Raid Yoga

Yogg-Saron hard mode is still harder than ICC LK. It has nothing to do with gear or damage; there is fancier footwork and coordination needed with Yogg-Saron. Now that we have enough guildies leveled and geared to form steady Tier 11 raid groups, the challenge in downing the bosses lies in the execution of good responses to raid situational awareness.

Raid yoga helps us practice our raid situational awareness, our good responses and our execution of those responses. For example, the Magmaw fight requires raiders in the ranged/healing group to immediately stop what they are doing and move out of the soon-to-be-erupting flame and requires all the other ranged/healers to be move away as well - all together, preferably. With everything going on, heightened raid situational awareness triggers our recognition that the erupting flame is about to happen or if we missed that cue, that someone has initiated the move to avoid it. The good response is to interrupt casting and move - which often goes against the grain, especially if there is very little left in the cast bar. The awareness, knowledge and discipline to execute that fight properly comes with practice and not from leveling activities. This practice is what we refer to as 'raid yoga'.

You can work on your raid yoga in heroics, in BH and in prior-tier raids such as Ulduar or ICC hard modes. In essence, it is practicing your raiding skills. Take every opportunity you can to hone your skills when not actually in the specific Tier 11 raid fight! There are many opportunities in heroics where you can practice the raid skills - which I believe Blizzard did on purpose. For example, in Stonecore, you need to interrupt casting to jump during Quake; in VP you need to jump to avoid static cling. Every time I run Stonecore or VP, I see people taking damage from Quake or getting static cling - myself included sometimes, too. We can all benefit from honing those skills to make clearing our current progression tier time-effective.