War-Crafting

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

Leotheras the Blind Down

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LEO DOWN

And let it be said, that Matticus’ computer did strike fear into the hearts of the blind. Resist, he attempted! Carnage members were strewn across the battlefield. Hope wavered. Dwarf and Dranei fell one after the other. So did Mallet cast one final Power Word: Shield and threw himself willingly into the his Whirlwind. Then the ground trembled, the clouds parted, and the power of the Paladins spoke in unison with their hammers of justice! When the dust settled and the smoke cleared, there laid Leotheras the Blind… Another casualty to that known as Carnage.

Loot:

[item]True-Aim Stalker Bands[/item] – Florandraa
[item]Gloves of the Vanquished Defender[/item] – Langsaebel
[item]Gloves of the Vanquished Hero[/item] – Troen

Introducing Another Feature Writer, and Healing in PvP

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With the advent of examinations and other academic nightmares approaching, I found myself hard pressed to solo blog. Enter Pwyff: Restoration druid, PvP Veteran, and friend. He maintains his own blog over at Gameriot while allowing me the pleasure of relaying it to my viewers whenever applicable.  

Today’s column comes from Pwyff. It starts with healing in Player vs Player combat. If you’re already aware of this, just skim it and come back next time. He’s working his way up from the bottom. Expect to see more advanced topics coming soon. If anyone figures out what an Ooglar means, please tell me.

Top 3 PVP Rules as a Healer:

1.) Don’t be fancy!
I sometimes find that healers will get too caught up trying to bait out CSes and interrupts. Quite simply, I’ve seen a WAR+PAL team go down because I decided to go Bear and intimidate the heals. The Paladin spent so much time watching me and trying to fake out an interrupt that his Warrior died while I sat in Bear and looked threatening. If you’re going to bait, fine, bait, but don’t be stupid and fancy with your stopcasting macros.

2.) Be aware of your surroundings! Don’t simply watch everyone’s HP levels all the time!
Keeping aware of where that Warlock is so you can line of sight a key fear is the sign of a good healer versus a bad one. If you see an enemy Druid getting focus fired, and he goes Bear; stay out of line of sight! This can severely cripple the Druid’s ability to get away from everyone by Feral Charging you.
If you see a Paladin or Priest trying to get close to you, run away! A lot of the time, they’re trying to get in that HoJ or Psychic Scream that will put a severe dent in your capabilities to do things. Keeping aware of your environment while healing ultimately leads to an increased capability of healing as well.
Furthermore, by keeping tabs on where your players are, and keeping communication lines open, you can create advantageous scenarios by positioning yourself in key protected areas where you can predict your players to be, and then get off heals. Finally, it prevents you from getting LOSed by your own team when they panic and try to run away.

3.) Keep everyone topped off, or as high as possible.
Only in very specific battles is mana efficiency valued at even near your capability of keeping an individual alive. Thus, while I’m sure it does pay to be as mana efficient as possible, do not make it your priority. Your priority should be always trying to keep your teammate(s) out of burst HP levels. That is to say, out of the level in which a team can consistently ‘burst’ your player down via a full out CD spam, or even a Mage pet nova, frostbolt, ice lance vomno. The logic stems from the fact that having no mana is better than having nobody alive. At least, last I checked.

Top 3 PVP Rules as a DPSer:

1.) Don’t be fancy!
This comes a second time around for the arena DPSer by the simple that some individuals tend to get carried away trying to create some kind of insane vanish immune cheapshot full-parry-chun-li-special type of thing. If you don’t think you can do it, and in attempting to do it, you mess up your chances at bursting someone down, don’t do it.

2.) Control is often greater than DPS!
This is always and constantly true. As, say, a Warlock, you may feel completely inclined to set up your full UA dot cycle on everyone within your grasp, but if this means that the Mage can’t sheep anything, you have to ask yourself; should I really be UAing the Pally?
The answer is no, so stop fucking doing it.

3.) Trust your healers!
As a DPS, you may find that when you get to a scary low digit of health, you’ll panic and turn Sword+Shield Defensive tanking (thus losing your team MS), burn a talent to get the heck out of there, or quite simply, run.
Don’t do it! Keep your healers in consistent line of sight, and always trust that they’ll let you know when they can’t heal you, or when they’re controlled, or when you’re out of line of sight. Arena is a team game, so always trust that your teammates will support you! This in turn will give you greater confidence in pulling off your bursts, because you won’t suddenly find MS missing on the target because your Warrior is hiding behind a pole, spell reflecting moonfires with his sword and shield.

Setting your Raid Schedule

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In past guilds, we would set a day or four to raid. We would raid on those nights of the week until we accomplished our goal or until it was no longer practical to do so. I don’t know about you, but raiding with no end in sight does seem a bit demoralizing until you get a boss down. One of first policy acts a newly minted GM needs to do is to decide when their guild plans to raid.

Conquest raids from 6PM – 9 PM flat (Pacific). It doesn’t matter if we’re one shotting bosses or if we’re wiping like no tomorrow. It’s three hours in duration no matter what we do. With that in mind, it’s absolutely important for us to maximize our time in the raid instances. Some of you may set your raid times to end at 10 PM or 11 PM. But all too often, I’ve noticed on several pug raids that I’ve taken part in is that there are set start times, but end times are insanely flexible.

So consider setting a final, non-negotiable end time that everyone can look forward to.

Why?

It gives you and your raiding team a specific time to look forward to

Would you prefer a 9-5 job or a job where you would clock out whenever your boss says so? You might be wiping on trash or boss attempts, but at least you will know HOW MUCH LONGER it’s going to go on for. If you stare at the clock and notice that you have 30 minutes of raiding left, all of a sudden, you realize that you can actually endure one more wipe if necessary.

Everybody tries to get out of a raid

My dog ate my mouse.

My in laws are in town.

My exams are here.

What’s more, people give these excuses in the middle of the raid because they don’t want to raid anymore. They’re looking for an easy way out. It’s all human psychology. They come up with a BS excuse that may or may not be right with the intent of getting out of the raid so they can do something else. By setting an end time, your raid mates can plan their life around it.

For example, knowing my raid ended at 9 PM allowed me to delay construction of my 1500 word essay on criticizing Lysistrata until after the raid. It allowed me to calculate that I could watch the NHL season openers on Wednesday and finish the paper which would have been due this morning.

Clearly this is a poor example of time management, but if I had not known when our raid would end, I would have missed out on watching the NHL season openers. That would have been deeply tragic.

Which days should I pick?

Tuesdays are server reset days.

Friday and Saturday nights often have people out doing other stuff (like parties or social events).

Sundays will have holidays throughout the year that players may miss out on.

The time of day will also matter. Make it too late and raiders that work won’t be able to join you. Make it too early and people might just be getting off work or class. Many of the guilds I’ve seen schedule their times between 7 PM to 11 PM. This gives everyone optimal time to eat dinner. The raid also ends early enough for everyone to get enough rest during the weekday.

Keep time zones in consideration. The hours between 5 PM to 9 PM are optimal for players on the west coast and east coast (North America, of course).

You can choose whatever days and times you’re comfortable with. Just make sure you tell everyone so no one gets confused!

How long?

Lastly, the amount of days spent raiding will also have a huge impact. Whether you’re aware of it or not, raiding three days a week versus two days a week can be far more draining. You might think to yourself ‘Oh its just an extra day’, but to some people it’s a lot more time for them to invest in. It’s also dependent on your raid’s ability to solve certain encounters. If you easily clear to Shade of Aran, but have a harder time cracking him below 80%, then chances are your raid isn’t ready to take him down yet. There is no sense in scheduling another day of four hour consecutive 80% Aran wipes. It demoralizes your team, it adds unneeded expenses, and your team won’t try hard at all because they know they can’t do it yet. It’s best to try the boss a few times, gauge the probability of success with your team before calling it and coming back when the week resets.

In the end, you know your raid team best.

If they’re willing to jump back in there and continue running into the brick wall, then do it. Perseverance helps. For the past two weeks, we’ve been getting Leotheras down to phase 3 where he is below 10% every attempt before our guild wipes. If that’s the same with you, then maybe coming back another night would be the right answer.

Having a refreshed raid is far more effective then a fatigued raid.

Know your Guild and what they’re capable of doing. Push them to the limit, but don’t tip them over the edge.

 

You heard it here first, and finals thoughts on Loot Distribution

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Nethaera wrote:Meditation is also going to get a bit of a bump up and it will increase to 10/20/30% mana regen as well.

I posted this earlier, but it didn’t hit home to me until I checked out the next druid changes. From what I understand, they get a similar talent upgrade, yes? If so, I suspect we’ll see an increase in healing endurance based fights. I’ve got 413 mana regen. Does that mean I will then end up with 537 mana regen? Honestly, I don’t know. My specialty has always been with theory and philosophy. I’ve never been good with hard numbers. I don’t know if that talent applies to your entire mana regen pool, or just your base without taking into account your gear, etc. So much for being a Priest resource, eh?

By the way, I got another post referenced on WoW Insider (1609 hits today). Apparently my Loot Distribution article generated a lot of views. From the responses, I could see that people were overlooking a few things and I want to elaborate just a bit more.

It will cover a basic DKP system, discouraging DKP hoarding, and a loot hierarchy [to prevent people from joining, taking loot, and then leaving].

Those three are the basic problems that many starting Guilds will have. Many new players have yet to embrace the system of working collectively together and achieving a goal. I wrote this article on the basic assumption that everyone is greedy and not willing to trust other players. Perhaps they’ve been backstabbed before in the past, or someone took loot and left, etc. I don’t know if a survey has been done on this, but I would hazard a guess that 30% of all loot acquired by a Guild will no longer be utilized by them: Players quit the game, players quit the Guild, etc, etc. It’s important to remember that these things do happen. There isn’t much you can do to screen for them. You can always consider it an expense. There is always going to be some kind of turnover.

Nadiaron made an excellent comment:

Nadiaron 03 Oct 2007 at 1:12 pm

Attendance is a horrible DKP modded system. It punishes people for having a vacation, and makes them less likely to want to come back afterwards. It also gives people who aren’t going to be sticking around, better gear whenever they have excess time to play WoW.

My response was already at the end of the article:

Matticus wrote:

No system is better then that of human discretion. Always use it. Different ways to handle loot are useful for different types of Guilds. Find out what works best for you.

Human discretion. Human… discretion. It can be misguided or it can be beneficial. If you’re going to have a player take off on vacation or who has family problems, it shouldn’t be difficult to suspend that player temporarily so that their DKP does not decay. There’s always going to be Pros and Cons to every DKP system. If there was a perfect system, I wouldn’t have a series on loot distribution. Instead, I would only have one featured article. Every Guild would be using it. The problem here is that no Guilds are made the same. Different Guilds have different needs. Some Guilds like zero sum. Some Guilds prefer to use timed accumulation. Some Guilds don’t use DKP and rely on Loot Council. The purpose of this article was to suggest a method by which new Guild leaders, who probably don’t have a clue what system to use, can start with. It offers a basic frame work of loot priority and distribution. In a nutshell, if you raid more, you’ll get rewarded. If you’re a veteran player, you’ll get it before the new guy. At the same time, if you’re a new guy, you are not completely shut out. A veteran player doesn’t need loot from an instance, his attendance goes down, his accumulated total goes down, but the new guy whose shown constant dedication in raiding for the past month has an equal shot at the loot.

Again, it is by no means the best solution. But it’s just a step in one of many different directions.

For cryin’ out loud, BUFF ALREADY!

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I need to de-stress myself. I just found out that this summary for a 27 page journal page article which had to be finished within 4 hours is actually due on Thursday. I had this one sitting on the backburner for a while, and it’s a great raiding topic to touch on especially for us Priests.

The short version: If that group isn’t your assigned buff group, buff them anyway.

The long version: Us raiders spent a lot of time buffing our groups. We do it so we can maximize the performance of everyone involved. Allow me to post an actual live transcript:

Raid leader: Everyone buffed? Good! Pulling in 3… 2…. 1…-
Random mage: WAIT! I DON’T HAVE FORT OR SPIRIT!
Raid leader: What the hell, why not?
Random mage: Sorry I zoned in late because I was repairing at a time when I shouldn’t have because you called for us to repair earlier and I didn’t because I was hungry and I auto-followed someone in.

Now the raid stalls for a priest to give him Fortitude and Spirit among other things. Then the buffers need to replenish their mana. By the time this happens, Paladin Blessings will have worn off (At least, last patch it would have).

Priest 1: Hey, he’s in your group, buff him.
Priest 2: I don’t have any candles. Besides, you were assigned to buff that player anyway.
Matticus: *sighs and gives the poor mage a 30 minute Fortitude and Spirit*

So is there a point I’m trying to make here? Yes, as a matter of fact there is. Follow whatever buff assignments your leaders tell you to do when you’re about to pull a boss, recovering from a wipe, or some other situation where everyone needs to be buffed again. If you have a few stragglers coming up behind you who didn’t get the group buff, just throw thm a 30 minute buff anyway even if he’s not in your assigned group. You can save a lot of time and minor heartache this way. Really, there are other significant things to argue about then whose responsibility it is to buff who. So save your efforts for that. What’s the most it will cost you? It will set you back one Conjured Glacier Water. And you got that for free!

Now I’m not a mage, so I can’t say this with absolute authority. But I enjoy the refreshing refreshments that these anklebiters throw out (assuming their Gnomish). To last a whole raid, I will need over one stack of water but never more than two. So Netherlord, I’m looking right at you. Hook me up with TWO stacks of water, NOT one otherwise I’ll have to open trade with you again at an inconvenient time for some much needed juice.

This reminds me of something else: Asking for water openly or just opening trade with a random mage in the raid. I am personally in favour of the latter approach as it makes it really convenient for a mage to just drag and drop water into the trade slots. Asking for water openly is like asking for a volunteer to do something. You shouldn’t bank on that. Push the issue and pop trade open with them. It also applies to buffs as well. Don’t openly ask for “Fort please” in raid. Either you’ll get overloaded with three fort buffs or none at all because the Priests assume someone else will do it. Whisper any Priest in the raid and ask them for a Fort.

Lastly, regarding rebuffing. Here’s another transcript:

Random Hunter: Fort please!
Random Priest: Looks like you already have it.
Random Hunter: It’s going to come off in five minutes.
Random Priest: *sighs, buffs*

It’s not a big deal, but again it saves on the minor stressors in WoW. If you have a buff which expires in another 10 minutes or even 15 minutes, right click it off. Chances are, the classes that can buff you will notice that it is off and reapply it again before you even ask. During every pull, as a healer, I constantly scan every member in the raid anyway so I know if there is a Fortitude or Spirit buff missing. But again, just click it off to save the questions.

I’m guilty of getting worked up over minor issues like this. I try to make raiding as easy on other people as much as possible by handing things out like that before they even realize it’s gone. It helps the raid transition and move much more fluidly. It helps to reduce any friction among member.