Which Warlords of Draenor Racial Would You Want Now?

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A few days ago, Warcraft Technical Game Designer Celestalon dispensed two hours worth of information on Twitter. One specific topic caught my eye. It’s no secret that racial bonuses in the game are a little skewed and slightly imbalanced. Many of the top tier raiding guilds are Horde and I’m fairly certain much of it is due to the min-maxing bonuses that the racials provide. So come Warlords, they’re mostly getting overhauled. While nothing has been finalized just yet, here’s where the racials stand right now.

WoW Head’s Perculia did a phenomenal job hunting down and assembling the information in an easily digestible package right here. You can check out the official blue post about racials here.

Alliance

  • Draenei:  Heroic Presence is now +X to your primary stat. Gift of the Naaru heals for the same amount but over 5 sec. 
  • Dwarf: Lost  Crack Shot and  Mace Specialization. Gained Might of the Mountain, a passive which adds 2% Crit Damage. Also… A change to Stoneform: Also removes Magic/Curse. HOWEVER, it still cannot be used while CC’d. (It is still NOT a CC-break) 
  • Gnome:  Escape Artist dropped to a 1min CD (from 1.5min), and  Shortblade Specialization became Nimble Fingers, 1% Haste. Also- A tweak to  Expansive Mind. Was +5% max Mana. Now +5% Max Mana, Energy, Rage, or Runic Power. 
  • Humans lose the Mace/Sword racials.  The Human Spirit becomes +X to two secondary stats of your choice.  Every Man for Himself, we’re still evaluating. Itemization changes may mean no nerf needed. 
  • Night Elves:  Quickness also increases movement speed by 2% passively. They also got a new passive which is quite unique… (Remember, no more haste breakpoints!) Touch of Elune, a new passive which grants 1% Haste at night, 1% Crit during the day.Shadowmeld is unchanged. 
  • Worgen: Darkflight is staying unchanged. 

Horde

Pandaren, of course, will most likely not see a change and retain their Epicurean bonus.

The Draenei racial bonus is much more appealing. Too bad we don’t know what the +X value is for the primary stat. It’s going to go right to Intellect for priests of all kinds. Gift of the Naaru will heal 20% of a target’s health over 5 seconds (instead of 15). It’s another healing spell you can add to your bar and you can save it for emergencies (every 3 minutes).

My first Priest was a Dwarf. I miss Stoneform and the ability to shrug off poisons. Now it functions as a secondary self dispel since it can remove magic debuffs and curses. The extra crit damage is handy for the Shadow and the Discipline Smiters though. May not be as helpful for Holy.

What about the Gnomes? There’s still the bonus to mana but it’s been expanded to include the energy of other class types. The natural 1% haste is new and useful for all priest types.

Humans gain a rather unique spin to their buff. They get to select which two secondary stats get a bonus. I imagine one of those will be Spirit and the other will be Haste, Crit, or Mastery — Whatever your priest is short on. An interface is being worked up right now allowing you to pick. The ability to pick and choose offers some neat flexibility.

Night Elves. Sigh. Really? Server time makes a difference now? Blah. I hate randomness. But it looks like there’s not much that can be done about that.

Horde side, Blood Elves continue to be the winner. The crit bonus passive is second only to Arcane Torrent’s innate mana restoring capability.

Goblins? The ability to Rocket Jump is huge in heavy movement fights. Now you get a flat 1% haste instead of a bonus to attack and bast speed.

Orcs can’t play priests so that point is rather moot.

Tauren Priests are already benefitting from a slight stamina boost allowing them to withstand a little more damage than usual. But the new Brawn bonus is a solid boon for priests of all types.

The first iteration of the Troll’s Berserking was pretty overpowered. It was like a mini-Heroism on demand. Now it’s been nerfed to a flat 15% Haste bonus instead of the 20%. Not quite as good but still reliable for burst healing your way through stuff.

Huge nerf to the Undead’s Will of the Forsaken with the cooldown going up. No other changes.

So let’s assume that you’re rolling a new Priest. You have all these excellent racials available to you. No more of the junk bonus to hit or expertise or any of that stuff.

Which one should you go for?

If you plan on playing Alliance, I would favour the Draenei bonuses. Hard to say for sure without knowing what the X value is. If you’re PvPing, Dwarves or Gnomes are a good bet. I like Gnomes though since Escape Artist is handy (and the fast cooldown).

If you plan on playing Horde, I’m leaning towards Blood Elves. That mana restore is so nice to have especially on progression fights when you’re tapped out. Berserking is another trait you’ll find attractive and is great if you’re playing either shadow or healing.

Personally, I’m staying a Pandaren. Can’t get enough of that food buff.

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Raid Leader Questions: Reset or Extend?

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Back in Wrath, right around the era of the Trial of the Crusader patch, Blizzard pushed out a new feature. It was a tool designed for raids who didn’t raid as often or who had trouble investing significant and meaningful hours in progression before the week reset and all their progression and work had been lost.

Yes, the lockout extension feature.

To my knowledge, it was one of those things that not many players really raved about but no one slammed it down either. It was completely optional and not many had the desire to extend it. Two expansions later, raids are getting larger, there’s more trash in the way, and time just seems to be a factor. This isn’t 5 years ago where I was in a raid that insisted on everyone going way past their bed time to get that much needed kill in. I was in guilds that asked much of their players to sacrifice sleep and hours for the sake of progression.

When Conquest was first formed, one of the key decisions was laying down our hours. In order to maximize the potential pool of players, I ensured that our times were west and east coast friendly. But this had the cost where we would not be able to go past our end times even if we had gotten a boss down to 1%. With Siege of Orgrimmar being the deep instance that it is, many of the players lobbied for more time on end bosses and extensions on the week to put in more work. It’s paid off because we secured kills on Nazgrim and Malkorok on the days where we normally would’ve reset.

At the same time, like other raiding guilds, we’ve seen our share of players come and go. This is the part of the expansion where many players are slowly returning back to the game. They’re smart and skilled players, but sometimes there’s nothing they can do to survive through a large explosion even with all their defensive cooldowns used simply because their health is too low. Or we’re not able to meet a DPS check on an earlier boss like Norushen and Sha of Pride.

It’s a tough balancing act between providing our newer players with the gear and experience they need now so they can be in a position to help us later versus ensuring that the raid has adequate time to work on progression bosses in the second half of Siege. Blizzard has announced the end of the Challenge Mode season coming soon to coincide with a new patch deployment. While there’s been no mention of a friends and family alpha, the patch signals that we’re one milestone closer to the next expansion and our time in Siege is growing shorter.

How long does it take to gear a freshly geared 90 and put them in a position where they are no longer a detriment to a heroic raid boss?

My estimate is 3-4 weeks. This includes running the raid finder, flex raids, using crafted pieces, and completely carrying them through any available farm content. On 25 man, that time could be cut to 2-3 weeks largely due to the larger pool of gear that drops from killing bosses (6 items on 25 vs 2 items on 10) and this assumes they’re diligent in farming their Lesser Charms on the island or via pet battles.

Reset please!

My original stance was to continue weekly raid resets. Until we’ve got a core group of 25-30 players who’ve been around long enough where they don’t need gear anymore, we’re going to need to keep that farming going. Every once in a while, we can pull in a player who is already at our level and ready to go to the point where we don’t need to gear them out. If we don’t funnel gear, eventually we’ll reach a point where we run out of players to bring in (because turnover, people leaving/quitting/new jobs/no time, etc). Our depth is amazing. It’s how we can even field raids sometimes. There’s always going to be a bottom end and we have to narrow that gap between top and bottom to help make it easier for us when we reach the harder progression bosses. It makes sense to do this at the beginning of the tier as well to really maximize all that gear coming in.

Now here’s the flip side of the equation.

Extend please!

When we get to a new boss, we need time to learn the nuances. We have to learn the new phases and mechanics that come with it. We have to wipe to it. We have to see it so that we can understand and then execute. This usually happens towards the end of the week because the first part of the week is spent clearing UP to that boss. Our ultimate end objective is to KILL everything in this instance. The fact that it’s the final tier in the expansion means that we have a silent countdown clock hanging except we don’t know what the end time is going to be. I’d rather err on the side of clearing everything early then clearing everything too late. I want to get these guys a heroic Garrosh kill. That’s what we’re all here to do. Just when it seems like we’re all prepared and ready to take down a new boss, we run out of time, and it’s Tuesday. We have to kill all that stuff again. And guess what? There’s days where our consistency and our mindset isn’t there and we don’t even GET to the new boss that we want which cuts in to our progression time, and then boom, reset again.

This is where we are at today. This is why I proposed the compromise of 3 pulls to get it done on farm or else we move on. It helps ensure chances on getting the players that need gear their gear while simultaneously ensuring that we have enough allocated time to work on a new progression boss. Problem is, that isn’t good enough anymore.

We’re still lacking on time. In the end, we’ve opted to switch to an extended week schedule. Week 1 is spent getting as far as we can, week 2 is spent extending to work on whichever boss we just cleared to. Any new recruits are typically brought in during week 1 to learn and get suitably equipped.  Our veterans and heavy hitters are brought in for the progression stuff.

I really miss winged instances.

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Giving You Crit for Dying: When is a Good Time?

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Like any guild leader would, I posted Hamlet’s latest post on Raid Awareness on my guild forums. They’re all good lessons and solid pointers. It’s all anyone can really ask for from their guild. Most of the team already knows it but it doesn’t hurt to have a little reminder from time to time. Many things shouldn’t be said but we’re nearing the end of the expansion where newer players are returning who haven’t quite raided at a heroic level before and could benefit from the points that were listed.

One of our newer players brought up a solid point about failure and dying.

I’ve discussed it a little with people but it definitely feels as a newer raider that there’s a much greater emphasis on failure as an “app” or “new” person than some of the older ones.

And this is absolutely true. Leaders tend to put recruits under the microscope much more.

The other night, we were working on Heroic Sha of Pride. One of my veteran players was standing on their projection which is the correct play. However, they spotted a rift on the ground nearby and immediately went over to that before the projection detonated. Even though she didn’t cause a wipe, the raid healers immediately crapped their pants (or in this case, blew all the survival cooldowns at the same time to stabilize).

Here we have a player who has done the encounter many times and wiped with us when we were learning it on both normal and heroic. What happened was a simple brain fart.

I could have reprimanded that player easily. But what effect would it have had? They already knew the mistake and owned up to it right away after the encounter. It was a simple mechanics error that anyone could’ve made (y’know, except me). Would me berating them incessantly and in public absolutely prevent that from happening again from anyone? Probably not. I might mention it as a PSA reminder to everyone (“PROJECTIONS FIRST, EVERYTHING ELSE LATER”), but that’s all.

Now what happens when a new recruit screws up?

Here they are trying to make a good first impression. That they know their mechanics. They want to show that they belong and that they can roll with the team. Before we engage the boss, I say one thing to every new recruit.

I don’t give two crits about your DPS or your healing right now. For one, most of you don’t have your cloak or your meta. Or alternatively, you’re not as heroic geared as the rest of the team I have. Don’t even try to match them pound for pound. You really want to impress me? Don’t die. The single most important thing you can do on this fight is to survive. Do that job well and everything else will follow.

The players that we’re pulling in? Their experience usually ends up being exposed to flex raiding or some normal fights. Often times these are players who’ve wanted to make the jump to heroic raiding but were never in an organization that was capable or they’re returning players who’ve demonstrated what they could do in older expansions with those heroic encounters. Even Flex and Raid Finder mechanics are easily shruggable. What’s the point of dodging the crap that gets thrown your way or the fire on the ground if it just tickles?

That veteran player up there who made a mistake? She knows what she did wrong. The new recruit who came in who has never learned the normal mode or heroic mode mechanics with us? He may not know what he did. Maybe he’s never stacked enough pride to even reach the projections portion of the fight. That’s when I’ll step in and tell them what happened, what he did wrong, and how he can prevent that from happening again in the future. Players like to associate educating a player with giving player crap for screwing up. Eh, it’s more like attempting to correct their errors.

Why the public mumble reprimand in front of the 30 players listening and raiding versus the private tell?

  1. It’s a reminder: Maybe some other new recruit hadn’t seen it before and hadn’t died to it yet. With luck, I’ll have prevented another future wipe when the second recruit is aware of why and how the first recruit died.
  2. People can stop sending me tells: Seriously team, I don’t need ten whispers telling me that the recruit died because they goofed on something. By gently informing the player publically, it’s an indirect and subtle message to the rest of the raid that a) Yes, I know they screwed up and b) You can all stop messaging me now.

It loses effectiveness. I rarely lose my temper. Alumni and current raiders know this. I’ve been told that I should lose my cool a little more often. At the same time, I know that if I do that, it’ll lose the message I’m trying to convey and not be as effective. So I’ll try to save it for those times when I know it’ll be most beneficial to jump start the raid a little.

The same thing goes with player reprimands. Imagine if I gave crit to a player for every minor mistake they made. I don’t know about you, but I figure they’d get tired and exasperated pretty quickly and start tuning me out (Note that they already do because I’m blasting variations of Katy Perry or Beyonce when I’m talking). It would be the equivalent of the hockey coach losing the locker room. I think it’d also accelerate my own burnout with the game and raiding in general. But I also understand it when it seems like if nothing is said about a player error that it’s overlooked and swept under the rug. It does look like leniency.

This is where the old Ensidia Fails addon comes into play (and for some reason has stopped working from me). It spits out who stood in what or who screwed up for that attempt right after a wipe. Name on that list? You know what you did wrong. Name on that list because you stood in it to intentionally wipe faster? You know that too.

Let me ask you this. Do you play better when your raid leader gives you crap on a farm fight that you should already know? How about a progression fight? Under what circumstances would you prefer your raid leader directly hold you accountable? All the time? Some of the time? Never?

We’re Connected!

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Another set of realm connections went out this week and Ner’zhul was attached to two other servers! Are they higher pop? Would they bring in more activity? Ner’zhul is one of the oldest WoW servers out there. At our peak, we used to be 3rd (or 4th) in terms of server progression back at the end of Sunwell and early Wrath. We’ve slowly been slipping away and are just shy of the top 15.

So who did we end up getting matched with?

Some server called Frostmourne apparently. A quick look up shows them being 6th with over 9000 progressed Alliance players compared to Ner’zhuls 1000+. That’s awesome! Our auction house is going to start kicking again! Alliance players won’t get rolled as much on Timeless Isle! There’s going to be PEOPLE aga-!

No Matt, it’s actually FrostMANE, not Frostmourne.

What? Oh.

It’s got 700 Alliance players and one decent 25 man progression guild Alliance side. I mean, it’s no Frostmourne but at least there’s another server that comes with it. Not one but two server merges!

Tortheldrin! It has an Alliance progression population of… 6! Zero 25 man raiding guilds!

Not that I’m complaining. Surely we can help these servers out a bit right? Have to admit, when I logged in, trade chat was more hilarious than usual. There’s Ner’zhulians and Frostmanes trying to welcome each other to their server.

Oh you Frostmane people are so cute. Welcome to the Ner’zhul show.

A side effect of the server merge seems to be that our time zone has changed. We’re no longer a pacific time zone server as we’ve shifted two hours in the future. We’re now a central time zone server. In addition, the server raid lockout reset! Another day of more bosses and loot from Immerseus to Shamans. There was a heroic Warforged healing trinket from Sha of Pride but I didn’t get it.

High command called a meeting after Tuesday night. We were going over the latest personnel reports. They called me in. My time as a mediocre shadow DPS player was done. The healing contingent needed reinforcing and it was getting harder to ask our dual specced DPS players to constantly switch to their healing spec when they were much more effective slinging Stormstrikes and Starfires. The reason I had gone Shadow in the first place was because I couldn’t run the raid and heal at the same time. Months ago, we elevated a new supreme commander to spearhead our raid so that’s no longer a problem. It’s time to shelve the Shadow gear and instill a sense of… Discipline back into the raid.

No drop of mana will be spared.

Cooldowns will be used.

Raiders will live but 15 seconds longer than they would otherwise.

Just long enough for us to kill the boss at least.

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Happy Belated New Year!

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I remember 2013 like it was just a few weeks ago. I trust the holidays and the subsequent post holidays have been kind to everyone? My apologies for being radio silent. It’s been quite the busy few weeks for the guild and I. Prior to the holidays, we had only mustered 3 heroic kills in Siege. Entering next week, we’ll be at 7/14 heroic (while expecting an 8th on Monday). The holiday season is the second biggest offender when it comes to roster turnover (with school and early Fall being my first pick as the top time for players leaving).

Every so often, I still get emails and messages from people asking about the Matticast and what’s going on with it. Every time, I have to respond saying that there’s no chance it’s coming back. We had a good run but everyone involved has moved on. I myself miss the podcasting circuit but to be frank, I lack the technical skillsets to really pull it off. That doesn’t mean I’m not willing to participate though (but more on this later).

This last week I made an appearance on the Starting Zone in their Hearthstone episode.

On a personal front, I’ve just recently made the move out on my own! Scored a condo within the same city. I call it… the Matt-chelor pad (or the Mattcave for short).

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The view from my balcony. Vancouver’s being slowly enveloped in fog. Kinda Sleepy Hollow-esque (and I stopped watching that show after the 2nd episode because I was too scared).

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One of the first meals I made was a pizza in the oven. I uh, didn’t realize I could rearrange the toppings when they were still frozen. Ah well, I consider it a half pepperoni, half cheese pizza!

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My battlestation above.

I’m learning a ton of things now that I’m on my own. My own guild’s facepalmed at some of the questions they’ve heard from me so no way am I going to share that here!

Hearthstone

The first test season ended not too long ago. I managed to hit the fifth rank (no, not legendary). On top of that, they changed and nerfed several cards. That more or less neutered my mage and warlock decks. Right now I’m sitting at a paltry rank 15 and slowly working my way back up. There’s way more people playing now especially since Blizzard has opened the floodgates for everyone that has opted in.

World of Warcraft

Conquest has eliminated every boss in order from Immerseus to Dark Shamans on heroic mode. Looks like the holiday break didn’t take too much wind out of our sails. We lost a number of players but also gained a few. Oddly enough, my old raid leader back from Burning Crusade had returned to the game and wanted to raid again (several expansions later). Another friend from an old guild (which used to be the top guild on the server) also came back.

With those pickups and others, we’ve had to revise our recruiting standards a bit. Now we’re looking for players who have at least acquired their meta and soon we’ll be changing that to having legendary cloaks. We’re pushing into the second half of Siege which means less time farming and backtracking for all that stuff. If a recruit isn’t able to contribute right now, then they’re not going to see much action in raids since we need those cloak effects in there.

We’ll be working on General Nazgrim come Monday. Hoping to add another notch on the Conquest belt. Speaking of recruiting, we’re looking for DPS players for now and for Warlords (especially Warlocks, ret Paladins, and Death Knights).

The Raid Mechanics

Okay, let’s circle back to the podcasting bit for a moment. I mentioned that I wasn’t interested in the technical production side of things but I still love talking about the game. A while ago, I applied as a co-host for the Twizzcast.

Alas, I didn’t make the cut. He mentioned something about being overqualified, but I bet it’s most likely because I was Canadian (or Alliance). That’s okay though because it turns out he was working on a side project and felt that I was best suited for that.

It’s called the Raid Mechanics (on Twitch). You’ll find it soon on BlizzPro.TV.

In a nutshell, it’s a show devoted primarily for raiders who are just starting or who are already experienced. We’re not even going to try to target anyone at the server first level or higher because those guilds don’t need us. What we want to do here is provide a resource for players who tank, heal, or DPS and offer our insight along with tips to help them get through encounters easier. We do plan to touch upon the overarching strategy of each boss on both normal and heroic for 10s and 25s players.

One aspect of the Matticast I really missed was when all the hosts were just sitting around and talking about general guild and raid problems. I’m not referring to problems with the strategy, but more around philosophy and personnel management. This is something I’m hoping to get back into again on the Raid Mechanics show. For example, issues that come up related to recruiting, systems, or day-to-day guild stuff. I couldn’t get enough of it so expect to see some of that.

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