Is LFR Mandatory for Raiders? Maybe

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To me, this is both a yes and no question.

As raiders, it’s fair to assume that we want to get as much of a gearing advantage as possible for raids. Every little bit helps and counts towards boss kills. The beginning point of an expansion is a crucial stage for this. The difference between a heroic weapon and an LFR weapon can be a significant upgrade.

Let’s look at it from the beginning of the expansion.

Speaking for myself, I feel that I have to run it every week. If I don’t, I feel like I’m letting the rest of my team down and that I’m not trying as hard as I otherwise could have. For one, the experience gain out of LFR and seeing mechanics early is beneficial (despite it’s nerfed state). Even though abilities function slower and aren’t as lethal, at least we can recognize and see them. Second, there’s always that slight chance where I’ll get an item upgrade that immediately replaces a heroic dungeon piece which will help in the long run when we’re working on progression bosses. I know there doesn’t seem to be a huge gap between a 463 item and a 476 item. But psychologically, I’m seeing the difference between a blue quality item and a purple quality item. Watching people absolutely refuse to queue for it despite the fact there’s a chance for possible upgrades feels like they’re not as willing nor as committed as I am to the success of the raid group.

It’s the same idea with someone who steadfastly refuses to do dailies.

From my point of view, a blatant refusal to consider LFR or do dailies limits your sources of gear to raids only. Now in a loot council guild, player effort is one of those things that gets taken into consideration. Do we give the shiny new weapon to the Mage who worked really hard at crafting their own items, built up their Golden Lotus rep, and tried their hand at LFR only to get nothing? Or should it be assigned to that Shadow Priest who had better things to do like Pet Battles for 10  hours a night and not giving a damn about dailies or LFR? It’s pure perception. We’re in an environment where we have a general idea of what other players are doing. We can inspect their gear and see where they’re getting it from.

This doesn’t include the fact that dailies help you with coins that can be used at a chance for more gear (although, for most of us, it seems to be for more gold).

The imaginative requirement to do LFR isn’t so much a product of the game. It’s a product of simulated pressure from our peers. We don’t want to let the team down. We want to feel relief in knowing that even though we didn’t get gear that week for our toons, at least the effort was made.

Now let’s Time Warp and move ahead a few months. Patch 5.3 is out with new raid content and big bosses. We’ll call it the Halls of Eternity or something.

Blizzard has indicated multiple times that the LFR gear in whatever the latest raid will be is going to be distinctively lower in quality and item level compared to normal/heroic items in the previous tier. I’d only run LFR in this tier to cap out. But if I’m maintaining my dailies, raids or doing dungeons, I may not feel the need or desire to cap out valor. The incentive to run LFR isn’t as high because there’s no gear in there that would be an upgrade. You could make a case that attempting to complete the new tier 16 set to activate bonuses is a possible goal. But are you willing to sacrifice a 13 x 4 item level decrease just to establish bonuses? I find that a tough case to make.

Many guildies and players I know just absolutely refuse to queue in LFR alone. They’d rather go in as a guild group of possible to increase the chance of success and get through it as fast as possible. Personally, I’m okay with solo queuing. It reminds me why I raid in a guild and is an exercise in patience. I end up doing 40% of the healing anyway.

You end up with people who just:

  • Refuse to read the strategy or dungeon finder beforehand (C’mon guys, do your homework).
  • Don’t stand in melee range for Spirit Kings thereby resulting in the tank dying.
  • Not going to the Spirit Realm for Gara’jal.
  • Falling through the floor on Elegon.

Stuff like that.

Actually, my guild and I turned it into a fun drinking game. I should post the rules we made up for it.

Skewering Vizier Zor’lok

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Wikipedia states that A vizier […] is a high-ranking political adviser or minister in an Islamic government.[3][4] The word is derived from Middle Persian[5][6] and then adopted into Arabic root. The vizier stood between sovereign and subjects, representing the former in all matters touching the latter.

Well, today I learned. Not exactly the voice of Psy, but he’s fun and engaging nonetheless.

Healers looking for pointers can visit this page.

We got trolled. For the longest time, Vizier would always run to the Attenuation platform. We would routinely trigger the boss from the middle and then run to it. We figured he’d go there everytime. Sure enough, the one time we set up at the Attenuation platform, the Vizier runs to the Force and Verve platform instead.

I was never able to take down the Vizier during the beta. Either I ran out of time or the gear or skill just wasn’t there for the groups I was in. I knew the Attenuation platform was going to be challenging for players (especially those who use the keyboard to turn instead of to strafe). Pay attention because Attenuation rings can go clockwise or counter clockwise.

Pro tip: Rebind your A and D keys to strafe left and strafe right respectively. It helps with moving through discs. Point your camera so that it’s from the top down. Paladins with the Relic of Chi Ji are instructed not to use Light of Dawn.

Look how blinding that can be. My guild likes to joke about it and call it the vagina of light.

With all the movement that’s going on in the Attenuation phase, I switched up my glyphs and used the Glyph of Shadow Word: Death instead. When I’m dodging discs, there’s situations where I’ll get lucky with Mind Blast, Mind Spike, and Devouring Plague procs. It’s possible to stand in one place and get a 2-tick Mind Flay through before interrupting it. Shadow Word: Death just gives you an extra spell for to to use on the go.

During the Convert platform, pop your Psychic Scream and Halo spells early and on cooldown. People get pissed off at you if you’re Mind Controlled and dropping fear bombs all over the place. Halo if used at the wrong time will chunk or even kill players.

On the Force and Verve platform, I’d activate Vampiric Embrace while under the Noise Cancelling shield. We assigned all the ranged players to the bubble furthest away. Healers would take the next closest (or middle) bubble. Melee DPS and the tank would secure the closest bubble to the Vizier. Any bubbles that had more than 9 players would have extras reassigned to the healer bubble.

Heroism was used in the final phase during the first Noise Cancelling bubble. It was used defensively to help the healers keep up with the healing without activating their raid cooldowns.

It’s not the greatest fight for a Shadow Priest with the amount of moving that’s going on. I’m still struggling with maintaining meaningful uptime. 80.5% on my Vampiric Touch just isn’t quite cutting it. The DoTs just keep falling off and I’m not able to refresh them fast enough. I try to reapply them with anywhere from 3-4 seconds left, but I’m not all there. Shadow’s fun this expansion (compared to Cataclysm where maintaining 3 different DoTs was a chore).

I’m using Fortexorcist to help track my DoTs but I think I need to find a better place for it. Maybe underneath the target on the top right? Where do you Shadow Priests park their timers? Should I just clip more and throw it up earlier?

The Things we Balance

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Life is a balance. We balance our work lives and our personal lives. We balance academics with extracurricular activities. We balance beer with hard liquor (some of us, at least).

WoW’s obviously no different. With that in mind, I wanted to pose some things to think about. These are questions that most guilds and officer teams will find themselves in. Not regularly or often, but they’ll do happen.

Progression vs Gear

Time needs to be managed with precision. With 9 hours allocated to raiding, it needs to be used effectively. Going into this week, we were only 5/6 with Heart of Fear coming out. The intel and opinion we had from other players and other GMs was that the first two bosses of Heart of Fear would be easy. Our options were to go into Heart of Fear and try to get two bosses down quick or fall back to the Vaults and secure additional weapons and trinkets. Elegon still drops fantastic weapons and trinkets. For whatever reason, we’ve always had a problem when it comes to acquiring weapon upgrades.

The flip side of that argument? If we secure the kills, it helps us with our overall standings. In the long run, this helps us with attracting quality recruits.

Besides, rumor has it that Garalon is serious business.

Learning vs Stacking

New players and recruits need a chance to crack the lineup. They need to have a basic understanding and exposure to a boss so that they can get their feet wet. Not only this, there may come times when a regular player can’t make it and someone from the bench needs to be activated. Do we bring in the recruits and risk maybe a few wipes so that they understand what the mechanics are? In the long run, this is almost always the better option. Experience time in the raid is always a plus. On the other hand, if you’re on a limited raiding schedule, would you rather blitz through the farm stuff as quick as possible by stacking the raid?

Every wipe on farm means less attempts on the harder bosses for the week.

There are other types of balancing questions and acts that we regularly answer. But off the top of my head, those two are the ones that come up. I find that those two topics generally face the most disagreement. You can make strong arguments for both sides and it’s not always easy to answer it. It depends on what stage you are at an expansion and what the guild goals are.

As an aside, we’re hurting on ranged DPS at the moment*. If you’re looking around for a new guild for 25s, check us out (and that invitation is open to healers and other roles/classes).

So desperate that I switched over to Shadow.

So Shadow Maybe

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“Hey I just met you
And this is crazy
But Monks are OP
So Shadow maybe.”

 

The world is officially ending.

Seriously, this is the year. Volcanoes are erupting ash into the atmosphere. Earthquakes are shattering continents. Storms are tearing up landscapes.

Why? Because the two most unlikeliest things have occurred.

I have a Horde Priest at max level. Never thought I’d get a character that high and routinely doing stuff. My friends ask me why didn’t I try a different class. It’s because I don’t feel comfortable playing another class. I just have an affinity and love for playing a Priest. However, I did decide to take her Shadow instead though she’s still quite capable of healing.

That’s the first bit of news.

The second?

It’s been clear to me after the first few weeks of raids that Holy Priests just can’t seem to match the level of other healing classes right now – Well, either that, or I can’t match the level of the other healers. That’s potentially true. The officers in my guild asked me to give Shadow a try. Since I’ve been predominantly Shadow on my Horde priest, I’ve had some practice. They were curious to see how I’d do in raids. I wasn’t the greatest Shadow player in Cataclysm but that’s largely due to my inability to maintain uptimes on DoTs (among other things).

But the Mist changes have made it a little easier for a newer Shadow player like me.

It’s fun, but I still feel wary. After playing a healer for 8 years, you still have assorted muscle memory from healing for so long. I find myself not only watching my DoTs on bosses, my timers, and my cooldowns, but I’m constantly scanning my raid frames. Burning Mana Hymns when I spot healer mana fairly low. I’m not quite sure what I’m looking for. My Resto Druid has been giving me her Symbiosis for Tranquility (which is fairly weaksauce, but not meant to stand on it’s own as a true healing CD).

I don’t know if I’ll ever play at full DPS capacity because I’m worried that something bad is going to happen. 

It’s not that I don’t trust the team, but I can read the play and “see” what’s going on.

Anyway, I apparently passed my trial so I’ll be doubleshifting as Shadow and Holy.

Things I need to work on:

  • Lining up cooldowns
  • Maintaining DoTs
  • Decision making (on spells)
  • Acquiring additional shadow gear (because I really don’t want to touch my healing gear)
  • Figuring out how to properly burst down orbs on Elegon

Dailies and Valor: Almost Out of the Woods

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The seemingly universal response from bloggers across the board regarding the new daily quests?

“Dailies suck.”

I get that its not mandatory. For most of us that want to push into raiding, it sort of is.

The first raid instance has a set amount of gear and doesn’t contain drops for every slot (which is understandable since there’s two other zones coming out). It feels like that if we want to be at our best (and I guarantee you, most of us that raid want to be at their best), we have to spend time doing it.

How many hours do you think you spend per day capping out your dailies?

It takes me around 3 hours as a Shadow Priest. I’ve managed to drop that some since I hit exalted with the Order of the Cloud Serpent and Tillers. My efforts are focused on the Golden Lotus, August Celestials, and the Shado-Pan.

There’s another thing I don’t understand. Why did we have to hit a reputation milestone with one faction before we could open up the rest? Don’t give me a lore reason. I’m trying to understand the logic behind it. Is it a form of content gating that’s believed to be necessary?

I don’t get it.

On Valor Rewards

Now the issue about capping Valor, I can understand. It’s a crappy fact of our virtual life that we have to spend time outside of the raid to hit our valor for the week. But we’re undergoing a short term level of pain here. In another week and a half, we’ll gain access to Heart of Fear and Terrace of Endless Spring – Another two raids where we can get our Valor supply from. Hang in there!

I’m with you guys on this. I like having all these new sources of valor. It’s great I can get it from dungeons, scenarios, raids, and dailies. I’m delighted that Blizzard gave us multiple avenues to secure valour which we can use to purchase gear. But, I’d really like to be able to cap out doing exclusively activities I like doing. As a raider, I’d like to get my points from killing big bosses. If my schedule’s all over and I’m not able to consistently meet a raiding group’s requirements, I’m okay with doing scenarios and dungeons for a week. That seems to make the most sense to me.

What I don’t quite agree with is tying reputation requirements to valor rewards.

There was a comment made by a blue awhile ago stating that they didn’t want to tie reputation gains to tabards. They felt that players would be “double dipping” rewards from dungeons for gear and reputation.

Actually, if they gave us tabard reputations, it would give people additional incentive to run it. After hitting level 90 in 16 hours, I spent the rest of week 1 grinding out heroics as much as possible. 3 weeks later, all my item slots are filled with heroic dungeon or higher. I don’t even queue for it anymore unless a guildie needs a quick healer queue for a specific instance. But give us a tabard, and I’ll gladly brave heroics and carry a group if need be. I’d even be okay if they decided to cap reputation gains (meaning you can get an X total amount of reputation which is the sum of doing all the dailies for a faction on one day or running a few heroics until you max out that gain).

One more thing about the mandatory-ness. I don’t know about you, but I’m one of the dedicated Enchanters in the guild. Now doubt your guild has a few go-to people for professions. You know, the guy that gets the first set of recipe drops from raid. For Enchanting, bracer enchants and weapon enchants open up  at Revered for the Celestials and Shado-Pan. It’s a big time requirement.

True, I could’ve passed the buck and gotten someone else to power enchanting.

But, you know, job security.