Non Elitist Raiding Diary

Hints for Valonia and Theralion 10

2011-03-18T09:43:00.002+11:00

I walked into the 2 dragons fight cold. I had read the strat, but most strats make no sense to me and tell me nothing that is really useful (one of the reasons I write my own).

The main thing I walked away from this fight knowing, is that this is not a DPS race, it is a survivability fight. Stay alive and you will easily beat the enrage timer. As usual, you can go find strats and videos on the web if you are so inclined.

So here are some things that helped me stay alive and healing during that fight:
Pink dragon
spread out - don't stand too near someone so when blue poop hits you on the head, it doesn't splash the sides of the bowl too much and splash the person next to you.

Run in under the tail for black out. Black out is really obvious to see on a person. DBM puts a skull on the persons head and they are glowing blue. STAY UNDER THE FRICKEN TAIL until the dispeller says GO! because if you don't, then the damage will make the healers very unhappy. (ETA replace "Under the tail" with "gathering spot of the RLs choice")

If you are the dispeller - be super fast and call out quick.

Smashy smashy. This dragon doesn't seem to be too bad.

Transition:
Don't stand in the poop.
If you DO stand in the poop and you end up in a weird twilight world, haul your arse to the portal on the side and GTFO ASAP! Avoid the glowing balls.

Blue dragon:
range SPREAD THE FUCK OUT!
Melee group stack under the tail.

OK here's the tricks:
Purple arrow
If you have a purple arrow on your head, run to melee. Melee will be under the tail, if they are not, that's their bad. No matter if you have an x on your head too. (see rules for x on head below)
IF YOU HAVE HOTS OR DOTS AND AN x... I am not 100% sure if each tick causes an explosion, I think it might... so be careful of that.

X on your head
If you have an x on your head, and you are stuck in melee (ie you are a rogue or something or have a purple arrow on your head) DO NOTHING. No autohits, no nothing. Stand there and /dance or something till it goes away

Otherwise, x on head GTFO! get away from anyone get out get away and continue doing what you normally do.

Why x and v?
x does aoe when you "do things" like heal or hit shit.
v drops poop from on high and you need to share the love.

Get this bit right, and not standing in the blue flamey bits on the ground is easy!

When the pink dragon gets annoyed
at some point, the pink dragon will start flaming 1/3 of the room. Designate a spotter (we found that dead people make great spotters) to tell the raid where the flames are going to be. At the point, it doesn't matter about DPS at all, just get out of the poop on the ground. Seriously, just concentrate on not standing in the bad and getting back to the pink dragon on the ground.

And it back to pink dragon again.

I found, the most important thing I could do in this fight was stay alive, and as a healer, emergency spot healing the raid to save idiots who stood in the poop *cough* like myself. Sometimes they died, but that actually turned into an advantage because it isnt a DPS race.

Hope that helps people wrap their brains around things - it has clarified things a bit for me.

I think the real trick is getting the inny and outey bits right (x and v) and having a good spotter for the 1/3 flamey bits, and also remembering that it is NOT a DPS race, you gotta stay alive.

Magmaw alternative coming

2011-03-01T09:53:00.000+11:00

There is another way of dealing with the adds in Magmaw - when I have opportunity to look at the ins and outs (and gotchas) for doing it the alternative way, I will pop up a Magmaw Part II post :)

Cheers to ratshag for reminding me!

Magmaw 10

2011-02-28T09:46:00.001+11:00

HI!
Well, this expansion, strats are going to come a fair bit slower as I am with a much more casual raiding guild. But, I am still going to be writing up everything I can - and this one is about MAGMAW!

First up, Magmaw is a giant worm that doesn't move. He has a ginormous hit box, so hunters, be really careful when dealing with the small amount of trash leading up to him. One misclick and you pull the boss and everyone starts wondering why people are dying. It's funny the first time....

Anyway, for some reason people say that Magmaw has 2 phases - I personally find that terminology confusing, so I wont use it. It's not really 2 phases at all. But you will see what I mean when I get to it. Also, I will do a TL:DR at the end which summarises the fight in about 3-4 sentences.

Magmaw is a gear check. It has high but predictable damage output, and it is to some extent a DPS race.

Magmaw can do a few things when he is free to wiggle around and you set up your raid team positioning accordingly.

Shopping list:
1-2 tanks (our team goes with 2, but 1 would also work if you are confident with your skills),
3 healers
5-6 DPS - at least 1 ranged

The positioning is as follows:
Tank is on one side of Magmaw, everyone else (except the one ranged I mentioned) is "behind" Magmaw on the other side. Get as close to the giant worm as you can but don't fall off the edge!!! This, while funny even the 7th time, leads to wipes! The one lone ranged (usually a hunter for obvious reasons, two if you have two hunters) hangs out in range of heals, but at "ranged". There is a bit of broken floor in the middle, hanging around that is a good visual marker.

That's it. Stay with that as best you can. Tank keeps the attention of the boss, the DPS/Healer group don't stand in the poop and the ranged dude also doesn't stand in any poop.

What poop is there?
Well, there are several kinds of poop. There is Ignition, which is fairly obvious as half the room catches on fire. If it is the half that the DPS/Healer group is on, they need to get out of it asap, then move back when it is over.

There is another kind of unavoidable poop that the healers simply have to heal through. You will see it because everyone's health bars will start plummeting. But most everyone is grouped up, right? AoE heals are fantastic here and make that part of the fight almost trivial when done right.

One is especially for the ranged guy. Every... oh 30s or so, Magmaw will cast something called Pillar of Flame at someone at ranged (and if there is no ranged, then it will be in melee which is bad). It's like the steam geysers in Valithria from ICC. You have 4s to get out of the poop on the ground before you get launched into the air.

BUGS!!
From the ground of this event, a whole stack of adds will appear - Lava Parasites. Under NO CIRCUMSTANCES must these little critters be allowed to a) live or b) hit anyone. I can't stress this enough. When they are out, they are the number 1 DPS priority, no matter what else is happening. I mean it.

So, now these adds need to be CCed - slowed, trapped, ice bolted... and more especially, kited. See why I recommended a hunter be at ranged? Whoever is at ranged needs to kite these suckers around, not get hit, and not die. Also, they need to keep enough threat on them all that the DPS in melee are not pulling off the kiter. Every class has something they can do - go research what you can do to help slow or kill these adds. I mean everyone, pallies and rogues included. It is vitally important that these bugs die.

If they touch you, this is what happens: they decide you are a great host for their babies, and stab your stomach and infect you (read the tool tip, it's worth it!), you then get so sick you chuck more parasites everywhere. I mean, seriously awesome stuff, but kind of fatal to your existence and the existence of the raid. This pretty much causes a wipe.

OK got all that?
Not too bad - it's pretty much, don't stand in the poop, kite and kill the bugs.

"The Next Phase"
At some point Magmaw will emote something about exposing his pincers (always a bad idea for the boss to do) which, conveniently, will then EAT THE DAMN TANK. Yes, Magmaw will bend over and chomp on the tank. This debuff is visible on most raid frames - healers, time to focus on the tank. In 30s the tank will irrevocably die so healers, don't worry if your tank suddenly carks it. It just means the DPS are not doing their job.

Huh? What Job?
2 DPS need to be allocated the job of jumping on Magmaw's head. When he bends over to chomp on the tank, a little vehicle arrow will appear when you mouse over him. One at a time, you can jump up on his head, but beware that vehicle icon is not available for long, so you have to be quick.

Once up, your action bar will have a thing to do, which is use constricting chains to tie his head to the spike in the middle there. OK DPS, this is where you need to talk on vent or something. You BOTH have to get your chains on at the same time. If only one gets done, then Magmaw will rip free and well, you have to go again, and since you only have 30s till the tank dies, you really only get one shot at this. The animation that goes along with chaining Magmaw is not short, so talk, and time it together.

Magmaw also likes to headbutt the raid at this point often stunning people. Not a lot you can do about that except wear it. I mean, you can probably dodge away, but I don't believe it is worth bothering with.

Spiked
Let's assume you got it right, and Magmaw is tied to the spike. The target will now change to exposed something or other - be sure that you are DPSing the right thing! Because, while Magmaw is chained down, you are doing double damage. Also, there is zero healing required at this time, so healers, you will need to use this tome to regenerate mana however you do it.

CAVEAT: If there are parasites up - no matter what happens, they are a DPS target priority. The only 2 people excused from dealing with parasites are the DPS jumping on Magmaw's head. Even then, they need to get their job done asap and get back onto the parasites.

Eventually, Magmaw will break free, and we are back to dealing with him as usual. This is where my group uses a second tank to ease the pain of the being munched on debuff. But if you are confident, you can use the same tank.

Threat Dump!
DPS - be very careful of threat - there is a aggro dump when Magmaw is chained (I think it is at that point) and it CAN turn around and snot you for about 120k on cloth if the tank it not quick enough on the taunt. Possibly not enough to kill you, but it will give the healers the scare of their lives.

TL;DR
OK maybe more than 3-4 sentences...

One ranged for kiting parasites (priority kill targets), hunter best.
Rest group up "behind" Magmaw.
Don't stand in the poop.
2 DPS jump up asap, coordinate chain activation (30s Max time for this).
Burn Magmaw (parasites die first).
EEEP! Aggro Dump!!!
Rinse, repeat.
Collect bad RNG loots.

Good Hunting - that's most of it. I know I skipped some things, but they really are irrelevant to know about.

Mana vs Concentration pots

2011-02-23T14:08:00.000+11:00

So, while deliberating the ins and outs of paladin healing this week with my guildies (mostly, my paladin partner in crime, Siha) we came to a bit of a realisation: I was mana potting, she was conc potting.

What exactly is the difference?

Mana pots give you a one shot 10k (approx) hit of mana.
Conc pots mean you stay put for up to 10s and gain back up to 22K mana (more if you are an alchemist - which I am not, so I dont know the details of the buff there).

Here is a bit of an analysis I popped on our forums trying to figure out which was better (slightly edited for a couple of errors I made and were pointed out to me):
--
So, 10s of silence with a concentation pot gives a guaranteed 22k mana. But you cant do anything else. For 10s.

vs

A mana pot (quick 10k) plus hitting the boss. Seems like the proc rate of insight is about 30-40% per successful melee hit giving around 937 mana, with a judgement doing about 3.5k, but also leaving you free to heal or do other things.

So in 10s a mana pot (10k instant) plus 2 judges (7k) plus 5 (ish) hits with a proc rate of about 2 of them returning mana puts you about 2 k behind a conc potion, without having to be immobile for 10s (ie you can WoG or HS or anything else at the same time)

Thoughts?

I think it is situational. Clearly, Magmaw favours conc pots (probably bracketed by judgements to maximise regen) but I suspect other fights might favour the mana pot.
--
Siha added that coinciding DP with a conc pot would really throw you back up in the mana stakes, and I said while that is a good idea, (I mean it really IS a good idea, and one of which I should have thought), it didn't change the math because both mana pots and conc pots could be coincided with DP.

So people - what have you experienced? When is it a good time to mana pot? when is it good to conc pot?

One boss in BWD gawn

2011-02-18T08:20:00.002+11:00

So, we killed magmaw on our first 10man adventure into raiding on wednesday night. In typical raiding style, it went down on the last pull of the night!

I drew a lot of conclusions from that raid, and I need to do a couple more before I write up some advice on how to kill magmaw (there are a couple of very straight forward things you need to do to win) but also, on holy paladin healing. There were two of us in the raid - and we are both very competent pally healers, with VERY different styles. Looking at the recount summaries made me guffaw in amusement. The other holy pally was using Divine Light as her go to spell, and pumping out the HPS. She probably has a good 8-10 gear points on me. Me? Well, I was using every trick in the book to squeeze as much as I could out of what I had! I used literally everything, except Light of Dawn, which I am not a fan of as a spell.

Today, I am hoping to go through the parses and see how much mana I generated compared to the other holy pally, and see if that is where I was lacking. I strongly suspect it is. I was experimenting with flasks and food, and I was trying the int flasks - I suspect until my gear picks up, I might need the spirit flask.

Here's a screen shot of the kill attempt and my spell usage (Yes I know they don't fit on my actual blog, just click them and they will take you to a page with just the image. RSS feed readers... you will have no idea what I am talking about!)

As you can see, I was very evenly using every trick at my disposal. I was keeping shock on CD as much as I could (which, honestly, probably wasn't enough). Here is the other holy pally:

As you can see, she was pumping out the DLs hard as her go to spell. I simply do not have the mana, or regen to keep that up as much as she did.

Then the money shot - why I need to up my spirit:

Guess where Brang ran short on mana completely and utterly and was running on fumes? Yes, I was the light pink line. This really rams home to me that my attribute distribution on my gear is not ideal, and I am a bit short when it comes to being 10man raid ready. Not a LOT short, just a little bit.

Remember that list I put up a couple of weeks a go with the self gearing information? Yeah, well I'm still wearing that list. It's not the best list, but as you can see above, it is really just about raid ready, or at least very close to it. I am near to replacing my crafted helm with the JP badge helm and that might make a bit of difference for monday, we will see! Unfortunately, I don't have another holy pally to compare myself to in that raid.

But, I think I acquitted myself quite well, I kept pace on the whole, considering my gear level. I didn't die too much, I didn't stand in the fire, and on the whole, the tanks didn't get omnomnomed to death.

Monday will be another raid instance, so we will see how that goes! I will chat to our kiters of adds for magmaw and see if I can get a good understanding of how they controlled the adds successfully (as toward the end of the night, they really had those adds under control) Then I will write up a NERD guide to 10man magmaw.

Short health-based update

2011-02-11T08:49:00.000+11:00

So you all know that I had been scarce here because I was "sick". Well, I was sick, I was nauseated all day every day and struggling to just get to work and collapsing when I got home.

But I had to wait until all the scans and tests were done to be sure that nothing was going to go wrong. Because when you are having a baby, the last thing you want to have happen is tell people, only to have something awful happen within the first 12 weeks or have to make a difficult decision.

So, I have been very busy in RL, with christmas/New year, organising a wedding (I have my own heirloom ring now for levelling with), convincing my partn^H^H^H^H^Hhusband to play a worgen with me, and... you know... growing a human in my belly.

It takes time!

Well, I seem to be a lot less sick now, I have a lot more time to play WoW and I have actually even started healing properly and have some ideas and advice on what to do in heroics, at least. May I say LoH is your friend, and so is holy shock.

And for the record, my very next grim batol heroic dropped my bracers. I'm pretty happy, and raid ready! Now, its just a matter of slowly replacing my 333 gear with 346+ for added shininess for entry level raiding.

My ret set is not changed much in the last week - but the ret update has added about 1k to my DPS (I can push 10.5k with my ilvl333 gear as opposed to pushing 9k). I got compliments from the DPS in my PUG heroic last night for what I was able to do with what I had (they were all partially raid geared, and I was keeping up, well, in the same ball park, with my quest greens!) so I was feeling on top of the world after that - still am, in fact. Also, I held my own in the Tol Barad raid - again, pushing over the magic 10k DPS requirement.

So, this week has been successful for me.

Next week, Southern Wardens steps into 10man raiding. Which I am looking forward to. Should be interesting.

Getting ready for Heroics (and raiding to some extent) as holy with minimal luck

2011-02-04T09:12:00.000+11:00

Since I have had little to no time for heroics (and every time I do, it takes upwards of 2 hours because there are always a few of us learning what is going on as I always go as a guild group), and RNG has been less than kind to me with regards holy gear, I have had to work on getting my gear sorted out very much on my own.

Shopping list:
About 2500 JP, about 5000 if you want to buy a helm instead of the crafted one. Rep grinding to exalted Earthen Ring and Therazane, Honored with Ramaken by quest levelling and wearing a tabard. Bad RNG in heroic drops. About 5-10k gold to use. A herber alt. JC as a profession.

So this is what I have done thus far:

Helm - get the Stormforged Helm created by a guildie. You can buy a helm with JPs which is better, but as you will see later, I spent my JPs on another item to cover off other, larger upgrades.

Neck - Pendant of Elemental Balance (Earthen Ring Honored)

Shoulders - Twilight-Heart Shoulderplates (Quest Reward, Traitor's Bait, Horde side, unsure of alliance equivalent in Twilight Highlands)

Back - Cloak of Ancient Wisdom (earthen ring revered)

Chest - Peacemaker's Breastplate (Earthen Ring Revered)

Wrists - Good bloody question. Still researching my options there, and waiting for RNG to strike in Grim Batol for Bracers of Umbral Mending off Erudax

Gloves - Gloves of Curious Conscience (1650 JP)

Belt - Expensive (truegold is owie), Light Elementium Belt (crafted Epic, needs 4 hardened Elementium bars, 3 Truegold, 2 Chaos Orbs)

Legs - My second piece of luck - Greaves of the Misguided (Heroic Shadowfang Keep, Lord Godfrey)

Feet - Drystone Greaves (Ramaken - honored)

Ring - Diamant's Ring of Temperance (Therazane - revered)

Ring - Ammunae's Blessing (Ramaken - Honored)

Trinket - Figurine - Dream Owl (JC)

Trinket - Figurine - Jeweled Serpent (JC)

Mace - A bit of luck! Scepter of Power (Heroic Halls of Origination, Setesh)

Shield - Shield of the Mists (950 JP)

Relic - Tattooed Eyeball (Inscription) This is where you will need your herber. The ink is hideously expensive, and it takes about one stack of cataclysm herbs per ink. If you have the money, GREAT! If not, get herbing!

It's not the BEST list of items, but it is a very fast way of getting mostly ready to kick arse and take names in heroics at least. I suspect, it might even scrape you into almost ready for raiding with an understanding guild.

So, in the last 4 days, that is what I have done. Gone from 277 and 264 items and a lot of quest greens, and done the above. I hope to heal my first heroic some time this weekend (My ret gear has been far outstripping my holy gear in luck and drops and so I have been DPSing all my heroics I have been doing) so will be able to put all this to the test!

Ret to the FACE

2011-02-02T09:37:00.000+11:00

It seems that the RNG gods are displeased with the goats I have been sacrificing to them asking for holy plate, and have, instead, in their infinite wisdom, showered me with DPS and Tanking plate instead. This is wholly depressing since healing is my thing that I do. I heal stuff. I heal stuff when I am ret as well. Although, apparently I also Tank stuff when I am ret too.

This is not all bad. Ret is stupid fun. And when I say stupid I mean it. My screen lights up like a christmas tree whenever I get into the thick of it and I am madly pressing the current glowing button and waiting for my combo points to hit 3 before I do something with them (or sometimes less if my "hit shit harder" timer says that buff is about to run out).

You see, I always loved playing rogues. My first toon was a troll rogue and I played the hell out of that character, until I was convinced to reroll alliance with work mates. So, you can imagine how damn excited I was to find out that my holy rogue is just as much fun to play!

Now, 4.0.6 will be a big change to ret. I am looking forward to the change in mastery. I might actually start stacking that at some point! I am going to have a look this week at numbers and things that I can produce (I have about ilvl 333 average gear, and seem to be able to produce about 8k average DPS on a boss if I dont have to cover tanking or healing), which, for someone excited by the shinies on her screen, are some quite respectable numbers... for ret. Yeah, I put the caveat for ret on there because no matter what I do, I seem to be about 1-2k behind people with similar levels of gear to me. Which is kind of depressing, really.

But my guild are lovely, and they take the broken holy pally along as ret to try to farm for heroic gear anyway. That said, I actually mostly hold my own these days. There really isn't a lot to ret; keep your hitty harder buff up, judge and crusader strike/divine storm when they are off CD, use your holy power when it gets to 3 on either the hitty one or your buff (or use word of glory if things are looking a little dire) and whenever one of your abilities glows, use it! Use all your CDs on bosses. That's the guts of ret. There are some ideas of rotation and start ups, and there is finesse in choosing which proc to use when many proc at once, but really, those are not too important to people who are not at top end raiding just yet. For most of us, venturing into our first raid, or gearing up in heroics, the finer ins and outs of decisions as to which proc to use when is not a life or death situation. Not standing in the poop will yield much greater results. That extra 100DPS just doesn't matter to us at this stage. I am not saying it won't soon, but it doesn't yet.

It's not quite the faceroll it used to be, but it is a lot shinier on the screen!

I have been quiet a while

2011-02-01T09:34:00.000+11:00

But I promise you it is for good reason!

[ Tangent alert - Non WoW related commentry below, feel free to ignore ]

Last week, I got married.

Yep.

After 10 years of being with my partner, we finally got around to standing up in front of people and saying emotional stuff to one and other with the sole purpose of making people cry. Well, he made people cry, I made people laugh. But that is us.

So yeah, I now have a heirloom ring for leveling up with, and so does he.

Things have been a bit crazy, my WoW time has been rather limited. Well, my time on the internets in general has been limited! I am only just getting back into the swing of things this week.

And I'm still sick as a dog. But I should have results on why and how in a couple of weeks - had some blood tests last week and having a scan next week. After that, the doc should know exactly what is going on. We do have a pretty good idea at the moment, but I'm not going to say anything until exactly what is going on is confirmed. I have had to come off the MS meds just in case, and that is making life a little bit interesting.

So only being capable of lolling around on couches feeling awful has also cut into my motivation to do things other than feel sorry for myself. That said, I am back at work this week, so we will see how well I cope doing that.

[ Tangent over - wow related stuff to follow ]

2 years!

2011-01-12T11:42:00.000+11:00

Well, this snuck by...
my 2 year blogoversary was on the 22 December!

YAY ME!

Mojo Found

2011-01-12T11:40:00.000+11:00

Very quick update between the craziness of work.

My mojo is definitely back! I am currently bemoaning the fact that I wont be able to properly play until the weekend due to life and organising a wedding (I just realised 2 weeks left of the *cough* ... oh dear, I have a lot of work to do!). I hope to get back into everything properly in February when my health should be settling down and the wedding done and dusted.

Losing your mojo

2011-01-07T13:19:00.000+11:00

What on earth do you mean, run out of mojo?
I have lost motivation to play! Apart from going and smacking a few trolls and stealing theirs, it's a question we all face in some way or other at some time. And there are a few things you can do if you love playing WoW, but are not really motivated at this point in time. Usually, it is due to circumstances in and/or out of game.

What happened?
Personally, I have a rather good out of game reason for mojo-loss that I wont go into for the moment (one day I will explain it, no it's actually not MS-related but that is part of the issue) that will probably eventually stop me playing in any way shape or form that is considered "regular". This was making me play less and have less energy to put into my guild, which consequently suffered, meaning that I was not enjoying the time online that I was spending, because I spent it feeling guilty that I was not motivated to run the guild.

So, what have I done that is keeping me going?
It isn't really worthy of a lot of blogging, but I have gone back to the beginning. I have managed to convince my fiance to play (yes, my boyfriend didn't play WoW! He didn't get me into it, I am annoying HIM to play. Although, he is a massive minecraft fan ans once I showed him the mining and blacksmithing professions he got inordinately excited) and we have decided to play on Proudmoore, where quite a few of my RL friends hang out. It is also the guild that my RL friends have been pestering me to join for a couple of years now.

So, I moved a couple of alts across as well as starting my worgen with my fiance (druids are fun, for the record) and started playing over there when I felt the need for company and easy levelling. My mage has been a great joy to play (I really love all the procs you get in fire spec, it is so exciting and compelling to keep on going on a hot streak!) and I played more and more over on Proudmoore, less and less on Brang and Frosty.

Until this weekend I realised something - I had not logged onto Brang in over a week. I had recommended that me and my partner start on Proudmoore, not Frosty. This was a massive realisation for me that perhaps I should go there too. So, I was mulling this over while happily exploding mobs on my mage and I made a decision. I was going to move.

Now, this guild on PM is a much more "casual" guild, but playing in a guild just for the raiding that I didn't necessarily get along with the people in it made me realise something earlier last year. I don't raid to raid. I raid for fun. I found out last year that I don't care if I wipe over and over and over as long as the people are GRADUALLY improving and the conversation is entertaining. This is leisure time, it's supposed to be FUN! not stressful.

After talking to the PM guild, and my GL, I transferred last night.

Only to have a name change fail. *sigh* so, 1 GM ticket later, we will see if that gets fixed up.

Who is the PM guild that made you leave your home?
Southern Wardens. You may have heard of them. They have been around for a very long time across a couple of MMOs - the WoW guild was formed in 2004 (yeah, they have been going that long). Their guild leader is the writer of Banana Shoulders, and there is at least one other blogger from Hunters Rhok in there too.

So yeah, that's why I have been a bit quiet; dealing with my health (which at the moment is a full time job yeesh!) and losing my mojo.

Here's to hopefully finding my mojo again and some more strategy writeups - but certainly not at the pace I was doing it last year. I'm going to try to add in some more paladin theory crafting as well.

The Cataclysm levelling experience so far

2010-12-20T08:25:00.000+11:00

Well, I wanted to post this a week ago, but it seems Life and Work have smacked me around the head a lot, and I have had minimal time to log on recently. I am currently half way through 84.

Previous expansions (including vanilla) I charged to the level cap, and was assisted to get as much XP as possible to get to endgame as fast as possible. As I get older, more cynical and with more alts, I am finding I want to actually level this time. I want to experience the story of the Naga, of consorting with ancients, or really smelling what uldum smells like.

I have completely finished Hyjal, and I loved the epic feel to it. I felt important, I felt like I was making a difference. Pity we had to go undercover again, I felt they ruined that section of the story with the pre-events. But apart from that, the Hyjal story line was engaging, the questing was useful (if there were "go get me 6 of these" it was clear that they had a reason). I was tricked, duped, sent up trees to save baby bears, used, abused, stuck on hippogriffs and dragons, had molten bore jokes thrust in my face and so on and so forth.

Vash'ir wasn't the amazing experience it was sold to me as. I found the quest tricks annoying rather than engaging (to the point that I spent over 45 mins trying to figure out why my seahorse kept despawning, only to discover it was my vanity pet after about 30 attempts, then to have arrows shown on my screen and have my action bar mod fail so I spent another large amount of time screaming and wondering why hitting the REAL arrow keys wasn't working... yeah, not a happy camper). I also gave up on the zone about 2/3 of the way through it. The story was LONG, the quests not engaging (the only really interesting thing was the naga phasing story) and I wanted to get levelling. So Vash'ir went bye bye.

I skipped deepholme and went to Uldum. Now, I had heard mixed reviews of uldum, that it was not linear, the quests were terrible, the cut scenes were annoying and so on and so forth. However, I am finding the quests interesting, the cut scenes FUN! and the xp very nice. I'm only half way through Uldum, but I hope to finish it as I hit 85.

I think this is the longest time it has taken me to hit level cap ever. Someone give me some of their spare time please? I am missing mine. I won't get to log on for at least another 2 days either. Yeesh, talk about getting the twitches.

And my poor guild needs recruiting and some love, MMOLeader needs some of my attention and my blog here needs some time too.

I have some opinions on Holy Pally healing as well, but given the state of flux the class/spec seems to be in at the moment, I might wait until it settles. Suffice it to say that holy light is still your go to spell, with the odd flash, shock on CD, and get in there and hit those mobs. No matter what anyone says, a free heal is a free heal, use those Holy Power points!

Leadership Failure

2010-11-24T10:19:00.000+11:00

Happy Shattering, all!

In celebration of WoW 2 dropping into Azeroth today, I am not going to write about it. Instead, I am going to pop up a post I wrote on MMOLeader about how you can deal with leaders that are not performing up to your standards.
--

What happens when a leader is not up to the task? Not only does your sanity as the leadership team suffer, but the group being led will almost certainly be suffering as a whole. You will often observe this with a drop in performance of the group and socially, morale will start to plummet. Perhaps people will start griping at each other, there might be some infighting or the most disastrous one, your group will start hemorrhaging members. If it is moved to the latter stages, you might be too late. That said, it is never too late to stop, regroup and rebuild.

Failure Behaviour
So, what are some of the things a leader might be doing which could be identified as an issue?

The first, most damaging and usually most obvious one is mutiny. They openly and actively go against what the leadership team agrees to be doing. This may be publicly, or it might be in the privacy of the leadership team communication channels, or it might be subtle undermining of the leader, the level of mutiny can vary.

A loss in time available to play the game can be another way that a leader can be identified as an issue. Being a leader is taking on responsibility above and beyond just gameplay, and in order to be an effective leader, that leader needs to have the time to do what needs to be done. If circumstances change, it is quite valid to mark a leader as having to be replaced simply because the work is not getting done.

Making the wrong decision to promote someone to the leadership team is another reason to remove them. Everyone makes mistakes, and some people just don't fit what is required to be a leader. Perhaps they didn't realise what was entailed in the job and are simply not up to the mark. Perhaps you didn't realise that the person was missing a trait you consider vital to being a leader in your group. Perhaps they just don't gel with the established leadership team.

The last reason I will mention is attitude. A change in attitude from the leader in question can trigger a removal of an officer. They might be doing everything else right, but if their personal morale has dropped for any reason, this will negatively impact your team. Or simply, your group doesn't like this person's style.

Incident Management
The very first thing you should do after you have identified an issue is take reasonable steps to try to rectify the situation without making any changes. Identify the issue and take immediate steps to minimise the impact of the actions. This can be enough to buy you some time to deal with the leader in question. Talk to your other leaders and see if you can get them to cover any responsibilities that are missing, or patch up any relationship problems in the group as they see them (which, really, they should be doing anyway. Sometimes people need a little prod to get moving as they worry about stepping on other peoples' toes in situations like these).

Problem Management
Talking to the leader in question about why they are behaving the way they are is leadership 101. Communication is always key. Take the leader aside and have a chat, find out what is going on with them to cause the problem. Talk to your fellow leaders and not only inform them of the problem, but see if they can help resolve the issue or perhaps shed some light on why the leader is behaving the way they are. Do your best to figure out what can be done to help the leader in question. Support, redistribution of duties, argument mediation... all of these things and more could be used to try to keep your officer in place and functioning again.

Problem Resolution
From all this you will have 3 likely outcomes, which could be the following

Leader stays
Structure changes are best kept to a minimum, so if you can negotiate a way for the leader to stay, then this is the best outcome. Giving them a chance to rectify the issues, work on them and grow as a leader is a good chance to develop not only your own management skills, but the leadership team's skills as well. Make sure that feedback is given to the leader and support is maintained during this probationary period. Everyone should be given a chance to show they can rise to the occasion in my opinion. Make sure that the entire team is supported if there has been any strain on the team relationships and especially if there has been a redistribution of responsibilities or changes in positions to accommodate new working parameters.

Leader leaves by choice
It might be that, after all the negotiations, it becomes apparent that the leader in question doesn't think they can stay in the job or doesn't want to stay. This should be relatively easy to have a transition period in which they stay in their job until a suitable replacement can be found. The leader can then drop back to whatever they feel they can do at this stage in time and the group can move forward together and clearly with no hard feelings.

Leader needs to be removed
During negotiations it might become apparent that the leader needs to be removed, but is not willing to step down of their own volition. This is the most tricky situation to mediate and will require super-amazing communication skills in order to execute without causing too much upset to the team. Try to keep everything as transparent as possible, and be as reasonable as possible. The leader's personal relationships will become a sticking point in all this, especially if there are some strong loyalties or friendship ties within the group to this person. More especially if those ties are to you. Be careful - there is no easy way to do this. You have my sympathy if it has come to this point.

At the end of the day, don't forget that you are playing a game. If it is no longer fun you are doing something wrong.

I have had to remove leaders before, and demoting friends who decided that leadership was no longer their thing is easily the hardest thing (emotionally) I have ever had to do. Even declaring that I was done leading and thus the team stopped functioning was easier than removing friends from office (especially when those friends then drifted out of your life). This is emotional, and anyone that tells you different is not a good leader.

What are my more popular posts?

2010-11-12T09:34:00.000+11:00

I was meandering around my site, looking at feedburner stats and the stats provided by blogger to see what my more popular posts are.

1883 views - "The Lich King - Arthas Menethil"

Unsurprisingly, my most viewed piece of work. This seems to get linked to by guilds the world over from their forums. Occasionally, these guilds have unlocked forums and I have opportunity to see what was said about my guide. Mostly it is positive, and sometimes there are penny drop moments for people which is satisfying to see. The main way people get to this post is via pwnwears couple of link backs to me in his compilation posts of online guides.

1821 views - "Sindragosa"

1266 views - "Heroic Lady Death Whisper"

622 views - Heroic Saurfang

People get here from google. Not as often linked to forums as our good friend the lich king, I can only assume this is mostly for people doing their own research. There is a sharp drop off in page views as I assume that google doesn't show saurfang as high on the search lists.

From here we drop into my leadership posts. These guys sit in the 2-500 view range.

Loot as a Skinner box

Copping it sweet: taking criticism as a leader

There's movement at the station...

These posts all had a lot of link love. They did the rounds of my corner of the blogosphere, which was extremely awesome to watch and every time someone links to me I never believe that they think my work could be good enough to promote. They are also all posts made within the last 2 months.

Of course, this is not looking at the RSS feed traffic or general traffic from the wonderful people out there linking unasked to my blog! I am a believer in putting links to other blogs I like. If I find a new blog, it goes in my reader for a couple of months. If I find myself reading it and enjoying it, I will pop it in my blog roll. If not, then I either unsub or I just read it occasionally.

So, luckily for me I will be continuing my strategy writing come Dec 7 (it will only be 10man focused, but I suspect that will be what the majority of people will be doing anyway). In fact, I will be documenting not just the working strategy, but also the discovery process we will be going through to create a strategy. I hope this will be interesting and entertaining for everyone to read!

An example of excellent leadership

2010-11-08T09:39:00.000+11:00

There are still awesome leaders in this world, one of them is named Blacksen.

Blacksen and his guild, Imperative, took it upon themselves to thank "Red Shirt Guy" in a way that the rest of us would never be able to - took him on a 12/12 ICC HM run. They gave him offspec shinies he might not otherwise get, and the winner of the roll for Arthas' horse, Invincible, gave up his shot at the mount in favour of donating it to Red Shirt Guy (who was quoted as saying that Arthas' "... loved that horse more than he loved Jaina Proudmore", yeah I think that was worth it).

Red Shirt Guy has had to deal with a lot of internet tough guys taunting him and attacking him. The video in question was brought to my attention by my partner (a reddit addict, and not a WoWer. He plays minecraft, and I don't ever want him to play Eve as I would never see him again). We both watched the video, and came to 2 conclusions - that the guy had a touch of aspergers (which red shirt guy later confirmed... I mean, his passion and attention to lore detail was amazing!) and that Red Shirt Guy had never used a PA system where there is a delay on hearing yourself talk. If you are not used to it, your automatically Slllloooowww dooownnn youuurrr talkinnnngg because your brain wants you to finish hearing yourself before going onto the next sound. If course, in your own head, this works just fine. On a PA system with a delay? Well, you just start talking slower and slower as the delay will never catch up and you quite often sound like you have a speech impediment of some kind (and sound pretty much exactly like Red Shirt Guy).

This delay technique is being used in a scientific manner as well. People with stutters find almost immediate relief from a lot of their stuttering as soon as you feedback their own speech with a slight delay into their ear. Why is that? For the exact same reason Red Shirt Guy sounded like he had a problem with talking - it slows you down, it tricks your brain into waiting. Stuttering is often caused by your brain going too quickly and getting stuck (of course it is vastly more complicated than that, but I am not a neuroscientist!).

I made my thanks known to Blacksen personally, but I think he and his guild deserve a public shout out. Thanks from all of us who didn't hate, who quietly admired Red Shirt Guy for getting up and asking the question in front of literally thousands of people, for putting up with the ridicule, who understood what happened on that day to his voice and who are the silent majority who noted the event and moved on.

Leaders are not just people who can lead their group, but they lead the way within the community as well. Blacksen has shown that he is not just a good leader within the context of competetive PvE content (Imperative are one of the best PvE guilds in the world, a piece of notable leadership in and of itself) but the guild and ALL its members are leaders within the WoW community at large by extension of this position. What they do is what everyone else will try to emulate. Their behaviour is watched and it is counted - every single member of that guild (and guilds in similar positions) are leaders.

This single act of kindness shows me that Imperative are the kind of leaders I want to be at the top of the game, showing the rest of the world that not only can you be badass (as Blacksen puts it) but you can be AWESOME and still be kicking butt and taking names.

So, thanks Blacksen and Imperative for being non elitist, hardcore PvE leaders.

Of PUGs, Mages and tangents

2010-11-06T19:01:00.000+11:00

This is a bit of a (long) Story Time with Aunty Brang, but I was so excited, I had to share. I won't be offended if you just skim it and click "read" on your RSS feeder, I also wont know but SHHH...

I am generally not a LFD-er. I am not a fan of the people you get in pugs from that tool. Generally people are silent, and when they do talk it is because you screwed up, or they are telling you to wait for mana or demanding a buff of some kind. The anonymity and randomness has made people forget their manners, on the whole. Occasionally, the LFD tool has sparks of awesome. This is the tale of one such awesome point in an otherwise boring time of levelling. There is one moral from this story, one point that I keep trying to make over and over... communication is key. If you communicate, then people are a lot more tolerant of you, as you will see in the following dialog.

I was levelling my little mage, Dhaliri, trying to catch up to some of my friends who had overtaken me so we could go do some instances together. With some trepidation, I hit the LFD key, and start questing. Within minutes I was being ported into Utgarde Keep "I WILL PAINT MAH FACE WITH YOUR BLOOOOD!" (Sure Ingmar, whatever you say).

It didnt take long for me to realise that something good was about to happen:

14:46 [Tank DK]: Try to keep up

So with out much further ado, we charge into the instance. The DK Tank is pulling like a champion, taking large groups of mobs (but not too many) and the rest of us are carving up the AoE. We all seem to know what we are doing, waiting for the DnD to go down before we start wailing on everything. Then... this happens...

14:53 [Priest Healer]: I don't get the trend for tanks to totally disregard that the healer needs mana...what is that?
14:54 [Tank DK]: I wasn't disregarding, I just wasn't paying attention
14:54 [Hunter]: an s on their chests now??
14:54 [Hunter]: lol

At this point, I think I had a massive crush on the hunter...

14:55 [Tank DK]: The very last time I ran this, I ran it with a druid who said he could faceroll

Uh oh! Could we possibly have a cocky, annoying tank?

14:55 [Tank DK]: I wasn't mitigating properly, usually I can heal myself a bit

*blink* SERIOUSLY? This tank was saying that the wipe was partially his fault! I think I have a crush on the tank now too! He even took the priest seriously with the next comment:

14:55 [Priest Healer]: no idea what that is
14:56 [Tank DK]: It's so easy, he could roll his face over the keyboard and it would workl
14:56 [Hunter]: lol

Hunter is giggling his head off at all this, and so am I.

14:58 [Tank DK]: Mana?
14:58 [Priest Healer]: thanks
14:58 [Hunter]: no ty i am good lol

Ah Hunter - how I love thee, let me count the ways. And thus we proceeded to completely smash the instance. Then, the Tank DK dropped the bombshell:

15:13 [Tank DK]: This is my second character, right next to the 55 warrior I dropped to make this one
15:13 [Tank DK]: I just love tanking
15:13 [Tank DK]: I'm gonna make a druid and a pally too
15:13 [Hunter]: u r good at it
15:14 [Dhaliri]: yeah, you are doing really well at tanking for your second character
15:14 [Tank DK]: =D
15:14 [DPS DK]: ya :D
15:14 [Tank DK]: My buddy has played WoW for about 4 years
15:14 [Dhaliri]: Im watching your threat and its solid
15:14 [Tank DK]: I learn a lot from him
15:14 [Dhaliri]: well, hes a good teacher
15:15 [Hunter]: yes
15:15 [Tank DK]: Thanks =D

We enjoyed that run so much, we decided to go again, but with a new healer. This healer has a rather... LOW mana pool. AAAAAAAAAAaaaand we wipe. Now, read the following interaction:

15:25 [Tank DK]: What happened?
15:26 [Dhaliri]: I pulled aoe
15:26 [Druid Healer]: i died
...
15:27 [Tank DK]: I screwed up the positioning of my DnD

There was a bit more to the conversation than that, but it is pretty boring to read. The upshot it we identified what went wrong and we corrected it. The only thing the druid had to say was "I died". The rest of us were trying to figure out what happened and how it occurred. I didn't pull aggro again, I watched the DnD and made sure my AoE was in the right places... however, the druid kept dying, generally, it seemed from a lack of mana (as the Tank DK was starting to look after himself), or not realising that DnD wasnt going down sometimes and pulling healer aggro.

15:40 [Dhaliri]: healer down
15:40 [Tank DK]: How?
...
15:41 [Tank DK]: I didn't think they'd be a problem, little babies hit a lot when they're many
15:41 [Tank DK]: I just blood boiled and assumed I'd have aggro thil they died
15:42 [Dhaliri]: druids pull healer aggro pretty hard

15:42 [Dhaliri]: something to be wary of on aoe pulls

15:45 [Druid Healer]: sorry guys, sik of running bak
15:45 [Druid Healer]: gl
15:46 [Dhaliri]: mmm so ... odd healer is odd?
15:46 [Hunter]: strange
15:46 [DPS DK]: did he was hurting himself ? xD

And the Druid decides to leave after the first boss. However, while we were waiting for him to run back one time, us Dranei entertained ourselves by telling jokes to the mobs.

15:43 [DPS DK]: ajajajaj draenei talks like russians lolol.. sorry my first ally char
15:44 [Dhaliri]: Kind of
15:44 [Hunter]: was just gonna say that
15:44 [Dhaliri]: Ever heard of Babylon 5?
15:44 [DPS DK]: ya
15:44 [Dhaliri]: The dranaei are based on the boneheads from that show
15:44 [Dhaliri]: their prophet is even named Velen! (in Bab 5 its Valen(
15:45 [DPS DK]: im gonna check them out later :)

Did I mention that this group rocked? Anyway, the new healer rocks up and we see the following exchange:

15:46 [DPS DK]: hi !
15:46 [Dhaliri]: Hi there
15:46 [Hunter]: hi
15:46 [Tank DK]: A DROOD
15:46 [Youngling]: Hello noobs and noobetes
15:47 [Youngling]: :P
15:47 [Youngling]: joks
15:47 [Hunter]: lol
15:47 [Dhaliri]: You are going to fit in JUST FINE
15:47 [Youngling]: lol?
15:47 [Youngling]: im scared now
15:47 [Dhaliri]: I would be
15:47 [Hunter]: for sure
15:47 [Youngling]: Just cause im a druid
15:47 [Youngling]: adn your a mage
15:47 [Dhaliri]: And you like dragons
15:48 [Youngling]: :O
15:48 [Dhaliri]: I SAW THAT MOVIE
15:49 [Youngling]: i made this toon when i was like 10
15:49 [Youngling]: then i got it to liek 15
15:49 [Dhaliri]: (oh man, I feel old right now)
15:49 [Youngling]: and stoped playing it for like 5 years
15:50 [Youngling]: adn now i am 15 and i decided to play it again
15:50 [Youngling]: lol how old are you
15:50 [Youngling]: 40?
15:50 [Dhaliri]: not THAT old
15:50 [Tank DK]: 23!
15:50 [DPS DK]: 26
15:50 [Youngling]: lol
15:50 [Dhaliri]: 32
15:50 [Hunter]: 38 here
15:50 [Youngling]: Lol
15:50 [Dhaliri]: oops 34
15:50 [Youngling]: lol u old people
15:50 [Dhaliri]: getting senile in my old age
15:50 [Youngling]: Lol
15:51 [Hunter]: young wippersnapper
15:51 [Youngling]: and you are a Femlae or a male :P
15:51 [Dhaliri]: One day YOU WILL BE OLD JUST LIKE US MUAHAHAHAAAA
15:51 [Youngling]: lol
15:51 [DPS DK]: same as my char
15:51 [Dhaliri]: ditto
15:52 [Hunter]: same here
15:52 [Youngling]: Finkle bottom saggy tits :P
15:52 [Youngling]: sorry :(
15:52 [Dhaliri]: lol?
15:52 [Youngling]: lol
15:52 [Youngling]: you should be CONFUSED

Yep, that was pretty much one long exchange as we pulled into the next boss. We smashed through the instance and queued up again. This was worth it just for Youngling's random comments while we waited for the next healer to sort out a mod:

15:58 [Youngling]: when i run sideways it looks like i am running foward

16:00 [Dhaliri]: Tree is for Fight
16:01 [Youngling]: yeh
16:01 [Youngling]: GUESS WHAT
16:01 [Dhaliri]: what? (dare I ask?)
16:01 [Youngling]: CHICKENS GO MEOW WHEN PEOPLE ARE NOT LOOKING!

16:01 [Dhaliri]: how do you know?
16:01 [Youngling]: cause i videod it
16:01 [Youngling]: :P
16:01 [Dhaliri]: SS or it didn't happen!

16:03 [Youngling]: Feel my suductive dance
16:03 [Youngling]: :P
16:03 [Dhaliri]: that damn moonkin dance makes me lol

Finally, the shammy logs back on... we charge in...

16:03 [Tank DK]: Here we go
16:04 [Tank DK]: Get ready for epic heals

And disaster strikes as the tank comes crashing down...

16:04 [Youngling]: lol
16:04 [Tank DK]: WELL I NEVER!
16:04 [Youngling]: Moments like this you need a Minti
16:04 [Youngling]: lol

I pull aggro and decide Ice Block is my friend.

16:05 [Youngling]: Mage get back
16:05 [Youngling]: if worst com e to worst use Invisiblility
16:05 [Tank DK]: If worst comes to worst

(I would if I HAD invisibility at that level...) I decided that advancing in a negative direction was the best thing for me to do right now... but I didn't count on LFD putting awesome people in my group a third time running.

16:05 [Shammy Heals]: you know what...that's my bad sry...
16:05 [Dhaliri]: I ran
16:05 [Dhaliri]: what happened?
16:05 [Shammy Heals]: my comp got freeze again
16:05 [Youngling]: lol
16:05 [Ret Pally]: I tanked
16:05 [Youngling]: :P
16:05 [Ret Pally]: we won
16:05 [Dhaliri]: AH
16:05 [Dhaliri]: I saw!
16:05 [Tank DK]: It's okay =D
16:06 [Dhaliri]: I froze, then ran, then ran back and helped!
16:06 [Ret Pally]: lol
16:06 [Tank DK]: runn!
16:06 [Youngling]: Lol you didnt help shit
16:06 [Tank DK]: loool
16:06 [Dhaliri]: I DID!
16:06 [Youngling]: :P
16:07 [Dhaliri]: Im helpy mcHelpPants

This was the very first pull of the instance. How many people would have just quit? But NOT US! We trooped on!

16:22 [Dhaliri]: LOL so used to being a tank healer - on the tanks heels all the time
16:23 [Youngling]: lol
16:23 [Youngling]: what a noob
16:23 [Youngling]: :P
16:23 [Dhaliri]: You wish you were as noob as me
16:23 [Youngling]: fuck yeh
16:23 [Dhaliri]: see?

And Youngling was just as entertaining as previously. Unfortunately, I had to leave after this run... but I couldn't be let go without a passing shot from the crowd...

16:29 [Dhaliri]: ok Im off guys - cheers for that
16:29 [Dhaliri]: GL with the levelling!
16:29 [Youngling]: *cough* noob *cough*
16:29 [Youngling]: :P
16:29 [Dhaliri]: haha
16:29 [Tank DK]: =D

There's movement at the station...

2010-10-28T18:38:00.000+11:00

...for the word has FINALLY passed around!

I have been working on a SuperSecretProject for a few weeks now.

One day, I was hanging out on the pwnwear leadership forum and thought... "If I wanted advice as a leader, where would I go?" After a quick internet search, I came up with a few blogs, but no real home or place to go for advice or just a good old whinge.

It seems that I was not the only one with this thought. Gravity from Pwnwear was thinking similar things. One quick conversation later and we were embarking upon a brave new world of leadership community building. This world was named

MMOLeader

We busily worked on what it would look like, how it would feel, what was the purpose. Along the way, we invited some people to join us in creating this new corner of the internet. Karatheya from Cold Comfort, Kasgrin from the Pwnwear forums and Blacksen of Blacksen's End all thought this was a mighty fine idea and agreed to be contributing authors.

Together we worked hard to create a space that... for a new home looks pretty good, if a bit utilitarian at the front end. We are hoping that as we grow and develop, so will our forums and more especially, our front page (I have cemented my realisation that "pretty" is for other people, however cool back end crazy coding, yeah, that's more like me!).

So please, if you are a leader or you enjoy reading about leadership and want somewhere that you can call home, join us at MMOLeader. We are not just about WoW, we are looking at all kinds of gaming leadership. We even have a section for professional development, because so much of the theory and ideas presented to keep an online group running is used in the workplace as well!

It is easy to become a member. You can login with your facebook or twitter accounts, or just comment anonymously if you wish, but to get the most out of the forums come and make an account.

The most important thing I have left till last - this is a community first and foremost. While a few of us will be authors, admins and moderators, if you wish to become an author, start posting! If the article you write is good enough, you will make it to the front page as a featured topic. No commitment, no responsibility, no strings attached. If you don't want to be put up front on the front page, just let us know in the post.

If you have enjoyed reading this blog at all, I hope you will come give MMOLeader a try.

Now, all that said - I will still be posting here. Much of my content will be cross posted if it relates to leadership in any way shape or form, but my strategy posts will still be finding a home here. In fact, come cata, this blog will undergo a slight content shift as I will be documenting my adventures in Pastafarian.

So Big News! Please pass the word around, it is going to be hard to generate the initial buzz, but I am hoping that all you wonderful people out there will help me achieve that!

Holy Rogues be BUFFED!

2010-10-28T14:52:00.001+11:00

30% across the board in the beta build and Bacon up from 1 minute to 5 minutes.
And mastery buffed as well. We might be viable again in Cata! WHEE!

* Holy Radiance's effectiveness now diminish on targets farther than x yards away.
* Divine Light base healing has been increased by 30%. From 8538-9512 to 11100-12366
* Holy Wrath now scales from 61% of SpellPower, up from 30%. Base damage reduced by 22%, from 3122 to 2435.
* Exorcism now scales from 34.4% of SpellPower or AP, up from 15%. Base damage increased by 15% from 2343 to 2741.
* Flash of Light base healing has been increased by 30%. From 5313-5961 to 6907-7750.
* Lay on Hands no longer restores mana.
* Holy Light base healing has been increased by 30%. From 3202-3567 to 4162-4637.
* Beacon of Light now lasts 5 min, up from 1 min.
* Mastery: Illuminated Healing now absorbs 10% of the amount healed, up from 8%. Now lasts 8 sec, up from 6 sec. Each point of mastery increases the absorb amount by an additional 1.25%, up from 1%.
* Holy Shock base healing has been increased by 30%. From 3033-3285 to 3943-4271.

Holy Pally Co-efficients 4.0.0.1987

2010-10-21T21:23:00.000+11:00

So, in a post over on The Bossy Pally, Ophelie was mucking around with spell coefficients for Holy Pallies. Now she has gone off to Blizzcon and left us all hanging with regards the patch adjustments. So, based on her math, here are the updates.

I have made a COUPLE of changes to what is going on - there seem to no longer be ranges on the tooltips for heals, just a straight number. So, I got my kit off in the middle of Dalaran in the name of science and came up with these numbers:

Nekkid (92 SP at level 80 - base values)
Light of Dawn -1687
Word - 1699 per charge
Holy Shock -1975
Divine Light -8499
Flash of Light -5319
Holy Light - 3187

Clothed (3416 SP at level 80)
Light of Dawn - 2296
Word - 2312 per charge
Holy Shock - 4047
Divine Light - 11566
Flash of Light - 7615
Holy Light - 4335

Coefficient = (Clothed heal - Nekkid Heal)/Clothed Spell Power

Light of Dawn - 0.18
Word - 0.18 per charge
Holy Shock - 0.31
Divine Light - 0.89
Flash of Light - 0.67
Holy Light - 0.33

Compared to the previous values:
Light of Dawn = MISSED
Word of Glory = 0.22
Holy Shock = 0.69
Divine Light = 1.04
Flash of Light = 0.77
Holy Light = 0.33

EEP check out holy shock! They really mucked around with that one!

I have linked the values on WoWhead so you can see what Ophie used (note these MIGHT get updated soon). Seems we have been dropped across the board - which is in line with the comments I am hearing that Paladins are over powered at 85. So, that's actually a good sign. I'd rather be tweaked with now, rather than later, that's for sure.

4.0.1 and initial Holy Pally reaction

2010-10-21T11:08:00.001+11:00

So, I spent 2 hours patching then another 3 hours readjusting my UI and figuring out my spec (which I am still not happy with) and wondering what on earth is going on with glyphs. Oh man, I wish I were an inscriptor, they were raking in the money! RAKING IT IN.

But this is a holy pally post - a very bad, I haven't raided yet, wtfamIdoing post.

First of all, I would like to welcome my new Holy Rogue style of play to my keyboard. I can't tell you how immeasurably happy I am to have my 2 favourite classes smooshed together in such a way. I was leaping around my chair with excitement. It seems blizzard are finally pushing paladins back into melee. I never understood why Holy Paladins all stood at range to heal. It doesn't fit the lore, or the class. I was always in the thick of it, seal twisting depending on what I needed at the time, health or mana, and by doing that, allowing myself to use different stats to other paladins. I could value crit higher. Bring on the Combat Medic, I say. I am looking forward to raiding encounters in Cata which will allow this to happen.

I am going to ignore anything about spec and glyphs for the moment. I am not convinced mine are right and I need to play a little to figure out what I think is useful in terms of spells before I tweak in any way yet. I expect to be spending some gold on respecs.

For reference, I have a spec something like this.

First of all what do we have to use as a holy pally now?
The very first thing I noticed was I have a lot less on my bars, but a lot more that I need to look at. I have moved from 1 bar under my feet with OHSHIT buttons and a GCD timer from quartz, to 2 bars and a holy power meter and quartz to manage everything I feel I need to watch constantly.

It seems things are now grouped into 3 catagories for healing.

Heals
Holy Shock - This seems to be our bread and butter heal. I keep it on CoolDown (CD) at all times. It was reasonably cheap and generates Holy Power (HP). If it is not on CD, why not? As far as I seem to play, it is always on cooldown.
Word of Glory - This is a free heal. Again, if you have HP and it is not on CD, why is it not on CD? Use it at every opportunity you have, generally on the tank, but really whatever needs it. 3 HPs mean the heal gets up to 5k.
Divine Light - This is our heavy hitting heal. Seems to me to be a little underpowered for the mana cost at the moment. I am sure this will get balanced out at 85 as we scale up. For the moment, use sparingly and only in emergencies.
Flash of Light - Ok, so this is our upside down heal. What used to be a quick small cheap heal is now a quick EXPENSIVE middling heal. Bigger than holy light. I seem to be using this a lot in heroics, its fast and fights dont last long enough for me to run out of mana.
Lay On Hands - This is unchanged from 3.x, but now the CD is 10mins base. Which is pretty much one per fight. Looks like every pally took the glyphs/talents to reduce the CD on this, so Blizz decided to just reduce the CD. Smart move.
Holy Light - What used to be the staple for healing is now probably going to gather dust till we hit 85. It is REALLY cheap now, like ludicrously so, but it heals like you are drinking water as a placebo. I suspect it is designed to be our average damage evener-outerer (the math design says that is the case).
Light of Dawn - This has a great graphic! The conal area of effect will take some getting used to, but this will be a great melee healing device. Wont work so well on ranged, they generally don't like standing in any position which will make this at all useful.
Beacon of Light -Despite the nerf, I found that bacon should be on the tank at all times regardless of anything else. We have so many more instant and free heals to throw around, that requiring this to be 100% I feel certainly would have been over powered. The HP talents that go with this make it even more attractive as it will generate a free heal for every 3 casts.
Seal of Insight - Go forth and be a combat medic. Hit shit the way Paladins were meant to! FINALLY! So happy about this change.

Holy Power Generation
Crusader Strike - Combat Medic strikes again. If you get a free cycle, throw up a crusader strike and generate HP. Hitting stuff is fun.
Judgement - old faithful. Use it when you can.
Holy Shock - Yep, should always be on CD and always generating HP for you.

Mana regeneration
Divine Plea - Seems this is pretty much unchanged from 3.x in terms of how and when you would use it (which is obviously, use early, use often)
Seal of Insight - Again with going in and being a combat medic, this seal regenerates not just health, but mana too.

UI changes?
We have a lot fewer spells to deal with now, but there are a lot more things to watch. All our spells are on odd cooldowns, and we need to keep track of HP to be sure to use Word as often as we can. I came up with a bit of an odd idea - I have a mostly opaque bar under my toon's feet with all my heals on it, behind that I used a mod (in this case, IceHud) to place the holy power bar behind that, so I could see at a glance which of my heals were ready to use, and how much HP I currently had.

However, I have now decided that is a terrible idea and simple have a counter next to that healing bar instead.

So, that's my initial reaction to what we now have to play with. I have some idea of how to use it now, but really, I have a nasty feeling that our gimpedness now will not be an issue at 85. We are in pre-cata patch testing... the talents and abilities we have now are not designed to be ready for 80. They are designed for 85 raiding. So, if you feel your incapable of being useful in heroic LK, have a break! Don't cry and say that your class is broken and you are going to reroll, and blizzard doesn't love you and all that other QQ I am seeing at the moment. I cant recommend more that you play an alt and go see what HEALING TALENTS classes have in their trees now. Judgement of Light might be gone, but it has been absorbed as talents in just about every talent tree I have looked at. Little things like that. Go see what syngergies are out there now for you. Yeah, so you will have less HPS on the healing meters, SO WHAT? As long as your targets stay alive and the boss dies, does it matter if you are at the top or the bottom of the meters?

Go play an alt. Go play the auction house. Have a break! You have earned it.

Loot as a Skinner box

2010-10-08T12:30:00.001+11:00

Last night, my fellow officer was explaining our guild concept to a new guildie. He is studying psychology and he mentioned Skinner boxes in the explanation. No, I don't mean you skin a mob called a "box" and get epic loot from it. I mean, a something called a "skinner box", but not a REAL skinner box, a software one. One of the most famous skinner box conditioned mammals are Pavlov's dogs - who were conditioned to slobber at the ring of a bell. I realised that I had not explained why our guild is doing what it is doing on this blog. So, here is why.

Disclaimer - I am not a psychologist. I am a trained scientist and I am using my skills learned within that to apply critical thinking and research to something I think leaders should understand at some level, or at least be aware of. I am sure that the below article will be contentious, and please comment if you have opinions or experiences to share! There are a list of links to read if you are interested in more information at the end of the article. If you read nothing else, read the one from cracked.com.

How is loot a software Skinner Box?
So the basics of the skinner box experiment are thus (I am going to assume you read the link above): Rat A in the skinner box is rewarded every time they press the button. Rat B in another skinner box is rewarded randomly when they press the button. Rat B will press that button more and more in hopes of gaining a reward, eventually just pressing that button continuously regardless of how much reward they actually have.

According to Skinner, Rat B displayed behaviors similar to a gambler. The next press might give them the thing they are after. It becomes less about the reward itself and more about obtaining the reward. I can easily see how this would extend to WoW and loot. Clearly, the lever is killing the boss and the reward is the Phat Lewtz we gain from the boss.

Reinforcement

There are many levels of reinforcement within WoW (and other games and MMO's) to keep us coming back for more. There is simple randomness "Will my item drop?" then to compound that once it does drop, "Will I win that loot?". That is one nasty lever! Not only are you being conditioned by a random drop, you can SEE that random drop (which proves that the drop exists) but then that random drop is randomly allocated within the raid.

Now let's take it one step further, I assumed that the boss died every time - it may not. So, not only are your random elements "Will my loot drop?" and "Will I win it?" but also "Will we kill the boss?". And one more element to that "Was I there when the boss was killed this week?" because perhaps you were unavailable that night, perhaps you were benched or perhaps the leadership team decided to not kill that boss that week.

Just think about all those variables for a moment. All of those things that can affect whether or not you get the reward. To use the schedule terminology, WoW raiding loot is a mixture of Fixed interval (ie weekly resets), variable interval (which bosses are killed a week, whether or not that boss has loot you want), variable ratio (who is in the group that week and your loot drops at a fixed percentage), and continuous ratio (raid loot drops every time, BADGES oh the Badges!). It has several levels of reward abstraction (ie after the loot drops, it is still some ratio as to whether you get it or not). It has multiple levels of concurrency and complexity. Simply put, it is the most complex and amazing skinner box I have ever seen and I was completely sucked in by it for some time. It is even incorporated into our jargon - Farming anyone?

Breaking Bad Boxes
There are many things that are done to break parts of the skinner box. The main reason to break parts of it is that the skinner box makes you feel slightly out of control (well it did to me). You don't know when the next "fix" is coming, when that next big win will happen. This causes friction and frustration between guild members. Good guild leaders understand this at some level, even if they don't understand why it is happening. There are a few basic methods to break the mechanisms to keep your guild ticking along smoother than the average guild.

The first and most prevalent one is (obviously) be in a guild. Reducing the number of people competing for the loot fixes the variable nature of allocating loot. LFG system actually exponentially increases this variable. If you want to gain an item, fix the group that you are going to be pressing that level. Randomising the people you go with will increase the randomness of you gaining the item, and increasing the effectiveness of the skinner box around you.

Following on from fixing the group of people around you, comes using a loot allocation system (like DKP). Making it clear when you will get that next piece of loot relative to other guild members removes a level of complexity to the system and calms people down. It changes the Variable Ratio loot allocation to an Interval Ratio (In random kills, but x drops, I will get item y). It would not have been hard to implement a DKP system within WoW, but they didn't. They chose to keep the two level variable ratio.

Further to that is planning ahead - letting people know what your raiding schedule is. What are you planning to kill when? Who needs to kill which boss for their push at the reward lever? How many badges do they need to upgrade an item?

The hardest thing to do is to create a culture where loot is no longer a reward, but a tool. Loot is what you need to kill the next boss and the reward is working together as a team to overcome a challenge. WotLK has made this VERY difficult to do, as they have created an environment that causes this challenge to have been removed placing emphasis back on loot as a reward and reinforcing the loot skinner box. I think this last point sums up why I enjoyed TBC vastly more than WotLK.

Using the Skinner Box for your own reasons
Having tools to break the box and the knowledge that the box exists means you can manipulate these tools to create or break morale in your guild. If you need people to turn up to raid nights? take away the predictability of what bosses you are doing when - add that element back into the skinner box of raiding and condition your guild to respond to that. You can take it away at will and put up schedules again, but as soon as the members start slacking off, add it back in and they will be pre-conditioned to respond and turn up to raids again.

This is not as nasty as it sounds.

Understanding how this works is a wonderful way to break the conditioning on yourself. Once you can break it on yourself you will be much more objective and strategic in how you run your raids and how you run your guild. It also allows you to break the subscription model the skinner box promotes and ensure you have a good balance of gaming versus Real Life. It is another tool in your guild leader arsenal to use, or to leave in place. It is your choice.

Given how well constructed this skinner box is, I am not surprised that there has been very little written on the topic. Here is a quick link spam to articles I have read in the past (and could still find links to) on the topic.

Mecha the Slag - from July 2010
Tobold from 2007!
Moose Bites from 2009
Nick Yee on the EQ skinner box
Gamasutra from back in 2001!
Cracked.com from this year with some great links I recommend you read including some I already had read and linked above.

Everybody knows.....

2010-10-05T13:05:00.001+11:00

It was announced on the Blizz WoW twitter feed last night that Cataclysm is going to be available on December 7th 2010. This fits with MMO-Champion's datamining finding that Season 9 will be starting on December 14th.

Well, I know what I am buying myself for my birthday!

What surprises me is that no one seemed to have noticed that little announcement on twitter. I was surprised that it slipped by the people I follow.

Anyway, Happy Cata!

ETA: I originally predicted June as a release date for Cata. When it became clear that was not on the cards, I revised my date to late November/early December. However, 7 December makes me happy, because I will be back from sydney in time to enjoy Cata!! The next question - do I try to get a collectors edition?

Updating your Guild Site is Important

2010-10-04T14:16:00.001+11:00

Guild websites have 2 important functions - promoting communication within and without the guild. This is achieved generally with having a members and non members section.

For the non members section, having a front page blog is a great way to advertise your guild. It can show your achievements, and highlight the great things about your guild. The most important thing it shows is that your guild is organised and active. Your website is the portal to your guild when not in game. It will be doing all the things that you cant do ingame.

Within the guild, one of the main things a website is for is to get people together and the best way to do that is making sure they have a way to communicate out of game. It is a great place for announcing upcoming guild events, getting people to organise things to do, more especially it is used for keeping track of DKP, putting up a raid calendar (to schedule raids and check peoples availability), a place to hold screenshots and mayhaps even a chat feature.

This article will list the things that are important to people who are not members yet, and are based on my own experience and the feedback I have had over the years about guild web site construction.

Customised Domain Name
Something that shows you are a serious guild is a custom domain name. These days they are not very expensive, and often come with redirection services. If you are not very web savvy, it is almost certain that someone in your guild or someone you know is; ask them for help. If you can get your domain name registered and redirected to your guild site, then do it, even if you are using a bulk guild hosting service.

Recuitment status
Having a current recruitment status on your front page is a wonderous thing. It is vitally important that the status be updated regularly (preferably with some kind of date on it). I have received much feedback asking about recruitment statuses in my time. By making it clear that they were current on the page, the number of questions I received on the topic diminished significantly. I would then receive positive feedback that the website was active and up to date.

Blogging
Having someone(s) who are willing to write about your guild on your front page can be a great way to show the world what life could be like if they were a member. Writing about things guildies say in gchat, adventures you go on, acknowledging achievements, screenshots and things like that can make your guild members feel included. Having more than one contributor is a fantastic thing, but often difficult to find. It can also serve as a history for your guild in years to come.

Pictures
Some guilds like to include member galleries in their websites, where members can upload their photos and screenshots for other guild members to see. Putting them on your front page with a "random photo of the day" application, or linking them in blog posts can keep the guild active and show everyone what your guild looks like and what you value together. Obviously, separating out private, guild only shots from publically viewable ones should be the order of the day there.

Forums
Clearly forums are important, as often application processes are done via forums. Some guilds have a public section to their forums (for example Elitist Jerks has a rather extensive publicly accessible section of their forums) and some don't. Making it clear on your website that you have forums is a good idea, no matter how publicly accessible they are.

About Us
Never forget to put on your website a section that describes your guild. Who are you? What do you do? What are your goals? Who are your members? Armory Links? Where did you come from and where are you going? This is your advertisement to the world. "Come read about how great a guild we are!!"

DKP standings
Some guilds like to show off their DKP standings and the latest shinies that guild members have acquired. Personally, I would not do this so I don't have a lot to say about it, but it is a perfectly valid thing to show on your site to promote your guild.

Keep it Simple, Stupid
With all of that information on your front page, try and keep that front page as easy to navigate as you can. Menus and drop downs are a great aid to the new user, highlighting of important things like Applications Sections. Links to important places. Remember that most of the people coming to your site will be new users, try to remember what it was like to be new somewhere - what did you want to know about a guild? Go look at other guild websites and don't be afraid to take their ideas and use them on your own website. Use effective graphics and colour schemes; be consistent within that.

RealID headsup

2010-10-01T10:54:00.001+10:00

Pewter just posted about RealID as announced by WoW Twitter account.

You can now log into battle.net, go to "account", then Communication Preferences under settings (I will have pictures up later, but for the moment my work firewall is not letting me upload them) and you will see the options there for RealID.

I recommend doing this as soon as you possibly can.

(Edit - due to working and health issues over the weekend, I failed at putting up pictures, and I am still having firewall issues now)

Copping it sweet: taking criticism as a leader

2010-09-17T09:59:00.000+10:00

It has been a long day at work or school. You get home, ready to organise your guild into what is going to be the most epic adventure of their pixelated lives, because tonight you are going to finish that raid instance. Last night went really well and your team is all prepped and ready to go. But for some reason, it's not coming together; people are standing in fires, adds are not being managed, people are pulling aggro and there are a lot of people dying to dumb stuff.... and you lose your cool. You were so sure that you were going to get that boss down and so was the rest of the guild. Tempers start to flare and people start criticising each other, both fairly and unfairly, and then someone finally turns their criticism to you. A flood of blame comes your way as everyone unloads all the pent up frustrations in a full blown attack fest at you.

What did you do to deserve that and how do you deal with it?

I am making a few generalisations in here, please remember that they are exactly that - generalisations. There will always be exceptions!

How did it get to this point?
Well, you probably didn't do anything much at all. The thing is, being "in charge" means that people are much more loathe to approach you with issues about you. You might hear whisperings that you are unapproachable, or that things are not well, or general disquiet. Most people don't feel comfortable going straight to the person they have the issue with, they will prefer a third party to talk to for validation of their feelings. In just about every other case, that third person will be within the leadership group. When the issue is about the leadership group, it is much more likely that the person will ask their fellow what they think about the leaders. This will start to spread dissent in the ranks. People will swallow those thoughts because on the whole, you are probably a good person and working hard for the guild and trying to do your best by everyone. So, they won't say anything. The thoughts build up until some event snaps someone and it all comes pouring out - either in a raid, on the forums, in guild chat, in vent... something will open the flood gates. It can be overwhelming to endure and it will hurt, no matter how much you think this is just a game. It might be one person unloading or might be more than one. It doesn't matter, the effect is still the same.

What on earth is happening?
Ok, you had a bad day, so you are possibly overreacting. The hardest thing right now is the thing you have to do - don't take it personally. Don't yell back, don't name call, don't do anything negative. Let them have a vent at you, because they need it. One thing about this being an online game is that you can not respond and no one will know that you are actually out the back punching a tree (yep, one of my guild mates does that, it is quite hilarious). You can shoot steam out your ears, get it ALL out of your system and then take a deep breath and talk calmly, nicely and politely to the person going apeshit at you. You must not take them personally, I cannot over state this enough. You need to be ready to listen to them - no matter if they are being reasonable or not. If they are name calling, let them finish, but you cannot react in kind. They need to say the things they are saying and they need to be heard by you. Give them respect and time.

Handle with care
This situation is an opportunity to really shine with leadership, to really cement that you are the right person for the job. These people who are upset and angry with you are presenting you with a chance to really make them loyal to you and the guild. How you deal with the situation could make or break your time as a leader, because this will not only affect those criticising you, but those who are not criticising you will be judging you silently.

Batter up!
The first thing you need to do is identify within yourself the problems they are expressing - There is no easy way to explain this other than to try to put yourself in the other person's shoes. How might you be perceived? Get yourself in a receptive mode for criticism (hopefully it will be constructive, but don't bet on it) Really get them to open up and explain what they are talking about if you are at all unsure about it. Remember, whether they were right or wrong about your intentions, you need to understand how they perceive you. Be prepared to hear some hard things - this is not going to be easy. Taking criticism, let alone criticism not necessarily delivered in the best way, is hard at the best of times. Give yourself credit for getting this far without resorting to gkicking everyone who is dissenting! And don't forget, you have emotional and tactical support in ochat or in whispers to a fellow sympathetic officer. Use them to get another view and to get a sanity check.

You pitch...
Get examples from them about what you have done and what they thought about that. If they cant give an example, get them to talk in general terms about the general issue. It is completely ok for them not to have an example, but to be caught up in an impression of someone as this impression colours every interaction you have with them. Once you have established the boundary of their grievance, you need to very quickly assess whether or not you intended. There are 2 major outcomes to this situation, either the guildie is suffering from miscommunication in some way, or they are out of line. The former means you need to do some work on your communication skills, the latter means they might not be suitable for you guild.

They swing....

Are the examples and impression they have of you not what you want from your guild members? Are they misinterpreting things you are saying and doing? Once they are a bit calmer, talk to them about their impression and what you actually meant. Listen to them and try to understand how they came to the conclusion they did.

Outcome 1: Home Run!
Ask them how you can improve your communication to help them enjoy their time in your guild. Give them the opportunity and the power to make a change in guild culture. Make sure you are humble, and apologise for not realising the frustration you are causing. Take the faults back onto yourself, but also don't let them get away with walking all over you. If they resorted to name calling, say something like "I didn't deserve to be called a so-and-so, that was unfair". A little bit of shaming is not a bad thing if you felt a line was crossed. Just make it clear where that line is, politely. Try to nail down what the miscommunication was and get both parties working on the solution.

From my experience, some of the best solutions to problems have come from situations like this. The guild member has been incensed at some decision that was made in the past. When it happens for the third or fourth time, they went hell for leather at me on the forums in a PM. For me, it came completely out of the blue, I had no idea that there was this problem in the guild. I let them rant, I talked to them to figure out what the actual problem was - and they were right, it was an issue that I simply was not aware of. We worked together and we put together some new policies in the guild that were enacted at the next raid, and I gave credit to that guild member for pointing it out and making the corrections. Not everyone was of the same opinion as this guild member, but not because they didn't care, but because the situation didn't apply to them, so they didn't mention it. The new policy was enacted and a guild member who was on the verge of gquitting came around and stayed an active and strong member of the team, contributing excellent ideas and keeping my decisions in line with the guild aims and the team needs.

Outcome 2: You're OUT!
After discussing with them what they think and finding the root cause of your issue, you both find that it comes down to a clash of goals or ideals or even personality. They simply do not agree with your choices or style but actually understand them, it is ok to part ways. Not everyone is going to suit your guild, and you shouldn't always keep someone in the team because they are a really good player. Sometimes ideals will never mesh and the person(s) need to leave for the good of the morale of the team and most importantly their own enjoyment of the game. What counts, however, is how you deal with this. You need to maintain reasonableness and approachability not just for the exiting person (although that will help your reputation in the wider community) but for the people staying put. The last thing you need is to be seen as some crazed lunatic with a gkick macro bound to your spacebar because someone dared to contradict you. That is not good for anybody.

Again, from my personal store of experiences, this can be seen out in 2 ways - the mutual respect/parting of ways. The person leaving has been calmed down and you both agree that you don't suit each other, and you pass on a recommendation to their next raiding guild. They continue to be an advocate for your guild, even while in a competing guild. They have a very good idea of the type of person that would suit your guild and will certainly recommend you to people who they think would fit. They bump your recruitment threads, and might even stay in touch on the forums. This really is the idea outcome for this situation.

There is a less positive outcome for the exiting person, and that is the raging gquit with crazy yelling and screaming in whatever medium they have access to. In this situation, you need to make sure that your other guild mates are on your side and that you communicate with them to ensure they understand that you did everything you reasonably could to keep the situation under control. The exiting person may try to exact revenge so it would be prudent to perhaps change some passwords (eg vent passwords or lock forum accounts) and be prepared for them to trash talk you in general chats on server and on the blizzard forums. As long as you don't rise to the bait, they will eventually run out of puff and stop bothering you and your guildies. Be professional, be polite and do not engage their trash talking game. Keep that moral high ground!

WHEW!
This is a complex topic; I keep rereading this post and being dissatisfied with what I put in there, but honestly, I think this is as good as it gets in terms of clarity. If I edit anymore it will just get confusing and lose what little coherence there is. The above are my experiences and opinions on how to deal with this, but since this is such a subjective topic, I am very interested to hear other people's anecdotes and stories on how they dealt with situations like this - leader or not, this is a common thing to deal with. If we share some stories, we will increase our arsenal of tools at our disposal in future situations.

So, tell me about your mother....

2010-09-06T14:32:00.001+10:00

Edit - I wrote this some time ago, but only just found it, unpublished, in my edit list. So, it seems fully formed as a post, why not post it! you can tell because I talk about pulling aggro in Ulduar, so this might be... a year old? I will edit the bits that need editing to make it relevant to now.

I was cruising the blogosphere and found that people have a bunch of questions about their primary tank/healer/dps toon. So, I figured why not do mine? I have not actually spoken to much about me and my history. It might pay to let you folks out there know a bit about me.

What is the name, class, and spec of your primary Healer?
If you are clever you can work out my name (there is enough info out there about me for the Watsons out there to figure it out). I play a holy paladin. I play on an oceanic realm, being from the antipodes. I run a guild. I am also quite insane.

I run this spec as holy. I gear specifically to run it. Which means I gem and enchant for int, and I preference haste/MP5 on gear and stats over crit. That said, I have nearly 1000 haste now yowser. I use the ilvl 200 libram and flasks of mojo. Yes, that libram is still the best damn holy pally libram in the game.

What is your usual healing environment?
25s baby! Preferably heroic and as fast as I can do it. I also really enjoy the 10man setting and I run in a 10man group on weekends. In short, I love team sports and I love overcoming challenges together in a group. [Edit - wow how time flies! Now I am running primarily 10s in a 10man guild]

What is your favorite encounter to heal, and why?
That's a very good question. I enjoy encounters where the heal stress is not high, and there are game mechanics involved that you need to complete to win. I think my fave WotLK encounters are Sarth25 3D, and yoggy. Yogg is just a beautifully balanced encounter, I feel. Sarth 3D has good raid awareness, stuff you have to do "other" than healing (ie using abilities, moving around, in and out of portals etc). [Edit - And guess what, this remains unchanged!]

What is your least favorite encounter to heal, and why?
Anything in TotGC. It is poorly designed, especially for healers. The tank spike damage is beyond ridiculous (for example RNG can kill a tank on Northrend beasts no matter how good you are in current gear if the planets align). Basically, I get into position, plant my feet and chain heal. BORING! Oh yeah, if I HAVE to move, there is a good change the tank will die or get gaspingly close to dead. And if I get killed? WOW. WIPE! I hate that pressure. [Edit - again, unhanged, ICC was a middling/average instance to me]

What do you think is the biggest strength of your class, and why?
Raw output. I love the changes to beacon of light, it has actually improved my game play enjoyment immensely. It also suits my preferred style of healing (which is emergency heals on DPS who stand in fires). With a mana pool that no longer fits in my pants and crit out the wazoo I rarely go oom and can pump out the numbers with the high haste rating I have somehow wrangled. I am not by any means well geared (I think I am 20th on my server atm... down from my usual position of the top 5) because, I dont need it. I simply dont need the gear to do the work I need to do. Which I think is a very good sign for things to come. Paladins are in a really good place right now, I feel. I hope blizz don't much it up.

and weakness?
I have one casting tree. Lock it, and I'm screwed. Also, I am very immobile as a healer. I plant my feet and I heal stuff.
Fire? WHAT FIRE? oh, hang on, that fire was a wipe mechanic *splat*
A whirlwinding mob? BAH! Oh that was HEROIC faction champions *splat*

What is your favorite thing about the class you chose for your primary Healer and why?
PLATE ARMOUR!!! Oh yeah. Loves me some plate! I also love the idea of paladins... combat casters. I always played my Holy pally as melee, and never understood why everyone else stood back and bitched about mana issues. Get in there and hit shit people! You are a Paladin of the Light!! Seal and Judge Wisdom kGO!

In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel is the best healing assignment for you?
Me heal tank.
Ugg.

What is your worst habit as a healer?
HAHAHAAAAA Hairy would say "pulling aggro on Steelbreaker wed night and getting one shot!", but I think my absolute worst habit is trying to do all the jobs at once. I simply try to do too much sometimes because I get bored. And sometimes tanks die. *whistles innocently*

What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while healing?
Players who are not raid aware. Players who cannot understand mechanics. Players who argue stupid shit. Players who don't shut up and do what they are told - right or wrong - when told to do so by the RL. DPS who stand in fires.

I could go on.... Hang on, it asked for one pet peeve. People who stand in fires, that's my biggest pet peeve.

Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other tanks for PvE healing?
Yes. I really do. I love paladin healing, and it is really well placed at the moment in relation to other healing classes. I could say that of paladins in general at the moment. I think they are in a really great place, and I'm loving playing my paladin. Which is good, because I have lost time to play on my alts recently *pats unloved alts* I promise to play you soon guys!!

What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a healer?
Are the tanks dead yes/no?
Is the boss dead yes/no?
If yes to both I did well. If no to either, meh - middling to good. If no to both I did badly.

I use livelogging into worldoflogs for analysis on the fly, and recount for a ballpark idea of how things are going. If anyone is doing too much healing on the tanks, then I am doing something wrong.

What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your healing class?
That we can do anything except buff, stand still and heal. Seriously, we don't do ANYTHING else so stop trying to make us, ok?

What do you think is the toughest thing for new players of your class to learn about healing?
Algebra. No really!
Pally healing is about predicting the rate of change of damage over time, and casting into the future to mitigate that. It is about learning the boss damage out put SO WELL that you can "feel" when things are going well, and going badly. You can "feel" when to cast a big heal, or when you can get away with flashing your tank *whee!* It is about algebra.

If someone were to evaluate your healing ability via tools like fraps, recount, and World of Logs, what tendencies would they notice?
I keyboard turn, except when I know I can't and I plan ahead to mouse turn.

Do you strive primarily for balance between your healing stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why?
I addressed this earlier on. I stack int and haste/MP5. I spec for it, I gear for it, I LOVE IT! I have found that the Haste style of healing suits me, and I empirically find that I get better mana return and bang for my buck doing this. Your mileage may vary.

What healing class do you feel you understand least?
Druids. Hots do my head in.

Addons for healing?
Pally power
clique+raid frames (I use a combination of xperl and pitbull and vuhdu)
dominos (bar mod)
quartz (casting bar mod)
Pally bar mod thingy (it keeps track of your bubbles, judgements, bacon and hots and also other peoples bubbles)

Heroic Professor Putricide

2010-09-06T14:17:00.000+10:00

Yeah, you thought I would never do it, but here it is! HPP for your reading pleasure.

HPP is very similar to normal mode for the most part. There are still 3 phases, there is still an abom to control, malleable goo to dodge and adds to kite and kill. However, I am going to outline a new way to stand in order to deal with the new bits more efficiently.

By now, everyone should have a good idea of where the green goo spawns and where the orange goo spawns. The new standing strategy goes like this: Everyone spread out on the right side of the room (and by right I mean as relative to facing Prof Puke's experiment table). The centre(ish) of the room must be kept clear for reasons I will outline in a moment. Also, for the same reason people need to spread out as much as they can.

So, one of the new abilities Prof Puke will be using is something called Unbound Plague. This will bounce around the raid if the raid is stacked up too closely together. Why is this a bad thing? because once it bounces off you, you get a debuff. So, the thing is, if it bounces around too many of the raid, then it might bounce back onto someone and that will pretty much kill them. So, there are 2 things you need to change to manage this issue. One is spread out, like I explained above, the second is why you need to keep the centre clear.

There are mods out there that help you deal with this debuff, but really, you don't need them. Just pay attention and organise yourselves and you will be fine. Being vocal on vent will help a lot with this debuff management. Alrighty, pick 5 ranged DPS to allocate a rotation to. DPS 1->2->3->4->5->1 and so on. To start with, DPS 1 sits in the centre. When the first plague is cast, that person needs to stop what they are doing and wend their way to the centre without (if possible) giving the debuff to anyone on the way. This is not as easy as it sounds!! If that debuff pops off onto someone else, the new person needs to move to the centre. Hopefully, all goes well, and the person in the centre gets the plague, the carrier then needs to get the hell out of dodge and back to whatever they are supposed to be doing.

The person in the middle needs to count out about 10s - healer note the person with the plague will be taking an increasing amount of damage, keep them alive! - and then DPS 2 needs to run in and take the debuff off DPS 1. DPS 1 needs to also get the hell out of dodge. After 10 or so seconds, DPS 3 needs to swap over. I think you get the idea. This needs to continue until the timer on the plague is 0. The plague has a global timer of 60s, and this is not reset when it is passed around.

Ok got that clear? This mechanic is the main reason for the positioning change. The positioning change has one further aspect to it. Since everyone is hanging out near the green goo spawn point, we need to look at dealing with green goo add differently. We know where the spawn point is; when the green goo add is about to arrive, everyone needs to stack together so that when the green goo hits (because it will... you are very close to it) you all get blasted in the same direction, and minimal damage is taken. This is really important, and you will notice the difference if people don't stack properly, they will be flung in weird directions.

The other major change is during transitions. Instead of smacking everyone with tear gas, Prof Puke will mark everyone with an Orange Affinity or a Green Affinity. He will then distract you all with spawning 2 adds, an orange one and a green one, of course. So, those of you with the orange affinity can affect the orange add, and those with the green affinity can affect the green add. Simple eh? Well, you better smash those adds down by the time Prof Puke comes back, or you will lose time on the boss, because those adds need to go down as a priority!

The rest is exactly the same.

We are still wiping NER, what's going on?
Are people spreading out?
Are people not moving the plague to the middle?
Are healers forgetting to heal the plague team?
Are the plague team holding on too long?
Are people DPSing the right affinity?
Are people standing in bad?
Are people not stacking properly for green add spawns?

Those questions should address the changes in this fight that cause wipes. Good luck guys, sorry it was so long between drinks!

Follow up to WTFBBQSEXISM

2010-09-02T21:12:00.003+10:00

Today, it seems, I got my blog groove on. Don't ask me how that happened, it just kind of did. Yet again, another comment on a blog that got out of hand - so I decided to post it here. But first some background. (for those disinclined to read this wall of text or follow links, there will be a TL:DR at the end)

Chastity at RighteousOrbs posted this in response to the inspiration he gave to Pewter the 'Mental Shaman's post here (I originally read her post on geek feminism, but it started getting some serious linkspam at some point around then, including inspiring my post on the topic earlier on this week. Pewter has a list of great posts on her site of women writing about feminism in a geek context, specifically WoW). Adam, the noisy rogue, seemed to take exception to the entire thing and posted on his blog in several chunks starting here. I read all of this and in a fit of pique at work commented on RighteousOrbs here. This, apparently, achieved some notoriety somehow, and I made it to the front page of Adam's blog with a nice piece of selective editing.

On the Righteous Orbs comment I made, I was employing (it was at work, so hastily) mimicry and parody. Also, a bit of reductio ad absurdium, calling Adam out on his argument from authority, a good straw man, a bit of baiting and quite a few other logical fallacies thrown in for good measure as much as I could think of in the time I had, because that was pretty much exactly what I read in not just his comments and posts, but in just about everyone who agreed with him, and also from the side agreeing with Chastity (but far less frequently). I was trying to be amusing, and outrageous and look where it got me! Adam even called my comment extreme, which was exactly the intent of it. Honestly, I was a bit stunned to see my words quoted back at me and dissected (not terribly badly either) when I idly went back to his site to see if there had been any more interesting comments made on any posts. No one reads what I say! I just shout into the black void of the internetz (... etz ... etz.... etz.....)

But now, my response to the blog post "Boxed In"

OK, so I got the Sydney bit wrong, it was an educated guess that Adam grew up there, I did make an assumption - and consciously too. However, as Chastity called me on, and I agreed with, I also do not normally like to assume things, but I thought... bugger it, Adam's doing it, so I will to make a point. However, I never said he was living there now (because I did read his about me page and it does say that he lives in Italy and has done so for 10 years).

I was actually trying to throw some context around the privilege - an attitude as a female working in Australia in IT (I wonder if he assumed I was male on purpose to get a response? It is exactly the type of baiting I would do in his position) I deal with in my face on a daily basis. I also happened to have opened on my browser the UN article I linked to. I thought it should be read, as it was relevant. We, as Australians, are racist and sexist. Me too. I am racist (ETA Sexist too), I don't mean to be, I try my hardest NOT to be, but I am.

I 100% agree that critical thinking is important; I am a card carrying member of the James Randi Educational Foundation and my partner is a member of the Australian Skeptics. My new guild is called Pastafarian. Critical thinking is something I pretty much live and breathe. So, of all the comments he could have chosen to use as an example, I am very glad it was mine. His dissection of my points was accurate, but brief, and apart from the fact my attempt at the explanation of Australian privilege was to partially mollify not incense, pretty spot on with the intent of the comment.

I agree with every point Adam makes about my list:

There were massive assumptions just like point a on both sides.

There was meaningless chatter as in point b (HA! I actually was thinking of a fictional literary character called Salamander as I was writing that comment, who was dubbed a "chattering elf" so I really liked that Adam chose to use the word chatter in commenting on that point)

There were more assumptions in the guise of information and reasonableness just like in point c.

There were misquotes and paraphrasing and twisting of words to suit the purposes of the author, just like in point d. However, it seems that Adam missed a secondary point of d - that your intent, no matter what you think you meant, must be clear. Reading his about me section where he correctly realises what I was referring to means that he understands how something like that can be read, but he unfortunately assumes that people are capable of reading sarcasm or willfully give others the benefit of the doubt. BTW, I believe he is a bigot based on his posts and comments recently.

He curiously leaves off point e in his dissection, where I say his attitudes disgust me (to clarify, his intolerance disgusts me more than anything) but that I was trying to put a bit of context around where some of his opinions and attitudes may have come from. I very much doubt that he is much different in age to me, and growing up in Australia in the 80s and 90s I am fairly sure would have shaped his opinions and attitudes that he is digging his heels in about now. The context was relevant.

I'm not attacking this person but... I am attacking this person. You don't wish to restart a flame war, yet he posts again on the topic. There is only one way to not start/continue a flame war in circumstances like these and that is Don't Respond.

Opinions in these situations are not going to be changed. As someone pointed out somewhere in the comments I read (I apologise, I cant actually find the comment, let me know if you do so I can link it, I suspect it was Pewter, but my mind may be playing tricks on me and I might be thinking of a completely other thread) they respond not to change the mind of the person they are debating with. They argue to inform the person who is NOT commenting, but is reading to learn more and inform that silent person. This is exactly why I poke and prod. This is why I post and comment. This is why I blog.

TL:DR - Some people yelled at each other about sexism in the geek world. I stuck my head in and made fun of one particularly blustery protagonist. He singled me out as an example of the bad. I may have accidentally on purpose trolled him, but honestly wasn't expecting a response. *headdesk* He pointed out all the things I did. He was right, but... I was trolling.

We agree critical thinking is important.

The end.

Raidleading Phrases during a fight

2010-09-02T12:33:00.003+10:00

Ok, so I had closed my edit page on my blog and started reading and came across this guest post on World of Matticus. I started writing a reply, then decided to write my own post instead! (Edit: I looked at the guest poster's blog and found the original post. I feel this is a much better description than the summary on World of Matticus. I recommend reading it)

As a raid leader, the way you give instructions to your team during a fight is very important. You need to be concise, timely and sounding like you are in control. It is assumed everyone is gathered on some kind of voice service for the purposes of this discussion.

What to say
Something I learned in childcare many moons ago was this: Tell a child what they can do, not what they can't do. For example "Don't stand in the sprinkler" leaves a child confused as to whether that order applied to them, and if it did what they should be doing instead. Compare this to "Childsname, go to sit on the step", which has the trigger word of the name, so the child knows to pay attention to the next phrase, and has something they can do which happens to have the flow of effect of removing small child from the sprinkler and thus you not having to deal with a cold, wet, soggy child when you are out and about. It also has the added benefit of being a positive instruction, not a negative one. Which means the child will feel good about completing the instruction as opposed to bad for being told they are doing something wrong.

In WoW terms: "Don't stand in the bad" vs "Brang, run to the star"

Directions
Use absolute terms when instructing directions, never relative terms. A great example of relative terms is saying "Move to the right" when you are the tank, facing the raid. So, which right? "NO, NO! MY RIGHT NOT YOUR RIGHT!!" Even using compass points are not fixed enough, how many fights are in round, enclosed rooms? How many times have you been turned around and not realised it?

Absolutes are things which are fixed no matter which way you are facing. Things like doors, patterns on the floor, stairs, engineering smoke flares even raid markings are absolute. You will note I have pointed out all things that are visible on the screen, that you can do a quick spin around and easily see. Someone with a raidmarker on their head might move around, but the marker itself is unique and very visible - which makes it an absolute direction when called. For example "Stack on star", "Run to the stairs".

Instruction Construction
Promoting a guild jargon will also help. For example, before the fight, set up trigger words which mean something in each fight. "Brang, DS!" when called by the tank to me means use my Divine Sacrifice cooldown now. I also like to your catchy phrases (as you may have noticed in my strat pages). No one cares that the name of the debuff on the tank is Curse of Torpor, they only care about this "MageB, Decurse!" Prior to the fight, you will have allocated MageA the job of decursing the tank, but they ate floor dust so quick reprioritization needs to occur. The actual process has already been assigned, the call is just that - a trigger to cause an action. The shorter the trigger, the faster the reaction.

A really good example of this is in BQL, organising bites is a nightmare, but a quick call like this "Biting Brang" makes it clear to all that someone (it doesn't matter who) has decided to give the Essence of the Blood Queen to me and no one else should try to do the same thing due to mechanics. But saying all that is a mouthful when all you need is 2 words! It's a vampire, vampires bite people and suck their blood! So, of course you are going to use the term "bite".

Using pithy descriptions of things on screen helps too. Trying to find one syllable descriptive terms will help shorten your calls on vent and make them punchier. For example "ADDS!" or "WHELPS!" or "BALLS!" or "WORMS" or "FIRE" or "RUN!" or "STACK" They are all trigger words for a more complex action defined by circumstance, and you will have told everyone what that complex action is before the raid. Your call is just to make sure it happens when you expect it to. The classic line everyone quotes, but is actually a very good example of this is "Many whelps, left side, handle it" While I don't like the use of the term "left" the rest is short punchy and tells the raid what needs to be done. The task had been allocated prior to the raid, people knew who were supposed to be handling whelps. The call went out, they did their job. It was short, and to the point and used pre-set key words to trigger a more complex action.

Instruction vs Warning
Now that you have some idea on how to generate your calls, we need to look at differentiating the two major types of calls used in raids Instructions and Warnings.

Clearly, instructions are imperatives "Do this" "Run there". Imperatives are usually used to either make changes or adapt to mistakes with the strategy.

Warnings are phrases you use to get people in the right frame of mind to action something in the future. "Ability in 10s", "Get ready", "Incoming", "Pulling"

Some phrases you use as a raid leader are combinations of the two. "aaaaaaAAAAAAAND GO!" The first word is a warning, in combination with a imperative "go". A warning combo strike like this is used generally to ensure that no one else is talking on vent at the time, and everyone needs to pay attention - that the action indicated by "go" is the single most important thing that needs to be done at that time.

Most raid leaders will use a warning phrase in combination with an instruction phrase at the time the action needs to occur. "Ability in 10s" ... "ready to run" ... "RUN!"

Vocal Tone
You can have all the theory in the world, but if you yell instructions like a drill sergeant, or are soft and timid like a mouse on vent, don't expect people to always follow your lead. Your voice is your whip, chain and carrot. With your voice you can cajole, order, beg and prepare people just with inflection.

The one thing you want to be as a raid leader is Calm. You need to appear in control even when everything has turned to shit. Never "yell". Talk loudly and firmly. If you keep instructing people and using imperatives, people will continue to do what you say. Don't ask questions, don't have discussions. Have a wide vocal range - use every inch of your range. Don't be a monotone. Be reasonable, listen to feedback, but stick to your decisions. Once you make a call, stick to it, right or wrong and be confident. All you have is your voice and you have a lot to convey in it.

Smile. No really, smile. You will sound different when you talk with a smile on your face to talking with a frown and the human ear is well attuned to hear this difference. Different muscles are activated and the shape of your throat and mouth is different as well as a whole bunch of brain chemistry that happens. Try it! Your mood will affect your team. So, force a smile onto your face while raid leading even if you want to reach your hand through the screen and murder each and every one of your guildmates.

Vent has a record and playback facility. If you want to experiment, I recommend recording yourself and playing it back. Play around with saying the same phrase in multiple ways and see how you feel.

Well, that should be plenty for you to be going on with. Always always always ask for feedback from your ~~minions~~ guildmates about what you can improve. What they like as well as what they dislike about the way you control your raids. Actively work on improving your style as this will be directly linked to your success as a guild progressing through content.

Moving toward Cataclysm

2010-09-02T09:05:00.001+10:00

As people are making the mad dash to get a hardmode Lich King kill, there will be a lot of decisions being made about peoples' futures and Cataclysm. The beta is running, the NDR was lifted some time ago and information is flowing.

This originally was going be a Guild Leadering 101 post, thanks to Jaedia's suggestion for me on her blogoversary, but since then as the post has been growing in my mind, it kept expanding and I wanted to keep adding to it. So, in conjunction with my current dissatisfaction with the way my posts are organised, I will eventually have a "Guild leadering the NERD way" page up there *looks up* which will be an annotated essay, "Cliff Notes" style for easy reference if you are getting stuck or need advice. It will hopefully encompass everything from looking at how to set up a new guild, to merging, handing over GL or staging coups, and of course, running raids! I will be linking back to posts I made a few years ago which have my opinions on how things work for a 25man raiding guild, doing some lit reviews on other blog posts on certain topics and link spamming them, and I will add in some more focus on 10man raiding guilds. I am fairly confident that 10mans are the way of the future.

The other thing I am going to start doing is an "Ask a GuildLeader" column. If you have a question, or want some advice or want to know why on earth your guild leader may have made the decision they did, shoot me an email at the address I have listed over to the right. For those in RSS readers that email address is kowari at gmail and so forth. The other thing I am going to say about guild leadering is that there seems to be a decent group of quite knowledgeable people over at Gravity's forums in the Leadership section. That's the place I tend to hang out the most when there (not playing a DK, as I don't). I would love it if you had a question or discussion to head on over and have a yarn. The more people we have over there talking about guild leadership, the better and more successful guilds we are likely to build.

Mementos

2010-09-01T11:24:00.001+10:00

I haven't really felt moved to write on a BlogAzeroth shared topic before, but this one piqued my interest.
It was asked (and I paraphrase): What keepsakes have you got in your bank that you wont throw away and why?

I don't have anything in my bank that I am not happy to throw away. I have DE'ed all my previous tier gear due to space requirements. I do have a bank full or random crap like seasonal holiday clothes (which I think are a bunch of fun), mats, gear swaps, food, gems and useful things like that. But there is one thing I will be keeping and will never DE, and that is my Mace. My guild (RIP) forced me to take the shards. Ok, I say forced, but they did yell at me over vent until I looted them to myself. No one would accept them, every time I asked. After 10 to 15 minutes of umming and ahing by me, and "Just take the damn fragment, Brang!" by my guildies, I took it. We then worked on getting that mace made, and we did. I still use it now, the bubbles' power scales with the rest of your gear very nicely, keeping the item current. It now has a bunch of sentimental value attached to it because of the memories: It was the last thing we did together and achieved, it represents the gratitude that my guildies had for me and my work, it showed their faith in me that I would continue to be a valuable contributor to the guild and to raids, it reminds me how special I am every time I see the orange.

Sometimes, you need to be reminded of these things.

The other thing I keep for sentimental reasons is a title: ", Hand of Ad'al". It is the title I have above my head at all times. Back when the restrictions on attunement were relaxed for getting into Black Temple and Mount Hyjal (in Caverns of Time), the title I mentioned was created for people who had the attunement. My guild missed out by weeks on getting that in time, however, since we all had the original quest and Vashj's vial, we were working on Kael'thas in Tempest Keep. We forewent heading straight into BT and MH for the free loot from the first couple of bosses, and stayed and worked on Kael. Morale was low, Kael was a hard boss. Once, we rewarded the people coming for a night of work on Kael with a fun run into MH (for shits and giggles). The next week, (I think), Kael died.

We earned that title with frustration and dedication. We earned it old school. And we went back and we got everyone in the guild that title. Everyone who worked on Kael had a shot at killing him and we got as many people as possible their full sets of T5. We were PROUD of that title, and we wore it for the entire rest of TBC. I didn't keep my Pink Power Ranger suit, but I do wear that title in remembrance of what you can achieve if you put your mind to it.

These things are pixels. They have nothing tangible about them. But if you think that you are completely missing the point. They are visible reminders of friendships, time spent, achievements gained together, a team I led, and a team I miss.

WoW might be just a game, but the people are real.

Sexism and computer games and... WOW WTF?

2010-08-27T11:00:00.000+10:00

I have been pretty sick recently, and in that time it seems the geek blog world has exploded with commentary on males, females, games, internetz culturez and everyone has put in their 2.2c with (that includes the aussie GST on the service, you see). So, I have been slowly catching up and getting up to speed on the topic. I have read some fantastic posts and some terrible ones, some that miss the point and some that get the point so hard that there is blood splatter for miles around, 300 Style. There have also been some very interesting conversations in the comments (as well as some trolling and tangents, but that is to be expected).

But on the whole, I am impressed with the level of loquacity, understanding and knowledge sharing of differing opinions without coming to raging arguments that there has been out there in blogland. As a third (I think I am third) wave feminist, I am really quite ecstatic to see feminism taken to the next level, not just women yelling into the darkness that they exist in a man's world (vote gaining, bra burning etc, the "militant" type), not just women having being heard coming to grips with and embracing their own femininity yet not having that compromise their cause (mothers with a career, enjoying "feminine" hobbies and jobs etc which is where most people are right now) but understanding how men are marginalised in the same way women are, but for different reasons, of course and how feminism (as an idea and a process of identifying endemic sexism) can be applied to help men as well!

Now, I am no expert in the field; I have done a lot of reading and I have an opinion (which I would like to think is broadly informed, but not deep).

So how does this relate to WoW, NER?
Like this: I do not believe that it is Blizzard's responsibility to comply with gender/feminist issues, I do, however, think it is in their best interestes to try to create the best story they possibly can. They are here for 1 reason - to make money. The mechanism they use to make money generates more money. Their mechanism is a game, it is someones dream, it is an ideal, a stereotype it is generated from the mind of one, processed by a group then made pixel. It is going to be flawed. It is going to be racist, sexist, wrong as much as it is fair, equal and right.

It is also consciously cartoony and not real. I remember seeing a blue post talking about this exact topic. I see people falling into the trap of wanting their toon (which is, ironically, short for cartoon) to look like them. Blizz have even created a Disney-eque world, with Disney style men and women in it (if you have completly missed this link, that would be the blood elves). Disney drew like that and they are paying homage to a person/company that had a great influence on drawing style over the ages. If you have problem with gender issues, holy crap is Disney a can of worms of analysis. But again, it comes back to the idea and prejudices of a single person.

I understand that people believe that this is no excuse, and it is not. But until the game is completely creatively controlled by someone(s) who can legitimately say that they are not unconsciouly biased by the influences of their past, I am going to give them the benefit of the doubt. As long as they are striving to give people a fair go, as long as there are male and female toons to choose from who are simply cosmetic to the game (no one has mentioned ADnD first ed where *gasp* women could only get to 18(50) str and men 18(00)!!!) to me, that is a great step forward in feminist thinking right there!

Sure, it is no Dragon Age:Origins or Warehouse 13[1] for story or porteyal of gender (which is currently the game and Sci-Fi series to which I compare other games and TV shows to for gender issues), but it is out there, it is doing it's thing and it isn't as bad as everyone is perhaps accidentally making it out to be.

Keep talking, keep asking for more, everyone. I firmly believe that Blizzard listen, and that the Lore will reflect what we want, if we all ask often enough, reasonably enough and loudly enough. If we don't talk about these things, nothing changes. The internetz, to me, feels like it is still back in the 1970's in terms of feminist and racist issues. We are working on it people, but it is a slooooooooow process.

[1] Warehouse 13 (wiki, imdb, Syfy *shudder at name change*), if you have not watched it is wonderful for showing women in positions of power. The main group of characters is women heavy in the first place. Most of the guest stars are female, there are women in positions of power and it is actually irrelevant that they are female. There is a relationship between the main 2 characters that is (at this stage) not based on sexual tension between them, if anything it seems to currently be the opposite. Yes, it still does things wrong, of course nothing is perfect, but it is also getting a lot of things right.

Leadership Style

2010-08-20T14:17:00.000+10:00

I have a confession to make: I am a regular at pwnwear.com.

For those that don't know, Gravity has created a great community for DKs of all flavours over there. But within that DK space, lurking in a corner, is a rather active leadership forum filled with excellent posts and comments from leaders of all kinds.

One in particular recently has caught my eye so much so that a) I didn't have a lot to add to it because it was a fantastic summary of the two major styles of leadership and b) it was so self explanatory I could just link spam it on my front page here.

The amusement is high already

2010-08-14T18:49:00.002+10:00

When you have gchat conversation like this, I know I made the right decision. (for the record, lazmoj is my baby shaman I am leveling in Pastafarian - my new guild)

17:44 [Rasmin]: nah Zuldarn told me to sign up to it
17:45 [Lazmoj]: OH I would be careful then
17:45 [Lazmoj]: you never know with Zuldarn
17:45 [Zuldarn]: yeah, im the shittest carnt
17:45 [Lazmoj]: dodgey as
17:45 [Anarr]: /nod
17:45 [Lazmoj]: Oh Anarr can you do me a favour?
17:45 [Zuldarn]: sexual favour?
17:45 [Anarr]: Sure
17:45 [Zuldarn]: if so, no he cant
17:45 [Lazmoj]: can you invite my DK into the guild
17:46 [Anarr]: np
17:46 [Lazmoj]: No i dont want anything resembling sex from anarr anywhere near me
17:46 [Zuldarn]: good lass.
17:46 [Anarr]: !
17:46 [Lazmoj]: *nods*
17:46 [Lazmoj]: Neither do you Anarr, so dont worry
17:46 [Anarr]: I'm a sexual tyrannosurus!
17:46 [Lazmoj]: ...
17:46 [Anarr]: :D
17:46 [Lazmoj]: BRB
17:53 [Lazmoj]: guild chat is entertaining again

For The Horde!

2010-08-12T10:26:00.000+10:00

I had my last raid with my previous guild. Last Thursday (ie one week ago) I made the transfer to horde and my new cataclysm 10man guild. I decided to do it then as the night before the 25man barely ran and that night had been called. My new guild were on my case saying "Come raid with us!!".

So, I was torn. I sat there thinking "I should stay and help my 25s, they need me, they put effort into me" And then I caught myself. No, I had earned everything I had via DKP, I didn't owe the guild anything for my gear, if anything they owed me at this point. I had turned up, put up with complaining and bitching. Put up with a culture I had enjoyed less and less as time went on. The more I thought about it, the more I wondered why I was still there staying with a guild that I wasn't overall comfortable with and denying the people who actually wanted to play with me (and not just because of my shiny mace). RealID meant I had everyone I wanted to keep in touch with on my friends list already and I could talk across faction with them. There really was no downside to my leaving except personal guilt. And personal guilt, in this case, was very silly! So, I said bye to the 11 people online, the 3 people left in my vent channel (not including all the people in passworded channels - I really hate passworded channels) after the 25man failure and hit "continue" on the transfer webpage of my battle.net account.

This is (slightly abridged, but) what I posted to the guild:

This has been coming for some time, you all know what I am going to be saying. I'm not retiring, however.

I am moving early to the 10man guild I am starting horde side. The transfer is currently in process. I was going to see out this raiding week, but given the dogging I decided to add to the shitness and move earlier rather than later. 4 holy paladins last night is not great for raid balance at the best of times, and when one is the goo queen [NER: That's me, I keep getting hit by malleable goo no matter what I do!], it's even more sheeite.

I wanted to say that I have honestly enjoyed my time [here]. It was a big thing for me to do, move to [this guild]. Not sure how many of you will understand how big a deal it was, some might, but there you go.
...

I do feel awful about leaving, but I am a guild leader at heart. I have spent most of my wow time running guilds, and to be honest, I miss it a lot more than I thought I would.

But this is what I am going to be going to do:
(it happens to be horde because people wanted it)
I am running a 10man focussed guild... This guild will be special in that come cataclysm when we start raiding, none of us will research anything. No boss mods, no clues. We will walk in there cold. We will take off our clothes and run into the boss and see what happens.

We want to recapture the magic that we used to have learning new bosses, working together, strategising and NUDIE PULLS! FD pulls with pets, remember them? I do, and I miss that feeling of walking into a new boss and looking around in awe and not knowing what was in store. More and more I feel like raiding is simply going through the motions - everyone knows what to do before we walk in there, you get yelled at if you ask a stupid question.

Here is a guild who has been doing it for a while if you are interested in more information:
http://www.converge-dh.com/website/z...ncetactics.php [NER: Oh for the love of the light, I cant find the post with the comment in it from a guildy of that guild to credit them!!]

Yes, this will mean we are not competing for server firsts, but I don't care about that anymore. For me, there are 2 things to playing wow. The satisfaction of defeating a boss by the skin of my teeth with cunning and luck, and having fun with friends.

For me, 25s progression raiding is not magical anymore. I don't care if I kill LK HM, because that first LK kill we did was everything I could have wanted.

So, that was that. Mostly I got sarcasm and bitterness from the people who bothered to reply to me (there were a couple of nice answers) which sealed the deal completely for me.

Since that time, I have raided twice in my new guild. And I never realised that going backward in content could be so much fun. We were wiping on LDW ICC10 normal (because, despite all my raiding time, I have never killed LK in 10man mode) and I was enjoying it. People were learning, they were improving, criticism was constructive and people never took it personally. I got to talk about balls to the face, and horizontal and vertical balls when explaining princes (which was hilarious to all involved).

In short; new guild good, old guild broken. Looks like I will have things to write about soon enough!

Voip culture

2010-08-09T13:12:00.000+10:00

There are many ways that your voip service can affect your guild culture. You have complete control over this, believe it or not. Your voip service (either teamspeak or vent, generally. I don't know anyone that uses the in game voip client) is the place where your guild members really get to know each other, where friendships are made, tempers flare, fights and love affairs occur. It is where you all come together to raid, and often where people choose to hang out when gaming in other games to WoW as well.

As a guild leader, you can really influence the way your guild glues together with the way you set up your channels in vent (I am going to use the term vent l from now on, because it is the server I use. Feel free to substitute your server in wherever I use the term vent).

First of all, I would actively encourage everyone to be using some kind of vent in their guild. One of the real basics of good raiding is a good guild friendships, and one of the fastest ways to build friendships is by talking to one and other. Welcome new members into vent as soon as you can. But more on that later. First, the dos and don'ts of creating vent channels.

Keep channels to a minimum.
The more channels you have, the more fragmented groups of people can be. You want your team to coalesce as a whole, giving the team opportunity to segment into cliques is not necessarily something you want to encourage. That said, you probably want to have channels for different purposes: arena teams, 10man teams, battleground teams etc. Having multiple channels with a purpose is fine, because you are imposing a reason upon being in those channels.

Having social channels is also a very good idea. Letting people know there is a place to chill and chat is encouraging of team building. Jus be wary not to have too many social channels.

You will probably need an officers channel. Sometimes you need to deal with guild matters that are of a sensitive nature. For example, how trials are going, dealing with guild drama, setting up the raiding teams for the night. This should not be done in front of everyone in the guild unless you have a very special type of guild or you are fostering a very specific type of guild culture. Talking about sensitive guild topics brings me to...

Channel passwords
There are some very good reasons to password channels. The first one that comes to mind is simply the server password to stop non guild members coming into your vent server and grieving your guild. That one is a no brainer.

The next clear candidate is the officers' channel. Putting a password on this is probably a wise idea. The last thing you need while discussing a sensitive guild drama issue is the person you are talking about to come barging in and hearing what is going on. Why cause more trouble than is going on in the guild already?

It starts getting murky after this.

The next thing I would recommend is divining your vent space up into public and guild members only sections. In the public area, create sections for pugs run by your guild members, pvp, raids, anything. Personally, I had a policy that as long as a guild member was in the channel, they could bring anyone they liked in. This allowed guild members to spontaneously create pug raids, do pvp with friends in other guilds, that kind of thing.

In the guild members only section - password the root of the tree and make sure your guild members know it. Put your main raiding channels in there and keep onto of enforcing the guild members only rule.

I would never password channels as that creates segregation of the guild base. For example, never let guild members create channels and password them. What happens is that cliques form. Once cliques start forming they start excluding people within a team where you are trying to promote wholeness and harmony to create a solid team.

I can probably pinpoint exactly who and what caused the first fractures in the raiding team in my old guild. There was a member who actively promoted his 10mans and ran them in passworded channels that were not handed out to the guild. Those people then sat in these channels socially as well. The 25man team was then split into 3 groups - the officers and close friends, this group and the rest of us. Slowly, the rest of us are quitting as we are left out of the "good" groups for everything. Why would we stay when things are lonely and not fun? But I digress.

Phantoms and binds
Phantom is a function that allows people in other channels to eaves drop on conversations in channels they are not in. Binds are like push to talk keys that allow the user to transmit only to configured receivers. Allowing these two functions on your server again creates segregation in your team. The worst use I have seen of binds is within a raid group, during raids, people taking the piss out of other raid and someone accidentally didn't bind and the whole raid heard. The other bad example is the officers talking in binds, leaving the raid wondering what was going on with no direction. Binds are something I find to be worse than passworded channels, as they are user configurable and usable during times when you want people to be working together.

So, what does this all mean?
The tl;dr version of all this is that you, as the guild leader, have a lot of control over your guild culture in ways you perhaps don't even realize. You have control over HOW your guild interacts with each other. This is true for other mediums like web pages as well, but I will talk about that in another post. How you set up your vent server, how you let your guild members use it will directly affect how your guild morale progresses, and you had better be prepared for that and set your vent up in accordance with the way you want your guild to function! Better to be in your control than to inadvertently contribute to your guilds demise in these times of stress.

Err... so Holidays! and Motivation

2010-08-05T08:37:00.000+10:00

The promised PP strat hasn't come because I randomly ended up going to FEEEJEEE for a much needed holiday away from the Cold of South East Australia and off to the warmer climes of the South(ish) Pacific! I just returned last weekend and, you know when you go away from work how other people are supposed to cover the slack of the time you take away because you are a team and ... well ... I got back to a massive pile of work.

I really must dust off that HM PP strat from my files and start writing it again. But motivation is at rock bottom.

Motivation issue? You NER? What's going on??
Yeah, me. ICC has been out for about 8 months now, Cata isn't looking like release till at least the end of the year. Frustation with raiding is at an all time high. I don't know about you guys, but I am seeing people retire for cataclysm left right and centre. What does that mean for guilds? I means that possibly more and more guilds are moving backwards. They are having to recruit people who are not necessarily the best fit in order to keep raiding. This will annoy and upset the longer term members who are watching what they consider their hard earned gear leave the guild. For example, we have had 2 Shadowmournes vanish almost as soon as they were acquired - one quit (then came back, then quit again) and the other converted to tanking to cover off a loss of MTs. The guild's only earned Valan'yr is gone, Mine is still there, however it was earned with my original guild.

I feel that this slump is worse than the TBC slump. This is because of incredibly poor planning of WotLK. 8 months of the same instance (Ruby Sanctum was barely a blip on the raiding surface) with the "challenge" being do the same fights but harder. There is only so much repetition people will stand for, and I think those limits are being tested right now.

This lack of motivation is expressed in multiple ways: retiring as mentioned, emoing, and rage quitting to name a few.

Retiring I can understand, people stop wanting to play and that's fine. You let us all know, we wish you well and you are welcome back when you feel the need to raid come up again in your life. We all know we can always use good players, and especially ones that we have already trialed and said "youse gud enuff dude". Good luck to everyone that has done this recently - I hope we see you again in Cata!!

But this brings me to the negatively expressed versions of tension and frustration. Namely "emoing" (inc emo quitting). Now, emoing comes in several flavours, but the one that is most destructive is yelling at each other. I just can't see how screaming at someone that they are shit, or that they are wasting your time is at all constructive.

Last night, we had 2 emo rage quits in one night. TWO. One came back, the other didn't. But the one who came back complained that he was sick of idiots wasting his time. Um, huh? Honestly, if you are worried about having your time wasted, then why on earth are you playing a computer game? That IS kind of the point... to waste your time... or have I got this whole thing completely arse about?

Yelling at each other just makes the rest of us not want to play which exacerbates an issue we are already struggling with; Numbers and Dogging (Dogging is a term which I don't know how wide spread it could be. Within our guild jargon it means simply not showing up to something because you can't be bothered or have a last minute commitment) . When what we have going for us at the moment is "fun" why would people want to turn up to raids if everyone is depressed, negative and at each others' throats for dumb things?

So, why are you still raiding, NER?
I raid with people, it is the people that bring me back, it is the people that make me laugh, it is the people that create my raiding fun. I have 2 main purposes in playing WoW and raiding - smooshing pixels into the ground and having a laugh with my friends. The latter is far more important to me than the former. If I am enjoying myself, I can put up with a lot of dumb stuff happening in raids, I can deal with nuffers standing in fires - Explaining and creating strategies for those nuffers is where this blog came from!! Creating explanations that everyone could understand using terms that were amusing and simple and not complicating things with technical details of the mechanics of the fight.

Recently, everyone that I am having fun with is leaving the guild I am in; retiring or simply changing their game faces and not being the people they used to be. This is very sad. I am not one for transient friendships, I collect people and I keep them. When people I consider "collected" drift away, that makes me really sad. This has happened to me with a couple of people in the last 6 months. So why am I still raiding? I very much doubt I will be for much longer in the form it currently takes.

My Cataclysm guild is looking more attractive as an early start than ever. And you know what? That is both wonderful and depressing.

OOPS HPP coming

2010-07-10T12:25:00.000+10:00

I just realised I had not written up the Heroic Prof Puke yet!
Given we pretty much randomly downed him one night, while I copped Malleable Goo to the face (oh I am SO BAD at that) I didn't get a good look at the disease strat. But I have had a couple of goes at it now, so I think I have seen just about everything go wrong and can write up some useful tips for that.

Currently working on Sindy HM (which, honesly, isnt too bad strat wise) and we should have that down soon. Guild has been having numbers issues recently with apathy and burn out a major factor. It has even been hitting me!

And It looks like Siha might be back on track soon with Banana Shoulders. Here's to you feeling better, Siha! Hope you have the energy to get writing on that holy pally stuff soon.

To RealID or not to RealID?

2010-07-10T12:17:00.002+10:00

THAT is a burning question on everyone's minds at the moment. Everyone has an opinion. Everyone has a need or want. Some of us care that you know who we are, some of us don't.

For a quick "how to do internets" I recommend you go read Ophelie's blog post here. She beat me to the punch with that one *shakes fist* I had mine all half written, and BAM work slammed me in the face and I didn't get time. Anyway, go read it, it's everything I was going to write. The short version for anyone on the internets is "Don't put anything on the internet that you would not want your enemies to see and use against you" I highlighted that in this post where someone tried to troll me for gkicking their sorry butt out of my guild.

RealID is here, like it or not. If you don't like it, you don't have to use it. Pretty easy, huh? Well, not so much. Until very recently Forums V2 were going to use your RealID as well. Blizz thought this for a few reasons which I will very briefly go through and slam with a big slammy thing.

The main reason, it seems, was to prevent trolling on the forums. This move seems to come out of fear and desperation. Motivating people to not troll each other because the "know who you are" is going to create an atmosphere of fear to keep people in line. Fear, while effective in the short term, will never engender the environment they are looking to create - one of constructiveness and harmony or some othe hippy concepts.

The other reason was to encourage people to know each other. I am going to let that statement hang itself.

So, how do you make forums nicer, then?
Blizz, you are doing it all arse about. Don't expect flowers to grow in a garden when you keep stomping on everything that looks even a little bit like a weed. We will not self regulate in an environment where we fear real world retribution for trolling. You need to create an environment where self regulation is the rule. Forums like Reddit, metafilter and even 4Chan (as scarey as that place can be) are entirely anonymous and can do amazing things because the community self regulates. Stupid posts (and posters) are down modded and you cant see them. Good posts (and posters) are up modded and their words given weight.

If you are still worried about trolls, then make sure that posters cant hide behind their alts. Simply put a tooltip in where you click on that poster, you can see all their toons. Or, don't give people a choice in their "posting" avatar. You get one avatar for the forums. That's it, no hiding on that level 1 alt you made just to flame that guy. It's you - warts and all - and your one avatar.

The last thing that needs to happen is less banning - counter intuitive, I know. Blizzard need to actually stop banning people for the tiniest little upset person on the internet. Half the issue of trolling has come about because people want to see how far they can push their comments before getting banned by Blizzard or get a response from a "blue". It is a game to them. Remove the incentive, remove (some of) the issue. Simply having people downmod comments so you cant see them, or any posts they make, and eventually after they have experienced people not reading their posts because they are a dick, then remove people with consistently low mods.

Encouraging people to know each other?
This is the part where I get into realID in game.
I don't know about you guys, but I have managed perfectly well so far to communicate with people without having my real name plastered everywhere. If I like someone, I ask them for their MSN, their email address, their blog, their phone number. I ask them to join my guild. I get them on my guild forums. There are multitudinous ways to communicate with people if you think they are worth your time. But the point is, I ask them for the way in which they want me to contact them. Having it forced on me that people know my real name is removing a choice from me. Personally, I don't mind if people know who I am. I have no issues with people knowing me - but I get to choose who those people are. I do not like that Blizzard has taken it upon themselves to tell me that the guy I want to chat with on that other realm when he is on standby for a raid I am running has to know my real name to get whispers from me. It isn't the anonymity, it is the implication that I don't know how to do my own social networking. It is the arrogance that I am incapable of forming relationships if Blizzard doesn't hold my hand.

There also comes into this the issues of minors; this was actually the kicker for me. What of all the people under the age of 18 who have accounts in their real name? What options have their guardians to protect them? The fact that you cannot change Bnet account names easily, how are those people going to deal with this very real privacy issue. Just pause and think about this for a moment. Can you imagine the stink caused when everyone now knows you are a girl and underage?

Which brings me (briefly) to feminism and girl gamers.
From a feminist point of view, it is sometimes hard enough in a game to be yourself. You play a male avatar, you dont talk in vent. No one knows you are a girl. And why is that? Because the gaming world has a looooooong way to go with feminist issues. I am not going to go into the details here, it's tangential and there are plenty of resources to go read on the plight of girl gamers. RealID will force this vulnerable group to be even more exposed and vulnerable if they want to use it. Women will not post on the forums, they will not use realID and their options in game will become even more limited and marginalised than they are now. It removes our ability to play a game for the fear of people knowing who we are, the fear of backlash, of harassment. There is a fear of this because it happens!! Forcing this out in the open is, I believe, discriminating against these people.

So what do you propose NER?
I want choices.
I want to be able to turn off "friend of friend" in game. I want to be invisible to some people if I want to. I want to have the option to "show real name" or default to a BNet Avatar/handle that is directly linked to me and my forum posts. I want +/- modding on the forums so the community can self regulate. I want less reward for bad behaviour (ie blue attention/banning).

Don't get me wrong, RealID is great! I use it. But I am very wary of who I add (at the moment only people I already know in Real Life(tm) or explicitly trust to not harass friends of friends) because of all of the reasons above. I want my options and I would use RealID a lot more.

It is so close to being great - add a few more features so we can choose how we use it, Blizzard. Let us make our own decisions and choices on these things. Give us options.

ETA:
Blizz have backed down on the forums using RealID, although your account "real name" is still being used for the ingame chat. I do not see that they will change their long term goal of having people use their account names for forums (fora?) anytime soon.

They have not yet described what they are going to do instead in their V2 forums. THAT will certainly be interesting, I dare say. Will they just let people get used to the idea ingame first, then change it over later? Who knows. But I tell you what, it is interesting... no doubt about it.

Guild updates in cataclysm

2010-06-21T09:38:00.000+10:00

I generally tend to avoid talking about "What's to come" in the future releases. Not because I am not interested, but because everyone else talks about them. I don't actually see a need to add more noise to the signal.

HOWEVER, recently, Blizz let some bloggers onsite and gave them a few press releases. If you have seen comments about path of the titans, and guild changes but cant find reference on the forums, that would be why. They were never released on the blizz website. You can go look up all the links to the posts on the topic at the official forums, The best summary being on WorldofRaids or take a squiz at mmo-champion.

In this case, guild changes are kind of a bit core to the purpose of this blog. Everyman and their worg has commented on whether they like the changes, or hate them. I have one very big question when I saw this comment:

The guild UI has received an overhaul

What kind of overhaul? The details are depressingly sketchy. They have told us the bits that NON GUILD LEADERS would care about. But what about functionality that guild leaders would want? Most notably, mass guild member functions. For example, have you ever decided to restructure you guild ranks and then have to manually, one at a time, move each and every guild member from one rank to another? For small guilds, not an issue, but for LARGE guilds? It is a nightmare. It generally involves something along these lines: Officers decide on a new guild structure, GM implements it, all officers then pitch in moving members one at a time and covering the guild in yellow chat spam. All officers then claim damages for RSI for the multiple clicking. And then you find that you missed people and it is all stuffed up anyway.

We all know that the guild interface at guild leader level is an atrocity to use. Fingers crossed that we can get something in cataclysm vaguely resembling something a guild leader can open and not despair at every time they see it.

Once upon a time I went looking for a mod to do this for me and gave up in frustration. Did I completely miss one that people use? Does anyone out there know of a better way of dealing with the menial tasks involved in being a guild leader?

When more details of exactly how all these guild changes come to light, I will have a look at what could be a good possible way of dealing with any potential guild relations' issues I foresee. But until I see this played out and have a chance to actually look at what all this shiny new guild levelling and rep grinding is actually all about, I will let the rumours run rampant in other blogs.

The importance of communication

2010-06-09T09:14:00.002+10:00

Right about now, I would suspect that there is a lot of burnout and frustration in ICC progression raiding teams. There certainly is in mine. People making simple mistakes are causing massive explosions of arguments, and fingers are getting pointed. People taking breaks, recruiting people well behind the curve, necessarily dropping standards; this is all leading to a slight backwards step in progression.

This is frustrating.

As people are generally frustrated, they take it out on each other. Small arguments get blown out of proportion, and things start getting said to your face in not the most pleasant way. I was a victim of this last week.

For some reason, people think I am unapproachable - this could be because I a) talk back and b) require evidence of theorycrafting and the math to back it up. If a minor change is minor, don't expect me to toe the line if my personal preference is for something else. If you are going to tell me "You are wrong, you should be doing this" I will question you, I will ask for proof, I will not just take it on your word that you are right. So, don't sidle up to me and subtly try to change my mind. I don't take kindly to manipulation, mostly because I do a lot of manipulating myself and zomg icwotududther HAHA.

I am a unique and special snowflake as a holy paladin, and DON'T forget it.

For 4 years my healing style as a paladin was hybrid, as a GL, and healing leader, I was generally doing all the jobs and covering people's arses. I was paranoid about mana usage (still am) and my goal was to have the lowest % overheal I could possibly manage and still beat the boss or have my healing assignment still standing.

Now, new guild has a new way of doing things. Fine, I will try to fit in. I ask questions in the healing channel and get radio silence in response. I ask more questions, again nothing. In the end, I give up asking questions. I just keep the tanks alive in the method I have grown accustomed to - minimal mana usage, minimal overheal. I am not in the "healer group" in the raid, I am not getting innervates or mana tides benefits, I have to tank heal and manage myself solo. I am also not getting communication because all the healer communication was occurring in party chat in the "healer group".

OK, got that set up?

Now, fast forward to last week. I had an inkling that there was resentment towards me, to the point that I was about ready to quit raiding. I was sick of the snide half remarks and bollocks pointed at my healing style. Not a single person would outright talk to me about anything. It was all "why don't you..."s or "You should..." without a shred of evidence or reason as to why I should. So, I would always counter with logical sound arguments: "I have to mana manage on my own, so I use flash a lot more...", "If I do that this will happen and that's bad" and so on and so forth. No one countered my arguments to my satisfaction, no one convinced me with good reasons to change my style. All I got were other classes QQing that I was flashing, to which my response was "Are tanks dying? No."

This all came to a head last week when the GL said "Can you please just use HL all the time on the tanks?"
...
Uh... Where did that come from? Are tanks dying?
No, but people are complaining that you are using Flash too much.
So, why don't they tell me that?
Apparently they are?
No, not in so many words.
Can you just do it?
FINE! I will be an OOM meter whore for you then, but this is silly and a waste.

I then proceeded to come in the first 1,2 of effective healing done on the meters, and ran dry early on in the fights. I played dumb, not smart, and that shut people up. It was ridiculous.

After the raid, I was pulled aside for "a chat". I was told that I needed to tank heal more. I proceeded to tell the GL what happened from my pov, the issue wasn't that I was healing wrong, I was healing right with the complete lack of information I had about my healing team and given zero communication to me about what my role was and how I fitted into the team. No one tells me, raid to raid, what people are doing in our healing team, who is healing tanks with me, what I am supposed to do in special circumstance fights (ie heroic saurfang) - because I am not in the healing group in raid. Those guys all talk about that stuff within party chat, they bitch moan complain, work out healing strat all that stuff, each and every time forgetting that I am not psychic and have no idea that they have changed what they are doing. I have to watch tanks die, or key assignments die, get blamed, then work out from looking at meters that people had changed their roles, and that I needed to adapt.

It was never a healing "fault" on my part, I could always do what they wanted me to do - it was a communications fail on their part, and to some extent mine for giving up on trying. The last time I had a long chat with officers and healers, I completely changed my spec (to a style I didn't really like) to cover off short falls in our raid team! I am not adverse to doing things differently, but you need to back it up, give me a good reason to be running myself dry, that blah has your back, tell me that blah is your go to person for innervates, and they will save them for you. That you are tank healing with this person, to give you someone to bounce off when there are issues with tanks. They finally explained how everything worked and where I fitted into that, I finally got through to them how alienated I always felt and the next raid, you know what? I didn't have to try to be psychic, I was told what was happening, in the healing channel, and strangely enough everyone else noticed the difference. I was no longer a mushroom, sitting in the corner of the healing channel in the dark second guessing what I had to do.

Half the reason I was miserable raiding was that I was an island, and I was in quarantine, no one talked to me. It was quite demoralising. I felt isolated and on the outer - all because I was the 6th healer, placed in the tank group and no one on my team talked to me about the important things, like being a team member.

This guild does not have specific "section leaders" and I tell you what, I am REALLY noticing that not having them makes for isolation within the raiding team. I very strongly recommend that you have officers with jobs - section leaders - who make sure each section is looked after and communicated with. It is so very, very important. Talk to each other... now more than ever. The thing that is going to get you through the frustration is communication and a feeling of belonging, because right now, progression is hard to come by.

Only three to go!

2010-06-03T12:14:00.000+10:00

Yep, I have now written out 9 hardmodes for ICC. Only 3 to go! We are already working on Prof Puke and Sindragosa, Sindragosa shouldn't be too much different from the normal strat, just harder, faster, stronger, more iceblocks for people to kill each other in and a lot more finesse in execution. But I will wait till we down it so I can explain all the tardishness people need to avoid in order to actually down her.

Prof Puke? Oh man, visions of Vashj Netball games are coming to mind. It hurts me already just thinking about it.

Anyway, hope you find H LDW useful. I am thinking about writing out a bit of a helpful hints post about using world o' flogs log parsing tool to help you analyse events. You are all logging your attempts, aren't you? *raise eyebrow*

Perhaps a post about communication as well, having fallen victim to communication fail recently.

Heroic Lady Death Whisper

2010-06-03T12:06:00.001+10:00

Lady Deathwhisper in heroic mode is amazingly difficult. There are a few mechanics changes that make this a bit of a cluster fuck of a fight, I will talk about the changes seperately. Also, there is more than one way to complete this fight from a strategic point of view, I will address in detail the way I am familiar with it, I will comment upon the other methods, but if any readers have experience with any other ways, pop a comment in and I will update and expand the varying methods. There is never one way to skin a cat, ladies and gentlemen.

Phase 1 is very similar to normal. All damage is increased for all adds, and LDW herself hits harder. The kill order of the adds becomes vital to the success of this fight. Shadow resistance also becomes far more useful in mitigating damage. So, don't be crap, tank the adds properly, smash the adds down in the correct order (see normal mode for that detail) and be very sure that you are focussing fire and getting those adds down as fast as possible and back on the boss. Watch for reanimateds and enrageds. And, again, remember your kill order and do it.

Phase 1 has another amusing change to it. Instead of one MC there are now three! Oh yes, it's Time for Fun! Now, if you don't manage those MCs properly, your own players will start oneshotting you. Let me say that again just to be clear. Your own players will start wiping out the raid!! I highly recommend that if you have a boss mod that marks the MCed players, that you allocate people to control them specifically. Mages, druids, locks, shammies, stun locks, traps, anything you can do to ensure that those MCs are locked down as soon as possible. This is absolutely vital to the success of phase 2.

One last thing on MCs... use your CDs early, and keep them on CD. If you are MCed you do NOT want the AI popping your CDs and a) wasting them and b) oneshotting your team mates. CD early, CD often, blow hero early on.

Ok, so you managed to get through phase 1 with minimal casualties (none is the preferred option) and LDW is at 5ish%. Watch the timers of the adds, and try to tick LDW over when you have few to no adds up. You really dont want LDW ticked over when the tanks are also having to worry about the adds. So, call it, watch it, and pay attention to what the RL yells out in decision to this.

Special Note to People with Pets: Put them on passive. Not defensive. Do it NOW. No, I don't care how good you are at managing your pets, just do it. Trust me on this. You MUST have them on passive. You must 100% control what target they are attacking, this is because if you are a CCer, or you are not attacking something temporarily and an MC person attacks you, your pet will run off and defend your honour! Now, usually this isn't an issue, but when 4 pets start attacking an MCed player, not only will they DIE, but it will break CC and cause havoc. The defensive AI in this fight is a detriment to your ability to succeed. If you are even arguing this point you need to go and learn more about how your pet works. There are plenty of websites out there that can help you with that.

Passive. Now.

Ok, sorry for that little rant, I have been killed more than once by wayward pets on defensive while I was MCed, you see. Ok back to the main plot.

Phase 2 has ticked over in a safe time between adds. Let me tell you a little story about non tauntable bosses and aggro resets. I am a holy pally, and I heal things. I hit like a girl and, generally, I am not a threat to anyone (even when MCed I tend to look threatening and buff the boss with wisdom). EXCEPT when I am in melee range, I am pre-healing the MT ready for him to take aggro, My heal lands and heals him a metric buttload (and perhaps my bacon target as well) BEFORE he lands a hit on LDW. At this point, LDW turns around and swats me one to the face. That is how delicate that aggro dump is. If you are a DPSer, just plain dont touch her, stay at range if you are melee from about 1% just GTFO! Seriously! Don't worry about your DPS, because if you pull, you are DEAD DEAD DEAD and that is terrible for your overall DPS.

Ok so, no one pulled, the first MT has aggro, and people are now pumping MD's and Tricks into the MT to get their threat up.

Phase 2 has some nasty surprises in store for you, and is where the real fight begins. First of all, adds keep coming, only one side at a time, but they keep coming none the less, more on that in a moment. Second, 3 MCs keep happening. Keep up the same CC rotation as Phase 1, no big change there.

Third, the ghosts will probably one shot you and everyone in range of you if they get in melee range of you. If there is a ghost even in your general vicinity RUN THE FUCK AWAY! Stop what you are doing, interrupt your casts and GTFO! They don't have to be chasing you specifically to explode, they explode in 2 ways. They explode when they reach the spot their target was standing, they also explode when they get in melee of anyone at all. Let me say that again, THEY INSTANTLY EXPLODE ON MELEE RANGE!! Melee range is bigger than you might think. So just stay away... as far away as possible.

Phase 2 will require interrupts, make sure you have an interrupt rotation sorted out for the frost bolts and other interrupt-able casts.

Mage dispels are vital on the tanks, and still important all the time. This becomes an issue in P2 because adds are still appearing. Don't forget to continue to dispel.

Tanks will have a new issue to contend with. There are two ways to deal with this - the first is tank rotation, the second is one tank with a lot of MDs/Tricks. They come in 2 separate add strategies as well. I will deal with the two below.

Ok, now we have dealt with changed the mechanics of the fight (I don't think I have forgotten anything), let's look at strategy and positioning.

Phase 1, bring the adds toward the platform. All healers and range stay up on the platform, melee go to the adds, but be very aware of LoS on healers. Resto Shaman, and perhaps Resto Druids will be doing a lot of healing in this phase and may pick up stray adds. Other healers should be wary of who in your team is likely to pull healer aggro and be ready with a quick heal to keep them alive. Mana can be managed by JoW on the boss and going up and autohitting the boss if necessary.

Phase 2 is much more difficult. I will detail the strat I am familiar with: Tank rotation+Add Kiting. There are variations on this theme with regards positioning. All ranged should spread out around the room, as far apart as possible. The MT should bring the boss to the bottom of the entrance stairs, and the MT healers should position themselves up the stairs away from everyone else as much as possible.

The add kiting tank should be ready to taunt/keep aggro on the adds, MDs should be used to redirect any stray adds to the tank that he can't pick up himself. This tank will kite the adds around the outside of the room. Make sure they are dispelled of all effects at all times, especially frostbolt slows, and topped up as best as possible. This should leave everyone free to kill the boss.

The other two tanks will take turns tanking and letting the stacks of insignificance drop off. Calling out stacks and managing threat is key here to ensure that the tanks keep the threat going. Tricks, and spare MDs can be of great help here managing the tank threat. It might take a bit of practise to get right, but it is certainly doable.

There is another variation where there is one tank who tanks LDW and all tricks and MDs go into that tank to keep it on top of threat. This requires a much more coordinated and aware DPS team who will take time off to smash down adds as well, I believe. The advantage it has is you have one less tank. It requires a much higher raid DPS output than the method I am aware of. But again, I am not au fait with the detail on this variation, having never done it myself. I suspect this will be much less tolerant of mistakes but will burn the boss down faster than the version I am using.

That's pretty much it. That was quite a lot to explain. They key features to this fight are as follows:

Stay AWAY from ghosts, don't be even in the same postcode as they are.
CC your MCed people asap
use all your DPS CDs all the time
careful tricks/MDs
burn down the adds in the correct order and be coordinated

Good luck! Don't forget, please comment with additions or mistakes I have made, I did write this one with half a brain (the other half being taken over by flu)

Heroic updates

2010-05-26T09:25:00.000+10:00

I have updated the heroic saurfang post to be a bit clearer with regards healing marks and to add in something about the adds I forgot to mention (Thanks Serrif!).

Also, I am aware my idea of BQL biting the highest damage dealer confuses people, but if anyone has parses from the last month in which a HEALER takes the first bite, I would love to see them. I need to see the actual combat logs if possible as well as the those logs uploaded to world of logs (because world of logs allows you to select a time slice of a combat log and analyse that). I know that BQL once bit what looked like possibly the first person to damage her before the bite (which is how I suspect holy pallies like myself originally copped bites) but I reckon that was a bug that was fixed and not mentioned by blizz. I have not seen or heard of a healer take a bite since ICC was fully released, and I went looking (maybe not in all the places, but in a lot of them).

So yeah, if you have some evidence that I am wrong from recent attempts/downings, I would love to see it! I like being wrong, it means I learn things.

Heroic Saurfang

2010-05-25T10:20:00.003+10:00

Heroic Saurfang is again the same as normal saurfang in most of the ways that matter. In heroic mode, he gets more blood points from all the sources of damage he does. Oh and everything hits harder, but that goes without saying, right? One extra added BOOYA of hitting harder is that now, damage is proportional to BPs. The more BPs he has, the more damage everything he casts/hits with does to your toons. And yeah, once a new mark goes out, he goes back to hitting like a pussy for a short amount of time until his BPs rapidly increase again.

This makes it significantly harder to heal as marks go out faster.

One thing that makes this really heroic is the adds. A commenter noted that I missed out an ability cast upon the adds, being Scent of Blood. The 80% aoe slow makes kiting near impossible. If they touch you, you are pretty much dead. CCing them and killing them cleanly before they get to their allocated DPS is vital to beating this boss. Allocate your DPS to them carefully and ensure that those adds go down fast and without touching anyone. Slows, knock-backs, stuns are vital to making sure the DPS have enough time to kill those adds before they attack anyone.

Aim to hold off the first mark until AFTER the first set of adds go out. If you are getting the first mark before the adds go down, you need to have a look at what is causing the blood points to go up so quickly. Are the adds hitting someone? are people standing too close together for blood nova?

Healers need to look at their healing much more closely now. 6-7 healers is recommended, probably 7. If you can, get 2 holy paladins as they can heal the first 4 marks leaving 5 healers free to keep everyone else alive. Keep the paladins on the ranged, and let the other better aoe healers heal marks on melee.

This brings me to an extra point for healing - marks transfer melee damage done by saurfang as well as some extra just for fun, that's how it works in normal mode, too. BUT! In heroic, the difference in Saurfang's melee hits from 0 BP to 99 BP is really crazy, mark healers will really notice the difference, and they will also notice the difference in healing a clothie with the mark and a plate wearer with the mark. Try to keep your pallies healing the clothies if at all possible (your clothies should be at range anyway, so this should happen naturally).

If in the first 4 marks a melee is chosen, the paladin should heal it, but communicate that they are going to swap to the first ranged marked after the first 4 go out. 2 paladins makes healing much easier, but of course, this isn't necessary, the theory extends to any class. Make sure that marks are allocated out to healers, (ranged marks to specific healers, melee marks to specific healers). Keep as much mana for the 35% mark, as things will start going batshit insane for healers at that point. Save all your tricks for this point, and conserve your mana as much as possible up until this point.

This is a hard fight, there is little to no wiggle room. Stuff up an add, and healers will be unable to heal toward the end of the fight as marks start cascading out. Stuff up a mark, and Saurfang heals, extending the fight. Good luck!

Bites in BQL

2010-05-25T10:03:00.000+10:00

I added in some research I have done in BQL to the heroic strat update. Very briefly, the bite goes to the most damage, not the highest threat (a lot of the time, these are the same people, however)

Work seems to have settled down a smidge and I should be popping up the rest of my heroic strats in the next day or two, I hope. Remember, if you have anything to add to them, pop a comment in and let me know!!

Heroic Blood-Queen Lana'Thel

2010-05-19T08:46:00.001+10:00

This is very similar to loot boat, except I wouldn't expect you to one shot BQL! There is no new strategy in heroic mode, everything hits harder. Healing is much harder, by extension, and people taking unnecessary incidental damage will now cause wipes as opposed to annoying the healers. Even with the buff, losing a bite victim early will mean you don't make the enrage timer, in fact, at the moment losing a bite victim full stop will probably push you over the enrage timer!

Apart from those tips, it is business as usual. Don't take extra damage, keep your bite victims alive. Win.

I should add in here that I have noted that BQL will bite the person who does the most damage to her before the bite, not the person with the highest threat after the tanks. Often, the person with the highest threat IS the person who has done the most damage, but I have gone through the logs of several occasions where that has not been the case. Someone was clearly highest on threat and another person got the bite. Upon reflection each and every time, the person with the most damage done (regardless of threat generation) was bitten.

Heroic Valithria Dreamwalker

2010-05-19T08:34:00.000+10:00

Again, not a massive step up in difficulty for most people (ie not healers). For DPS and tanks, business as usual, it is just that everything hits harder and is harder to kill. So your priority order and ability to burn down adds as fast as possible is on the line here. Make sure you have allocated your left and right teams well enough to cover off managing adds. Also note you will be 1-2 DPS down due to increased healing requirements.

In heroic mode there are two major changes to Valithria - first, she loses health over time, second, going into the portals is damaging to your health and far fewer balls spawn in the dream. Oh yeah, and they are red! Because RED is BAD MKAY?

Anyway, you will need about 8 healers for Valithria - 3 raid healers to stay outside and keep the raid going and 5 dream healers. All healers should be putting any spare GCDs on Valithria as well as any spare AoE healing. The dream healers need to allocate themselves one eacy to a portal (when they appear) and edge their way toward them and stand next to them as soon as possible. While outside, dream healers should be helping with AoE healing on the raid, but their number one priority is healing Valithria.

Once in the dream, it is quite likely that there will be a red blob above your head. Go and grab it to refresh your stacks. Then, find a fellow healer or two and fly around together bursting red bubbles. It is really important that you move in groups of at least 2 more if possible so that the most people get the most stacks. The red blobs REALLY are thin on the *cough* air and you need to share them to get Valithria healed. As long as you are within the area of the explosion when one is popped you get the (de)buff.

Just like in normal, get your stacks up as high as possible, and heal the pants off valithria. Heroic is just plain Harder, so expect a few wipes while you find your groove. Good healers to go into the Dream are pallies and shammies, priests and druids are probably better on the outside. Save your CD heals for just before Valithria is healed and your stacks are high.

Something to keep you going

2010-05-17T14:39:00.000+10:00

Here is something I posted about Heroic LDW in my guild forums. It is really the main hurdle to overcome in the heroic version of the fight (names have been removed to protect the guilty):

Dear DPS,
For some reason, HLDW likes to MC me a lot. And I mean A LOT. This gave me opportunity to notice a few things.

First, it took a long time for me to get CCed. Now, on me, this really isn't an issue. All this does is that I stand there and pretend to hurt people with damage that is easily healed through, my auras get changed around, I use my wings ... oh yeah, and I buff wisdom on LDW. Go figure.

But, you know, when people like a Certain Rogue or a Certain Hunter are not CCed, they have a tendancy to 1-2 shot me very dead. Hells, that hunter autoshotted me dead in 2 hits! And Mr Rogue smashed me in one blow! Now, while this gives opportunity for witty banter, it leaves me unable to heal tanks. When I am unable to heal tanks, Officer Bear Tank gets shitty because tanks die. And we all know what happens when Officer Bear Tank gets shitty. That's right, he argues with That Guy and we all have to put them on mute for 5 mins.

Second, when I am MCed, it seems that people like to kill me. A lot and often. Sometimes I got brezzed, then MCed immediately again and killed AGAIN. Now, this is not too much of an issue on the hip pocket at the moment, but it really is annoying and frustrating for the druids burning their BRezzes on me. Hells, it became so noticeable, even the LOCKS started SSing me. I mean HUH? I shouldn't be a target for SS's.

No Love,
Me

PS Holy Pally Buddy, next time we both get ghosts, let's not hug each other to death. Deal?

Excuse for a lack of updates

2010-05-17T08:47:00.000+10:00

Well, I have one.
I have been rather ill so been focusing on getting better (like many people that spend far too much time in WoW, I have a chronic illness that plays up every so often), and researching hardmodes for our hardmode conquest of ICC. Currently am 9/12 hardmodes, so I have some writing to catch up on!!

So, hoping this week will see a return of some more writings here.

LootBoat Hardmode

2010-05-06T08:46:00.000+10:00

If you can do normal mode, you can do hard mode.

Make sure your cannoneers kill the rocket launcher guys at the back, and the ranged kill the axe throwers at the front. Apart from that, it is busniess as usual. Don't lose your head, and steady as she goes.

Blood Prince Council Hardmode

2010-05-05T08:48:00.000+10:00

The major and HUGE difference in this fight is a simple yet incredibly annoying one: Whenever your character moves you gain a stack of a DoT debuff - it does 500dps per stack, and is refreshed with each new application. It has a 10s duration. This means, if you stand still for 10s all your stacks drop off. This debuff HURTS. This debuff is applied not only when you run, but also when you get knocked back by anything in this encounter that knocks you around.

So, this encounter now becomes even more about positioning and team work. Due to the Vortices and the need to be spread out, and also due to the need to Not Move, it behooves the raidleader to plan out where everyone is going to stand as their "permanent" position. A good idea is to space the healers around the semicircle at the bottom of the stairs with one healer at the top of the stairs to keep those on stage alive due to LoS issues. DPS need to stay spread around the room. Melee should be allocated spots on the top of the stage for the personal vortex phase.

Tank both Taladaram and Valanar as together as possible to minimise melee movement. The Keleseth tank will need to move around obviously, so the healers need to be aware of the stacks on this tank (as does the tank themselves).

The kinetic bombs drop significantly faster in hard mode, and also, you cant allocate 1-2 ranged to go after them as you just dont want people moving around. Allocate a spotter to call out where the bombs are falling (we actually use a mut rogue due to their reduced damage from all the target swapping and moving) and anyone in that area has to stop DPSing the boss and keep that bomb up full time until it goes away. If the bombs drop on stage, melee need to be allocated to hit them (in this case, our mut rogue generally handles the entire stage on his own).

If you do get knocked back from a vortex or kinetic bomb, run back to your position in stages to ensure you dont get too many stacks of the debuff.

Even more than in normal, this fight is NOT a DPS race, I cannot stress that enough. This fight is about staying alive and whittling away at the boss slowly. There is a stupidly long enrage timer, you are very unlikely to hit it, no matter how long you take.

The key factors are: Staying spread out and staying in your allocated position as much as possible and making sure those kinetics do not touch the ground under any cirucmstances. It is everyone's responsibility (except perhaps healers) to keep a kinetic up in their area. If a kinetic touches the ground near you and you didn't hit it, then the resulting wipe is 100% your fault.

Rotface Hardmode

2010-05-05T08:30:00.000+10:00

As with the theme of Hardmodes, Rotface is mostly the same but hits a lot harder. In fact, rotface is one of the easier hard modes to achieve.

There are 3 real mechanic changes, first is that the infection causes a much higher healing debuff, so it is recommended that the person is dispelled as soon as possible and healed until they merge their ooze.

The second is the pools of goo coming out of the pipes now cause a stacking slow debuff that you need to be wary of. Most especially the tank who is doing the kiting. It is recommended you either skirt the edges of it, or use freedoms and other snare removing abilities to get the stacks off as soon as possible. If you are kiting a small ooze to the big ooze, it is wise to not even attempt to go into the green patches, just wait for the big ooze to get to you.

Third is rotface will cast a Vile Gas type thing on anyone at range. The off tank is a viable target for this as well. The vile gas will disorient you if you move. So, get all your range and healers out of melee and spread out around the room as best they can to reduce the risk of the off tank getting it.

Other than that, it is business as usual, just with more hitpoints and everything hits harder!

Lord Marrowgar HardMode

2010-05-05T08:16:00.000+10:00

Lord Marrowgar is a great introduction to hard modes. It is twitchy and confusing and simply great!

There are several changes to the encounter. The most important one is that now bonespike happens all the time, so during the whirlwind phase, yes, RNG can happen so you are spiked, fired and spun upon all at the same time. There is not a lot you can do about that sometimes.

So, phase1 is business as usual. Marrowgar, of course, hits harder.

Phase 2 is where things get fun. Since people can be bonespiked, it is imperative that you get them out asap. Also, the whirlwind thing hits a lot harder, so you cant plant your feet and heal youself through it.

So, you divide the raid up into 2 groups, one goes left one goes right. Spread out a bit, but make sure you are in range of heals. The idea is to ping pong marrowgar left and right between the two groups. Try and avoid the blue fire on the ground, and as soon as you see Marrowgar heading in your direction, run away. I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to move as SOON as you see marrowgar swap targets to someone on your side. However, keep the group together, so having 2 designated spots to run between on your side can help with this. If anyone on your side gets spiked, get them out as soon as you can, and healers, try to keep them alive.

But really, that's it! Heal hard, get those people out of the bone spikes as soon as possible, and ping pong Marrowgar between the raid groups, while staying away from his spinning blades of death, and not standing in fires.

Hardmodes

2010-04-29T12:45:00.000+10:00

There are a few hardmode I have under my belt and deserve a delta writeup.
I just have not had the time to do it! Work has me under the pump at the moment, and I need to get that under control before I write too much more.

That said, there is not a lot of change between normal mode and hard modes. The general idea is "hard modes hit harder" and that's about it really!

I wont even BOTHER with heroic loot boat because., honestly, if you can do normal loot boat, heroic is just a bit slower.

I think my favourite hard modes thus far are marrowgar (which actually requires skill) and Valithria (which is just plain fun as a healer). The other hard modes are pretty much business as usual with 264 loot. They feel a lot like normal modes did when we walked into ICC the first time.

Which leads me to a quick commentry on how this all works.

Hardmodes are not new content. I don't get the excited feeling walking up to a hardmode boss, because I have done it before, you know? I have killed these pixels already! Let me walk up to hard mode cold - give me uldar hardmodes! I still believe ulduar was how it should be done. Dont force me to run normal before I am allowed to make things hard, let me be the judge of that. If I think I can turn up the pressure and not boil, then I should be able to do that. Forced gating/attunements are a silly idea in this capacity when we only have "current content" to be done.

When there is more raid content available than we are able to achieve, sure, put on a simple attunemet (ie in order to get to Tier N+1 you need to have defeated the end boss of Tier N) but note I say tier content. Hard modes are not new tier content, they are increase difficulty on CURRENT tier content - don't gate them.

But I am coming down with a cold and my brain is wafting around on the winds. Looking at the ideas with cataclysm, I am not convinced that it will work the way we all hope.

I have 2 happiness quotients out of it though: 1 ID per instance no matter the size, 2 emblem levels, this content and that content. I hope this will sort out much of the problems of burnout and gear gaps for newer players. The ID should force people to make a decision about what content they enjoy doing. This I can only see as a positive thing.

Anyway, ramble over. Expect new strats in the coming week for hardmodes.

The Lich King - Arthas Menethil

2010-04-19T11:18:00.000+10:00

This has to be the most fiddly fight I have ever done. There is zero room for error and the encounter is very sensitive to lag. Playing with a 300+ ping increases the difficulty of this fight exponentially. Once you overcome how to deal with defiles, the rest of the fight should fall into place.

I am also going to try to leave lore spoilers OUT of this strategy. I worked very hard to not get spoilers before I defeated LK, and I will extend the same courtesy to you.

Shopping List:
2 tanks
6ish healers (less if you can)
A range heavy DPS lineup, preferably with a couple of hunters

Quick note for healing infest - this fight is a metric buttload easier with 1-2 disc priests in the raid. They need to keep bubbles on everyone at all times to combat infest. Having the bubbles will soak the burst of damage the raid will take, and thus generally keeping them over 90% without any extra raid healing. If you dont have this, then this fight will be significantly harder and I would recommend taking an extra raid healer to compensate for it. Infest is cast regularly in phases 1,2 and 3 (not in transitions) and I will not mention it again in detail. In short, bubble the raid and keep them topped up at all times. I recommend getting a raid frame addon (the default frames will do this as well) that displays which raid members have infest on them so you can focus any stragglers back to health.

Quick note to everyone in the raid - before you start, everyone should target LK and type /focus. Ensure that you can see the LK and ensure that you can see the target of your focus, as well, prominently on your screen. This will become apparent in phase 2. If you have macros that rely on your focus, fix them up so you can keep LK focussed at all times. I cannot stress how important this is.

Phase 1 - 100 - 70%
After a minute of roleplay, you can start hitting LK. It doesn't really matter where you tank LK, the positioning is relative. Phase 1 is all about the tanking, and the plague.

One tank will hold LK. Periodically, LK will summon some pets for you to play with. Tanks take turns in grabbing these adds. Eventually, LK will summon a shambling horror, and this is where P1 really starts going. The second tank needs to have the horror MD/tricksed to them if possible, otherwise they need to pick them up under their own steam. Hunters/Rogues - it is handy for the tanks if you can work out a rotation to get the shamblings to the tank as efficiently as possible. As they spawn (it's really obvious, they crawl out of the ground like a DK pet), clear the path between the mob and the tank tanking it or you may end up splattered on the ground if you stand in front of it. No one, except the tank, should ever stand in front of these adds. Ever. Ever ever! Or you will die a splattery death.

Now, that tank tanking the mobs needs to move about 10 yards away from everyone on the LK. Face the add away from the group. No one will be DPSing the adds, there is a clever trick to killing them. Your favourite boss timer will show you how frequently LK casts Necrotic plague. If you have necrotic plague, you need to run as fast as you can to stand behind the Shambling horrors. When you arrive at the shambling horrors, someone who is allocated will dispel the plague from you. This will cause the plague to jump to the nearest target - which should be the Shambling Horror. If it jumps to another player, work out your positioning as a raid to ensure that the nearest target is the Shambling Horror THIS IS VITAL!

Why? Because when that plague ticks at the 5s mark it does 100k damage. Yes. 100k. SO! You will use the plague to kill the adds. The allocated dispeller must dispel the plague at 4s regardless of whether the person with it is in the right place or not, if it ever ticks, that person will cop 100k damage and die. When it jumps it starts the 15s timer again, so that next person has a fresh 4s to get into place.

One last thing about this phase mechanically - the shambling horrors will also enrage periodocally. The add will go big and red and mean and will hit the tank REALLY hard. Healers need to be ready for this. It can be tranquilized by hunters or rogues, and should be.

Other than that, burn the ghouls down with aoe and incidental damage and hurt LK. When LK hits 71% make sure the raid is toward the edge of the platform, ready for phase 1.5.

Phase 1.5 70% No damage to LK
When LK runs to the centre, you all need to run to the edge to avoid Remorseless Winter AOE in the centre of the platform. Using Aura Mastery at this time will help the stragglers caught out in the cold.

This transition lasts 60s, and it is a DPS race.

LK will periodically summon Ice Spheres. These will latch onto someone with a beam and hurt them. Make sure you have a couple of good bursty range on them and that these things die before they get to their target because you really don't want to get knocked off the edge of the platform when it hits you or someone near you, it gets really annoying after a while! So, kill those spheres ASAP!

He will also be casting Pain And Suffering on the raid. So, there is a way to stand to minimise the impact of this. Melee don't have a lot of choice, they stack up with the LK tank ready to DPS down the Raging Spirit (more on that later). Ranged and healers need to spread out as much as possible on the cracks in the ice (you will see them). The Shambling Horror tank needs to be off to the side on his own until the plague finishes off his adds. The dispeller has to continue dispelling that tank, or they will die from the necrotic plague still bouncing around.

Most importantly, there needs to be a clear path around the very outside edge for the tank to move the Raging Spirits. 4 times in this 60s (the last being JUST before the 60s is up) Raging Spirits will spew like a gut burster out of you and try to eat your soul by tearing away at your flesh! The tanks need to be ready to taunt them over, and hunters should be ready to assist with an MD. When the spirit arrives, it is likely to knock you over, don't worry, just get up and try to help get that add to your tank. Do not stand in front of the spirit as it will probably one shot you. Tanks will need this silencing effect dispelled in order to be effective tanking.

Speed is of the essence, those raging spirits need to die as quickly as possible so you have very few up at the end of the 60s.

Call which tanks are taking which spirits and make sure that the tank for LK is free toward the end of the 60s.

At 60s LK will cast quake and Phase 2 will begin.

Phase 2 - DEFILES!!! 70% - 40%
The key to this phase is managing the defiles, indeed it is the key to the entire rest of this fight.

Everyone must run into the centre of the room or they will fall off the edge of the platform. There might be an orb or two up. Don't be an idiot and run into the orbs! they will wipe the raid. Tank pick up LK and the other tank drag the raging spirits into range. The raid must kill those spirits as a priority over killing LK. Get them dead, dead, dead. Once the spirits are dead, you can change your DPS target to LK and start to burn him down.

After a while, LK will summon 3 val'kyr to be annoying at you. These Val'kyr will randomly grab 3 people and fly with them off to the nearest edge of the platform, ie not the stairs up to the throne. They will always take the shortest path to drop you off to your doom. This means that they are controllable. The raid can stack tightly together, just off centre (hunters can stand back in line with the shortest path to the edge, get your protractors out everyone!), and the val'kyr will all take the same path to the same place. This means that you can add incidental damage to all 3 mobs to burn them down faster. You don't have a lot of time to kill them, so obviously you need to slow and stun them as much as you can to buy more time. Allocate stun teams to each valkyr (boss mods can mark them for you), sort hunters out with traps, and DKs with their abilities to slow and chain. This is up to your raid team to sort out, depending on what you have available.

Here's another bad paint picture to show you what I mean:

In order to get those val'kyrs down, you really need to stack up to control where they move. The tank will move LK with the Val'kyr in order to maximise incidental damage on him.

Now, this will lead us to the major problem in this fight - DEFILE!
Defile has a 1.5s cast time (this is important) and when cast will drop a big black blob of badness on the ground centred around the person targetted. Defile is on a slightly longer timer than the val'kyrs, but not a lot longer.

Before the fight, practise this:
Get someone to be LK. Have everyone focus that person. Get everyone stacked in the val'kyr position like they were DPSing the LK. Look at the lineup. make sure everyone is stacked up tight, and that hunters are in line with the shortest path to an edge. Get that LK person to cast a 1.5s spell on someone. The person being targetted needs to run TOWARD the stairs/iceblocked idiot and every single other person in the raid needs to run toward the lift in the opposite direction.

Repeat this until everyone in the raid can do it. If you get targetted, run toward the iceblock, if you are not targetted, run away. Make sure everyone understands that you have to move. If you don't move, chances are you will wipe the raid. I don't know about you, but I know that we are no high end elitist guild who can rely on the person with defile to get it right every single time without fail.

Ok so got that under control? Excellent.

So, why have you LK on focus? Because defile will often be cast while you are burning down the Val'kyr. Raiders have to be VERY AWARE that while they need to burn/stun/slow those val'kyr, they also need to be mindful that also need to move for defile. This is without a doubt the hardest part of the LK fight. Boss mods CANNOT be relied on for accurate and timely warnings for defile. I learned this the hard way.

There are several ways to set up where to move LK for this fight to ensure defiles are out of the way, and none of them will suit you and you will have to work out your own positioning, almost guaranteed. Check out my post about creating your own strats to help with this. There is a general rule of thumb here:
Stack for val'kyrs;
Run for defiles;
tanks control the positioning.

Basically, you stack up and burn LK most of the time, you watch your timers and you watch your Focus' target to ensure you know who gets defile cast on them. The tank then repositions LK ready for the next wave of val'kyrs and defiles. Rinse repeat.

The mechanics of Phase 2 are not hard - getting them right, that is VERY hard as one person getting it wrong and not moving can wipe you. It's is a very fiddly phase. Once you master defile, you pretty much have this fight sorted out.

One thing to note - the cooldowns in your boss mod are a GUIDE. They are not 100% every time, so make sure your raiders are not relying on them and forget to use their brains and watch what LK is casting on their focus. There is a general order to the val'kyr/defile pattern but it is not a guarantee.

Note for LK positioning - try to rotate your stack point for val'kyrs, the last thing you want is to stack in such a way that you send the val'kyrs over a defile.

Last but not least for this phase is a tank effect called Soul Reaper. In short this is a "oh shit" moment for the tank. Rotate cooldowns and if you can, think about getting the second tank to taunt off you as soon as possible to ease things up for the healers or get a rotation happening to ensure CDs are ready for it to be cast.

When LK gets to 42% ish, you need to start watching your DPS and control the transition to Phase 2.5. Move LK and the raid to the very edge of the platform, as close as you can. Obviously, you don't want to be doing this if you are about to get val'kyrs, deal with the val'kyr's first then move the raid.

Phase 2.5
This is the same as phase 1.5 except that the frosty aoe thing is quite likely to oneshot anyone standing in it. Get onto the outside ring ASAP! Use any CDs to mitigate raid damage.

Phase 3 FROSTMOURNE!! 40% - 10%
Destroy the Raging Spirits as fast as you can. You should not be touching LK until they are dead.

This has all the same mechanics as Phase 2 with one change which makes all the difference. Instead of Val'kyr there are Vile spirits. These guys spawn high above you on 10 random players. They will then chase you down for 30s then explode. Obviously, you run away.

So, the best way to deal with this is divide the platform in half. Spread out in one half until the vile spirits arrive, then run to the other side of the platform, ensuring you are not in range when they explode. Seeing as defile is still being cast, but there is no longer a need to stack for controlling the val'kyrs, spreading out is a much better option for controlling defile. Again, watch LK to see defile targets and use your brains - stay out of defile.

Occasionally, LK is going to have a hissy fit and try and send someone to their doom in Frostmourne. Upon getting sucked in there, you will see the good guy (I wont say whom, as that could be considered a spoiler) and the bad guy.

This is surprisingly easy to do. First of all, everyone has to interrupt the channeled spell being cast by the bad guy.

Next, if you are a healer, you need to go nuts getting the good guy to full health. Heal your little butt off, much like in Valithria, as the good guy gets more health, he does more damage until the bad guy dies.

If you are a DPS, smash face on the bad guy. You will be buffed while in there, so don't worry too much about that. As soon as the bad guy is "defeated" you will be spat out. If you die in there, then LK gets an enrage buff which can be healed/tanked through, but will seriously deplete your healers and tanks reserves.

At 10% there is a hard enrage. Sit back and enjoy the RP. At 10% the hard work is over. If you screw up the last 10% you should all hang your heads in shame and delete your toons.

And that is the Lich King fight. 90% of this fight is learning how your raid is going to cope with defiles and working out the best positioning to deal with that. As long as everyone pays attention, and everyone moves, even 1 to 2 ticks of defile is ok.

Good Luck!

Back from holidays

2010-04-19T08:51:00.000+10:00

I am back from a nice, relaxing and yet highly amusing time away from home. So expect a lich king post to arrive in your RSS reader very soon!

Update post - how NERD works

2010-04-09T12:59:00.000+10:00

NERD is aimed at the RSS reader. It's light on the frills, and occasionally has pictures to illustrate points. it is also VERY wordy because I assume that your RSS reader is wider than the blogger website is and that people are capable of reading more than one sentence in a paragraph before getti... ooo shiny thing!

BUT this does mean you miss out on a couple of things:
1) comments. If you ever want to comment, please click through to the post in your browser and say something. I appreciate each and every comment I receive, and am happy to work with constructive criticism on my strat posts. I will often work in any additions and valid points that people bring up even if I dont use them. Sometimes I wont because while the comment and strategy is valid, I consider the method to be either lazy or promoting of bad raid behaviour that will bite you on the arse later on in the game. If you ever get confused, or notice I have forgotten something or I'm just flat out wrong (I know, I know, but it does occasionally happen), or have tips and tricks to add PLEASE drop a comment on the appropriate post. Even old ones, like ulduar or ToC.

2) my awful but functional drop down boxes with "important" posts. I have a list of all the strategies and a couple of dropdowns for things like guild leadership, raiding and being a guild member.

At some stage soon, I am going to add in a drop down for "holy pally theorycrafting" but these posts will be few and far between as there are a lot of great theorycrafting sites out there already. They will more be my own justifications for the spec and gear I have!

If you like my strategies, please link to them! Tell your friends about them, just credit me with the strat if you copy paste anything with a link to my blog. I work hard to make them as user friendly as possible for everyone to be able to follow.

10mans in a 25 focussed guild

2010-04-09T12:36:00.000+10:00

10mans are great for a 25 progression guild.

Because of the smaller format, you can grab a bunch of people with more gear than the raid is tuned for and learn the fights coming up in 25s. I cannot stress how invaluable that experience is in making sure every moment in your 25 man run counts. I have run a lot of 25s, and as a raid leader and as a raid member, it becomes very obvious very quickly who has and who has not run a 10 prior to the main raid. I have also noticed it very distinctly in my own ability to adapt to the craziness of 25s if I have had a crack in 10s beforehand.

10s are easier to put together, you can do them in downtime and have fun with your little group of friends in the guild.

But what happens when a group of people in the guild form a 10man and they start progressing, and they kill the endboss and start on hardmodes while another group is struggling to get people together? What happens when the group of people are all the officers? What happens if the officers are split between 2 competetive groups unevenly and they end up having fights in officers down those lines over 25man content and stuff "for the good of the guild"?

In short, 10mans can be a very divisive situation in your guild. They necessarily isolate people into little groups and those little groups form very tight knit circles of friends. This in and of itself is not a bad thing. Circles of people will happen wherever you go. What makes this situation different is that new people will find it hard to join in, they may feel alienated and unwelcome on top of feeling unsure in a new guild. This, of course, probably isn't the case, but how you spend you non raiding time is really important. It should be encouraged for people to mix and form friendships understandings and trust so that their 25man behaviour is more accommodating and overall raid performance improves.

How often have you thought so and so was an idiot only to find out maybe 2 months later, that, no they are not? And the only way you found that out was by running chain heroics with them one day because you had a spot free and they came along? All this time you thought they were an elitist snob because they were the RL of that 10man that ran on sundays and never included anyone new. After that, you may have trusted them more in raids to do their job, or when they said that blah blah happened instead of thinking the worst, you might give them the benefit of the doubt. Then maybe a week or two later, you start enjoying raiding again and your OWN performance improves.

Don't underestimate the impact that fracturing your guild members can have on your morale, and therefore, raid performance. Not everyone has a robust personality and wont take being told "no, we dont need blah class for our run" to heart or even more unintentionally hurtfully hear "We worked for weeks to get this group together, and we enjoy running together, we don't have room for everyone". Ouch. Yeah, I head that said recently in my guild. While very true and factual, it was really very upsetting to the poor person on the receiving end (and no, it wasn't me).

Lastly, 10s should always take a second place to 25s in a 25 progression guild. If the officers need another 25 night for a recruitment alt run, and the best time they can find is at the same time as your 10man, don't emo out at everyone saying how unfair it all is. Talk to your officers about the situation! It might be that the 25 is completely optional and you can continue your 10man while another alt 25 is running. But at the end of the day, if the 25 run is "official" (ie a recruitment run offering all the perks of a normal guild run, or a new progression night) then, no matter how put out you feel, you are there to raid 25s, not 10s and you should support the guild in that endeavour. If you are questioning this, mayhaps this guild isn't for you after all. And you know what, that's ok too.

As officers and guild leaders, you should be sensitive to all the things I have spoken about above. Be aware of which officers are attending which 10s. Try and find out from those not attending 10s how they feel about the situation, how they have been treated. Make damn sure that no divisions spring up within your guild based on who goes to what 10man. If you can, as officers, mix up where you attend. Be "busy" one week for your regular 10 with your officer friends and see if you can sit in on another one. You might not think it immediately, but morale and raid performance is greatly affected by this out of raid stuff, because no matter what happens, people are people and you need people to defeat the game and earn purple (and sometimes orange) pixels!

Recruitment

2010-04-07T11:13:00.000+10:00

Probably the hardest thing about running a guild is turnover. How to minimise churn is another post entirely, but every guild has churn, natural lulls in activity and morale, and the only way to deal with it is to recruit. So, what are some of the more effective ways to recruit?

Trade Advertising
If your trade is anything like my trade, it is full of trolls and people LFG and general spam. I actually have a separate window for trade spam that is tabbed behind my gchat window. Trade chat advertising has a reputation, I am unsure why, of being beneath serious raiding guilds. If you have a solid recruitment process to weed idiots out, then this should not be an issue for you and a carefully worded 255 character ad placed in trade every so often will drive traffic to your website and your application process.

Yes, you might have a higher turnover of idiots but there are diamonds in that rough, including new transfers (either people with alts on the server looking or just plain random server transfers) or people from guilds already running who are not happy there.

WoW Forums
Having a posts here means you can get into more detail about your guild, what you are after and basically pimp yourselves a bit more. I recommend an officer or the guild leader post the thread so that the initial inquiries and checks are of that person. Transfers may dismiss or question a recruitment thread posted by someone other than an officer. Make sure your guild members are aware of the thread and get them actively bumping it and updating it. The WoW forums show how many views there are of a thread, the more view you get, the more people will view it. So, get your guildies bumping up those views as much as they can. Standard rules for trolls apply. Remember, this thread is an ad for your guild, and the way you deal with trolling is indicative of the type of people who think you are cool.

There are several places your threads can go: Your realm's forum, the recruitment forums (horde or alliance), oceanic realm forums. These links are to the US forums. I am an Aussie, so they are the ones I am familiar with. Anyone on EU forums, this applies to you as well, but just on your forums. Go look for places that are relevant but perhaps not immediately on the top of your mind for recruitment threads.

External/Progression Websites
Often the websites keeping track of progression will allow guilds to have recruitment on their guilds. A good example is on wowprogress.com. Find your guild on there and update your recruitment regularly. EJ also has a recruitment section on their forums, and this may suit you as well.

Your website
The front public face of your website is the first place people will probably be coming to see your guild. I cannot recommend enough to keep this updated and indicative of the culture of your guild (whatever you choose that to be). Have a recruitment section on the front page with information on the classes you are recruiting. Put up your current progression on the front page as well, and if you are into that sort of thing, victory screenshots! And keep it current and updated. Something with a date on it so people can see immediately that the site is active and the information is up to date. Make the application process immediately obvious and clear for anyone new coming to the site.

Alt runs
Getting up a second 10/25 run with alts is fun, but not everyone's cup of tea. If you have people interested in gearing up and playing alts, then organising a guild alt run is a great way to suss out new recruits. Fill your alt run with pugs, and run it the way you would your main raids. If you find anyone who is decent then encourage them to apply on their mains. You may also find that mains from other guild who come along on an alt may like the way you run your raids better than their own, and you may be able to poach some disgruntled players from other guilds. Specifically running an alt run as a recuitment tool is something you need to start the raid with as a goal.

Word of mouth/friends of friends
Ultimately, the best way you are going to get people is by your reputation and word of mouth. So make sure your reputation is one you approve of. Ask people about your reputation in your application process, find out why they are applying to you and how they found out to apply. Ask your guild mates to be on the lookout for people who would be appropriate for your guild, and to talk to people.

Encourage guild members to be active in recruitment. Recruiting is a hard job and quite demoralising for officers. If everyone in the guild took part and was active, the pressure is off the officers to keep the stiff upper lip. Also, more diversity in recruiting can only be a good thing. Just make sure that your guildies are not recruiting in a way you disapprove of - give them some guidelines to be running with, if you don't want them posting in the forum thread, say so. If you are not happy with trade chat, then tell people so, but also give them something they can do as well.

Recruitment - the story

2010-04-07T10:05:00.000+10:00

Something that has cropped up recently as a topic in my guild is recruitment. But first, a story of how I got into the next more factual post.

I was out doing some trade spam to garner some new recruitment through our application process, I got a couple of bites and I had a chat to them. They seemed like nice people but possibly not up to the technical standard we were looking for. I told them to apply on our forums anyway, as the officers of the guild told me to.

I then mentioned in vent that a few new apps were up and could the appropriate class peoples eyeball them.

This elicited a rather interesting response behind my back, and not one I am entirely comfortable with as a guild member. I have come to realise that in my attempts to try to help out, that people are polarising with my efforts. Many people know I ran a guild for a long time - and I have a lot if information and experience on how to do things. What works? what doesn't work? And I am vocal in passing on my opinion and experience in the guild forums, but always trying to make it clear that the officers are the ones who make the decisions and it is up to them. I am also active in trying to get people into the guild in whatever way the officers say I am allowed to. At the moment, I have permission to trade spam. So, since I don't get time to get into a lot of pugs, I have been doing said trade spam to help out with recruitment. I also bump our realm recruitment thread and keep it active. I do this because I want to raid, not for any ulterior motive. The more guild members help out, the better the guild becomes. It really is very easy to sit back, do nothing, then complain when people don't show up or numbers are low or whatever. WoW is an MMORPG - that means dealing with people as well as pixels.

But back to the story, one of the class peoples I mentioned above obviously started talking after I left vent last night about my trade spamming activities. They then posted in our forums their displeasure at trade spam in general (leaving my name out of it, but it was very clearly a direct result of my actions) saying that trade spam for a 12/12 ICC guild was effectively beneath us, and by extension, my behaviour was almost out of line with his vision of the guild. In fact, it seems that they were almost inciting a backlash to what I was doing deliberately, but passive aggressively. I hate passive aggressive so I said that I was the trade spammer in the thread and that I had officer approval (which I did).

This has been compounded by the fact that the officers are talking about "a shakeup" and inviting new officers into their team for some new blood up there. Quick piece of advice to officers out there? NEVER say there is going to be a "shakeup coming" and "new officers" until you know who they are and promote them straight away or are immediately ready to put the officer selection process in place. The bitching and disquiet created by people thinking they are the one in mind is not worth it.

Unfortunately, there has been one person who has been saying out loud that they think I am the person that they should take. I have told him to STFU but... it's not working. Person complaining about trade spam is quite active in the guild, is reasonably new, and could quite possibly be thinking that they are a candidate for that position and sees me as a threat. That last bit is complete speculation on my part, I could be completely wrong and it is based in my paranoia.

*sigh*

If I were offered the position, I would actually suggest someone else instead and not me, but I am getting off topic.

There are a lot of strong personalities in this guild (including me!), it is very interesting to see them posture around each other. I am also learning a lot about how important communication is within a guild.

Death to the Lich King!

2010-04-06T12:40:00.000+10:00

Last night, I got my Kingslayer title!
This means, I have a working strategy to write up in the next few days with lots of tips and tricks to get things moving (literally).

Stay tuned. And hopefully, soon, Hardmode tips and tricks!

My Webmaster is awesome

2010-04-06T09:51:00.000+10:00

Even though my raiding guild has all but bitten the dust, I still have an alt as a GM and there are still a lot of old guildies that hang out on our forums.

So, it's april fools, and my webmaster contacts me on MSN:

10:00:59 AM Webmaster: hey i really didn't have time to do it. but you might get a laff anyway. i had a plan for april 1st this year to put a clickthrough page on [our front page] that portayed HoS as a FarmVille guild.
10:01:10 AM Brangwen: ahaha
10:01:33 AM Webmaster: come harvest with us on facebook, etc.
10:02:48 AM Brangwen: lol
10:02:51 AM Webmaster: i made notes about it in february. but ran out of time.
10:02:55 AM Brangwen: oh damn
10:02:59 AM Brangwen: that woulda been cool
10:03:06 AM Brangwen: woudld have freaked me out for sure

So, with that small amount of encouragement, he wanders off and creates a front Farmville page anyway:
--
Thursday, 01 April 2010
Folks, it has recently become apparent that more of our members are spending time on Facebook, in fact, a lot of time on Facebook, more than playing WoW.
As a result, Harvesters of Sorrow is changing to a FarmVille guild.

Come join us, search for Harvesters after you log into FarmVille and send an officer a message for an invite.
Lets get those piggies squealing and work towards the biggest land grab FarmVille has ever seen.

Forum thread for discussion is here.
--

10:25:56 AM Webmaster: try the front page.
10:26:03 AM Webmaster: published it.
10:26:55 AM Branwen: LOL!
10:27:25 AM Webmaster: was going to put a link to a forum thread for discussion.
10:34:54 AM Webmaster: "hey Brang, have you unlocked the sheepdog trials yet? "
bit much perhaps... maybe i should delete it from shoutbox.
10:35:12 AM Brangwen: lol nah leave it haha
10:37:01 AM Webmaster: seany appears to be at the site atm too.
10:37:20 AM Brangwen: orly I guessed good then

Over the course of the next couple of hours, a few more guildies get wind of this prank, and being the awesome lovable people they are, generally BELIEVE IT in the forum thread:
--
Webmaster: As mentioned on the front page here, Harvesters goes Facebook, Harvesters of Sorrow has a new direction.
Discuss!

Brangwen: about time too
I know we have all been in the closet about this great game, now we can all come out and be proud.

Dunte: i dont want get addicted to an online game again! noooooooooooooooo!
Can you grow epics?

Seany: Most embarrassing front page story ever.
YOURE ALL CASUALS
EDIT: Just realised what day it is. You got me!
« Last Edit: April 01, 2010, 01:18:21 PM by Seany »

Keaper: Oh thank fuck lol

Hairyhippy: Read this after midday, so no fair in fooling me.

Webmaster: Quote from: Hairyhippy on April 01, 2010, 02:52:00 PM

Read this after midday, so no fair in fooling me.

I was going to take it down after QLD midday. Got told to put it back.

Seany: It's too good to take down.

Gnoob: hahaha good work!
i read the post before the front page though =[
lol
--
And myself and my awesome sauce webmaster continued to lol at our friends:

1:21:43 PM Webmaster: i should pull the joke now. after noon.
1:22:27 PM Webmaster: oh dear. we actually got seany.
1:22:59 PM Brangwen: LOL poor bastard
1:24:45 PM Brangwen: leave it for a sec - sic wants to look
1:24:46 PM Webmaster: ok, forum post is still there, article has "p.s. april fool" added to it and is no longer front page, but still reachable by the link.
1:25:49 PM Webmaster: it's still there.
1:25:59 PM Webmaster: just not front page
1:26:10 PM Brangwen: put it back up seany is sad
1:26:46 PM Webmaster: ok, is back
1:30:59 PM Brangwen: YAY!
1:34:06 PM Webmaster: um, we got keaper too?
1:34:31 PM Webmaster: his forum post expressing relief.
1:39:56 PM Brangwen: yeah they are both guillable

--
Thanks guys, We still love HoS!

Healing as a Pally - The Frostwing Halls

2010-03-31T09:01:00.000+11:00

Valithria Dreamwalker
Bacon the dragon
Kings the dragon
You should be going in the portals, so make sure you know what to do
Get into portal position early, use judgement or bacon upkeep/holy shock/FoL combo to keep casting and move into position
Holy Light all the way for this one, so change your gear/spec to maximise crits and Spell power of this spell (the buff means that MP5 is irrelevant)
Help out on raid healing when you can (glyph of HL will be obscene with lots of stacks later on in the fight), and keep an eye on Valithria - make sure bacon doesn't drop off.
Use LoH directly on Valithria when you have 25+ stacks (or when you are on your last healing phase)

Sindragosa
Phase 1/1.5
Single tank at a time fight, so bacon the tank, heal the raid.
Dont get more than 6 stacks of the debuff (and heal yourself if you have to)

Phase 2
Be careful of tank transitions, ensure that you are precasting on the incoming tank to avoid early hard hits
Dont get more than 4 stacks of anything at a time
Don't die to the debuffs - yes that might mean letting someone else die, as long as it isnt a tank, then its a necessary thing to do

Healing as a Pally - The Crimson Hall

2010-03-31T08:52:00.001+11:00

Blood Prince Council
Pop bacon on the purple balloon tank
Go hard early, as that balloon tank will be taking a fair whack of damage
Stand as close to the centre as you can, and get people to move away from you.
Heal the other two tanks evenly
Use fire aura and pop AM when the big ball of fire is cast
Keep the current target in mind and keep judgment of light up on it as best you can.

Blood-Queen Lana'thel
Phase 1
Get in melee range and get some mana back on your time with auto hits.
Bacon the blood mirrored off tank and heal the main tank
Make sure your raid frames show who has the bite buff, these guys dont need as much healing
Shadow aura

Phase 2
If you are human, get out of fear with your racial and bubble the second, otherwise bubble off the first fear and tremor totem the second
Get in position early and heal like crazy
Use AM to cover off the fear to position transition and try to ensure people have extra resistance if they get a bad fear

Valithria Dreamwalker

2010-03-25T10:00:00.000+11:00

Valithria is an upside down fight. You need to heal her from 50% to 100% to "beat" her.

The quick and dirty version is that a group of healers go into the portals to get healing buffs then come out and heal her while everyone else manages the adds.

Shopping list:
2 tanks
6-7 healers (3-4 portals, 3-4 raid healing)
DPS - including 1-2 zombie kiters

The Portal Team
The 3-4 healers in the healing team (and everyone else with any spare GCDs) start spamming Valithria as soon as possible and do not stop. Put your best single target healers in the portal team, eg pallies. Resto shaman really excel at this with their chain healing spam.

Valithria will put up green blobs on the ground saying "I have opened a portal into the dream". These blobs will eventually become clickable. The portal team needs to be ready and in range to get in them as soon as possible.

Once in the dream you have 15s to collect green blobs. You need to jump up off the ground and fly around collecting green blobs in the sky. It is a good idea to allocate each healer a general area for them to collect their own blobs so they don't try to grab each others accidentally. Left, Right and Front works for us. It is useful to know that the blobs have an aoe effect and if someone else pops one and you are in range, the buff will also get applied to you.

The blobs are tricky little suckers - not only are they small, but they float around. Their radius of exploding is very small, you really have to go right through the glowing blob in the middle. I highly recommend mouse turning for this phase. Try to pre-plan your run so you collect as many blobs in as short a time as possible. Each time you colect a blob your stack timer refreshes. Obviously, the the idea is to keep as many stacks on yourself as possible. The timer is 35s. In order to keep this as up as possible, watch your dream timer on your buff/debuff list and TRY to pop a green blob JUST before you get spat out into the real world again.

Again, when you are out in the real world your number 1 priority is to get as many heals onto Valithria as possible, and if you have splash heals, splash them around as much as you can. Bacon, chain heal, LoH (when you have 20+ stacks) all those special move heals which do lots of healy goodness - high HPS get them out and use them. Heals on CDs, try to keep once per fight heals to the end when you have high stacks.

AAAAAADDS!
This is very stock standard "manage the adds" section of the fight. You can go read up on the abilities of each add yourself, they are not really very difficult to understand.

The short version:
Get someone kiting the zombies away from the raid.
Kill blazing Skeletons as soon as you see them and with extreme prejudice (Lay Waste hurts a lot)
Try to gather the adds on top of the suppressors to the left and right to take advantage of aoe effects.
Interrupt the archmages
Avoid the columns of frost
Tank the aboms
Kill everything as fast as possible.

Honestly, that's it. Keep the adds under control, get your stacks as high as possible. Win.

Healing as a Pally - The Plagueworks

2010-03-24T09:34:00.002+11:00

Rotface
Bacon the add tank, heal the rotface tank (as the add tank might run out of range)
Stand on rotface and melee hit him for mana
Shocks on the infected person to assist with a quick heal to keep them alive
Use bubble to make sure your slime merges quickly if you have to run through green goo on the ground
Shadow aura

Festergut
Shadow AURA!
Bacon the tank and heal the raid, as the raid takes less damage focus on the tank.
Have DG/HoSanc ready for emergencies on the tank
Watch the boss for the cast of pungent blight and save AM for a bit of extra shadow protection then (incase someone missed a buff)
Plant your feet in melee range and heal like crazy!

Putricide
Phase 1 and 2
A much more mobile fight
Aura doesn't matter
Bacon on the tank, and help raid heal
Throw additional helping heals on the slime targets
Keep an eye on the abomination and heal it up if necessary

Phase 3
Keep the tanks alive at all costs
Try to keep your best DPS up if you can spare a bacon heal
Pre-bacon the next tank and start pre-emptively healing them when the current tank is on n-1 debuffs (n is the number of stacks you guys decided to take per tank)
Keep bacon on the current tank so you can throw out extra heals on the raid and the previous tanks without losing a beat on the current tank
Keep all the tanks alive (did I mention that? I did? well it really is that important)
Save LoH for the third tank phase

Healing as a Pally - The Lower Spire

2010-03-22T15:54:00.000+11:00

Lord Marrowgar
Phase 1
Get into melee range and hit Lord Marrowgar.
Put Beacon on one tank and heal the other (HL or FoL are acceptable depending on gear levels)
Frost Aura is a must.

Phase 2
Plant those feet, beacon yourself and heal like crazy, Shock, HL, FoL
If the fires come your way, strafe out a little bit so you dont get hit.
Use Aura Mastery at this time to help people stuck in fires.

Lady Deathwhisper
Try to stay as central as possible to keep range on all tanks
Beacon on one tank, heal the other - if they are both in range of you, they are in range of each other for beacon.
Use the aura you are specced into, resist is not a major player here.
Aura mastery not a major player here except for fun.
Keep your judgement up on the lady, dont try to judge the adds (the ret pallies will do that)

Gunship
If you are careful, and stand on the edge of the boat, you can generally have range of everyone.
Beacon yourself and go nuts healing anything and everything.
This is an easy battle, you should not have to do a lot of work.
Judge the axe throwers or any thing in range, really.
Fire Aura!

Deathbringer Saurfang
Stand wherever your RL's strat tells you to
Move HoJ onto your bar
Aura is not critical
Keep your judgment up on Saurfang
Keep Sacred Shield up on Saurfang's current target and FoL spam it (that should be enough to keep them up)
When a mark goes out, beacon the mark and keep FoL spamming.
When a second mark goes out, swap your FoLs to the second mark target.
If a third mark goes out, start using holy lights and alternate your heals around the marked targets and tanks.
When an add comes in range, Stop, HAMMER TIME! You should be able to get one stun every 2 sets of adds.
If toward the end things get hairy, you might want to use a Hand of Sacrifice or DS to ease the pressure.

Healing as a Pally

2010-03-22T15:33:00.000+11:00

Ok, I am going to start down a road of advice for general raid tips for healing as a pally. I am going to start in ICC normal and pretty much jot down everything I find useful in every strategy I do. I think wing by wing might be the go to start off with, might even critique all the Phat Lewtz if they bear a comment (not everything always does - a lot of pally gear is a no brainer). I will try and comment on when all our pally tricks are useful above and beyond the usual "OH CRAP A WIPE Ummmm I will DI THE TANK!"

Blood-Queen Lana'thel

2010-03-22T12:07:00.000+11:00

Well, after spending an inordinate amount of time wiping on this boss the other night, I think I have a REALLY good grasp of how to write this one up. For the record, this is the ultimate in noob fights. Super simple mechanics that every man and his worg will get wrong, and it only takes one person to stuff it up and cause a wipe.

Shopping List:
2 tanks
6-7 healers
even distribution of DPS, all with working microphones

BQL comes in 2 phases, on the ground and in the air. She will have 2 air phases before she enrages and smears your entire raid into paste on the ground. That's 5 minutes people!

Phase 1
The tanks run in (with appropriate MDs etc) and keep BQL on the stairs. Turn her to face the back of the room. She will instantly cast a Shroud of Sorrow on everyone in the room. This will keep the healers on their toes.

Ranged and healers need to spread out evenly around the room or you this will kill you and your stacked up buddies. So just spread out nice and evenly - in fact, spread out as per where you will be for phase 2. Melee and Holy Pallies stack directly behind BQL at max hitbox range.

Cast your mind back to ToC and to Jaraxxus. The flamey thing that you had to run around the room screaming whilst on fire? That's back, except this time it is purple and called Swarming Shadows. When you get it (your favourite boss mod will scream at you, be that your RL or something on screen or both) you need to run around the OUTSIDE of the room as close to the wall as possible, to ensure that everyone has as much room as possible for phase 2. DO NOT stand still or you will die and be ridiculed by your raid team. Even running in the wrong place is better than not running at all. But yes, ideally, get that fire around the edges of the room.

Next, again cast your mind back, this time to Yogg Saron. Remember when you and someone else were joined together with the bright green bonds of insanity? Well another similar mechanic is in play here. This time the bonds are bright red, and explode with an aoe every second or two until you run and give the people you are joined to a hug in the middle of the room. In 10man it's 2 people, in 25 it's 3 people. The best way to deal with this is to have everyone affected run to the diamond floor pattern on the floor in the middle of the room. The AoE is nasty, so again, you need to move as fast as possible to the centre.

Now I have explained the two phase 1 mechanics that are simple, I am going to delve into ones that are not, and are still not really understood.

The tanks are sharing damage, or they should be. The tank (ie one with aggro) will have an ability on them called Blood Mirror. The toon physically closest to you will share all the damage that you, as the tank, take. This is a good thing because BQL hits hard, but nothing that an appropriately geared Holy Paladin or two can't deal with (with good backup of course).

A short time after Blood Mirror is up, BQL will go bite a toon (because she is a vampire and all). And thus begins the most confusing part of this fight. That toon will have the buff Essence of the Blood Queen giving you 100% extra damage and will heal you for 15%. However, it also has a downside. After 60s, you gain the debuff Frenzied Bloodlust. In short, you have to bite someone to satiate your lust for blood drinking, now that you are a vampire. You have 15s to get to another toon and use the vehicle bar now on your screen to bite them. You cannot bite anyone that is already bit, so I highly recommend getting raid frames that support you seeing the Blood Queen buff so you don't try to bite someone already affected. Why is this an issue? Because if you don't bite someone you will become MC'ed and almost certainly will cause a wipe at this stage in progression.

Tips about the first bites - get the first bites onto your highest DPS. Now, I have spent a lot of time recently trying to figure out who gets the first Vampiric Bite. There are plenty of theories going around the net, ranging from threat, to who hits BQL first after blood mirror. I have looked through logs and logs, and honestly, I cannot really see a pattern to who gets it yet. When I do see a pattern, I will let you all know. Hell, even I, as a healer, has managed to get bit first. It has something to do with threat, something to do with when you hit her as well. The best bet if you want to try to control who gets the bite first is to get everyone to hold DPS except the tanks and the person you want to get bit. Let them establish the threat table and hits in first by holding off for 4 or 5s.

Get raid frames that show the buff clearly and a working mic in vent/TS. I cannot stress this enough. If your target is bitten, you will need to find a new target and quickly. Call it out on vent and establish who you are biting as soon as you can. There are mods you can get to help your raid team work out who is getting bitten when, I don't use them, so I cant tell you what they are. We call our targets early on in vent and make sure people don't screw it up.

The first biter - bite as soon as you can to ensure that people do not have to try to do bites during phase 2 (you will understand why when I describe it). If you are looking like you need to bite during phase 2, either get your bite off early, or try to wait until after it is over (risky, but again, call this out on vent if you are worried). If the first bite is timed right, you shouldn't need to worry about this.

So you understand the math, this is how the bites approximately progress during the fight (note the big fat APPROXIMATELY ymmv due to vagaries of when people actually bite in that 15s window):
0:15s 1 buffed (BQL bites someone)
1:15ish 2 buffed (1 bit another)
2:00 Air Phase
2:10 Ground phase
2:20 ish 4 buffed (2 bit 2 more)
3:25 ish 8 buffed (4 bit 4 more)
3:40 Air phase
3:50 Ground phase
4:30 ish 16 buffed (8 bit 8 more) all your DPS should have the debuff at this stage.
Enrage - there should be about 9 people unbitten who can be used as "spares" for stuff ups.

Phase 2
BQL will swoop up in the air and cast a fear on everyone. Tremor totems here are invaluable, also any other "get out of fear free" ability you might have helps. Positioning in this phase is crucial, and you don't have a lot of time to move.

As for Blood Princes' vortices, this is a "spread out or die" mechanic. All the healers and ranged should know where they need to stand for this already, as they would have already copped the extra damage in phase 1 if they didn't. Now, the stacked melee need to find their spaces. The tanks can stack on top of each other where they tank the queen, and all the melee need to spread out around the platform, making sure they have 6 yards between them. Using your favourite range checker (your eyes or a mod) ensure you get away from anyone after the fear. If you are having trouble with this, crack out MS paint and draw a picture and allocate people to positions. Again, simple mechanic, but one person in the wrong position will wipe out a heap of people, and probably cause a wipe.

When phase 2 is done, melee collapse back into their phase 1 positions.

--

So, why are we wiping?
Are you spread out enough in phase 1 and 2?
Are your healers keeping up (it's hard yakka early on)?
Is anyone getting MCed?
Is anyone dying early with the debuff meaning the damage increase is not going out to enough people?
Are people trying to bite the same targets?
Are people simply not paying attention on vent, or not talking when something goes wrong?

I think this fight is actually simpler than putricide, there is just so many more places where people can wipe the raid which make this a very frustrating fight. Be careful taking new people in on this once you have it under control - even one new person can throw the whole balance out and give you a night of frustrating wipes where the week before you one shot it.

Blood Prince Council

2010-03-16T16:42:00.000+11:00

This is one of the harder strategies to wrap your brain around as a DPS. This is the opposite of a DPS fight - this is a do your job and turn off the meters fight.

Now, there is so much going on in this fight, it is quite likely I will forget something - please let me know and I will update as we go along.

Shopping list:
2 tanks (one for Taldaram - hence forth known as Edward Sparklypants, and one for Valanar)
1 "other" tank (usually a warlock - for Keleseth)
6-7 healers
good mix of range and melee DPS

The pull is straight forward, each tank picks up their assigned mob and moves them apart from one and other. The trick to this fight is that one Boss is Active with the red swirly crap at a time. They will be the one with a health bar, and they are the one with the special ability active. They are the one you need to attack.

Before I get into each trick for each boss, there is something that needs to be made so painfully clear you would think you had a wasp sting you nose (don't laugh, I had to AFK recently to rescue someone who had that happen to them). This is not a DPS race, this is a survivability and raid coordination fight. There will be some people at the bottom of the meters who usually sit at the top. This is perfectly normal. I cannot stress enough that you do your job and you do it with 100% uptime.

With that in mind, let's look at the bosses one at a time.

Normal Keleseth
This dude is tanked by the range tank, usually a warlock. Keleseth creates floating purple balloons that the range tank has to run around and collect (with aggro) while keeping Keleseth interested in them and no one else. They need to collect as many as they possibly can, as each balloon channels Shadow Resonance into its target. Yes, it stacks.

The other annoying thing Keleseth does is throw lances around whoever has its aggro. The sooner that range tank has 2-3 balloons, the better for the healers.

Note to healers: this tank will be taking large damage early on from the lances until they can collect a couple of balloons. Make sure they are all healed up and watched carefully. I recommend this as a bacon target for a pally.

Keleseth is pretty straight forward: Collect balloons, keep threat.

Normal Taldaram
Edward Sparklypants is the only one allowed to be in front of this guy, so tank him off to the side facing away from the raid or he will turn more people into Edward than we really need to see in a raid (we already have 3 emo vampires in this fight, more than one emo sparkly vampire tank is just too much for the healers to deal with!).

Taldaram also throws balls of fire around the room, which explode on impact with their target. Fire resistance totems/aura will help here.

Normal Valanar
This guy is all about the physical shock factor. No resistances will help you with this more than SPREAD OUT!!!

He will create glowing yellow balls in the sky that slowly descend to the ground. Allocate a hunter, or a mage or someone whose sole job it is to keep these buggers from hitting the ground. When they are hit with damage, they go up in the air again. If one of these suckers hits the ground, it will pretty much knock everyone flat on their backs and *points* over there, which stuffs up all the careful positioning, you will have set up to get through this fight. So, keep these things in the air at all costs. It is easy to do, and the consequences of NOT doing it are dire and onflowing.

Valanar will also place swirly white things randomly in the room, if you arewith 12 yards when they go off you will get knocked on your arse again. So, when you see the white swirly near you, make sure you move away. This is where range finder mods are very very useful. Keep an eye on yours.

Red Swirly Valanar
Let's take this backwards.
When Valanar is empowered (which means he has a health bar, and is the current DPS target) his vortices also become empowered.

Instead of placing a couple of white swirly things in the room you need to move away from, everyone becomes their own little vortex. Everyone needs to spread out at least 10 yards apart to ensure that you dont cop multiples of 7k damage. It doesn't take much for you to die to this.

This isnt a difficult mechanic to understand, but it is REALLY hard to get right. It relies on everyone knowing what they are doing, have some idea of where they need to be and also having range finders (either your eyeballs or a mod of some kind) telling you that you are far enough apart from the people near you.

Often, to minimise movement for the healers, they are allocated the semi circle at the bottom of the stairs so they have range for everyone and an easily defined space for them to be in. Everyone else spreads out outside that.

Red Swirly Taldaram
Taldarams empowered ability is his fireball. The rule of thumb is the bigger the ball, the harder it hits, and this one starts our HUGE. Fortunately, it also likes to smash people it goes past and that bleeds of fire to do which makes it smaller. Now, this fireball will hit you really hard if you dont reduce its size by having it hit people as it goes along. Generally, you have rogues sprint along with the fireball, taking damage and making the final impact lessened. If you have issues with this, make sure other DPS run in and take some of the damage away.

Having rogues able to do this is easy because this will only happen when Taldaram has a health bar and everyone is attacking him.

Red Swirly Keleseth
Keleseth's empowered ability is his lances. They hit like mack trucks if the ranged tank is not holding enough balloons. As long as the range tank has aggro and is continuously collecting balloons, then this part of the fight is quite straight forward.

--
Slowly, slowly is the key to this fight. Make sure you keep those kinetic bombs in the air, that everyone knows where to spread to when vortices are about, and that the fireball has its power bled off by people being in range to be hit as it speeds along.

The very hardest thing is spreading out. There is not a lot more I can tell you about that, it is, unfortunately, a bit of a retard check as well. And yes, one person can wipe the raid.

Healers, there is a lot of damage going around in here, so pay attention and make sure that you keep your space at the bottom of the stairs to be yours so you dont have to worry about moving for vortices.

Shadow resistance and fire resistance is very helpful.

Wipes are generally from the following things:
1) the range tank not having enough purple balloons
2) the range tank not getting heals early on when there are not enough balloons to help mitigate damage
3) healers getting knocked over (either not moving themselves, or someone moving into them) and therefore tanks dying
4) kinetic bombs hitting the ground because the people allocated to stop them is not doing their job
5) People dying to the empowered vortices by not spreading out enough
6) Empowered fireballs not getting bled off enough

If you have that list covered off, you should be well on your way to getting these guys down.

Well, that was much harder than anticipated

2010-03-12T15:46:00.000+11:00

Splurging that strat forward was a marathon and a half!

I am not really sure why it was so hard, possibly it was the last boss that my guild was working on before we died, so now that is written up, that really is a formal acknowledgment of that chapter of my wow career being gone.

That said, new guild is going well. Apart from one thing. I am suffering from "but you aren't them" syndrome. But not in the way you would think. I am not worried that this new guild is not like my guild. That is fine, I am suffering from "We have only ever had one holy pally and he does things this way so why aren't you doing things this way?"

Um... because I am not them?

Mostly, I just don't have the gear their pally does. I am geared and (was) specced to be a utility OT healer. I valued crit and int, I was specced into the ret tree for critty goodness. And no matter what the people on EJ say about it, the spec is viable, it doesn't OOM as much as you might think and you can quickly switch your style mid raid if necessary. I can FoL till the cows come home, almost literally with a bottomless well of mana. I can HL for a good lengthy period of time because I have a huge mana pool from all the int. This allows time for my crits to do their work (raid buffed I sit AROUND 70% crit).

But one of the guild leaders is also the main tank - and he's nervous of my style. He doesn't like "dipping" low (which is actually not at all an issue for him, he is just paranoid) and panic uses CDs. So, to mollify him I have dual specced holy. One into the ret tree, and one into the prot tree (taking imp dev aura as we have no prot pally). Now, respeccing into the prot tree was something I was looking at for hardmodes (if we ever kill LK) but not really before that.

So I have dropped my lovely DPS spec in favour of trialing 2 specs side by side. Hopefully next week I will have parses to look at on the same fights with differing specs.

I suspect that because I am not on top of the healing meters, he thinks I am doing something wrong. *sigh* When I manage to get ANY T10 that is useful, I am quite confident my healing output will increase.

Professor Putricide

2010-03-12T15:03:00.003+11:00

I had originally started writing this up as a 10man strat, but since then, I have managed to be able to kill this guy a few times on 25s so here we go!

The voice acting for this boss is a little tired by this point and is quite likely to send you to your music controls to try to find an option to stop the vocals! But that aside, this is quite a fun fight.

Shopping list
3 tanks (preferably one with a good DPS output for a tank, ie a bear tank in kitty form is a good idea)
6 healers
Ranged heavy DPS team

The pull

Get everyone up towards the table end of the room and off to the left a bit. The Main Tank will pull putiricide, your third tank will be DPSing, or at least pretending to, and your second tank is going to go for a ride! MT tank where putricide stands, and OT go up to that table and drink the bottles labelled "drink me". You will turn into an AWESOME CREATURE capable of a couple of things. Now, I have never driven this guy so bare with me here. You get a few abilities. One is eating up the goo (which powers your other abilities up), another is slowing oozes and the last is an attack. I will explain as we go along how you use these for the oozes. You also have a bit of a stink to you, and you will cause a tick to the entire raid every 2 s.

Phase 1 (100-80%)
This is the second easiest phase and makes you practise the things you will need in Phase 2 (where the difficulty is stepped up).

The 2 slime puddles (as thrown around by the delightful prof) will increase in size and eventually take over the room if the OT doesn't gobble them up! And as with all things, Don't Stand In The Goo (unless you are gobbling up the goo). All the time throughout the entire encounter, he will chuck out a couple of slime puddles at people. Get out of them, don't stand in them.

Everyone is out of the goo, the first two puddles are down, and the OT is on top of the gobbling. It is now time to start explaining the rinse and repeat factor of the fight. Get this right, and you will have the fight pretty much sorted out (except for transitions, but I will explain that later)

Green Ooze
On the Right hand side as you are facing the table at the back of the room, after the Prof has had a crack at his unstable experiments (this guy will never learn! But it does give you 2.5s warning to get ready), green gas will spew out of that right hand side wall and a green ooze will appear.

As you can imagine, if Bad Things are happening on the Right Hand Side, chances are, you will need to be as far as way as pixelly possible. And this is certainly no exception. Drag the boss over to the far left hand corner. Healers should be in that far left hand corner, melee on the boss but ready to run, and ranged as far over to the left hand side as they can be yet still be in the middle(ish). Let me find a picture to show you. Hmmmm.... None that are good. Here let me draw something awful in MS paint!

Yep, that is truly awful, but it gets the point across.

So, that green woobly thing coming out of the oozes head? That is cast randomly on a raid member, and it freezes them in the spot. You can still cast and hit things, but you cant move and you are taking damage. Kill the ooze. Kill it dead as fast as you can. Obviously the further you are away from the ooze the more time you have to kill it before it gets to the target and explodes. Now, that damage is evenly distributed to everyone in range and knocks you all back some distance. If not enough people are in range, then it might do enough damage to kill you! for example if there are 2 people in range (the target and a martyr) then both will take 70000/2 = 35000 damage! Ouch. Splat. 3? 70000/3 = 23k each - almost survivable 4 people? 70k/4 = 18k which is probably survivable. Obviously, the more people are there the less damage everyone takes. But 4 really is the bare minimum you need to survive.

So, all the melee need to run to the ooze and sit with it and kill it dead (this should theoretically be more than 4 people!). If the ooze makes it to the target, which is quite likely, then after it knocks everyone back, it will pick another target and do it all again. Same deal! Melee get to the ooze and stay with it. Keep repeating this until the ooze dies.

Range, you should simply stay where you are and smash that ooze down FAST!

Assuming you do this right, then you will have time to DPS putricide and move into position for the Orange Ooze.

Locks and mages, yes you can teleport and blink to increase the distance between you and the green ooze. I tried bubbling while ooze stunned, and the results have been unpredictable... the ooze sometimes runs around randomly, sometimes it rehomes... I wouldn't recommend it and save bubble for P3.

Orange Ooze
So, this time an orange ooze will appear from the left hand side of the room. Here's a picture I prepared earlier:

OK so you can see where everyone needs to be. You will also note that the ranged DPS really dont need to move much between oozes - which is kind of the point, to try to maximise DPS time on putricide before swapping to the ooze.

As with the green ooze, as soon as that ooze is able to take DPS you need to smashy-smashy and get it dead as fast as possible. The person targetted by the orange ooze will feel fat and bloated and will not be able to run fast. It is VITAL that the abomination slow that ooze as quickly as they can. If that orange ooze touches its target, you will throw up so violently you might kill yourself. So be careful, make sure you kite that add well and everything will be alright.

Yes, like the green ooze you can use your tricks like lock teleports and blink, just be careful of them and be sure you know where you will end up and where your ooze will go because of it. As soon as the ooze is dead, prep for green ooze (by moving over) and DPS the Professor.

Phase 1 summary
Don't stand in green stuff (except if you are an abomination, in which case eat it to power your abilities)
For green ooze, go left, for orange go right and kite it around.

And that, kiddies, is phase 1. Getting this right is pretty much the crux of the fight. It really isnt that easy as it doesn't take much for one person to get it a bit stuffed up and then everything will go horribly horribly wrong. Practise and don't give up hope!

Phase 2 transition
At about 82% you need to call out to slow DPS so that you can control when putricide is going to stun everyone with tear gas. Why is this important to control? Well, if everyone is stunned for 20s, and there is an add out, and the abomination JUST slowed it... how long does that slow last for? The answer is "not long enough" and as soon as everything is UNstunned, it speeds its way over to the target killing it dead. SO clear calls, if you are the abom, and you see putricide at 82ish % and a ooze about to spawn CALL OUT that DPS needs to halt, and the add needs to die before putricide hits 80%.

In other sneaky news, you can vanish and iceblock out of the stun effect and get some free DPS on putricide. Now, you might be thinking "isnt that an exploit" well... it hasn't been hotfixed so I am putting it in the "creative use of game mechanics" category.

Phase 2 (80-35%)
This phase has everything phase 1 has plus two more things to look out for.
Periodically, the Prof will throw blobs of goo at you or in your general direction. Simply get out of the way! Now, this is a ranged attack and if there are not enough people out at range, then this will get thrown at someone in melee, with no time to dodge the blow! This is a Bad Thing. So please, make sure you have your ranged people at range, and melee in melee. Now, these goo things bounce around, while it is possible to run underneath them, it certainly isnt wise to do so. Strafing is your best option in this case. One thing to watch out for? If you are moving sides for goo, try not to run into the bouncing blob of goo. I learned that one the hard way a couple of times *whistles innocently*

Now the melee people dont get off lightly either. Professor Putricide will place horrible looking glowing orange bottles at his feet. If you break these bottles, you will be exploded, and everyone around you will be exploded as well. Clearly, you dont want this to happen (and this is the source of many wipes when you first start learning this fight), so the tank needs to be aware of this and move Putricide around so that melee can hurt him in *cough* safety.

Again, if you are being chased by ooze, or changing sides, be aware of the bottles on the floor and dont run into them while concentrating on health bars *whistles innocently*

So, Phase 2 is the same as phase 1 but with added "don't stand in the fire"s.

Phase 2 transition
As with phase 1 transition, when Putricide hits 40% be wary of when oozes are due and how many slime pools are up. You want Putricide to hit 35% with no ooze and as few slime puddles as possible (more than 1 will make P3 really hard).

So control the fight kill that last ooze and clean up the puddles, and smash putricide to 35% triggering

Phase 3
At this point you all get teared again, and yes rogues and mages can get out of it if their abilities are not on CD.

Now we need 3 tanks. As you will have noticed the slime puddles actually grow in size if not gobbled up. Well, your "drink me" options are all gone now, you have no monster to clean up the mess, and those puddles are going to grow and grow and grow and yes, leave you all with no room (this is the soft enrage).

Try to tank putricide off to the side, as close to any already present goo piles as possible. The raid needs to spread out a bit, and try to keep the slime puddles as close together as possible by staying near older ones. And tanks just need to kite the boss around the room steering clear of trapping themselves in a corner with no escape route.

The tank will be getting stacks of the plague that putricide is carrying around with him. As the tank gets more stacks, the raid will be copping more and more damage (its crazy healers!!). Now here is a bit of crazy math for you. As a tank gets more stacks, the increase in damage to the raid is HUUUUUGE. So, 1 stack on 3 tanks is smaller raid damage than 3 stacks on one tank. However, since rotating tanks that quickly is generally unfeasible and assumes you have evenly geared tanks, it is generally accepted that a tank take 3-4 stacks before changing. Of course, this will depend on a great number of things, including how well geared your tanks are, how good your healers are and how fast your DPS is.

OK so your first tank has successfully kited around has 4 stacks of the debuff, it is time for the next tank. Now, think about this, the first tank is still generating 4 stacks worth of raid damage, and now the second tank is copping that plus more stacks of their own, plus general boss damage. As you can see, you want your best tank last, and your "worst" tank first.

Healers - here's a very important fact. At no stage is it a good idea to let a tank die in phase 3. Even if they are finished tanking. As soon as a tank dies, and those debuffs drop off, Putricide will heal enough probably to cause you to wipe. So, keep those tanks marked and topped up.

Oh yeah, did I mention that putricide also hits harder in phase 3? No? Well, I have now.

Tanks, its generally up to you in this phase, use your CDs wisely, kite intelligently (don't get stuck in a corner trapped by expanding slime piles) and don't die.

Raid, try to stand as close to a slime puddle as you can so get them to overlap as much as possible to free up as much space on the floor as you can. Throw down a hero/BL and make putricide cry out in agony. GO hard and win.

WHEW! That was a long time coming. Hope it is still helpful to people out there!

Hot tip for the cold top

2010-03-02T09:45:00.000+11:00

Wanna know something awesome for the Lich King fight?
In phase 3, with the val'kyr who wanna drop your mates off the edge of the cliff? Yeah, those chicks always ALWAYS head for the closest edge. Have a think about that for a moment. Yes, that means you can control which direction they move, and instead of having them go off in seemingly random directions, if you stand stacked just off centre, you can get them moving predictably to the edge. Which makes CC and DPSing them down a whole lot easier!

It also means that if you stack over there *points* then you can get them going that way which is not over the defile on the ground *turns 180 and points at the black goo on the ground*

No, I haven't killed LK - but I have spent a lot of gold on repairs wiping.

I also haven't yet been in on a Blood Queen kill, nor that green dragon and I finally got a putricide kill last Thursday. I have 2 strats due to be written up (being putricide and council)

Sindragosa

2010-03-01T08:47:00.002+11:00

The fight mechanics in Sindragosa are reasonably simple. But add them together and you get a deadly dance that is very easy to wipe on! If you can do sapphiron, then this is a very similar fight. So reach your brains back into naxxaramus and think about the mechanics in there. Yeah, Line of sighting with ice blocks, melee having a horrible time dancing between face and tail... remember? ok good. Let's move onto Sindragosa.

Shopping list
2 tanks
6-7 healers
Nice even mix of DPS

WHOA but we didn't finish the trash?
Once you clear out the last trash pack on her ledge thing, Sindragosa will immediately fly down and engage you. Be ready and prepared for that!

Phase 1
Tank Sindragosa where she lands (in the middle of the middle circle). It is a good idea to turn her to the left or right by 90 degrees so that melee can avoid being hit. In other words, have the tank turn her so as to expose her flank to the stairs. For the love of the light, do not stand near her face, unless you are a tank, or you will die a horrible death from halitosis or just from her swiping at you. To make matters worse, she also has a tail swipe that will hit you for six if you get too near to her rear end. Remembering these two things (dont stand near face, dont stand near tail) is really important for phase 3. So, burn them into your brain right now.

Now that you know where not to stand, let's look at where TO stand. Melee should stack right up on her middle (much like sapphiron) and range should be directly behind melee at max spell casting range. The two groups should be stacked to assist healers with the cold aura sindragosa will inflict on everyone.

Every so often, Sindragosa will drag everyone to her then start casting an aoe spell that will kill you if you are caught in it. So, here is how you get out of it. Mouse turn immediately and piss bolt for the stairs. If you are a keyboard turner, now is the time to repent! You simply do not have enough time to keyboard turn and still be able to run 26 yards to avoid the aoe blast. Trust me on this, I am a keyboard turner, and I am now mouse turning for this event. Keyboard turning is simply not fast enough. I also recommend getting the boot speed increase enchant if you are struggling. You must run with the pack, or you may struggle with the cold aura and general dying from being out of range of heals. There is no reason to be dying to this event if you do all of the above things. Believe me, if you die on this more than once, your RL will be raging at you (if you are an RL, you should not be taking any excuses for people stuffing this up)

What are these debuffs I am getting?
There are 2 debuffs that sindragosa puts on the raid. One for hitting sindragosa and one applied randomly to casters for casting spells. Your favourite boss mod will tell you who gets stricken with the caster one and when. Unchained magic will drop off after a period of time and you can cast freely again. Permeating Chill is a permanent effect on sindragosa, but it has a chance of application per hit. It is about 20% from what I read.

These both cause a DoT debuff (hitting / casting) to be applied to the person which cannot be dispelled. However, the stacks drop off after 8s. If you are hitting sindragosa in anyway, you need to make sure you manage the hitting debuff. If you are casting, you need to manage the casting one. If you are a caster DPS, you may need to manage both. It is your responsibility to not get too many stacks. If you are hitting sindragosa, that means stop hitting her for 8s. If you are casting, that means stop casting for 8s. Each time you get a stack, it refreshes the timer back to 8s. It is really important to understand that. You actually have to STOP for 8s for ALL the stacks to drop off. Most people will have about 6-8 stacks before letting them drop off, but this will depend on what your healers are capable of.

Phase 2
When Sindragosa hits 85% (and then every 1:50 after that time) she will flap into the air, much like sapphiron. Everyone needs to run to the bottom of the stairs at this point.

5 players will be marked with a little blue down arrow on their heads. Your fave boss mod will probably also mark them with raid markers (if it doesn't, I strongly recommend that you find one that does).

If you are NOT marked, you need to get the hell away from anyone that is marked, and by away, I mean away not just sort of away.

If you ARE marked, you have a very special job to do (and this really isn't easy, and will require practise as you only have 7 seconds to get into the right place). Each person should have a raid marker on their head - be aware as lag might play a factor in this. Now, at the bottom of the stairs (and we choose this position to minimise the area in which things can go wrong) you 5 people need to make a pattern. That pattern should be something similar to what you can find on tankspot in their project marmot vids. 2 people in front, 3 in back, like a pyramid without the top point. What is important is that you make sure you very clearly assign your raid markers to a position in that arrangement so everyone knows exactly where they are moving to. RLs, it is a good idea to have a macro reminding people of their positions for the first few attempts until people learn it. Putting down flares to mark out the positions is also a good learning tool.

Everyone should have a range finder on their screen - when those marked people turn into Ice Tombs, they will inflict aoe damage on everyone within 10 yards. If you are within 10 yards of a marked/tombed person you are doing something wrong. If you are marked and are within 10 yards, it is quite likely that you will DIE HORRIBLY and everyone will mock you. If you are not marked and within 10 yards of a marked person, not only will you cop damage, but you will also become tombed. This is a Bad Thing, as you will see in a minute.

Now let's assume everyone did that perfectly (which, is actually pretty unlikely). The raid is on the stairs, and the ice tombs are between the raid and sindragosa. You all remember Hodir from Ulduar? and getting the frozen guys out of the ice blocks? Yep, here we go again guys! It's a smoosh of Hodir and Sapphiron.

So the raid needs to be doing 2 things. The first is that they need to DPS their team mates out of the tombs before they Die Horribly unable to breathe. Second, is that the raid needs to make sure they line of sight the Frost bombs Sindragosa will randomly drop on the ground. Now you will see why the bottom of the stairs was chosen! There will be 4 frost bombs dropped in Phase 2, and each bomb will have a target on the ground for you to line up with the tombs.

So, get behind the back 3 tombs and smash them down while staying out of line of sight of the bombs! Easy right? Not so much. The front 2 tombs you need to get down to about 20% and keep them there until the last bomb drops. If you smash everything out too quickly, you will have nothing to hide behind! After the 4th bomb is dropped, free the last two people and get back into phase 1.

Healers!
You will have LoS issues in this phase, if it becomes too much of an issue discuss with your RL where to position the raid to help you out. Also, make sure the marked people are topped up to full before they become tombed, and make sure they are quickly healed up after they are released. It does happen that a tombed person gets released just in time to cop a frost bomb to the face and die. Be really aware of that, and call out to slow/stop DPS or be ready with a CD to save that person if necessary.

Phase 3
Ok so you managed to transition from phase 1 to phase 2 enough times to hurt sindragosa enough that she now has 35% health. Stay in your positions (melee on her flank, and ranged behind melee at max casting distance) and get ready for the REAL fight.

In addition to ALL the abilities you previously have known and loved (the face cleave and halitosis, the tail swipe, the melee and caster debuffs, the sucking you in, and you running on out with a mouse turn) she has a new ability called mystical buffay, and we are back to having to LoS it to drop it off! Well, what a coincidence, Sindragosa is conveniently iceblocking people in P3 as well for you to hide behind!

So, everything else is the same... how do we add in the iceblocks and LoSing?
The first thing you need to do is split your raid into 2 teams, with even distribution of melee and ranged and healers in each. Each team will be allocated a "side" (generally left and right).

The first person to cop the Ice tomb needs to run away from the pack, and stand as close to sindragosa's front leg as they can without getting the face cleave and halitosis. Then the team for that side, needs to run over, stand with the iceblock inbetween them and sindragosa, then dps down the block.

Here is the trick: do not free the iceblocked person until the next iceblock is ready.

The next iceblock should be ready, and that person should dash to the back leg, again stand as close to sindragosa as possible without hopping the tail swipe. As soon as that iceblock is up, the first iceblock should be destroyed, that team head back to DPSing sindragosa, and the other team should be LoSing Sindragosa on the second iceblock.

Again, wait until the next iceblock is ready before releasing the person then run back into DPSing sindragosa positions.

Up until this point you could single tank Sindragosa... but no more! You will need to swap tanks as the tanks will also need to line of sight her behind an iceblock to remove the stacks of debuff. If a tank gets too many stacks they will be oneshot and die horribly, so make sure your tanks are watching their debuffs and cooldowns and calling tank changes for the healers.

And that is phase 3. It's much more complicated than it sounds to get right. Positioning is everything, and something that people are inherantly bad at. Just make sure everyone has their range checkers on for spreading out the ice blocks, that they mouse turn the sucking in thing and remember where they are supposed to be when and after some practise, you should be able to kill this undead beastie.

Good luck!

For the Love of the Light!

2010-02-16T13:43:00.000+11:00

I had my chance to face palm against Sindragosa 25 last night.
Not only was I wholly unprepared to be invited at short notice, but I was also extremely unprepared. I think this point is so important, I had to make it twice.

So, I crammed as much wowhead/tankspot as I could in the 10mins I had to play with before getting summoned into the instance.

WHOA THERE NER! Didn't you say that your guild had stopped 25s?
Well, yes we have.

I had to make a tough call last week. I had to decide what I wanted to do more - run a guild or run 25man content. And this is what I wrote on my guild site about it (with a few edits for it to make sense here):

This is not easy for me to say.
I am going to be moving Brangwen to another guild to continue raiding 25s.

All I have ever really wanted to do is raid. When I couldn't find a guild to do that in originally the way I wanted it done, I made my own place with the support of a group of people to run a guild with.

When those people left, I found another group of people to run a guild with to continue raiding. And now, after 2.5 years, that group of people has finally dwindled down to 2.

There are many reasons why I decided to call a halt to 25s. I was also very aware that it was probably the end of us as we knew it irrevocably. And yes, it broke my heart. And yes, I feel like I am deserting those who chose to stay. And yes, I have been uncommunicative about this decision, because I have been struggling with even admitting it to myself. But, I find that I want more than this guild can provide.

I want to kill the Lich King on 25 mode, and I want to do 25man hardmodes. I am also no longer in a position to be able to do this as a guild leader. I am burned out, for reasons outside WoW as well as inside WoW.

I will stay on as GL for the moment - but mostly as a figure head. I am going to talk to people who are most keen to get us going as a serious 10man guild. You know who you are, and I will try to support you in your ambition to make this happen. So, there will be a period of transition and negotiation coming up.

I will also be leaving my alts here for as long as is feasible.

But the long and short of it is that I need to step down, but I want to raid, this necessarily leads me to other pastures.

Thank you for all your support and time over the years. It really has been one of the most rewarding things I have ever done with my time. We have achieved a lot, and I am sure we will again - but differently.

I and my wow buddy decided last week that we really did want to run 25s and we wanted to see the content and defeat it. He had some solid contacts in another guild and we both applied privately and talked to the guild leaders before we made a move, before we said anything to our guild.

Yes, it felt a bit like deception. But I wanted to be sure that I was actually going before I said anything to anyone. And these guys do things very differently! It will be interesting to make comparisons about the way we used to do things to the way they actually do them now.

TANGENT NER? What about Sindragosa?
As a holy pally, sindragosa is really a terrible fight. The damage output is minimal, and evenly distributed if everyone does their job in Phases 1 and 2. But you know what REALLY makes you look bad first night in? 3% of the total healing. Yeah, that looks bad. But if you break it down, it really isnt as bad as all that.

Comparing myself to the other holy pally in the raid, over 40% of his healing came from Judgement of light. There really is nothing I can do to compete with that! Why waste a GCD when he is maintaining the judgement? Sure, it makes the new girl look BAD but any healer worth their salt will see the break downs and realise what was happening.

The other mechanic that made my wow buddy gag when I pointed out to him how poorly it looked like I was performing, was the actual fight itself. There are 3 mechanics that forcibly stop you from casting as a holy pally. One is a debuff that stacks when you cast/melee hit the boss with it on. So, you stop casting. Awesome! The second is running around like an idiot. Because pallies are so GOOD at moving and casting at the same time. This fight has a lot of movement in it. The third is being turned into an iceblock and being stunned.

Guess which paladin was well and truly loved by Sindragosa last night? Yeah, this one. On the upside I got very good at positioning my iceblock exactly so!

When we get Phase 3 more under control, I think holy pallies will be looking a bit better on the meters, but it is still a really mobile fight... we may not catch the chain hax and HoTy goodness of the other classes in time.

Paladins!

2010-02-08T13:29:00.000+11:00

Since I am a paladin, I have been thinking of adding some paladin content on here as well as the usual bursts of strategy and (currently terrible) guild leadering.

I mean, most of you can probably find my guild if you looked through the content and put 2 and 2 together, and you all know my avatar name (although there are a few more Brangwens at level 80 now than there used to be) *cough* We are recruiting everything *cough* Anyway, broad hints aside, I am thinking of adding in some paladin specific posts which will go in hand in hand with healing strategy posts in general. See how they turn out. But for the moment, I should probably just get the strats up that are in my head right now and not get too far ahead of myself!

Dropping back to 10s

2010-02-05T09:57:00.000+11:00

The casual flavour is really hitting us hard over here and our raids have been struggling for a while. So, I had to make the hard call this week and announce to my guild that we were stopping 25s for the mean time and would be running 10s until we regrouped.

There are many reasons for this, a large one being that 25s have been sucking the fun out of the game for not just me, but for many people, and it felt like we were flogging a dead horse. We weren't short on numbers per se (we were still fielding a full team every night just and recruiting hard) but the lag compounded with the motivation and we came to a point where the officer team really were not leading any more. So, for the first time in the history of the guild, we are not raiding 25s and we are not doing "progression" content.

This has had a dual fold effect on the guild. Some people instantly left for greener pastures - some people I didn't expect, and others I did. I am honestly hoping that the people that have stayed and rallied will forge a strong solid core of friends to move forward with in the future. Some people are putting their feelers out still and this week's raiding is a bit all over the place. The lag isnt great, and people are "not logging on" and a few guildies have said they have seen apps around the traps. I am not looking because looking will make me feel sad, I think. I am just going to kick back and watch people leave and see what we have left.

The other effect is that we will be working on hardmodes in 10s. I am gunning for at least 2 IDs to clear and kill the Lich king *puts fingers in ears* LA LA LA NOT LISTENING WANNA SEE LORE UNFOLD!! This will get people familiar with fights and strats in a smaller, less laggy environment and with a tighter knit group. Then, in a couple of months when we have numbers again, I am HOPING that we will just be able to waltz in and smash face.

At least, that is the plan I have in the back of my mind. Whether or not we can pull it off? NFI!

So, I will still be writing up strats, but for the moment, they will be 10man oriented. I have a putricide, blood council and blood queen strat in my mind ready to go. So they should appear in the next few days. And hopefully, after Monday, I will have the rest of them done and dusted and I can start working on the hardmode stuff! I will also muse on the hows and whys of the decision in the near future, but at the moment, the wound is still a bit raw to talk about.

It's not the damn game, it's the people in it that make this all so hard for me. Stupid people. Wish I cared less sometimes, but then the highs certainly would not be as high without putting my everything into the people.

The guild leader personality type

2010-01-25T14:47:00.000+11:00

I don't normally do this kind of thing, but this one really stuck out as an example of the amazing lengths people can go to make themselves feel important and avoid rejection anxiety.

I had a tank type whisper me asking if he should bother applying. I told him that was his choice, and here is the website.

Our application template is quite lengthy. All the questions are there for a reason, and we like to have them answered. For reasons best only known unto himself, this applicant chose to not answer them all. With this comment at the bottom of the app:

"...I have played WoW for 5 years. I have had 10 Level 70's and 4 Level 80's over 4 accounts I am now solely focusing on this Tank and a Druid Healer. I have RAID experience, skills and talents I believe your guild and I will be best served with a two raid trial. I have purposefully chosen to not answer some questions as I would prefer to have my actions and game play / style speak for itself.

I do not like the gear score or achievement system as it is used much too often to form an image of a player; usually of a character who just levelled to 80, these players generally have the required skills and determination to see a RAID through to the end but never get noticed.

If you have any questions please feel free to contact me in game and I will happily jump on vent and chat."

Ok... apart from every time he wrote raid it was in all caps for some reason, alarm bells were going off in my head. Something tells me this guy knows who I am and has read my rants about gearscore and it trying to earn brownie points. So I replied with this:

"we ask questions for a reason.
We like them to be answered one way or another, in the applicaiton[sic] process, before we test and trial.

We also think actions speak louder than words. Your actions in this case are saying that you are trying to not answer things becuase[sic] if you do you will look bad on your application.

We prefer people to be honest with us. I get the strong impression from your applicaiton[sic] that you are hiding a lot of things from us.

Please answer all the quetions[sic] on the application or I cannot go further with the process. I would also recommend you reread our "about us" section and really think about how you are answering the questions we are asking. You might also want to reread the application template and understand exactly waht[sic] our application process is. Reading your extra comments makes me think you havent."

Yeah, my typing is terrible. So sue me. Anyway, my point is that the guy either didn't care about his application or was yanking our chain by deliberately not reading and pushing for a response. My GL partner in crime merely -1'ed it and the melee officer outright declined it, prompting me to lock the thread (as I do all declined applications to minimise nerdrage fron within and without the guild) Apparently, this guy was "testing" us. He follows up with a rather pompous PM to me and my two officers who bothered to reply (yes, I am colouring your perception of these snippets deliberately):

"If I had been accepted on that application I would not have joined, after 5 years of wow I know what to look for and what to ask or say to get into a guild....

...I have no doubt the application was not to your expectations which was my intention by completing the application in a half hearted manner which I have no doubt this email is an unexpected move for [your guild]....

... I do have a question though from all the responses I have seen which for the most part were courteous, why is it applicants must only be worthy of your time, why are applicants not worth 5 minutes of your time to fix an application or clarify a point? ...

... It is worth noting that a guild that cannot accept criticism is not worthy of my dedication and time, additionally I do see the hypocrisy in wasting your time to make my point when I do not like my time being wasted....

...Thanks for your time and patience in reading this deliberate and thought out response... "

The mind boggles. So, why are applicants not worth 5 mins of our time? Well, they are. We actually spend a lot of time to-ing and fro-ing in applications trying to figure out whether or not a person is right for us. However, occasionally, we find applicants who dont bother to put the effort in for us to bother to look much at them. I was not going to grovel and apologise to this guy to get him to apply properly (something he should have done in the first place)

I am reminded at this point of the very first line in our application template:

"Please, carefully read the entire contents of this post and other posts linked here before deciding to make an application. Remember to put a lot of thought into your application as your first impression will be a deciding factor. If you write thoughtlessly, expect nothing more in return."

In this case, his little ploy completely backfired on him. Here are some of my responses to his PM:

"I am not surprised that you have continued dialog, you are not the first person to seek alternative means of communication with us when an application is declined. There are many ways to continue an application if the applicant feels they were hard done by....

...And no, this is not unexpected. I was actually waiting for your in game PST, to be honest, raging about the denial.....

...Indeed we have had our time wasted, which is why the application process and questions are as they are - it becomes very obvious very quickly who is talking out their arse....

...Most of the questions on the application are about personality couched in wow terms. Some are pure tehnical[sic], but TBH, one armoury link is enough for that. We can glean everything we need to know (technically) about a person from the armoury these days.

I could use yours as example. One look at armoury and a few other sites tells us that you are probably not up to what we are looking for in a tank from a tech pov. Your toon is new, you havent tanked the content and you are quite likely inexperienced at paladin tanking. Your blase attitude in your application sealed the deal for us. You didn't bother to read up on how our application process works and decided to tell us how to suck eggs with regards testing and trialing, when one proper look at the documents would have pointed out we do exactly that.

So, not only are you not up to scratch technically, but you pissed me off by being impertinent...

...Honestly, if you are going to be double talking every single thing you do and say, as you are proving right now, you will be a very high maintenance guild member to have in guild and I am disinclined to continue dialog with you.

Prove me wrong and I will happily eat my words, but I and my other officers dont appreciate games being played - we simply dont have time for this shit. You will get responses like you got on your application.

[I am] Always willing to read applications that do us the respect of answering all the questions and are honest in their dealings with us.

Reapplication is up to you. But given the way you dealt with this thus far, unless you can really wow me with awesome, you are not the right personality type for [my guild]."

I was pretty brutal, but I was pushing him for a response as much as he was pushing me. As a guild leader, you can't really have someone come into your guild entirely on their terms, with them calling all the shots. It has to be on mutual terms. This guy, from a leadership perspective, would have caused issues down the track pushing his opinion and playing his games to get his way in the guild. He is the type of person who should be running a guild, not playing in one. And there is only room for one perhaps 2, with good understanding, communication and partnership, guild leader types in any one guild. And I have my partner in the leadership stakes at this moment, I dont need another one to argue with or to have take the piss liberally out of me in raids (oh, sorry RAIDs)!

The applicant came back with this which quite literally made me guffaw at my desk:

"Thanks for taking the time out in your busy day to respond so poorly to my reply which was written with the best of intentions and was done as a courtesy not as an attempt to win favor to be given a trial.
Your cynical and attitude reflects poorly on [your guild] in my opinion which i believe is important to you....

...Your break down of everything i said is so hastily replied to without taking the time to genuinely and respectfully absorb it and determine what it is I am saying, your knee jerk responses show that you are easily upset and offended...

..You are not the type of GM I am looking as you are overly judgmental and opinionated without grounds based on what you "think" is occurring regardless of any amount of nerdrage received in the past and not the facts this combined with the inability to read between the lines is a recipe for major failure, i am certain you have lost very good players because of this already...

...What i have achieved in a few pages text has saved me considerable amount of time by evaluating you and [your guild], which was my intention from the beginning, a test on core character and personality of officers...

...The judging my tanking and skill based on my new toon was your biggest flaw finding point, not having seen me tank anything you base an opinion...

As you have so justly stated I have been tested - So has [your guild]. "

So, what do you make of this little exchange?

Personally, I think I came out the better of the two of us. He is still looking for a guild to raid in (I assume he is). I will take the back handed compliment when given however, that he felt my guild was worth the time to play his game. Have we lost good players because of my attitude? Honestly, I don't think we have. If anything, I am far too forgiving and willing to give people a trial than most of my officers are. I give second chances were others would not, and I wear the consequences of that if I think the person is worth it.

This guy would have been an absolute pain to manage. He would be challenging authority, playing games, and stirring trouble where trouble didn't need to be stirred. He simply would not fit in our guild because I called him on his behaviour and I was 100% on the money, as he didn't offer to make me eat my words.

He is right about one thing, people's opinions of the guild are important to me. However, one person having a bad experience from generating a bad experience I have no issue with. He can go around bad mouthing us as much as he likes. I know that I maintained my integrity and morals for my guild intact.

So, watch out for people like this Guild Leaders. Always be on the lookout for potential troublemakers in your applications and don't be afraid to call them on their behaviour and decline applications that might be technically sound, but those alarm bells in your head just wont shut up.

Rotface

2010-01-25T10:14:00.000+11:00

Rotface rotface rotface.
You are not too hard - if anyone says this fight is too hard, then they might want to really think hard about whether or not they are going to go kill Arthas, because this? This is just a warm up guys. It's going to get serious from here on in.

Rotface is what we call a RAID COORDINATION CHECK fight. The damage isn't hard to heal though and is mostly avoidable. It will kill you of you are not paying attention or if you don't understand what is going on. So, I will break this down into separate chunks, as I do a run through of how the fight works.

Shopping list
1 MT
1 OT with good ranged taunt/threat generation
5 healers
Even mix of range and melee DPS

The pull
The tank runs on in and tanks Rotface where he stands. Everyone (except hunters) arranges themselves evenly in a semi circle behind the boss in melee range. Yes, everyone. Hunters stand as close as they can to rotface. Smash the living begeebers out of rotface. OT stands back at the door, on the black circle drawn on the ground, waiting. More on the boss later.

The Ooze Dance

The infection (part 1 - no big ooze)

The first thing that will happen is someone will become infected. No matter what your instincts are do not dispel them. This person need to run out to the OT and hang out with them (if you are ranged, keep DPSing ok?). When this person is with the OT and in the right position, the OT needs to call out for a dispel. Now, this person will have a great desire to run back into the pack and continue their job. They must resist and hang out with the OT.

Note to healers - anyone with the infection is going to recieve 50% less healing than normal. You will need to allocate at least 1 person to be responsible for keeping them alive.

The next person will get infected, and they need to trot out to the OT as well. The OT will call out when they are ready for a dispel, and both players stay put until the merge happens, then run back.

The Merge (aka The Little Adds)

When you are dispelled you will spawn your own little baby add which will love you and attempt to hug you and call you George. It's threat table is a bit weird, in that it has one. It will generate a lot of threat on the person who it came from. This seems to be a bit buggy for things like Mirror Image, and when the add spawns on you and you have images up, it may go shooting off in a direction you don't want, thinking that the person it wants to call George is over there, and not you. So, please be careful with that spell.

Anyway, the add will start chasing you around. Do not cloak of noob or bubble. You want that add to chase you in a controlled manner. The main thing you need to do is ensure that it is facing away from the raid so when it spews ooze at you, it is not in the middle of the room. Everyone at all costs needs to stay out of these green ooze patches.

Note to healers - the little oozes have an aura which is pretty easy to heal through. Again, the person allocated to healing the infected people should keep them up.

When 2 little oozes get close enough together (6ish yards) they will merge and make a big ooze. Merging is Good.

The Big Ooze
The OT needs to grab that big ooze and start kiting it around the room in a big circle. It has a normal threat table so the OT needs to watch and manage it properly. However, the big ooze hits like a train (it has a frontal arc melee attack that hurts), and radiates an aura that really hurts. The big ooze also spews goo at you, so as an OT you need to try to avoid that at all costs. So it's a balancing job of not getting too close, keeping threat, and keeping that add moving around the room.

Oh Danny Boy...

The not getting too close is compounded by the pipes in the room periodically flooding out a corner of the room. You can see where it is going to go because greem steam will eminate from the pipes in that corner of the room. So you really have to watch for that. Hand of Freedom will help if you are stuck, but on the whole, the OT should be able to kite through the flooding without needing to do anything special.

Everyone else in the raid should avoid going into the green flood if at all possible, especially if you are currently infected due to the healing debuff you have.

The Infection (part 2 - with big ooze)
Ok, this time around you got infected but there is a big add up. Again, you look to see where your OT is and where they are kiting. You have 12s to get into the right position. If the OT is kiting through the green flood, wait for them in the kite path on the other side of the flood, otherwise, get to the OT as soon as possible.

When you are with the OT, call for a dispel (or kite with the OT if that is easier until the infection drops off). Carefully position yourself so that the little Ooze is within range of the big ooze and wait for the big ooze to gobble it up. When it is safely gobbled, run back into position and DPS. Do not, under any circumstances, get too close to the big ooze. Its aura and cleave will smash your face in and your healers will wail that you went down like the proverbial sack of spuds or other less savoury contents.

I cannot stress how important these bits are to getting the fight right. Keep the infected person alive, and get those adds merged as soon as possible.

2 Big Oozes?
Occasionally, your raid will do Stupid Stuff(tm) and you may end up with 2 big oozes going. DON'T PANIC! OT, just grab threat on both of them, and draw them together. When they are in range, they will merge into 1 big ooze.

EXPLODING OOZE!
When the big ooze is made up of 5 little oozes, it becomes unstable and explodes. It will create a little flying bomb for each raid member alive. The trick here is to watch the big ooze and wait until the cast is done and you actually see the little blobs flying in your direction from the big ooze itself. Once you see them going, you need to move out of the position you were in and into a position that no one else was in. Why? Because those oozes target where you were standing when they take flight (just like the rockets on the gunship fight). So, there are a few ways to deal with this. You can all just scatter (you don't need to move far, about 10 yards away is enough) or everyone can pick a direction and run for it (ie like call "DOOR!" or "FOLLOW THE BOSS!" something like that). This decision will depend on your raid's ability to think on its feet and understand mechanics.

After the ooze explodes it's back to the first part of the ooze adventure. Rinse, repeat. The only additional thing you need to consider is that the mutated infection is cast faster and faster over time. So, you want to kill Rotface as quickly as you can.

The Boss
There really isn't a lot going on with the boss. Tank him where he stands to avoid the green goo on the floor, and if you have to move the boss for the ooze explosion, take him back to the middle when done. The raid stands in melee range (or as close to melee as they can) in an evenly spread semi circle around the back of the boss. Periodocally, the boss will target someone and start casting a conal effect spew. Everyone has to wait until the cast is finished, then run around the boss out of range of the spew. It is really easy to avoid, and is the reason everyone is spread out evenly so as few people as possible have to move, and there is more DPS uptime.

Healing in this fight is hard if people don't avoid the avoidable damage, otherwise, plan to keep the Tanks and focus the mutated infection person and everything should be fine:
Boss Spew - avoidable
Boss Damage - not massive
Mutated infection - unavoidable, and needs healing focus
Big Ooze Aura - avoidable
Big Ooze Melee - avoidable (but OT might take a calculated risk on it for threat gen)
Big Ooze explosion - avoidable
Small ooze aura - negligable, should only be on the OT or mutagen target
Small ooze spew - avoidable
Flooding - avoidable, OT might need to take calculated risk in it

OK that was a bit of a doozy to explain, and I am sure I am missing things. There are lots of ways to deal with the oozes, this is the way we are finding is the best for us.

Keep the comments coming! And if they are appropriate, I will update the strat.