You Wake it;You Tank it

On Goblins of Avaricious Nature and the Social Aspects of WoW

2009-03-03T15:39:00.003-05:00

Greedy Goblin, whether you disagree with him or not, is not known for pulling his punches. In one of his latest posts, he equates WoW with a drunken poker party he attended in college. The point of the party was to drink, have fun, meet new people, etc. Not to make money. If you know Greedy Goblin, you can probably guess who walked away with the most money! He feels that WoW has become Second Life with NPCs and decoy-monsters. Over time, he feels these attitudes will dumb the game down to a level he can't justify paying 15 dollars for. That's a justifiable stance, I honestly can see his side on this. However, I disagree on it's ability to ruin the game.

Like Nesh and I have often said, "WoW is the world's most complex internet chat client." I have a lot of one-player console games, books, hobbies( knitting is not a team sport! or a sport for that matter... )with which to fill my time when I don't want to play WoW. But, unlike GG, I play for the social aspect of the game. I do not hang out in /trade swapping Chuck Norris jokes, I do not spam BGs with my inanities( and I have many of them! ), I share my tim w e with people I value. I've spent time building a reputation both for myself and for my guild - an activity I've found to be worth my efforts.

When I log in, I'm usually innundated with /tells. Some of these are guild business, but a large number of these are personal. I get people asking how my daughter is if she's been sick. I get people who just say hello and ask me how I've been lately. Tells from people both in guild and out of guild.

Are these people that I meet in a bar regularly? No. Coworkers? No way. Old Schoolmates? Not a single one. They are, in fact, people that I've -chosen- to associate with and that is the most important part. I spend a lot of time surrounded by personal contact of which I have no control - the people in my office, the people in traffic with me, telemarketers, professional associations, etc. The people I stay in contact with through WoW are all by choice. They are all people who have met my, admittedly, strenuous checklist of "worth my time"-ness.

Even some of the short, one-off contacts I've had with people have been enjoyable. I happened into a PuG Heroic UP, Heroic DTK, and OS-10 with a small guild full-to-the-brim with hilarious players. All of them were well geared, exteremely well played, and laugh-out-loud funny. It was one of the best PuG experiences I've had. If I see any of those guys in LFG I go out of my way to include them or to be included with them!

At one point, while needing more information about Discipline priests, I sent Matticus from WorldofMatticus a message and asked for insight. In no time, Matticus is hanging out on KoU vent, talking Disc priests, then Hockey, then the American Justice System. It was a valuable interaction, not just for the information that Matticus was willing to give freely, but because I -enjoyed- the time spent discussing these things.

I feel that GG sees the other players in WoW as a mean to his ends. He has stated goals and prepares to succeed at those endevors. On the other side of the scale, I prefer to look to the person behind the keyboard and monitor. Their contributions to my successes as a raider, guild leader, and player have been enormous but pale in comparission to the value I place upon them as friends and confidants.

Leadership from the Rear: A Day in the Life

2009-02-13T18:35:00.000-05:00

(A guest post by Neshura, continued from The View From Behind)

As a player, my goal in the game is to maximize the amount of time I spend accomplishing fun things, and to minimize my wasted time. (Blizzard doesn't make this easy, since one of the requirements of the game bearing some resemblance to a real world is that it wastes your time with things analogous to real life like sitting on transit.) As a guild leader, Kyuushi has told me many a time that his number one goal is to minimize the amount of wasted time for *everyone*. He does this by staying on top of information, keeping up with organizational tasks, and delegating. The day-to-day tasks of running a guild aren't unenjoyable, but neither are they optional.

Lots of people talk about running a guild, but very few get down into the nitty-gritty of what actually happens. Let's step into Kyu's average day, shall we?

Promptly at 6AM, every day, get up and feed the baby. Yes, real life baby. She wakes up at 6 and makes noises, and must be fetched, fed, changed, dressed, and have her hair brushed and adorable ponytails installed. Then, she must be entertained for 30-45 minutes further so that Nesh (me) can grab a shower, finish morning chores, and get everything trundled out to the car that needs to go to daycare along with the baby.
An hour, maybe two more, of napping, before the dog needs to be fed, let out, and walked.
Head to real life work, do real life work as it comes in.
Monitor the KOU forums, respond to raid signups and class questions, answer private messages, txt messages, out-of-game emails from officers. Staying in contact through many channels is important. Monitor all these things even while logged in to the game during the evenings.
Promptly at 6PM, stop everything else, take the baby upstairs, read her some stories, make lion noises. Grrrr grrr! Show her how butterflies flutter their wings. Fix a sippy cup of warm milk and give her some snuggles while she finishes it off. Unstructured play time, rolling a ball, patting the dog, identifying body parts (finger in the eyeball!). Change her, dress her for bed, rock her into drowsiness, and put her down.
Dinner. Make it some days, eat it most days.
Read the blogs. Wowinsider, class-specific blogs, tankspot, elitistjerks forums -- all scanned and kept up with on a daily basis. Industry information, if you will, like reading the Wall Street Journal, Economist, and Fortune magazine every day. If there are changes coming that will affect the group, Kyu is the first to find out and start letting people know and start making plans.
Recruit new people for the guild. Sit in a city and spam the recruitment chat channel with information about KOU. Armory interested recruits sometimes, interview them always.

Direct quote from Kyuushi: "The primary question is 'What do you expect to get out of being in a guild,' if the answer is 'a place to farm up epics', that person is usually rejected. If the answer leans towards, 'A friendly community to get to know people and progress as a player,' that's a big plus."

Do the JC daily quests on an otherwise-unplayed 80 toon, so that the guild has the resources to make gems with which to equip its people. Coordinate with Kvasira on which gem patterns to buy, so that there isn't too much guild overlap.
Over the course of 24 hours, conduct lengthy private conversations based on in-game /tells from roughly twelve to fourteen different people. Not all at once, usually no more than three at once. Shoulders offered for tragedies small and large, because getting to know Kyu as a friend is remarkably easy. Answering questions is a big part of /tell time. Intra-guild problems, one person vs another, are currently quite rare. Lots of /tells are simply socializing and enjoyable chit-chat.
Investigate complaints about players. This is more common now that we've got new recruits coming in. They walk around the game wearing the "KOU" guild tag, and misbehavior is reported to and dealt with by Kyu.
Work with the raid leader and officers to make current guild projects, namely Naxxramas, a success. Daily discussion about strengths and weaknesses of particular teams, goals to be accomplished, schedules to be worked around, available resources. This takes the most amount of work, but also has the highest level of delegation to officers.
Direct guild chat questions to the right person. If Kyu doesn't know, he can tell you who does know.
Review policies when there are gray areas brought up to him, then delegate a rewrite or clarification.
Negotiate with leaders from other guilds if necessary, though this is mainly done by letting the officers work out the details of multi-guild raiding.
Once a week, ordered off the computer and over to the couch for a movie with his wife. That's right. He's mine, back off!

When all this work behind the scenes is done, the optional stuff begins: instancing, raiding, quests, and having fun. At 1AM or so, log off and get a few hours of sleep before the 6AM wake-up cry.

From the theoretical to the very specific, I hope this has given you some insight into the story of who Kyuushi is as a guild leader, how he makes decisions for KOU, and what goes on behind the scenes to keep the most number of people happy most of the time.

Happy Valentine's Day, sweetheart!

Leadership From the Rear: The View From Behind

2009-02-13T18:33:00.000-05:00

(A guest post by Neshura, continued from the Introduction)

There are three major roles for players in WoW -- tanking, dpsing, and healing. Tanks and healers are utility roles, dps is... well let's just put that aside for now. By and large, tanks set the pace, choose which monster to kill first, issue orders, and are generally in the front seat when it comes to a group effort. Quite literally, tanks are leading the charge to keep the monsters' focus and attention. Healers, in contrast, have the job to stand in the wings, stay unnoticed by monsters, and keep everyone alive.

It's very natural for tanks to take a leadership role in any short-term (1-2hour) group, inviting people and kicking them out, and giving very specific instructions to the people (dps) whose job it is to actually do the killing. The one person who tanks don't typically instruct is the healer. Usually the most they say is, "Do that thing that you do, healer". Healing is more mysterious, hard to quantify, and unique than any other role. You know a good healer when you've been in a couple groups with them, and you know a bad healer, but you can't say why. All you can really point to is that you died, or you didn't die. I could say more about why tanking and dpsing have more in common but I don't want to get off on a tangent.

Now, Kyuushi was a tank for a long time and enjoyed it. The nature of tanking is such that it attracts people who naturally prefer to set the pace, issue orders, and pick which monster to kill first. Kyuushi likes tanking okay, but healing... Kyuushi loooooooves healing. As a healer, you typically have no direct front-end control over how a scenario plays out. It's a fundamentally reactive role -- you see or sense incoming damage, and you make a snap judgment to heal or not to heal. (If you don't play a healer, you might think "Ummm why would you ever not heal...". Contact your friendly neighborhood healer and ask them about their kill priority list to find out more.)

So this is kinda crazy if you think about. Here's a guy who is a guild leader, and his preferred role in actual game play is one that, fundamentally, has the least direct influence in the middle of the fight. If a tank heads left, the healer follows. If the dps clumps up near the tank, the healer moves to be within range. The healer tells no one where to go or how to do their jobs. Occasionally, a healer will tell you how to make the fight easier on them. But again... tanking is proactive, healing is reactive.

Leadership though, is a proactive skill. If he's not running the raids, and he's not tanking the instances, how does Kyuushi keep from getting insanely frustrated by only being able to react once gameplay starts??

Here's where this gets interesting to me. What Kyuushi does as a healer is to play around with a concept called "starting conditions". I doubt Kyu would ever put it that way, I'm just using an odd term from another field to convey this concept. What Kyuushi does is to research, prepare, make rules, pick people, stack the deck, juggle gear, and get familiar with fights so that ultimately, the group should already have won the fight before it even starts. Kyuushi tends not to either create or join groups that have too many unknowns. The old Boy Scout motto of "be prepared" starts to capture this, but not very well. I have no doubt that there's probably a Sun Tzu quote in there somewhere too.

Kyu has, in fact, followed this same approach for raiding. He's taken a half-assed social guild and rebuilt it into a casual-core raiding guild around the approach of tweaking the starting conditions for raids:

IF (you pick a good group of enthusiastic team players),

IF (all those people have read the strats and reviewed the videos),

IF (the raid leader is prepared, competent, and patient),

IF (everyone is gemmed and enchanted and has brought every possible consumable),

IF (you have a stated guild policy for common sources of disagreement (like loot)),

IF (everyone shows up on time so invites and buffs take place while the night is still young),

IF (we pay attention to emotional momentum, by not wasting time pugging and armorying like we used to do with Karazhan)...

BEGIN raid

In Kyu's world, there is simply no value in skipping any of those starting conditions just to save a little time up front. There's not a point, for him, in attempting a raid in which you haven't done everything possible to guarantee success before you send out the raid invites. The appropriate quote from, I dunno, some guy, would be, "Practice doesn't make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect." Kyu obsesses up front because, and here is where I either wholly agree with or have possibly influenced Kyu, your in-game and in-raid time is valuable to both you and us, and we don't want to see it wasted.

Now, this approach is going to seem, like, "Duh" to some readers, especially the ones in KOU.

But it isn't -- there are plenty of people who pug raids every week. When you pug a raid, the assumption everyone makes coming into a pug is that individually geared and talented players will make or break the raid. There are plenty of guilds who don't keep the almost-military orderliness and rules that Kyu imposes. Guild cultures and styles vary widely, and Kyu's style has for sure chapped some asses in KOU. An alternative to Kyu's approach is leadership from the front - the tank is the raid leader and says, "Don't worry, I'll explain the fights to you as we go. We'll take our most talented people and just go." That's very common and is effective, because the tank usually knows the fights well. It's also easier to put together more raids if you simply take every single opportunity to run one spontaneously whenever 10 raid-quality players are online in your guild. KOU rarely does that; we schedule ahead of time so that we can make sure that our raiding schedule gets people in for roles where there is an excess of players.

What it comes down to for KOU and Kyuushi is that, when you are basically helpless to do anything but try to heal up people that are unprepared and running amok and losing their heads in a situation, and everyone dies, it's basically a setup -- where the healer is set up to take the fall. People get pissed off and blame the healer(s) at least as often as they blame the tank. Kyu, I think, has an innate and intimate understanding that if your starting conditions are imperfect, your outcome will be AT BEST imperfect. So what he does is, he makes it so it's a rule that your contribution as a raider is to understand your personal best starting conditions and bring those to the raid, along with a readiness to take the raid leader's orders, have fun, and execute an elegant smooth win that just makes everyone feel great. When you emphasize player preparedness over player talent, you get a third bonus -- player experience. Because if you can take 7 prepared talented experienced players, and 2 prepared noobs, you can give those noobs the benefit of gaining high-quality dense boss fight experience, which is critical to developing talent. If you don't get past Shade, no one on the team will ever get to practice the Prince fight.

Kyuushi and his KOU management team have rebuilt, from a scorched earth guild implosion, a raiding team out of a group of remnants, that from the moment KOU was reborn started destroying progression content and never looked back.

My view is that this combination of the view from the front as a tank and the view from the rear as a healer has shaped Kyuushi's approach tremendously. It's now like second nature to all KOU raiders to be efficient and effective with fewer resources, time and people.

I coined the term "casual-core", but Kyuushi brought together the team that defined it.

Leadership From the Rear: Introduction

2009-02-13T18:23:00.000-05:00

(A guest post by Neshura)

To talk about leadership in WoW is necessarily to talk about guilds and raids. The four people who read this blog are going to be familiar with the difference, but it's always useful to establish a common metaphor. A guild is like a department of a company, whereas a raid is like a project, short-term and long-term. I might touch on raid leading a bit, but I mainly want to talk about guild leading. I wouldn't be the first to compare a guild to the corporate world, but I think I'm the first to suggest that you avoid thinking of it in terms of "guild equals company". Guild leading has far more in common with the middle management world than it does with the corporate executive world.

What does a mid-level department head in a faceless company have in common with a WoW guild leader that a CEO does not?

1. A lot more actual work, for

2. None of the glory

Woof. Sounds like a mind-numbing daily grind, so why does anyone do it? How do they do it? There are twelve million people playing WoW and probably thousands if not hundreds of thousands of guild leaders, who are paying $15/month and drawing no salary for the privilege of having a second (or third) job that requires countless hours for no tangible reward. The "how" and the "why" are, then, a pretty interesting set of questions! If I were ghost-writing a best-practices book for the corporate executive marketplace, my answers to these questions would start with something facile and non-specific like

"Define success."

Namely, that as a leader, it's your job to define how your company will be successful, how you'll measure success, build consensus, and how you'll constantly reevaluate the parameters of success.

Horseshit. That has nothing to do with how you keep a large group of people from imploding on a daily basis. It could be a volunteer organization, it could be a school class, a church, a military group, an art collective. The fact is, large groups of people organize spontaneously, and somebody has to keep them from imploding. We call those people "leaders". Americans tend towards the subconsciously associative concept that a leader is a CEO and a CEO is a leader. The intellectual rigor of that statement is lower than that of your average bumper sticker.

Seriously, folks, if you want to go spend $39.95 at Barnes & Noble to read about the parameters of success and then come back and try to apply that to a group of real people, you go right ahead. It could easily work for you, but I don't want to talk about how you are going to lead your guild, nor am I about to tell you about the color of your parachute. Please don't mistake me for the kind of person who puts a metaphor out there, like "guild leadership is like middle management", and then tries to prove that it is true.

I have nothing to sell you. I am the observer, the storyteller, making the slightly crazy attempt to make sense of complex social interactions. I am giving you a metaphor, not to prove its accuracy as a model, but to simplify and frame, so we can get on with the story. My goodness, look how much I've written and the story is, as yet... unstarted.

So, this tale is about leadership, one guy, and how and why he does it.

On clearing Naxx-10

2009-02-10T11:24:00.003-05:00

Last night, Knights of Utopia took a couple of shots at Kel'Thuzad in Naxxramas-10 and downed him after about 4 tries. We had him on the first attempt, but one of the melee DPSers was a wee too close to our tank and iceblocked him.

As you can see in my screenshot, I'm running boomkin on this fight. For Kel'Thuzad, too much Melee DPS spells death for a raid and we were running heavy this week - heavier than I'm ever comfortable running. To combat this, we swapped out Kvasira for her resto-shaman alt Karika and I respecc'd to Balance so I could Laser Turkey.

Our loot rules are such that you can spend DKP on off-spec stuff( but not roll against a main-spec user ) and I spent heavily for Balance gear feeling that the versatility of Druids made it a reasonable idea. Now, what this means is I'm exchanging priority on resto loot for flexibility. Sharing my T7 Tokens with Rogues, Mages and DK's, I'm almost guaranteed to not see a T7 token for some time - which is something I'm fine with. Kyuushi is nearly out-gearing Naxxramas-10 in both Restoration and Balance gear so I'd almost prefer to see the tokens get spread out to others. In fact, given that I have the highest attendance in raids due to being a healer, it's not such a terrible deficit that I can't get myself back up to positive numbers.

On Ranting...

2009-02-05T02:01:00.001-05:00

I have a problem with specific classes/specs. I don't like that Ret Paladins can top a damage meter and I don't like that Survival Hunters can top the damage meters. Not because I dislike either class or either spec, but because, in my view, utility is like a talent spec. You have three trees: Damage Dealing, Raid Utility, and Healing. Just like talent specs, the deeper you go into a tree the better you are at that role. So lets take a look at some of the possible specs.

Warlocks: Spent heavily on DPS, a couple points in Utility, and just enough points to heal themselves a small mount.

Mages: Spent heavy on DPS, a point or two in Raid Utility, and none in Healing.

Rogues: Every single point is in DPS.

Retribution Paladins: Spent deeply in DPS, deeply in raid Utility and only a little bit in Healing.

Survival Hunters: Spent Deeply in DPS and Deeply in Raid Utility.

No, comparitively, Mages, Warlocks and Rogues should be able to easily out damage a ret paladin or a survival hunter since they've spent considerably more points in the damage tree. I wouldn't expect a druid with a deep moonkin build to be able to out heal my resto druid for the exact same reason. I would expect that Survival Hunters would be able to easily out damage a ret paladin since they only spent deep enough to get Hunting Party ( mana regen ) where as paladins picked up the mana regen, poison cleansing, disease cleansing, raid saves, some of the best class buffs available, AND enough in healing to use Lay On Hands, Judgement of Light, and some instanct cast heals.

What this says to me, is that it's not, as the developers claimed, "bring the player, not the class", but instead that unequal footing is being granted to classes that were previously looked down upon. Frankly, it's a Blizzard "pity f**k". If I was the type of guild leader that looked at nothing but progressing our raids and I was given the choice of bringing a Ret Paladin, a Rogue, and a DPS warrior, there's no compelling reason to bring anything but the ret paladin! Not only can they go neck and neck with the DPS, but they provide more raid utility as well!

Same goes for Survival Hunters; Why would I bring a mage, warlock, Moonkin Druid, or even a Marksman druid? Survival DPS is -huge- now that they've buffed Explosive shot - to the point that the eponymous BigRedKitty respecced! Add in that they can return mana and I'm sold! What does the other class bring to the table thats worth passing up on the Survival Hunter?

I agree with Blizzard's sentiment that it should be about play-style, but raid utility -IS- a play style. You have to be willing to be middle of the pack in Damage Done to provide the utility that will help your raid succeed. You have to know how to best provide for it just like you'd need to understand how to maximize your DPS.

On what stats are important and how important are they...

2009-02-04T15:14:00.004-05:00

When you're levelling up, obviously, your goal is to crash through as many quests and instances as you can do your the best you are able in your chosen role. Once you get to 80 and turn an eye towards raiding, a fair amount of thought is going to be introduced into the picture.

My guild, and a lot of guilds that I know of, maintain minimum stats profiles for specific roles but sometimes, especially as you're gearing up you need to understand the "weight" of those stats. Often times you'll see forum posts where people ask, "What stats should my warrior tank stack?" followed by a list of stats, sometimes in no particular order. If the answer said "Stamina, Strength, Dodge, Defense, Block, Armor," those stats would be both incorrect and correct. A warrior tank should stack those stats but there's no indication of priority. If that warrior hasn't stacked Defense because it was 4th on the list, he's probably going to eat a lot of critical hits and drop like a raid-wiping stone in a repair-bill pond.

For example, if you're DPS, Hit Rating is often heavily weighted over things like attack/spell power. Once you've reached the hit cap( your chance to miss with an attack on a raid boss is 0% ), the weights will shift and Hit rating will move to the bottom of the list as it stops helping to improve your DPS. There are several addons such as Lootster or Pawn that will help you make gear comparisons. For my uses, I've chosen Pawn. Here's a quick screenshot of Pawn in action in it's two major roles.

The first is an integrated tooltip. I've set up what are called "Scales" for each spec I maintain gear for and can see the combined weight of the item via tooltip when I mouse over. You can see if the item is well stated for Resto, Moonkin, Feral DPS or Feral tank.

Secondly we have the comparison between two items. You can reach this window via the /pawn command. Here we see two main hand weapons being compared. The Titansteel guardian and the Blade of Dormant Memories. You can see that while the Titansteel Guardian does have 49 extra spellpower over the Blade of Dormant Memories, it is severely lacking in other others such as Intellect and Haste! When making comparisons such as this, it's best to have an understanding of where you are weak in your gear. At the moment, I feel that I'm at an acceptable level of unbuffed spellpower and that more intellect and more haste will make me a better healer! In the end, item comparison mods are an effective guideline for upgrades, but have to be used by someone with a brain to back them up. They simply don't work in a vacuum.

Now that you know you need to be looking at stats, the difficult part comes in, finding those stats. As you'll see in this series, the premiere number crunching site is the Elitist Jerks forums. Some classes
have stat weights listed in their class-specific topics and some take some digging. Another great tool is the Item Comparison available at wowhead. Simply add an item and then select a weight scale. You can click "show details". You can take the numbers listed there and create a scale in Pawn with them. Again, you have to use your head when you're looking at these things. Knowing the stats that are valuable to your class is a big step towards maximizing your value, but understanding where you are lacking is the other half of that equation.

Another invaluable asset, and I'll touch on this later in the series, is to have someone who is smarter and more hardworking than you are. When I want to dine on some crunched resto druid numbers, I pull up a seat at the Resto4Life buffet and tuck the table cloth into my collar! Nobody crunches numbers as well or has a higher dedication to understanding the ins and outs of resto druids than Phaelia and I'm perfectly willing to bow to her knowledge and intellect and reap the benefits of it! Many times, bloggers such as Phaelia will cover things like "Pre-raiding" gear, or "best-in-slot" lists and those are -great- resources for tracking down gear and making yourself a gear progression list.

What's a gear progression list? Well before you walk, you have to crawl, and at max level the first thing on your list is get ready for the heroic dungeon crawl. You have to be well geared for the level 80 instances to start doing the heroic instances, and you have to well geared for the heroic instances to start doing the raids! You'll find a lot of pre-naxx gear guides online. In fact, googling for "pre-naxx gear INSERTYOURSPEC INSERTYOURCLASSHERE" will likely bring you up a good list for you to shoot for!

Up next: Researching your spec

On preparing a new series...

2009-01-30T14:18:00.000-05:00

I'm going to be starting a new series here on how to be better at whatever class and spec you choose.

I'm not going to cover every single class and spec, explain your needs and wants, and then tell you what to do, I'm going to explain how -you- would do these things. What resources to be familiar with and why. This won't be a simple "Google It" either.

Some of the things we'll be discussing will be:
Researching your Spec
Understanding the gear and stats
Learning your rotation and how to maximize its use
Understanding your role in a raid
Sources for information and enlightenment.

First post should be up in a couple days.

On entering Naxx-10 and beginning to raid again...

2009-01-06T10:50:00.015-05:00

The numbers of unique-80s in our guild finally entered the realm of "raid-team" and Absitively and I decided it was time to start progression raiding. The goal was to poke our heads in, have a look at where we stood, and try to hammer out our stat minimums for Naxx-10 raid requirements. All in all, we came out of the gate like like a cannon shot. Everyone seemed to be prepared, not just in the vein of consumables and repairs, but to really dedicate the next two hours to focused progression.

Roster for the first night:

Tanks:

Name	Class	HP	Armor	Defense
Posolutely	Warrior	26,100	22965	553
Balending	Warrior	~22,291	21827	547

Healers:

Name	Class	HP	Mana	Spell Power	Crit%	MP5	Haste
Boon	Paladin	~14044	~14884	~1643	~16.4%	~120	~117
Janril	Priest	11770	13348	1413	6.62%	215	0
Kyuushi	Druid	14277	14886	1393	9.96%	252	4.79

DPS:

Name	Class	HP	Mana	Hit Rating	Crit Rating	Attack Power	Ranged Attack Power	Spell Power
IceRavens	Ret Paladin	~18814	~5704	~8.42%	~32.14%	~3054	N/A	N/A
Kvasira	Ret Paladin	17644	~5719	8.78%	20.43%	2193	NA	NA
MicroMachine	Frost Mage	12323	13488	14.33%	9.88%	N/A	N/A	1172
Neshura	BM Hunter	~15548	10451	8.66%	15.75%	N/A	3123	N/A
WolfInMe	Marksman Hunter	15588	10556	9.61	22.38%	N/A	3486	N/A

I'd say the stats listed above are likely to be close to our Guild minimums for Naxx-10 Raiding. I'd like to see more evenly spaced DPS and am likely to modify the stats such as Attack Power, Ranged Attack Power, Spell Power and Crit. According to WWS, Hit Rating seemed adequate with the Marks Hunter and Frost Mage missing nary a shot, the BM hunter missing approx 1% and the Ret Paladins getting parried or blocked about 5% between the two of them - I might have to include an expertise minimum for Ret Paladins as they had a 3% and a 4.5% "Miss" rating from WWS( which is the sum of Dodge and Parry ) - that's some lost DPS.

The spread of DPS on Bosses varied widely.

On the Noth the Plaguebringer kill, our DPS managed to keep pretty tightly packed, posting percentages at 19, 18, 14 and 11% of damage done. With the exception of one DPSer, everyone had 2K+ DPS on that fight and the aforementioned DPSer wasn't last on Damage Done for the fight either! Unfortunately the only data I have is Maexxna, Noth, and Heigan for the night. I'm afraid that Noth's AoE styl e bumped our numbers higher than they are.

For the Maexxna kill, which took us quite a few tries due to her enrage, DPS is considerably more spread out. My opinion here is organization and positioning was the key. Those who were assigned to kill webs were considerably lower than usual due to running around and attempts to target the web wrapped victims.

On Preparations to meet the King

2008-08-31T19:24:00.003-04:00

* Wrote a three part series on healing to be published when I polish them while I levelled Kyuushi's fishing up to 260.
* Fell asleep while Owaru simultaneously levelled 2H Axe, 2H Sword, and 2H Mace skill from low 100s to 300 in the blasted lands against the unkillable-unless-you-have-the-quest-and-click-on-the stone guys. Smashed my face against the desk. Hurt
* Decided to go Enhancement on Shougeki for a solo run to 80 and since I don't have a physical DPSer in my stables. Will definitely pick up offspec healing gear. Shaman Healing in Wrath is going to be fun.
* Hid away all my low level herbs from Neshura. THEMS FOR SELLING TO OTHERS NOT FOR YOU! BAD KITTY! She just yelled "I'm sending you herbs" all sweetly from her study. Fine. You can haz peacebloom, you minx!
* Cleared out banks from the hybrids, removing unneeded offspec gear and vendoring them. Made a little scratch and am on the brink of breaking 5k on the Kyuushi Epic Flight Form Fund.
* Alleria's AH market is pretty abysmal right now. Usually a 30g stack of adamantite ore was a very good investment. You could get a good return by prospecting and cutting gems. Now, Solid Star of Elune runs about 20g. Down a full 20g. Royal Nightseye is lucky to break 35g buyout. I might have to switch to farming herbs and selling them. Primals are even down a fair bit. Primal Air is often found for 25g a piece on the AH. Used to be 60. Aside from that, I feel there was a stealth nerf to Prospecting. I've seen stack after stack go w/out a rare gem. It's painful.
* Took the more than 1000 Netherweave Cloth, craft them into Heavy Nethweave Bandages and vendor the bandages. Time consuming, but I can blog, watch TV or just do something else while the combines are done. The cloth sells for 2.5g on the AH if you're lucky and is simply clogging up my banks.

On chosing your favorite and putting a head on the chopping block.

2008-08-26T10:34:00.000-04:00

It's coming. And just like a year or so ago, you are not prepared. If you're like me, or like Kikidas, or like Bremm you have many 70s. Some are your favorites, some are ... there. When the expansion comes out, you're going to have to choose one or two and probably focus on them to 80 before moving towards filling out your stable of 80s - either from love of accomplishment or love of suffering. So...what happens? My 70s have a synergy of both group/raid role and professions. I'll break it down in a handy chart so as to make my blog look like it's deep in the "maths".

Name	Class	Group Role	Primary Profession	Secondary Profession	Tertiary Professions	PvP?	Personal Enjoyment
Owaru	Paladin	Tank	Engineering	Blacksmithing	Cooking, First Aid	God, No	High
Kyuushi	Druid	Healer	Alchemy	Herbalism	Cooking, First Aid	Yes, Please!	High
Tasogare	Mage	DPS	Tailoring	Alchemy	Fishing, First Aid	Yarp	Medium High
Shougeki	Shaman	Healer	Jewelcrafting	Mining	First Aid, Cooking	zomgyarp	Medium High
Byouki	Warlock	DPS	Enchanting	Tailoring	Cooking, First Aid	Never	Medium Low

So, there are things to take into consideration:

Three ore-specific professions across two characters and only one miner.
Group build up: I usually run w/ Absitively( Tank, DPS ), Kikidas( Tank, Tank, DPS, DPS, DPS, DPS, Healer ), Boon( Healer, DPS, DPS ), and Neshura( DPS, Healer ) and if we plan well we can probably make sure we reach certain landmarks together and instance together.
End Game Consideration. At the moment in ten man content we're heavy on tanks, light on Healers, and okay on DPS. We don't have any raiding resto druids except for Kyuushi so I'll probably push to get her to 80 first and ready to raid heal.
Of my professions, Jewelcrafting is probably the most helpful to my guild and my groups. If Absitively wants to run his tank up first, I'll back burner Owaru, spec Shougeki to Enchancement and DPS w/ what will become our A group. Otherwise, I'll probably just solo him to 80.
DK? Aw crap. There's going to be a glut of these honky tonks. They're not going to be like the flash in the pan that the new Draenai and BElf areas were. I think people are going to actually level their DKs. Which means they're going to be everywhere. Admittedly, I'm interested. I'd like to play around with one, but I don't think it's something I'm going to spend initial time on
Inscription? I'm making Neshura do it.

There's a lot to see, a lot to do, and not entirely too long to do it. Some of the things I'd like to accomplish before the expansion is to earn my Epic Flight Form on Kyuushi as well as her Redeemer's Alchemist Stone from the SSO Rep, and max out her fishing so she can fish up all the new tasties in the outlands. I'm going to have to max out my Engineering on Owaru as well, which, if you're not a Gnome can be a really expensive endeavor.

Then comes the more difficult choices. Someone has to go. I don't have a free slot for my Death Knight. I have a 64 Hunter who is too high to remove, a 30ish Gnome Warrior, a 26 Draenai Warrior, a 20 something Priest who I couldn't bring myself to level and an 18 Bank Alt Rogue. Chances are, it's the Priest who gets the chop. It's up between Priest and the Draenai Warrior.

On what I learned about druid healing through instancing: Part 1 of an ongoing series.

2008-08-22T11:11:00.000-04:00

Do not dismiss Rejuvenation.

Sure, Lifebloom is the pretty girl that comes to the party, gets drunk, flashes her goods to God and Country and requires constant attention( every six seconds in fact ). Surely, your parties might be known for having Lifebloom there. People are going to send pictures they took of Lifebloom on their iphones to all their friends. MySpace will be abuzz with Lifebloom related rumor and gossip. Lifebloom will Twitter, "OMG! My head hurts, like, so much!" the next morning and have "Hungover" on the "Mood:" field of her livejournal post.

But remember when you ran out of beer that one time in the middle of the party? Remember, it was Rejuvination who mentioned she had a whole keg in the trunk of her car? Just ready to go? Ready to have it's potential tapped and ready to keep the party going? Remember, way back when you were new to hosting parties and weren't very good at invites, e-vites, and word of mouth invites? Who was there first? Rejuvenation. She was there, easily and cheaply, checking up each party attendant. Making sure they were having a good time and suggesting that next time they invite their friends because the Hostess is quite good at this, why look, it was she who invited Rejuvenation in the first place!

So to summarize.

Rejuvination( Hideko Takamine in Onna ga kaidan wo agaru toki[ When a Woman Ascends the Stairs] )

Lifebloom( Hamburgler )

On things I said I'd never do and am now doing...

2008-08-22T10:53:00.000-04:00

Lead a guild - Neshura and I used to play Star Wars Galaxies and pretty much just entertained ourselves in our tiny house on Tatooine, avoided the sand people( they travel so as to hide their numbers, you know! ) and generally goof off. Then Nesh got a guild invite. The invite was then extended to me. We liked the people. They were genuinely nice people and from time to time we'd raid a Rebel Town and lay down the smack in what was probably the worst implementation of PvP ever. Then the guild leader disappeared like a fart in the wind leaving a leadership void. There were plenty of "well liked" people in the guild. Having a fairly organized personality and what Neshura calls a 'tendency towards leadership roles," I selected two of the more competent and well liked members and interposed the three of us a ruling council. Then the kitten herding started. It was pretty horrible. Not only is there not much to do in SWG, but there's not many ways to do what you can. Raids were nonexistent. World PvP was horrifically implemented. When Neshura and I started playing on Alleria we had friends leading a guild. If you've read the blog for a bit, you know it had it's drama and yet again, in nearly the same circumstances... I'm a guild leader again. I have to log in and check my guild log. I have to fear that the core of our guild, the people I've gotten to be good friends with will have stealth quit late at night.

Roll a Nelf - Yea. I greatly greatly dislike the night elves, unfortunately, I really wanted a 70 toon for each hybrid class and only Nelfs can be druids for the Alliance. Sigh. For one, when they swim they don't use their arms. This infuriates me. I don't know why, but it drives me up the wall. Before Kyuushi got Aquatic Form, I would constantly avoid water so I wouldn't have to see me "fish" my way through the stream. However, I'm finding that Resto Druid healing is a ton of fun. It's almost like playing a very complex version of Osu! Tataake! Ouendan! where you have to click at the exact right moment to make sure your lifebloom doens't bloom or your rejuv drops, etc. I have to to know that my Regrowth casts in 2.5 seconds and if there is 2.8 seconds left on the tanks lifebloom, the ret paladin that really needs the regrowth is either going to die or get healed at the cost of a bloom on the tank. And if it's going to bloom, my mana efficiency is going to take a dump as I have to restart stacking it. I ... like it. Thankfully my druid is usually in tree form or flight form!

Raid more than once a week. - Last week( being Tuesday to Tuesday ), I raided Wednesday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Kara group one on my mage, Kara group 2 on my paladin, ZA on my paladin, Kara group 1 on my mage. We're pushing two Kara groups and doing so by having some of our officers run double duty in the raids. K over at kdots.blogspot.com will come as a healer, tank or dps on in one raid and something else in the other. Pos from absitivelyposolutely.blogspot.com pushing DPS/Tank, and Boon from guardianknights.blogspot.com will Heal or DPS while I Heal/Tank/DPS with whomever best fits the bill. I used to poo-poo raids. In fact, I used to poo-poo instances because they were PuGs and I didn't want to spend my time gaming w/ strangers. Then I started instancing...then raiding...my god, sometimes, I even PvP.

On the things I won't do.

2008-08-08T11:06:00.000-04:00

There are somethings I won't do in game.

I will not run people through Azeroth dungeons over and over again, resetting the instance repeatedly to allow someone to get a specific drop. If you have all the quests for an instance and I have the time, I'll be glad to run you through. But I'm not willing to "twink" you. I don't care how nice the drop is. No, I don't care that you can get an epic from Zul'Farrak. You're going to replace it when you get to the outlands and are thus wasting my time. People were replacing Molten Core gear in Hellfire Penn - your little shiny won't last long. Just keep questing.

I will not kick someone from group/raid based on gear or performance. If you're in the group or the raid, someone should have armoried you. If it's a 5-man or a heroic, I will work my ass off to make sure you complete. I'll give you advice, I'll try to produce any synergistic effect between your class and mine, and I'll be understanding if you have questions. The only way to get removed from my groups or raids is to be disrespectful, make it so someone else in the group isn't having fun, or are incapable of playing due to being too tired, too drunk or too stupid( this is rare... very very rare for me to call someone stupid but it has happened and even then I give this person a chance. Usually I call them stupid because they've been told how to do it right and refuse to do so out of arragance. ) A good example would be a recent Mana Tombs we ran w/ a PuG rogue. If I recall correctly, It was Fyzzgig( Boon's Tank ), Zeshura( Neshura's Healer ), Kvasira( K's Ret Paladin ), Byouki( My Warlock ), and a PuG'd rogue. The rogue's DPS and Damage Donewas well below Fyzzgig's. In fact, it was about 80DPS. An abyssmal damage rate. So, we started giving out advice. Boon has a very well geared and fantastically played Rogue( even though he can't kick a spell to save his life ), K plays a rogue, and I spent a lot of time on Rogue Theorycraft when Boon was gearing his rogue for Kara. We told him to attack from behind in every single fight. His DPS jumped above 100. He said thank you for the advice and to please let him know if there was anything else he could do. That alone made me whisper him with a guild invite( since he was unguilded - I do not, have not, and will never cherry pick an active guild member [ More on that later] ) We told him to keep Slice and Dice up and back stab to his heart's content and his DPS skyrocketed. He went from subpar to really holding his own by the end of the instance. We were all impressed by him and by the end of the run he was spending a lot of his time making jokes with us. Sadly he didn't join our guild. He was actually in a guild, just didn't have a tag since he was spending some time alone.

I will not poach, cherrypick or otherwise attempt to make a person leave their guild. Being a small guild means people cherry pick from us. We've had some heartbreaking moments when good friends were tempted away from our guild and in general it takes all the time and effort my officers put into growing and building this guild up and craps all over it. In fact, I'm loathe to invite people in our guild if they have a guild tag. We recently had a person ask for an invite because our guild was ranked very well for T4 content. His guild didn't need another tank and he whispered an officer asking if we were recruiting. It got forwarded to me since I was on and I made it 100% clear that the only way he could join our guild was after I spoke to an officer in his guild to make sure they were okay with his leaving as well as make clear my position on inviting members from other guilds. We had a good chat and that warrior is now in my guild. I consider this a common courtesy to other guild leaders. Just like the Military, any time spent on a new recruit is a time/money investment. Losing that recruit means losing money/time. Losing a long time member means having your efforts and relationships stomped on. It's a common courtesy and it's a good way to keep your guild name a good one.

On where we are, where we should be and why we're not

2008-08-05T13:03:00.000-04:00

Two weeks ago we pounded through three guild firsts in three days. We did a full Attumen->Netherspite clear of Karazhan where we usually only do Attumen->Prince. We took down Nalorakk with seconds to spare and earned the chest for the first time. We also downed Akil'zon for the first time, by tweaking our sound setup so we can hear the storm coming in. We ignore the birds( I'm offhealing instead of tanking ) and just burn him down. Took him down this week too. I'm willing to say those bosses are on farm. Next up is making sure we get both chests. I think we can pull it off. The gauntlet isn't proving to be very difficult for us and Akil'zon is fairly easy w/ the sound setup collapse instead of the Deadly Boss Mods cooldown counter.

We've picked up a fair number of new 70s over the last couple weeks, absorbing the casual guild of a new member, and even having a random tank join us because we're ranked very well for Tier 1 content. We're getting closer and closer to the magical number of 25. If we could get all our raiding 70s online at one time, I think we'd have about 20 actual people. We can PuG the rest of a Gruuls/Mags run. It's one of the things we're thinking about doing along with a Sunwell Trash Farming team. If we're downing Nalorakk and Akil'zon, then Gruul will seem like a kitten. Every time I've been in Gruuls it's not the mob that beat the raid, it's the raid that fails. The High King Mulgar pull goes wrong and the PuG abandons the raid or the mage tank dies because the healers weren't paying attention to the healing assignments.

One of the big things - one of the most important things to us as a casual guild - we're accomplishing is making friends. We randomly PuG'd a shadow priest on Friday for Kara and on Sunday she was back with us in ZA making life easier and more fun for us mana hungry Prot Paladins. We even managed to get Morphos, an old KoU guildie who went inactive for a time, tanking again in Karazhan.

Unfortunately, Summer is not the time to be raiding. People have plans. Kids are out of school, vacations are taken, and our nights fill in pretty quickly with the detritus of having a real life. I don't think we'll have a week where we miss a Kara run, but we're on the verge of having a two group run fail if a couple people are busy that night. To get past that we're polling our forums to see the most convenient raid schedule. It's looking like it's going to be one group running two weeknights for two hours( Attumen->Curator, Curator->Prince/Netherspite ) and one group doing a 3 or 4 hour run on Saturday. Some of us, mostly the officers with raid ready alts will probably end up pulling double duty. It will probably be fairly tiring. I'm attempting to avoid a Friday, Saturday, Sunday night raid schedule. I -need- our members to step away from the game or atleast the raids from time to time and make sure they're still having fun. It's not easy to fight off the WotLK blues and I think being over active isn't the way to do it. I think moderate, enjoyable raiding is the answer. Raids where people aren't so much getting gear as they are building bonds with the other members.

On Offtanking in Karazhan

2008-07-08T11:45:00.000-04:00

Pos posted a guide to warrior offtanking in Karazhan, so that got me thinking about Offtanking as a Paladin.

It's easy.

Oh

My

God

is it easy.

Before offtanking in Karazhan, you obviously need 490 Defense Rating to keep yourself from eating a Critical Hit and as close as you can get to Uncrushable by stacking Block Rating, Dodge and Parry( in that order ). It's probably best for you to be running Heroics before hand as the Libram of Repentance ( 25 Badges ) will give you an easy 5% Block Rating. You -can- get uncrushable pre-kara. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either a very bad paladin or very bad at math. It takes time and it takes serious work. The best way to tell a good paladin from a bad paladin is to see if they understand and value Uncrushability. I ran a PuG Karazhan on my Mage with, not surprisingly Absitively the Warlock and the Paladin Tank had gobs of health and tons of threat gen. I think he was pushing about 700 or 800 threat per second. Those are big numbers to post.

Then he got nailed on Moroes. Simple healing mistake we all thought. We make it all the way to Prince and he just can't hack it. He's going down over and over again and might as well -not- be tanking during Phase 2 because Prince is just eating him alive. I check my Recount and sure enough he's eating 6 or 7 crushing blows. During Phase 2 crushing blows kill. A lot of health does not a good Paladin make. Don't ignore Uncrushability because you see other tanks touting their HP Pools.

On our badge farm runs, I often run Kara as Owaru offtanking for Posolutely's warrior. After, say, Opera, I don't do much tanking. In fact, the only thing a paladin tanks after Opera w/ a similarly geared Warrior is Kilrek during Illhoof.

During last sunday's ZA-Progression Raid for KoU, Owaru and Posolutely were both pushing high 19k health pools while buffed, well fed, and flasked. If we had a druid in the raid we would have both cracked 20k. Both have about the same amount of armor and both generate threat well. As tanks they're on par with each other, but Owaru -belongs- in the off tank position. Why? Because he can bring more functionality to the position. If you're going into a boss fight where only one tank is needed, it's almost always more advantageous to have an extra healer w/ +1000 Healing Bonus than a DPSer who can only pump out a measely 250 dps. That 250dps won't make the difference. Keeping up the rogue who can push 800? Or the BM Hunter's Pet that helps the hunter top the damage meters? That matters and it matters big.

So, as an Offtank, full Uncrushability isn't the biggest requirement. Flexability is. A good set of healing gear, healing Add Ons( Grid, Clique and Decursive ), and healing foods. So lets run down the quick list of Big Bad's in Karazhan.

Attumen the Huntsman: You're either on the horse or on the rider. Chances are it's on the rider since you're uniquely equipped to deal with him. Stand next to the MT, behind Midnight and start dropping Concecrates as he gets close to 95%. Once the rider spawns, he'll be right on you and you can target him and begin your cycle of Seal/Judgement of Righteousness and Exorcism. Consecrate isn't particularly needed. Once you have a fairly good threat lead, swap to Seal of Wisdom for a little mana regen and comment to your raid that you're going to DPS this bad boy down on your own if you have to!

Moroes: If I'm equally geared with the Main Tank, I find it useful to do the initial pull with an exorcism since most tanks can generate threat without being hit at a greater rate than a Paladin. As well, this is a perfect place for your Blessing of Sacrifice Macro. With BoS up on the other tank, as soon as you get put to sleep and he switches to the other tank, you'll be awake on the first hit. As well, keep an eye on Decursive to free up your DPS or healers if they get stunned/gouged. If you have a healing addon like Grid you can tell when someone has Aggro and is close to death and you can be the hero and save this poor clothie DPSer w/ a well time bubble. Also remember that the bubble will clear the Garrote debuff. Just don't use it on yourself since it takes you off the aggro table and Moroes will go smoosh something after Gouging the other tank. Gather ye Badge-buds while you may and start heading towards the pulls to Maiden.

The Maiden of Virtue - With a paladin in the raid, the Maiden is a push over. This is another showcase for your handy Blessing of Sacrifice macro. If you're the only paladin in the raid, make your focus the Main Tank. If there's already a paladin healer, make it a hunter's pet or a melee DPSer. Keep an eye on the cooldown for BoS and recast -every- time it's up. Keep an eye on your decursive boxes and make sure you quickly cleanse the Holy Fire Debuff. When repentance strikes, start healing the main tank until the other healers are up. Repeat until she falls and rake up the badges for fall pick up.

The Opera - This is fairly straightforward. Easy tank and spanky for most of them.
If it's BBW, just toss on your healing gear and get ready to heal and bubble little red riding hood if needed!
If you get Romulo and Julianne and you have a warrior tank you should tank Julianne. The warrior can disarm Romulo which pretty much turns him into a kitten. Use your consecrates and exorcisms to pick up the mobs when they spawn and be careful because if DPS grabs aggro it's a bitch to get it back.
Oz - Here you'll either be tanking Dorothy and her dog or kiting Tin Man. However, there are a couple of really really handy things you can do. First and foremost is to try to get initial aggro on Roar. The hunters and warlocks are going to be fearing him and if you have some aggro he'll leash right back to you after the fear expires and give the locks and hunters some invaluable time to recast. It's a life saver. Once everyone is down ask for a mana shout out. If people are low, tell them to leave Tin Man alive and go judge wisdom on him. The DPS and healers can all start wanding or running up and hitting him to regain some mana before the witch starts up.

The Curator - Your tanking days are pretty much done by now. Tank the trash and when you get to curator, toss on your healing gear and buff up with healing food. You accel at keeping the Hateful Bolt soaker alive and spot healing when needed. Just keep the HBS up and heal the raid when you have the opportunity. This a fight where potting early can save lives so as soon as you've lost about 3k mana Pot and the Pot again when the cooldown is up. Once the Curator hits 15% switch all heals to the tank and get ready for your badges.

The Shade of Aran - Pop up your healing gear back on and toss up concentration aura or either frost or fire resistance aura if you already have a holy paladin in group. Try to keep mobile and heal as you can. When he pulls everyone to the center of the room use decursive to cleanes the Slow Effect off your raid members so they can be guaranteed a safe run to the books. When the water elementals spawn, feel free to try to stun one or taunt one if you see it going after a healer. Otherwise, once you've pounded Medivh's old man into the floor boards, tell him his books are overdue and collect a fine of 2 badges of justice.

Illhoof - This is a somewhat stressful offtanking job. Your job will be to tank Kilrekk and all the teeny tiny imps that pop out of the hidey holes Illhoof summons. As soon as the tank engages, run up and start your exorcism and Seal of Righteousness/Judgement cycle on Kilrekk. Once you have an aggro lead switch to Seal of Wisdom, Judge it and Seal it again. You're going to need all the mana you can get. As soon as Illhoof pops the portals open, start consecrating. You're not taking heavy damage, so you're not getting big heals, so you're not generating a ton of mana. In fact, you can pop Fire Resistance Aura and they'll do even less, but you're going to run out of mana. As soon as you're missing 3k mana, drink a pot. If you get sacrificed, bubble yourself and get back into position.

Chess - You don't have to be Bobby Fischer, just don't screw up.

Prince - Again, pop your healing gear, manage your mana pool with pots and trinkets and do your damnedest to try to keep the tank up during phase 2. If it's an Uncrushable Paladin it won't be too bad. If it's a crushable paladin... bring your walking shoes. If it's a warrior who forgets to Thunderclap during Phase 2? Bring your walking shoes.

More later probably. My guild doesn't really do Nightbane or Netherspite, so I don't get to offtank them much. Once I do I'll leave posts about it.

On being a jerk.

2008-07-02T13:49:00.000-04:00

Sometimes your friends go out of town and leave wow for a week and you miss them a great deal.

Sometimes you get your friend's wife to log his toon on to use the various skills he has worked so very hard to level and this helps assuage the small hole they've left for a short time.

And sometimes you get your friend's wife to log his toon on so you can dress him a dress and summon him to an instance deep inside Orgrimmar and leave him there with no armor, no weapons, and no hearthstone.

On headaches, both in game and out.

2008-06-10T10:47:00.000-04:00

Things are hectic. I'm finding less time to do the things I really want to. I've attempted to write a post three or four times and been waylaid by other things. There's always something else that needs doing. In fact, I shouldn't be writing now. I should be updating the DKP Stats for KoU from last weekend's run. Which was a ...strange run. We made good time. Abs counts it at just under 4 hours. Which is... strange. We wiped once on the Opera Event( Oz ) and three times on Shade( one being an accidental pull ). We PuG'd a priest from K's raiding guild Resolve and he died three times on the way to Attumen... not sure why. We did the mobile fight on Prince this time, losing only, I think Neshura to an enfeeble/shadownova combo. If we hadn't wiped on Shade/Opera we'd have probably been looking at about 3 to 3.5 hour run and maybe a shot at Netherspite.

I was in a bit of a crabby mood. Usually, I'm putting my daughter to bed while the raid prep is beginning so I get my toon ready a couple hours ahead of time. Abs told me to prep Shougeki, my resto Shaman so I got Pots made, Flasks purchased, food cooked, oils made and mailed. He was ready to go. Unfortunately, we didn't have a priest in the group which makes some of the pulls and the Moroes fight rather hairy. So when I finally got the baby to sleep after a bit of a "whose will is stronger" contest with her, I come down groggy with a headache and the beginnings of a cold starting to be told that we now need my Frost Mage Tasogare. I still had some baby related work to finish before the raid so I asked Neshura to log me in and shift the oils and potions from Shougeki to Taso. I don't mind being replaced by a different healer. I don'thave e-peen issues and I know Abs wouldn't do it out of lack of respect for my healing. What annoyed me was the fact that I wasn't ready. Taso ran the entire time with no flasks and no buffing pots. So, I was under-performing. I didn't even have empty vials to make what elixirs I could. /facepalm

I did okay, I think. I was able to maintain pretty good damage, but completely failed on Prince. I was OOM by the last phase and it killed my DPS. I think the Alchemy Trinket might need to be my next big project for Tasogare. Unfortunately it doesn't help with Mana Gems. Neshura and I were neck and neck pretty much the whole time and lead the DPS meters in Overall and in most boss fights. Granted our heavy hitters like Kikidas, Absitively, and Dhark were all in different roles( Kathe the Bear Tank, Posolutely the tiny Warrior tank and Boon the best damn paladin healer on Alleria respectively ). Nesh and I lead on most boss fights except the ones where Melee has a strong advantage( i.e. Shade ). Nesh managed to kick my tail on Attumen( Hey, I was decursing! ) and on Maiden( Damn you Porphyria and your crazy Ravager DPS! ).

Guild Status:

We're hitting what, I think, is a bit of a wall in KoU. The main core of the raiders are progressing fine in Karazhan. Aside from Netherspite and Nightbane, we're not having much trouble. We need to start hitting those bosses early in the evening and give them serious tries. We absolutely have to start Zul'Aman before our raiders get bored, but finding the right time to do it is getting to be tricky. For one, since it's progression we want our best geared players in there. We can't really PuG an extra because we'll be learning the instance and probably wiping heavily since we're new to it. No PuG member will want to walk into that situation.

As well, each time we add a new raid to our schedule we also have to try to keep up the old raid as well, so our newly Kara-ready raiders aren't left behind. This means extra time investment on the raid teams. I feel we're getting to the point where we can shift in some of our lower geared members and have some of our more experienced players carry their weight. Harder to do with Tanks and Healers, but easily done with DPSers. However, we have to be careful about who we take. I don't particularly want to see someone in there in all PvP epics, no heroic experience/gear/badge-gear. It makes me think they want the easy way in and that they'd be gearing up in Karazhan - a HUGE no no in our guild. So we need to find someone who is working hard but just falling a little short of our stat goals and help boost that person. That may start to look like favoritism.

On changes, alts, progression, and repression.

2008-05-13T10:02:00.001-04:00

Neshura and I have been in Knights of Utopia since the second day of rolling Alliance. Our friend's Babygorn and Bremm were running the guild at the time and we had a lot of fun. When the expansion hit, KoU's flock of 60s became our flock of 70s and Karazhan progression started. Then stopped. Each boss was a slog. Each raid night stressful and expensive. When my first 70 dinged, I was asked by our raid leader how long it would take me to get into "all blue" gear so I could go into Karazhan. Well, not too long. I was a tailor all I needed was to get my Imbued Netherweave Set and maybe some parts of my Frozen Shadoweave Set. But then, don't you want to know my stats? Don't you want to run instances w/ me? What makes you think I'll be a good addition to the raid squad if you've never even seen me? For all you know I'm the world's first melee warlock! Soul shards? Pah. I use my fists and quick wit to beat the mobs down. The Succubus is left in the back of the group to act as a cheerleader! I never joined the raid squad. To be honest, I wasn't even instancing a lot!

I didn't -belong- in Karazhan. I didn't have the stats for it. My spell hit was miserable. My spell damage was about as high as Larry Bird's jersey number and my ability to react to situations was abysmal. I wasn't a good warlock and, at the time, being told "you just need to get into blues" wasn't very encouraging to me. It seemed like you were telling me I just needed to paint flames on the side of my car to win the Indy 500.

Then we swapped raid leaders and we progressed. This raid leader would take the group w/ the best chance of succeeding in Karazhan. If we had 18 people sign up, he'd cherry pick the 10 best and roll. They did pretty well. If they weren't progressing, he'd ask someone to step out. No nevermind to their now being saved to a raidID they're no longer participating in. The guild became decisive. One group was progressing, one set was stalled out. The guild leaders stepped on the raid leaders toes and tried to tell him who to take. The raid leader told them to go piss up a rope and started his own guild, taking with him, the majority of our raid squad. KoU was a wasteland. The guild opened up recruiting, bringing in anyone we could and trying to build another raid squad. However, Babygorn and Bremm were demoralized and in the end, passed leadership to a member of the high council and, in time, gquit. Nesh and I stayed... I'm not sure why. We'd become very close with several members of KoU and we were comfortable in our niche. Plus, fuck it, it's not like we raided.

The new guild leader did his best. We got right back into Karazhan with any keyed 70 and tried to progress. Often making it to Curator in one night and working towards Prince on the second night. More often then not, Shade was where the raid group would stop. The DPS couldn't keep his health low enough, people were getting killed by Arcane Explosions, and the raid leader wasn't flexible enough to adapt to the situation - opting, instead, to stick to his preconceived plan. Guild recruitment was still open and we just kept growing. People would come and go. I'd log in and check the guild log to see a handful of people leave and join each day. Grumblings started. People were sick of working hard in Karazhan and getting nowhere. Loot was handled by /roll and some people were being greedy and inconsiderate of others. Some people in the raid squads didn't belong there to start and were getting gear when they were simply not good enough of a player to contribute to the raid. Second verse same as the first. A handful of /gquits, the guild leaders were demoralized and they called it quits. Guild leadership was handed to me.

Fuck.

First thing I did was find a set of statistics for raiding. I used the stats from The Alt Doctor. Anyone who met these stats was promoted to "raider". Anyone who didn't have these stats was demoted. I promoted Absitively to raid leader since he is one of the most flexible players I've ever met and can think critically quickly and make decisions on the fly. His only guidelines were "raiders only", move quickly, limit the amount of time to 3 or 4 hours per night and keep everyone focused.

I instituted a Zero-Sum DKP system and set up the eqdkp system to manage and control it.

I then took a look at who we had as Raiders. Some people would be new to Karazhan, some people would old hands. But we had ten or eleven people who were, in my opinion, in possession of the skills and will to succeed. One of those people was my wife, Neshura.

This caused a fair amount of trepidation. One of the complaints we got last time was that the raid leader's wife was allowed into every raid, sometimes at the exclusion of others, and got geared up for Karazhan -INSIDE- Karazhan. She would die on Shade almost every time. The first Arcane Explosion would make a lot of people say "Bye bye little mage" in their head and almost invariably, down she went. It was a tough situation for our raid leader. Telling your wife to toe the line or GTFO is not easy. Neshura told me she'd go as a raider. It would mean a lot of time commitment for her that, as a new mother, was very precious. I immediately told her, "If you fuck up, I will kick you from the raid." Not because I don't love her. Not because I think she would but because I refuse to fall into the same trap the previous leaders did. I can't play favorites at the cost of the raid or the guild. She took that to heart. She gemmed up, got enchants on every piece she had. Maintained a high DPS trash gear set and a high "to Hit Rating" boss gear set. She read up about every boss fight, built macros, and was ready and waiting on the first night. She destroyed the place. She never pulled aggro, she trapped like a mad woman, she didn't open up on the DPS like I've seen her do in Heroics due to focusing on not screwing up, but she maintained about 3rd or fourth on the DPS meters behind two or three people who were way overgeared for Karazhan.

That first night we took Attumen to Prince in four hours. Wiping only on Opera( R&J ) due to a miscommunication. We stormed the place. KoU had never done Attumen to Prince in four hours. I'm not even sure we'd ever done Attumen to Prince in one night. Everyone was shocked. With the exception of Netherspite and Nightbane that's almost a full clear in four hours. This last week we took Attumen to Prince in just over three hours. We're close to putting Karazhan on farm status and taking a shot at the first two bosses in ZA. It took us about a month to do this.

Recruiting is about to be reopened. The ranks are being reworked to be non-arbitrary and build a sense of community. We have people excited to be in KoU. We have people proud to be in KoU. Things are progressing. Things are going well. We can do this.

On Frost Mages and Cheaters!

2008-04-02T15:08:00.000-04:00

I have four 70s on Alleria. In order of dinging 70: Byouki( Warlock ), Owaru( Tankadin ), Tasogare( Frost Mage ) and Shougeki( Resto Shaman ). Now there's a fair difference between all of them. Byouki and Tasogare did no instancing whatsoever on the way to 70. Just quests. Their gear sucks. Byouki, a shadow weave tailor, at least has the full Frozen Shadow Weave set. Tasogare, as of yesterday is at least sporting the Destruction HoloGogs from engineering. Given that I didn't instance on DPSers, I don't have good rep and I don't have good gear. Shougeki lived in instances and benefited greatly. Combine that with the fact nobody really needs more DPS in a run and you can easily see how and why Owaru and Shougeki are nicely geared. However, this leaves me with out a DPSer for our Triad runs. So, at Boon's insistance, I did some thinking on which DPSer, I'd like to see geared well.

Firstly, I know two fantastic Warlocks. Kikidas is by far, the best WoW player I have ever encountered. Absitively is a better warlock than Byouki by far. That's two warlocks I don't think I can match wits with. I don't really know any great Frost Mages. I know a good number of well played Fire mages, but I simply love Frost. Secondly, I think I have more fun on Tasogare. When I need to farm, I mostly do it on Taso.

With all these things in mind and a Triad that has had a very difficult set of weeks, I suggested that we log into our less-well-geared DPSers and have a DPS off. As such, Kiya the Huntress( BM ), Isabeaux the Frost Mage and Tasogare the Frost Mage all went to Shadowlabs with our buddy Yorkshire healing and a PuG feral druid tank. Kiya is fairly well geared, having ventured into Kara when we needed to fill a DPS slot. She also has the unfair advantage of being K. Isabeaux is, in my opinion, very well geared. Taso comes in last for gear. Here's the recount report for overall damage done.

Now, I'm not going to say that Isabeaux cheated, but I am going to mention that I stepped away from the laptop to let the dog out and came back to find that the group had engaged a group of Skeleltons to AoE down. Also a certain priest kept casting Power Infusion on Isabeaux. I'm not even going to mention the 5 gold he paid Yorkshire to NOT cleanse a mind control on Taso so Isabeaux could sheep him.

For an undergeared Mage, I think I did fairly well. The DPS difference fluctuated a fair bit. Most the time he was 10 to 30 DPS above me. Our Damage Done was almost always neck and neck until a few previously mentioned "non-kosher" activities were enacted. Before them, I was running a constant 2% ahead. While, it was a friendly competition, we were both busting our( and each other's ) balls to pump out the DPS. At the end, Boon wanted to know what I was doing. Given his gear, he -should- be out damaging Tasogare until he sits and cries. I think the answer lies in management of skills, trinkets, and a few very helpful addons.

A.B.C - Always Be Casting
I use Quartz on all my characters. No matter what the toon does, Quartz is active. My Rogue and Warrior lowbies have it for the swing timer. All my casters live and die by it. Without it, I feel I'm wasting time not casting. As many of you know, Quartz acts to build in a small "Red Bar" inside of your Casting Bar that represents server/client network lag. When your cast progression gets to the red bar, it's safe to click your next spell which will be queued and sent to the server. You spend 0 downtime this way. Tasogare is -always- casting. More frost bolts mean more damage.

Shoulderpads are for Show, Trinkets are for Dough
Shoulderpads look great. They're sexy. They're big. Meh. They're stat bonuses that's all. Trinkets are where the real money is. It's a free talent! Extra spell damage? Yes please! Extra crit rating? Ladle it on. More spell hit? I would cut you in your sleep for extra spell hit! If you're not activating your trinkets you're losing damage. It's foolish. As a frost mage, as soon as I have 5 stacks of winter's chill on a target a trinket is activated. As soon as the cooldown on the secondary trinket is done, it too is activated. In my opinion this probably counted for a majority of the damage I was able to generate to close the gap between Isa and Taso's potential damage output. I have both of my trinkets bound to Shift-Left DHat and Shift-Right DHat on my speedpad. Since I do most of my casting under the Shift button, I can constantly check to see if the trinkets are on cooldown. If they're not on cooldown and I'm fighting, I'm losing DPS. Simple as that.

The Elements of Elemental Pets.
The Water Elemental should, according to Elitist Jerks count for about 15% of your total damage. That means it should be out -constantly-! Unless you're less than 2 minutes from a boss, pop it. The WEs waterbolt also takes advantage of winter's chill. If you make sure that Winter's chill is stacked to 5 before you pop it, it will do even more damage. As well, the WE has to be out before a shaman's Heroism/Bloodlust is cast to get the haste bonus.

Cooldown Kid Kilowatt
The Frost Mage build has a fair number of cooldown abilities that help their DPS and especially burst DPS. Our Haste enhancing Icy Veins, the ever useful and powerful Summon Water Elemental, and the refresher "Cold Snap" that removes the cooldowns on both of the previous spells! As with the cooldown for the water elemental, if you're more than 8 minutes away from a boss fight, pop Cold Snap: Summon another Water Elemental, pop Icy Veins again. Managing these cooldown is a big bonus for Frost Mages. They add substantial DPS and have short refresh timers. There's no reason you should sit on them like a hen waiting for an egg. Crack those skills and make a messy DPS omelet.

Keep an eye out when things are going down

I keep MSBT ( Mik's Scrolling Battle Text ) running so I can keep a clear idea of what is going on between the target and I. The most useful aspect it adds for my frost mage is a big notice for when the target has been FrostBitten. When effected by frost bite, the the damage of my ice lance is trippled, and my crit chance is increased. If the target already has 5 stacks of Winter's Chill on him, this can be devastating. I don't just stop and ice lance though. I cast another Frostbolt and just as my casting bar hits the Red, I pop an ice lance. The damage coeffecient for ice lance is calculated at casting time instead of time of impact. This means if I cast Ice Lance -before- the frostbite is broken by my frostbolt, I still get the 3x damage multiplier. It adds an unholy ton of damage.

I'm a know it all, but I don't know it all:
There are still some things I didn't do well. Things like get a good feel for the groups DPS so I'd know when to use Cone of Cold or Fire Blast to quickly finish off the mob instead of wasting time casting a spell that would only hit a dead target. As well, I hadn't worked with that tank before so I didn't have a clear picture of how quickly he pulled. Had I know he was a little slow between pulls I'd have popped my elemental much more often.

On the n52te, obsessions, and banging the drums all day

2008-03-27T14:24:00.000-04:00

I play WoW on a Thinkpad T60p laptop. Usually I'm sitting on the couch, with my feet up, a drink on the side table and my laptop in my lap. I keep my right hand on the seat of the couch w/ my mouse and my left hand sort hovers above all the keys. This has worked fairly well but has, over time, developed some Repetitive Stress Injury symptoms in my left wrist. I'd be contemplating a couple other game pads a looking at the Belkin Nostromo 52 Tournament Edition along with a couple others when I saw that BigRedKitty picked one up and was singing its praises. Now, I've posted screenshots, before so you most likely know that I work with a block full of spells in the bottom center of my screen hosted by Bongos. The n52te has 23 easily accessible non-modifier( Shift, Alt, Ctrl ) buttons - I'm not counting the middle buttons on the directional hat as they are too unreliable to bind to something w/out causing problems. Now, the n52te doesn't give you new buttons. It's an external device with completely mappable buttons that have to replicate the buttons used on your laptop. I mapped the three left most buttons( buttons 01, 06, and 11 ) to Tab, Ctrl, and Shift respectively and mapped the thumb button to Alt. This gives me modifiers for clique casting as well as modifiers for simple button mappings. The rest are mapped to mimic the left hand side of my keyboard.

It's the button mappings that will drive you nuts. You should see my desk. Covered w/ 3x5 cards listing the skills of all my toons( 5 or 6 active toons, 4 of them 70s ) broken down by cooldowns, castable while moving, and class. Add to that the fact that you're doing your moving w/ your left hand as well. So moving, turning, strafing, popping your bags open, using trinkets, auto run, jump ontop of the various skills you've got lying around your spellbook. Yeesh. Thankfully this is where Bongos becomes your best friend!

It's not particularly easy to adjust to the N52. It's new muscle memory and it's usually a new set of buttons to use all together. What I decided to work with was a block of 24 buttons in columns of 5. In fact, I created four of these templates. In Bongos that's 4 separate action bars each with 24 buttons and 5 columns - we'll call these action bars Action Bar 2, 3, 4 and 5. They are, at this stage identical. With the action bars unlocked in the Bongos config( use /bongos to get there ) I can right click on Action Bar 2 and select "Modifier". I set Ctrl to "2" which will correspond to Action Bar 4, Alt to "3" which is Action Bar 5 and Shift to "1" which is action Bar 3. It's confusing I know... I just put a unique icon in each one part of each bar and then tested by holding down Ctrl, Shift or Alt and changing accordingly. Now we have one basic Action Bar set that will alter depending on which modifier key I'm holding down.

I then laid out the buttons, scroll wheel, dhat, and space bar with placeholder skills for each set of Action bars. You can see a sample below. The Alchemy buttons are for the buttons under my fingers( 2-5, 7-10, and 12-14 ). The Fishing pole is the scroll wheel up, scroll wheel press, and scroll wheel down. The Escape Artist icons are for the dhat. The Engineering Cog is for Space Bar.

Now, we know that we're going to lose at least 7 buttons to movement actions like move forward, jump and strafing. As well, I went ahead and assigned the commonly cast spells that don't require me to be standing still. On my mage this is Frost Nova, Ice Lance, Blink, Cone of Cold, CounterSpell, Arcane Explosion, Fire Blast, Frost Barrier, Icy Veins, Summon Elemental, Wand, and a Pet Attack Macro. I went ahead and just made an empty macro with the Rogue skill "Kick" icon and placed that macro in all my movement buttons. This left me with what is shown below.

I then filled out Action Bar Set 3 with spells that I'd need to stay stationary for. This set doesn't need to worry about movement so I have more buttons to play with! I created another macro with just #show Netherweave Bag to be a place marker for my bags. This way, Shift-Scrollwheel down will open/close all my bags. I also mapped Shift DHat Left and Shift DHat Right to my trinkets for easy access. Any time I try to compete with DPS against my wife, constant trinket popping is the only thing that can get me even close to her 70 hunter. Having these in close proximity means I don't even have to think about them!

The last step is to go into the Bongos Settings( again /bongos ) under Visibility and turn off Action Bars 3 4 and 5. This hides them but still lets me access them via the modifier key! The new action bar block is posted below. My modifiable buttons are the left of the minimap and my the utility buttons are to the right!

On the Shaman UI

2008-03-12T11:18:00.001-04:00

Since I was talking about addons recently I figured it would help to throw up a quick UI screenshot. It's a custom UI I built.

1 - ArcHUD2 : A nice Heads Up Display showing my health/mana as well as that of my target.
2 - XPerl : I like that I can see who is targetting what mob and what they're casting.
3 - Grid : Here you can see that Kiltic( our paladin tank ) has aggro from the red dot in his square. He's down about 2.7k, 2.6k of it which is about to be healed by me with a downranked healing wave denoted by the +2.6 and the darkening of his Pink bar to almost full.
4 - FuBar : Just holds various widgets that I find useful.
5 - Quartz Casting Bar : Selfexplanatory
6 - Bongos : I like to have my action bars segregated by function.
7 - Omen : threat meter
8 - AutoBar : I need some work to par my categories down to the size of the background frame( provided by eepanels2 ) but it allows stacking of consumables, etc
9 - ELKBuffBars : Easy display of buffs and their remaining duration
10 - Recount : I'm not really interested in Damage, but I know dhark and kikidas are. Both are dedicated to being great DPS( and are! ) so keeping stats is usually my job.
11 and 11b - DoTimers : Durations and Cooldowns of my spells. I don't particularly use the "duration" set as much as I do my cooldown bars. It's handy to know when Nature's Switfness is up and when I can pop Heroism, etc
12 - Shaman Friend : Shows me what totems are dropped, their duration and time remaining on Earth Shield, Water Shield and Reincarnation.
13 - Totem Timers : I feel it's probably redundant. Most likely to be removed in favor of Shaman Friend
14 - Decursive : Essential. I use this on any class that can dispell any stutus debuff. No matter the role. My tank uses it when to dispell the pioson from Quamirron in Heroic Slave Pens. My mage uses it to dispell curses, etc.

So there you have it.

On why I can't do PuGs

2008-03-10T14:28:00.000-04:00

Kikidas over at More Dots! More Dots! has a post up about our Triumvirate. I've posted about this before a little - especially when she talks to accusations that we're "cliquish". To be honest, we are. We have each roll filled out well enough that the other two don't have to worry about it.

Here's the breakdown:

A-Team
Tank - Owaru( Paladin )
Healer - Boon( Paladin )
DPS - Kikidas( Warlock )

B-Team
Tank - Kathe( Druid )
Healer - Shougeki( Shaman )
DPS - Dhark( Rogue )

The B-Team has Kikidas shifted to tanking, me to healing, and Boon from Boon: Tales of a Guardian Knight dpsing on his Rogue.

There isn't anything our A-Team can't do. We simply don't fail. The only time we haven't completed a heroic was when we ran w/ the worlds dumbest hunter( Yea, it's a great idea to bring a dragonhawk w/ auto-attack AoE firecone into a heroic to break CC! ) and we called it because everyone was so tired. Other than that one time, we've never said, "Owaru can't tank this" or "Boon can't heal through this" or "Kikidas isn't providing enough DPS". We succeed and we do it efficiently and with panache.

The B-Team hasn't failed so far. We're mostly sticking to the mid-level heroics like Underbog and SP and maybe start in on the Auchindoun heroics, but we don't fail. Sure, we wipe, these characters aren't as well geared as the A-Team, but the playability is still there and we still succeed.

We're a clique because we work well together. In fact, we're known for it. We've had guildies hold off on daily heroics just to try to get a spot in our group because they know it'll be a smooth run. It's a good spot to get too! Not only do we succeed, but we spend the whole time cracking up in Vent and having a good time.

There's an added component to this group and the reason I run with, rely on and connect with them. They're my friends. They're on the other side of the country and currently, beside my wife, they're the people I'm the closest with. Any time I'm "off" ( personality-wise ) Boon and K pick up on it and I'm getting thoughtful /tells that cheer me up and get me back to feeling like myself. There's a reason my wife refers to Boon as my "other wife". If we've filled the two spare DPS slots with PuGs, it's always K and Boon that cover for me when I have to run upstairs to feed the baby or to get her back to sleep. Every time I come back to a /partychat that always includes "Trust us, he's worth the wait."

Conversely, after a long stressful weekend where a lot of real-life things didn't go well, I was up late and trying to get the last 5 badges I need for my new healing shield on Shougeki. Took a while to find a group for Heroic Ramps due to the time and I was about to log off when I had a PuG beg me to heal for the instance. I wanted to succeed at something challenging( even though Heroic Ramps isn't particularly challenging at this point ) so I agreed to do it and off we went. Then Helena started waking up. After the first boss, I tell them I need a sec and I run up to soothe my daughter back to sleep. She goes back down after a couple minutes and we clear the largish pull at the top of the winding staircase and the next two before the large circular room before Omor the Unscarred and Nazan. Then the baby wails again. I say I need a little time again and that, if it takes too long, I understand if they drop me from group. I shoot upstairs like a rocket w/ a baby bottle for a warhead. I get her back asleep again, and go back downstairs after about five minutes. Shougeki is in Shattrath. I say, fair enough, it was late and it took me five minutes to soothe Helena. I checked the backlog to see if there was much discussion about kicking me.

It took a minute.

I was given a little over a minute before they booted me.

That was a final kick to the scrotum for the weekend so I just logged off and went to bed.

... then Helena woke up again. And again. And again.

I don't need that stress. I have to run with people I trust. With people in WoW who have made my short list of "Human Beings". That's why I have my clique; that's why I've never felt guilty about our exclusive club.

On Resto Shaman Battleground Healing, PVP Prime Time and welfare epics.

2008-03-08T17:29:00.001-05:00

Lately, I've been spending a fair amount of my time in Battlegrounds. Turns out, according to Draezele a good majority of the great resto shaman gear is to be had from PVP epics. I've gotten a pretty good hang of Arathi Basin and Eye of the Storm. I do my best to stay out of WSG( called Hordesong Gulch in my battlegroup ) unless it's the PVP daily and I avoid Alterac Valley like the plague. Just this morning I earned enough points for my Gladiator's Ringmail Spaulders coming in at 11,250honor and 20 Arathi Basin marks - a huge upgrade from my hallowed pauldrons. Next up, a new chest piece!

So, what does a resto shaman do in battlegrounds? Heal our balls off, naturally. Spam Lesser Healing Wave, keep Earth Shield on yourself, spam Purge, and go nuts. With a deep resto build, you're pretty hard to take down w/out focus fire. Earthshield and Nature's Guardian you'll be constantly refreshing health. With Healing Focus your healing spells don't suffer from push back very often. Just keep spamming LHW on yourself if you're being attacked by more than one opponent or keep healing your group and piss off your opponent by popping Nature's Swiftness and big heavy instant full rank Healing Wave. I've pretty much seen rogues go from beating on me, to frustrated to finding another target w/ that little trick.

Totems: Tremor Totem goes down first. Keep all the fearing CC annoyances down to a 4 second ( soon to be shorter in 2.4 ) pulse. Then comes grounding totem. Make sure that giant spell hit you or your group member is about to eat gets eaten itself by this magnificent totem. Next comes Magma Totem and you stand on it. With luck this will keep all the rogues from stealthing in behind you and stun locking you. If you're stunned you're not healing. If you're not healing -someone- is dying and it's your job to make sure that doesn't happen. Lastly, the water totem - this one is up to debate. If you see a rogue coming in, drop your poison cleansing totem. If the fracas has gone on a little long, drop your mana stream totem. Healing stream totem isn't super useful in battle grounds. With all my healing gear it ticks about 120hp every 2 seconds which doens't have many uses in BG. Even I can out DPS it!

Your worst enemies are Hunters, Mages, and other Shamans. All three of these bastards can yank your earth shield off you faster than Helena can snatch the eyewear from your face if you get too close - which is shockingly fast. In the cases of Mages, they just spell steal it so purge it off them and reapply it to yourself. If you're up against another shaman( who will purge your earth shield ) or a hunter( who can drop it with arcane shot ) try to gain some distance and get the group your healing to pick them up and depend on your totem tricks, your quick heals, and your cool downs. If you're up against one of those classes and your earth shield doesn't disappear thank your chosen specific deity that you got a dumb opponent.

Addons: Shaman Friend, Clique and Grid. I can't recommend these three addons enough for both PVE and PVP healing.

Shaman Friend puts up icons on your screen displaying what totems have been dropped and how long they have to last. If a totem gets destroyed it disappears. I have mine set just above my HUD( ArchHuD2 for the curious ) and I keep a pretty strict eye on them. If I see the spot for my earth totem's is empty I know someone just took out my tremor totem and there's a fair chance I'm about to get fear bombed. If I see the air totem spot is empty, my grounding totem just ate that giant sure-to-crit shadowbolt and it needs to be dropped again.

Clique is the only way I know how to heal. I have my healing buttons on the action bar, but just to watch for counter spells and any effects that have slowed the cooldown on my healing spells. Otherwise, I just Shift-Click on the name of the healing recipient to toss my max-level Healing Wave of them. Ctrl-Click for Lesser Healing Wave, Alt-Click for Healing Wave Rank 8, and Ctrl-Shift Click for Healing Wave Rank 1. What's that? You don't know why we'd use Healing Wave Rank 1? It's fast. Super fast, in fact, and has such a low mana cost that the difference is made up with almost -any- MP5. It also stacks Healing Way which grants an 18% buff to healing. In PvE this is how I start a boss fight. Kathe over at kdots.blogspot.com doesn't meet the big bad w/out 3 stacks of healing wave. In PVP, it's just a buffer. Hopefully someone's arcane shot or purge will remove this buff instead of Earth Shield!

Grid changed the performance of my raid/battleground healing substantially. Usually I'd target an opposing faction member and just heal their target. This resulted in a lot of deaths. I don't have time to go into the various ways that Grid can be configured. It places a block of your raid members in one centrally located spot and stacks all the important information. Little red box in the right hand corner? Someone's targeting your raid member. I have my grid set so the members boxes are wider than they are tall and the health is shown decreasing from right to left. They're also colored by basic class colorings. If I have two members at half health and one is pink while the other is purple, the purple gets the heal. The pink is a paladin and he's going to take a while to kill while the purple - the lock - is going to drop like a stone if a heal doesn't come in soon. As well, this clears me of my -biggest- failing as a healer - watching my own health.

Shaman Duties: Even when you're healing there are other things you need to do. You have to know how to multitask and what situations are appropriate for it. If your mage is getting focus fired, don't stop to cleanse a slowing poison off him. Just keep healing. But if your group is at a survivable health level, make sure you're purging. I have Purge bound to the 'C' key and I spam it any time I'm not healing. The list of things Purge can remove is huge, see it over at wowwiki. That pesky frost mage not taking much damage because of his ice barrier? Purged. He'll be down soon. Same for the shadow priest and her power word: shield - bye bye! Blessing of Freedom on the paladin? Hasta la vista! The worst of the worst: Druid HoTs making them nigh invulnerable? Ja matta ne!

Group Dynamic: Don't be afraid to be demanding. Healers are at a premium in a battleground. We sway the tide of the battle. If you're being beat on, call out for help. Maybe even make a macro so you can hit the button and call out for someone to get this opponent cleared off your back so you can go back to saving their lives. Let people know that you're there to make a difference, that you're going to do everything you can to keep them up and contribute to winning nodes, capping flags, and holding towers. If you're a dedicated healer, you're often the lynch pin of the group. There are always more dpsers - healers in BGs are few and far between and if they're any good they elevate those around them. That being said, don't try to hold the group hostage. Be humble, thank people that get your opponents off you, and congratulate the group for pulling off the coup you healed them through.

Goal: Shaman Gear Progression

2008-01-17T17:28:00.000-05:00

Just working on my Resto Shaman Gear Progression.

Head:
Crafted
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=32776 Crown of the Sea Witch
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=29508 Living Dragon Scale Helm

Drops
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=27759 Headdress of the Tides from Heroic Underbog( Ghaz'an )

Quest:
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=31107 Shamanistic Helm of Second Sight

Legs:
Drops:
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=30541 Stormsong Kilt Heroic Underbog( Black Stalker )
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=27458 Oceansong Kilt Heroic ramps( Nazan )
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=28266 Molten Earth Kilt Mechanar( Paltheon )

Shoulders:
Drops:
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=28250 Vestia's Pauldrons of Inner Grace Mechanar Cache
http://www.wowwiki.com/Mantle_of_the_Sea_Wolf Mantle of the Sea Wolf Heroic Mana Tombs( Tavarok )

Hands
Drops:
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=27806 Fathomheard Guauntlets Steamvaults( Kalisheh )
Prismantic Mittes of Mending: Botanica( Sarannis )

Wrists:
Drops:
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=28194 Primal Surge Bracers Black Morass ( Aeonus )

Crafted:
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=32577 Living Earth Bracers

Waist
Drops:
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=27835 Stillwater Girdle Heroic Mana Tombs

Trinkets
Drops:
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=28190 Scarab of Infinite Cycles: Black Morass( Aeonus )
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=27828 Warp Scarab Brooch: Heroic Mana Tombs( Shaffar )
Rep Rewards
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=30841 Lower City Prayer Book

Totems
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=27544 Totem of Spontaneous Regrowth: Slave Pens( Mennu the Breaker )

Chest
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=27912 Harness of Deep Currents: Shadow Labs( Murmur )

Boots
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=27549 Wave Fury Boots: Heroic Slave Pens( Rokmar )

Mechanar	2	Cache and Paltheon the Calculartor
Heroic Underbog	2	Ghaz'an, Black Stalker
Black Morass	2	Aeonus
Heroic Ramparts	1	Nazan
Heroic Mana Tombs	3	Tavarok, Shaffarx2
Steamvaults	1	Kalithresh
Botanica	1	Sarannis
Heroic Slave Pens	1	Rokmar
Shadow Labs	1	Murmur
Slave Pens	1	Mennu the Breaker

2008-01-14T16:27:00.000-05:00

For Paladin tanks, Black Morass is probably your first big challenge. Sure, some instances require some fancy footwork( Hokey-Pokeying for Murmur, Ring-around-the-rosey for Ikiss, etc ) but Black Morass is not only an instance, it's an endurance event. If you're trying to complete it for the first time you need to bring your A Game to the table or you're going to disappoint an entire group.

Unfortunately, while healing Black Morass last night on my shaman, the paladin tank didn't bring his A-Game. Things didn't go well at all. I'm nosy, I checked his profile on the armory and noticed all his gear was gemmed for, effectively, how a warrior would build aggro. Very little Defense if any, no dodge, no parry, no spell damage. It was all attack power, crit-rating, and strength. I noted this in party chat and gave him some tips. To his credit, he went and bought a couple new gear peices and a couple different gems. Unfortunately it wasn't the gear that he needed work on the most. He had very little understanding of his aggro mechanics. Rarely sealed and judged and basically thought most of his aggro was going to come from Consecration. In my opinion, unless you're AoE speed-tanking( we all love to do it! ) you don't need consecrate.

He failed to pick up the elites at the portals, failed to hold aggro and failed to taunt the elites when they inevitabely switched to the DPS warrior. I was healing my space-goat-balls off. Popping Nature's Swiftness and Mana Tide everytime they were up. Still, 90% of my heals were going to the warrior. Through the first boss - healing the warrior. Through Temporus - healing the warrior. We catch our breath, drop beacons on portals 13-17 and the big bad comes out to have tea with Medivh. The shield had taken a beating during Temporus and was down to 55% when we started the second boss. Unfortuntely we didn't start the second boss so much as hurl ourselves against him. The Paladin was nowhere to be seen. The shield continues to tick down and the Warrior goes in to peel him off. Naturally, a DPS warrior isn't going to last long against Aeonus. He hits too hard and his time stop ability simply makes it a killing ground. We wipe. The group is demoralized, we call it. We're not going to go through that again to have the tank let us down again.

So fast forward a couple days. I take my first step into Heroic Ramps as a healybot shaman. My unbuffed healing is about 997, my MP5 is about 130. With buff foods, I should be fine. Little did I know before I got there that the paladin tank was completely new to this role. Not only was he wearing some of the Khorium set( healing gear ) he was mostly gemmed for +Str and the biggest offense was that he had sub 490 defense rating. It simply wasn't doable. I was going OOM on every pull. The mage and I are commiserating in /whisper and mostly sobbing. We don't even get to the first boss.

I think this comes from two recent wow phenomenons. First, it only takes a reputation level of "Honored" to enter any of the heroic dungeons. A decision of blizzards with which, to be honest, I'm perfectly fine. However, it does have the side effect of putting people who aren't ready for heroics into groups. If I was going to be honest with myself, I don't know if Shougeki actually belong in that group. I think I can do it. Bremm over at bremm.blogspot.com feels that I should have at least 1200 +Healing. Seems like a sexy round number and I mostly agree with him, but I was feeling perky last night.

Secondly, I think it's Paladins. Ever since the changes from the release of Burning Crusade went live we have been smoking instances. We're producing, holding and managing agro like like it was Agro Day at Agro Stadium and they were handing out free Agro Bats and Bobbleheads. We're getting into groups and wowing folks w/ our skills. People are thinking that Paladin tanking is easy. And, truth me told, it is ... once you know what you're doing. Once you know what gear you should be sporting, what seals and judgements you should be tossing and how to position mobs for LOS, crowd control, etc. Then yea, it's easy.

On the goals of squiddle shamans and their silly dances

2007-12-27T16:52:00.001-05:00

Shaman Goals:

7.5k to 9k Mana Pool ( Mix in some Intellect and MP5 Gems )
1k Healing
A Ratio of 10:1 Healing:MP5

I got these goals from picklemonkey's blog which is a great read for anyone working on Resto Shaman. I had just respecc'd to include healing way and remove Ancestral Knowledge. Pickle's blog is where I learned to keep a rank 1 Healinv Wave clique-cast bound so I could spam it three times in quick succession and start off with a whopping 18% increase in my healing waves. 18% turns out to be a big bump when you're dropping Healing Way's on the tank. I'm shocked that I passed it up in my original spec build-out.

As a rule, I value the hybrid classes more than the others. For one, they have a degree of difficulty to them. Paladin tanking is harder than Druid and Warrior tanking. Shaman healing is harder than Priest or Paladin healing. Basically, I see the hybrid classes as a number game. You're trying your best to tweak the math to fit your particulary input/output system. More avoidance into Paladin Tanks, better MP5:Healing Bonus Ratio for Healy Shamans. Often times you find that perfect piece of gear and even a purple can't hold up to it because it screws your equation.

Lately, I've been working on Shougeki, getting him levelled and into instances in the outlands. I'm finding it a fun job. With a 34% overhealing rate that I'd like to get down, I tend to do a lot of dancing in the instance. Stop Casting involves taking a step right before your heal is about to go off. That way you've got a healing spell ticking when your tank feels that big hit like a tightening of braces on their teeth. So, while the heal waits, I'm doing the hokey pokey with an invisible circle. Between my handsome step routine and downranking, I'm still pumping big overheals. I'm not entirely sure how to correct it, but according to PickleMonkey, I might not need to worry as long as I'm not running out of mana on every pull and I'm the only healer in the group.

On my resemblence, for or against, to the common fast food chain...

2007-12-17T07:30:00.000-05:00

I've lately learned that when someone suggested they whisper me for a tanking job one of the group members, a guild member no less, said, "No, don't ask him he only tanks with his little Clique." When they say "clique" they are referring to Kikidas ( from kdots.blogspot.com ) and Boon. Nevermind that these are two of the people I'm the closest with in the game. Nevermind that I've come to know, respect, and appreciate them over time. Nevermind that I know K and Boon well enough that, as it always happens, I'm never ashamed to ask for a quick break so I can get the baby fed or put down for the night. Nevermind that, since I have a 4 month old, I usually start my serious game play at 8:30 EST if I'm lucky. Nevermind that, as a new father, my free time is horded and protected to a degree that would make Smaug think I was obsessive. To be honest, tanking is my favorite role. But, given my limited free time, it's a role I'm selective about since I don't have the time to run 3 or 4 instances at night. But nevermind that as well! We're here for abject derision!

Apparently, all the work I've done: soloing to 70, gearing my paladin up to 11k health and uncrushable status, was for the benefit of others! Apparently when I said to myself, "Self, there seems to be a bit of an issue finding tanks in this game. Let's focus on Owaru and get him from 32 to 70 as fast as we can!" it was so I could log in and be "tapped" by whomever laid eyes on me! They saw me first! Back off! I BELONG TO THEM!

Now, I'm all for helping out my guild. I'm all for being available and responsible and seeing people succeed. However, I'm not your goddamned McDonalds. This is not TempTanks Ltd. You don't get to choose me. I'm not in a stack of snot-streaming brats waiting to be picked for dodgeball, asshole. If I wanted to stand in a pack and hope I'm picked for a dps spot, I'll go log into my Warlock or my Mage and start hoping. But when it comes to logging into my plate covered tank-mo-tron, looking at the daily heroic and deciding who I'm willing to send myself into the poor house for ( what? You didn't realize that even a non-wipe heroic still costs me 7 gold in basic gear degeneration? ) well, golly, that's when I become a discerning shopper. I will take the group I have the most fun with. I didn't grind 70 levels, instances, and gold for gear and professions so -you- would have a tank whenever I logged in. I did it so -I- would have a tank.

One good thing did come of this though. An ex-guild mate of mine, BigPappi, was in that group. When he heard that being said, he stood up for me. That means a lot to me. It's not common that someone stands up for you when you're not around to praise them for it. BigP took a giant leap in my estimation of him.

On the procurement of Repair Bills, infamous, nefarious and otherwise.

2007-12-05T11:05:00.000-05:00

5 Worst Wipes:

BabyH has contracted RSV Virus, so I'm taking the day off to keep an eye on her while Neshura gets some work done. BabyH and I are levelling fishing, so you get a blogpost( Yay for Omnibus! )

Tagged by Bremm at bremm.blogspot.com, you get to learn about the five worst wipes I've experienced.

1. Given the name of this blog, this one is out of game. The poop of a 1 day old baby has the consistency and appearance of tar. 9 months of digestion in utero with nowhere to poop. Not only are the new parents coming off an 18 hour labor, but they just inherited a screaming, pooping machine. Learn to change a diaper, try not to be scared of the tar rolling out of your daughters bottom and keep telling yourself you can handle another 20 years of this. It's scary!

2. Not only does this one include Bremm, but it includes the most embarassing moment in WoW for me. Shortly after the baby was born, Neshura took a weeks vacation to the beach with her mother, leaving me alone for a full week. This week was designated: Key Owaru for Kara Week. I got all the instances run and on the last day before I was going to head out to meet them at the beach, all I needed was Black Morass. Bremm logged in, caught us as a PuG and we started out. I toss on my DPS/Spell-Damage gear and get to help clearing my the trash. We stop, we buff and we start knocking rift lords in the teeth. We're doing well. Bremm is having to throw the big heals but we're clearing portals in good time and I'm excited to think we'll one-shot this. Last boss pops and he's just hitting me way too hard. I drop; we wipe. On the run back, I'm checking to see what my repair bill is going to look like. Wait a minute, I don't remember there being any spelldamage on my ... chest... piece. Ooooh shit. I'm still in my Spell Damage gear. Oh no, Oh no, Oh no. How am I going to admit this to the group? How am I going to tell Bremm?!?! Let's just say I still haven't lived that down. As well, after that, my connection went to crap and I spent 9 hours in Black Morass fighting Rift Lords -and- disconnections.

3. Mechanar. First time in and we down the fire-bitch and I get my Jade Skull Breastplate. I'm excited. I turn around and start running to Pantheon the Calculator... right down the hall way. Werenal, the Hunter-farmer to whom even Old McDonald offers up blood-sacrifice, says in Vent, "Where's Owaru?" I'm in the hallway fighting four people at once, death is imminent and it comes swiftly!

4. Heroic Ramparts. The pat that moves counterclockwise in the area before the last two bosses. Kikidas marks it and says pull it. Off goes my best captain amerinca impersonation spinning towards the baddies. Right before Kikidas finishes her thought, "..after they pass the door".

5. Same run as #4 except we're running with the -dumbest- hunter I've ever seen. Look, I give -anyone- a chance in instances because people are always learning and I expect the same treatement for my toons and the toons of my guildies and friends. But this one actually earns my ire. He shows up with a damned Dragonhawk. The dragonhawk has a special attack in the effect of a cone of fire. it doesn't need to be said that this is a very bad thing for Crowd Control. Fine, Boon is overgeared and he's keeping us standing against most things. Last boss, it's the daily heroic so he represents 3 badges for us. As the mount flies around tossing fireballs from the sky. If one hits you, you take 2 steps to the right and keep up the DPS. He just wouldn't do it. 3 attempts, 3 wipes. We're tired, we're pissed, we call it.

On the naming of weapons and the imperceptible and horrifying changes of a warlock spec...

2007-12-04T10:35:00.000-05:00

Arthur had Excalibur and wielded it through Britannic-mythic history.
Tolkien's Gandalf swung Glamdring the Foe-Hammer at terminal velocity tangled with a Balrog.
Micheal Chabon's Amram used Mother-Defiler's existence as threat more than enforcement in "Gentleman of the Road".

Now, Kikidas of kdot.blogspot.com has created a spec I have dubbed... "Tank Hater".

According to WWS stats from a Heroic Blood Furnace run with Owaru tanking, Boon healing, and two pug dpsers, Kikidas managed to crit 24% of the time on her shadowbolts and 15% of the time on her immolates. Of the 13 Shadowburn's she tossed at the hard hitting, hard living orcs of the Blood Furnace four of the them were critical strikes. Her average Shadow Bolt crit-damage? Oh, only 3896. Her max Shadowbolt crit-damage? A whopping 5139! Stats like these make tanks cry. Thank God she was on double and sometimes triple duty using seduction and Banish Demon elsewise, I think she would have squeaked out more than 486 DPS. When she's not CC'ing, like in the heroic Underbog we did on the 29th of Nov, I've seen her crank out 600+ DPS. Given that we had a sap as one of our forms of crowd control, front loading my threat was impossible since Avenger's Shield just doesn't play nice with sap. No Avenger's Shield means you just can't lay into your target like you could if I pulled with my shield. You have to let me build threat the old fashioned way.

Seriously, she hates tanks.

DPS AM HARD!

2007-12-02T11:49:00.000-05:00

Okay admittedly it's not hard. It's hard to do well, though. I went into Mechanar and Botanica in an attempt to gear up Tasogare a bit so he's not such a sissy in PVP. As well one of our pally tanks needed some gear and I'd made suggestions like the Jade Skull Breastplate off the fire-bitch in Mech. Only fair that I go with him to try to get it!

Tasogare was able to maintain around 400 dps the entire time. I think my shot rotation needs work as does my gear. He's mostly in quest-blues and some early instance blues. More Spell Damage and more Spell Hit. I may have to start farming the mats for the spellstrike stuff... *shudder*

One of the issues that I tend to run with a very good group. The warlock Kikidas( from kdots.blogspot.com ), ridiculously good pally healer Boon, geared to the gills BigPappi and an alternating 5th spot( filled by Daalia when I can get my hands on him ). We don't run instances. We storm them. When your dps is maintaining 600 and 700s and your healer has a 20% crit rate on his uncrushable tank, you spend a lot of time goofing off in vent and cracking wise. It's a ton of fun.

On the downside, it does percolate a sense of overconfidence. My 70 lock, Byouki, is no Kikidas. Sure, she has the full shadowcloth set but she's nowhere as well geared as K and that's not even the hard part! Kikidas is just plain good. I remember a Mech run where a pull went badly leading to the stairs above the Cache. Before I knew it one demon was banished while the other was enslaved. Saved the party. I couldn't believe she got those off so fast. Byouki would have just paniced.

As well, my new healybot Shaman is going to have a tough time comparing himself to Boon. One of the great things about having Boon healing is that he's a tank at heart. He even has a sexy set of tanking gear and manages to tank SLabs, BM and, at times, off tank Kara. Not only does he know most of the fights as a healer, he knows them as a tank and knows when the big hits are coming. He knows to keep them coming fast instead of playing Health Pool Limbo so my mana stays nice and high on the long fights.

Tasogare doesn't even compete with BigPappi. I'm pulling threat off our tank( who admittedly doesn't have a threat meter installed ) w/ my measely spell damage but BigPappi rarely pulls threat off my tank even with his 1.4k spell damage bonus. He learned( sometimes the hard way ) to control has aggro and it paid off in spades.

All these things, these great players and play styles are ancillary to one hard fact: They're all great people. Great people to be around, great people to instance with and people that I feel genuinely lucky to have had the chance to know. Succeeding in a heroic is a good feeling. Having a low-stress blast the entire time, well, that's that requires a special group.

I think I'm done

2007-11-27T10:35:00.000-05:00

One of my big goals in this game was to hit Uncrushable and 11k unbuffed health. I've done that and as such I'm done hunting for gear. I feel that, geared as I am, I'm a good tank. There are, of course, pieces that drop in heroics and raids that I would take as an upgrade if we don't have another pally tank in the group who needs it to reach Uncrushable. As far as I've seen, I can tank up to and including the Curator in Karazhan and don't often have troubles with Heroics. For me the 102.4 Avoidance and 11k Health is the gold standard. It may change after the Curator, I'm not sure. But I don't feel right rolling on, say, the Tier 4 glove token the Curator drops when we have healers who could use it or rogues who need to eek out just a little bit more DPS.

With the addition of Combat Expertise in the Paladin Protection tree, the gear requirements for a pally tank lessened ever so slightly that we could finally take a breath between gasping about gemming for +12 STA and needing more avoidance. Finally, our gear requirements are somewhat normalized. As well, many of the epic grade plate peices simply aren't Paladin Kosher. The weakest spot in my gear is the boots. The Enchanted Adamantite Boots aren't great. I'm going to have to run a quick group through Mana Tombs for the Flesh-Beasts greaves, but it's still not a big issue. The greaves have great avoidance stats, so I could probably stack more stamina.

Someone at Blizzard has a stomping fetish...

2007-11-22T11:16:00.000-05:00

Tuesday night, after tanking the baby all weekend Neshura gave me a kitchen pass to tank Karazhan all on my lonesome. It wasn't our usual party. After some guild drama that ended in feelings hurt for some and an alliance with another guild which bolstered our effective kara-pool, we pulled together a group to go skipping into Karazhan with flowers in baskets and tra-la-laing the whole way. With me Main Tanking and our Druid, Babyblasts, Off Tanking, we steam rolled over Attumen in a fashion and effeciency I hadn't seen before and then two-shotted Moroes. We quickly cleared the way to Maiden and spent ourselves against her giant shores. With no paladin healer, Blessing of Sacrifice wasn't on the table so the healers( two priests and druid ) had to hokey pokey their way in and out. The first attempt was going well and I had hopes that we'd down the giantess but, as we would later find out, Deadly Boss Mods does not accurately time her Repenatance phase.

In hindsight I probably should have moved to off healing( with my piddly +714 healing gear ) and let Babyblasts tank it so I could provide Blessing of Protection. We'll get her next time.

On another note, I did hit Honored with the Violet Eye which provided me the epic ring and in turn bumped my health to over 11k Unbuffed while still leaving me at Uncrushable.

Can't Crush This!

2007-11-16T00:35:00.000-05:00

Last night Helena and I tanked Heroic Botanica with Kikidas from kdots.blogspot.com and a PuG group. After a rocky start that was ended with K finally took group leadership( she's a natural leader and tactician ) we started to rock through and after skipping Laj and the Tender downed the Warp Splinter and got his clipping to turn in for our Heroic Daily and get two extra badges. That put us up to 15 badges, which we exchanged for [Libram of Repentance] which, in turn, got us to uncrushable!

A critical strike is 200% damage and avoidable with a defense rating of 490 or above. A crushing blow is 150% damage and requires reams more in the way of itemization. You're mostly stacking Block Rating, Dodge, and Parry in order of importance. Before 2.3 this was a little more difficult since we also had to stack Stamina. With the extra 10% talent-spec stamina boost, we can take the strain off. The "Kara Standard" has long been 11k unbuffed health and uncrushable for tanks. Owaru pegged out at a whisker or two over 10k and still has some blue gems he could upgrade to [Solid Star of Elune]or some meta gems.

Eat your heart out snoopy!

2007-11-13T16:51:00.001-05:00

Patch 2.3

2007-11-13T11:49:00.000-05:00

The big news is of course, that 2.3 hits today. This means Tasogare( my PVPish Mage Engineer ) is going to blow 800g on the flying mount training just so he can fly around in the Flying Machine - best design I've ever seen Blizz pull off in my opinion!

Alternatively( watch this! ), it means that my other addiction is going to get a boost: Alts( see how that paid off? ). My 48 Shaman will have 12 easier levels and my 34 Hunter will finally be able to dust off his rifle and go running around with Neshura's priest. The latter prospect is the most interesting for me. When we first came to Alleria( from the Horde side of Feathermoon ), Nesh and I created a dwarf hunter and a gnome mage respectively. Since I play more than she does, I had a couple other character's I'd solo on, but the deal was that Tasogare wouldn't level without his dwarf lady-friend. And it was a lot of fun! For one, a frost mage and Beast Master hunter level lightning fast. Once Nesh tamed her gorilla, Daffodil, and trained up Thunderstomp, it was even easier. Now, Teppou will be using his boar, HamSolo, backed up my a dreanai priest( tails are sexy! ). I'm excited to try it again!

Of course, my main, Owaru will require a respec. The new tier 8 protection tree skill Combat Expertise will raise my expertise by five and my stamina by 10%. That's big news for tanking Paladins. Our biggest failings are itemization and inability to take the really big hits. This should alleviate the strain on both. Better stamina means we can gem less w/ Solid Star of Elune. Many tanking paladins just cram these blue babies into any available slot once they reach uncrushable. With less need to stack stamina, we'll be able to reach uncrushability easier by stacking Dodge/Parry gems and getting block rating/dodge/parry enchants. A free respec would be nice though...

Heroic Mana Tombs

2007-11-11T08:57:00.000-05:00

Last night, while Helena audibily snored in the pouch and I tried to stay awake to allow Neshura 4 hours of uninterrupted sleep, I was asked if I could attempt a Heroic Mana Tombs. Bremm over at bremm.blogspot.com hates heroic MT. An unmitigated pain in the ass he calls it. Well, he's right on one point: You cannot mitigate Pandemonius' attacks. All his melee attacks do shadow damage so they completely ignore my 13k+ armor in my heaviest tanking gear. After three attempts and a brutal offering each time, I hopped a bird to shattrath, port'd to ironforge and spent about a hundred gold on new "armor". I ended up with two rings, two pieces of cloth, a leather piece, a mail piece and a plate chestplate from the mid 40s! It was almost embarassing to face Pandemonius down in that get-up. But 183 unbuffed shadow resist( 253 buffed with Shadow Resistance Aura ) and pandemonius became a creampuff. During his reflection stages, I simply spammed Flash of Light on myself to take some of the strain off Orzag our priest.

We only got to Tavarok before chasebrandt was too tired to go on and I needed to wake Nesh to get the baby fed, so we called it. I'm not sure if we had the DPS to take down the last boss. All reports on him say his adds spawn at a prodigious rate on Heroic. Either way, only five more heroic badges to get my tanking libram and I'll be within spitting distance of uncrushable.

You Wake It; You Tank It - Expect a lot of Wipes...

2007-11-05T23:25:00.000-05:00

This was originally a T-Shirt idea I came up with when my daughter was born. I'd been levelling a Paladin Tank and he hit 70 just before Helena screamed her way into our lives. About this time I started to get really involved with my guild tanking instances and I quickly became the defacto evening-parent so Neshura could rest and recuperate from the days trials. In general, my wife is more of a morning person while I'm more of an evening person. It's a setup that works fairly well for us both. Since the baby likes to sleep in the sling, I'm often pinned to the chair so many hobbies are out( Studying Japanese, Playing Guitar/Banjo, Television ) and WoW lends itself well to a quiet night. So most nights, I tank with a baby asleep on my chest - and frankly, I really enjoy it!

The first time I tanked Karazhan, Helena snoozed on my belly and would get shushed back to sleep when our cheers or swearing would stir her.

I often run a speed-group through Shadow Labs. As a decently geared Paladin Tank we throw a capable healer in there with me and go through the entire instance with no CC. Often I'm in there trying to get Murmur to drop the Sonic Spear for my wife's hunter or to get someone their first Kara Frag. Usually we tend to run about an hour and 20 minutes. The whole time, I'm sweating because my daughter is a tiny furnace of cute and poop.

All of this is great to me. However, it has one very severe, very important requirement - an understanding guild. They know that if it goes bad, if Helena wakes up and simply won't get back to sleep, then they lose their tank. No matter the instance. I don't care if we're just trying to do a 5-man quest or Karazhan. Baby wails, daddy goes and tanks it. I'm lucky enough to belong to a guild that has never had a problem with that. I was honored to have been asked to become an officer of that guild. Naturally, I feel bad when I have to leave. I hate to leave my friends in a lurch. I enjoy succeeding and I enjoy seeing them succeed. This does however, mean that while I'm a capable tank I am also a liability if you group with me. It's a bit of an interesting situation to be in and this is where I'm going to try to organize my experience.