21 Things You Don’t Hear in Raid Finder

  • I think all the classes are balanced the way they are right now.
  • Ghostcrawler? Hell yeah I agree with everything he’s said about my class!
  • I would much rather queue for Raid Finder on my own that go with people from my own guild who I trust!
  • I have no problems doing dailies after because I love them!
  • That’s okay. I know I didn’t get the drop I wanted but I’m sure I’ll get it soon!
  • I’m just running raid finder for fun. I don’t need valor or loot.
  • My trinkets are proccing right when I need them to!
  • We don’t need to use Heroism or Bloodlust at all.
  • I’m sure the Priest who Life Gripped me meant well when he pulled me into the void zone.
  • Sure, as the off tank I’d be happy to taunt exactly when you need me to!
  • I respect your opinion. I think it’s absolutely valid.
  • You’re right, I’m not at the top of the DPS meters. I’m clearly not playing at my best.
  • Gee guys, I’d love to queue up with all of you again!
  • Our healers are doing an excellent job!
  • I ended up at the last boss again, but I don’t mind killing him even though I needed only the first two.
  • Congrats Warriors/Hunters/Shamans/Monks, we got three Prot shoulder tokens again! –  (Thanks @metao)
  • Whoo! We killed the boss! I got exactly what I wanted!
  • You must all be veteran, experienced players who know what they’re doing and have researched every boss fight in here!
  • I am happy with getting 16 gold on a coin roll I’ve used for the 10th straight week in a row!
  • It’s okay, I don’t need a summon!
  • That’s okay, we don’t have to kick that obviously AFK Mage over there who’s not casting anything.

What else would be extremely unlikely for someone to say in Raid Finder?

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Emergency AFK? 6 Ways to Handle It Like a Pro

Have you ever heard of the perfect storm of raiding?

Not a single cloud in the sky. Calm and steady waves. You have enough players present even though 1 or 2 players have signed out for the day. But you can’t quite shake that feeling it’s just too good to be true.

For us, it started out much the same. But then, a series of unfortunate events occurred. Lodur had a computer shortage. I had to race through the streets to pick up mom. Some people were going to be a little late due to overtime at work. We were ultimately left standing with 22 people. What could we do until everyone had returned to their battle stations?

On the perfect day, none of these things would have happened. But every so often, you get that day where the universe just likes to screw with you and cause havoc for players. As the GM, I admit that feel uneasy and anxious when not raiding. All that time is being wasted just by sitting there.

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What do you do if you don’t have a full crew to work with? Are there options when someone needs to step out briefly for a few minutes?

If there’s trash still up, go do what your parents yelled at you to do when you were younger and take out the trash! By the time you clear it, the player should be back in business and ready to go.

1. Switch another player in

Easiest solution. Is there any other players online that you can pull in? Most raiding teams have a bench or maybe you have a recruit who is willing to step in. Activate the members you have around who you can grab.

2. Make some attempts in, even if it’s short handed

Just because there’s a player out doesn’t mean you can’t at least get warmed up and give exposure to your players. Have them get a handle for the opening phases. Start practicing some of the mechanics. Get them thinking about how they’re going to react to the different phases. By the time your other raider gets back, they’re the one that has to play catch up.

3. Downshift and clear (Heroic)

This is generally not a first option. I’d only consider this under a few circumstances. First, it’s clear that the players gone aren’t going to be back anytime soon. We’re talking an internet outage or a computer exploding or some other case where it’ll take longer than the rest of raid to resolve. Second, the raid group is nearing the end of the raid week. Maybe the raid is on a day 2 or a day 3 and it’s clear that there won’t be enough time left. Lastly, if there is still valuable loot to be had in the rest of the instance. Certain trinkets, weapons, or 4-piece drops that players are missing will warrant an instance clear.

4. Alternate content

Within instances like Naxx or the first tier of raids in Cataclysm, you had options on where to go and what bosses to do. Throne of Thunder is completely linear. In previous instances, your raid could have switched to a different wing and gotten down a different boss (preferably one on farm) while you waited for the lone player to return.

5. Wait and call an early break

Easiest solution on the planet. Give people a breather. It’s not uncommon for players to switch screens or alt tab and browse other sites (like this one) and catch up on other things going on. If you’re on a progression boss, the wait can allow players to catch up on additional information. Or be like me and sneak off to grab a quick bite from the fridge. It’s free time to spend!

6. Flex it up

Enough said. I’ve written about it a few times here (and here). No need to elaborate here! But it’ll be available in the next patch as something to kill prolonged time with.

Don’t despair like me at the thought of an underwhelmingly numbered raid. There’s always something that can be done until your group is back to full strength. However, if you find yourself consistently at less than capacity, then you’re going to want to start addressing that.

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Patch 5.4 Preliminary Priest Thoughts

General

  • Leap of Faith no longer has a facing requirement.

Say hello to the no-look life grip! I promise, I will only use this power against trolls. In all due seriousness, it’s a minor quality of life change. I can move and face the direction I want to go and not have to whip my camera around mid movement to pull a fellow player away from danger.

Talents

  • Angelic Feather now increases allies’ movement speed by 80%, up from 60% and the feathers have a duration of 10 minutes, up from 5 minutes.
  • Divine Insight for Discipline Priests now has a 100% chance to activate its effect after using Penance, up from 40%.
  • Twist of Fate’s damage and healing threshold to activate has been increased to 35%, up from 20%.

Angelic Feather change? Neat, I guess. Still not quite attractive enough in a raid setting. Too much effort, I think. Harder to work with on 25.

Power Infusion is the primary staple in the fifth talent tier (in most cases, anyway). Divine Insight triggered quite often for Holy Priests but not very often for Discipline. It should make it a little more lucrative. It’s essentially an extra Prayer of Mending Power Word: Shield on targets.

Twist of Fate change is agreeable. An extra 15% buffer means more frequent activations. Should come in handy in large, multi target ad fights for Shadow (like Primordius). It’s good news for raid-assigned healing priests (whack the mole with the lowest health first).

Shadow

  • Shadowform no longer reduces all damage taken by 15%.

Now I’m going to get two shot by Rogues instead of three. Sad smile

Class Armor

  • Restoration PvP 4-piece set bonus is no longer an area-of-effect and only affects the character that dispels Vampiric Touch.

Aaaaah, this might’ve been too strong in PvP. It was fun while it lasted, at least.

Tier 16 bonuses

  • Priest T16 2P Bonus (New) Serendipity also increases the healing of your next Greater Heal or Prayer of Healing by 50% per stack. While Archangel is active, your critical chance is increased by 10%.
  • Priest T16 4P Bonus (New) Circle of Healing and Prayer of Mending casts increase the effect of your next Holy Word spell by 50%, stacking up to 10 times. While Spirit Shell is active, you gain 10% haste and 3,500 mastery.
  • Priest T16 Shadow 2P Bonus (New) Shadowy Recall effects have their critical damage bonus increased by 100%.
  • Priest T16 Shadow 4P Bonus (New) Each Shadow Orb consumed for Devouring Plague increases the damage of your next Mind Blast, Shadow Word: Death, or Mind Spike cast within 12 sec by 20%.

Not sure if the two piece bonus is going to stay. But the Holy side of it is incredible. Increased potency of Prayer of Healing alone with just two Flash Heals (and the Serendipity effect)? However, the 10% crit is nothing to completely sneeze at. I think maybe it should go up slightly. 15% seems like a good number. If you’re not automatically triggering Archangel, this better be a good enough incentive for you! As for the four piece, I can see Circle of Healing and Prayer racking up some big time Holy Word charges. Nice for Blizzard to sneak in a pseudo-buff to Sanctuary and Serenity. The Spirit Shell bonus is no joke either. Try to time Archangel and Spirit Shell together for extra Divine Aegis proccing fun.

The Shadow bonuses are certainly cool on their own. I think Shadow Recall refers to our little Shadow copies that periodically run into the boss. The four piece is good in the sense it doesn’t really need us to change anything in our rotation significantly. We should still be using them at a full charge of Shadow Orbs, I think.

Don’t think this is going to be final just yet.

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Why the Flex Raid is a Boon

I recently purchased a Flex plan from my cell company where I’d be charged monthly based on the amount of data I actually used. I don’t know if I’ll always be near a wireless access point or not but at least the charges will scale accordingly.

Speaking of Flex plans, Blizzard’s taking a page out of that book and introduced a new type of raiding: The Flex Raid difficulty.

  • We can bring anywhere from 10 – 25 people and the bosses will scale.
  • We can invite friends from other realms via battle tag
  • Item level is between raid finder and normal but loot will be handled via raid finder loot system
  • Separate lockout from raid finder, normal/heroic

I’m still digesting the news. Usually my raid will run through raid finder once a week. We’ve started bringing in and carrying our alts. People are still running raid finder to grab their Titan Runestones at the start. Raid finder is great if I just want to mind numbingly get my way through an instance, gear up an alt, and just generally not have to think but mash buttons. I can eat every void zone, stand in every fire, miss every interrupt, and can live (most of the time).

What kind of example am I setting, right?

Why it’s good

This is great for guilds and cross realm raid groups. Players don’t have to transfer their characters from server to server to raid. I know there’s players out there who have a whole train of alts with assorted professions designed to support their main. If that player is satisfied with raiding on the flex plan, then they can still see the content in the game without committing money to move their supply train.

Second, from a recruiting standpoint, this is a huge tool for a prospect to raid with a potential guild and see if they’d fit in. Right now, we run livestreams and invite possible recruits on to our Mumble in order to give them a look at our raids. I can see a day set aside where recruits can jump in and raid with the team – And the beauty is a whole 25 man team isn’t going to be needed either.

Third, what about guilds that are looking to scale up from 10 to 25 man? This is another excellent way for them to gradually expand. It’s often a nightmare to make an immediate jump from a 10 man to a 25 man raiding guild. Sometimes the pool of player availability isn’t always there. The flex raid allows them to slowly (but surely) change their raid size until a consistent 25 raiders is found for the inevitable shift to normal modes.

But at the end of the day, Flex Raid isn’t a normal raid. It will never carry the prestige or reputation that normal and heroic kills grant. I doubt it’ll be taken seriously but maybe that’s what the main point of the flex raid is. It’s not designed to be cutting edge or challenging. It’s supposed to bring you, your family, and your friends together to raid where you don’t have to deal with potential morons in raid finder. You get to raid on your terms with whoever you want with relaxed restrictions.

Will you flex?

I’m still weighing the costs and benefits of working in Flex raiding for Conquest. I’d remove guild sanctioned Raid Finder from the list of activities and swap to this instead. At minimum, I would have to have at least two tanks available for this. With Raid Finder, I’d be able to go in with whatever composition I had available. The potential drops are better than raid finder anyway. I imagine my current raiding gear from Throne of Thunder will be better than the Raid Finder and flex drops in 5.4. If anything, Flex will be used to help ease our way into progression raids or on nights where half the raid is unable to attend.

Where does the flex raid factor into your guild’s raiding plans? What about your raiding plans? I’ll end up changing my Wednesday night raid finder to the flex raid instead.

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Lei Shen: A Hollow Victory

This was more of an “about time” feeling then a “YES, WE GOT IT” feeling. I always knew Lei Shen was within our grasp. But something always came up that got in the way of really getting it. We yo-yo’d from wiping on first intermissions to 2% wipes with a debuff stack of 110 on the final phase and back. The attempts were never really ever consistent but I did what I could to try to keep the groups static and in the same positions. The lineup shuffled from raid to raid, but if even 18+ players were in the same spots with the same players, they would be able to get used to it.

I had set a target deadline of being in hardmodes in May. We killed Lei Shen on 25 just before June.

Oh sure, we killed it a couple of times on 10 man late at night before the raid reset. But I don’t consider progression kills on 10 man as progression kills for the guild. We’re a 25 man guild, first and foremost. If we don’t kill it with 25 players, then it never happened. I have no qualms if the team wants to go in to get practice on a progression boss on 10 man or try to squeeze out loot, but it means nothing.

I tell myself that the delay could’ve been attributed to newer players coming in. Some of them weren’t even equipped to properly do the content yet sporting LFR gear from the first Mists tier. Have to factor in the time training and showing new fights. I put these recruits into the frying pan on the nights our veterans are unable to show. But no, as much as I want to blame real life, I can’t.

Jobs, relationships, and school will always remain a constant factor. Unless I suddenly inherit millions of dollars and buy my own raid team, it’s nigh-impossible to expect everyone to make commitments. People get sick. There’s explosions at work. Imminent wildfires about to engulf the home. I can’t help but be bitter and curse the dice of real life rolling against me and my team. Must be punishment for the times I’ve gone to the casino in the past.

It’s your job (as a GM) to foresee these problems and account for them. Stomaching the occasional 1 – 2 player absence is doable. Raiding with an almost 20% deficit from a roster is just not going to get the job done on an end boss. Oddly enough, I was quite amazed at the play and effort of everyone when we raided short handed. It’s as if players automatically knew that they had to step up to really offset the players that weren’t here. They played their asses off and we pulled off some kills that were really close shaves (I didn’t think we could do some of them but was delightedly proven wrong).

Although, I bet the 5.3 item upgrade had a slight boost in there.

In the end, I’m disappointed that I couldn’t get this kill for our previous main tank.

I regret not being able to kill it for Haddion and Sweet who were claimed by real life.

Players that were with us from the beginning of this tier deserved to at least see this guy go down before retiring but we could not finish and limped over the finish line.

Did I not say the right words enough? Did I not make the necessary enough adjustments to our tactics? Did I get caught blindsided by attendance problems again?  Probably a combination of all of the above. It’s easy enough to look back and dissect what went wrong. The solutions are so easy in hindsight. I look at myself right in the eye when I’m in front of a mirror. You know what I see? I don’t see a field general. I see a guy who loves the game and his guild, but that’s just not enough. Not anymore.

I’m pissed off at myself more than anything else. But there’s no time to feel angry and sorry.

Heroic raids are coming up and we have some serious catching up to do.

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