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Monday, December 31, 2012

Glyphs, Talents, and Reforge


Please stop being so restrictive about the Glyph/Talent UI. It's driving people nuts, I loathe the moment I have to change!
Philosophically, we don't want automating talent or glyph swaps. Once it's easy to reglyph every pull, players feel like they must. (Source)
The above is about addons on the talent/glyph ui.

In Vanilla there was one spec, no glyphs, and if you wanted to change your talents you had to go to your trainer. He would then give all your talent points back and you could redecide how you wanted to spend those points.

Back then it was actually possible to spend your points halfway over 3 different trees if you so desired. The only requirement was that you had filled up the previous talent tier with enough points to open up the next.

There was no gemming your gear, no reforging, no glyphing. No nothing. You picked a spec, figured out what your role was, and went with the best spec for that.

During raid, you had no option then to just deal with it. And sometimes classes would be switched out, and the high-end raids would sometimes send people out halfway through to have them respec quickly and summon them back.

This was comparatively a lot more costly, but much easier, because at some point you would know your specs so well that you could just fill them in blindly almost. As long as you made sure to enchant all your gear you were good to go once the summon came.

Now when you get an upgrade you often cannot even wear it directly. Because without reforging, gemming and enchanting it it would quite often be a downgrade to your perfectly tuned set.

In fact, what happened to me the other day is that I got a neckpiece of ilvl 496 which replaced my 463 neck. 30 item levels up, but I could not use it because I would be so far under the hit cap by swapping it out that it would be a problem.

This makes me wonder if Blizzard has gone overboard in the options to finetune your character. Each time you win a piece all other items have to be reforged to be in tune with the items you already have. Gems have to be replaced, enchants have to sometimes be redone, etc

Hit and expertise are the worst for this as the blues have already admitted, but also haste forms an issue since for quite a few classes there is a haste cap. Mistweaver monks included, in between the different haste plateaus the stat simply doesn't do a lot and you're better off with crit or even mastery.

And then there is the retalenting and glyphing. I have to admit, I was excited when I learned that we would be able to reglyph and talent on the move. I'm not so sure anymore.

It feels like I'm at a disadvantage if I don't reglyph/retalent for every fight. So pre-fight check is no longer a matter of having all your buffs (flask, food, and casted buffs), it now includes do you have the correct talents and glyphs.

It feels as if more time is spent in between fights just to finetune it so you have the edge, more time spent in between and less time on the actualy fight. More time spent on preparation and less on actually having the fun. Or is the preparation supposed to be the fun?

Another problem on top of this is that when you do change a talent or glyph it changes the way you fight, or heal so drastically at times that it takes a couple of attempts to adjust. So while it may be the better glyph choice for the fight, it may change the way you do things so much that you'll do worse at first. Glyph of Uplift is a good example for this.

With glyph uplift costs mana, without it costs chi. Sounds simple, but it affects so much more. Because you're using mana for uplift you need to use a different spell to spend your generated chi, to generate mana tea. This changes your rotation. However, if you do not change your rotation and make sure to spend the chi to get mana tea you're running out of mana real fast, because not only does uplift no longer spend chi, and hence generate mana through mana tea, it also costs mana.

Or glyph of mana tea, allowing you to have instant mana tea, but only 2 charges at a time. But it still costs a global cooldown, so if you do not have those to spare you cannot just use more mana tea at a handy moment. To know if you have to use the glyph or not requires you to know before the fight whether you'll have downtime to drink your mana tea.


So one glyph can change your healing style so much that you can easily screw it up, yet it is expected that you know how to work with all this.

I'm liking this new method less and less. Yes, I have choices, but all those choices are diminishing my time spent on the actual fun, namely the fight and learning the fight.

And since the fights are built around having the option to reglyph and retalent I cannot just ignore this part of the game. I have to play the game as it is designed even though I would much rather just focus on the gorgeous raid fights themselves.

Not to mention the costs involved with changing everything every time, meaning that you have to go farm for those costs. An upgrade will generally cost about 400 gold - 8x reforging + new enchants, + new gem. And then it's not even a weapon which upsets stuff even more.

I find myself longing more and more for the days where the difficulty was in figuring out how the fight worked, not how my character, gear, talents and glyphs work for each and every fight separately.

(and please Blizz don't go with reforging on the run, because then I have to add that to my pre-fight check as well).

Monday, December 24, 2012

All I want for Christmas is...


Except for a nasty cough that is keeping me from sleeping through the night, my cold is mostly gone. Time to focus on the time of the year.

Christmas time! And time to make my wishlist for the upcoming year for World of Warcraft. I have done this before in the past and mused about what I wanted in the game. 

What we've been seeing in Mist of Pandaria has so far been pretty spectacular. And hey, as I see the dailies of Operation Shieldwall develop further I may even feel how Blizzard is learning from mistakes with the dailies of release (holy golden lotus way too many dailies batman!). 

Lets review my list from 2009:

1. Can there please be some cloth gear with crit/mp5 in Icecrown?
I think there was, but it now seems of so little importance, Icecrown was one of the best raid tiers that World of Warcraft has seen in my opinion. Even though it did last quite long. 

2. Can I have 1 gearset that is usable (and effective) in all my specs?
With spirit being hit for a priest they did come fairly close to this. If you're a healer priest as I was back then you can actually fairly easily switch to being shadow and use the same gear for starters. 

3. If number 2 won't work, then can I haz a soulbound items bag?
Yeah...still dreaming about that bag. Void Storage is interesting, but fairly unusable. Stuff ends up in there and never gets pulled back out. 

4. The little wishes count too: if I learn an account bound item, remove it from my bag
This is pretty much how most items are handled now, though I think there are still quite a few improvements that could be made here. 

5. Can we haz real mohawks for nelfs as well, please?
Of course they gave them to gnomes and to male nightelves (well sorta), but there are mohawks, still nothing like the funky troll hairdresses for nightelf females though. Being a panda now I still think most of the female Alliance hair dresses are rather tame. 

6. I would like haste to work on Weakened Soul
They implemented something like this with the disc priest being able to shorten the duration on weakened soul, wish granted I guess?

7. Gimme a challenge!
They did hand out a challenge. It was 'have your raid survive Cataclysm'. I guess we made it out alive, but not unscathed. I see challenges now in Pandaria though. 

8. An auctioning system like Auctioneer offers
Nope, the in game AH has gotten worse instead of better if anything. With the addition of battle.net account bound items I cannot even filter on pets that I already have anymore. This is rather disappointing Blizz. 

Half of them sort of implemented, not a bad score I would say. Time for a new wish list!

1. Mount Battles

I am thoroughly enjoying pet battles, but it leads me to thinking about something I enjoy collecting even more. Mounts. 

Now, I would not very much like mount battles to be the same as pet battles, but I would love to be able to catch mounts in the wild. 

Capture them with a Lasso, battle them into submission, and then go into a period of having to teach them under the saddle. This process could be somewhat harder than catching a pet of course, and I think that you would need a certain taming skill to even start capturing wild mounts, but I'm sure Blizzard could come up with something great here. 

Much like a hunter can tame their pets I want to go out and find my favourite mount skin. And yes, there should be some rare catches as well. 

I think Aotona would make a great mount model for example!

Aotona

2. Less Transmog Restrictions

I have some favourite looks for armor in World of Warcraft. Unfortunately none of those are leather. And of the leather looks I do really like seeing, most of them actually have class restrictions. 

I would love to see my monk in some items, and while I can still understand the armor restrictions for transmog (it would look somewhat silly to see a warrior tanking in black mageweave), I hope that at some point they will remove the class restrictions so that as far as transmog is concerned, leather is leather is leather. 

And if my monks wants to wear tier 8 for rogues, or tier 4 for druids...she can. 

I love the colors of this set, Conqueror's Terrorblade. (Rogue)
Flying Saucer

3. Monk Tier without a Flying Saucer

Don't get me wrong, I do think that the flying saucer hats look good with monks, but I hope that the designers will not give every monk tier set a shado-pan hat in the future. 

Surely there is something cool to do with the crane, the tiger, the ox, or the wind serpent, no?

4. Choice of Rolling in LFR

Currently LFR seems to have waaaay too few healers. Logical as well, because most of the healers who heal fulltime have a raid of their own in which they get gear that is better than the LFR gear. So for LFR they queue as dps to work on their offset. 

But this does leave LFR without healers, and tanks and dps with a much longer queue. If I could join as a healer, but roll as a dps I would be rather happy. 

Also, I think that LFR gear should always drop. No matter the how maniest time you're in that LFR that week. When I currently queue up as a healer to help out guildies with a faster queue all I get for it is a meager sum of valor points, which I could get faster through dungeons or scenarios. I queue anyways to help them get into LFR, and I do my best to heal the raid, but this could be rewarded a bit better than it is currently. 

5. Item Storage like in Guild Wars

In Guild Wars you can click on a button on your bags and it send the item to your crafting storage. Once there it has a full overview of every craft item in the game, and has the items you do not have faded out. I love, love, absolutely adore this system. 

It would go such a long way in saving space in your bags, organizing your inventory, and actually having enough slots for those type of items. It would definitely have consequences for how items are handled. Stacks would no longer have to go to 20 or 100, no in the bank it could simply be a picture with a number. 

I'm sure that this is not something that is easily implemented, since World of Warcraft is of course dealing with bagage from 8 years of WoW, and a database design which would need quite a bit of changing. Not to mention all the consequences it can have for the economy. 

But I would love to have something like this implemented in World of Warcraft. 

6. Have Group Will Travel

I want it back, please? Or something like it at least. 

I don't even mind not having it for raid as much since you can just use the summoning stone and you're normally in the same place for quite a bit of time after. 

But where I really miss it is when I go out together with Thror to do Molten Core, or something like it. You cannot use the stone with just one, and it would be so nice to just summon the friend you're playing with at that moment. 

For older content it is nice anyways. My monk doesn't have all the nifty travel shortcuts that my priest had (working on it!), but it means that I generally make the other person wait while I take the long road. 

7. An ingame Cavalier Pet

Lady, our tri-color cavalier. 
I have two Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, a ruby and a tri-colour, and I think they would make for adorable pets. They could even have a pet special and go barking when they see other dogs (mine do at least). It would make my day if I would see the Cavalier in the game. 

What would be even better is if they're available in 4 colors, as they are for real. Ruby, tri-colour, blennheim, and black and tan. 

But hey, probably every pet owner thinks that their pet is the most adorable and should have an in game model, so this may be a tiny bit unrealistic :)

tri-colour, blennheim, black and tan, ruby













Tuesday, December 18, 2012

No words...

This guy is visiting:





And because this guy is visiting I feel like this:



And this:


If I were to write posts now they would likely come out like this:


So I'll be back with a post once I feel like this:


End of message.

Monday, December 17, 2012

Who says it's about facts

Today I'll poke a phrase I keep seeing around in blue posts here and there, and that is giving me the serious heebiejeebies.

It normally comes by phrased into something like this:
"Is this something you just 'feel' like is reality or do you have facts?"
As if it matters?

Is it less important if it is about feelings? Are player feelings less important than statistics? If a large part of the player population feels that something is not enjoyable, then I would say that this is a rather important signal that something needs changing.

I get that as a blue poster you get tired of the raging community sometimes. Tired of explaining over and over that you cannot go change stuff just because the people who speak up demand it so. Because for every person who opens their mouth and complains, there might be 10 silently enjoying.

I get it, I really do.

But this just feels like sending players off with nothing...

Not to mention, Blizz keeps coming with statements like:
'We wanted the players to feel as if the world is more populated.'
'We want players to experience how big the world is.'
' Mana pools can still be large (we are thinking 100,000 mana at level 85) so that it doesn’t feel too bizarre to existing casters and doesn’t feel too much like rage or energy. '
Of course it is about feelings, of course it isn't all about facts! The whole game is built around how people experience the game.

What is part of the issue here is the difference between how people actually feel, and how people think they feel.

Say what now, Shy? There is a difference?

Yeah, there sure is, and I'll try to explain as best as I can, though I am not a psychologist.

I assume you must have felt super angry at some point in your life. So angry that you wanted to (or maybe even did) smash something?

If you look back, was the true emotion anger? Or was it maybe disappointment? Was it maybe the feeling of being let down? Maybe you felt deceived?

Often anger is not the true emotion, often anger is only the resulting emotion, the underlying one is something else.

I believe that this is what is quite often happening at the forums as well. Players are all pissed off, shouting that they will leave the game, boo bah, etc

But what they truly feel is disappointment. Disappointed that their class is not performing as well as they had hoped. Let down by Blizzard because that item that they had hoped for so long did once again not drop (fault of the loot system and the designers of course), disappointment that their mount flaps in a wrong way, disappointed because their expectations were not met by the reality.

Expectations not met by reality...

Makes me wonder if it really is good of Blizzard to do as much previewing as they are, since the bigger picture can rarely be seen by the one player.

But, even when the anger is not the true emotion, it does feel like Blizzard needs to stop discarding the feelings of the posters. Channeling that energy into other activity would maybe be better, not sure, as said beofre, I am not a psychologist. I don't have the facts.

I do feel that I am getting quite tired of Blizzard asking facts from disappointed players though...

Friday, December 7, 2012

Have A Nice Day Mr Troll!

A while ago I read this story at WoW Insider. If you don't want to go through the entire story, it is about a Blizzard CM, Tseric, who way back when picked a fight with forum trolls. He spoke his mind, but in the end, he lost the fight from the trolls, and lost his job over it.

Today I read another post on WoWInsider, about how a blue poster explains what you can do against harassment. And also repeating Blizzard's promise to deal with these people if they are found guilty as accused.

This all made me think on where we are going with this. It feels like I see it more and more that people are rude and mean to other people. Intent on bringing other people down, on hurting other people as much as they possible can, with no other purpose than their own enjoyment it seems.

Are we forgetting that there are real people behind the characters? Or worse...are we not forgetting, but is this simply how society is nowadays? Are these in-game bullies simply this messed up that they automatically do this?

It feels like more and more people are so self-absorbed, so self-centered, that they cannot seem to take one step in the shoes of the people they are harassing, and imagine what it would be like to be on the receiving end.

On the other hand, maybe these sort of in-game bullies are constantly on the receiving end in their real lifes, and they need to let of steam in their online lifes. Reaction instead of action in that case.

I do like this last stream of though. The big bad bully suddenly takes on the image of a grown-up crybaby in diapers, waving a world of warcraft game around instead of a rattle. Makes them seem a little less impressive, huh? ;)


Have A Nice Day

I while ago I posted the DailyBink Poster you can see on the left, this poster is not recent, and what happened to Tseric is also old news, so this sort of stuff is nothing new. But, it does feel like I see and hear more and more about it.

Maybe people are fed up with it by now, maybe the people who remained silent against the bullies are speaking up now. I don't know.

I do know that it doesn't make the game more fun. It doesn't make me want to play more. So I had an idea.

Because I too can be short of patience against fellow gamers, and maybe leave a group hanging without a healer, or just ride along on other player's shoulders in an LFR. I would never openly be rude, but I too find myself cussing newbs we come accross every now and then, and I complain to Thror about how some people have no idea.

Because I feel like we're not getting anywhere if I don't start with changing myself I am going to change this. Starting with my own behaviour. Even though I am nowhere near the level of what would ever be reported, I too can improve my nice-factor in game.

So from now on I will introduce for myself  H.A.N.D. - 'Have A Nice Day' one day per week. On this day I will be nice to everybody in the game, I will offer help to people who seem to need it or ask for it. I will take time for the people who need to learn, and I will be patient to every newbie out there.

I will say hello, and chat in my pug groups, and even greet people in LFRs. On this one day per week I will try to explain to rude people that they should be nice, that the world (or at least the warcraft world) can become a better place, if only you start by being better yourself.

And ya know, I will even do this on a day I normally play a lot, I'll take Saturday for this.

So the rules are:
- Say hello cheerily in every pug group
- Greet fellow players
- Be patient to players who need to learn
- Be helpful to those who ask, and even to those who don't ask, but look to need it
- Do not argue over loot
- Basically be a nice person

What do you say? Will you join and make your own gaming world a little better?

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Cross Realm Raiding

Current tier content cannot be raided with people from other realms at the moment. According to Greg Street 'Ghostcrawler', Blizzard worries about what that would do to guilds.

You wantz raidz?
With the shortage of people our 10man has been experiencing I have often wished we could cross-realm raid. We seem to be getting into a bit calmer weather now with 2 new people joining us on a more regular basis (we found them in trade, can you imagine!), but there are still times that I would love to invite someone from a different realm.

Imagine only how much easier it would be to trial people and how much bigger the recruitment pool would be for guilds that do actively recruit through these means.

And I keep wondering...wouldn't it be possible for blizzard to make realms not matter?

Worry about guilds, well...if guilds were cross-realm that wouldn't matter, right? The sense of identity would be placed even more on guilds.

Of course there are people who have, so to speak, 'grown up' on a certain realm. Personally I have grown up on Icecrown-US, and while I would be a tiny bit sad to see that part of my game identity become more vague, the advantages would far outweigh the disadvantages for me.

So why then is it so important to keep realms separate for current content?

Might it be maybe because people need to be able to identify themselves on sites like WoWProgress?

WoW Guild Rankings

Being 16th in realm-wide progress sounds much better than being number 13943 world-wide.

WoW Guild Rankings

But would the player base not find another way to measure how they are doing in the competition? Would in the end it not be better actually that you're not measuring apples against pears?

There is no possible way that FP can compete with Dream Paragon for example.

WoW Guild Rankings

And doing so is only leading to disappointment in the end.

And even comparing ourselves against the number 1 on our own server is not a fair comparison. We raid 10s, they raid 25s. We raid only 8 hours per week, casually. They raid for 16+ hours.

Yet, these sort of sites compare the two guilds together and say how much better one is above the other.

I believe that if it would actually become possible to compare experience with experience, and time invested with same time invested with each other, it would become a lot more satisfactory, for a lot of players. It would feel good to be the best in your own league, the best in what you do. The best when all is set to even footing.

After all if FP would transfer to certain realms, we would suddenly be realm number 1...looks nice, but it is in no way an indication that we have improved.

Maybe Blizzard likes the income from the realm transfers too much?


Maybe, but I find this hard to believe. If there is anything that Cataclysm, and now Mists has shown me, it is that Blizzard designs the game the way they believe will work out, not the way they believe will make the most money.

Of course, quite often those two go hand in hand, but I strongly believe that if it would come down to a developer vs sales battle at Blizzard, the designers would win in the end.

So I'm getting to the end of this post, and while I have been turning this back and forth in my head, I find the argument that Ghostcrawler gave on twitter a bit weak and shallow. They must have a better reason, but I haven't figured it out yet.

Monday, December 3, 2012

What's wrong with just wanting to raid?

"Regarding the alt unfriendliness of MoP. You created a huge requirement sink and refuse to address the elephant in the room"
"If an alt gets every accomplishment your main has then you have few reasons to play that alt. There has to be a better design."
"I disagree Greg. I play dif chars because I want to play a dif class, not to get some achieves. Make them all .net bound."
"But what are you going to do on that character if it has everything the main does. Just raid?"


I wonder what is wrong with just raiding. 

If I had it my way I would raid a whole lot more than I do now. I happen to find it the most fun and challenging aspect of the game. Granted, I wouldn't have time to raid every day, and most of the days I do log on to do one or the other in the game, but if I could choose I would love to have an insta raid ready for me the moment I log on and feel like playing for a few hours. (not an LFR, I love raiding, but LFR is not raiding for me).

I prefer to think of my alts as holding wintersleep
Also, I wonder what else they want to see as final goal in the game. Dailies? Dailies to me have always been a means to an end. And some people may enjoy them. Some people may even enjoy them so much that they  don't feel a need to do anything else after the dailies, but to me that has never been a goal on its own.

PVP? Sure, pvp is an end goal in the game. But then the argument that is being made here, completely invalid as well. "But what are you going to do on that character if it has everything the main does?" More PVP?

Do they really believe that people have alts to do the achievements again? I would bet that this is about the smallest part of the wow population you can imagine that actually does this. People have alts to have a change of scenery, to learn from a different perspective in the game, to experience a different playstyle. Some may have a specific alt jus tot PVP since they don't enjoy their main in PVP. Others may just really like questing. One of the main reasons is probably professions. But least likely it seems to me that people have alts to do the same dailies and achievements all over again.

Achievements on many alts is not a goal, and while I believe that the road to the end goal in the game has to be interesting, sometimes challenging, and always rewarding, I do not believe that it would hurt gameplay one bit if alts would have more things account wide.

Also, I think the forum poster here expressed himself badly. Alt unfriendliness in MoP is something that seems to be experienced by a lot of people. Myself included. I used to love playing alts, experiencing different classes, and different viewpoints. I had 7 characters at 85 and I with that I was definitely not special.

But now...now I have 1 character at 90. Exactly 1. My hunter is halfway through 89, so closing in on 90, but that took me remarkably longer than it has ever taken me before in previous expansions.

Why then are alts so unattractive at the moment?

I play on average about 18 to 20 hours per week. And I think this is quite a lot already. This includes 8 to 9 hours of raiding, and 2,5 hours of achievement/challenge runs on my Sunday evening. But what do I do in the rest of the time then? I still have about 7 hours of not raiding or achievements...well, I prepare as much as I can for raid.

And when I say as much as I can, I mean as much as I can without burning out on the game entirely. You see I don't like doing dailies. But to get my lesser charms I have to do them. So last weekend I spent about 3 hours just on doing dailies and getting my lesser charms so that Tuesday I can get my elder charms.

Other than this I want to not be broken on my characters. I hate standing at the AH and not be able to get my gear enchanted or gemmed. I have guildies and raid members who help with this of course, but sometimes I'm simply impatient and I just want that enchant/gem now. So I spend time on working the glyph and darkmoon card market. This takes about 20 minutes per day and keeps my wallet nicely filled enough to do what I want to do without going bankrupt.

Then of course I have some things in the game that I would like to do, which makes up for the last 3 hours of playtime. I go looking for pets, or transmog gear, or I do my farm, etc.

So reason number 1 why alts don't get pulled out of the stables? Time. They have created so many time sinks that are semi-required for the main that I just don't have a lot of time left to play an alt.

Next to this I still needed a lot of items on my main. Items that seem to all be soulbound, bind on pickup. So reason number 2, I cannot get what I need on my main by playing an alt. And I'm not talking about BoP gear, I am talking about spirits of harmony for example. Which I need to get my lotuses for flasks. I am talking about reputation, which I need for gear. Valor points and justice points, which I need to upgrade my gear.

Reason number 3, is that those reputation grinds are each looking like mount everest to me (and to a lot of others if I follow the forums a little). I haven't even been able to finish the rep grinds on my main. And time that I spent on my alts is taking away time from my main, who I feel already doesn't do everything I could do to be in the best shape possible for raid. I regularly don't do LFR. Last week I did only terrace. I don't max out my valor points every week. I haven't grinded all the reps to get the gear. Etc.

Every time I feel like playing an alt, I am thinking, "But I should really be doing this or that on my main" followed immediately after by, "But I really don't feel like that, blergh" and then quite often ends with "Hey Thror, feel like watching a film?"

Simply because it is all too much. What needs to be done is so huge still, that I cannot oversee what all needs to be done, which leads me to just not doing anything.

Lastly, reason number 4, As if it wasn't enough the first time I need to do all of it again on my alt. Once I finally have stuff on my main, I have to do the same grind (less heavy due to new rep tokens) again on my alts. To get to the better profession recipes I have to grind several alts to revered with shadopan for example. Tailoring and enchanting being two examples.

It feels like a task on my main, but it discourages me completely on an alt. So my hunter is hanging around at 89 and a half, because levelling her to 90 means that I have to start the rep grind.

Somehow I think Blizzard has shot themselves in the foot a little with this, and I think I'll leave my hunter where she is and level the warlock to 89 and a half next. At least at that level there's no pressure of rep grinds if I don't reach level 90.

But hey, this is just my take on this. Opinions may vary.

Gara'Jal the SpiritBinder - Quick Guide

To find a full guide you only have to google and it comes up with many, many results. But a quick guide to have on the other screen when you have to quickly go over the fight before you begin...yah, not so much.

So often I make my own guides and then share them with whomever comes accros them on my blog.

This time Gara'Jal the Spiritbinder.


Raid Composition:
- 2 tanks
- 2 or 3 heals
- 5 or 6 dps

Phase 1 until 20% health - Phase 2 - at 20% he frenzies.

Tanks need to swap when a tank phases out, the tank who phases out needs to make sure that he kills his very own special enemy in the spirit world. (Banishment)

When the boss summons a totem some dps and heals need to go kill the totem and enter the spirit world by doing so.

2 dps + 1 heals in 10man
4 dps + 1 heals in 25man

The healer needs to heal the people inside to full which will give them an extra action button. This button allows you out again. You need to leave before the debuf runs out or you'll die.

Inside the Spirit World the dps needs to kill the adds that float around, since they damage everybody outside.

The healers need to heal, a lot. The more heals they land the higher the dps gets from the people that are inside with them because they will receive a stacking buff. So cast a lot of small heals. (but make sure to heal to full on time).

Outside it is tank and spank, stand and shoot, and do as much damage as you can. Just make sure to NOT stand in the totem circles when it's not your turn.

The boss casts voodoo dolls regularly on people. This prevents you from going into the spirit world.

To prevent confusion about who goes in, and who doesn't we use the addon Gara'JalAnnounce. This addon will set up everything as long as you have done a role check. You can however adjust priority of people who go in and out.

-------

The next post I'm working on will be about this: (Copied from MMO-Champion)

"Regarding the alt unfriendliness of MoP. You created a huge requirement sink and refuse to address the elephant in the room"
"If an alt gets every accomplishment your main has then you have few reasons to play that alt. There has to be a better design."
"I disagree Greg. I play dif chars because I want to play a dif class, not to get some achieves. Make them all .net bound."
"But what are you going to do on that character if it has everything the main does. Just raid?"

PS: My raid managed to get 2nd boss Heart of Fear down this weekend. Well done guys!

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