An example of excellent leadership

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.

Mementos

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.

Accidentally HIS ENTIRE BODY!

Yes, we accidentally the Kologarn hard mode achievement!

Kologarn 10man over the weekend was accidentally done with the hard mode. How was this managed? Pretty easy actually - easier than you would think.

While you are downing the right arm, make sure there is a goodly dose of AoE going on and splash damage onto the left arm accumulates. When you are ready, and the left arm is at about 10% or less, smash the right arm, then smash the left arm, ensuring that smashing the left arm kills Kologarn. Collect your Hard Mode achievement which isn't actually very hard. I suspect that this will get changed soon so that it wont apply.

I suspect this method will work in 25man as well with a bit more management, perhaps save a heroism for it.

Identifying simple mistakes and correcting them is OUR responsibility

On the heels of a failed Immortal run, I had this to say to our guildies on the guild blog

--

Well, there were mixed feelings about whether last night was a success or not. Personally, I wouldn't say that success (in terms of achieving goals) was a good yardstick for last night. If you are measuring that way then we failed in the arse. However, if you are measuring in other ways, then last night was a big step forward in identifying what attitude shifts we need to make in order to be more successful in Ulduar.

The first thing we did which was a step forward was that even after a death kyboshing our immortal run, we continued to behave like it was still going. In all (apart from one called wipe) we had a total of 4 deaths. 2 in KT (the individuals need to look at why they died and try to not have that happen again) 1 in gluth (we need a better way of keeping the kiters alive, or do a better job of kiting), and one in thaddius (where a raider made a bad judgement call and screwed up that wont happen again). There was also a bad judgement call by another raider when we were going for shocking, again, that raider wont be making that mistake again.

In short, officers were raging in officer channel at every simple, stupid mistake (but it was kept in there to keep the raid upbeat and moving). Comments of "Do we need to baby sit them all the time?" The short answer is No. We dont and we shouldn't have to. Individual raiders should know exactly what they are doing and what mistakes they made, especially at this point in the content. All the above were individual stuff ups (except gluth, we will address that seperately, that's a current strat failure) from raiders that should have known better.

We will be doing this again, and again and again until we all get the idea that we are to be on our best behaviour at all times. Dont scrub up and its on your own head. Yes, we are bored with this stuff - but that is ZERO EXCUSE to be lazy.

As I pointed out at the time, a run where people pay attention is a fast run - last night was 3:15 total. Including a break. As we do this more and more, our timings will drop. An excellent example of this was patchwerk. We downed him in less than 3 mins - we pulled him across the water and we werent even trying, we had 7 healers ad 3 tanks. The difference? We were all paying attention and everyone stayed alive. The more we stay alive, the faster stuff dies.

You can't DPS dead. So let's each make a concerted effort to stop dying to dumb shit, even if you DPS a bit less. Deal? Deal.

Volazj's Quick Demise - healer PoV

Somehow, after many, MANY hours of trying, I managed to get this done yesterday. As a paladin healer (specced arena 2s PvP) I found that I was the main reason we were not making this in 2mins.

Reasoning is as follows:
1) You do not "pop out" for assistance of insanity until you have taken down everyone bar one of your shadows is dead by your hand. I noticed this late in the piece.
2) I was taking far too long to kill the tank
3) I was not pumping out enough DPS to break out for assistance and still be able to make the 2 min timer.

What we ended up doing was that I respecced ret and wore most of my healing gear. This did a couple of things. It meant that my shadow did not cast healing spells, making it much faster for everyone else to kill their shadows. I also swapped my weapon/shield to a DPS weapon once inside insanity. I went for the ranged first, which dragged the melee with me and aoe'ed everyone down. I also left the tank for last (to get assistance on that one) - the tank was extra tanky as they were not going to get as many heals as usual. Everyone one who could cast a healing spell helped with healing when we popped out.

This technique got the damn achievement done as SOON as we did this. We had been failing on it for a good couple of hours, trying to figure out what was going wrong. As a holy pally, my shadow was too hard to kill and healed too well. As a holy pally, I didn't do enough DPS to kill my shadows fast enough.

Respeccing ret fixed all of these issues and we did 2 insanities and killed the guy with 10s to spare. I highly recommend any healing class respec to a DPS spec and wear a combo of your healing gear. There isnt a lot of healing required in this fight if you burn through it quickly. The slower you do this fight, the more you need healing. Trust your group to self manage somewhat.