Over at Blog Azeroth, Lissanna of Restokin posted the shared topic: Being aware of your surroundings during raids. I’ll be examining this topic from a ranged DPS perspective, drawing from my raiding experience as a Moonkin.

Very rarely are there encounters in instances where you can just stand still and unleash all your firepower upon a boss. Such encounters do exist, such as Patchwerk in Naxxramas, but they are few and far between. (It’s important to note that this is why Patchwerk is such a good measure of DPS. You can just stand there and run through your rotation, or spell priorities, without having to worry about moving for any reason whatsoever.) Most encounters will have some sort of mechanic which you have to actively look out for, unless you want to die a horrible death, and be branded a noob forever.

This “bad stuff” can come in all shapes and sizes. For example, when killing Sartharion you need to avoid the huge flame walls that can come from either side, by running in to a gap in the middle of them. Sometimes you will be able to get away with standing in one spot and DPSing, if the flames keep coming from one side, but when one from the opposite side comes, you’re going to have to stop casting and run to that gap. (As a Moonkin, this is a good time to refresh Moonfire and Insect Swarm.)

Another example of an encounter where you have to avoid the “bad stuff” is Hodir. This fight requires much more raid awareness, as there are several things you must be aware of. Number one: You must keep moving, as much as possible, in order to dispel a frost-damage DoT (unless affected by the Toasty Fire buff). Number two: Stay out of the falling snowflakes. If you see snowflakes falling on top of you, or very close to you, move away. Number three: When flash freeze is about to occur, make sure you’re on top of a snow mound. Number four: Try and optimise as many of the available buffs as you can – this will require some positioning.

Why does avoiding the “bad stuff” matter?

In the majority of situations, the “bad stuff” will do damage to you, and potentially kill you. Taking the example of the flame walls of Sartharion, if you get hit by these it will apply a fire DoT on you. While you may be able to do this once and get away with it, assuming your healers are keeping a close eye on you, if you get hit multiple times by successive flame waves, chances are that you will die.

In the Hodir fight, if you stand still and don’t dispel the DoT, the damage will keep building up until it kills you (even if you are receiving large heals). If you get hit by the falling ice (which is preceded by the falling snowflakes), you will be knocked back, as well as taking a large amount of damage. If you don’t avoid the flash freeze, you get frozen inside an ice block, and have to be freed by your raid members. If you get hit again by the flash freeze while in the ice block, you will die.

How does this affect us ranged DPS’ers?

It might sound easy, “Just avoid this stuff and you’ll live!”, but often you can get caught up in your DPS rotation, or simply be focused solely on the DPS metres, and fail to even notice the “bad stuff”. Even for things as big and obvious as Sartharion’s flame wave, I’ve been so caught up in trying to squeeze anything in to an Eclipse rotation that I’ve failed to notice the big huge orange walls of flame, failed to notice the raid warnings popping up in the middle of my screen, I’ve been too involved in the spells. Then I get hit, and I suddenly think, “Oh damn, that was dumb”. Of course, it’s impossible to be completely aware 100% of the time. The key is to keep this tunnel vision to a minimum.

Situational awareness is an extremely important factor for DPS in the majority of boss encounters. Simply put – you can’t DPS when dead. Even if you’re doing 4000 dps, while everyone else is languishing at 2000, if you die early all that DPS has gone to waste. You go from 4000 dps to 0, and will probably end up near the bottom of the metres for damage done. So, if you want to be an effective DPS, not only do you have to have your rotation (or spell priorities) well rehearsed, but you also need to be able to stay alive, in order to actually do some damage.

Finally, if you’re a ranged class, make use of that! Why have to run out of the harmful AoE, when you can just stand back and continue to do damage? Tail swipe? No problem, just stand back a bit. In many cases, staying at range will help you to avoid all that “bad stuff”, but make sure to keep your eyes open.

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