Raiding casually is NOT a myth

Lately I seem to keep reading in various blogs/forums people deploring the fact that there don't seem to be any raiding guilds that don't expect at least 3 nights raid attendance a week. It's starting to irritate me. I'm here to tell you that raiding successfully without a ridiculous schedule is possible.

I can only assume that the people bemoaning this fact are also the people who want to be downing Kil'jaeden now but only raid once a week. Wake up and smell the Dark Dwarven Lager people you can't have your cake and eat it too.

Our raid is currently 5/6 in SSC and 3/4 in TK with a Kael/Vashj downing getting ever closer. We raid once a week on Friday server for 5 hours. Yep. Once a week. We are also serious about our raiding. In a way because we only do have the one weekly raid this makes us want to really take advantage of our time. Therefore we do our homework, we discuss strategies and we come to the raid ready with the flasks, pots and etc that we'll need.

I'm not including the various Kara & ZA runs nor the random spontaneous Gruuls/Mags runs since we have this content on farm (maybe not so much with ZA) and are generally gearing alts mostly whereas our 25 man is our progression raiding.

So you might be thinking that our progression must be really slow. Well let's compare to a well known guild in blogging circles - the erstwhile Aetherial Circle. We entered SSC and TK after AC who raid I believe 2 or 3 nights a week and are currently on a par with them re progression. The only difference is - they have downed Vashj *cheers for AC* and Rage Winterchill in Mt Hyjal. The Badger raid could definitely go lay some smack down in MtH but we want to down Vashj and Kael first - because that's how we roll baby.

Anyway the point I am trying to make is not that my raid is uber but rather that it IS possible to raid casually. I had a brief email conversation with BRK about the definition of casual raiding and according to how he defined it our raiding can't even be considered casual since casual raiding guilds spend 2-3 hours on 2-3 nights a week raiding. So we are... I don't know... relaxed raiders? Hehe.

According to WoWjutsu we are ranked 56 out of 171 guilds on our realm and 5,314 world wide. That's pretty damn good for a group that raid once a week.

The message here: if there are that many people who all have the same issue surely they could find guilds that suit their playstyles. Or am I just incredibly lucky?

Clearing Sunwell Plateau before Wrath of the Lich King is highly unlikely for us, but I'm confident we'll be well into MtH and Black Temple before then. The amount of content I get to see given the amount of time I spend raiding seems like a pretty good deal to me.

No WoW for you!

I got home after a long day at work looking forward to getting a couple of hours of play in before maintenance shut down tonight. I've recently dusted off Sephiroh and am really enjoying the fun and utility of playing my druid. She's 67% of the way through 62 and with the help of Jaime's Levelling Guide I'm really cruising through the quests.

So I'm sure you can appreciate my dismay to be confronted with extended maintenance for the second week in a row. Being an Australian player really bites when it comes to maintenance since it happens Tuesday nights and when it's extended maintenance that means everything goes down at 7:30pm.

/frown

On the plus side I have no choice but to spend some time doing other activities such as reading, blogging or catching up on my feeds. It's even possible some TV watching might be included in the mix.

/grin

I've also recently been seriously considering writing up an RP description and backstory for Jez. It's something that's been bubbling around in the back of my mind pretty much since I started playing but I've never had the motivation to get started. Having recently been introduced to That Damn RPer via the lovely Anna and reading up on some great posts on character creation I'm thinking that the time might have come.

Many moons ago I participated in an online RP community within the Wheel of Time world and I very much enjoyed exercising my creative and writing skills through thread based RP. I don't know if I would get into any RP in game in WoW but I know I'll enjoy writing about Jez. I was a little concerned about the amount of lore knowledge required (which means time spent researching) but Nauloera had some good words of encouragement for me saying that a well thought out character is more important than a detailed knowledge of the lore.

Roleplay is definitely something that has always interested me but with which I've had very little experience outside of the thread based kind. I confess I'm a little bit afraid of looking like an idiot, or perhaps more precisely, coming off as someone who is inexperienced. But nothing chanced nothing gained right?

Count your blessings

Every now and then I am reminded to count my blessings in terms of the calibre of people I raid with. This weekend was one of those opportunities.

We had our weekly 25 man raid and took down all bosses in Tempest Keep except Kael. Due to spending longer than we would like taking down Alar we skipped out on attempts on Kael and decided to move the raid to Hellfire and take down Mags instead. It's interesting how sometimes whether it be 'one of those nights' or just a slightly different group, things that were easy or hard previously change up. In our previous visit to TK we had downed Alar on the 2nd attempt on our second visit to TK itself. This week we just couldn't seem to get it together, I'm not sure why, we only got Alar down after about 6 failed attempts. Mags though was a breezy one-shot which had us exclaiming over Vent that something surely was wrong. It was a nice morale booster for the raid to down Mags so easily, which was the reason we headed there instead of spending time on Kael - that and with an hour left of the raid we wouldn't have got much learning in.

Raiding is truly all about team management comparable to a sports team or team of people within your company. Keeping morale up, playing to strengths and ensuring a fun environment are things that any leadership group should be concerned with regardless of the context.

I've read other peoples comments on it and know that I speak for myself that when you spend a lot of time with a group of people working to achieve shared but challenging goals you can start to feel a bit jaded, personalities start to grate on you and having to repeat the same things over and over wears thin. My personal bug bear is the amount of talking that happens over Vent and the tendency of some people to, in my opinion at least, talk just for the sake of hearing their own voice. I believe that voice chat is a really integral part of successful raiding but it is also one of the more tiring aspects and after a few solid hours raiding (our scheduled raid bracket is 5 hours) I often find myself taking my headset off so that I don't have to listen to people talk.

So I'm basically having a bit of a moan about our regular raid group, but all said and done they are a fantastic group of mature and skilled players. I was reminded of this and to count my blessings the day following our raid when we for some strange reason decided to put together a pick up group for Gruuls. It's kind of amusing that an instance that not all that long ago was really challenging is now one that we feel confident throwing together a pug for.

As anyone knows a pick up group is a minefield of potential asshats and noobery. Sometimes combined in one heady mix. While we didn't get any specific asshats we did get a strong dosing of huntard courtesy of the LFG tool. I was the lucky person who got to coordinate the 5 hunters for MD assignments. While I'm naming no names I'd like to present my top tips for what not to do when you are a level 70 hunter looking to get into end game raiding.

1. Ignore instructions
   Setting up MD assignments for the High king Maulgar can be kind of challenging if there is a chance that the tank assignments may change - which is more than possible with a pick up group. Therefore having to tell a hunter 3 separate times what their assignment is just adds to the annoyance. We have a specific raid chat channel for all the hunters. They should be in it and they should be paying attention. Ask once, I'll forgive it, chat can move fast. Ask twice I'll start to think there are pebbles rolling around in your head instead of a brain. Ask three times and I'll be sure of it.


2. Bring your level 65 pet to the raid.
   This is so obviously a no-no. You want to bring your best A game to a raid, especially if you are a BM hunter when your pet is doing around 1/3 of your damage. A level 65 pet no matter how cute and potentially awesome (once he/she levels up) is going to do diddly-squat in a 70+ instance.


3. Forget to stock up on arrows/pet food
   Come on people! Seriously! This is like the first dot point in the 'Raiding Prep 101 for Hunters' hand book. Even before flasks, pots, stat food and bandages. If you are a pick up hunter in my raid and you have to ask me for ammo or food to borrow that's an instant mark against you. I'll be more forgiving in a 5 man that was thrown together kind of scenario where you may have been rushed but there is just NO excuse when 25 man raiding.


4. Neglect to repair, die three times within 10 minutes and ask for a repair bot.
   ZOMG. Where to start? A: Repair before you accept a summons (see reference to Raiding Prep 101 above). B: Don't expect people to use expensive items to help you because you were unprepared. You will just have to zone in and then out and go to the nearest town that you can repair at. Don't expect the raid to wait for you either. Remember kids: your lack of preparation can potentially hold up 24 other people - and that's not cool.


5. Equip items with +strength
   If you are levelling your first hunter, sure ok I'll forgive it. I made such huntardy mistakes too. But if you are a level 70 looking to raid you need to learn about your class and what stats to stack to do your best. Maybe the item has +agility too. So what, there are definitely better pieces out there. In my opinion you don't ever use an item that takes up one of the stat bonus slots with a stat that you don't get any benefit from whatsoever.


6. Neglect to socket gems into your items
   Ok they might only be blues and you're holding out for the phat purples. I don't care. Get yourself some cheap green gems and get them cut. improving your performance now will help you get those phat purples.

There you go, Jez's tips on what to not do if you want to be taken seriously as a raiding hunter. There's more too, maybe I'll write an actual Raiding Prep 101 for hunters one of these days. Still there are plenty of other great blogs that have done similiar, BRK being one of the obvious examples.

Magisters Terrace - the good and the bugged

I don't know about you but I am soooo happy to have a new 5 man to run. Especially when there's the chance to pick up a nifty mount or a vanity pet. Although I have to say I find the raucous screech of the hawkstrider most annoying hehe. Sweet lewts aside I also think MrT is a triumph of in game artwork. It's such a lovely beautifully detailed instance. It's also always a pleasure to run an instance with some greenery as opposed to the dreary 'dungeon/cave' appearance of so many of them.

Friday night a group of us got together to give MrT a drubbing. Our group was composed of a Warrior tank, Demo lock, holy priest, fire mage and yours truly. We did the normal version first to get Emelin and myself keyed and then hit it up in heroic mode. We actually did better in heroic mode - probably because after one run through Emelin and I now knew what to expect. The instance definitely benefits from a group make up possessing multiple CC ability which is what we had with sheep, banish, seduce, fear and my traps. The most exciting moment - the phoenix pet dropped! Woooo! The lucky recipient was Tiffi our mage.

The next day we were all set to run the instance on heroic again for a chance at phat loot and for myself increased rep. I've haven't spent much time looking at the loot from MrT but I'm yet to see a drop that would be a clear upgrade for me. There is a nice chestpiece but since I've just got my hands on the Ranger Generals Chestguard, apparently considered one of the best it's no upgrade. No it's the rep I want as there are several nifty Jewelcrafting designs to pick up.

So a group forms. Three party members had run the instance that morning before the reset. So we head in and clear the trash up to the first boss. Wait... where is the first boss. He was totally AWOL! But the door that opens to the next section once you down him was still shut. Hmmm. Very strange.

We head back outside and I made the stupid mistake of asking in General whether anyone had had any issues with the instance. Yup definite mistake since the responses were all about how I needed to L2P and stop QQing just because you find it too difficult. Ugh. I further explained what had happened and then had people telling me to check my raid ID. That if we dropped group and reformed under a new leader all would be fine and so on. Just to prove ourselves right we did just that. Yep as expected, the boss was still missing although the trash respawned (in this group we had a handy rogue who was able to sneakily investigate). As with any heroic we had all been saved to the instance on the same raid id without needing to kill a boss first. Reforming under a new leader and re-entering did nada. I took great satisfaction in announcing that in General although typically no-one actually listened. Great, we were saved to a borked ID and the instance wouldn't reset until the next day. I'd opened a ticket but with little hope of any quick response we decided to pick up the heroic daily and headed over to lay waste to Steamvaults.

A pleasant suprise was that a Blizz CM contacted me just as were entering StV. It seems this is a known issue and Blizz are working hard at solving it. However there was nothing they could do for us and were sorry for our inconvenience. They did tell me that the issue occured when members of the party left the instance for longer than 30-45 minutes and if this was avoided then there would be no problems. I then pointed out that none of us had left the instance and that there were 3 people who had run the instance before it reset. Therefore what I was in effect being told was the instance had not actually reset. The CM said they would add this additional info to the database.

I had read on the interwebs that raid reset information was displaying incorrectly but I hadn't thought that this applied to heroics and admittedly hadn't read the detail. Considering that heroics have a raid ID I guess I should have realised they came under the same 'jurisdiction'.

Here's hoping Blizz fix the issue soon.

The huntard unleashed

I've really been looking forward to getting into the new patch 2.4 content. So many lovely new things to see and experience and my first opportunity to participate in a server wide effort to open new content since the gates to AQ were long opened on my server by the time I started playing.

I thought last night was the night but no. I'd just got in the door after work when the phone rang with our weeknight Kara raid MT asking whether the spousal unit and I would be logging on for the raid as everyone was ready to go. Righto then. Log in without taking the time to update my mods and head straight into Kara. We did almost a full clear only skipping Netherspite and by then it was laaaate and I logged pretty much directly after we downed Prince. As an aside it was a great run - probably our best yet with the Aussie group. Most probably since we had a larger than usual balance of over geared players and the other guys are getting well geared now too. DPS was totally off the wall although no one had a working damage metre to confirm it heh.

I did have one spectacular huntard moment though which the title of this post refers to. There are many excuses I could give like being tired, feeling rushed and so on but I take full responsibility for one of the worst f**k ups I can think of in my WoW career to date. We were clearing the trash before Moroes and as usual I had the MT set as my focus and smacked my assist focus macro key to focus fire on whatever mob he was wailing against. Normally I pay attention and make sure that the mob has a sunder or similiar on it so I know it's the right one (not to mention the appropriate charm mark). Not this time, no sirree, I sent the pet off to attack then realised my error, called him back and brought 2 mob packs back with him including the elite pack of dancers. Can you spell wipe? I was soooo embarrassed hehe.

So Kara done and tonight's the night I'm thinking but it seems it's not to be as not only was Curse running slow as molasses with log ins disabled - it's now completely down 'for maintenance' as per the picture. In my opinion having a 'click here to try again' link is madness as you can guarantee that people will just click spam and that ain't going to help the poor old server. So mod updating is not going smoothly. I could just log in right? Wrong. Feathermoon is down and has been for at least 30 mins as I write this although according to the log in news all servers are having rolling restarts applied to correct the apellation of server names in name plates for BGs. Seems things aren't running smoothly for the Blizz peeps.

Working in the IT industry as I do I can empathise with the pain of problems with deployment. There's nothing quite as stressful as a live roll out going wrong and with Warcraft that's some massive scale we're talking.

Fingers crossed that both Curse and Feathermoon come back online soon and I can get in some gaming. Otherwise I guess I'll... um.... I'll...

/blink

make an animated avatar about how I survived a WoW outage?

look at some lolcats?

get a life?

EEK! Elune forbid!

/wink

Guess I can go drool over some of the awesome new hunter badge loot. I like the looks of the Crossbow of Relentless Strikes yes I do precioussss. It's got a hefty 150 badge price tag but I'm pretty much almost sitting on that amount currently and there are definitely many more badge gathering opportunities in my near future. If I can log in that is.

/sad panda

Hope the rest of you are having a smoother patch 2.4 experience.

Trolls have no fashion sense

The Drunken Badgers raid has of late been running a regular raid where we do our Gruul farm and then split into 2 groups and head over to ZA for some troll slaying fun. Sadly, or perhaps happily we will be starting our push into SSC and TK as of next week so there will be no more chance for ZA loots (at least until my weeknight Aussie Kara run gears up enough people that we can start ZA anyway). We can happily say that we are 6/6 in ZA, although only with one of the groups - the one I wasn't in sadly.

Anyway that's not the point of this post, the point in fact is like the title says: trolls have no fashion sense and damn it neither does Gruul.

Upgrades had been few and far between for yours truly recently, for PVE gear anyway, the PVP gearing has continued nicely (more on that in another post). However on a recent run I was lucky (lucky? well you decide) to pick up the Gauntlets of the Dragonslayer from our grumpy friend Gruul, which were pretty much an upgrade on my T4 gloves and let's face it does anyone actually care about the set bonuses for the hunter T4 set? Didn't think so. So I was rather pleased with the lewtz and slapped a couple of +8 agi gems and the AP enchant on them. And then I equipped them.

...

...
ZOMFG they look like freaking OVEN MITTS!

Now I'm all for some colourful raiment, I love the gear that the finger wrigglers (to borrow an awesome description from Ratshag) get around in. Hunter gear however is generally of your more drab variety. Which is fitting to the idea of a hunter being out and about in the wild, blending in to the environment to stalk and kill our prey. So WTF is up with these gloves?

/sob

I mean sure they could be a great fashion accessory as I serve you up some crunchy Tyrantus ribs but they seriously destroy any sense of coordination to my outfit and a girl wants to look her best you know?

And then, to add insult to injury I get a further drop in ZA - the Pauldrons of Primal Fury. Yes an upgrade to my T4 shoulders but yet another blow to my ideal of the fashionable hunter. If I was a troll hunter this look would be pimpin', if I was a dwarf those big broad shoulders would perhaps help me get away with it. But on a skinny boingy eared Nelf? Um no. Decidedly not. And combined with the T4 helm? Hideous doesn't even begin to describe it.
Here's hoping I get some drops in SSC and TK that are more.... harmonious..

WoW Life Balance

In the corporate landscape an oft thrown about phrase is 'Work Life Balance' which is a buzz phrase (rather than word I guess) for talking about providing a working culture that values and supports the achievement of balancing work responsibilities with other responsibilities in life. In my somewhat cynical experience this most often refers to flexibility for people with children since this seems to be the most quantifiable and valued alternative responsibility from work. I guess I am being a bit cyncial since carers leave, annual leave and sick leave are also part of the work life balance equasion, as well as, in some industries, rostered days off. Note: I'm talking from an Australian perspective here, I have no idea how this breaks down in other countries.

Regardless, what I want to talk about in today's post is WoW Life Balance. There's definitely a need for it and in my opinion by balancing your WoW life with other activities in 'RL' you will derive more enjoyment from the game itself. I remember being a kid and getting denied the constant diet of lollies and chocolate that I craved and thinking that when I grew up I'd eat them all the time. The thing is though, if you have something you love all the time it begins to pall. Maybe not straight away but eventually you'll never want to see it again. Case in point: A long time ago in a galaxy far far away I used to work in a biscuit factory baking and packing biscuits. Really yummy ones. At least until I ate so many of them that I got to the point of never wanting one to pass my lips again. I still see them for sale in cafe's today and shudder.

I think MMOs are just like those yummy biscuits. You play all the time and the fun aspect is slowly leeched away resulting in burn out. Having said that, by other peoples standards I probably play WoW a lot. Definitely my non-gaming friends think my amount of game time is weird. I would argue however that they may very possibly spend the same amount of time slouched in front of the TV. It's a value thing, it's a subjective thing. Gaming a lot is seen in quite a negative light by general society I guess whereas the amount of TV people watch is not seen in the same way. The thing to consider is that 50 or whatever years ago when TV first hit the scene I'm sure spending a lot of time watching it was viewed unfavourably as compared to... to... whatever people did before then... um... sing-alongs round the piano maybe? I personally would much rather actively choose what I do rather than put up with whatever trash is on TV. In my view, TV is a passive activity, gaming is not. It's also not really a social activity whereas I'd argue MMO gaming definitely is.

So how much WoW is too much? I don't think I'm qualified to really answer that question. I play almost every week night and every weekend. I raid 3 instances a week plus Arena, BGs and farming. I think it comes down to the question: what are you forgoing to play WoW.

Last night I didn't play though, I caught up with a friend I haven't seen in a little while and spent the evening hanging out with her. Subsequently I'm really looking forward to the Kara run tonight.

My Dad always said it and it's true - moderation in everything.

BG QQ

Yah it's about time I let loose with the rant in this here blog non? And I can tell you that I'm quite the feisty huntard when I get my rant on.

(Emelin is nodding fervently in the background)

The thing in WoW that makes me rantier than just about anything even crap instances PUGs?

Battlegrounds.

Seems like the Wowosphere (see that? I just made that up whoo!) is awash with postings about AB weekend or arenas or PVP in general recently. Or maybe it's that whole being more attuned thing I wrote about before.

So anyway back in December Megan over at Out of Mana wrote a post on Accountability in BG and I was thinking about that this weekend as I spent some time in AB. Now Megan is a way more of an uber PVPer than me that's for sure. I would qualify as one of the people who make a BG 9vs10 in her view with my lousy resilience and HP. That said though I have my own particular annoyances in BGs without factoring in HP and resilience.

I'm obviously talking about PUG BGs of course.

I get really annoyed when what I assume are testosterone fueled 15 year old boys (my apologies if you happen to be a 15 year old boy reading this for the blatant generalisation) who spend 5 mins in the BG before getting all pissy and yelling (ie all caps) in BG chat about how alliance are such losers and WTF nubs and so on. News flash! This doesn't help!

I am formulating a theory that Alliance are so used to sucking/having morons in the BG with them that often when they enter a BG it is with this defeatist attitude already in play. No point saying anything, no point trying to get some teamwork going because it always falls apart.

I have a case study (hahaha I sound like I'm at work...) to illustrate this, but with a positive outcome. I was running a WSG recently. At first things weren't going so great. We capped once but then seemed to be stuck in a stand off with the Horde. It started getting a bit angsty in bg chat but then, miracle of miracles, people started communicating. Providing info about where the Ally flag was or which way our flag bearer would be coming. All of sudden things started to come together and we capped again. It was a long battle but eventually we capped again. And why did we win - because people started talking and working together. It was really quite a beautiful thing to see unfold. It was like there was this change in attitude that you could literally feel... this sense of 'we can win'.

I've been in BGs before where everyone did their jobs and it was smooth and beautiful and we won and there was no really talking required. This could also be because we lucked out with crappy Horde opponents.

But this one WSG will always be memorable because it was a long hard fight where we succeeded by working as a team.

Another part of my theory is that no one wants to stand up and take the lead. You might have seen it in instances where no one really wants to mark. I think it's much worse in BGs. I mean there you are with a group of strangers and you don't really want to push yourself forward in case everyone tells you to stfu scrub. Well at least that's been how I've felt in the past. Now that I'm getting a bit more experienced with the BGs I'll speak up a little more. I'm leery of herding cats though. I'll make a comment like say 'I'm going LM' when AB starts and hope that someone follows me.

In fact last night was one of those poetry in motion BGs where everything seems to hang together because people know what to do. I capped the LM and stood there guarding it. I'm so hot keyying flare and /cast frost trap because that's all I did for a good while. Well I did mix it up with a couple of snake traps. Anyway, this rogue tries to gank me as I stand on the flag (fight on the flag always fight on the flag) and a) I spot him because of my flare and b) he gets ice-trapped giving me time to get to range, smack my LOL-I-WIN button, and start firing. Then I notice something.... I'm bubbled. WTF?? Rogue dead I look around and hiding up in the lumber mill bit is a priest.

Awesome!

/cheer

The priest and I kept that node safe for almost the entire BG until the Horde decided to do a bit of a zerg on it (we had them 4 capped by this time) and we both bit the dust. It's just so great when you get a good healer in a BG and even better when they stick with you as you unleash DPS death so

/bow
/thank

I really appreciate it.

Hmm for a post that was supposed to be pretty ranty I seem to have got all positive and affirmative and stuff. Dang.


Credit where credit is due: The awesome artwork in the picture above is via Wyndforge. I'm totally unsure of their rules about using the work since I'm at work and about to run out the door to get home to log in (whee!) so didn't read up. I promise to do so when I get home though!