Guide to Healing, Leading, and Progressing in WoW Raids
General news and opinion about WoW.
Tonight Conquest is going to take a shot at Heroic Sartharion with one drake up. For those that have done it, I have a few questions to ask:
Good morning! It’s the sweet taste of school freedom for me (and the beginning of Winter’s Veil for all of us). Stealing a page from Anna and Wynthea’s deep thoughts (who has also been far too busy for deep thoughts).
* I finished out Sunday’s weekly Spiritual Guidance post. This week I wrote about the Circle of Healing nerf, some initial thoughts on it and how to counteract or compensate for it when the changes were live. Woke up to almost 60 comments and some of them are depressing. I’ve come far too close to calling it a career on WoW Insider too many times. But then I realize that the number of times the post is viewed versus the actual number of comments is like 0.5% (literally). There another Priest out there that wants to try their luck at it?
* On another note, to the guys that are speccing out of Wild Growth and Circle of Healing, are you sure about that? Like, there’s still going to be AoE raid encounters. If anything, they become even more important now than they were before. Every AoE healing spell from Chain Heal to the Holy Light Glyph to Holy Nova and such will have to be used. I can understand not using it if you’re not in a raid situation. But like, seriously? Everyone needs to pitch in now more than ever and if you’re going to drop them out of your healing lineup, I think you’re shooting yourself in the foot.
* Stick to your guns. If there’s anything school’s taught me is to always stand firm in what you believe in and take a stance. I’m inclined to respect someone more if they take one stance and stay with it. I wrote about it briefly on my Twitter this morning. It started off with a tweet from @ryannaka (WoW Twitterati, there’s another one for you to add):
@mattycus It seems you hit a nerve with that post [The Spiritual Guidance one]. The complaints in the comments section always make me lol.
And he’s got a point. I did hit a nerve. But I’m not going to argue one side and then double back and argue for the other. I’d rather pick a stance and stick with it and let someone else come up with the counterarguments. Fellow WoW Twitterati @roflwolf said it best:
@mattycus it’s the whole "non-biased opinion" thing. no one wants to pick a side because it’ll push away an audience.
So to all the aspiring bloggers out there, you have an opinion to write and a brain to help you critically think. Don’t be all wishy-washy and try to cater to everyone. Sure you might lose guys that don’t agree with you because they might unsubscribe and stop reading. But the ones that do are your real fans and they’re the ones that care about you the most.
Notable heated exchanges include the following topics:
“Greedo shot first!”
“No Han did!
“Dude, Picard saw FIVE lights!”
“Did not! He saw FOUR!”
“Vader would totally kick Arthas’ ass”
“Hello? Army of Stormtroopers versus Army of Undead? I think not!”
(I might’ve made up the last one but the others are true)
* I don’t care what anyone else says. 33/40 on a final exam worth 45% is NOT good enough for me. SIGH!
* I stopped putting up a Christmas tree when I was 12. I still have a pang of enviousness whenever I go to a friend’s house. Yeah, you know who I’m talking about. That friend. You know, that friend who’s decorated his entire house and has candy canes on the front lawn with enough lights to drain the power grid of Los Angeles? And they have a Christmas tree inside with loads of gifts and stockings over the fireplace.
But nah. I’m not bitter. Not at all.
* Speaking of Christmas, wow what is up with the mega commercialization of Winter’s Veil this year? Small Eggs are used in the creation of Gingerbread Cookies. And they’re on the Auction House for 15g this morning. FIFTEEN GOLD FOR AN EGG! What is up with that? Why are you sucking away the spirit of Winter’s Veil by marking up the prices of all this stuff? You’ve got players that just want to make some simple gingerbread cookies for Father Winter. And that can’t afford things like simple eggs! They just want to give it to him as a gift, that’s all!
Interesting how the virtual world can sometimes reflect the real, eh?
* Lots of emails for more Naxx guides. Seriously? WoWWiki and Boss killers have them way more detailed. I’m just giving you what I think is really relevant for healer material. Need some for Malygos or OS as well?
* Speaking of Christmas, some of you might be scrambling last minute to get gifts for that favourite geek in your life. If you need some help, feel free to take a look at my personal Amazon.com wish list. Some of it is Matt specific, but the rest should work for anyone else. There are some things not on the list that I forgot to add. It’s not all non-fiction books. Apparently there’s this series called A Game of Thrones
On the other hand, if you’d like to donate to your favourite WoW blog:
By the way, scratch Dark Knight off the list (Thanks Joyce!)
* Need to comb my hair before I take these shots especially on the sides. It’s all leaning towards my right.
* Shopping for women is hard no matter who they are.
* Need a suggestion for a good electric powered razor with a cradle and recharageability. I’m seriously getting one this year. excellen
* What the heck is this craze about this whole Twilight business?
We took out Malygos. A job well done to everyone that showed up tonight.
With this kill, we now set our sights on Sartharion with 1 (maybe even 2) Drakes up.
It’s been decided that we’ll be looking hard at shoulder enchants and head enchants of all players who wish to raid. It should go without saying that players should already be working on the necessary rep on their own time. I’m extremely impressed with the quality of players and raiders. There is still room for improvement for a number of them.
Thankfully, my exams are over now which means I can turn back full time to the blog for the next few weeks.
Being the generous boss I am, I could give them the entire winter vacation off. I’ve got some ideas stewing around on assorted Post It notes. If there’s anything you’d want to read about or any questions you may have, make a comment here.
Yes, my thoughts on the CoH nerf are on the way.
This is a guest post from friend and bodyguard Cassio
I’m Cassio, I’ve been playing a rogue on Ner’zhul for the better part of three years so my area of expertise is something different then the writers here.
I’m a damage guy. I run numbers to figure out how to squeeze another one or two points of damage per second out of my rotation or how much I should weigh hit stat verses attack power or agility. So please understand that I will not be talking about the best way to heal a boss encounter. Most of the time I have no idea what a healer is doing in them since they are behind me somewhere. Instead, I’ll be trying to stay remotely within the sphere of this blog by talking about loot distribution.
With the changes that have been made since the release of Wrath, almost every spec to become viable for raiding. This means that some classes may be dipping down into gear that’s exclusive for other classes to use due to armor class restrictions. Boomkins, tree druids and holy paladins may start to want to take gear that all cloth wearers can use. The same goes for titans grip (TG) warriors and to some extent enhancement shamans and hunters with rogue/feral druid gear.
It is my opinion that this should be avoided whenever possible.
Taking gear from a class when it is all they can use and giving it to a class that is moving down armor types to pick up an upgrade might seem fine in the short term. However, it will hurt raids in the long term due to the limited upgrade pool available to classes who have no other option other than leather or cloth.
In my guild, I am currently the raid leader for ten man raids and it falls onto me to sort out loot distribution and how to do so without causing problems that could destabilize the raid group and force us back due to people leaving and having to replace with new people. The system I have worked out is part science and part art but the basics of it is to keep gear separated to classes that are restricted to their armor type before opening it to others. There are some exceptions, such as if the gear is only a miniscule upgrade for a rogue and a large one for someone else.
Weapons are handled by letting those that get the biggest upgrade from them roll, any two-hander classes have to roll against each other just as any one-hander users and casters have to roll against each other. So that means that ret paladins, TG (Titan’s Grip) warriors and death knights all have to roll against each other. This method relies heavily on the loot master knowing the different needs of the classes and where his raid members are in gear progression.
While I find that I can do this (with some help from officers and others outside my guild that know the other classes better) I would not suggest that anyone try such a method in a twenty-five man environment. Instead make your officers/class leaders do gear upgrade charts for your members and give the upgrades from the different raid instances a set value, making sure to include heroics gear where it applies, and then use that as a way to check which gear is a better upgrade for who. The higher the number the larger the upgrade, also there should be a method worked out to reward those that go out and craft or farm the gear for outside raids that will help you progress through the instances you wish to run.
While all this sound complicated it really comes down to the simple idea that each classes chances for upgrades is different. If someone needs an item that is all they can use, then this may be one of a limited amount of chances to get it. Someone that can use other armor has a larger pool of gear to pull from and so has better chances at upgrades.
Many raiding guilds are aware of what WWS (WoW Web Stats) is and what a tool it can be to troubleshoot and improve member performance. In a nut shell, it takes your combat log and translates it into meaningful data (if you know how to use it). The WWS client runs locally off your computer (it’s a small download) which parses the log that you’ve recorded. It’s accuracy increases with the more source combat logs you have. I try to get my officers to run a long in addition to my own so that we can have an accurate and reliable report.
What you might (or might not) be aware of is that WWS offers a premium service and Conquest picked up a subscription not too long ago.
Simply put, it’s a subscription based service for certain WWS based features such as:
No Advertisements
Your eyes will no longer be assaulted with irrelevant ads.
Faster loading times
During peak hours, your reports are given priority in the queue and will be taken care of first. It seems the guys on the free side of things will have to take a number and stand in line (literally).
Longer hosting
The WWS website keeps an archive and history of all of your reports. A guild account will keep your information for 30 days and having an unlimited account keeps the log information for as long as your account is active.
Let me see if I can sound out my reasoning for acquiring one.
Most readers are aware of my devotion to maintaining a high level of performance. The advertising aspect is irrelevant to me. As a frequent web surfer, my eyes will automatically tune out ads. Don’t get me wrong, I believe in this service and I gladly support the guys behind it. But if I go to any site with ads, I typically zero in on the content. I suspect many of you are like that as well. Like it or not, ads are here to stay because they help support the people behind the site.
What about getting moved up in the queue? How important is that? Fellow Twitterati and blogger Santyn grumbled earlier that he was “moving backwards in the queueâ€Â. On some nights, you could be standing in the e-lineup with 100 people in front of you. Sometimes you’ll end up in the 400 range. After every raid, the players that are still around bug me into uploading the combat log so they can evaluate themselves and other players around them to see how they’re doing. Even though the raid ends at 9 PM sharp, the discussion can list for an hour after the raid about specific problems or player issues that WWS can shed some light on. I’ll often listen to the ground pounders compare themselves to other players from other guild reports or look at their own individual rotations and damage output.
I may not understand a word of it, but it sounds pretty important. For myself, I make it a habit to check out the healers and their rotations and see if there’s anything out of the ordinary. I have to say that I’m blessed to be surrounded by a group of people who aren’t only hell bent on trying to improve their play but trying to improve the play of others around them.
Having a historical archive of guild WWS may not be useful at first. I suspect it will become much more important later on. If a player wants to change certain parts of their gear or their spec to test for improvements, they can do so and then look back at a recent history of their performance to see if there’s a noticeable difference.
Patchwerk, because of the nature of the encounter, is our main DPS measuring instrument of choice. It’s a simple and straightforward encounter that involves little movement. All DPS players are capable of opening up to their hearts content with little worry of pulling aggro. Having a premium account allows you to store these records so that you can re-examine them later.
This is going to depend on a number of factors. You’re essentially paying for the 3 services above. Depending on your guild and your needs, this will either be an asset or a waste.
Guilds that would benefit:
If your guild that likes to take it easy and go through content at a casual pace (be it normal or heroic), then you might not be willing to fork over the 3 month subscription for a $15 guild account. If no one in the guild really cares about theorycrafting and analyzing their own DPS, then having a WWS paid account isn’t going to benefit you much since it won’t be used.
But if your guild wants to compete and be a top tier organization, having a WWS paid account would be an asset. You could start off with the $27 Unlimited account for 3 months to give it a try and see if it is of any use.
You can find out more information about WWS paid accounts here.
You can not game the system. You can’t split costs with another guild and share it. It’s strictly for the personal use of your guild.
As a side note, I’m grateful to the people that have helped chipped in financially to help make the infrastructure of the guild a success. Want an idea of how much running a guild can cost?
50 slot Ventrilo: $210
Webhost: $119.40
WWS Premium: $81
VBulletin Software: An arm and a leg
Dropping toy trains before every boss encounter while the GM’s trying to explain something: Priceless
Okay, that was a bad Mastercard commercial. But those costs are on a yearly basis. Already these figures should tell you I’m a fairly devoted GM.
It’s an interesting cycle. I play WoW so that I can earn some money on the side from writing about my experiences and knowledge that’s WoW related. Some of the money I earn gets invested back into the blog and back into the guild so that I can continue playing for more experiences and knowledge within the game. Which I can then write about.
Not exactly the average college kid’s part time job.