Not only is it more chaotically challenging than regular leveling content or 5-player dungeon content, but it more solidly introduces the concept of teamwork within the game setting.

Self-Defense In Raiding, Defined

When I first think about self-defense in a raiding context, "staying alive" is what comes to mind.

Raiders Gather for their ToTC Raids

Those are dynamics that are also in play in Regular and Heroic 5-player dungeons as well, so there's a lot of practice available for any given raider in terms of that type of self defense.

Second up, I think of self-defense in a "something is on you, and you're not a tank" kind of way.

If that something doesn't one-shot you, or you have a chance to react to their making a bee-line towards you, self-defense tactics are the ones you use to keep yourself alive long enough for that mob to be downed or taken back by a tank (or by another less squishy raid member).

But ultimately, neither of these types of self-defense are what inspired this entry.

The one that inspired it is a third type of self-defense - that of defending yourself against your own raid members' and their (sometimes warped) senses of humor.

Someone Always Thinks It's Funny

Unless you're in a raid team with zero roster movement, you're always bringing in new blood to your guild raids, and if you PUG raid at all, generally over 50% of the raid tends to be "new blood", at least when it comes to your familiarity with them.

And when there's new blood, there's always someone who gets a kick out of using a skill or object that negatively impacts others.

For example, for the first time since January someone put down a Toy Train Set in our official raid last week. Of course it was destroyed immediately, and it was put down by someone brand new to the guild (not a veteran by any stretch), but part of me was deeply saddened.

Thankfully, our guild isn't filled with people whose humor is triggered at the expense of others, and has officership that is respected enough that when they say stop, folks stop.

Slow Falling To The Anub'arak Fight

Mages, Priests in ToTC: Slowfall/Levitate Your Friends FTW

In closing I'd like to say that the one thing I've learned about this phase of WoTLK raiding, especially in PUG groups with a bunch of strangers, is the one place I can defend my friends and stymy the guy who is trying to find laughter by laughing at them.

Slowfall and Levitate are your friends, Mages and Priests (just happen to be my two raiding toons). Cast them on your friends just before the fall to take on Anub'arak, and cast them on yourself.

Let someone else die if there's an annoying DK in the group, but above all else, defend yourself and your friends with just a few clicks.

That's my 2c on the topic anyway!

Related posts:

1. Looking Back: From Social Guild To Raiding Guild
2. Why My Raiding Guild Rocks, Part II
3. Helping A Warrior Tank Guildmate Exceed 490 Defense

Disc Priest and Ele Shaman

When I first got into Heroics in Burning Crusade, none of my friends were anywhere near geared well enough to join me, nor did they (yet) have the intestinal fortitude to work towards it as a goal.

When I first ventured into raiding, I tried to keep it casual and non-committal by staying in my social friends guild, but the playstyle and playing interest chasm grew and grew until I knew I had to make a change and take my chances on my social circles completely changing around me.

So, while my friends were still leveling up lowbies to max level and then switching to the next lowbie to level up to max level, I took my best-geared character and entered into my very first raiding guild. I left my non-raiding alts in the social friends guild, and life on World of Warcraft shifted just a little bit for me.

Relief From Frustration

The first day I was in my new guild with my Frost Mage, I got into my first Heroics-romping party.

You know - those parties where the group is so good and so fun and so quick that you romp through five heroics in no time and nobody finds (or gives someone else) an excuse to bug out!

Keep in mind, before this point I had been doing Heroics for two months, but I had been forced to PUG all of my Heroics because I didn't have a guild of Heroics-inclined players to draw from. And anyone who does PUGs knows how rare it is to find a Heroics-romping party via the LFG tool.

Having my first day be marked by being invited into this awesome Heroics-romping team certainly helped ease the guilt of transitioning to Raider status before any of my friends showed similar interests.

In fact, it was a huge relief to be amongst players who were excited at to continue advancing their favorite toon further in the game than just hitting the level cap.

Relief Turns To Joy

In the days and weeks that followed, I discovered that some of the very same things that my social leveling guild friends and I had long agreed upon as the road to success in World of Warcraft were valuable in a raiding guild as well.

Like how my friends and I valued the Fishing secondary profession - having discovered early in the pre-BC days that some pretty expensive things could be fished up. Expensive things that could either reduce the costs of advancing our professions ourselves, or could earn us a profit by selling to others who were advancing THEIR professions.

Or the value of Alchemy for its Elixirs and Cooking for its Buff foods in terms of lasting just a little bit longer in a fight, or outright surviving a fight we would have definitely died to. Even as a leveling lowbie we had learned that elixirs and buff foods often meant the difference between a graveyard run and VICTORY, squeaking by and using a bandage afterwards while hoping to hell for no more aggro.

Sartharion the Onyx Guardian

These opinions my WoW leveling enthusiast friends and I had developed on our own during our play time together were finally coming together in a way that paid big dividends for me.

The Dividends That Stepping Into Raiding Give

The main "dividend" that was "paid" to me for finally making the painful decision to leave my friendly social leveling guild to make the leap into my first raiding guild was this:

No longer was I one of the most knowledgable players in the group.

Now, you might not think this is a benefit initially (depending on the size of your epeen... I mean, ego) but look at it this way: If you're always amongst the best, what impetus is there to improve?

Another big dividend I got out of making the switch was that I finally got to get into a semi-organized team that didn't require a lot of MY time to put together. For the first time I could just sit back and do MY job and not worry about making sure there were people to fill out other jobs.

After all, I had tried in my previous social guild to motivate and encourage and organize the guild I enjoyed so much to try to "make it work" with them, but short of recruiting a bunch of people who weren't my friends (and thus negating the whole reason I wanted to stay in my social guild) it just wasn't going to happen, there wasn't enough interest.

The combination of these two dividend factors felt like JOY inside of me. Excitement for the game, for exploring, for improving and for learning.

I had been pretty frustrated before the transition, looking back on it now - but I guess frustration is just a form of discomfort that lets us know it's time to make a change in our lives!

Raiding With Friends Over Time

There is a happy ending to the story of my transition from a Social Leveling guild to my first Raiding Guild (which I was a member of for 4 months) and then now to my second Raiding Guild that I've called home for nearly a year.

Namely, a lot of those friends who used to be too scared to run Heroics in Burning Crusade finally did get into the whole Heroics and Raiding scene the summer before Wrath of the Lich King released. Some were bit by the raiding bug harder than others, but in general now, it's easy to find a friend to bring along to some raid PUG that is forming, because even my friends who don't hit a raid every week are well-geared from professions and Heroics badges and Enchanting and Jewelcrafting.

The One Thing I Like To Do For My Friends

There were a few of us in my friendly social leveling guild who played together for years before deciding to move to a raiding guild, but many who still remain in that social leveling guild.

Those of us who "got out" (so to speak, not like it's hard to /gquit) haven't forgotten our friends, however, and it brings us great joy to be able to bring our friends along to great raid and Heroics groups - to see them get gear upgrades and see their play abilities improve over time, and to hear them talk about the adventures with the rest of the social leveling guild folk afterwards.

Final Boss of AQ40

So yes, it took a while to get to this place I'm at, but it's been worth the wait and worth the journey for me, and I hope, for my friends who get to join in on fun runs they normally wouldn't have felt comfortable joining on their own.

After all, as I was aiming for in the beginning, it's a heck of a lot of fun to raid or run Heroics with someone you consider a Friend and not just some random acquaintence or complete stranger.

And isn't a large part of what makes World of Warcraft great the people and the social interactions involved?

I think so :)

Related posts:

1. Why My Raiding Guild Rocks, Part II
2. How To Get Into PUG Raids Without An Achievement
3. Why My Raiding Guild Rocks, Part One

I don't know a lot of Warcraft lore, nor am I really truly very interested in it beyond how theatrical the voices are in acting out the parts we do see in instances, but Malygos definitely is a challenging boss, presenting a challenging encounter.

Our guild is one that raids 25 man content on our official nights, and as a result, that leaves our 10 man raid ID's free to be spent how each member sees fit or as we each get the opportunity.

So, after finishing off the last few bosses in 10 man Naxx with a guild who is still building towards their 25 man group, I was invited to attempt Malygos in Eye of Eternity with them.

Joining A Malygos PUG Is All About....

Practice.

Repair bills.

It's certainly not about loot - at least, not at this point in its release.

Even joining a Malygos group in most guilds is going to be the same thing - all about practice and learning the encounter, and absolutely nothing about loot or any type of financial compensation for your efforts.

And of course, that means this is one of the encounters I personally quite enjoy - everyone there knows it's not a loot pinata, and that means they're a different type of player than those who seek the loot pinata experience.

Practicing On Malygos

For me, practicing on Malygos right now is largely about practicing mana efficiency, because most of our issues - either in-guild at the 25 man level, or in PUGs at the 10 man level - are related to living through Phase One and Two with enough time left in Phase Three to finish him off.

Malygos has a 10 minute enrage timer that acts as a DPS barrier of sorts if your raid cannot deal enough damage quickly enough, and at this stage of the expansion, most players are simply not geared well enough, nor familiar enough with the encounter, to make this DPS target.

Dual Priest Death to Malygos

When the healers run out of mana and have no more tricks left through which to regenerate mana quickly, that's generally when the fight completely deteriorates and a wipe happens.

That is, if something else doesn't happen to cause Malygos to turn around and puff an Arcane Breath on a bunch of key people.

Introducing Friends To The Raid

I got a chance to invite three of my friends/social guildmates to the 10 man Eye of Eternity / Malygos raid this time, which was a lot of fun on its own - although none of the three had ever seen the encounter before, they all did very well at adapting, and when we hopped over to our social vent afterwards the chatter was happy and positive about the experience, despite the repair bills.

I always love bringing friends into interesting raids, and am glad I've got a group of friends who are interested in dropping everything to try something new, even if it doesn't mean they'll get any upgrades from the experience.

I certainly count myself as a lucky raider, and I marvel at the difference one year has made within my friendship group - last year at this time I was the only one of my peer group able to do/interested in Heroics, nevermind raiding - but now we've got our own 10 man Naxx group of just buddies. It's quite cool :)

Related posts:

1. The Fall Of Naxxramas
2. The Entertainment Of A FailPUG Adventure In Blood Furnace
3. Practicing the Frost Mage AOE Grinding Strategy