Matticus

Matticus is the founder of World of Matticus, a World of Warcraft blog.

Loot Management Week: Karazhan

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Sorry guys, I had a really busy weekend. I had to finish up a few projects and participate in my hockey draft. I think my picks look pretty solid.

I’ve noticed an alarming trend lately in how some younger Guilds are imposing DKP for their Karazhan runs. Wait, what? Why? Why use DKP for loot distribution in a small ten man instance? Hopefully my plea can change the course of Guilds so that they don’t run into any Guild Drama later on in their path.

Don’t use DKP for Karazhan. As a Guild run, there will be at most two classes that are the same (warrior/warrior, priest/priest). It adds unnecessary work and possible consequences in the future. Loot should be decided via rolls or gear prioritization. I’m assuming that your guild is running with the same crew of people on a weekly basis. Even if you have two or three groups for Karazhan, then the loot being distributed should remain in those individual groups.

Like come on, seriously, its only a ten man raid. Did anyone run UBRS with DKP? I think not. There’s only a few pieces in Karazhan that can be used by multiple classes. Even then, a simple roll off will work for it. There’s a LOT of bosses in there that it’s almost virtually guaranteed that everyone will get an upgrade at some point. As you progress through the higher areas of karazhan, you’re going to end up with players with an insane amount of DKP through the roof. Once you start instances like Gruul’s and Mag, then you will have players with lopsided points (in the range of thousands). These are the instances where DKP really DOES matter.

The rest of the week, I’m going to discuss the various methods that Guilds can use to distribute their loot in the best possible way for players. Each loot system is different and should be tailored to the primary objective of the Guild.

Getting your Leadership skill to 375

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I just finished off setting up my new hockey blog known as Lowongo’s crease (It’s a play on my last name for those that know me). The layout hasn’t been completely finalized yet, but I wanted to give me facebook viewers more to chew on instead of just WoW. Expect a lot of Canucks coverage along with other news, opinions, and thoughts around the league. On to today’s piece…

Here’s yet another reference to the business Guild model of WoW. Some would argue that a Guild is defined by it’s players. I would argue that excellent leadership defines how well a Guild performs. Unfortunately, leadership is not something you can go to a skill trainer for. I’ve been in my share of numerous Guilds. I’d like to think that I know what is good leadership and what is bad. I’ve seen Guilds crash and burn, or flourish and thrive. Similar to my column on valued traits for a Priest, here are 6 of the valued traits in a Leader no matter what class they play.

Edit: Again I am beat to the punch by Kirk.

Patience

“The rung of a ladder was never meant to rest upon, but only to hold a man’s foot long enough to enable him to put the other somewhat higher.”
– Tomas Huxley

No one likes to wipe. But true leaders expect it. I commend real leaders for their outstanding patience whether its in dealing with new raid bosses or frustrated guild members. No matter what the circumstance may be, they are able to weather the storm of angry guild members or angry raid bosses (I’ll let you decide what is worst). The goal has been set and the challenge has been issued. Now it’s up to the players to respond. Throughout it all, they maintain a face of dignity and passivity knowing that things will improve with time. I think Mayor Rudy Giuliani is a great example of this. He was the face of the city after the 9/11 attacks. There’s a reason why he was one of Time’s Man of the Year.

Knowledge

“Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.”
– Peter F. Drucker

This ought to be self explanatory. Any leader be it class, raid, or Guild will have done their homework on whatever they are responsible for. Raid leaders know the fight and are able to convey the strategy effectively. Class leaders know how to play their class and teach others to optimize themselves better. With that being said, leaders are humble enough to acknowledge that even they cannot possibly know all there is to know. The world is in a continuously evolving state with patches, changes, nerfs, etc. They realize that even though there is a lot to know, they are quite willing to learn even more.

Inspiration

“One of the tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency.”
– Arnold Glasgow

In a way, this is related to Social Skills but I wanted address something else. Your leaders are people that players turn to for advice and guidance. With responsibility like that, they’re expected to know how to convey information. But in order to do that, they do two things which any player can accomplish: Plan and set goals. They are able to focus the Guild in a certain direction and layout the steps necessary to accomplish it. They already have solutions to every problem that comes up because of their planning and anticipation. This is the kind of player who is not afraid of pulling the trigger when $&%@ hits the fan. They already have a Plan B and a Plan C in mind in case Plan A goes horribly wrong. No one likes to stand around and mindlessly die in case something bad happens. Every raider wants to try and salvage the situation. A good example that comes to mind is when our MT Lang ate a blow which caused him to crumple, Maeve was second on aggro since he’s been building up enough threat to stay just below him on the list. The moment Lang was down, a half second went by when Maeve bellowed for all of Lang’s healers to switch to him as he was tanking. Had he not made that call, we would have stood around not knowing what to do and we would not have gotten the satisfaction of the Guild first kill on Fathom-Lord.

Social Skills

“The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it.”
– Theodore Roosevelt

There’s a lot of excellent players who know their material and the class inside out. But when it comes to talking to other people, they just don’t have a friggin clue. I think having some degree of emotional intelligence helps. A key skill, not just in WoW but in life, is your ability to interpret the other person’s words either in text or via voice. You have to know how to handle the other player as a player instead of just a random NPC. One of the things I admired about Warack was his tendency to check up on players every now and then. He’d whisper them randomly or just jump into a channel and talk to them for a while, see how they were doing, and try to “get a feel” for the over all guild mood. Think of it as taking a temperature of the Guild. With the pickup of solid players, they also know how to refrain from telling them to exactly what to do. My understanding is that I rolled a Priest from 1 – 70 and I should know the basics of it. I don’t want to be told how to heal, when to heal it, and who. That kind of thinking comes naturally. I love it when tanks often tell me to keep them alive. You worry about holding aggro, and you let me worry about keeping you alive so you CAN hold aggro.

Confidence

“The spirited horse, which will try to win the race of its own accord, will run even faster if encouraged.”
– Ovid

It all boils down to one word: Belief. They believe in themselves and they believe in others to achieve the objective. The aura of confidence comes from their high knowledge of play and how to get it accomplished. I feel reassured knowing that I can place my character under the command of someone who knows what they’re doing as opposed to a raid that is being led by a headless chicken. Even if they don’t know what they’re doing, they can at least pretend. The point is not whether you down the boss or wipe horribly. The point is that someone had the confidence to get the raid going and try it. If that player doesn’t have the skills themselves to pull it off, they’re able to point to the person that does.

Authority and Respect

“The country is full of good coaches. What it takes to win is a bunch of interested players.”
– Don Coryell, ex-San Diego Chargers Coach

Props to guys like Blori and Harth. They really know how to get the raid to shut up and listen. Everytime you hear either of their booming voices, you know it’s their time. Why? Perhaps it’s their age and maturity. Every time they speak, they command that aura of authority and respect. When you hear it, your back automatically straightens while your ears latch on to their words. Unfortunate that this isn’t a trait that can be learned or gained. I once listened to a raid leader who sounded like he had nasal issues and sounded like your typical four eyed Urkel. No one would take him seriously at all because of the way his voice sounded. The bottom line here is that not only must you be willing to voice your commands, but your Guild must be willing to listen to listen to them. Former Vancouver Canucks Head Coach Mark Crawford got fired because he lost the locker room and players started to tune him out. One of these days, I’m going to record ventrilo during a raid night and put a snippet up here so you can get an idea.

Clearly there are many more traits that I have yet to identify. I’m merely setting myself up for a part 2 further down the road. The next time you go raiding or PvPing or whatever it is that you do, listen to your leaders and see how they are. Do they or do they not possess the traits I have listed above? If not, it might be time for a scenery change.

Quotes are courtesy of askmen.com and About.com

And for you young Guildmasters out there, every chance you get to use the term “Brouhaha” you take it.

My desk

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Me and a raid leader were comparing desk spaces the other day. He’s got a three monitor set up while I only use two: one for gaming, one for everything else while gaming.

I’m beginning to not enjoy these Maulgar-esque fights with multiple tanking targets. Tonight was Fathomlord day. We had the toughest time with four tanks and nine healers simply because the pet and hunter were being tanked by the same player who was getting knocked around all over the place. A tank being knocked all over the place is bad because 9 times out of 10 he will end up out of range. I’m busy slamming my Oh $&*% macro trying to keep the guy alive while moving around the damn pillar AND making sure I’m alive. Starting in SSC, I’m beginning to notice a trend where some of these pulls need to be accomplished with a tank, a healer on the tank, and another healer on THAT healer. Blizzard sure does seem to have endless gimmicky ideas for trash and raids.

My Interface

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There has been a flurry of Raiding interface posts (courtesy of Kirk and Galadria). I’m going to show a screen shot of mine in a moment and label all the present addons in the screen. But first, I want to show you an addon that will blow your mind away as a healer and make you drool. Check out the following shots:

Edit: Forgot to enable comments

Now that I’ve caught your attention, you will most likely be asking yourself “OMG WTF IS THAT?”. This, my friends, is a raid user interface called Pitbull. You can find a copy from Curse Gaming.

As you’ve seen from the shots above, it has a special feature which functions like bullet tracers. It graphically generates a line from you and your raidmates to the players they are healing so you can visually see on your screen who is healing who, with what heal, and when it hits in real time. Is that not mindblowingly awesome? It’s like little lasers! Now healers can really pew pew. I believe the numbers you see on their names are the estimated heal amount.

But there is a problem.

With all the graphic generation, heal calculation, and so on and so forth, you will need a nuclear reactor to power your computer. As much as I want to run this, I know my computer would buckle especially in a raiding environment. So to you healers who have kickass machines, give this a shot. It’s got a ton of more features as well, but that part caught my eye the most.

Here’s the interface that I use. Make a note of the numbers that I photoshopped in there:

1: This is singlehandedly the most important addon you will ever use in your WoW Raiding career. You can skimp out on the heal addons, and the threat addons, and the pretty addons. But get Deadly Boss Mods. It highlights important knowledge and phases during your encounters. It is an absolute must.

2: X-Perl Unit Frames is my primary UI of choice when interacting with my party and my raid. It boasts a whole slew of options and is compatible with CT Raid, oRA2 and a few others. It’s able to show me the target of my target’s target (four windows). It can show all MT targets. It shows who’s targeting you. It shows who’s also assisting you. It also shows players with buffs that you can provide. It’s an easy way to spot if a player is missing Fortitude or DS. It’s also got a built in range finder, spell cooldown (you can see how long before you need to refresh renew), if the raid is down it shows who has soulstones or Shaman’s self res active, and most importantly, your screen flashes if you pull aggro.

3: I use Bongos 2 to manage my extensive array of options and choices for my bars. If you look really carefully, you can even see the way I bind my keys. It allows me to flexibly move my map, my bars, my FPS and castbars all around. Note that I don’t have my menu’s or my bags on screen (I rely on Esc. and Shift + B for that respectively).

4: I like my map square so I can see more surface area. Thank you Squeenix.

5: I didn’t like the way Blizzard organized my buffs, so I turned to CT_Buffmod. I do believe you need to download the core, however…

6: KLH Threatmeter (or KTM). It’s a way to graphically view your own aggro and threat generation. Normally I disable the view but keep the transmission enabled to free up more real estate on the screen.

7: Finally the last one I use is Natur EnemyCastBar so that I can see at a glance what is being cast by my target. It’s an excellent tactical addon to download to help you prepare for any incoming spells or attacks. Allows you to deliver an appropriate and timely response.

There ya go! That’s how my setup is at currently and it’s served me well. It delivers a lot of information that I need so I can calculate my next move.

Calling the Wipe

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This is one of the toughest calls for any raid leader to make. But it’s one of the best ways to optimize your raiding time and not waste any more effort or consumables trying to prolong a fight that’s already lost. I know some of you may think “Never! No surrender!” but really, it is a futile effort if your MT dies or over 50% of your healers are dead, or some other crap hits the fan. I want to give an example of a wipe procedure since not many young Guilds have such a concept in mind. Many inexperienced Guilds will continue to engage to the bitter end.

Wipe Preparation

What, you thought Warlocks were only good for Healthstones and DPS? No, they have Soulstones which when applied to any player allows them to resurrect themselves whenever they like. If that player falls in combat when the entire raid is still alive, it’s best to blow it. When you are engaging raid bosses, operate as if you are not going to wipe unless it is painfully obvious. So again, blow the stone. If you’re the last man standing, don’t blow the stone.

Wipe Calling

I sympathize with the Raid Leader when it’s called. It’s not a very decision to make and a false call will involve a waste of over hundreds of gold in repair bills and consumables. The correct call will save time and allow for more attempts. Typically, your Raid Leader will announce a wipe. When that happens, the following should happen: Ranged DPS would run to a location where they can be easily picked up (Such as the Gate when engaging Gruul). Try to get a Priest, Shaman, or Paladin in that same position and have a Paladin use their Divine Intervention to render that player immune. Shaman’s have the ability to self resurrect themselves, but that is an ability which should be used if the other two options are available. If you want to be really crafty, get a Druid outside in a clear position from where he can Battle Res a healer. Generally that is not recommended since it can be put to better use during combat. But if you’re in a raid instance and mobs start to respawn in ten minutes, you may not have the time or energy to reclear it all. Make sure that healer doesn’t accept it until after the encounter is reset. The moment wipe protection is utilized, make sure it’s called in vent so that players know. If there isn’t one, the last thing to do is the walk of shame back from the graveyard.

So to summarize in the following order:

* Soulstone
* DI
* Shammy Res
* Fancy Druid maneuver

Post Wipe and Analysis

Your Stoned healer picks himself up and starts ressing other healers OR Your DI’d player clicks off the buff (debuff?) and starts ressing other healers OR Your Shaman activates his self res and starts ressing other healers OR your Battle Res’d Healer wakes up and starts ressing other healers.

See a pattern here? Let your tanks and melee run back since most of the time you won’t be able to pick them up without drawing Aggro. If you can get a player, call it out in vent so they don’t zone in and be forced to run the gauntlet.

As players are being ressed, buffed, and positioned for the next attempt, go over the encounter and figure out what happened. What is a badly timed misheal? A crit from a mage which pulled aggro? The tank not eat his Wheaties that morning? Figure out what the problem is and remedy it, or else it will happen again. Raid Leaders should not be afraid to reassign healers to different assignments. Some healers are better tailored for certain jobs then others. Maybe you want your veteran healers to focus more a bit on the clothies during some phase where they take damage (Mage tank in Gruul’s lair). Sometimes you need to mix and match. But more importantly, analyze what your mistakes were so that they don’t happen again. If the fault was the result of a player, don’t call it out in raid but allow them to speak up and take responsibility. It shows signs of maturity and trust. If no one admits fault but you know who it is, send them a light whisper letting them know that they forgot an assignment or made a mistake because some players just aren’t aware that did anything wrong.

Sometimes, I wish Blizzard would implement an Instant Replay function with speed up and slow down functions so certain phases can be analyzed.