Writing Effective Boss Strategies

I first began writing up boss strategies about a year ago, when my guild's raids were to be led by a temporary raid leader for 2 weeks due to officers being busy or absent. Given that our boss strategy discussions at that point were either copy+pastes of Bosskillers strategies and notes from what we had learned, or several page discussions about stuff such as Kalecgos portal rotations, we really didn't have a handy resource for the temporary raid leader to use.

What's an Effective Strategy?

My general rules of thumb for an effective strategy are as follows:

• Communicates concisely and clearly what needs to be done
• Suits the needs of the audience, be it a raid leader or raid attendees
• Provides a rationale for decisions so the strategy can be adapted to different situations. Differentiates between what is truly needed to complete the fight and what is nice to have, but can be worked around.

A strategy should convey how to beat the boss. A list of boss abilities is not a strategy.

Being Concise, Yet Informative

WoW players generally have a short attention span when it comes to reading. You may have the best strategy ever, but no one is going to read 10 screens worth of information and digest it all. Breaking down the information into sections which can be easily skipped if the person finds it irrelevant is a good idea. A TL;DR summary might also be a good investment.

Audience

Who is your intended audience? Your strategy should be tailored to their needs, whether it is the raid leader, raid attendees or guild applicants. How much knowledge are you expecting your audience to have prior to reading your strategy? Is your strategy a reminder of what your audience should be doing, or are you teaching them what to do from scratch?

Raid Leader

If you are writing your strategy to be useful to a raid leader, consider including:

• Raid composition, such as number of tanks, healers and DPS needed, and if any specific classes or specs are required for the fight.
• How groups should be arranged to maximize use of group-only abilities.
• Special items or consumables that should be brought to the raid.
• Whether there needs to be elaborate setup, such as marking of mobs, interrupt rotations, dividing the raid into smaller groups, etc.
• Notes about tanking, healing or DPS assignments.
• Benchmarks, such as the minimum DPS required to take down a boss before the enrage timer.

Raid Attendees

Raid attendees generally have quite different needs. They don't need to know the minutiae of how to organize the raid, but do need specific information on the role they should be playing in the raid.

Melee DPS

• Positioning and Hitbox size should be included for fights like Kologarn where melee should be standing in a certain spot. Do melee need to be divided into groups to avoid chaining spells such as Frost Tombs or Chain Lightning?
• Single-target RSTS abilities that require melee to get out of the melee clump should be noted.
• Melee-range hazards, such as cleaves, AoEs, mines/bombs. Include the range of said hazards wherever known.
• Any debuffs they are expected to maintain, if not normally applied.
• DPS order if not a tank-and-spank. Are they responsible for adds? What do they DPS in fights with multiple adds or parts that need to die at the same time?

Ranged DPS

• Positioning should be included when fights have abilities that specifically target ranged over melee, or if a strategy has people spread out to avoid chaining certain abilities.
• Abilities that interrupt spellcasting or increase spell cast times should be mentioned.
• Whether crowd-control abilities should be used.
• DPS order if not a tank-and-spank. Are they responsible for adds? What do they DPS in fights with multiple adds or parts that need to die at the same time?
• Abilities that can be spellstolen, purged or dispelled from the boss.
• Are they responsible for tanking certain adds or the boss?

Healer/Decurser

• Abilities that need to be added to raid frame mods.
• What debuffs should they be removing? Should shamans be using cleansing totems?
• Positioning, if assigned to heal specific areas of a room.
• Abilities that interrupt spellcasting or increase spell cast times should be mentioned.
• Best spells to counter certain abilities, if any.
• Boss abilities that require use of healer cooldowns or coordination with tanks.

Tank

• Positioning of boss or adds
• Boss abilities that require use of tank cooldowns, or coordination with healers.
• Whether the boss/adds are tauntable.
• Should the tank be wearing a specific gearset?
• Abilities that can be spell-reflected for warrior tanks.
• Kiting pattern, if required for the fight.

Providing the Rationale

For strategies that are intended for a wider audience, or targeted to a new raid leader, it is vital to provide the rationale for why you chose to do something a specific way. Many guilds do things a certain way because it's always been done that way, but is it truly best? Maybe you have always had 5 priests in the raid, so you did Felmyst having each priest being responsible for mass dispelling one group. But what happens if only 3 priests show up? It's best to indicate the bare minimum when you have "required" classes or tanks/healers needed to do a certain job, and also state what would be preferable, if available.

If you use a certain tank class to mitigate a particular ability, can another tank class do it, or do you need to change your strategy completely? For example, in the Mimiron fight, you can have a warrior or a ranged DPS tank the Aerial Command Unit. If you prefer to use the warrior tank, state that as a preference, but mention that a ranged DPS can also do the job.

TL;DR
Boss strategies should be tailored to their audience and provide enough information to successfully execute and adapt the strategy for a particular raid.