Optimize Your Raiding Time

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First off, some benchmarks are in order after reading Kirk’s ideal stat requirements for holy priests, I must respectfully disagree. Mind you, my guild is 3/6 SSC with Mag and VR on farm. Shade of Aran has a Poly/Pyro combination that will blast players for about 7k damage. While he is correct that there is a certain threshold in terms of HP that a player should have, I don’t believe having it as a base stat is necessary as much of the healing gear in the game does not carry much emphasis on stamina. Here’s a screenshot of my stats before and after buffs (and yes, that is 13.3k mana):

Base Stats Base Stats

Next, I wanted to build off of Kirk’s guide on forming a raiding group, I wanted to follow up with making the most out of your raid time. Face it. We waste a lot of time in raids farting around and just slacking off in general when we could be pulling mobs and downing bosses. My Guild has a time window of three hours from first pull before we call it a night. Every precious second of raiding counts. Unless you’re a super hardcore Guild who raids every day, chances are you don’t have a lot of time on encounters. It seems the primary respawn timer is two hours. That’s not a whole lot of time to work with.

The next time you attempt a raid boss, try this experiment. Start timing your raid and see how fast they can ready up before the next pull. This means from the time you wipe, to the time your entire raid team is alive with full health, full mana, and full buffs in front of the boss. Unless your Guild has the discipline of the Queen’s Guards, you’ll be amazed at the time it takes. I guarantee it.

Thankfully, there’s many different ways for you to trim the fat and get as many attempts in as physically possible.

Release and Run Back

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out when your raid wipes. But if you’re new to raiding, here’s a few tell tale signs:

  • Your Main Tank dies
  • Over 50% of your healers are down
  • Over 20% of your raid is down within the first minute of the pull
  • A class with a specific role goes down (ie, mage tanking mage on the High King Maulgar encounter)

Now don’t get me wrong. It is perfectly possible to recover from sloppy mistakes in raid. Obviously if the boss is down to 5% or less, keep plowing away. But back to my original point, let’s try not to prolong the fight. Don’t run around trying to escape him. Run to him, die, release, and run back. But there is an exception to this…

Use Protection

And I’m not referring to a Trojan. I mean use wipe protection. It will save you a lot of time. Warlocks have soul stones. Paladins can Divine Intervention. Shamans have the ability to self resurrect themselves. If you can time it properly, have a Druid battle res a priest or someone and make sure he doesn’t accept it until after the encounter resets. Meanwhile, raid members should move to a safe location away from the boss if the raid leader calls a wipe that is within range of a person who can resurrect. The only players who should not be withdrawing would be the main tank who ought to try and stay alive as long as possible to allow the rest of the melee to get some distance. Once you get that done…

Res Ressers First

I should not have to say it. But I still see it happen so it must bear repeating. A lot of beginning players aren’t aware of this, but always resurrect other players who can res first. Instead of ressing a mage or a warlock, pick up a paladin or a shaman. Just imagine it as a snowballing effect. Try using a res notifier. I believe CT Raid has one built in as does X Perl.
Ressing multiple targets

Now you can res to other players together instead of one other. Then the four of you can res another four and so on and so forth. Ideally, it would just be tanks and other melee running back in through the front door. Typically, they’ll have a lot of ground to cover between the entrance and where your encounter is. Which leads to…

Summon the Runners

Remember back before we had summoning stones? We relied on Warlocks to summon the whole raid into the door steps of MC or BWL. Sometimes it seems as if people forget they have this ability. If there is a Warlock alive, have him start summoning players the moment they zone in. There are instances the trek back to the boss is agonizingly long. You’ll shave precious seconds or even minutes which could be used towards engaging the boss.

Buffing

There’s a neat utility called XRS (X Raid Status, I believe) which comes with X Perl Unit Frames.What it does is scans every player and lists what buffs are missing for them, so players don’t have to keep asking for buffs repeatedly. The raid leader presses the button, and it spits out the list.

XRS

The onus is then on everyone else to buff the rest of the raid. The only buff that you absolutely need on trash is Power Word: Fortitude. Otherwise, you can just whisper a player to toss a 30 minute one instead of repeatedly asking for it in raid. This is one of my pet peeves in raiding is people asking for buffs in the middle of trash. Whatever it is, it can wait. It’s just trash. You shouldn’t even need Salv right away if your tanks and healers are able. Hopefully, you’ll be given a 5 minute one in between trash pulls as the raid is steaming along. The last thing players need is a break in momentum. If you’re a buffer and you notice someone is missing a buff, just take the time and give them a 30 minute even if you’re not the person assigned to buff that group. Just do it, and it saves time, frustration, and heartache.

Preparation

Illidan has taunted us by continually saying that we are not prepared. Shut him up by proving him wrong. Mages should start conjuring water and food before everyone even gets to the instance. Bandages should be made before the raid. Most importantly, repair, repair, repair. I cannot count the number of times I’ve had the urge to strangle guildmates for failing to repair. You know there is a raid. There should be no excuse for you not to be repaired 100% on first pull.

AFK’ers

Alterac Valley isn’t the only instance to suffer this problem. Raids will have problems of players going AFK. Even I am guilty of this. But I’ve learned and gotten better. I try to time my AFK’s on trash pulls knowing that my presence is not essential. Bad times to go AFK are the pulls just before the boss, pulling the boss, or during the boss encounter. Do things that you would normally do before going on a flight to London. Make sure you go to the bathroom, and make sure you grab a bite to eat. I’ll admit I don’t have the luxury of eating at my computer on some nights. My family’s quite traditional and is required to eat at the dinner table sometimes during raids. I go there, I wolf it down, I come back during trash pulls not during Tidewalker or Lurker.

Hopefully, these tips will help streamline your raid some more so you can get in an additional 2 or 3 shots at the boss.

Play of the Week

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What’s one of the biggest thrills you get from playing WoW? Doing a five-man quest with two players.

Doc and I wanted to wrap up the Ashtongue quest series which culminated in you killing a mounted Orc on a Netherdrake. Oh it was a glorious battle indeed. Wave after wave of Shadowmoon Orcs rushed against us the moment we touched down and killed the channelers. Eventually I drew aggro since it was just me and a hunter. Naturally this gave him free reign to just shoot everything. I think there was a point where I was down to 6% health and still managed to survive. What helped was that the incoming mobs were ranged and shooting their pathetic arrows at me. This allowed me enough time to predict their next shot so I can time my heals accordingly. If you ever find yourself being under siege, spam everything you have to stay alive. Remember, forget what you’ve been taught at the academy. In the real world of WoW, the law of the jungle reigns supreme.

Even in WoW, rules are meant to be broken.

Matt’s on Curse, and PvP Zones: The Good and the Bad

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I’ve recently started blogging over on Curse about a week or two ago to help boost my traffic and viewership. Boy, all I can see is that it works. If you check out Curse, you’ll see my name mentioned on the front page (unless they’ve loaded up on news that it goes down). I’ve teamed up with another blogger there to create a blog called The Daily Quest. We were stuck on ideas for names, and this popped in my mind as I was bombing cannonball stacks. And why not? We’re both writers who enjoy what we do. Other than that, nothing else has really changed. My content will still be published here and there to reach a wider audience. So without further adieu, here is today’s piece.

PvP Zones: The Good and the Bad

Don’t worry, I have absolutely no intention of blasting WSG, AB, EoTS, or AV. That’s already been done to death by countless others and I see no need in further adding my 1.8 cents to that pile (Canadian, remember?). With the release of Burning Crusade, Blizzard decided to add extra PvP related gimmicks to various zones in the outland after the huge, “success,” they had in Azeroth (Eastern Plaguelands) and Kalimdor (Silithus dust stuff). After that mammoth of a post I wrote yesterday about Priest gear and the time it took for me to make all the links Curse-able (Thanks Kody), I needed a break so let’s check it out shall we?

 

Hellfire Peninsula

The Good

This would the first PvP area that players encounter as they start to level from 58 – 70. The gimmick here is that killing members of the opposing faction or capturing the three points of interest (Stadium, Broken Hill, The Overlook) would net you honor tokens which you can turn in for some cool swag. In addition, if a faction held all three towers, that faction would get a zone wide buff good for PvP or PvE purposes (5% damage, still good in
instances).

The Bad

Those three points change hands more times than Paris Hilton. It takes a party or even a small raid to maintain control of the points. No one’s going to take the time to do that. Players capture them then bugger off allowing the other side to take control and back and forth it goes. Make it more difficult and add something to dissuade the other side. I’m sure the Legion could install some Fel Flak Cannons around the area, which could be controlled by the faction owners of the points.

Zangarmarsh

The Good

A fair number of guilds have begun to enter Serpentshrine Cavern. That makes it beneficial to help get the zone wide buff (Also 5% in damage). What we have here is two towers flanking a middle tower. Capture them, and you get possession of a flag. Plant it at the central spire to gain the buff (No cheating, you can’t mount or shapeshift). Remember those marks you got in Hellfire? Yeah, they’re still good here. I know the Alliance one is somewhere a little ways from Telredor. I don’t have a clue where the Horde one is. Oh, you also get a graveyard in the middle.

The Bad

Did anyone really have an idea of what to do? There weren’t any instructions on how to properly get the bonuses. Talk about being noob-friendly. Aside from the graveyard, there wasn’t much of an incentive to do it.

Terrokar Forest

The Good

Here we go! This is one of Blizzard’s finest. Capture five Spirit Towers, and the entire zone gets 5% additional damage and 5% additional experience gained (Those of us at level 70 should gain 5% additional gold from mobs). Note that the effects last for six hours. After that time is up, the control of Towers can be disputed. With the Towers under your control, the Auchindoun instances now have Spirit Shards that can be looted from the bosses within. These Shards can then be turned into the Spirit Sages (Allerian Stronghold for Alliance, Stonebreaker Hold for Horde) for some cool epic swag. As a Holy Priest, he didn’t have much to offer me. What a waste.

The Bad

Players are too busy bombing eggs to help. The distance between Skettis and Skethyl Mountains makes it difficult to assist. I can’t count the amount of times I’d be busy trying to capture towers and yelling for raid invites and I’d get whispers saying: “Hold on! Just a few more eggs and I’ll be right down!” Get the Skettis Bird guys to start laying some eggs on top of the Spirit Towers. Make it easier for us to bomb them and capture them.

Nagrand

The Good

So here’s a town that’s capturable via PvP. All you need to do is bomb to submission the Guards (if there are any) and then make like Counterstrike radio spammers and “storm the front”. Your reward? Halaa, which is a town rich with amenities such as quest givers, vendors, and a (you guessed it) 5% damage increase buff across the zone. There’s 4 of these flight post things you can interact with that stuff you on a Wyvern (weird) which flies you around the city for you to lob explosives on players and guards below. When the Guards are neutralized, players go in and must defend the flag as it is being hoisted. Congratulations! The day is yours.

The Bad

It needs a flight path. Seriously. Or some kind of a portal which will shuttle us between the towns and Halaa. If only I had an epic mount to get me there. I think Halaa also needs some Flak Cannons. Nothing would bring me the satisfaction of shooting down a 64 Rogue who laughs, sneers, and spits as he flies by knowing there’s not a damn thing I can do about it (until he lands, anyway).

Wrath of the Lich King is promising additional World PvP fun. I’m waiting eagerly to see what it brings. That means more things to do in between those 50 minutes AV queues (Come on BG 9, I know you can do better). For the time being, we can only hope Blizzard might add another PvP gimmick in Netherstorm. I’d love to have 5% additional damage when taking on Kael’Thas. You know there’s this really popular map called DoTA on Battle.net, which might be adaptable to WoW…

Gearing Your Fresh 70 Holy Priest: My Recommendations

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As Holy Priests, the main stats we are concerned with are +healing, mana per five, intellect, spirit, and stamina (yes, stamina is up there since we can’t heal if we’re dead). I’ve compiled a list here of the best possible pre-raiding gear you can acquire before venturing into Karazhan. I will also list your gem choices and possible enchants. The ideal professions for Priests would be enchanting and tailoring as we get some awesome BoP recipes for us to use only. This helps maximize our healing and means less dungeon instances we need to do. I know there may be better items to get out there, but this Burning Crusade priest healing gear list shows you the quickest and most cost effective way to gear up your Priest.

Updated 10/13/07: Hallowed Shoulders and Garments as well as Veteran’s Mooncloth Cuffs added. [Thanks Gnomik/Luni]

Updated 11/24/07: Typos fixed. I think.

Updated 07/17/08: Added Shadow Pearls and Star of Elunes for Spirit regen.

Head

Watcher’s Cowl (+79 Healing): It costs about 13 gold but is quite possible one of the best blue cloth healing pieces in the game. I’ve even seen resto druids use it (because they can’t find anything better?). You need to be Revered with Cenarion Expedition to purchase and equip it. Find it at the Quartermaster at the CE Camp in Zangarmarsh.

Whitemend Hood (+79 Healing, 11 Mana Per 5): If you’ve got some extra cash lying around, consider getting this made for you. Difficulty lies in finding a player with the recipe and who has a Nether for sale.

Neck

Necklace of Eternal Hope (+48 Healing, 8 Mana Per 5): This one will set you back about 25 heroic badges. If you don’t think you’re geared properly enough for heroics yet, then try the next one which is a little longer to get.

Natasha’s Guardian Cord (+55 Healing, 6 Mana Per 5): You can get this neckpiece from Blade’s Edge Mountains. It’s at the end of a ridiculously long chain quest which starts when you find a Mask on the Ground that you hear voices from. The 9th step in the quest will reward you with this decent neck.

Sethekk Oracle’s Focus (+35 Healing, 8 Mana Per 5): Go to Sethekk Halls, get the quest to kill Darkweaver Syth, kill Darkweaver Syth, turn in quest. Voila! Easy neck!

Shoulders

Primal Mooncloth Shoulders (+92 Healing, 7 Mana Per 5): This is a Tailoring Mooncloth recipe which is BoP. It requires:

But boy is it worth it. The pattern will cost you 6G.

Hallowed Pauldrons: With the amount of times you’ll be running Shadow Labs, odds are high this will drop for you. Grandmaster Vorpil will have this for you.

Back

White Remedy Cape: Easiest cape you can possibly get. It’s a tailoring BoE blue. The pattern itself is a world drop. If you put a tell in trade chat, hopefully you’ll be able to find someone who can create it on your server. It’s Level 69 so you can start shopping for it a little earlier. If you’re on Ner’Zhul, look up Mallet and I can craft it for you. Here’s the mats requirement:

Chest

Primal Mooncloth Robe (+121 Healing, 10 Mana Per 5): Best. Healing. Chest. Pre-raid. Ever. If you don’t have Mooncloth tailoring, drop whatever profession it is you have and use it. It’s just about on par with T4.

Hallowed Garments: Killing Murmer could yield this drop for you as well. Good alternative for you non-tailors.

Wrists

Bindings of the Timewalker (+64 Healing): Have a lot of time on your hands? Go run Black Morass a billion times. This sweet bracer comes at a not so sweet price of about 43G and lost hours better spent playing hockey or watching the Office.

Veteran’s Mooncloth Cuffs: The time required to grind out the Honor for this vs the Bindings of the Time Walker would work out in favour of these cuffs. One weekend in Alterac Valley should yield you enough honor points for this PvP item.

Gloves

Gloves of Penitence (+46 Healing): Chances are you might have this. All you had to do was kill Levixus the Soul Caller and it’s yours.

Prismatic Mittens of Mending (+55 Healing, 7 Mana Per 5): Consider upgrading to these once you get the Gloves. The first boss in Botanica, Commander Sarannis drops them.

Belt

Primal Mooncloth belt (+81 Healing, 8 Mana per 5): Finish out the set, get a set bonus where you gain mana back (5% of your mana regen to continue while casting). Like the shoulders, this pattern is also 6G. Mats are:

Legs

Whitement Pants (+62 Healing, 11 Mana Per 5): The difficulty here would be finding a tailor with the pattern who has a Nether available for use. Nether costs have dropped in price so it shouldn’t be as as before the patch when the only way to get them was killing the end boss in Heroics.

Feet

Jeweled Boots of Sanctification (+55 Healing, 6 Mana Per 5): Dropped by the big bad confused Ogre from Shattered Halls who doesn’t know which way he’s going.

Rings

Keeper’s Ring of Piety (+42 Healing, 7 Mana Per 5): This one’s easy to get. If you’ve been following your Karazhan attunements, then you will have this one by now. The Quest is given by Sa’at in the Caverns of time after you’ve completed Hero of the Brood.

Ring of Convalescence (+57 Healing, 4 Mana Per 5): Requires you to be Revered with Honor Hold (Or Thrallmar). Will cut into your gold pouch with a price of about 18G. Pick it up from the Quartermaster.

Trinkets

Lower City Prayerbook (+70 Healing): Yeah the on use effect sucks. But just look at the passive ability! Besides, -22 mana isn’t that bad. Any mana saved is mana that can be used later. Think of endurance fights. Think of how often you you will use it and think of what that mana can be used for later. Requires a Revered Reputation with Lower City (Shadow Labs loves you).

Scarab of the Infinite Cycle (+70 Healing): Spell haste rating is cool. It makes your spells go faster. Too bad it requires running Black Morass a couple of times.

Weapons (Staff)

Epoch-Mender (+227 Healing, 10 Mana Per 5): For a staff, it’s not the greatest. It drops off of Temporus in the Black Morass. Personally, I would stick to a 1 Hand/Off hand combination until later on. But it’s still a decent staff. If you’re Scryer, opt for the Seer’s Cane instead.

Weapons (1 Hand))

The Essence Focuser (+227 Healing, 11 Mana Per 5): Scout your local auction house as it is a world drop. Unfortunately, no stats.

Gavel of Pure Light (+299 Healing, 8 Mana Per 5): Do lots of Mechanar runs to increase your rep. You need Exalted to be able to buy this from the Quartermaster. This will really make your wallet hurt with a near 192G cost. If you’re lucky, you might be able to get Hammer of the Penitent to drop off of the Mechano-Lord in Mech. Either way, you’ll get a good mace to use.

Weapons (Off Hand)

Netherwing Spiritualist’s Charm (+33 Healing, 6 Mana Per 5): Once you become neutral with Netherwing, you’ll get this as a reward. Head down to Shadowmoon Valley and look for an Elf wandering around killing Flayers just below the Netherdrakes.

Wands

Soul-Wand of the Aldor (+22 Healing): Hands down, the best wand you’ll get for a long time.

Enchants & Other Augments

Glyph of Renewal (+35 Healing, 7 Mana Per 5): This goes on your head. Requires Honor Hold/Thrallmar reputation of revered. Costs 100G.

Greater Inscription of Faith or Greater Inscription of the Oracle: Depends on which faction you chose (Aldor or Scryer). Aldor for the win!

Enchant Cloak – Subtlety: Wait for Patch 2.2 and Enchanters will be able to get this beauty. It’s updated for BC materials. It reduces the threat you cause by 2%. That means 2% more healing! Whee!

Enchant Chest – Restore Mana Prime (6 Mana Per 5): Easy to get. You’ll want this.

Enchant Bracer – Superior Healing (+30 Healing): Same thing. 4 Primal Life’s and 4 Greater Planar Essences and your bracer got a whole lot better.

Enchant Gloves – Major Healing (+35 Healing): Ouch. In addition to 6 Greater Planars and 6 Primal Lifes, now you need 6 Large Prismatic Shards. Put it on the best possible gloves you have knowing that you won’t be replacing it for a while.

Enchant Weapon – Spellsurge: This unique enchant has a 3% chance on cast to restore 100 mana (not 100% mana) to all party members over 10 seconds. This is most useful in a raid environment, but there is a lot of debate between this and +81 Healing. Hopefully one of my other fellow Priest bloggers will dwell on this topic (Ego? Kurt? Anyone? Eh, guess not. I’ll get around to it eventually).

Enchant Weapon – Major Healing (+81 Healing): Stick to this for now. It’s cheaper.

Enchant Boots – Vitality (4 Mana Per 5): Restores Health and Mana every 5 seconds. The enchant is a world drop.

Enchant Ring – Healing Power (+20 Healing): Remember when I told you to take up Tailoring and Enchanting? Here’s the other half of the reason why. Enchanters are able to enchant their own rings (Must be Soulbound).
Golden Spellthread (+66 Healing): Here’s a big hint: Put this on your Whitemend Pants. You’ll need 10 Primal Life’s and an Aldor Exalted Tailor with a Primal Nether. If you’re on Ner’Zuhl as Alliance, send Mallet a tell and I’ll do it for you.

Gems

Purified Shadow Pearl (+9 Healing, 4 Spirit): Spirit changes in recent patches have modified the Priest choice of gems rather extensively. The ideal blue slot gem now belongs to these Shadow Pearls. Bear in mind, they’re not something that can be mined or prospected easily so the cost of acquiring these might be higher than normal.

Sparkling Star of Elune (8+ Spirit): This is another option for you if you’d like to focus more exclusively on mana regen. But at an early level, having both +healing and mana regen should be worked on simultaneously.

Royal Nightseye (+9 Healing, 2 Mana Per 5): This is your best friend. Most of the time, you’ll want to get a yellow gem for the socket bonus. Personally I say it’s hogwash. Most of your red and blue’s should be Nightseyes. There’s not a lot of gear where the socket bonus is good enough to warrant not using a Nightseye.

Teardrop Living Ruby (+18 Healing): I don’t use this at all personally. I heavily favor Mana Per 5 over miniscule amounts of +healing. It’s only 9 more than the Nightseye. I do not foresee it making a huge impact.

Luminous Noble Topaz (+9 Healing): For the rare pieces that do have a kickass bonus when you slot in a yellow gem, use one of these babies.

Conclusions and the Math

I’ve factored in my top choices in gear and included the best enchants, augments, and recommended gems. Here’s the final numbers:

Head: 135 Healing, 24 Mana Per 5 (Whitemend Hood, 3 x Royal Nightseye, Glyph of Renewal)

Neck: 48 Healing, 4 Mana Per 5 (Necklace of Eternal Hope)

Shoulders: 125 Healing, 11 Mana Per 5 (Primal Mooncloth Shoulders with the Aldor Greater Faith Inscription)

Back: 59 Healing, 7 Mana Per 5 (White Remedy Cape)

Chest: 139 Healing, 20 Mana Per 5 (Primal Mooncloth Robe, 2 x Royal Nightseye, Enchant Chest – Restore Mana Prime)

Bracer: 94 Healing (Bindings of the Timewalker, Enchant Bracer – Superior Healing)

Gloves: 90 Healing, 7 Mana Per 5 (Prismatic Mittens of Mending, Enchant Gloves – Major Healing)

Waist: 99 Healing, 12 Mana Per 5 (Primal Mooncloth Belt, 2 x Royal Nightseye)

Legs: 154 Healing, 17 Mana Per 5 (Whitemend Pants, 3 x Royal Nightseye, Golden Spellthread)

Feet: 55 Healing, 10 Mana Per 5 (Jeweled Boots of Sanctification, Enchant Boots – Vitality)

Ring: 77 Healing, 4 Mana Per 5 (Ring of Convalescence, Enchant Ring – Healing Power)

Ring: 62 Healing, 7 Mana Per 5 (Keeper’s Ring of Piety, Enchant Ring – Healing Power)

Trinket: 70 Healing (Lower City Prayberook)

Trinket: 70 Healing (Scarab of the Infinite Cycle)

Weapon 1H: 380 Healing (Gavel of Pure Light, Enchant Weapon – Major Healing)

Weapon OH: 33 Healing, 6 Mana Per 5 (Netherwing Spiritualist’s Charm)

GRAND TOTAL:

1690 Healing (Does not include the Whitemend Bonus. Factor that in, and you’ll get healing increased by up to 10% of your intellect. So you could easily be looking at over 1700 Healing)

129 Mana Per 5 (Note that this is just from the gear. I did not calculate spirit bonuses into it)

With those kinds of numbers, you can easily begin raiding Karazhan. I started doing it with ~1300 Healing.

And there you have it! Matticus’ recommended pre-raiding checklist for the Holy Priest. If I’m wrong somewhere, please leave a comment and I’ll fix it. Remember, there are better blues out there you can get, but I only listed those that offer the best value for the buck (and time).

Whew, that list took a lot of time. I started compiling this at 6:30 AM. It’s about 9:23 AM right now. Good thing it’s server downtime day.

Sources:
WoW Wiki
WoW Head

5 Things about WoW (post TBC) and How I Would Fix Them

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Matt’s Note: I’d like to introduce another writer. Ryan “Doc Holiday” has been a friend for many years. He also plays World of Warcraft with a Hunter as his main. He’ll usually post one or two days out of the week. His columns can be found under Ryan’s Rants on the side. Enjoy!

5. Heroic Dungeons

Now to be honest I’m not wholly against the idea of “beefing” up instances and offering up some decent epics but… something got lost in the translation. I don’t think it was Blizzard’s intentions that heroics become a nightmare of micro management for CC classes but thats what they got much to the chagrin of any non CC class in the game. Not only that its a nightmare for priests (2 shot wonders) or Druids (I wish i had some aggro management or at least let me cast heals in bear form) but the testing for heroics had seemed to be play tested with a group consisting of tier 6 Warrior, Holy pally, Mage, Mage, and a Mage. Now people are going to tell me “Hey Heroics are a success” and they probably would be right but that doesn’t stop me from hating it anyway.

How I would fix it

Making trash hit like a brickhouse and have a ton of health doesn’t make the game more “epic”. Well designed instances and fun encounters do. e.g…black morass. Whoever made Black Morass I would promote him and see what they could do with Heroics cause its got to be better then whatever fool suggested mobs that hit for a billion and have more health then Tidewalker.

4. Epic flying Mount

I can’t think of a bigger time and money scam then the epic flying mount. Question. Why would you spend 5000 gold on something that is completely irrelevant to game play? Oh people come back with “It helps me farm faster”… Really if you’re good enough to farm 5000 gold then why do you need an epic flying mount? This one item has basically done two things: Inflate the cost of everything on the auction house and keep gold farming companies in business. The first thing is probably good for Blizzard it keeps people playing longer. The second is well not good for Blizzard unless they secretly own the gold farming companies.

How I would fix it

It should be some grand quest that believe it or not… Takes time. The idea for daily quests is a good one but could be put to better use with a grand quest spread out over weeks or even months. Only the truly dedicated would complete these “epic” quests. Is it truly awe inspiring to see Johnny McCreditcard or Bill the Overpowered Warlock Mote farmer of doom flying his epic flying mount around all the other thousands of people with theirs? Truly epic indeed.

3. Time equals Gear

What ever flavor it comes in, Arena, Battlegrounds, or Reputation gear. Rewarding someone by simply playing is too me the lowest form of mediocrity. I would think as a 2000+ rated arena team its pretty degrading to see that hard earned arena gear on some team that maintains a even record. Yes the drive to be good is kept alive in wow. Want to earn gear? AFK in a Battleground, repeat, get easy epics. Grind Mechanar on easy mode, get an epic. Thats right people don’t excel because we know your too stupid to do anything that requires the smallest amount of skill.

How I would fix it

First and foremost: Arena teams must achieve and maintain a certain rating for certain gear. Failure to do so means you cannot wear that gear or purchase that gear in the future. No more points for “winning” or “losing” a Battleground. You get points for doing what you should be doing. Whether its dpsing or killing blows to healing or flag capturing or flag defending. No more Reputation gear. It would be replaced with Hero Gear. Tired of shadow labs? How about doing it without CCing anything? doing it in an hour or 45 minutes or 30 minutes? Reward people for the skill that is required to do these feats because you would be in fact training them to be better players and maybe just maybe you would have more then .01 percent of the total wow population doing the things you spent a lot of time developing like the Black Temple.

2. The Forums

I cannot think of a bigger cesspool and waste of time as the official forums of WoW. Trying to find useful and helpful information is harder then finding a needle in a haystack. Is everyone that plays wow a crystal meth addicted moron? If you read the wow forums the answer would probably be yes. What should be resource for the 9 million subscribers has turned into a never ending forum for trolls, criers and flamers. On the plus side it has created a huge offshoot industry of websites offering dedicated wow gamers the things they really need.

How I would fix it

Scrap the forums. Blow them up and start again. Hire a ton of moderators and have them deal with troublemakers right away. For those helpful and talented wowers out there give them a job and have them contribute full time to help make the game more enjoyable for everyone. There are plenty of great websites out there that do just that, for those that are for beginners (WoW Insider) or to the more advanced (elitist Jerks).

1. Trash

Oh lord give me strength after this wipe to battle through another hour of trash clears so that I do not take my own life in rage. You know I listened to Blizzard’s raid discussion and their attempt to defend the amount of trash in its raid and I just wanted to scream BS the entire time. No one can tell me that more trash is better or equal to less trash with more difficulty. The idea of putting trash into an instance to let you know that if your not ready for this instance yet is ludicrous. Bosses should be the test for guilds not trash. End of story period. Time after time again the thing that ends raids for almost every guild is a re clear of trash in starter raids of SSC and TK. You would think they would have learned something from the most successful raid instance of all time and no I’m not talking about Naxx I’m talking about BWL. Two quick boss encounters that were challenging some nasty trash that tested your tanks, dps and gear, a timed room clear that kept everyone on there toes to a boss that was tied into those timed rooms. Follow that up with some new and interesting trash 3 quick dragon bosses, the big doggie, then the end boss and what you had was 3 or so hours of fun. Now its an hour of trash followed by 2-4 attempts on a boss thats very unforgiving with mistakes.

How I would fix it

I am not saying eliminate trash but what I am saying in its current state is it either needs to be reduced or have its re spawn time increased. I once heard a Blizzard developer say that trash should be “relaxing”. Well I don’t want my pallies relaxing when I get poisoned and they don’t cleanse me instantly so i die. I don’t want my tanks relaxing when enraged Murlocs are running around 1 shotting healers. In the future, trash should be either tied into a boss encounter in a 15-20 minute cycle or removed entirely. Attumen is a good example of how trash affects a boss encounter, it adds a sense of urgency to the encounter without making it seem horrid if you have to do it again. If there is no trash then boss encounter should be difficult or long. Razorgore is a perfect example of a encounter that was interesting, chaotic and long. It felt truly epic and was followed up by a short but difficult encounter in Vael. How many times did you wipe on Vael? I know some nights it would take hours to down him but the important thing is it kept making us come back no matter how long it took.