Category: guild

Updates, Kills, Nerfs and Stress!

Kurn / / apotheosis, blackwing descent, guild, healing, raiding, ramblings

What I like about blogging is that your blog is always there when you want to write. I’ve actually wanted to write a lot in the last week, but I rarely have the time these days. Being a GM means a LOT of your free time (and some of your non-free time!) goes to guild stuff.

It’s not even in-game stuff, it’s out of game stuff. Planning. Reading parses. Dropping notes to people. Figuring out promotions. Oh, and then what to do about Cauldrons? And how can we incent the raiders to give us Lavascale Catfish?!

I have a break in my day today that allows me to post here because a lot of the stuff that’s been consuming me over the last week has been dealt with. Our first batch of promotions went out this morning to those with whom we’re happy concerning performance and if they’ve been to all 9 of our raids thus far. Welcome to Raider rank, kids. :)

Aside from that, I’m pretty pleased with our raids thus far. Every week, we’ve killed everything we killed the week before AND a new one.

Week 1: Argaloth, Magmaw, Omnotron, Halfus, V&T
Week 2: The above plus Maloriak
Week 3: The above plus Chimaeron

And we also got Atramedes to 28% on Sunday. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Chimaeron.

We did it with the following group of healers:

2 holy paladins, 2 disc priests, 1 holy priest, 1 resto shaman and 1 resto druid

The individual assignments:
Group 1 – minus the two tanks: resto shaman
Group 2 – melee: holy paladin (not me)
Group 3 – casters on left side of the room: holy paladin (me)
Group 4 – most of the healers: holy priest
Group 5 – mostly ranged on the right side of the room: disc priest
MT – resto druid
OT (double-attack tank) – disc priest

First of all, let me just state for the record that prior to Chimaeron, the last time I healed a GROUP in a 25-man raid was almost certainly on Naj’entus in Black Temple. You know. Back in 2008.

Second of all, huge props to one of our discs for digging up this little nugget of awesomeness from the PlusHeal Chimaeron 10m thread:

Way we did this was to add Low Health debuff to Center Icon on Grid and the other debuff (Caustic Slime) to Border indicator (set the aura to a yellow colour).

That made things SO much easier, at least for me.

So the groups were more or less taken care of. The tanks were more or less taken care of.

How to deal with Feud and the multiple Caustic Slimes the entire raid had to absorb?

Well, I looked at our lineup and I coordinated everyone’s cooldowns/abilities. Like, every single one. I assumed the following:

– Feuds would happen an average of 1m apart with the occasional one 30s after the last and the occasional one 90s after the last
– We would have no more than 5 Feuds

This was sparked by Beruthiel and Vixsin‘s comments on this post of mine (so many awesome suggestions there!!! Thank you, everyone!):

Vixsin: Surviving Feud is all about coordinating raid CDs and having all your non-healers use their group healing spells. Ret and Prot pallies should be hitting HR. Elemental and Enhance Shaman should be dropping Healing Rain. Feral druids should use Tranq. Personal CDs also make a huge difference, along with a raid leader who screams “click the lightwell!!”

Beru: during feuds have them work out a Tranq/ToL cycle. They should not utilize both CDs for the same feud. For example: Feud 1: Druid 1 Tranq, Druid 2 ToL, Beru ToL; Feud 2: Beru Tranq, Druid 1 ToL, Druid 2 heal; Feud 3: Druid 3 Tranq – the other two ToL when it’s up and if it’s needed.

I also seriously considered making two healers be a “Slime Team”, as per Vixsin’s suggestion:

For quick and easy topping, handle “Low Health” like you did Penetrating Cold–assign healers to specific groups. (Priests on ranged, R-Sham on melee).

It was definitely still in my mind as a possibility if what I came up with just flat-out didn’t work. But… it did. And here’s how we did it.

First off:

1) ALL Paladins should hit Holy Radiance when we’re clumped up.
2) ALL Shaman should get Healing Rain down on the clump spot ASAP.
3) ALL Resto Druids should get an Efflorescence up on the clump spot ASAP.
4) ALL Holy Priests should get a Sanctuary on the clump spot ASAP.

Then we did this:

Feud 1:

– 1x Power Word: Barrier
– 1x Lightwell
– 1x ToL and LB/WG spam, using Regrowth w/ OOC procs and keeping Swiftmend on CD for Efflorescence
– 1x Mana Tide Totem (and again on cooldown anytime we’re clumped up)

Feud 2:

– 1x Divine Guardian
– 1x Barkskin/Tranquility (resto druid)

Feud 3:

– 1x Power Word: Barrier (other disc)
– 1x Divine Hymn (shadow priest with PI and Lifeblood for maximum ticks)

Feud 4:

– 1x Divine Guardian (other pally tank)
– 1x Barkskin/Tranquility (feral DPS druid)
– 1x Lightwell (should be back up)

Feud 5:

– 1x Power Word: Barrier (first disc)
– 1x ToL and LB/WG spam, using Regrowth w/ OOC procs and keeping Swiftmend on CD for Efflorescence (same resto)
– All kinds of personal cooldowns, including Healthstones

I know what you’re all thinking. “Wow, Kurn, that’s some serious overkill and overplanning!”

On our kill, we had 13.3% overhealing. So not a lot of overkill. And while it was a lot of planning, I think it was just the right amount of planning. So far as I can tell, everyone did what they were supposed to do when they were supposed to do it on all 8 of our attempts. We never had more than 5 feuds.

What is something that really surprised me is this:

182823 raid DPS
85376 raid HPS (effective, not raw)
98423 raid HPS (raw)

The average DPS and HPS on a kill, according to World of Logs:
228673 DPS
88908 HPS

I’m pretty sure the average HPS is raw, because otherwise I don’t know how we won, basically. I’m chalking it up to our outstanding healing, which allowed us to overcome the issue of having substantially lower DPS than the average.

That’s the sort of thing that makes a healing lead proud of her team. :)

For reference, here’s what my Grid looked like throughout the vast majority of the fight.

Chimaeron is not for the faint of heart! You can clearly see that five people have the Low Health debuff and that they also have Caustic Slime on them (yellow border). My groups go from 1 on top to 5 at the bottom so there I am in the second position in Group 3 benefitting from Protector of the Innocent. Lord, I hate that talent. Having said that, it was usuallyNOT enough to keep me alive. I had to watch my health carefully, lest I die. And for that fight, I was definitely specced 3/3 PotI. (I’m normally 2/3.)

And speaking of talents. And being a paladin. And such.

There are nerfs a-plenty in the new PTR patch, including a likely live hotfix to our passive Walk in the Light, which now supposedly only adds 10% to our healing spells instead of 15%. I am so tied up in my paladin that I don’t think I have any choice but to continue as my paladin, even if I’m unhappy about a variety of changes. I’m hoping 4.1 will show us more love than 4.0.6 is, thus far.

With regards to stress, I find myself remembering why being the GM sucks. It’s not just the work, although there is that. It’s not just the constant stream of whispers and PMs, although sometimes that does get tiresome. It’s the loneliness. I’m surrounded by great officers and we do a lot of things by vote/committee/etc. I’m not a dictator, I’m not a monarch. I’m the representative of the officers that takes what’s said behind closed doors and announces it. I’m the one who pushes the officers to discuss things. Basically, I’m a facilitator.

But I’m still the guild master. And even though it doesn’t mean a whole lot as compared to my brother or Majik or any of our other officers, I’m still “the face” of the guild.

People act differently around me. I have to wonder how to act around various people. Can I shoot the breeze with a guildie about stuff that’s going on or is that best left within /o? Am I allowed to make mistakes like a moron or is that going to reflect horribly on my ability to lead? It’s as though I’m always putting on a public face that’s there “for the betterment of the guild and the raid group” and I don’t get to relax in-game at all. As such, I haven’t been in-game a lot over the last few days. I’ve been working hard to get all these promotions and attendance things taken care of and help plan out our progression route (right now, Atramedes, Council, Cho’gall, Nefarian and Throne somewhere in there), so it’s not like I’m sitting here doing nothing. Oh, and I’m recruiting, too. (Resto shaman, resto druid, balance druid! Apply now!)

But it’s still lonely.

Toga, one of our officers, was the original GM of Apotheosis when we formed. We signed the charter that Majik bought, decided upon officers and the officers basically voted unanimously (there were like, 10 of us at the time) to make Toga the GM.

I’m pretty sure Toga has never forgiven us for that. ;) I thought that as the primary raid leader back in BC, I got a lot of whispers and messages. I thought wrong. When I became the GM when Toga stepped down midway through SSC due to RL stuff, I was flooded, inundated. And I realized that I was the go-to person people would come to about stuff that would impact their raiding.

“Kurn, I can’t go to the raid on Tuesday, I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay, thanks for letting me–”
“My mom’s… well, this is hard to say, but…”

And the person would launch into an extremely personal story that I didn’t need to hear. I mean, you can’t make the raid. Okay. Thanks for the heads up. I don’t need to know more.

But I knew the people coming to me with these things needed to tell me. There’s something about telling someone you kind of know over the Internet some personal things, so you can vent about how you’re feeling without any RL repercussions.

This is when I realized that I needed to start sharing my WoW stuff with my RL friends. One of them is extremely kind to listen to me babble. She knows the names of many of my guildies, past and present. She doesn’t play at all and has no interest, but when I told her I got the Kingslayer title, back in the day, she was thrilled for me!

I also talk to my RL Friend the Resto Druid, because it’s always nice to have an objective opinion from someone who knows the game and how guilds work, first-hand.

So it’s lonely in-game sometimes, but, thanks to some of my awesome friends, I get to vent to them about the in-game frustrations I have and no one in Apotheosis needs to be witness to that. Which is probably a good thing.

Anyways, invites in less than 6 hours. I need to comb through the Atramedes log from Sunday and figure out why it looks like I failed so badly the parse doesn’t seem to be picking up various things and counting others as double damage and the like. I’ve been very pleased with WoL in T11 content, but DAMN, Atramedes is messy as hell.

Sorry for the long-winded update, but not writing for a week totally meant this was going to happen sooner or later. ;)

Busy! Productive!

Kurn / / apotheosis, blogging, guild, paladins, raiding, ramblings

Monday morning, I woke up and promptly recorded Episode Five of Blessing of Frost with Majik, which I need to edit after I do this post.

Then, I went out to meet Ophelie from The Bossy Pally and the Giant Spoon for coffee. She was in the area visiting friends and was kind enough to ask me if I wanted to hang out, so we settled on Monday afternoon. 48 minutes after I finished the podcast with Majik, I arrived at the coffee shop and just a couple of minutes later, Ophelie arrived.

We had a great chat — from Canada and Quebec and Newfoundland to TV shows, from holy paladin mechanics to guild stuff, from Matticus and Conquest to Oestrus and Apotheosis. ;) It was a good time!

FOUR hours later, I realized I needed to get going, so I hauled ass and got home in time for my officer meeting which lasted over two and a half hours. It’s our first of the expansion and we got ALL the EPGP crap ironed out by virtue of doing a random regular, which ended up being Stonecore. And we played with the loot mods through the instance.

I’m shocked that it took Daey almost two hours to make the “Why don’t we just frigging /roll for loot?” suggestion that he’s basically famous for. (He suggests it multiple times EVERY expansion and gets shot down… every single time.) I bust out laughing at it, though. It felt like I was home.

So we finished up with EPGP – decided what loot mods to use, precisely, worked out the figures for EP awards and then, the most miraculous thing happened.

Dar actually said she’d update the EPGP post on the forums (which basically had how we do loot organized, but very out of date and not complete — lacking details that we had JUST hammered out tonight).

I nearly fell over in shock. One of my officers. Volunteered. To write an official post on the guild forums. Why I didn’t make Dar an officer during Wrath, I don’t know, but I’m sure as hell glad she threw her name in the hat for Cataclysm!

So she updated and edited my original post, created a new thread, which I just added a couple of things to, then replied to and gave a couple of additional details on standby and such… and that was it for all the EPGP stuff! Ecstasy!

I’ve gone another check of the people who weren’t QUITE up to snuff on my weekend check and written to them, reminding them of what they’re missing. Mostly it’s just enchants that are lacking. I think almost everyone is at the appropriate ilvl of gear we’re requiring (338+) and the ones who are lacking enchants, I put on standby as a temporary measure to remind myself to check their missing enchants before I invite them to the raid tomorrow.

Tomorrow!!!!

The plan:

If we have Tol Barad, Baradin Hold to start with.

Then, Magmaw in Blackwing Descent. If the big worm dies, we go to Omnotron. If Omnotron goes down as well, it’s off to play with Halfus in Bastion of Twilight!

Why those bosses? We have experience, albeit limited, with all of those bosses, so the learning curve won’t be terribly steep. Hopefully.

Anyways, it’s 4:14am and I need to edit Blessing of Frost before I try to get some sleep and then write more stuff on the guild forums. Busy day on Tuesday!

An Annoyance

Kurn / / apotheosis, cataclysm, facepalm, general, guild, ramblings

Those of you who are long-term readers may recall a post I made over a year ago. On November 9th, 2009, I posted about missing Apotheosis. That followed a post from June 4th, 2009 where I informed everyone to prevent me from doing the whole GM thing again. (And no one did. Typical! ;D)

Basically, I have been working to get Apotheosis back together for over a year.

A year.

While raiding from 11pm-2am with my RL friend the Resto Druid or 9pm-12am with Choice (in need of holy pallies for Cata!), I was also getting back in touch with people. Making plans. Setting up forums. Organizing people. Inviting people back to Apotheosis from my level 4 toon.

When Cataclysm launches on December 7th, that will be the real start of a new era in Apotheosis history. But all the work that went into ensuring there WOULD be a new era in Apotheosis history is crazy. It’s been a long, long road. Assembling officers. Checking in with people. Making sure people are still around and interested. More recently, interviews, loot rules, forums, recruitment videos, 10 and 25-man raids…

I’ve put a lot of effort into this over the last year and certainly a lot since 4.0 hit and I moved Madrana home to Eldre’Thalas.

None of this annoys me.

What annoys me is the people who clearly haven’t put a moment’s thought into expansion plans.

I’m talking about a mage app who applied with a bad spec, bad gems, bad gear and bad grammar who said they’d decided to make the mage their main. Really? Did you decide to make your mage your main five minutes ago? Looks that way from the effort you’ve put into the toon. Nice spirit gems, by the way, and that green trinket is just to die for.

I’m talking about guilds out there who haven’t started retooling their rosters and recruiting. Seriously? How have you not started to prepare, yet? I’ve been preparing for a YEAR and you, yes you, with your raid group that’s 11/12 ICC 25HM while working on HLK attempts, how are YOU less prepared than I am?

It’s true that when you’re running a guild, you have a lot less time to prepare for the future than someone who’s “just” a raider. I’m deluged in emails and private messages this week. I get it. But good leaders don’t assume anything. A good GM and officer team checks in with their members and keeps checking in. Just because I have… 39 people on my Google Docs spreadsheet does NOT mean that come the first planned raid date, we’ll have 39 people ready to raid.

I’ll have to make sure that everyone listed HAS the expansion and is over on Eldre’Thalas. I’ll have to make sure that everyone’s levelling at a reasonable rate or maybe drop them from consideration for that first raid. And depending on how hard it is to finish dungeons and heroics and gear up, we might even have to push our first raid date back a week or two.

This is what annoys me — I’m already working 3-4 weeks down the road and looking at problems that may arise. And so many people aren’t making plans, aren’t trying to work around potential problems, aren’t even bothering to discuss stuff.

I realize that plans aren’t that important in terms of RL priorities, especially during the holiday season, but if you play this game as a raider — or you want to play the game as a raider — how have you not been thinking this stuff through already when I’ve been doing this for a year, now? Raiders and guilds alike, I see so many people completely unprepared and it’s like, well what have you been DOING since Cataclysm was announced?!

The people who haven’t done 4.0 research for their classes just make me sad.

The guilds who haven’t got planned raid dates and deadlines make me facepalm.

These are going to be the people complaining out the wazoo when Cata hits and they can’t immediately queue for a dungeon because they don’t know where the entrance is yet. These are the people who will be mystified that half their guild has left for another guild because they weren’t ready to raid, yet.

I see so much disorganization that is going to lead to a huge wakeup call, which will lead to so much complaining, which, God willing, will not lead to demanded nerfs or buffs.

As a result of this general state of unpreparedness that I’m witnessing, plus my experience in going through the BC and Wrath expansion transitions, here are three predictions:

Fearless prediction #1: Random dungeons will suck for a minimum of 3-4 months, probably closer to 6. Random heroics will possibly suck until people really outgear them, meaning the first raid tier (T11) being available to the general public, so this is looking at when the second raid tier comes out (T12).

Fearless prediction #2: Guilds who have been recruiting and plotting out dates, deadlines and plans will be much better at dealing with issues that crop up mid-January than those who haven’t even started to plan things out.

Fearless prediction #3: I’m not going to feel prepared enough because there’s ALWAYS curve balls thrown at guilds during expansion transitions, but, by golly, Apotheosis will prosper because my officers and I actually care about the people and the guild and we will do what we need to in order to hit those curve balls out of the park.

I feel a bit better for having ranted.

Coming soon: pre-raid gear suggestions!

Guild Recruitment & Roster Management

Kurn / / apotheosis, general, guild, ramblings

Recruitment. Just that one word makes me want to run for my mommy. Of all the administrative tasks a guild has to handle, recruitment is the one I most loathe.

“Is this too many melee DPS? Wait, do we need more ranged? Is five warlocks on the roster really too many? Wait, I thought we had like six resto druids…”

Apotheosis is getting very close to being basically full for Cataclysm’s launch. Actually, we’re probably already sitting at full, but there’s always something that will come up and throw a monkey wrench in our plans. You have to allow for RL emergencies, RL schedule changes, RL issues in general, as well as burnout, general malaise, boredom and the like.

Not to mention the fact that our raid attendence requirement is 75% over four weeks. That means an average of 2 nights a week and then one week where you raid for 3 nights, to maintain Raider status.

So if the typical raid requires, say, six healers, you need a minimum of 8 or so on the roster in order to mathematically make sure you’re covered in terms of attendence.

If the typical raid requires 2-3 tanks, you want to make sure you have 4 who can all do the job at about the same level of competency (ie: not using potentially poorly-geared offspec tanks to start out).

Plus, you kind of want things to be relatively balanced. At least I do. I don’t think five of one spec/class is a good thing, but we currently have five warlocks interested; two destro, one demo, one aff and one undecided. Does five warlocks screw us over? No, but it makes fitting them all into a raid more difficult if every one of them shows up on the same night.

I’m working on a second recruitment/pre-Cata video right now. I hope to have that up tomorrow sometime and a third one up in two weeks. And then a “ZOMG CATACLYSM” video the day before launch.

It’s kind of weird, recruiting for a guild that hasn’t done a whole lot this expansion. I mean, if you want to get really technical, we’ve gotten up to Thaddius in Naxx 25, got Sarth (no adds) and didn’t get Maly.

That’s sad.

In the couple of weeks pre-4.0, we did get to 11/12 ICC 10.

And this last week, we got Lower Spire and Plagueworks down, Blood Prince Council down and Valithria Dreamwalker rescued.

So, really, 9/12 ICC 25 (regular!) isn’t terribly impressive.

Until such time as we get a couple heroic modes under our belts, I’m recruiting based on the success we had in BC. Yeah. Not a lot of people particularly care what we did two years ago. ;)

Still, we’re filling up those spots on the roster and getting there.

I’ve posted to the Alliance recruitment forums (old and new), the realm forum (old), MMO-Champion, WoWhead forums, LookingForGuild.net and edited our info on Wowprogress.

Anywhere else I should post? Like, where do rogues hang out? Seriously. WTB a rogue or two. And an enhancement shammy!

Kurn's Q&A #27

Kurn / / apotheosis, guild, healing, patch 4.0.1, q&a, raiding, ramblings

Wow, folks, it’s been a long, long time since I last had enough search terms to pull off one of these posts!

Looking over the last month, I have, oh, 2,927 search terms that brought people to my site. Hi, 4.0.1, thanks for the bump in traffic! ;)

1) Let’s consolidate all the “holy pally 4.0.1” stuff, shall we?

Go read my What Holy Paladins Need to Know for 4.0.1 post.

2) madranah + server

Interesting. Someone from one of my old guilds is looking for me? Sorry, people, I’m kind of doing this “GM of a guild for Cataclysm” thing, so I’m not going to join your reformed guild, even if one of my RL friends is in it. ;)

3) base mana paladin 85 kurn

I believe that would be 24,732 mana.

4) divine favor 4.0.1

Divine Favor has definitely changed. Once upon a time, hitting it gave us a guaranteed crit on Holy Light, Flash of Light and Holy Shock. Now, it’s a buff that lasts 20 or 30 seconds (depending on whether or not you’re glyphed for it) and increases your spell haste AND your spell crit chance by 20%. Not only that, but because Divine Illumination is gone (15 second buff that used to halve the cost of all spells for the duration), our 2pc T10 bonus has changed. Whenever Divine Favor is active, your healing spells are 35% stronger. So not only do you have 20-30 seconds of increased haste and crit chance (both of which strongly increase your throughput) but if you pop it while wearing two pieces of Tier 10 gear, you’ll have a bonus 35% healing going on as well.

While I still like to use this to offset Divine Plea, this is a fantastic utility spell for us. Either you use it to cover Divine Plea usage or you pop it when your targets are about to eat dirt. Or as often as possible on Dreamwalker. ;) Beautiful!

5) do improved judgements and enlightened judgements stack

Yes, Improved Judgement and Enlightened Judgements stack and so, with the base Judgement range of 10yd, you can get a maximum of 40yds as the range  on your Judgement spell.

You should not concern yourself with Improved Judgement yet, though. Enlightened Judgements is handy for the hit and a bit of extra range, but we have very few points to place at 80, so don’t waste two of them on Improved Judgement until you’re at 84, looking for a talent to spend a point on. I recommend 3 in Divinity and 2 in Crusade, then I’d fill out Crusade (3/3) and Eternal Glory (2/2) at 82 and 83, then Improved Judgement at 84 and 85.

6) does sacred shield use gcd

It certainly used to. That said, it’s gone. They got rid of it in 4.0.1. Rest in peace, Sacred Shield. You will be missed.

7) divine intervention gone in patch 4.0?

Also gone, yes. Don’t ask me why. Shaman still have Reincarnation (30m cooldown), druids still have Rebirth (although one druid popping it will put everyone’s on the 30m cooldown!) and warlocks still have Soulstones on a 15m cooldown. And yet, paladins lose their wipe-prevention ability entirely. Way to go, Blizzard.

8) lifeblood 4.0.1

It’s godly. I wish I still had Herbalism on my paladin. Lifeblood now grants 240 haste rating at 450 Herbalism, as well as producing a small heal. Sick! :)

9) addon for speed of light procs paladin holy

You don’t need an addon for this. At 3/3 Speed of Light, every time you cast Holy Shock, you get 4 seconds of 30% spell haste on Flash of Light, Holy Light and Divine Light. You also don’t need an addon for this because it will be changing to a flat spell-haste percentage (1% per talent point). So, for the time being, count to four after using Holy Shock. There’s your addon. ;)

10) 4.0.1 judgement 4% mana

I believe it was Walks who pointed this out to me, but right now, Judgements will not proc Seal of Insight. I tested this out myself today and got absolutely 0 procs while judging. That’s okay, though. Soon enough, we’ll be getting 15% of base mana back when judging with Seal of Insight up. Mana is, by and large, not a problem for us right now anyways.

And a bonus one!

11) holy paladin eternal glory vs paragon of virtue

Because mana isn’t a huge problem right now, I would advise against Eternal Glory for the moment. You basically have to take at least one point in Paragon of Virtue when building a PVE holy spec, so PoV wins over EG at this point in time. When we hit 85, especially considering that PoV will also reduce the cooldown of Hand of Sacrifice, I’ll seriously consider 1/2 Enlightened Judgements and 2/2 PoV when building my holy tree.

And just to pimp out a rockin’ resource, don’t forget to take a look at Oestrus’ Guide to the Chakra Sutra! Oestrus will be healing in Apotheosis in Cataclysm, on her little d0rf priest. :)

Finally, Apotheosis is recruiting for Cataclysm! Sadly, we are not in need of any holy paladins at this time. However, if you want a great raid group who DOES need a holy paladin, definitely check out Choice of Skywall, the guild I spent the last four months in. I can’t say enough good stuff about these people!

Weekend Update

Kurn / / achievements, apotheosis, fishing, guild, ramblings

(still without Tina Fey)

What a weekend it’s been, both for Apotheosis and myself! We’ve got new people coming over to Eldre’Thalas every week! And then there are the people who are in touch about their plans to transfer as soon as their obligations for this expansion are done.

Even though recruitment isn’t technically open (soon!) we snagged a commitment from a new shadow priest this week and, in what might be the best news in ages, someone I used to heal with at one point in Wrath is thinking about coming over here for Cataclysm! Ahem. No pressure. ;)

Recruitment will almost certainly open on Monday or Tuesday. I just need to get a couple of web-based things sorted out. Best foot forward, you know?

As for why this was a great weekend for me…

That’s right, I won the Kalu’ak fishing tournament! I did it in Howling Fjord. I hit four spawned pools around Fort Wildevar and then went south down that river and the first spawn there had it on, I think, my second or third cast. I hit Cheetah, then my hearth, then ran up to the dude in Dal and wasted about five precious seconds in trying to just complete the quest without picking a reward. >< I finally selected the Dread Pirate Ring and hit complete. BAM!

Euphie, one of my priests (he was a kick-ass healer in BC and Wrath, who is going shadow for Cataclysm), and I have been fighting over the Kalu’ak fishing tournament for a little while now. I’d been working on it on Kurn over on my last realm, but to no avail. So when I actually got the Blacktip Shark earlier this month, Euphie and I started getting a little competitive. ;) His reaction to my achievement was priceless.

:D Good times. The contest is the last thing Euphie needs for his Salty title and, after winning the content on Saturday, the last thing I needed was One That Didn’t Get Away. I’d long-ago decided (thanks to Euphie, actually) to go for the Dark Herring. Why? Well, it’s got a chance of being in any Fangtooth Herring pool in Howling Fjord, so it’s in Northrend. And any pool in Northrend has a chance at getting the Sea Turtle mount for the Turtles All the Way Down achievement.

So anyways, I did the contest and spent half the day randomly grinning about it. This left me going fishing in Howling Fjord for either the Sea Turtle or the Dark Herring.

This evening, out of nowhere:

Woot! So I got my Dark Herring and I got my Salty title. It’s not even that I particularly WANT to be “Salty Kurnmogh”, but that I like titles. I have all the world event ones required for the meta on Kurn, plus:

Knight-Captain, Jenkins, the Patient, Salty, Chef, of the Nightfall, of Stormwind, of Ironforge, of Darnassus, the Argent Champion, Champion of the Frozen Wastes… and that might be it. I don’t like duplicating titles much between Madrana (who generally gets raid titles) and Kurn, so Kurn does all the world stuff and Madrana does all the raid stuff. Mostly. :)

Anyways, I also completed a project for recruitment that will go live tomorrow or Tuesday, both here and at the Apotheosis website.

It’s definitely been a great weekend both for me and the guild. Just over six weeks until Cataclysm’s launch. So much still to do!

That was a great adventure.

Kurn / / apotheosis, guild, raiding, ramblings

Madrana went “home” today, back to the server she’d started on, back to the guild she’d helped form.

My original intention had been to stay with my Skywall guild until they got their meta achievements for the drakes or raiding had completely stopped for the expansion or Cataclysm launched.

I did not anticipate the amount of time I really feel I need to put into Apotheosis. I’ve barely touched Madrana since the patch and that’s not good for me as a player. I need to get use to new mechanics and I want to write about this stuff, too. But every time I logged in to WoW, I felt like I should have been on ET, doing something guild-related. I’ve done more on Kurn since the patch than on Madrana.

Due to Blizzcon and the patch and everything, my Skywall guild has essentially stopped raiding. Not completely — we had a normal ICC25 run on Monday, which was a hideous experience for me because it was before the holy pally hotfix — but enough that raiding isn’t required any longer by anyone and we weren’t going to raid until something like next Wednesday. Which made me sad; I thought we were going to try to raid this reset, but I totally forgot that half the guild is going to Blizzcon and would make that really difficult to pull off.

Add to that the feeling that I couldn’t just ignore Madrana for another week, which is what I would have done, since we weren’t raiding, and it just made sense to say goodbye now. So after some back and forth with my GM and with Walks and with my brother, I decided to bring Madrana home.

It was so much harder to leave my Skywall guild than I had ever thought it might be. I figured that I’d spend a couple of months there and then hop back to ET at 4.0 and not even blink.

It was hard to leave Apotheosis when we stopped raiding in March of 2009. Leaving this guild to go back to Apotheosis was almost as hard. No kidding, for real, I actually cried while writing my epic-length goodbye post. There are replies there, several of them, which I can barely even read because I’m all emotional about it.

I’m not normally someone who cries easily, especially about something like this. But the guild was just such a haven for me after the outright abuse I experienced in my previous guild. Compassionate, kind, happy voices filtered through my headset every raid. Laughter, gentle ribbing and the like? It was amazing after “healers you fucking suck”.

Senses of humour abounded. In-jokes were developed. I BOPped a tank on Festergut on my second night in and wiped the raid and everyone joked about it.

I was a big part of getting heroic Saurfang for them for their second kill, and the subsequent ones. I was a big part of helping them rescue Dreamwalker — both on my second-ever raid with them.

I helped out with Lady Deathwhisper strat stuff. I was there for Putricide’s two heroic deaths and an epic Sindragosa kill. I was there for lots of achievements, from a couple of Portal Jockeys to Been Waiting a Long Time For This.

So I did what I set out to do. I finished up Wrath with a great raiding group where I made a difference. I had fun. My raid leader would “butt-pull” now and again. One tank would turtle pull (as in mount up on his turtle mount and run in for the pull). I zerged Sarth 3D on 25 a couple of times. I even managed not to get bounced around on Blood Prince Council once.

The last four months have been a great time in WoW for me. I’ve seen my friends and compatriots trickling back to Eldre’Thalas while I’ve had a blast in 25-man raids with a great group of people who kept on pushing and pushing and finally got two of the three hardest encounters in ICC — heroic Putricide and heroic Sindragosa.

It was time to go. The day that I knew would inevitably come had finally arrived.

And even though I cried while writing goodbyes to some of the best personalities I’ve ever encountered in this game (a certain mage is definitely going to be written into a story at some point in time…!), I know that the guild will be okay. They can get Neck-Deep in Vile and All You Can Eat without me. They can get those drakes.

I went to the store this evening to pick up some milk. It was after the transfer, after I’d been re-guilded in Apotheosis, after I’d even run a heroic or something on Madrana. I was walking to the store and thinking about WoW and about how Madrana was home.

And it was just a huge relief, all of a sudden. Uncertainty stresses the crap out of me and not knowing when I’d be transferring was weighing on me more heavily than I realized. I just felt the weight be lifted off me as I took a deep breath of cool October air and knew that I’d made the right decision.

Now I can be more focused on the guild, more focused on my own toons. I don’t have raids to worry about. I can open recruitment and know that if I’m on WoW, chances are, I’m on ET and able to answer questions.

So tonight had me online on ET, hopping around my alts. I ran some stuff on Kurn and I ran some stuff on Madrana. I didn’t rely on my brother’s JC to cut gems to sell. I had some hilarious Vent conversations and gave Apple some advice about running heroics. I chatted with my friends and guildies and I was just generally present for most of the evening.

It was a good day. A sad day, though. I’ll never, ever forget my time in Choice of Skywall. They’re recruiting for Cataclysm, you know. And they definitely have an opening for a holy paladin.

They’re some of the best people it’s ever been my pleasure to run with. If you’re looking for a Cataclysm guild, I have to recommend them. (Apotheosis recruitment is not yet open, but we’re looking for a rogue, a mage, a feral druid, maybe a resto shaman when recruitment opens. No holy paladin spots right now.) 9pm-12am (Eastern) on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Mondays, although you’d have to check with them for when they plan to raid in Cataclysm.

Excellent group of people. Give them a shot if you’re looking. But be aware; I might be the one asked to look over your application. ;)

Thanks, Choice, for four of the best months I’ve spent in this game. I’ll miss you guys. <3

Tales of a GM (1)

Kurn / / apotheosis, guild, ramblings

I inherited the position of guild master of Apotheosis back in January of 2008, when our then-GM, Toga, stepped down due to work and RL conflicts. Majik and I had decided to both throw our hats in and so I posted that I’d consider it and then that jackass said “Grats!”. So I became the guild master.

It wasn’t a position I ever really wanted. I’m not even sure I want it now, but I know what I need to do as the GM and I know I can do it well. Add my dedication to this game and, particularly, this group of people, and I know I’ll do my best at this job.

That doesn’t mean it’s not a giant pain in the ass now and again.

Even apart from all the in-game obligations (I’d forgotten about the DELUGE of whispers one gets when logging in as the GM!) which include answering basic questions and checking things like who’s joined, quit and the like, there are all the other little things.

Tuesday, for example, I discovered that one of the guildies had created a pretty bad-ass new logo for the guild. Incorporating the logo into the website and the forum will require reformatting, resizing and I might put my own touches on it as well. It’ll also mean new skins/themes for the website and the forum.

I also had a few questions on the forum from a guildie about our plans for progression and the like, before she commits to raiding with us. (Ultimately, she really liked my open and honest answers and has decided to stick with us!)

Then there was a note from another guildie that had to be dealt with quickly because it was important to me.

In the meantime, I found fixes for the cog wheel bug (when you click something in an instance/BG and get disconnected) and the missing projected textures, as well as two awesome posts regarding raid buffs and debuffs in Cataclysm, so I posted all that information to my guild’s website — and also to my current guild’s website, because I’m a nice person like that.

Then, Majik tells me he’s set up a Vent server on his home network that has a sweet connection (they’re running a TF2 server and such at his place), so we organize the server, start making usernames and passwords and the like…

… whereupon I get pulled into a guild Naxx 10 Undying run, where everyone died on Heigan, thanks to the tank who forgot about the spell casting speed debuff and tanked him on the platform. ;) We cleared the rest of the instance without much else issue and, thank you very much, I can kite zombies on Gluth like a champ as a hunter. (I miss Volley and its lack of a minimum range, but moving while Multishotting is kind of awesome.) It dawned on me that it’s about 100 times easier to kite zombies than it is to heal a bad kiter, by the way. :P

Anyways, after the run, I decided to poke around on the new Vent server Majik had set up and discovered that it has a limit of 8 people for the free server version and that to get more slots, you have to ask to be licensed and you’re given 1000 slots. Which means that you’re basically a hosting provider AND Ventrilo can decide not to give you a license, too. So, that clearly isn’t going to work for us.

So I ponied up and expanded my Vent server from 15 slots to 35 and retooled it a bit to give people more channels to talk in and passworded a few channels. Then I added people’s usernames and passwords to the Vent and then sent everyone private messages with the info. (Edit: This was the easiest and fastest solution by far, but thank you for the Mumble recommendations. It’s on the backburner, but I’ll probably be chatting with Majik about Mumble in the not-too-distant future.)

At some point during Tuesday, I also bumped my brother’s main raiding toon and the designated bank alt to a specific rank that allows him to withdraw basically anything. He’s our guild bank administrator, yay! I also made that rank and the regular Officer rank require an authenticator and then asked the officers to log in on their unused alts to get the 72h timer going on those toons. The authenticator requirement doesn’t actually interact with the account database, but rather checks the flag of the individual toon, meaning all new toons will need 72 hours before they can be promoted to ranks requiring an authenticator. Which sucks. But anyways.

I helped a guildie with her blog (which is not ready for the public yet) by helping her add the WoW Recent Achievements widget to her blog.

I also did a couple of things to do with my toons — transmutes, Icy Prism, some Headless Horseman runs and a heroic on my shaman. Bloody hell, it sucks to not be able to cleanse poisons on the shaman! What, it’s not bad enough that they removed Cleansing Totem altogether, but I can’t even TOUCH poisons now?

Anyways, that’s what I did today. Big day of guild stuff, really, but how much got accomplished? Well, everyone can get on Vent, now. We’ve added another person to our starting roster. Players will have the ability to work around the cog wheel and projected textures issues. Oh, and Kurn got the Headless Horseman’s mount, so there’s that. ;)

What remains: beginning recruitment, working on redoing the website and forum themes to better mesh with one of the new logos, responding to some more PMs from members and making sure people know to check the forums regularly!

And it would be nice to get some RL stuff done and also to post here about: raiding in ICC as a holy pally after the patch (it sucks!), raiding in ICC as a holy pally after the patch AND the buff (we’ll see tomorrow?) , the new beta build and the Holy Radiance change, the Seal of Insight change and the Mastery change.

Plus I still have comments to get to.

6:47am. Bedtime. It was a productive guild day, but boy, it felt like it was never going to end.

Hug your guild master today. Chances are, they deserve it.

Weekend Update

Kurn / / achievements, apotheosis, cataclysm, classic instances, dungeons, guild, ramblings

(without Kevin Nealon, Norm MacDonald, Tina Fey, Jimmy Fallon, Amy Poehler or Seth Meyers or anyone else who ever hosted SNL’S Weekend Update)

The update is this: I have done nothing on my paladin this weekend. I have been being a GM over on Eldre’Thalas. Trying to organize the ranks all pretty-like, trying to make sure all the toons are at appropriate ranks… It doesn’t help that apparently each character’s authenticator timer only starts when they log in for the first time since 4.0.1, since I wanted to get my guild bank officer (my brother — since I can track him down and beat him if he screws us over) to the proper rank, but his bank toon hadn’t logged in until Friday or so. So I have yet to implement the authenticator requirement for any ranks, which is annoying.

I helped a guildie get Incendius and the BRD key last night before finally doing the Moira Bronzebeard quest/Emperor run in BRD last night with Football. I did it for the achievement (hi, I killed the Emperor at level 58, thanks) and the quests and for nostalgia. I really do love Blackrock Depths. I just know it so damn well. Football and I also did a step in his Tier 0.5 questline, although it appears he’d already done that one before. I loved and hated that questline, culminating in the death of Lord Whatshisnuts (Valthalak).

Today, I did Sunken Temple and got lost. I didn’t remember I had to kill the six guys up top before killing dragons and then undeads and THEN the Shade of Eranikus. Go me. Eventually I got it done, though.

Let’s see, what else? Oh yeah. I’m pleased to announce the return of the Q&A posts, effective this coming Tuesday. You would not BELIEVE the amount of search engine hits I got after 4.0.1 launched…

And in the interest of pimping out some blogs:

Daritos’ Food for Thought – a long-time member of Apotheosis (and Fated Heroes before that!), Dar will be a first-time officer for Cataclysm and will be playing her resto shaman for us.

The Stories of O – Oestrus has been hanging out with the Apotheosis folks for a few weeks now on her holy priest. I was introduced to her blog via Codi’s and it’s been nice getting to know her, whether she decides to stick with us for Cataclysm or not. She’s also just started co-writing over at Divine Aegis again, so be sure to give that blog a peek for various healy-priest needs.

Things I still need to do:

– finish up responding to comments

– get my screenshot project finished

– finish a lawn dart video for my current guild

– write that requiem for Zul’Gurub

– clarify my feelings about hunters and hunter pets

All righty. Off to go do stuff “in real life” for the evening. :)