Primal Precision

Happy Birthday, Dragons.

2011-07-27T12:30:00.002-06:00

The first time my guild showed up on the radar of Warcraft Realms was July 27, 2006. Five years ago, today. I was not a member of the guild at the time. In fact, I was not a member of any guild at the time. I had only been playing WoW for a little over 4 months at that point, very on-and-off. I didn't find the Dragons until 2 years later and joined when the guild I was in at the time, Calentrai, was merged in.

I've tried for a couple hours to think about what, exactly, to write in this space. I kept referring back to a post on our guild forums by Dinaer that he made just prior to Cata and has maintained since, basically recounting our guild's history. I've finally realized that he summed it up better than I ever could, so I'm just going to repost it here, nearly word-for-word. Hopefully he doesn't mind.

The Beginning

The Dragons is one of the oldest continuously active guilds on the Sen’jin server. It was founded in July of 2006. There are still a couple of players in the guild from that far back.

Back then the guild was mostly a social/leveling guild. Most players were not at the level cap. There were two players who had raiding experience and they led us on some fun adventures. Many of our current officers joined back in late 2006. They had a very fun group that got along well.

The Dragons did our first guild raid (UBRS) in late 2006, but we did very little actual raiding as a guild. At some point we finally decided that we should try real raiding. We got all of our interested members attuned to Molten Core and arranged to join a 40 man raid along with some friends in another guild. Then, just days before we were ready to go, Blizzard announced the release date for the Burning Crusade expansion. With that information out, interest in raiding plummeted, and we never got to go into Molten Core.

Burning Crusade

The Burning Crusade expansion was released in January 2007. It took a while to level through it. We weren’t really focused on raiding. Our experienced raiders were gone. At the level cap we ran a lot of heroics but didn’t raid.

Sometime around June of 2007, the GM called a guild meeting in ventrilo. He told us that he had arranged a guild merger (without informing anyone else) into a large guild. The reason for the merge was to give us all opportunities to raid. This announcement was not met with the reaction he had hoped for. The majority of our members really liked the friends-and-family feel of The Dragons. No one wanted to go be little fish in a huge pond. In the end, the GM and a few of his friends left to go to the other guild while the rest of us stayed in The Dragons.

A few days later we had another guild meeting in vent to decide the future of the guild. We needed a new leader. Dinaer was about to nominate Hamacus for that position, but Ham was faster on the push-to-talk button than Din was and he suggested Din for the job. The guild agreed and Din was promoted to GM of The Dragons.

We decided that the best way to cement this decision was to start raiding on our own. Within days of the new leadership we set up a Karazhan raid. This had problems from the start, due to our lack of experience organizing raids. There were more people who wanted to raid than there were raid spots, and the selection process was handled poorly. Feathers were ruffled, and as a result a group of players left shortly thereafter to form their own guild (our first drama!).

We still had enough to field a raid team, so we pushed into Karazhan in the days to follow. Raiding was much harder back then. It took weeks of wipes before we even killed the first boss in Kara. We didn’t kill the second until October 2007 – three months after we started raiding there. Progress was slow, but steady and the learning process was fun. We had a fine raid leader who taught us much about raiding. By the end of 2007 we had defeated most of the Kara bosses. Along the way we added many excellent players that helped drive our success.

And then in February 2008 things just fell apart. We had a lot of strong personalities on the guild, and eventually there were disagreements and conflict. Our raid leader and his wife did a server transfer to get away from the negativity. When we had trouble fielding raids, others left for larger guilds. By March 2008 we had as few as 3-5 people logging in each night. We considered disbanding the guild, but chose to continue out of respect for the longevity of The Dragons name.

We knew that to continue we had to find a way to raid. Around March of 2008 someone stumbled across a forum post by a guild called Calentrai that was looking for a guild alliance for raiding. Din spoke to their guild leader and soon we were running Karazhan raids with them. Those raids went pretty well. Between the two guilds we fielded two full Kara teams most weeks, and we got along well.

Now that we were raiding again The Dragons started to thrive once more. Several members who had left during the down times would come back to us during this period, including the original GM. Between the two guilds, we had enough people to move into 25-man raiding. (For those who are new, in BC you did not have the option to choose 10 or 25 man raids. Karazhan was only 10 man and the later raids were only 25 man)

In April of 2008 we started in Gruul's Lair, and had that raid cleared by May. By June, The Dragons had enough people to run our own guild-only Karazhan raids and still have enough people left unsaved to do our joint Dragons-Calentrai runs. The guild alliance was moving right along, downing Magtheridon and moving into Serpentshrine Caverns.

However, Calentrai started to have its own internal problems. When the guild alliance started in March, the raids were 70% Calentrai and 30% Dragons. By August 2008 they were 70% Dragons and 30% Calentrai. After a lot of discussion, in September 2008 we decided to merge the two guilds. (San's note: By this time the co-GM's of Calentrai were taking a break from the game to work on personal issues. Norf had been promoted to active-GM and I was also given officer status to help try to keep it together until they came back. They never really did.) This turned out to be the most important decision in the history of the guild. About half of the current guild leadership came over in that merge.

There was a short golden age of Dragons raiding then. Blizzard nerfed a lot of the raids in advance of the Wrath expansion, so we blazed our way through most of Serpentshrine Caverns and Black Temple. We had a lot of fun in those last days of BC.

Wrath of the Lich King

As we went into the Wrath expansion we had a very solid core of players. The expansion was released in November 2008, and by December we had a group of players at the level cap so we started raiding Naxxramas. We had cleared it with a 10-man team by early January, only two months after its release.

At that point, we were hit with the type of drama that always plagues casual guilds. A group of our raiders wanted to push progression more aggressively. That didn’t fit in with our guild philosophy. When we didn’t go that route, a large group left to form their own raiding guild. We still had enough solid players to do 10-man raids, but our 25-man raiding was put off for quite a while.

Through the Wrath years the guild was pretty stable. Our officers have been around the since Wrath began. Din had been GM for four years, and I had been leading raids since the guild merger. We went through cycles where sometimes we had enough people to do 25-man raids, and sometimes we didn’t. In a guild with no attendance rules and no gear requirements, those sorts of ups-and-downs were bound to happen. Through it all we maintained our friends-and-family approach and always put fun as a first priority. We were joined by the members of more guilds during toward the end of the Wrath cycle - Guild Drama and Freedom Knights, bringing more good people into the fold. We did manage to defeat the Lich King and complete the raid content before the end of the expansion.

Cataclysm

This expansion presented us with a challenge. Raiding was harder, and raid lockouts changed. No longer could we try to balance 10 and 25 man raids. We decided to go strictly with 10-man raids. We also imposed some gear requirements for the first time in our history. It was an adjustment, but one that helped in the long run. We have tried to balance two 10-man raid teams through this expansion. Its been tough, and one team has had more has had success than the other.

Despite the changes and the slow loss of players due to burnout, the guild has reached all-time new heights during the first six months of Cataclysm. We were the 13th Sen'jin guild to reach Level 25. We have stayed in the top 10 on the server in guild achievement points.

Most notably, we cleared all available raid content before any content nerfs or new gear was released. This is the first time in the history of the guild that we have accomplished that feat.

I can honestly say that I'm very fortunate to have fallen into this guild. The people are great, the atmosphere is always comfortable, and it's just an all-around great way to play. I don't think I could play WoW in any other guild for long without just calling it quits. (Except maybe the Effers. They seem alright.)

LF2M Heals, then G2G

2011-07-22T15:10:00.001-06:00

As I alluded to a couple days ago, I'm looking for a couple more healers to round out my current raiding group. Right now we only have two regulars, one of whom would like to spend more time on the DPS side. Our third slot tends to get filled in by whoever is online and available.

Anyone interested will be seriously considered, though non-Druids will have preference. We have one Tree already (our lead) and are actively gearing another. I'd like representation from the other healing classes to keep a balance.

The Raid Team:

We run Thursday and Monday nights, from 8pm to 11pm server (Central) time.
We're a solid group that can play well, but is not hardcore progression. We don't have dead weight, but we won't be showing up on World of Logs rankings, either.
We started really raiding as a team in mid-April and finished T11 the night before patch 4.2 dropped and nerfed it. So far in the Firelands we've downed Shannox once and got Beth'tilac down to 9%.
My unofficial mantra for our raids is "fun, but focused." There's room to joke and laugh while we run. Mistakes are taken in stride. We /roll for blame. I don't think I've ever really had to rant or yell. If I do have to call someone out specifically (rare), I do it in whispers. I'm not out to embarrass anyone or make them feel bad. That's not fun for me or the other person. That said, we do want to progress. We know our classes and we play hard. When it's time to get down to the srs bsns of killing internet dragons, we treat it as such.
With the exception of Healers, we have more people at each position than we have slots. I hope to get there with the Healers, as well. What this means is that we rotate. Every so often you'll be asked to be on Standby for a lockout.
We use /roll for our loot distribution. Main specs get priority. It's inelegant, but we're a mature enough group that it's been drama-free since we started running together.

The Guild:

The Dragons is one of the oldest active guilds on the Sen'jin server. Less than a week away from our 5 year anniversary. About half our officers have been in their position for four of those years. The other half, for three. Point being, we're very stable. This isn't a guild that's going to blow up and disband any time soon.
We're also one of the largest guilds on the Sen'jin server. We have over 500 characters in the guild, representing probably somewhere around 100 players. Some, obviously, more active than others. Still, it's not uncommon to log in on any given evening and see 15-25 people playing.
The guild is mostly made up of working adults. Many with families. We understand life comes before WoW and we don't begrudge people who have their priorities aligned accordingly. We value maturity, stability, and friendliness.
Guild rules are pretty simple. Respect others. Don't swear in Vent, /g, /r, /p, /bg, or /s. Don't be a troll in General, Trade, or LFG. Stick to these even if they're not filled with fellow guildies. There's a few others, but people that can follow the ones above generally don't have a problem with any of the rest, either.
Level 25, all 8 bank tabs, most Vendor rewards unlocked. Guild Repairs.

What you need:

Thursday and Monday nights available.
Ventrilo (Mic optional. We'd love to hear your voice, but as long as you can hear us, that's enough.)
DBM or similar addon.
A minimum equipped 353 average iLvl on your healing set. We don't mind helping you get a few extra pieces to finish it off, but at this point we're not looking to spend a lot of time gearing you up, either.
T11 experience a plus. Minimum 4/12 prior to the 4.2 nerf good. 9/12, very good. More, even better.
A smile. Seriously. No frumpy raiders. No angry raiders. I'm as close to either as we're allowed and I fill the quota for both.

If you're interested or know someone who is, you can contact me at primalprecision@gmail.com.

Also feel free to check out our website.

You can also whisper me in game if I'm online. My character list is at the top of the blog on the right.

If you want to bring a lowbie into the guild to see what we're like before coming in, whisper any officer. There's almost always one available.

A Bear's guide to the Firelands: Beth'tilac

2011-07-21T10:34:00.003-06:00

Beth'tilac is what happens when you try to kill a spider with fire and it goes horribly, horribly wrong. Instead of no spider, you now have a giant fire spider. Toasty.

Beth'tilac's encounter is a two phase fight requiring two tanks for each phase. In the first phase the tanks are performing very distinct duties. In the second, there's taunt swapping.

Phase 1: Beth'tilac Tank
When you pull Beth, she immediately retreats up to the web above her lair. A moment later she will start raining down fire on the whole raid. This is unavoidable and she will continue to do this at any point during Phase 1 where she is not aggroed on a player on top of the web.

After a few moments, a pair of Spinnerweb Spinner adds (medium-sized yellow spiders) will drop down from the web, hanging off web strands a little bit off the ground, and start shooting fireballs at random raid members on a pretty short interval. There are two ways to get these spiders on the ground. First, ranged can kill them. This takes some time, though, and you need to get on top of the web fast to stop Beth's fire rain. The other way to get them down is to use any taunt or taunt-like ability. For us Bears, this means Growl.

Communicate with your other tank prior to the pull on who is going to get which Spinner. (i.e. "I'll taunt the one that's on the right.") Their positioning is somewhat random, so things like "right" can be arbitrary, but it usually works out. You want those first two on the ground as quickly as possible so that the tank and a healer can get up to Beth and get her attention.

When the Spinners are brought down--regardless of the method used--the web strand they were attached to is left on the ground for a short period of time. This is what you use to get up onto the web with Beth. Mousing over it gives you the typical green-arrow vehicle cursor.

The first strand should always be used by the Beth tank. The second should be used by a healer.

It's generally a good idea to use Barkskin as you're being carried up to the web. It may be a few seconds before your healer can join you and you'll want to mitigate some of the damage you take before they get there.

As soon as you're on top of the web, target Beth and get her attention. Your initial pull will have generated no threat, but the healer coming up after you will have some from throwing heals. You obviously want to make sure Beth doesn't start hitting them. Growl and F3 for sure. Once you have her attention, try to tank her near the large hole in the center of her web. Just be careful not to fall through it.

Tanking Beth isn't that tough. You don't have much to do. Optimize your rotation for damage. The more you do while up there, the easier Phase 2 will be on your raid later. Depending on your raid's composition and ability, you may have a DPS helping out. This is ideal, but not always possible. Add control on the floor is important. It's also harder on the Beth healer when more people are up on the web.

Beth hits fairly hard and will also be casting a fiery AoE blast pretty regularly. Paladin and Shaman healers work well on top of the web for their access to elemental resistances. If you're having survival issues, you may want to consider moving some talent points around to spec into Perseverance.

The one avoidable thing you have to watch out for is Meteor Burn. Watch under your paws and get ready to move if a lava puddle appears. You'll have a few seconds to react before a meteor lands on the web in that spot and burns a hole through it. (It looks less like a hole and more like a small, fiery eruption, but believe me, you can fall through it. And that's bad.) There will be around four of these active at any given time after they accumulate, so watch your positioning. If you do have a melee DPS with you, try to keep Beth positioned to where they don't have to worry about them, either.

The final thing you need to do is watch Beth's energy/mana bar. It slowly drains over time. When it reaches 0, she'll cast Smoldering Devastation, which will kill you. When the cast starts you need to drop back down to the ground level. If you go through the big hole in the center of the web, a few web strands will catch you and slow your descent. Otherwise you'll take some fall damage. If you absolutely have to fall through some hole other than the center one for some reason, shift to cat form on the way down to reduce the fall damage you'll take. It's almost negated by this.

Once you're on the ground, you have a few seconds before a new set of Spinners appear and you're able to get back up on the web. Toss F3 on any Drones your other tank might be holding to help get them down faster. If there's a nearby pack of Spiderlings, feel free to Swipe and Thrash a couple times to help burn them down.

As soon as you see Spinners hanging off the web, taunt one down (the one furthest from the other tank, if possible) and get back up there.

You're going to repeat this process three times. After the third Devastation, Beth drops down to the ground for Phase 2.

If there are any Spiderling packs active during the transition, go Cat and help burn them down as quickly as possible. Just make sure to go Bear again in time to pick up Beth when she hits the ground.

Phase 1: Add Tank
The second tank needed in Phase 1 is an add control tank. Bears are very, very good at this job, thanks to the ease of our mobile AoE tanking.

When the phase starts, get ready to Growl at one of the Spinners that drops off the web so that the Beth tank and healer can get up top ASAP. But don't get cozy. After those first two, there will be six more. They need to be brought down quickly, or their fireballs will overwhelm your healers. They do much less damage on the ground than they do hanging from the web.

Taunt as frequently as possible to get them down. Enlist the help of any Paladins, DKs, Ferals, and Hunters (Distracting Shot works, too) in the raid. Get ready to grab the Spinners off of them when they come running to you. They don't hit all that hard, so group tanking them usually isn't that big of a deal.

In addition to the Spinners, you'll also be tanking Cinderweb Drones during this phase. They are fairly large, red spider-taurs that emerge from caves around the edges of Beth's lair. The important thing to remember when tanking them is that they have a long-range, frontal cone AoE that hits pretty hard. Make sure they're not facing the raid at any time. The first one will appear about 10 seconds after the first set of Spinners fall off the web.

The last thing you need to watch out for as the add tank is the Spiderling packs. Like the Drones, these spawn around the edges of the lair. Unlike Drones, you don't tank them. In fact, you need to stay very clear of them. Once spawned, the move relentlessly towards any active Drones. If a pack starts getting close before your DPS can burn them down, you need to move. Drones will consume nearby Spiderlings, healing 10% of their health in doing so. You don't want this happening.

Things can get pretty frantic on the ground will all the adds and all the movement and all the taunting. Keep cool, keep your eyes open, and you'll be fine.

Phase 2
Heading into Phase 2, if you don't have any adds currently on you, look for Spiderling packs and help burn them down. Like the Drones, Beth will consume nearby Spiderlings for a health boost. This can negate all the work that was done whittling down Beth's health on top of the web and you do not want that.

(Note: The range at which Beth will consume Spiderlings has been hotfixed and greatly reduced. It's now fairly easy to tank her well away from any packs while the DPS finishes burning them down. Still, your best bet is just to kill them outright before then.)

Once Beth hits the ground for Phase 2, she seems to aggro reset. So whichever tank is going to tank her first will need to taunt. Usually this is the Beth tank from Phase 1, but if all the adds on the ground are dead, it can be either tank.

From here on out, it's a straight DPS race. Beth will continue to cast Ember Flare, which will now hit the entire raid. Additionally, she will be in a stacking Frenzy state, which increases both her physical damage and the damage of the AoE blast. This is why you want her health as low as possible when the phase begins.

Beth will also be casting Widow's Kiss on her current target. This is where the tank swapping mechanic sets in. When one tank gets this cast on them, the other needs to taunt.

For this phase, your raid should be forming a triangle around Beth. Each tank should be at one point and the rest of your raid should be stacked up at the third to help with healing. Tanks need to make sure they're 10 yards apart from each other and the raid so that the pulsing damage they put out while under the effect of the debuff doesn't hit anyone else.

The deadliest part of this phase (for the tanks) is the swapping. Between the damage of Beth's physical hits, plus the her fire blast, a tank can drop very quickly after a taunt if the healers aren't ready. If you have DBM, watch your timers and make sure to communicate with your healers when a swap is approaching. Saving Barkskin for just before taunting is also a good idea.

If you have Berserk available during this phase, you have a couple options. You can either wait until Beth is taunted off you, then do some Cat burst damage or you can use it in Bear form after gaining high stacks of Vengeance for some crazy Mangle damage. Otherwise, stay Bear when not holding Beth. Your damage output will be comparable, and it gives your healers more breathing room.

Try to save Survival Instincts and Frenzied Regeneration for as late as possible.

Loots
Beth drops a few good things for Bears. The Cinderweb Leggings are a good holdover until you can your T12 legs along with the 2pc or 4pc bonus. The Widow's Kiss is a nice ring. You'll be reforging Haste to Dodge, but it's still good. Finally, there's the Spidersilk Spindle. The mastery is nice, even if the proc isn't that great. Most tanks will eat up that shield in one blow. It's mostly intended for non-tanks in AoE or random damage situations.

As with all my boss strats, I'm writing from the overall perspective of a Bear tank (in 10-man) and what they will need to do. For you Cats reading this blog, I suggest you check out Dinaer's guides on Forever a Noob. They're written for Rogues but are a pretty good guide for melee in general and his gear drop suggestions (with the exception of weapons) will be spot on for Cats. If I have additional insight, I will try to add it in my blog.

So hot

2011-07-20T09:56:00.003-06:00

I haven't been WoWing much since my last post. The A/C in my house crapped out...just in time for the hottest temperatures of the summer so far to kick in. The room that Norf and I play in is the hottest in the house, due to a number of factors including the running electronics, being south-facing, being the smallest room in the house, and being in a weird place for overall airflow.

Needless to say, I've been avoiding being home as much as possible. And when I am home, the computer room is the one I least want to be spending my time in. Molten Front dailies and Shaman gearing be damned. (That said, there was something disturbingly authentic about sweating my ass off while raiding the Firelands on Monday night.)

I'm working on a Beth'tilac writeup for Bears, which I should have done for tomorrow. We haven't killed her yet, but we're close. (9% was our best attempt.) I've tanked both on the ground and on the web for Phase 1, so I've got a pretty good grip on what needs to be done.

I'm also working on a call for Healers. My raid group could really use a couple more. There will be more details on that coming, but if you're looking to join a group of level-headed adults and can raid Thursday/Monday nights, keep an eye out here in the next few days.

A Bear's Guide to the Firelands: Shannox

2011-07-15T10:40:00.002-06:00

Shannox is the first boss a lot of guilds will be tackling in the Firelands. When you first enter the raid, he's not around. You have to start killing trash to get him to eventually spawn. A lot of trash. Which is good. Because unlike any boss that's come into the game since Molten Core, Shannox doesn't have a little area of the raid to call his home. Instead he pats around the road that circles the big, open area in the center of raid. And if you want to deal with him without worrying about trash, you have to clear a good-sized area in which to fight him.

Once Shannox does spawn (you'll hear a third "horn" sounding and a /yell emote), he moves very fast. Make sure you're not anywhere near the road unless you're ready to pull. He can come down on you in a hurry if you're not careful.

This is a two-tank fight. One tank will be on Shannox. The other will be holding one of Shannox's Hellhounds, Riplimb. Shannox's other Hellhound, Rageface, is not tanked.

Both tanks
Shannox, in a what can only amount to a giant EFF-YOO to every Hunter in the game, spawns more traps than the Noblegarden bunnies spawn offspring. And they persist until triggered.

He has two types of trap.

The first is an Immolation trap. It doesn't look much different than the standard Hunter Immolation trap. Just bigger. It has an orange dancing flame above it. Walking over one of these does big fire damage and applies a hefty DoT.

The second trap is a Crystal Prison Trap. Basically an Ice trap. When triggered, it locks the target in a Ruby-colored crystal block that must be DPS'd down to be broken. It's not trivial, either. It will require several seconds of focused DPS by your raid (not just one or two people) to break. This trap has a deep red, elongated octahedron floating above it.

Both tanks should avoid stepping in either trap. The longer the fight goes, the more difficult this becomes. Occasionally it can be necessary to kite your target to an area of the raid that's nearly empty of traps to give you more room to work with. Communicate before you do this, as it will force almost everyone to reposition.

It's also worth noting that both of Shannox's Hellhounds can trigger the traps. This is important later.

Both tanks will also be receiving stacks of Jagged Tear from their respective targets. The key to this fight is getting those stacks to drop. More on how to do that below, but I'm going to note here that one of the key factors in making this happen is tanking Shannox and Riplimb well away from each other. 60+ yards away. 80 is better.

Just don't go too far. There's some point (we don't know exactly where it is...100 yard range, maybe) where Separation Anxiety kicks in. This is bad, mmmkay?

Finally, none of the enemies in this fight are tauntable. That becomes most important late in the fight, but just keep in mind that if you lose control of your target, you have to actually hit it to get it back.

Riplimb Tank
Other than avoiding the traps Shannox is laying everywhere, the Riplimb tank has two specific things to deal with.

The first is Limb Rip, which is the attack that stacks Jagged Tear on the the Riplimb tank. There's nothing you can do about it. Just be aware that it's happening.

The other is Hurl Spear. Shannox will frequently toss his spear towards Riplimb. You can tell where it's going to land because of a bright red column of light that appears. You've seen this before on Mimiron (his missile attack) and on the adds prior to Om(nomnom)notron with their Laser Strike. When this appears, you need to move. The further away (without inducing Separation Anxiety), the better.

Prior to this point, it's a good idea to keep Riplimb clear of traps, as well. When he hits a trap he becomes immune from other traps for a short time. In an ideal situation you'll be looking for a nearby Crystal Prison Trap and kiting Riplimb over it (without going over it yourself) when Shannox starts to toss the spear.

Once the spear lands, it will crate a large fire spiral around the impact point. Find a gap between the flames before they erupt.

At that point, Riplimb will stop attacking you. He runs to the spear, picks it up, and runs it back to Shannox, and finally runs back to you to keep attacking. This is where you drop your stacks of Jagged Tear and it's the reason you want to trap him in a Crystal Prison. It gives you a lot more time for the stacks to drop. Depending on the exact timing of the debuff application and the spear toss, you could need up to 20 seconds. That doesn't sound like long, but in practice it feels like forever and can be very tricky.

Whether or not you manage to trap Riplimb, do what you can to slow his movement once he picks up the spear. Bears are probably the least capable tank for this. During this part of the fight, Riplimb gains a buff that prevents him from being slowed below 50%. He definitely can't be rooted. I also believe he's immune to stuns.

For Bears, this means the only thing we can do is our very best to apply Infected Wounds before just letting him go. You don't want to chase him to keep it up, as the run-back time after he gives Shannox the spear is also important to dropping your Jagged Tear stacks.

This cycle continues until Riplimb dies.

Your DPS should down Riplimb before Shannox gets to 30% health to prevent him from going into a Frenzy.

Shannox Tank
The Shannox tank's job doesn't differ too much from that of the Riplimb tank. You're still avoiding traps. You're still watching Jagged Tear stacks.

One of the key differences is that Shannox has a frontal cleave with a 10-yard range. So make sure to keep him facing away from you raid. This is also the attack that causes stacks of Jagged Tear.

When Shannox hurls his spear he loses the ability to cleave and, by proxy, to stack Jagged Tear. This is where the Shannox tank tries to drop his stacks. Much of this depends on how well the Riplimb tank does their job. If they sufficiently slow/trap Riplimb, you're in the clear. If not, you may have to do some kiting to increase the time it takes for Rimlimb to give Shannox back his spear. If you find yourself in this situation, Stampeding Roar can help a lot.

At the start Shannox doesn't hit too terribly hard. But each time one of his Hellhounds dies he will gain a Frenzy stack, increasing his physical damage and attack speed by 30% each. Make liberal use of Barkskin and Survival Instincts throughout the fight to help your healers.

After Riplimb dies, Shannox will begin to drive his spear into the ground in front of him, instead of tossing it. Functionally, this has the same mechanics as when he tosses it, minus the massive damage at the impact point.

Since he's no longer tossing his spear, and since he can't be taunted, you can't drop your Jagged Tear stacks anymore. The fight is a race at this point. The DPS have to kill Shannox before he drops the tank and then makes quick work of the rest of the raid. (It goes without saying that if you can time entry into this phase to a point where you have 0 stacks, you should.)

The general idea is to have Shannox as close to 30% as possible before killing Riplimb. This leaves Shannox with the minimum amount of health you have to burn at the end of the fight while still preventing Riplimb from going into a Frenzy.

I like to save Frenzied Regeneration for this phase. I also do what I can to make sure I have Survival Instincts at some point during this phase. Obviously, still roll Barkskin every time it's available.

Loot
Once Shannox dies, you're hoping to see the Gloves of Dissolving Smoke drop. It's the only thing he has to reward you for your efforts.

A little secret

2011-07-14T08:24:00.002-06:00

A lot of people are making a fuss about Valor Points right now. Is it too hard or too easy to hit the weekly cap? Are Heroics faster than raiding? What about the ceilings? What about people who don't have time? What if you're a responsible adult and you have to prioritize limited play? And what about your alts?

There's an easy answer to all this worrying about VP. Three simple words you can say to yourself to make it all go away.

You ready for these?

"It doesn't matter." (Other candidates include "Get over it," and "I don't care.")

Seriously. It's okay if you're not rocking your 4-piece T12 bonus yet. It'll be okay if you still have a few pieces of 359 gear at the opening of the next raid. I promise the Firelands bosses will still fall and all will be right in the world.

And if you're worried about not being the first person on your server to be the best geared, let me help you with that: It's too late. Someone already beat you. You can stop worrying now.

Since 4.2 dropped, I've accumulated a grand total of 140 VP. That's it. I haven't downed a raid boss yet (though we're close on Shannox) and I've run a grand total of two heroics. One was just because the group needed a tank and the other was because I was trying to get a Chaos Orb.

Here's the craziest part, though...I'm perfectly okay with this. My hair's not falling out, I'm not crying into my keyboard, and I've had no shakes or convulsions yet. Not even a burning desire to justify my behavior. And--despite this sacrilege--Blizz hasn't canceled my account. The game loader still lets me log in. All my characters are on my select screen, with their gear, and still sortable. The game even allows me into the Firelands when I step through the portal. As the RL, no less.

I know. Wild, right?

Ambitious Alts

2011-07-08T09:28:00.001-06:00

If you look over on the right there, you can tell I'm a little bit of an alt-aholic. Not as bad as some, but I have my share of issues. Most of it comes down to the fact that leveling offers a sustainable, solo-able goal. Short of times like now, where there's new content to work through and conquer, this is somewhat lacking. So I roll and go.

At the moment I have four 85s. Five, if you count Sanele, but she's on the back burner for now. She fulfilled her intended purpose. (Incidentally, as of last night we are a classy guild. No, Sanele was not the last missing link. She's been 85 for a couple weeks now.)

I do enjoy playing the other 85s that are not Saniel. I've been taking each of them through the rounds of daily content that the Molten Front has offered because it's finally given me a reason to spend time on them. Yes, it's somewhat repetitive doing the same set of daily quests 4 times every day. And when they all unlock the 3rd and 4th phases I may have to start picking and choosing who--other than Saniel--I work on each day.

But for now, it's still fun. I don't use them often, so the different mechanics keep it interesting. Feral, Enhancement, Beast Mastery, and Shadow all play very differently. Plus Daluaan and Siaaryn are still in more questing gear than not. So that offers even more challenge.

I've also been putting some effort into beefing up Daluaan's healing set as of late. It's what I created him for way back in BC. And, every now and again, he's still needed for that. (Mostly in dungeons.) He's woefully undergeared, though. So that's given me a good reason to put some time into him.

But at the end of the day, what I really love about WoW is raiding. It's where (in my mind) you really get to see what you can do with a given character. And it's only once in a blue moon that I don't add the most value to a group by bringing out San and going Bear. It's not that I mind tanking. I love it. And I'm happy to do it. But the opportunities to spend time on my other toons is too limited.

I've been toying with the notion of shopping Grevioux around my server a little. Of all my toons, he's the least helpful to my guild in any group situation. We don't have many Shadow Priests. We have fewer Enhancement Shaman. And there's always need for a healer. But we're overflowing with Hunters.

Add to that the fact that I've really come to love playing Beast Mastery. It's just fun. No two ways about it.

In an ideal situation, I could find a raid group somewhere on my server that needs the occasional rDPS to fill in. Between my responsibilities to my own guild, plus my out-of-game activities, I'm committed to stuff 4 or 5 nights a week (depending on the week). I don't really want to lock myself into another one every week.

But I would really like a chance to raid current content on a toon other than Saniel occasionally.

And I do definitely want to keep him on Sen'jin. In my guild if I can. He's my scribe and I'm about 6 weeks away from knowing every glyph that I don't need a book to learn. He's also my herbalist with access to Bountiful Bags.

Of course, as a raid leader, I know this is a pipe dream. If someone approached me and said, "Hey, I'd like to be a part of your raid team. On an alt. Standby only, because my schedule's kinda full. And I want to stay in my own guild. Just run with you," I'd laugh and then /ignore them. How could someone like that be accountable?

I mean, I know I'm an exception to the rule. But there's no way to convince someone else of that.

Also, today is my 256th post. Which is not only a square, but also a power of two. This makes my (not-so-)inner geek very excited.

PSA

2011-07-07T08:19:00.000-06:00

Pro Tip: The Reflective Shield that the Seething Pyrelords cast during the Protectors of Hyjal quest I mentioned yesterday? It can be interrupted.

Fellow Bears and Cats...do everyone a huge favor. Skull Bash that thing.

Bravo, Blizzard. Bravo.

2011-07-06T10:45:00.000-06:00

Note: I started writing this post on Friday. I'm just now getting around to finishing it. A lot of it is written assuming that people were just getting to the point where they were ready to enter the Molten Front. Since then, Blizz has hotfixed the rate at which this can occur (from three days to one). Also, a lot more people have gone through those three/one day(s) and seen this already. So this is probably no longer "OMG, Amazing!" news. But I still want to share it because I'm still excited about it.

Once you're gotten your first 20 Marks of the World Tree and seen Hamuul Runetotem turned into hamburger, you unlock a daily quest out at the Sanctuary of Malorne called The Protectors of Hyjal. (Which doesn't actually show up until the next day.)

This is, far and away, one of the most amazing quests I've ever seen. Why? Blizzard took a small, subtle step that shows just how far-reaching the consequences of Ragnaros' invasion really are.

Once you pick up the quest and fly out to Sethria's Roost, you're joined by a group of four NPC allies. Sometimes all four will be generic Hyjal Protectors. But sometimes the fourth will be a named NPC that you've run across during your time in Azeroth. Usually ones associated with some of the best questlines from certain areas.

Saniel ended up with Tony Two-Tusk the first time around, who's the center of a pair of short (but fun) quest lines out in Thousand Needles. First to kill him, then to bring him back to life.

Siaaryn also ended up there on the same night and he got John J. Keeshan in his party. If you've quested out the Burning Steppes as Alliance since the Cataclysm, you're well acquainted with Mr. Keeshan. Dude's hardcore. I'd want him on my side any day of the week.

If you go to quest page on Wowhead that I've linked above, you can see all the possible NPCs that could show up. There's some crazy names on that list. Mankirk, Johnny Awesome, Budd, Thassarian, Hemet Nesingwary.

From characters you meet in starting zones (Gwen Amistad) all the way up to one of the most powerful dragons on Azeroth (Chromie), to characters who are no longer really in the game (Linken), every name on that list brings back memories some of the best quest chains in WoW.

Do you remember turning your weekly Raid quests to Archmage Lan'dalock?

Do you remember rescuing Archmage Vargoth from the tower in Kirin'var Village in Netherstorm?

Do you remember rescuing The Leaper from the Lich King's grasp?

Mog'dorg the Wizened from Ogri'la?

A lot of the characters are new to the game in Cataclysm, even though you meet them in 1-60 zones.

Lunk, the pacifist Ogre in the Searing Gorge.

Maximillian of Northshire, the incompetent and condescending Knight in Un'goro.

Tony Two-Tusk and John J. Keeshan, who I've already mentioned.

I could keep going. But I won't.

Like I said, it's subtle and it's simple. You don't really interact with these characters. And the Protectors quest itself doesn't take long at all. A few minutes, really, including travel time. They just show up, occasionally say or emote something, and then disappear again with a quick farewell.

But the point is that they're no longer forgotten. They're not relegated to their brief, shining moments and then left there for all eternity anymore. They're now a part of something bigger. Their story continues. This is their world, too. And they're going to help fight for it in any way they can.

What Nefarian could not do...

2011-06-29T10:12:00.002-06:00

So I didn't get to play in all the new 4.2 goodness last night. I downloaded the patch, updated all my addons, logged in, logged back out, enabled out-of-date addons, logged back in, picked up the quests from the Hero's Call Board and Naraat the Earthspeaker, and took the portal to Hyjal...

...where my game promptly slowed down to approximately 1 frame every 10 seconds.

I hearthed back to Stormwind, where the lag issues persisted, though not as bad. (Which is interesting, because SW was fine before I left...no lag issues.)

I decided, rather than get in a four-way wrestling match between me, the game, my system, and the throngs of people out doing the new 4.2 content, I'd just go continue my Mass Effect replay for the night and try again today.

I must have had bad luck or bad interaction between one of my addons and...something. Because Norfin zoned into Hyjal just as I logged out and he had zero issues.

I was already committed in my mind to shooting aliens and synthetics rather than shredding elementals, so I let it go. I'll give it another try tonight.

We did it! 12/12!

2011-06-27T22:46:00.004-06:00

I called "last attempt."

I called "real last attempt."

I called "for real-real, seriously last attempt."

The problem was, even though we were way past our usual cutoff time, we kept getting closer and closer.

I mean, you don't stop when you get to 25%, then 18%, then 7%...

So I declared that we would stop when someone whispered me and said they had to go to bed before they made face-waffles on their keyboard.

And as soon as I said that:

So crazy. And on that last attempt, the successful one, it felt so cool and calm. (Save Karmaze, whose voice went up 2 octaves and doubled in tempo.)

I'm really proud of this group. I was looking through the guild forums the other day and realized that we didn't even start raiding together until mid-April. Some of us had seen Halfus, Magmaw, and Omnitron prior to that, but I don't think we'd managed to kill all of them, if any. So, in all reality, we learned and conquered all 12 normal mode bosses in two and a half months. And we did it before the patch nerfed them significantly.

The last night before the nerf. Talk about bringing it down to the wire.

We joked (after the raid) about still being at it, right on the heels of a kill, when the servers went down for maintenance. We kinda wondered if anyone was going to be unfortunate enough to experience that. Thankfully, not us.

For most of us, this was a true 12/12, giving us our Defender of a Shattered World titles. It also unlocked the Dark Phoenix for our guild.

(I finally replaced my 346 helm, too.)

Come tomorrow, no one will really know we earned them before the patch. But that's okay. We do.

We're going to take Thursday to go redo BoT. We only have one Council kill, and our Hunter (my other half, Norfin) was healing on his Shaman when we did it. So we want to get him his achieve and title. The other Shaman who's regularly filled our 3rd healer slot also needs that fight for the raid portion of his Defender achieve.

Monday we're taking off for the holiday.

And then it's into the Firelands after that.

Nice.

Al'Akir defeated! 11/12!

2011-06-20T22:10:00.002-06:00

Brutal fight. Every phase has things that can go horribly wrong. And, as the tank, it's exceedingly easy to wipe the raid at any point in the first two phases if you're not paying attention and performing with absolute precision. No easy task when you're trying to manage adds, lead the raid, watch the timers, and find the gaps in the squall lines. Plus, you know, still put up respectable tanking damage to help the raid get through those phases quicker.

The hardest part was the third phase just because--to even get to it--you had to get through the other two phases first, which we were only doing about 33% of the time. Made it really, really hard to learn how to execute the strategy properly. In those kinds of situations, it's up to the raid leader to step up and really guide everyone through the process. There's no room for ambiguity. Once I figured out how to lead that phase effectively, we got him. (Not to sound like it was all me or anything.)

I got my tier shoulders out of the fight, which means I was able to justify spending my VP on the robe. I now have the 4-set bonus and don't look half bad (except for the silly belt).

Only Nef is left. The first half of Thursday's raid will be spent just clearing to him. We have the first five bosses down to an art, with the possible exception of Chimaeron. We can usually down him, but it's still almost never pretty.

Providing the first 5 go that smoothly, we'll be left with 4.5 hours to down Nef before 4.2 drops. Going 12/12 before the nerf would be a huge accomplishment considering how late we got started raiding in this expansion and how long it took us to really hit our stride once we did.

Even if we don't quite pull it off, we're going to stay in Tier 11 until we get him, just to have it all wrapped up. Then it's off to the Firelands.

A Bear's Guide to BWD: Atramedes

2011-06-15T11:41:00.000-06:00

Atramedes resides on the north end of the Vault of Shadowflame in BWD. He's a unique boss with a new sound mechanic. At the beginning of the fight everyone in the raid has 0 "sound." Every time someone gets hit by one of his special abilities, they gain sound. If/when they hit 100, he focuses on them and cannot be taunted off. Many of his special abilities are also deadlier against people with higher sound levels. Why sound? Because Atramedes is blind. Sonar, people.

There are 10 gongs around the room (5 per side) that can be to cause Vertigo on Atramedes. While under the effects of Vertigo, he'll take additional damage and the sound level of everyone in the raid will be reset to 0. However, you don't want to use them recklessly. Each time you ring one, Atramedes destroys it and they serve an important function during the fight.

If you have DBM (or similar addon), you can see sound levels represented in easy-to-read text. If not, you'll be dependent on an in-game sound meter graphic. It's a circle that fills blue (from the center, expanding outwards) as your sound rises. I find it's very difficult to read because of the non-linear relationship between a circle's radius and area. Low levels of sound tend to look much worse than they really are.

Atramedes is a single-tank fight. It's not unusual for Bears to be asked to go Cat for this fight to get a little extra DPS boost. There's no enrage timer, but if he isn't killed before your raid runs out of gongs to ring, it will cause a wipe.

But this is a guide for Bears that do end up tanking.

There's two phases to this fight. An 80-second ground phase followed by a 40-second air phase. Rinse, repeat. You'll only be tanking Atramedes while he's on the ground. He hits hard, but slow. So you usually don't have to panic (too much) if your health dips low. Your healers will (probably) have time to get you back up.

You'll want to know ahead of time the order that your raid is using the gongs. In my raids we use the gongs on the east side of the room during the ground phases, starting with the northern-most one (closest to where Atramedes spawns) and moving south. You want to keep Atramedes positioned such that the gong is one side of him and the center of the room is on the other. Your ranged should be standing near the next gong to be rang and melee generally do their job from the other side.

During the initial pull, this is not very hard to accomplish. When he lands (in the center of the room) after the air-phases, it's a little harder. You sometimes have to kite him to the north or south end of the room first and then swing him around and into position. Make sure you're communicating with your healers when you do this so they don't end up out of range.

All throughout the ground phase, Atramedes will be casting Modulation and Sonar Pulse. There's nothing you can do about the former, so don't worry about it too much. The latter causes four gold discs to spawn beneath Atramedes and move out in random directions. They move somewhat slowly and are relatively easy to avoid. Atramedes has a fairly large hit box, so try to make sure you're tanking from the edge of it. It gives you more time before the discs reach you and more time for them to spread further apart, making easier gaps to run through. Strafing is your friend here.

Sometimes fate conspires against you and there won't be an easy gap for you to hit. When this happens, run straight through the discs towards Atramedes to minimize the amount of time one is touching you.

Twice during each ground phase (at roughly 20 and 60 seconds), Atramedes will use his Sonic Breath ability. He targets a single player and casts a room-length, fire-laser at them. That player needs to run around Atramedes to avoid it. (Atramedes continually tracks the target for the the six or so seconds this beam lasts.) Anyone the fire-laser touches takes damage and gains sound. As the tank, you'll never be the target of this ability, but that doesn't mean whoever is targeted won't track it right through you. You may have to move to avoid it.

Once per ground phase (at roughly 40 seconds) Atramedes will cast Searing Flame. Your ranged should be standing by on the gong as this ability approaches and ring it very quickly when he starts casting it. It must be interrupted by the gong. If you have high sound (more than 50), pop Barkskin before this ability goes off. If you have really high sound (more than 75) use Survival Instincts instead. And if you have low health, Frenzied Regeneration is probably not a bad idea in addition to either one of your damage mitigation abilities, regardless of your sound level.

Once Atramedes starts to fly up into the air, you and the rest of your raid should start running in a large circle around the edge of the floor. Atramedes is going to pick one person and start chasing them with Roaring Flame Breath, a beam similar to Sonic Breath except that it goes downward now. It starts fairly slowly at first (faster if the target has high sound) and gradually speeds up as it chases them. The beam does heavy, fast ticking damage to the player if it catches up. It also leaves a trail of fire on the ground behind it that will damage anyone that runs through it. They'll also gain sound (presumably because of shouting something between "Ow! Ow! Ow!" and "Oh god, the burning! Make it stop!").

The beam can be stopped by ringing a gong.

Once the beam targets someone, everyone else should collapse down to the center except for a designated gong-ringer. The gong-ringer needs to stand near an available gong (in my raid group, we use the gongs on the west side of the room for the air phases) and keep an eye on the person being chased. When the Flame Breath is about to catch up to that person, they need to use a gong and then immediately start running. Why? They become the new Flame Breath target.

In order to keep the number of gongs needed for the air phase at 1, the gong-ringer should hold out as long as possible. People being chased by Flame Breath should do whatever they can to increase the time the gong-ringer has to save them (Sprint, Dash, Blink, Lock Gate, Ghost Wolf, Heroic Leap, etc).

Providing we don't get targeted initially, we Bears make very good gong-ringers. For starters, we can't DPS Atramedes while he's in the air (ranged can still reach him) so we're pretty much useless during the air phase anyway. Secondly, we can shift Cat to gain a speed boost via Feral Swiftness and have Dash available to us every other air phase.

Whether or not you're the gong-ringer, keep an eye out for Sonar Bombs. These fall fairly rapidly during the air phases and frequently target the spaces people are standing in. There will be a set of flashing rings that appear where one is going to land a few seconds before it does. If one of these appears under you, move.

If you're not the gong-ringer, just hang out near the middle and get ready to pick up Atramedes when he lands. Stay out of fire patches on the ground and Sonar Bomb zones. Also stay 6 yards from other raid members so you don't catch splash damage from the Sonic Fireballs that will be raining down.

Atramedes has a pretty anemic loot-table as far as Bears are concerned. The only drop you'll potentially be looking for is the Sark of the Unwatched.

Cho'gall dead! BoT Clear!

2011-06-13T22:09:00.002-06:00

Our first attempt of the night we got him to 11%, which was our best ever. At that point I knew for sure we had him tonight.

After Cho fell, we headed over to T4W to make quick work of the Conclave and then started learning Al'Akir. We only had an hour, but we made good progress. I think we may be at 11/12 before the week is over, leaving only Nef.

So many levels...

2011-06-13T09:43:00.000-06:00

Another hectic weekend gone by with a lot of things that took my attention away from WoW. I'm not complaining. I had fun doing them and I don't mind spending time away from the game.

It's just not conducive to power leveling a toon.

Sanele is 72 now and almost done with the Fjord. Just a few more quests out of Fort Wildervar and then it's off to Dragonblight.

My plan is to get her to 80 by the weekend, which is ambitious. Tonight is raid night (Cho'gall will die) and I have hockey Friday night (although not until 10:45, so I should have plenty of time in the early evening).

Then it's the final push to 85.

After that, I plan to take Maeniel from 80 to 85, mostly because I've worked through my stockpile of enchanting mats leveling his skill and questing/leveling is a huge source of DE'able gear.

After that, no more leveling for a while. Once I go through the the aforementioned plans I'll have taken three toons from 80 to 85 (Saniel, Daluaan, Siaaryn), three from 1 to 85 (Grevioux, Sanele, Maeniel), and one from 80 to 82 (Maarken), all since Cata's release.

And now that I typed that out, the little completionist on my shoulder is telling me I can't leave my DK as my lone hold-out. So I'll probably end up finally maxing him out, too. Finally give his Frost spec a shot.

Eventually...

Tanking the weekend, part 2

2011-06-06T11:52:00.000-06:00

After taking a few days off of leveling my Warrior I sat down on Saturday morning and queued up again to see if things would get any better.

Between the time I started and when I took a coffee break, I ran 3 or 4 dungeons. Most of them actually went pretty smoothly. The groups were nice enough, the DPS did a relatively good job of not trying to tank for me, and I didn't run across any major jerks. I even ended up in one group with a Hunter that was an obvious fan of Jane Lindskold's Firekeeper Saga. So we chatted about that a little while going through one of the Dire Maul wings.

I gained a couple levels from the runs, putting me somewhere around 47 when I stood up to take a break.

Once I did get out of the routine of leave-queue-run, though, I found that I was extremely reluctant to get back into it. I started doing anything I could to delay sitting back down in front of my comp and queuing again. I even started cleaning the kitchen.

I took a step back and realized that, even with the better groups than I ran with last weekend, I just wasn't having fun. And the only reason I'd continued to queue as long as I had (pretty much everything past level 30) is because I said I was going to level to 85 by tanking dungeons and that was that.

What makes WoW fun:
I've been playing this game for over 5 years now, and I'm honestly well past the point where the game itself is enough to keep me interested in playing. That's not a knock on WoW. It's still an amazing game. I don't think it has a lack of things to offer...I just think I've done and seen more of it than not.

There's two main things that keep me coming back: social interaction and challenge.

Low-level dungeon running has neither.

The social aspect of this game is huge for me. I've made a lot of friends over the years and if they were to all scatter, I probably wouldn't stick around long. But even outside that, if I'm in a group with people, I want to feel like I'm in a group with people, not silent robots on auto-pilot. I can power run a dungeon with the best of them, and I don't always mind doing so. But if there's not some kind of talk or banter going on, it just feels like a slog.

Talking with the "Firekeeper" Hunter I mentioned above was actually fun. But it was easy to tell the rest of the group wished we'd just shut up and go faster.

The challenge aspect is obvious. I love raiding with my guild, because I love tackling those challenges. It's actually tough. There's effort involved.

Of course, I would never want to try to tackle those challenges without those same social connections I mention above. They're what keep it fun and light in the face of wipes and such. So there's a hand-in-hand aspect there.

Outside of those two factors, though, there's something else that started to notice:

I'm not convinced dungeons are actually faster than questing.
It's no secret that running dungeons while leveling can rocket you completely past zones. It's been a well-posted fact ever since 4.0 dropped. But I think that has less to do with how much experience you gain through dungeon running and more to do with how tightly tuned questing is now.

Prior to level 30, you definitely rip through the levels while you're running dungeons, no question. I would often ding more than once from beginning to end. This is especially true the first time I hit each dungeon and had quests to turn in at the end.

But as time went on, even with tank insta-queue, I felt like leveling speed had actually slowed to a crawl. I felt that even my two Worgen (Grevioux and Maeniel) that had gone 1-60 with no heirlooms had leveled faster post-40 than Sanele was. Or it could be that I was just enjoying it more. Either way...

The leveling-via-dungeons experiment is over
After that last run, I just decided I wasn't feeling it. There was no reason to play the game in a way I wasn't enjoying for reasons that I wasn't sure were even valid. So I stopped queuing and headed out into the world.

Since I was already stocked up on all the Prot plate gear (and out of JP on all my 85s), I decided to just stick with it and see how it would go. I figured, if nothing else, the bonus XP would offset any speed differences.

Two things happened:
1) I started having fun again. How novel.
2) OMG, I'm ripping through levels. Due in no small part to how easy it is to kill things.

With just about every character I've ever played before, if I was running along on my mount and accidentally pulled something, I'd just keep going and hope it didn't catch up. If it did, I'd kill it and then keep going.

On my Warrior, I'll look around first to see if there's at least 2 or 3 other mobs I can pull. If so, I'll stop and mow them all down. If not, then I'll try to keep going. A Prot Warrior can kill huge groups of mobs just as fast and more efficiently than a single one. And that's gobs of XP every time.

I've started playing games where I see how many mobs I can pull before they all start leashing or overwhelm me. In some areas of the Blasted Lands, I was able to get upwards of 15 on me at a time and drop them all.

Now that's fun.

My play time this past weekend was somewhat limited again. Much of my time Saturday was spent with my family celebrating the birth of my new nephew. And there was a lot of housework to be done on Sunday. Still, I managed to make it to 61. I did run Ramparts once, when I got the quest to do so. It was a good change of pace from the leveling grind and gave me a good chunk of XP. I plan to do Bloodfurnace once I turn in that quest.

In Outland and Northrend, I think this might be the way to go. Mix it up. Run dungeons when the natural progression of questing asks you to and leave them otherwise.

Obviously, this doesn't work in the old world anymore, where all the dungeon quests have been moved inside the dungeons. There's no real breadcrumbs leading you inside.

And, of course, this is just my preference. But it's what felt fun and stress free, and isn't that why I play games anyway?

Picture Day!

2011-06-03T14:35:00.006-06:00

Just some of the screenshots I've collected over the last couple months.

The werewolves can now breathe underwater. We're boned.

One of the only helmets I've seen that don't look absolutely ridiculous on Worgen.

Yes, I have both the Sparkle Pony and Running Wild. But it's a werewolf riding a giant, armored saber cat. How metal is that?

Wolf totem.

Speaking of totems, Earthmender Duarn decided to vent some of his frustrations while I was busy fighting Iso'rath.

This is the kind of quest I can really get behind!

In order to make the 31-point Demonology talent more appealing, a stealth component has been added. (Not really.)

Darth...Mool?

Take two conversations, equal parts awesome, and mix together...

Prince Thunderaan down. Guild achievement imminent.

Call me crazy, but I'm pretty sure that's not the proper duration on Mend Pet. (This happens whenever I have him out in groups. Also, anyone have a good name for a worm?)

I finally got the last piece (robe) of my Priest's Tier 6 set. And a shiny mace for the finishing touch. Looks soooo good.

This happened while waiting for a raid member that dc'd.

More Guild Firsts (in chronological order):
Atremedes

Chimaeron

Double Dragons

Ascendent Council

We made damn good progress on Cho'gall last night. I fully expect him to die Monday.

And how!

2011-05-31T11:51:00.002-06:00

Oops, I did it again.

Tanking the weekend

2011-05-31T09:50:00.002-06:00

Welcome back from your long weekend.

Those of you who had a long weekend.

And those of your who are coming back to...something.

Umm...hi again.

So anyway. I actually didn't WoW as much over the weekend as I usually do. Had a lot of other stuff going on. Most of what time I did spend in-game was spent working on my Gnome Warrior, steadily tanking my way through dungeons and leveling her towards the cap.

Friday afternoon into Saturday evening I pretty much flew through the levels. I went from 13 to 35 in that span, even after taking most of Saturday afternoon off to watch the second and third Pirates of the Caribbean flicks. Most dungeons yielded a level, if not two. Most of the groups I ran with were pleasant, if not entirely experienced. It was smooth sailing all the way through. For the most part, I was having fun. And even when I wasn't, I was at least getting rewarded enough to make it bearable.

Starting Sunday morning, things changed. I don't know if it's because it was starting to get a little repetitive, because I was starting to get into dungeons that I was totally unfamiliar with, because people were just set in their bad habits, because all the pleasant folks were spending time being with other people instead of playing WoW, or just coincidence.

Around that time I started ending up in Scarlet Monastery and Maraudon a lot. SM has always been very compartmentalized and Maraudon has become so segmented from it's "winginization" that any one section is over in a blink. That, combined with the climb in experience needed to level slowed down the dings a lot.

And it seemed like every group I got in was just cranky and impersonal. Every time I enter a dungeon, the first thing I do is greet everyone. Usually short and simple. "Hey," or "hey, all." In the earlier dungeons I got responses and sometimes we'd even banter and converse through the dungeon.

In the later ones, by the time I'd finished typing, the DPS has generally already pulled for me. No one would respond at all and the whole run would be done in silence.

Mages and Hunters seem to be the most impatient. Probably because they have ways of saving themselves when they pull and I choose not to pick up the mobs. As soon as that whole pack starts going for my healer, I grab them.

In one SM:Armory run, every time I pulled the Hunter would run ahead, pull the next 2 or 3 groups, bring them all back towards us and Feign Death.

I had a Scholomance run where a Warlock declared he was able to tank. He was booted after causing two wipes (only instance so far where there's been wipes) and killing himself three additional times.

Generally every run includes at least one person that refuses to attack my target, if not all the DPS. Ferals, I'm sad to say, seem to be the worst offenders in this regard.

I can see now why when people start hitting current-expansion dungeons, they have unrealistic expectations of how they should be run and are general poor performers. I don't want to go so far as to say the low-level dungeons encourage bad play...but they certainly don't punish it.

So far I haven't been called a bad tank (probably because I'm not) or had any real negativity directed at me (because I just do my job and wait for the run to end when it gets unpleasant). But the whole experience has become decidedly unfun and I just haven't had the motivation to queue.

Between Sunday and Monday, I only gained another 8 levels. Granted, given the amount of time I actually spent playing those two days, that's still not bad at all. And 30 cumulative levels over a 72 hour span isn't too shabby given that I pretty much only played mornings and/or nights over most of those three days...nothing in the afternoons.

I think I'm going to give it a solid rest for a few days and then make a push to get to Outland. If it gets better, awesome. If not, I may forgo the whole level-by-tanking-dungeons thing and fall back on questing. Not that I'm excited about the prospect of questing Outland and Northrend again, but at least I won't have other people ruining that for me.

Bear updates in the 4.2 Patch Notes

2011-05-27T10:13:00.003-06:00

Some interesting Bear updates in the latest 4.2 PTR patch notes:

Bear damage abilities were scaling too fast with higher gear levels compared to other tanks, so the following balance changes have been made. All the numbers cited are for level 85 characters; numbers will be lower for lower-level characters
Faerie Fire (Feral) base damage has been raised to 2950, up from 679. Attack power scaling has been decreased to 10.8%, down from 15%.
Maul base damage has been raised to 35, up from 8. Attack power scaling has been decreased to 19%, down from 26.4%.
Pulverize weapon damage percent has been decreased to 60%, down from 80%. Damage per Lacerate application has been increased to 1623, up from 361.
Mangle (Bear) weapon damage percent has been decreased to 190%, down from 260%. Bonus damage has been increased to 3306, down from 754.
Swipe base damage has been increased to 929, up from 215. Attack power scaling has been decreased to 12.3%, down from 17.1%.
Thrash initial base damage has been increased to 1464, up from 339. Initial damage attack power scaling has been decreased to 13.8%, down from 19.2%. Periodic base damage has been increased to 816, up from 189. Periodic damage attack power scaling has been decreased to 2.35%, down from 3.26%.
Lacerate initial base damage has been increased to 3608, up from 2089. Initial damage attack power scaling has been decreased to 5.52%, down from 7.66%. Periodic base damage has been increased to 69, up from 16. Periodic damage attack power scaling has been decreased to 0.369%, down from 0.512%.
Natural Reaction damage reduction has been increased to 9/18%, up from 6/12%.

What does this mean for us?

I'd like to sit here and say I saw this coming. But the truth is that when I see "Base Damage X and AP Scaling Y," I just kinda gloss over. It's never been my end of the game. Too much theory. Gimme application. How do I hold one mob? Two? Five? Ten? How do I make sure I live when that's happening? Where do I need to hold said mobs to give my raid the best chance of surviving? Those are the things I worry more about.

But if you look at the numbers with a little bit of hindsight, it's pretty obvious this was going to happen. Small base and huge scaling percentage? Yeah...your damage is going to run away at some point.

If you're a raid-geared tank, I doubt you'll see much difference when the patch goes live. I have a feeling these numbers were balanced to keep that gear/performance ratio pretty much in the same spot.

Where I think this could have an effect is on Bear tanks still in Dungeon and Heroic blues that are trying to raid gear themselves.

As you may remember from patch 4.1, the threat modifiers of a lot of our abilities where stripped away and were replaced with higher damage output to compensate. If scaling was an issue, specifically in that Tier 12 damage output would be too high, than it stands to reason that Dungeon/Heroic damage might have been a little low. Or at the very least, that with the evening out of the damage curve, it's going to bring Dungeon/Heroic damage up a little bit.

So for you non-raiding Bears out there that have maybe been having some threat and aggro issues, you may have a little easier time of things if/when these changes go live.

Light help me...

2011-05-25T13:40:00.003-06:00

One of the big achieves my guild has been going for is Stay Classy. We've had a thread on our forums since early February tracking our progress and keeping people in the loop about what we still need.

As of right now, we're actually very, very close. We're only missing 7 total race/class combos and many of those are 80 or above already. A few of them are either already Honored or already 85, and so they just need to complete the second half of the achieve requirements.

The two glaring exceptions at this point are Worgen Priest (though we have a couple people working on them now) and Gnome Warrior. I've taken up this latter portion of the challenge now that Maeniel is at 450 Enchanting and is effectively functioning as my mats factory.

Meet Sanele. (The random name gen found the name...after almost 10 minutes of names I'd never use. I couldn't pass it up.)

I've decided that, similar to Dinaer's Mage experiment, I'm going to level Sanele through dungeons. To lower my queue times and hopefully make this a relatively quick trip, I've decided I'm going to do it as a tank.

I'm really not sure what I'm in for here. I've never tanked anything level-appropriate prior to Kara. With the exception of going in for the achieves, I haven't even set foot in most of the pre-BC dungeons since...well...pre-BC. They're more than half the reason I almost quit the game while still in the mid-40s. Gnomeregan broke my spirits in regards to dungeon running. When it looked like I was going to have to run Sunken Temple to keep advancing, I waived the white flag.

KYL is what ended up bringing me back, and what gave me motivation to figure out this whole group aspect of the game was supposed to work. I wanted to be a part of this story, and there was only one way that was going to happen.

So...yeah. I'm probably 2 hours of play time (tops) from being able to queue.

Light help me...

A Bear's Guide to BWD: Maloriak

2011-05-24T00:09:00.001-06:00

Maybe it's just me and the various strengths/weaknesses of the group I typically work with...but I kind of feel like Maloriak is on the bottom of the difficulty curve of BWD bosses. He should be first and either Magmaw or ODS should be moved inside.

That said, he's not a pushover. He's probably also the most technically
demanding boss from a tanking perspective. It's very easy to slip up and induce a wipe.

Maloriak's also a unique boss in that pacing and timing are very important. There's a right "speed" for this fight. Go too slow and you'll hit the enrage timer. Go too fast and, unless you have a very well-geared add tank and healer or a third tank, you'll get overwhelmed by adds and wipe the raid. More on those in a bit.

As you may have gathered, two tanks are required for this fight: the Maloriak tank and an add tank. Bears can generally handle either. This fight has 20 adds total: 18 Aberrations (released 3 at a time) and 2 Prime Subjects (released at the start of Phease 2). Any Aberrations that haven't been released by the start of Phase 2 will also be released at that time. All the adds are buffed with Growth Catalyst. The more you have in a small space, the tougher they get.

Maloriak is a two phase fight, with the first phase broken up into a series of three mini-phases: Red, Blue, and Green. Each mini-phase lasts 40 seconds.

About 20 seconds after the pull, Maloriak will run to his pot-o-potions and initiate the first mini-phase. It will randomly be either Red or Blue.

For the Red phases the important mechanic is a frontal-cone AoE fire blast that extends the length of the room and shares its damage among everyone it hits. So for this phase you'll want to make sure everyone is in front of Maloriak, with the exception of any non-tanks that get Consuming Flames. Those people should run off to the side until the debuff expires.

For the Blue phases, the idea is to stay spread out. Maloriak will be casting Biting Chill and Flash Freeze, both of which affect an area around the target.

The second mini-phase will also be either Red or Blue, but it won't be the same as the first. So if the first mini-phase was Red, the second will be Blue and visa versa.

The third mini-phase is always Green. The Green mini-phase is a burn phase, where everyone in the room (friend or foe) will be taking 100% additional damage for 15 seconds due to Debilitating Slime. The slime also strips the adds of their Growth Catalyst buff. This is when all the DPS should leave Maloriak and burn down the Aberrations that have been released.

After the Green mini-phase, the loop starts over.

Throughout the phase, there's going to be two spells that you have to keep an eye on. The first is Arcane Storm. This must be interrupted every time and as quickly as possible to keep your raid from taking heavy AoE damage. The second is Release Aberrations. When successfully cast, this spell releases three adds into the room from the vats on the north and south walls. On average, he's going to cast Release Aberrations 5-6 times during each set of three mini-phases. You want him to successfully cast it 3 times. No more, no less. The rest have to be interrupted.

It's best to appoint two interrupters before the fight starts, one for each of the spells.

He'll also be casting Remedy on himself. Warriors can Shield Slam this off, but other tanks are going to have to depend on their raid to get rid of it.

The idea in this fight is to go through the mini-phase rotation twice, letting out 9 Aberrations each time. After that, Maloriak can safely be pushed into Phase 2.

Phase 2 starts when Maloriak hits 25%. From that point on, it's a burn fight.

Maloriak Tank
The first phase doesn't have any positional requirements. Most groups tank Maloriak right where he's standing when you enter the room. He will be running between the pot and the tank during this phase, so keep that in mind. You don't want to have your melee dps chasing him to keep doing their job.

More often than not, one of the interrupters during this phase is going to be the tank. Regardless of which spell you're given to interrupt, don't be too quick on your Skull Bash. You want to be sure you're interrupting the right ability.

If you're interrupting Arcane Storm, it's easy. Just get every one. The air above the raid will fill with lightning streaks, so it's pretty easy to identify.

If you're interrupting Release Aberrations, it's a little harder. You need to be keeping track of how many times it's gone off so you know whether to interrupt it or not. Again, the magic number here is three successful casts prior to each Green mini-phase. The third successful cast should come right before the Green mini-phase starts, otherwise it puts a lot of strain on the add tank and your healers.

After all 18 Aberrations have been released, you don't need to interrupt anymore. Maloriak will still cast the Release, but it won't do anything.

During the Red mini-phases, make sure you keep Maloriak facing your raid. There's nothing else special you have to do. Maloriak will sometimes cast Consuming Flames debuff on you. If you get it, there's nothing you can do. Moving will just cause Maloriak to turn with you, and you don't want to do that. Just pop a cooldown and eat the flames.

During the Blue mini-phases, you need to keep an eye on your raid. Biting chill can land on anyone, even you. Flash Freeze should never be cast directly on you, but it can still chain to you if you're too close to the person it is cast on. Generally this won't be an issue. Just make sure you tank Maloriak in the same spot throughout Phase 1 and it'll be everyone else's job to stay away from you during the Blue mini-phases.

When Maloriak starts the Green mini-phase, he's going to leap to the back of the room. Not long after he'll cast Arcane Storm. Your DPS is going to be focused on the adds at the time so it'll be up to you to interrupt that, even if you're typically the Release Aberrations interrupter. This is nice for Bears, since our Skull Bash works from range. We don't have to run all the way to him to interrupt.

Once you've interrupted the Storm toss out a quick Swipe and Thrash to help with the adds if they're nearby and then drag Maloriak back to his normal tanking spot.

When Phase 2 starts, your job gets a little tougher. Maloriak will begin casting Magma Jets. This puts a line of fire on the ground in front of him (not at a random target, as the tooltip says) that does heavy damage if it hits and leaves a trail that will damage anyone that runs through it. When he starts casting this, you need to move out of the way fast.

I've seen two different tactics for dealing with this spell.

I like to keep Maloriak where he's been the entire fight. When Phase 2 starts, I immediate face him towards the pot. When the first Magma Jets goes off, I turn him 90°, so that he's facing either the North or South wall. For the second Magma Jets, I run through him, turning him 180°. Finally, for the third, I turn him back 90° towards the pot. Then just keep repeating that. Only two Magma Jets trails are on the ground at a time, so this works out. The rest of the raid just has to make sure they stay in the front half of the room.

The other tank in my raids likes to kite Maloriak along the edges of the room, keeping him facing the walls for each Magma Jets cast and then moving him between. This requires a lot more movement and coordination by the tank (I think), but it also frees up the entire room for the rest of your raid.

Regardless of what method you choose, make sure to keep an eye out for floating ice balls and steer clear of them.

Aberrations Tank
The Aberrations tank job is simple: pick up and hold the Aberrations until the Green mini-phase.

You have a little bit of time at the start of the fight before any of the Aberrations are released where you can help DPS Maloriak. Once that first Release Aberrations goes off, though, you have to be ready to get the adds.

The Aberrations can come from a lot of different spots in the room and it can be difficult to pick them up, given our limited ranged options. Usually this isn't a big deal, though. Almost every raid has one healer who picks up more heal-aggro than the others. Just park yourself near that healer and pull the Aberrations away as they get there. You may have to Growl at the occasional straggler, but that's easy enough.

The most important thing for the Aberrations tank to do is keep the adds away from Maloriak. Their Growth Catalyst buff spreads to him, too. You don't want that happening.

Also watch your positioning during the Blue mini-phases. Like Maloriak tank, Flash Freeze should never be cast on you, but it can still chain to you if you're not careful. You also don't want to be taking the pulsing Biting Chill damage from another raid member, especially once you get beyond three Aberrations.

During the Red mini-phases, you probably shouldn't be standing in the path of the Scorching Blast, either.

Make sure you're communicating with the interrupters to keep them informed of how many adds you have. Three is no real threat. Six starts hurting a little. Nine is going to require heavy heals and good use of your cooldowns. This is why you don't want the third Release Aberrations cast to go off until right before the Green mini-phase. The longer you have 9 adds doing 180% damage to you, the hard this fight is going to be.

More than 9 will wipe all but the most uber-geared tanks.

There's usually going to be an uninterrupted Release Aberrations cast during the first Green mini-phase. All your DPS are going to be busy burning down the current adds, and the Maloriak tank's interrupt is going to be on cooldown from having interrupted the Arcane Storm just before it. So...no rest for the weary there.

Once all 18 Aberrations have been killed, you can go Cat again and help your raid DPS Maloriak into Phase 2.

At the start of Phase 2, Maloriak is going to release any unreleased Aberrations (hopefully none) and the two Prime Subjects. The Subjects are always going to come from opposite ends of the room. They're untauntable and they have to be picked up as quickly as possible. Shortly after they're released, they're going to fixate on whoever they're aggroed on for the rest of the fight. It needs to be you.

Once you have them, you just need to hold them until your DPS have killed Maloriak.

Like the Aberrations, the Subjects have the Growth Catalyst buff. Make sure you keep them far away from Maloriak. Avoid any floating ice balls you see. And if one of the Subjects is fixated on a raid member other than you, take the other one away to reduce the damage that other person takes.

Once Maloriak is down, you'll be looking for the Aberration's Leggings and the Cloak of Biting Chill, which is T11 BiS cloak for Bears.

Fun times in ICC

2011-05-23T11:43:00.002-06:00

So an interesting thing (to me) happened last night.

We put together a semi-impromptu group to go run H ICC to try and get the guild achieve for a H LK kill and to make some inroads on getting people their Frostwrym mounts. Initially the invite only went out to people who were Kingslayers before Cata dropped (because I had no idea how difficult it was going to end up being), but when a lot of people just couldn't make it on a Sunday, we ended up pulling in people that just happened to be online so we could go. I figured, if nothing else, it would be a good way to see what we were up against for future attempts.

As we went through I gave brief descriptions of important stuff on each of the fights, but they were hasty and vague at best, especially on the later bosses. And a lot of them ended with, "I don't know what's different on Heroic mode. We'll just pull and figure it out."

Between determination and the fact that the Heroic modes are a lot more brute-forcible than I was expecting, we made a fairly rapid trip all the way up to the Frozen Throne.

I think a good summation of the night was when I was trying to describe the LK fight and more or less resorted to, "We're really short on time and I don't want to spend it going over this fight in detail. Just listen and be ready to react."

And everyone did. Again, we may have outgeared the fight significantly, to the point where some mechanics were trivialized. But there's other mechanics during that fight that no amount of gear can overcome. It's attentiveness and reaction only.

We didn't get the heroic kill. But out of 3 attempts, we came damn close twice. Both times we were done in by a Defile that we didn't react to quite quick enough.

But I think it speaks volumes about the raiders in that run that I can say, "just listen," and we can almost kill H LK the first time any of us have seen it in that mode, overgeared or not. And for a few raiders in that group, that's a long way to have come from when they first started running with us.

Despite the non-kill, it was still a nice high-note to end my weekend.

Random thoughts on Aspects

2011-05-20T09:32:00.002-06:00

Have you seen the new Nozdormu model yet? Blizz is gettin' serious with their Aspects.

I'd hit it.

What's more interesting, though, is the fact this marks the first time since WoW's inception that Nozdormu is more than a whisper or an apparition. His whereabouts (and whenabouts) have been a complete mystery for the last 6+ years. No one's really sure what he's been up to.

Clearly the choosing of a new Aspect is a good reason to finally show up. It's probably one of the most profound events in Azeroth's history. Certainly unprecedented. But I have to wonder how he's going to be welcomed. And what kind of questions is Alexstrasza going to have for him? Afterall, there's evidence that suggests he's responsible for, if not leading, the Infinite Dragonflight.

Each expansion has had little bits of Infinite lore scattered about. In Vanilla it was the time distortions in Andorhal. In BC we got Durnholde and the Black Morass. And, to a lesser degree, Hyjal Summit. In Wrath it was the Bronze Dragonshire and Old Stratholme.

Could Nozdormu showing up now be a lead-in to the rumored Caverns of Time: War of the Ancients raid we've been hearing about? Is this story going to be coming to a head soon?

Should be interesting to see how long he sticks around.

Also, on the topic of picking a new Aspect...

For as unprecedented as it is in the thousands and thousands of years that Azeroth has been around, it's something that's going to play out again in the very near future. There's little question that we're going to be killing Deathwing. The Earth Aspect will soon be no more. (You can argue he hasn't been for a while.)

Who's going to step up and lead the cruel, arrogant Black Dragonflight? Can you think of any Black Dragon you've come across in game that you would want in charge? Have you seen any (beyond Nef and Ony) that would even qualify?

Of course, rumors are that Thrall will get the job. Wouldn't that be interesting? A mortal from another world becoming an Aspect. Is it possible? Can an aspect be not-a-dragon? What would Varian have to say about that? (Hopefully, "I give up. Anduin, you're in charge now.")

And I kind of wonder...will Nozdormu be next on the replacement list? (Chromie, you're up.)

OMG Premium Fees??!!?1

2011-05-18T11:00:00.000-06:00

I kinda pay attention to the blue tracker on MMO-Champion just because I like to see what the devs are commenting on...even if half of them end up being "locking this thread because the community can't handle their shit".

The problem is that after about 10 minutes of reading these posts, I get into the same state of mind that reading the comments section of news articles gets me to...namely pissed off at how ignorant and spiteful everyone is. I realize it's a small, but very vocal minority projecting this image. But when something is inundated with that kind of vitriol, it's hard not to generalize.

So of course, this morning there's about eleventy-billion threads about Cross-server Friends List LFD being a Premium Service that people have to pay additional for.

Now, before I go further, I'm going to fully admit my bias on the subject.

All the people I want to play with are already on my server. So this isn't a feature I really need.
I am a full-time working adult with a decent job, as is Norfin. The only debt I'm currently carrying is my mortgage. The only "dependents" I have are our two dogs. With rare exceptions, I don't rack up more on my credit cards than I can pay off at the end of the month. So I have a fair amount of disposable income.

I realize a lot of people aren't in the same boat as me. That said...

Seriously, people? Get over yourself.

Yes, you already pay a monthly fee. You want to know where that goes? Two years worth of content patches...art assets, class mechanics, animations, zones, boss encounters, questlines, etc. CMs that read the forums, put up with your BS, and respond when appropriate. GMs that answer the endless stream of tickets submitted and are generally very quick to respond. Oh, and let's not forget the servers that run the game. In case you were unaware, Blizz worked closely with AT&T to design some really crazy, proprietary stuff that lets (all 11M+ of) us play the game as seamlessly as we do. And if you think that designing or maintaining that kind of technology is cheap, you're either dumb or delusional. This isn't a desktop system you can just replace every couple of years and occasionally upgrade your graphics card.

And that fee is nominal. Seriously. Your monthly fee buys you, on average, 730 hours of play time. I can't go to the theater and watch 4 hours of movies as cheaply. What the hell are you complaining about? If you don't already feel you're getting your value out of it, that's your own fault.

But, San! Why should I have to pay more money to play with my friends?

I'd ask why you aren't already playing with your friends. No one's forcing you not to. Last I checked, you can choose to roll a character on any realm you want. Blizz doesn't pick for you. So, somewhere along the line, you and your friends made your own choices to not play together.

If you've since realized you made a bad choice, server transfers are available for a one-time fee that's less that what the premium services cost for a year. Rerolls are free. And it's ridiculously easy to level to the cap, even with zero heirloom gear. Hell, you can even level together. Then you get the whole game with your friends 24/7, not just LFD.

Of course, if being in your level-25, 1337 13/13H raiding guild is more important to you, then that's fine. That's your choice, too. But don't complain when you can't have everything your way. Sometimes you have to make those kinds of choices.

Only now the choice isn't "do I want A or B?" It's "am I willing to play a little bit more for B so I can still have A at the same time?" That seems reasonable to me. It's kind of how the world works.

But, San! Blizz has said over and over they won't charge us for services that give certain players advantages over others! And now they are!

I fail to see how this does that. Granted, I'm a competent player in a big guild that also has many other competent players. I don't need LFD. That said, I still sometimes use it. And I get by just fine.

How do you know your friends are any more competent that the average LFD'er anyway? What kind of "advantage" does this feature actually provide that you can't get anyway? Please, make a logical case if you can.

But, San! This is the next step in the inevitable free-to-play, microtransactions-for-everything end-goal. Soon we'll have to pay extra for instances and raids and epic gear and...

Ah, yes. The slippery slope argument. Did you know that if we allow gay marriage, soon people will want to be marrying their box turtles? It's true.

Also, if I keep reading and talking about this drivel, I'll end up as mentally paralyzed as all the half-wits spewing it. I mean...probably not. But just in case, I'm going to stop now.

A Bear's Guide to BoT: Halfus Wyrmbreaker

2011-05-17T15:19:00.001-06:00

I've been putting this particular guide off for weeks and weeks. I wanted to cover all the "entry" raid bosses before I started discussing the ones further into each raid, but I've been dreading this one. How do you write a tanking guide for a fight that can change from week to week?

There's 3 aspects to this fight that are important. First is your main objective--the big etin, Halfus. He does need to be tanked, so you will have to worry about him.

Halfus swings moderately slow (usually), but does hit pretty hard. Starting from the moment he hits 50%, and then periodically thereafter, Halfus casts Furious Roar 3 times in quick succession. This acts as a raid-wide 6-second stun plus damage. The good news is that Halfus isn't attacking while he does this. The bad news is that anything else involved in the fight still is.

Second is Halfus's pet Proto-Drake. The PD flies above the raid and rains down fire on everyone. It can't be killed. It can't be tanked. It's just there as a source of raid damage. Its standard attack is a fireball with splash damage. For this reason, you'll want to stay spread out. This is particularly important as a tank. If you're already taking damage from Halfus or MC'd dragons, you want don't want to be taking splash damage from standing too close to your other raid members as well.

Third is Halfus's assortment of captured dragons. There's five total, three of which are going to be "active" any given week. (The other two will have "knock-out" stars swirling above their heads and are non-factors.) Using some trusty HS probability (n!/(r!(n-r)!)), for n=5 and r=3) we come up with the nice, round number of 10 possible combinations of dragons you might have to worry about.

Each of the three active dragons is going to give either Halfus or the PD some kind of buff or additional ability. Each one also has the potential to give a debuff to the same target. The catch is that in order to activate the debuff you need to release the dragon from captivity--at which time Halfus is going to MC it and you have to kill it. This will also require a tank, though they're all just tank-and-spank adds. The debuff remains active even after you've killed the dragon.

How you handle the dragons is going to be where your strategy changes from week to week. This can vary based on your healers, your tanks, and your overall raid dps. You can "free" the dragons in any order you want. You can also free as many at a time as you want. Again, there's a trade-off here. More freed dragons equals more debuffs on Halfus and/or his PD. But it's also more strain on the tanks and healers.

The dragons are friendly at the start of the fight, so feel free to walk right up to them. Once Halfus is engaged, your pointer will turn into a lock when hovering over a dragon. Right-click to start channeling the release. Make sure you don't move or re-click while you're doing this, just like any channeled spell. Once the channel is complete, you'll have about three seconds before the dragon gets MC'd and you have to grab aggro.

There's a 6 minute enrage timer on this fight, but each time your raid successfully kills one of the dragons, Halfus takes an additional 100% damage.

In my group's runs, we generally end up killing all three active dragons. More often than not, we'll bring the first two out at the same time and then go for the third when they're both down. Usually we down Halfus with about 30-seconds to a minute left on the enrage timer and my guild isn't known for our amazing DPS output.

The base strategy for this fight is one tank on Halfus and one for the dragons that you'll be killing. Or course, it's never quite that simple.

Proto-Drake Dragons
These dragons give their buffs/debuffs to Halfus's PD. Having either or both of them active is going to increase the total damage going out to your raid. Freeing them helps bring that raid damage back down to easier-to-heal levels.

Time Warden (Bronze Drake)
The Time Warden is on the right side of the room from where you enter. When he's active, the PD gains the Fireball Barrage ability, which is exactly what it sounds like. Every 30 seconds or so the PD will rain down a barrage of fireballs on your raid.

When you free the Time Warden, he places Time Dilation on the PD. This makes its fireballs (both standard and the Barrage) avoidable. Fire plumes will appear on the ground where the fireballs are going to hit and you'll have a couple seconds to get 4 yards away from them before impact. So if you see them appear under your feet, move.

This isn't the most important dragon to free at the beginning of the fight, but it's not the least either. If you plan freeing two dragons at once, this should probably be one of them, though. Otherwise the combined damage of the dragons and the PD's fireballs will likely kill you.

Orphaned Emerald Whelps (Many whelps!)
The Whelps are caged up to the left of the Time Warden. When they're active, they give the PD the Scorching Breath ability. While the ability says that it damages enemies "in front of the caster," your entire raid is in front of the PD and in range of this breath at all times. So it's effectively an 8-second raid-wide AoE.

To free the Whelps you actually have to click on the cage, not the Whelps. Once they're out, they cast Atrophic Poison on the PD, lowering the damage of all his abilities. 750 damage may not seem like much, but the ability stacks and each of the 8 Whelps applies one stack. That's 6,000...a significant difference.

I'd argue that Bears are the most ideal Whelp tanks, thanks to our mobile AoE tanking prowess. If you are tanking the Whelps, it's important that you wait until they're hostile to start Swiping and Thrashing, or you might find yourself waiting several long seconds without being able to pick them up. If you do get a little over-excited, a well-timed Challenging Roar can save the day.

From a tanking perspective, I'd call the Whelps the next-to-least important to free. That said, if the Time Warden or Storm Rider are also active it's very easy to pull the Whelps with either of them and have your DPS go AoE crazy at the start of the fight. Once the Whelps go down, the drake will already be missing a good chunk of health.

Halfus Dragons
Obviously, these are the dragons that give their buffs/debuffs to Halfus. These dragons each add a mechanic to the encounter that has to be dealt with in some manner and generally increase the damage taken by the Halfus tank. Freeing them makes the extra mechanics easier to deal with and/or reduces the amount of damage the Halfus tank will be taking.

Storm Rider (Wind Drake)
The Storm Rider is immediately to Halfus's right. When active, he gives Halfus a Shadow Nova, which is a raid-wide damage and knock-back ability on a 0.25 second cast.

When you free the Storm Rider, he casts Cyclone Winds on Halfus, which makes the Shadow Nova a 1.5 second cast...something you can actually interrupt.

In a 10-man group, the time between Shadow Nova casts is such that a tank can single-handedly interrupt them all. Make sure that you do.

Once Halfus gets to 50%, he'll cast a Nova immediately after his third Furious Roar. There's nothing you'll be able to do to interrupt it at that point, so just be prepared to deal with that.

I generally feel the Storm Rider is the first dragon that should be freed any time it's active. Whether or not you free another of the dragons along with it is up to you and your raid, but the knock-back effect on the Nova is extremely disruptive and you should be making sure it can be interrupted from the very first one.

Slate Dragon (Stone Drake)
The Slate Dragon is immediately to Halfus' left and it's pretty much the bane of this fight from a tank's perspective. When the Slate Dragon is active, Halfus gains Malevolent Strikes, which causes his attacks to place a stacking 6% healing-received reduction debuff on the tank each time they land. The debuff stacks up to 15 times and lasts 30 seconds from the final application.

When the Stone Drake is active, Taunt-swapping enters the picture.

When you free the Slate Dragon, he'll place Stone Touch on Halfus, which will periodically stun him for 12 seconds.

The Slate Dragon will usually be the last one freed. The 12 second stun on Halfus is nice, but it's not what I'd call a game changer. The Malevolent Strike stacks last longer than that, so taunt-swapping is still the only way to drop them. And a frozen Halfus makes taunt-swapping harder because...well...a frozen target doesn't move. You'll gain aggro over the other tank, but it may not be immediately apparent and can just lead to confusion.

If your raid is only freeing one dragon at a time (Whelps excluded), then a true tank-swap should occur. The Halfus tank should take the dragon and visa versa. If you're freeing two dragons at once, or you have the Whelps, this becomes much more difficult. In a two-dragon situation, the dragon not being burned down by the raid should be the one the Halfus tank taunts. If the Whelps are involved, the Halfus tank should be taking any active non-whelp dragon.

The first swap should occur when the Halfus tank hits 5 or 6 stacks. This is going to happen not long after the add tank gets initial aggro on any dragons, so it can get dicey right there.

Each subsequent taunt should happen the moment the non-Halfus tank's stacks drop off. This taunt-swapping will continue through the duration of the fight.

A third tank, or a well-geared DPSer in the right stance/presence/form can help a lot if the two tanks alone struggle here.

Nether Scion (Nether Drake)
The final potential dragon in this fight is the Nether Scion. It will be all the way on the left, just inside the entrance as you come into the room. When the Nether Scion is active, Halfus gains Frenzied Assault, increasing his attack speed by 100%.

If the Nether Scion and Slate Dragon are both active, this fight becomes nightmarish.

When you free the Nether Scion, he casts Nether Blindness on Halfus, reducing his attack speed, hit chance, and damage done all by 25%. Effectively, this brings his damage output just below where it would be without the Nether Scion being active. Malevolent Strike debuffs will still stack slightly faster than normal, though.

The Nether Scion is second only to the Storm Rider in freeing priority. And if they're both active, you should probably do what you can to free them both right from the start. The best way to do this (minus a third tank) is to make sure you keep your raid far away from one of them. Have a DPS free that one and then high-tail it back to the rest of the raid. (Rogues, Mages, Warlocks, and Shamans with 2/2 Ancestral Swiftness are good candidates.) Once the dragon becomes hostile, Growl and F3 before it hits anyone else.

Blow cooldowns.

As far loot goes, Halfus is okay for Ferals. Essence of the Cyclone has a lot of Agi on it, but the Crit proc is much more suited to your Cat set than your Bear one. Malevolence is in a similar boat. It is a pretty nice Bear weapon and you shouldn't be turning your nose up at it...but your inner Cat is going to get more value out of it than you will. The Storm Rider's Boots are also a very nice drop if you haven't acquired your tier boots yet.

More of Dad's adventures in Azeroth

2011-05-09T11:32:00.000-06:00

Well, it's been almost 3 months since I last wrote about my dad's exploits in Azeroth, so I figure it's about time for another update.

As for the content of the last post...

I did spend that weekend down at my parents' place, most of which was playing WoW along-side dad.

We worked out a Prot spec, figured out the rotation, and shored up some of the holes in his tanking gear. A lot of this was a learning experience for me, too, as I had no idea how Prot Warriors played.

I also got him set up on Vent and showed him how to use that.

By the time we did all that and got a group together, we really only had time for one run. We took it slow, but overall he did pretty well. He held primary targets just fine, and did a good job of not breaking CC. The biggest weak spot was not realizing when he lost aggro on tertiary targets or when CC would break and a new mob would enter the fray mid-fight and go straight for the healer. "Taunt Star," was probably the one thing I said most often.

Sadly, we haven't been able to run another dungeon since then and that's something I feel legitimately bad about. My dad's mostly a weekend day-time player, and most of our guild members that are more patient and willing to take the time to go on those sorts of runs are evening players. So it's been hard to mesh our schedules and get a group. But it's something I want to try harder to do, because I think he had a lot of fun tanking for us. And actually playing together.

That doesn't mean he's been idle, though. He took up Mining and Blacksmithing on his Warrior, though not at the same time. He didn't pick up BS until after he'd maxed out mining...and had already sold most of the low-level ores he collected while doing so.

He also rolled a second toon. He now has a Gnome Mage that he's been working on and has already gotten him to Zangarmarsh. Being home for Mother's day last weekend provided the first opportunity I've had to really talk to him about it since he started the toon. I was happy that he seemed to be legitimately enjoying it, rather than just kinda falling back on it as "something to do." He was really excited about the fact that he'd been able to solo most of the group content out in Hellfire with good usage of Mirror Image. He even managed the quests out on the West end of the zone where you have to kill the big, red rock giants. One at a time, mind you, waiting for the cooldown on Mirror Image to expire between each. But still, that's impressive. Most of the toons I've taken through there, I couldn't solo those while level-appropriate.

The only one he needed help with was Arazzius. I was out there on Maeniel at the same time, so I actually got to help out on a level-appropriate toon for the first time since he started playing and I followed him around on a baby Pally. Almost every other time he's needed help with group stuff, I've either had to go out there on San or Dal and just keep him healed up while he fought, or ask Norfin to jump on one of his toons closer to the right level and go help. (He doesn't like it when you take an overpowered character to "help" and then just slaughter whatever he's up against. Not that I blame him. I don't like helping or being helped that way most of the time, either.)

He's also been working on Enchanting and Tailoring on the Mage as he's leveled and has kept those up with the curve. So he's definitely got professions down now.

Of course it wouldn't be a trip home without a fun noob moment to share. We were sitting on the couch chatting about the mage and he mentioned that he really liked how many ways he had to freeze mobs and run away from them when he needed/wanted to. This got me wondering...

"What tree did you spec down?"
"Frost."
"Frost? Really?"
"Yeah. Why?"
"If you were Frost, you should have a Water Elemental running around with you, helping you out. I've never seen you with one."
"Oh, I have him. But I couldn't seem to make him do anything, so I just put him away and left him there."

He's gone from 10 (Frost Mages get the elemental as soon as they select that tree now) to 65 without it.

So I got to go teach him pet management and how they work. For example, selecting the Move To command and placing them out amongst some mobs is not very effective.

First impressions on T12 bonuses

2011-05-05T10:32:00.001-06:00

When I was driving to work this morning I had about 3 different ideas for posts spinning around in my head. Then I got to my desk, did quick perusal of My Morning Internet™ and instantly settled on a fourth option.

Wowstiq has posted preview of the T12 Set Bonuses. A lot of them are nice, but two in particular stood out for me.

The first was the Shadow Priest 4pc bonus:

4-piece While you have Shadow Word: Pain, Devouring Plague, and Vampiric Touch active on the same target you gain Dark Flames, which reduces the cooldown of Mind Blast by 3 sec.

This is a really interesting direction that I don't think I've previously seen in set bonuses. Most set bonuses give you some kind of passive bonus for doing the things you already do (i.e. Resto Shaman 2pc: Your periodic healing from Riptide has a 40% chance to restore 1% of your base mana each time it heals a target) or significantly alter your standard rotations (i.e. Shadow Priest T9 2pc...that extra 6 seconds really screwed me up for a while. I had the first minute of my rotation ingrained into muscle memory.)

While this new Shadow 4pc bonus works similarly by reducing the cooldown on one of the most powerful Shadow Priest spells by a significant amount, it takes it one step further. You have to be playing your class right to get that bonus. On a boss fight, a Shadow Priest should have near-100% uptime on SW:P, DP, and VT. This set bonus further encourages people to learn how to do that in order to make the best use of it. It's a really interesting direction for Blizz to take with the design and I'm very interested in seeing how well it works out.

Similar to that is the new Cat 4pc Bonus:

Your finishing moves have a 20% chance per combo point to extend the duration of Berserk by 2 + (20 * ComboPoints) sec...

While I'm pretty sure the number 20 is a place holder for something much more reasonable (not that I'd complain about a 102 second extension to Berserk) it follows that same trend of trying to get us to play our class the right way.

Common wisdom right now is to Shred like a manic while under the effects of Berserk, ignoring finishers (except to refresh Rip if it's about to expire). While it's certainly a huge DPS spike, it pretty much ignores the way the combo point system is supposed to work. This set bonus encourages Kitties to spend those CPs on finishers (probably Ferocious Bites) in order to try to extend the overall duration of Berserk.

To make this work, though, Blizz needs to really fine tune it. FB isn't in the best of places right now. There are some people who suggest it should be ignored outright until the last 25% of a fight (given 2/2 Blood in the Water). If it's not glyphed it's a very high-cost attack. And if it is, its overall damage potential isn't much better than Shred.

Even under the effects of Berserk, when the Energy cost is reduced, there still needs to be a viable trade-off.

We know that whatever the final number on the time extension ends up being, they're not going to make it high enough to guarantee another 5pt finisher before Berserk expires. Otherwise we could keep ourselves in a Berserk state for the entirety of a fight. But it still has to be sufficiently long for using FB when you already have Rip and Savage Roar going to be a good exchange for those extra seconds.

Or they could just retune FB to make it more viable before the last 25% of a fight...

Complete tangent aside there, it still shows an effort to get people to play Kitty DPS the way it was intended: build your CPs and spend them.

Finally, MALORNE!!!!

A Bear's Guide to T4W: Conclave of Wind

2011-05-04T11:29:00.004-06:00

Conclave of Wind is the first of the two encounters in the Throne of the Four Winds. It's a pretty unique fight in that your raid group is split up into very distinct groups and personal accountability is extremely high.

There are three separate bosses to this encounter, resting on three platforms connected by air bridges. Stepping on an air bridge whisks you across to the next platform.

Unlike most of the multi-boss fights in Cata, they do not share a health pool. Each boss has their own. When one "dies," it begins to channel a 60-second, uninterruptable regeneration spell, after which time its health pool returns to full. The only way to end the channel is to end the encounter by killing all three bosses. So from the time the first one "dies," you have 60 seconds to finish off the other two.

If any of the platforms is empty while the boss on it is still alive, that boss will channel a spell that silences your entire raid and deals significant continuous damage.

Each boss has an energy bar that goes to 90. They all fill at the same rate. When their energy bars hit 90 (this takes about a minute), they go into a "discharge" phase. During this phase each one will port to the middle of their platform and channel a particularly powerful spell. Additionally, the air bridges disappear for the duration of this phase (15 seconds) so whichever platform you're on when it starts, you're stuck there.

As a tank, you're really only concerned with two of the three bosses: Anshal (West platform) and Nezir (North platform). Rohash (East platform) is very melee unfriendly. He's range-tanked by DPS.

This fight requires two tanks. One will start on Anshal and the other on Nezir. Figure out which tank will be starting on each boss. There will be tank swapping, so you will eventually be tanking each of them. Once you know where you're headed and you're all buffed up, jump across the bridges to the appropriate platform. The bosses don't pull until one of them is actually attacked, so you have some freedom while getting into position.

Tanking Anshal
The Anshal platform is generally going to consist of 3 DPS, a healer, and a tank.

Anshal's main ability is Soothing Breeze. It drops a healing circle directly beneath him that works much like the one the Young Storm Dragons in VP drop. Any enemy inside the circle is going to get a lot of healing. Unlike the circles the Dragons drop, however, any player standing inside the circle will be silenced and pacified (and not healed).

You should be keeping an eye on Anshal's cast bar and running the moment he starts casting this to kite him away. His hit box is a good bit larger than his model, which makes this a difficult task in two ways. 1) You have to move a lot further to actually get him to follow you. 2) It can look like he's out of the circle when he really isn't. Keep an eye on his health bar. If it keeps going up, move him further.

Ideally, you should be tanking and kiting Anshal close to the edges of his platform. If he drops a Soothing Breeze directly in the middle it's very tough to get him out of it.

The other ability Anshal casts is Nuture. He'll do this once per normal phase. Nuture summons a group (5 or 6) of Lasher/Flayer adds called Ravenous Creepers. They'll all spawn near Anshal, but not in any kind of convenient cluster. The Creepers don't hit all that hard, but they do pulse Toxic Spores every 5 seconds.

Depending on your group, there's two ways these adds can be handled. If you have good slow/root CC (Frost Mages and DKs, Hunters, Shamans) you can have your DPS take care of them while you keep focusing solely on Anshal. If not, you'll want to tank them yourself while they're burned down.

The easiest way to pick them up is to stand near your healer, as that's the first place they're going to run. Once you've collected them, your healer needs to get away to avoid the stacking DoT.

I actually recommend the second method for Bear tanks. Our AoE DPS (at least right now in 4.1) is through the roof. With Swipe and Thrash at our disposal, we can really help drop these guys fast. Popping Berserk here is also really nice for those free, rapid, multi-target Mangles.

And Barkskin. Don't forget that.

Also note that Anshal is going to drop a Soothing Breeze shortly after summoning the adds. So you'll need to move him and them out of it quickly.

As Anshal approaches 70 energy, you need to start making your way to the bridge that leads to Nezir's platform. Do everything you can to make sure all his adds are dead by this point. When he gets to 80 energy, you (and everyone else on your platform) should be jumping across. This is where the tank swap occurs. The Nezir tank (and healer) will be jumping onto Anshal's platform at the same time.

Anshal "Discharge" Transition
Upon landing from Nezir's platform, you need to target Anshal and Growl immediately. Depending on the timing of the tank swap, there may still be a few active seconds where Anshal will be taking swings and you want to make sure they're at you, not your healer. Also, if the last group left any adds, you'll need to pick them up.

Once Anshal's energy actually hits 90, he's going to port to the center of his platform and channel Zephyr. It's going to heal him for a significant amount and give him a good damage buff that will last 15 seconds after he's done channeling. Any adds left alive from the previous phase will be healed to full and will get the same damage buff.

When Anshal stops channeling Zephyr, Growl again for good measure and toss an F3 for additional threat.

You'll want wait for Anshal at the edge of his platform near the bridge to Nezir. When the DPS return, they'll have less distance to cover before they can get back to work.

At this point you'll be tanking Anshal until the next tank swap. (Waiting for your Wind Chill debuff to drop off.)

Tanking Nezir.
During the normal phases the Nezir platform is going to have a tank and healer. All the DPS will be working on the other two bosses.

For the most part, Nezir is going to be tanked in the center of his platform. He doesn't need to move much.

Nezir has two basic abilities that you'll be dealing with. The first is Ice Patch. As the name suggests, this drops an ice patch on the ground that does continuous (stacking) damage to anyone standing in it and also slows movement speed. He always drops these directly under someone on his platform. If it's you, just strafe out of the quickly.

His other ability is Permafrost, a frontal-cone AoE attack. As the tank, you can't avoid this. He turns to face you as he casts. You do want to make sure you're facing him so that you're the only one getting hit, though.

Anyone on Nezir's platform during this phase will also be hit by Wind Chill. This will go off several times during the normal phase and is completely unavoidable. It just has to be healed through.

There's not much else to this phase. It's just keeping him occupied.

As Nezir approaches 70 energy, you need to start making your way to the bridge that leads to Anshal's platform. Be careful not to wait right at the base, though. You don't want him to drop an Ice Patch where everyone coming from Anshal's platform is going to land. (This goes for your healer as well.) When he gets to 80 energy, you (and your healer) should be jumping across. This is where the tank swap occurs. The Anshal tank (and group) will be jumping onto Nezir's platform at the same time.

The transition from Nezir's platform to Anshal's really sucks. Odds are that Nezir is going to cast Permafrost just as you (and your healer) are jumping across. The game tends to not realize you've gone out of range until you land on the other side and so you (and your healer) will be taking the damage all the way across the bridge without your healer being able to cast anything but insta-cast spells. Being at full health before you cross is nice.

Nezir "Discharge" Transition
Upon landing from Anshal's platform, you need to target Nezir and Growl immediately. Depending on the timing of the tank swap, there may still be a few active seconds where Nezir will be taking swings and you want to make sure they're at you, not anyone else in your group.

Once Nezir's energy actually hits 90, he's going to port to the center of his platform and channel Sleet Storm. It's going to do 30K DPS to everyone on the platform divided by the number of people on the platform. You should have all 5 DPS (this is when they go ape on Nezir to try and get his health down), your healer, and you on Nezir's platform at this point...so a little over 4K DPS per person for 15 seconds. (About 64K damage total, each.)

During this phase you should be standing on the North side of Nezir (the side furthest from the entrance and Al'Akir) and building threat. As soon as he's done casting Sleet Storm, he's going to cast Permafrost and you want to make sure none of your other raid members get hit by that.

At this point the DPS are all going to return to their respective platforms and you and your healer are going to stay there until the next tank swap.

"Death"
If you're tanking one of the Djinn as he approaches death, keep a close eye on him. His health pool will stop at 1 and he will become invulnerable, but not inactive. You won't lose him as a target and you can still attack him, so it's not immediately obvious that you're done there.

The animation for the channeled heal spell has four air streams curving out, up, and back into the boss, making him look kind of like a stereotypical crown. When you see this, quickly head to one of the other platforms, go Cat, and do what damage you can to end the encounter.

Loot for the Conclave is somewhat unique. They drop rings and belts that have "random" stats. For Bears, these are what you're looking for:
Mistral Circle...

...of the Windstorm (best)
+285 Stam, +190 Agi, +126 Crit, +126 Mastery
...of the Stormblast
+285 Stam, +190 Agi, +126 Hit, +126 Crit
...of the Windflurry
+285 Stam, +190 Agi, +126 Crit, +126 Haste
...of the Zephyr
+285 Stam, +190 Agi, +126 Haste, +126 Mastery

Wind Stalker Belt...

...of the Windstorm (best)
+380 Stam, +232 Agi, +160 Crit, +160 Mastery
...of the Stormblast
+380 Stam, +232 Agi, +160 Hit, +160 Crit
...of the Windflurry
+380 Stam, +232 Agi, +160 Crit, +160 Haste
...of the Zephyr
+380 Stam, +232 Agi, +160 Haste, +160 Mastery

Raiding Progress

2011-05-03T11:20:00.000-06:00

The last week was a pretty good one for my raiding team. On Thursday we went into BWD and managed to clear all the way up to Nef in the span of 2.5 hours. This included a one-shot of Atramedes (guild first kill, second time attempting) and a three-shot of Chimaeron (also a guild first kill, first time any of us had seen him).

The Chimaeron attempt was particularly crazy. Our first attempt was a disaster just because I didn't have a good handle on the tank swapping mechanic. Once I saw it (and failed it), it was pretty easy to figure out. But that attempt lasted about 30 seconds.

Our second attempt was a little smoother, but something went wrong at the end of a Feud and wiped half our raid, including all 3 healers. We may have spread back out too quickly, but I'm honestly not completely sure what happened.

The third attempt was smooth sailing through the first phase. And for a moment it looked like we were going to hit the 20% mark and get into Phase 2 during a Feud, which would have been glorious.

Then I made the mistake of sharing our good fortune over Vent.

Instead of hitting Phase 2 during the Feud, we came up just shy an instead hit it right after a Massacre.

For those of you unfamiliar with Chimaeron, Massacre reduces everyone's hit points to 1. (That's not the actual ability, but that's how it works out 99% of the time.) When Phase 2 hits, all healing is reduced by 99%. Can you see how this might be troublesome?

I swore. In Vent. Which is a no-no in our guild. But I couldn't help it.

I was just about to call for the wipe, but then something miraculous happened. About 5 seconds had gone by and most of us were still alive...including me. I still figured we were doomed, but at that point it was worth trying.

I popped Survival Instincts and--out of little more then muscle memory--Frenzied Regeneration. The healing portion of FR didn't do anything, as expected. But I did still get the 30% increased HP ceiling and the instant 30% HP refill. For me, that's a little over 67K health.

I think I also hit a crazy luck streak with the RNG. I'll have to check the parses, but I had to have dodged a bunch.

Somewhere around 6% we were still going and our uber-tree pipes up on Vent, "San is a GOD."

Damn right.

We got the kill. Nailed with a Massacre right before Phase 2 and we still got the kill.

That. Felt. Good.

The night was over at that point, but we went and pulled Nefarian just for giggles.

Last night we spent 2.5 hours working on Nef. It was...rough. We only had one attempt (our last of the night) get far enough into Phase 2 to make it worth saying we got to Phase 2. But we learned at lot and I think when we get some more gear, we're going to be in a pretty good place.

That will probably be our last set of tries on Nef for a while. I think we're going to focus on gearing up a little more first. But if we can get 5/6 BWD in one night and then head over to BoT and make some good progress on the second night, it won't be too long.

For every action...

2011-05-02T14:31:00.000-06:00

I've been playing WoW for a good, long time now. Over 5 years at this point. That's a lot of time to spend on one game, even one as expansive as WoW. Enough time that there really shouldn't be anything I hadn't seen or done.

Unfortunately, this is not the case. I did and saw a lot, but one thing I failed to do was really invest the time in seeing the Horde side of the game. In the past week, I've been lamenting this fact quite a bit.

Other than my first unofficial toon that I rolled on Norf's account way back in the day, I completely shunned the Horde until the waning weeks of Wrath. That's when I rolled Hotahinahu and steadily leveled him through the old-world (sticking almost exclusively to Kalimdor).

I knew there were storylines and experiences that I was missing and that would be gone forever once Cata hit. But I tried not to dwell on it. Short of taking an extended leave of absence from work and eating/sleeping/breathing WoW for a few weeks, there was nothing I could do at that point to experience them. I'd messed up and deprived myself of a good portion of the game, but oh well. Life goes on.

So why am I writing this post? What changed?

I've been leveling an Enchanter Rogue recently and, like Hotahinahu, I've been sticking almost exclusively to Kalimdor. (Mostly because when I leveled Grevioux, I stayed almost exclusively in EK.) As I've been doing so, I've noticed that a lot of my favorite quest lines are ones that relate back to things I did Horde-side prior to Cata...things no Alliance toon gets to see.

The second half of Thousand Needles is spent driving back the Grimtotem assault on the former Tauren encampments. If you'd never played a Horde toon through this zone you probably weren't familiar with Arikara (Magatha's Wind Serpent familiar), Cliffwatcher Longhorn, Arnak Grimtotem or Lakota Windsong. You had no previous interaction with them so you don't know the history they have in that zone. You don't know you're missing it, so you probably don't give it a second thought. But seeing them all there again really made the zone feel complete.

Same with Felwood and the events at Bloodvenom Post.

And as I went through Desolace and helped unify the Centaur clans? I couldn't imagine how my Tauren Warrior would feel about that. Had I rolled Hotah, I never would have given it a second thought. But as it stands...I felt dirty the whole way through that questline.

Those moments, though. They were shining examples of what can make a really strong, compelling game. When your current situations can be directly correlated to your past actions...even if that's "you" as a player, not a specific toon. It drove home this point that, Horde or Alliance, your actions can affect everyone on Azeroth. But to really see that, you have to know both sides.

I keep wondering how many other things like this I deprived myself of by never taking the time to fully experience the Horde side of the game.

Da Trolls, mon

2011-04-28T15:35:00.000-06:00

I got to run the newly revamped ZA last night. I have to say that after all the hype and build-up and such...

...it was the most fun I've had playing this game in a long time.

ZA as a raid instance was always in tight competition with Kara as my favorite, and the winner usually depended on my mood that day. So having an excuse to go back in there with an appropriately-geared group and run through it again was a dream come true.

My group went in semi-blind. Meaning none of us had really read up on how anything had changed, but we still had at least vague ideas of what it was like before. (I'd actually gone through the old version on Grevioux a couple weeks ago so I could tame one of the dragonhawks on the way to Jan'alai.) Trying to reconcile what we could remember, what we'd forgotten, and what was new--all on the fly--made the whole experience seem very frantic, but never in a way that was overwhelming.

The biggest on-the-fly adjustments were on Nalorakk (realizing how his charge mechanic had changed and how we needed to deal with it) and Malacrass (figuring out what abilities he was stealing and how to compensate). We one-shot both of them, but it wasn't without a some breath-holding going on...that is when I wasn't shouting frantic commands at group members that may or may not have really been prepared to deal with them. Whatever. They handled it. That's why I like running with them.

Oh, and I snagged one of the coolest looking shoulder models in the game. Always wanted a pair of those back when it was current...

Tonight's raid night for me, but I'm looking forward to trying to tackle ZG before the weekend is out. We haven't had a guild group get through that one yet, so it would be nice to ding that achievement.

Prolonged silence is prolonged.

2011-04-27T10:44:00.002-06:00

Ugh.

I'd like to say that the long stretch of not posting was due to some massive time crunch at work/home or that I've been travelling to exotic places far, far away from any internet access or stuff like that.

The truth is just that I've been horribly unmotivated to post over the last two weeks. Every time I load up Blogger, I just kinda stare at a blank post window and then think, "Eh...later."

Two weeks later...

So anyway, 4.1 is here. Lots of new, cool stuff. Especiall ZA/ZG. I was really looking forward to giving them a try. Of course, as many of us know, patch day is the bane of custom UIs. Most of the time you can get away without too much trouble, but last night was not most of the time. Among other things, my unit frames were borked and Outfitter wasn't updated until I was almost ready to go to bed for the night. (I always forget how much I depend on Outfitter until I don't have it...) Not to mention I pretty much couldn't do anything without Lua errors sprouting up like Noblegarden rabbits.

Since all my toons that are geared enough for the new heroics also have custom UIs, I hopped over to the Rogue I've been leveling and took him through Felwood. It actually wasn't a bad night...just not the way I was planning on spending it.

Also, it's worth noting...Tailoring is a great 2nd profession for an Enchanter. You can make lots and lots of extra stuff to DE for mats. This is good. But to collect cloth, you kind of have to kill things. Subtlety Rogues do an astounding amount of not-killing. This is not as good.

So every now and again I have to get on one of my 85s, go farm some cloth to hit the next level of Tailoring, then farm some more cloth to work up First Aid.

Good times.

Gonna try and get myself back into the swing of things again. Hopefully with more coherent and relevant posts than this one.

Burst DPS for a non-tanking Bear

2011-04-13T09:02:00.004-06:00

There's a small number of boss fights in Cata where a Bear tank is going to find himself without anything to tank. Rahj in HoO when he's recharging his energy, Throngus during his shield phase, Magmaw while he's impaled, Halfus Wyrmbreaker if you're tank swapping because of the MS debuff, Omnotron before the second unit becomes active. Those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head. There may be a few more (especially on later raid bosses I haven't seen yet).

So what's a Bear to do during these times?

1) Make sure F3 is on the target. Most of the time this won't be an issue since you were already tanking the target previous to that, but for Omnotron or Magmaw (his impaled head is technically a different boss, so it doesn't carry the debuffs over) you may have to apply it before dpsing.

2) Go cat if you haven't already.

3) If you're at least 8 yards from the target, Charge, then Ravage! (if you're specced into Stampede).

If you've specced into King of the Jungle...
4a) If the boss doesn't have the Mangle debuff or the debuff is within 20 seconds of expiring, Mangle

5a) Rake

6a) Pop Tiger's Fury

7a) Pop Berserk

If you haven't specced into King of the Jungle...
4b) Pop Tiger's Fury

5b) Pop Berserk

6b) If the boss doesn't have the Mangle debuff or the debuff is within 20 seconds of expiring, Mangle

7b) Rake

Then...
8) Shred to 5cp (if you're not already there)

9) Rip

10) Shred spam. Mash that button. Even when you hit 5cp, don't stop. Just Shred.

11) Refresh Rake when it's within 2 seconds of expiring. (Berserk will almost be over by this time.)

12) Refresh Rip when it's within 2 seconds of expiring. (If you get this far, it's most likely the last thing you're going to do before you have to go Bear again.)

13) If you have to go Bear again before you get to step 12, hit Ferocious Bite to dump your combo points.

If that's all too confusing to visualize, here it is in flow chart form:

Remember, this is intended to tell you what you should be doing if you have about 40 seconds or less of total DPS time before you have to be tanking again. If you have longer, you can start this way for the first 30 or 40 seconds, but then you should drop into a standard cat rotation.

I is for Introvert

2011-04-12T09:27:00.000-06:00

Last week, Ophelie made a post about how to keep shyness from ruining your WoW experience. She gave some very good tips on how to not get overwhelmed in a game like WoW that has heavy social and group components.

A lot of what she wrote also covers another group of people, and one that I feel I fall into: Introverts.

Allow me to get pseudo-science here for a moment.

When I think of someone as being "shy," I think of a person who (as an average case), feels anxiety in social situations, possibly to the extent of it being a phobia. The thought of conversation, especially in groups, makes them nervous. Actively being around other people can be uncomfortable and awkward. If they do go out with a crowd, they tend to move themselves away from the group, or at least aren't engaged much at all.

One-on-one situations can sometimes alleviate this anxiety, if the other person is someone they know and are comfortable with. Then they can open up.

On the flip side, there's an introvert. Introverts don't mind being in social situations. In fact, group social activity is something many introverts still crave and actively seek out. When in a group, they'll be in the throng and engaged. But the introvert can come off as shy because they still won't say much. They're passive participants.

Many introverts, like myself, feel totally fulfilled socially just by being around other social people and listening to their conversations. If they have something to add that they feel is of particular value to the conversation, they'll offer it. But most of the time they remain part of the audience. Being there is enough to make them happy.

One-on-one situations can be more awkward for an introvert than group situations. One-on-one, there's a (necessary) pressure on the introvert to be an active participant in the socializing. Even when it's with a close friend, the introvert often just doesn't have a lot to express.

So how does this all relate to WoW?

In a game like WoW, where your social interaction is pretty much related to a chat box, there's less distinction between a shy person and an introvert. The people in your guild or group or whatever can't look at you and determine how involved you are in what's going on. No one knows if you're hardly getting anything done because you're trying to read everything that's typed, or if you're ignoring it completely. At the end of the day, if you're not putting words in that box, (for lack of a better way to phrase it) you don't exist. And while you may be enjoying the conversation and banter that's scrolling up your screen, if you want to get the most out of the situation you need to involve yourself a little more actively.

This is where most of the stuff Ophelie put in her post comes into play.

1 - Take it one step at a time
No one's going to go from being a quiet observer to a spotlight hogger. But do little things to remind people you're there and you are paying attention. Even if it's just a simple "lol" or "grats" or "that's amazing" here and there. They're generic non-committal responses to a lot of different things, but at least they get your name in the chat box.

Work yourself up to the point where you can actively engage yourself in a conversation without being prompted to. You don't have to do it all the time, but often enough to show people you're involved.

If you're feeling really daring, start a topic of discussion. Whatever's on your mind. Introverts are almost always thinking something, sometimes playing out entire conversations in their head. But they don't feel any particular need to share those thoughts if they're not immediately relevant to an active conversation.

2 - Seek out (medium sized) social guilds
When a guild is too small and doesn't have a minimum number of players online at the times you play, it falls back to that uncomfortable point where you can feel obligated to participate in any social interaction because there won't otherwise be any.

Alternately, if a guild is too large, it can become too easy to sit back and let everyone else do all the socializing for you. Introverts may not speak much, but because of that, when they do speak, they want to feel heard and acknowledged. Whatever they said was important enough to them to warrant saying. If a guild is too big, your voice can get lost in the crowd which doesn't give you any reason to say more in the future.

3 - Be honest as to why you’re quiet
I'm going to copy this part almost word for word from Ophelie:

There's no shame in being introverted. As long as people know they're not being snobbed, they'll generally give you as much time as you want to open up.

I use a format like this "*insert compliments and appreciation here* *warning that I take a long time to warm up here*". For example: "Thank you very much for the invite! I really appreciated it. I'm having a great time, I'm just a really quiet person."

4 - Be nice to others
Nothing brings an introvert out of their shell quite like strong emotion. Strong negative emotion, in particular. While everyone needs a bitch-fest every once in a while, try to make sure that when you decided to speak in chat it's not always complaining about what a jerk/noob/scrub you just ran with or how much some part of the game is getting under your skin. You may know you're not an angry, negative person all the time, but that's the impression you'll end up giving to other people, and they won't want anything to have to do with you.

5 - Know when to take a break
While introverts may love social activity, it can also be draining on them. After they've spent so much time listening to conversations and being with a group, they often need to retreat off on their own to mentally process all of it and recharge.

I go to social conventions two or three times a year. They're a great opportunity for me to get together with friends from all over the country that I don't get to see very often and party like a rock star in some other city far from home. But after being around other people from the time I wake up in the morning, come mid-afternoon, I need a break. I'll usually head up to my hotel room for a few hours and nap, read, play DS, or whatever. Then I'm ready to head out to dinner and party the night away.

By the end of the weekend, I'm more than ready to have a couple days all to myself.

WoW can be the same way. I may spend a few nights being social and actively doing stuff with my guild. But then every so often I just want to log onto an alt and level or farm and completely ignore gchat. And that's fine. Allow yourself time to do that every once in a while.

Another big change for Bears

2011-04-08T10:19:00.002-06:00

There were more additions to the 4.1 Patch Notes put up yesterday, and among them was this gem for Bears:

# Enrage no longer increases physical damage taken.

Go head and read that again, just to let in sink in.

Do you feel that? That warm, tingly sensation? The light-headed giddiness? Yeah, me too.

One of the things I've liked least about Bear tanking is the choice I constantly have to make between waiting 10 seconds after hitting Enrage to engage a boss, or dealing with the fact that I'm going to be taking extra damage in the vulnerable opening moments of the fight when everyone is getting into position.

A standard pull for me looks like this: Thorns -> Bear Form -> Enrage -> Barkskin -> Pull. On many fights, this is the only real opportunity I have to throw Thorns on myself, and I already lose several precious seconds while going through the rest of the chain. If I chose to wait the full 10 seconds, it'd be almost a total waste.

Another place I hate having to hold of using Enrage is after Magmaw's impale phase. My raids generally solo-tank Magmaw, which means I'm spending much of the time tanking with that huge armor debuff he applies. I go cat while he's impaled to crank out some additional damage, but when I shift back, I'm rage starved and have no aggro (because his table resets when he picks up the tank). But I don't want to Enrage because I don't want to take the additional damage on top of having the armor debuff. It's enough strain on my healers already. This will make that transition so much easier.

And for you hybrids out there? You should be dancing.

King of the Jungle is an absolutely essential talent for good Cat DPS and Primal Madness is nice (though not essential). The problem was that, even with the benefit those talent also give in Bear form, the tradeoff with the extra 10% damage just didn't really make them worth it.

With this change, they're still not as good for Bears as they are for Cats...but at least they're unarguably positive places to spend talent points if you so choose.

I'm really glad to see this change. Blizz experimented with our T10 bonus, where it actually decreased the damage when took when we Enraged. That was probably overkill and they ended up leaving Enrage alone once Cata dropped. I think it's become clear, though, that there are certain moments when Bears need Enrage, and penalizing us for using it wasn't right, either. So now we're in the middle ground.

I'll take it.

Suck it up, buttercup.

2011-04-07T08:57:00.004-06:00

Indulge me for a moment as I stand on my soapbox and get a little haughty. There's a good chance I may insult you in this post. It's not intentional and it's not personal. I'm going to make a lot of gross generalizations and I'm fully aware that they are not representative of each individual. Just (my view of) the culture as a whole.

Big news floating around this morning is that, come 4.1, Blizzard will be incentivizing tank (and to a lesser degree, healer) queuing in the LFD tool. Why? Because the lack of tanks (and to a lesser degree, healers) in the LFD queues is what's causing DPS to have to sit and wait upwards of 40 minutes to run randoms.

How are they doing this? By offering guaranteed gold, plus chances at gems, flasks/elixirs, vanity pets, and mounts.

Even if you didn't click the link above to read the post, it's easy to see why this could be a controversial decision. And whenever there's controversy on the internet...well, you've been around. You know how it goes. All the armchair designers come out of the woodworks, spewing diarrhea of the mouth about how much it sucks and blah blah blah.

Some of my favorite lines so far have been, "this is an admission of failure," "tanking is not fun," "healing is not fun," and the best, "First make heroic's easier so there are less wipes and problems. Second add an expert level of the dungeons". (Seriously. I lol'd).

Blizzard hasn't failed at anything. That's not to say everything's perfect or ideal or whatever word you want to use. Yes, they have a stated aim to make tanking and healing more desirable and more "fun." But just because you don't think those roles are fun doesn't mean Blizzard has failed. (I, personally, think both roles are fun. I love tanking. And while I haven't healed a lot yet in Cata, I still have a desire to do it more.)

Let's get this straight. I realize not every class and every spec and every role is fun for everybody. I get that. But let's also be honest here. No less than 90% of the people complaining that tanking and healing aren't fun are really saying "tanking and healing require thought and effort, which I can't be assed to put forward. Also, I might actually have to take some sort of responsibility for bad outcomes."

I get it, though. I really do. I enjoy playing my Hunter in groups specifically because it's damn easy. I hit four buttons. Sometimes five. And I light up the meters doing it. The closest I've come to stress was pet-tanking the last 25% of Foe Reaper 5000 with my spirit beast because the tank dropped to Harvest and like hell I was going to start that fight over. (That required six buttons.)

Many DPS are complaining that this shows favoritism to tanks and healers and why don't the DPS get something, too?

You do get something. You get (theoretically) significantly lower queue times. You get a quicker path to your gear upgrades, your (Cataclysm) random mounts, and your VP/JP. You want more? Bummer. You're a dime a dozen. Not in the sense that you're worthless--you're an essential part of a dungeon group, too--but when was the last time you lost a DPS mid-run and had to wait more than three seconds to get another?

How long do you end up waiting when you lose a healer? Or a tank?

Admittedly, I don't think what Blizzard is doing is going to have much impact. It might at first, but then it will wane. I doubt we're going to see an influx of new tanks or healers queuing up. Some of the current ones who don't mind using LFD but just don't do it often may find incentive to use it more, at least until they get all the rewards they want out of it.

I still won't queue as a tank, and probably still won't on my healer. The rewards Blizzard is offering aren't enough to overcome the reason I don't queue on them, which is probably the same reason a lot of other people don't, either: LFD is a minefield of Internet Fuckwads. Every single role.

I despise dealing with the over-inflated egos, the people who still seem to think dungeons should be played like the were in Wrath, and the general hello-goodbye impersonal nature of the whole system.

And here's where I give you DPS a break...tanks and healers are the worst of them. They act like they're Aman'Thul's gift to groups. Like the rest of us are being graced with their time and so we'd better not waste it by not measuring up to their standards. They're only there for the rewards and we're just a means to that end.

And that's the problem with throwing more rewards out there as an incentive. The people who are going to go for that the most are the pushy, arrogant jerks that are only there for the rewards anyway. And the people that don't queue because they don't want to deal with pushy, arrogant jerks? This doesn't do anything for them.

Bottom line, there is no solution to the problem. LFD is an amazing tool, but it has serious flaws that can't be fixed. Because the flaws are the players themselves. You want low queue times and reasonable people to run with? Find a good guild.

A Bear's Guide to BWD: ODS

2011-03-30T13:40:00.002-06:00

ODS (or Odies or Omnotron (Defense System) or Omnomnomotron) is the other initial encounter in BWD, and the one that's significantly more complicated for tanks.

There are four individual "bosses" in this encounter, any two of which can be active at the same time. On their own, not one is really anything special. The difficulty in this fight lies in dealing with them in constantly rotating pairs. The order is random each time you try the encounter, though the activations always go in sets of four. (i.e. None of the units will activate a second time before they've all been activated once. None of them will activate a third time before they've all been activated twice. etc.)

Each defense unit has a resource (energy) bar that starts at 100 and slowly drains (I think it takes about a minute). When the unit reaches 55 energy, a new one will become active. At 50 energy the unit will put up a shield (specific to each one). The shield lasts for 10 seconds, during which time you'll want to stop attacking. (This is a good time to pop Barkskin since you won't be getting the benefit of Savage Defense.) At 0 energy the unit shuts down.

At the start of the fight, there will be one active defense unit. Whichever tank is the initial tank will pick it up. Thirty seconds later, a new unit will activate. The second tank will have to pick up this unit. Another 30 seconds later, another new unit will activate and the first one will deactivate. The tank on the first unit will have to pick up the new one. This continues in a round-robin fashion until the encounter is over. (The units all share a single health pool.)

The first time each unit activates, it has a clean aggro table, so the first thing it's going to do is go straight for your healers. Be ready with your Growl and F3 to grab it if it's your turn. From that point on, each unit retains its aggro table when it shuts down, so next time it reactivates it will go back to the tank that had it last time.

When tanking one unit that's about to shut down, it's tempting to go stand near the next one that's going to become active. (You can tell which one because there will be an energy "stream" from the central tiki console thing to that unit.) Don't do this. There's a 2 or 3 second window between the time one becomes active and the previous one completely shuts down, which means you can get pummeled by both of them. Your healers won't appreciate this. Just be ready, pick them up from a distance, and let them come to you.

Each of the defense units has two abilities and a shield that you have to be aware of.

Arcanotron (Purple)
Arcanotron is the most demanding of the four units to tank. His first main ability is Power Generator. It puts a small, arcane-colored (blue/pink) void zone on the ground beneath his feet. He must be moved out of this immediately, as it increases the damage done by 50% to anyone (friend or foe) standing in it. Make sure to watch his buffs, as his hitbox is bigger than it appears. It can look like you've kited him away from it when you really haven't.

His other main ability is Arcane Annihilator, which is a 1.5-second cast Arcane blast. You're going to be taking turns with one of your DPS interrupting it. (You are specced 2/2 in Brutal Impact, right? You'd better be.) He casts about every 6 seconds, so you will need to share the duty and make sure you take turns.

Arcanotron's shield is Power Conversion. Be very aware of when it's going to go off. It's a 1.5 second cast, just like Arcane Annihilator. It's very easy to accidentally blow your Skull Bash on the shield cast, effectively wasting it.

While the shield is up every damaging attack will give Arcanotron a stack of Converted Power. It can be purged or spell stolen so a couple hits aren't bad (and can even be good if you have a mage with you), but you still don't want the stacks going up too high too fast. The trick here is that you'll still have to interrupt him while his shield is up. Get friendly with your escape key or use a macro like this:
/cast Skull Bash(Bear)
/stopattack

Electron (Blue)
Electron, on the other hand, is the least demanding in regards to tanking. He has a chain lightning that you can't do anything about and a electric AoE damage debuff that he'll inflict on random raid members. You also can't do anything about this. So just hold him steady and tank away.

While his shield is up, any attacks against him will trigger damage on a random raid member and anyone standing near them.

Magmatron (Red)
Magmatron isn't much harder to tank than Electron, but requires a little more awareness.

His first major ability is a channeled AoE fire blast that just has to be healed through.

The other is a two-stage ability where he'll first focus on a target and then do a heavy-damage channeled fire cone in their direction, extending all the way to the end of the room. This can't be avoided. He'll turn to always face the target.

Ideally you'll want to hold Magmatron near a wall, facing parallel while tanking him. This way the targeted person can just go stand against the wall and everything will be fine. If you are tanking Magmatron, this won't target you.

As a tank this becomes a dangerous ability when you're tanking an active unit other than Magmatron. If he targets someone standing between himself and you, you'll be in the blast path. If you see this happening, move quickly. There's also a possibility he'll target you, at which point you should be hitting Survival Instincts.

Magmatron's shield absorbs all damage done to him, up to a certain amount. If it reaches that point it bursts, doing 75K fire damage to everyone in the raid. Ugly.

Toxitron (Green)
Toxitron is somewhere in the mid-range for tanking difficulty. He's harder than Electron and Magmatron, but easier than Arcanotron.

His first ability is Chemical Bomb, which creates a large cloud at the feet of a random raid member, including the Toxitron tank. Anyone standing in the cloud, friend or foe, takes an additional 50% damage. As long as you can do it without holding Toxitron right in the middle of the room, you'll want to position him so that he is in the cloud and you are not. Anyone in the cloud turns a green color, so it's easy to tell.

Twice while he's active, he'll also do Poison Protocol, which summons 3 slime adds at his feet, 1.5 seconds apart. Each separate slime will fixate on a raid member and start chasing them. If the slime reaches its target before it dies it will explode, doing massive AoE damage near it and leaving a slime puddle on the ground.

These are the reason I mentioned not holding Toxitron in the middle of the room. It gives the rest of your raid a definitive direction the slimes will be coming from and an easier space to use to avoid/kite them.

The slimes can be slowed. I'm not sure about rooted or stunned.

The adds will not fixate on the Toxitron tank, but they can fixate on the non-Toxitron tank. If you're not tanking Toxitron, be alert. You may have to kite the boss until DPS takes care of the one after you.

Stampeding Roar can be helpful here if you see one of the slimes getting close to you or close to a target standing near you.

Also, you'll be able to use Berserk during one of the two add "phases". (I usually choose the 2nd since the rest of the raid is focused on a different defense unit by then.) Spamming Mangle on Toxitron as the adds spawn will put out some good initial damage. It will also put an initial slow on the adds if you've specced into Infected Wounds.

Once your raid defeats the encounter, you'll be looking for the Lightning Conductor Band and the Poison Protocol Pauldrons.

It's the little things

2011-03-28T11:51:00.003-06:00

Let's face it, after playing this game for 6 years, you start to take a lot of things for granted. And even your "relaxed pace"--where you're trying to take it all in--will run laps around newer players.

But every now and again you stumble across something that makes you stop for a moment and really appreciate this game that Blizzard has built. Often it's something small. Just a little detail that you happen to catch; almost by accident.

One of my goals last week was to get Siaaryn's Archeology skill maxed out so that I could start seriously hunting for the Vial of the Sands Recipe. At the start of the week he was at 200 skill. I hit 525 Saturday afternoon. </gloat>

Needless to say, I spent a lot of time during the week (especially on Saturday), mindlessly flying around from shovel to shovel on my map.

During the 450->525 home-stretch, once I was back in old Azeroth, I ended up in Feralas. I hit two different digsites and then opened my map to find the next one. And that's when I had one of those moments.

For the first time since Cataclysm's release, I heard the new music that plays in Feralas (anywhere other than around Dire Maul). I'd been through the zone a few times previously. A few for archeology, a few for picking up the new flight points, and Grevioux passed through very briefly while leveling, but didn't quest through the zone. But the music never really registered until this last time.

It's really quiet, unlike so many zones in WoW. I'd say it fades into the background more than anywhere else. Maybe that's a part of why I hadn't heard it before.

Whatever the reason, I heard it, then, while I was staring at my map and I just had to stop and listen.

It's one of the most beautiful pieces of music I've heard in the game. It's so haunting and so...sad.

It's easy to look at the Night Elves and say that everything is their fault. As a race, they've collectively brought about pretty much every bad thing that's happened on Azeroth in the last 10,000 years (give or take). From the day they started getting drunk off the waters from the Well of Eternity, it's all gone to hell.

But if you're going to accuse them of that, then you have to look at the other side of the coin, too. As a collective race, the Night Elves have lost more and fallen further than any other race on Azeroth. Perhaps combined. Their current civilization is hardly a shadow of what it once was.

A lot of the Night Elf music encapsulates that loss. It's almost all down-tempo with long, drawn-out melodies.

Music from later stages of the game (i.e. what you hear in Mount Hyjal) starts to show a revival. There's still sadness, but also resolve and hope. There's a fighting spirit coming back.

But back in Feralas, among the overgrown ruins of one of their most ancient and powerful cities, and the shambles of Feathermoon Stronghold in the wake of the Cataclysm, there's none of that.

Maybe because I'm an established lore-whore (or maybe because I'm just a little bit special), I couldn't help but to stop my Archeology grind for a few minutes and just fly around the zone, listening to that music, and truly feel sorry for the Night Elves.

Kudos, Blizzard.

A Bear's Guide to BWD: Magmaw

2011-03-24T12:18:00.001-06:00

I've been putting off writing these guides because I've wanted to include video with them, but every time we raid I either forget to start recording or we just have a bad night. (Sometimes both.)

So I figure I'll at least start typing them out, then I can update with videos as I get around to making them.

Magmaw is one of the first two bosses of Blackwing Descent, and the easier of the two when it comes to tanking. There's a lot of different tanking options with Magmaw, and which one you take is going to depend on your group's makeup.

Magmaw is a stationary boss. He doesn't move. So for the pull (and every moment thereafter) you have to go to him. If Magmaw is in combat without someone in melee range for more than a few seconds at any time, he starts throwing a Molten Tantrum, so once you start combat, you want to close in quickly. Magmaw has a very small hitbox and only a slightly larger aggro range. So you can actually get really close before pulling. I recommend a face-pull and then throwing F3 as soon as you enter combat.

As you close in, keep in mind that you can fall off the edge of floor into the lava below. So make sure to stop running when you get close.

Generally you're going to tank Magmaw with your butt against the wall to his right. This turns him enough that your melee dps can stand behind him if they're all the way to the left.

Once you're tanking him, there's not much you have to worry about. He'll be doing random Magma Spits and Lava Spews on a timed interval. You can't do anything to avoid either one, so just chill out. He'll also be dropping Flame Pillars under random people's feet, but unless you have no one outside of melee range you don't have to worry about these hitting you.

The Flame Pillars will spawn several Lava Parasites. You do have to keep an eye out for these. If they happen to get near you, make sure you don't Swipe or Thrash or do anything else that may cause you to gain aggro on them. You don't want to have to worry about Parasitic Infection and Infectious Vomit on top of the damage you're already taking.

Now here's where things get important for the tank. Every 90 seconds, Magmaw is going to do an ability called Mangle. His version is significantly more vicious than ours. While in his grip, you are stunned, so it's important to pop your cooldowns before you get picked up. And you will want to pop them. You will be taking heavy, heavy damage and anything you can do to help your healers will be appreciated.

Shortly after picking you up, Magmaw will cast Ignition, slamming his head down on one half of the room. Once he picks his head up, all aggro is reset.

You will be dropped 5 seconds after your DPS successfully chain Magmaw (at which point he becomes impaled), or when you die.

If you survive the Mangle, you will have the Sweltering Armor debuff, which reduces your armor by 50%.

Once you hit the ground, you should immediately shift to cat, pop Berserk if you have it available, and go to town. Keep an eye on your DBM timers. About 4 seconds before the impale phase ends, you'll either want to be backing out of melee range or shifting bear and getting in position to pick him up again. Once combat resumes, you're back to the first phase. It's just rinse and repeat from here out.

This is where your group has some choices. Magmaw can be solo-tanked and the armor debuff healed through. This puts a little more strain on your healers, but frees up a spot for another DPS, which will help the encounter go faster. There's also a very, very small chance that the Sweltering Armor debuff won't clear before you get Mangled again. If this happens, you're definitely toast.

If you choose to use this method, there's two things you'll need to do as a bear.

First, you'll have to alternate your cooldowns for the Mangles. Survival Instincts for one, Frenzied Regeneration for the other. Try to make sure you get a full Rage bar before popping FR. Try to save Barkskin for after you get dropped, when you're tanking with the armor debuff.

Second, you'll want a macro like this:
/cleartarget
/targetexact Magmaw
/cast Growl
As Magmaw gets close to the end of the impale phase, you'll want to start spamming this to make sure he doesn't melee your other raid members. As soon as your Growl goes off, start attacking and building threat.

If you go with a two-tank method, you have a couple options. You can tank swap at the Mangle (in which case you'll be able to use both defensive cooldowns every time you get picked up), or you can have one tank designated the Mangle tank. The Mangle tank will taunt off of the main tank right before each Mangle, leaving the other tank free to tank normally the whole encounter. If you go with this method and end up as the Mangle tank, you'll have to roll your cooldowns the same as if you were the only tank.

There's one other possible thing to note here. One strategy on Magmaw is to have only one person outside of melee range. This has the advantage of easily controlling where the Flame Pillars will spawn (since there's only one candidate), cutting down on the number of raid members running around instead of doing their job, and decreasing the number of potential Parasitic Infection targets. (A person can only get infected by one parasite at a time.) A lot of times this job falls to a good AoE kiting class with slows, like a Hunter, Frost DK, or Frost Mage. Some groups opt to use a tank to do this.

As is generally the case with large groups of mobs, shield tanks (Warriors and Pallys) are more ideal, but Bears can do the job. If you end up with this job, you'll have a few things you need to watch.

Make sure you stay out Flame Pillars. Since you'll probably be moving a lot, this shouldn't be too much of an issue.
Stay out of melee range of the Parasites as much as possible. Obviously you'll have to spend some time in range. Swipe and Thrash will be your tools of choice to hold aggro. So it'll be a pattern of run in, hit your AoE attacks, get out.
Stay in range of your healers. You'll be running around a lot. Make sure you don't run too far away from them.
Don't let the parasites reach your other raid members! Use F3 and Growl to get back loose adds. If you lose control of several parasites, Challenging Roar can save the day. In an extremely dire situation, Hurricane can help get the job done, too. It just means you'll be spending several precious seconds stationary and out of Bear form.
Use Barkskin and Thorns on cooldown. They'll help keep you alive and keep aggro, respectively.

Once your group kills Magmaw, you'll be looking for the Parasitic Bands and the Symbiotic Worm as potential upgrades. There's also Akrius the Worm-Breaker, but only if you really need a new weapon. As usual, Strength isn't nearly as good for Bears as Agility.

Life vs. WoW

2011-03-23T10:31:00.000-06:00

Where do you draw that line? To what extent are they allowed to merge? At what point does one start to overshadow the other? What decisions do you have to make when that happens?

About 3 years ago, when I started to really, really get into WoW and began to spend an increasing amount of time logged in and playing I told myself that I was never going to become that gamer. You know...the one whose life started to play second fiddle to the game. I promised myself that if I ever saw myself pushing aside my real life for more game time, I was going to have to adjust.

Since then I've done a fair job of that. A couple times I started to see myself letting WoW consume time I should probably spend doing other things, but I never fell completely off the wagon. I was always able to adjust.

All well and good, right?

But what happens when your game time isn't just yours? What happens when you fill a big role in a guild (say, Raid Leader and Main Tank, just for totally hypothetical example *cough*)? Does that shift those lines any? Does it make a difference in your decisions?

I've been playing hockey recreationally since the fall of '04. The whole time I've played in a single league. And while teams shuffle from season to season, I've pretty much played with the same core group of guys, including one of my best friends.

While it only takes up one night a week, that's still one night a week I know I can't really be playing WoW.

The last couple years, I've been growing steadily more and more dissatisfied with my league.

For starters, I moved to be closer to work once I got hired into my company as a FTE instead of just a contractor. The move meant hockey is now a 40-minute drive, instead of a 10-minute drive.

Secondly, the league management has gone further and further downhill every year. From changing the schedule on the night of games to changing rules mid-season (and even mid-playoffs) to combining two different level leagues into one (creating situations where some teams are far outmatched by others), it's just become infuriating. And the only time they appear to give a damn about you as a player is when you're so much as a day late paying your fees.

So why am I still playing?

Familiarity, for one. Friendships, for two. And because, despite all the frustrations, once I was out on the ice I still had more fun playing than not.

But above all that, because if I switched to the league I've been considering switching to, my primary game nights would move from Mondays to Fridays. Since I'm in a Friday/Saturday raiding guild, as the RL and MT, this would cause some obvious issues.

Yes, the biggest single reason I've stayed with something that caused a certain amount of undue stress is because to change it, I'd have scheduling conflicts with WoW.

That said, this past season has been a nightmare. It's gotten to the point where I don't look forward to game night anymore. I'm not having fun. And that's a problem that I can't continue to ignore. It's where I decided I had to draw the line.

About a week and a half ago I informed the other officers of my guild that I'm going to be pulling the trigger on this change. Initially just for the summer season, but if I end up enjoying the new league it'll become a much more permanent change. Tonight we're going to be having a guild meeting, much of which is going to be centered around this topic.

With the continued un-success of our 25-man runs (either getting them together or accomplishing anything when we do) and now losing a MT and RL for one of the two nights, we're pretty much throwing in the towel on 25s. This is a big shift for us as a guild, as it's the first time we're truly abandoning the idea instead of merely putting it on hold. While it might be fair to say that it's been a long time coming and probably something we should have done a while ago, there's still a voice in the back of my head telling me that I caused this upheaval. I'm responsible for the shift because I put my life ahead of that of the rest of my guild.

Although that's fair, too, isn't it?

Are there any classes you just don't get?

2011-03-17T13:52:00.000-06:00

Alas' post yesterday touched on keeping up with class changes in patch notes. It's definitely a hard thing to do.

But it got my brain going off on a different tangent.

WoW currently sports 10 classes that cover a wide range of play styles. There's mana, energy, rage, focus, runes, and runic power. HoTs, DoTs, and nukes. Pets and minions. So many ways to play.

Are there any classes you just don't get?

I don't mean classes you've played to 10 or 20 and decided they weren't for you. I mean ones you've spent a good chunk of time with and just can't get a grasp on?

For me, it's Death Knights.

When I started Maarken, it was mostly just because I wanted to see the DK starting zone. Ultimately I decided to level him up because I needed a high-level herbalist and he was a lot closer to 80 than any of my other toons with open professions. So I specced Blood, went tearing off through Outland and Northrend, and generally had a good time. I never fooled myself into thinking I was doing it "right," but I felt like I had the basic mechanics of Blood down and I enjoyed it while I was doing it.

I tried Unholy PvP to get him from 78 to 80, just to do something different. I don't want to say I did horribly, because I didn't. But I think that had a lot less to do with me as a player as it did with the fact that I was using a DK. I'm pretty sure I could have done a lot better if I'd known what I was doing.

Once he got to 80, he only saw action when Siaaryn needed herbs. But even running around Sholazar collecting herbs, when I'd get attacked by something, it felt like it was taking forever to kill.

Now Cata's here. Blood is the tank spec, and while it may still be an option for leveling, it's probably not the best one.

I've gone through 2 and half levels as Unholy since Cata's release, including one group run. I've read a few guides and blog posts about how to play the spec correctly. I've even looked at what it would take to go Frost to give that a shot. Bottom line, though...I always feel like I'm reading a foreign language.

Even when it comes to just having DKs in my raids, I can't give any DPS or tanking advice because I just plain don't understand them. The only thing I have a solid enough handle on to consider asking is, "Can you death grip that caster over here?"

My guild isn't exactly overflowing with DKs, so that helps. It's actually somewhat uncommon for us to have one in our smaller raids.

Of course, that's also one less reason for me to make the effort to figure them out.

Some Raid Lead Macros

2011-03-15T12:36:00.001-06:00

I know a lot of raid leaders, like me, have turned off the default Blizzard raid UI in favor of their own custom setups. The problem this has is that it hides a lot of functionality from you that's otherwise very useful (and that I haven't found addons to replace).

I managed to find a set of macros to deal with one of these areas (world markers) and spent some time digging through the source to find out how to deal with another (role checks). I figured I'd share these with any interested parties.

World Markers

Using these will give you the targeting rune if the marker is not already active. If the marker is active, it will get cleared. (So replacing a marker will require hitting it twice.)

Blue
#showitem item:23770
/click CompactRaidFrameManagerDisplayFrameLeaderOptionsRaidWorldMarkerButton
/click DropDownList1Button1

Green
#showitem item:23771
/click CompactRaidFrameManagerDisplayFrameLeaderOptionsRaidWorldMarkerButton
/click DropDownList1Button2

Purple
#showitem item:25886
/click CompactRaidFrameManagerDisplayFrameLeaderOptionsRaidWorldMarkerButton
/click DropDownList1Button3

Red
#showitem item:23769
/click CompactRaidFrameManagerDisplayFrameLeaderOptionsRaidWorldMarkerButton
/click DropDownList1Button4

Yellow
#showitem item:23768
/click CompactRaidFrameManagerDisplayFrameLeaderOptionsRaidWorldMarkerButton
/click DropDownList1Button5

Clear all markers
#showitem item:23768
/click CompactRaidFrameManagerDisplayFrameLeaderOptionsRaidWorldMarkerButton
/click DropDownList1Button6

Role Check

/click CompactRaidFrameManagerDisplayFrameLeaderOptionsInitiateRolePoll

or

/run InitiateRolePoll()

You'll have to pick you own icon for this one. I really, really wanted to use the one for Showdown (among a few other vehicle-based spells), but it seems it's inaccessible from macros. If anyone knows or can figure out how to use it, lemme know. (I spent about 30 minutes the other night trying every method I could think of based on what I could find about the #show command.)

Code diggers may be asking themselves, if /run InitiateRolePoll() works, why not /run PlaceRaidMarker() and /run ClearRaidMarker() for the world markers. The answer is...I don't know. Blizz has decided to block those particular functions from easy use. Probably too easy to break things (as they can take arguments).

Picture Day!

2011-03-10T10:27:00.004-07:00

Here's a random collection of screenshots I've taken of the last few months. Sorry about the uber-low-res preview versions. I didn't have time to use PS to actually make them, so I had to settle for Photobucket's editor...which liked to use low-res versions of my images for editing. Click any of them for full-size/hi-res.

Ran across this guy while questing through the new Stranglethorn. I lol'd.

This is my Ogre disguise. There are many a few none quite like it, but this one is mine.

I picked these gloves up while questing through Northrend. I just felt that they looked amazingly cool on a Worgen.

Our (Dwarf) tank wasn't feeling very pretty. A little makeup and some accessorization took care of that.

Bind Elemental might just be the coolest looking spell in the game right now.

Can you spot what's wrong with this picture? I'll give you a hint. Lightning Shield orbs and Flametongue Weapon trails are usually "attached" to something...

Wolf-head helms on Worgen just look...wrong.

Obligatory Guild-First Kill Section (in chronological order):

Argaloth

Magmaw

Conclave of the Winds

Halfus Wyrmbreaker

Omnitron Defense System

Maloriak

The best thing to happen to Druids in a long time

2011-03-09T09:30:00.002-07:00

If the news coming from MMO-Champion this morning is any indication, 4.2 is finally going to give (Alliance) Druids the ability to do something that many of us have been wanting to do for 6 years:

Kill Fandral Staghelm.

AKA Fandral Douchehelm

Now I'm not going to say he doesn't have his reasons for being a giant jerk. He did watch his son get ripped in half by General Rajaxx. And in his despair, he did fall under the influence of Xavius and, presumably, the Old Gods.

But you know what? I don't care. A jerk is a jerk is a jerk. And "I'm under demonic influence" isn't really an excuse. In fact, all it really does is give me another reason to want to see you beaten to a pulp. Damn demons need to get off my planet.

Clearly, after 1,000 years, your chance at redemption has come and gone. I honestly felt worse for Illidan.

So you know what? I'm going to round up 9 of my friends, I'm going to march into Ragnaros' little home, find the playroom he's set up for you, and finally show you what became of that lowbie night-elf that you all but spit on.

Oh, and I'm bringing some Morrowgrain with me to shove down your throat once I'm done.

Heirlooms and Spirit Beasts

2011-03-08T12:13:00.002-07:00

As I have most weekends as of late, I spent this past one (at least the days, nights are raid time) working on Grevioux.

I've started several Hunters of the course of my WoW time, but was never really able to get into the class. My last Hunter, Ultanan, was a fun diversion, but ultimately that's all he was. I still wasn't having enough fun with him to really work hard at leveling him. And once they announced Worgen as a playable race, I knew I'd be making a Worgen Hunter to see all the new content with. Any desire I had to work on Ultanan died at that point.

But while I'm finally having fun with a Hunter in general, and leveling through the new old world was an absolute blast, the moment I hit Outland, it turned back into a grind. Even moreso in Northrend.

About halfway through Dragonblight, I had an epiphany. Just because I had no intention of using heirloom gear to speed up 1-60 leveling doesn't mean I couldn't strap it on the second I hit Outland to help push through the next 20 levels.

I do have an inherent reason to get Grevioux to 85...he's the closest in the guild to reaching the requirements for the Classy achievement. But more than that, I really am having fun playing him.

Anyway, I sent him the heirloom gear that used to belong to Ultanan. I also purchased the (ugly, ugly) chest with some of my extra JP as well as the cloak.

The rest of Northrend just flew by. On Saturday, with the help a full helping of Rested XP bonus, I sped through 5 levels. Sunday I got 3.5 more. He's about 40% of the way through Vashj'ir (just did the first quests as the Battle Maiden) as it stands and halfway from 81 to 82.

The best part of the whole weekend, though, came Saturday night.

See, the reason for my renewed interest in trying the Hunter class came with the release of Wrath. Loque'nahak.

From the moment I saw the first screenshot of that pet, I said, "That's awesome. I want it."

This was before I ever quested through Zul'Drak and saw Har'koa. Readers of my blog should be well acquainted with my feelings towards her. Her presence only fueled my desire to have a Hunter with Loque'nahak at his beck and call.

While questing through Sholazar I would occasionally swing out of my way to check the nearby areas where Loque'nahak could be found, but had no luck.

Saturday night I was sitting around in the Dwarven District, waiting for some of my raiders to finish a Heroic run with one of our best healers who got late start in Cata and is still trying to gear up and learn the new style. I figured, just for the hell of it, I'd log over to Grev and fly around to see if I could get lucky.

It's funny, because I did a few things I don't usually do. I'd cleared my creature cache earlier that day so that NPCScan would have fresh data to work with. I figured that would be enough.

Just to be sure, though, before leaving Nesingwary's camp, I also turned on Track Beasts because I remember reading that it lets the spirit beasts (which are neutral) pop up as a yellow dot among a bunch of red ones. Makes them easier to spot.

So I mounted up and flew to the first potential spawn area, just south of the camp. Of course, that area is filled with Longneck Grazers, which are also neutral. My mini-map was a sea of yellow.

NPCScan hadn't gone off, so I started heading to the next spot. Right before I left--and I have no idea what compelled me to do this--I waved my mouse over my mini map. In the brief flash of creature names, I saw it.

Loque'nahak.

It took me about 30 seconds to find him on my mini-map again, go land near him, and tame him.

He's mine!

Seriously, I didn't stop smiling for about 40 minutes. I was way too excited about this.

Now there's just one problem. I have no idea what to name him.

I've considered sticking with his actual name. I do like it and it's better than anything I've been able to think of so far. But it just feels...unoriginal to keep it.

But for now, until I stumble on something I like, it's just Grevioux and Spirit Beast.

Spirit Beast: 100% more awesome looking in dark caves

What's his power at?

2011-03-04T07:14:00.001-07:00

Back when Blizz announced achievements, I kinda rolled my eyes. "Oh boy...one more ruler in the giant epeen measuring contest," I thought. So not for me.

If history has taught me anything, it's that I'm very good at lying to myself. Especially when it comes to making myself feel like I'm somehow above something.

Actually, that's not accurate. In reality, I'm horrible at lying to myself. What I'm really good at doing is telling myself those lies. Which is different. Because they're horrible lies. They never hold up.

I remember when I told myself I was way above watching cartoons. This started when I was 12. I missed a lot of great cartoons throughout most of my teens.

I used to tell myself I was above playing an MMO...

Anyway, all it really took to get me to admit I was a big, fat liar was to get a few achievements accidentally. You know, the ones you inevitably get just by playing the game. The little fanfare and the flash as the achieve pops up on my screen...it's like a drug. Not quite as rich as the leveling ding but oh so much more frequent.

Then the worst part happened. One day I noticed I was in 3rd place in the guild for Achievement points. A cage door in my brain swung open. Turn-everything-into-a-competition Saniel came out to play.

The thing about TEIAC Saniel is that he's like a cat prowling around. You really have no idea he's there until he's on top of you, smiling a smile with way too much fang involved for your comfort. TEIAC Saniel doesn't like to make his presence known while he's on the hunt. What kind of cat would intentionally make his prey harder to catch?

TEIAC doesn't every really go back in the cage, either. He may lay low for a while every now and again, but once he's out, he's out. I did eventually claim first place in the guild, but I had to keep going. There was more I could do. Always more.

I hit a milestone (or a new low, depending on your viewpoint) last night. Two nights ago I got my 9000th achievement point. I was excited because I knew there was a Feat of Strength involved with that. But then it didn't come.

Egg on my face.

Wait, what? Why not?

Oh, the achievement is for having OVER 9000 points. Well...crud. What haven't I done that I can knock off quick?

I spent the next hour or so flying and teleporting all across Azeroth, spreading my love among way too many critters for me to be okay with it. But the Achievement! The rush! I needed that fix! (Getting creepy yet?)

Eventually I ended up in Uldum with just one critter left to love. But I couldn't do it. Not because of some kind of performance anxiety or the fear that accomplishing the big goal would somehow leave me feeling empty. No. It was because there were only four other guildies online by that time. And some things just deserve the proper audience.

Hey, why should I pretend I'm not some total bitchin' rock star from Mars?

*cough*

So I logged out, flying just above a Mac Frog. Then last night I logged in, still there, and still with a Mac Frog within sight. What's more, there were about 20 people online.

Perfect

10s vs 25s. How's it going?

2011-03-03T10:36:00.000-07:00

I should have seen this coming...

Before Cata landed on us, the officers of The Dragons (myself included) decided that we wanted to try to be a 25-man raiding guild.

I'm not sure why we decided this. The most success we've ever really had as a 25-man raid group was downing Magtheridon before the 3.0 super-nerf. Of course, to do anything past Kara, you had to run 25s, so there was something to be said for that.

We went into Wrath with the intentions of being a 25-man raiding guild even though it was optional. We did manage to clear Naxx (a week) before Ulduar dropped. After that we had a huge exodus and couldn't even field enough people to try Ulduar on 25 most weeks. We never got past Auriaya.

ToC came and went much the same way. We did eventually clear it, but Anub took us a good while and we couldn't crank out the DPS to get him down before he enraged until a good portion of us were sporting a fair amount of ICC gear.

ICC at the beginning was rough. But at least by then we seemed to be able to regularly pull together the numbers to try. Festergut and Rotface were pretty regular challenges for us, though. We did down Putricide once and the Princes a couple times. But nothing beyond that.

Part of the problem was that 25s were actually tuned to be more difficult (beyond the obvious difficulty in wrangling 25 people instead of just 10). Often to fill all 25 spots we'd be taking people who just weren't as geared or able as the situation demanded. Often they would have struggled in 10s. So to ask them to perform in 25s was probably short-sighted and unfair.

Enter Cataclysm. Blizz expressed the design goal of making 10s and 25s equally difficult. If you could handle one, you should be able to handle the other. But the overall difficulty curve went up.

When ICC came out, our guild had somewhere between 12 and 15 raiders good enough to handle the kinds of fights you see in the ICC wing-chiefs (Putricide, Lana'thel, Sindragosa) and LK. In the year that followed we picked up a few random people here and there. We also absorbed two smaller guilds. So going into Cataclysm, that 12 or 15 jumped up to about 25. Maybe even pushing 30. It was the biggest pool we'd had heading into any expansion. Or even any new tier.

We figured with the gear reset and everyone starting over at the same time and being in the same place, we'd be in good shape to try the 25-man raid experiment again.

It just hasn't worked out that way.

We have started to put more stress on overall preparation due to the increased difficulty, but one thing we haven't changed at all is our "no required attendance" policy. That's just not in line with our stated goals as a guild.

The downside to this, as I've realized over the past few weeks, is to have a 25-man raiding guild with a "no required attendance" policy, you need about 35-40 geared and capable players. We're nowhere near that. I wonder if we ever will be.

At this point, I'd say we're hovering right around the 25 mark. We have yet to have a night where those exact 25 people are all online and able to go. So we've filled spots with the other people available just so we wouldn't have to tell 8-11 ready players, "sorry...we're going with 10 tonight," and subsequently spend two hours wiping before trash respawns and we call it. I don't want to say that we haven't seen good progress on those nights. Our later attempts are always better than our early ones. But I'm still watching enrage timers or other limiting factors and knowing we're just not going to make it.

Our 10-man runs have seen more success. We're not clearing places yet, but we're making progress. Magmaw, Omn(omnom)itron, Halfus, and the Conclave have all been downed. We made decent progress on our four attempts at the Double Dragons, as well.

It's obvious that the people involved in those feats are much more inclined to want to continue where we've seen success.

There's currently a 4-page long thread in our Officer section debating what we should do now. Persevere? Throw in the towel and run 10s? We have way more than 10 people who deserve raid spots.

Do we have enough for two 10s groups? We're a little light on tanks and healers.

Should we include alts? That would mean people might be in both groups and they couldn't run at the same time.

Should the separate groups be very succinctly defined, or mixed from week to week? What happens if one group starts seeing more progress than the other?

There's also the fact that I'm currently my guild's only regular raid leader. There are other people that probably could lead a second group, but no one that really wants to. That's fine for the occasional "fill in for San because he's off leading a ski trip instead of a raid" or whatever, but not for a regular second group.

In a way, I like the idea of two 10man groups. I think most of us in the officer corps do. It sucks trying to put together a 25-man group and looking at the guild list, only being able to pick out 18 people that can handle it. It sucks even more trying to put together a 10-man group and having to whittle down a list of 18 candidates.

For now I think two 10s is going to be the direction we head. We're gonna have to play around with it and make some adjustments on the fly. But hopefully we can make it work.

Troll love

2011-03-02T08:32:00.004-07:00

From Zarhym:

We'll have more information to share on the return of Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub soon. But for now I'll say this: there is a center of troll civilization yet to be seen in World of Warcraft. There was once an ancient empire of troll tribes united. Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub becoming key points of interest in Cataclysm plays into this. Perhaps something has happened to once again call for the unity of the disaffected tribes. Perhaps a certain tribe with allegiances elsewhere sees this as a very bad thing. ;)

Honestly, I think I just peed a little.

It could be said that WoW is a game that's actually all about Night Elf lore. Pretty much everything we're doing in the game since it started (and even the RTS titles before it) is a result of the Night Elves' follies. You can debate about whether or not these follies were induced by the Old Gods (as they seem to be very adept at manipulating the mortal races of Azeroth, and even the not-so-mortal ones), but the fact remains that we're all trying to clean up the messes they've made.

That said, I've always loved the Troll lore most of all. Their history is all of Azeroth's history as far as we know. It's rich and expansive and full of politics and betrayal and war.

Not to mention the Loa. The Loa are where it's at. I'm still trying to figure out how I can make Har'koa adopt me and let me take her form. (It'll happen, dammit!)

Zul'Aman was my favorite BC instance by far. In every respect. Story, design, and content. I loved that the ZA Loa showed up to offer guidance while you were questing through Zul'Drak in Wrath. It was one of those small touches that tied together loose lore strands from across expansions.

Even though we've defeated Zul'Jin, I'm very interested to see where the story is going there. I haven't quested through the Ghostlands since BC. Has the story there changed any? Is there some indication while going through the zone of what's going on in ZA? If so, I might have to go roll a BElf just to see it.

Zul'Gurub looks to be very promising, too. If you've quested through Northern Stranglethorn since the Shattering, you know what I'm talking about. (And if you haven't, you should before 4.1 hits.) It was definitely my favorite zone as I leveled Grevioux through the new "old" content.

But, seriously. A central troll empire possibly reforming? And the Darkspear being very uncomfortable with this? Why? Given Vol'jin's current lack of enthusiasm about Garrosh's control of the Horde, what would be so bad about a re-united Troll empire that he'd rather stick it out than go rejoining with his brethren? Inquiring minds want to know!

Do you smell that? It smells kind of like a future raid. Zul'Ultimate!

The more I hear about 4.1 (3 second Swipe!) the more excited I get. Granted, I'm currently 4/12 in current raid content. So it's time to start busting by butt there.

I'm a bastard.

2011-03-01T11:23:00.003-07:00

Is it bad that I really want to get Grevioux leveled, geared up and raid ready as a Beast Mastery Hunter just so I can get the smug satisfaction of out-dpsing some of the "leet" SV and MM Hunters I've played with while using a sub-optimal spec?

5 min Jager break...

2011-02-28T10:52:00.003-07:00

Over a week of silence on this blog? Craziness.

Last week was a pretty chaotic one for me. I was pushing hard at work to finish up the project that's been taking most of my office time. And on the home front I was busy making final preparations for the ski weekend that me and a couple of my buddies run every year, and then actually going on said ski weekend. This year we had 35 people. It makes for a very fun, but very stressful four days.

What's amusing to me is how often my mind wandered off and started comparing the trip to leading raids. Or, in a broader sense, a guild.

First, we have limited space on the trip and want to make sure it gets filled with the right amount of people. It's cool that you want to come and just hang out, and we do like you...but this is a ski trip. We want to keep as many spots open as possible for people that actually plan to ski.

Alternately, either drama tends to follow you around, or nobody going on the trip knows who you are. We want to keep things comfortable for everyone, so it isn't really going to work out having you here.

We need to make sure we're stocked up on all the mats stuff we need. Food for breakfasts and dinners. Lift tickets for those without their own passes. Booze. Movies. Games. Booze. Did I already say that? We go through a lot of booze...

Who has all the gear they need already? Who doesn't and what do we need to do to help them get it?

What kind of content are people running? Greens, Blues, Blacks, Bowls/Glades? (Dungeons, Heroics, Raids, H Raids...)

Are people in the right teams? No one skis alone.

Which "officers" oversee cooking? Cleaning? Each of the houses people are staying in? General behavior?

How do we get everyone up on the mountain? Who managed to get themselves there and who needs a summon?

Yeah...it's a little geeky. Or a lot geeky. But little thoughts like that help alleviate the stress and make the whole thing a lot more enjoyable.

Another familial update

2011-02-16T09:26:00.004-07:00

Saturday is going to be an...interesting day. Lemme 'splain.

This past Sunday I was at my cousin's engagement party, as was the rest of my family. As it often does when we're together, the conversation with my dad eventually turned to WoW. (Honestly, I don't think we've ever talked so much about a single topic together in my lifetime as much as we have about WoW over the past 14 months.)

To my surprise, he's decided to give dungeon-running a try. I honestly never thought he'd have an interest in this because when he started playing he was very intent on making sure that he could spend all his time solo. And his history has been that, even in games that have multi-player components, he's always stuck to the solo side of them.

In the 14 months he's been playing WoW, he's done a lot of research. He discovered addons on his own and installed several to help him out. He learned how to use Wowhead to give him a hand in completing trickier quests.

When he started trying to run dungeons he researched what it would take as a Warrior. He decided that he would try tanking and looked up what a tank's responsibility is in a group. He also figured out what kind of gear he could buy on his own (with gold) and what he'd need JP to buy. He read up on some of the dungeons and the basic strategies therein. He read up on how to use the LFD tool. So in that regard, I'm actually really proud of him. I've run with guildies that have done less...

But, WoW being the complex game that it is, and my dad still learning all those complexities, missed that to tank dungeons at max level (or any level above 30, really) a Warrior needs to be Prot specced. He was still running Fury, with a shield in one hand and a 2H in the other. I cringed inwardly when I heard this and tried my very best not to let it show on my face. I can only imagine the things other puggers were saying to him and my only measure of comfort was that he really doesn't pay much attention to the chat window, so he probably didn't see most of it.

Not surprisingly, he said that he hadn't completed a dungeon yet before everyone would drop or he'd get kicked. Although he got pretty close to finishing Throne of the Tides once. Apparently they got to Neptulon.

So looking ahead to Saturday...

Norfin and I agreed that if my dad wants to start running group content, it's probably time to bring him into the guild. He asked me if I could spend some time with him, in person, teaching him some of the fundamentals of group play, as well as some of the other things he just hasn't gotten a handle on yet, like the AH, professions, and dual-speccing.

So Saturday I'll be packing up my rig and heading down to spend the day there with him. I'm gonna bring him into the guild, get him on Vent, wrangle up some of the more patient members of the guild and try to run a full dungeon or two. Then I'll probably stay there after dinner for the guild's Saturday night raid so he can get a view into what insanity is at the end of the trail he's started down.

Update on life and the Conclave

2011-02-15T09:12:00.003-07:00

I feel obligated to apologize for my sudden decrease in posting frequency. I had about 7 weeks starting around the time of the release of Cata where I took as much time off of work as I spent in the office. It really messed with my focus and I started letting things slip. In an effort to refocus myself, I made a conscious effort to really buckle down and get shit done. That meant that the hour or so I used most days to blog (more for those uber-long guide posts with lots of links) had to get shoved off to the side until I could catch back up.

I'm just about there. A few more weeks, I think. Until then I'm probably going to be at the 1-2 posts/week pace I've been holding recently, rather than the 3-4 posts/week pace I tried to keep up through the first year.

That aside, I do want to spend a quick moment to say that, so far, I've enjoyed raiding in Cata more than any other expansion. It's challenging, but engaging. While my guild is only 2/12 so far (closing in on #3), those two kills already filled me with a huge sense of accomplishment.

On Friday night we took on the Conclave of the Winds. It was a hand-picked 10-man team of some of our best raiders. We spent 20 attempts learning the fight, tweaking our strategy, and honing our timing. On the proclaimed "for-real real last attempt of the night" we got the kill...anti-climactic as it was. ("Did we do it? We won? We won!") Seriously. There was no flourish. No big flash or crash. They go out with a whimper and if you don't know what you're looking for (like we didn't), then it takes you a couple seconds to notice it. The only reason I knew for sure we'd won is that the EPGP boss kill window popped up.

I have to say, though, it might be my new favorite fight in all of WoW. It's complex, but not overly chaotic (like Omn(omnom)itron) feels). It's also the only fight I can immediately think of as a raid lead where I had to ask for constant feedback from my raiders. I couldn't just look around and get an instant handle on what was going on. I needed their input. I think I'm going to have to start asking for that kind of feedback more regularly, though on 25s I'm definitely going to have to make sure I'm getting it from specific people.

Learning LUA

2011-02-10T10:53:00.000-07:00

So I have this little secret. I let a few people in on it, but mostly I've kept it close.

A few months ago I applied for a job at Blizzard. It was a position doing pretty much what I'm doing now for my current employer: .NET internal tools development.

I wasn't sure I truly wanted the job for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that I'd have to move halfway across the country and leave behind pretty much all I've known for my whole life. I was born and raised in Colorado and while I've lived in several cities during my 30 years here, I've never live outside the state. Hell, I've never lived more than a 15 minute drive from I-25.

I'd also have to convince Norfin that moving to SoCal would be awesome. Or at least tolerable. (I'd have to convince myself, too. I love having seasons.)

Nevertheless, I thought, "Hell, why not? Let's see where this goes."

The problem was that I approached the application process with that "I don't even know if I want this" mindset stuck in the back of my head. Which meant I unintentionally half-assed the whole thing. I believe I had every qualification that they were looking for, but about 5 weeks after submitting the app I got a form rejection email.

Granted, rightly so. I can see that now. But it pissed me off. Lit a fire, if you will. It would have been one thing had I gotten to the interview stage and then got rejected. It still would have stung, but I would have accepted that. But I didn't even get that far and, dammit, I'm better than that.

I've kept a casual eye on their job board since, and while some .NET dev positions have shown up here and there, I'm getting the impression that if I really want to put myself in a good position to get an interview, I need to learn LUA.

I've thought about doing this before. When I'm working on something that I can see value in, I enjoy programming, even in my leisure time. The problem was mostly that, every time I had an idea for an addon (which is the primary entry point for LUA programming), a quick search turned out at least 2 people that had already done it. I hate reinventing the wheel, especially just for the sake of doing it. So I've never really gone anywhere with it.

At times I've opened up my current addons and poked around in the code to see if I could follow what was happening. Once or twice I've fixed a small bug or issue that I found. But nothing major.

I had some Amazon gift certs laying around (thank you, credit card rewards), so I nabbed the 2nd ed. of World of Warcraft Programming. I haven't thumbed through a programming book this thick since college. (Or even during college, if I'm being really honest.) I'm gonna start playing around, learning some stuff, and seeing what I can find.

I have a hard goal of getting an interview at Blizz by Summer '12. Again, whether I get rejected at that point or don't but decide that it's not the job for me, that's fine. I just have to get that far. I need to prove to myself that I really am that good.

I do have an idea for an addon to get started with. I don't even care at this point whether or not someone's already done it. I can't worry about that. I need a starting point.

I have a goal and I'm going to get there.

Cheating on WoW

2011-02-07T08:55:00.000-07:00

I'd say I feel guilty. Or dirty. Like I was sneaking around the back of a long-time lover. But none of that is true...and not just because I have a knack for being a heartless bastard.

I managed to get in on the RIFT beta with the help of one of my guildies. The beta for RIFT is somewhat interesting in that instead of being a continuous thing, it's broken up into separate events.

This past weekend was beta #6 and it ran from Friday afternoon until today.

It was kind of a bad weekend for me to get in on it. For one, I had the goal of driving my Hunter, Grevioux, up to level 62 this weekend. At the start of the weekend he was 49. Even with the increased speed in leveling, that's a time-consuming goal.

I also knew that today would be pretty much out of the picture as far as any playtime was concerned as I had a Super Bowl party to prepare for/attend. So my weekend really only allowed me about 8 hours to play around in Tirion's world.

I'm still not 100% certain on what I can say and what I can't. There was some sort of NDA agreement that I agreed to, but it wasn't really clear to what extent I wasn't allowed to talk about the game. It was all in legalese, which I don't speak.

That said, I think there's a few things I can say. I just have to stick to generalities.

The game looks amazing, but it's a double-edged sword. While it has the more realistic and high-res graphics that I've always hoped WoW would update itself to, I constantly found myself thinking, "now I understand why WoW sticks to a brighter color palate and toonier feel." Things blend together a lot, and the longer you spend playing, the harder it can become to distinguish stuff. This isn't a great thing to begin with, but when your own character doesn't look crisp and clear and stand out strongly, it becomes tiresome.

The strongest point of the game is definitely the Rift events. I found myself frequently veering off my questing path to participate in them.

The Soul system is intriguing. There's a lot of depth there and a lot of room for possibility. Like my early days in WoW, though, I find myself getting obsessive and trying to spread my talent points around somewhat evenly rather than strongly specializing. The whole fact that I got to choose all three talent trees out of a larger set further encourages this behavior. Why would I choose something and then not spend points there?

In general, I think my personality would drive me to try as many different combinations of souls for each class as I could and I'd end up overwhelming myself with it.

I didn't make it to a high enough level to try the first dungeon, but I'm hoping I'm able to do so when the next beta event rolls around. I'm anxious to see how it feels playing in a group, as that's what I really enjoy in the MMO experience.

Do I think it's going to pull me away from WoW once it's released? Unlikely. But I will say this: if I wasn't playing WoW and I was actively looking for an MMO to play, I would definitely get into this one.

Magmaw down (sort of)

2011-02-02T15:56:00.002-07:00

So over the weekend, my guild and I got our first real taste of Cataclysm raiding. We headed into BWD to challenge Magmaw to a 1-on-1 25 battle.

We had to compromise to make it happen. Prior to raiding we (the officers) said we would be checking gems/enchants/etc and determining eligibility from that. This was a huge step away from our Wrath-era stance of "the first X tanks/healers/dps available get the spots." What we ended up doing was taking the 25 most prepared, even if we believed they weren't really prepared enough.

From there, the ends to which our raiding weekend (Fri/Sat nights) was successful depends on your measuring stick of success.

By the end of the second night, we had made leaps-and-bounds improvements over our first few attempts. But our best single attempt of the whole weekend was 45%, 2 minutes away from the enrage timer.

While there were a lot of small areas we could improve on, the biggest single contributing factor was that we just weren't handling the parasites well.

I don't consider the weekend a failure by any means, though. While it's true we weren't really close to defeating Magmaw, people were happy to be raiding again. Through the whole weekend there was relatively little grumbling and several people thanked me for the opportunity to participate.

We finally have a solid idea (beyond reading about other peoples' experiences) what it's going to take to begin progressing through raids. And while we're not quite there yet, we're close. Close enough that we're not going to stop trying and revert back to spending our raid nights running Heroics.

On Sunday night I rounded up a group of 10 of our better and more prepared raiders and went back in. We still wiped several times and the eventual kill attempt was anything but clean. Had Magmaw's head come off the spike before we killed him, we would have been flying back from the graveyard instead of passing out loot.

But, at the very least, I have a much better concept of the fight from a raid leader's perspective than I did either of the previous two nights. I can watch as many videos as I want and read all the strats that are out there...but until I've iterated over the fight several times, I never really understand it.

We're going to go back at him this weekend with a group of 25...hopefully one a little more prepared than the last. I think we can make even more progress, and potentially bag him. If not, we'll probably switch it over to Omn(omnom)itron. It's not any easier, really...but at least it'll be different. (After our Magmaw 10 kill, we threw ourselves at its mercy for a while to try to learn it better.)

What our kill shot taught me is that there is absolutely no carrying anyone. At least not right now. Everyone has to pull their weight. If a group of 10 of our better/more prepared players eke out a win, a group of 25 is going to struggle. That's going to be the name of the game for a while. As a raid leader, I'm going to have to find ways to keep morale up. But I can also use it as a carrot to dangle in front of people to get them to improve. I didn't really have that in Wrath.

Gonna be interesting.

Now what?

2011-01-31T09:43:00.003-07:00

As some of you may recall, I managed to pull my dad into Azeroth a little over a year ago. I set him up with a trial account, helped him with some of the basics, and then sent him on his merry way.

He ended up enjoying the game enough to stick with it. Though his playtime is limited to a few hours on the weekends, he still managed to get enough out of playing to continue his subscription.

He solo'd the whole way, with Norf or I occasionally running out to help him through some group quests, especially in Outland. Often that just meant running around behind him and keeping him healed up as he fought some of the bigger bads. Or tanking the ones that would have just killed him too quickly.

He enjoys taking the game at his own pace, and is very tunnel-visioned when he plays. A lot of times I have to call him on the phone when trying to help him out because he's just not watching his chat window. For this reason I didn't even bother inviting him into my guild. I just didn't feel it would add anything to the game for him. (I did discuss it with him at one point, and while he didn't say no, I got the impression he just didn't see why he would want to be part of one.)

Yesterday he logged on and I noticed he'd hit 85. (He was 79 when Cata dropped, so this was the first time he'd hit the cap.) I was halfway through sending him a congratulatory message, when I got a message from him instead. After exchanging greetings he said this:

"I hit level 85. Now what do I do?"

I started to type a response, stopped, started again, stopped again...and then sat there for a couple minutes just thinking about what I could say.

I've never approached the end-game from the perspective of someone who wasn't interested in raiding, or any other forms of multiplayer play. You know...that second M in MMORPG. From the very first time I hit level-cap in BC, group play was my goal.

We have a few uber-casual soloers in my guild, so I posed the question in gchat. Specifically asking for ideas on what someone could do with a max-level character that was perfectly happy playing unguilded and solo.

The first response was "start gearing for dungeons." *headdesk*

A few more minutes of conversation led to the conclusion that none of our uber-casuals were online. Everyone was in the same boat as me...they just didn't approach the game from the right perspective, so they had no clue.

I mean, there is stuff to do solo. Reputation grinds, AH PvP, Achievement hunting. But I had a hard time imagining any of that appealing to my dad. They don't have rewards that are easily quantifiable.

My dad can spend hours and hours and hours playing games that have loose definitions of winning. Civilization, for example, is one of his favorite series of all time. He's been playing since the very first one. But from the start of the game, there's still a quantifiable end-state.

Ultimately I told him to finish questing out Twilight Highlands if he hadn't. Then he could roll a new character and start over to see things from a different perspective. I also told him how to browse his Achievements and that he could pick some of those to go after. And, finally, that it may be an easier conversation to have in person.

I also apologized and said, "There's just not a ton of stuff to do on your own once you hit the level cap."

Oddly appropriate that this morning, Ardol announced his cold-turkey resignation from all things WoW for almost those same reasons. As someone who enjoyed just being on his own while playing the game, he found that the game really stopped offering things for him to do.

It's possible this is the end of my dad's adventures in Azeroth. Which doesn't entirely surprise me. I even told Norf a long time ago that I kind of envisioned my dad playing until he hit the level cap and then calling it good. He's the type of guy that doesn't watch movies twice because he's "already seen it." So I have a hard time envisioning him rerolling (even though he did ask about other classes before). And I just can't think of anything at level cap that will really hold his interest.

Even if this is the end of his WoW days, I can't say it's a bad thing. He certainly enjoyed his time. He enjoyed playing a game "with" me and a lot of the time I was at home we spent talking about the game. And it was nice for me to finally be able to share one of my games with him. I'm the gamer I am today because of all the games he shared with me while I was growing up. So, in a way, the cycle is complete.

Now I just need to wait for my niece to get a little older and I can start corrupting her. Not that I'm going to be alone in that endeavor. She's a total grandpa's girl. I'm sure he's already planted the seed...

Level up!

2011-01-29T22:55:00.002-07:00

Holy carp! I got linked by WoW Insider!

<3

...

(Shhh. Don't speak. Just let me have my moment.)

The curtain is set to rise

2011-01-28T09:27:00.003-07:00

Tonight's a bit of a big deal for me and my guild. Tonight is our first official guild raid night of Cataclysm. We've been working towards this for a while now. Obviously ever since Cata dropped. But the last 2 or 3 weeks we took it a step further, spending our usual raid nights (Friday/Saturday) grouping up and splitting off into Heroic groups for gear and practice.

Last Sunday we had a 10-man kill of Argaloth (who dropped nothing useful, the jerk) and a couple nights ago a 10-man team went in to give the Bastion of Twilight a shot. I think it was a good learning night (I didn't participate, but listened to the latter half of the run on vent while they went) that ultimately ended without getting Halfus down.

Tonight, though, is the big one. 25-man BWD. The invite has been on the calendar for 2 weeks. As of right now we have 27 Accepted and 13 Tentative. Somehow we're going to have to pare that down to 25.

(Matticus' post today mentioned streaming raids. His is for recruitment purposes, but I may try and set up a stream before our raid so those who don't get to go can still watch if they want to. I still say raids need an "observer" mode.)

Unlike in the past, where we've mostly gone with a "the first 25 to show up get in" method (with the caveat that we need X tanks and Y healers), we'll be doing some gear checks. Not so much who is the most geared, but who put in the effort. Did they gem and enchant everything. Are those gems and enchants appropriate for the class? How's their First Aid skill? Do they have food/flasks/bandages?

During the Heroic runs over the past few weeks, we've also been keeping some notes on how people play. Not necessarily how good they are, but more how they work in a team. Do they help with CC (including refreshing when needed)? Do they interrupt? Do they help throw emergency heals? Do they do any of this without necessarily being reminded to or told when?

To be fair, as a raid leader, it's also a big night for me. We haven't raided as a guild in a long time now. A lot of our newer members (and there are quite a few of them) haven't raided with me at all. I worry about how I'm going to perform in that role and how well I'm going to be received. (Despite the frequent and flowery sentiments to the contrary from my guildies, I still don't think I'm that amazing of a raid lead.)

I'm also woefully unprepared. I took a quick look at a Magmaw guide earlier this morning, but still haven't researched anything else about the instance. Hell...I couldn't even tell you how to get there.

I didn't sleep well last night. Seriously. That's how neurotic I get about these things sometimes.

At the same time, I'm really, really excited. I love to raid. It's the pinnacle experience of an MMO, IMO. And as Captain Lore (as Cheres has named me) I get geeked out because raids are where a lot of the lore happens. It's the reason I got into raiding in BC in the first place.

I'm also excited that, at least for now, we're able to make good on our goal of being a 25-man raid guild. I know it's the less-desirable option right now. But we're in a place where we may be able to pull it off.

So we'll see how things go.

Is (low) leveling really too fast?

2011-01-25T08:01:00.000-07:00

To people who frequently read my blog or that I interact with on a somewhat constant basis, it may seem kind of odd that I'm asking that question.

I've stated on more than one occasion that, yes, I feel low leveling is too quick. And up until this past weekend, I wholly believed that.

So what changed?

My Worgen Hunter dinged 40 this weekend. So far he's gone through Gilneas, Westfall, Duskwood, Northern and Southern Stranglethorn and he's started on Dustwallow Marsh. He's specifically abandoned breadcrumbs leading to Redridge and WPL. He has one going to EPL right now that I'm pretty sure will be green, if not grey by the time he's through Dustwallow. I'm sure he'll have picked up another one to somewhere else by then.

(That paragraph is making my spellchecker go nuts.)

So by my best estimates he'll have gone through 7 or 8 zones by the time he heads out to Outland. And if they continue like they have been, each one is going to be fully self-contained and give me enough levels to cleanly move on to the next without worry.

I also haven't hit a single dungeon (which people are complaining completely rockets them past zones).

Let's compare this to the old leveling experience.

I never really quantified it the way I just did above. But I have leveled 5 toons through pre-4.01 Azeroth. And I remember how it felt. The first 2 felt fresh and interesting, but they hit a lot of zones, and there was definite overlap. By the time I got to the third, there were only a couple zones I still hadn't been through. And I feel like if I had picked completely disparate paths, I would have had fewer, if any. Which means I was hitting around 45% of the zones.

There were definite dead zones in leveling where I was scrounging zones for quests of an appropriate level, or just any quests at all. I often spent so much time traveling from end-to-end of/between continents that I definitely felt I was leaving things undone. And I dreaded the 30-45 range when my choices were doing STV again or slagging through a hodge-podge of dreadful zones that included Desolace.

Some amount of dungeoning was almost required.

Leveling got to the point where it felt like a chore and I just wanted to get through it.

Now I already have a mental list of 4 zones I've completely skipped that I want to make sure I see on a future playthrough. And that doesn't include any of pre-40 Kalimdor or the new Elwynn and Dun Morogh.

Blizz is leaving ample content for me to explore on future playthoughs. And I'm actually excited to explore it.

I think I, like a lot a people, got wrapped up in the fact that it was different. I was expecting one thing, even though it was something I didn't actually enjoy, and when I didn't get it I made brash claims about it: it's too easy and too fast.

The old leveling slog through Azeroth felt like a chore. It was undesirable. But it felt like an accomplishment getting through it.

Now the sense of accomplishment is somewhat removed. But in its place?

You know...these new zones...

They're kinda fun.

A simple observation

2011-01-24T18:45:00.002-07:00

It's kinda sad when a minor character like Glop has the best voice acting in the game, superior to more important and significant characters like, say, Alexstrasza, Varian, and Sylvanas.

Feral Enchants (4.03)

2011-01-21T10:42:00.000-07:00

I have a confession to make, and it's not something I'm entirely proud to admit.

I've been really, really lazy with enchanting my gear so far this expansion.

That's not to say I haven't done it. I have. All my enchantable gear has something on it, but I'm not entirely sure any of them have the best option on there.

Mostly because I haven't really checked to see what all the options are.

As our guild started those early weeks of Cataclysm, we pushed for people to put their BoE greens in the guild bank to get DE'd, or send them directly to an enchanter. We figured we'd have some success with that method, but I don't think we were really prepared for just how successful we'd be. The bank tab we were using to hold the greens kept filling up faster than our enchanters could pull stuff out and DE it. We had 3/4 of a tab filled with materials in no time, and another 1/2 tab filled with enchants.

And so my method for enchanting my gear became to scan that half tab and pick the most useful looking thing I saw for each slot.

Now my guild is ready to start (25-man) raiding. Or at least ready to assemble a raid and see how ready we really are.

Guess it's time to really start paying attention to enchants, eh?

Bear Enchants:
Head (requires Revered with the respective factions)

Arcanum of the Earthen Ring
Arcanum of the Ramkahen (If you somehow have more rep with Ramkahen than ER, this will serve until you can get your ER rep up.)

Shoulder

Inscription of the Earth Prince (Scribes only)
Greater/Lesser Inscription of Unbreakable Quartz (Exalted/Honored with Therazane)
Heavy Savage Armor Kit (If you have no Therazane rep you can use this while you quickly work it up.)

Chest

Back

Protection

Wrist

Draconic Embossment - Stamina (Leatherworkers only)
Major Stamina

If you feel you're in a spot where some extra mitigation/avoidance is going to help you more than the Stam, then go

Draconic Embossment - Agility (Leatherworks only)
Dodge

Hands

Glove Reinforcements (Seriously)
Heavy Savage Armor Kit

Legs

Charscale Leg Reinforcements (Leatherworkers only)/Armor (Everyone else)
Twilight Leg Armor

Feet

Weapon

Rings (Enchanters only)

Cat Enchants:
Head (requires Revered with the respective factions)

Arcanum of the Ramkahen
Arcanum of the Wildhammer (Alliance)/Dragonmaw (Horde)

Shoulders

Swiftsteel Inscription (Scribes only)
Greater/Lesser Inscription of Shattered Crystal (Exalted/Honored with Therazane)

Back

Chest

Wrist

Draconic Embossment - Agility (Leatherworkers only)
Greater Speed
Greater Critical Strike

Hands

Legs

Dragonscale Leg Reinforcements (Leatherworkers only)/Armor (Everyone else)
Scorched Leg Armor

Feet

Weapon

Rings (Enchanters only)

Agility

Some Feral Macros

2011-01-20T11:57:00.002-07:00

Over the holidays I picked up a Razer Naga. I have a full post coming in regards to how I feel about it, but suffice to say that it's been quite a shift in my play style. Among many other things, it's put me in a position where I'm using macros much more frequently than I used to.

On that note, I figured I could go over some of the macros I use.

Bear Form Macro

#showtooltip Bear Form
/cancelform [noform:1]
/dismount [mounted]
/cast [noform] Bear Form

This macro does 3 things. If I'm in any form except Bear form, I cancel out of it. If I'm mounted, I dismount. Finally, if I'm in caster form (no form) I shift to Bear. Where this macro differs from the standard Bear form button is if I'm already in Bear form, it won't get canceled. It also lets me shift out of flight form into the others when I'm not on the ground, which the game doesn't typically let you do. (Or at least used to not let you do...I don't know if that's true anymore since I always use this.)

I have a similar macro for Cat form. Just change the 1 in the second line to a 3. Then cast Cat Form on the last line.

Power Shift Macro

#showtooltip
/cancelform [modifier:shift]
/cast [form:3] !Cat Form
/cast [form:1] !Bear Form

Powershifting is a powerful mechanic. Any debuffs that impair your movement (or, when 4.06 drops, just those that slow it) can be cleared without losing form. One easy example is the poison the Empyrean Assassins in Vortex Pinnacle apply.) If you're Rage starved and have speced 3/3 into Furor, you can powershift for 10 free Rage.

The PvP applications should be obvious.

I also included a way to shift out of my Cat and Bear forms in this macro since I removed that from the buttons I use for those abilities and it was an occasional annoyance having to cast a spell to get out of form.

Interrupt/Stun Macro

#showtooltip
/cast [form:3] Skull Bash(Cat Form);[form:1,modifier:shift] Bash(Bear Form); [form:1] Skull Bash(Bear Form)

There's two things going on here. The first is that I can bind Skull Bash to the same button and have it work in both Cat and Bear forms. The second is that, when in Bear form, I can hold down shift and cast Bash instead for a quick stun.

I could also add [form:3,modifier:shift] Maim if I wanted to add my Cat form stun to this macro as well. But for now I've been keeping my combo finishers separate.

Cat DPS Macro

#showtooltip
/cast [modifier:shift] Swipe(Cat Form); Shred

As a Cat your main attack is going to be Shred on a single target (often) and Swipe on large mob packs with low health (not so often). With this macro, I can bind both "main" attacks to the same button and just switch by holding the Shift key when fighting packs.

Stampeding Roar Macro

#showtooltip
/cast [form:3] Stampeding Roar(Cat Form)
/cast [form:1] Stampeding Roar(Bear Form)

Pretty basic. Allows me to use the proper Stampeding Roar regardless of form.

Stealth Macro (NElfs only)

#showtooltip
/cast [form:3, modifier:shift] Shadowmeld; [form:3] Prowl; [noform:3] Shadowmeld

With this Macro, I've bound both my stealth abilities to one button. In any form but Cat, I Shadowmeld. In Cat form, I Prowl by default, but Shadowmeld if I use the Shift key.

Taunt Macro

#showtooltip
/cast [modifier:shift] Challenging Roar; Growl

Similar to the Cat DPS Macro above, this one lets me put a frequently used and a lesser used taunt on the same button.

Speedy Travel Macro

#showtooltip
/cast [swimming] Aquatic Form; Travel Form

Another one that's pretty simple. It puts my non-flight travel forms on one button. If I'm in swimmable water, I'll shift into mutant seal form. Otherwise, cheetah.

As time goes on, I'm finding a few of these are less useful than I originally anticipated (I don't need the Skull Bash macro to handle both forms in my current setup). I'm also finding others that would be useful, like combining Rip and Ferocious Bite, or binding my defensive cooldowns (which I haven't done, but really should).

Cataclysm Bear "Rotations" (4.03)

2011-01-19T13:33:00.001-07:00

I put "rotations" in the title (and then again put "rotations" in the first few words of this post) in hopes that it will help people searching for that keyword find this post. But this isn't really a post about Bear rotations. Because Bears don't really have true rotations the way some other classes do.

Can I stop typing "rotations" now?

I lieu of talking about a specific rota--set of abilities hit in a specific order, I'm going to go over the tools we have as a bear when when you should be looking to use them. I'll also try and give an idea of something that might somewhat resemble that "r" word. But don't get yourself locked into that. Tanking is much more situational than strict rotations allow for.

Say rotations again! I dare you!

I'll stop now.

Damage:
There are 4 main direct damage abilities in the Bear arsenal. These are our primary threat-building tools and the ones you'll be spending more time than not hitting.

Mangle - Mangle won't be the attack you're hitting most often (probably), but it's probably the most important one in your arsenal. It has a 6 second cooldown, but with your Lacerate stacks proccing Berserk, you rarely have to wait the full time. Absolutely use this every time you have the free one.

Maul - Maul is one of the most misunderstood abilities for Bears. It's a powerful attack, and glyphed it's a very effective way to hold threat on a secondary target. But it's a complete Rage hog. You have to be careful using it, or you'll find yourself Rage starved and unable to do anything else.

In Wrath, the idea was to spam Maul, or at least bind it to every other attack on your bar. It used to replace your auto-attack with a much more powerful one. Blizz didn't like that design, so it's gone now. Instead Maul is an instant attack that's off the global cool down. That's an important distinction. You can hit Maul at any time. Any time you're sitting there with a near-full Rage bar (75+), you should be using Maul to dump some of that Rage.

Lacerate - This is probably the one attack you'll be hitting more than any other. The general strategy with Lacerate is to apply a full 3 stacks, then consume them when your Pulverize buff expires. At the start of a boss fight this means you'll be spending 7 GCDs stacking, consuming, and restacking Lacerate in rapid order.

Lacerate is also one of the few abilities we use that doesn't have a cooldown, so it fits that "I need a button to push" niche when everything else is still locked out.

Also, Feral Druids, Rogues, and Warriors all have abilities that do increased damage on bleeding targets. When a Bear tank is in the raid, Lacerate is the primary source of that bleed since it's a pretty standard part of our rotation. That means that you want to keep its uptime as high as possible.

Pulverize - Pulverize is one of the new toys Bears got in Cataclysm and it seems to be the one a lot of Bears are having the hardest time fitting into their rotation. It definitely complicates things a bit. The model of stacking, consuming, and restacking Lacerate added a new dimension to a rotation that used to be sleep-inducingly simple.

Even with 2/2 Endless Carnage, your Pulverize buff only lasts 18 seconds, and you'll be spending a minimum of 4.5 seconds of that restacking Lacerate. A full third of your attack rotation (excluding Maul) is consumed by this pattern.

The crit buff is a big deal, though. Crits give us extra rage and a temporary shield that we would like to have on near-100% uptime. Not to mention the increased threat generation and damage.

Also, you can see in this post how I user PowerAuras to help track the Lacerate/Pulverize synergy.

AoE:
AoE tanking is a lot harder than it was in Wrath. Gone are the days of Swipe-spam. We did gain a second AoE tanking ability, Thrash. But both abilities are on a 6 second cooldown, which makes management very important.

In an ideal situation, you'll be hitting these 3 seconds apart to minimize any long waits for cooldowns to expire, lest you lose control of a bunch of mobs and are forced to wait until you can get them back.

Swipe - While it's your main AoE tanking ability through most of leveling content, once you hit 81 and get Thrash, this becomes secondary. It still needs to be in your AoE tanking rotation to help offset the 6-second cooldown of Thrash. But it's just not as good.

Thrash - Thrash has two components. Cast-time damage for snap threat (that's higher than Swipe's damage) and then a bleed that lasts the full duration of of the 6 second cooldown. For AoE tanking, this is going to be your primary threat building ability.

The other very nice way to use Thrash is on single-target fights just before using Pulverize. This ensures that you will have a 100% bleed uptime by bridging that gap between the time you consume Lacerate and subsequently start reapplying it.

Taunts:
Taunts are a major part of any Tank's arsenal. They're what allow us to quickly regain aggro on a target, regardless of how much more threat someone may have than us. Of course, in an ideal world, we'd never need them (except for boss fights that require Tank swapping). But we don't tank in an ideal world.

Growl - Growl is our primary taunt. It makes a target focus on us and puts our threat level even with the highest person on the threat table. It's important that you don't let this lull you into a false sense of security. It's fairly easy (especially early in a fight and/or when a mob you taunted has to run back to you from range) for someone else to jump back past the threat threshold and gain aggro. More often than not, you're going to want to immediately cast F3 after a Growl to give yourself a little extra lead on the threat list.

Challenging Roar - While not a true taunt, Challenging Roar can be very useful in emergency situations. I've used this more so far in Cata than I have in the preceding 4.5 years combined. CR makes all enemies within 10 yards attack you for 6 seconds, but it does not modify any threat tables. At the end of that 6 seconds they'll go back to attacking someone else if you haven't managed to gain aggro.

CR is most often used when a large pack of mobs gets out of your control and is attacking the party/raid. Use CR to gain temporary aggro, then get off a quick Thrash and Swipe. Hopefully you can pick most of them up that way and deal with any individual stragglers appropriately.

It's also useful in raids if another tank is taking too much damage and is about to die. You can give your healers 6 seconds to get the other tank back to reasonable health. Just be sure you're in a position to take the hits for 6 seconds so you don't die instead.

CC:
For the sake of simplicity, I'm not going to mention Entangling Roots, Cyclone, or Hibernate here. They are CC abilities that we do have as Bears, but they're rarely abilities we use while actively tanking. I have a different post for another day that will include those spells.

Skull Bash - Skull Bash is my new favorite Druid toy in Cataclysm, by a long shot. I absolutely hated tanking fights that required interrupts and not having a reliable one on a reasonable cooldown to use.

Speccing 2/2 into Brutal Impact lowers the cooldown of Skull Bash to 10 seconds, which is enough for you to handle nearly every must-interrupt situation on your own.

It's also worth noting that SB is not tied to the GCD, so you're able to use this instantly at any time, as long as you have the Rage to do so. If you're not the key-binding sort, I still recommend you bind this one ability to a key that you can reach quickly and easily and get used to using it that way.

Bash - With the interrupt component of this ability moved to Skull Bash, it's seen a significantly reduced role in the Bear toolkit. But it shouldn't be ignored. It's still a very powerful ability that's actually been improved with the addition of Skull Bash. Now you don't have to save this for some kind of emergency interrupt situation. You can use it every time the cooldown is up...and I suggest you do.

While most bosses will be immune to the stun, it's very effective against trash. It gives you a 5 second reprieve from damage from a single mob. Additionally, a mob that's stunned cannot Block, Parry, or Dodge, meaning it's going to take full damage from anyone attacking it. If you need to burn something down quickly, this is a very effective tool.

Nature's Grasp - I debated on whether or not to include Nature's Grasp in this post, but I think it's finding enough use that it may be worth mentioning.

NG is an ability you're going to be using on occasion when you need a pack of mobs to stop attacking you for a time. You're able to cast this in Bear form, which makes it particularly helpful. The next 3 physical attacks you receive over the next 45 seconds will temporarily root the attacker in place. Damage done has a chance to break those roots, though. So you want to be careful not to attack (including Swipe or Thrash) rooted targets.

Normally you're going to use this in fights where you have to kite something. Or multiple somethings. The Setesh encounter in HoO is a good example of when NG becomes very handy.

Another use is when you have too many mobs attacking you. Pop this, let a few of them get rooted, and then run off a short distance to continue tanking the rest. It'll give you a short reprieve from massive incoming damage.

Debuff:
Faerie Fire (Feral) - The primary debuff used by Bears if Faerie Fire (Feral) (or F3, as I commonly refer to it). Not only does this reduce the target's armor, but in Bear form it does damage and a hefty bit of threat. It's the only ranged ability we have.

Most pulls are going to be done with F3, even if it's as you're running up to or Charging the eventual target. Using F3 to pull from range and then ducking out of line of sight is also a key way to round up mob groups with casters.

As I stated above, you'll also want to use F3 immediately following Growl on any target that you're trying to get aggro on.

Demoralizing Roar - All tanks have some ability that mirrors Demoralizing Roar. Paladins and DKs don't even have to hit an extra button for it like Druids and Warriors do, (although Druids and Warriors have an easier time applying it to a whole group of mobs). So if you're raid tanking, you may not have to worry about this, particularly against bosses. But in Dungeon situations, you'll want to try and keep DR up as mush as possible. Your healers will appreciate it.

Defense:
While you'll generally want to use these cooldowns on a rotation, using all 3 at the same time can make you nearly invincible and fill your health bar significantly for a short period of time.

Using Survival Instincts and Frenzied Regeneration together is also a fairly common tactic, as they're on a mirrored cooldown and have great synergy. However, if you're in a fight where you need to roll defensive cooldowns fairly frequently, it may be better to use them separately.

Barkskin - With its relatively short cooldown, you should pretty much be hitting Barkskin every time it's available unless you know there's something specific coming up that you should be saving it for.

Barkskin is particularly helpful right at the beginning of a pull when your healers may be focusing on getting in position more than healing you or when you'll have a large number of trash mobs hitting you.

Survival Instincts - SI has a much longer cooldown, so it should be used with more caution. The damage reduction can save your life and, ultimately, a wipe. But if you use it haphazardly you may not have it when you really need it.

At the same time, don't be too gun shy. If you always "save it for later," then you may never get the chance.

I generally use SI any time my health drops below 20% for more than a few seconds, or if I know some big damage ability is incoming that I won't be able to survive otherwise.

Frenzied Regeneration - FR is an interesting ability in that there's two different ways you can use it. There's the base state, where you can convert extra Rage into a fairly powerful self-heal. Then there's the glyphed state, which removed the self-heal but increases all healing done to you by 30%.

Either way, you get the bump to your current and total health.

Which one you use is probably a matter of personal preference. Right now I'm mostly running with the unglyphed version. I like being able to tell my healers "don't worry about me for the next 20 seconds, heal the group." It's also an excellent survival tool for when your healer dies and you need just a little more time to down that boss.

I have a feeling that once I start raiding more and running dungeons less, I might find the glyphed version more useful. The jury is still out on that one, though. If any regular Bear raiders have some insight on this, feel free to share. :-)

Other:
Enrage - Enrage is generally used before a pull to give you an initial pool of Rage to work with. Usually you'll want to pull just as the 10 seconds expires to make sure you have maximum rage to work with, but don't start taking damage while you still have Enrage active.

Depending on how you're specced, there's also some in-combat advantage to be gained from Enrage. However it's up to you and your healers whether or not the additional damage you'll be taking while it's active is worth the trade-off.

Feral Charge - Many pulls will start with Charge, especially those where you don't want the boss/mobs moving very far from their pre-pull locations.

You'll also want to use this to quickly close the gap on any enemies that have gone out of range.

Berserk - Besides the free and regular Mangle procs, the actual Berserk button can be very helpful in certain situations. Hitting this button will give you virtually unlimited 3-target Mangles for 15 seconds as long as you have the rage to support them (which, between getting hit and generating a high number of crits, you should). It's great for getting a high level of threat on multiple targets or for those "blow all your cooldowns" moments for high damage. Adding Maul to the mix every time it's off cooldown (again, if have the rage to support it) can send your damage through the roof.

Stampeding Roar - One of the new Druid toys in Cata. I debated whether or not to include this in this post, but ended up going with it for one main reason...it's a mini-Dash for Bears. If you find yourself in a situation where you have to run a long way to get to a safe zone (Erudax, Asaad), quickly get to the other of some void zone, get out of the way of a super damaging ability, or need some extra kiting distance, this is a great ability to use.

Also handy for those times your whole group/raid needs to move somewhere quickly. You know...those other guys.

Thorns - Thorns has seen a very decreased role in Bear tanking since Cata. It has a short duration now (where it used to be a set-it-and-forget-it 1 hour) and cannot be applied while in forms. You'll have to shift to use it, which is dangerous when you're actively tanking. Additionally, the damage done by Thorns is now based on the target's spell power, not the caster's. So we can still have Boomkins and Trees cast this on us so we can stay in form, but it doesn't do extra damage like it used to.

Still if you're going to be tanking a large group of mobs, it can be useful to apply this just before the pull for some additional initial threat. Ditto with bosses. Obviously it works better on mobs that hit faster.

Passive:
Savage Defense - I want to take a moment to specifically mention Savage Defense because a lot of Bears seem to forget it. Since we can't Block or Parry, we needed something to smooth out our incoming damage. Because of our previously outrageous Dodge percentage, bosses had to hit very fast or very hard to compensate. It put other tanks at a disadvantage, and it meant incoming damage against Bears was very spiky as it was dependent on the RNG.

The SD mechanic works very similar to a shield for blocking. Our crits have a 50% chance to proc this, and with most boss attack speeds, we should be able to have it up near 100%. That's the idea, anyway. We're balanced around that goal.

Additionally, our mastery increases the effectiveness of Savage Defense.

Just to give you an idea of the power of Savage Defense, just before Beta ended they nerfed it significantly. In order to not make boss damage against Bears inconsequential, they were hitting unfairly hard against all other tanks.

Single/Double Target Priorities:
As I said at the top of the post, Bears don't really have Rotations. It's more of a priority list. Each time you do something, go back to the top of the list and start over.

If Mangle is available, Mangle.
If there are no stacks of Lacerate on the mob, Lacerate.
If the mob does not have Demoralizing Roar or a similar debuff, Demoralizing Roar.
If Thrash is off cooldown, Thrash.
If the mob does not have 3 stacks of Lacerate, Lacerate.
If your Pulverize buff has dropped off, Pulverize.
Refresh F3

There are two assumptions this list is making.

You pulled with F3.
You're using Maul any time you have the Rage available. (Since it's off the GCD, it doesn't really fit inside the priority order.)

Multi-Target (3+) Priorities:

If Thrash is off cooldown and you can hit all/most of the targets, Thrash.
If Swipe is off cooldown, Swipe.
If there are mobs that do not have the Demoralizing Roar debuff, Demoralizing Roar.
If Mangle is available, Mangle current target
Lacerate current target

Again, there's a few things to note here.

Maul any time you have the Rage to spare.
Your current target doesn't always mean the first kill target. Once you have enough of a threat lead over your DPS that Thrash and Swipe will maintain it, start tab-cycling through the remaining mobs and applying Mangles and Lacerates.

So there you have it. Simple, right?

Keeping all of your abilities in mind, knowing when you use them, tracking cooldowns, de/buff durations, on top of just keeping an eye on your health and the overall tanking situation can be tough.

Not just can be. It is.

Don't let yourself get overwhelmed. In time you'll get more comfortable and you'll be able to do everything while thinking about it less than before. After time, certain things will become automatic. But don't expect there to not be growing pains. And don't fret even when you find yourself messing up a rotation long after you think you're comfortable with it. It's not uncommon, especially when learning new fights.

Cataclysm Bear Raiding Spec (4.03)

2011-01-11T08:36:00.001-07:00

The following an overview of a dungeon/raid talent build for Bear tanking. In this build I pass over abilities that are nice during solo or PvP play and focus strictly on what's useful for group play. This is also not meant to be a hybrid build of any kind. It's optimized strictly for running as a Bear.

The Base Build
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#0ZfMGboubzrck0c

These are the 34 talent points that I would consider to be at the heart of any Bear build. Your mileage may vary, of course. But this is as good of a starting place as any.

Restoration - 3 points
Heart of the Wild - 3/3
A pretty key talent here that I don't think any Druid build (of any spec) is going to pass over. For Bears, this jumps our Stam a cool 6%. If you've been playing around in Cata so far, I don't think I have to explain why more health is a good thing.

Feral - 31 points
Feral Swiftness - 2/2
Being that Bears can't Parry or Block (technically), Dodge becomes incredibly important for our overall damage reduction. We get a lot of it through the Agility on our gear, but 4% for a couple talent points is also a good bargain.

Furor - 3/3
Not really an essential talent, but the guaranteed 10 rage on shift is nice. It gives us some breathing room when we're called to help out with CC. Throw an Entangling Roots or a Hibernate and then shift and you're not completely Rage starved.

Infected Wounds - 2/2
There are a lot of abilities and talents that reduce enemy attack speed, but I generally don't like to depend on other people for my own survivability where I don't have to. As a tank, that's my job. Plus, as a tank, I'm the most likely to be attacking the boss 100% of the time. So it makes sense for me to be the one responsible for applying these types of debuffs.

Fury Swipes - 3/3
There's room for debate on this talent. I like, it though. With my current weapon this equates to a 15% chance of getting a free hit for 3.2K - 5K damage. And that's if this can't crit (I'd have to look at some parses to see if I could even determine that). Over a long fight, that can really add up, both in terms of damage and threat. (Edit: Thanks to Ampzilla for confirming that this does, indeed, crit. That makes it a little more valuable as a 3-point talent.)

Primal Fury - 2/2
Rage is what we use to do what we do. A rage starved bear might as well be holding a big neon arrow that says "go attack him." With all the agility we stack as Bears, we crit. A lot. So getting Rage for something we do a lot...hey, that sounds like a good deal. (Plus, the more Rage we generate, the more we can Maul. And Mauling is fun.)

Feral Aggression - 2/2
This is another one of those not-entirely-critical talents. But there some points you need to put in arbitrary places to unlock lower tiers and this gets my vote for one of them. The only-needing-one-application-of-F3-to-get-full-stacks is kinda nice, though.

Feral Charge - 1/1
This is just one of those essential Feral talents I could never imagine being without. Great for those I-need-to-get-there-and-hit-that-now moments.

Thick Hide - 3/3
An absolutely essential talent for Bears. Without this, you're no less squishy than a Cat. And the whole crit-immunity thing, too. Just a little important.

Leader of the Pack - 1/1
Another one of those essential Druid talents. A passive crit buff to your whole raid is a good thing. So is the 4% self-heal every 6 (or so) seconds.

Brutal Impact - 2/2
I can't tell you how giddy it makes me to have this talent available to us. Skull Bash is my favorite new Druid ability in Cataclysm, bar none. I no longer have to depend on other people to interrupt that boss ability that's going to kill me. But Skull Bash on a cooldown of 1 minute, or even 35 seconds just isn't good enough. 10 second cooldown? <Insert George Takei "Oh my" here>.

Survival Instincts - 1/1
A super-charged Barkskin on a longer cooldown. Every Bear needs this button on their bars for emergency situations.

Endless Carnage - 2/2
Pulverize is already a tough ability to really get a feel for. It doesn't hit incredibly hard and it consumes our stacks of Lacerate, meaning we lose the damage/threat from the bleed and have to spend 3 GCDs stacking it back up again. That said, the 9% crit bonus is very good, since Crit actives Savage Defense, our version of Block. With Pulverize in the game, Blizz is going to continue trying to balance us having it in our rotation, so it makes sense that it really is something we're going to want to be using. And without the extra 8 second duration from this talent, it goes from a debatable ability to a less-than-useless one.

Natural Reaction - 2/2
Less damage, extra dodge, and more Rage. Easiest 2 points on the tree.

Rend and Tear - 3/3
Another talent of somewhat debatable value. For 3 points we get a 20% increase in Maul damage to any bleeding target. If you have a Cat, Rogue, or Warrior in your raids, this is pretty good, as the bleed uptime will be just about 100%. If you have none of those, you're completely dependent on having Lacerate up...which you'll occasionally be consuming with Pulverize. But you do need 3/3 here to get Pulverize...

Pulverize - 1/1
As you can see from having discussed Endless Carnage and Rend and Tear, there's a lot of debate going on over the relative value of Pulverize. I think it's a good idea and an interesting ability. I just don't think it's quite where it needs to be yet. Hopefully Blizz is getting a lot more data from current play than they were during Beta and are tweaking it appropriately to get it to line up with where they want it to be. Still, like I said earlier, we are at least partially balanced around having that crit buff up. So get cozy with it.

Berserk - 1/1
Not as good for Bears as for Cats, but still a very nice talent to have. Especially when you need to get snap threat on a group of (up to 3) targets or need to help burn them down very quickly. Unlimited Mangles for 15 seconds can do a LOT of damage. When your raid leader tells the DPS to blow all their cooldowns, you want to be using this to help out (and to keep up, if it's early in the fight).

The zero pointers
Predatory Strikes, Nuturing Instinct, and Blood in the Water provide no benefit to Druids in Bear form. They're good for hybrid builds or if you really, really want to put some points there for those times when you may be going cat. But if your goal is to be a primary tank, you'll be wanting to skip these.

The rest
At this point you're left with 7 talent points to spend and a few places you can choose to spend them. Where you do will largely depend on your personal play style and needs.

King of the Jungle (Feral, 3 points)
I'm pretty much against ever using Enrage in combat. I'm not saying there's never a reason to do it. But the times when you are willing to take an additional 10% damage should be very few and far between. That said, maybe towards the end of the encounter when your healers are going all out and you've popped Barkskin and Survival Instincts (and maybe Frenzied Regeneration, too) you can afford the extra damage output 3/3 here will get you. Maybe you need it to beat that enrage timer. Or maybe your healers are awesome enough that they're okay with you taking the extra damage for 15 seconds every so often. I'd be hard pressed to personally spend points here. But to each his own.

Primal Madness (Feral, 2 points)
I could have grouped this KotJ because...if you're going to go that deep, you may as well go all the way. Still, there might be some reason you want the occasional damage buff but don't feel the pressing need for extra Rage at the same time. So this is still hanging out on its own as a take-it-or-leave-it option.

Stampede (Feral, 2 points)
The value of melee haste for Bears is pretty questionable right now. It doesn't feel like it's all that great. And 2 points for 8 seconds of it only after having Charged doesn't feel like a great bargain. That said, if you're charging something as a Bear, there's more than a 90% chance that you're trying to gain aggro on it--whether that means you're pulling it off one of your other raid members, or just pulling it cold. A little extra attack speed is a little extra threat you can generate in that 8 seconds.

Natural Shapeshifter/Master Shapeshifter (Resto, 3 points)
I lump these together because no PvE Druid would take Natural Shapeshifter on its own. The goal here is to get Master Shapeshifter, and you're going to have to spend 3 points to do it. Is 4% increased damage (threat) worth 3 points? Tough call.

Perseverance (Resto, 3* points)
Tanks in general, but Bears especially, don't have a lot of defense against spell damage. Whatever amount of damage a spell does, that's what we're going to take. Perseverance is one defense against that. 6% isn't a huge gain, though. And it's costly. Not only do you have to spend 3 points here to get it, but you'll need at least 2 more (beyond the 3 in Heart of the Wild) in the first tier of the Resto tree to even unlock this talent. Blessing of the Grove and Naturalist don't really do anything for us, so you'd probably be putting the points into NS, at which point you'd also be putting one in MS just to justify it. That's 6 total points for a 6% spell damage reduction. If your healers need the help keeping you up, or you're already going for the threat increase of MS, it might be worth it.

The New Old Azeroth (So Far)

2011-01-10T09:45:00.002-07:00

I still have a lot of Druidy stuff to talk about...not the least of which is getting some tanking guides and such up for the Cata era. But I've been lazy about prepping posts at home and I have a lot of work to get done today, so I need to keep today's post somewhat short.

I spent a lot of my time this past weekend devoted to my Hunter, Grevioux. (Anyone who can figure out the reference gets bonus points.) After devoting most of an afternoon to him when I started him, getting him through and out of Gilneas, I pretty much left him alone while focusing on my current-content toons.

In the past week (mostly Saturday and Sunday) I've taken him through Westfall, Duskwood, and most of STV (all of Northern and most of the Cape).

I'll tell you what...I enjoyed all of the level 80-85 zones that came with Cata. I thought they were fun, varied, and told excellent stories.

They don't hold a candle to the new old-world content.

Yes, leveling is way too fast and easy now. But this isn't a leveling post, it's a zone post.

If you haven't run the new Deadmines yet (Heroic or otherwise), I suggest you try and get a character (even if it's your 85 main) through Westfall before you do. It sets up the story amazingly. I ended up doing H DM on Saniel after having quested out the zone on Grevioux and it was a total thrill to see the story of Westfall come to fruition there.

Even if you have already done DM, run Westfall anyway. You'll know the end of the story already, but at least you'll get the rest.

Duskwood is basically split into two halves now. There's the Darkshire half, which hasn't changed a whole lot since Vanilla but is a lot more streamlined now (including having moved Abercrombe over to that half of the zone). And then there's the Raven Hill half, which is almost all new. In particular, the story of Sven Yorgen and Jitters gets moved forward from its previous incarnation and had one of those (somewhat) subtle moments in it that, as a lore-whore, I am all about.

And then, there's the craziest of crazies. Never in my life did I think I'd utter these words.

I love STV.

I used to do everything I could to avoid this zone. It was the nightmare marathon from 30-45. The only reason you went there is because your alternatives were Desolace and the Badlands...which were, somehow, inexplicably, worse. But good lord, I hated STV.

Now, it's amazing. I actually ended up staying at my computer well past my bedtime last night because I didn't want to stop. It's so streamlined. And the story...oh man. The story.

The highlight of the zone (so far) has to have been trying to guide the little raptor out of ZG. Cute overload. If you're the squee type, you have to quest through the zone. It will become one of your favorites.

The story of what's going on in ZG dominates the zone. I love Troll lore. I think it's some of the most fascinating in the game. Has been for a long time.

Also, I'm way too geeked out to finally figure out what the hell that blue rock is. I just got down to Booty Bay (the last hub down there) so I haven't figured it out yet. But seriously, so excited.

And one of the first quests you pick up in BB alludes to something a little bit mysterious about the little Goblin port. I want to see where that goes...

I've heard the new Redridge is equally amazing, but I leveled straight past it while doing everything else. I'll have to save it for another time.

Now I'm all anxious to start taking Shaetano through Kalimdor to see what's new over there.

Leveling Feral 80-85

2011-01-07T16:28:00.001-07:00

I saw a lot of theory posts coming out in the weeks and months leading up to Cata regarding this. A few of them were written by people that were actually in the Beta, and so they had first hand knowledge of what things would be like. A lot of the rest were pure conjecture though.

Now that I've taken San (and two other characters) up to 85 I think I have a good feel on what it's like. So I'm going to offer my own advice on how to level from 80 to 85 through Cataclysm.

Talents
So you just dinged 80 and you're ready to head home from Northrend and start exploring the world that Deathwing (un)made. Cool.

From a pure solo-play, quest-grinding perspective, I would suggest you have your spec set up something like this 0/33/3 spec. It's a little mish-mashed and it's missing some of the key Druid cooldowns/abilities, but you'll only miss them while in dungeons. And even then...not too much. Once you hit the level cap, you can respec and optimize for group-play.

As you get leveling talent points, it's really not too important where you put them. Fill out Fury Swipes and then spend the other 4 wherever you want.

Glyphs

Prime
- Mangle: This will be your primary attack while leveling. Get everything out of it that you can.
- Savage Roar: Kill things faster.
- Tiger's Fury or Lifebloom, depending on how often you end up HoTing yourself.
Major
- Faerie Fire: Increasing your pull range is always useful.
- Feral Charge: You want this available as often as possible for the free Ravage.
- Rake or Thorns: I didn't notice many mobs that try to flee, but Glyph of Rake would stop any that do. Thorns is nice for tougher mobs or when you get stuck in a crowd.
Minor

Combat
You're going to be spending almost all your time in Cat form, so get cozy with it. While you're running around, you're going to have two basic attack patters:

If Feral Charge is available
- Feral Charge
- F3
- Ravage
- Mangle
- Rake
- Mangle spam to 5 CPs
- Savage Roar
- Mangle spam
If Feral Charge in unavailable (on cooldown or the enemy is too close)
- F3
- Mangle
- Rake
- Mangle spam to 5 CPs
- Tiger's Fury
- Ferocious Bite (if you still have Savage Roar active, otherwise Savage Roar)
- Mangle Spam

Through all the zones, mobs are spaced just far enough apart and take just long enough to kill that you'll be rotating through those lists on a 1-2-1-2-1-2 basis pretty regularly.

For tougher solo mobs, you can throw a Rip in there as long as you already have Savage Roar up already, but most mobs are going to die long before Rip becomes more effective than Ferocious Bite.

Unfortunately, Cats don't really get any new and exciting (useful) tools from 80-85. So your attack pattern in the first quests of Hyjal and Vashj'ir is going to stay steady all the way through your last quest in Twilight Highlands.

Other abilities
Keep Skull Bash handy. There's a lot of stuff to interrupt while you're questing through the new zones that will make your life 100 times easier. A lot of caster mobs will die without ever getting a spell off if you manage this right.

I got a lot more use out of Maim while leveling than I did through most of Wrath. If you're getting low on health, that 5 second reprieve can be invaluable. You won't need to use this regularly, but using it at the right times can save you a corpse run.

Also, keep Nature's Grasp handy for those times when you start to get overwhelmed. Pop it and hightail. Anything chasing you will get rooted in place, giving you plenty of open space to run away.

Stay healthy
Quite frequently, you're going to find that you're at 4 or 5 CPs when a mob dies. If so, pop off a Savage Roar (you can use this to consume the leftover combo points from a dead mob now, as long as you don't go too far away or attack something else) and then use the ensuing Predator's Swiftness buff to pop off a quick Healing Touch, shift back to cat, and go back to the grind. (The buff comes from having specced 2/2 into Predatory Strikes.)

If you need a little more of a boost, stack up Lifebloom. It used to be way too mana-intensive for Ferals, but with the change of only allowing it to stack on one player at a time, the mana costs have been lowered significantly. This is a great spell to use while on your own now, only hindered by the fact that it takes 3 GCDs to fully apply. The bloom at the end is amazing in Cat form, though, with the aid of Nuturing Instincts.

Pull with care
While we have a number of tools at our disposal (including Bear form) to help out our survivability, Cats are still kinda squishy. The idea is for us to be able to nuke something down before it has much time to do real damage to us. One- and two-pulls usually aren't much of a problem. Three-pulls start to feel fairly dangerous, especially once you get out into Uldum and Twilight Highlands.

Four-pulls end up being pretty deadly.

Keep an eye on your surroundings, pull mobs to safe places to kill them, and be aware of OoC and Predator's Swiftness procs for emergency heals.

Not so fast, kitty!

2011-01-05T15:08:00.001-07:00

True to form, I've been spending most of my group time in Cata so far tanking. You'd think people trust the bear or something...I dunno.

That said, I've had a few opportunities to go cat and shred some heels and it's taught me something that, inexcusably, I never seemed to know before. It's taught me that I need to slow down my attacks.

The cat rotation, even with the recent simplifications, is still pretty hectic and chaotic. There's a lot going on and a lot for you to keep track of. That, compared with the nature of the Energy mechanic, can lead to a certain degree of button mashing. Hell, the very nature of being a DPS can lead to a certain degree of button mashing.

It makes sense, right? If you're a caster and you're not casting a spell the moment your GCD is up, you're losing DPS. Not just casters, either...Ret Pallies, Enhancement Shamans, and (to a lesser degree) DPS Warriors should all be hitting that next ability as soon as they can.

But the Cat (and Rogue and Hunter) playstyle require a little more finesse and, ironically given our hyper-fast attack speed, patience. Why? What's the difference?

Energy, unlike Mana or Rage, is a time-based resource. It empties fast and regenerates slowly and steadily. More often than not, we're not working with a surplus.* The only time you're truly wasting energy and limiting your DPS is if you're sitting with a full Energy bar, doing nothing.

Let's take Shred, for example. On most boss encounters, Shred is going to be your primary attack. And at 40 Energy, it's a costly. Since Energy regenerates at 1 per decasecond (or 10 per second)** if one Shred takes you down to 0 energy, you're going to be waiting a full 4 seconds until you can use it again. If you sit there (like I used to) and mash your Shred button until it can go off again, you're back at 0 Energy and waiting for your next special attack.

This is bad, mmkay?

Why?

Many, many bosses in Cata require interrupts. And, conveniently, Cata gave us the ability to ram our noggin into something hard enough to interrupt it. But you need Energy to do it. 25 Energy, to be exact. That's 2.5 seconds of Energy-time. So what happens if an attack takes you down to 0 energy and suddenly the boss starts casting something that needs to be interrupted? You can't help. Not if it's not a very long cast-time spell.

"But Saniel," you say. "So many classes have interrupts now. Who cares if I can't use mine?"

First, I generally dislike depending on someone else to do something that I could. Second, some bosses require more interrupts than one, or even two people can handle on their own. But mostly, this is just a crappy attitude and shows that you're not a team player and are only interested in the size of your Recount-peen. Shame on you.

But okay, let's work with that attitude. Let's say we want to keep our DPS numbers as high as possible, even at the expense of being a team player.

A big, big part of kitty DPS is having 100% uptime on our bleeds, Rake and Rip. Let's say you've just Shredded yourself down to 0 Energy and then suddenly realize that both are about to expire. Uh oh! Now it's going to take you 7.5 seconds to get them both back up. And I really hope you're at 5 combo points before you apply that Rip, or you've wasted even more DPS! Bad kitty!

And if your Mangle debuff is at risk of dropping off in the same time frame...tsk tsk.

So slow down those special attacks! Try to keep some Energy in the bank.

In a completely ideal situation, you'll spend most of your time hovering between 70 and 30 Energy. This will just about let you rip off any special ability you need to as long as you're not locked out by the global cooldown. Ideally your energy will never top out. Ideally it will never bottom out either.

There are, of course, exceptions.

If you're fighting Baron Ashbury and you know he's about to Asphyxiate everyone...go ahead and burn through your Energy. You'll be back at 60 by the time you hit the ground.

Breaking Rom'ogg's chains? Burn away. You want them down quickly and you're going to be running away as soon as they're broken anyway.

Need to empty yourself to interrupt Rajh's Sun Orb? Do it.

Are you approaching 90 or even 100 energy for some reason? Then fire off two fast attacks to get yourself back down into the safe range.

Reapplying bleeds and debuffs is another good reason to burn through some extra energy fast.

Overall, it's just about knowing the encounters, knowing your timers and rotations, and playing smart.

Please, do us all a favor and play smart.

* - For the sake of simplicity, I'm ignoring Tiger's Fury, Berserk, and OoC procs.

** - Also for the sake of simplicity, I'm using the base rate. Haste now affects how fast our Energy regens and can change these numbers, but the basic idea remains the same.

1 Year Blogoversary!

2011-01-04T18:32:00.002-07:00

Yep, that's right. One year ago today I made my very first post to this blog.

It's been a interesting adventure so far, but since I already made the post detailing it, I'm going to keep this one short and simple.

I didn't make my goal of 200 posts in the 2010 calendar year. As it came to a close I was primed and ready to do it. I figured out that if I posted every weekday except for a single one over the last two weeks, I'd make it.

I make a lot of arbitrary goals while playing WoW of the exact same variety. And usually I put in the time and effort to see them through. This time, though...this time I decided to let one slide. Partially because it would have taken time out of a shiny, new expansion I've been enjoying the hell out of. Partially because I felt that taking off two weeks of work to close out the year should mean all work. I worked my butt off the other 352 days, the last 13 could be about relaxing. But mostly I took the time off blogging because it would have taken that much more time that I wanted to spend with friends and family, enjoying the company. I already feel that, despite my efforts, WoW takes up too much of the time I might spend doing that. I wanted to make sure that trend didn't hold through the holidays.

So now I'm back, ready for a new year of blogging. I've got a ton of skele-posts saved up in my drafts and a few more ideas stuck in the back of my head, so I should be good on material for at least the next few weeks.

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season and I wish you all a great start to 2011. Are you excited? I know I am.

Female Worgen to Human Hair and Ear Charts

2010-12-22T13:05:00.004-07:00

And, finally, the Female charts. I had to roll separate toons to put these together, including leveling a female Worgen to the point where she could get to Stormwind.

The Female Hair and Ear styles were a little harder. They're less symmetrical than the Males', so finding good angles for single screenshots was difficult. Hopefully they're okay.

All screenshots were taken with the WoW Model Viewer. Above each screenshot I've included the name of the style as it appears while you're in the Barber chair, as well as the # of the matching setting in the Model Viewer. This gives you a couple ways to actually see them in 3D if you want to.

Hair:

Changing hairstyles on the Worgen affects the mane and "tails". They map to specific human hairstyles.

Click for full size.

Ears:

Changing ear styles on the Worgen affects the ear size and shape. They map to different piercing configurations on the human forms.

Click for full size.

World Dragons

2010-12-20T09:25:00.002-07:00

I enjoyed a pretty full and eventful WoW weekend...at the cost of a ton of other stuff I intended to get done. I think I'm going to seriously curtail my game time this week and catch up on life. Novel concept, right? But I need to do it, and I need to make a conscious effort to do it.

The thing I'm most excited about right now is that, as of the time I'm writing this, my guild, <The Dragons>, is currently first on the server (Sen'jin) in guild Achievement points, and #37 in the world (according to GuildOx). Seriously.

Will it last? Probably not. But that's okay. I've screenshotted it and I'm keeping it tucked away for proof that our humble (not so) little guild was once able to say that it was top 50 in the world in anything.

Saturday night we had 3 groups chaining BC Heroics (and Kara) to get those achieves. Sunday night we had 5 groups chaining classic dungeons and then LK Heroics to wrap those up. It was actually a lot of fun. Plus when you have 5 groups scattered all over the world collecting these things, your guild achievements ping your screen like crazy. Every couple of minutes a new one goes up.

I hadn't smiled that much all week.

I'm really happy that we were able to get that many people willing to take a break from whatever they were doing to go back and run old content for the good of the guild. Especially now that achievements don't grant XP, so the amount of actual "good" isn't as easily quantifiable. Double especially because no one can just queue for those dungeons anymore...we had to travel to get to them.

Outside of that adventuring, I finally set foot into some Cata Heroics. I'll be giving my impressions on them in a post later on this week.

I also rolled a Female Worgen, leveled her up to the point where I could shift forms and get to SW, and got all my notes and screenshots for the Female Worgen Hair and Piercings chart. I just need to put it all together now, which is the easier but slightly more tedious portion of the process.

So those will be my next two posts. I'm not sure which order, yet.

Now is the time!

2010-12-17T09:30:00.000-07:00

I had intended to make this post prior to Cataclysm releasing. Or at least in the first couple days thereafter. But it just never happened.

With all the new race/class combos, and the gear reset that occurs every time we have new levels to chew through, now is the idea time to try that Tanking or Healing that you've wanted to.

Late in an expansion (let's use Wrath for an example), it's hard to start Tanking or Healing if you haven't been doing it from the start. You're inexperienced, you may or may not have the gear, and encounters are pretty much designed such that they're less forgiving than, say, Naxx encounters. You may have done okay in the Lower Spire, but above that? Not likely. And being taken all the way to a fight like LK? Even more unlikely.

Even with Heroics, people were looking for fast, trouble-free runs. Easier to do if everyone's playing the roles they're familiar with. Wake me up when the last boss is dead, amirite?

But now you have a fresh start. Everyone getting new gear, everyone's learning new skills. And while I'd hardly call the current dungeons "forgiving," even on Normal modes, at least everyone is suffering through some growing pains.

So while you're out questing through the new zones, make sure you're keeping an eye out for that gear that may be good for the Tank or Healer spec you've been wanting to try and tuck it away. It shouldn't take too long to build up a decent starting set.

For aspiring healers, spend some time standing in one of your home cities and casting your heals on yourself. Get a feel for how long they take to cast and how much they actually heal. If you use keybinds, Clique, Vuhdo, Healbot or anything like that, get yourself familiar with they key/mouse presses for the different heals.

For aspiring tanks, get a DPS buddy and go out into the world, preferably in a zone where the mobs are a little tougher in groups (Uldum or Twilight Highlands). Start off pulling 2 mobs at a time. Focus on one while the DPS focuses on the other. Try to keep aggro. This (ideally) isn't how it will work in actual dungeons, but it's good practice on world trash. When you feel comfortable, try to bump this up to 3 or 4. Learn your cooldowns, even if you don't always need them.

Queue for dungeons force yourself into the unfamiliar role. 99 times out of 100, if you check DPS and either Tank or Healer, you're going to get either Tank or Healer. But don't take that chance. And if you're typically a Tank or a Healer trying to get used to the other one of those roles, definitely don't queue up with the familar one as an available option.

Better to do this in guild groups, btw. People are generally more patient and understanding.

Let everyone know up front that you're learning.

Be open to advice. Even rude advice. Just because someone's a jerk doesn't always mean they're wrong. If you do get someone who's adamant that you suck, ask the rest of the group if they feel you're really struggling. Ask for more direct, supportive advice.

Make sure to pick up better gear for the new role. Get a feel for how it changes as you get more powerful.

By the time you're ready to run Heroics and/or Raid, you should be getting pretty comfortable and used to how to play those styles. And since you're getting in on the ground floor, it'll be easier to continue those roles into the future of the expansion if you choose to.

To Worgen or not to Worgen

2010-12-16T07:19:00.001-07:00

I've been kinda teetering back and forth between race changing San to a Worgen and leaving him a NElf. I won't go into a long boring list, but most of the reasons for changing to a Worgen revlove around the fact that, visually, they appeal to me more. Most of the reasons for staying NElf revolve around it having been my in-game identity for so long. (Among other things, I'd feel compelled to change my name. Saniel isn't very Worgen sounding.)

But there is a single reason above all others that's holding me back.

Shadowmeld.

Saved my blue-skinned butt so many times while leveling to 85. Pull too many mobs? Or that angry Elite? Couldn't get away from a spawn point that churned out enemies as fast as I could down them? Wanted to get swoop in, skin a corpse, and get out without a fight?

No problem. Pop Shadowmeld to drop combat, then pop flight form and fly away. Easy peasy. No mess, no fuss.

I would have died so many more times without that...

Male Worgen to Human Hair and Beard Charts

2010-12-15T13:38:00.004-07:00

Zel pointed out in my comments yesterday that the internet lacked a complete guide to mappings between Worgen and Human features. There were some partial ones, but since the Barber shops have more options than the creation screens, none of them were really complete. You're only able to access Barber chairs in Worgen form, so it's pretty much a change-and-check system to see what it looks like in the Human form.

I had a little time last night, so I put together the Male portion of said chart. (I don't have a Female Worgen or Human with which to do the counterparts, but I may be able to find the time to fix that, or at least get some help from someone who does.)
Update: Female charts are here!

Anyway, here are the Male charts at least.

All screenshots were taken with the WoW Model Viewer. Above each screenshot I've included the name of the style as it appears while you're in the Barber chair, as well as the # of the matching setting in the Model Viewer. This gives you a couple ways to actually see them in 3D if you want to.

Hair:

Changing hairstyles on the Worgen affects the mane and "tails". They map to specific human hairstyles. There is one Worgen hair-style (Mane) that doesn't actually appear in the Model Viewer as a hairstyle. Instead it seems to be represented by turning hair display off.

Click for full size.

Beard:

Changing beard (facial hair) styles on the Worgen affects the hair on the chin and under the muzzle near the neck, as well as ear size and shape. The Model Viewer has 23 different beard styles for the Worgen, but only 9 are available to players in the barber shops. I think I matched them all up properly.

Click for full size.

New Character Habits

2010-12-14T10:04:00.003-07:00

I have this habit with every character I've rolled since 3.0 was dropped before Wrath.

I create them, go through the starting zone, and then immediately hit the closest (or most convenient) big city with a barber shop and check out all the hair styles that weren't available upon character creation.

More often than not, I find one I like better than the original options.

Grevioux is currently resting in Darnassus. The next time I log into him, the very first thing I'm doing is jumping on the boat to Stormwind. Gonna get my harr did!

Do you have any crazy habits around your new chars?

The best laid plans of mice and men...

2010-12-13T09:29:00.004-07:00

Ah, Tuesday. Feels like an eon ago. I remember looking ahead to the next five days off, excited about all the new things I would get to see and experience in Azeroth, but also firmly resolute in my dedication to not be consumed by them and to get a number of other things done.

Most of those other things are still completely undone. Others are only partially done. Cleaning my kitchen is the only one that got completely done...and then subsequently undone again as the days wore on.

I'm horrible.

I hit 85 on San early Sunday afternoon. At first I thought, "Wow...I planned to take a little longer than this to hit the cap. I didn't want to rush it." Then I realized I didn't rush it. I went through Hyjal, Deepholme, Uldum, and the Twilight Highlands. (I also ran through all of Vashj'ir on Daluaan.) It was about 60 quests through that last zone that I hit 85. I quested each one out completely and I made sure to take the time to read every quest I got. Not just skim it. Actually read and follow the stories.

The amount of time I spent on San alone in the last 5 days would probably take me 2.5 to 3 weeks during my normal play routine. So I didn't sprint to 85...but I sure as hell ran a marathon to get there. Add in some time I spent on other toons and...yeah.

The zones are amazing. Uldum so far has been my favorite one (not in the least because I'm totally enamored with the Ramkahen), but each has been a complete joy to experience. Part of the reason I was able to spend as much time in-game as I have is because the questing never felt grindy or needless. (*cough*Nesingwary*cough*) Every quest moved the story of the zone forward in a very real and impactful way. And the zones themselves are beautiful and a joy to travel through.

I haven't done any Heroics yet...I'm 1 iLvl away from being able to queue for them. Plus they're not something I intend to PuG at first, so I need to wait for a few more of my fellow guildies. I have tanked BRC a few times, plus ToT, SC, VP, and HoO once each. I've been having a blast, but it's been difficult. I have another post for that later this week, but the biggest change so far (even from running Wrath heroics post-4.01) is how careful I have to be with Maul. Using it at the wrong time now leaves me utterly rage starved and scrambling to keep threat.

I've cooked and fished some. My Skinning is maxed out and my Leatherworking is at 506. Those next 4 points are proving very difficult to get. I have 3 or 4 cheap patterns I can grind out, but since they're so close to grey, the likelihood of skillups is low. I have 2 yellow patters, but both are expensive, and they're close enough to green that they're unreliable for skillups. But I can't access any of the Twilight Highlands patterns until I get those 4 more points.

It's Monday, now. That means back to the grind. At least until next Wednesday, at which point I start my until-the-new-year vacation. My playtime until then is going to be somewhat limited (especially if I can maintain some semblance of self-discipline). But that's okay. It'll probably be good for me to take it a little easier over the next week anyway.

A service to all my fellow bloggers

2010-12-07T15:42:00.002-07:00

I found out something on Monday while I was updating my character list over there on the right:

WoW has a new Armory.

Yeah, no joke. I didn't know either. Been a while since I've checked it. It probably happened with the launch of the new forums and community site.

Needless to say, all my links were broken. They led to a big, fat, "Oops" page.

At first I was kinda embarrassed about this. I was sure I was the only one who'd missed the change.

Just a few minutes ago I perused several of the blogs on my blogroll in an attempt to confirm that I had been stuck on Idiot Island, population: 1.

Turns out I wasn't so alone.

So if you have links on your blog to your various characters' Armory profiles, you may want to take a look at updating them.

The new style looks something like this:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/senjin/saniel/advanced.

Come join me in the bar for a drink once you get back to the mainland. First round's on me.

My extensive list of Cataclysm Bear gear

2010-12-07T08:00:00.001-07:00

So here's the deal.

I started to compile a list of the top 4 pieces of gear for Bears to look for as they level through Cataclysm. I pulled up Wowhead, put in some filters, and got a decent start at a stare-and-compare analysis.

Then I jumped over to The Fluid Druid to check out Alaron's post about gear for Cats and see how he put it together. It was a pretty good guide and I figured modeling mine after it couldn't hurt. Then after staring at it for about 30 seconds, I realized something...

It's the same list.

Follow me for a moment here.

At the beginning of an expansion, there's not a lot of variance in gear. Yeah, there's a ton of of new gear. But a lot of it is random drops and quest rewards. As you go through dungeons, you'll be looking for a piece or maybe two for each slot. Same with Heroics. Then you'll get to the raids.

At the end of BC I had two almost completely distinct pairs of gear. One for Bear, one for Cat. The first time I set foot into Naxx in Wrath, I had about 4 unique pieces for the two sets. The rest was shared.

Now that we're at the end of Wrath, I'm back to having two distinct sets. I expect I'm going see that pared down significantly before I step foot into the Bastion for the first time.

Now most of my distinct pieces of gear are my trinkets, rings, and amulet. And my cloak. Why? These are pieces that have more armor and defense on them. Plus more stam than the comparable DPS pieces. The rest of my gear is mostly the same pieces with different gems and enchants.

Things have changed now. Defense as a stat on gear is gone. Strength has gone down in value as a stat for bears (not that it was that great to start with). And Stam has been more normalized between Tanks and non-Tanks. Blizz has stated they didn't really want Bears going after those Plate-tank pieces anymore and they've backed up that desire with item and class design. So the line between Bear gear and Cat gear has gotten a lot thinner.

That makes Alaron's gear list almost spot on for Bears too. If I were better with numbers and assigning weights to stats, I think I might find that a piece or two here and there might be flipped with the one above it. But, honestly, I'm more of the eyeball-it type.

So if you want to peruse my extensive list of Cataclysm Bear gear, head on over to Alaron's blog and check out his extensive list of Cataclysm Cat gear.

Thanks for making my job easier, Alaron. :-)

Tonight at 12:01 PST...

2010-12-06T10:09:00.002-07:00

...I will be asleep. And I will continue to be asleep until my normal wake up time of about 6:30. Then I will get up, take care of the 3 S's, get dressed, and go to work.

I figure UPS will be delivering my Cata:CE to my building sometime in the morning. Office mail will probably have it on my desk by the time I'm brewing my afternoon coffee. I'll finish out my work day, go home, and do any kind of installation/account upgrade that I need to do.

Then I'll probably create my Worgen Hunter. I won't start him. Just create him. He'll be a project for later, but I'm excited about him, so I do want to get that done.

I might log into my various characters long enough to get them to SW (San's the only one who has his hearth there already...the others are still in Northrend) and pick up Old World flying.

And then...I'm going to log out and go for my bi-weekly guys' night out. Every other Tuesday is wings night. Cata's not going to change that.

I did take the remaining 3 days of the week off of work. The timing is, admittedly, because of Cata. However the act of taking the days off is not. I have 11 PTO days I need to use up before Jan 1 or I lose them. This seemed like a good week to take care of some of that.

I'll still be taking some time among those days off to finally put up my Christmas lights and tree. I meant to do that this past weekend, but ended up with a pretty full schedule.

I've also been working on a set of questions for TriviaBot. The current available set is pretty badly out of date. Many of the questions are no longer valid. Some are flat out wrong (and were even two years ago when they were made). I've got over 450 so far and I figure I'm about halfway done. Maybe a little less. It's very time consuming and I really had no idea how large of an undertaking I was...undertaking. I really wanted to be done by tonight, but that's not going to happen. I'd like to finish them up in the next week. I figure if I put in a couple hours a day, that's reasonable.

So it's not going to be all Cata, all the time.

For what time I do spend playing, San will be my main focus until I hit 85. While I'm in no rush to get there, I do feel some small sense of responsibility as my guild's RL and MT to be among the first to the cap and available for runs, even just dungeons. I plan on breaking one of the major "rules" of WoW while I do it, though. I will not be logging out in inns or major cities. I want as little rest as possible to have to deal with. I want to see everything.

After San hits cap I'll probably be rotating among running dungeons and heroics with him as guildies need tanks, as well as leveling Daluaan, Siaaryn, and Grevioux (the previously mentioned Hunter). Hotahinahu might even see some love, too...though he'll be spending many lonely hours in Northrend. And, at some point, I'll have to get Maarken up to the cap. I may give Frost a shot to see how it plays. I'm just not having fun with Unholy.

Of course I'm really not expecting any of this to be happening in the next 5 days.

So those are my grand, illustrious Cataclysm plans.

Exciting, no?

On Kings and Warchiefs

2010-12-02T13:46:00.000-07:00

Before I start today's post, I just want to say hi to the recent influx of visitors from Team Sportscoat. I don't know what I did to catch your attention, but I definitely appreciate it. :-)

I know I've said it before, but the one thing that keeps me coming back to WoW above all others is the Lore. The story. This universe that Chris Metzen has created is beyond amazing. And the help and support he's gotten in bringing it to life leaves me slack-jawed.

I finished reading The Shattering on Tuesday night. It was a good read. Quick, clean, but still captivating. One of the things it showed me, though, is how dreadfully out of touch I am with the lore of WoW as it is right now.

I could go on and on about the War of the Ancients, the War of the Shifting Sands, Arthas' history, Illidan's history (and most of the lore surrounding the major players of Burning Crusade), etc. But I never really took the time to read up on the current players.

For the purposes of this post, I'm specifically referring to Varian Wrynn and Garrosh Hellscream. Two very important and very controversial figures in the current happenings of WoW.

Opposition to these two being in power is pretty unanimous. Both are hot-headed, impulsive, and violent. They have a hatred of the opposite faction so powerful that it's blinding them to (what we as players see as) any type of reason. This is especially true when we stand them up against their more moderate counterparts Jaina and Thrall. (I could toss Fandral Staghelm into this discussion, too, as he's probably still the single most reviled lore figure to ever grace the game.)

But there's a couple factors here that we as players never seem to consider.

Good writing doesn't avoid tension. It creates it.
Think of every story you've ever read. Think of every movie you've ever seen. Think of every game you've ever played. Think, particularly, of the best of each of these.

How many times are you screaming in your head, "just kill the bad guy! He's. Right. There!" or, "would you two just admit you have it for each other and get it on?!" or, "he was my favorite character, why did he have to die?!" or, "why can't the Horde and Alliance just put aside their differences and realize there are bigger problems?!"

It's simple...because what makes a story compelling is when it does the things that we as readers (and even as writers) don't want it to. There has to be a conflict that we want to see resolved or we lose interest. And as frustrating or disheartening as it can be when it gets worse instead of better, that only shows how invested we've become in it.

Have you ever read a story by a novice writer (they proliferate now, thanks to the internet) where everything just kinda goes right and all the conflicts are resolved the way we'd want them to be before they can really cause strife? It's boring as hell. And worse, it's completely unbelievable. You walk away feeling like you wasted a part of your life for having read it.

That's why we have Garrosh. That's why we have Varian. We may not like them. But they certainly keep the story interesting. Plus, it's worth noting that we are not the people they rule.

We are not Azeroth's citizens. We are its champions.
When the extent of your NPC interaction is clicking on them to open the AH or having them ask you to "keel six snow moose," when it takes 30 seconds to run from Stormwind's Cathdral to its Keep, when you can mount up and run from Westfall to Redridge in minutes, it's easy to forget that the world we play in is only a representation of the "real" Azeroth.

While the players that make up the Horde's fighting force would probably continue to play regardless of whether Garrosh or a Basic Campfire were appointed leader, the people of the Horde certainly would not.

Thrall had a very difficult decision to make and he had a very, very short time in which he could make it. He didn't want to give control of the Horde to Garrosh. But he didn't have any better alternatives. Not if he wanted to keep the Horde unified. The citizens of the Horde would break apart under any other rule in Thrall's absence, and he knew it.

And his intention at the time was for it to be a temporary thing. Just while he was off in Nagrand learning what he could about why Azeroth's elements were in such turmoil and how he, as a Shaman, could help. He assumed that when he returned from Nagrand he would resume leading his people. But it didn't turn out that way. And he couldn't just waltz back into Orgrimmar at that point and say, "Well, I'm not coming back to lead the Horde. But I thought about it and I think I'm going to appoint _______ for the job instead of Garrosh."

Yeah...that would go over well.

Likewise, on the Alliance side, we may not like Varian, but he is the rightful King of Stormwind. And as long as the Humans are the center of the Alliance, he will be its leader. At the end of the day, he's probably a good King. He's just a dick of a person. But there's a reason for that...

The game doesn't do a great job of telling the whole story.
When we see Varian in game, all we see is a giant, pushy, unreasonable jerk with an irrational hunger for Horde blood. But we usually don't think to stop and wonder why.

Through Warth, I knew a little bit about Varian. I knew that after he was kidnapped by the Defias he somehow got free, but was found washed up on shore with no real memory. I knew he was captured by the Orcs and forced to fight in their arenas until he eventually regained his senses and fought his way back to his rightful place in the world. So I could understand why he had a little bit of a distaste for the Horde, Orcs specifically.

You know what I didn't know until I read The Shattering? Varian was actually split into two people during that time. Literally.

There was Varian, the good, reasonable side of his personality. And there was Lo'gosh, his angry, violent side. It was Lo'gosh who was forced to fight in the arenas of the Horde while Varian tried to figure out what was really going on. And when the two halves were rejoined...it didn't go quite right. Instead of meshing back together into a whole man with each side of his personality acting as a balance for the other, he's still fractured. He's still two parts that wrestle for control. And Lo'gosh, being more naturally dominant, is often the side that gains the upper hand.

Now I understand why he's so unreasonable at times (during the siege of Undercity, for instance) and then does a complete 180 at others (telling Muradin to stand down so Saurfang can collect the body of his son, and telling Saurfang that his son was an honorable orc). (For those of you who only play Horde, this plays out when an Alliance group defeats Deathbringer Saurfang in ICC.)

Similarly I was able to learn why Garrosh is so battle-hungry and that he's not completely without a brain, or honor.

Metzen didn't make these characters jerks just for the sake of them being jerks, or just for the sake of keeping the story interesting. There's actual reasons for their personalities to have developed that way. (Again here, I would point out Staghelm. He, too, has reasons to being such a jerk.) But if you only look for readily-presented, in-game answers as to why, you'll never find them.

The game isn't about them. It's about us.
Here we come to the flip side of the citizen/champion coin. While we are not representative of the people of Azeroth as a whole, as long as we're logged into World of Warcraft, the game is still about us.

While it would be great at times if the game would do more to show us the stories of NPCs like Varian and Garrosh, they're secondary to us as heroes. We are not there to find out about Varian's past, or to counsel Garrosh. That's not our story. Our story is fighting to banish Ragnaros. It's stopping Onyxia and Nefarion from continuing their father's work. It's defeating Illidan once and for all. It's ending the Lich King's reign. It's slaying Deathwing before he can destroy the world.

Blizzard only has so many resources at its disposal to tell us stories (I have a whole other post about that for sometime in the future). While it's good for us to know what and who we're fighting for, at the end of the day, our story is the fight. And that's the story the game has to focus on telling. Blizzard realizes this, and that's why there's a plethora of other avenues for us to learn about all of Azeroth's history and the histories of all those who are a part of it. It's left to our discretion to go out of our way to find it and consume it.

And I highly recommend you do so. I've finally started to and it's made the game all that much better.

Kill it with fire!

2010-12-01T11:34:00.002-07:00

I still hold that, in the game, Worgen casters just don't seem that appealing.

But...uh...this would probably make me soil myself.

My guild defies logic

2010-11-30T15:41:00.000-07:00

Lately Alas has been focusing a lot of word count on guild drama and officer issues/disagreements. I have a feeling what she's dealing with is much more common than we'd all care to admit (going off of some of the things I've seen the Drama Mamas tackle as well as general anecdotes I've picked up here and there).

One of her recent posts included the following words in her opening sentence:

...bringing me down to a comfortable total of three officers.

Woah. Three? That's...so few.

But is it?

I have a feeling my guild is very much an anomaly.

I kinda hope Alas doesn't read this next statement. Her head might explode.

My guild has 13 officers. No, that's not a typo. Unlucky 13.

Further defying the general rules and conventions of officerism, among those 13 are 4 couples, a pair of brothers, and an Aunt/Nephew pair. (There's some overlap in there.) It's always a little fun for us as new recruits start finding out we're not an entirely random group and start trying to connect all the lines in their head.

While Dinaer is unquestionably our leader, and we rarely take any significant actions before running them by him, he also extends the same courtesy to us. We have different ranks because the guild ranking system in WoW requires it. But at the end of the day, we're run more by committee than anything else.

If you want to get down and dirty about it, there's probably 4 of us total who actually do "officery stuff." Schedule things, run things, manage things...do more than just give our voice to the general direction we'd like to see the guild go.

And yet, you know how much serious drama we've had since I joined the guild (2.5 years ago)? None. In fact, our guild has had relatively little drama of any kind. And none of it has been inter-officer. It's either been officer-member or member-member drama. But our core has stuck together with an amazing amount of harmony.

I think the trick is that Din (and other active officers) have done a very good job of assembling people with the same overall goals and a healthy respect for the fact that not all of us will always agree on the exact way to reach those goals. We'll have debates and discussions on our officer forums about policy or direction. Sometimes we'll go round and round in circles and ultimately not do anything. Sometimes it's easy and quick and decisive.

But it always seems to work out.

And we must be doing something right. We've managed to assemble a pretty large group of capable raiders. Most of whom could probably find spots on more focused, progression-pushing raid teams. But they're content here with us.

In terms of progression, we're usually ranked around 40th or 50th on the server. I think that's more because of time and our relaxed approach. Push-come-to-shove, I doubt there's 50 guilds "better" than us on our server. Maybe 20.

We're definitely one of the oldest active guilds on the server. (Jul '06?) And if you take the "Level Value" stat on WarcraftRealms to be a reasonable indicator of guild size, we're #11 on the server.

Am I bragging? I think I'm bragging.

What I'm getting at, though, is that the standard wisdom of what kind of leadership team function doesn't apply to every guild.

We're fortunate to have a group of mature individuals who want to play the game for fun, which means playing it with friends more than anything else.

I think we have 2 officers under the (physical) age of 30. So it's a group that's got their heads on their shoulders and are very accustomed to working with groups of people that share different ideals.

I'm curious, though. How far off the norm are we?

For those of you that read my blog, how many officers does your guild have? Are you one of them? What are your guild's goals and focuses? (More progression- or socially-oriented?)

I'd also be really interested in hearing from any of you that might participate in an RP guild, as I have to assume that introduces a whole new realm of complications.