Maintaining Awareness and running your rotation

[Dolphination 0]

Hey All,

It has been a long time since I played WOW as I wasn't too into the past few expansions but I decided to pick up Legion. And since I have been back I have been struggling with one concept: Awareness. 

Now most of this has to do with me essentially being completely new as the abilities and their rotations are not at all what I knew from 2 or 3 expansions ago. However I have been tanking with a warrior and healing with a priest; the main thing that is really tough for me right now is maintaining awareness while running my rotation and managing cooldowns. I doubt it has to do with whatever class I'm playing.

So, I was wondering if any of you might have any tips to help me. I try to stay pretty addon-free as all I run now is DBM and shadowed unit frames. I would prefer to keep it that way but I would appreciate any addon suggestions as well. It is just killing me right now as I can either run the perfect rotation or I can dodge all incoming damage and completely flub my rotation. There doesn't seem to be a huge middle ground.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[demonardvark 556]

18 minutes ago, Dolphination said:

Hey All,

It has been a long time since I played WOW as I wasn't too into the past few expansions but I decided to pick up Legion. And since I have been back I have been struggling with one concept: Awareness. 

Now most of this has to do with me essentially being completely new as the abilities and their rotations are not at all what I knew from 2 or 3 expansions ago. However I have been tanking with a warrior and healing with a priest; the main thing that is really tough for me right now is maintaining awareness while running my rotation and managing cooldowns. I doubt it has to do with whatever class I'm playing.

So, I was wondering if any of you might have any tips to help me. I try to stay pretty addon-free as all I run now is DBM and shadowed unit frames. I would prefer to keep it that way but I would appreciate any addon suggestions as well. It is just killing me right now as I can either run the perfect rotation or I can dodge all incoming damage and completely flub my rotation. There doesn't seem to be a huge middle ground.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

The first thing I might recommend is a weakaura. These are basically rotation helpers that tell you when to push certain buttons. Now these are more geared towards dps in my opinion because tanking and healing requires a bit more awareness, however, I know there are some really good tank weak aura programmers out there. Another addon is tell me when. It basically lets you know when things are off cooldown. There are also many class specific addons out there as well.

However, beyond that I would say the age old "practice makes perfect". Going into this expansion most classes were changed pretty dramatically and some of them were jarring. It just takes time to get things down. Specifically with warrior tank lets say, you have two main CD, shield block and ignore pain. The backbone of that class is learning when to use each one. It's just practice. So, we're out in the world and a wolf runs up to me, well he keeps biting my face, this is melee damage, I should probably shield block. Now im suramar and this elf is shooting spells at me, that's not melee so I should probably use ignore pain. So, its just practicing and learning. Go out and fail 1000 times as quickly as you can :) there is more to be learned from failure than success. 

Also realize different specs do roles differently. So while warrior is actively chugging between 2 defensive things, blood dks really use one. In that case its a manner of timing. You use it at the right point and decide which damage to block, and which attack to just take to the face.

One general tip that may help though, and this is very very general, so take it with a grain of salt. With most classes you have your basic abilities, your sometimes abilities, and your rarely abilities. So with tanking as warrior, you will always be using either shield block or ignore pain. Many of the other abilities are for emergency situations, or you bout to die son, situations. So, master the basics first then move from there. So, our guides have basic rotation sections, followed by cooldown sections, followed by advanced play sections. that's a very good way to progress :)

hope any of my rambling helped ya XD

[Valks 2,378]

Addons are there to help with exactly this. You can customise them to be as minimalist as you wish, as well as being as intrusive or not as you wish. They can display a whole wealth of information for you to use and assist with maintaining your rotation.

I completely second the addons that demon has advised, TellMeWhen and WeakAuras2. Here are links to both:

https://mods.curse.com/addons/wow/tellmewhen

https://mods.curse.com/addons/wow/weakauras-2

[Dolphination 0]

Thanks for the help guys!

I think an addon like that may be just what I need. My thing is I really don't like to add unnecessary addons or things if I don't need them. 

I definitely could use some practice with the class but like you said there really aren't that many abilities to monitor yet all of my main rotation and CDs are located on my main action bar in the bottom left and I find myself tunnel-visioning onto them. For instance with my warrior it is more about making sure I don't miss free procs on revenge or shield slam when them become available. Are you guys generally bouncing back and forth with your eyes from your character to your bar or are you monitoring all of this from peripherals?  Like physiologically what are your eyes focused on during gameplay?

I'm just in general awe of not being able to do these things effectively when it seems like it should be so simple.

 

[Mahoot 0]

TellMeWhen is pretty decent for that. You have to program it a little, but you can have it pop up icons anywhere you want on the screen that will tell you when you get your free procs. You can have it pop the icon up right next to where your toon is standing and, if you know which button it is assigned to and can reach that button quickly you can keep watching your avatar and the fight and just reach a finger up to hit the button.

I bought a mouse with 9 buttons on the side to use for these types of situations. I've had it for 2 years and just haven't gotten around to programming it because I am so used to just using the keyboard and I feel like I would have to learn my mouse controls all over again. It's practice.

I do find, though, that I tend to focus more on my main action bar than anywhere else like you said, and it does cause me to miss stuff.

GTFO is a very lightweight addon. It plays a sound effect when you stand in something you ought not to be standing in (like a spell that affects the ground under your character). That's helpful for me when I get tunneled in to the action bar, I hear that sound and I know it's my cue to look up at my toon and move him somewhere else. I find that probably 80 - 90% of the time that I need to be focusing on my toon during a fight is just to make sure he isn't "standing in the poo poo" as my groupmates and I like to call it. The other 10-20% is mobs moving around or some fight mechanic that requires moving to a certain location within a certain amount of time, and stuff like that, but I mostly play DPS.

When I tank or heal I do have to look at the fight a lot more often. Tanking gets pretty hard that way because, like you said, I am not super experienced at it and I don't remember which icons to use when and I have to make sure I have all the mobs and I am interrupting and mitigating, etc. It gets overwhelming, but that's what makes it fun for me, I guess.

I'm with you, though, I prefer not to use addons whenever possible.

You can do it with or without them. They both just take practice.

 

[Edit because I reread what I wrote and realized it was more appropriate for a DPS and not a tank or healer. Tried to fix that.]

Edited September 13, 2016 by Mahoot

[Valks 2,378]

As Mahoot suggests, the majority of my UI exists around my character. I barely have to look an inch away from my character to get the information I need. 

This is a really old screenshot, but I can't login right now to get one of my updated UI. It gives the idea of what I mean though.

Everything I needed to know was easy to find. It has been simplified a lot since then, but it still has the same information.

[SilkAus 2]

Outside of all the addons. Which are excellent, I use WA and Boss Mods etc.

Repetition and practice are the best way to learn anything. It gets to a point, where mechanics become those annoying things that stop me from tunneling. You'll barely notice stuff with enough time invested, it will just me muscle memory.

I find it especially helpful to assign sound files to weakuras to ingrain a response.

[Valks 2,378]

6 hours ago, SilkAus said:

Outside of all the addons. Which are excellent, I use WA and Boss Mods etc.

Repetition and practice are the best way to learn anything. It gets to a point, where mechanics become those annoying things that stop me from tunneling. You'll barely notice stuff with enough time invested, it will just me muscle memory.

I find it especially helpful to assign sound files to weakuras to ingrain a response.

Exactly this. It's also worth making your own WAs so that they fit your needs accordingly. Copying someone's WAs can definitely work, but it will never be as good as your own!