Guild Topics

Can’t live with them and you can’t live without them. Guild topics for your perusing.

Guild Talent Point Wishlist

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wish-list

The guild talent point system is an upcoming feature in Cataclysm that will allow guilds to invest points into certain special abilities. It’s the same idea when it comes to our individual classes. The only difference is the fact that guild talents will either give your guild some cool abilities or passive perks.

So Blizzard! My birthday is coming up shortly in another week and 2 days. I know you’re hard at work on Cataclysm and Icecrown. One of the biggest features I’m waiting for is the new upcoming Guild talent point system.

I’m aware you’ve included example talents like extra gold on mobs, reduced repair costs, mass resurrect and the ability to summon everyone to a certain point. I’m no game designer and I doubt I’ll ever make a good one. As a guildmaster, I have my own wishlist of guild talents I’d like to see. If you have time, I’d very much appreciate it if you could look it over. I don’t expect you to use any of them but I hope something on my list might inspire your talent designers.

  • Cauldron of Enlightenment: Alchemists are able to create a Cauldron of Enlightenment which is able to produce 25 Flasks of Enlightenment. Flask increases your highest individual stat by 40. (Remember, this is when spell power and mp5 and such gets compressed down to base stats).
  • Bug out: Immediately renders a player immune to fires on the ground… by teleporting them out of the instance, removing them from raid, and from guild.
  • Overdrive: Haste of all members in raid increased by 25%. Does not stack with Heroism or Bloodlust. Causes Exhaustion. Only usable by the Guild Leader.
  • Skilled Negotiator: All faction discounts increased by an additional 5%.
  • Asylum: The 10 yard radius around you is instantly converted into a sanctuary. You cannot attack opposite faction members and opposite faction members cannot attack you. Lasts 30 seconds. Not usable in PvP.
  • Let’s be pals: Reputation gains increased by 5/10/15% (Okay, that’s too much. I guess a realistic number would be 2/4/6%)
  • Slavedriver: All crafting professions create items 10/20/30% faster.

What about you, the rest of my readers? What type of guild talents would you like to see? Remember, the rule is that you cannot include any ability that could aversely affect PvE or PvP. So no class damage modifiers. I only included the pseudo-heroism for guilds that might not have a Shaman.

Your Opinion: Is Raiding Too Easy? Or Just Accessible?

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Here’s a post that an officer of mine wrote on my guild forums. I wanted to share it with the rest of you to generate some discussion as we head into the long weekend. Check it out! Do you agree? Why or why not?

If you partake of the wow forums you will notice a large number of QQ threads lately that divulged from the nerf wars that usually take place.

ToC is too easy!

That is a huge complaint from a very small minority!

Now its not that I disagree with the statement but I disagree with the reasoning. It is my belief, and I think it is very very true, that the main reasoning people complain about the level of difficulty of ToC stems from the following basis.

People love to lord over other people.

It is that above statement which drives a majority of people that do raid. That statement is slowly being crushed by Blizzard’s belief that all of its subscribers should have the opportunity to do content.

Now if you do not quite understand what I mean by that I will explain it out fully. In Vanilla WoW on my old server, my guild was the only guild to be able to fully clear BWL, AQ40 and most of Naxx. We had roughly 40 or so people in the best gear. Every other guild that raided struggled with Molten Core and could barely kill a few bosses in BWL.

The ego that goes along with that level of success was amplified greatly. Believe me I had every hunter on the server drooling over my gear and asking me all sorts of questions. In BGs, it was common for me to rack up 120 killing blows and 0 deaths. I could one shot people and to be perfectly honest, it felt very good.

Blizzard realized soon after the release off Naxx 40 that they had indeed made a mistake. They released the best raid they ever built and no one saw it. Only a handful of the total population ever stepped foot into Naxx. They then decided they needed to change the game and they did just that.

We are now in the world of easy epics and 10 mans. It is relatively easy to see most of the bosses in game and actually kill them. Epic gear is widely available and if you only play a few hours a week you can conceivable have a raid ready character in a month. The casual players rejoiced.

But those few hardcore people did not.

They were no longer lords and masters of there respective servers. Thus their ego shattered and the crying began in full force.

I don’t know what kind of person can define themselves by this game. I define my hobbies as something I enjoy doing. I enjoy the game and I enjoy the camaraderie of the people I play with. It’s much the same with any of my hobbies be that golf or hockey. I don’t define my existence around it though. I don’t sit around work and brag about killing C’thun in Vanilla wow or being 6 of 6 Sunwell pre nerf. But I think many of these people who do have this perception about themselves where this game defines the type of person they are.

I find that very odd and disturbing but it in it self is nothing more that human nature.

The guy who buys a Corvette because his neighbor bought a Mustang would be that person. He defines himself on what he has as compared to others around him and that very concept drives many WoW players.

It’s a strange world we live in.

What Aldo Raine Can Teach You About Raid Leading

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aldo-raine

What on earth could you learn about killer raiding and leadership from a ridiculously accented, revenge-based officer coming out of Maynardville, Tennessee? Answer: Quite a bit! If you haven’t watched Inglourious Basterds yet, I’d strongly recommend watching the movie.

The Lieutenant puts together a team of eight soldiers to go behind enemy lines and do nothing but kill German Nazis. Aspiring raid leaders would do well to pay keen attention to Aldo the Apache’s style.

What exactly does he do?

Ability to identify talent

Aldo has a keen eye when it comes to evaluating people with certain skills. When he hears of someone who’s in a tough jam that helps fulfill a need, Aldo will go out of his way to extend an invitation.

As leaders, always keep your eyes and ears open for players out there who may augment your guild in some fashion. If your guild is raiding, never turn down talent right away. Take a look at them and see if that player provides something that your guild could use.

Be direct

Don’t beat around the bush. It’s okay to pick words wisely. There’s better ways to tell someone that they need to improve other than they suck. But you have to be prepared to get straight to the point and not play passive-aggressive. Tell your players exactly what went wrong or where they messed up. After every wipe, I look through Recount and Obituary to find out the events that lead to our wipe and I’ll explain to everyone what happened. This way, we’re all on the same page for the next attempt and we can minimize the chance of that happening again.

Common sense

Sometimes it’s common for leaders to overthink the scenario. All you really need is some basic common sense. As Aldo says, “You don’t got to be Stonewall Jackson to know you don’t want to fight in a basement.” When it comes to strategy and tactics, examine the room you’re in. Take stock of the boss abilities and the players you have.

In the Faction Champions encounter, your raid doesn’t have much room for error. It’s different every time and it’s going to rely a lot on players. Leaders need to make the right call at the right time in terms of what’s the next target and who to lock down.

Push players hard

Either your raiders are going to sink or they will swim. Push and stress them to their limits. Now that summer is just about over, we’ve all but abandoned Ulduar and are setting the guild crosshairs on both Trial of the Grand Crusader hard modes for 10 and 25 man. We’re taking a “Survival of the Fittest” mentality when it comes to selecting personnel. Syd and the rest of the officer corps did an excellent job while I was away to recruit some extra players and now it’s their chance to show why they should remain. This means continuing the grind of raiding.

As Aldo says, “You know how to get to Carnegie Hall, don’tcha? Practice.”

Set expectations

On the first day Aldo meets his recruits, he makes his expectations and intentions absolutely clear. Leaders set the bar that everyone needs to reach. For raiders, lay down a rough DPS benchmark that they should be able to hit on test dummies or on certain bosses (Patchwerk or Ignis). It’s difficult to set benchmark for healers but I try to look at their potential healing throughput (like 2000+ healing per second on some fights, or their assignments get rotated to see if they can cope).

Right from the get go, every man under Aldo’s command owes him one hundred Nazi scalps.

… And he wants his scalps.

Cataclysm Gear Economy

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Well, I’m confident all of you have heard by now how stats are being changed around come cataclysm but in case you missed it

Itemization
In World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, there are plans to streamline the statistics found on items. We want to remove all unnecessary stats, make all existing stats understandable, and make all “core” stats more appealing. Here are some examples of such plans.

•MP5: This will be removed from items and replaced with Spirit. All healers will be given a meditation-like ability.
•Spell Power: Spell Power is being removed from items as well. Don’t panic, we’ll be improving Intellect so that it provides mana and Spell Power.
•Attack Power: We’re removing Attack Power from items as well. Instead, we’re allowing Agility to provide the necessary Attack Power for leather and mail wearers. Strength will provide the appropriate amount of Attack Power for plate wearers. This means leather and mail items will no longer be desirable for plate wearers.
•Defense: The Defense statistic is also being removed from items so that players no longer have to worry about juggling around “the cap.” Tanks will receive the necessary anti-crit from talents, like Survival of the Fittest.
•Armor Penetration: This ability is too confusing and “mathy.” It is being replaced with Mastery, a stat that makes you better at what you do. More on that later!
•Haste: Will also increase the rate at which you gain energy, runes, and focus. Retribution paladins and Enhancement shaman will have a talent that allows them to take advantage of this benefit.
•Block: Block Value is being removed. Blocking will now always mitigate a percentage of damage.
•Stamina: Players will notice more Stamina on gear as Defense, Spell Power, Attack Power and Armor Penetration are removed.

Lots of changes here, but let us focus on the ones that affect us the most. First on the docket is MP5.

MP5 Is currently one of the prime stats for Restoration Shamans, so this change frightens me a bit I’ll be honest. There is just something dirty about the possibility of Mail caster gear having spirit *shudder*. That’s neither here nor there however. This will be the first time that Restoration Shamans will be stacking something for mana regen OTHER then pure mp5. We’ll be getting something like Mediation for all classes. it’s uncertain at this time whether this will show up as a new talent , or if it might show up in the new mastery system that has been talked about (more on that later). The stat will still be present on the character sheet, but will no longer be seen on gear.

Spell Power is also one of those prime stats for us. Expanding INT to be the root of spell power is interesting, but it does make a certain amount of sense. It does offer a boost in spell power right now as well as in crit and it does affect your mana pool size.  Right now we stack it to take full advantage of Replenishment effects. Seeing spell power removed from gear though is going to be interesting in and of itself. A lot of on the fly gear choices can be boiled down to how much more SP it gives you over your current piece (assuming similar stats in other regards). I’m certain that they will add an item to the tooltip noting how much SP an item is worth similar to how Druids see Feral Attack Power listed on items when everyone else doesn’t.

Haste will continue to affect us casters as it does now. Blizzard is happy with how haste worked out for us so you wont see much if any changes there.

Defense and Block, now I’m sure you’re asking yourself “how does this affect us, we are healers?” well I can assure you it does. Changing Defense to no longer be a geared stat is huge, and in my opinion a very welcomed change. I can tell you that there have been several times I’ve pugged a group and found the tank not defense capped, or defense capped but having rather dismal health pool. This change will help alleviate that. By letting tanks get their crit immunity through talents, it leaves them free to gear up stamina. This will also give some added mitigation from block which as it stands is convoluted and a stat that, to my understanding, is largely ignored by tanks.  After talking with my guilds main tank and guild leader, most tanks gear for effective health. As a healer I appreciate this, letting more tanks do this without worrying about losing a few points in defense is a HUGE boon to not just raids, but pugs and heroics as well.

Stamina for everyone! This is good for us as healers, I remember having to have stamina sets for certain fights just to be able to live through certain effects. Those days should be long gone. Effective raid health should go up and through the roof and our jobs as healers should get just a little bit easier. I look forward to not seeing mages and other clothies getting one shotted by some trash mobs *cough* The Descent into Madness *cough*

My concerns though, are for how gear will be distributed. Currently if a piece of Leather Spellpower gear drops, there is not really any question who it goes to. But if we are gearing up for all the same stats, how much blurring of lines will there be? I remember a time when I saw Paladins running around in cloth because it had better stats for healing. I don’t know if we can rely on things like haste and crit to separate that either, as now most of the healing classes tend to stack both (yes some more then others). I’ll be interested to see how this plays out. I eagerly await the changes if nothing else just to see how my gear is going to look before I put it on and look at my stat sheet.
So, what do you think? Excited about the changes? Hate them? Concerns or ideas?

That’s it for today. Until next time, Happy Healing!

Sig

Archetypes of a Guild: The Guild Egoist

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veruca-salt

Some of you may remember my article about the 5 Archetypes of Healers back when I was still a guest poster here.

I was watching a conversation on twitter between a few of my friends and it got me thinking. Like every social clique a Guild has certain roles or social archetypes that people can be categorized as. This post series will explore some of the more common ones you may encounter in your travels through MMOs, as well as offer suggestions on how to deal with some of the less savory. These posts come from a request made by Valkrierisen and Firewillow. I’ll add a disclaimer here, this is based on my observations over many years of multiple MMOs and pen and paper tabletop groups.

Today I’d like to talk about one of the bad personalities that people sometimes adopt, the Guild Princess. A Guild Princess is for all intents and purposes a  Prima Donna. This role is not gender specific in the sense of the player(both men and women can and do fit this role), but it’s almost always a in game female toon being played. The princess can be a destructive force in a guild, they can undermine authority and leadership, hold raids from starting on time, and can cause guild drama that can become something akin to Jerry Springer.Keep in mind this is an extreme, but it is something I’ve seen many times.

Now there are a few different varieties of a Guild Princess, lets take a look at them shall we?

The Prima Donna

This guild Egoist will usually attach themselves to the vulnerable player base of the guild, usually honing in on the more socially awkward ones first. They can often be found grinding or questing with this person and talking to them late night either in chat messages or even ventrillo/teamspeak. Prime targets are officers or people with power within the structure.  Once the person is enthralled enough, they move onto the next person. Sometimes they will find the other females in the guild and begin to cultivate friendships. They will often hide behind “solidarity” and try to build a  bond between the players, often times using a sob story or tear jerker to cement it. As with the first point, females in power or who are married to/dating someone in power in the structure is primary target.

This leads to two paths. First the person can and will usually try to use these relationships to get themselves elevated to a position of power, maybe a class lead or lower officer. If they can’t obtain the rank, they will settle for using the friendships they’ve had to get what they want, be it a raid spot, loot or the shunning of a guildie. If someone disagrees with them or doesn’t give up a raid spot or loot the princess wants, they will often times complain or cry to friends about how unfair they were and thus begin a social shunning of the “offender”. This same person will flirt with multiple males in the guild and sometimes throw them at each other when one has outlived their usefulness. They also have a tendency to think of their raid performance as above reproach and when presented with numbers indicating the level of improvement needed or that they are causing wipes, will often have a million excuses that are not their fault. They will often have long periods of being absent, especially during new encounters, but will still expect full loot rights.  Watch for canned responses, vague answers or sometimes even re use of an excuse.

How to Deal With the Prima Donna

This brand of Egoist is in the game for power. They want it, they want to be the center of it. There are a few ways to deal with it. If you notice the behavior above, tell your GM or a trustworthy officer right away your concern. The biggest thing for this one is to be proactive. Point out their behavior early so it gets noticed is key, this puts people on guard and allows officers to intervene if needed. This also helps to guard the rest of the guild from this behavior. Warn your close friends too, point out their interactions with other people as examples. Don’t get sucked into the sob stories that they lay out.  The worst thing you can do with this one is to do nothing at all.

The Vapid Vixen

This one is used to getting their way because they are a “female” in game. They use their sexuality to get what they want, be it loot, raid spots or whatever. When they don’t get what they want they are prone to pouting or tantrums. They are pretty much the spoiled brat of the guild. During raids they will often talk over encounter instructions, they often die to void zones, possibly even wipe raids all the while chatting away. They are used to being the center of attention and do everything they can to keep it, be it causing drama, holding up raids, talking with anyone that listens or even spouting random snippets or comments in chat or on vent. Anytime the lime light shifts away from them they try to do something to get it back, negative or positive it doesn’t matter as long as all eyes are on them. They are a disruptive force but often times it’s not intentional, they are just used to everyone dropping everything for them and expect it to continue on no matter where they are.

How to Deal With the Vapid Virago

If this behavior is proving disruptive quite simply, ignore them. They make an offhand comment not pertaining to the conversation? ignore it and continue on. They make a comment in vent or talk over instructions? stop talking. When they ask what’s wrong say nothing and continue on with the instructions. They throw a tantrum? After a short while they tend to learn that acting out gets them no where and they settle down. If they don’t settle down they tend to leave to find another stage to perform on.

The Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing

First of all I’d like to say that I respect any man capable of role playing a female accurately. I myself play a female toon, but I’m not certain I could ever accurately portray that in an RP environment.

With that said, this category is for the guys who play females toons and pretend to be female to get what they want. Their main motivation is usually one of the two aforementioned items (see Prima Donna and Virago above). Either they want power, or they want attention and they are using the pretext of a female toon and supposed female player to get them. Pretending to be female lets them prey on the socially awkward of the guild and fill the role of a Devious Diva or Vapid Vixen. They tend to be very open about sex and sexual conversations and will launch into graphic detail if prompted. They tend to be a bit more flirty, refuse to talk on vent (usually with an excuse of shyness or no mic), and tend to be promiscuous in the guild.

Dealing With the Wolf

The same rules for the Virago and the Prima Donna apply here with an added items. If they are being disruptive and causing issues and you want to get rid of them, catch them in the lie. Get them to talk on vent or make a comment that outs them. Usually they disappear shortly after they are found out to start over again somewhere else. It’s not easy but once it’s done they are 99.99999% likely to leave and be gone for good.

The guild princess can be a very disruptive force in your guild. Identifying them early can save your guild a ton of drama and keep things together. Letting them run rampant can splinter the guild and potentially the friendships that you’ve built up. I’ve seen it happen, and it’s not pretty. Find your guilds “Bad egg shute” and help direct them towards it.

Have you had to deal with a Prima Donna in guild? Have any interesting stories or experiences to share about a Guild Egoist?

Until next time,

Sig

Image of Veruca Salt from Willy Wonka courtesy of Paramount Pictures