Sydera

Is Lifebloom Obsolete? Another Look at Resto Druids in 3.0

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Restoration druids have been through the wringer of late, and many otherwise content stalks of broccoli, me included, have even thought of rerolling in the face of severe nerfs to Lifebloom and Flourish. However, the developers have, as it were, turned over a new leaf (yuk yuk yuk) and have modified both Wild Growth (the new Flourish) and Nourish to make them more attractive to the Restos of Wrath. This article takes a look at healing druids now, as of October 2, and speculates about our future as competitive PvE raiders.

First, the Nerfs

What was wrong with druids, you ask? After being strong early in Beta and getting one of the things we’ve always wanted, an AoE heal, Restoration druids got hit up one branch and down the other with a big, nasty nerf bat. Both Wild Growth and Lifebloom, two spells that druids had planned to put in heavy rotation for the expansion, received reductions to their healing done and had their mana cost raised. We were, however, left with a strong Regrowth, and a particularly overpowered glyph which increased the effectiveness of the initial burst heal by 50% if the Regrowth HoT effect were still on the target. The Regrowth glyph has, incidentally, been nerfed as predicted to a 20% bonus, and to add insult to injury, build 9194 also included a nerf to Nature’s Splendor, reducing the duration of a talented Lifebloom to 9 sec. instead of 10. For another perspective on the druid nerfs and buffs, take a look at Phaelia’s post on Resto4Life–as always, Phae has an interesting–and beautifully illustrated–take on things.

The nerfs brought out many high-quality posters to the Beta forums, many of whom posted hard numbers from raid encounters in Beta. I even joined in the pleas to Ghostcrawler to re-evaluate the druid class for effectiveness in end-game raiding. GC reassured forum posters time and time again that druids would be fine for 5-mans or entry level raids, but I remained worried. My focus has never been entry-level or casual content. I want to be competitive in 25-man raiding, and I want to remain strong as my guild progresses through tiers of content. I’m not the best druid healer out there (in my opinion, that’s Bonkers, CD’s other tree and my personal hero), but I do have the skills to handle a 5-man or a heroic even if my class is not optimized for it. I don’t need any new talents for 5-mans–I’d like those abilities to help me in the more difficult raid environment. As the healing lead of a raiding guild, I always want to see my team make smart choices in terms of play and rostering. I have to admit, I did think about rerolling, and I took a serious look at shamans, pallies, and priests in Beta. For what it’s worth, priest is looking very good to me at the moment, as are shamans, despite the mana issues. I would–and I still will–change mains if it turns out that taking a restoration druid or two to endgame raids handicaps the group. I do have a paladin at 70 now, and so that might be a more realistic option for me than for others.

The Light at the End of the Tunnel

However, before I could log into my 20-something baby shammy and take her for a spin in Ashenvale, Ghostcrawler made another series of posts. First, on October 1, there was hope:

We are going to “run the numbers” again on Wild Growth and Nourish. What I mean by that is we’ll do some tests and compare them to similar heals and to other druid spells.

Wild Growth was nerfed pretty hard and I have some confidence that we can bring it up, though probably not as high as it was before. We’ll have to see about Nourish.

We don’t want to mess with Regrowth much more since it is now a button that seems worth pushing. We’re standing by our Lifebloom changes for now. It just felt like the solution to every healing situation that druids encountered. I suspect druids will still use it in its current form, but we’ll see.

Sorry I can’t offer anything more concrete than that. Making promises until I actually see the changes made can be pretty dangerous and just ends up frustrating the community in those situations where we can’t deliver.

And then, yesterday, a promise:

Here are the changes we’re making next patch. See how they feel.

Wild Growth: Coefficient and healing increased. Mana cost decreased. Cost should be about the same as Circle of Healing. It doesn’t heal instantly, but will heal for about double what CoH does over its duration.

Nourish: Reduced mana cost by somewhere between 15 and 20%. This is supposed to be your Flash Heal, but we recognize that it doesn’t have the same versatility — you can’t just drop one on a wounded rogue or something since you need the hot up first. Hence the lower price.

Druids have quite an arsenal of healing spells now, and it can be tricky to find niches for all of them. 🙂

I was very happy to hear this news, and I was particularly pleased that it came from Ghostcrawler. It has long been my opinion that this particular blue poster is a class act. She’s been fairly attentive to restoration druids, even while assuring us–up until last night–that our healing was just fine, even strong, while the numbers clearly said otherwise. I don’t think the devs are out to get us, by any means–I just think that misdirection and even a little truth-obscuring is part of the jobs. “Class balance” is mysterious, and the game company naturally has different priorities from the players. In any case, here’s my reactions to the promised changes to Wild Growth and Nourish.

1. Relief

I do think druids will be more effective now. If the change is significant, a Wild Growth build will become more attractive than a Dreamstate build at 80. This is a good thing, because I really didn’t want to have to dip that far into Balance. I like keeping the feel of my character consistent, and I’ve been 61 resto for several months. As for Nourish, well, I can see a use for an improved Nourish as a tank heal. If I am maintaining a now cripplingly expensive Lifebloom stack on the tank, I may choose Nourish over Regrowth in a situation where I need the extra half second in order to be able to refresh Lifebloom on time.

2. Puzzlement

Ghostcrawler stated that Blizzard stands by the nerf to Lifebloom, although her language leaves the possibility of future revision open. The post seems to recognize that the nerf was severe. “I suspect that druids will still use [Lifebloom] in its current form” is a very different statement from “You will need to use Lifebloom” or even “You will still cast Lifebloom.” Nuance is very key here. For myself, I am waiting for theorycrafters–and my own experience in raids–to tell me whether Lifebloom is now worth the cost. Most Beta forum posters agree that even triple-stacked, it heals for paltry amounts compared to max-level tanks’ health pools. And this is early in the raiding game–I’m waiting to see how the numbers work out when we get beyond entry-level raids.

Does Lifebloom Have a Future?

This is the question on my mind as I ponder my post 3.0 spell rotation. Lifebloom has defined the life of a druid in BC. At lower levels of +heal it was quite weak, and I know I certainly relied on Healing Touch back when I was in blues and running Heroic Mech almost every night so Briolante could get his Sun-Eater (it took 14 runs, by the way). However, in Karazhan and beyond, I’ve had to tune my whole playstyle around casting and recasting this one spell. Because of the nature of the stacks, I have learned to time seven seconds in my head with stunning accuracy. I can feel the seven-second interval as it passes, just as I can feel the 1.5 second GCD (and yes, haste messes with my internal timing and as such, gets on my left nerve). No other healer is on quite this strict a clock.

The numbers from Beta testers indicate that for Lifebloom to retain any value, we will need to stack it on less players (perhaps just the main tank) and refresh it with precision timing, i.e. after it has gone through its maximum number of ticks. This spell is much easier to use with a little slop permitted in the timing. Right now, there are no severe mana penalties for refreshing a stack early, and even post 3.0, early will still be better than late. However, druid healers are going to have to get much, much better at timing their refreshes. Right now, we’ve got bigger fish to fry, and little things like moving out of the way of AoE’s deserve more of our attention than precise timing on Lifebloom refreshes. So yes, if druids persist in using Lifebloom, a little L2P will be in effect. We will have a particularly difficult time at 70 if we choose Wild Growth over Nature’s Splendor. That’s not bad in itself, but it’s not exactly “fun” either. In fact, Blizzard is designing away from precision timing for tanks, who have had it pretty bad in BC where that’s concerned (Shear, anyone?). I am puzzled, then, as to why they would want to restrict their healers’ spell choices more? I’m not sure that it’s all healers though–somehow I think it’s just the Vegetables.

So, Are They Going to Buff Lifebloom?

I’m going to disagree with Phaelia here and say no. I think they’re pretty determined to marginalize Lifebloom, or else, to make a Lifebloom stack the balancing point for a druid’s mana. Regardless of what’s said by Ghostcrawler and others, Lifebloom has only been problematic in PvP. In PvE, it was our bread-and-butter spell only because it had to be recast so often. That seems to have been an intentional part of the design. Now, I’m guessing that Blizzard regrets putting in the stacking mechanism. If I were the devs, I might strengthen Lifebloom considerably and stop it from stacking or blooming–I would make it an instant-tick Rejuvenation and nothing more. No shenanigans when you dispel it either! If you want to free your trees to cast other things while still using Lifebloom, this is the way to do it. Take us off the dreaded seven-second timer! (Hear, hear)

If a Tree Falls in the Forest . . .

I will say that I am glad that Resto is getting a little attention from Ghostcrawler. I believe that Blizzard has the best intentions as far as game balance is concerned, except that they might be overly stubborn about keeping mechanics for PvE and PvP the same. However, my experience from BC tells me that sometimes broken specs stay broken for months and years. Up until the Wrath Alpha, for instance, blue posters insisted that druids did not need an out of combat rez, even though it would certainly not factor into game balance. The only thing an out of combat rez does is make it easier for players to find groups and for healers to care for those groups. Boss fights are not affected at all, and the effects on pvp are marginal at best. The devs defended an aspect of design that was, in fact, just a punishment for hybrids. Moreover, as someone who’s played both Moonkin and Retribution Paladin, I know what it’s like to play an underdog character. There’s a very good reason I raised my warlock to max level–it’s nice to have a character in the lineup that gets a lot of development love. She’s my backup plan, just in case both Resto druids and Holy pallies become unplayable. I had, up until this point, though that Blizzard rather liked Resto druids. At least now, even with the nerfs, we are receiving some attention. However, I urge the Beta community to post, post, post, and to back up their complaints and suggestions with numbers when they can. Of course, that suggestion comes with the caveat that posters should always be respectful to the blue posters whose attention they covet and avoid out and out panicking or QQ. There is evidence that we have Ghostcrawler’s ear–so keep that constructive feedback rolling in.

Build Your Own Guild Part 5: Membership

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Once you decide what kind of organization your guild is going to be, sketch out rules and policies, and design a leadership structure, you are ready to build up your membership. Ideally, if you have an ambition to start a brand-new guild, you already have a stalwart band of friends and associates to sign your charter. I would go so far as to say that it’s essential to start any new organization with at least a couple of members–it will be extremely hard for just one person to follow the recommendations I’m going to make in this.

1. Get the Word Out

I hate to break it to you, but a guild of one–or even ten–isn’t going to be able to accomplish much. Ideally, you need to bring in a lot of people quickly. How can you do this with a new organization? If I were starting from scratch, I would do the following four things. This set of tips assumes that you want to muster your troops right now, ahead of the expansion.

a. Go through your entire friends list and send everyone a note about your new guild.
b. Advertise on your realm forum and bump it once per day.
c. Start pugging instances obsessively and talking about your guild to everyone you meet.
d. Sponsor and lead open events, like a pug Karazhan, or for the ambitious or more experienced, ZA bear runs, Magtheridon or even Hyjal. The events you lead depend on your level of experience in the current content and the number of members you have at startup.

At this early stage, you may choose not to have an application process and may invite all who are interested. This is not a bad idea when you’re getting off the ground, but it could make raiding difficult later. It’s hard to get people to apply to an organization that doesn’t have a track record, but some people will take a chance if they’re offered a spot in a more informal manner. I advise you to find a middle way and only invite players you or another officer have had a conversation with. You want them to know ahead of time what kind of organization they are joining.

It bears mentioning, also, that prospective members will judge your guild by your behavior and the behavior of your officers. Now is the time to watch everything you say and do on your server–make sure that you reflect your guild’s values in how you treat other players. Now is NOT the time to spam trade channel.

2. Get Friendly With Other Guilds

Alliances between guilds can be formed on the basis of just a few friendly words passed back and forth. My current, very successful guild began when one of our tanks saved one of our healers from certain death in Blade’s Edge Mountains. They got to talking and found that they were both officers in Karazhan guilds with the ambition of moving on to 25-mans. At that moment, the seeds of an alliance were sown.

Alliances and cross-guild friendships have many different uses. You may want to partner up with another small guild at some point and run instances together, even if you keep your two guilds separate. Friends in other–ideally more progressed–guilds can be a source of help and information. For example, many members of Collateral Damage have friends in Cohors Praetoria, a more progressed guild on our server. The lovely people of CP have sold us Hearts of Darkness for cheap and have advised us on many boss fights as we’ve gone through T6 a few months later than they did. Some of their players have even offered to fill spaces in our runs if we need them. In return, CP has used our raid ID at least once to get an Illidan kill without farming the whole instance. These kinds of cross-guild arrangements are golden–they are mutually beneficial, and they tend to leave everyone with a good feeling about the virtual community. In addition, at times we’ve shared information about recruits, particularly about certain bad apples. Ideally, if one raiding guild on your server recruits and later /gkicks a whiny, greedy player, their recruiting officer will inform other guilds about it. Sometimes it’s difficult to tell what a player will be like from an application alone.

I urge you, as a prospective GM, to open a line of dialogue to the recruiting officers of other guilds on your sever. It’s a recruiting officer’s job to talk to people–if this person is halfway competent, he or she will be happy to have a conversation with you. Something I’ve done in the past, whether or not I knew much about the guilds in question, was to refer good applicants that were not right for my guild, either because they were not prepared for T6 or because we didn’t have space, to other guilds on the server that happened to be recruiting. I judged these guilds based on their ads and on the players that I knew, and have referred people to the ones that seem like class acts. Especially with the changes leading up to the expansion, there are enough players to go around for everyone. If you get to know some recruiting officers, they will probably be glad to help a new guild out. Established guilds can’t take anyone and everyone who comes their way. I know CD can’t even take all of the good applications. I always try to help anyone who applies to find a new guild home, when I can. If I knew of an enthusiastic new guild that was trying to build itself up, I would certainly point people that way. In turn, I know that many of Collateral Damage’s players have filled spots in other guilds’ T4 and T5 runs when particular classes are needed. If you reach out to others–particularly players that you know are classy, friendly individuals–people will most likely support you.

3. Recruit Creatively

Once you get a few members on the roster, you can fine-tune your recruiting a bit. In order to find players to fill specific roles, follow the 10-step guide I wrote on this type of recruiting. The guide assumes that you already have an existing player base, so you may have to adjust some of the advice to suit the needs of your brand-new guild.

What Do I Do if I Want to Start Once the Expansion Comes Out?

It may have occurred to you that most of the advice in this article applies to those who want to get their guild off the ground ahead of the expansion. It is true that the time is running short, and that you may prefer to start building a membership base during the leveling phase of Wrath. That approach has a set of advantages.

1. Many players may return to the game at that time, and some of those will be free agents.
2. It’s easier to leave a guild during a leveling phase than during a raiding phase, so some raiders will suddenly be free once Wrath hits.
3. Expansions in general are a time of change–some old guilds will implode when it hits, leaving their raiders homeless.
4. Some guilds will downsize to 10-man content, and some of their players will leave.

It sounds great, right? The only drawback to starting your recruiting drive when Wrath hits is that with everyone leveling at the same time, you may not be able to distinguish the kind of player that you want from the herd. If you pick up lots of players as they level, it will be hard to tell who will be able to make a commitment to raiding. This is in some sense an unavoidable problem for a new guild. My advice is to plan for continuous recruiting. Bring in more people than you think you will need, and sort out the difference between raiders and non-raiders once you actually start tackling 10 or 25 man content in the expansion. And yes, if you do general recruiting early in the expansion you may have to draw some distinctions in your guild roster between raiders and non-raiders, but that, dear readers, is a topic for a different entry in the series.

Happy recruiting!

The Dreamstate Special: Hybrid Builds for 3.0.2

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This article is a follow-up to my previous discussion of the most workable pure healing talent builds for druids once patch 3.0.something hits live servers. There’s been some speculation in my guild that the big day will be Tuesday, but I would personally be surprised–I don’t think the classes are in balance yet.

Today I’m going to speculate about the future of Dreamstate builds, and I’m writing particularly in response to Bonkers’s question about Dreamstate in the comments for my last article. Bonkers is actually my co-resto druid in Collateral Damage, and he’s usually right about all things druidic.

Dreamstate Basics:

The Dreamstate build takes its name from one particularly great talent in the Balance, not Restoration, talent tree, but it is nonetheless a healing build. Yet, in its BC form, the build did not include Tree of Life, which most have come to think of by now as a spec-defining talent. In the early days of Burning Crusade, Dreamstate builds had a solid advantage over Tree of Life builds. In fact, Syd’s original talent build for 5-mans in BC was a Dreamstate-plus build that dipped all the way down to Moonkin form before picking up the early talents in Restoration. Dreamstate, however, was strong early on mostly because Tree of Life Builds were weak. The reason was that Lifebloom in its original state did not stack properly–only the first application received a bonus from + heal. The Dreamstate druid did in fact use Lifebloom, generally a single stack, but most of her healing was done with Healing Touch, alternating Rank 4 and max rank.

A Dreamstate druid healed like a holy priest, constantly casting and canceling that big heal and weaving it in with hots. Besides the mana regen and the access to healing touch, the other attraction to a Dreamstate build for BC was increased mobility. The tree of life 20% snare was and is a big pain in the bark for certain fights. “Move out of the bad stuff,” in fact, is the most often-heard raid instruction for Tier 6 content. I don’t know Sunwell encounters first-hand, but from what I’ve read, being at the right place at the right time continues to be key. Tree form waddles rather than runs, and with weaker Lifebloom in early BC, this was a deadly combination. In the current state of Lifebloom–strong, and properly stacking–druids do fine moving around. My Lifebloom is strong enough so that I don’t have to worry so much about AoE–I just stack it on myself and move at my pace. I probably take a tick or so of damage from AoE effects in a fight like Illidari Council, but I survive it very well. Right now, the only fight that I do out of tree form is Archimonde, and that is mostly because I’m assigned to decurse.

For Wrath, and for the upcoming patch 3.0 Dreamstate and Tree of Life will be greatly different from what we’ve used to. Tree of Life has essentially been updated to include some of the advantages a Dreamstate healer used to have. A tree gains access to most of her useful spells, including Healing Touch and Remove Curse, and the snare will go away. The tree bonus now is all about efficiency and power–with the new, expensive Lifebloom, the reduction from Tree Form becomes quite significant, and the Master Shapeshifter talent adds to the healing power of the tree as well.

My assumption, initially, was that Dreamstate had gone the way of the Dodo and that the new must-have talent in Balance was Nature’s Splendor. However, trusting Bonkers to be on the right track, I took a Dreamstate build in beta last night on Syddera, my level 70 clone on Northrend. I took her through about half a level, running around with my favorite warrior, newly fury-specced, and alternately healed and dpsed. And let me tell you, we were a leveling machine–there was no stopping, no eating, no drinking–only killing things very very fast. I’m convinced that Dreamstate is the right leveling build now.

Dreamstate at 70 (28/0/33)

This is quite different from the old Dreamstate builds, mostly because Dreamstate has moved to a lower tier of the Balance tree, and Balance has been altered to include many more resto-friendly talents at the top. Despite such a significant investment in Balance, this really is mostly a healing build. I only picked up DPS talents when I had to to get to the next tier. With this build, I’m planning on healing instances as well as questing with a buddy. For solo questing with instance possibilities, I might choose Starlight Wrath instead of Genesis in Tier 1.

As a side bonus, this build picks up Insect Swarm, which has always been quite useful, and which has now moved so far down the tree that healing trees won’t have it. I don’t use this talent much for leveling–Briolante, my afore-mentioned warrior leveling partner, kills things too fast for it to matter. However, Insect Swarm shines in raids and instances.

Notice also that in Restoration, I DID NOT pick up Natural Shapeshifter or Master Shapeshifter. This build, at 70, stays in caster form the entire time (which for me is a huge bonus). Dreamstate is meant to offset the greater efficiency of the tree for healing, and in any case, you don’t even HAVE Tree of Life form until you get to 80.

Dreamstate at 80 (28/0/43)

I also played around with a prospective Wild Growth-Nature’s Splendor build yesterday on my level 80 premade druid, a hunka hunka manly night elf I’ve named Sydd (creative, I know). After I got rid of his horrible hairstyle and shaved off his scraggly beard, I went with Briolante to the forest below Dalaran and we found an enormous elite–a big robot-looking dude, like something straight out of a Miyazaki film. We spent 5 minutes or so slowly killing him so that I could test my mana regen. It’s bad news folks. A triple-stack Lifebloom and a Rejuvenation will drain your mana bar slowly but surely. In live, I cast something every GCD and use less mana. I didn’t notice mana problems on Syd at 70 in beta either for damage or healing, but even in gear with 600 or so spirit, my premade druid has issues. In fact, we had to try the elite twice–I simply wasn’t able to stay in mana if I remained in caster form and helped dps. On live, Brio and I have taken down many elites that way, and I was disappointed at my performance in beta. To kill that elite, I had to stay in tree, use a minimal cast rotation, and use my Innervate. Guess what folks? Innervate only filled half the mana bar with that level of gear. I realize that my mana regen will be much better than the premade druid’s–at 70, Beta Syd’s regen is already higher than Premade Sydd’s. However, most people will probably start out raiding with stats equal to–or even weaker than–the premade characters.’ My guess is that druids are really, really going to have to watch their mana for Wrath raiding.

As a consequence, I think Dreamstate builds will be a viable alternative at 80. Many of the talents in the highest tiers of the Resto tree are looking comparatively underpowered, and with the more generic gear of Wrath, we’ll always have huge amounts of intellect to make Dreamstate work properly. We might see a repeat situation of early BC, where Dreamstate seems strong only because deep Resto is weak.

For my level-80 Dreamstate build, I’ve chosen to get Tree of Life. I was impressed with the mana efficiency difference at 80 between using tree and not. I figure the armor bonus is so minor as to not be worth noticing from Improved Tree of Life, so what you’re missing out on is really just a portion of the spirit-based bonus to your spellpower. Notice also that you will have to respec at level 80–you can’t just continue down the Dreamstate path you’ve started at 70. A Dreamstate druid at 80 really NEEDS Natural Shapeshifter–you will still be shifting out to caster from time to time if Insect Swarm is important for the fight. It’s ironic that at 80, the only healing druid who shifts mid-fight will be a Dreamstate build. I have also set up my Balance talents a little differently for level 80 to be more raid-friendly.

Conclusions:

My recommendation for level 80 is as follows. For 25-man guilds with two Restoration druids, one should take Dreamstate and the other a Nature’s Splendor/Wild Growth build. Okay Bonkers, so you can take Dreamstate and use your Innervate on me . . . kidding. From what I’ve observed in the past, diversity of skills strengthens large raid groups. For 10-man guilds, I would take the Dreamstate build for best mana management, even though it does not contain Living Seed or full points in Improved Tree of Life. I think that at the lower gear levels, Dreamstate will give you a little leeway with mana. Heck, we may all take Dreamstate builds to get a gentler adjustment to the strict mana management conditions of Wrath.

Build Your Own Guild Part 4: Leadership

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If you can, dear readers, stretch your reflective faculties for a moment and recall the first article in the Build Your Own Guild series, in which I urged future GMs to start forming an officer corps. This entry will delve a little deeper into the question of leadership and show you how to construct and maintain your guild’s hierarchy. The principal lesson here is delegate, delegate, DELEGATE! This article will show you how officers and GMs work together to govern the unique virtual organizations we so casually refer to as guilds.

History Lesson: Getting Medieval

I would like to meditate for a moment on the word “guild” and its history, as I think its origins are rather instructive for MMO players. A guild, in the medieval sense of the word, is an association of tradesmen, artists, or craftsmen. Guilds oversee the production and distribution of material goods, and they regulate both practitioners of a trade and the larger market in which that type of product is bought and sold. My favorite guild example dates to cinquecento Italy. Imagine Renaissance Venice, her canals a-stink with the smells of a thriving fishing industry, her now-white palazzi ablaze with murals in every color of the rainbow. Somewhere in the Serenissima, probably next door to the leather-curers guild or the paper-makers guild, Tiziano Vecellio runs his own workshop. He sees himself as a craftsman, rather than an artist, producing goods for sale. He is the Master, and his is the signature on most of the products. His employees, however, are also craftsmen, some of them as talented as the master, and Journeyman and Apprentices work together to create great pieces of art. Sure, Tiziano himself may be the one to sketch the Madonna’s face, but what about her hands? Guess what? Renaissance art was a cooperative enterprise, and just look at the product. Pretty fantastic, eh?

Why the long excursus into metaphor, you ask? For you, the prospective GM, the setup of your guild is your masterpiece–the way you do things at the beginning will prove to all your members that you are a capable leader, someone they can trust. But like Tiziano, you can’t go it alone. You will need help, and the end “product” that you create–namely, excellence in raiding–will be a group effort.

Choosing Officers

If you’re contemplating setting up your own build, you probably have a few people in mind for officer positions. Make sure, however, that your officer corps is not composed entirely of your best friends and your significant other. For a raiding guild, you need a balance of power, and this means bringing people into leadership positions who represent different constituencies and have different perspectives. You will also need to limit the number of officers to a manageable size–too large, and every member who’s not an officer will start to feel left out. The following are my quick tips for forming a workable officer corps.

1. Size

If you plan to focus exclusively on 10-man raid progression in Wrath, your optimal number of officers (including yourself in this number) will be three. That means that there will always be a tiebreaker vote. The percentage of officers to members will still be rather high, especially if you are a niche guild and limit yourselves down to 20 or so players. I think this model will be extremely workable in Wrath. The good news is that if you form a guild of this size, your work as GM will be much less, and you will not need to define each officer’s role to the nth degree. The three of you would each probably be capable of handling any questions your members have, and all members will know the officers personally.

For the 25-man size, the task is more difficult. I suggest either three or five primary officers (including yourself of course). Three will be just fine if you plan to also have class or role leaders to do some of the work, but if you do without them, expand up to five so that you can cover all the necessary tasks. I actually recommend against having class leaders. That model worked better in Vanilla WoW, when specs were less differentiated and there were more people to manage.

2. Diversity of Talents

All of your officers should not excel at the same aspect of the game. They should not be three healers or three dps. You should include your primary Raid Leader in the officer corps, but the other members do not have to be your best players or best strategists. One of them, at least, should be computer-savvy enough to build and maintain your website, if you cannot do so yourself. Try to find people with different interests. And yes, sometimes this means looking beyond your immediate circle of friends. Caution: it may seem attractive to a new GM to appoint as an officer someone who has been a GM in the past. Be careful–this person might be so used to leading that he chafes at just being an officer and effectively undermines the officer corps’ decisions. Have a very thorough talk with any officers with GM backgrounds so that the guild hierarchy–whatever it is–is clear to them.

3. Diversity of Perspectives

Your guild is a raiding guild, so most of your officer conversations will be about raiding, and almost all of your planning will be dedicated to raid progress. You do not, however, need to find officers who agree 100% with your vision. It is best, in fact, if officers to some degree serve as checks and balances for each other. For a real life example, in my guild, raiding is important to every one of our eight officers (yes, too many!) but within that general category, our priorities fall under several subheadings. For some real-life examples, in Collateral Damage, our Raid Leader wants everything to be well-organized, transparent, and planned out ahead of time. The officer who manages our Loot system wants all policies to be fair and all goods to be distributed equally. Our personnel officer focuses on the human side of things–she wants to make sure that no one feels left out. And me? Believe it or not, I’m always the one pushing for faster progress and stricter requirements.

4. Open Positions

When you introduce your brand-new guild to the world, you probably won’t have the perfect balance of officers yet. I suggest starting out with yourself and one other person (or for the large guild model, two) and promoting the rest of your officer corps after you actually begin raiding. You need to see how people operate in their new guild context, but you can’t do all the work alone at the beginning.

Your Management Hierarchy

Let’s imagine that your guild is up and running and you’ve identified and promoted four other people to work with you. Now what do you do? I have seen guilds flounder at just this juncture. People become officers, but it’s a vanity position. There are no clear duties and no opportunity for leadership. In practice, the GM runs the guild by himself. Or worse, no one runs the guild. No events are scheduled, and people associate with each other only in guild chat. Here are 5 ways to avoid the no-leadership quagmire.

1. Weekly Officer Meetings

Schedule a meeting at a mutually convenient time, and hold a meeting every week. Believe me, you’ll have a lot to talk about–some of CD’s run upwards of three hours, and they were longest at the very beginning. You should at the very least check in with the guild’s progress, set the raid schedule for the week, and vote on any potential recruits. This is also a good time to talk through the inevitable member complaints and make plans to address them.

2. Give Each Officer a Specific Task

You chose officers with different talents for a reason. Assuming you’re a large guild with 5 officers, here’s a sample breakdown. As GM, feel free to snap up the role you like best, but if it’s your name at the bottom of the guild panel, expect a secondary job as QQ filter. Your five officers could best divide into the following roles:

a. Raid leader and strategist
b. Loot system manager (if you use Loot Council, this person tracks drops received)
c. Personnel officer (this person takes attendance and tracks raider status/performance)
d. Recruiting officer (woot! This is what I do)
e. Website manager (don’t underestimate this one–it’s a TON of work)

As GM, you need to funnel any specific questions or complaints to the officer who specializes in that area. People will want to talk to you too, but if you get a loot-specific question, pull the loot system manager into vent with you when you talk to that player. You will find that your officers will become experts in their area of expertise.

3. Strive for Consensus

When there is a decision on the horizon, particularly if it’s an important one, don’t just flex your GM muscles and make the call yourself. Discuss any decision that has far-reaching implications in the guild meeting, and let each officer present his or her opinions. Very likely, some of you will disagree on any issue that’s halfway worth talking about. As GM, you may feel tempted to go with your own opinion after nominal discussion, but I urge you to wait it out and let people make full arguments, especially when they feel passionately about something. There should be give and take. If two parties disagree, have them propose compromise solutions until each of them can live with the new policy.

4. Hold Votes on Important Issues

Your officers can only serve as checks and balances for each other if you give them power. Try for consensus first, but what you may find is that not everyone speaks up every time a new policy is on the table. If everyone cannot agree after a reasonable amount of discussion, as GM, it is your responsibility to call for a vote. Except in dire circumstances, abide by that vote. Remember: if you have power as GM, it is only because others entrust you with it. Allowing them a voice will convince your fellow officers to stick around and support you. My guild–which has no GM, only officers–has just now put in a voting policy. We felt that compromises were sometimes worked out only among the most vocal officers, and in any case sometimes we would have 12 hours of discussion over many weeks with no solution reached. We’ve decided to hold votes after 2-4 hours of discussion on a topic when we can’t come to consensus. I am in full support of this idea–even though I’m one of the loud people! If you never vote, you may create a situation in which one person can veto any idea by holding out on the compromise. That can lead to guild stagnation, particularly if it’s a regular occurrence. Sometimes your officers will have to agree to disagree.

5. Know When to Play the GM Card

If you’re going to be the first among equals, you have to know when to step in and put an end to debate. Maybe votes are inconclusive too, or your officers just can’t come up with a decision. In those cases, use your best judgment and lay down the law. Don’t do this too often though–a GM whose attitude screams: “It’s my guild and I can do what I want with it!” won’t be in power for long.

Conclusions

It’s not very fun to be the Supreme Emperor of a nation of one. If you want a happy, healthy, resilient guild, you will need a power structure that puts some of the authority in other people’s hands. Build trust with your officers, and always treat them with respect. They are both your friends and your work colleagues, and the relative unity that the officer corps presents to the guild will determine your success or failure in endgame raiding. People want to feel that their leaders are both well-organized and fair. Use the GM/officer dynamic to create that feeling, and you’re well on your way to climbing up the rankings on your server.

The Talented Druid, v. 3.0

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When patch 3.0 hits live servers, every endgame raider is going to have to make some difficult choices. We will go from being the max-level, king of the jungle, top of the talent tree whiz kids we are right to being unfinished, not done yet, 10 levels behind. These comments are based on the current beta build, and of course all talents are subject to change at this point.

The raiding tree will have a particularly difficult set of decisions to make. Our prospective talents pull us in two directions, much as they did in early BC, as resto druid healers split into Treeform and Dreamstate varieties. This time, the choice is a bit more subtle, and it focuses on a few key talents. To read a great rundown of the new druid talents and their implications for raid and group healing, mosey on over to Resto4Life. Phaelia has your numbers amply covered! This article attempts to use those numbers to create meaningful builds not for the endgame at 80, but the soon-to-be middlegame of 70 raiding. I don’t know about you, dear readers, but my guild is not finished raiding yet! We’re going to have to learn to operate within the new framework, and quickly. We will be raiding the very day the patch comes out, and I want to be ready.

Prospective Build #1: Wild Growth (8/0/53)

The main goal of this build is to take just enough Restoration talents to reach the talent formerly known as Flourish, Wild Growth. Along the way, the build picks up a few fun new bells and whistles, which should make for an interesting night of raiding while I try them out.

Fun Features:

Wild Growth is an AoE spell that heals 5 party members for 1085 over 6 seconds at max rank, and it promises to be simply tons of fun. As you might guess, rank 2, which we’ll have at 70, is a bit less impressive. Sure, it’s been hit with the wrong side of the nerf bat, but I am hoping for a favorable re-balancing before the patch goes live. It might require learning a new healing style, but it’s animation is beautiful (shiny, pretty cascades of light-filled leaves surround the targets), and it will probably be quite useful in the current end-game content. I am going to make one of my CoH priest buddies switch with me on Bloodboil and let me heal bloodboil groups.

I’ll also be psyched to get my grubby little branches on a fully-talented Living Seed. It doesn’t quite have the wheeeeeeee! factor of a brand-new AoE heal, but I’m hoping for a zippy animation and a sound that either beats or equals the zing of of the priest’s frisbee (Prayer of Mending).

This build also includes Omen of Clarity, which has shaped up to be a neat little effect (for once!) in its current incarnation.

Passive Benefits:

While Natural Shapeshifter seems a lackluster talent now that I won’t ever be shifting out of tree mid-fight, it does lead to a lovely bonus in Master Shapeshifter.

In the Balance tree, I’m able to reach two resto-friendly talents, namely Genesis and Moonglow. That means stronger HoTs and cheaper Regrowths!

Spell Rotation:

This build relies heavily on HoTs and assumes that I will be doing tank healing for the most part. The Regrowth-related talents have excellent synergy with each other, and I am expecting to proc Living Seeds like crazy on my favorite tank. In order to get a further benefit from Regrowth, I am hoping that the Glyph of Regrowth will be available to me. Said favorite tank has promised to level up inscription ASAP, since he’s a flower picker already.

And yes, Lifebloom will continue to be my bread-and-butter spell with this build, even though its effectiveness has now been nerfed all to hell. It is my hope that Genesis will cushion the reduction to Lifebloom’s coefficient, but I will reserve judgement on that point until I see it in action. I logged on the beta to drop myself off things, and the nerf looks pretty significant, but I would still like to see it in raid conditions.

As for Wild Growth, I think I will drop it on the melee area from time to time, but unless I take someone else’s habitual job, I won’t use it all the time. I’m a tank healer, after all.

Drawbacks:
One would expect this build to pick up a fully talented Gift of the Earthmother. I’m on the fence about this one. Phaelia thinks it will be useless, and she’s probably right. I certainly think with the amount of unavoidable spell haste on Wrath of the Lich King gear that it will be totally redundant in its current form, but I’m holding out the hope that it will be useful at 70, since I have practically no spell haste in my regular set.

Prospective Build #2: Nature’s Splendor (14/0/47)

Fun Features:

The capstone feature of the Nature’s Splendor build is the increased duration of Lifebloom. This build would allow a druid to maintain triple stacks of Lifebloom while also casting Healing Touch. I think we’ll still be triple-stacking Lifebloom even though we won’t get as much out of it as we did pre-3.0. The usefulness of Healing Touch, however, remains in question–it’s never been our best spell. Nature’s Splendor increases Lifebloom’s duration to an incredible 10 seconds, which gives me time to sneak in Healing Touch. If I have the Healing Touch Glyph, the spell turns into something more like a Flash Heal, which sounds like loads of fun to play around with. However, its efficiency concerns me, and a druid who uses HT often, glyph or no glyph, will be putting to the test the devs’ current complaint that druids won’t be able to run out of mana.

Passive Benefits:

The other standout feature of this build is Nature’s Grace, which has excellent synergy with the constantly-critting Regrowth. If I time it right, the Nature’s Grace proc could always be used with Healing Touch.

Spell Rotation:

Guess what, I’ll still be tank healing! Except now, a Healing Touch or glyped Healing Touch will be in the rotation for tanks. It will be a little bit like getting Nourish before the fact. Lifebloom stacks will be in effect, and Regrowth will be used for its yummy crits. Now, if it’s possible to use both the Regrowth glyph and the Healing Touch glyph, this build looks a lot more interesting.

Drawbacks:

The Nature’s Splendor build feels very unfinished at 70. The balance talents I’d need are clear, but I had a heck of a time deciding what to take in Resto beyond the basics. Without the last 10 talents, I can’t get full synergy. I contemplated taking Empowered Touch, for example, and I might have with more points. I think if druids are really going to use Healing Touch instead of having it sit on their bars a-wasting, they are going to want to go for a full complement of related talents. That’s not really possible at 70. Darnit, and I really wanted to make use of that 4 piece T6 bonus (which….I don’t have yet).

I hate spreading myself that thin in the Restoration tree to get Nature’s Splendor. I’ve been 0/0/61 for a long while now (ever since Bonkers took Insect Swarm). With fourteen points in Balance, at least one very good talent will be missing from my resto setup, and that bugs me. I like to get the full effect of a healing build!

Conclusions:

I’m going to start out with Wild Growth. And please, keep that weed killer away from me!