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It’s My Party and I’ll Spec How I Want To!

by

brat

You’re the one who sits in front of your computer.  You’re the one who has to look at the back of your toon’s head all night (or day).  You’re the one who has to put the gold into gems, enchants, and glyphs.  You’re the one doing the necessary rep grinds.  Most importantly, you’re the one paying $15 each month to play the game you enjoy.

Hence, you’re entitled to play how you want to play, right?  Keep in mind that it doesn’t mean people are always going to want to play alongside you.  If you’re a chain-pulling DPS Death Knight, it might be tough for you to find dungeon groups.  If you’re a mage who is trying to mass-bandage people in battlegrounds instead of DPS, expect to get laughed at.  Most of us strive to play our characters in a way that helps and benefits a raid, battleground, or arena team.  We’re going to look at things from a raiding perspective.

If you’re an aspiring raider, two guys named “Min” and “Max” always come into the conversation pretty quickly.  Wikipedia describes this practice as:

…the practice of playing a role-playing game, wargame or video game with the intent of creating the “best” character by means of minimizing undesired or unimportant traits and maximizing desired ones.

Obviously, this doesn’t only have to do with spec, but also relates to gear, gems, enchants, and spell/skill rotation.  How beneficial is it to tweak all of these to get the most desired output from your character, whether it be healing, DPSing, tanking, etc?

PvP vs. PvE vs. Hybrid

If you really want to be effective in a raiding environment, leave your PvP spec, or your “hybrid” spec at the door.  Although it is perfectly viable to heal in a PvP spec (I usually do it after Wintergrasp), you’re lacking in true PvE potential if you’re not specced properly for raiding.  Taking talents such as Improved Ghost Wolf or Reflective Shield are not effective for raiding in the slightest.  The points you spend in talents like those are much more useful in talents that boost your raiding skills/spells.

Granted, you may be able to find yourself in a guild that doesn’t mind you being a hybrid spec.  Perfectly fine.  Just don’t be too upset if your raid spot is handed over to someone with a pure spec.  Keep in mind that the effort you don’t put into raiding has to be made up by the other raiders.  In effect, you run the risk of making their job harder.  It can be handled for a while, but there’s an often-reached breaking point.

Rusty Cookie Cutter

The term “cookie cutter” usually refers to a globally accepted spec to accomplish a certain job.  PlusHeal.com, TankSpot.com, OutDPS.com, and WoWWiki.com are all great places to get yourself a “cookie cutter” spec for whatever role you’re filling.

I usually reserve using a spec like those for when I’m first learning a new playstyle.  As a Discipline Priest, I’m not too familiar with Holy.  I lined myself up a “cookie cutter raid healing” spec, and learned the mechanics of that style that way.  The more I get comfortable with the abilities, buffs, debuffs, etc., the more I can tweak the spec to what I need, as well as what the raid needs.

If you’re joining up with a raiding guild that’s new to you, take a look at what kind of role you’re going to be filling.  If it’s foreign to you, start with a “cookie cutter” and go from there.

Juggling Stats

At a certain point in gearing, you reach a point where you can start adding on a certain stat over another.  For tanks, it’s the defense cap.  For DPS, it’s the hit cap. (Remember the expertise cap, too.)  For a healer, this point basically involves being able to keep your assignment up comfortably without running out of mana.  From there, you can stack:

  • Haste – Faster heals
  • Spellpower – Consistently bigger heals
  • Critical Strike – Chance for bigger heals / Chance for bonus procs
  • Mana/Mana Regen – Longevity

Each method serves a purpose.  Whichever path you choose, you essentially keep the minimum amount of everything else to function as a healer, and maximize what your goal is.  If you lose your ability to keep a target up or sustain mana in a fight, you’ve “min’d” too much.

The Good

If you min/max correctly for the role you’re filling, then you’re incredibly good at your job.  If you’re a tank-healing Discipline Priest in consistently short fights, and you gem into a higher Critical Strike Rating, then Inspiration and Divine Aegis are gonna stay up on the tank most of the time, making the other jobs easier.  If you’re a Resto Shaman healing the raid with a lot of AoE damage, and you gem for Haste, then you’ll be firing Chain Heals off like mad.

It also makes it easy to judge your gear upgrades.  You know what you’re aiming for, and you know what stats you don’t really need to focus on.  In fact, you may have some stats you may be able to start scaling back on to accomplish your goal.

The Bad

You go too far, and you lose versatility.  If you’re gemmed out for big heals, but don’t have longevity, you’ll be tapping out quickly.  If you’re stacking mana, but don’t have a lot of spellpower to back it up, you’re going to have a tough time lending a hand in short fights that pack a lot of punch.

A lot of us know the value of being able to think on your feet.  A good raider needs to be able to pick up the slack when someone goes down.  If you’re a one-note player, you’re going to have a tough time switching around.  A raid leader needs to fill specific roles in a raid, but he/she also needs people that can adapt if circumstances change.

Thes’s Solution

Staying within the role of your spec, do what you can to make yourself a well-rounded player.  As a Discipline Priest, my primary role is to keep the tanks alive.  However, if my target isn’t taking any damage, I’ll throw some HoTs and Flash Heals on the raid to help everyone else out.  It would be unwise of me to try to work my spec and gear to be a full-blown raid healer.  It’s a waste of my talents and spells, but that doesn’t mean I can’t help out when needed.

What do I do? I hit a point where I got comfortable with my mana pool and regen.  I could easily get through longer fights with my mana cooldowns (and keeping up my end of the healing).  I started swapping out my Brilliant King’s Amber gems for Luminous Ametrine gems.  This lets me keep my mana efficiency while upping the power of my heals.

If you need something more specialized for a long fight or for nuke heals, start building an alternate set of gear that’s more gemmed/enchanted for the task.  With all of the options for getting gear out there, it shouldn’t take that long to build a “special set”.  It’s an easy way to avoid being a one-trick pony.

Remember: Raiding is a team effort.  You have to put a lot into it if you want to get a lot out of it.  Cutting corners with spec/gear, or maxing TOO much of a certain stat can runs the risk of putting you on the standby list real fast.

ThespiusSig

Follow me on Twitter: @Thespius

The Significant Owl Goes Hoot in the Blog

by

Mimetir-intro

This is a post by Mimetir, an oversized owl of a raid leader on The Venture Co (EU). You can find her twitter feed.

Well, if not significant then *peers around owlishly* the only owl in the blog, at least. And yes, I do shine my beak, thank you. Nothing strikes terror into an opponent more than the eerie glow of an eclipse proc reflected in the beak of an overgrown bird I tell you.

Matticus has kindly invited me to make something of a more permanent nest here as a regular member of the team, along with Thespius. I’m grateful to many of you for sharing thoughts and comments on my posts so far, which have looked at hybrids, looting and social Wrath. I’ve enjoyed the discussions which have come out of you pitching in your two-hapeth alongside mine – so, thank you, and I hope it continues!

Meanwhile I’d like to introduce myself a bit more thoroughly. Sure, I say I’m a giant owl – but who’s the person behind the feathers and what kind of WoW player does it make me? I’ll meander around and about the facts of my life in and out of game for a short spell. Are you sitting comfortably?

I’m an English Literature graduate who has a longstanding and deep rooted dislike of (some) Shakespeare and of Middlemarch. I took great pleasure in studying fairy tales, post colonial texts and war literature. I still love learning and a good old yarn.

This is a big influence on my gaming – it must be said that WoW is a huge and complex game to learn. Three years into playing I’m still revelling in learning and improving in different classes, roles, fight tactics. More importantly I still sometimes feel a bit of the “new player” magic that many of us get upon entering WoW at first – that it’s a huge world to explore with breadcrumbs leading bit by bit through the epic storyline.

As a  British Red Cross volunteer I have worked with refugees to try to help them integrate into society or find their families after being separated from them through war, conflict or disaster. I’m also someone who has lived with a disability for most of my life. These things have taught me patience and empathy with other people – and players – and that people are really just people. Everyone has within them the strength to make what they want of their life and live it.

That extends, too, to WoW. I personally don’t like to turn away from a challenge though at the same time I remember everyone plays different parts of the game, so try to help anyone who asks for it. I try to treat all players I meet equally. I expect – even ask – that to be returned and shared in a group situation. If a player turns out to be A Nitwibbling Little Horror (you know the type of player) in my group, then my boot, claw or hoof quickly helps them out of the instance portal.

I grew up as the only child of a small family in a seaside town in England. I’ve played computer games since an early age – my parents bought me a Nintendo and we collected consoles as they appeared. I played many of the best, earliest RPGs with my mother – think Final Fantasy II/IV, Secret of Mana, Suikoden, This may conjure an atmosphere of peaceful safety of a gamer in training in your mind…

Perhaps that’s so, looking at my time on Ravenholdt. One of my mains is a fury warrior named Gramm – he’s guild master of a small, family-type guild. We try to be a place of safety and friendship for players of any sort, so long as they have something of the ‘bimbler’ about them. And yes, my mother also moved from console RPGs to WoW. I’m not sure if she thanks or curses me for getting her hooked on it.

Online gaming has had its claws in me for ten years now. Scary thought. Most of those years were spent playing tick based games such as Planetarion. I was one of the founders and then leaders for a long, long time of an alliance – a group not unlike a guild. Over time the alliance became a strong community and many of us became friends, with ensuing alliance meets in different countries.

This has translated straight to WoW and raid leading. My other main characters are Mimetir, my boomkin, and Apeorsa, a newly minted resto shaman. Their guild is a small group of real life friends. We aren’t big enough to run guild-only raids so we have a wider network of players we have met at random, enjoyed running with, and regularly keep in contact and raid with; we meet new folk all the time. This style of running means raid leading can present different challenges to a guild-only run.

I’m now living in Edinburgh after an unexpected and happy turn of events during a guild meeting. This, apart from anything else, reinforces my belief that WoW and similar online games are not to be scoffed as communities. I happily stand as proof that it is entirely possible to meet and build solid relationships with new friends and even your “other ‘alf” in these games – and it’s no bad thing to be brought together partially through a mutual love of gaming.

So that’s me, pretty much. I’m thoroughly enjoying blogging and contributing to this site. Watch out for my thoughts on the “link achiv or no raid” style and why I disapprove of it, to what extent micro managing in raids can do as much harm as good – and, well, whatever else takes my fancy, hitting a blog near you.

Oh, and … Hoot.

Breaking in The Newbie

by

Screen shot 2009-10-31 at 3.07.09 AM

So you’ve just recruited a new healer and need to integrate them into your healing line up. The question a lot of people have is how do you do this effectively? Well, it will obviously be different a little bit for every guild but I’d like to offer up some tips

As a Leader

Communication

Probably the most important thing you can do is talk with the new person. Make sure they understand the rules of the raid if there are any. If they don’t know the specific rules of a raid it’s too easy to trample on them. Communicate healing assignments to them and see how they react. Seeing if they can follow an assignment is a great indicator of their raid mentality. If you have a veteran healer of their class in your raids that performs well, ask them to talk to the newbie and gauge their performance. Most importantly socialize with them a little bit. Getting to know someone a little bit can make a big difference in how they perform and react. Also being able to judge if the person can communicate effectively, as well as if they mesh with the other personalities of the raid is a good thing to do.

Performance

This is something you think wouldn’t be an issue, but it is. You have to be able to put the player in a situation where you can accurately gauge skill and knowledge of the role. If you bring them to a raid that you out gear, with your team of best healers, chances are the new guy wont show up quite as well against the others. It’s easier if the person is equally geared but chances are just as likely that they are below your current gear content. Give them a place to shine, take them on 10 man runs with alt healers, take them on heroic runs, chain pull and see how they react. Give them a chance to show you their moxie without the saturation of other over geared healers.

Evaluation

When it comes time to look at what they’ve done, take the time to include them in the analysis. They may have done things that you don’t quite understand, but they might have a perfectly logical reason for doing them. Talk to them about the runs you’ve done, things you like, things that might be concerns, you’d be surprised how many people respond very well to just being talked to about what’s going on.

As an Applicant

Be Vocal

Don’t just be the silent kid who follows along behind the pack. Be vocal, say hi, converse with the your fellow healers and guildies let them see your personality. Don’t overrun ventrilo or take over the conversation, but try to be sociable. It goes a long way when people can see your personality shine a bit. Don’t be afraid to offer to go on heroic runs and such.

Ask Questions

I encourage my raiders to ask questions if they are ever unsure about anything. You shouldn’t be afraid to ask for clarification or anything really. I’ve had raiders ask why we do things a certain way compared to another, and it’s OK with me, I have zero problem explaining why we’re doing it one way if someone cares to know.

Don’t Be Afraid

Probably the most important thing I can say is don’t be afraid to be yourself. Don’t try to be someone or something you’re not. There’s nothing worse then trying to shoe horn yourself into a little category or check box. Just be you!

Have fun!

It is a game after all! If you’re not having fun with the people you’re around, then what’s the point? We want to have fun too and if you can have fun with us, well that’s just a ton of points in your favor.

Practical Application

I’m going to share with you a story of one of my healing team members, you might know him. He’s a little bald Dwarf named Thespius. You might have seen him around Here and There. He came to me as a transfer applicant, he transferred servers just for the chance to raid with me and mine. We had talked over twitter and on AIM and email, and eventually he decide it was worth while to hop servers and spend time with us. I talked to him outside of the game so I had a decent understanding of his personality and I made it clear what I was looking for in a healer and a raider. We were both on the same page. And then after he was transferred on server we got him into one of our ToC (25) raids.

Keep in mind he is a Disc Priest for the next part. I started switching him back and forth between tanking heals and raid healing, purposely overlapping him and my other Disc Priest multiple times. I wanted to see how he would react and if it would interrupt his rolling if he got to a target that already had the weakened soul debuff. He didn’t make one complaint, nor did he break stride. He performed very well, never questioning orders. He had one suggestion that night and sent me a tell about it right away, and I encourage this in all my raiders as we either succeed or fail as a guild. I had also sent a tell out to the healers to give it all they got and not go easy so I can see if he can keep up (we out geared him a little bit ). At the end of the night I uploaded numbers to World of Logs. Thespius had performed more then admirably, he did downright fantastic! My healers had given their all and he kept right up with us despite the gear discrepancy.

I talked to him the next day and let him know what a fantastic job he did and that I was happy to have him on my healing team.

We talked, he listened to assignments and he wasn’t afraid to be himself. Since then he has contributed to strategy as the guild was working on three lights in the darkness. Communication between us was clear and he always responded when I gave assignments letting me know he knew what to do. He performed well, and was very personable with everyone in the guild, going along with heroics and raids and just having a blast. Honestly was one of the best applicants I’ve had in a long time.

Being the newbie isn’t always the most fun thing, but just remember to be yourself and have fun!

So how about you out there. How do you try to integrate the new recruits? What about when you first joined your guild? Any tips you want to Share?

That’s it for today, until next time, Happy Healing~

Sig

PTR: Fond Friend or Venomous Vixen??

by

wizardmario

The PTR.  Public.  Test.  Realm.  It’s been our best friend and our worst enemy.  People will flock to it, and then people will cry outrage or joy at its contents.  Some avoid it like the plague, while others spend more time in its embrace than in the game itself.

I have a huge innate sense of curiosity.  I love learning things.  When it comes to this game, I try to learn everything there is to know (without delving into theory-crafting and copious amounts of number-crunching).  There are different healing styles, different add-on preferences, different philosophies on gameplay.  I’ve learned to love the variety of them all.

However, the idea of the PTR has me torn between love and hate.  I don’t harbour a global hatred for it, but I have my reservations about it.  It is both a blessing and a curse.  And I’ll tell you why.

Friend

Patch Notes have become a huge cornerstone of the WoW community.  We read them every chance we get.  We get Twitter updates about them; entire blog posts are dedicated to them.  They help us get accustomed to our class.  If we need to change our playstyle, we get a heads up.  If our class is getting nerfed to oblivion, we know to spend more time on an alt.

We can see what gear we have to look forward to.  We drool over gear models, agonizing over the ever-changing nature of new tier set bonuses.  Our dreams are peppered with new craftable items, new patterns, new glyphs, new gems/enchants.  It’s like waiting for (insert related holiday with presents)!

In this, I’m a huge fan.  I love having to save up money/gems/mats for new enchants, or re-speccing to take advantage of a new spell bonus or counteracting a nerf.

Foe

I’m averted to the large exploitation of the upcoming raids on the PTR.  I don’t “hate” it, because I understand its purpose.

I get a huge adrenaline high from facing a new boss on my server with my guild, without really knowing what to expect.  I have to think on my feet.  The raid has to be ready to adjust and listen to the raid leader for directions.

Remember the climactic scene of the movie “The Wizard”?  The kid and his nemesis are the in the final battle, about to play a game that no one has ever seen before.  The curtain is lifted….SUPER MARIO 3!!  I was a kid when that movie came out, and I just about crapped my pants.  Neither the kid nor his nemesis had any experience with this game.  Both were going in totally blind.  No tricks, no strategies, just shutup and play.

It’s that mentality that I crave for the community when it comes to releasing a new raid.  The new content is released and has been tested by a representative sample of the community under a confidentiality clause.  My team goes in on patch day, bags filled with flask/food, ready to conquer.  Our gold stash resembles Scrooge McDuck’s money pit in “Duck Tales”.  Let’s learn this boss our way.  We can be as hardcore as we want to be.

The Toss-up

In spite of all my rantings, I understand that living on the cutting edge of raiding needs every advantage.  World and Server Firsts are a big deal to a lot of guilds.  They need that edge–the ability to practice something, even if it’s not in it’s final form.  Guilds can strategize what needs to happen before the boss actually hits the live servers.

My proposal, though, is to assign a smattering of raiders the ability to do a closed testing of these bosses.  Start the difficulty of the bosses high and slowly bring it down as needed, but not so much to make the boss one or two-shottable.  Keep in mind it isn’t too interesting for us to go in and down bosses in our current gear.

My random thought of the day: Would we complain as much about the ease of boss killings if we didn’t have a head start?  A marathon is a piece of cake if you only have to run a small portion of it on the actual day, right?

What do you think?  Would you rather train in the PTR, or save the workout for after a new raid goes live?  How do you feel about the ability to test and learn a boss ahead of time?

ThespiusSig

Two Val’anyr at WoM? That’s Unpossible!

by

hammerbanner

First things first I’d like to congratulate Matt on his Hammer of awesomeness!

Matt and I were long talking about sitting on the 30 fragments and needing to get the mace completed.  Matt’s guild was not the only one to have problems deep into Ulduar. Unpossible on Zul’jin, my guild and my home was tearing through Ulduar. Fragments were dropping and loot was being passed all around. Then we got to Vezax, the guild was going full steam…until we lost some of our top dps and heals to burnout. A top dps DK, Hunter, and a few others just didn’t have any more juice left. They had been raiding you see since before BC. It happens, and I don’t fault them for it, but that meant Unpossible was recruiting. All my guildies hit the streets so to speak, spreading word that we needed people to bolster our ranks! I sent a call out across twitter and got a response from someone on the Firetree server. We began negotiations and talks almost daily for several weeks and in that meantime we would bring in non raiders from the guild to fill in gaps and try to keep raids going.

Eventually the Firetree crew transferred servers and joined our ranks, and we began the process of integrating raid styles and getting everybody on the same page. Shortly after that we got our first Yogg kill, with new players we felt quite accomplished. Now came the problem of farming the rest of the Fragments of Val’anyr. We gathered up steam and pushed forward until Trial of the Crusader patch hit. We now were faced with a difficult decision. Continue to farm content till we had all of our fragments or push on into ToC and place Ulduar on the back burner. We did what was best for the guild as a whole and made our way into ToC. After finally pushing through faction champions the rest was easy to clear. Standing on top of the corpse of one giant Beetle we set our sights back to Ulduar. We dove back in and lady fortune smiled upon us as we got the last of our fragments, Mimron was kind enough to let us have the last piece. The guild excitedly followed me to the Archivum where we activated the console, and listened and watched as the history of the mace unfolded before us.

Now we had met with another guild on Zul’jin back at Blizzcon and they had already completed theirs. Sympathetic to our recruitment dilemma and bringing people up to gear and speed they offered to help us complete the mace. After weeks of waiting to hear from them, we finally said and I quote,

“To hell with it, lets do it our own damn selves!”

And so into Ulduar we dove one last time, clearing to the watchers, only to find Thorim bugged for us. He would despawn when he jumped down. Frustrated we waited, until finally we got a good spawn. We pushed through Vezax with ease and made our way down into the prison of Yogg Saaron, or as we like to call him, Yoggles.

We strode in and began the pull, only to have Murphy rear his ugly mug and slap us around. Tanks DC’d in the middle of combat, losing spawn and immortals and clothies died in troves. Random lock ups and lag spikes caused people to be frozen in the path of so many clouds that we had too many spawns to handle. After 32 attempts in 3 days of attempts everything clicked into place. Transitions were smooth, no one disconnected or lagged out. Like Matt I died not once, not twice, but thrice. One soulstone and two battle rez’s were burned and we were up and running into phase 3. Yogg opened wide and I turned, threw in my hammer and then healed my rear off keeping everyone alive I could with my heal team! Then all of a sudden I started shaking in real life, the nerves, anticipation, adrenaline all came in one rush as I looked over and saw Yoggles at 2%. Down his life went and UP went the achievements!

3 Lights in The Darkness (25) completed as well as Drive Me Crazy (25)

Off to the archivum we went, I completed the quest and in my hands lay Val’anyr, and the cry went out over vent

“WOOOT! Now bubble me bitch!”

and Unpossible rejoiced.

here’s a link to the full image from the header, it’s possibly my favorite screenshot ever taken by me, it just looks cool

Awesome Unpossible Screenshot

And as an added bonus, here’s a video for you all to enjoy.

Now what does this mean now that Matt and I both have Val’anyrs? This means that truly World of Matticus is Legendary. Also since I’ll be a dwarf sooner or later maybe Matt and I can be “Hammer Brothers”!

Sig