Matticus

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

When Good Enough isn’t Good Enough

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With Conquest taking down Throne of the Four Winds and Theraliona on heroic mode, we find ourselves now at 7/13 hard modes for progression (We could also greatly use another Rogue or Warlock).

At that progress level, I’ve had to make slight adjustments to our recruiting requirements. Namely, gear that was good enough to get through normal mode bosses such as players with a mix of crafted epics, reputation epics and other blue heroic quality gear just won’t be enough anymore. With the way the lockouts presently work, we only tackle heroic bosses. There aren’t that many normal mode bosses that we can really take on lest it compromise our progression. We generally don’t downgrade heroic bosses to normal because we usually take them down within a couple of attempts.

Because of this, we’ve raised our gear requirements from an average item level of 345+ to 356+. Why? Because we can’t spare the time and effort to go back through and “carry” players to get gear upgrades. Our directive is to go progressive and look forward. Granted, because of this, there’s going to be a slight gap. Players that draw in will continue to get to gear and I also need to take care that the players who are sitting on the side get rotated in the week after so they can get practice and shots at gear as well.

But how can I get better if I don’t get to raid?

Therein lies the kicker. As a player on the outside looking in, that player needs to do well enough to draw into the lineup. From there, they’re off to the races. But as a raid progresses through the different bosses, the minimum requirements will go up. What may have passed as above average months ago may not be good enough now. If there was one thing I missed about having access to separate 10 man raid instances, it would be the capability to gear players on the side during the weekend. The success of pickup raids on vary wildly from server to server. I get lucky joining 5/6 clears in Blackwing Descent on my alt Ret Paladin. Not everyone is so fortunate in getting in.

Player patience

The other thing I notice is that player patience drops the moment we take something down on farm. I know my guys tolerate the first 20 – 40 learning wipes. Once we get a fight down once or twice, people get agitated if we wipe more than 2 or 3 times. Wiping more than that is inevitable if we pull in several newer players who haven’t taken down the fight yet (much less seen it at work). I counter this by placing them in the most easiest and least stressing of roles. I don’t try to switch up the tanks unless it’s extremely urgent (such as a missing tank). I’ll place new and less experienced healers on raid healing duties until they see enough of the encounter for me to get them to specialize in certain positions (Tank healing, or kiter healing or tackling the stupid Rohash platform on heroic mode).

I face pressure from the veterans from trying to get through the stuff we’ve taken down on a timely fashion to get moving onto the stuff we haven’t seen.

On the other hand, I face pressure from the newer players who are also dying to get in on some of the action for loot and to see the encounter.

This new system makes it a little difficult to accommodate both. I’m glad those big nerfs are coming in 4.2. It’ll spur up alt and pickup runs again for sure.

The bottom line

Performance matters. Is it the only factor? No, of course not. But it still represents a significant portion.

You can be the nicest person on the planet and still do lower DPS than the tank. Sorry, not good enough.

You can be the hottest guy/girl on the planet and still do lower DPS than the tank. Sorry, not good enough.

You can have the best gear available and still do lower DPS than the tank. Sorry, not good enough.

The bars on the DPS meters have a cutoff point where it becomes a liability to bring a player in. It’s up to that player to not be a liability. I’m not sure if I’m willing to stack the deck to help ‘em out or ask veterans to ease off the gas a little bit. It’s quite frustrating either way. I love the new lockout system and all. It’s freed up 3 hours of raiding that doesn’t have to be done, but it introduced an additional set of headaches.

With a 4.2 release but only weeks away, I struggle to find a line between straight progression to get as much down as we can or switch to gearing. If we go for the progression focus, I’m tempted to utilize lockouts to cut away the time. Right now, we’re operating on 3.5 hours for farm and 7 hours for progression. Basically, we spend our day 1 clearing to a progression boss and days 2 and 3 working on pulls, fine tuning and going through it completely phase by phase, minute by minute, attack by attack.

Heroic Nef is next. Could use some pointers.

The Gradual Shift to Inefficient Healing

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I actually had to read this a few times to make sure I was reading it correctly. I swear, blue language happens to take a language on its own entirely. It’s like lawyerspeak but for gamers. This is a passage taken from the Firelands Q&A that was released a few days ago.

Q: It can be anticipated that mana regeneration and maximum mana will increase from gearing up with the new Firelands equipment. Isn’t there a possibility that healers can spam big heals again (and more quick heals) just like in WotLK? If so, is there any plan to handle this without class nerfs? – Whitewnd (KR)

A: As damage increases, healers will need to use their largest, most inefficient heals more regularly to keep up. That’s fine and was all part of the design. We just didn’t want players to opt out of mana regeneration too early in the content because then Spirit (and mana-related procs) on gear wouldn’t be attractive, and because we’d have to balance difficulty by making the tanks die in a couple of GCDs if not healed continually. Most progression-oriented healers still want large amounts of Spirit, often in every single slot. As they get more comfortable with their mana, they’ll be able to replace some of that Spirit with other stats, but the Spirit will still be valuable; more Spirit on a set piece for example might mean being able to use a different enchant or reforge on another piece.

This is still a much better place to be than we were with Lich King content, where mana stopped mattering in the first raid tier. Aside from the mana changes we’ve already made to Innervate, Mana Tide Totem and paladin heals, we don’t think an overall regen nerf is necessary.

The first two sentences pretty much gave it away. We started the expansion heavily relying on triage healing to get things done and to be as efficient as we could. Heal was extensively relied on as our filler spell (for Priests). Other healing classes had the same. Drawing back from the previous years and expansions, we knew that as encounters got increasingly difficult, our gear levels would rise with it. The only constant here is mana cost. The mana cost of Flash Heal stays the same whether we’re working on Tier 11 or Tier 15. So we’re seeing a trend where Heal is going to gradually be rotated out of our spell usage in favor of high impact, inefficient spells – Largely because of necessity. It appears that in Firelands onwards, mana neutral spells can’t even be considered anymore.

For example, during the first part of the expansion, I relied on Heal as my filler spell. I was always casting something on players where damage was expected. Now I’m relying mostly on Renew as a filler spell for Holy. I’m hoping healing in the final tiers of Cataclysm aren’t going to be as mind numbing or stressing as they were in Icecrown Heroic. With higher health pools across the board for everyone, we should still have some time to react to incoming damage. Instead of dying in 1-2 shots, players would die in 3-5 shots.

This appears to be part of the design intent (Sentence two). Rising gear levels means larger mana pools and larger secondary stats. We’ll have much more flexibility when it comes to stat allocation. Right now, we need around 2100~ Spirit to function. The rest of it goes to your Mastery, Haste or Crit (Whatever tickles your fancy). From Firelands PTR testing, we’re going to need a little more Spirit for sure to be do our jobs. We’ll have much more stats to move around though.

Have you seen the Discipline numbers on the PTR? 40000+ Divine Aegis crits and absorbs (stemming from the 200% bonus to crit instead of 150%). I wonder if stacking crit and mastery is the way to go. Decisions, decisions!

How to Own Your Trial Run Like a Champion

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Been addicted to read the Game of Thrones series right now. Not watching the TV show just yet. I want to get through the books at least. Also, my hometown team of Vancouver in the Stanley Cup finals for the first time in 17 years! Hockey has killed some of our raid nights with about 5 of us from Vancouver. We can still work and raid if it’s just the 5, but we could certainly use more players (DPS with off specs would be great).

Recruiting’s a bummer right now. Everyone that applies could be a stud or a dud. Today’s post is a story of how an undergeared player just strolled in and wrested a full time roster position into his grasp.

Step one: Getting In

At first glance, he didn’t have the best of gear. He sporting blue quality items. What sold us for the trial though was the application. One of our questions involved a spec explanation and what is done to maximize it. He lists the correct primary stat and then goes on to list exact DPS rotation and why it had to be modified due to additional factors like glyphs and secondary stat allocation. It’s easy enough to parrot the information that can be found on prominent community websites, but those typically demand precise gear levels before optimal equilibrium can be met. Most players applying to raiding guilds don’t meet that quite yet. A little explanation on the side helps. It’s an ideal world we live in where every player is expected to be optimal.

But, we don’t live in an ideal world. We adapt to what cards we’re dealt and make it look awesome.

Step two: The Trial Run

This is where the applicant shone. He had never seen any of these heroic encounters before first hand. But you don’t need previous experience to understand that stuff on the ground is generally bad, or to run to a specific location with a bad debuff. Stand out applicants pick up mechanics within one or two attempts and maintain a high level of consistency in play.

Absolutely nailed it. You know you’re off to a good start when no one calls a Rebirth on you because you didn’t die. If you don’t stand out negatively like that, you’re golden.

Step three: The Aftermath

Didn’t do so hot there? That’s tough. I daresay most guilds allow recruits additional time to get acclimated and comfortable. You might get a second or third shot later on where you can really rock their world. The line that annoys me the most as a recruiter is the “I don’t have enough gear to make an impact” argument.

Now, I get that.

But if gear level really was that low, they wouldn’t have been screened through in the first place. This applicant barely scraped by our minimal expectations laid down in an application but came in and nailed DPS rotations and survived like the best of them. Their numbers were on the low end of the curve relative to the other players. But they kept quiet, made no excuses and did the absolute best they could. They didn’t complain, they didn’t whine when they weren’t brought in at all knowing that sooner or later their chance would come if they continued to appear. Summer is here which means roster sizes are going to be all over the place.

For me, it’s always been about the attitude. It really annoys me when performance is blamed on stuff like gear. I second guess their mental fortitude after that. What happens if they have a crappy raiding night later on? Is it going to be blamed on gear when they’ve already been outfitted with what’s available? Relax a little and do what can be done, listen to the feedback given by evaluators and run with that. Not everything needs to be a point of contention.

Sometimes the best thing you can do is sit your ass down and shut your ass up. Don’t be difficult. Our new player acknowledged his short comings and resolved to try harder. Since then, he’s worked his way into a starting spot.

* Bonus step: Fitting in

Hang out with the guild for a while after raids. Just be sociable and get to know people. They’re your new guild. Find out what makes people tick and just try to be friends. Don’t start off holding grudges against other players who do better than you or getting too competitive. No one likes a loud mouth who comes in trying to rock the boat. It just makes them seem desperate for attention.

Would you pay for Premium?

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Blizzard’s Mobile Armory which now offers guild chat capabilities? $2.99.

Recently announced cross-realm Dungeon Finder feature? More money.

Additional mounts or non-combat pets? Those range anywhere from $10 to $25.

I’ve seen people upset that all these extra cool features are costing additional money. We’re paying 15 bucks a month already. Shouldn’t we be entitled this stuff? I’m not so sure. I do have a different take on it. Things like the Mobile Armory, the cross-realm Dungeon Finder and stuff, those aren’t exactly essential game play services. Blizzard typically doesn’t charge for content (Exception: Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, and Cataclysm). If it’s something related to stuff we can do in game, there’s no extra cost to it. We just pay the monthly cost and that’s that. I have a difficult time understanding why some players are annoyed over an optional feature.

At school, we have a universal transit program. For an additional 105 bucks a semester, we get a pass that lets us travel anywhere via public transit in the Greater Vancouver area (that’s 26 bucks per month of go anywhere). Many of my friends complain because they drive to school, to work or to shop. They have no use for such a pass. Yet the school makes it mandatory. The only way this deal would’ve worked between the University and the public transit system is all or nothing. Given the option, they’d rather opt out of it. I can’t blame them.

The point I’m trying to get to here is would you rather pay a higher monthly cost for included services or have a lower monthly cost along with optional services? What if the monthly fee went up to 20 bucks instead but came with the ability for you to interface with the armory remotely through your mobile device? Not only that, you’d get to be able to use the cross-realm Dungeon Finder feature. And just for kicks, having the active premium subscription service means whatever new mount of combat pet comes out of the Blizzard Store goes straight to your mail too. I’m not interested in this stuff as much (that’s a lie, I bought a celestial pony and a pandaren monk). I’d even consider the cross-realm Dungeon finder just to have a chance to play with potential off-server recruits who were of the same faction to see how they’d fair (fare?) in a 5 man environment at least.

I like the opportunity to pick and choose what additional premium features I want access to. If it costs extra, that’s okay because then I can see what I’m willing to pay. Otherwise, the other alternative option is a higher price with no say in customizable features.

15 bucks a month for WoW. I had to pay 18 bucks to watch Thor last weekend. Great movie, but remind me not to watch stuff in 3D again.

Uh, anyway, anyone need heals?

How EPGP works

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This is a guest post by Valen who has graciously offered to clarify the EPGP loot system and the process behind the usage.

Hello! I am Valen, Guild Leader of Temerity, an efficiency-focused progression guild on the Windrunner server. I also happen to be helping maintain EPGP while its author, Disht of EU-Sunstrider, takes a well-deserved break. My hope is to provide an introduction to EPGP and demonstrate why many people believe it to be a superior loot system.

What is EPGP?

The EPGP loot system, nicknamed “dkp reloaded,” is a mature, established loot system that has been in active use by many guilds for a number of years. Sometimes known for being somewhat “mathy,” EPGP tries to provide a fair, transparent, configurable, deterministic, and reasonable loot distribution system. EPGP is somewhat more complicated than most loot systems, but thanks to addons that simplify calculations and management, both the master looter and all members of a guild will find EPGP to be a fluid and effective loot system.

The word “fair” is somewhat ambiguous when it comes to handling loot, and is highly subjective. Can loot systems be fair to every member of a guild, and to the guild itself? Probably not, but when people think about fair loot systems, often words like “unbiased” are used, with sentiments of objective, even distribution. EPGP provides such features.

Many familiar loot systems, such as DKP and its variants, use a single point pool, whereas EPGP uses two. Those two kinds of points in EPGP are in the name — EP and GP. EP, which stands for Effort Points, encapsulates the contributions of a raider to the raid (primarily attendance). GP, which stands for Gear Points, encapsulates the loot a raider has received from the raid.

How does it work?

Dividing a raider’s EP by their GP determines a raider’s Priority. When a piece of loot drops, the player who is interested in it with the highest Priority gets the loot along with the Gear Points the loot is valued at — there is no randomness or rolling in EPGP. This therefore increases the player’s GP, which lowers their priority once the division takes place, putting them below many other players (depending, of course, on the other players’ EP and GP values).

Left unchecked, EP, which grows as raids are attended, and GP, which grows as loot is received, would increase unbounded since neither are reduced inherently in the loot process. Instead of spending points, both simply accumulate. To prevent infinite growth, EPGP uses the concept of decay — at the start of every raid, or every raid week, or any other interval, everyone’s EP and GP are reduced by a fixed percentage. This results in EP climbing quickly at first, but then eventually sloping off towards a natural cap. GP, on the other hand, tends towards zero as it accumulates only when loot is rewarded rather than every raid.

The above is intentionally vague and lacking in specific numbers. This is one of the areas where EPGP is configurable to meet a given guild’s needs, but also where it tends to intimidate users.

  • How much EP does a raider get?
  • What earns EP?
  • How much GP does a piece of loot cost?

The latter question is the easiest to answer; by default, every piece of loot has a fixed cost across all guilds and servers, based on the slot it is used in and the item’s level (aka, ilvl). Deep inside the game, there are formulas used to determine how much of a each stat such as Haste Rating or Intelligence a piece of gear has; this formula is based on the ilvl and slot, so, for instance, an ilvl 359 two handed sword has more strength than an ilvl 359 one handed sword or ilvl 359 ring. EPGP uses this formulation to derive a price for each piece of loot, normalizing around a chest piece with an arbitrary cost of 1,000 GP. Weapons cost more than 1,000 GP since they have a bigger impact than a new chest, whereas rings, carrying smaller item budget, cost less.

EP is more fluid; typically guilds award EP based on attendance, both who is present at the beginning of raid and who is present throughout its duration. Even players on the bench receive EP and thereby loot opportunities when next they are in raid.

EPGP in action

Each guild decides themselves how much EP to award and what to award for, so rather than a complicated explanation, I will use a concrete example and explain how my guild uses it.

Fifteen minutes before raid starts, a decay of 7% occurs. Then an on-time bonus of 1,250 EP is awarded to each member in the raid. Every fifteen minutes thereafter until the end of raid, 300 EP is awarded to anyone in the raid and on standby. Finally, at the end of raid, another 1,250 EP bonus is awarded. The net result is a typical, 3.5 hour night of raiding results in 7,000 EP.Some guilds opt to also award EP when bosses die (with different amounts of EP depending on the farm status of the boss) but we choose to not award the kills themselves.

The values chosen are largely arbitrary; we settled on a 7% decay as it is a decent rate to prevent hoarding as well as to encourage taking loot (since GP will decay at a decent rate). We chose 7,000 EP per raid because it has the mathematical property that, a player with perfect attendance across an infinite number of raids, would cap out at 100,000 EP — the point where a 7% decay equals the EP awarded for the evening (7% of 100,000 is 7,000, of course).

We also choose to award a small, fixed weekly amount of EP for consumables — specifically, raw herbs and fish. This was a new experiment for us as early Cataclysm consumables were extremely expensive until supply grew and guild perks kicked in, this helped us supply flasks and feasts — a significant competitive advantage.

The EPGP system itself is managed via the EPGP addon. Earlier I mentioned that EPGP is transparent; this means, thanks to the addon, any player can see any other player’s standing and priority from within the game. In fact, this addon keeps all EPGP state in-game rather than on an external website. Therefore, it is never a surprise when someone receives loot as any player can, at any time, see other players’ EP, GP, and Priority. Likewise, the addon places the GP cost to every item in its tooltip, so you know the exact price an item would cost by simply mousing over it.

In addition to the EPGP addon itself, there is a third party addon named EPGP Lootmaster. This addon handles the loot process itself, providing very simple push-button distribution and vastly reducing the time it takes to handle the many drops off of the typical 25 man heroic boss. I highly recommend using both addons together for a tremendously smooth and simplified loot process.

Hopefully this has provided a relatively math-free explanation of EPGP. I’ve personally used it for over four years, and while certainly imperfect, it is an excellent combination of transparency, fairness, and efficiency that is suitable for guilds at all levels of progression. Once the initial setup is done, there is very little maintenance and the distribution of loot itself is very quick — important attributes for efficient raiding!

Further resources

EPGP’s website, mailing list, and bug forum
The addon itself
The Lootmaster Addon