Sydera

Spotlight: Loot Council, a New Upgrade Comparison Tool

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If you’ve ever been in the hot seat during a loot decision like I have, you already know that it’s important to assess the relative value of the upgrade for all interested players before you weigh in on who should be awarded the item. What if there were a tool that you could use to research upgrades for all your guild members and compare them to each other? That would be pretty cool, right?

My friend Bonkers of Vek’nilash has just developed such a tool. It’s name is–not surprisingly–Loot Council, and it will help any WoW player investigate the gear from a certain dungeon and decide when to pass, and when to bid for an item.

How to Use Loot Council

Once you get to http://loot-council.appspot.com/, you’ll find that you have a form to fill out. To get the most out of Bonkers’ fantastic creation, put in the names of two or more characters of the same class and spec in your guild, separated by commas. To test out the LC tool, I used the names of Conquest’s three resto druids. Then, select a ranking type (Wowhead is working best at the moment) and a dungeon. I put in Naxxramas Heroic. Some Naxxramas normal stuff may still show up–I think Bonkers is working on that.

What you will get is a list of all the items in Naxx that might be of interest to a resto druid and a summary of the comparative upgrade for each player. As with all generic rankings like Wowhead, it can’t tell how important spirit or intellect is to a particular player. However, I find Loot Council’s suggestions to be helpful, especially when I know that I personally want an item. What it helps me see is whether someone else on my team would benefit from getting it first.

Sample Entry

Here’s what you will see when you scroll down to the items that you’re interested in. Even though I’d like to have this item, it looks like a pass to Burningpaw is in order the first time it drops.
loot-council-example

Why Use the Loot Council Tool?

Either for Loot Council members deciding how to award prizes or for individuals deciding whether to pass on an item or spend dkp, the issue of fairness is very important. I always urge people to research their gear, and this tool lets you do that–and, at the same time, research your friends’ gear. Raiding isn’t just about loot–or, in any case, it shouldn’t be. It’s also about friendships, and sharing is one of the things that helps build those bonds. I think it’s no coincidence that the opening page of the Loot Council tool features Oliver and Otto, Bonkers’ two cats–or, I should say, two greedy little piggies who happen to look like cats, and who also happen to be best friends. Oh, if only WoW raiders could be like that. No matter how much we want the loot, we’ve got to learn to share our kibble.

A Druid’s Reaction to the Wild Growth / Circle of Healing Nerf

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Those of you who keep up with upcoming patch notes and blue posts on the official WoW forums have probably known for quite some time–ever since before Wrath’s release in fact–that both Wild Growth and Circle of Healing were living in the shadow of the nerf bat. A 6-second cooldown has been threatened for both spells since beta testing proved their strength.

Now that the nerf has gone to PTRs, a new wave of complaints has swept over most healing websites. If the comments on Matticus’s recent WoWInsider article are any indication, the nerf to AoE insta-heals draws a passionate response from almost all players, whether they belong to one of the affected classes or not. In fact, what surprises me about the whole discussion is the sheer number of vehement, “L2P nub, don’t spam AoE heals” type retorts. A lot of discipline priests, in particular, seem to feel vindicated by the nerf. On the other side are those that passionately argue against nerfs to any class. I sympathize with this point–such an adjustment to two classes makes us all weaker. When there are less available tools in the toolkit, the game becomes both more difficult and less fun to play.

That said, I find myself having very little personal reaction at this point. Perhaps that’s because I’ve known that Wild Growth spam isn’t a long-term tactic for months now? This is not to say that I’m in support of putting in a 6 second cooldown on Wild Growth and Circle of Healing, just that by now I’ve become accustomed to the idea.

From a certain perspective, this nerf seems necessary. The following series of musings is my attempt to take what I’ve observed through Naxx 10 and 25, Sartharion 10 and 25, and Malygos 25 and try to explain why, from the developers’ perspective, it’s druids’ and priests’ turn to cry.

The State of Healing in Wrath

1. Right now, the risk of dps death during raids is minimal. Healing is relatively strong overall, and three out of the four healing classes have capable raid-healing tools.

2. Right now, the risk of tank death during raids is minimal. Healers can keep up with incoming damage, and tank healers often have time to cast spells on other targets.

3. Most encounters are designed with at least some AoE damage. This kind of damage will always be at least a little challenging for healers because they have to deal with the Interface Boss in order to get heals on multiple targets. However, there is no new Gurtogg Bloodboil yet–AoE damage has not been taken to the kind of extremes we saw in BC.

4. Wrath encounters typically require less healers than BC bosses did. For most guilds, I would take the number that they ran with in BC and subtract one to get their perfect number of healers for a 25-person raid.

5. Smart heals like Chain Heal, Circle of Healing, and Wild Growth are really, really effective. It turns out that (surprise, surprise) a computer is better than a human being at calculating who needs a heal.

6. Mana management is less challenging than most bloggers–including me–thought it would be. It turns out that the level 80 epic gear does a pretty good job of getting people the regen they need, even though some of the old familiar tools (mana oil and chain-potting) are history.

The Behavior of Healers in the Wrath environment

Intelligent players respond to the conditions given them, and the top WoW players will always use a play style that the numbers support. Now, there may be individual differences and preferences, but given free choice, almost all players of the same class and spec will, at the top end of the ability spectrum, make the same decisions. Here’s how raiders are reacting to our current capabilities and to the demands of the current content.

1. Healers are using Wild Growth and Circle of Healing to the utmost. And why not? These two heals do, in fact, make the content much easier. If AoE damage is the challenge (and Blizzard seems determined that it should be), these two spells are the antidote of the moment.

2. Healing has become a competition between healers instead of a mad race to keep people alive. No one is going to die anyway–the content is too easy for that. The best healers are trying to sneak in effective heals against their fellows. Spells like Wild Growth, Circle of Healing, and even the high-HPS glyphed Healing Touch shine in an atmosphere of heavy competition.

3. Healers are not focusing on mana efficiency. When the content is easy and the team can kill a boss quickly, mana efficiency is less relevant. There are no prizes awarded for ending an encounter with 40% mana. The only prize available is for healing output. As such, many players end up healing too much too early and needing someone else’s innervate. This has happened to me a few times, and I’ve been trying to watch it.

4. Druids and priests are, in fact, leaving paladins and shamans behind on the meters. This has only one good effect–that shamans aren’t as necessary any more. I’ve recruited for two different guilds, and the hardest position to hire is that of alliance resto shaman. There just aren’t many out there.

What the Developers Hope the Nerf Will Accomplish

Here is where I really get speculative. The following is my best guess about exactly what kind of “fix” the new 6-second cooldown will be.

1. The nerf will retroactively add difficulty to encounters that guilds have already cleared. Some guilds may even find themselves unable to beat a “farm status” boss. As a result, guilds may stay in the current tier of content longer than they otherwise would. This is good for developers, because it stresses them less to release the next tier in a timely manner.

2. The healing meters will shake out a little differently. The conspiracy-loving part of my brain thinks that it’s “best” for Blizzard if people go back to complaining about resto shamans. After all, they’re far less numerous than priests and druids, at least on alliance side. While most guilds could fill their entire healing roster with priests and druids, I doubt anyone could fill theirs entirely with shamans. It’s a safer class to have at the top of the chart.

3. The management of another cooldown will add back some of the difficulty of playing a druid or priest. The developers want playing a healer to be difficult. If healing is difficult, a guild takes longer to go through a tier of content. For example, let’s take the healing druid. In the good old days of managing 7 second Lifebloom stacks on multiple targets, timing used to be everything. With stacking de-incentivized, I often have only one 9 second triple stack to manage, giving me a lot of freedom. I have a feeling though that now I will be casting Wild Growth every time it’s up. There will be a bit of a return to a fixed spell rotation. I hear many healers threatening to give up their AoE spells entirely, maybe even going as far to spec out of them. I tend to agree with Matticus in thinking that, paradoxically, Circle of Healing and Wild Growth will become more important. We’ll need to actively manage those cooldowns, and the effect of that adjustment period will be to slow progress down.

4. There might be room for an extra healer in a healing team. Circle of Healing and Wild Growth have been such workhorses that the old numbers for a healthy healing squad didn’t make sense any more. This might give a few out of work raid healers something to do. It’s not good for Blizzard if lots of players lose their raid spots.

Am I in Favor of the Nerf?

Personally, no I’m not. And yet, I’m not up in arms about it either. I realize that it hits druids less hard than priests, but I’m not worried about either class’s raid spots. Wild Growth and Circle of Healing are still good spells. Comparatively, I’d say that the Lifebloom nerf of a few months ago was much more devastating than this one.

The addition of a 6 sec cooldown to my best-designed spell is not a happy prospect, and it’s not the kind of thing that makes healing “more fun.” In fact, managing an extra cooldown, especially for druids, who are already managing Lifebloom and Swiftmend, is pretty much anti-fun. I’ve never believed developers’ claims that they want to make healing “more fun.” I don’t think that’s really in their advantage–to really make healing more fun would probably “trivialize” the content as well, forcing them to come out with more content patches on an accelerated timeline. What they might actually do is change our interface to be more “interactive”–and also a ton more difficult to use. I dread this prospect a lot more than any nerf to Wild Growth! Think about the new vehicle interfaces and imagine if you had to heal and target with that! What if all healing were like Malygos Phase 3 or the final boss of the Oculus? As it is, I think the developers recognize that healing, more so than tanking or dps, requires players to modify their interface. I hope they just leave us alone with that and let Grid do what their standard frames can or will not.

Reader Question: How Do I Find a Quality Raiding Guild?

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Recently, reader Solarius wrote in with a question that I found so insightful and thought-provoking that I felt it deserved a whole post in response. In his own words:

I was wondering if you had any advice for players who are looking for a decent raiding guild – I’ve read your post on “How do I break into raiding?”, but there are also considerations, like how to recognize a good guild or know when its recruiting and so on. I remember back during BC when Karazhan just had i’s entrance requirements relaxed, and I had the hardest time finding even a Karazhan guild that didn’t either try to run with greens, or have an established cliquish environment.

While I admit I didn’t improve my equipment to the upmost (enchantments and non-green gems being the cardinal sins), I tried my best to be a better raider: I ran PuG Heroics for equipment upgrades, made and offered potions and elixirs, learned how to maximize my DPS rotations, and read up on instance encounters. I still never really made it past PuGing Karazhan.

Since you were writing about guild management and recruitment, I hoped you could cover the other end of the spectrum. As you’ve mentioned before, not everyone advertises on Trade (and I’ve regretted the three times I took those blind offers), the Realm forums can be sketchy, and sites like WoWJutsu are impersonal and lack contact information.

Solarius is absolutely right in that the question of finding a guild has two sides. Yes, players need to do everything that they can to “sell” themselves to the organization they would like to join. There is plenty of information available in the blogosphere, both on this site and elsewhere, about how to apply to a guild. However, how does a player find a guild worth applying to?

I’ve recently changed guilds myself, and you might say that I had an insider’s tip as to where to go, as I’m now raiding with Matticus (who, as I’ve said, is every bit as great a GM as he is a boss). However, I am confident that, if I had to find a guild with no personal connection whatsoever to me, I think I could sort the good from the bad. What would be my plan of attack, and even more importantly, what decisions would I have to make?

If you’re looking for a new guild, consider following these ten steps to virtual health, happiness, and phat loots.

1. Decide whether you want to stay on your current server.

Personal circumstances will probably decide this one for you. If there will be a lot of drama involved when you leave your current guild, a server jump can be a good way to get a fresh start. However, if you have friends and relatives on your server, and they’re not willing to move with you, you may want to stay. In many cases, this decision will be impacted by the overall health of raiding guilds on your server. If there are many active guilds that you wouldn’t mind joining, it could be a good idea to stick around the neighborhood. If your server’s too quiet, or if your faction is outnumbered or always loses battlegrounds, you may be happier with a change of scene.

2. Place advertisements.

What you’re doing is fishing for responses from guilds who are actively looking. If you’re staying on your own realm, make a post about yourself on your realm forum. Be aware that these posts can draw the trolls, but they will get your name out there. However, for a fairly troll-free place to fish, go to the Alliance or Horde Guild Recruitment Forums and place a thoughtful ad about yourself. Quality guilds will search these almost daily when they’re looking for new blood. I found Trinia, an awesome warlock and one of my favorite people in Conquest, that way. Watch to see who responds to your ad, and then research their organization before you take the next step.

3. Observe how your prospective guild behaves.

If you’re staying on your own server, do watch that Trade Chat. Sometimes really good organizations will advertise that way. Write their names down, and whisper the recruiter for more information. If you’re thinking of a guild on another server, make an alt and stand in a major city for a while. Are they an active presence on the server? If so, do they contribute in a positive or negative way? This is far easier to do on your own server, where you are in effect listening all the time to how other guilds behave. If the guild recruits in trade, ask to talk to someone. That will be your best measure of what the guild is really like. I must admit, I judge guilds by their members, particularly their public interactions with others. Just one person spamming trade with obscenities will color my opinion of the whole group.

4. When a guild interviews you, interview them right back.

If you’re invited to chat or get on vent with a guild recruiter, ask questions. It’s not just about “auditioning” for this new person and proving how great you are. This is your chance to quiz them on the issues that are important to you. How do they distribute loot? How do longtime members treat new people? Is there any longstanding guild drama? What do they do when problems arise? These are tough questions, and you’ll be listening carefully to your recruiter’s responses. If she’s being evasive, take it as a warning sign. This interview is your opportunity to find out whatever you want to know–use it wisely.

5. E-stalk your new guild.

Before you accept a g-invite, take advantage of any and all public information about them. Go to their website, and, if you can, make an account there. Read the whole thing if they will let you. If they are well-organized, the site will have at least some content. Raiding guilds tend to have fairly active websites. Watch for too much activity however. All guilds have drama, but beware all-out insult fests.

It probably already occurred to you to check a guild’s progress on Wowjutsu. However, I want you to go with a critical eye. Go through all the listings and find out what their gear distribution is like. How many players are getting geared up? Is there a lot of competition for your class and role? Do the officers seem to be getting everything? Wowjutsu doesn’t track everything, but you can pretty much count on guilds queueing up their loot from first boss kills. If the loot distribution is fair, you will see a lot of different names. In addition, Wowjutsu lets you see the grayed out names of players who have recently left the organization. A high proportion of these can indicate that your prospective guild has lost many members and is trying to rebuild.

In addition to the guild’s own website and Wowjutsu, I urge you to go to the guild’s realm forum and see how other guilds respond to them there. They probably have a recruitment thread up, and there are probably responses from players with other guild tags. If they have a good rep on the server, most of this commentary will be positive. If your prospective guild is comprised of a bunch of ninja asshats, the server forums might just clue you in.

6. Go on a trial run if you can.

A really good organization will let you try out–and even take loot. They will be proud of what they have to offer. Particularly if you’re on the same server, pug a 10-man with some of their members. If you like the personalities of the people you run with, talk to them more in-depth about the guild. Most people will be honest with you, and you’ll get to see their perspective on the good and bad features of the guild.

Remember, accepting a g-invite is not a lifetime commitment. If you’re unhappy, you owe it to yourself to seek your bliss elsewhere. Even if you server hop, you can change guilds again in a month. I am all for loyalty to an organization, but be sure it is a guild that deserves your allegiance. Be fair to your guild, and don’t expect perfection, but don’t be a martyr either. Happy hunting!

Raid Frustrations: Malygos

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So there he is, a giant dragon. He’s pretty, isn’t he? But guess what–this dragon isn’t your cute and cuddly friend. He’s insane, and he wants to eat you, and probably the whole universe too.

Welcome to heroic Malygos–the best (and worst) boss so far in Wrath of the Lich King.

On Monday night, Conquest spent three hours tackling this internet dragon, and what follows is my post-raid analysis.

Why Malygos is a great fight

1. The boss and his instance are absolutely beautiful. It reminds me of Archimonde in that way. I find myself wanting to take screen caps of the action, particularly in phase one.

2. This is a dragon boss that broke out of the ground phase / air phase model that we’re familiar with from Nightbane, Felmyst, and Sapphiron. There’s only so many times dragons can do that before they become utterly predictable.

3. This is a fight that challenges healers on every skill they have–throughput, mana management, movement, and, in particular, targeting.

4. The fight is genuinely difficult, unlike the current incarnation of Naxxramas or Obsidian Sanctum (cleared the standard method, with the three drakes killed ahead of the boss). I would place it’s difficulty level around that of Magtheridon before the last nerfs to that boss, which makes it exactly right as the keystone of the initial tier of Wrath raiding.

5. Phase 1 and 2. These phases are examples of great boss design. The Beserk timer puts emphasis on dps, and the amount of movement and chaos is enough to be difficult without being totally frustrating. For relative difficulty, think movement in Gruul, not movement in Archimonde. Also, the melee dps gets to ride flying skateboards in Phase 2. Now, tell me that’s not the coolest thing ever.

Why Malygos is a terrible fight

1. Phase 3. Combat on dragonback is a wonderful idea, but both here and in the Oculus, execution by Blizzard is poor. In the Oculus, at least, there are ledges to serve as reference points. However, in Malygos’ uniform 3D space, there are no markers for distance or even relative height except the dragon himself. Even guidelines like “be head height with the dragon” are not error proof. Healing range in this 3D space is more challenging than it ought to be. In addition, I believe that a count of combo points needs to display right there on the vehicle bar. Healers are not used to thinking in combos–I think counting them for us would be the least Blizzard could do.

2. Phase 3 interface. Just like the rest of Wow’s standard interface, it’s all right for dps but practically unusable for healing. If this is what they mean by making healing “more dynamic,” no thank you. It’s well known that healers see our interface, not the encounters. If that interface is difficult to use or does not show enough information, our job is frustrating at best.

3. Phase 3 interface v. Grid. This is mostly a personal complaint. Because the dragons are vehicles, don’t expect to target them through normal means. I was having to physically click on teammates in the air. I’m told that I should use X-perl raid frames for this fight, or just the standard ones, because they will allow me to click target on people’s health bars. That won’t solve the range issue–I will still have to be moving around to find my groupmates in space. However, the issue of having to actually see them will disappear.

Tips for Healers

We did this fight with 6 healers, which is probably the right number for us until phase 3, where we will want more people to convert over to healing once we’re all on dragons. In phase 1 and 2, we scrambled to output enough healing and to manage mana. Here are my suggestions for healers trying this fight.

1. Privilege throughput over mana efficiency. For druids, make sure the tank has all of your hots at all times. Use Wild Growth in between tank refreshes. I alternated between targeting the MT, a select dps, and myself to hit the largest number of people.

2. Heal like mad during vortexes. If you happen to be a tree, just spam that Wild Growth or Rejuvenation and Swiftmend. When I looked at wws last night, it seemed that Rejuv actually did a lot in vortex phase even though it only targeted one person at a time. For priests, CoH seems the way to go, or else Renew. Paladins and Shamans are unfortunately out of luck here.

3. Be ready to move. Use your minimap–which looks just like a compass–to orient yourself. Anticipate your movements before you have to go. Particularly in Phase 1, you’ve got to avoid that nasty Dragon Breath. I died to this on the first attempt but then figured it out. Dragon Butt good, Dragon Head bad.

4. If you have two mana restore abilities, like potion and shadowfiend or potion and innervate, use one in mid-Phase 1 and one in mid-Phase 2. You will have a few seconds to regen at the end of Phase 1, so as Malygos approaches 50%, don’t pot.

5. It’s all right to blow through your mana in phase 2. In fact, keep everyone up at all costs. Don’t be conservative here. AoE heal, pop your cooldowns, innervate yourself–use it all. It won’t matter that you’re dry by the end–phase 3 is on dragonback.

6. Stay alive. Phase 2 is going to challenge priests and druids. When the Scions target you with Arcane Barrage, your health bar will disappear fast. Do what you can–shield, healthstone, etc–to keep yourself alive. No guarantees that your teammates will save you, or even notice that you’re being targeted. Grid doesn’t seem to be able to pick up the ability, so it’s not a situation like Rage Winterchill or Kel’Thuzad where you will receive big heals from your fellows to counter the effect.

And beyond that, good luck. I expect Conquest to beat this encounter in 1-2 weeks–just as soon as we can overcome the Interface Boss of Phase 3.

Loot Council: First Raid

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Monday night was Conquest’s first mostly-guild Naxx 25, and we premiered our Loot Council system for guildies and pugs alike. I think that we successfully distributed loot in a fair way, but I have to say that it added to the tension factor of raiding for me.

First, the rules for players. At the outset of the run, I explained the following.

When useful loot drops, players type one of the following things in raid chat. Interested means that the player wants to be considered for the item right now. Pass means that it’s a good item for the player, but he or she wants others to have it first. If no one is interested, the item will go to a person who passed. If no one has a use for the item, it will be disenchanted. Any questions about the process should be dealt with in whispers.

The members, thus, play a bigger role in our Loot Council than they might in other guilds–they have a hand at deciding when to take something and when to share. However, the big deliberations happen in Loot Council chat. For those of you who might be interested, here’s what happens behind closed doors.

Loot Council Deliberations

1. First, we inspect the interested players and evaluate the relative value of the upgrade. We type our opinions in chat.
2. Second, we list out the number of items the player has already received that night.
3. We determine the use value for the raid–as in, do we need this item on our tank/healer so we don’t all die?
4. We consider performance on bosses.

I felt good about all but one case last night. When you’re debating between equals, sometimes it doesn’t matter who it goes to–the other person will get the next thing, after all. However, our LC is not all in agreement about what to do about pickup raiders and trials. My opinion is that we should try to give puggers and trials a prize if we can. There are special cases, as in when we need to gear our tanks in order to live through the content, but in general, I like to consider pickup raiders under the same criteria as everyone else. In the case of trials, I would give them more consideration than our own raiders–if they’re working hard for a spot, they should get a prize, even if it ends up being a consolation prize when we ultimately do not invite them to our guild.

The only other case that took us some time was tank loot. I have a strong desire to see the tanks work out their drops among themselves. The warrior tanks of Collateral Damage, my former guild, did that in T6 and it was a great benefit to the guild as a whole. I’d like to see our tanking corps be somewhat independent–and to build stronger relationships with each other through sharing the loot. That sounds very kindergarden doesn’t it? But so much of a guild’s success depends on trust among members.

On Trust

I think that trust is the key concept to talk about when we’re doing Loot Council. I used to administer an Ep/Gp system, and believe me, the responsibility is much greater when serving on a Loot Council. With Ep/Gp, the top person on the list got the item and that was it–there was little for the system administrator to do other than read the list. For me personally, being part of the Loot Council is a trial in every sense of the word. I want to be a fair and trustworthy person. Sure, I want my share of the loot–but only what should go to me, and not a bit more. As such, I’m instituting a personal policy of frequent passing. For example, last night I would have been awarded an awesome mace had I not passed–I did so, not because the upgrade wasn’t great for me, but because the other player had received less items that night.

However, the bigger challenge is keeping my mouth when I’m supposed to. If I have a personal failing, it’s giving my own opinion rather insistently, whether people ask for it or not. I also tend to go on crusade when I believe that I am right, or even worse, when I believe that an injustice is being committed. However, I’ve got to learn to keep to the rules. I wrote the Loot Council policy myself, so I know why I’m not supposed to weigh in on my own or Briolante’s loot. However, it gets tricky when I just want to give useful information–which I might have, as I actively research healing gear for the blog. I’m not voting on my own loot or tank loot, of course, but I have to draw that fine line between informing and meddling. I think the key here is going to be trust. Do I trust the other members of the Loot Council to give all the tanks and healers a fair shake? I guess I’m going to have to.

However, trust is earned. All of us–me, and the other members of the Loot Council–are going to have to work incredibly hard to maintain balance. We all have friendships and allegiances, as well as personal desires. We just have to learn to keep them out of LC chat.