Category: guild

Your Mouth and How to Shut It

Kurn / / apotheosis, general, guild, raiding, ramblings

Hilarious title, when you consider that I’m the author of this post, right? One of the longer-winded bloggers, whose posts can often exceed 3000 words, is advising people on how to keep quiet? INCONCEIVABLE!

But seriously, folks, there is a very interesting issue that can arise in a raiding guild, particularly when you feel you understand a fight better than those who are organizing it.

Full disclaimer: I do both. I organize fights for Apotheosis (still seeking skilled DPS, including WARLOCKS PLEASE) and I’m a part of the rank and file in Choice.

One thing that I have noticed, as a raid leader for Apotheosis (both now and back in BC) is that I loathe people telling me what to do when I’m the raid leader. Note that this is very different from entertaining suggestions or people offering advice. I loathe when people say “Kurn, you’re doing it wrong, we have to do it this way”. It drives me crazy. In part, it’s because many times, the individuals who say these things to me are wrong (in that they’re forgetting a key part of the fight or encounter or whatever), but it’s also like, “hey, now, buddy. Show a little respect for the pecking order.”

In Apotheosis, I’m in charge. I oversee the raids, I am the guild master. I don’t run the guild like a dictatorship and I don’t have vetos or anything and I largely view my role as one of a mediator/administrator/communicator, rather than one of SUPREME DICTATORSHIP. (Although I have fantasies about being able to do anything I want, from time to time.  What guild master doesn’t?) But really, I don’t have to “answer” to anyone, technically, when it comes to raids. (Apart from showing progress for my raid group, lest they lose faith in me.)

Having said that, we do have review threads up for every single raid and everyone is welcome to chime in about what they thought worked/didn’t work and how to better improve something. 25 pairs of eyes is better than one, after all. I’m more than happy to hear what the guildies saw and what they think and I may (or may not) incorporate their suggestions/observations into further refinements of strategy.

I will even sometimes ask during the raids if anyone has an idea for something or if people have any suggestions, although most of our discussions take place on our forums.

And I also constantly consult with the officers to see what the impressions/problems are from a DPS/healing standpoint as well.

So it’s not that I don’t like taking advice and it’s not that I don’t like hearing what others think. I just feel strongly that there’s a time and a place for it and, in our guild, more often than not, it’s in the raid review forum.

Now flip that around.

Two nights a week, I raid with Choice — as a holy pally (on the “baby pally”, as I call her). The fights are the same as what I’ve seen in Apotheosis, since we’re both raiding Dragon Soul and attempting heroic bosses, both on 25-man. My own role is almost easy, because all I have to do is heal my assignment, as opposed to heal as well as oversee everything. It’s FUN to raid without any additional responsibility.

All of a sudden, however, I am keenly aware that I know the fights very well (given my other role as a raid leader with Apotheosis) and possibly know them better than some of the people in that guild.

The question here, when the raid group is struggling on an encounter, is “do I say something or do I keep my mouth shut?”

Since I absolutely loathe being told what to do in my own raids, I try to approach being a raider the way I want my raiders to act towards me. I will likely, privately, point out some issues to an officer and if the officer encourages me to do so, I’ll whisper the RL themselves. Or, even more likely, I’ll send a PM to an officer at the end of the raid, or occasionally post something in the raid forum after the raid with some of my identification of issues.

Throughout the raid itself, I will usually not say a lot with regards to strategy. That’s not my role. It’s not my raid group. And since I only raid twice a week with them, the officers are a lot more familiar with their group than I am. While most strats for most bosses share a similar basic strategy, it’s the nitty gritty parts that can, and do, change from raid group to raid group. I have to trust that the leaders in Choice are doing what’s best for their group.

Even if they’re struggling.

It’s occasionally frustrating to see the raid group not doing as well as they could be. The question isn’t actually saying something versus not saying something: it’s “do everything I can to make sure the raid succeeds versus letting them figure it out themselves”.

While I have no doubt that Choice will eventually get to the point where they want to be for kills and progression (they’re just one boss back of Apotheosis), it’s still sometimes hard to see them hit the exact same struggles we saw, because I KNOW how we solved that. Hell, I probably HELPED to solve that problem. And since they’re so close to us in progression, it’s really fresh in my mind as to how we solved those issues.

But at the same time, I know that I would quickly lose patience with some know-it-all who showed up in MY raid and proceeded to tell me how to do MY job as a raid leader.

So I largely keep my mouth shut with regards to strategy in a raid setting, unless I’m asked about something in particular.

But I do touch base with some of the officers to let them know of my concerns or issues or suggestions, usually after the raid. Choice has a raid forum for discussions, but they don’t do the level of raid review that Apotheosis does, so on the rare occasions I’ll post something public in the forums, it’s often just a lone post from me saying “well, this is why the tank died, this is who blew up the raid with deep corruption” and the like.

That’s also kind of frustrating, because I know the people there are interested in bettering their performances and preventing mistakes, but since it’s usually me posting these things, I feel like the mean ol’ person calling people out. In Apotheosis, that’s fine! I’m the raid leader! I can do that! In Choice, it’s somewhat more difficult to get my points across without seeming as though I’m an authority figure, or trying to BE an authority figure.

So for me, the best way to deal with this is to whisper or private message an officer with my concerns and post where appropriate on the guild forums.

My advice to those who are watching their raid group struggling, who think they have a better idea — unless asked for your advice during a raid, hold off until afterwards. Chime in on a review thread, or start your own, or chat with your role officer/friendly officer about your thoughts and ideas.

So it’s not exactly shutting your mouth. It’s more like holding your tongue until you have an appropriate time and place to discuss those things. And something else you need to be aware of: your advice may not always be taken or listened to. Unless you’re in charge of the raids, you always have to expect that your advice may be dismissed by the leaders. And that’s okay — you’re a team and your leaders may choose to go in another direction. The best thing you can do, as a member of that team, is support your team and team leaders and throw in your two cents’ worth at appropriate times in appropriate places.

(Also, have you listened to Episode 52 of Blessing of Frost yet? Why not?)

(Seriously. Warlocks. Apply now. Please.)

Guilt and Glory of the Firelands Raider

Kurn / / achievements, apotheosis, firelands, guild, raiding, ramblings

One of my favourite memories about Burning Crusade is also one of my most guilt-inducing memories about Burning Crusade. I led Apotheosis to Vashj and Kael’thas kills before the Hand of A’dal title was no longer obtainable. Bear in mind that these were fights that we worked on seemingly forever. With a roster that was ever-changing and ridiculously low attendance “requirements”, it’s a wonder we made it through 4/5 Hyjal and 5/9 Black Temple before 3.0 dropped.

But we did it. We worked hard at getting Vashj down three times and Kael died twice, I believe it was.

One of my best moments was getting one of our rogues, Kut, his Hand of A’dal title. Kut had been around in Tier 4 and parts of Tier 5, but had a demanding schedule of work and class and, honestly, having him there for both a Vashj kill and a Kael kill was just flat-out luck, it feels like. I did what I could to work around his schedule and it paid off with Kut, our token “lying dead in the fire” rogue, getting his Hand of A’dal title.

The flipside of that is that we didn’t get Majik his. Maj had his own conflicts with raiding and such. We did get him a Kael kill, but the one night we’d set aside for Vashj for a fourth kill… things just didn’t click. We couldn’t get her down again. Our second-ever kill of Vashj was a 1-shot (seriously!) but we couldn’t close the deal on what was to be our fourth kill. And so Majik, and a couple of others, never got their Hand of A’dal titles.

Thus, Hand of A’dal is both one of my best moments and one of my worst.

Tonight, Apotheosis starts in on Glory of the Firelands Raider achievements. Well, that’s a bit misleading. We’ve already accomplished most of those — all six heroic bosses required? Done. Share the Pain? Done. Only the Penitent…? Done (and easily repeatable if anyone’s missing it). Ostensibly, the worst is over.

So I’m faced with a list of 32 people who could possibly be at the raid tonight and only 25 spots to give out.

One thing that I was pretty clear about was that the Raider-ranked people would be given priority on the first reset, but then there’s the group composition to think about. I’m basically going to have to sit a tank and a healer who are Raider-ranked and pull in at least one (perhaps two) Initiates who are DPS.

Plus, if people are causing our failure on Alysrazor’s Do a Barrel Roll! then I’m going to have to sit people and pull in others.

All of it together combines to stress me out just a wee bit.

Now, I know that I’ll be able to get most people their achievements and mounts and, barring catastrophic failure, my own achievements and mount are secured. But the important thing to me is that people not be left behind on this particular set of achievements. Yet, due to 4.3 likely coming out on November 29th, I fear that some of our Initiates who don’t have Alysrazor, Shannox, Beth’tilac or Rhyolith on heroic won’t get theirs. And that sucks. And of course, if anything goes seriously wrong with an achievement (I can foresee SO many problems…) then it’s possible we could screw it up this week and screw 10ish people out of their achievements due to a lack of time.

Ultimately, we didn’t have the news that 4.3 was likely launching on November 29th until November 10th, by which point we’d already killed Shannox, Beth’tilac, Rhyolith and Alysrazor on heroic, so we couldn’t go backwards, revive them and spend last reset doing achievements.

Instead, we repeated 6 heroic boss kills (including our second H Baleroc kill) and played with Heroic Ragnaros and that, essentially, will mean that the majority of us have gotten all the upgrades we can possibly get (barring possible Baleroc and Majordomo heroic loot). In short, the guild is probably stronger for spending last week clearing 6/7 heroic modes and we’re probably better prepared for 4,3’s raid because of it, but it might be at the cost of getting some of our newer people their meta achievement and their mount. Which sucks. And that’s why I mentioned the Hand of A’dal title to start out this post. We literally ran out of time before the title was no longer available and that’s why Majik doesn’t have it. I’m hoping 4.3 is delayed just one more week so that we can finish out the achievements and get one more 6/7 HM reset in, but if that doesn’t happen, then, once again, my guild will have literally run out of time to get some people some achievements.

Second-guessing myself and my decisions (and the decisions of the other officers) does us no good, but it’s still disappointing to know that, if the patch does drop on November 29th, we had the opportunity to do the achievements last week and didn’t. I guess it shows that I value the people in the guild more than the gear, and that’s probably a good thing, but I probably won’t feel great about things unless 4.3 comes out on December 6th.

It’s decisions like these that I stress out over and probably the fact that I do stress over them means that I’m a decent leader, but it’s definitely an unpleasant part of the job.

The Importance of a Parse in an Application

Kurn / / apotheosis, guild, parses, ramblings

As you may be aware, Apotheosis is currently recruiting. As such, we’ve had 8 applications in the last five days. One of our requirements is a log parse of you in your raiding spec.

Personally, I’m not terribly fussy, but I do prefer a recent log in Firelands content.

Three of the eight applicants, plus a fourth who has yet to actually apply (mostly because he doesn’t have a parse), had no log parse of themselves. Actually, another one of those didn’t have any he’d personally logged, but his guild did and I was able to dig up some parses, so that worked out.

Kurn, you may be wondering, why do you need a parse? Why won’t a screenshot of Recount or Skada work, especially if I’m a healer or a DPS?

Quite simply, Recount and Skada are nice little tools that you can refer to in the moment and get a basic idea of if you were doing the right thing. A parse, particularly a World of Logs parse (which is the only one I can strongly recommend), will not only show that you did, for example, use Aura Mastery 3 times in a fight, but it will show WHEN you used Aura Mastery. It’ll also show what else was happening in the raid at that time. Essentially, it shows what Recount and Skada do, but it adds the elements of time and context to all your abilities.

I can read a World of Logs parse and, assuming I’m familiar with the fight, I can figure out the story of the wipe, without even talking to the people involved.

And that’s why a parse is so important in an application to a raiding guild. They don’t lie — they tell you everything. They tell you how many traps an app hit on Shannox (and which kind), they tell you if someone stands in Magma Flow on Rhyolith or is familiar with spider wrangling on Beth’tilac. They tell you if someone is inexplicably drawn to fire on Alysrazor or if someone screwed up their Baleroc rotation. They tell you how many times Leaping Flames hit someone on Majordomo or how many Lava Waves someone surfed on during Ragnaros.

It’s how I realized that Aura Mastery has absolutely no effect on Beth’tilac’s Ember Flare. Comparing the damage taken by the raid before and after Aura Mastery was used, it was clear that no resists occurred, even with Aura Mastery. That means that Ember Flare is not at all resistable by Resistance Aura or Resistance Totem, nor by the boost from Aura Mastery.

Here’s another example of how detailed those logs can get. At one point, my guild was working on Heroic Magmaw, which was not the easiest encounter at the time. I was on the skeleton tank and, for whatever reason, the Magmaw tank died a couple of times. I went for what I like to call a log dive, which is where I go to the World of Logs parse and sift through it to see what the assigned healers were doing at the time. Turns out that one of them was having fun DPSing the boss and the other was raid healing when both should have been on the tank who ended up dying. Without logs, I basically wouldn’t have had a clue. The person raid healing would have had their raid healing all wrapped up in their total healing done and, if asked about it, the person DPSing could have easily said it was during a lull or something to deflect responsibility.

With a parse, neither could deny that they should have both been focused on the tank, as their assignments requested.

I feel that it’s not only important to be able to zero in on issues that happened during the raid, but also to better evaluate my own performance. And that’s where I get confused about people not having logs of their performance available to them, particularly those looking for new homes. How can your prospective new guild know how good you are at avoiding environmental damage if you don’t have logs? How can they know you know your rotation if you don’t have logs?

Answer? We can’t know.

So I use the logs to evaluate our raid, our individual healers, check out applicants and, of course, to improve my own performances on a fairly regular basis. I know, flat-out, that I don’t use my Guardian of Ancient Kings enough. It’s one of those “new-fangled” abilities that came about in Cataclysm, so I’ve used the logs in the past to help me identify when some of the best times to use it are. Because of that, I now use most of my burst cooldowns on our first group-up after the first Molten Seeds on Ragnaros and on the second, I use Guardian of Ancient Kings. Since we’re all grouped up, even if all I do is heal my tank, the splash heals are really effective in that particular scenario. If I didn’t check my logs consistently, I probably wouldn’t have thought to start to use the CD in that way.

So it’s a way for me to improve my own playing by being aware of what I did right and what I could have done better and you just don’t get that from a damage meter. You really only get that kind of detail in a parse.

I think every class and spec can use World of Logs parses to their advantage, even tanks, to better improve themselves and having logs that you recorded (or if you were aware of your guild’s logging) shows that maybe you spent more than five seconds glancing at the overall damage or healing done. It shows that the possibility exists that you dug through the logs to see what you could do better, how you could improve your own performance.

But Kurn, you ask, how can I use a World of Logs parse to evaluate myself or others?

How you use World of Logs will differ based on the person/class/spec you’re evaluating, but here are some great links:

Apotheosis‘ own Jasyla:  Evaluating Healers with World of Logs at Cannot Be Tamed

A series of posts by Ophelie about using WoL at The Bossy Pally and the Giant Spoon

Some YouTube videos over at BandageSpec

So remember, kids, bring a parse with you when you go applying to other guilds! It’s not just the damage and healing they’re interested in — it’s all the little things that can’t hide away in a parse that we’re looking to see.

Catching up with Kurn

Kurn / / 4.3, achievements, apotheosis, blogging, firelands, guild, podcast, raiding, ramblings, T12

I have been a bad person of late, not responding to (m)any comments of late, for which I sincerely apologize. I’m currently writing this post as a break from working on a project for my Video Games as Literature class. Things should be less hectic as of Wednesday!

That said, I had to talk a bit about Heroic Ragnaros, recruitment, Blessing of Frost, Majik and a couple of other topics.

Heroic Ragnaros

We pulled him once on Thursday night. We got Baleroc down for the first time that night, had a third kill of heroic Majordomo and still had time left in the raid. So we pulled Heroic Ragnaros (and I frapsed our infamous FIRST attempt, too!). We didn’t do too badly, in that we didn’t die instantly. ;) We did die to sons hitting the hammer, though. I think doing the nerfed version of regular Ragnaros for so long meant that we were expecting the sons to melt as they normally do. Hot tip: they don’t die so easily!

We spent Sunday night, our last night of the raid week, working on Heroic Ragnaros. 20 pulls on heroic, then one pull on normal to kill him.

According to WoL, the best pulls lasted four minutes and two seconds, four minutes and three seconds and four minutes and four seconds.

For anyone familiar with the heroic Ragnaros fight, that’s a pretty clear sign that the Molten Elementals and/or Molten Seeds kicked our asses. And you would be correct.

It was pretty clear that at least some of the group hadn’t watched the L2R video I’d linked in the forums and didn’t really understand the concept of all grouping up for Molten Seeds. On the one hand, bad preparation. On the other, at least they understood that grouping up for Molten Seeds is normally a bad thing? (Silver linings, Kurn, silver linings.) Still, we eventually got away from the Molten Seeds with just a couple of deaths, but it’s the Molten Elementals that would then catch up to us and brutally murder us.

Someone had suggested using a moonkin’s Typhoon to knock them back. I was going to respond that it probably wouldn’t work when Hestiah, who was asked to go moonkin for the occasion, answered in raid chat:

For some reason, this had me howling with laughter. I mean, absolutely cracking up. It continued for a couple of minutes, too. Oh, man.

Anyway, so yes, the current sticking point is the Molten Elementals. It didn’t help that we had 2 healers and a tank in their DPS offspecs, either. Of course, we don’t always GET to Phase 2, because sometimes, the sons reach the hammer and KABOOM, we are all dead. We had some AMAZING saves, though! Great work by so many people. (Seriously, a 1/7 split is not a lot of fun, though.)

What now? Well, we’re gonna do another week of heroic farming, I do believe — try out some apps, get some gear, get the heroic Baleroc achievement for people who weren’t in for the first one… and then maybe work a bit more on Ragnaros. Ultimately, we don’t know if we’re going to push him, but I think that we’re just going to run out of time before 4.3 comes out. What we will do is spend two resets and get people their Glory of the Firelands Raider achievements. Heroic Baleroc again will finish off the hard achievements, leaving us with things like Bucket List, Not an Ambi-Turner and the others.

I do worry about Alysrazor’s achievement, though. I can’t do anything about the air team, but I’m thinking I’ll use a sacrificial lamb method to have people mark a couple of SAFE places to stand for the tornadoes. So we’d go through P1 and then, when the tornadoes come out, have people mark the ground with safe marks. So to the left of a right-moving tornado, or to the right of a left-moving tornado. And then wipe it and do it again. Doing the achievements on normal mode will make things a lot easier, like we’ll be able to really lock down the initiates on Alysrazor and kill them before Brushfire comes out. We can hopefully get the hatchlings to eat worms quickly and burn them down and use CDs to go through tantrums so that Lava Spew is out of the equation. Then the tornadoes. And hopefully, the air team will have done a good job of not eating clouds. And then kill her during her first ground phase.

That’s the plan, at any rate.

So after we get the meta achievement… then what?

Well, more heroic farming, but I figure we’ll have, at most, one or two more resets after we finish the achievements. So a couple more nights on heroic Ragnaros or do we kill him on normal and give people some time off to recuperate before 4.3 hits?

To choose to work on Heroic Ragnaros, when Beru’s guild, Monolith, just got him down last night after 388 pulls… well, it kind of seems foolish, doesn’t it? It took them over two months. I’m pretty sure we won’t have two months until the next patch.

But shouldn’t we still go down fighting? That’s what we did in Tier 11 content. We pushed heroic V&T and got them down just five days before 4.2 dropped and we even played with heroic ODS, which we didn’t get down.

The time people put in on the Heroic Ragnaros fight, though, makes it seem as though it’s not an achievable goal unless we don’t go to Dragon Soul right away. And that’s the difference right there. Do we bash our heads on something that is likely not to be achieved? Or do we rest our raid crew and prep for 4.3?

Having said that…

Apotheosis Recruitment

Apotheosis is still recruiting! We’ve had some snazzy apps — an enhancement shaman and shadow priest will be starting their trials with us this week. We have an interesting elemental shaman app and I’ve been going back and forth with a hunter.

We could still use a mythical retribution paladin and any spec of warrior, so if you’re one of those and can attend 75% of raids that take place on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays, from 9pm ET until midnight (invites at 8:45!), apply now!

Blessing of Frost

Then, there’s Blessing of Frost! We didn’t record last week because Majik had no power, due to a snowstorm and such. We can’t record today because Majik has actually lost his voice. Last night, during the raid, was hilarious. He honestly couldn’t speak, and took to threatening me in raid chat. (We will ignore the fact that I was probably taunting him about being unable to speak.)

So we’re going to let his voice recover and aim to have a new episode of Blessing of Frost out on Wednesday at some point, maybe Thursday at the latest. (We’re going to try to record on Tuesday.) It’s made all the more hilarious because MAJIK HAS IMPORTANT THINGS TO SAY!!! So, uh, yeah. Tune in this week (probably!) for a new episode of Blessing of Frost. :)

Majik Gets a Crazy Idea

And in case you’re missing your weekly dose of Majik (and who would?), he has decided to set up a blog.

Majik’s Missives is a blog where Majik will talk about his gaming life. Not just WoW, but TF2, League of Legends, reflections on older games, all that kind of stuff. He’s actually a pretty decent writer, so definitely check out his first post. He’s got a couple of others already written up and will be posting them throughout the week.

And on that note, my dear readers, it’s back to my Video Games as Literature project. Have a great Monday. :)

"End" of Expansion Malaise

Kurn / / achievements, apotheosis, firelands, guild, raiding, ramblings, T12

I’m still here, folks, no worries of my head exploding about pandas and the like. ;)

I’ve been slammed recently with deadlines for my classes at university and with all kinds of guild work, but hope to get back to posting regularly in the next week or so.

In the meantime, I wanted to touch on the malaise and burnout and fatigue I’m seeing of late.

We’re not even done with the second tier of raiding this expansion and I’ve had a few raiders come to me to tell me that they’re stepping down or will be stepping down when 4.3 comes out.

While I can’t say I’m completely surprised, I have to say that it’s a little bit startling that so many people — both in my guild and others — are throwing in the towel.

I’m not sure what’s causing it, in general, although I suspect that there’s more to it than just a reason or two.

I do think, however, that Heroic Ragnaros, or the prospect of him, is causing part of this malaise and fatigue. Every single raider who has aspired to clear heroic modes in Firelands has to have thought to themselves, at one point or another, “MAN, that Heroic Rag fight is completely brutal!”

Reading blogs like Beru’s and Borsk’s, reading tweets from Derevka and Pliers, there’s no way anyone can be delusional enough to think “hey, my guild will be different! We’ll spend a week on him and he’ll fall over!”

In Wrath of the Lich King, we didn’t encounter a heroic-mode boss of the difficulty of Heroic Ragnaros (or even close!) until Heroic Lich King. Heroic Anub’Arak came close, in that a lot of guilds got to 4/5 in TOGC and then “hey, ICC is open! Screw Anub’Arak and his ridiculousness!!!”

That’s not to say that Sarth3D wasn’t challenging (it was) or that Algalon wasn’t rough (again, it was) or that 1 or 0 Light Yogg wasn’t extremely difficult (I understand it was). But to *clear* the instance, the final (even optional) bosses were doable for a progressive raid guild.

But Anub’Arak was a jerk, to put it mildly. A lot of people didn’t get him down until after ICC had come out, as I recall. A lot more people only got to 4/5 and then waved a little white flag and moved on to ICC.

And then, Heroic Lich King was a fight that was even more nightmarish.

Here we are, in Tier 12 content, no idea when 4.3 and T13 will be coming out (my best is ~4 weeks from now) and people are being faced with the prospect of an “impossible” boss. Most guilds spend in excess of 350 wipes on him.

By contrast, a lot of progressive guilds got through to Sinestra (although perhaps heroic Twilight Ascendent Council or heroic Al’Akir eluded them…).

So why is Heroic Ragnaros so hard?

I’m not saying “omg nerf heroic rags!!!” or anything. I’m trying to question the logic of putting such an “impossible” boss into this portion of the content. Obviously, the last boss of the expansion has to be Deathwing, so they couldn’t put a bad-ass Heroic Rag at the very end of content.

I think Blizzard does themselves a disservice by making Heroic Ragnaros such a huge stumbling block. I also think they’re doing themselves a disservice by only having 7 “real” bosses this tier. As a result of so few bosses, I think pretty much all classes have a slot where they can’t upgrade to 391 (holy paladins are stuck with the reputation 378 belt, for example) and the way Firelands is structured leads to bashing our heads on walls as we push forward.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind bashing my head against a heroic boss 3 nights in a row.

I’m starting to realize that other people do and I think that’s contributing to the burnout I’m seeing/hearing about. The kind of people who are willing to bash their heads against Heroic Ragnaros for 350+ pulls are increasingly rare. Once again, I have to point to how easy it was to gain gear in Wrath of the Lich King as a reason for people’s lack of patience. It took me months, months (!) of raiding before I got my first epic on Kurn, back in the day. Nowadays, people hit max-level and can immediately use a ton of epics. I understand the reasoning for it and, as a guild leader, I’m thankful for the ability to gear up quickly for lesser-progressed people, who then expand the recruitment pool, but the sense of entitlement is what I think is causing issues.

I remember the days of spending several resets (with our limited roster and time back in the day) on different bosses. Nowadays, it seems as though if you spend more than one reset on your farm content and a single new boss, it’s not enough. God forbid if you don’t down a new boss every week!

All of this begs the question: “Kurn, you guys are 5/7 HM and you’re working on Heroic Baleroc. What happens after you get him?”

Short answer: Probably doing Glory of the Firelands Raider and working (at least a bit) on Heroic Ragnaros.

Long answer: It really depends on the time allotted us after we hit 6/7 and knock out Glory of the Firelands Raider, but, by golly, if I can SPAWN Heroic Ragnaros, I want to WIPE to Heroic Ragnaros.

It’s not all decided, we’re still chatting about things, but I really have to question what the hell Blizzard was thinking to put in a boss that requires 350+ pulls in the second tier of raid content and I have to question if that’s good for the game and good for the raiding population.

My thinking is no, it’s not good for the game, nor is it good for the raiding population. I think we’ll see more burnout issues come 4.3 after more people have beaten their heads on the Heroic Ragnaros fight.

In other (somewhat related!) news:

Apotheosis of Eldre’Thalas is an Alliance 25-man raiding guild with several spots open at the moment!

We are currently seeking:

– 1-2 hunters (!)
– 1 retribution paladin
– 1 elemental shaman
– 1 enhancement shaman
– 1 warrior (either DPS or tank!)

We raid 3 nights a week, from 9pm ET until midnight. Raiders are expected to be online by 8:45pm for invites and are expected to make 75% of scheduled raids in a given month.

Come throw in an app!

http://www.apotheosis-now.com/main/

Post-Nerf Heroic Alysrazor: A Huge Disappointment

Kurn / / apotheosis, facepalm, firelands, guild, raiding, ramblings

24 pulls is all it took us and Alysrazor collapsed.

It took us 46 pulls to get her down on normal.

Something ain’t right here.

(Yes, I’m still talking about nerfs.)

Do I want to wipe more on a boss like Alysrazor? No, not particularly. But I don’t feel as though we earned the kill. Granted, our kill was near-perfect execution, except for Majik’s Mumble client dying on him and Kaleri dropping her Power Word: Barrier on the other side of town at the pull. ;) And I could have done without some of the deaths we had, to be sure… but it went very smoothly. If we can do that every time, we’ll have no problems killing her every single week on heroic.

However, it just feels as though Alysrazor has been de-clawed, had her wings clipped, whatever.

Tornadoes move just as slowly in heroic as they do on normal.

Firestorm won’t automatically kill you if you don’t line of sight it, not if you’re healed up and use a defensive CD. (Our pally tank app ate a Firestorm while still working on a hatchling. He put up Ardent Defender and blew Lay on Hands and lived with plenty of health to spare.)

The biggest challenge, it seemed, was re-allocating DPS.

I’m sorry, but is that all there is to heroic Firelands bosses?

Let’s examine them, shall we?

Normal Shannox: Some people on dogs, some people on Shannox.
Heroic Shannox: Just about every single person on Shannox, a few people on various dogs for slows and breaking Face Rage.

So that’s a simple reallocation of DPS.

Normal Rhyolith: Some people on Fragments and Sparks, some people on legs.
Heroic Rhyolith: Same as above — stun/slow/blowback Liquid Obsidium.

Another reallocation of DPS, but I’ll admit, this one was effing tricky — at least pre-nerf.

Normal Beth’tilac: Some people on caves, some people on spinners and drones, some people on top of the web.
Heroic Beth’tilac: Same as above — and then blow up the Engorged Broodlings.

Same damn thing, more reallocation of DPS and some healing, but the worst part about this fight was making sure caves were covered. Once we had that down, the boss died.

And now…

Normal Alysrazor: Some people up top, some people on Initiates, some people on hatchlings. Dodge Brushfire, Tornadoes, Lava Spew and Incendiary Clouds.
Heroic Alysrazor: Same as above — plus dodge Firestorm and Meteors and Boulders.

Really? I mean… it’s just not that difficult. I’d say it’s actually easier than normal because the hatchlings die so quickly. The worst part here isn’t even the Firestorm, it’s making sure Initiates die quickly enough that interrupters can interrupt them.

At least Majordomo Staghelm has a “real” new mechanic in Concentration. I’m looking forward to that fight, but am prepared to be “meh” about it.

It makes me sad. It feels very much as though these “heroic modes” are like “normal” modes now that the nerfs have gone through, at least to an experienced raid group. I’m sure Ragnaros will be different, of course, and it’s not like the challenge has completely vanished from heroic Firelands… but I didn’t enjoy heroic Alysrazor. At all. And, prior to our work on heroic Alysrazor, that was my favourite fight. I really didn’t feel as though I was healing with finesse last night — I felt as though all I was doing was praying that my tank wouldn’t get two-shotted or that people wouldn’t fall out of the sky or die to tornadoes.

I spent the vast majority of our time on Heroic Alysrazor just hoping we could execute it, but there wasn’t anything to figure out after the first 10ish pulls. We tried a couple new variations last night and eventually just said screw it and went back to what we’d been doing, essentially, with very minor tweaking to get Initiates down.

And then, on one glorious attempt when most people didn’t die or disconnect or anything… she died.

Totally anticlimactic.

Am I proud? Of course. Am I pleased that we’re 4/7? Absolutely.

But ultimately, I got more of a sense of accomplishment at knowing that we budgeted our raid time this week extremely well (repeat of H Rhyolith and H Shannox, plus first kills of H Beth and H Alysrazor and a full clear and we even did Volcanus!) than I did when we downed Alysrazor.

Sad.

Please, don’t let raiding be this ridiculous in 4.3.

Comfortable with my Class

Kurn / / apotheosis, firelands, guild, healing, paladins, raiding, ramblings, T12

On Tuesday night, Apotheosis got Heroic Beth’tilac 25 down.

Dar, one of our resto shaman, had posted to say she wasn’t going to be there, which left me with a difficult decision: who was going to heal Dar’s people in the northwest? For 28 attempts, Dar had dutifully healed that particular corner.

In order for it to go as smoothly as possible, I wanted to make as few major changes as I could.

What did that mean? That meant that I was going to take her spot.

I got to heal our moonkin, Hitoku and, lucky me, Majik, my caster officer and my co-host over at Blessing of Frost.

(The “lucky me” was sarcasm. If you couldn’t tell. ;))

So, for 28 attempts prior to Tuesday, I was essentially healing the ground tank, keeping an eye on Dar and other healers, taunting spinners down and generally watching everything, as a raid leader is prone to doing. I had never assigned myself to a cave and, to be honest, I would be happy if I never had to do so again… But I digress.

It took us 10 pulls to kill Beth’tilac Tuesday, bringing us to 3/7 25-man heroics. For each of those 10 pulls, I was healing my cave group, although my cave group migrated from northwest to southeast at one point. Jasyla said she liked that little northwest corner better and I could totally see why. The southeast corner is cramped and crowded!

Anyhow, during the first attempt, I lost Majik. Then, several other people died. So it wasn’t totally my bad, but I vowed to do better.

In the span of 10 pulls, ladies and gentlemen, I became a cave-healer pro. I kicked some ass. Not only did I keep my targets alive, but on try 10, our kill, approximately 97% of the Engorged Broodlings that spawned wanted to blow me up. I am not joking. Better still, I have it all frapsed and it’s embedded below. (Bear in mind that in P2, my computer suddenly decided to violently revolt and I experienced some tremendous lag and loss of framerate. It’s not the best video ever, but it is our first kill.)

 

Kurn, you may be wondering, what on earth does any of this have to do with being comfortable with your class?

Good question!

On the kill attempt, I was constantly the target of the broodlings, as I mentioned. Walks was healing up in the northeast and one thing he had been saying earlier in the night was that if a broodling was heading for someone at southeast, there was no way he could stop them, since they’re up on some damn ledge. So he took to calling out “ledge”.

Of course, on the kill attempt, his broodlings came at me frequently. So I was always calling out “got it”, while running to the ledge where the spiders come down from, while ALSO trying to heal Majik and Hitoku and, you know, trying not to kill myself while doing so.

I think it was only after the whole raid was over for the night that I realized that there was no way in hell I would have been able to manage all that crap (seriously, FOURTEEN broodlings hit me!) AND keep Maj and Hitoku alive if I weren’t extremely comfortable with how my class works.

It’s almost instinctual after a certain point. Granted, my instincts aren’t always spot-on or great or whatever, as you can tell since I do let Judgements of the Pure drop off and don’t use my Guardian and the like on the kill (which I’ll blame on the fact that my computer was about to throw up on me) but they really served me well over the whole raid night. At various points during the entire night, I popped cooldowns appropriately, even using Lay on Hands on Hitoku at one point. I figured out where my Beacon of Light was best put to use (sadly, on Majik) and basically, that was all the real thinking I had to do about how to heal my group.

Venom Rain? Aura Mastery. I’m low on health? Pop my bubble to buy myself some extra time to heal up my group members before turning to myself. Need to regen mana? Use my shiny Fiery Quintessence and pop Divine Plea. See 3 bright orange beams on me from Engorged Broodlings? Don’t panic, use instant heals like Holy Shock and Word of Glory until I’m in position to interrupt one and can start casting again.

Paladins have changed substantially since the original World of Warcraft game came out. Holy paladins have changed and evolved right along with the other specs. While we still need to stand still and cast to be most effective, Holy Radiance (well, the current iteration, not the 4.3 version!), Holy Shock, Word of Glory and a Flash of Light with Infusion of Light proc are all things we can do on the run. Even a 1-2 point Word of Glory can be useful (you can see in the video I made some use of that) if you’re on the move and someone needs a heal ASAP.

Giving Divine Protection a shorter cooldown for Holy (due to Paragon of Virtue) is great and it came in handy all through the night when magical damage (which includes nature damage, which is what those nasty little Engorged Broodlings emit) was troubling me. No problem — Shift-A (my keybind for Divine Protection) to the rescue!

During the night, apart from maybe the first pull or two, despite having absolutely no experience healing where I was healing and healing the people I was healing, I felt calm and in control of myself.  I really do attribute my ability to adapt to cave healing to knowing what all my buttons do. The only thing I didn’t use duing the night was Hand of Freedom and I could have used it when I was stuck in the Volatile Poison on the ground at one point on our kill.

I encourage everyone to take a second look at all your abilities. Not just the ones in the holy tree, look at prot and ret as well. Read through your spellbook and be sure you understand what your abilities do. Armed with that knowledge, you can walk into a fight and adapt much more quickly than you would otherwise. Don’t forget about your Hand spells, your procs, your set-it-and-forget-its (like Holy Radiance and Guardian of Ancient Kings).

Paladins are very strong healers and not restricted to tank healing. Not only that, but we have a ton of utility, so don’t forget to use those utility spells! Once you know exactly what you’re capable of doing, you’ll react with your instincts, leaving your brain to sit there and worry about where you should be standing, rather than what spell to use.

(And you can always read through my second revamped Holy How-To Guide to help you out!)

First Reactions to the Nerfbat

Kurn / / apotheosis, facepalm, firelands, guild, raiding, ramblings

Well, for better or for worse, we repeated our Heroic Shannox kill (3rd kill) without needing Jagged Tear to drop off our Shannox tank at ALL, ending the encounter with 15 stacks on him.

We downed Heroic Rhyolith for the first time, after 46 total attempts, 40 of which were pre-nerf. (That brings us to 2/7 HM, btw.)

And then we flipped it to normal to take out Alysrazor and Baleroc.

Since we had someone working on the charged focus for Alysrazor, we needed two “full powers” from her, so that’s two full cycles.

We had to call “DPS OFF!” several times.

The Initiates who cast Fieroblast? They apparently now cast Fieroblast after every third Brushfire. In fact, it took us several initiates before we realized they even still CAST Fieroblast.

Tornadoes are very slow, now. You can keep ahead of one and actually run into the next one with just a single feather.

Healers were healing Gushing Wound on the tanks because there was basically nothing else to do. I wonder what four healers for that next week would be like.

Baleroc melted. You can COMPLETELY screw up the healing order for the shards and people will probably still live.

I think we’ll be pulling Heroic Beth’tilac and Heroic Majordomo Thursday/Sunday, so we’ll see what they’re like. Those are new (to us) heroic fights, but it’s clear that the normal modes are just so completely ridiculous now, at least for a group that’s done three full clears and probably a few 6/7 weeks.

Really, it’s kind of sad.

Having said that, the raid group was in fine form on Tuesday night. Lots of laughing, lots of joking… for some reason, at one point, people were openly pondering the gestation period for a Smurf.

So we had a “fun” raid night with good spirits and good moods, for the most part, but it feels weird. The Rhyolith kill doesn’t feel hard-fought. The hardest part on Alysrazor was NOT killing her faster.

Normally, for me, the best part of any night is any progression on a boss.

Tonight, it was that I got the Eye of Purification.

Ah, well. We’ll see what the next few months hold for us, eh?

Oh, and don’t forget to listen to this week’s episode of Blessing of Frost! We post a new one just about every Tuesday, so be sure to keep listening. Next week, we’ll reflect on the Firelands nerfs and talk about some of the community’s reactions and you’ll doubtlessly hear me bleeping myself again. ;)

Too Soon, Blizzard!

Kurn / / apotheosis, cataclysm, facepalm, firelands, guild, podcast, raiding, ramblings, T11, T12

I’ll apologize for this up front. This is going to be long. This is going to be angry. This is going to be ranty. This is also heavily my opinion and how this will affect me, personally. Don’t be offended if I don’t mention your raid group or your raid size or if I do and I’m mildly disparaging. I am not happy and that’s going to come out here. So I apologize now. This also puts a delay on my response to my own “Is Warcraft a Game?” post and my post about evaluating healers and my post about Paladin feedback.

My first thought upon reading about the upcoming nerfs to Firelands content was “What the FUCK?!” In fact, you can hear that thought in Episode 33 of Blessing of Frost. Note that this post gets angrier, so either click through or move along.

Continue reading “Too Soon, Blizzard!”

Double the Pleasure, Double the Fun

Kurn / / achievements, apotheosis, baby paladin adventures, firelands, guild, raiding, ramblings

It’s definitely been interesting to raid with both my guild, Apotheosis of Eldre’Thalas, and a guild I was in for the tail end of Wrath, Choice of Skywall. I’ve learned a LOT about both Firelands and about being a holy paladin. I’ve learned a lot about being a raid leader, guild leader and healing lead. I’ve learned a lot about being a cog in the machine and being part of the rank and file.

I spend, well, I guess it’s about 15 hours a week raiding. In truth, it’s probably three hours or so too much, but nine hours isn’t quite “enough” for me, and 6 hours of raiding as “just” a raider isn’t anywhere as taxing as 6 hours of raiding as any kind of a leader. So I’ve spent a lot of time raiding Firelands over the last couple of months and have learned a lot.

What’s been the most valuable thing about this whole deal is that I’m learning from my own mistakes that I make in various raids. In Apotheosis, I’m guilty of spending too much time looking at the rest of the raid — cooldowns used, who’s dead, etc, and my healing suffers. In Choice, I’m guilty of spending a little too much time tunnel-visioning, so while I have great healing, I do occasionally get beaned by some environmental hazard.

I’ve also learned a lot from each raid and brought what I’ve learned to the other raid. For example, Choice did Baleroc before Apotheosis did, so I was able to take their strategy and refine it to suit my group. I was also then able to take stuff from Apotheosis raids and let the Choice leadership play with it as they saw fit. (They totally use our 1-8 naming of Rag elementals, which I like to think are thanks to me. ;D) Apart from the cross-raid knowledge, it’s always an amazing feeling to know that you helped a raid group do something, you know?

I mean, sure, I was dead at the end of both of the Apotheosis Ragnaros kills, but I knew I’d worked hard to get us there. For Choice’s first kill, I was one of three healers standing, there was one tank left and a sudden calm descended upon me. “We’ve got this,” I felt. I just felt it and knew it. I popped my Angry!Man (Guardian of the Ancient Kings) right as he came off of cooldown and proceeded to heal the crap out of the sole, remaining tank. (And as I did so, I couldn’t help but think, “Man, Kal would be proud of me for using him twice in one attempt!”)

The tank died shortly after, due to a meteor, but another couple of seconds of DPS and Rag was defeated.

So Apotheosis defeated Ragnaros again last week and tonight, Monday, Choice defeated Rag for the first time.

Both guilds are poised to play with Heroic Shannox this upcoming reset.

Despite my grumbling about heroic modes and such, I still do them, and heroic modes are where guilds go to raid when they complete regular-mode content, so that’s where both Apotheosis and Choice are headed.

I cannot WAIT to see the differences between the approaches to Shannox on heroic mode, can’t wait to see the mistakes both groups make and can’t wait to see how both guilds eventually down him.

I enjoy being a part of both raid groups very much and while my overall loyalty has to be to Apotheosis (both because I’m the GM and because I love my guild), healing with Choice makes me feel accomplished in a different way and allows me to relax in a way I can’t do with Apotheosis.

And hey, Rag down on normal for both my paladins, Ragnar-O’s for both my paladins… that definitely does feel pretty good. :)

PS: Don’t forget to check out Blessing of Frost, just released Episode 32!
PPS: Majik has a Twitter! Follow him @Majjity!
PPPS: I have two posts coming this week: one rewritten Holy How-To and another one about healer evaluations. Stay tuned. :)