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You know how raid nights go. Sometimes you have the bare minimum of people showing up, and you’re desperately trying to fill spots. And on some occasions, everyone inexplicably shows up at the same time. When you go from barely scraping by with eight or 22 to suddenly dealing with a glut of 15 to 25, obviously somebody’s not making it into the mix. So how do you decide who?

Some guilds simply go by attendance numbers; if you’ve shown up consistently, you’re in. If you just happen to be making an appearance for farm night, you’re out. Some guilds pick based solely on performance in the raid itself; if you’re consistently pulling high DPS and not standing in fire, you’re in. If you can’t find your way out of a poison cloud with a map and GPS system showing you the way, you’re out.

But what do you do when you’re the one being sat?

Pugnacious Priest wrote a wonderful post about the up and downs of bench warming, both as a raider being sat for a fight and as an observer to those filling the bench. As a healer, Pugnacious Priest realizes that spots are limited — if more than the usual healing crew shows up, someone’s going to be sat. And she also pointed out the behavior of those being sat: While some stuck around, others invariably wandered off at some point during the evening.

What struck me about her post, though, was the way she quite eloquently expressed the troubles with being sat. If raiders show up, they want to raid. Nobody shows up to sit out. People set aside time specifically for raiding, and if they aren’t raiding, well, why did they log on in the first place? Some farm, others run around in circles, still others alt-tab out of the game, and some leave the game and voice chat entirely. It’s the latter group who are the problem. If they are needed, how is anyone supposed to let them know it’s their turn?

My guild is pretty lenient with sitting, for the most part. While everyone really, really wants to be there for progression fights at the start of an expansion, interest wanes. But anyone who is sat at the beginning of the evening will eventually be rotated in over the course of the evening; raiders are asked if anyone would like to sit for a particular boss. I’ve sat on several occasions, voluntarily — frankly, if I don’t need loot off of a boss and there’s another raider who does, it doesn’t seem to make sense for them to warm the bench while I’m stabbing a boss for no reason.

As Pugnacious Priest pointed out, it’s all about the attitude. She suggests sitting players not like they’re being punished for an indiscretion but in order to be helpful and let someone else in. That’s about how my guild approaches it, too. We’re pretty good about swapping for various bosses with little to no delay in actual raiding. Players who are sat know that they could be called at a moment’s notice, so they stay close by. As for me, I’ve got a dual monitor set up, so I just alt tab out of the game and poke around the internet or work on an article until my name is called.

How does your guild handle sitting players? Is there a strict policy involved, or is it a painless process? Are you one of the ones who’s OK with sitting out when needed, or do you feel you need to be in raid all evening long at the expense of other players? Does sitting out feel like a punishment to you or a welcome break from the raid insanity of the evening?

For a priest, it represented the ultimate in weapons, a staff designed to assist with the greatest of healers or the darkest of shadowy specters. For others, the staff was a signal that the healer they’d just run into was one of the few and highly skilled, capable of keeping them alive in the darkest of situations. Though epic in quality, the staff Benediction was akin to a legendary in stats and appearance. Clicking on Benediction wouldn’t give you wings or turn you into a mount; instead, the staff transformed into Anathema, a completely different staff with a completely different set of stats.

There has never been another weapon released with Benediction’s glimmering golden model or with Anathema’s dangerous silver spines. Benediction is no longer obtainable in game; it was removed when Cataclysm was introduced. But for players in vanilla WoW lucky enough to get the appropriate quest drops, Benediction represented the best of the best in healing staves for the majority of the original iteration of the game. Others looked at the weapon with awe, but the lucky priest who wielded it knew there was more to the staff than a set of killer stats.

Benediction may have been a brilliant weapon, but its origins were stained with the blood of thousands of innocents.

Once upon a time in the days before World of Warcraft, there was a plague that swept across the kingdom of Lordaeron with deadly swiftness. This plague, the plague of undeath, was spread through the distribution of tainted grain to the various towns and hamlets. Once the grain was ingested, those who were unlucky enough to eat it would die — but the horror didn’t stop there. After death, the dead would be raised back to life, a tool for the rising armies of the Scourge.

Prince Arthas Menethil was sent to investigate the reports of this strange sickness, along with Jaina Proudmoore. The two discovered the grain plot and the man behind it — the necromancer Kel’Thuzad. Though Arthas slew Kel’Thuzad, the tainted grain had already been distributed to the various cities of Lordaeron, including its largest, Stratholme.

What followed next was a bloodbath, but it wasn’t at the hands of the Scourge. Prince Arthas, determined to halt the spread of the plague, ordered the Knights of the Silver Hand to purge the city before the plague had a chance to spread. Uther and Jaina refused, and Arthas disbanded the Knights of the Silver Hand and set about the task himself with those few that followed his orders. The citizens of Stratholme were systematically murdered, whether they had tasted of the tainted grain or not.

And not far from Stratholme, high on a hill, a lone priestess stood, desperately trying to heal those who fled from the carnage. Hopelessly outnumbered, she valiantly stood her ground until at last the waves of Scourge risen from the fallen peasants she tried so valiantly to save took her life as well.

Blizzard is a fairly tech-savvy company. You can tell on account of this huge, massive game it runs. More importantly, though, Blizzard maintains a fairly robust online presence even outside of the game. It even keeps a fully stocked, awesome YouTube channel dedicated to Customer Support.

The thing you might not realize about the videos is that they’re awesome. I don’t just mean that in the sense that Blizzard is putting good information out there; the videos themselves are well crafted, lots of fun, and brilliantly narrated. I’d like to make sure you’re not missing out on any of the cool stuff. So let’s review the best Blizzard support videos available on YouTube.

Item Restoration

The Item Restoration video above is probably my favorite video. It introduces the new Item Restoration service, which is a huge benefit all its own. The narrator really grabs this subject by the horns and runs with it. Of course, the shocked worgen is equally awesome, and I spent the day making my own shocked worgen face at myself in the mirror.

Are you considering using the Guild Services? Are you tired of your old Firefly joke name and now want to trade up to a hip new Supernatural guild name? Or maybe you want to jump realms to start over in a new realm. That’s what Guild Services is for. This video will walk you through the requirements, the process, and what it takes to get it done.

One of the most frequent questions I encounter is what someone should do after being hacked. I can nearly set my watch by it. You could blow your mind pondering how many people still haven’t put an authenticator on their accounts. So, people still get hacked.

This quick video spells out your steps after your account has been compromised. This is a video that you absolutely should keep in mind. If the unthinkable happens to you, start here.

War Banner is one of the abilities I was most curious to play with on the beta — so curious, in fact, that I stayed up to level to 87 once the latest patch fixed my constant crashing issue. The downside to playing six warriors on the beta is that none of them levels very fast. However, now that I have the ability, I have to report I find it very interesting.

The interface is very familiar if you’ve ever had a shaman, since it’s similar to the totem interface. Mouse over the War Banner, and you can select one of three banners, the Skull, Demoralizing or Mocking Banner. The banners are currently designated as totems in game, but all three have a far more limited duration. On the plus side, all three can be Intervened to, so placing one at a distances means you can use it to get distance for a charge or otherwise move around the battlefield. The banners do not share a cooldown aside from the global cooldown; I dropped each banner one after the other to test them out.

At present, Skull Banner increases critical damage of any party or raid member within 30 yards by 20%, lasting 10 seconds with a 3-minute cooldown. It’s the handsome yellow banner in the screenshot above. Mocking Banner taunts mobs within 15 yards of the banner to you, forcing them to attack you for 6 seconds. It lasts for 30 seconds, making it the best banner to drop if you intend to use it for Intervene. Finally, Demoralizing Banner reduces all damage by every enemy in range (30 yards) by 10% for 15 seconds. Since each banner has a 3-minute cooldown, you can choose to stagger them out or drop them all one after the other, depending on your need.

The banners themselves look pretty cool, although they seem to have a tendency to float over the ground rather than sink into it. Time will tell if they become beloved additions to the class, but right now I’m fairly enjoying them just for novelty and using them to creatively mess with mobs.

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Each week, WoW Insider and Mathew McCurley bring you a fresh look at reader-submitted UIs as well as Addon Spotlight, which spotlights the latest user interface addons. Have a screenshot of your own UI that you’d like to submit? Send your screenshots along with info on what mods you’re using to readerui@wowinsider.com, and follow Mathew on Twitter.

What do you get when you cross readers with UIs? Reader UI of the Week, of course. Want to show off your own interface creations? Send an email, screenshots, and anything else you’d like to readerui@wowinsider.com, and you might see your submission right here. That’s totally awesome.

This week’s discussion is all about Alvala and a changing multi-spec setup that eventually had to accomodate the healer lifestyle. With a flair for keeping things neat and tidy, as well as introducing neutral elements that span each class, spec, and role for every character, Alvala has created a UI that works for pretty much anything she can think of with room to grow.

I don’t want to spoil the surprise, but at the end of the article today, I talk about how much I like the little WeakAuras goldfish that Alvala has on her UI. It’s pretty much one of my favorite things. Must have caught me at a good time, little goldfish.

Default raid frames come recommended?

A day I had not anticipated for some time is coming true at an alarming rate. With just a few small tweaks that will definitely be coming with the popularity of the Raid Finder, the default Blizzard raid frames will come recommended by me and my addon ilk. Players now are using the Blizzard frames by choice, and for the most part, they are as solid as they come. While not the most feature-rich frames out there, what comes with the basics is good enough for what Blizzard intends the casual player to use, and that’s a good thing.

Mouseover macros make good UIs great. Alvala knows this and built the healing portion of the UI around the use of mouseovers. If you’ve never used a mouseover macro, let me break down the basics for you: target=mouseover lets you cast spells based on the character your cursor is currently hovering over rather than your actual target. Mouseover macros are one of the cornerstones of the Vuhdo/Grid/default frames addon genre and can greatly enhance your play experience.

There are two ways you can go about making simple mouseover macros. First, you can bind the spell to your action bar as a macro such as

/cast [target=mouseover] Intervene

This macro, when pressed on my action bar, will attempt to Intervene whatever target my mouse is currently over. This mouseover also applies to unit and raid frames, allowing you to hover your mouse over the target to be dispelled or healed and press a button to do an action on them.

The second albeit a bit more complicated way to make mouseover macros is using something like:

/cast [target=mouseover,help] Holy Light; [help] Holy Light; Holy Light

This type of mouseover macro works in a different way, allowing three spells to be chosen or cast based on different parameters. What this macro is saying is if I have a mouseover target that is a friendly ally (“help”), when I press the button, it will be Holy Light. If I have just a target that is an ally, it will also cast Holy Light. Finally, if I have no target or a mouseover target, the button will still just cast Holy Light on whichever is the default “no target” target, usually yourself.

See if you can make some nifty mouseover macros for your new healing UI and get the most out of your Blizzard raid frames.