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Transformers 3: Officially Excited

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7 months ago
by george in

Its official… I am completely and utterly excited about this next iteration in the Transformers series. So much so that I am planning to take next Wednesday off to go see this installment.

What can I say, I didn’t have much hope for this given the disaster that was Transformers 2. But reviewing the previews and initial opinions, I have to say, Michael Bay may have pulled this series around with this installment and hit a home run. A week from now we will see and hopefully this one is a win.

Raid Healing 101: Evaluating your Healers

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7 months ago
by george in

As we ramp up our raid roster for Firelands that is set to release in patch 4.2 on June 28th, I feel it necessary to post about leading a group of raid healers. Coming from a raid leading perspective, I believe that while you can reduce healing to heals per second (HPS), the net result of that is a very limited view of your healers and gives a false sense of usefulness when judged purely on HPS. Others in the blogosphere seem to agree with this and the lists are very similar as you take into account the broader view of your healers.

How do you evaluate healers? I will admit, that evaluating healers across multiple specs and roles is going to be both subjective and objective. And let’s first start by saying that not all healers are alike and that certain healers in certain situations will be hands above the rest. For example, a resto druid in a situation that calls for a lot of expected raid damage will just be higher in throughput and HPS than the rest. That doesn’t mean the rest of the healers didn’t do their job.

Evaluation Criteria

  1. Doesn’t die to fire. If you have strong burst healing and can push HPS, but all the while you get hit with incoming avoidable damage or die an avoidable death, your HPS was all for not. Staying alive and avoiding the avoidable while healing is key.
  2. On par with those of similar spec and role. If there are two resto druids who are both raid healing, they should be able to do about the same throughput (overall healing done) as well as HPS. Comparing everyone by HPS alone doesn’t take into account dedicated tank healing, or specific role healing, such as bubbling etc.
  3. Is the raid dying due to heals? The healers job is to keep everyone alive. But if a raider doesn’t follow mechanics and gets pummelled by a 200k hit, obviously it’s not a healer issue. Healers need to be raid aware to understand how people are dying on their watch. For example, if you are assigned as a tank healer and your tank goes down, do you know why? Was it because the tank failed a mechanic or did you fail to keep up with expected damage? This isn’t necessarily a dig at the healer, but that information is necessary in understanding the situation and making any necessary adjustments to succeed. For example using the previous example, if the tank dies because the healer can’t keep up with expected damage, either the healer needs to adjust their play style, spec, gear, etc, or the healer needs to be swapped for a different class that may have more utility to handle the expected damage. There are options, but the root is that the healer needs to know who’s in their focus and why they died on their watch.
  4. Adaptability. Just because your assigned to a tank heal, doesn’t mean the tank is the only person you heal. That’s just your primary focus, but your secondary focus is the care of the raid in general. The same is for a raid healer, they can’t just let the tank faceplant because they are on raid healing. Healers need to be able to execute their primary objectives, but also adapt to secondary objectives. Another example would be if a tank healer dies, a raid healer needs to jump in immediately to take over both roles.
  5. The right stuff. Healer composition needs to fit with the raid encounter. Generally speaking we’ll assume that we’ll be running a raid group that has a balanced configuration, but there may be raid encounters where HoT healers are generally just hands above all others, or there may be raid encounters where single target healers are just better. We need to look out for these trends and adjust accordingly. Everyone needs to be aware of what’s going on to be able to catch these patterns and say something.
  6. Teamwork, teamwork, teamwork. Recount and Skada need to be ignored. If anything the above 5 points highlight, HPS is only one of a slew of factors that make a good healer. What I’ll be looking for are people who can stay competitive with their fellow healers, but also work well within the team. Check your ego at the raid door, cause if your going in with the intent of being the #1 HPS, you may be doing the raid group more harm than good.
  7. < 10%. Managing mana is going to be key. Especially with all the changes, you want to make sure that you have enough mana to survive the entire fight. Both relying on your own ability to manage your mana efficiently, but also relying on your fellow healers to help carry their weight. But by the end fo the fight healers will want to aim to be < 10% in mana, ideally < 5%. This will mean that you are pushing your heals to the absolute end, leaving a small margin in reserve for the “oh shit” moments, but in the end you want to be running on fumes. This isn’t to say heal recklessly, that would contradict the above, but healers need to heal and if you are ending the fight with almost full mana, unless that is the case with ALL the healers, there probably was more healing you could have done and didn’t or didn’t find the need to.

Office Musing: Putting the Toliet Seat Down

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7 months ago
by george in

So now that the title of the post has grabbed you, this isn’t actually about putting the toliet seat down, per se.

Unless your a bachelor living on your own, most men have had to go through the situation where when they live in a house with a woman, whether a mother or sister or when you are involved in a committed relationship and live together with your spouse, after using the facilities you sometimes forget to put the seat down. Unless your a complete clod, you will do the needful and make sure that the women in your life don’t suffer the indignity of going to sit down only to find that the seat is up. This isn’t something new or ground breaking but is part of what I will call common sense, which in previous years could be seen as a universal known, but nowadays I’m not entirely sure that common sense is so universally known. Common sense is now seen as relative to the person and their experiences and perspectives, which leads us into the actual issue to this post.

As I hope the majority of people who would read this are gainfully employed, we all have worked in office environments where you have common spaces. Typically in these common spaces you will find your basic office amenities–coffee, tea, utensils, plates, microwaves, water cooler, etc. Off all of these amenities, two stand out: the water cooler and coffee.

I have seen, at least in my office, a growing trend that I think warrants some considerations, that is where the water runs out and nobody replaces it with a new bottle, or leaving the K-cup in the coffee machine (or for those not using Keurig, to leave an empty pot of coffee or leaving the grounds in the machine).

Now why is this important? Well in the grand scheme of things, when compared to 3rd world debt or world hunger or famine, flood, and natural disasters, this is obviously small potatoes. But nonetheless, common sense should dictate that these common spaces should follow the old camping adage: Leave the area better than when you found it. The camping adage just means that when you go camping your bound to setup a lot of gear–tents, fires, food, garbage, etc. These have become common place in the modern camping experience. However, after your done, you are suppose to restore your camp grounds to a state better than when you found it, i.e. no lingering garbage, no man-made remnants, pretty much just nature. These common area’s should be seen the same way. If you are a user of the water cooler and find that after your use the water is empty, the common sense thing to do is to replace it with a new bottle. Or if after you make that delicious 1 cup serving of coffee you empty the K-cup, or if your coffee depletes the water supply you do the needful and fill it back up for the next person. Basically leaving that space in a better state than when you found it.

Isn’t this making a mountain out of a mole-hill? Yes and no. By all rights, this is kind of a stupid topic! I’ll be the first to admit it. But this goes back to my initial premise that we have lost a universal understanding of what is common sense. Supported are these observations that we see growing both in the work place, but also at home. We are becoming lazy and using our reasoning abilities to justify our actions to make ourselves feel good or at least indifferent about those lazy actions. Another perspective is that we are not lazy, but just in fact clueless to what the proper etiquette is! Perhaps this is a failure of our education system to no longer teach our young what proper etiquette is, but again, if this is such a common sense ideal, shouldn’t we all have a base understanding of how to act and not act?

TL:DR, take a set back and see how apathetic you are to your work place and these common spaces. Do you do the needful and take time to consider your colleagues or do you do the selfish and only act in ways that benefit you?

Business 101: The senseless email interruption

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7 months ago
by george in

There have been many articles  posted recently about the negative effects that email interruptions have on your work day. By and large we all use email as a critical component to day to day business and there cannot be any argument to the positive benefits of email. This is not a point I am arguing.

But the negative effects of email interruptions are real. When you get an email, it can take several minutes to tens of minutes to get refocused. And we’ve all had this experience. Whether it’s:

  1. Getting an email because the sender believes you need to have the ‘visibility’
  2. Being part of a mass email because the sender doesn’t know who specifically can help
  3. Being part of an email where their is a broad audience, but no specific person is identified as being the direct recipient of the email or calling out within the email specific people who the sender is looking for a direct response from

There are probably more, but generally the idea here is that the sender is responsible for the email interruptions, and in the majority of cases is senseless. For example, if I’m working on an issue, and all of a sudden my inbox is flooded by several emails all on a similar thread, I am going to stop whatever I am doing, examine the first few emails and determine if this requires my attention. Now that simple act has caused probably a 15 minute or longer distraction.

Now for some, this may be viewed as a necessary evil, part of doing business, but in my view, these are to some degree avoidable behaviors. The sender should/must understand who their target audience is and ask the simple question:

  1. Do each of these recipients have a reason and need to receive my email?

Also we seem to have lost the art of adding someone onto an email as a CC in the middle of the thread, and then removing them as soon as the question or bit that they have contributions to is over. I believe that this is some of the power of Google Wave, as people can be inserted mid-wave and not have to stay on for the full course of the wave.

TL:DR, we all must take more consideration when sending emails. In today’s world, email is essential so there isn’t a leg to stand on to say we need something different. But the senseless interruptions have to stop and we each need to do our part in making that happen. Taking care to understand your audience, who needs to be involved, and managing the thread are each person’s contribution. We all could do with a little less interruptions in our day.

 

Raid Leading 101: Knowing when to take a step back

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8 months ago
by george in

All good things must come to an end. A timeless quote from Star Trek: The Next Generation that applies in so many different contexts. I haven’t written a lot these days, but lets just say things haven’t been going well. As a result I have decided to take a step back from this role. I’ll talk you through a walk-a-mile-in-my-shoes as to the reasoning behind this decision.

There have been many posts online regarding WoW and Cataclysm raiding and how quickly it seems people are getting burned out with this content. Let’s not make any reservations or beating around the bush, this content is tough. Blizzard did a great job making the raids something that requires a group that both know their own abilities, but can work well together. For instance, I’ll take a look at the first encounter in ICC, Lord Marrowgar. Even in heroic modes, all of his abilities hurt even more, and bones spikes occurred throughout the entire encounter. Because of this, even in a PuG you can easily look at pugging this encounter and not really worry about much as long as people stayed out of the bad and knocked down those bone spikes as soon as they were up. Looking at Cataclysm, let’s take a look at the heroic Halfus encounter, at the current tier would you ever consider pugging this fight? Absolutely not! The level of coordination that’s required and ability to know your own class would make this an absolutely miserable encounter to raid lead or be a part of within a PuG. It’s these differences that highlight the changes in difficulties between WoTLK and Cataclysm where I have to tip my hat to Blizzard for making these raids pretty tough!

So on top of tough raid encounters, many guilds are facing internal problems as raiders get worn down, and internal politics play at adding complexity to already tough raid encounters.

I think that guilds need to look at ways to simplify their structures and organizations to optimize decision making process and to ensure that focus can remain on raiding and not on minute details. For instance, if a guild is a 10man raiding guild, stick to 1 raid group. Trying to manage 2 10man raid groups in 1 guild can be done, but is exceedingly difficult to manage. A better solution would be to move from 2 10man raiding groups to 1 25man raiding group. For 2 10man or more raiding groups within 1 guild, I think a few things have to be in place to make this happen. First the GM has to not have a vested interest in one group over the other. Ideally the GM would be someone who floats between the groups or doesn’t raid at all so there is an objectivity when it comes to guild resources and allocation between the groups.

Competition is good. Competition is good, but at the same time its difficult to contain within 1 guild. For example, if you pit 2 10man raid groups against each other, naturally there is a natural buildup of opinions and anxieties between the raiders in both groups and rightfully or wrongfully when one team succeeds, that is seem by the other team as a negative cause they weren’t #1. In my view having gone through this recently, it is probably a better solution to have the entire guild in 1 raiding group to alleviate this from happening and to prevent unnecessary competition anxieties. It’s funny, when discussing this with my good friend, his immediate reaction was that most of my issues were a result of competition or my desire to win.

Dealing with individual players is very similar to that in business. Comes with the territory. But in this case, what became more and more of an issue was the week after week trying to scramble to get 10 players all to get on at the same time. There were times when as a raid leader I tried to bring in new members of the guild, but that backfired as those players were already slated for the other raid group. In the end, recruiting only seemed to be for one group and the constant slide backwards was demoralizing and started to make this game not fun anymore.

In the end, I have to admit, I am a bit saddened by this as I haven’t quit anything before, but yesterday I decided to step down from this role. The major reasoning for me was that there lacked executive sponsorship to support and develop the group in the ways that it needed. While this is true in one sense, the other reason to step down was to force the issue and to correct the situation so the other 9 people didn’t have to live through the dysfunction. By having our GM now step in to take over the group, this is the best of all situations as there now becomes a vested interest and executive sponsorship. Would this be my preferred method, absolutely not! But the ends justified the means–this time at least. Part of me look to this as a failure on my part, but the other part recognizes that no amount of effort could equal out the mental capital that was going into this raid group each week, and for what? The needling wasn’t moving from empty. My hope is that going forward, things take an upward swing, and I am sure that I have let others down, but this has to be the best option at this time.

Raid Leading 101: Roles at the Top

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9 months ago
by george in

Now that Cataclysm is well underway, and the majority of players are basking or cursing (or a bit of both) the contents in patch 4.1, but raiding must go on. The talk of the town now is what’s to come in patch 4.2 with the Firelands and raids all over the world are planning their attack to take down Rengoth and his feared minions of doom!

But before that comes out, Cataclysm raiding is still going strong. Guilds all over the place are downing hardmode content in Blackwing Decent, Bastion of Twilight and Throne of the Four Winds. The current guild I’m with are currently 10/12 in Cataclysm content with initial attempts on Nefarion and looking forward to Al’akir.

But in the midst of all of that, raid groups are still an issue. I see posts all over where other guild leaders are complaining about the pains of recruiting and churn, but looking at the guild I’m a part of I can see this happening right before my eyes.

The problem. Whenever a 10-man raiding guild starts to have more than one group, it seems there is always a byproduct of one group feeling that the other is better. For example, we have a weekday raiding group that has been around since the start of the guild, but we also then have another 10-man raiding guild that formed 2 months back. That second group has been plagued with issues:

  1. Family issues, the initial group had 4 members who were all related that ran into an issue where one of the members wasn’t on par with the rest and when confronted feelings were hurt and in the end those 4 left the guild/server.
  2. Starting over, we have run into issues with reliability where members in the group don’t show up at raid time
  3. New members each week, having to pull in alts from the guild to fill the roster for that week
  4. Members coming in from group 1, due to schedules, we have people transferring from group 1 to group 2 and seeing differences in the raid style and progression
  5. Lack of DPS/healing, as we get into higher tiers of bosses, we are finding we are running into a HPS and DPS ceiling with the current members

All of these are common issues that any guild can face, but the important element is that the guild leadership is solid and working to quickly address each situation. In our guild we have co-GM’s, and each group has a raid officer and a raid leader. I think it’s important to understand the roles of each.

Raid Management

Within a raid, the following list outlines what the raid management/leadership is responsible for [source]:

  • Make the raid as successful as possible
  • Needs to be Honest, Unbiased, and always performance-oriented
  • Make the tough decisions / wear the black hat
  • Assess players based on what they bring to the raid and how well they are executing
  • Manage the PERFORMANCE of the raid
  • Be a clear and present leader at all times during the raid
  • Get progression, achievements, titles, mounts, fame, fortune, super-model girlfriends

In our guild, these responsibilities are broken up between the raid leader and raid officer. In my view, the separation of powers would go like this:

Raid Officer

Make the raids as successful as possible. This is done by making sure that the raid invites are up on the calendar, chasing down people to make sure they are committed to the raid days for that group per week. Looking for replacements and horse-trading with the other group if necessary or other guild members who have alts that are not locked to the other group.

Be a clear and present leader at all times during the raid. You need to manage the state of the raiders. Where there minds are. How they are reacting to decisions that are being made. Micromanaging the personal issues. For example, if people are getting frustrated over the current boss, they should complain to the raid officer who can then assess the state of play and discuss with the raid leader on the concerns, moving on to another encounter, calling it for the night, or changing out players for a more optimal performance for that encounter.

Raid Leader

Managing the performance of the raid. Providing direction for what each class is to do and monitoring the execution of that. Understanding the faults and where adjustments need to be made and quickly making them.

Assess players based on what they bring to the raid and how well they are executed. Sometimes you bring whoever shows up, but a lot of times this isn’t the best raider. Performance is the key and for these encounters that have hard enrage timers, i.e Atremedes, once the gongs are gone GG, raid’s a wipe if the dragon isn’t dead. If people aren’t DPS’ing enough or healing enough or tanking properly, those things need to be changed.

Shared Responsibilities

In both roles, there are shared responsibilities. The leadership needs to be honest, unbiased, and always performance-oriented. Sometimes we may feel certain things or certain ways or people may rub us the wrong way, but as a leader you have to assess this and determine if a change needs to happen, if this was a transient thing, or whether an off-line conversation has to occur to address a specific concern.

Make the tough decisions. Raiding is not a one man show. Both people need to be on the same page with regards to how to handle the raid and making adjustments where they need to be made to ensure the success of the raid group.

Get progression. It’s both roles responsibilities to get progression. Bottom line, if the roster isn’t filled, the group is going to not form up and have a good chance of success. If the strats suck, the boss is going to eat the group. In the end it’s a combination and reliance on both roles in order to make sure at the top, the group is going to be successful.

 

 

 

How To: Protecting your computers from harm

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9 months ago
by george in

Over the last few days, I’ve had to help a few friends overcome issues with their computers being infected with various malware. Mainly this seems to have been caused by a Vista Home Security variant.

While there are plenty of guides online to deal with this problem, the bigger question is–how does someone protect themselves from this type of problem going forward? Or is it even preventable given today’s online trickery?

I have some basic steps, nothing revolutionary, to help people cope with the difficulties that are faced when browsing online. Make no mistake, going online these days is treacherous! And this is no understatement. People who would do bad things are using all sorts of methods and means to know who you are and to compromise your computer. It is up to you to take on a serious perspective to deal with these challenges.

Computer Security

  1. Use multiple browsers. My rule of thumb is 3. Use Internet Explorer exclusively for banking only–this excludes any type of online transactions. Use Chrome for online transactions. Use Firefox for your everyday browsing. The reason behind this is what I like to call separation of church and state. While there isn’t anything political with this, it does mean that by using separate browsers you can protect yourself at the browser level from cross-contamination between browser activity.
  2. Use antivirus. I don’t buy into the idea that you have to purchase an expensive solution such as Norton or McAfee. There are free/open source antivirus out there that is at or exceeds the effectiveness of commercial solutions. Solutions like Avast! or AVG are both very good.
  3. Keep your antivirus updated. You MUST be the one responsible for making sure that you periodically go back to the software website and seeing whether or not there is an updated version. Typically the version you have will update definitions and the software within the current release, but for instance if they go up a major release version, the software that you have installed may not update to the latest major release. This is typical and NOT the responsibility of the software to take into account as you don’t want major releases automatically updating on your system (this can lead to bad things unto itself). So take the time periodically to go out and see if there are any major version updates.
  4. Keep your computer updated. This is your responsibility not Microsoft. If you own a Toyota, you wouldn’t expect Toyota to call you each time your car needs service–likewise its not Microsoft’s responsibility to tell you when to update. Be diligent and create a maintenance plan for your systems.
  5. Toolbars, many software these days will try and install toolbars and other browser plugins. Make sure your not just clicking through the installation of any software. Choose custom instead of the default installation and make sure that toolbars and other bloatware is not being installed onto your computer.
  6. Browser addons. These can be useful, but use as your own risk. The more addons that are used, the more changes that are made to the way your browser was originally designed to behave. Rule of thumb, install only what you need and be sure that you actually need it (verses a want).
  7. Frequently clean your browser cache and registry. Use something like Ccleaner.
  8. Use a sandbox, this is for the more advanced user, but because of software like Synergy, you can use multiple computers using the same keyboard, monitor, and mouse. Why not take an old computer, and install Linux on it, connect it to your main computer (say if it’s running Windows), and do all your unsure browsing on the Linux system?
  9. Change to use OpenDNS. OpenDNS maintains a database of potentially dangerous sites. By using something like OpenDNS, this is another line of defense to potentially bad web addresses as well as improving your browsing speeds (this is a double edged sword as sites that use Content Delivery Networks (CDN) will not be optimized due to a lack of correct geography).

Website Security

  1. Don’t save passwords–EVER! This is sort of a no brainer, but the number of people who don’t follow this simple rule is also astounding. If you can’t remember your passwords cause you have made them too hard or you have too many of them, rethink your password policy. For instance, pick a phrase that has 8 words in it, take the first letter out of each word and then add in a special character, followed by an abbreviation to the site, i.e. Amazon would be Amz, and then end with another special character. Believe it or not, this password is extremely secure and easy to remember because of the abbreviation.
  2. Don’t click on any banners or ads. This one people like Google, Bing, and Yahoo! would all be sad to read, but yes, those nice ads that appear in your searches, or banners on websites, are all big no-no’s! If you want to look at a product/service, make sure to do a search for the main website verses clicking on a banner or ad link. This is because both can contain other functions within the URL that can do all kinds of weird or odd or bad things.
  3. Use the URL field. People are getting lazy, and forgetting that if you want to go to a website, you can type in the URL directly in a browser.

Email security

  1. Use webmail. I love email solutions like Google Apps (Gmail) and Hotmail and the like. These sites are great as images within an email can be set to only display if you trust the source. This is great because many emails come through with deceptive scams.
  2. Look at your email headers. These are part of every email. If you don’t know the email address in the header (not just the from address) don’t click on anything within that email.
  3. When in doubt, visit the email senders homepage? For instance, if you get an email from Chase (assuming that’s your bank) saying that your account is compromised and to click here to fix it, instead of clicking on the link, go to their webpage directly. Or better yet, call them using the number on the back of your card or statement. Honestly the number of people who blindly click on something in an email is astounding.
  4. Deceptive links. If you know how to code in HTML, you know that simply stated you can make a URL appear to be something, but then have the link go somewhere else. Many people take links at face value and this is just wrong. Before you click on a link hover over the link and see where in the bottom left corner of your browser the link is going to. If the link doesn’t agree with the sender, then don’t click it.
  5. Don’t open attachments, period, unless you are absolutely sure who sent the email.

Warrior Healers in WoW, Just WrOnG!

0
10 months ago
by george in

Light it up Blue!

0
10 months ago
by george in ,

Everywhere you go these days it seems like Cancer is getting all the attention. Whether it is one form or another, cancer is certainly a bad thing; however, Autism is something that I don’t think people realize is also just as wide spread. The statistics are all over the place, but you’ll find statistics that show autism affects every 1 in 45 people or 1 in 75. Needless to say, the number is high and what we need is more awareness to support efforts to better understand the autism spectrum and how we can understand the cause and cope with autism when we see it affecting our loved ones.

Show your support today for Autism by lighting up blue. This is an effort to show the world that while there may be a diverse number of illnesses out there, autism deserves more attention than it has been given and people need to be more understanding of what autism is.

Raid Leading 101: Taking Responsibility

0
10 months ago
by george in

So its been a few weeks now and I’ve had the opportunity to raid lead on some of our group 1 progressions and for most of group 2 progressions. All in all, I can safely say, it is not for the weak minded! And certainly that’s not tooting my own horn as this has been an interesting experience to say the least and has certainly pushed my mental fortitude to points that I didn’t realize I had within me.

As we move forward in this process, a few topics around responsibility come into play:

  1. Who comes, who stays, getting that solid group together and for each raid member to have their head in the game 100%.
  2. Within each encounter

The first one came as sort of an eye opener. Since we have two raid progress groups, the second group is still in the final stages of getting ironed out. With that being said, we have guildie alts that are coming in on those fights. While this in most cases should be a good thing, what it also means is that they are on toons that are not their mains or ones that they don’t play on that often. Where this does affect the group is when we start wiping and part of it is due to lack of focus and knowing how it would be in another group. For example, if I’m healing in group 1, and tanking in group 2, I can’t be thinking about how much better I’d be healing than tanking. My role at that point in time in that raid is to tank. And by golly it is my responsibility to come in with my game face on and give it my 100%. But when you have people who are talking like their head is not 100% in the game, this can cause tremendous strain on the rest of the group as they begin to feel that way too.

Secondly, within an encounter, it is the raid leaders job to make sure everyone is aware of the mechanics of the fight and the strategy that will be used, but it is everyone’s job who is in the encounter to take it upon themselves to understand how the mechanics affect them and do their part to handle them.

For example, in the Bastion of Twilight twin dragons encounter, everyone needs to stack up to get Blackout dispelled and then move away. Part of this is timing it so that the dispell is done quickly and everyone moves back out. This is key as during the blackout there could be a Twilight Meteorite that is dropped right on the stacked pile. So if people don’t stack up quickly, get dispelled quickly, and spread back out quickly, you are likely to eat 2 twilight meteorites. Now looking at responsibility, it is the DPS and healers responsibility to stay relatively close to the boss so they can stack while not being too close where they are affecting each other with twilight meteorites, the assigned healer needs to be quick and dispell, and before the call is made, everyone needs to be aware of when the debuff is dispelled and spread back out. If everyone waits for the dispeller to call it out, then it may be a second or two too late and everyone eats a meteorite.

Needless to say that with each mechanic each person to the raid has a responsibility to not wait for a call out as everyone should have their DBM timers up looking to see when the next mechanic is going to be up.

Sometimes I feel that as a raid leader you fail because you aren’t calling out each of the abilities or mechanics. But on the other hand, my gut tells me that as a participating member of the raid, if you know the mechanics and you have the tools, i.e. DBM to let you know when things are coming up, should it really be the raid leaders job to worry about calling stuff out, or should they be focused on looking at what is actually happening through the encounter and adjusting that from attempt to attempt, i.e. people didn’t stack quickly and therefore we ate more of the twilight meteorites than we should have and it wiped the raid.

While generally if failures happen the raid leader is naturally and should be the person to take the ownership of that, the raid leader also needs 9 other players who bring their fair share of responsibility to the raid as well otherwise the factors are skewed.

TL:DR, everyone has a part to the success as well as the failures. Wiping is just part and parcel with the raid experience; however, everyone needs to bring their A-game. Otherwise no matter what you do, your going to have an uphill battle.

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