I can't take 2v2 anymore, the half hour matches because neither side can generate enough dps to kill the other. Last night my partner and I were about to strangle ourselves after fighting our third arms warrior/resto druid combo.
(The problem with that match up is that my partner can't get range as a hunter and the warrior can't do enough damage to outdps my heals.)
I'm hoping that will end this season. We only played 2s this week because our newest teammate was out on vacation, but it looks like he's going to be a regular for Season 10. I can't say I'm going to miss those season 9 2v2 matches that took so long we even timed out at the 45 minute mark three times.
My new 3v3 team is a KFC comp, which does not stand for Kentucky Fried Chicken. (It stands for Kung-Fu Cleave, which honestly doesn't make much better sense, but there you go.) KFC consists of an arms warrior, a marksman hunter, and a healer. It's not as strong in 4.2 as it was earlier in Cata, but since my 2s partner is a hunter, we wanted a third player who would be able fill in the gaps in our playstyle.
We wanted either a DK to match our previous success in WotLK as a PHD team, or a warrior to try out KFC. Nothing else we knew of would be viable for a hunter (holy paladins can fortunately be shoved into many more comps). Fortunately, one of our priest guildies also has a warrior alt he likes to PvP on, so we found a new teammate.
We've played two weeks as a 3v3 team prior to this week's vacation, and we're starting to get the hang of playing with each other. There are better calls being made, more communication about cooldowns people need to know. My hunter partner isn't used to letting people know when he has dps cooldowns ready for some burst, because in 2s it hadn't mattered, but KFC kills with focus fire and when our hunter and warrior get their cooldowns lined up together, they can put out some pretty solid damage, particularly if it's middle of the fight when the healer's no longer expecting it.
There are still weaknesses though. We had some line of sight accidents, where someone didn't get healed, and I'm still getting used to figuring out just when the warrior is in danger of being pancaked. There were a couple matches where he died early, but the hunter and I managed to hold out for a frightfully long time 3v2, almost bringing the match down to a 2v2 multiple times before the other team finally ran me out of mana. I'm sure that's because we've been playing together so long I know exactly what the hunter's damage threshold is and can calibrate my heals accordingly. The knowledge of how to do the same with the warrior will come with time.
Personally, I know I have to get better about juking my heals. Sometimes when I'm feeling particularly canny I do this, and I admit it's really satisfying getting the other team to waste a cooldown on a fake-out, but it's not a regular habit. I think part of the reason I forget is that many times when I'm silenced it has nothing to do with casting a heal at all. It's far more common for a mage to preemptively counterspell me than for a warrior to interrupt me, largely because if a warrior is on me, I try to cast only instants or use measures such as Aura Mastery to make sure I don't get interrupted. If I'm doing an unprotected cast near a melee it probably means that I think someone's gonna die before my next Holy Shock/Word of Glory if I don't, which of course is why I should juke so I don't lose such a critical cast.
My other "I want to get better at" item is pillar dancing to avoid being CCed. It's easier in 2s because there are only two opponents to watch and one of them is usually trying to hide behind a pillar as well. But in 3s, there are more people to watch and generally at least two of them are happy to CC a healer. In extreme circumstances I've ended up hexed, then trapped, then feared for good measure, because everyone on the opposite team, including the healer, had a CC.
KFC is not a CC bonanza. For us, it seems the best tactic is to pick a dps kill target and then focus fire it while keeping the healer CCed/busy. I try to Rebuke, Arcane Torrent, or Hammer of Justice the healer if I'm free. If I'm the focus target of a melee I generally run in circles casting instants to stay alive while my teammates do their thing. But if I can't take the output then the warrior peels (love the whole charge and root thing) so I can get a breather. And if the hunter is left unhindered... woe to the other team.
Right now, I think the point we can most improve on as a team is target switching faster (when needed) and going on the offensive more. We have a tendency, particularly because we have a hunter who wants to hide in camo, to wait for the enemy to come to us. But when we think about it, it's very obvious to the other team that we have a hunter and he's near the entrance even if they can't target him, which just gives them time to execute their plan of attack, particuarly if they have a stealther.
On the bright side, we felt quite good about ourselves when we ran into another KFC team of the exact same composition (pally healer) and beat them not only once, but twice, and the second kill was solidly in our favor.
Friday, August 5, 2011
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Is there really a need to raid more than twice a week?
I occasionally read recruitment threads of other guilds, partially out of curiosity, and partially to see if there's a nice recruitment layout I might want to use at a later date. Sometimes I'm surprised by what I find by what people offer or what they expect.
Particularly, I notice quite a few guilds still raid 3-4 nights a week, a pace I gave up as too demanding.
For most purposes, I don't understand raiding more than two nights a week anymore. It used to be a near necessary, especially with resets every week and no way to extend a lockout, but even then it seemed an awful lot of time to spend each week in a game. Just because I might spend 20 hours in a week playing a single video game, doesn't mean that I want to spend 20 hours a week every week playing a single video game (because you can't forget the time spent doing heroics, leveling alts, and playing the AH on top of raiding). Personally, I burn out.
At my raiding peak I'd run 25-mans three days a week and 10-mans two days a week, and that was just too much. I like WoW, but there are a lot of other forms of entertainment I enjoy besides WoW, such as other video/ computer games (played the new Dragon Age II DLC, woo!), D&D, anime, books, etc. When I'm playing WoW, I'm not doing any of those, and there's only so much time in the world.
At the time I started my two night a week 10-man raid guild, 10-man raiding was still the poor cousin of 25-man raiding and how the hell could anyone get anything done before reset with only two nights a week?
But we managed. We did wonderful things like clearing 11/12 Heroic ICC in a single three hour night so we could spend all of our second day on Heroic Lich King. (We rarely extended the lockout because people didn't like the idea of doing nothing but the Lich King all week.) We prided ourselves on efficiency. We still do.
We like that we've cleared the majority of Firelands bosses within our first three attempts. We like that we never spent more than three hours downing any of our six heroic T11 kills. We like that raids start on time and people come back on time from our scheduled breaks (if you're 2 minutes late it means you're last, people are doing /poke at you, and chances are everyone else was back on time).
Even though we like raiding, we like that we have good progression for minimal time investment. We lost a couple raid nights after 4.2 landed due to real life issues, but we're still 6/7 in Firelands, and hoping to down Rag in the near future.
One of our raiders, who really likes raiding, also raids on an alt in another two night a week group to get more of her raiding fix. When I mentioned that I was surprised she wasn't with a three or four night a week raid guild instead of us, she said that raiding more nights a week doesn't mean the guild's going to do more with the time that they have.
Skywall is not the most progressed server out there, so when I say we're in the running for server third kill of Rag it may not mean much depending on what your own server is like, but the thing is... the patch hasn't been out all that long! I don't know when Patch 4.3 is going to land, but if you figure it's at least three months betwen major patches there's still two months or more to work on Firelands.
It's not necessary to raid more than two nights a week anymore if you just want to see the content, not unless there's a drive to be the first at something, to brute force a boss kill, or you just really like raiding (and even then, you could do that on an alt like my guildie does). Two nights a week has even allowed us a fair amount of time for heroic kills. So if I was a prospective applicant looking for a new raid guild, where would I go?
Would I want to be in a guild that's 6/7 raiding two nights a week or 1/7 raiding four nights a week? (I've seen the recruitment ad for the latter. It's out there.)
We're not best in the world or best on the server, but we're doing all right and because of this I know that it's possible to do a lot with just two nights a week.
Yet when I look at other guilds advertising their raid nights, I'm quite shocked that a lot of them still raid 3-4 nights a week. And these aren't necessarily heroic guilds either. What does a 4 nights a week raid guild that has only downed Shannox do on its other nights? Are they raiding T11 still? Maybe some of those raid nights are retro raids?
I admit I don't understand and their ads don't help me to do so.
If a guild's struggling with content, adding more nights to the raid schedule probably isn't going to help them see it faster. More raid resets will, because that will give them more gear to compensate for any lack of skill. A guild that takes 50 attempts to kill a boss that takes another guild 5 isn't a better guild because they killed it first, and they may be burning out their members by doing so.
Particularly, I notice quite a few guilds still raid 3-4 nights a week, a pace I gave up as too demanding.
For most purposes, I don't understand raiding more than two nights a week anymore. It used to be a near necessary, especially with resets every week and no way to extend a lockout, but even then it seemed an awful lot of time to spend each week in a game. Just because I might spend 20 hours in a week playing a single video game, doesn't mean that I want to spend 20 hours a week every week playing a single video game (because you can't forget the time spent doing heroics, leveling alts, and playing the AH on top of raiding). Personally, I burn out.
At my raiding peak I'd run 25-mans three days a week and 10-mans two days a week, and that was just too much. I like WoW, but there are a lot of other forms of entertainment I enjoy besides WoW, such as other video/ computer games (played the new Dragon Age II DLC, woo!), D&D, anime, books, etc. When I'm playing WoW, I'm not doing any of those, and there's only so much time in the world.
At the time I started my two night a week 10-man raid guild, 10-man raiding was still the poor cousin of 25-man raiding and how the hell could anyone get anything done before reset with only two nights a week?
But we managed. We did wonderful things like clearing 11/12 Heroic ICC in a single three hour night so we could spend all of our second day on Heroic Lich King. (We rarely extended the lockout because people didn't like the idea of doing nothing but the Lich King all week.) We prided ourselves on efficiency. We still do.
We like that we've cleared the majority of Firelands bosses within our first three attempts. We like that we never spent more than three hours downing any of our six heroic T11 kills. We like that raids start on time and people come back on time from our scheduled breaks (if you're 2 minutes late it means you're last, people are doing /poke at you, and chances are everyone else was back on time).
Even though we like raiding, we like that we have good progression for minimal time investment. We lost a couple raid nights after 4.2 landed due to real life issues, but we're still 6/7 in Firelands, and hoping to down Rag in the near future.
One of our raiders, who really likes raiding, also raids on an alt in another two night a week group to get more of her raiding fix. When I mentioned that I was surprised she wasn't with a three or four night a week raid guild instead of us, she said that raiding more nights a week doesn't mean the guild's going to do more with the time that they have.
Skywall is not the most progressed server out there, so when I say we're in the running for server third kill of Rag it may not mean much depending on what your own server is like, but the thing is... the patch hasn't been out all that long! I don't know when Patch 4.3 is going to land, but if you figure it's at least three months betwen major patches there's still two months or more to work on Firelands.
It's not necessary to raid more than two nights a week anymore if you just want to see the content, not unless there's a drive to be the first at something, to brute force a boss kill, or you just really like raiding (and even then, you could do that on an alt like my guildie does). Two nights a week has even allowed us a fair amount of time for heroic kills. So if I was a prospective applicant looking for a new raid guild, where would I go?
Would I want to be in a guild that's 6/7 raiding two nights a week or 1/7 raiding four nights a week? (I've seen the recruitment ad for the latter. It's out there.)
We're not best in the world or best on the server, but we're doing all right and because of this I know that it's possible to do a lot with just two nights a week.
Yet when I look at other guilds advertising their raid nights, I'm quite shocked that a lot of them still raid 3-4 nights a week. And these aren't necessarily heroic guilds either. What does a 4 nights a week raid guild that has only downed Shannox do on its other nights? Are they raiding T11 still? Maybe some of those raid nights are retro raids?
I admit I don't understand and their ads don't help me to do so.
If a guild's struggling with content, adding more nights to the raid schedule probably isn't going to help them see it faster. More raid resets will, because that will give them more gear to compensate for any lack of skill. A guild that takes 50 attempts to kill a boss that takes another guild 5 isn't a better guild because they killed it first, and they may be burning out their members by doing so.
Monday, July 11, 2011
Molten Burnout
I was reading a post at Kurn's about how she was getting burned out by everything that needed to be done in order for a responsible PvE raider to max out their effort every week in terms of valor points, dailies, rep, etc.
It's a lot, and I'm at the point where I'm close to throwing my hands up and saying "Screw those Molten Front dailies, screw those heroics, I don't care if I need more gear." I only raid twice a week on my druid main because I want relatively low commitment gameplay, but the Molten Front material takes almost a month to fully unlock, and I've been slavishly doing all their dailies since 4.2 landed (even on the nights I would normally be off WoW) because a day I don't do is another day's delay to the end.
Worse, I'm doing this on two characters so my engineering paladin will be able to make the Flintlocke's Woodchucker scope for my guild's hunters.
And I think it's retarded that it's more time efficient (at the moment) to get valor points from heroics than raid boss kills.
Then, like Kurn, I have a holy paladin that's occasionally running with a second guild other than the one I lead, because it's nice to go to a raid and not have responsibility.
But all this is sucking up a huge amount of time.
Now that I've unlocked the Druids of the Talon on my druid and the Shadow Wardens on my paladin, the number of dailies I do each day on both my 85s has skyrocketed and I'm doing them everyday.
I suppose I don't have to, but I feel like I should to be a good raider on my main and to get the engy schematic for my guild's hunters on my alt (because I'm sure the first few engineers to get the schematic will be gouging on the AH).
The thing is... I know the rep will come with time. As we kill trash and bosses in Firelands I'll eventually get Avengers of Hyjal rep, so I can close my eyes and say there's no need to do trash runs. Yes, it would help get gear sooner, but I can at least pretend any gear upgrades are minor enough on my main that it won't make much of a difference.
The valor points will come with time as well. I'll still be raiding twice a week and we'll kill bosses.
Both rep and valor points will come while doing pre-planned scheduled events.
But the stupid Molten Front dailies... I think the reason I'm so annoyed by them is that they aren't a fun group activity and they're mostly the same thing day in, day out and they're taking up time when I'd otherwise be doing something else that is most likely not WoW.
Previous daily quest grinds didn't seem to be such a big deal.
The Netherwing dailies weren't for gear, so I never worried about missing a day in TBC. Hodir gave shoulder enchants in WotLK, but it was relatively easy to get the blue versions and even then there was perhaps a max of seven dailies and I only was working on one character at a time. The Argent Coliseum dailies didn't even give anything to raiders. They were mostly just for fun, city rep, and titles. Gear was only really needed by alts.
In Cata, Therazane and Dragonmaw were probably best known for having dailies, but they also had tabards so dailies weren't the only way to get gear and enchants. I could combine gaining rep with heroic runs so it felt very time efficient.
But the Molten Front gives competitive gear as well as the means to craft competitive gear. I just realized there's a neck unlocked a few days ago that's better than the one I'm wearing, and there's a relic I could use while I save valor points for my tier pieces. And of course no hunter is going to want to be without the Woodchucker.
I'm just not sure how much longer I can keep this up before I'm going to want to take a step back from the game. I think if there wasn't such a clear gating mechanism, with its own story, and with competitive rewards I'd take my time and play through the sequence leisurely, but since it's not, I feel compelled to burn through it.
And the worst part is... there's all this new craftable gear, but no new engineering helm. The engineer in me is sad.
It's a lot, and I'm at the point where I'm close to throwing my hands up and saying "Screw those Molten Front dailies, screw those heroics, I don't care if I need more gear." I only raid twice a week on my druid main because I want relatively low commitment gameplay, but the Molten Front material takes almost a month to fully unlock, and I've been slavishly doing all their dailies since 4.2 landed (even on the nights I would normally be off WoW) because a day I don't do is another day's delay to the end.
Worse, I'm doing this on two characters so my engineering paladin will be able to make the Flintlocke's Woodchucker scope for my guild's hunters.
And I think it's retarded that it's more time efficient (at the moment) to get valor points from heroics than raid boss kills.
Then, like Kurn, I have a holy paladin that's occasionally running with a second guild other than the one I lead, because it's nice to go to a raid and not have responsibility.
But all this is sucking up a huge amount of time.
Now that I've unlocked the Druids of the Talon on my druid and the Shadow Wardens on my paladin, the number of dailies I do each day on both my 85s has skyrocketed and I'm doing them everyday.
I suppose I don't have to, but I feel like I should to be a good raider on my main and to get the engy schematic for my guild's hunters on my alt (because I'm sure the first few engineers to get the schematic will be gouging on the AH).
The thing is... I know the rep will come with time. As we kill trash and bosses in Firelands I'll eventually get Avengers of Hyjal rep, so I can close my eyes and say there's no need to do trash runs. Yes, it would help get gear sooner, but I can at least pretend any gear upgrades are minor enough on my main that it won't make much of a difference.
The valor points will come with time as well. I'll still be raiding twice a week and we'll kill bosses.
Both rep and valor points will come while doing pre-planned scheduled events.
But the stupid Molten Front dailies... I think the reason I'm so annoyed by them is that they aren't a fun group activity and they're mostly the same thing day in, day out and they're taking up time when I'd otherwise be doing something else that is most likely not WoW.
Previous daily quest grinds didn't seem to be such a big deal.
The Netherwing dailies weren't for gear, so I never worried about missing a day in TBC. Hodir gave shoulder enchants in WotLK, but it was relatively easy to get the blue versions and even then there was perhaps a max of seven dailies and I only was working on one character at a time. The Argent Coliseum dailies didn't even give anything to raiders. They were mostly just for fun, city rep, and titles. Gear was only really needed by alts.
In Cata, Therazane and Dragonmaw were probably best known for having dailies, but they also had tabards so dailies weren't the only way to get gear and enchants. I could combine gaining rep with heroic runs so it felt very time efficient.
But the Molten Front gives competitive gear as well as the means to craft competitive gear. I just realized there's a neck unlocked a few days ago that's better than the one I'm wearing, and there's a relic I could use while I save valor points for my tier pieces. And of course no hunter is going to want to be without the Woodchucker.
I'm just not sure how much longer I can keep this up before I'm going to want to take a step back from the game. I think if there wasn't such a clear gating mechanism, with its own story, and with competitive rewards I'd take my time and play through the sequence leisurely, but since it's not, I feel compelled to burn through it.
And the worst part is... there's all this new craftable gear, but no new engineering helm. The engineer in me is sad.
Monday, June 27, 2011
Times I'm Thankful For My Guild
My guild looks like it will be ending its Tier 11 raids with the progression of 6/13 Heroic, which isn't too shabby at all. We've had our ups and downs, and chewed through a frightful number of healers at one point, but stabilized over the past month or two and downed multiple heroic bosses for the first time.
One thing I've liked is that people are serious about showing up. People post ahead of time whether or not they're going to be absent. We run a team of 12 and only very, very rarely have we had to cancel a raid even under the worst of circumstances.
I was not always in a guild like this.
Back in TBC, when I was in my first raiding guild, they were very lax with their team setup. People knew the raid times, but on the rare occasion they would actually raid earlier than scheduled (I was admittedly quite upset to have rushed home to raid only to discover they're started without me) and then they wanted to be fair about giving everyone an opportunity to raid. The problem was, they had trouble stopping recruiting and when you have two tanks, three healers, and twenty dps for Kara... well... you don't get to go very often.
It also meant that if a healer was absent we probably wouldn't go, and if a tank was absent we definitely did not go. There was no penalty for being absent. There was no reward to being present (other than you might get to go). There were no attendance rules at all really, so the dedicated raider would often be sat for someone who rarely showed up in the interests of giving everyone a chance to raid.
Those who are dedicated raiders can see the problem in this.
But for a casual raid guild, maybe it's not that bad a thing to trade off progression and a regular raid spot for the freedom of just showing up once in a while and still getting to go (maybe), but it's something I knew going forward that I've wanted to avoid.
And I've done a decent job. My second TBC guild valued me highly and I never sat, whether it was 10-man or 25. My first WotLK guild never benched me either, though occasionally I volunteered to sit. Both of those guilds were good about making raids happen until eventually their leaders couldn't take it anymore and quit.
My second WotLK guild and current Cata guild are the same, and it is my guild. I run it, and I do all I can to avoid the burnout of my predecessors while accomodating the schedule and raid style I want. We raid just two nights a week (then unprecedented on our server and quite rare in general when we started in ToC), just 10-mans, and with an eye on heroics.
I've seen more content in my little guild than in any of my previous ones, and I know it's due to the skill and dedication of my raiders.
This feeling of pride isn't something triggered by the upcoming patch 4.2, as one might think. Rather, something else happened recently.
In these final days of Tier 11 I volunteered to fill in for a casual raid guild's healing team on my paladin. I don't know this guild well, but their members have always been nice folks, so I was sure that running with them would be more pleasant than pugging. I was warned by their GM that they didn't have as many of their regular raiders anymore, and things might be kind of rough, but I said I was fine with that. I'm not someone who's going to nerd-rage because we wiped.
The guild ended up taking three non-guildies, including me, to fill the holes in their roster. We killed three bosses in two hours and called it a night. For a casual guild deprived of a full in-guild raid team it was acceptable, especially considering that they had to explain the fights from scratch for a couple people.
Knowing they were short-handed (and wanting to raid a bit more on my alt), I offered to fill in for them again, and their guild master extended invites to me via the in-game calendar for the next three raids.
I accepted, and now two of those three dates have passed. They didn't raid on either of them because not enough people have showed up.
If I was one of their guildies and that was my only opportunity to raid, I would be quite annoyed, but since I'm just filling in for fun on my alt, hearing that the raid has been canceled 20 minutes after start time didn't bother me, especially since I would have been online anyway.
Now, attendance is not mandatory in their guild, and it's one of their selling points in their recruitement ads, so it's not surprising that when content is stale not enough people show up. Personally, I could not live with that on my main. But I know people at my day job who play WoW and think it's ridiculous to set aside a set time every week to raid. They don't mind raiding itself, they don't mind going once in a while, but they don't like the commitment. For them, that kind of guild isn't a bad idea. Go if there are enough on, don't if there aren't.
The biggest thing to be thankful for in a guild is being with people who share the same commitment to raiding, leveling, PvP, whatever that focus might be. It doesn't matter if it's a high amount or a low amount as long as the commitment is the same. My guild is ranked #2 for 10-man progression on our server, but #72 on guild levels since we're still level 20. We might not be achievement hunters or fishers or crafters or activity maniacs, but we know what we like and we do it.
One thing I've liked is that people are serious about showing up. People post ahead of time whether or not they're going to be absent. We run a team of 12 and only very, very rarely have we had to cancel a raid even under the worst of circumstances.
I was not always in a guild like this.
Back in TBC, when I was in my first raiding guild, they were very lax with their team setup. People knew the raid times, but on the rare occasion they would actually raid earlier than scheduled (I was admittedly quite upset to have rushed home to raid only to discover they're started without me) and then they wanted to be fair about giving everyone an opportunity to raid. The problem was, they had trouble stopping recruiting and when you have two tanks, three healers, and twenty dps for Kara... well... you don't get to go very often.
It also meant that if a healer was absent we probably wouldn't go, and if a tank was absent we definitely did not go. There was no penalty for being absent. There was no reward to being present (other than you might get to go). There were no attendance rules at all really, so the dedicated raider would often be sat for someone who rarely showed up in the interests of giving everyone a chance to raid.
Those who are dedicated raiders can see the problem in this.
But for a casual raid guild, maybe it's not that bad a thing to trade off progression and a regular raid spot for the freedom of just showing up once in a while and still getting to go (maybe), but it's something I knew going forward that I've wanted to avoid.
And I've done a decent job. My second TBC guild valued me highly and I never sat, whether it was 10-man or 25. My first WotLK guild never benched me either, though occasionally I volunteered to sit. Both of those guilds were good about making raids happen until eventually their leaders couldn't take it anymore and quit.
My second WotLK guild and current Cata guild are the same, and it is my guild. I run it, and I do all I can to avoid the burnout of my predecessors while accomodating the schedule and raid style I want. We raid just two nights a week (then unprecedented on our server and quite rare in general when we started in ToC), just 10-mans, and with an eye on heroics.
I've seen more content in my little guild than in any of my previous ones, and I know it's due to the skill and dedication of my raiders.
This feeling of pride isn't something triggered by the upcoming patch 4.2, as one might think. Rather, something else happened recently.
In these final days of Tier 11 I volunteered to fill in for a casual raid guild's healing team on my paladin. I don't know this guild well, but their members have always been nice folks, so I was sure that running with them would be more pleasant than pugging. I was warned by their GM that they didn't have as many of their regular raiders anymore, and things might be kind of rough, but I said I was fine with that. I'm not someone who's going to nerd-rage because we wiped.
The guild ended up taking three non-guildies, including me, to fill the holes in their roster. We killed three bosses in two hours and called it a night. For a casual guild deprived of a full in-guild raid team it was acceptable, especially considering that they had to explain the fights from scratch for a couple people.
Knowing they were short-handed (and wanting to raid a bit more on my alt), I offered to fill in for them again, and their guild master extended invites to me via the in-game calendar for the next three raids.
I accepted, and now two of those three dates have passed. They didn't raid on either of them because not enough people have showed up.
If I was one of their guildies and that was my only opportunity to raid, I would be quite annoyed, but since I'm just filling in for fun on my alt, hearing that the raid has been canceled 20 minutes after start time didn't bother me, especially since I would have been online anyway.
Now, attendance is not mandatory in their guild, and it's one of their selling points in their recruitement ads, so it's not surprising that when content is stale not enough people show up. Personally, I could not live with that on my main. But I know people at my day job who play WoW and think it's ridiculous to set aside a set time every week to raid. They don't mind raiding itself, they don't mind going once in a while, but they don't like the commitment. For them, that kind of guild isn't a bad idea. Go if there are enough on, don't if there aren't.
The biggest thing to be thankful for in a guild is being with people who share the same commitment to raiding, leveling, PvP, whatever that focus might be. It doesn't matter if it's a high amount or a low amount as long as the commitment is the same. My guild is ranked #2 for 10-man progression on our server, but #72 on guild levels since we're still level 20. We might not be achievement hunters or fishers or crafters or activity maniacs, but we know what we like and we do it.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
I'd Tank... if I had a Third Spec
I queued for the Ahune fight the other night on both my 85s. My druid is currently off-specced into bear, which is my preference. (I spent most of T11 off-specced into resto, which I'm not nearly as happy playing as.) I was happy to jump in the queue as a tank and be rewarded with my instance within a few seconds. So was the one guildie I was grouped with.
This meant we had three puggers.
My guild is a small one consisting primarily of people with relaxed playing schedules, so guild-only 5-mans are uncommon. We mainly log on to raid, and anything else is happenstance. When I do 5-mans, I usually pug, and I'm fine with it. I think pugging makes me a better player due to the unpredictability of what I get.
Anyway. Ahune died. Loots dropped. All was happy in the world.
My guildie and I got on our alts. I queued as healer on my paladin. Guildie was dps. And we waited, and waited, and waited. And after 9 minutes (as a healer!) we finally got in.
Then the tank, who'd clearly never tanked Ahune before, got himself killed by trying to tank the boss (standing in bad stuff) and ignoring the adds which killed everyone else. The tank went off-line rather than face the embarrassment of a explanation on how the fight works.
Which meant we had to wait again.
And it occurred to me, that if I had a third spec... I would have tanked on Gillien.
Back in WotLK my paladin's dual specs were holy and prot. My holy spec pulled double duty for PvE and PvP, but the two specs were close enough that this was "okay" even if it wasn't ideal. Many times, in order to get the faster queue, I'd tank. It got to the point where I was tanking 5-mans more often than I was healing and I'd opt for waiting a couple minutes in the queue just to get a break from day-in-day out tanking on two 80s.
But in Cata, I found the difference between a reasonable arena spec and PvE holy spec were quite a bit different, with 7 of my talent points rearranged to give me access to a variety of talents not present at all in my PvE spec. They're good talents too. They've come in handy multiple times, whether helping my teammate burn someone down with Exorcism spam or getting an extra Word of Glory heal from Eternal Glory.
I use my PvE and PvP holy specs often enough that I don't want to sacrifice one for a prot tanking spec, but I don't mind tanking. I would have gladly tanked Ahune the other night, but I wasn't going to pay 100g in respecing forwards and back for the privilege.
It occured to me that Blizzard is trying to find ways to improve 5-man queues, to the point of offering additional rewards through the Call to Arms, and it makes me wonder if they've considered the potential tank population that just ran out of specs, seeing as all tank classes are hybrids.
I know they want specs to be of a lasting impact, to be meanful. I can understand why they wouldn't want a hunter to have BM PvE, MM PvE, MM PvP, and Survival PvE (which my guildie has said he would do in a heartbeat). To keep this on the topic of too few tanks running 5-mans, why not make the third spec a dedicated tanking spec? If it's not tanking, you can't have it.
I'm sure it would be annoying to implement something just for that consideration, but let's say the third spec can only be used for tanking and people take it for tanking. I can only see it increasing the number of tanks, since people who tank instances already aren't going to stop just because they freed up one of their dual specs, and people who would consider tanking but can't because they ran out of specs, might actually tank.
I don't know how large the "I ran out of specs population" is, but Blizzard, you have one here.
This meant we had three puggers.
My guild is a small one consisting primarily of people with relaxed playing schedules, so guild-only 5-mans are uncommon. We mainly log on to raid, and anything else is happenstance. When I do 5-mans, I usually pug, and I'm fine with it. I think pugging makes me a better player due to the unpredictability of what I get.
Anyway. Ahune died. Loots dropped. All was happy in the world.
My guildie and I got on our alts. I queued as healer on my paladin. Guildie was dps. And we waited, and waited, and waited. And after 9 minutes (as a healer!) we finally got in.
Then the tank, who'd clearly never tanked Ahune before, got himself killed by trying to tank the boss (standing in bad stuff) and ignoring the adds which killed everyone else. The tank went off-line rather than face the embarrassment of a explanation on how the fight works.
Which meant we had to wait again.
And it occurred to me, that if I had a third spec... I would have tanked on Gillien.
Back in WotLK my paladin's dual specs were holy and prot. My holy spec pulled double duty for PvE and PvP, but the two specs were close enough that this was "okay" even if it wasn't ideal. Many times, in order to get the faster queue, I'd tank. It got to the point where I was tanking 5-mans more often than I was healing and I'd opt for waiting a couple minutes in the queue just to get a break from day-in-day out tanking on two 80s.
But in Cata, I found the difference between a reasonable arena spec and PvE holy spec were quite a bit different, with 7 of my talent points rearranged to give me access to a variety of talents not present at all in my PvE spec. They're good talents too. They've come in handy multiple times, whether helping my teammate burn someone down with Exorcism spam or getting an extra Word of Glory heal from Eternal Glory.
I use my PvE and PvP holy specs often enough that I don't want to sacrifice one for a prot tanking spec, but I don't mind tanking. I would have gladly tanked Ahune the other night, but I wasn't going to pay 100g in respecing forwards and back for the privilege.
It occured to me that Blizzard is trying to find ways to improve 5-man queues, to the point of offering additional rewards through the Call to Arms, and it makes me wonder if they've considered the potential tank population that just ran out of specs, seeing as all tank classes are hybrids.
I know they want specs to be of a lasting impact, to be meanful. I can understand why they wouldn't want a hunter to have BM PvE, MM PvE, MM PvP, and Survival PvE (which my guildie has said he would do in a heartbeat). To keep this on the topic of too few tanks running 5-mans, why not make the third spec a dedicated tanking spec? If it's not tanking, you can't have it.
I'm sure it would be annoying to implement something just for that consideration, but let's say the third spec can only be used for tanking and people take it for tanking. I can only see it increasing the number of tanks, since people who tank instances already aren't going to stop just because they freed up one of their dual specs, and people who would consider tanking but can't because they ran out of specs, might actually tank.
I don't know how large the "I ran out of specs population" is, but Blizzard, you have one here.
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Still One Blizzcon Ticket Left!
My guild still has one Blizzcon ticket left! If interested, please contact me ASAP at 
. It's for sale at face value of $175. We have until June 10th to get your name registered in the database so you don't have to stand in line with us.
I'll go back to regular blogging after this. Promise. :)
. It's for sale at face value of $175. We have until June 10th to get your name registered in the database so you don't have to stand in line with us.I'll go back to regular blogging after this. Promise. :)
Friday, June 3, 2011
Blizzcon Tickets?
I apologize for falling dorment again after the beginning of last month. May was very hectic for me for multiple reasons.
I would have liked a real post, but as it is, there's not much time to take care of my current business.
My friend and I bought extra Blizzcon tickets for friends, but it turns out that the extras weren't needed, which has left us stuck with $350 of paid tickets that we don't need.
But given how quickly the tickets sold out, we figure there must be plenty of people who are interested in going, but never had the chance. We'd return these tickets if we could, but since we can't we're offering them up for sale at the face value price of $175 each.
If you are interested, please e-mail me at. We would like to sell them ASAP, since the tickets become more complicated to sell after June 10th. (June 10th is the deadline to attach an attendee's e-mail address to a ticket, which would let them pick up their ticket without arriving with the credit card holder.)
And yes, this means I will be at Blizzcon this year.
I would have liked a real post, but as it is, there's not much time to take care of my current business.
My friend and I bought extra Blizzcon tickets for friends, but it turns out that the extras weren't needed, which has left us stuck with $350 of paid tickets that we don't need.
But given how quickly the tickets sold out, we figure there must be plenty of people who are interested in going, but never had the chance. We'd return these tickets if we could, but since we can't we're offering them up for sale at the face value price of $175 each.
If you are interested, please e-mail me at
. We would like to sell them ASAP, since the tickets become more complicated to sell after June 10th. (June 10th is the deadline to attach an attendee's e-mail address to a ticket, which would let them pick up their ticket without arriving with the credit card holder.)And yes, this means I will be at Blizzcon this year.
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