Communicating to your raid the strategy you will be using is a key part of being successful in a raid. Well, duh. How many times have you gone over a fight and said, “ok if you get the bad stuff… go run over here. You are the bomb!!!” (Molten Core reference, anyone?) Let’s tell a story… a long time ago, in a raid far far away….
Raid Leader: “Ok now everyone remember, if you get the Super Bad debuff, you go over here.” *pings map*
The encounter begins, and Raider Joe is targeted by the Super Bad debuff and runs off to the wrong location.
Raid Leader: “Joe! Joe! Wrong way! Run to the east!!!!” *pings map incessantly*
Debuff goes off, and wipes the raid.
The End.
Now, in a perfect world this would never happen. But as we all know, this does happen in raids – Yes, this happens in my Guild’s Heroic 25 man raids.
Yes, we all can look at maps created in strategiy forums and other online venues… I’ve seen some masterpiece MS Paint strategy ‘maps’ that rival Picasso. However, even the best maps are paled in comparison to the raid itself. Enter the mod, AVR. AVR (Augmented Virtual Reality) is great for laying out strategies for your raid. You can provide illustrated locations for the boss in the actual raid environment.
AVR allows you to create lines, shapes, and other directions that display right on the screens of the other users in your raid. All they need to do, is have the AddOn installed, and you can share your layout with them. They don’t need to do ANYTHING except load the mod.
It is very intuitive to set up, you can access the menu via /avr menu and create shapes (aka Meshes) or you can draw lines using the Paint controls. I’ve created the Raid Icon star here in Dalaran. I could then share this shape with any number of people in my raid and they could see this shape. I could use this as the designated ‘debuff point’ or simply as a ‘ranged stand here’ marker.
My guild is progressing on Heroic Sindragosa and in our strategy we are strategically positioning the ice tombs in Phase 2. To assist with that positioning we’ve created an AVR for the raid with the corresponding Raid Icons and positioning.
This means if you are marked with a Skull, X, Diamond, Triangle, Moon, or Square – you know where to go.
Great… now the best part of this addon is that the created graphics are visible the entire fight. Yep, that means in the middle of the encounter you know exactly where these designated places are. The utility for this addon is endless:
Rotface – Collapse points for the inoculate buffs
Sindragosa – Tomb Placement
BQL – Healer Positioning
You just need to find the application for this mod for your raids. “Ok… I have a moon on my head, where am I supposed to go?”
NOTE: Sorry this post was up then down then up then down again. There were some complications regarding a number of aspects of this post. It is now back up again.
