How'd you get started?

I posted this on my guild's forum's a couple months back, but it's still one of those fun things to think about.

Way back in the day my partner got pulled into WoW by virtue of living in a house where all his roommates played. It was a good way for them to bond and do something together that they all enjoyed. At the time we lived a few cities apart and really only had weekends together. But Sundays were football days (still are). So while I was sitting on the couch from 11 to 5:30 watching whatever CBS and FOX were collectively offering that day, he'd be sitting next to me WoWing away on his laptop.

Of course, during commercial breaks I'd lean over and watch what he was doing. I had no interest in playing myself--not because it didn't look fun, but because I swore up and down that I would never pay a monthly fee to play a game I already owned. I could understand paying a monthly fee for a persistent game, but then I believed I shouldn't have to pay $40 for the initial retail offering. Principle. You know. (Yeah, I was young and stupid.)

He kept trying to get me into the game. "Just try it. You'll like it," he said. I, of course, recognized this tactic from my D.A.R.E. days back in 3rd grade and stood my ground against addictive substances. "No," I'd say. But I'd still watch until the commercials were over and I could once again hide in the relative safety of manly athletic activity.

But he never relented in his assault and one day I finally cracked and gave in, secure in the knowledge that if I tried it and turned it away I would be safe from further pressure. This all occurred immediately upon the end of the afternoon game when my defenses were at their lowest. (That's what I told myself, anyway.)

So I took over his laptop and played around the character creation screen until I was set up with a brand new, shiny Tauren Hunter. Several hours later (with barely enough of a break to eat dinner) I still retained control of his laptop and had reached level 12. My D.A.R.E. officer would be disappointed.

I already realized I was going to continue to play this game. The only retail store still open at that hour was Walmart and so that's where I ended up. I used the self-checkout stand so that no one could see my shame, but I still felt every eye in the store watching me. Judging. I had principles, dammit. I wasn't supposed to play this game. And here I was, reneging.

There were many people I knew playing the game that I never wanted to have to worry about playing with and they all played Horde, so I had to abandon the Tauren (unarguably my favorite race) and find something Alliance side. My partner played a Hunter, so to keep things different I decided to forgo that as well. I ended up with a Human Warrior, Maarken.

Over the next couple weeks, I became very unenamored with that Warrior. I still didn't understand much about the game and I had a very "Final Fantasy" view of how a warrior should work: I should be able to take the hits all day long an keep rolling. Anyone who's played a warrior at low levels is laughing at that statement. Blizz's idea of low-level survivability difference between a warrior and, say, a mage is that a warrior can take 7 hits before dying instead of 5 and they'll only find themselves in unmanageable situations every 45 steps instead of every 20. (Despite this, I still think the first 15 levels are the most fun on any toon...now that I know what to expect.)

Add to this that I didn't really understand or enjoy the Rage mechanic and...yeah. Maarken was laid to rest in Westfall, somewhere around level 15.

20 minutes after that, Saniel awoke from the Emerald Dream to begin his defense of Azeroth. He's been going on ever since.

So what about you, readers? How did you get started? What was your first toon and if it wasn't your current main, when did that switch happen?


Incidentally, a few of you may have glanced at my character roster and noticed that Maarken isn't quite as dead as I left him. Apparently the Lich King saw more in him than I did...

Bitter, party of one?

So I have this noob in my guild, right? I'm not making fun of him...it's a self-professed title. One he wears proudly. I'm happy to oblige.

Anyway, this noob is really starting to piss me off. A couple weeks ago, we finally got The Twilight Zone (10 man). Black Drake drops, he wins the roll.

Earlier his week we got a group to try again. He flys in on the Blue Drake (that can now be obtained as a rare drop after defeating Eregos in a random Oc run).

Many months back, Skadi dropped the Blue Protodrake. Only time I've ever seen it drop. The noob was on that same run. He won the roll.

He's managed to fish up the sea turtle.

In the guilty-by-association category (because I'm mad, so logic no longer applies): his wife has gotten 3 (three!) green protodrakes, and his brother got one on the first try.

But which one of us is 87/100 on Mountain 'o Mounts and is furiously trying to complete it before Cata drops? Oh yeah...that'd be me. I had my Albino before Wrath came around and I want to finish this achievement!

And when I expressed these feelings to him over vent, do you know what his response was?

"I'm not trying to get all these." Yeah. Wrong answer.

So let me apologize for not feeling the least bit of sympathy when said noob has a QQ fest over Lower Spire loot drops.

Seriously. No love.

/raspberry

A Bear's guide to ICC: Festergut

Like Deathbringer Saurfang, Festergut is a pretty straight-forward fight for tanks. We don't have to do a whole lot other than tank him in a single spot. By and large this fight is a DPS check.

During the entirety of the fight, the ground is going to be covered in Gaseous Blight (orange poison cloud) that will tick damage on the whole raid. There's nothing you can do about this, but be aware that you will not be the sole focus of your healers (at first).

There is going to be some tank swapping in this fight. Festergut will stack Gastric Bloat on the tank. If it reaches 10 stacks you die a horrible explodey death and take anyone within 10 yards with you. This is bad. But you do get a 10% damage buff from each stack. This is good. The idea is to let this get up to 9 stacks and then taunt-swap.

As a Feral you really want to be the first tank to take these stacks. Festergut's enrage timer is pretty short. There's enough time to taunt-swap twice. And if your DPS is fast enough it'll only happen once. If you tank Festergut first you can drop into Cat form after he's taunted off you and have a full 100 seconds of additional 90% damage. In my tank gear and spec this equates to almost the damage I would normally be doing in my DPS gear and spec. But it's fun to be able to put up those kind of numbers with a gimped rotation and Energy regen rate.

While you're DPSing make sure you're watching the Bloat stacks on your other tank and be ready to shift and taunt when they get to 9. Also, watch your threat. Even though you're in cat, until the other tank gets a few stacks of the Bloat you'll be riding the threat limit.

On a regular interval Festergut will Inhale Blight, which reduces the ticking damage of the gas in the room by 30%, but also increases his damage and attack speed by 30%. He'll do this 3 times. If you're tanking during the period of the third inhale you'll want to start managing your cooldowns to help your healers. Don't pop them all at once. You need to drag them out. Usually I start with Barkskin. When it has about 3 seconds left I'll pop Survival Instincts. When that's a couple seconds from expiring I'll use Frenzied Regeneration. That will usually last through the vast majority of the 3rd inhale period.

When the time comes, instead of a 4th inhale Festergut will exhale all the blight he's sucked in (Pungent Blight). Ideally you (and the rest of your raid) will have 3 stacks of Innoculation from a spore mechanic going on in this fight and that 50K damage will be reduced to something very manageable.

The spores will spawn at interval on two different players. When they do you'll want your ranged to group on one and your melee on another. At times this may require one of your raid members to run out to the ranged or in close with the melee. If you're in cat at the time and get this, run forward just a little to stand right between Festergut's legs so that the spore will also innoculate the tank when it bursts. Also be ready in case your raid decides you need to be the one to run out to the ranged. If you're the tank and you get this, all the melee needs to shift closer to you until the spore pops.

Finally, this won't affect you directly, but Festergut will be casting Vile Gas on random raid members. If you have at least 3 people in your raid at range it will never hit the melee. You want to make sure this is the case. The player that gets Vile Gas (and any other player within 8 yards of them) will start puking for 6 seconds and will be unable to do anything during that time. It's essentially a stun. Just more disgusting. Depending on who you have standing at range this could be a healer. Just be aware and be ready to react appropriately, especially if there's multiple Inhales active.

Obviously with needing to clump together for the spores and stay spread out for the Vile Gas, anyone at range (potentially healers) is going to be moving around a lot. Just be aware of this and manage appropriately.

On 10-man Festergut will drop Plague-Soaked Leggings which are very nice for tanking. He can also drop the Cloak of Many Skins, though it's only okay for you. Honestly, by the time you're tanking Festergut, you should already have the Frost Emblem cloak, and that's about as good as it's going to get for Bears.

On 25-man you can look forward to Distant Land (do want!!) and the Gangrenous Leggings.

---

As with all my boss strats, I'm writing from the overall perspective of a Bear tank 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. Here is his Festergut strat.

A Bear's guide to ICC: Precious and Stinky

This is going to be fairly quick, but I feel like covering these two is worth their own brief post. They're closer to a mini-boss status than they are to "trash mob." Killing these two will probably take your guild a few minutes each and the fights can get challenging if you're not careful.

Just like Gluth did in Naxx, both of these dog...things will drop Mortal Wounds on the tanks and Decimates on the raid, so healers have to be vigilant. The Mortal Wound debuffs stack fairly quickly. You need to watch your debuffs and taunt off your fellow tank the moment yours drops. This is usually in the 7-9 stack range, so it can get tense.

Stinky:
Once you've cleared the trash immediately outside the Plagueworks, made your way up the stairs, and chopped down the Decaying Colossus, Stinky will be your next target. He (she? it?) pats along the corridor that goes to the left and leads to Festergut. He's also green.

Of the two plague pets, Stinky is the easier and the one you'll want to tackle first. Pull him with a Faerie Fire and drag him out onto the landing. The only thing going on in this fight other than the two abilities mentioned above is Plague Stench, and AoE ability that will constantly tick damage across the raid. (How foul does a smell have to be to tick 1500 HP?)

Precious:
It stands to reason that if I'm using "to the left" and "green" to describe Stinky, then Precious can be identified because he's "to the right" and "not green." Joyous.

Precious does not smell so bad that you take damage for it, but he does summon a sizable group of adds on a regular interval. They don't hit hard and they don't have a lot of hit points, but you do want to get them down. The general idea is for the raid to stack on the tanks so we can AoE snag the adds. Then the DPS will AoE them down. So when they spawn, start Swiping like crazy.

And that's pretty much it. Once you get the basic idea down, they're simple. But they caused enough headache the first time we ran through that I thought it was worth mentioning here.

...

I just had a terrible thought. What if Stinky and Precious aren't "he" and "he"? What if it's "he" and "she"? And Gluth is their...oh god. Can undead even do that? And they have those open abdomens. Oh god. Oh god. I think I just threw up a little...

Trials of the Commander

Leading raids in a casual guild such as the one I'm in is a tough thing. We have a very strict policy about who can raid in our guild: If you want to raid, show up and you'll get a chance.

That's it.

We don't enforce DPS minimums. We don't require you to come with certain specs. Show up in quest blues? We'll ask you to DPS instead of tank or heal until you get geared up, but you can go. Only run with us once every two months? That's fine. There's probably room for you anyway. Just joined the guild yesterday? Same. Keep dying in the fire? We're not going to kick you. Show up late or have to go early? Life's more important. We understand.

Part of this is out of necessity. Our guild is continually hovering around that critical line of 25 active raiders. In fact, we spent most of this past year below it, focusing on 10 man content instead. Right now I think we're at 27. It doesn't take many people not showing up for us to have trouble filling runs.

A larger part, though, is that we truly believe that everybody should get a chance to see the inside of a raid. Now more than ever, perhaps. This is a game. It's supposed to be fun. Raids are a huge part of that fun for a lot of people, and we don't think anyone should arbitrarily be denied a chance at having that fun.

What this means, of course, is that our 25-man progression is usually a tier behind our 10-man progression. And right now, that's probably only due to the way that Emblems of Triumph rain down on us with wanton abandon. If we still had to run people through Naxx and Ulduar to get them ready for ToC, we wouldn't have a prayer.

The other thing this means is that our core raiders--the ones that are regularly included in our 10-man progression--have to significantly outgear encounters in order to make up for some of the carrying we have to do.

While the "everyone gets a chance" philosophy that I agree with and embrace (and one of the reasons I love my guild), it's also a really hard philosophy to plan and run a raid around.

There's no certainty and no balance. I don't know who's going to be in the raid and what role they're hoping to play until we've sent out all the invites. We had a run some time ago where we had 6 tanks, 8 healers, and 12 DPS, 4 of which were ranged. Some of these people we were able to switch to other specs or toons to fill some of the gaps and we managed. We still had 2 tanks DPSing in tank gear and spec because that's all they had, but they couldn't take the hits from bosses at that level.

Despite being the second easiest fight in ToC as far as execution is concerned (I believe), we still can't get Anub'Arak because we can't beat the enrage timer. I suppose it's less frustrating to hit the enrage timer with 21 of your 23 raid members still alive than to continually wipe on the first phase 2 or something like that. But it's still not easy. (Thaddius was a huge roadblock for us in 25-man for the same reason.)

Outside of vent, well...let's just say I'm thankful for PTT and wine. But while in Vent and typing in gchat I have to be supportive and encouraging and be very general when correcting mistakes. ("Alright guys, a pretty good attempt there. We made a lot of progress over the last one. Just remember that casters need to stay at range and that the fire will kill you in about 3 ticks if you don't get out of it.") Even if I see a lot of changes that need to be made, I can only throw out about two at a time. Wait until they're no longer problems and then start trying to correct others. Small steps.

At the end of a run that's not ultimately successful, I have to point out the obvious without pointing fingers. ("Good job tonight, guys. Four bosses down in a couple hours and we rocked Faction Champs this week. We're still hitting the enrage timer on Anub with most of our raid alive, though, which means our DPS is too low. I know we try to not to make a big deal about things like that in this guild, but if we want to down this boss, we have to collectively raise our DPS. We have Officers and Veterans who are knowledgeable about every class, so please don't hesitate to approach them and ask for advice on how to raise your numbers. And keep running heroics for badges and gear upgrades.")

Next week rolls around and...well...second verse, same as the first.

This may all sound like a huge QQ fest. And to some extent, I suppose it is. As I said above, this is a game and it's supposed to be fun. So why do I spend two nights a week stressing myself out for little personal gain? Because when it's all over I'll get whispers from people telling me how much fun they had and how awesome it is that they got a chance to roll into ToC and down some big, bad bosses. I'll get thanks for giving them a chance when a lot of guilds wouldn't. I get whispers from someone who was in the world-third AQ gate-opening guild back in the day letting me know that our laid-back, no-pressure style has made raiding enjoyable again. (Do you know how much I was stressing raid leading someone like that when I found out? And they complimented me. Blew my mind.)

At the end of the night, when the wine glass is empty (for the second time) and Vent's closed down, those are the things that make it all worth it for me.

I never wanted to be a raid leader

Over the course of the last week or so--as a result our continued un-success at bringing down Rotface and my inability to figure out exactly why--I've started thinking back to how I ended up as a raid leader anyway.

I never wanted to be a raid leader. It's not a position I strived to obtain. And more times than not, I feel woefully inadequate at doing it. I'm sure my guildmates will chide me for saying so, but it's true.

It started back when I was an officer of a different guild (a position I think I was given for little reason other than I was reliably online and playing the game) and we started doing joint runs with my current guild because neither could field 25-man teams on their own to take on Gruul and Magtheridon. During off-nights we would often get Kara teams together to hone our skills and gear as many people up as possible.

In my early days in Kara I had no idea what was going on. I had never raided before. I'd barely run Heroics (I entered Kara in near-full epic BG PvP gear). I only had the faintest idea of concepts like aggro. I knew, as a Feral, if I wanted to raid I was probably going to have to tank, although I'd only run cat to that point. Basically I was an utter noob.

At first it was pretty overwhelming. And it didn't help that at the start of each fight I'd get a quick synopsis of what was going to happen and then we'd just go. During the battle there were no reminders of what was happening. And since I'd never seen them before, I just had to try and keep up and remember as best I could.

Slowly I learned the fights. I learned how group mechanics work. I learned, at least to a small degree, what each class/spec could and couldn't do.

As time went on, the people who I had traditionally considered to be our raid leaders didn't log on very much. And I found myself in Kara groups where everyone was just kinda running around and trying to stay together, and there was no definitive plan of action through the whole thing.

I'm the type of guy that's 100% okay with sitting back, letting someone else take the reigns, and doing what I'm told to do. In fact, I honestly prefer it--just let me worry about me and quietly do my job the best I can. But when there's a void there, I'm also the kind of person that will step up and fill it until someone else comes along that can do it as good or better than me (which I still don't think takes much).

So in these Kara groups I suddenly found myself being the one to explain the fights. And while the fights were going on, I continued to call out instructions and reminders. This carried on to Gruul as well. And by the time we started making serious attempts at Magtheridon, I found I was actively researching the battles ahead of time so that I could help coordinate what 25 people across 2 different guilds were trying to do.

Eventually my old guild kinda fell apart and we all merged into the other (now current) guild. I was grandfathered in as an Officer and became one of the two defacto raid leaders (we now have a third as well).

It all just sort of happened. Quickly and silently and without forethought or planning, I found myself being that guy that everyone else looks (listens?) to for direction. Some days I like it. Some days I really don't. But most of the time it's just there. One more aspect of this game I play with a bunch of strangers. And I'll continue to do my best at it.

Invincible (music)

Anyone that knows me knows I'm a huge music fiend. I love music. All kinds. If I had to pick my top 3 passions, Games and Music would be two of them. Given that, I've been so excited over the last few years as game soundtracks have become a serious endeavor. True, Square's been at it for a long, long time with their excellent FF soundtracks. But the rest of the industry is catching up. So many times I'll stop playing whatever game I'm in the middle of and just listen to the music.

When Wrath was released I bought the Collector's Edition for one reason and one reason only: the CD. Everything else that came with it is nice, don't get me wrong. But I really only paid the extra $$$ for the CD. And every time one of those tracks pops up on my iPod, I just smile and geek out a little bit. Usually I can think of what I'd be doing in game in the areas where that music plays.

The music in WoW has always amazed me and I'm one of the few people I know that play with the music turned on (except in Stormwind). All the different themes and ideas. Although, to date, the single best piece of music written for the game has been in the Wrath opening cinematic. Even without the visuals and Terenas's voiceover, the music alone tells the story.

About a week ago, Blizz released this piece of music titled "Invincible." If you haven't heard it yet, go now and listen.

You can hear a lot of the same themes running through this piece as are in the opening cinematic, but they definitely take on a much more somber tone. And by "somber" I mean "downright sad."

Speculation and rumors are that this is the music that's going to run under the cinematic that plays when you defeat the Lich King in ICC, which would make sense. This definitely sounds like the music of a long-fought, but hollow victory.

Of course, all speculation will likely be confirmed tomorrow when 3.2.2 drops. I have no doubt said cinematic will be in the patch files. It's going to be really hard for me not to run off and watch it the moment it gets posted on YouTube, but I really want to try and wait to see it for the first time, in game, when our guild earns it. (Of course with another weekend of failed attempts on Rotface behind us, I don't know when that's going to be...)

In the mean time, I'm going to continue to listen to this over and over and over and try not to get a little teary each and every time.