Raid Positioning: Its all about the way you move

Recently my guild was running into problems properly placing people in the Razorgore fight and it got me to thinking about how many raid encounters depended on coordinated movement to succeed. Even in the lowest level raid zone of Zulgurub there exist several fights where placement and coordinated movement is the key to victor. Trying to organize them in my head I came up with several different placements that my guild used for different fights. Oftentimes the different classes would be using different placements depending on their role in the fight.

Max Range Placement:
Think of the Bat Boss in Zulgurub and any other mob that will charge people in proximity. This placement is also used in fights like Shazzarah where the boss has an AoE spell that is centered around them. The main strategy for this placement is always to be ready to react to any movement your target makes. You will need to know the max range for your spells and range attacks and be sure that you are always within a couple yards of max range. This way as long as you don't steal aggro from the main tank you will be able to cause damage without taking any.

The Group-Up Placement:
This placement isn't used that often since its vulnerable to AoE attacks but its needed in several cases. Usually the raid leader will call out a physical feature or spot for everyone to gather on. The rune for the Baron Geddon fight is a good example of where this placement becomes handy. Since everyone is close together dispellers can cleanse everyone in the raid which causes debuffs to be gotten rid of very quickly. When the debuffs are especially dangerous like a magic drain then this becomes one of the few ways to quickly cleanse a 40 man raid.

The Semi-Circle Placement:
This placement can be use in combination with the max range placement but makes cross group healing difficult. The main purpose of using this placement is to minimize the danger of an AoE spell that is not centered on a boss mob. One example where I usually see this is the Kurinaxx fight where the boss causes silencing sand traps to spawn around him. By being spread out around in circle everyone is in range to cause damage but only a few people are damaged by the exploding sand traps. The key to maintaining this placement is to watch the boss mob's movement and not pull aggro to the outside of the circle.

The In and Out Movement:
This movement is for all you melee fighters out there. Basically some boss's have a powerful AoE spell which they can only be maintained for short periods of time. Usually the main tank or secondary tank will call out when the AoE spell has been temporarily depleted and that is your cue. Run in quickly and do some sweet melee dps damage, then just like the hooky poky get yourself out. Baron Geddon has a fire damage AoE spell and Ragnaros has a knockback spell that are both are commonly defeated with the In and Out strategy.

The Hide and Seek Placement:
This placement is a healer's nightmare but is needed for some of the more difficult fights in the game. Basically the idea is for healers to use the terrain placement to hide themselves from the boss mob's line of sight. However, while they are doing this the tanks and melees have to keep themselves within sight of the healers so they can be kept up. I personally don't have that much experience with this strategy but I hear its commonly used to defeat the second boss of BWL, Vael the Red.

The Anti Social Movement:
Also know as the "No Touch, No Touch" strategy. Basically certain effects can be cast on a player which actually hurt all the people around them. The big trash mobs before Ossirian are notoriously for casting a disease which does this and several other boss mobs are know for casting devastating attacks if people are grouped close to one another. The ones off the top of my head are Onyxia during her phase 2 flying and Ragnaros with his targeting of clumps of any people with mana. If more then three people are close together for too long then in both cases they will cause the boss to throw a good chunk of range damage their way.

If anyone else can think of any that I missed go ahead and throw them into a comment.