Shared topic: situational awareness!
June 22, 2009This is brought to you by Blog Azeroth’s shared topic. Every week they pick something to write about, and it’s a good source of inspiration. This week, it’s about tunnel vision and situational awareness.
Hunters have to be very situationally aware. In addition to the fact that many of the Ulduar encounters have environmental DPS buffs, some of our most popular abilities require us to be situationally aware. For example- doing the Iron Council encounter as survival requires having the ability to find a safe way to stand in the rune of power (which moves around) while losing as little sniper training uptime as possible, and avoiding the much larger rune of death. If you can do this, you will see your DPS go far and beyond what you would get in a simple patchwerk type fight.
Basically, most of the encounters in Ulduar will significantly reward your situational awareness, or seriously punish your lack of it. So what can you do to prepare? First off, read the fights ahead of time. Be aware of what you should look for. Secondly, and this is very important, ensure that projected textures is checked in your graphics settings. 90% of environmental DPS buffs or dangerous areas are visible only with this on. If you need to reduce your settings to keep your frames per second high, reduce particle density and view distance.
Next, get good at using camera angles. I typically play from close to max camera range, set to an angle where I can see the boss and whatever’s behind me, however sometimes this isn’t the best. For example- in the Hodir encounter, I have to zoom in a bit so I can more easily find the fires. I am also looking into a way to set up my Power Auras addon so I can visually see when I’m in range without looking at my buffs.
Next up, learn to use targeting macros. You can’t always /assist off the tank, sometimes (like on Freya) you need to be able to switch between targets without breaking a step, and zooming out while trying to find them and click on them is not optimal. On this note, use enemy name plates. Whenever you’re working on more than one target, if you can see their health without stopping your primary actions, you can judge whether to make a quick change for a kill shot.
Also, try to be aware that healers have a maximum range. If there’s any way to avoid getting out of it, do that. These people are good at what they do, but you’re just not as important as a tank.
Lastly, use deadly boss mods and some sort of visual damage indicator to see if, whether you can see it or not, you’re standing in a fire or void zone.
euripidesoutdps
jurgwena
Faeghleis
lemli
eidotrope
Excellent topic. The phrase “Raid awareness, people” almost became a drinking game in our guild.
A few weeks back when we were struggling through some stuff we had one guy who kept saying it over and over.
His message was right, but the delivery was all wrong.
Oh, and the part about Sniper Training and Iron Council is dead-on. That was something I was working on last night. We got them down btw.
Up until recently I had projected textures turned off, and although some things aren’t visible, you can actually raid perfectly well with it off – the only bosses I haven’t killed with it off is Algalon, Mimiron and those in Sunwell.
I wouldn’t recommend this, obviously, but I had a terrible computer at the time :)
I like the zooming out bit. There’s a command, I forget what it is, but it allows you to zoom out much, much further than you normally would. It’s kind of necessary for things like three drake Sartharion. I figured I’d just use it for that fight, but I got so used to being able to see all around me, and it’s proven quite useful in a lot of raid scenarios, which allow me to get a better view of what’s going on.
I need to link this post into my guild forums. We had a shammy and shadow priest get burned down by Kologarn’s eye beams without moving once…. and they did it twice! I know it takes a lot of concentration to push buttons, but unless you’re new to computers, you should be able to do it without having to look at your fingers the whole time!
I’m happy to say that all the hunter’s did extremely well moving out of things.