Category: ramblings

An interesting idea.

Kurn / / general, guild, parses, raiding, ramblings

If you’ve never raided with me, but you read my blog, you already know that I’m long-winded as all get out.

If you’ve both raided with me and read my blog, you know that I’m not just long-winded as all get out, but that I am very detail-oriented and I use that to go through the logs and pick apart where a raid went wrong.

My RL friend the resto druid told my former raid leader that she thinks I might actually enjoy going through parses more than playing the game itself. Sometimes, I think she has a point. ;)

I had an EPIC-length post that I sent to my RL friend the resto druid and my former raid leader in regards to the Failadin who apped to that guild a couple of months ago. You know, the one who only cast Sacred Shield when he was MCed by Lady Deathwhisper.

I actually sent that post to the other GOOD holy paladin in the guild and he was like “… you should do this for a living.” He also could not believe how bad the pally app was, but anyways. ;)

As I mentioned in a previous post, I’ve sent out a couple of these analyses to the raid leaders and the GM of my current guild, in the hopes of pointing out some issues that they may or may not be aware of, but that I know need to be addressed in order to progress in various encounters. Because they’re SO LONG and SO DETAILED, I’m sure their eyes tend to glaze over. ;)

So my GM snagged me on Vent last night and we had a long chat about going over parses and stuff and we may have found a constructive outlet for my ramblings and my attention to detail and stuff.

It also involves a Cliff’s Notes version of the raid analyses. ;)

Also, in talking to her last night, about all kinds of guild ideal stuff, I realized that, if all goes well with the planning of Apotheosis 2.0, I’m really going to miss my current guild. I know that I’m new, that I’ve only been there for three weeks and that the honeymoon period is still going on, but I honestly really like how things are done and the attitudes of people, for the most part. (I think the biggest issue I might have with the guild is that, as a raiding group, the raiders have an occasional tendency to talk themselves out of being able to do something — they can sometimes think they’re going to fail, so they do. I have thoughts about that, too, because it’s the first time I’ve really encountered that sort of thing. Most guilds I’ve been in have either been too cocky or too stupid to realize they “can’t” get something done. ;))

I feel good that Apotheosis will come back and kick ass in Cataclysm. I really do. But if it doesn’t, I think I have a really good alternative open to me. And hey, if it means I don’t have to be GM? SWEET. ;D

Kurn's Q&A 24

Kurn / / healing, paladins, q&a, raiding, ramblings, real id, ruby sanctum

Oof, all this Real ID crap, plus a nap, means a later-than-usual Q&A post. I’ve decided to rely solely on my search terms for this stuff going forward, by the way. I decided I didn’t need a way for people to anonymously harass me. If you have a question, let me know via email or twitter. :)

1) how many people recemended on ruby sanctum

… 10 or 25? Haha, no, seriously, here’s the breakdown:

10: 2 tanks, 2-3 healers, 5-6 DPS. I strongly recommend three healers unless you SUPER outgear the content.

25: 3 tanks (one can be DPS or heals for Halion himself, but you need three for Baltharus), 6-7 healers, 15-16 DPS.

2) divine sacrifice macro it cutting my fps

No. Your Divine Sacrifice macro is not cutting your FPS. If anything, the spell effects of Divine Sacrifice are cutting your FPS. Turn down your graphic settings, either Particle Density or some of the other effects.

3) does the beacon accept its own heals

I’m confused. If you mean “will heals that land on the beacon directly copy through Beacon of Light, effectively hitting them twice?”, then no. Only Flash of Light, Holy Light, Holy Shock and Lay on Hands heals to OTHER targets will be copied to your beacon target.

If, on the other hand, you mean “can I beacon myself and benefit from heals I cast on other people?” then the answer is yes.

4) halion shadow resistance

You don’t need Shadow Resistance gear, but an aura or Prayer of Shadow Protection is highly recommended.

5) holy light vs flash of light 3.3

I’ve always done my best to acknowledge that there is another interesting way to play a holy paladin, that being the Flash of Light style. However, I don’t like that style. I don’t think I’ve hidden my dislike of it, but I also try not to be all “you’re a moron” if you do like that style. The reason I don’t like it is because it’s less flexible. You are basically forced to keep casting Flash of Light because you don’t have the mana pool to sustain casting Holy Light more regularly than “every once in a while”.

Whereas Holy Light style paladins CAN cast Flash of Light if the occasion calls for it and CAN cast Holy Light ’till the cows come home if we need to.

That’s why I prefer a Holy Light style and always will.

6) meta achievement requires “neck-deep in vile” 3.3.5 25

YES. It does require it on 25-man. Absolutely confirmed. (Click for a larger version of this screenshot of a GM ticket.)

7) ruby sanctum 3 healers

The reason I strongly recommend three healers is because the shadow aura in the twilight realm just flat-out sucks. Get a raid healer and a tank healer in the twilight realm and any decent healer outside and you should be fine.

8) anyway for you to block a real id person from seeing your potential friends

Afraid not.

9) saviana ragefire “no hunter”

… got a rogue with Anesthetic Poison? Otherwise, you’re going to need awesome heals on the group.

10) toravon frost or physical damage

Both. There is a lot of frost damage in terms of Frostbite stacks on the tanks and Whiteout every so often, but his hits are physical.

Real ID and the Official WoW Forums

Kurn / / general, ramblings, real id

Today, it was announced by Blizzard that forum posts to the official World of Warcraft forums would be tagged with your Real ID. It was later clarified that this is not something that will be retroactive, so if this creeps you out, you do not need to go purge the current forum system of all your posts.

When I read this post, my first thought was “Well, there go the forums.”

For those of you who don’t know (which is likely a great many of you), I have worked for quite a few years in the Internet industry. Specifically, I was a content producer for a top-ten website as well as maintaining the most active chatting community on that web property for a period of approximately three out of the four years I worked there, at the height of the boom in the “dot com” industry. (For the record, it took me a year to build up the community and then my community was the most active chat for the next three years until I got laid off with hundreds of other people because they were too stupid to monetize us.)

I haven’t worked too much in that area of the industry recently for a variety of reasons, including the “dot com” crash and a return to university to get my degree. Still, I maintain a variety of different forum and chat-based communities across the web and have successfully grown self-sustaining communities in both mediums from scratch. I love online communities and I love creating them. I daresay I’ve created a nice little community here on my blog as well and I really enjoy the back and forth I have with my commenters.

So as a seasoned professional in the area of online communities, my first thought wasn’t to myself and Blizzard’s privacy creep as it infringes on me. It was “Oh Lord, Blizzard has just completely ruined their own forum community and the forums will now be a desolate wasteland.”

Let us go through my thought process on the matter:

– Blizzard has provided us with access to their many, many forums for many years. They existed when I started playing over four years ago, but I’m unsure if they were available at launch or not. Regardless, a minimum of 4+ years is a long time to have a community tool such as the forums easily accessible to every customer. Changing how the forums work after so long is bound to anger some customers, regardless of what the change is.

– People get acclimated to the forums, particularly when they become a very official method of communicating with Blizzard (Blue), once Ghostwalker (Greg Street) starts posting in his official capacity on a regular basis and solicits your feedback and opinions with regards to class development and design. People also flock to the forums for a variety of other reasons: looking for a guild, recruiting for a guild, advertising guild progression, advertising crafting services on your realm forum, looking for technical support, looking for customer support, even posting to ask on which characters you’ve done the 00x quests. The forums become a valuable method of communication as soon as both sides start using the forums as a tool to communicate what they feel is important information, regardless of what that information is. As soon as people feel it’s important, the medium in which that information is available becomes valuable.

– As with all online communities, trolls and other unwelcome entities have had their fun. In fact, a lot of people disregard the official forums as completely useless, disgusting, troll-filled message boards rather than the potentially useful tool that they are. How about the Guild Relations forum? The Customer and Technical Support forums? The Guild Recruitment forum? Your realm forum? Sure, there are trolls and otherwise unhelpful individuals in each of those places, but, by and large, the good information in each of those forums is enough to outweigh the undesirables.

“So,” I concluded, “Blizzard wants to get rid of the trolls.” I feel that this upcoming system will certainly help to combat the troll problem. Without low-level alts to hide behind, without the veil of anonymity, people are bound to be less moronic. In fact, I believe that it will stop around 75% of trollish behaviour on the forums since people will be accountable for their actions as they will no longer be able to jump from alt to alt to alt as a persona. (Note that I have no data on how much crap Blizzard actually locks and deletes versus how much gets posted, etc. This is a ballpark figure based on my previous experience in online communities and the more than four years I’ve spent in the World of Warcraft community.)

So the next question I asked myself was “What will forcing people to post using their ‘real ID’ actually do?” Well, first of all, I strongly believe that a portion of the people upset over this would be upset over any change, as I mentioned before. Already, there’s a portion of the community that won’t take this “slap in the face” lying down.

Then you have the people who have reason (regardless of what the reason is) to be reluctant to share their real name with eleven million other players and anyone who happens to surf along. (“Anyone” being someone who ran some kind of search on you, like a prospective employer, a potential significant other, your cousin in Nebraska, the kid you used to babysit, anyone.) Given the uproar on this already, I would have to wager that approximately 20-25% of Blizzard’s overall customer base is actively unhappy with this upcoming change. Again, this is a ballpark figure, based on my never having seen such a strong, negative reaction to anything Blizzard has done before. The original thread, posted by Nethaera at about noon, eastern time, has grown to 607 pages of 20 responses on each page in ten hours.

Conservatively estimating things, that’s about 900 responses from unique individuals an hour, the vast majority of them disagreeing with this upcoming change. And that’s just on the North American forums. I’ve never seen such an outcry in my four-plus years in this game. No nerf has ever generated this much response.

Therefore, my conclusion is that if the change goes forward, about 25% or so of people (conservatively estimating) who did use the official forums in some capacity, including trolling, will stop doing so. There’s even an MVP poster, Snowfox, who will no longer post if this goes through.

25% less traffic means 25% less posts to make sure aren’t obscene, profane or threatening. 25% less traffic means less bandwidth/server costs. 25% less traffic means less manpower hours to supervise the posts. 25% less traffic turns into money saved for Blizzard.

Forums and other community-based tools are notoriously hard to monetize. Go on, click on the link above to the WoW forum thread about this to see how Blizzard is currently trying to monetize their forums. I’m currently looking at two banner ads. One is for swagdog, offering your guild tabard on a t-shirt. The other is for Warcraft figures.

Because the forums are so heavily trafficked, I imagine that Blizzard does make a bit of money from the display of advertisements on each forum page, just by virtue of the law of averages. But it’s my professional opinion and experience that lead me to believe that this kind of advertising is NOT enough to sustain the infrastructure and manpower the forums require and so the cost of the forums is likely subsidized by other avenues of income, including our monthly fee.

Because I do not believe the forums to be entirely self-sustaining, I believe that Blizzard is attempting to do two things here that are designed to cut costs:

a) Lower traffic on the forums to lower infrastructure-related costs

b) Lower the amount of trolling on the official forums by making people accountable for their posts by virtue of using a single identifying tag (the real ID) which lowers the amount of human supervision the forums need.

I further believe that they are doing this under the guise of hopping on the social networking bandwagon. They may be thinking that since Facebook is mostly real-life names and identities and it’s so popular, why not tap into that willingness to share and connect? Targeted advertising could be next, based on the assumed gender your real ID indicates. Advertising that can be directed to specific segments of the population can bring in a lot of money versus ads that are directed at a general population. The bottom line is, Activision Blizzard is a business and they want money. They are clearly looking at new avenues to procure money or, at the very least, save it.

So to recap, it is my professional opinion that the change forcing us to use Real ID when posting on the official forums will cut official forum use substantially, meaning less money spent on the forum infrastructure and supervision, with the bonus that trolling will drop even more than legitimate traffic.

Now for my personal opinion.

Blizzard, you’ve lost your mind. Personally, as someone who doesn’t use the Real ID in-game friend system except for three people (one of whom I’m related to, one of whom I’ve known IRL for 27 years and one of whom I’ve spent hours with IRL and many years playing with), this is ridiculous.

From the Real ID FAQ:

“Who should I add to my Real ID friends list?
Real ID is a system designed to be used with people you know and trust in real life — friends, co-workers and family”

Versus the announcement today:

“The first and most significant change is that in the near future, anyone posting or replying to a post on official Blizzard forums will be doing so using their Real ID — that is, their real-life first and last name”

So, hold up. You want me to share my real name with people who already know it, who are people I know in real life… okay. That’s my choice, I got it.

But then you want me to use the same information on a public forum which is accessible to anyone on the Internet?

Uh, no.

I’ve used the official forums a moderate amount over the years. I used to post guild progression updates, I’d post in people’s “looking for a new guild” posts with information about my guild, I’d post recruitment threads, I’d post on the forums to say hey, I’m a Leatherworker and can make this stuff…

No one needs to know that [my real name] is a holy paladin looking for a new guild.

No one needs to know that [my real name] is a Leatherworker on some realm with a couple of interesting patterns.

Further, I am, in case you didn’t know, a woman. I have had enough bad experiences in online communities over the years just because I am female that when I first made a toon in WoW, I made my hunter male. While the numbers between men and women in WoW are getting more balanced, this is still an environment that is inherently extremely hostile to women. Just about every insult used frequently in-game by others is hostile to women because it equates women with being weak and apparently some of the ultimate insults in the game have to do with men being equated to women or just being less of a “man”.

Seriously, think about that for a minute. I apologize if this is a trigger for anyone, but think about this: why do people use “rape” as casually as they do in this game? “Aw yeah, I’m gonna rape that guy!” It’s because, to them, “rape” is synonymous with exerting power and control over another person. It is encouraged in this game to exert power and control over others and I don’t have a problem with that. What I do have a problem with is that people use the term “rape” so casually, to indicate they are powerful beings in this world, when the fact of the matter is that one in six women (and one in thirty-three men) will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime. I have been fortunate enough to not be that one-in-six, but I certainly know my fair share of people who haven’t been that lucky.

Due to the fact that is is disturbingly common for women to be assaulted in such a way, how can using the word “rape” in-game not be hostile to women? Even if the intent is clear that someone doesn’t want to actually sexually assault another person’s character, it trivializes what is a horrifying event for anyone who is subject to it. It also emasculates the intended target, since most victims of rape and sexual assault are women.

On a related note, how can calling someone “gay” or a “fag” not be hostile to members of the GLBT community? For that matter, how is that not hostile to women as well? If someone is calling someone else “gay” as a derogatory insult, it can only be because they are not as “manly” or “strong” as a heterosexual man is perceived. And, in our binary society, if you are not a man, you must then be… a woman! So to call someone “gay” or a “fag” is not only equating homosexuality with weakness, but the implication is also that weakness is equated to being a woman.

So given the prevailing attitudes in this overall World of Warcraft community, is it any wonder that many women don’t want to be known as women to the general public? Don’t want to give people even the slightest opening into being able to look them up and stalk them?

I have an EXTREMELY common name. It’s so common that I was stopped in Germany a few years ago because suspected terrorists are using passports and other identification papers using that same name and they wanted to make sure that I was really me and not actually a suspected terrorist. And I STILL don’t want people in-game to know my real name, in general. I certainly can’t blame anyone, regardless of the popularity of their names, for not wanting to give out that information.

Giving out my real name should always be my choice. There’s a reason I post as Kurn and not my real name. Kurn is my public WoW identity. Kurn is not now, nor has ever been, linked to my real name in any capacity except where I have chosen to share my name. Kurn is SO FAR AWAY from my professional online presence that I’m sure no one even suspects that I play WoW. (Well, I hope, anyways.)

And I LIKE it that way.

That’s why, if this change goes through, I will no longer be posting on the official World of Warcraft forums. There are too many people out there who are REALLY good at e-stalking to even risk it. Doubt me? Poor Bashiok, a blue poster, made the mistake of posting his real name on the official forums and now a ton of people have looked him up, determined he’s 28 and lives at home with his mother and older brother, possibly a sister as well, and found his Facebook (now 100% closed if you’re not friends with him) and found a contact number for him. Even if that’s not Bashiok, what about the poor guy who shares his name? Do you really think there aren’t people who are going to call that number at 4am just to be dicks? If you don’t believe that’s a distinct possibility, then please, tell me what game environment have YOU been playing in? Check out Trade, sometime.

Then, there’s the whole “gainful employment” thing. On some versions of my curriculum vitae that I send out, I mention the whole officer/GM thing. On some, I don’t. I fully expect some potential employers to think it’s a good thing and some to think I’m a nutcase if they come across that information. I’m careful about which prospective employers I share that information with.

And now, some links:

Miss Medicina has a cautionary tale for you all, as well.

Ciderhelm at TankSpot is against this, too.

So is Lume.

ETA:

Larisa’s thoughts at Pink Pigtail Inn: 1 and 2

Nattie’s comment at MetaFilter is long and detailed and TOTALLY worth every moment of the read. (Thanks for the link, Mattias.)

Lissanna of Restokin is also against this and will not post her extremely popular and useful druid guides to the new forums. (Thanks for posting, Lissanna!)

The last thing I’ll say in this post is: please think about how this affects other people before you pronounce this to be “okay” or “fine”. Please think about the various uses people have for the official forums, including technical and customer support before you call people with valid concerns “paranoid”.

And finally, please note that I’ll be monitoring my comments on this post carefully. If you disagree with me, I don’t have a problem with that. But disagree with me respectfully, intelligently and back up your arguments with proof. Troll comments will be deleted.

T-t-t-tuesday!

Kurn / / general, ramblings

A few things on the agenda today:

1) Write a post about the RealID/forum fiasco, including my professional opinion as someone who built communities for a living and still dabbles in it.

2) A new Q&A post.

3) A new poll.

But first, guild news!

I was promoted to a Raider last night in my new guild. I kind of figured I’d get promoted once my trial period was over, but it’s still nice to have the trial done with. :)

I’m going over the parses from last night’s heroic Sindragosa attempts and I can’t, for the life of me, figure out why this one tank was basically allowed to die. Probably my weakness (apart from my crappy video card) in this game is that I overanalyze things. It worked out nicely when I was a GM or healing lead, but I’m not altogether sure how my analyses of raids goes over with my current guild leadership. I’ve sent a couple out in my trial period, so at least they didn’t gkick me for being overly long-winded and detailed, but at the same time, I wonder if I should even open my mouth about things.

I think my problem is that I KNOW how to read the logs. And I read them frequently and I see things in there that maybe the RLs aren’t aware of. I should trust that they do, but all my instincts are screaming at me to let them know what I’ve found, so I think I WILL send a writeup to them about some attempts from last night. I’ll make sure it’s framed in a “I dug all this info up, please do with it what you will” way and hope they don’t regret promoting me to Raider. ;)

How do you deal with pointing things out to raid leaders and such?

Thoughts While Running Through Kalimdor

Kurn / / cataclysm, general, ramblings

I’m determined to at least get through the fires on my hunter, if not my other toons. I am POOR on this server, funding my own alts, plus my brother’s and Majik’s.

So I’m running through Kalimdor. I play on a laptop (always have, actually) and not since the days of pre-60, before I discovered such things as frame rates and lag and such, have I played with full graphic details and such. Sure, on the rare occasion at my parents’ or at an internet cafe, such things have been possible, but it’s been a long, long, long time.

So while running down through Feralas, I turned up my draw distance, turned on the full-screen glow effect and such.

The difference between that and my regular all-low settings is astounding and reminds me of why I fell in love with the visuals in this game.

Running through the old world brings back so many memories! And I never know if THAT was the last time I’d be in Feathermoon or if THAT was the last time I’d visit Cenarion Hold.

I hate change in general. I really do. Bring back Aimed Shot with its 3s cast time and make it so it doesn’t break Shadowmeld until the shot is cast! Bring back 100% mana regen Illumination!

Overall, I can deal with the mechanical changes to the game. It took me several patches to understand that everything is always in flux, but I get that and I’m okay with that.

Changing the game world, though, that’s something else entirely.

On the one hand, I’m excited because Cataclysm will bring us back to the old world, where I arguably had the best times of my WoW career (barring BC raids). On the other hand, they’re screwing with my zones. There’s going to be a flight point in Dolanaar. That breaks my brain a bit.

The Barrens will be split into two.

Desolace will no longer be desolate.

Things will be flooded.

I know I’ll adjust to it, as time goes by. But a big part of me just wants to hold on to old-school Azeroth and never let it go.

Amusing screenshots.

Kurn / / parses, ramblings, ruby sanctum

After parsing my Ruby Sanctum 10 run the other night, I about fell over laughing at the rankings. The hunter is my brother. I’m the resto shaman who starts with a K. Our buddy Maj is the frost DK.

Hilariously amusing to be one of the first parses up. My brother was ranked world 10th in DPS on Baltharus and Zarithrian!

Today, the continuation, where we actually go out and kill Halion. With a little luck. :)

"It works for me!"

Kurn / / facepalm, healing, icecrown citadel, paladins, raiding, ramblings, ruby sanctum

Codi was talking about how she’s basically been accused of being an elitist in terms of stuff she says on her blog and how, because she’s so advanced, people have used that as a caveat when it comes to taking her advice.

This got me thinking about my own paladinesque standards.

What do I know?

Well, I know what works for me, and what HAS worked for me, in all tiers of content in this expansion, through regular modes and hard modes.

Like Codi, I’ve got a fair bit of gear and a fair bit of progression under my belt.

I’m pretty sure that most of my sort of requirements for a holy paladin are good ones. They’re requirements that would show someone’s done reading and research about the class, that show that people understand the basic tenet of “more mana is always better than more spellpower” and such.

Given the ICC buff, though, a lot of people are getting by with terrible specs and horribly-chosen gear.

But if it works for them and their raid group, does anyone really have the “right” to say that they’re being an idiot?

On Tuesday night, I ran a pug Ruby Sanctum 10 with Maj and my brother. There was a failish paladin in the group.

Here is her armory. Click on it and it’ll open in a new window, then come back here and we’ll go through why I think she’s pretty fail.

http://www.chardev.org/?profile=428926

1) Helm: Right helm. Wrong meta. Wrong gem. IMHO: Insightful and Nightmare Tear. I won’t even talk about the arcanum, since that’s too nitpicky at this point.

2) Neck: Great necklace. Good gem.

3) Shoulders: Right shoulders. Wrong gem.

4) Cloak: Why any holy paladin wastes Emblems of Frost on this piece of crap, I don’t know. Good gem and enchant, at least.

5) Chest: Well, there are better options. But the tier chest isn’t terrible. Again with the hybrid gems, though. WTB 20 ints!

6) Bracers: Great bracers. Would prefer 16 int enchant and a 20 int gem.

7) Gloves: Great gloves. Need 2×20 int gems, though. Fine enchant.

8) Belt: Wrong belt. Should have the Belt of the Lonely Noble or the Lich Killer’s Lanyard, both of which are identical to each other, and both have haste. Also tries to hit the socket bonus here with a Dazzling Eye of Zul. Socket bonuses are evil and are there to confuse you!

9) Pants: Great pants, good enchant, needs more int gems.

10) Boots: No haste on boots. … and a 20 AP/10 crit gem. w. t. f.

11) Ring 1: A caster ring, with hit and no haste… and a Dazzling Forest Emerald. REALLY?

12) Ring 2: Exalted ICC ring, nicely gemmed.

13) Trinket 1: Love that Talisman.

14) Trinket 2: Why, dear God, why the Purified Lunar Dust?

15) Weapon: Lockjaw is a solid weapon in ICC 10. Not enchanted with anything, though…

16) Shield: Great, perfect.

17) Libram: Dear sweet fancy Moses, why a gladiator libram?

18) Talents:

a) 60 in Holy: 2/2 Blessed Hands, 3/3 Imp Concentration Aura, 3/3 Sacred Cleansing. Eesh.

b) 11 in Prot: All solid pickups, including Divine Sacrifice, but no Divine Guardian makes me want to cry.

19) Glyphs: Seal of Light and Holy Shock instead of Seal of Wisdom and Beacon of Light. OH THE HUMANITY.

But how was her performance? The paladin outhealed me on bosses; 3 attempts at Ragefire, 9 on Baltharus, 1 on Zarithrian and 2 on Halion. Granted, my shaman is terribly geared, still sitting in T9. I think anyone with any amount of gear could outheal me at this point.

She had good overall uptime on Beacon of Light (89.7%) and Sacred Shield (81.3%), but dropped to 69.1% uptime on Judgements of the Pure.

Here’s what boggles me, though — she used Divine Plea 15 times and only offset it with the Talisman once and Avenging Wrath once. She didn’t use Divine Illumination AT ALL.

To me, all the things I’ve pointed out as being wrong, the gems, enchants, uptimes, offsets for DP… these are basics. BASICS. These are things that make my head want to explode. Never, not in a million years, would I want this paladin to raid alongside me in ICC. Ever.

And yet, despite the issues I can clearly see in the logs and on her armory, she did an overall good job. I mean, we beat the trash, we beat the minibosses and today, at least 8 of us are going back into RS10 to down Halion. She’s not necessarily one of them, unfortunately, because she hasn’t responded to my calendar invite or in-game mail, but Thursday was successful, in my opinion.

So my question is… do I have a right to question what works for some people? I’m sitting here saying “do X, Y and Z” because those are the “best practices”. Those are the things that I’ve learned work best, mathematically, practically, etc.

But so what if someone isn’t living up to their potential? Should it really make a difference in a pug? Should I care that the pally is specced abysmally? Should I care that she’s having to waste globals to refresh SS and BoL? Not if she’s keeping people up. And that’s what she did, by and large.

Let’s see what happens to her stats if I go fixing her gems, glyphs, stats, etc.

Pre-Kurn edits:

33.15% crit

2980 +healing

203 mp5 while casting

1886 intellect

32404 mana

Post-Kurn edits:

33.73% crit

2873 +healing

174 mp5 while casting

2041 intellect

34729 mana

So she gains half a percent of crit, loses 107 +healing, gains 155 intellect (2325 mana) and loses 29 mp5 while casting. She also gains a proc from her meta that is awesome, the chance to proc 4% of her maximum mana back whenever she judges, a raid-saving CD in Divine Guardian, a longer and stronger Sacred Shield and a longer Beacon of Light.

To me, it’s obvious that my tweaks make her toon that much more efficient, that much stronger.

But it is absolutely necessary for success in her current content, which is ICC 10? She has one, count ’em, one regular 10-man Putricide kill.

Without knowing more about her and her raid group, all I can say is that whatever she’s doing is, more or less, working for her. She’s pushing through content with her guild (2 Fester/Rot kills to date, 1 PP kill, so that’s progression) and she wasn’t the cause of wipes on my pug.

A lot of what I say here comes from my own experience. You know, doing Saurfang 25 normal back pre-ICC buff wasn’t easy. It wasn’t particularly HARD for us, because we were decked out in 245/258 gear and picking up 251/264 upgrades, but it wasn’t easy to heal. Nowadays, there’s a LOT more room for error with a 25% buff. And by “a lot” I mean A LOT. People don’t need to be properly min/maxed for the content anymore, because the buff means that you can get away with damn near anything on regular.

But when I was doing it without the buff, I NEEDED these optimizations to my gear and playstyle. I constantly need that stuff on what my guild currently considers progression. I can’t imagine going a night without my meta gem. On Thursday night, through Baltharus, Ragefire, Zarithrian, Halion, Council, BQL and Dreamwalker, I gained 53400 mana back just from my meta gem. I gained 258k mana back from Seal of Wisdom. This stuff is still absolutely necessary — for me.

But is it so very necessary for other players? Or are all these things just tips to min/max when min/maxing might not even be needed for a player these days?

Don’t get me wrong, I will still bellow from the highest mountaintop that a good holy pally should do X, Y and Z and will continue to try to instill good practices on the malleable minds of not-optimized paladins.

But how necessary is it?

Kurn's Q&A 23

Kurn / / healing, icecrown citadel, paladins, q&a, raiding, ramblings

Delayed a bit due to fatigue and epic Ruby Sanctum hilarity, here’s my Q&A for the week. I’ll probably wind up doing that form this week sometime or something.

First of all, thanks to all those who “retaliated” against Majik with the following search terms. You totally made my day, hahaha. :)

– why is kurnmogh such an amazing player?
– madrana is the best holy paladin ever
– kurn yeah but can majik heal?
– kurn majik may be able to tank but he still dies without heals
– kurn majik is just a dk they’re all noobs
– sometimes i close my eyes and wonder how i can be awesome like kurnmogh

And, my favourite, and thus, Question #1 this week:

1) kurn who the hell is majik?

My history with Majik dates back YEARS at this point. Honestly, truly, years. Majik was a frost mage who joined our guild back in something like mid-June of 2006.

My first-ever experience with this guy was during the Scourge Invasion of Patch 1.11. He basically said that he could solo all the non-elites guarding one of the Necrotic Shards or whatever.

I was like “yeah, RIGHT.”

He laughed, hit up Ice Barrier, mounted up, GATHERED THEM ALL UP, hit Frost Nova, blinked away and hit Blizzard until they all died.

Solo.

I didn’t do anything. Neither did our regular priest, Crypt (who had been in Majik’s prior guild, where Majik had been the GM) and neither did our warlock, Tia. We just stared at this nutcase in absolute shock and amazement.

A LEGEND WAS BORN. hahaha.

Majik quickly became one of our raid leaders in Zul’Gurub (and later instances as well) and eventually became an officer and he, along with Crypt, Tia, myself and a mage named Tandrace (whom we affectionately called Steve) all ended up doing the Tier 0.5 questline together. And thus started a beautiful friendship.

Highlights include, but are not limited to:

– “That was *spectacular*.” (Heard frequently, usually after a particularly hilarious and/or brutal wipe.)
– “Guys, guys, he’s trying to be sneaky, but I see him and oh God, he’s got a really big sword!” and other assorted quotes from the 11 minute vent lag spike in Dire Maul.
– “Tia, Tia, Tia.” (Chiding our warlock for not soulstoning us, even though she tried and there was no room in her bags and I traded her for her to trade me something and then SOMEONE got us into COMBAT and … yeah. No soulstone.)
– “Not the face, NOT THE FACE!” (Also heard frequently.)
– “I have a plan.” (The plan was for the five of us, with no tank, to jump down on to Venoxis’ platform and “take him from behind with the element of surprise!”. At level 60. We got Venoxis to 98% and considered that a victory.)
– “Hey Maj, pick up engineering.” (He did, spent easily 500g on it, and that was a LOT pre-BC, and got to 300 engineering overnight.)
– “Who’s up for a Venoxis run? C’mon guys, 20 minutes, you get rep, bijous, chance at loot!” (This was frighteningly commonplace, since we only ran ZG officially one day a week. Why did Majik want to do Venoxis? Just one reason: Fang of Venoxis. Along with his Tome of the Ice Lord, the Fang of Venoxis would make him super leet. My hand to God, until he got a better 1H elsewhere, he was using Hypnotic Blade, which drops off Arcanist Doan in Scarlet Monastery. Not even kidding. At all. We actually WENT BACK to SM to pick it up for him.)
– Many hours over Vent spent complaining about the idiocy of any moronic mage taking Arcane Fortitude. (It was Very Bad at the time.)
– Doing a Strat 45 run in 39 minutes with the following group:
* Kurnmogh + Whisper (Whisper, my cat, tanked. I was Marks, FYI.)
* Tandrace, Fire Mage
* Majik, Frost Mage
* Crypt, Holy Priest
* Tia, Destruction Warlock

Yeah. Again. No tank. At all. We actually did the 45 minute run in 39 minutes with no tank. We also did a Dire Maul North Tribute run more than once without a tank (I still feel bad for Tharivol) and did almost everything for our Tier 0.5 quests without a tank, only bringing one in for the special boss in Scholomance and then being in a regular 10-man group for the UBRS boss, nicknamed “Lord Whatshisnuts”. (By Tia.)

And that? THAT is just pre-BC!

In Burning Crusade, we’d disbanded our previous guild, gone our separate ways for the most part, but brought Apotheosis to life on June 1, 2007. Majik was the guy who bought the charter and was a core officer throughout BC, even though the jerk decided to, you know, GO TRAVELLING THROUGH EUROPE at the height of our Karazhan farming, where I was swapping people in and out on every. single. boss. I may not have forgiven him for leaving me with the raid leading duties then. ;)

He was our mage tank on Krosh (and, as freaking usual, I was his healer), he would always put down a Brewfest Pony Keg after Maulgar was down. He did, in fact, Blink into Gruul once while explaining the fight. He once got bounced/feared OUT of Magtheridon’s room during the encounter and basically /danced at us.

He wasn’t there for a Vashj kill of ours, which is probably my biggest regret. Of everyone in the guild who deserved Hand of A’dal, Majik was at the top. But he’d been taking some time off, dealing with school (?) or work (?) and though we TRIED, we couldn’t get Vashj down on this one night that Maj was there. He missed out on the first Kael’thas kill as well, but was the jackass responsible for our setting foot in Hyjal.

Picture it. Sunday, April 27th, 2008. My dad’s birthday had been a couple days earlier and the birthday dinner was that Sunday. I wasn’t there for the officer meeting, I was going to be very late for the raid…

I log on.

I get an invite to the raid group.

They’re in Mount Freaking Hyjal.

22-manning Winterchill waves.

They summon me IN THE MIDDLE OF WAVES and I promptly crash because my computer sucks so bad.

We spend an hour or so working on Rage Winterchill and get him down, Apotheosis-style. With only 24 people.

Thanks to Majik, who decided to go screw around in Hyjal since we were short people, we were able to start working on T6 content while trying to get Vashj and Kael.

Maj was solid in T6 content and we couldn’t have gotten through Hyjal and BT without him.

God, I haven’t even mentioned that he spearheaded the charge against Zul’Aman in our guild. He had an awesome team and they cleared ZA.

These days, Maj is playing a DK and levelling his priest with my brother and me and, as per usual, I’m healing his ass, more often than not. ;)

So… Majik has been a key part of my WoW experience, I don’t just mean “that guy from pre-BC”. I mean someone who has been there with me through Vanilla, BC and now Wrath. I mean someone who has always brought a positive attitude to a raid. I mean someone who has sat there, for hours, helping out mages or other DPS with their spec or gems or enchants. I mean someone who basically weaseled out of being the GM of Apotheosis by virtue of breaking his word to me. (Our GM, Toga, stepped down and Majik and I decided we’d both throw our names in the hat and so I said I’d consider doing it and then Majik was the first to say “GRATS!!!” and I was like “You bastard.”) This guy has one of the best senses of humour ever and I still crack up to the point where I can’t breathe when he gets on a roll. You should have seen him bitching me out IRL, in an Internet cafe here in Montreal, telling me that “Conjured Glacier Water” doesn’t just appear out of thin air. That he has to go to the goddamn Glacier himself, that he has to chip ice into a container and warm THAT and then bring it out when some bitchy “WATER PLZ” person like MY ignorant, needy ass starts griping.

No kidding, I nearly fell out of my chair. In public. Couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see for the tears rolling down my cheeks. It was hilarious.

We tease each other to death, insult each other constantly, but it’s all an act. We know that we can rely on each other, we trust the other knows their class and the encounter. We know we can defy all odds together. And it’s that kind of exuberance, enthusiasm and optimism that Majik brings to every single raid encounter. He’s the “YEAH LET’S DO THIS EVEN THOUGH WE DON’T HAVE A CHANCE!!!!!” person to my “Are you out of your goddamn mind?” attitude.

I like this game, a lot. I’ve played it for a long time. You know how people say it’s the other people they’ve met that keep them playing? Majik is probably the key person for me. I won’t even TRY to reform Apotheosis without him on board. I wouldn’t even consider it.

So. That’s who Majik is. (And no, we’re not dating or anything and no, there’s no interest. Trust us. I only bring it up because someone in Apotheosis once thought we were married to each other and I thought I’d head THAT off at the past.)

2) bol dont beacon my tank macro

While mechanically, this is pretty easy:

#showtooltip
/cast @target Beacon of Light
/ra Beacon of Light on %t, don’t beacon my tank!

(or something like that – I’m not a macro god!)

I’m curious as to why you’d want a macro like that. Just call out who you’re beaconing or get your healing lead to assign beacons, etc. Also, sometimes two beacons is actually useful. Best example of this is a third tank on, say, Marrowgar. One pally each on two tanks and then both beacons on the third tank. Or both beacons on the mobile tank on Blood Prince Council. Or both beacons on the kite tank on Rotface.

3) can i do dungeons with my friends with real id

No, right now the functionality is restricted to chatting. However, I believe that Blizzard is planning to remove the battlegroup restrictions for Cataclysm, so even if you and your buddy are on two different battlegroups (say, Reckoning and Bloodlust), you should be able to both queue for heroic Oculus or something stupid that no one else wants to do, and be put into a group together. It might even be more intuitive than that. We’ll have to see. :)

4) dealing with infest heroic lich king

Probably the best way (on 25m) is two disc priests. Split up the raid, spam PW:S on your targets. Done. Hopefully. Remember that since it hits SO much harder on heroic that you probably won’t even need to downrank it to ensure Rapture procs.

5) did heroic modes in icc drop only heroic mark

Heroic end-wing bosses in ICC (Saurfang, Putricide, Blood Queen Lana’thel and Sindragosa) all drop ONE heroic token each. And for some reason, it’s almost always Vanquisher. :P Short of heroic Lich King, these four are the only way to get a heroic token. The end-wing bosses will also drop TWO regular marks on heroic.

6) do yellow gems count for spell hit

Yes, Rigid King’s Amber counts for both physical hit and spell hit. Both types of hit (and haste) were combined in Wrath of the Lich King.

7) gearscore is 4626. what should my dps be?

Your gearscore doesn’t matter. IF your gear is properly enchanted and gemmed, IF you’re specced and glyphed properly, IF your chosen pieces of gear are appropriate to your class and spec… IF all of those things are okay, then you should be doing DPS at least equivalent to what your gearscore is. I noticed that when I hit 5k GS on Kurn (properly enchanted/etc/etc/etc) that that was when I could pull 5k DPS under good conditions.

Don’t worry about gearscore. Worry about what’s appropriate for your class and spec. Gearscore can be thrown off by a dozen different factors and, *at its very best* only serves as a marker for potential. That’s it. It’s what you do with gear that’s appropriate that matters.

Read about this “tank” with a very high gearscore, which meant nothing.

8) harvest soul lich king mass dispel

I’m pretty sure you cannot dispel, mass or otherwise, Harvest Soul.

9) terenas menethil clique

I don’t think that’ll work. What I’ve been doing is actually targetting him and hitting my 3 button (Holy Light) and 4 button (Cleanse). You could try making him a focus and clique-casting on your focus frame, though.

Edit — Whoops, my bad. I was primarily thinking about how he doesn’t show up on Grid. I have my Clique set up so that my Grid frames (and my focus frame) are the ONLY active frames, period, that my Clique works with, since I have bound stuff to right-click. If you right-click on your own unit frame to leave a party, or right-click to do any number of things on your target frame, and your Clique is enabled for those frames and you have something bound to right-click, you can’t bring up the context menu.

So having said that, if your Clique is enabled on your target frame, absolutely, go to town.

I forgot until just now that I had my focus frame Clique-enabled. Guess who’s gonna focus Terenas next time she’s inside Frostmourne? That’s right, this lady.

10) world of logs triggered shadow trap?

Well, apart from seeing who took damage from it, you don’t really know who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. There’s no trigger for it listed in the logs that I can see. Sorry! :( Maybe one day, the Shadow Traps will be as vocal about who triggered them as Yogg-Saron’s clouds are now. ;)

Hilarity and Halion

Kurn / / facepalm, healing, raiding, ramblings, ruby sanctum

So, as it’s Tuesday, I met a friend for a late breakfast, we went to see a movie (Iron Man 2, which was definitely worth the $6.75), we wandered and chatted and then I came home to discover that, as per usual, Blizzard and I don’t agree on things and Ruby Sanctum is open.

I was asked to go heal for my new guild when I logged on to do my transmutes, but I’d just walked in and was supposed to do a few Ahunes with my brother and Majik over on Proudmoore.

Maj, my brother and I actually ended up doing the weekly (twice on two toons each) and then when I told them that Ruby Sanctum was up… that’s all they wanted to do.

I’ll get into details on the fight in a post tomorrow or something, but can I just say that it was a HILARIOUS raid, even though we didn’t down Halion?

Maj was on his DK, tanking. My brother (whom we call Fog or Foggy) was pressed into service on his rarely-used hunter because his paladin, while able to solo-tank Anub’Rekhan, would have been smushed into itty bitty little bite-sized morsels of dragon food if he had tried tanking in Ruby Sanctum. I… was on my resto shaman. My poor, neglected, rusty old resto shaman.

We pugged seven people: another resto shammy and a holy paladin (a poorly specced, not optimally geared paladin which, to be honest, made me want to cry a bit) to make three healers. We had another paladin tank (who tended to forget about Righteous Fury), a shadow priest, a mage, a warlock and a fury warrior. So five DPS, 3 healers, 2 tanks. Might have been a little conservative on our parts, but hey, we strongly suspected it might not be a faceroll kind of instance.

We went to the right first, killing trash and getting the hang of the first miniboss, Saviana Ragefire.

We wiped a few times on her, since people weren’t watching the BIG FLASHING ARROW THINGS when they had the Conflag debuff. We learned very quickly that conflag is BAD and you want to make sure those people gtfo of the raid and away from each other.

I think it was on our fourth try on Saviana Ragefire that the warrior, mage, shadow priest, warlock and paladin tank all died. And we kept going. That’s right. Three healers, the tank and one DPS — my brother.

HILARIOUS.

We got it done, too. Took something like 14 minutes, because I KNOW I used Mana Tide twice. After about 10 minutes, I realized three things:

1) I had no mana potions. At all. I actually had to trade my brother, while in combat, for the one Runic Mana Potion he had.

2) My mana regen on the shaman SUCKS.

3) Waiting about three seconds before being able to cast even Lesser Healing Wave sucks a LOT.

But we did it! It was great!

We didn’t invite the puggers to Vent, but rather me and Maj and Fog were all on my Vent together. It was so damn funny to hear Majik yelping when his health would be low or to hear him yelling at the pugs (who couldn’t hear him, obviously) to GTFO of the raid. “Run, run, RUN YOU FUCKERS, RUN!” was just one example of that. We really got into a nice rhythm that probably no one else ever should have to be in for as long as we were, but it worked out really nicely and I re-evaluated my opinion of the failish paladin because at least they knew how to run away from the rest of the raid when they have a HUGE red arrow on their HEAD.

It was somewhere around the 11 minute mark when I realized that my paladin instincts had failed me again. I didn’t have Earthliving Weapon on. Whoopsiedoodle.

But better yet, I believe that it was AFTER the fight that my brother says, on Vent, “Guys? I, uh, I might have possibly done all that without Aspect of the Dragonhawk on.”

Then we went towards Baltharus the Warborn.

This guy kicked our ass all over the Ruby Sanctum. I have no idea how many times we wiped on him. Let me see if I can glean this information from the logs.

Ouch. Seven wipes on him.

We lost the shadow priest after the fourth wipe, who “disconnected”, and replaced him with… another shadow priest. Who was much more good natured, too.

The issue was that our paladin tank wasn’t picking up the clone properly or that the blast wave right before the split was throwing a healer or a tank completely OOR. We had people die to melee hits from the clone, we had people die from being OOR or out of LOS… We also had people too close to each other so that mark thing was splashing to others. Took us 4-5 attempts to figure out it’s a lot like Boiling Blood on Saurfang. I vaguely recall being incredibly thankful that we’d gone for the mage instead of a rogue we’d been considering inviting. Apart from AB and food and stuff, the rogue would have died as frequently as the poor warrior did from AOE on the melee.

After the seventh wipe, I was like “Okay, guys. We’ve been here for a fairly long time, so we’ll give it two more attempts and then call it for the night and maybe try to set something up later this week.”

Apart from anything else, I was POOR and couldn’t afford the repairs. I was sincerely not prepared for a raid on the shammy, hahaha.

Well, we walked in and while we lost the warrior and actually lost the prot pally, we got Baltharus down. AWESOMESAUCE.

We investigated the Ruby Sanctum, as per the quest Krasus at Wyrmrest had us do, turned it in and decided to see what Zarithrian was like.

God bless Tremor Totem.

The sunder debuff on the tanks suck, the fear sucks, the adds suck, but we one-shot the bastard because WE WERE AMAZING. Ahahaha.

And then we decided to take a look at Halion himself.

We only did two attempts on him, but had a good time of it. We blew hero at the start on the second attempt now that we knew to expect crazy fire shit dropping from the sky and actually got into P2 and all zoned into the shadow realm. THE DEATH BEAMS ARE HILARIOUS. Oh my God, I haven’t laughed so hard on a wipe in a REALLY long time.

Anyways, we called it and plan to go back sometime this week to finish it off. With any luck, I’ll have done it on the pally by then.

Man, too much fun. I really miss raiding at all with Majik. And my brother, for that matter. :)

Pug Tales of Fail

Kurn / / dps, facepalm, lfg, ramblings

So I was on my priest earlier today, with my brother on his paladin who was ret, and a friend of ours was on his warrior, tanking. We did the random heroic and it was The Nexus.

In our party was Sellursoul, a warlock from Caelestrasz.

Within the first 30 seconds of the run, I knew it was going to be unpleasant. Sellursoul soulstoned… him or herself.

I said nothing.

We get to the first boss, the Horde Commander. Not only is the warlock standing right up there with the melee, not only that, but the warlock then gets feared (as one does by that guy)… into four mobs on the far side.

I see him in trouble. I wisely elect to let him die rather than pull aggro.

He dies.

He pauses.

HE USES THE SOULSTONE.

Pops up again.

Dies. Again.

All while the actual boss fight is still in progress.

He then releases. And apparently cannot find the entrance, because after the boss and the four adds died (someone else got feared — lesson; tell our tanking friend to pull him back), he was STILL a ghost.

I rezzed him. We moved on.

He is not particularly horribly geared. 5/5 T9 232. I have no idea what warlock specs are supposed to look like, but he seems to be destro and has fire-type glyphs. Haste and hit and crit all seem low to me, but again, I’m not a warlock.

He did precisely 799 dps to the caster boss for less total damage to her than the tank.

WTF.

Moving on.

I make a bet with my brother and our tank that dipshit, as I was referring to him, would pull adds jumping off the platform to the ground.

Neither took the bet, and it’s good for them, because I was right.

It was at about this point that I finally let the warlock have it in party.

“Your imp pulled those adds,” I said. “How do you have that gear and not know how to leave your pet behind on stay or dismiss it?”

No response.

“And you soulstoned YOURSELF instead of the healer. And used it right after you died, whereupon you died immediately AGAIN.”

No response.

“Do you know how to play this game at all?”

No response.

I tried to vote-kick and was informed by the lovely in-game mechanism that I have to wait another 15 minutes for a kick.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

We’d already BEEN in a group with this moron for 15 minutes. And now we couldn’t kick him for another 15?

We do Anomolous. Whereupon the warlock doesn’t touch the adds, and continues casting at the boss when shielded.

We do Ormorok and does the warlock dismiss his pet or set him on stay? No. Thank goodness pets despawn on that jump since they get too far away from their owners. I chewed him out about that, too.

And then he pulls the last Ancient as we leave that section.

Seriously?

Finally, we get to Keristrasza. He proceeds to die with 12, count them, TWELVE stacks of the debuff on him, despite my awesomeness in mass dispelling Frost Nova.

I /sighed at him and left the dungeon at the end. I didn’t even rez him. I gave him ample opportunity to show he has a CLUE about his class and the game (in fact, that had been his third run through heroic Nexus, according to the armory) and he failed every single time.

So when game developers tell us that people are “too good” at this game, I say bullshit. There is an ever-widening divide between “good players” and “bad players” and even if I don’t have the foggiest idea how to play a warlock or a rogue or a DK or a warrior, I bet you 10,000 gold that I wouldn’t wipe my party with my mistakes and I probably wouldn’t die like a moron three times in the Nexus, either.

Ultimately, trying to help smart, motivated people close the gap between “good” and “bad” is why I write about holy paladins and other various things. It’s really up to the community to teach people how to play this game, because Blizzard is under the mistaken impression that EVERYONE CAN PLAY. Everyone CANNOT. It is increasingly rare to find DPS in a random who can’t out DPS a semi-geared (ie: 232s and a couple 245s) tank. It is increasingly rare to find a healer who knows how to play even the basics of their class. It is increasingly rare to find a tank who can hold aggro and understands the basics of threat.

I resent Blizzard’s conclusion that the players are all good. They’re not. Most of them, most of the eleven million people who play this game are not just “not good” but actively “bad”. And now I have to wait thirty minutes through potential wipes thanks to morons before I can kick someone?

Next time, I’m just dropping group. I know that the kick delay is now based on our behaviour, but a 30 minute delay (the default, I’m guessing?) is literally more time than the whole instance takes if all goes well. I am not going to sit there in a run where someone is going to die despite my best attempts to keep them alive, or risk our group’s health because they were too dumb to control their pet.

That’s bullshit. Blizzard is way, WAY out of touch with how the majority of eleven million people play and they’re punishing those of us who DO know how to play by making us sit there for 30 minutes babysitting these morons who, five years into the game, don’t understand something as basic as a soulstone or pet pulls or move when you have a stacking debuff.

And now, much as I’d like to continue to bitch, I need to grab food before my raid.