War-Crafting

Game mechanics, add-ons, play styles, guides, explanations and how-to’s.

A Tuesday Story and Trash Blows

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I stumbled upon this touching story today. Everyone needs to go read it. Sometimes we all need a reminder to slow down just a little bit even in WoW.

Fate wrote a nice piece the other day about the hassles of trash mobs. One of his Guildies complained about them and Fate took it upon his hands to write about why trash is good and not bad. His main argument? Trash helps to build up the suspense and the pleasure when the boss in charge of them gets taken down. Otherwise, you’d be blowing through Karazhan, SSC, and TK within time frames of an hour.

Personally, I’d love to see more instances akin to Mag and Gruul (Ony style). We’re on a limited raiding schedule. Every wipe, every trash kill, every rebuff eats into the precious time we have. Our 25 mans are capped at exactly 11 hours of raiding per week. Let me first say that I’m proud of the Guild that I’m in and the discipline that they show during crunch time. We may fool around and crack jokes, but when we get down to business we do whatever it takes to get the job done. The clutch Al’ar kill is a testament to that (5 hours of sunday wiping, one more respawn kill, followed by an Al’ar first down). Sometimes, I just wish we had more time to do it.

Trash is nice to have sometimes. I do agree with Fate that it’s something to do in between bosses. Players need to have a little bit of a downtime. It’s not possible to ask 25 players to maintain a 110% focus and concentration. They would burn out too quickly. I know I can’t remain that tense for such a period of time.

But on the other hand, I don’t want to spend time to reclear trash repeatedly. Nothing kills momentum faster then getting a boss down to 10% and knowing you’re able to kill him only to get stopped by the Wall of Trash (0/*, Creature – Wall, Tap: Piss off target raid).

Ah M:TG. Sometimes I miss playing. But it’s either that or WoW.

Anyways, the trash respawns, you look at the time and you realize that your raid is over as people have to work or go to school on the east coast. Trash respawns just kills that level of energy and anticipation. With all the trash removed in SSC, we’d be able to one shot all the bosses and have time left over to do other things (Like Cartman says, now we can all enjoy the game)!

Fate’s point is excellent though. We DO need that trash. Where else are we going to get our Primal Nethers from? Or random BoE/BoP recipes?

Here’s a thought.

We’ve all sniggered at one point when our raid leader forgot to downgrade a raid instance from Heroic to Normal difficulty.

What if Blizzard implemented it and made Heroic raids? Give Raiders a choice in how they want to go through SSC. They can do it normally, or they can do it the Heroic way. Reduce trash by 80% but increase boss difficulty by 20%. Keep loot tables roughly the same and throw in some badges. Maybe the health of Hydross will increase a little bit so the raid needs to ice and poison dance for an extra minute. Think of it as an express raid. I’m not going to try and develop that concept any further. It would probably get defeated in a manner of minutes. But at least it’s something to think about. I sure as hell am not a game developer.

Sadly, I don’t get to go into Zul’Aman today. Our 25 schedules stay the same throughout. With the reset timer nearly twice as fast as Karazhan, it means we can do it any time we want. I’ll probably run through it tomorrow.

Meanwhile, snoozing through trash is the order of the day.

Making Maiden Submit

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I was about to turn in, but I decided to check my email first (5th time today). I had an intriguing question directed at me that I could not resist answering.

Edit: Email partially edited for clarity and compactness.

Hey Matt

Guild went to Kara today, downed Attunmen (hurray – first all guild boss kill). Then we went on to the Maiden of Pwnsauce – though not really. Wiped 4 times. We had three healers. 2 hrs later came back to try, this time with 4 healers, one replacing the offtank. Wiped 3 times. I threw Adam Smith at the wall and almost broke my headset again, because I like to be constructive.

I know that you can’t tell what the problem is just by hearing that. The tank keeps dying. We have 4 healers – 3 of which are above 1000 healing, one that’s at a shameful 617 (I’m going to kick him next time I see him on his hunter :P). You’d figure with two pallies on tank,  druid on raid, me on dispell, we could do this no problem – but. the tank keeps dying.

The essentials of the maiden fight – Pally does blessing of sacrifice to heal through redemption. Everyone stands at beginning of steps. Someone dispells holy fire. Pew pew. Lootz. Move on.

I have no idea. I’m so frustrated. The only thing I can do on my end from what I see is attempt to dispell better – for some reason, there are a few people out of my range. I do gymnastics to no avail, in fact, get bitchslapped by Maiden’s consecrationishthing and have got to heal myself. People keep telling me that if i stand at the stairs, I should be just fine. But these… are lies… or I’m doing something wrong and I don’t know what.

First, I’d like to address something. Headset smashing is a common occurrence. I myself have broken three Plantronic’s Audio 90s and one Logitech PC Gaming Headset within the span of a year. Hell hath no fury like a gamer pissed. That’s why I dropped $90 on my Sennheiser PC Audio 160’s and I am loving them (The SK edition even). Knowing it’s price, I would not throw it against the wall.

Anyways, I digress. So here I have a reader who has some trouble dealing with the meddlesome Maiden of a woman. The main problem here is that the tank keeps dying. There are two probably causes: The tank can’t survive due to undergearedness or the healers are sitting around taking a smoke break. Either of those two are bad.

I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that you’re utilizing a circular formation for the whole raid. Every ranged member (healer, caster, or hunter) should be in between each set of pillars. Your melee classes would be in the central platform in a triangular formation of some sort with some distance between each other.

Possible Solutions

When you engage Maiden, every ranged member should be collapsing to the first step. You need to be able to dispel the guy that’s directly opposite from you. I know this has nothing to do with keeping the tank alive, but bear with me for a moment. If you can hit the guy on the other side, then you’ll be able to reach everyone else around you. I like to bind my Dispel key to ‘e’.

I’m going to suggest a minor change in your setup in regards to your healing. Shift one of your Paladins from MT duty to raid duty. You, as the Priest, should be on the MT. Have that Paladin cleanse the raid when Holy Fire hits (it’s cheaper then your Dispel). You should not be close enough to Maiden to absorb her Consecrate damage. Your Raid should be close enough to Maiden so that everyone can dispel each other but far enough away that her Consecrate does not affect you. If your Paladin isn’t keeping up Blessing of Sacrifice, then somethings wrong. One Paladin should be able to keep up the tank during the Repentance period.  When Repentance hits, you’re just sitting there and counting down. It is all Paladin. Once you’re free, your tank might be fairly wounded. Shield him immediately, then toss a renew, and resume your healing duties. You didn’t specify which stage of the encounter that your MT is dying in, but it’s usually in the Repentance period. If you got another melee class, consider having Paladin 2 put a Blessing of Sacrifice on him to wake him up out of Repentance.

If there’s still problems, you’ll need to take it a step further and analyze the encounters further to discover what is causing the problem. There isn’t much of a gear check involved here but if your tank is undergeared, it is possible for him to get smashed quickly. I confess that it took my Karazhan Guild about 10 days to take her down.

With four healers, there should be no excuse for the tank to die at all. If you can, I highly recommend using WoW Web Stats to parse your Combat Log. If you’re unsure of how, Kirk’s got a great guide (I’m working on one to help supplement it). What you can do is use that tool to help analyze your encounters and find out exactly what is going wrong.

I hope that helps! Having problems healing a certain boss encounter? Feel free to drop me a line: matttz at gmail dot com.

No Money No Problem

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Can that patch get here any sooner? The faster I get to deal more damage, the faster I can start getting money. Leiandra made a good point the other day. Why on earth do we do daily quests? With all the raiding and the wiping on Vashj, I need income from some source to restock on potions. I need Mana Potions to survive and make sure the rest of my team lives. Here’s my main problem. It’s not the inability for me to deal damage. It’s my lack of time. There’s so many things that I need to do on a given day that I just don’t have the time to farm the necessary Herbs. Therefore, I’m caught flatfooted and placed at the mercy of the auction house minutes before the raid is due to begin. That is why I need the money from daily quests. I’m trading time for money.

During the summer, the gain from doing dailies outweighed the loss from repairs and pots. I was raking in about 100 G per day between Mallet and Saphfira. I was able to pick up an epic mount soon after. It went to Saphfira. Why not my main you ask? Because Saphfira’s professions are mining and herbalism whereas Mallet’s are enchanting and tailoring. It makes more sense. The time I do have to farm can then be increased further.

Now that I have one epic mount already, I just don’t have the desire to collect the gold needed for another one. I just don’t see the point. Prestige? Whoaness? No, I rely on my gear for that. Just about everyone has an epic or a netherdrake already. My income has been cut dramatically short. It’s now something like 20 gold per day. It’s barely enough to get me by on potions and repairs. My gold count tends to stay below 100 among both my characters. I guess I’d be considered impoverished in WoW?

Minimum Class Stat Requirements for Karazhan

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A dear friend asked me for some help a few days ago. She wanted to know what the minimum requirements are for new players looking to enter Karazhan. I’m not looking for numbers that will take down Prince on the first try. What I want are respectable numbers that players of any class can shoot for. I’m looking for ABSOLUTE MINIMUMS HERE. These are the kinds of numbers that will down Attumen after one try, Moroes after three, Maiden after two, and Curator after fifteen because they don’t have the gear for it.

These are the numbers that she has so far. Any recommendations or adjustments? I’ve modified the numbers for opinions on Holy Priests and Shamans. When I get a chance, I’m going to begin perusing the blogs of my other colleagues to see if they have any information that I can add to this list. Even a simple confirmation of numbers would be nice to see, so don’t be shy! (Note: Don’t mind the colors. I copied it directly off a forum)

SUGGESTED MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS TO START KARAZHAN

Warrior

Tank(MT):
12000 Armor, 12000 hp, 490 def., 15-30% Dodge/Parry

DPS:
1700 ap, 70 hit, 33% crit

Druid

Tank:
415 def with 3/3 Survival of the fittest, 12000 hp, 30% Dodge, 20k armor
(As suggested by Karthis)
DPS:
600 dmg, 15% crit (caster form), 75 mp/5, 75 hit

Heal:
+1000 heals, 100 mp/5

Rogue

1300 – 1400 ap, 90 hit, 20% crit
As suggested by mesczante

Priest

Heal:
6000+ health, 7500 mana, +1000 healing, 100 mp5

DPS:
6000 mana, +650 dmg, + 3-5% hit
(As suggested by MK)

Hunter

BM:
8000 hp, 6000 mana, 1450 ap, 17.5% crit, 75 hit

MM:
8000 hp, 6000 mana, 1750 ap, 17.5% crit 75 hit

Shammy

Resto:
950 – 1000 heals, 110 mp/5, 10% crit

Elemental:
+500 dmg, 20% crit

Enhancement:
1000 – 1200 ap, 20% crit, 8% hit

Mage

+600 dmg, 90 hit, 25% crit, 6000 hp and 7000 mana
(As suggested by Calandris)

Pally

Tank:
102.5% Total avoidance (dodge/parry/block)
490 def, 10500 hp, +100-150 dmg

Heal:
1000-1200 heals, 80-100 mp/5, 8000-9000 mana, 15-20% holy crit

Warlock

Affliction: 7000 hp, 6000 mana, +600 dmg, 90 hit

Destro/Demon: 7000 hp, 6000 mana, +600 dmg, 90 hit, 20% crit

Again, your comments and opinions will be greatly appreciated.

I hate second guessing myself

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The Carnage strike team raided on Tuesday. This run wasn’t as smooth. Unfortunately, we couldn’t shut out the first five bosses in SSC and we did not have enough time for a Leo kill. I just need to assuage myself.

So here’s the situation.

We killed Fathomlord and two Defender tokens drop (Pants for Priests, Warriors, and Druids). Most of the other Priests had theirs. One of the Healing Priests took it, and then the option fell on me since I had the next highest amount of DKP among the three classes.

If I were to take it, it would render my [item]Star-Soul Breeches[/item] obsolete from Solarian. I would have wasted past DKP. Obviously the [item]Breeches of the Avatar[/item] would have been an upgrade but it would have been a slight upgrade.

If I pass, then the option would pass onto one of our main feral tanks. I know he would exercise his option and take it as they would upgrade his pants and make our raids marginally easier.

One of the hardest things to do in this game is to pass on loot when it comes to your turn. All of us players are human. Humans are inherently greedy. Passing on those pants, from a logical stand point, would be the right thing to do. But there’s that inner demon inside me that screams “I WANT IT AND I WANT IT NOW” (the Id even). Then I internally punched it in the face and said pass. If I took it, I would’ve been a hypocrite. At least now I’m practicing what I preach.

Who knows when it’s going to drop again? Knowing my luck, never. I’m not going to spend points on it until all the other Warriors, Priests, and Druids have theirs.