Bring the Class Not the Player

So, a lot of what we've heard about raiding since before Wrath came out was this concept of "Bring the Player Not the Class." Basically meaning that Blizzard doesn't feel it should be required to bring certain classes to each raid. For example, many of the Burning Crusade raids required certain classes (mage for sheep / steal magic, warlocks to tank, hunters to tranq shot, etc.) With almost everything in Wrath, they've pretty much eliminated that need. Only thing left I can think of off the top of my head is the MC'ing in Naxx for Instructor Razuvious on the 25-man version.

It's still held on a bit though, in a way. Ideally, the best way to go into VoA is to bring one of each class so that you're sure somebody can use a drop. Now, if they have it or not is another story, but still... it's not an instant-shard.

But I had this random idea for a raid. What if it took the complete opposite of Blizzard's statement. But not in a bad way. See.. what if there were certain mechanics that only a specific class could get the loot. Here's the catch though: the class-specific item is obtained by conquering that mechanic. An easy example would be that there's a lockbox (or maybe even a series of lockboxes) that contains either gold or a rogue item. Maybe there's a guy you have to MC in order to open something and then either gold or a priest item drops. (I mention gold so that you can still have Blizzard's precious "random drop" mechanic in play.) A mage can spell steal an NPC shield to bypass some lazer door. etc. You get the idea.

Ideally, it may even open some small wing or something so that you can only see that part of the dungeon/raid when you have that class. As a dungeon, it would almost make the run different every time based on what you brought to the instance.

Anyway, just a random idea disguised as a post on my blog. :)

10-Man Raiding in Catacylsm

Or another title might be, "____! It's about time!"

In case you haven't heard, there's some really good news for 10-man raiding in Cataclysm. Maybe not so good for 25, but we'll see. The source is from the European forums found here. And to sum it all up, 10-man and 25-man raids will have the same loot drops in Cataclysm. There will also be only one raid lock-out for each. So, you don't have 25-man guilds also farming 10-man content and gearing up much faster than people that only run 10-man content.

To offset it, the 25-man content will drop more loot, and more gold as well. They still want 25-man content to be a more efficient way of gearing up. (Writer Warning: lots of math-type stuff ahead.)

So, let's play with this a bit. Let's say that trends continue, and each boss on 10-man raids drops 2 items (or 1 for every 5 players). An even way would be for 25-man bosses to drop 5 items (same 1:5 ratio). Making it slightly more profitable would mean 25-man would drop say 6 items. If loot tables are something like the first 3 bosses in ICC, there's 12 different items that will drop on 10-man. That means you have a 1 in 6 chance for your loot to drop in 10-man, but 1 in 2 chance for your loot to drop in 25-man.

But will you win it? I'll have to make some assumptions here. Let's assume gear is very homogenized. There will still be some differences though. For example, some hybrid classes will still have 2 sets of gear, especially those that require completely different stats (like a healing druid vs. a tanking druid). But for the sake of this conversation, let's say that we have a 10-man raid with one of each class. As a Shaman healer (best case), I get every single drop that's casting mail. (Only shaman in raid, and hunters don't want it.) As a cloth mage (worst case), I have to fight 2 other classes making my initial drop rate of 1 in 6 change to a loot rate chance to 1 in 18.

Our 25-man raid has to be guessed at. Let's assume 1 of each class/role. Where only 1 role for the class is available, we'll assume they bring two of those class (hunter, mage, rogue, warlock). We may have too many tanks (4), and probably not enough healers (4), but it's simply for illustration purposes. I also threw in another paladin healer (5 healers now) since they were in a armor group all by themselves. Here's what I came up with for this fictional raid:

death knight dps

death knight tank

druid healer

druid melee

druid ranged

druid tank

hunter

hunter

mage

mage

paladin healer

paladin healer

paladin melee

paladin tank

priest healer

priest ranged

rogue

rogue

shaman healer

shaman melee

shaman ranged

warlock

warlock

warrior melee

warrior tank

So, your odds vary quite a bit here as well. You have anywhere from a 1 in 2 chance to get your item (paladin healer vs. paladin healer, or, shaman healer vs. shaman ranged, or, druid healer vs. druid ranged) all the way to a 1 in 6 chance (all clothies, or, all melee/tank plate wearers). So, the 1 in 2 chance that your item will drop becomes a 1 in 4 loot rate (best case scenario) or a 1 in 12 loot rate (worst case scenario), with a couple other odds in between.

Anyway... point being... I think this will be a great change. I'm still not sure it's completely on track. Like I've mentioned and has been said many times before, 10-man raiding can be more difficult than 25-man. If one person dies on 10-man, that's 10% of your raid. A 25-man death is only 4%. But if they made it completely equal, it would be the death to the 25-man raiding for sure. And while I have found that 10-man raiding is by far what I enjoy, there's still a special place in my heart for the 25-man stuff that I did all through TBC.

Examples of When to Kick

I'm generally a patient guy when it comes to people. I understand that not everyone has the best computer, best Internet connection, or the best gear. I understand that people generally don't want to wipe time and time again, especially on a boss that should be considered "easy". I also understand that there's a pretty big difference in purples these days. Consider that there are items that are purple that are ilvl 200, and some that are 277. Simply put... there are a lot of variables in Wow.

Couple that with the fact that sometimes I'm a really lazy raid leader. I know that if there's a new encounter in VoA that I really should do some type of gear check. Ony 25, for example, can be a huge pain in the butt if you have a bunch of people that are still in quest greens. So, sometimes these "interesting" parts of Wow and my personality make for some "interesting" fights. (See "the best gear" link above for one of such examples.)

But sometimes these things are completely out of my control. Take, for example, the lfg tool. If I sign up for an instance with nobody else in my group, it's really just a roll of the dice if I'll get a good group or not. I know, at least, that I'll have a decent healer, but that's about it. (For those that haven't kept track, my mage is mostly retired, living with the other mages in Dalaran.) But other than that, I really don't know.

Like the other night that I got in a random instance of Heroic Old Kingdom. The entire group was obviously 80's. We certainly didn't have any problems downing any of the bosses. Heck, we could have 4-manned the entire instance. Come to think of it, we were. The hunter that was with us was so bad. His dps was in the range of about 200. Yes, I wrote that right: Two-Hundred. For a lvl 80. Heck, auto shot should do more than that. The guy was running in place a lot, and he'd blink from here to there every once and awhile, so I knew he was having problems. I'm not even sure what his gear looked like. I let it slide for a bit, but after no improvements, even after we downed the first boss, and he couldn't even walk with the rest of the group, I initiated a kick vote. It must have been unanimous, because he was almost instantly removed.

Now, don't think me heartless. We talked with the guy, or tried to at least. We waited and waited for him to get to the second boss. We addressed him multiple times in party chat. And then finally, it just wasn't worth it. Honestly, he really should have removed himself from the raid when he recognized his connection was that bad. What if Prince Taldaram did his vanish and accompanying Embrace of the Vampyr on him? And we'd have to run all the way over there... just didn't seem worth it to wait. We made the next hunter that came in through the random generator promise that he could do more that 200 dps before we attacked the boss, and we laughed about it the rest of the instance as it was easily cleared. (The new hunter was top dps IIRC.)

To expatiate further, last night, however, was mostly my fault. We've been trying to gear up for arenas, and so did WG last night. Thought we'd try our hand in Voa 25 for the better gear as well. The new boss is out, so why not go over there? After waiting for somebody else to start a group to no avail, the 4 or so guildies started our own group. And calls to "LFM 25-man Voa" were almost instantly answered with tells of "I'll go". The prudent raid leader would look at each of their gear scores on external web sites to verify that they're up to snuff. The lazy raid leader that I was last night, I invited anyone that whispered me. And after finally getting another 2 tanks and a few healers, we started the 25-man raid.

Don't get me wrong. This raid was probably destined to fail from the beginning. It's especially challenging when you have people standing in the sparks, or when ranged dps aren't killing said sparks. It's not a challenging fight as far as what needs to be done, but you still have to know the fight. It was typed out. We opened our Vent server. It was said on Vent. But still we failed the first time.

Now people start looking around at everyone's gear and damage meters and whatnot. One Paladin had a mix of spell power, attack power, and healing gear. I mean... he had a real mix. He had literally taken the meaning of hybrid and used it to a T. If I were a betting man, I'd say that his spec probably reflected the same, but I honestly didn't look. He had two green trinkets as well. I forget which, but again, one was spell power and one was attack power. And his numbers? 1200 dps and about 400 hps. Yep.. a hybrid.

So, after multiple requests for people to get on Vent, which he was not on, he was removed. When he asked me why he had been removed, I didn't want to take the time to explain gear to him, so I told him he wasn't on Vent. The sad part was, he asked me what Vent was. I told him to google it, and that it was a VoIP program so that we could talk to each other. *sigh*. I feel sorry for the guy, but really glad he didn't make a big deal about it. And yes, we were all noobs once... but he should have asked what Vent was way before the first boss fight.

To wrap up the story... we still had other fail dps (melee mostly), and we didn't get the boss down. Maybe I should really stop being the one to lazily invite people to raids. lol.

3.3: The Death to Hogger Raids

I spent a small amount of time on the PTRs this time for 3.3. It was fun to get a sneak peak of some of the stuff coming up. Other than that, I really haven't read too much about ALL the details of the patch that's going live today... until today.

Since it is patch day, I try to read in detail, or at least peruse the lines that would be of some importance to me. (Like I really care about warlock changes. lol) And with 3.3, I read a line that saddened me. It basically ruins a number of the fun things that I always wanted to try but never got around to actually organize or participate in.

From the official 3.3 Patch Notes:

Players below level 10 may not join raids.

So, what does this mean?

• I can no longer suggest my running joke of level 1 Hogger Raids.
• Level 1 bank alts cannot form raids to help 80's farm Old World Raid Content.
• And the naked gnome race from SW to IF that I always wanted to do can no longer be tracked with a raid mod.

Think of it as the end of an era, I guess. I also remember seeing a really cool even where a bunch of level 1's took on a level 70 mage "boss". Looked like a fun time. If I recall correctly, the mage only used low level spells, had certain emotes before major spells, etc. It was really well thought out. But alas, it would have to be a bunch of level 10's against the lvl 80 mage "boss" now.

Gear Rating Web Sites

I'm a little concerned about the recent trend that has come up to entirely base people's ability to play WoW on a gear score. I mean, these gear scores have been around for a really long time. I can remember in mid-BC sites like be.imba coming up and telling you everything you need to know about your toon (wrong enchants, upgradable gems, etc.). Now we have ones like Wow-Heroes and probably 15 others as well that will give a score and tell you where these people can (and can't) raid.

This was set off when earlier this week, we ran a pretty smooth 25-man PUG into Onyxia. There were only about 4 of us from the guild that wanted to do it, so we had to PUG just a few people. As we were forming the raid and getting people on Vent, a couple of people were asking what gear score was needed to join our PUG. Is such and such number high enough for my friend to come along?

Umm... I hate to burst anyone's bubble, but it's Onyxia. Get a couple of geared tanks (which were in guild) and a couple of good healers (which I am *flex* and so was another guildie or two), then you can pug a crappy healer and a whole bunch of dps. As long as everyone stays out of the deep breaths, you really don't have to worry about killing her in record speed. I'm thoroughly convinced that a group in all blues could take her down. She's not hard. She hasn't changed much in the past 4 or so years.

So, while I really appreciate all these gear-checking/rating sites, I would advise using them with caution. Even with the best gear in the world, you still have to know how to (A) do your job, and (B) avoid fires.

Furthermore... didn't Blizzard make "most" classes equal so that we can play with our friends? If one of your 15 (or so) DPS is a lame duck, it's probably okay if he dies. Especially if you get Ony to phase 3... DPS makes it go faster... that's all. Shoot, at that point, all you need is your healers and your tank. She'll die eventually.

Phase 3: The One Where Onyxia is a Chump

After running the daily heroic yesterday, one of my guildies gets the idea that we should PUG 25-man Ony. "Sure," I say, "get us into a group." Before I know it, we've formed a group, and had 24 people ready to storm Onyxia's Lair. (Yeah, not sure how we didn't get a 25th, but whatever.)

Like I said, it was mostly a PUG run. I knew none of these people except for my 1 guildie, and an ex-guildie (good friend).

And... the result: We one-shotted her.

Much like the 10-man version, the hard part was Phase 2. But once we got to Phase 3... even with about half the raid dead, it was still a pretty easy kill. I guess it just goes to show that some bosses can be very easy if people know what they're doing.

Time for: Stump the Raid Leader

As I've mentioned numerous times, our guild now takes things a bit slower. Sure, you'll find a small band of us running heroics on most nights, but as for raid content, we generally only raid 1 or 2 nights per week. And with the recent change and us able to carry over our raid ID's from week to week, it's been our new goal to go in and see new (to us) content.

Before the raid lock extension was made available, as a guild we'd get in and take down Flame Leviathan (with as many as 2 towers up), Deconstructor, Ignis, Razorscale, and Kologarn. That's pretty much where we were in progression. And with a couple of hours per night, it would sometimes be Flame Leviathan and Deconstructor one night, and then Kologarn and attempts at Iron Council the other night.

But 2 weeks ago, we decided to start carrying over the Raid ID. And due to RL conflicts with some people, we were only able to raid 1 night per week. So... Flame Leviathan and Deconstructor one night. Kologarn and attempts at Iron Council the next week.

Now we're at this week. A couple of attempts at Iron Council, and we beat it. Woot! My first time. Then one attempt at Auriaya, and she's dead. Woot! First time for most of our guild.

And... and... that was it. I had been leading the raids along with another guy. Neither one of us had been further. Sure we could have looked it up on Wowhead or Bosskillers really quick, but I guess we get to spend time on it next week. It was just one of those moments... one of those realizations that YES! we killed the bosses, but NO! I have no idea what to do next. lol

Have a great weekend everyone. I've got a couple posts in the hopper, so see you next week.

The Bowling Post, Part 2

Continued from Part 1. If you didn't read it, go start there.

Now that you have all of your bowling gear. You have your own shoes, your own ball. You may even have a dedicated towel and wrist guards because you're just that good. You're strong enough to roll the ball all the way down the alley, and you even get a strike or spare... even if only every once and awhile. You enjoy bowling so much, that you'd like to share this experience with a bunch of friends that also enjoy bowling. Or maybe you want to make new friends that will share in this new found enjoyment of yours. So, you head to your local bowling center and you sign up for a league.

(For Wow, you hit 80... and that seems to be the only basic requirement. I've seen people in full greens headed in to heroics. At any rate... however you did it, you're now in a guild.)

While your commitment to the bowling league is only 1 night per week, you're pretty hardcore. So, you also spend a lot of extra time bowling on the side, watching bowling on TV, and also researching the latest technologies. You're committed. You may even be bowling 2 nights or more per week. I think my Grandpa, at his peek was bowling about 4 nights per week.

In Wow, you generally are raiding for more than one night per week (obviously depends on the guild you're in). But even if you do only raid once per week, you're pretty hardcore, so you research gear, upgrades, min/maxing with your gems, etc. "What other achievements do I need," you may ask yourself. Or how do I get that cool pet that others have. Endless amounts of research and actual "work" are involved to have the gear to truly contribute to your raids.

Now here's one of the things that I don't get in the differences between these two "sports". If you're not going to make it on your bowling night, you generally need to get a sub. Somebody that will fill in for you, take your spot. And/or at least let your teammates know. This is generally taken into account by raiding guilds having more than the minimum number. If you're a 25-man raiding guild, you probably have at least 30 active accounts in your guild. Hey, things happen. Things like, "Gotta go, guys. Cat's in the oven again."

But if you sign up for a guild that raids say Monday through Wednesday, make it a point to be active, be online and ready to raid on those days. If you've previously spoken with your team captain (raid leader) that you can't make it on certain days, that's fine as well. Just live up to your word. Do what you've said you will. That's called integrity. :)

In the actual game, the most coveted thing you can do is bowl a perfect game. (That's a score of 300 for any of you non-bowlers out there.) Or if you've already completed that task, maybe you aim to bowl a perfect series. (That would be 3 perfect games.) These would be the achievements in Wow.

But remember, you also need your teammates to win. Even if you bowl a perfect series, sure this will help your team substantially, but if they're practicing gutter balls, I'm afraid you're not going to be winning any tournaments. (You may be going pro and making some bucks there, but you won't be winning any team leagues with your current teammates.) The same thing goes for Wow. You want to be equally yoked with your teammates. If you're the highest DPS'er in the world, but you're running with a tank that can't hold aggro... you're gonna be running around like a little girl... with her hair on fire... you get the picture. Furthermore, if you're 90% of the DPS in your 10-man raid, and something somehow happens and you die, your raid just lost a heck of a lot of DPS.

The whole point of this post, besides a lot of fun analogies is that while Wow is a game, so is bowling. And if you make a commitment to join a league, or be in an active raiding guild, do your best to live up to those commitments. But on the flip side, if you're not having fun, don't register with that team next season, but don't just stop showing up.

The Bowling Post, Part 1

I come from a long line of bowlers. My dad bowled. His dad bowled. And while I don't have first-hand knowledge, I suspect my great-grandfather also bowled. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me to find out that my ancestors were a part of the group that started bowling in Germany back in AD 300.

At the height of my teenage/young adult bowling career, I averaged around 160-170. But while my patriarchs were all in bowling leagues, I never joined. It was simply a pastime that I enjoyed.

For me, my bowling league has become a little game called World of Warcraft, and more particularly raiding in World of Warcraft.

Stay with me here while I explain. In order to raid, I had to first level to 80 (well, 60 when I first started, but that's besides the point). Along the way, I ran various instances or ad-hoc groups for group quests. I may have even had a high level toon run me through an instance or two to complete a quest or get a low level blue item. Likewise, I may have started bowling with the bumper lanes and doing the granny roll to get the ball down the alley. (They actually didn't have the bumpers when I was a kid; at least, I never used them at that age.) Sometimes on hard splits, I might have my dad come and pick them up for me.

The gray and even green equipment that you get in Wow will eventually be replaced by shiny, form fitting epics. Those epics are soulbound (or at least account bound), so you don't have to worry about the last guy that wore the shoes. You don't even have to worry that Mr. Bowling Shoe Giver Outer didn't spray the shoes properly. They're yours, and they just help you to do your job better.

Every bowling alley also has balls that you can use. They're generally uncomfortable since your fingers don't fit exactly right. At best, you'll get the right weight that's not too uncomfortable for your fingers. You may even have some comfortable finger holes (seems like they put multiple holes in it sometimes), but the weight is way off. So, eventually, you may even buy your own ball and custom bag. Maybe put your name on it.

In Wow, you'll find add-ons to be your friend. They can track auctions, warn you of boss abilities, track your own abilities, etc. etc. In case you've been living under a rock, there's whole web sites dedicated to add-ons. And as many ways as you can purchase a bowling ball or bag, there's at least that many add-ons for Wow.

To be continued...

Raid Instance Comparisons

A comment by Guest yesterday got me really thinking about the Raid Instances that we've had in World of Warcraft. So, I thought I'd start with a little table and then draw some conclusions from there.

Vanilla	TBC	Wrath
UBRS	Karazhan	Naxxramas (2)
	Gruul's Lair (1)	Obsidian Sanctum (1)
Zul'Gurub	Magtheridon's Lair (1)	Eye of Eternity (1)
Onyxia's Lair (1)	Zul'Aman	Vault of Archavon (1)
Molten Core	Serpentshrine Cavern	Ulduar
Blackwing Lair	TK: The Eye	Trial of the Crusader
Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj	Mount Hyjal	Onyxia's Lair (1)(2)
Temple of Ahn'Qirj	Black Temple
Naxxramas	Sunwell Plateau	Icecrown Citadel

(1) Single Boss Encounter Instance
(2) Recycled Instance

As for my footnotes, I am very well aware that Gruul's Lair had 2 boss encounters and technically EoE has 4. Furthermore, I'm also aware that VoA will soon have 3 bosses. But I believe it is fair to lump them into one category and compare them because they're much shorter instances. If you want to talk about environment, you could even consider Trial of the Crusader as a Single Room Encounter, which meant a heck of a lot less work for the graphic designers. lol.

Further clarifications: I put a space between UBRS and Zul'Gurub since UBRS was still 10-man (down from 15 at a certain point) and Zul'Gurub being a 20-man instance seemed that it needed more coordination and "raid" tactics.

All of that said, Blizzard did a lot in the first few years of Wow. They created 9 classes (8 playable by each faction). They created 2 continents, 24 5-man instances, and 8 raids. Not too shabby. Granted this was all work done from alpha to beta to about 2 years and 2 months until the next expansion came: The Burning Crusade. They then gave us another continent, flying mounts, 16 5-man instances, and 9 raids. Then about a year and 10 months later, Wrath of the Lich King came. So far, we know that they have given us a new continent, 13 5-man instances, and 6 raids with 2 more (Onyxia's Lair and Icecrown Citadel) on the way.

Recycled
Of the 8 raids in Wrath, 2 of them will be completely recycled from Original Wow. Honestly, I'm completely okay with that. I don't think a lot of people (as a percent of the whole) got a chance to run Naxx or, to a lesser extent, Ony before TBC came out. So, it's good that people now get to go back and see these fights. Especially with Blizzard's redirection that everybody should be able to see raids, it just makes sense.

Albeit, I recognize that there's been less development time, but if you factor in that these 2 instances got recycled from before, the true number is really down to about 6 new instances. And 3 of those are Single Boss Encounters (4 if you count Trial of the Crusader).

Now, I'm not saying that any of the Single Encounters are bad instances. I'm simply saying that they seem like they'd take a heck of a lot less work. And yes, Blizzard has given us these hard mode options to them to make them last a little longer... it's not like it takes them the same amount of time as a brand new instance. If you've been around Wow for a bit of time, you know the excitement that comes with heading in to a recently released instance or raid (bugs and all).

Brand New With Quality
On the other hand, I have to really hand it to Blizzard for Ulduar. It's a fun instance. It really shows that Blizzard has learned what people like and don't like. People like to be able to mount in these huge zones, even if it's just in the first area. Being able to teleport around in Ulduar is also great. Graveyard run times are also greatly reduced. There's a repair person in the instance... at the beginning... and you don't even need to defeat a boss before you repair. It also uses the technology that they've been working so hard on (vehicles) and gives you credit for your awesome gear by making your vehicle stronger.

And from what I hear about Icecrown Citadel, it's going to be more of the same quality. I know it was only a joke, but Ghostcrawler joked that it would have 31 bosses. Even if it only has half that, it's still more than Ulduar has, so I really expect the same level of polish and newness to Icecrown.

But... wasn't that level of polish there in the Vanilla Wow? You know... in the first 8 raids that existed? Or will the trend simply continue and mean that in the next expansion, we'll all be farming Sunwell Plateau as soon as we hit 80?

Healing Firsts: H-VoA (Troubles with Healbot)

In a small way, it's a little anti-climactic to take down bosses with alts. Yes, last night was the first night that I got in a PUG for Heroic VoA, and we cleared both bosses pretty easily. But it wasn't like I was jumping up and down now that I have the achievement. On the contrary, I felt a little embarrased... it's kind of like, "No, I swear! I've done this content already." lol.

There were a few issues on Emalon (4% on the first attempt, and then people focused on the boss and not the Overcharged add... bad raiders), but after 3 attempts, we beat him down. And no issues at all on Archavon. I was really hoping for any Shaman drop... simply because I was the only Shaman. But no, such luck. Oh well... there's always next week, right?

But the major issue I had was actually with Healbot. I know it has the settings to make it like the picture below. You know... mulitple columns and rows. Maybe instead of the 40-man picture (4 x 10), it would be more like 3 columns with 10 people in the first two and 5 people in the last one. That would make sense, right?

Yeah, well.. no. Mine is just one column. All 25 people in one column. I'm sure it's a setting that I have messed up or something. I just didn't have time to fix it. I got the invite, accepted the summons, and then Wow crashed. It does this enough that I know I have to completely restart the computer or else it will keep crashing. So, as soon as I got back online, I had to run in the instance: everybody was already waiting at the boss. A quick healing assignment (I was on raid healing), and we were off. I dragged Healbot around a bit so that it went from the top of my screen to the bottom. And I think I could heal most people. And those I couldn't, probably got hit with a chain heal anyway, right? And since none of the wipes were the healer's fault, it didn't matter if I couldn't see a few.

Regardless of the reason. I have to fix this. Furthermore, I really need to stop being lazy, enter in my MouseOverTarget macros, and then just use the x-perl interface that I have up anyway. Either way will work, but healing with one column... what a pain!

Oh... and there's just something about being the only one to have the power to drop Heroism and make 25 people instantly smile that they're casting, hitting, shooting 30% faster. It's a fun feeling.

Making a Difference

I've told a number of my friends how much I've enjoyed playing my shaman. Heck, I think I've mentioned it here in this blog as well. I obviously really enjoy playing Wow. And I really enjoy playing the game with others, hence why MMO's in general have such a big appeal to me. But the thing that's really appealing to me lately is being able to make such a substantial difference as a healer.

Now, by that last sentence, I am not professing to be some uber healer. I have mostly blue gear. I probably overheal a ton. But I enjoy doing it.

Last Saturday night, we ventured in to Ulduar. We took down Flame Leviathan pretty easily, but that's really not role or class specific. You could walk in there with 10 mages and still down it pretty easily. What we were lacking for the next fight (Deconstructor) was a healer. We had 2, and with our group, we knew it would be a challenge. I kept volunteering to grab my shaman (I was on my mage), but the raid leader wanted me on my mage. (He knows how blue my gear is on my shaman, maybe he really didn't think I could help out, who knows. lol.) After a couple of wipes on Deconstructor, I grabbed my shaman. We had one wipe after that, but it was more of a communication error, and then we took him down easily. Also Razorscale went down easily with me helping to heal.

So, after the struggles we were having with only 2 healers, I knew it was me healing that made the difference. (Again, I'm not trying to take credit from the other 2 healers, I'm sure they did a much better job than I did.) It was the difference between a night of wipes and downing just 1 boss, and success with the short amount of time we had and downing 3 bosses.

And I guess that's also why I like PvE. In PvP, there's a winner and a loser. While you don't know your opponent, there's still a human controling that toon. With PvE, it's a bunch of friends playing against a computer. So all human partipants win with the boss dies. Partly the same reason I like games like Rock Band and Guitar Heroes, and sports games where you can play against a challenging computer opponent with your friends.

At any rate, healing a group has been a lot of fun, and I hope to do it a lot more in the future.

Putting the Casual Back In Raiding

I really don't know where to start with the whole 3.2 Patch. Everything that I hear about it seems to be good. I'm sorry, but if there's somebody that's whining about Emblems of Conquest being handed out in Heroics (and all the lower raids) and Emblems of Triumph being handed out through Daily Quests... well... what did you expect? You're obviously Hard Core... and better than all of us (see whut I did thar)... and you'll get your upgraded epics way before the rest of us. So, simmer down, clown.

But one of the best things for casual guilds is the ability to extend raid lock out times. Honestly... one of the best things ever. Take our casual guild now. We run once per week, and generally about 3 hours. It's enough to clear Ulduar's first 4 bosses. And that's about it. There's no way we'd be able to clear Naxx in that amount of time. But in two weeks, completely possible. On our schedule, we'd be "clearing" Ulduar forever and still never see progression in. (Well.. we can skip bosses, but that's not the point.)

The hardcore people still get to be hardcore, but it really opens up some of the deeper parts of raid instances to more casual players. Great move, Blizzard. I wish I would have thought about this myself. (And if I wasn't lazy, I'd dig up the link where I did think this up, 'cause I'm 95% sure I posted about it. I'm 100% sure I've thought that it should have been done before now.)

Uber Death Knight (in Defensive Gear)

Primogeniture has basically undergone a bit of a change lately. To make a long story short, we've had some issues with numbers, so we're basically down to 10-mans for awhile. Last night, however, a few of us got together to run something to help (hopefully) gear up some of our healers a bit better.

Unfortunately, with the holiday, we didn't quite have the "required" 10-people. So, what do we do? Turn to the /lfm tool!

We were at 8 people, so we needed 2 more. We had the flexibility to just get 2 more DPS (some of our DPS were dual spec'ed as healers). Turns out we got 2 Death Knights.

So, we head over to Naxx to run through as much as that as possible. One of the DK's, we'll call him EbayKnight, discovers that he's magically in a different instance then we are. He's running around looking for Mr. Bigglesworth, but the rest of the group sees him alive right in front of us. EbayKnight remembers that he's already saved this week and leaves group. "Hey," we thought, "Why don't we just take his instance since it's Tuesday and it's obviously not going to get used." I ask which bosses are left, and he said that they cleared 3 quarters. Sweet! We'd actually get to finish off the last bosses in a small amount of time. So, we invite him back and he's thrilled.

Head in to Naxx. Yes, yes.. I want to be saved. But then we realize that all of the quarters are cleared since the lights are lit up. A quick jaunt up to Kel, and he's dead too... and all of us got saved to a cleared Naxx run. UGH!

Well, not really this guy's fault, right? I mean, how was EbayKnight to know that the other 9 people cleared it (and obviously without him)? So, let's go kill Emalon.

Wipe after wipe, we were just struggling. We realize off the bat EbayKnight is trouble since he never runs out for the Lightning. He also doesn't switch targets. And finally he helps to string the Chain Lightning as much as possible. Furthermore, the guy consistently does about 980 DPS!!! 9-manning Emalon, we could do, but that's without all this extra raid damage that he's causing. He wasn't on Vent (another point against him), so we told our healers to stop healing him. But it just doesn't happen. Finally somebody has the bright idea to look at this guy's gear. FULL TANK gear! Yep, every piece has defensive. So, we start asking him about it.

"So, EbayKnight, you got any DPS gear?"

"I'm wearing it."

"No, you're wearing tank gear. DPS gear doesn't have defense rating like tank gear does."

"Yeah, well my friend says I do fine in DPS."

"Okay... this ain't working." I think we left him with, "It's not you, it's us." lol. Got a rogue in there, and 1-shotted it.

So, yes... the title is mocking him. And Death Knights may be the new Huntard class.

Speed Runs (Naxx and Others)

Okay, today's post is a bit more serious than yesterday's satirical one. And rightfully so since today is the first day of Guild Leadership Appreciation Day for 2009.

Suffice it to say that there are a few people that are no longer part of Primogeniture, so we've had to slightly rebuild our guild over the past few weeks. We've had some struggles, but overall we've pressed forward and we've succeeded.

This raid week, we've gotten back to the point that we can clear Naxx in 2 raid nights. That's probably about 4.5 hours of raiding for our guild. Sure it's not the 1 hour speed runs that some guilds are seeing, but it's better than 3-4 nights that it was taking us. And this was with 23 people on the second night. I don't recall how many we had on the first night.. but must have been less than 25 since we pulled one of those people in as soon as he hit 80 towards the end of the first night. (And he's a prot warrior, so was just along for the ride and gear we would have sharded anyway.)

Back to the point though, there's a number of very simple things that our guild (and probably most guilds) did to be able to speed up their runs. If you're old skool enough to remember the 45-minute Baron run back in the days before TBC. You had to run the Gauntlet in Stratholme and kill Baron Rivendare in 45 minutes. Our guild did it at the appropriate gear level; in other words, I don't think we had a single raid item between the 5 of us. Our group consisted of 2 mages, a holy priest, a prot warrior, and a versatile (but mostly feral) druid. And the pace was fast. We chain pulled. We created multiple mana gems. Looting was seen as a time sink (and mostly unnecessary to our relatively geared group). We pulled only necessary mobs. We had our druid that truly played the hybrid role; melee DPSing, tanking when we didn't want a patting mob to have to make another cycle, and healing to conserve the priest's mana. Honestly, it was crazy fun. And then taking those lessons and finally killing Lord Valthalak... Truly some epic times. We even got the kill posted on YouTube.

Basically, most all of these same things will work for your Naxx run, or any other run you want to step up the pace. Here's some of the points:

• Chain Pull - Try to get through mobs as quick as possible. Healers don't need full mana. Heck, you probably don't even need 100% of your members there as well. Just know the pulls, and know what your group can handle.
• Quick Looting - Whatever your method is (DKP, /roll, need or greed), try to handle it as fast as possible. (This ain't no Baron run where you're sharding everything.)
  
• Fight While Looting - In a 25-man raid, there's generally about 4 items that drop per boss. Maybe 2 people are interested in each item on the average. That's 8 people that stick around for the loot while 17 people move on to kill trash. Or maybe you have to wait for a few items to be distributed (and the interested parties to be ready to kill trash), but you most likely can press on before loot is finished.
• Quick Rebounds - Wipes happen. Even with wipe prevention, there's still downtime when people are dead. Quickly determine the fastest path to getting everyone back up. This isn't an excuse for 1/2 the raid to go surf the Internet. If everybody's running back, than everybody should be running back.
• Short Explanations - If you know the fights and how your guild does it, this is probably a moot point, but do your best to pay attention to the person explaining it, and they should do their best to keep the explanations of each encounter condensed.
• Proper Buffs - Everyone should be buffed. This also includes Flasks/Potions and Well Fed Buffs. Even if you vastly outgear a raid dungeon, it's not a bad idea to throw on a flask (or at least a cheapo Potion) to help speed everything up.
  

This is not necessarily a comprehensive list, but it does cover probably the major time killers. Feel free to add other suggestions if you have them.

Buffing Classes You Can't Raid Without

A fellow raid leader and I were talking about the sudden lack of Shaman that Primogeniture has now found itself with. Two Shaman re-rolled Death Knights, one went to another server, and one disappeared without a trace. (I really hope the last one is okay... never heard from her again.) So while we may be looking for a few good Shaman (as well as some other healers), that's certainly not the point of this post.

One of the reasons that Shaman not being in our guild is sort of a bad thing is the loss of Heroism/Bloodlust. If I'm not mistaken, some of the melding of the classes and removal of stacked buffs was to get people to take who they want to a raid, and not who they need. Looks like a raid still "needs" a Shaman.

For that matter, it looks like there's still a few classes that are kind of a must have. Looking over at MMO-Champion's nifty tool, it kind of shows who can cover which buffs and debuffs. There's a couple that are slightly flawed, but let's take a look at them anyway.

The first item that is on their list that is only represented by one class (besides the aforementioned spell) is Blessing of Wisdom. With changes to potions, I'd say this is probably a must have. Every 30 seconds or so, that's probably another spell you can cast. So, pretty valuable stuff. Then again, the mana regen portion of Improved Water Elemental, depending on your mana pool, could probably easily be about the same amount of mana regen, just not something that is always on.

Wrath of Air Totem is the next one that is awesome for your caster group. You really should have one of these in your raid. Oh... wait. That's a Shaman again. Dang. Well, let's hope you have one.

Power Word: Fortitude is a Priest only spell, but can be slightly mitigated with Command Shout or Blood Pact. Probably still preferential to bring a Priest, but there's still these minor substitutes.

Then there's Mark of the Wild. Okay, we now need Druids. And then Blessing of Kings. I guess we'll have to take a Paladin with at least 1 point (preferable 5) in Protection spec.

So, there you have it. The only classes you now need are Druids, Shaman, and Paladins. Every other class is simply a filler.

(And in case you didn't get the tongue in cheek attitude, other classes are obviously needed, but maybe not as much as the 3 above.)