World of Warcraft correspondent Dana O`Shea gives tips, hints and non class specific advice for players who are new to PvE raiding.

This guide is intended for players who are getting ready to start PvE raiding, or have started and are having a difficult time keeping up. Or even intermediate players who just want to improve their game. Rather than giving specific tips on class play, this guide is applies to all classes and all roles. Much of this is relevant for PvP and soloing as well, but that's not my personal area of expertise.

Defining Effective Play
Effective play in a raid is doing whatever is needed to make the raid successful. All three raiding roles have desirable traits players are constantly trying to adopt. For example, these are things like quick reaction speed, strong output, and aggro management. If you try for these traits, and succeed, that's effective. If you try and don't succeed, that's ineffective.

Read Part One of The Virtues of the Effective Raider.

As usual the author missed the primary virture, "Have no life".  All the ones he/she mentions are strictly secondary.

Good article man, good to see someone else uses dps meters not for glory but to see where ** I ** SUCK at pull types, with the aim that next time I will try and do a different rotation in order to up my contribution. I rarely look at the over all stats (apart from to see whose realy just plain bad/lazy) but only look at the last fight. Good addons such as recount are invaluable because they have the ability to break down your moves into graphical, readables stats. Ofc  wws reprt is more acurate but its handy to see an instant 'i sucked, 2k dps that pull, try xx' or 'great i didnt die and did 4-5k dps that pull'

I know some people like to say trash doesnt matter but it does when you are aiming at timed runs etc (or just want a nice speedy night) and its good for me to know that there are very, very few pulls now where I cant pull my weight simply by trying new rotations where I realized something isnt working.

also DPS doesnt really matter as much as people make out, contrary to what some believe. I can quite easily do 15k+ on some trash. I only do about 30k damage before I die tho. Your dps is irrelevant if its at the cost of your life! And if you die you just slow everyone down :D

How to be a Drone 101...interesting...not.

Seriously do we need guides like this?   Raids still represent everything thats wrong with alot of MMOS today..loot centricity, linear gameplay, and the ever present 'rush to end game' so people can raid.   MMO's that focus on Raids should just be called MMORG's instead of RPG's there's nothing RPG about end game rushing for raid gear.  I miss the days of when the Journey and the story to your character actually stood for something in MMOS. And I miss creating a character for yourself instead of creating one for everyone else.   Atleast back then you'd create a char for youself.   Now its all about cookie cutter pre defined roles and which ones are better so no one plays the other ones and figures out how to actually use them in an effective way.

/mini rant off

I didnt realize this was a discussion over the MERITS/CONS of raiding. seems to me to be perfectly clear its about how to be a good raider, regardless. Also whats wrong with being polite in a raid anyway? Would hardly call that being a drone, more, simply not being a prick...

Last I looked this is a Forum and I'm perfectly free to state my opinions on Raids when the Discussion is on Raids.    If you dont want to hear negative thoughts on Raids then don't post on Raids. 

The article flat out states to use cookie cutter builds, it pretty much states to do as your told, and eludes to basically you dont need to think for yourself as long as you know the overlords plans.   Having a particular play style or a Build you like shouldn't be seen as a deteriment.   If raid leaders are unable to define a plan of action that involves particular builds and playstyles outside of the norm that should actually be considered a seriously fault in a raid leader.  

Just because 1 plan works doesn't mean it has to be the only plan but thats not how raids are played.  They're eventually plug and play everyone does the same thing every time and everyone is built a particular way thus eliminating anyone or anything that is not built to specification.   Thus everyone ends up a drone or a clone of one another in most games like WoW.

Good...

Now that we have an article on how to be effective, how about an article on how to have fun as well? I mean... that's what a game is supposed to be, right?

Originally posted by Faelan

Good...

Now that we have an article on how to be effective, how about an article on how to have fun as well? I mean... that's what a game is supposed to be, right?

Last I checked, this subcategory of gaming is about drama, drama, mind-numbing grind, arguing with jackasses and retards, drama, ganking newbs, lewt hoarding, ruining social lives, and drama.

Where did it all go wrong?

Originally posted by Cyrosphere

Last I checked, this subcategory of gaming is about drama, drama, mind-numbing grind, arguing with jackasses and retards, drama, ganking newbs, lewt hoarding, ruining social lives, and drama.

Where did it all go wrong?

You know the sad part? You're absolutely right

I used to be the biggest enemy of raiding. I used to loathe the raiding system and its unforgiveness, I used to hate raiders.  The whole "gear up until you're strong enough for raiding" system in MMO's used to make me sick to my stomach.

Eventually, I got bored with the other content though. First I tried some other games, but found  none of them offered the polish and high production values that WoW had, so eventually I came back andstarted focusing more on high end PVE, first by doing heroics, and eventually stepping foot in kharazan until i joined a raiding guild to do 25 mans too.

Now I'm turned 180 on this subject. Raiding isn't about epics or about epeen (sure there might be people out there, but surely not me), its about pure FUN!

To work together with 24 other people, each using their own skills to their best and paying attention to their surroundings, and in sync defeat the biggest challenges and defeat the strongest foes. That's what raiding is about. Sure I'm happy when a good epic drops and I win it, but what makes me far more happy is finally defeating that dragon that the guild whiped on so many times.

So I'm happy about raiding now, I find it the one challenging thing that keeps the game alive and kicking for me.  The great thing about raiding in WoW though, is its completely optional. No one "needs" to raid. You can stick to small groups or even soloing dailyquests if thats what you want. And with the introduction of resilience, raiding gear isn't useful at all for PVP, its useful for raiding only, so no one who doesn't like raiding actually need the "epics" that drop in raiding instances. You can get far better PVP sets from doing PVP if thats what you're interested in.