Raid Awareness is a Learned and Practiced Skill

[Igloo]

Amazing article that is well worth the read.


http://iam.yellingontheinternet.com/2014/01/29/raid-awareness-is-a-learned-and-practiced-skill/

I really like the part about being able to recall specific actions on a boss. Especially for the first kill of a boss, the timing of everything becomes second nature. You begin to learn when you can partially cheese mechanics to push DPS, or when a mechanic superceeds DPS output. For sha, if I have more than 50 pride before a swelling pride, I normally stop everything that I am doing, and start looking for my puddle.

Another thing that was not mentioned, which I feel most players do not want to hear, is that mastering your class is extremely important in PvE. Constantly swapping toons and not spending quality time mastering your class hurts a players ability to focus on mechanics, because they still need to consciously pay attention to their rotation. Having played my warrior since BC, my DPS rotation is second nature, as is my response to taking damage. I can screw up a mechanic, but still live because I can quickly shield wall and defensive stance. I don't need to do a fight a million times to near max my dmg output because I respond quickly to my surroundings. Being able to keep a solid rotation and popping defensive CDs when everything around you is in chaos is the difference between landing a first boss kill and having to wipe for another week.

 

[Talan42]

I've started playing WoW at release and played all the way through shortly before Cata.

In all this time I only seriously played my druid. Though I also played some other classes, I never played anything as serious as my druid. And as far as I could tell I was the best druid player around on our server. Our guild consistently got server firsts and I don't think that I'd have been as good a player if I'd switched classes multiple times.

Playing druid became second nature to me over the years. Everytime Blizz tweaked something, like a cooldown, I immediately feelt something was off - even without realizing what exactly.

 

[dragoon]

I started in vanilla but dropped it due to lost interest. Picked it back up with friends for WOTLK and hit 70 the day before it came out. I played it like crazy.

I had a few different characters but I almost exclusively played a healing class. I had a Holy pally and priest. I also leveled a resto druid to around 66 before leaving him in Outlands somewhere long forgotten.

Individuals mastering their class is, indeed, something that will make or break a raid group. I think there's something to be said for mastering a play style in general, though. Understanding what to do and how to respond is very similar on these classes.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/bloodscalp/Gød/simple <-- what a blast from the past.