The Battle Rez

One of the more awkward parts of being Raid Leader for me has been the management of The Battle Rez.

Hugely useful tool, among the reasons I like to pack as many Druids as I can find.

The hard part always comes down to two things, one of which is mechanical and one of which is a little softer.

Mechanical - you've got three druids, each with a battle rez available. you call for a rez, two druids blow their cooldowns. /doh. I call this one mechanical, because the only issue is communication.

To fix this one, I used to actually ask a druid by name to perform the rez. Helped eliminate the confusion, but also made the named druid perhaps run all the way across the battlefield searching for a corpse, when there was a perfectly suitable druid standing right on the corpse, but was not called on by the raid leader. We lose valuable time for the player running around, and we've even had rez'ers run past the front of Maggy and get cleaved for 20k damage. Not good.

So I usually just call out for a player to be rez'ed, and I ask at the beginning of a raid, that the druids call out on voice to let everybody know that they are casting the spell. This works reasonably well, especially if the druid says "ZYX rez'ing" instead of "I'm rez'ing", which not only lets the other druids know they do NOT need to cast, but it also makes it easier for me to keep track of who is on cooldown.

Judgment - the other stress for the Raid Leader that comes with The Battle Rez is who to give it to?

Perfect example. Rage Winterchill. I personally die in the first 20 seconds of the fight. I've got one Druid with a battle rez available.

Do I ask for it, or not? Pros and cons for calling for Amava to get rez:

Pro: We are in a single target DPS mode of the fight, the dead player in question is historically a large part of our team's single-target DPS.
Pro: Its ME we're talking about, and laying there dead is pissing ME off to no end :-)

Con: The encounter is new and unfamiliar to us. I have no idea how many more deaths will be coming our way, is the fight going to be a near insta-wipe, or will it go on for a while? Hate to blow a brez cooldown on an insta-wipe.
Con: Priority. As much as I love me, a healer or tank is simply more important. Unless we're in a fight known to be a very tight DPS race, but refer to the CON above to see how familiar I was with the encounter.
Con: Not taking the brez gives me something to blog about.

So I chose to not ask for the rez. The team did well, although that attempt did end at a 20%-ish wipe. Was it a good call? Not sure. Certainly, Amava would not have accounted for 20% of the boss damage, so I think it was probably a wipe anyway, but you make command decisions and live with the consequences.

Next attempt at Rage Winterchill.

A very high DPS producing and generally very survivable player dies during the very last part of Trash Wave 7.

Corpse run. He gets locked out when boss event starts. He stays as a corpse, so there is an opportunity to battle rez him.

Similar to my reasoning above, I chose to not battle rez him.

There was some banter back and forth on voice chat from some folks wanting him to get rez.

Sorry, but no. And please don't make me explain my reasoning during the middle of the f'ing fight. Command decision.

And in this case, I feel it was a good call, because the first thing Chilly did was to one-shot two healers with his first two hits. That is, we lost 25% of our theoretical healing capacity in the first 4 seconds of the fight. By holding out the battle rez on the rogue, we were able to bring both healers back and continue with a solid attempt, although this one did also end in fail. (editors note: going forward, tanks will be on the hill waiting for Ole Chilly such that he will not force me to blow two Battle Rez cooldowns in the first 4 seconds of a fight. kthxbai).

So there you have it. Battle Rez Woes.

How do your raids manage the use of Battle Rez, Soul Stones, Reincarnations and the like?