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Why the Flex Raid is a Boon

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I recently purchased a Flex plan from my cell company where I’d be charged monthly based on the amount of data I actually used. I don’t know if I’ll always be near a wireless access point or not but at least the charges will scale accordingly.

Speaking of Flex plans, Blizzard’s taking a page out of that book and introduced a new type of raiding: The Flex Raid difficulty.

  • We can bring anywhere from 10 – 25 people and the bosses will scale.
  • We can invite friends from other realms via battle tag
  • Item level is between raid finder and normal but loot will be handled via raid finder loot system
  • Separate lockout from raid finder, normal/heroic

I’m still digesting the news. Usually my raid will run through raid finder once a week. We’ve started bringing in and carrying our alts. People are still running raid finder to grab their Titan Runestones at the start. Raid finder is great if I just want to mind numbingly get my way through an instance, gear up an alt, and just generally not have to think but mash buttons. I can eat every void zone, stand in every fire, miss every interrupt, and can live (most of the time).

What kind of example am I setting, right?

Why it’s good

This is great for guilds and cross realm raid groups. Players don’t have to transfer their characters from server to server to raid. I know there’s players out there who have a whole train of alts with assorted professions designed to support their main. If that player is satisfied with raiding on the flex plan, then they can still see the content in the game without committing money to move their supply train.

Second, from a recruiting standpoint, this is a huge tool for a prospect to raid with a potential guild and see if they’d fit in. Right now, we run livestreams and invite possible recruits on to our Mumble in order to give them a look at our raids. I can see a day set aside where recruits can jump in and raid with the team – And the beauty is a whole 25 man team isn’t going to be needed either.

Third, what about guilds that are looking to scale up from 10 to 25 man? This is another excellent way for them to gradually expand. It’s often a nightmare to make an immediate jump from a 10 man to a 25 man raiding guild. Sometimes the pool of player availability isn’t always there. The flex raid allows them to slowly (but surely) change their raid size until a consistent 25 raiders is found for the inevitable shift to normal modes.

But at the end of the day, Flex Raid isn’t a normal raid. It will never carry the prestige or reputation that normal and heroic kills grant. I doubt it’ll be taken seriously but maybe that’s what the main point of the flex raid is. It’s not designed to be cutting edge or challenging. It’s supposed to bring you, your family, and your friends together to raid where you don’t have to deal with potential morons in raid finder. You get to raid on your terms with whoever you want with relaxed restrictions.

Will you flex?

I’m still weighing the costs and benefits of working in Flex raiding for Conquest. I’d remove guild sanctioned Raid Finder from the list of activities and swap to this instead. At minimum, I would have to have at least two tanks available for this. With Raid Finder, I’d be able to go in with whatever composition I had available. The potential drops are better than raid finder anyway. I imagine my current raiding gear from Throne of Thunder will be better than the Raid Finder and flex drops in 5.4. If anything, Flex will be used to help ease our way into progression raids or on nights where half the raid is unable to attend.

Where does the flex raid factor into your guild’s raiding plans? What about your raiding plans? I’ll end up changing my Wednesday night raid finder to the flex raid instead.

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Lei Shen: A Hollow Victory

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This was more of an “about time” feeling then a “YES, WE GOT IT” feeling. I always knew Lei Shen was within our grasp. But something always came up that got in the way of really getting it. We yo-yo’d from wiping on first intermissions to 2% wipes with a debuff stack of 110 on the final phase and back. The attempts were never really ever consistent but I did what I could to try to keep the groups static and in the same positions. The lineup shuffled from raid to raid, but if even 18+ players were in the same spots with the same players, they would be able to get used to it.

I had set a target deadline of being in hardmodes in May. We killed Lei Shen on 25 just before June.

Oh sure, we killed it a couple of times on 10 man late at night before the raid reset. But I don’t consider progression kills on 10 man as progression kills for the guild. We’re a 25 man guild, first and foremost. If we don’t kill it with 25 players, then it never happened. I have no qualms if the team wants to go in to get practice on a progression boss on 10 man or try to squeeze out loot, but it means nothing.

I tell myself that the delay could’ve been attributed to newer players coming in. Some of them weren’t even equipped to properly do the content yet sporting LFR gear from the first Mists tier. Have to factor in the time training and showing new fights. I put these recruits into the frying pan on the nights our veterans are unable to show. But no, as much as I want to blame real life, I can’t.

Jobs, relationships, and school will always remain a constant factor. Unless I suddenly inherit millions of dollars and buy my own raid team, it’s nigh-impossible to expect everyone to make commitments. People get sick. There’s explosions at work. Imminent wildfires about to engulf the home. I can’t help but be bitter and curse the dice of real life rolling against me and my team. Must be punishment for the times I’ve gone to the casino in the past.

It’s your job (as a GM) to foresee these problems and account for them. Stomaching the occasional 1 – 2 player absence is doable. Raiding with an almost 20% deficit from a roster is just not going to get the job done on an end boss. Oddly enough, I was quite amazed at the play and effort of everyone when we raided short handed. It’s as if players automatically knew that they had to step up to really offset the players that weren’t here. They played their asses off and we pulled off some kills that were really close shaves (I didn’t think we could do some of them but was delightedly proven wrong).

Although, I bet the 5.3 item upgrade had a slight boost in there.

In the end, I’m disappointed that I couldn’t get this kill for our previous main tank.

I regret not being able to kill it for Haddion and Sweet who were claimed by real life.

Players that were with us from the beginning of this tier deserved to at least see this guy go down before retiring but we could not finish and limped over the finish line.

Did I not say the right words enough? Did I not make the necessary enough adjustments to our tactics? Did I get caught blindsided by attendance problems again?  Probably a combination of all of the above. It’s easy enough to look back and dissect what went wrong. The solutions are so easy in hindsight. I look at myself right in the eye when I’m in front of a mirror. You know what I see? I don’t see a field general. I see a guy who loves the game and his guild, but that’s just not enough. Not anymore.

I’m pissed off at myself more than anything else. But there’s no time to feel angry and sorry.

Heroic raids are coming up and we have some serious catching up to do.

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The Art of Chaining Cooldowns

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Want to increase your raid’s overall DPS?

How about expanding it’s survivability?

Or keeping enemy packs incapacity and stunned for longer than usual?

This is one of the basic raid tactics you can use. Chaining cooldowns refers to players using similar abilities one after the other. Stacking cooldowns means to use them simultaneously. How exactly should a raid chain their cooldowns together?

Offensive

As a DPS player, you have your own personal DPS increasing cooldowns. In most cases they’re fired off all at once to raise your damage for those brief seconds that the abilities are active. It’s kind of a no brainer isn’t it?

But when you’re dealing with many players, you may not have that luxury. What happens if two players stun the target at the same time with two Hammer of Justices? The target still gets stunned for 6 seconds (too bad the other stun doesn’t carry over and add 6 seconds on top).

(Un)Fortunate enough to have 5 shamans in raid? You can use their Stormlash totem one after the other for 50 seconds worth of extra lightning DPS. Bonus marks if you pull this off during a Heroism.

If you’re working on challenge modes, then you’ll have to chain your cooldowns together to get through various trash packs. In some cases, you may need to combine both offensive and defensive ones based on your group composition. My challenge mode group is stun heavy with a Death Knight, Monk, and a Shaman. Like clock work, the Monk opens with a Leg Sweep while the Shaman drops his Capacitor Totem at the same time (the stun detonates after 5 seconds) before the Death Knight finalizes with Remorseless Winter. If we still needed more time to finish off a pack, I dropped a Power Word: Barrier to help. Like any form of crowd control, targets will be affected by diminishing returns.

Defensive

Structuring healing cooldowns does need a little more thought. Should you use more than one at the same time or layer it one after the other? Bosses tend to have signature mass DPS abilities which affect the whole raid. Your decision on stacking or chaining all comes down to how intense the damage is and how long that boss ability lasts.

Jin’rokh’s Lightning Storm? We started chaining two cooldowns one after the other (example: Smoke Bomb followed by a Power Word:  Barrier).

Iron Qon’s Fist Smash? We stacked two cooldowns at a time as Rising Anger continued to increase.

Addons

If you don’t have it installed yet, get RSA downloaded and set up. It’ll help you and your fellow raiders as it announces when you activate your own raid cooldowns and when they end.

rsa-config

Bring up the configuration and go into the General Announcements tab. The drop down on the top right let’s you adjust which spells and abilities you want to use. The checkboxes let you choose where you want the start and end points broadcasted. In most cases, it’s going to be either a Smart Group or a Whisper. You can choose to override the output channel if you wish.

In Conquest, there’s a dedicated shaman channel where they organize their own Stormlash Totems and that’s where they set their macros and announcements to.

This simple technique is going to help you shave time off your kills and help you beat enrage timers. A little organization and communication ahead of time with your players is going to be needed, but it’s well worth the effort! To really stretch this out though, look through each boss and find out what the best time to chain cooldowns will be. Look for periods in a fight where your raid can stay still and unload their arsenal!

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PSA: Don’t Put Tanks on Follow

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I wanted to follow up on the previous PSA I released about Battle Rez spells.

Don’t put tanks on follow

Because if you do put tanks on follow, you’re going to have a bad time. If you actually need to go AFK, your best bet is to put a healer or a ranged DPS on follow. In most cases, they won’t be affected by cleaves or anything of that sort. I wouldn’t advise following a melee player either. Those guys tend to just do nothing but DPS and will ignore saving you if it means moving around.

Also, it’s best not to go AFK in the snail hallway in Throne of Thunder. If you put someone on follow, there’s a high probability they’re going to feed you to a snail.

Otherwise, don’t follow tanks unless you want repair bills.

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Why do You Need a Professional Guild Site?

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The Conquest Gaming website received a much needed facelift a few weeks ago. A special thanks to Altered Innovations for the design work that went into it. You’ll see many guild sites aiming for predominantly dark colours. I wanted to go with a different approach and go in a brighter direction instead.  Functionality aside, today we’ll be talking about pure aesthetics.

The looks.

The feel.

The sex appeal.

Why do you need a good looking website?

One of my raiders suggested adding more Comic Sans to help make it a little more “fun”. I shot that down without zero hesitation.

“What’s wrong with Comic Sans? Why do we need such a good looking site? Why does it have to be professional? I mean, we’re not getting paid or anything like that.”

Those are all excellent questions. You don’t actually need a polished, quality site. But attracting players is like trying to pickup women: First impressions matter! You can aim for something that’s clean. Or go for something more bold. Or have a little fun with it! No matter what, there’s something to be said for good design.  Rules and other information should be easy to find. The “apply” page should be in an obvious location.

I’m not trying to be shallow or anything. I’m not saying that the quality of your guild depends entirely on the look of your site. Your guild should have a little substance to it. Your guild is defined by the players, the culture, and the activities. At the same time though, your guild site should showcase those aspects. For progression raiders, it’s all about how many bosses that guild has taken down and when. With potential recruits visiting, a good looking site determines whether or not they’ll leave within the first second.

Just like in real life, adding a little more care to appearances goes a long way.

A few of the other raiders echoed those sentiments. If the site had an old school Geocities or Fortune City look, they wouldnt’ve given it a second glance. That brings back memories of scrolling or flashing text (depending on Netscape or Internet Explorer — My how times have changed). Don’t forget the embedded Real Player.

Or frames.

I digress.

When I’m browsing around other guild sites and I see one that catches my eye, I can’t help but be impressed. Because there’s a guild master who gets it. It’s another way for that GM to express their dedication for their guild. If a GM didn’t care, why bother investing the time or the money in creating a unique site of their own? If you’re a recruit, you can think of that as a positive indicator when you’re shopping for a new guild.

Not every guild has access to the tools or designers for sites. I suspect this is true of smaller guilds. But their activities and communications are coordinated around Facebook groups or Google+. That’s okay too, but I’ve found it harder to find information about them. Then again, most of those groups tend to be invite only.

if you actually are looking for a custom layout with spoilers and rims, I recommend looking into Altered Innovations (check out the portfolio). If you’re already on Enjin, then it’s a bigger bonus as he does specialize with Enjin sites (and that’s what allows the rates to be reasonable). Most of the coding is already built into the Enjin infrastructure which saves time on development.

Besides, these guys actually do  get paid. It’s stipulated in the contract. One drink at BlizzCon*. They just need to be there to redeem it!

* Redeemable for active raiders only or at GM’s discretion.

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