Pew pew..... Zzzzzzz...

Drunken Badgers cleared Naxx 25 on our first visit there as a raid. This was awesome - we got many loots and a feeling of satisfaction at our awesomeness. This was lame - when there is no challenge it's a little boring. Well it wasn't a straight one shot of each boss...we had a couple of tries on Thaddius and Gluth before we downed them.

I know Naxx is the entry level raid for Wrath but it was no where near like the challenge we experienced when first starting Karazhan in TBC. There is a discussion going on in our forums at the moment about this very subject. Generally the feeling is - this time round we are an end game experienced team. Many of us have been working together raiding since the Kara days - and therefore it's not so much that the bar has been lowered by Blizz but that we exceed a bar that has been set to allow entry into the game for players who are at the place we were when TBC first came out.

One thing everyone agrees on - we hope Ulduar is released pretty soon before we get bored of current content and that it is more of a challenge.

The remaining challenges for our raid currently are Malygos 25 and Sarth 3D. I'm pretty confident we'll get Malygos soon - our 'clean up raid' got him to 20% last week and that was without all of the A team regulars in the group. Sarth 3D, as was pointed out in the comments of my recent post on fighting Malygos as a hunter, seems to be the fight considered the most challenging by the broader community. So maybe that will take a little longer.

One thing is for sure - I personally need to work on my Heigan dance party skills!

Fighting Malgyos as a hunter

In a nice start to the new year the Badgers have downed Malygos in normal mode for the first time. Since it was a spur of the moment raid with the guildies online at the time rather than an 'A team' planned attempt the victory is even sweeter.

I mentioned in my last post that I believe (like others) that Malygos is the most epic fight to date in WoW and I definitely stand by that. The mechanics of the fight certainly require everyone to be executing their role with a high degree of skill. Whatt I'm going to talk about here is the fight from a hunter perspective, there are many good guides out there to the overall fight strategy so I see little point in repeating them.

I found the fight quite difficult as a hunter during phase one, however perhaps this came down to the particular way we executed the fight and the composition of our raid group. I'm definitely interested in hearing tips, tricks and suggestions!

Power spark buff and positioning
The thing about phase one of course is that you want to make sure that you arrange for as many people in the raid as possible to benefit from stacked power spark buffs. The way we handled this was to have the main tank reposition Malygos as much as possible each time a spark spawned so that it was coming from his rear. The ranged and melee DPS would then down the spark when it was in range but before Malygos was able to soak it up.

As the only hunter in the group I found it very difficult to be on the spark buff area and still at range of Malygos. The spark buff area is quite large - about 10 yards, but so is Malygos' hit box. I would start the fight at the top of the damage meters and then quickly fall down the list during phase one. Now as we all know hunters are very good at MQoSDPS and Malygos is a DPS race so it's important for all DPSers to gain benefit from the buff. I mentioned the issue I was having and our MT bless him was able to position Malygos such that the melee and I were all able to enjoy the buff. I'm pretty sure that this adjustment helped us win. Not because I'm all that awesome - but because of the nature of the fight.

As a hunter you're in a great position to help position the sparks - and as tempting as it may be to do this to your benefit it's better of course for the maximum benefit to be achieved for the raid. I use a target macro - /tar pow and concussive shot to slow the spark once it's on the platform since they move quite quickly at this stage. This gives the melee time to pick it up and down it in their position - we also had a death knight using Grip to pull them in and using Concussive gave him some precious extra seconds.

Pet behaviour
One thing I also noticed during phase one is that pet behaviour is a little buggy. Several times I noticed after coming down out of the blender that George my devilsaur was over near the boss but not actually attacking. As a BM hunter this is not good. I had to call him back to me and then send him back in again to attack. Quite annoying as this required precious seconds away from pew-pewing.

Phases two and three
There's nothing much specific to hunters for these phases - in phase 2 stay on the ground, the melee are the ones that need the disks and in phase 3 everyone is in the same boat - stack stack boom!

Altogether a fun and challenging fight. I'm really looking forward to doing it on heroic!

On preparing the raid for Wotlk and loot systems in particular

The Drunken Badgers raid had a successful run of Burning Crusade raiding. By no means leaders we managed to come from behind to end our TBC raiding era as one of the top 20 raids on the server although sadly we never made it to Sunwell, and after the pre lich content nerf patch it didn't seem worth it.

For a guild that formed and began raiding during TBC I like to think this is no mean feat. We certainly learned some lessons along the way and as a result evolved our raiding management in order to achieve the goals that we had set for ourselves. As far as I can tell we also ended TBC with a good reputation on our server as a fun group who know what they are about, which can only stand us in good stead for the future...

So enter the Lich King, and Drunken Badgers are preparing to take on the 25 man content available in the new expansion starting with 25 man Naxx. It was decided that we would commence 25 man raiding in the new year, giving everyone the opportunity to level up at a leisurely pace if they so desired and to also account for the disruptions of the holiday period.

Unsuprisingly most, if not all, of the core raiders of the group hit 80 pretty quickly and started working on gearing up through heroics, 10 man Naxx and various guests spots in other 25 man raids in order to be in tip top readiness for the official commencement of Badger raiding.

During this period the drunken officers have been working on some further changes to raid management, mainly to do with sharing duties to decrease the load previously on the shoulders of only a few individuals. We now have several different raid 'offices' that are shared across 2 to 3 officers. How these officers manage their particular areas in terms of sharing duties is up to them. The offices are loot management, raid leadership, DPS performance, healing performance, tanking performance and recruitment.

I put my hand up to be a loot officer and have been learning how to use the loot mod of choice and with the other raid officers working on refining our loot system still further. Lively discussion took place from near the end of TBC raiding onwards whether we should stay with the current system or look to moving to another. Although generally happy with the way Suicide Kings was working for us we had encountered a couple of specific problems: top spot camping and bottom dwellers.

Top spot camping occurs when a person chooses not to bid on items that would be an upgrade for them in order to hold onto their position in the list so as to be guaranteed their holy grail item should it drop - we like to refer to this within the group as the 'DST' - ie Dragonspine trophy - something many people were after during our Gruul's raiding period. Although it is the individual's choice to hold out for their grail the decision to pass on upgrade loot is seen as detrimental to raid progression on the whole.

Bottom dwelling is where people on the bottom of the list have no hesitation in bidding on items due to their having no guarantee of other loot. Often the bottom dwellers would be subs. Bottom dwelling was further exacerbated by the top spot campers, who were generally regulars.

So we end up with a situation where our regulars are not improving their gear and our subs are making out like bandits.

Personally I never had a problem with the way our use of Suicice Kings functioned, I geared up at a reasonable pace, but I also never held out for a particular item.

The discussions concerning our loot system to me essentially speak to what kind of raid we want to be. In our earlier days we had been concerned with keeping it simple, encouraging a roster of regulars but retaining some fairness to subs - since subs when in attendance helped us achieve success as much as the other attendees. We were initially quite casual, not thinking particularly of progression as our main focus - but rather fun with hopefully some success.

As we have succeeded, so too has our focus evolved. We are now definitely more focused on progression. Therefore in order to achieve progression we have had to look at tightening up performance requirements even further, stepping up recruitment and tweaking the loot system to support progression.

As the passionate discussions have demonstrated progression does not necessarily equate with a loot system that is equable to all. We are trying to arrive at something in the middle. Also, an opinion which I stand by, is that the loot system is not *the* answer to successful progression - that all areas of raid management need to be considered holistically. That said we are doing our best to develop a loot system that gives subs a reasonable chance of receiving loots whilst at the same time rewarding regulars and discouraging camping at either the top or the bottom of the list. Other goals are keeping it relatively simple to explain and manage for the loot officers. We considered DKP and loot council, but both systems have inherent issues which we were not happy with collectively. The problem of a growing point spread in DKP and the lack of transparency and risks of alienation with Loot Council respectively were the main issues. We even considered just going with the in game rolling system but the RNG is RNG factor put people off, myself included.

The system which we will use as we begin 25 man raiding is as follows, naturally if it doesn't work we will make changes, we're certainly not inflexible.

We use Raid Ninja as a sign up tool and it is now mandatory for all raiders to indicate their attendance status for the raid by Tuesday each week (we raid once a week on Fridays). This will net each raider 1/8th of a point whether they attend the raid or not. Attendance at the raid having signed up correctly will net each raider 1 point, if they did not sign up they will earn no points. By the end of a 2 month period each raider must have a point total equal to or greater than 3 to remain a regular. The benefits of being a regular? Only regulars will be on the SK list. The process when a piece of loot drops will be bidding from people on the list (main roles only) then if no bids open need roll to everyone at the raid (again main roles only) and then if no need rolls open greed for offsets etc. Additionally every 2 months the SK list order will be randomly reshuffled to discourage camping.

We're hopeful that this system will be reasonably equitable for all and not too difficult to maintain. The most cumbersome part will be tracking attendance and point awarding - but I'm crafting a google spreadsheet with nifty forumlas with the help of a certain tanky person.

After the system has been in play for a while I'll be sure to post about how it's going.

In your face Archimonde!!

The DB raid has been pretty lucky in terms of our progression, we moved through T5 and into T6 at a pretty rapid pace. At the end of January this year we were sitting at 70th server on wowjustu and by mid July had moved up to 25th. At the time of writing we are currently sitting in 22nd. I think this is mostly as a result of a core group of skilled and dedicated raiders who have consistently raided together since we started back in Karazhan way back when. Over time this group has also grown as we have picked up recruits to the raid.

However Archimonde has been a bit of a stumbling block for us. It's a complicated fight that more than ever requires every person in the raid to be experienced with the fight and be totally on the ball. One mistake by one person can cause a snowball effect that results in fail.

The DB raid started in Mount Hyjal in June and quite quickly got the first 4 bosses on farm, however due to various factors including some instability of our roster it is only now, 2 months later and after numerous attempts that we have successfully downed Archimonde for the first time. In true DB style however it was a one shot! We had a good feeling about this particular group and were confident that we'd get him after a few attempts but I think we were all suprised and elated to succeed on the first attempt. Unfortunately this particular huntard was out of the fight early after dying to Doom Fire for the first time ever. How embarrasing. I was lucky enough to get a battle rez later in the fight (which is unusual since we don't ever BR due to the risk of the person getting quickly killed due to low health and causing another Soul Charge) to contribute some pewpew and help down him. The delighted screaming and yelling over vent and various chat channels was awesome. It's these kind of moments that totally make the game for me.

Progression vs farm raiding and laziness

Throughout the history of the DB guild Jez has always been in progression raids. By that I mean that from the moment we started Kara way back when it has always been a new content experience for Jez along with the rest of the raiders in the guild.

Not so long ago due to having enough Aussie time zone folks in guild we were able to start running a week night Karazhan. Initially Jez went on this raid, primarily to help out and then when 2.4 came out, for badges as well. Several of the people in that raid were/are T4/T5 geared which really helped out the other 'Kara entry level' players. Now that Sephiroh is 70 I am running her rather than Jez for these groups.

One of the things that several people have noticed about some of the members of our Kara raid is that they don't seem to bother to get their gear enchanted, or gemmed, or even work on gearing up outside of Kara. Since I'm now taking a newer 70 through Kara I'm wondering whether the fact that these people were able to pretty much get carried through Kara as they geared up hasn't given them a sense of urgency or feeling a requirement to do this. On Jez I do everything I can to make sure I can perform to the level the content demands - gems, enchants, consumables etc. On Seph I haven't felt this pressure because the raid group is already strong.

It's got me thinking. If a player experiences their own progression via farm raiding does this lead to a tendency towards laziness in terms of gear itemisation and etc?

I'd just like to point out that I'm definitely working towards getting enchants and etc on Seph hehe. I put good blue level gems into the epics she has and I use armour kits since I don't have enchants yet, which I'm working on farming the mats for. One symptom here is also that once I levelled her I took her straight into Karazhan and therefore I'm still working on the rep I need for things like the shoulder and head armours etc. The other people who I'm talking about though have been 70 for months now.

It's just a different experience for me to have a second 70, perhaps other people have different experiences? Perhaps it's also a playstyle thing, perhaps these people just aren't interested in progression style raiding?

In terms of the regular Kara group it is somewhat frustrating for me since I would much prefer to be doing ZA rather than Kara but I'm concerned that the group will not have the chops to succeed there - and part of this is definitely due to the sort of apathy I'm talking about here.

The DB raid keeps on trucking

The Drunken Badgers raid has been on a heady trip in the last month. We're progressing rapidly through both Serpentshrine Cavern and Tempest Keep with our raid today seeing us down Alar and achieve 3/4 in TK. We also had time for several attempts on Kael and got in some good practice learning the fight. I don't think any of use are kidding ourselves that we will down Kael without a lot of messy splatty death.

It really is such an interesting fight with so many components. I commented to Emelin during the raid that it feels like the kind of fight that is very much about knowing when not to do something as well as when to do something. As much as I enjoy a 'balls to the wall' DPS kind of fight where you just stand there and unleash I really really enjoy the kind of fights which require.... well I guess the word is finesse. Today we were successful in completing the first phase and downing the four advisors and then moving on to the weapons. We were able to get as far as having only two weapons still up when the advisors respawned but everytime we got this far we then proceeded to get smoooshed all over the place. Obviously we need to work on the transition at this point.

The main jobs for me in this fight so far are to misdirect the high lady caster biatch onto Emelin our FR tanking lock and tank the Netherstrand Longbow facing it away from the raid. It was so frantic today that I didn't really get to stop and enjoy the fact that I got to first kill, and then loot and use, an awesome legendary weapon. As a matter of fact the hunters also pick up the dagger and sword too. Three legendary weapons at once? OP!

It was kind of a weird feeling see 'big boy' Kael after handing him his butt in heroic Magisters Terrace, especially since some of the mechanics of the fight are similar, the honors definitely went to him today though.

I also got a new shiny purple today which is always nice in the form of the Star-Strider Boots. Now to decide how to gem them, the enchant will be +12 agility naturally.

I got to thinking during the raid today that it's so awesome to be progressing steadily each week. So far since our foray into T5 content we have downed at least one new boss each week if not two. And this has generally been the case for all the raiding I've done with the Drunken Badgers starting with Karazhan. We've had our hiccups and stalls for sure, but they never lasted long. I really feel lucky to not be part of a raid spending weeks and weeks bashing their heads against the same boss. That's not to say that this isn't in our future though! And even if it is, I'm a believer that it's all part of the raiding game.

Still it is nicer to progress.

./grin

Tidewalker is Disgusting!

The Drunken Badger's raid made our second ever foray into Serpentshrine Cavern this weekend with pleasing results. We swiftly gave Hydross and Lurker what for in glorious one-shots and made our way over to Leo to give him a pummelling.

Emelin has worked hard in the last 2 weeks to gear himself with enough fire resist to take on Leo in demon form and thanks to the help of the guild he got there. Leo is a tricky fight in terms of both threat management and people being quick enough to kill their inner demons. I'm happy to report that after a few failures we downed him on the 5th shot.

So it was time for Tidewalker. Any giant that shoots bubbles out of his butt AND smells them obviously needs to be taught a lesson. And teach him a lesson we did on our third attempt.

No hunter loot for yours truly but a great deal of satisfaction to see the raid progressing so nicely, woohoo 4/6 in SSC baybeeeee!!

Next week it's back to Tempest Keep and I look forward to us downing Alar after getting her as far as phase 2 on our last attempt.

When all the world was young

A friend of mine from my former piratical days has just recently started playing Warcraft. She's subscribed and is up to level 13 on her human mage. Talking with her is reminding me of what it was like when I first started playing. There was so much to learn and so much to see!

I will have to make sure that I don't either overwhelm her with information or try and force her to play a particular way. I told her that Frost was the best spec for levelling and she responded that she had put her points in Arcane. Rather than scream Nooooooooooooo at her down the interweb tubes and demand she change to Frost I smiled and said that if she's having fun with it then she should stay with it.

It's easy to forget the innocence of that first period of playing. Maybe some people go into the game researching and min-maxxing from the get go. I'm glad I enjoyed a time of just running around with my icy weapon enchant and my gear with +strength clueless of my noobery but I enjoying my explorations in Azeroth immensely.

I could really make the comparison to being a kid and all full of fun and curiosity and then end game when you grow up and get a mortgage for your flying mount and work for an employer called 'end game progression' that involves raiding and farming all the live long day (and/or night).

Sometimes it's good to stop and smell the roses I think.

Good times in Tempest Keep

So after the trials and tribulations of the arrival of patch 2.4 as previously moaned about here by yours truly the weekend shaped up pretty nicely indeed. Unfortunately it's ended rather unhappily with Emelin passing on his tummy bug to this poor hunter but let's not go there eh? I'd rather talk about the good times in Tempest Keep.

After our triumph in SSC last weekend the Drunken Badgers raid was ready and raring to go in TK. We were aiming for 3 bosses this week - Solarian, Void Reaver and Alar. Like any good raider I'd done my home work - read up on the fights and watched the youtube strategy vids. I was ready with pots and flasks and food and bandages - all the accoutrement's of a raider heading into unknown territory.

First stop Solarian. We cleared the trash and learned that rushing along at our usual headlong pace should probably wait until we've got the pulls down pat hehe. The Solarian fight was really pretty straight forward. We got her on the 4th try and as you might expect it was only Wrath that caused us any problems. Once people learned to 'run away little girl' we were sweet. Of the loot dropped was the Vambraces of Ending which suprisingly (at least to me) no one wanted. That meant they went to open roll and myself and the other hunters were up for it. I was the lucky winner - which means I've scored in both SSC and TK in our first visits there. Yay!

Next stop - Loot Reaver. We were aware of the news that Mr. Pinata had changed a little with 2.4 and orbs were no longer announced and were sometimes rising out of the floor or coming in multiples. First shot many of us got splatted by them but we learned quickly and downed him second try. Huzzah. Two of the T5 tokens for hunters, mages and warlocks dropped and there were some very happy people.

Now it was time to take on Alar. I found myself thinking that perhaps we should take on the harder bosses earlier in our raiding day as by now I was starting to feel quite tired and my ability to focus was slipping. Alar really is quite a challenging fight - but in this case mostly for the tanks. I was grateful that my main job was to unleash MQoSDPS. We gave it a few shots but were unsuccessful in downing her. We did get to phase 2 and got some good practice in for the tanks as regards positioning and reacting to quills and were pleased with that. I'm quite confident that we'll get her on our next visit.

I'm really proud of the progression our raid has made in the last two weeks and I do so enjoy learning new fights.

Our first foray into SSC and how the guild got there

Over the past month or so the Drunken Badgers have been preparing to start raiding T5 content. This has meant a few changes in our generally casual style of play. I've written before about the fairly lassez faire approach to raiding we've had in the past. Attempting and failing on Magtheridon was ultimately the writing on the wall for us. It was not so much a gear check as it was a teamwork/experience check and as a result we instituted some changes that I guess make us more your 'serious raiders'. The changes included:

Instituting a loot system
After much discussion in the forums we chose to go with Suicide Kings as from our research it appeared to meet our needs the best, be simple enough to use and be mod supported. Our raid is composed of both guild members, out of guild regulars and the odd subs. We needed a system that would reward regulars without disadvantaging subs too much but which also wouldn't result in the chasm between the two which is a problem of the DKP style systems. We trialled Suicide Kings in the last few Gruul runs and have found it works well.

Firmer leadership structure and tougher raiding requirements
Getting more serious means more work. It also means being tougher on performance and the gear required to join the raid. Therefore a raid performance monitor role was assigned to observe the work of the raid and identify weak points. Any issues identified are then referred back to a more senior member of the raid who is the same class as the person who needs some guidance. The requirements for raiding were also tightened up - gear, enchants and consumables all became more important considerations.

Stepping up recruitment
We also decided to get more serious about recruiting regulars and therefore a recruitment officer was assigned and posts were made in appropriate places about joining the raid.

Formalising raid sign ups
To date we had been using the forums and in game chat to line up people to come to the raid. Subs generally had to be online 15 minutes before go time in case a spot became available. This was tough on the subs and also often delayed raid start times if we had trouble finding the final few people required if we were down on numbers. We have now started using the mod Guild Event Manager and require players to subscribe to a particular raid event no later than the Tuesday prior. This makes it much easier to organise subs if needed.

It's funny really, I think some people thought that introducing all these changes would put people off of raiding with us. I would argue the opposite. It's been my experience both in other games and in real life teamwork/management situations that putting some structure and rules in place means that people feel more comfortable - they know you are serious about what you are doing and they feel more comfortable knowing the structures in place. Humans are funny like that. Since we've made the changes we have a firmer group of regulars with more people applying to join the raid all the time.

And this weekend we stepped into Serpentshrine Cavern as a raid for the first time. We were all prepared with flasks and elixirs and pots and food and bandages and ready for massive amounts of repeated painful death.
First cab off rank was Hydross. Most people entering SSC for the first time apparently skip Hydross and go straight for Lurker. That's not the badger way. He was there so let's give him a shot. So we did. And downed him on the second try. Yup. The. Second. Try. We were justifiably proud of ourselves. First time visit and we nailed the sonofagoat. This is in no small part to the work the tanks and off tanks did in getting their frost and nature resist gear together.

Full of high spirits we boogied on over to Lurker. Finally yes finally my 372 fishing skill came in handy hehe. It turned out that Lurker was the more difficult of the fights for us as everyone got used to jumping in and out of the water for spout. We got him in the end but it was on the 7th attempt. Still and all 2/6 SSC on our first visit? Stoked!

And to add to the awesomeness of that experience yours truly picked up a nice new chest piece. WOOT!!!

Next week we are hitting up Tempest Keep as we plan to alternate between SSC and TK week to week. Will be interesting to see if we fare as well in TK as we did in SSC and whether we can keep up the roll in SSC. Leo we're coming for you!