Jan 25, 2008

fashion spec

I'm getting really tired of my current epic quality gear look. Part of the problem is that I'm not using T4, as being a tailor the Frozen Shaddowweave set is much better than Warlock T4, and arguably T5. However, the point is that I'm starting to look like a replica of every other raiding shadow priest, warlock, or frost mage.

It's kind of distressing that as you play the game from early game to midgame, everyone looks different, as there are plenty of viable gear options. As you progress into the final endgame, though, there are fewer options for gear choices, and they are coveted by multiple classes and multiple specs. The end result is you have a largely homogenous mob of players.

Its kind of a shame that when creating a character we get all of these hair/face/skin color choices and that by the time we reach the end of the game we are totally encased in armor that hides those features away, with no option to customize our armor other than choosing whether or not we want to see our cape or hat. Hopefully when WotLK rolls out, Blizzard will have listened to players cries of "let us customize our armor".

I mean, those new hairstyles (its kind of sad that was even a selling point for the next expansion @ blizzcon) still wont mean crap when they're all hidden underneath the same engame helmet.

In the meantime, if I'm just waiting around for a raid to start or a PuG to form, I swap out my DPS gear and put on a few more interesting items that are seldom worn by other players. Right now I mix and match various peices of the cloth dungeon sets I have collected (I'm trying to get every TBC cloth dungeon set possible). Nothing like seeing a warlock with +healing gear and a mage set item on to inspire PuG confidence, am I right?

raid report: progression content

And after last night we now have Loot Reaver, Lurker, and Magtheridon down. This leaves the only 25-man content left for us to do on sunday being Gruul (which takes us an hour tops on a bad day) and new content.

When we finally nailed lurker it was a very short encounter. Thanks to the fact that we had a shadow priest in the raid and the 3 other warlocks all respecced to destruction for maximum pewpew, he was only allowed to submerge 3 times, in the end the damage meters was a boomkin at the top (he was getting power infusions). One of the attempts had 4 of the top 5 DPS slots being occupied by warlocks, while the final attempt I had fallen off to 7th place.

The spec the other warlocks are using is the 0/21/40 Demonic Sacrifice/Shadowflame spec. It's a very good spec, though the DPS cycle is a little boring, as you just mash the Shadowbolt key over and over. Personally I'm not going to spec off of affliction because it still has some very nice raid tools that are useful into BT: Blood pact, shadow embrace, and malediction.

Its a tradeoff between having me do an extra 200 DPS or extending the tanks life by +1000 HP and reducing all incoming physical damage he receives by 5%. The malediction also allows either the mages or warlocks/moonkins to have a slight edge over what they would normally have by 3%. Additionally, Destruction spec is highly life/mana inefficient, and puts a strain on healers.

The new boss we ended up trying was Morogrim Tidewalker. It was progression raiding at its finest:

"All right team! Move in!"
*raid gets turned into fine red mist*
"Good attempt team! Lets rez and try again!"

He has some interesting abilities. The worst of them is when he summons a dozen murlocs on the raid. Not just because theres a lot of adds that have to be managed and AOEd, but because they're murlocs. I was glad when I thought we left those buggers back on Azeroth where they belonged, but somehow Blizzard just had to find a way to put them in Outland.

Jan 24, 2008

my introduction to world of warcraft

I was in a college dorm when the World of Warcraft open-beta started up. It was an interesting experience since about half the people on my floor and the one below had all decided to roll up on the same server and it looked kind of interesting. I didn't really feel like signing up as my laptop could barely handle Warcraft 3, and the game looked like it needed a bit more horsepower.

My roommate was hooked. From what I remember looking over his shoulder at, he was in one of the first endgame raiding groups. Playing the game through headphones on a laptop crappier than mine (how you tank with only 4 fps I'll never know). Regardless he seemed to enjoy himself.


A little too much.

As finals approached, he spent one of his last days up all night playing WoW and "studying" at the same time. His final was at 8am, and I think he eventually fell asleep at 7am for a "quick nap". I eventually woke up at 9am, and remember distinctly saying out lout "*yawn* it is 9 o clock". Prompting an "oh shit" moment from him, where he had an hour left to get to and do his final.


I didn't really have anything urgent to do that day, so I left the dorm room for a while, and when I came back at 10:30, he was right back on there, playing WoW, talking to his mom on the phone explaining how missing half his final wasnt a big deal at all and everything was fine. It was like he had no remorse for his actions at ALL. The following semester he was still playing WoW, but I didnt notice as that semester was a huge blur for me as I was basically staying up every night til 1-4 am working on various math homework in a study room. Theres a huge gap in my memory of anything happening then between midterms and finals.

This basically killed any desire I had for playing the game. Any time I saw a picture of it, heard of anyone playing it, my mind instantly conjured up that scene. However, eventually I stumbled onto the lore behind origin of Azeroth and the Burning Legion, and became fixated on it. This eventually led up to the discovery of things like the Old Gods and C'Thun, and then other raids entirely. Finally I decided it was worthwhile to

Originally I was only interested in playing only a Blood Elf, as they had the coolest lore backstory. So by the time the expansion pack was announced, with Blood Elves as one of the new races, I decided to take a plunge and see what the game was all about. Thats when I borrowed a friends laptop with the game and tried it out a bit, and got instantly hooked after killing a few kobolds.

Why I play a Human on Alliance is a different story for another time.

why bind on pickup is a great game mechanic

If you've ever played Diablo 2 -- and as a devoted Blizzard fan you've killed Baal at least on Nightmare difficulty -- you'll quickly realize that getting into Hell difficulty requires you to do boss runs or cow level runs over and over again. Even afterwards you will then spend the rest of the game avoiding monsters because they are too difficult (Extra Strong Multishot Lightning Enchanted Physical Immune? More like "fuck you, player") and not worth the ensuing repair bill.


The game shifts from steadily progressing to being stronger and taking on swathes of enemies to avoiding those monsters so you can go kill the boss that has a much better chance at dropping something worthwhile. Part of this has to do with the fact that if Boss monsters ALWAYS dropped Unique level items, everyone and their pet dog would have them -- rather than just the botters or the devoted grinders. Suddenly the game no longer is challenging once you have a single high level character because they can just farm all the overpowered gear a new character would ever need, and hand it off to them. They could even create a looping progression cycle of hand-me-downs that they never get rid of when they want to reroll a new character.

World of Warcraft's avoids this by binding equipment. By having equipment bind, you can no longer have an overinflated item economy due to people just shoving off their hand-me-down equipment when they are done with it, or farming the same boss over and over and trading it out.

Bind on Equip items force a choice of either using said item for yourself, or getting trade value from somone else who wants it. There is an opportunity cost with equipping it, so you either have to choose to use it or get rid of it entirely, rather than trading it away the moment it loses its usefulness.

Bind on Pickup forces you to actually be present in an attempt for the item. Usually contributing towards getting it. It's still quite possible to take a higher level character in and trivialize the encounter, however its not possible anymore for you to bring in your own high level character, gather all the items, and then hand them over to one of your lower level characters. You need somone else to help you to twink out, and they are often busy grinding something else in the game.

With this, Blizzard no longer has to agonize over drop rates of the best equipment like they did in Diablo 2. The economy doesnt become oversaturated with powerful items because once they are placed on an owner, they cannot be put back on the market again. So now when you get through the effort of killing a "really hard guy" you dont have to sigh as it again drops a bunch of items that are useless for everyone. (Instead you sigh because once again, they didnt drop item X for you).

Overall the improvement is noticeable, when killing a boss you have a 10-33% chance of getting an item you want to drop, drop, rather than having a droprate below 1%.

everything i needed to know, i learned from 25 mans

Maulgar taught me first impressions are important.
Gruul taught me to always show up prepared.
Lurker taught me that slow & steady wins the race.
Void Reaver taught me that he who fights and runs away lives to fight another day.
Magtheridon taught us that its better to show up early than to show up late.

see also: http://blessingofkings.blogspot.com/2007/11/everything-i-needed-to-know-i-learned.html

raid report: acting like idiots

We were supposed to off Lurker last night, but after an hour and a half of failed attempts, it became clear that certain members of our raid weren't fucking paying attention and wiping us repeatedly.

As I mentioned before, theres a treshold of where if 5 people die, you might as well wipe the raid. In addition, we dont have the people to field the Paladins and Mages for the encounter, so if one of them dies, its practically game over.

I personally wasnt causing wipes and was actually focusing on killing the adds rather than killing the boss himself. The fight is supposed to be long, you can't really speed things up by cranking out your top DPS rotation on him and then start DPSing adds with low mana. I only died intentionally suiciding myself when it was apparent a wipe was going to happen the entire night. And after the 2nd wipe, I got myself a glass of wine and the entire experience was a lot more fun.

The major problems: 2 fold, one, people still dying due to spout. The fact that we still have to call it out over TS is a problem: its pretty obvious he is going to do it and there are plenty of raid warnings for it. Second, our rogues need to stop doing stupid shit on melee adds. The first attempt a rogue got killed by a cleave (DPSing a cleaving add from the front!). He then died again for the SAME REASON after getting battle rezzed. And to top it off he wasnt the only rogues making the same dumb mistakes, sometimes they would just break CC before a tank even threw a single sunder on the target, sometimes several of them would die from a single cleave.

Jan 23, 2008

heroics need improvement

I had the fun the other day of participating in some Steamvault runs where we used exactly no Crowd Control on the mobs. The tanks weren't paladins either. We were able to just run in, DPS like hell, and kill everything without drawing aggro off the tank too much, and were able to deal with their special abilities. Our group was full of skilled players that knew what to do, and we didnt even have to mark anything. It was refreshing and fun, and since I needed Cenarion Expedition rep, rewarding as well.

Meanwhile you have Heroic 5-mans, are painful to me still, even with my raiding gear. The problem is that since the trash mobs have been elevated to stupid high levels of power, you can't reliably use offtanks anymore, and too many targets hitting on the tank is right out. You certaintly can't have anything attacking somone in cloth or leather. Ever. And any run with 2 dedicated tanks is going to run into trouble as the DPS will be lacking and the healer will be overstressed. The run then devolves into hoping CC goes as according to plan, and hoping your healer doesnt run out of mana. This also heavily forces thte group to pick DPS based on their CCing abilities alone.

In all, its no longer fun. The moment CC breaks, the monster will run off and probably kill one or two people before there is even time to react. All of the effort in the run is directed at figuring out how to approach and execute the trash pulls, and almost all the wipes are directly due to some mistake during a trash pull. Effectively, the effort the party spends on the boss is shifted over to the trash mobs. It's not that the bosses aren't challenging, its just that usually the trash pulls are far more difficult. The problem with this is that for the entire run, the only thing thats really worth killing are the bosses. They hold the badges, they drop the BoP gems, they drop the items. The only wortwhile thing left to be gained from killing trash is reputation rewards, but by the time you clear a heroic, chances are you could have cleared it twice in normal mode, receiving more reputation.

Itemization wise, most Heroic mode drops are worse than items you can get in Karazhan. While Karazhan trash may be strong, there are enough player slots to allow for multiple Tanks and Healers, and more CC options. The end result is that Karazhan is actually easier to do, and gives better rewards than Heroics, with the only downside of needing an additional 5 people to do it.

To their credit, Heroics do breath in new life to old encounters and bosses, and are good PvE endgame for people who are unwilling or unable to raid. For raiders, they are mostly overlooked, only gaining new life because of the Daily quests to do them. To fix Heroics for me, Blizzard would have to change the Trash from being their current "hits harder, has more life" model and implement something more interesting, by either changing their behavior/abilities, or introducing additional trash mobs to fight entirely.

raid report: loot reaver and magtheridon tuesday

As you can tell from the title, we downed void reaver. We were 10% ahead of the timer pretty much the whole fight, and we basically 24 manned it since one of the priests was very unlucky and died right off the bat, in her defense this was the second time she'd ever fought the guy while the most the rest of us had 3 or more tries on him. Last time we tried him I think we failed only because we were bringing in several people that were not properly geared, just so we could at least get an attempt in. This time our powerhouse DPS team was on the job, and it showed.

Afterwards we had just enough time to one-shot Magtheridon, which we haven't done in a while. We almost wiped several times when our main tank and secondary tank both died within minutes of eachother, the final moments we were trying to burn him down with half the raid dead, barely beating his next blast wave cast with burst DPS.

Jan 21, 2008

raid report: managing expectations

I showed up 2 hours late for the raid invite last night (I forgot that I was an hour BEHIND server time, and thought that I was an hour AHEAD of server time). It was ok though, since for once 3 other warlocks in the guild were on that wanted to raid. By the time I got on they were still working on getting Lurkey Below down, so my mishap had the added bonus of dodging repair bills on a boss we should have been able to 2-shot. Additionally, as an Affliction Warlock, Lurker's boots aren't much of an improvement on the Frozen Shadowweave boots.

Then we spent an hour clearing trash to Void Reaver and had just enough time to get in one failed attempt. You probably aren't going to down a boss you are learning with 5 substitute raiders that haven't been gearing themselves up, don't raid regularly, and haven't been in the fight at all.

One major difference this time was that our Main Tank was a Druid. I dont remember reaching a threat ceiling at all until about 5 minutes into the fight when he got punted away too many times. Meanwhile last time with our Warrior MT, I would have reached an aggro ceiling 2:30 into the fight. Perhaps this is due to the fact that I didn't have a shadow priest, but thats only 15% more damage, and even then we had 4 Misdirects last time instead of only 2 this time.

The highlight of the raid was when I finally joined up for the Void Reaver, one of the other warlocks said to me "Sun, I've been meaning to talk to you about managing expectations". I was confused of course, and he went on to explain that I was being too accomodating with my healthstones, and they were getting yelled at throughout the night for not handing them out fast or soon enough. My fellow warlocks went on to explain that it is an important thing to do in life in general, one stating: "Never be too great of a spouse. Otherwise she will expect you to be great all the time. Thats why every once in a while I make it a point to be an ass to my wife."

PROTIP: As a raiding warlock, you know a soul well only has 10 stones per well, and it has a 5 minute cooldown. To get the entire raid stoned that means you need at least 3 wells. To do this, zone in early, and when you coun the first 10 people, drop a soul well. That one will dry up by the time there are ~15 people in there. By the time the entire raid is raidbuffing for trash, drop another well. Finally, when you are just before a boss encounter drop the well again. If there was a hard trash encounter also drop wells because some people use their stones then rather than die on the battlefield.

Jan 18, 2008

newbie guide: how to behave in a 5 man

As a newbie, you will notice that at times there are side dungeons you can participate with 4 other people with to gain better equipment and kill feircer foes. You may think this is done via teamwork, but in reality much more powerful forces are at work.

These forces can all be categorized under a single banner, called the "leet pwnage force". "leet pwnage" comes entirely from attitude. No amount of epic items or gameplay skill can duplicate it, which is very fortunate for newbies, since there is no grind attatched to it. Unfortunately, most newbies play the game without learning how to "pwn leet"ly, but fortunately for them, I have created a simple guide on the topic. Follow these steps and you'll be able to take on anything:

HOW TO LEET PWN IN 5-MANS

First of all, don't ever bother to use the LFG tool built in the game. Its for scrubs. The best way to get a group together is to use the LFG channel, spamming it with a macro full of acronyms "lf2m dps brd pst!!!!". At the same time, spam general chat with the macro, it doesn't matter what zone you are in.

When your group begins to form up, don't say anything. This game isnt about being social, its about killing things indiscriminately and proving to others how badass you are. You ever hear of a social badass? Neither have I.

Once you've zoned in, if it's a sub lvl 70 run, make sure everyone knows you have a lvl 70 main. If its a lvl 70 run, make sure everyone knows you have a main that farms Illidan, and that this is your alt. This will free you up from any blame of "not knowing how to play the game", while allowing to sling blame on your compatriots for not knowing how to do their job.

To expand upon this, make sure to inspect your teammates and comment that they are using the wrong equipment. Pick stats at random that they do not have enough of. Tell the healing paladin that he doesnt have enough agility, or that the Hunter doesnt have enough +healing, or that the Warrior needs more spell crit.

Before the first pull, if somone else is trying to mark the pull, attack the monsters before they can get it done and do a "/rw marks are for nubs, we can handle this!". If you are the party leader, refuse to hand it over to somone who repeatedly asks for it so they can mark the pull.

Make sure you take every opportunity to insult the progress of the group and make it clear that the only thing keeping this group alive is you. Especially if you're AOEing the CC on a non-AOE pull. The DPS will never be fast enough, the heals never soon enough, or the tank cant hold aggro enough for you. Remember: "lrn2play" is a term of endearment (unless somone is using it on you. what the fuck is their problem?).

If you wipe once, threaten to drop the party unless everyone else doesnt shape up. Wiping twice is grounds for dropping the party, or at least gives you full clearance to Ninja the next boss drop should you remain.

Remember that when rolling on items, its only the stats that matter. Not usefulness to the class. Feel free to roll on that leather item against the Rogue as a Warrior, or against the priest for that Robe because it looks good on your Hunter. Roll on items you arent even going to use and sell them.

At the end of a run, make sure to contact whatever guild leaders/officers you can of the people you ran with, and notify them of every mistake they made.




And that is how you "pwn leet"ly.

Jan 17, 2008

raid report: reminding myself why i hate ZA

Our guild doesn't really run ZA agressively at all. We've downed the Lynx boss, but we don't take it nearly as seriously as 25-man bosses, where we are required to study strategies before the first pull.

Part of the problem is that we haven't learned the content, so we end up wiping on something that is supposed to be "post Karazhan Level", with a team of people that can flash fry Nightbane and Prince. The bear boss and the trash leading up to him are bearable (PUN!). But then we get to the Eagle boss and our strategy still isnt perfect. His gauntlet is really annoying, and when we do fight him our agreed upon strategy is to collapse just before he launches somone into the air, but this leaves us super wide open for his Static Disruption. Personally I think this might be dealing fatal blows to us, since the debuff from his chain lightning is quite punishing.


We tried not killing the birds the first two times but it wasn't working out at all. While DPS can handle a few interruptions, our healers aren't geared enough to a point where they can handle interruptions and heal the raid.


We were getting ready for our fourth attempt, when we hit the gauntlet respawn timer. 30 minutes is entirely too short for learning the encounter. Thats when we decided to stop the raid and go off to Karazhan, chain pulling our way through Opera before calling it a night.

Jan 16, 2008

raid report: gruul & mag tue-- wait we're doing lurker today too?

Gruul and Mag were 2 shot deals.

The first attempt at Gruul just being very unlucky with the Random Number Generator and having most of our DPS die in the first few shatters. I personally got to enjoy being lobbed into the center of gruul, not being able to see where I was going, but knowing I had to move out as the tanks always charge after being launched and hate being next to anyone else. When I finally got out from underneath him I was next to 3 other DPSers.

Mag we lost our first attempt due to the fact that certain people jumped the gun and clicked early on a rotation. Otherwise it was a pretty standard pew pew pew loot loot loot procedure.

And then I thought we were done. But with ample time leftover we got 2 failed Lurker Attempts in. The first attempt we had one of our sheeping Mages die 3 times in a row due to bad luck his CC target. We ended up wiping that attempt after he died again, and his sheep target went to town. The second time, I died like a newbie right off the bat when transitioning from my lurker DPS spot to an Island DPS spot: I stepped a little TOO close to lurker before he submurged. Ranged dont usually have to worry about threat on Lurker, so when you walk into his melee zone before he submurges as a ranged theres a good chance he will one-shot you. I got hit for some 11k damage, which I could have survived if I ate +sta buff food instead of +dmg buff food. The rest of the attempt deteriorated as other people were making stupid mistakes.

The real downer of the evening was that I used elixirs on Magtheridon and a flask on Lurker. So much wasted consumables.

Jan 15, 2008

the raid boss formerly known as prince

Currently known as "that jacakss that will randomly wipe us and theres nothing we can do about it".

Despite the fact we are inches away from breaking into SSC proper, there are still useful items to be found for people in Karazhan. Maybe not gear that they need for boss fights, but Tanks/Healers can always use a DPS set, and DPS can always use a set that isnt saturated with +hit stats when they are just farming or doing 5 mans... and alts need love too!

In a somewhat humbling experience we wiped on Prince.
3 times in a row.
2% 8% and 8%.

On the positive side, when we finally did kill him, we didnt shard a single thing he dropped afterwards.

(This isn't a formal raid report because I was just dragged in on an off day to help some recruits/alts get some gear from Prince before the reset timer.)

Jan 14, 2008

raid report: not yet a lootreaver

Last night was our guilds first formal stab at doing Void Reaver. Right off the bat when you enter the place there is a 6 pull, with 5 AOEs and some Mind Controllers thrown in for good measure. Some of the trash pulls are pretty boring, and I was particularly underwhelmed by the trash pulls inside Void Reavers room. Apparently they are supposed to be "harder than VR himself", and our guild leader had found a video of a guild where half of the raid died on one of the trash pulls.

Basically in the pulls there are these two demon guys that do massive AOE damage to the raid if not CCed correctly. In the video half the raid dies on the pull. In actuality, it was really more of a problem that the warlocks just sucked at CCing. Their first mistake in the video is that they dont bother pulling the patrol first. The second mistake is that they have their main tank pull and then run out of Voidreavers room into a hallway. The third mistake was that their warlocks dont have a debuff timer mod at all, so they have to guess when they need to apply the next banish, leading to the demons AOEing life down quickly. With the mod it's quite easy for a warlock to keep a demon banished repeateadly, not allowing them to move or act. Furthermore with misdirect, you can have the warlocks run in and body pull the group while the golems are misdirected and the additional blood elf mob is sheeped off the bat.

Void Reaver himself was a much trickier deal. He doesnt hit the tank that hard. The real issue is the melee DPS avoiding his poundings, and everyone avoiding the sparks he lobs. Part of my problem with his sparks that he's lobbing is that they come from above at a very inconvenient angle. You cant zoom out the camera far enough normally to get a birds eye view of the situation to see all the sparks, and to have the camera looking slightly up the entire fight is also tricky, since as you have to move around to dodge the sparks you will be moving the camera around a lot.

The thing that pisses me off about Void Reaver though is that he's just a gigantic threat management fight. At least the way our guild does him, we have one main tank doing his best to build threat, while he gets constant misdirects from whatever hunters we have in the raid. But it's just not enough. I'm not even using my spelldamage trinket and I can quite easily reach the aggro ceiling in 3 minutes. Soulshatter doesnt get rid of enough threat for me. It's really more of a fight for our Hunters, Rogues and Mages to shine because they have better threat elimination abilities. My alternative is to start farming threat reduction items, I trashed my old threat reduction gear ages ago because I got to a point where I thought the tanks I was running with would generate enough threat for me that I wouldn't have to worry about it ever again, at least with a meter running anyway.

The best choice right now may be just to get to exalted with the Keepers of Time for the Time Lapsed Shard and spam that on its every cooldown. And then hopefully supplement those with Shrouding Potions, but I don't know if we have an alchemist exalted with Sporregar. If those arent enough, theres another trinket I can get that's a drop in Shadow Labrynth, and get a cape from Sporregar. Hopefully it wont come to that.

It's been a while since I've done Black Morass runs, so it'll be interesting to see how different it is now that I have insane gear to back me up on them.

Jan 11, 2008

raid report: taking lurker to school

Last night my guild and I rallied and after a few attempts finally killed lurker. Like I said before our problems were all just people making ridiculously stupid newbie mistakes such as "dont aggro a mob before a tank gets on it", "keep the CC CCed", and "get out of the way of the blue beam of death".

I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that on Magtheridon we didn't have to worry about DPSing the mobs being CCed, and we had to DPS the channelers as fast as possible, which meant that it was the tanks who had to aggro at the pace at the DPS, rather than the DPS paying attention to their threat. Lurker works on a much leisurely pace and punishes you for trying to jump the gun and "speed things up" more than taking things at a steady, reliable pace.

Up next is Voidreaver. His fight mechanic doesnt seem too difficult, and from what I understand is that I have to soulshatter in the first few minutes so I can soulshatter again in the latter few minutes. (pew pew pew)

Jan 10, 2008

raid report: lurker lessons

Ahhh. Learning content. Far better than farming the same old tired farming bosses for items. Even when I'm fighting a boss that has a gear upgrade for me, after a few downings of said boss, it gets old. I want to head onward to newer and more challenging foes! The only reason I'm even bothering to kill these guys over and over is so my guild can go on to the next.

Even trash mobs feel more exciting and vibrant on a new boss encounter. The pulls are particularly more fun for my warlock since pulling aggro on Gruul and Magtheridon trash mobs is fairly easy to do. On the trash surrounding Lurker's pool, there are enough targets that I can throw up all my DoTs on the primary target and then begin to load them up on the next target, with just enough time leftover to Drain Soul the primary target. SSC trash also actually drop useful crap too: flask tokens, nether vortices, and epics, oh my! Tonight we had the random drop Feral Druid Staff drop for us twice. It's a welcome change from killing trash in Gruul and Magtheridon, who barely have loot tables at all. Karazhan foes drop epics, but they are very specific and theres a good chance that nobody who can use it will be in your 10 man.

When it came to the actual Lurker, we failed.

Dying to Lurker's Spout must quickly become dying to Prince's Enfeeble/Nova for us. It just shouldn't happen. Ever. But every once in a while somone makes a stupid mistake and gets blown off the platform and killed. Lurker and his adds aren't really that hard at all, but the fight is fast paced enough that every person that dies during the fight has a huge effect on how the rest of the fight plays out. The breaking point seems to be at 5 people. Once any 5 people die our entire raid just begins to fall apart. Not immediately, but its a point of no return from which the encounter goes from being "easy" to "battle of attrition", where more people just keep dying and dying.

Our main tank was previously in a guild that did SSC, so he is particularly pissed off that we keep making newbie mistakes on the easiest boss there. Current things we need to figure out:

1) Not dying on spout
2) Lettings tanks get aggro on the melee adds before DPSing -- they do an 8000 damage cleave (on cloth)! One one attempt the rogue group engaged him before the tank even was nearby and just got slaughtered by a cleave and a few attacks.
3) Getting better at CCing adds. Those melee adds just love to make a beeline to our healers when they arent under control and attack + cleave = death.

A lot of it is us just doing really dumb shit that we shouldn't do, and should know better than doing by now.

In the end we found out that once guys start respawning on the platforms, the pirranas also reappear. Luckily we found this out during a wipe recovery, and not during an encounter.

Jan 9, 2008

no more class trainers

With the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King release, Blizzard has been talking about making the game feel more epic, more heroic (at least for Death Knights). One of the least heroic things I found about levelling my character in outland was that every once in a while I had to haul ass back to some old world capital city to get my training done by the same guys who have been training me since level 10.

If those guys are that good why aren't THEY killing Illidan? Or conquering Alterac Valley? Or dominating the Arena? It certainly won't be epic if theres a few Death Knight trainers just milling about somewhere in Stormwind. (...Undercity on the other hand they'd fit right in...) I say they have served their purpose. I put on my big boy pants at level 70 and they have nothing more to teach me.

Instead spell ranks should be learned through class questing.

One of my faveorite things about levelling up my warlock was that there were plenty of quests that forced me to prove my worth to some master of warlockery in order to receive a particular new spell. They often required me to gather materials from powerful demons or participate in some profane rite.

On the opposite hand I have my rogue and priest alt. My priest had an interesting quest at around lvl 10 to do something for a spell, but nothing new since then. My rogue did the reputation building quest with Ravenholdt, only to discover there was nothing more to do there. In comparison my Warlock had, by level 40, done 4 class quests for learning how to summon pets, and 3 class quests for obtaining useful equipment.

The dreadsteed questline takes the tops: I had to sneak into a demonic lair and trick it's denizens into giving me information on how to summon my mount. Then I assembled a few powerful magical artifacts with rare consumables from around the world. You then wander into some highborne ruins and deactivate a barrier surrounding a powerful demon. After killing said demon I had to enact a ritual that would over time draw more glyphs on the ground as demons warped into existance, ending with a very angry demon and his horse for my group to help me take down.

In Outland, however, they forgot about class quests almost entirely. Only the druids got one, and they already have moonglade. What gives? There aren't even class quests for epic items to help patch up itemization gaps in raiding.

Back on point: for an epic hero who has laid waste to many dangerous foes and magical beasts, training should no longer be about handing over some gold and saluting. Instead it should be about searching out new sources of power and taking them from their owners. Proving your worth through a challenge of power. Discovering a tome of ancient and arcane lore written in an indecipherable language, so you must seek aid in translating it. Sneaking into a heavily fortified fortres, stealing important documents and sabotaging its inner workings before leaving undetected. Competing with a master of arms in sparring, and as a reward for your cunning he teaches you a new trick with your sword. These are heroic ways to unlock new abilities.

I know Blizzard wants to keep people going back to the old Azeroth capitals, but keeping the only source of class training there will just be a repeat of TBC: After the initial rush to 80, there will be little need for 90% of the high level population to step inside old world capitals again. There needs to be a better incentive to hang out there.

There are some downsides to this system, where people can level faster and higher than new ranks would be given to them. It would also unfairly punish PvPers that have no interest in playing the PvE game and just want to reach level 80 ASAP. Theres some definite balance issues. It may seem like a good idea to have a lvl 80 spell rank as a reward for clearing a lvl 80 dungeon instance, or completing a lvl 80 group quest -- but then you run into problems where people need to run that quest and no longer receive the necessary help, as they joined too late or a new expansion dropped.

raid report: gruul & mag tuesday

Gruul
One shot encounter. I learned that my DPS isnt sucking, its my threat. I outthreat the secondary tank too early in fights now, even with salvation. Ideally I want to be blowing soul-shatter halfway through the fight. Instead I do it within the first few growths and end up gaining too much aggro by growth 10.

Mag
3 wipes. 4th times the charm!

We did it this time with only 2 warlocks, which is tricky since Infernal CC is a tricky task with less than 3. It's doable, but only if the hunters spam their freezing traps early and often.

Wipe 1 - My memory is a bit fuzzy on this one. DPSing the channelers down was great. Until the last channeler. Somehow I died and a few other people did. We recovered, I got a battle rez. 2 actually (way to go druid synchronization!). Rezzed again after a blast wave, so as to not get instagibbed by a late/failed cube clicking. Next blast wave went ok, but then it became my rotation's turn to click. I distinctly remember seeing somone at their cube but not clicking at the appropriate time, and too my dismay by the time they did start clicking, I had died (2 ticks from blast wave and the standard cube damage is greater than 8000 damage, which was how much HP I had with 0 buffs on). Luckily Magtheridon was still banished. Then in the next rotation 2 people were not in position to click at all. Many groans as we wipe.

Wipe 2 - I think this one a tank did not establish aggro soon enough. So we had channelers running wild, which basically means they start to over DPS the raid with their shadowbolt volleys and heal the DPS target. Somone on Teamspeak blames the CC, the other warlock, my CO, gets angry.

Wipe 3 - Started out fine, but then for some reason one of the tanks just died. Then another one did. Then we had like 8 infernals running around with 8 people dead and not even the first channeler dead. I suicide via Hellfire because I know theres no way to recover from that. Somone blames the CC on Teamspeak again, pissing off my CO even more. I feel like blaming a healers because they've been doing a crappy job here since the first attempt.

Wipe 4 - Our guild leader said this was our last attempt, because he was tired of the newbie mistakes we were making the first 3 wipes. We all put on our A game, and kill the 5th channeler before the first cube click has to occur, which is really good for our DPS. There were a few times when the 1st rotation was too slow at getting all the clicks off and so it became a competition between the 2nd and 1st rotation on who could interrupt magtheridon better. 2nd rotation - my rotation - came out on top... until after the cave in. Then the guild leader got a little nervous and accidentally called out for a click 5 seconds too early, and 2 people in our rotation clicked. Finally when Magtheridon actually began casting blast wave the rest of us clicked, just in the nick of time to banish Magtheridon.

PROTIP: Always look at Magtheridons caster bar to click, and never ever ever ever rely on a boss mod timer for when to click. For when to move into position for clicking it works very well, but as a marker for clicking it will just wipe your raid.

6 peices of T4 dropped in a single night!... And not a single one was "of the hero". Curse you random number generator!

As an added bonus this week I finally got my head out of my ass and got back into the top 5 on the damage meters. For Maulgar I was 4th, which is pretty good because of the rapid target switching that occurs. For Gruul I was 2nd, behind the best DPS rogue in the guild. And thats without a shadow priest buffing my damage.

Jan 7, 2008

overheard in guild chat

Tank: I knew it was going to be a bad run from the start when they called a caster LOS pull a "sexy move".
Hunter: sorry I dragged you into that...

Said after a 3 hour failed Heroic Steamvault PUG.

Jan 6, 2008

raid report: magtheridon sunday

I originally wasn't going to raid sunday night, I've been sick recently and I wanted to just sit back and relax and do chores I had been avoiding.

So when I logged on around the usual quitting time for Raiding we have, I was surprised to see everyone still stuck in Magtheridon's Lair. I don't know how many wipes occured, but immediately after the attempt I logged on to failed, I was conscripted into the instance for "one last attempt". So by raidiquette, I had to go on this one last attempt for the night.

Being groggy on a Magtheridon fight for a warlock is never fun. As a warlock my job is to make sure any infernals that spawn are CCed the moment they appear, lest they kill a healer. On top of that you have to make sure the initial 5 adds are permanently Curse of Tongued, as their shadowbolt volleys will kill people if they cast them too often. Then, if your a warlock, youre usually on cube clicking duty, where accidentally clicking your cube too early or not getting in position at the right time becomes a wipe. I was on cube duty.

The fight was pretty hectic. We lost 2 people by the time the final channeler died, and a few more kept dying as time wore on. There were at least 5 substitutions on cube clicking duty due to their designated clickers dying, thankfully I wasnt one of them. One thing of distress was that when people died, they didnt use TeamSpeak to declare so, instead opting to spam raidchat with their "I died" macro.

The good news was that we killed him. We got our second member in 5/5 T4, and a new recruit got their T4 chest token. Thats how we roll.

Right now killing Magtheridon isnt that thrilling for me anymore, but I imagine some other classes can use his drops a lot more than I can. On the whole I think the killing of Magtheridon was more about reassuring ourselves that we are still up for 25 man content. Guild morale is a fickle thing and is easily raised, but just as easily lost.

Jan 4, 2008

raidiquette: blaming wipes

After a wipe, you have to examine what went wrong during the raid, and if was a trivial encounter that you should be able to do with your eyes closed: blame somone for it.

For certain coordination fights this will be easy. For example, a typical Netherspite wipe could look like this:
"Johnny stepped in front of the green beam for too long, so I got nether exhaustion and after he stepped out of the green beam Netherspite healed too much, and we ran into his enrage timer."

But for other fights the problem is more complex and not easy to identify. Here are a few simple rules for figuring out to blame:

1) Don't Blame the Tanks
Even if it was their fault, don't blame the tanks. Until Wrath drops and we can all get EZ Offtanks (Blizzard calls then Deathknights for some reason), dont blame them. Certainly dont blame your main Warrior, Druid, and Paladin tanks. There are specific encounters that call for their abilities, and if you place too much blame on them they may leave. Some have thick skin, but its not worth the risk.

2) Don't Blame the Healers
Healers watch health bars more than anyone in the entire raid. They know when they are sucking and they certainly dont need a reminder from you. Pissing off healers is a bad idea as well: most healers would switch to DPS at the drop of the hat if they could, and if you piss them off too much they might do that and go to another guild. Again, some have thick skin, but its still not worth the risk to blame the healers.

3) Blame the DPS
Since DPS has the easiest job, you will always have more DPS than you will ever need. Honestly, we are a dime a dozen and everyone likes to see big numbers appear from dealing damage. Comparatively, big healing numbers are usually overheals, which means you wasted mana, and as a tank all you get to see are the feet of some massive giant laying into you the entire fight. Furthermore, blaming the DPS is a great motivator, since its negative reinforcement that if the DPS doesnt get into shape they will start losing raid invites to other DPSers.

4) By "Blame the DPS" I mean "Blame the Hunters and Rogues"
Firstly, dont blame DPS Warriors, Paladins, Priests, Shamen (Shamans?), or Druids. They can all spec to tank and/or heal at some point. For the same reasons for rules 1 & 2, you don't blame them for a wipe.

Looking ahead, this leaves the 4 pure DPS classes. Hunters, Rogues, Mages, and Warlocks. Of these, Mages provide the needed service of Arcane Intellect/Brilliance, free food/water, and portals for to exit the raid without using hearthstone. Warlocks provide wipe insurance, healthstones, and blood pact for the tank group. All very essential buffs and items to have in the raid encounters.

Hunters and Rogues do have some useful tools to bring to the table. Misdirect is amazing, and trueshot is sort of ok. Rogue poisons have situational usefulness, and hemo is nice to have -- though not many spec to get it.

However, the most important reason to blame them though, is because they are the largest idiot magnet classes around. Hunters because they promise high damage with survivability, rogues because they promise high dps and a lot of people have ninja fetishes. Either way, they levelled up to now constantly being ridiculed by groupmates as "Huntards" and "Roguetards" because of their less intelligent comrades, so they will have the thickest skin.

5) Alternatively, blame whichever DPS got a nice drop recently
If it was clearly not a rogue or hunter at fault, the next best choice is to blame a DPSer who got a nice purple to drop recently. This will reinforce the behaviour that they "owe" the guild, and their recent "payment" from the guild is fresh in their minds. Also, if it was a really nice item, they will be to happy to care that they are taking the heat for the wipe that they probably didnt cause.

6) If all else fails, blame Blizzard
I heard there were more Deep Breaths this patch.

raid report: gruul & mag thursday

And after a long winter break my guild decided it was time to do 25 mans again.

This was probably the first time I logged into my main for over a week, and I was surprised at the graphics. I remember them being much more low rez and blocky. I think I might've fiddled with the graphics settings before logging off last time.

A lot of other people were logging on for the first time after the break too. And it showed:

Maulgar
Usually Maulgar isnt worth mentioning since he goes down quick and easy. For the uninitiated, if your guild can clear Karazhan, you can kill Maulgar once you learn how to do the initial pull.

We wiped Maulgar 2 and a half times.

The first two times was because the mage tank was getting a lot of spell resists on his spellsteal and not enough heals. I think the problem was mostly because he had too much of his Arena gear on and not enough spell hit on.

The half was because by the time we got all his adds down we were down to basically a few tanks and a few healers. Execute spam saved the day. He dropped two Hero pants tokens, so I finally got my second peice of T4. Hooray... sorta. Most of us dont even need T4 peices anymore, and are really only getting them for completionists sake. Even on the half wipe I still think he needed more spell hit on, because by the time we killed the first 4 adds, I and another mage managed to outthreat him on a mob that he had been building aggro on since the beginning of the fight.

Gruul
One shotted Gruul.

Our rustiness really only showed when there were a few times when I took over 5000 damage from shattering, where normally I only take 1000-2000 damage, if any at all. He died somewhere around 13 growths. Not the greatest fight. My DPS was somewhat lacking because I wasnt given salvation, and for whatever reason 3 different tanks were vying for the coveted 2nd position*, which meant three different people were getting misdirects. I also used Soulshatter way too soon into the fight and ended having to stop DPS entirely.

Gruul finally dropped his tanking shield, and I was wondering where that shield had come from since I've seen it around a few times. The shield went to our main tank automatically, but all the warriors, paladins and shamen (shamans?) rolled on the shield just to piss him off anyway. Our token DPS warrior got a 100, and "gave" the shield to MT, and currently claims credit for every block our main tank does with it.

Magtheridon
Triple wiped on Magtheridon and called it a night.

Wipe 1: A rogue on cube clicking duty died too close to the first blast wave and nobody could run into his position in time.
Wipe 2: DPS pulled aggro away from the first channeler that we kill. We got him back into position only to have him break away a second afterwards and get a heal. Everyone groans and the raid leader calls for a wipe.
Wipe 3: 2 cube clickers died right before the first blast wave, and one person was not in position.

On the positive side I had the foresight to only use Elixirs on these attempts instead of a flask.



*For the uninitiated: Gruul will do additional damage to anyone who is second on his threat meter, so to be safe all of the DPS tries to stay third or below.

Jan 3, 2008

vanity guilds are awesome

Back when I was still a newbie, I was in a vanity guild with a friend of mine, who liked immature humor, and I hated all the ridiculous guild names I kept seeing with words like "Knights" "Shadow" or "Of The Light" -- with the O and T capitalized, and I swear I remember seeing some ridiculous guild called "Shadow Knights Of The Light" while levelling my main and it made me gag -- so we created our own guild, if only so we could have a name in brackets.

We ended up deciding on "thats what your mom said", as "thats what your mom said last night" was too long, and probably to risque for Blizzard to allow. The all lowercase was my idea, because I was tired of seeing prepositions being capitalized when they werent the first word in the guild name. Another benefit of the name was that it was as long as a guild name could be, and so those who didnt turn off the guild name display option would be drawn to its length.

Anyway, got quite a few compliments, and a few negative tells. Most of them were simply "reported for your guild name", and I got to laugh at them behind my computer screens for having dirty minds. However one moment that still clearly stands out for me was I was standing by the Scarlet Monastery meeting stone waiting for more people, and some guy had just finished summoning somone, turned to me, paused and gave me this whisper:

"I would have invited you to our SM run, but your guild name is so awful I'm putting you on ignore."

I tried to whisper him back with "lol" but by then I was already ignored. Then I strated to laugh out loud for real.

the khadgar house rules

If you couldn't tell by the character sheets on the side, I play Alliance on Khadgar, and as long as I've played there, there is one very simple rule for loot distribution:

Pass on BoPs

I dont really run into that rule now as a 70, because pretty much every group I play with has veterans of the server who accept the rule as law and dont question it. A lot of new players, however do. I was like that once, but if you group enough as you level, you will keep hearing it and keep encountering it, and more experienced players will force the rule down upon you.

From what I've come to understand the rule is there so you can have more time to decide after combat is over on who deserves to actually roll for need on it. There have been plenty of times while levelling where people would get item crazy and roll on things they didnt necessarily need at all, only to get shouted down by the group to l2p. Should the debate on "needing" the item end in the result that it should be "greeded", the item then can be picked up by an enchanter and sharded. Early on the shards dont mean much, since newbie characters can afford to pay for nice enchants when they can barely pay for their lvl 40 mount when they ding 40, but later on their economic importance becomes realized.

But of course it leaves the system wide open for ninjas. Nothing's stopping anyone from picking up items either by clicking need after everyone has passed, or self looting the item after passing and discussion about who it goes to is under way. But ultimately its just a 5 man drop. I'm sure Master Looter was a lot more prevalent during the old days of PuGing 10 mans, or participating in 40 man raids. But for 5 mans it doesnt really seem that important to use it in order to ensure somone isnt going to ninja the item, as while levelling, the only people who really care about missing out on a blue item tend to be newbies, and at lvl 70, its not [i]that[/i] much of a hassle to run instance X again and again until the item drops.

the bash'ir landing event

Why the hell aren't there more things like this in the game? For anyone who has never gotten enough people together to do it, you are missing out on some very interesting stuff.

Basically the Bash'ir landing event happens every 2 hours. Some Shat'tari Skyguards fly up to the northwestern corner of Blades Edge Mountain and expect a few players to bother to defend them. The longer you defend them, the better merchants you get. But the longer you defend them, the more enemies come, the rate they approach increases, and the types of mobs that attack continually get stronger. Theres a boss mob at the end to top it all off.

Sadly, most of the items you can buy in it are forgettable. You really need 10-20 people to survive all the way to the end, and if you can coordinate that many people you've already been clearing Karazhan, so the blue items you can get from defending to spawn the final vendor aren't that great. But the overall encounter is an interesting experience, and some of the flasks help a great deal on Gruul.

Events like this are nice because they break up the dull staticness of the world. The game world is populated with wandering masses of mobs that will slowly respawn even after you clear the area of them. The event though, your ability to withstand mobs has an effect of spawning more mobs. It would make the game more interesting if they applied this principle elsewhere in the game.

I think a healthy sprinkling of this here or there wouldn't hurt the game too much. For example, the "Onyxia Style" raids in the game are too short to have any interesting trash drops, yet for a guild learning them the repair costs and not easily offset (my repair bill from my worst nights in Karazhan are about 5 gold, my worst nights in Magtheridon? 27). To alleviate this, there could be some sort of crazy optional event in them that would trigger a lot of extra trash to fight, and they would result in some combination of gold, reputation rewards and tokens to receive items. The rewards shoudln't be spectacular, just good enough so that a guild who has the place on farm status would skip over it, but a guild just starting the place would do it, if only to recoup expenses from a night of wipes.

Jan 2, 2008

new healer mechanics

If the first hero class is going to be able to tank because of "tank drought", I'm betting the second hero class is going to be able to heal. But at the same time there still needs to be mechanics that exist that make them seperate and unique from the other healers. Additionally, Healers will probably be dissapointed if Blizzard doesnt introduce new gimmicks in Wrath that alter how they have to heal, if only a little bit.

IDEAS

Charged Healing: The priest T4 4/5 set bonus has an interesting mechanic where using flash heal several times stacks a charge that reduces the casting time of greater heal. Why not make this into a learnable mechanic? Using a mana inefficient heal to build the charges isnt the best idea though, as then it really becomes more of a way to mitigate the hurt of using them and less of an interesting mechanic to use. Instead you make it an ability that costs little/no mana, but used the global cooldown to build charges, and when fully charged it can reduce the casting cost of the spell to an instant.

"Rage" Based Healing: Druids have Omen of Clarity, but Tree druids are far too immobile to make full use of it in a raid situation. Paladins on the other hand, could benefit from a simmilar ability, as to turn them into something a bit more complex and interesting than deciding "use the big heal" or "spam the little heal". Perhaps a way to spruce up the retribution tree?

Reward for Healing well: One interesting idea is to have an ability that will refund the healers mana based on how much they are actually healing, to discourage them from overhealing. This is a bad mechanic for Paladins (they have this mechanic in reverse), Druids (why bother healing accurately when you can self innervate?), and Shaman (have totems that will refund their mana). It would be best as a high tier Discipline talent for Priests, or good for a new healer class that is fundamentally mana inefficient, and thus to only be useful at healing they have to play smart.

Front/Backloaded HoT: Druids have a nice backloaded HoT, but the HoT component is stack based. A frontloaded HoT would give the healer the dilemma of deciding over whether to continue having the HoT up, knowing that it is healing less and less, or to refresh it. A backloaded HoT would also be nice, its usefullness would be mostly in healing the raid, as a healer could throw it on a target and switch to their next -- but it would also create the dilemma of "is this person going to die before the HoT gets good!?". Perhaps a "Mid"-loaded HoT would combine the best of bost worlds?

Area Shield: A sort of AOE version of Power Word: Shield, where they designate an AOE area or point blank drop an invisible totem that creates a bubble around the area. All damage taken by people in the area reduces from the total amount of damage the shield absorbs, until it breaks.

Situational Shielding: Power Word: Shield blocks all types of damage, but what about shields that can only block certain elemental types? A good class to receive this would be the Shaman, since it fits their "elemental master" role well.

Damage Supression: A buff that prevents the first X of damage from a source but adds a stacking debuff, that on expiration deals X times the number of stacked damage. Alternatively, a buff that functions like inner fire but can be cast on other people. (Allow priests to cast inner fire other people, but they can only have one inner fire up at any time?)

Healing Exhaustion: Power Word: Shield and Blessing of Protection throw on debuffs that prevent them from being used again in rapid succession, and BoP has a nice large cooldown. Perhaps some new healing mechanic could be introduced with this where it reduces the effectiveness of the spell the more it is used. With this in place, Blizzard could give a healing class an awesome new healing spell that is fast, efficient, and bursty, but at the same time only situationally effective and reserved.

Contagious Healing: Simmilar to how some boss effects penalize players for standing too close together, why not make a healing spell that heals the intended target, and gives a little extra healing to those around him/her.

Channeled Healing Spells: Tranquility is ok, but I'm thinking something more along the lines of how warlocks can heal their pets.

Pave the Way First: Healing Way is an interesting Shaman talent, but a more interesting mechanic is a healing spell that requires first a buff to be placed on the target before it is fully effective. For a new class, for example, the buff would be slow to cast, and only placeable on one target, but the benefit would be that buffed target would receive extra healing and/or the spell would would have increased mana efficiency.

A Healing Pet: If only to get more pets in the game. This would go good with the Channeled Healing Spell. While the player is busy focusing on one target, they can order their pet to go spot heal somone else. Make it a small Naaru as to increase their relevance in a post BC world.