A Primer on Deadly Boss Mods

DBM_Tutorial

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Here you go folks, a primer on how Deadly Boss mods works. I’m going to assume that you’ve downloaded and installed the mod.

Okay, so in case you hadn’t noticed we’re fighting Koralon the Flame Watcher from VoA (you know the jerk who throws fire underneath you and then gives you T9 gear when you win).

1. DBM Timer Bars – DBM has a variety of countdown timers it displays in the form of animated bars. By default these bars appear on the right, but I’ve customized DBM for me and put them on the left.

In the screen shot above we can see that Koralon will be casting meteor fists in 14.2 seconds. We also can see that we’ve got 3:57 seconds to get him down or he’ll enrage. Go, go, go!

2. Critical Warning –
DBM does a great job you letting you know when bad things are happening to you. In this case the jerk through threw fire underneath me. Note that this text warning comes with an audio warning as well (Run away little girl twisted ).

The important thing to realize is that the warning is in giant blue text right in the center of my screen (this is by default, right out of the box, no assembly required). Seriously if you have DBM there is no excuse for dying in the fire.

3. Spell Timer. As events get closer to happening DBM will move the timer bar from the left (see item 1) and put it in a more central location. Please note that I have customized my DBM for me.

The point is DBM attempts to put this important information in a place where you can see what’s about to happen.

In the above screen shot the jerk is casting Burning Breath. No big deal because the healers all have DBM, saw that it was coming, and were ready for it.  Right healers?

4. Boss is Doing Something. Again this is another alert in big text in the center of your screen. In this case it’s reminding us that the boss is casting Burning Breath.

DBM_Tutorial_1

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In this second screen shot I wanted to point out some additional DBM warnings.

1. Raid Warnings. Here you’ll see two warnings for Meteor Fists. The first one that reads “Meteor Fists in 5 sec.” appeared on the screen about 5 seconds earlier letting us know meteor fists was coming. The text right above it is now the Meteor Fists event happening. The five second warning message is about to drop-off.

2. Boss is Doing His Thing. Okay, I’m not 100% sure that this one is a DBM message. It may actually be a Blizzard message built into the encounter. Still that’s a lot of warnings for Meteor Fists, which explains why our tanks never die from it because the healers have DBM and are always prepared.  Right healers?

3. Chat Warnings. Finally if all those spell timers, audio warnings, and giant text in the center of our screens wasn’t enough, DBM broadcasts all of this to our chat window as well.

So that’s basically it, DBM is designed to provide lots and lots of information regarding these raid encounters. Each encounter will have it’s owns set of alerts, but the basic placement of these alerts is pretty standard.

If you have a free moment, I encourage you to go into the DBM general options and run a test mode. This will give you samples of it’s alerts and warnings. It only takes about a minute to run.

RUN AWAY LITTLE GIRL!!

4 Comments on “A Primer on Deadly Boss Mods”

  1. […] Boss Mods! October 23, 2009 I saw Darkbrew, of The Brew Hall and our podcast, wrote a nice primer on Deadly Boss Mods. I’m going to go and link it in yesterday’s raiding 101 post, but go and take a look. […]

  2. […] boss mods. It’s not optional, and gives you invaluable insight into the mechanics of a fight. Here’s a good guide on how to use […]

  3. "In this case the jerk through fire underneath me."

    I thought I had heard you were an English major?! 😛

  4. English major turned computer programmer. The 1s and 0s have all but taken over. Nice catch.

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