Category: raiding

Heroic Lich King.

Kurn / / healing, icecrown citadel, raiding

Ow, ow, ow, ow. Seeing my tanks get hit for for 65k is not fun. Well, okay, it’s moderately amusing because it’s like, HOLY CRAP, 65k! But anyways.

We pulled Lich King on heroic 25m for the first time last night. And will spend another nearly-three hours on it tonight, I would imagine.

The first thing you all should know about LK heroic 25m is this.

That’s right. 103,151,168 health. Remember the days when Ragnaros had the most health of any mob in the game and it was “just” 1,099,230? So heroic LK on 25 has ONE HUNDRED TIMES the health that Rag did.

Just to put that into perspective for you.

Once I recovered from that shock, it was time to learn a new strategy for Phase 1.

On heroic, Shadow Traps will target a player and take a few seconds to spawn. Anyone on the shadow trap when it spawns (and 10y around them) will take about 20k damage and, if they’re still in the vicinity and alive, will then be blown backwards off the ledge, basically, and die. The Shadow Traps do not go away immediately after they spawn, either. (They do vanish if someone trips one.)

So what we did was split the raid into three groups.

Group 1: Melee and tanks. Melee starts the encounter halfway up the steps to prevent getting initial aggro on Arthas. This group stays in the middle third of the platform.

Group 2: Ranged and healers. We split them up half and half, basically. Group 2 stands to the LEFT of the stairs as you face them. They stay on the left third of the platform.

Group 3: Same as group 2, except on the RIGHT of the stairs as you face them.

As each group gets a Shadow Trap, they strafe 10-15 yards out, staying grouped up. By “out”, I mean “north”, towards where you enter the LK’s area. This can occasionally cause range issues if, say, melee has had four shadow traps in a row and Group 2 has had 0, so the healers need to move ahead to stay in range of the melee, but then the ranged have to go WITH them because otherwise, the group gets broken up by shadow traps. That is bad. You want to stay on top of each other during this phase.

Here’s what an early P1 looked like for us (click for a larger version):

So you can see how we’re laying the Shadow Traps down, right? The dead people are either morons who did not move or casualties of Infest. More on that in a bit.

By the time you get into the transition phase, you SHOULD be relatively close to the ledge. If not, haul ass.

We got to a transition phase once and the OT died to an enraged shambling horror that was leftover and that was a wipe.

Things to note:

– Remember Infest? Remember what Infest was like before PW:S was affected by the zone-wide buff? Remember scrambling to heal the LIVING CRAP out of EVERYONE? Yeah. We’re back to that, now. Infest hits HARD.

– Still have Necrotic Plague going on, too. Good times!

– LK was hitting my tanks HARD. I was popping Divine Plea super early and often. It was basically on cooldown 30 seconds into the fight and every minute thereafter.

Here, have a look at the first few beatings:

[00:22:12.321] The Lich King hits MT 51804
[00:22:17.206] The Lich King hits MT 31706 (A: 4408, B: 8212)
[00:22:25.735] The Lich King hits MT 40055 (B: 4790)
[00:22:27.522] The Lich King hits MT 34616 (A: 7437)
[00:22:41.952] The Lich King hits MT 32598 (A: 6992)
[00:22:45.681] The Lich King hits MT 40040
[00:22:47.564] The Lich King hits MT 41317 (A: 4719)

Or perhaps a death log would be more interesting:

[00:32:03.840] Madrana Holy Light   MT +0 (O: 23014)
[00:32:03.840] RL Friend Resto Druid Rejuvenation MT +0 (O: 4173)

Full health.

[00:32:04.022] The Lich King hits MT 68943 (A: 4503, B: 2395)

I think my precise thought here was “HOLY SHIT.”

[00:32:04.212] Resto Shaman Healing Wave MT +*0* (O: 30521)

This is lag, obviously, this landed before the hit.

[00:32:04.212] Good Resto Shaman Riptide MT +1831
[00:32:04.375] Resto Shaman Earthliving MT +1382
[00:32:04.536] Dumbass Priest Flash Heal MT +8241
[00:32:04.536] RL Friend Resto Druid Lifebloom MT +2655
[00:32:04.536] Drudge Ghoul hits MT Absorb (3040)
[00:32:04.884] RL Friend Resto Druid Wild Growth MT +1414
[00:32:04.884] Resto Shaman Riptide MT +1736
[00:32:04.892] Other Holy Pally Beacon of Light MT +27150
[00:32:05.089] Good Resto Shaman Lesser Healing Wave MT +8725
[00:32:05.487] Madrana Holy Light MT +15411 (O: 8078)

Whew. Back to full.

[00:32:05.500] RL Friend Resto Druid Lifebloom MT +0 (O: 2655)
[00:32:05.657] Resto Shaman Ancestral Awakening MT +0 (O: 11530)
[00:32:05.673] Dumbass Priest Flash Heal MT +*0* (O: 11816)
[00:32:05.673] RL Friend Resto Druid Wild Growth MT +0 (O: 1384)
[00:32:05.861] RL Friend Resto Druid Rejuvenation MT +0 (O: 4173)

Still full.

[00:32:05.861] The Lich King hits MT 74738 (A: 982)

OH MY GOD.

[00:32:06.358] Good Resto Shaman Earthliving MT +1463
[00:32:06.504] RL Friend Resto Druid Lifebloom MT +2643
[00:32:06.504] Other Holy Pally Beacon of Light MT +17768
[00:32:06.515] Good Resto Shaman Riptide MT +5040
[00:32:06.718] RL Friend Resto Druid Wild Growth MT +1352
[00:32:06.952] Madrana Holy Light MT +23603
[00:32:07.123] Good Resto Shaman Riptide MT +1831
[00:32:07.269] Other Holy Pally Beacon of Light MT +7395
[00:32:07.452] RL Friend Resto Druid Lifebloom MT +2643
[00:32:07.606] The Lich King hits MT 65671 (O: 1151, A: 6147)
[00:32:08.141] MT dies

Dead. Thanks for playing! Obviously, the other holy paladin should have had a holy light casting on his last cast there as it might have kept him up. That was a very small overkill.

And if you think it’s okay to have Enraged Shambling Horrors hitting your OT for any amount of time? Wrong.

[00:23:49.929] Shambling Horror hits OT 73255  (O: 80523, A: 11540)

I am probably going to be leaving my guild tomorrow and applying to the Skywall and Hyjal guilds I was talking about, so tonight is almost certainly my last raid with this guild.

I find my feelings about that are more than a little mixed, but I know that I’m not going to be happy pushing through to HLK and wiping with these people for the next X number of months. I’d rather take a couple of steps back in progression to ensure that when I DO kill LK, it’ll be with people who are, you know… not assholes.

A Revelation

Kurn / / cataclysm, guild, raiding, ramblings

I saw my RL friend the resto druid today. And over the five hours we talked (yes, I am, in fact, long-winded in person as well as in text) we spent precisely one hour talking about WoW.

And in that one hour, dear readers, she pointed out something to me that has completely changed my perspective on a few things.

It’s times like these that I’m really glad I’ve blogged all this stuff, because you can see in my blogs how I have become increasingly unhappy and more distressed at guild crap.

I really started getting CRANKY right about mid-April. It’s then that I was in the middle of my temporary position of healing lead, plus dealing with Priest Who Thinks So Far Outside The Box He Can’t Even See It Anymore, plus raiding too much and too late for my tastes.

My RL friend the resto druid has been concerned about me and my attitude about raiding, both as a friend and as a healing lead. So when we met up today, we had a discussion that completely opened my eyes about a few things.

1) Prior to, say, December/January, I didn’t have a real problem with how people were treated in our raids. I was personally called out a number of times for standing in fire or poison (I do raid at like, 9fps and adjust to those things fairly quickly, but it takes some dying first) and insulted directly. Like “are you retarded?” and such like. I think I was actually asked, by the MT, if I was blind, at one point.

The way it goes in the guild is: you take it. You shut the hell up, bite your tongue and you take it. It’s just business. Don’t take it personally.

This does not excuse or forgive the MT’s behaviour. But you just take it. Period.

And yet, I didn’t have the same recoil and reaction as I did the other week when the MT basically insulted all the healers by lumping us all together with the Failadin. (I’ve since learned that two other people have complained to my RL friend the resto druid about that comment, so it really wasn’t just me.)

The question is, why did I not react as severely to personal insults in September/October as I did to something that could have meant this particular Failadin instead of all healers?

2) I spent two months as healing lead, raiding in a guild I had only joined in order to raid with my RL friend the resto druid… without my RL friend the resto druid. Without her there, raiding became a real obligation and duty to me. Every night I went to a raid, I told myself that I had to go for her, so that she could focus on her RL issues and not let the guild stuff distract her.

It was that important to me that she not need to worry about the guild and the healers. I continued raiding and doing healing despite not wanting to, because I felt bound by loyalty to my friend.

So the answer to the question in the first point up there is this:

The guild has changed. We have had some WICKED turnover. We have lost a ret paladin, a holy paladin, a disc priest, a resto druid, a kitty druid, two hunters, a resto shaman, two mages, a DK tank, an enhancement shaman, two different moonkin, a DPS warrior and a rogue, I think. That’s just the people I can think of off the top of my head. They were all core raiders and all of them have quit the guild or the game.

We pulled in a core bunch of raiders from a failing guild to shore up our numbers and suddenly, raids weren’t cancelled anymore. Sweet deal.

At about this point in time, we had a change. The MT gave up raid leading duties to the current raid leader (a shadow priest), promoting him and the hunter (now DPS lead) to officer.

The new RL is, in my mind, a jackass. But he’s an excellent player. Still, he spends too much time theorycrafting versus seeing what’s actually executable with our raiders. This makes him inflexible and makes me want to beat him in the face with a hockey stick.

But I digress.

The new RL also brought Vent into raids.

Given the new social dynamic brought by the core raiders from that other guild, added to the fact we have now spent time on Vent together listening to each other’s voices… the guild has gotten more social.

Add to that the fact that I was in a position of authority, which was EXACTLY like the position of authority I’ve ALWAYS had in all my other guilds, which were ALL much more social and friendly and such…

And you have the makings of Kurn going batshit insane without realizing what the hell is going on.

Without my realizing it, the guild changed, became more social, became much more like my old guilds. And with me slipping into my old role of healing lead, I began to treat my healers… well, not better, but as if they were MY healers in MY guild, not just my FELLOW healers and guildmates. That’s to say, I took care of them. Not that my RL friend the resto druid doesn’t take care of us, but I slipped into the job and did what I’d always done — reviews of the healers, detailed examinations of the logs, personal attention to the healers…

I was forging relationships (even if they’re just working relationships) with the healers. And trying to forge them with the raid leader, the DPS lead (hunter) and… even the big, bad MT.

And I didn’t even realize what I was doing. It’s just who I am. It’s just what I do.

So talking to my RL friend the resto druid today brought all of this up.

She pointed out that I am taking everything as a personal affront to me these days. Everything. In a raid, out of a raid, in trade chat, in an instance. And she’s right. I am SUPER CRANKY KURN these days.

Why?

Because the guild is getting to me. Nine months ago, I treated it like a job. Log in. Raid. Log out.

Ever since my stint as healing lead, I have been forging relationships with some people and taking shit personally. It’s not that job anymore. Now, it’s this horrible situation I’m in where I am literally betwixt and between. All my instincts are telling me to be personable, to continue building these bonds with people but every time I do, I get crankier.

The reason is that the guild is in a state of transition from a very business-oriented guild to a guild like most others, that is somewhat social, but the guild master (the MT) is a complete dick to people in raids.

He’s ALWAYS been a dick to people in raids.

But I take it personally now because I’ve adjusted to the new, more social reality of the guild. Hell, I probably helped contribute to the new, more social reality of the guild by bonding with the healers.

The GM/MT has not. He will not. He never will. He will ALWAYS be The Bad Cop, which was his role four years ago, two years ago, nine months ago and two weeks ago. And will be his role tomorrow and Monday when we pull heroic LK on 25 for the first time.

This realization has completely shifted my perspective.

I realize that one of two things has to happen.

1) I have to go back to thinking of it as a job. Log in. Raid. Log out. Done.

2) I have to leave for a guild that’s more social and friendly and respectful.

I’m going to spend the next three or four days deciding whether or not I can do option 1. I have a feeling that I can’t.

But if I can’t, if I do have to leave… at least I really understand WHY that is. This is a different guild than it was nine months ago. It will never get to the social level I need if it’s going to be a social guild, and it may never return to the very business-like atmosphere it once had. But it may be possible for me to readjust my thinking and go back to how I used to treat my membership in the guild.

My mind is still kind of blown by all of this.

My RL friend the resto druid pretty much rocks, everyone. Because when I realized I had to make one of those two choices, she reminded me that if I have to leave the guild to be happy, that that’s what I have to do. She reminded me that it’s not like I’m leaving her in the lurch, that I shouldn’t feel bound to the guild because of her and that I’ve done so much for her already that she really doesn’t want me to stay if I’m not enjoying myself. She also said it would suck to have to look for another paladin, based on Failadin’s very short trial, but that I really do have her blessing if I’m gonna go.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I’ve been friends with her since we were six.

More stuff tomorrow here on the blog, including responses to my judgement post comments (must do math and research!), an update on potential guilds to go to and a nugget or two of information about Cataclysm, without spoiling too much. But I got to play Alpha for a little while at my friend’s place today. Woot!

Who Judges What?

Kurn / / paladins, raiding

Edit: My initial hypothesis is under review. In the meantime, please feel free to discuss how your guild handles judgements in the comments and why you value JoW or JoL uptime in your raids.  –Kurn (June 13)

All right. I’m taking deep breaths. Honest, I am. However, I have recently had occasion to go through various parses belonging to other guilds and I have noticed something that drives me a wee bit nuts:

Given two paladins (1 ret or prot and 1 holy), the holy paladin is judging light.

Don’t see why this is wrong? Think “oh, holy paladins heal, let’s have them judge light!”? Okay, then. Let’s examine what, exactly, the judgements do, shall we?

Paladins can put up three different debuffs on any hostile target:

Judgement of Light: “attacks made against the judged enemy a chance of healing the attacker for 2% of their maximum health”

Judgement of Wisdom: “giving each attack a chance to restore 2% of the attacker’s base mana.”

Judgement of Justice: “preventing them from fleeing and limiting their movement speed.”

We can basically throw out Judgement of Justice. It’s almost exclusively used in the domain of PVP. Since I’m addressing PVE encounters here, particularly 25-man raids, we will pretend Judgement of Justice doesn’t exist. (And druids and shammies who arena rejoice at the concept of a world without JoJ.)

Obviously, JoL and JoW are both important debuffs to place on the boss and even the adds at times. I think everyone can agree that 2% of your maximum health or 2% of your base mana is pretty sweet to proc, right? That’s a lot of healing and a lot of mana regen.

Now, let’s bear in mind that Divinity does not work the way you think it might when it comes to judging. That means that anyone’s JoL is basically equal to anyone else’s, at least when considering the raid group as a whole.

Let’s now look at a typical 25-man raid group.

3 tanks (say 1 warrior, 1 DK, 1 paladin)

6 healers (say 1 paladin, 2 priests, 2 druids, 1 shammy)

6 melee DPS (say 1 warrior, 1 DK, 2 rogues, 1 enhance shammy, 1 kitty)

10 ranged DPS (say 2 hunters, 2 shadow priests, 2 mages, 2 warlocks, 1 ele shammy, 1 moonkin)

That’s 25 people. All 25 of them have health bars. 7 of them do not have mana bars and 6 of them (the healers) are not going to be attacking the boss with any kind of regularity. That means that even though 6 of them aren’t really going to attack the boss, there’s still 19 people who are going to benefit from Judgement of Light versus 12 people who will benefit from Judgement of Wisdom.

Even if that wasn’t as large a difference in terms of pure numbers, let’s look at this logically:

If you run out of mana, you’re probably not going to die, you’re just going to have to stop casting spells or special attacks until you get mana back.

If you run out of health, you’re dead.

Hm. Now, which Judgement should have priority on a mob?

The answer is, of course, Judgement of Light.

Now, let’s examine why paladins judge at all. Surely there’s a reason, right? Apart from debuffing the mob in a helpful manner?

Yes, all three specs of paladin have a reason to judge the mob.

1) Retribution Paladins: Judgements of the Wise. So not only are they proccing the Replenishment effect whenever they judge, which Blizzard themselves have admitted they expect all raid groups to have, but judging is a damaging ability. ICC-geared ret pallies in my guild are judging for 7k, critting for 14k. It is an integral part of the ret pally DPS rotation. They are specced for Improved Judgements so they are judging on cooldown, every 8 seconds. That leads to really, really, really high uptime on whatever debuff they’re judging.

2) Protection Paladins: Judgements of the Just. Hey, look! It’s the prot pally version of Improved Thunder Clap! That’s to say, both those abilities reduce the mobs’ attack speed by 20%. Which is, you know, awesome. Plus, because tanks do have damage-dealing abilities to help cause threat, judging is also an integral part of the prot pally 96969 rotation. So they’re also judging on cooldown, every 8-10 seconds, depending on talents, even if the judgement debuff (and attack speed debuff) lasts 20 seconds. This also leads to a really, really, really high uptime on whatever debuff they’re judging.

3) Holy Paladins: Judgements of the Pure. 15% spell haste. Gorgeous. This talent is what allows us to reach a 1s GCD with 676 haste and is just generally awesome for getting more casts in during the same time frame. (The result being that your cast times drop pretty drastically.) However, unlike our melee-friendly brethren, our Judgements of the Pure buff lasts a full minute. We do NOT have a built-in reason to judge any more than once a minute, if we are playing as selfishly as possible and we have no mana problems. The prots and rets, however, even in the most selfish scenario, are judging on cooldown. In that scenario, we are judging once a minute.

To summarize:

– Protection and Retribution paladins judge on cooldown, Holy paladins judge at least once a minute but do not necessarily need to judge more than that for optimum self-performance. (Exception: Judging can proc Seal of Wisdom, which most holy paladins should be using if their style is Holy Light. Still, meleeing or judging strictly for mana return is not always possible, so I won’t really address that, preferring to stick solely to judgements and their uptimes.)

– Judgement of Light should be the priority debuff placed on any mob, followed by Judgement of Wisdom and Judgement of Justice should be ignored entirely.

Everyone following me? Good.

Now, then, it is a logical continuation of these thoughts that leads to ret and prot pallies judging light and leaving wisdom to the holy pallies, isn’t it?

You know that if the prot or ret pally is alive, they will be judging. This leads to near 100% uptime on their chosen debuff.

But what of the holy paladins, who are busy healing like crazy, dealing with insane tank damage, making sure to refresh Beacon of Light and Sacred Shield and trying to judge when there’s a bit of a healing slump? Sure, you can usually find an extra GCD to throw a judgement at the boss to maintain a better uptime than 20 seconds on every minute. But not always. Judge the boss more than once a minute on, say, Heroic Deathbringer Saurfang when you’re solo-healing two Marks of the Fallen Champion? Not going to happen or you’re probably going to lose your marks, unless you time it exceedingly carefully.

Not only that, but even with Enlightened Judgements, which every single holy paladin should have, you can still actually miss your Judgement. You need 8% hit to hit a raid boss with a Judgement without missing. Since Judgements are considered ranged physical attacks (like a hunter’s auto shots), they are not affected by a moonkin’s Improved Faerie Fire or a shadow priest’s Misery. Even with a Draenei in your party, for Heroic Presence, that’s still only 5% chance to hit. So you can miss, which means both your debuff of choice and your Judgements of the Pure will not be applied or refreshed. And if you then are swamped by healing, it might be a while yet before you can try to judge again.

What does that all mean?

It means that the uptime on a Judgement debuff by a holy paladin will almost always suck compared to the uptime on one by a ret or a prot paladin.

It means that the following setup is probably the best way to maintain high uptimes on the debuffs most important to the group.

1 paladin (any spec): Judgement of Light, preferably judged at least every 20 seconds.

2 paladins (ret/ret or ret/prot or prot/prot or holy/holy): Split them up, one judgement each, judge at least every 20 seconds if possible.

2 paladins (holy/ret or holy/prot): The ret or the prot gets Light, the holy gets Wisdom.

3 paladins (holy/ret/prot or holy/ret/ret or holy/prot/prot): The melee paladins split the judgements and the holy picks one and only judges more than once a minute if they feel they can — or for Seal of Wisdom procs, as mentioned above.

3 paladins (holy/holy/holy): Put two holies on Light and one on Wisdom to achieve a higher uptime on Light. The logic here is that all the holy paladins will judge at least once a minute, probably at different times, so while there will be some overlap, it leads to more uptime than just one of them judging it.

3 paladins (holy/holy/ret or holy/holy prot): The ret or the prot takes Light and the holy paladins both take Wisdom. The logic here is the same as above for Light, only applied to Wisdom.

4 paladins (holy/holy/ret/ret or holy/holy/ret/prot or holy/holy/prot/prot): Melee paladins split judgements between them, holy paladins split judgements between them, so you have the melee pallies really responsible for the uptimes and the holies are free to judge whenever, but are still judging something valuable in case one of the melee pallies dies.

Any other situation I didn’t cover: You can figure this out yourself, just make sure any melee paladins are judging Light first, then Wisdom and assign holies to be backups, basically.

Questions? Comments? Got a better method for splitting up the Judgement of Light/Wisdom debuffs? Do tell! :)

Guilds & Loyalty & Obligation, Oh My!

Kurn / / healing, icecrown citadel, paladins, raiding, ramblings

(or, Yes, Kurn is Still Bitching About Her Guild And Stuff… You Got A Problem With That?)

So, as previously mentioned, I didn’t raid last Thursday. Or last Sunday. And I didn’t raid on Monday, either. Insert 24h downtime and then I figured I’d go raid tonight. Apart from anything else, I was definitely getting twitchy. I hadn’t healed on the paladin for, oh, a week. I actually tried to toss a renew up on a tank at one point by clicking my mouse wheel and got the error message that there’s nothing to dispel. (It’s bound to Cleanse on my pally.)

Anyways, it didn’t start off terribly. I don’t raid for loot, but it was definitely very nice to get the heroic version of the Bulwark of Smouldering Steel. We’ve had five shields drop since our first week in ICC and this is only the second heroic one. I’m too tired to do the math, but that is a LOT of weeks without a shield dropping.

Apart from that, the raid pretty much sucked. Here are some “highlights”.

Heroic Lady Deathwhisper:

Number of Resto Shaman in the raid: 2

Number of Resto Druids in the raid: 1

Number of decurses by Resto Shammies on one attempt: 3 and 1 = 4

Number of decurses by Resto Druids on same attempt: 12

Heroic Deathbringer Saurfang:

Wipes: 2

Number of times people beaned in the face by Blood Beasts over all three attempts: 13

Number of times the raid leader got beaned in the face by Blood Beasts and subsequently died: 4

Heroic Blood Prince Council:

Number of wipes: 1 (which is 1 more than usual)

Number of times the stupid DPS forced ME to move, while healing the MT, despite Shadow Prison: 3

Number of times the stupid DPS killed me because they refused to move and I could not move lest the MT die: 1

Number of times veteran ret paladin died to Shadow Prison: 2

Number of dispels of Glittering Sparks by anyone over 2 attempts: 6 (me), 2 (RL/shadow priest), 2 (holy priest)

Number of dispels of Glittering Sparks by virtue of Mass Dispel by ANY priest over 2 attempts: 0 (I think that the healing lead asked the holy priest to go disc and he doesn’t seem to have done so)

Blood Queen Lana’thel:

Number of healers asked to heal tanks: 3 (1 holy paladin, 2 resto shaman)

Number of non-Chain Heals cast by shammies: 33 + 43 = 76

Number of Earth Shield heals on MT: 8 (never refreshed)

Number of Earth Shields heals on OT: 1 (placed on the OT at the end of the fight)

On a scale of 1-10, with 1 being “Not at All” and 10 being “Extremely”, the level of fear Kurn has of looking through the rest of the log to see Earth Shield failure: 14

If I was looking to last night’s raid to convince me that I should stick around despite the fact I’m currently not speaking to the raid leader, well, that definitely wasn’t convincing at all.

Everything was pissing me off. The stupid holy/disc priest who is the one who thinks outside the box before thinking inside it was all “yaaaaaaay, we have healers tonight!!!! I’ve missed you guys!!!” and it made me want to punch him in the face. Which, you know, is silly. He was genuinely happy to have so many members of the healing team online. But I still wanted to punch him in the face. I didn’t feel like it was a big ol’ happy reunion or anything. I was actually dreading the raid, exactly as I have been for the past couple of months and everything about it had the effect of stressing me out or frustrating me.

And so, perhaps it’s finally gotten to that point where a decision will have to be made. Do I put the good of my guild ahead of me and my desires? Or do I run screaming from this atmosphere and find a new home?

Let me be clear: I am not a guild hopper. I spent a year in Fated Heroes — my first real guild. I was there from the day I dinged 50 until the day it disbanded. I spent a couple of months in Skull, until such time that they ceased raiding pretty much entirely and my old FH crew and I started up Apotheosis. I was in Apotheosis for over a year and a half, until we stopped raiding officially in March of 2009.

From March of 2009 until September, I was in a raiding guild on Bronzebeard and only left due to two reasons:

1) The raid leader had ragequit and, though I was an officer, I didn’t have the energy to help them pick up the pieces of the guild. I tried, but I really couldn’t help keep it together.

2) My RL friend’s guild was in need of holy paladins; after nearly two years of talking about raiding together “someday”, “someday” was finally here.

And so I’ve been in my RL friend’s guild since October, with my trial having started in September. That’s nine long months of TOC, TOGC, ICC and the odd Ulduar run. I’ve been there for their Algalon kill and the crafting of my friend’s Val’anyr. I was acting healing lead for more than two months while my RL friend dealt with RL stuff. I was responsible for the healing for Sindragosa and LK regular kills and all the hard mode kills except Putricide and some of Sindragosa (I did some basic strat stuff, but it got further refined by my RL friend and the raid leader, which then led to a kill).

My point in this is not to toot my own horn, but merely to show that I am someone who values loyalty, who IS loyal, who always puts the needs of her guild/raid group/healing team ahead of her. The exception, of course, being when I took the crappy boots off Dreamwalker from Failadin. ;D

Leaving a guild is never an easy decision for someone like me, who believes that there has to be more to the guild than showing up with 24 others and downing content, or attempting to. I’m not saying I want to be best friends with everyone in my raid group, but I’d kind of like to respect the majority of the raiders. I’d like to push myself to keep up the tank because I don’t want to let the tank down, not just because I’m scared they’ll swap me out for a poor performance.

I want to be patted on the head every so often and told that I did a good job. I want to do my job quietly, but I want people to recognize that even if I didn’t top the healing meters, I DID do my job. (Don’t get me wrong, I CAN top healing meters if I really want to, and I will do so on certain fights, without even aiming for that goal, but that shouldn’t be the measure of success on a fight. :P)

I want to be surrounded with people who can play their classes adequately, if not extremely well. I want people who KNOW how to play, who can rely on others in the group to do what they’re supposed to do on each attempt.

Like, for instance, resto shammies who know they’re supposed to get rid of the damn Curse of Torpor and NOT let it run full duration on a freaking tank healer. Have you ever seen every healing ability you have on cooldown for fifteen seconds? It’s not a pretty sight, but it was necessary because if I didn’t throw my tank SOMETHING, he was gonna die.

So my raid on Wednesday was lacking in so many ways and was not at all what I had hoped it might be. I hoped that with a few nights off, I’d be ready to go back to ICC and kick some ass. And I, personally, totally kicked some ass. I have no idea how, but I hit 7k HPS on Saurfang, and I didn’t even have Marks 1/3 to heal, I was given 2/4. I never died to something that was my fault (see: DPS killing me on Blood Prince Council) and when the tanks died, it was either a wipe or they weren’t my target for that fight. (Like Saurfang, and for some reason, we lost a tank on our Council kill, but it wasn’t my target, nor was it my beacon. I didn’t even notice.)

As a former guild master, I automatically hated people who left my guild. Period. You leave my guild, you are dead to me. As a raider, I’m similarly pissed when a core person leaves a guild. And so this is where responsibility and loyalty and obligations come into play. As a member of any guild, I have a responsibility to show up for raids, ready to raid and prepared for the fights. I have a feeling of loyalty and belonging when I’m in a good guild, where we can learn from mistakes or laugh about near misses and all be collectively inspired to kick some ass after a 2% wipe. I have an obligation to do my best, to not let down the people around me, to do what I can for the team.

This is why, more often than not, I open my stupid mouth and try to help if I see things being done “wrong” or not being done at all. I’m the one who tells the paladins what to judge. I’m the one who sets up pally power for the optimal buffing setup. I’m the one who does all of this stupid stuff because other people either don’t do it or, in my experience, they do it WRONG. Er, “wrong”. As in, sub-optimally.

I’m not someone who, by nature, min/maxes completely out the wazoo. If I were, I’d run 10s, I’d have crafted the shammy spellpower legs for Madrana already and replaced the 258 Legplates of Failing Light.

But when something is done sloppily in a raid, I tend to be a little cranky. So I step up. Same with healing and healing assignments. That’s how I got to be healing lead in my Bronzebeard guild; I wouldn’t shut up about how X, Y and Z would be better than A, B and C. I feel like if things are done sloppily, we’re all just wasting each other’s time.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I devote myself to the guilds/raid groups I become part of — I want the team to succeed.

So when the time comes to leave a guild, I am, of course, drowned in waves of guilt. My natural inclination is to help the team, not myself. Leaving a guild is the ultimate in selfishness; you’ve gotten loot, experience, strategies from raiding with these people and then you leave and take your loot and experience and another idea of how to do things to another raid group.

But, as anyone who’s been reading can tell, I’m clearly getting to this point with my current guild.

So I’m exploring my options and plan to talk to my RL friend about this stuff tomorrow. There’s already a guild that’s caught my eye, but I figure hey, if your guild is looking for a holy paladin, let me know, either here or via email at kurn [at] apotheosis-now [dot] com. Why not, right?

Some notes:

– I will not go Horde.

– I would prefer raid times between 8:30pm ET and 1am ET (not for 4.5 hours, but a 3-3.5 hour chunk in there). (Obviously, I am on North American servers and cannot transfer to any other versions, blah, blah, blah.)

– I prefer PVE servers and have no interest in going to a PVP server. RP is potentially negotiable, but not my preference.

– Server economy must be strong; I don’t care if things are pricey so long as they’re available.

– Prefer Alliance to dominate Wintergrasp so VOA pugs are easy to form.

– I have 0 interest in 10-mans. I am only interested in 25-man ICC (and eventually Ruby Sanctum) and my preference is at least 9/12 HM already down. (Perhaps 8/12, but I have no desire to relearn/teach people how to do fights I already spent hours wiping on.)

– Must have a competant healing lead who is very aware of all five healing specs and how they work together. Healing leads who bitch people out for not topping meters are not competant. :P

– Similarly, must have a competant healing team. Preferably, a competant raid group in general.

– Must have a respectful atmosphere. I don’t want to see racist, sexist, homophobic crap, no religious or national intolerance either. If your raid group consists of people who call each other “gay” or “fag” or use “rape” casually to indicate domination of something in the game, I would probably rather stay with my current guild and all the abuse the GM lays on us.

– I’d really only stay until 4.0/Cataclysm. This is just a short-term stay to help finish ICC heroic and Ruby Sanctum.

So, yeah. Let’s see if there are any options out there, eh?

ETA: Here’s a CharDev profile of my gear and talents:

http://www.chardev.org/?profile=420109

All "Good" Things… ?

Kurn / / raiding, ramblings

Well, I snapped. At least a little bit.

I sent a fairly, how shall I put it, biting PM to my raid leader (CCing my RL friend the resto druid/healing lead) on Thursday afternoon. In it, I addressed three things:

1) Screw this noise, I am not your healing lead, even when the healing lead isn’t there. The expectation to automatically do healing if my RL friend is late or absent, without so much as a “hey, do you think you could…?” was perhaps understandable, but not doable for me. I made it very clear that my time as healing lead was temporary and that I was happy to help my friend during a time of RL trouble, but that I was done with it.

2) The MT/GM has got to stop being so freaking abusive. I’ve talked to my RL friend about this point a lot and she’s insistent that he’s not saying it to deliberately insult us but that he’s just a bad leader and that’s how he’s seen the previous leaders in this guild get results. My stance is that I just don’t give a crap what his intentions are, because any normal person is going to take offense to “HEALERS YOU FUCKING SUCK” and such. The chances of changing any part of the MT/GM’s behaviour are slim to none.

However, I did realize something. He has always been this crude, abrasive and obnoxious. It’s not a new thing. But prior to my RL friend’s break from the game, he at least was telling her in /o or whatever that we sucked and trusted her to bring the message to us. Which, we both realized in discussing this, he doesn’t do anymore. He just lets us have it in raid chat. She had been acting as a filter for him for pretty much the entire time I’ve been in the guild, but without her, he had no one he trusted to tell us we suck and fix things. Because he didn’t know or trust me. (Compared to my RL friend, who’s been in the guild for four years.) So my RL friend is going to work on getting him to use her as a filter again. Which is only changing what chat channel he says his stuff in, rather than changing what he says.

So. I guess we’ll see.

3) The late nights are killing me. The raid leader has pushed us past 2am a few times in the last couple of weeks and obviously, I stay, like a moron, because I know they can’t get X or Y down without a holy paladin or without a sixth healer or whatever. So I told the RL in my PM that I was done, that 2am is my hard limit and that any attempts that begin after 2am, unless it’s an exceptional circumstance, will have to be done without me.

Those were the basic points. Of course, I was a lot less brief about it all and I was angry, to boot.

The response I received involved the RL being pissy at me and included the phrases:

“If you’re really that unhappy raiding here though, you should probably
just stop raiding. […] If you have more suggestions about what we can do, then I’m all ears, but I’m kind of doubtful we’ll be able to fix all the issues.”

So I didn’t raid on Thursday. I’m about to post and say that I won’t raid tonight. Did I mention that they didn’t raid on Thursday, either? Not enough people in general, but only five healers as well. 0, that is zero, paladins of any spec.

I’m not one to cause issues, really. But I’m not above withdrawing my services from the guild for a little while to illustrate various points: a) We need 3 holy paladins, period, b) I have worked my ass off for you people and if you think that you can just tell me to not raid because we’re not going to solve the issues, well, good luck raiding without me, c) An unhappy raid environment leads to unhappy raiders who then don’t want to raid or do whatever’s necessary to push through, such as staying ’till 2:30am when end time is 2am.

That cancelled raids give my RL friend a better night’s sleep doesn’t hurt, either. ;)

Anyways, I don’t know what this means for me or for my guild at the moment. It may mean I’m in the market for a new guild. As angry as I am with the RL, he has a point: if I’m not happy, I shouldn’t raid, which is what so many people have said to me over the last week. His pissiness towards me (not really included in this post) has helped ease the guilt of not showing up. I have lost respect for him and, as such, I don’t feel motivated to do my best. Or, you know, anything at all.

Having spoken candidly with my RL friend really helped and I’m feeling less stressed and less worried about the impact my absence has on the guild and raids. I suspect taking a few nights off is also helping substantially.

I’m undecided on tomorrow’s raid, but it’ll probably depend on what they do, if anything, tonight.

In the meantime, priest is 79 and I’ve made almost 4000g since Friday afternoon. So there’s that. ;)

A Look at a Heroic Putricide Strategy

Kurn / / guide, icecrown citadel, raiding

Good news, everyone! I’ve decided to take a minute here and talk about how my guild does Heroic Professor Putricide on 25-man. Seems that there are a lot of people out there struggling with the fight and not a lot of information out there, so I thought I’d drop in my two cents.

Please bear in mind that I really don’t know a lot of the details as to how the DPS works on this fight, but I do know how healing works pretty darn well.

Our raid composition is rarely exactly the same, but our tanks almost always are. We have a warrior tank who is the MT. We have another warrior tank who is in the abomination. We have a bear tank who plays kitty for us until Phase 3.

For raid buffs, we find it essential to drop Nature Resistance Totem and have Prayer of Shadow Protection up, in addition to the regular raid buffs. In lieu of NR Totem, Aspect of the Wild may be used, but this is a serious DPS/healing check, so you don’t really want to gimp your DPS by forcing a hunter out of Aspect of the Dragonhawk.

For paladin auras, we prefer Improved Devotion Aura, if only for the extra armor (and the bonus healing if there’s no tree in the raid), Concentration Aura to help reduce or eliminate spell pushback and either Retribution Aura or Shadow Resistance Aura, though it doesn’t stack with Prayer of Shadow Protection. (A holy paladin can use Aura Mastery + Shadow Resistance Aura to boost everyone’s Shadow Resistance for a short time.)

Phase 1:

Healing: We typically run with six healers. Two holy paladins, one disc priest, one resto shaman and the remaining are a mix of either 2 resto druids or 1 resto/1 holy priest or even 1 resto shammy/1 holy priest. It really depends on who’s around, but we do our best to have at least two holy paladins, the disc and a shammy.

Paladins: Beacon MT, heal raid, focusing on Unbound Plague and Gaseous Bloat targets, helping out on Volatile Ooze Adhesive targets if possible.

1 Resto Shammy: Raid healing + Volatile Ooze Adhesive targets.

Disc Priest: Raid healing by virtue of shielding folks and tossing out Renews, Prayers of Mending and the odd Prayer of Healing. Spot heals with Penance and Flash Heal as well.

Other healers: Focused really on the raid and these are the people who will do the most moving. They’re the ones who stand on the Volatile Ooze Adhesive person, but the pallies and shammy generally won’t, since the melee and 3-4 healers is enough to absorb the damage.

We also find that a minimum of one resto druid with Revitalize is excellent for regenerating the abomination’s energy. If possible, two resto druids with this talent really helps out because it means the slime puddles really don’t have to stay up for long at all in order to regen the abom’s energy. In the comments, ambient reminds us all that Rapture works like Revitalize does. The important thing is having two of these effects on the abomination as often as possible. :) More energy = more slows on adds. Thanks for the reminder, ambient!

DPSing: Uh… moar pew pew? ;) No, seriously, the DPS really just focus on the boss, always prioritizing the adds when they come out. We WILL try to stop DPS at 84% if we’re due for another add. We have discovered, the hard way, that even one extra add up during any transition phase is a bad, bad thing.

Tanking/positioning: The tank is usually moving Putricide around, away from Unbound Plague targets, towards Volatile Ooze Adhesive targets. It’s a very mobile encounter and while we used to stand on various sides based on which add was coming out back on normal mode, we don’t tend to do this any longer and definitely not on heroic mode.

Once the adds are down and we’re not due another one for a bit, we will push Putricide to 80% and start the first transition phase.

Transition Phase 1:

Healing: We maintain the same assignments as during phase 1, with the paladins healing the Gaseous Bloats and a resto shammy on the Volatile Ooze Adhesives. Unbound Plague should fall off someone just as the transition is beginning, so we don’t have to worry about that again until Phase 2.

DPSing: What can be said but kill the add that you can attack? Something that helps us immeasurably, though, is a good Gaseous Bloat kiter. They’ll run the ooze away from the raid, initially, and then come running back towards the group, so that the DPS can get a good start on the Ooze and then can ruin the Gas. Go go focused fire!

Phase 2:

I hate Malleable Goo. :P

Healing: Nothing’s changed, everyone’s still doing what they’ve been doing up ’till now.

Tanking: Same thing, MT is on Putricide, OT is in the abomination and the other OT is playing kitty.

DPSing: Again, the same.

In reality, Phase 2 is so similar to Phase 1 that it’s hard to believe that the addition of Malleable Goo is such a problem. But it IS a problem. I believe that Putricide launches THREE Goos (I’m usually too busy to count!) and the only way to really avoid them is to watch for them. DXE, AVR, DBM, BigWigs, none of them will show you all the targets. Trust me, I’ve tried.

So what I do is move my big central warning text from the middle of my screen off to the side and watch my Malleable Goo timer as best I can. When the warning noise (from DXE, I believe) goes off, I stop whatever I’m doing and look up at Putricide and run like the dickens.

This does not mean that I don’t get hit, now and then, because I do. :P But it’s a lot less often now that I’ve trained myself to watch for it. Plus I still have DBM yelling at me if it’s targetting me specifically.

So, same as the end of Phase 1, we hold off DPS at around 38% or so until we’ve killed all the adds and then we push Putricide into transition.

Transition Phase 2:

Same as the first transition phase, with two exceptions:

1) We hit heroism.

2) We also try to pull out summonable pets for the Volatile Ooze Adhesive explosion, to help absorb the damage. We’re talking Army of the Dead, Ghost Wolves, Shadowfiends, hunter pets, warlock pets and shammy elementals. These pets are really key to absorbing damage and helping to finish off the transition adds so we can get on to Putricide ASAP in P3. Adds MUST go down before DPS switches to Putricide.

This is one reason why going into a transition with any kind of extra add up is recipe for disaster. It prevents you from getting back to the boss in a timely fashion.

Phase 3:

Okay, time to switch things up!

Tanking: OT pops out of the abom. OT pops out of kitty into bear form. MT tanks until he has two stacks of Mutated Plague, then Bear Tank taunts and holds the boss for two stacks. Then other OT taunts and holds the boss for two stacks.

Subsequent taunts are quick, just for one stack each, so it goes like this:

Tank 1: 2 stacks

Tank 2: 2 stacks

Tank 3: 2 stacks

Tank 1: 1 additional stack, for 3 stacks

Tank 2: 1 additional stack, for 3 stacks

Tank 3: 1 additional stack, for 3 stacks

Tank 1: 1 additional stack, for 4 stacks

Tank 2: 1 additional stack, for 4 stacks

Tank 3: 1 additional stack, for 4 stacks

If Putricide isn’t dead by now, chances are, the entire raid is.

The important thing for the tanks to do, apart from knowing when to taunt, is to NOT change direction abruptly. Keep moving him slowly, keeping him out of slime puddles and away from the orange vials and such, but you really don’t want to be going one way and then have another tank taunt and go back the way you just came.

Healing: Healers, I hope you’re ready for some insane freaking damage here. It’s just STUPID.

Paladins: Don’t worry about beacon yet. It should still be on your MT, but I encourage you to keep spamming Holy Light directly on your first tank. You MUST be aware of the tank rotation! As soon as you see that the first tank has two stacks (or whatever you stack to), you need to switch targets immediately. With any luck, your beacon is still up on the MT (although I wouldn’t waste the mana to refresh it) and you can pre-emptively heal the second tank a bit.

After everyone has two stacks is an ideal time to do three things:

1) Find a better place to stand. You want to stand somewhere far enough away from the tanks that you won’t have to move again for the encounter, barring environmental crap, but close enough that they’re still in range. You want to be near the area where they will be kiting the boss towards. But don’t just run over immediately when people have two stacks…

2) This is a great time for one paladin to hit Divine Shield/Divine Sacrifice. The 20% damage reduction for six seconds is enough of a buffer, usually, for you to run to a new place to be before you resume casting and the Divine Shield aspect allows you to run through slime if you need to in order to get to your new location. Any other paladins should chain DS/DS at this point, so when one finishes, the next begins.

3) As soon as you’ve done your DS/DS and moved to a better location, beacon YOURSELF and heal the active tank. This is pretty much the only way you’re going to be able to stay alive on the encounter because you’re taking 18k+ damage every time Mutated Plague ticks on the three tanks when it’s getting to 3 stacks. It’s actually really easy to keep up one tank (and yourself, via beacon) just by spamming the crap out of Holy Light and using all your cooldowns available to you — wings, Divine Illumination, Lay on Hands, anything you’ve got.

Priests: Derevka suggests chaining Divine Hymns at the end of P3, so probably at about the time the first stack of 3 appears and the raid damage gets significantly harder. Chaining them will allow subsequent Divine Hymns to benefit from the buff of the initial heal, with disc priests going first, then holy priests for maximum output. Thanks for the tip! :)

Raid healers: You are probably going to die unless your DPS is seriously on top of things. I honestly recommend priests use the occasional Binding Heal. Don’t worry about the paladins because they’ve beaconed themselves. Don’t worry about the tanks. Worry about yourselves and the DPS.

DPSing: Apart from killing the boss, your biggest responsibility is containing the Unbound Plague. I really haven’t spoken a lot about the plague, because it’s easy enough to hand off/avoid in the first two phases with just a little practice, but since everyone is basically bunched up for Phase 3, this is where it’s YOUR responsibility to get it the hell out of the raid. You do not want this ticking on your tanks or healers and you especially do not want anyone to have the plague ticking on them after they’ve already had the plague. Plague Sickness is bad, okay? The loss of your DPS (if you’re melee) or the slowdown of your DPS (if you’re ranged and have to move) is really minor compared to the havoc that the Unbound Plague can cause in melee range. So if you get it, RUN IT OUT. If you die with it, it’s not the end of the world, because at least you won’t spread the plague. But try to hand it off after about 10 seconds.

And that is, more or less, how my guild does Professor Putricide on 25-man heroic mode.

Comments or questions are welcome. :)

Kurn's Q&A #19

Kurn / / alchemy, dungeons, healing, icecrown citadel, lfg, paladins, q&a, raiding

Welcome, welcome, one and all, to Kurn’s Q&A! This is the time of the week when I look at my website stats from the previous week and see how I can better help those search for information by expounding on 10 search terms that led people to my site. I love Tuesdays.

1) “katrana prestor”

Ahhhhh, Lady Katrana Prestor, also known as Lady Onyxia! Katrana Prestor used to be an NPC in Stormwind Keep. There was Bolvar Fordragon, Anduin Wrynn and Katrana Prestor in the throne room in the keep.

At level 50, you could start an immense quest chain that begins in Burning Steppes called Dragonkin Menace. It would take you through Burning Steppes, over through Blackrock Depths, to Lakeshire, to Stormwind, back to Morgan’s Vigil, all over the damn place. Eventually, you would rescue Marshall Reginald Windsor, whom everyone from pre-BC probably loathes as much as I do, and meet up with him at the Stormwind gates.

There would be this truly awesome event that would take place — you’d escort Windsor up to the keep and accuse Lady Katrana Prestor of being Onyxia in disguise and she’d transform RIGHT FREAKING THERE and get the guards in the keep to turn into their draconic forms. Bolvar would LAY THE SMACK DOWN, but not before Windsor is mortally wounded. (I used to /cheer.)

Here’s the script.

Onyxia would vanish, presumably to go to her lair, and you would be tasked with restoring a medallion. You’d have to go to freaking Winterspring, to the top of a damn mountain, to talk to a blue dragon (Haleh, who appears in high/blood elf from) who’ll tell you to go to Upper Blackrock Spire and kill General Drakkisath and get the Blood of the Black Dragon Champion. (This eventually became party loot, but for a LONG time, there were only 1-3 of these that dropped at a time.)

Then you go back to Haleh and she would give you your Drakefire Amulet, which you had to have with you to enter Onyxia’s Lair.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the story of Lady Katrana Prestor as she was in the game before they removed the Onyxia attunement questline. More info here on Lady Katrana Prestor from WoWWiki.

Edit: Best video EVER. The Craft of War: Blind.

2) does divine shield drop lady deathwhispers

Drop Lady Deathwhisper’s what?

Curse of Torpor: Probably
Frostbolt: Yeah.
Mind Control: Well, you can’t pop it if you’re MCed, I don’t think, but if she makes the mistake of popping it for you, you will probably get released from the mind control.

3) dxe bossmods malleable goo putricide hard

Yeah, my DXE only shows me the location of one, not all three, Malleable Goos. Sorry. :(

4) elixir master not proccing 2010

I’m an elixir master. It procs. My proc rate usually sucks, but it procs enough to let me know I haven’t lost the ability to proc entirely.

5) fastest way to get emblem of triumph one night

Queue up as a healer or a tank and do dungeons all night long. Or, do Naxxramas.

6) hard mode professor putricide 25m strat

Funny you should mention that. I just wrote up a post detailing how my guild does heroic Putricide on 25m.

7) holidays grace for dps or healer

I understand your confusion in this day and age of spellpower instead of damage/healing and healing. Holiday’s Grace has mp5 which means it’s for healers. DPS have enough tricks up their sleeves to regen mana, whereas healers have a couple things, typically with long cooldowns, such as Mana Tide Totem, Shadowfiend and Innervate. mp5 is the only thing that will aid in mana regen for healers, so you’ll find it on lots of healer gear.

Rule of thumb: +hit = DPS caster, +mp5 = healer

That doesn’t mean all healers want a lot of mp5 or all casters want a lot of hit, mind you.

8) how to respond when someone asks for raid achievements

If you have them, link them. If not, you may be out of luck if you’re not really geared. You can always say “this is my alt, I know the fight from my main” if that’s the case, or just tell them you know the fight and just haven’t done it on that toon, even if you’ve never done it. The key here, of course, is doing research so you’re not That Tool that everyone else is carrying.

9) why cant i que for icc

First of all, it’s “queue”. Second of all, ICC is not a dungeon. You cannot queue for a raid group. You can sit in the raid browser for it, but I’m assuming that this is what you cannot do.

If you cannot select ICC as a raid to sit in the raid browser for, this means that Blizzard’s estimation of your gear is such that you won’t be able to adequately perform with that gear in ICC. Go get some gear.

10) on a holy palatin, what foods, enhants, and gems to improve mana regeration

… please, please don’t have been a native English speaker.

The more mana you have, the more mana you’ll regenerate. Divine Plea is based on our maximum mana, as are Replenishment and Mana Tide Totem. For mana regen food, you can either go with 40 crit strike food or 20 mp5 food. For everything else, it’s intellect. Make sure you’re also using the Insightful Earthsiege Diamond.

Big Crits

Kurn / / raiding, ramblings

So I read Derevka’s post about Big Crits last night and was instantly hooked. I mean, instantly.

I highly recommend you go read Derevka’s post, but basically, Big Crits is a web series about a real end-game raiding guild in World of Warcraft. There are four episodes so far and I adore it.

It’s awesome for so many reasons, but the primary reason is that it isn’t just about focusing on the game and progression and the encounters. With the inclusion of talking heads (you know, when someone faces the camera and speaks their mind, like they do on The Office or Survivor or The Apprentice), they’re not just showing a guild downing a boss. They’re having their actual guild members talk about their actual raid experiences and it’s all woven really well together.

Who wouldn’t love that? I LOVE talking about my raid experiences (as this blog proves) and I love hearing about cool happenings for others. Plus, the talking head segments are comprised of actual video of the people, not the toons.

I majored in Sociology, so I’ve always been absolutely fascinated by the social interaction in WoW. Don’t get me wrong — I still can’t stand stupid people and I would very much like to wipe them off the face of the planet. But how guilds who raid together gel (or not) and deal with various in-game issues is just awesome to me.

The biggest challenges of being a guild master aren’t really the in-game encounters, although I will admit that getting 15 people to know their Bloodboil rotation sucked, just as getting 25 people not to die from air bursts or fire on Archimonde sucked.

But that wasn’t the big challenge. For me, the toughest thing was knowing when to be a hardass and knowing when to be more understanding. (And also, when to stop talking or typing, because I am the most long-winded person in the world.)

A classic problem any guild faces is the following:

A long-time member who is basically universally adored by all guildies for being so awesome in so many ways is, in fact, one of the worst players we’ve ever seen. He has consistently died on whatever progression fight we’re currently on and his death has had repercussions that lead to a wipe. Say that, I don’t know, four of seven wipes on this one fight can be traced back to a chain of events that began with his death.

What do you do? Do you swap him out for someone on standby? Do you bitch him out and tell him to shape up? Do you warn him at all that if he doesn’t do better, he’s on standby? Honestly, how do you deal with that?

Then, assuming you chose the more diplomatic method of getting his class/role lead to talk to him and apologize while swapping him out, then what? Is he going to leave the guild? Stop raiding? Is he going to be disappointed and sulky? What about the morale of the guild and raid team? If the guy they adore is wiping them (but perhaps they’re not aware of that?) and gets swapped out, are THEY going to be sulky because he got sat out?

Here’s a second scenario that has happened to every single guild:

You are in dire, I mean, DIRE need of a specific class/role, to the point that if the one person who does fill that role isn’t there, you can’t do a whole lot.

So you go recruiting for that particular class to fill that particular role. Granted, it’s much easier in Wrath to swap any kind of DPS for any other kind of DPS, so let’s imagine that what we want is either a moonkin or a retribution paladin because we don’t have Improved Moonkin Form or Swift Retribution in the raid on a regular basis. We have a prot paladin, so we have various blessings and we have Heart of the Crusader. We have an elemental shaman who is occasionally not around, but we generally have Elemental Oath and Totem of Wrath.

But we don’t have that pesky 3% haste buff and everyone is getting pissy about it, plus we don’t have backup for that ever-important 5% spell crit, so if the elemental shaman is out, we’re screwed. So ideally, we want a moonkin, but would take a ret pally.

So we go out recruiting for both.

After three weeks of searching and four nights in that period where casters were without their crit buff and still no one had that 3% haste buff, we finally get an app from a moonkin.

He looks awesome.

He is appropriately geared, gemmed, enchanted, specced and glyphed. He’s moonkin and resto, but also has a tank set. He wasn’t significantly behind you in content, just a boss or two.

He’s perfect.

So you accept his app, he transfers, gets a ginvite and then you realize, right smack-dab in the middle of the first raid… this guy is a jerk. I mean, really, no question about it, he’s pretty much That Guy that you want to punch in the face. Maybe he’s told a dead baby joke in raid, maybe he yelled profanity at someone who wiped the raid or maybe he’s just overly superior about his skill and is boasting constantly.

Of course, he’s topping damage, CCing appropriately, helping out on decursing, innervating and tossing battle rezzes as needed. In short, he is a freaking excellent player. He’s pretty much the opposite of our first example.

Within a week, you’ve heard about 12 people complaining about this guy, but you’ve killed two new bosses, largely because of him. His role lead has tried, without success, to rein him in a little bit, but he’s still mouthing off in raid, if not in Vent, and it seems like he just doesn’t understand that his comments aren’t appropriate.

So what do you do, as the guild master or member of the officer team? Do you decline his application and remove him from the guild? Do you warn him that the previous action is a possibility if he doesn’t stop being such a jerk? Do you try to appease your guild members individually and asking them to be patient? Do you hold on to the jerk until you get another moonkin or ret pally app? Perhaps more importantly, is being a jerk who helps the raid to excel such a horrible thing after all?

These are the real challenges in running a guild. It’s all about taking actions for the betterment of the guild as a whole while simultaneously trying to achieve goals as a raiding group.

I really think Big Crits is going to bring up these kinds of issues. They’re common problems, but everyone has a different opinion on how to deal with them. This is what is going to make this web series fascinating to me; how others deal with problems I’ve dealt with within this incredibly rich game world.

So go watch Big Crits from Week 1 (they’re up to 4 now)! Let me (and, more importantly, the guildies themselves) know how you liked it. :)