For what it's worth

I like 10s better than 25s. 

Reasons?

1. With 10 people you normally have a tighter group. 
You know each other better, and you have to trust more on each other to do the job. In 25s you always get sub groups. This is not even my experience only, there has actually been research into this stuff and once a group gets to big, it will automatically split into smaller groups.

2. I find deafeating a boss with less people a lot more epic. 
Think about it...I defeated all those big dragons and baddies with only 10 people, other groups needed 25. Bah weakos, had to pull in all their friends to be able to beat da boss.

3. With only 10 people there are less spell effects and I actually get to see more of the fight. 
When I ran 25s I saw very little of the fight itself, the spell effects were overwhelming. I get this with LFR already and there you don't even have to focus much.

4. With 10 people each person has more accountability per person.
My experience in 25s is that more people can screw up. Actually, it's a fact that with 25s more people can screw up because you get 3 battle rezzes, and you even get more shaman logically that can self-rez.

5. Healing is a lot more intense in a 10man raid. 
With 25 people you have 5 or 6 healers covering the raid. You have a certain role, you do your role and you don't often move away from doing your role. In 10s you sort of have to be able to do everything. In current content the only boss we have somewhat strict healing divide on is Garalon, and even there we have to keep an eye on all targets and not just on the ones our focus is on.

6. Organization is less intense in 10s.
What can I say I am a control freak...or wait, think positive...a natural leader. When I see a situation that needs organization and structure I tend to step forward and take over. Not in a mean way, but it naturally happens often. I know what I'm doing and when there is not a strong lead in a group I take over.

This leads to me always leading something in a 25. In our 10s people lead themselves. I do some organizational stuff, like copy/paste the calendar invite, but the rest gets itself arranged.

I do have to say that I am incredibly lucky with the base of our 10man group. We've had people rotating in and out, but the base group is strong and stable, for which I am very thankful.

There you go, six strong reasons for me to like 10s better. So the fact that Blizzard feels that 10s are worth less than 25s, is to me another disappointment to the game.

Bit of a shame...I was discussing with Thror yesterday. And while this whole loot change is on its own not even all that big of a deal. MoP has few things in it that not have a bad aftertaste for me.

I hated Cataclysm with a passion, but I play less during MoP...but hey, that might just be the next blog post.

Foot in mouth disease

10s aren't more popular because the entire community agreed they're more fun, it's just a simple case of effort versus reward. 

A sentence grabbed from a blue comment....

In one sentence this person just called everybody who does 10s lazy and greedy.

Tons of players would love to do 25s, but the coordination and effort to do so is more difficult with very little additional reward. 

This was the sentence before that.

Tons of players....obviously not tons of leaders, because otherwise there would be more 25s than 10s. And if those leader's are sick of dealing with the extra organizational hazzle, why does it make sense to offer the entire raid a higher chance for higher item level loot?

I see what Blizz is trying to do, but the sort of nonsense they are trying to do now with the thunderforge loot only pisses people off.

Add to that these sort of explanations of why what they're doing is a good thing to do, and you'll piss even more people off. Smart move Blizz.

Where are you now?

Patch 5.2 Release Date
More interestingly, what do you think would be a good date to launch 5.2?

Do you think the majority of players are already “finished” with the current content? Where do you think most players stand in terms of PvE and PvP progress right now?
What rules do you think we should follow when deciding to launch new content? 
Should it be a fixed linear time cycle? (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

I copied this from MMO-Champion, and funny enough it kept the style...

So where are you now?

Where am I?

Well, I am currently finishing off Shado-Pan rep. I am 2/3 through revered with them. I am also finishing off August Celestials, I am a sliver away from Revered with them.

Raiding wise we have killed the first four bosses from Heart of Fear and were closing in on the kill on Amber Shaper.

Gearwise...well, we have been incredibly unlucky with the leather spirit drops, but our raid has their gear somewhat behind what we're beating, because I'm not the only one who has not finished their reps.

Valor points? I have now reached the valor cap 5 times since MoP went live! But then again, we were talking about this during raid last week and one of our shamans said he had reached it a whole total of once.

Legendary quest? I am 2200/6000 or so. I have a 500 int gem in my bags which is rather useless since I have no weapon to stick it in (not a usefull weapon at least, I did get the staff without spirit twice already in LFR).

Pet Battles, I have several pets at level 25, and am 2/4 on the Spirit Tamer quest.

Alts? yah...not nearly as far as I would wish to be, mostly because I keep feeling guilty if I spend time on an alt while I could finish of reps on my main.

Challenge Modes? We've completed 1 challenge mode and got no medals for it. Luckily I find the gear monks get ridiculously ugly, so I only have to get silver to get the mount. But yeah, somewhere I would love to find time to do some of this.

I have done the scenarios all once at least, but since I don't have time I am nowhere near tired of them. I am somewhat done with dungeons though since it doesn't seem to matter how much time I put in there, I seem to get the wrong ones anyways.

Oh yah...I am also allowed to go into Black Temple for transmog gear now, and got myself brutally murdered by the heads boss (reliquary), the rest is fairly easily doable solo.

So all in all I am nowhere near done with this patch

Yet, people are asking about patch 5.2. I am personally hoping that it will not be there for a bit still. I have accomplished quite a bit if I put it all in a row, but specifically the alts part is something that I would love to find some time for before I have to get back to grinding on the main again.

And I would love to have at least cleared all the normals before the next patch. Terrace is a few weeks away and I am looking forward to this instance. I find it incredibly pretty in LFR and the fights seem like they will be a fun challenge.

And I'm not even looking much at the achievements...

I guess FP's other group is looking at achievements...cause this was not our 10man...sounds fun, lol. 

So like all the Panda's say, Blizz:  'Slow Down.'

I am in no hurry to have a new patch already. I would only feel way behind again. (and we're 14th on the server on 10man progression...I think there might be more people who are not done yet).

How about you?

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).

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?



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



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.



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.

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!

WoW Mood:

Dissecting Da Boss

Yesterday in the car home I was discussing boss abilities with Thror and how most can be brought back to standard abilities. In fact, once you understand the basic abilities, raiding almost becomes like dancing. You dance left and right, and make sure to press the buttons at the same time. Make sure you stay in the right rythm ;)

After that we had some fun coming up with new boss abilities. I figured that it would be a lot of fun to write about this and got all excited about that!

At first I figured one post would be enough and started writing....turned out I had quite a bit more to write about than one post. So I'll turn it into a series of posts and come back to it when I feel like it.

Today I'll go with the first 3 abilities that came to mind, and 1 idea for a new boss ability.

This player has no idea....

'The Bomb'

One person gets chosen to be the bomb this person has to stand away from everybody else because everybody close will be blown up. Remarkably, the person itself is often not all that harmed.

Boss examples: 
Feng the Accursed - Arcane Resonance - Mogu'shan Vaults

Baron Geddon - Living Bomb - Molten Core
High Astromancer Solarian - Wrath of the Astromancer - Tempest Keep









'The Puddle or Cloud'

Defile would quickly take over the entire platform. 

Somewhere in the room, quite often under someone, a puddle or cloud of bad will form and everybody has to get out.  These puddles may or may not have extra bad, for example expanding when you stand in it.

Sometimes they stick around for the fight and you have to put them tightly together to prevent the whole room from flooding, and sometimes it requires you to stand apart so that as few people as possible get hit by it when it forms.

Boss examples:
The Lich King - Defile - Icecrown Citadel

Conclave of Winds (Anshal) - Soothing Breeze - Throne of the Four Winds (reversal, circle heals enemy and pacifies you, not directly damaging.)
Northrend Beasts (Acidmaw) - Slime Pool - Trial of the Crusader (worms drop acid clouds that need to be gotten out of)
Mimiron - Ulduar - Firefighter. So. Much. Fire

One of our raid members still has nightmares about this phrase I think...

'Hide or Die'

The last one for today is the mechanic where something, most often the boss itself, explodes and the only way to survive is to hide behind something. When a boss has this ability it is often combined with players who become blocks of stone or ice so you can hide behind the player.

Sometimes however you have to hide behind the environment, or even behind the boss.

Boss examples:
Sindragosa - Ice Tomb - Icecrown Citadel
Sapphiron - Icebolt - Naxxramas
Shade of Aran -Arcane Explosion - Karazhan (get out of the Arcane Explosion or die)

The Ability I would love to See

'Don't Touch Me'

Of course fights should be about doing something, not about doing nothing. Yet, I would love to see a boss where every hit to the boss will drain life from the hitter and give it to the boss. Some of the Sha should probably work like this. In fact, I was well surprised that we can even beat a 'Sha of Anger' when you have to beat him with more anger and fighting...I had figured this would only feed him.

How to kill the boss then? Simple, by killing his cohorts. Kill the adds, kill the boss. Of course the adds have to be tanked closed to the boss, otherwise the boss goes pissy. There has to be a reasonable risk that if you do it wrong you hit the boss anyways, right?

It would be a nice change to have to carefully pick and chose your abilities. Carefully tank the boss without doing too much damage.

Not being able to do your full rotation because it includes cleaves would naturally piss some dps off, but then, which fight doesn't?

PS: Thanks to Thror for thinking along with the boss examples

25 vs 10man

We love 25 player raiding. We also love 10 player raiding. We have people on the team that do both, depending on who they are. We aren't really satisfied with the state of 25 player raiding right now. Our goal when we made the raid changes at the start of Cataclysm that unified the 10 and 25 player lockouts was to let players choose the raid size that they preferred and make it a fair choice. 

At the time, we were responding to feedback from many players who preferred 10 player raiding and felt pressured to do 25s because they offered such better loot. The reality, something we failed to properly account for, is the logistical burdens of maintaining a 25 player roster. Those burdens are borne almost exclusively by the officers, raid leaders, and guild leaders of those groups. Those pressures are such that it tends to cause those groups to splinter into 10s. Before there was the carrot of 25s give you the best loot in the game, which was enough to get guilds to push through those stresses by recruiting more or making it work. 

Now it is easy to say, well, we only have 21 people on at raid time, let's just do 10 mans instead of cancelling the raid. Then you go down the road to transitioning to a 10 player guild. It isn't a reflection of what our players want, but what is simplest for the guild leadership. We are looking at trying to better incentivize 25s, recognizing that for it to be a fair choice, there needs to be something to compensate for that additional logistical burden.

A blue poster posted this a couple of days ago. I picked it up from MMO-Champion from this post, and I immediately saved it as a draft. Knowing that it was something I wanted to speak my mind about when I would have the time.

Overall this statement tells me that there will be a higher loot level again at some point for 25s. Especially with tests going on already with 10s and 25s being separate lockouts again.

If the burden is completely on the raidleader/officers/guildleaders, and those people are done with the catherding, what is the problem of them turning to do 10s instead of 25s?

If the general raider is not willing to step up to do the extra work, why should they be the ones rewarded? Attendance bonus?

"There needs to be something to compensate for logistical burden."
I disagree. Obviously people would prefer not to do this. 

Obviously people prefer to do 10s. Because there is currently nothing holding them from 25s. 

Yet, they don't.

Why do they need to be pushed into doing the 25s anyways? Why is it so important that the 25s are more popular than they are now? It feels like these people need to be bribed into doing something they would prefer not to do.

If I would not get paid for my job, I would not work either. So does this mean that I prefer working over doing something else? No. If given a choice and having everything even I would much prefer to do only the things I want to do, and not go to work. And I like my job, but there are still quite a few things I would like doing better.

So are the 25s supposed to be like work? Are players supposed to be pushed into 25s? But if they are obviously not fun enough without the extra incentive of 'salary' why would Blizzard want to push people in that direction?

To me it seems that currently people can decide to do 25s if they prefer that size. It seems to me that the fact that so many 25s have fallen apart is proof that the leadership prefers 10s over 25s. And to be honest, it's also proof that the players prefer 10s. Because if they would be so hung up on doing 25s, why do they not put in the extra time and energy to get that done?

Frankly, if you're a player who wants this or that, but is not willing to put the energy in to get that going or at the very least help the leadership to get that going. Then you have not much to want. You have to be happy with what the people who are willing to step up get done, and be happy that you can tag along.

If anything at all does happen, the leadership should be appreciated, not the whole raid. If you want the leaders in World of Warcraft to step up and do more, reward them. Not the whole 25 man, just because it is a 25man.

How about just giving the raid 1 item per boss kill? 10s and 25s. An item that the raid can reward to the players they feel have deserved it most. That the raid can give back to their leadership or whomever stepped up.

An item that does not effect the effectiveness of raiding mind you. Or maybe only after a long time of saving up. So having to save up say 20 of this or that item will get you the extra special reward.

Or maybe Blizz should introduce 20mans? 2 times 10 after all. If guilds have to transfer back from 10 to 25 that means 3 groups of 10, with 5 people left by the wayside.

In the end I don't know how Blizzard will get what they want, I know even less why on earth they want it. I do know that in the end the players won't be happy with it anyways.

Current WoW Mood:

Dailies, dailies, and LFR loot system

I've been following the blue posts a little and the hottest 2 items currently being discussed are the dailies, and the loot in LFR. Let me start by weighing in on the whole daily discussion.

Dailies 

Complainer's POV:
Everything is locked behind dailies. 
If we want to progress in the game we are forced to do dailies. 
Dailies ruined my game, I quit. 

Blizz's POV:
But you don't have to do dailies, go do dungeons and scenarios
You do not need your dailies or your reps to progress in the game. 
Go enjoy other content. 

My POV:
I have not maxed out my valor again this week. The reset is today and I have managed a wooping 720 valor or so. I play a lot, but I absolutely hate the daily system. They feel like chores to me, and so my whole head rebels and most of the time I really just don't want to do them.

I forced myself (no Blizz did not force me) to revered with the Klaxxi because I had nowhere!!! to spend my valor points. I hated every quest I did.

Now I am at the point where I don't feel like getting a lot more valor is currently worth much to me since I would have to force myself to do another rep to revered, and then another to get to something that I can use for my character. This means that I do not feel a drive to get valor points, and I feel even less drive to get the reps, since one is locked behind another rep.

So in all sense I do not feel a drive to do a massive part of the game. I do a dungeon to make sure I have maxed out my valor by the time the upgrade item system comes in, but that's about it.

What do I do in the game?

Well, last weekend I spent 3 hours with some guildies to get the dungeon achievements. A nice challenge and a lot of fun. Also got the guild some money.

Chores

I've also made a list of what I need to level all the cooking ways. There is a quest you get once you max it out and I'm curious for that. Plus I can skin with my hunter so I've been shooting crocs for their raw crocolisk belly.

I raid with my raid group and we're enjoying ourselves with that.

And I try to do LFR, but only on reset day since it sucks to try and get a proper group on other days. (unless my guild goes with a group).

Is this as rewarding as what I would prefer to do in the game? No. This is not the game I would prefere to play. I would prefer to actually run dungeons, because I like them, but I don't feel like that's very useful, plus since nobody has a drive to run them, it's not a lot of fun to actually do them at the moment.

I would prefer to work on my character's progression during the week and feel like I'm getting better for my raid. But since the only way I can do that in the game is in a way I really dislike, I just don't do it. I dislike that I am less good than I could be if only I could like the dailies. But I just don't like that part of the game, and it is the ONLY part of progression.

And here we come to the heart of the problem. The only SOLO path of progression is doing dailies. You can run dungeons till you drop, but it doesn't matter. Without doing the dailies you have nowhere to spend your valor.

You can level all your professions, do scenarios, do PVP, LFR, whatever you want to do. But the only way to progress your character and spend those valor points is through daily chores.

On top of that the daily chores reward you with valor better than all the other stuff does. So clearly the best way to progress solo through the game is to do chores. Which is very very discouraging to people.

And this is not going to improve much with the 5.1 patch either, since it's not worth upgrading your gear much if you didn't manage to get it in the first place.

Now, I'm lucky to have some raid gear, but people who do not raid...well, again, what do you upgrade? Your dungeon gear? Make me laugh, yeah?

And I agree with the poster from this post:
If blizzard is not going to fix this fast, they will lose a lot more people all over. Not because it is to hard this time around, no this time they will lose the casuals. Because those casuals feel like they cannot get anywhere with their game without spending some hardcore amount of time in the stupid dailies.

To sum up:

• There should be some other way to spend those valor points (and justice points)
• There should be a way to have people who cannot log in every day feel equally rewarded for their play time as the people who do log in every day
• My time in game without doing dailies should feel as appreciated by Blizzard as someone else's time in game who does do dailies
• If I love scenarios I should not feel discouraged to do them because the reward is useless without doing something else in the game that I do not love so much
• If I need something from such and such faction number 2, I should not have to go through faction number 1 as well to get to number 2.
• We need more not wiggly snakes in the game (oh wait, that is a personal peeve that almost every mount you can get in the game is a silly wiggling snake mount now)

LFR Loot System

This is apparently also Loot

Now this is a different discussion all together. It weighs in on the valor and daily points since it is one of the few ways that you could progress solo...if not for the ways the new loot system has decreased your chances of getting loot.

But statistically your chance is much higher to get loot! Blizzard says....

Ok, lets compare.

Raid:
2 cloth healer, 2 leather healers, 1 mail healer, 1 plate healer

1 plate tank, 1 leather tank

5 cloth dps - 2 mages, 2 warlock, 1 priest
6 leather dps - 1 boomkin, 1 monk, 2 druids, 2 rogues
3 mail dps - 1 hunter, 1 enhance shammie, 1 ele shammie
3 plate dps - 2 DKs, 1 pallies

Old System:

Boss dies. The system pops up with 3 items from a random loot table.
Mail Int Chest Piece
Plate Str Boots (no tank stats)
Spirit 1handed mace

Mail Int Chest Piece - 2 people who would want it the ele and the resto shammie. Chance you get it? 50%

Plate Str Boots - 3 people who would want it, and possibly an asshole tank who needs on it. Chance you get it? 25%

Spirit 1H Mace - 7 people who would want it (shadowpriest). Chance you get it? 14.3%

ew System: (as explained by Blizzard)

Boss dies.


- Each player has a chance to win loot, independent of the other players.
- For each player who wins loot, the game randomly assigns them a spec-appropriate item from that boss's loot table. This subset contains only items that the game (meaning the designers in this case) thinks are appropriate for your class and current spec.
- Notice that you aren't rolling Need or Greed. You don't have an option to Pass. The game just says "Take this."
- You can't trade this item, or that would defeat the purpose of removing the social pressure on groups of strangers. If you don't want the item, you are free to vendor, delete, or disenchant it.


In a blue post:

First, other players will not affect your loot in any way. Another player winning will not cause you to lose. Another player winning a mace will not mean that she took your mace. If there are many rogues in the raid, your chance of winning a rogue item is not diminished. We may decide that each player has an X% chance to get loot, or we may decide that X number of players get loot, and then randomly determine who those lucky players are.

Second, the item you win will be "useful" in the sense that it's potentially usable by your current spec. This does not mean that warriors will get leather because warriors can equip leather (at a huge stat loss). It also does not mean that the game will always give you an item you want or an upgrade for the items you have. It just looks and says "You are a Holy priest, so here is a random item chosen from the Holy priest-appropriate items that this boss can drop."


What in the end is my chance to get loot? I have not been able to find out what my chances are, but it certainly feels lower than the 14% I had before.

Problem 1.

I think the first big problem here is that other players will not affect your loot in any ways.

Lets say in the old situation my guild group did what we did last weekend. We jumped in with  a couple of  people who are outgearing most of the LFR gear already.

We had 2 leather healers, 2 plate tanks, 1 mage, 1 shadowpriest.

For the loot situation I described above this means that for example the mace could have 3 less rollers on it. Lets say that from the people who were not in our group there is another healer that already has a weapon. All of a sudden your chance is not 14% for the mace, but your chance has just gone up to 33%.

And your chances will get higher as more people are getting geared.

With the new system your chance is static and will not change, because it is unaffected by other players.

Problem 2.

The loot system decides what I need. I personally have won 5 items in LFR/Sha so far. Woohoo!

1 pair of pvp gloves (which I am using since it's better than I had, and hey the bonus on the roll is nice)
1 neck (I had better, so it got sold)
1 cloaks (I had betetr so it was sold)
1 offhand (which I would've gotten apparently if I had not done that boss already)
1 chest piece (which I am using, since it was an upgrade).

It really, really feels as if those items that I didn't need went wasted, and it would've been so nice if they could have gone to someone who did need them.

Also, I cannot see how many items are handed out, and how many loot bags. There should be some sort of window that shows me who won items.

I am not getting any offspec gear this way. I would love to actually get some gear for my windwalker, but instead Blizzard assigns int cloaks without spirit to me. (I refuse items without spirit as a healer, but that is a different discussion). The mage in the group could've used that item sooo much better.

When you get useless gear like that it feels like a carrot is being dangled in front of you. Frustrating.

Problem 3. 

Elder Charms. I worked my butt off to get these elder charms. I did your stupid dailies, I went through the motions of doing what I should be doing. And what do I get? Another bag of gold.

It really feels as if the work I did for the charms should be rewarded. Maybe not directly with loot, but then at least with a bigger bag of gold.

Hey, you know Blizz, maybe that gold you get when you change the small charms to the big charms could be handed out to make the gold bags from elder charms extra big!

I want something to show for my effort.

Problem 4.

I think this is already on the fix list (or at least I would hope so).

If you do LFR again, to help out guildies with a faster queue time for example. Or to see that specific effect from such and such boss again. You get taunted with the loot you would've gotten if only you hadn't been so dumb to already be locked.

This is just plain cruel and is really demotivating to do LFR more than once.

To sum up:

• It feels like loot is wasted
• The precious few times you do win, you often get something you do not want because the choice is taken out of your hands. 
• Your chances do not increase as people gear up
• The effort that was put in acquiring Elder charms should feel more appreciated and rewarded higher. 
• Show people what loot did drop from a boss. Seeing that loot has dropped (even if not for them) might make the feeling of accomplishment higher
• Do not show what you would've gotten if you had not been locked

PS: You get some really odd pictures if you google for loot o_O

Legendary Gems

I was reading MMO-Champion today and noticed that I had missed a post about legendary gems that they had datamined.

Refined Crystallized Dread
Refined Crystallized Terror
Refined Crystallized Horror

And I find myself hoping that this is not Blizz's idea of making an item 'legendary' for everybody. As a healer stats are gorgeous, but as a constantly mana-starved healer I'm not gemming for intellect, so it would have to be a spirit gem at the least.

Also, stats are nummy, but if you want to make a legendary healing weapon a proc will have to be added, something like what Val'anir does. Raw stats I personally find rather meh.

I guess we'll wait and see, maybe the gems are just an intermediate step, and maybe Blizzard has something really wowzers up their sleeve.

Current WoW Feeling:

Feng the Accursed - Tactics

We beat this boss last weekend, and below is what we learned throughout the fight.

Composition:
- 2 tanks
- 3 healers
- 2 melee
- 3 ranged

We used the strategy guide from Icy Veins. Their guides are generally pretty damn good, but I can totally imagine that people would like a visual indication of where to stand that is not moving and flashing all about like the videos.

If you do like a video I can advise the video guides from Fatboss. I generally find those fairly clear :)

Phase 1.

Tips:

- Stack up properly in the center to make it easier on the healers, epicenter does a load of damage and heals have a hard enough job as it is. 

- Do not attempt to cast the nullification barrier on the ranged. This may work for some teams, it caused us only a lot of trouble because the boss would move along with the tank. 

- Make sure that melee can be under the barrier

- This is a tank fight, if your tanks are not good enough....good luck. 

Tips:
- Create a weakaura for the Wildfire Spark
- If you do not want to use weakauras, turn on your chatbubbles. DBM will make you say that you're affected and a chatbubble can function as a weakaura
- If you have really high dps you may be able to get the boss to the next phase before he gets to his 4th draw flame, you then want to use the nullification barrier on the 1st and 3rd draw flame.
- Use heroism in this phase, especially when starting on this fight. This phase is the hardest and you will wipe on it a couple of times. We used heroism here, and the first time we got out of this phase into the 3rd phase we wiped, but the second time we got into the 3rd phase we also killed him. Phase 2 is definitely the hardest.

Tips:
- Use any movement speedups to get to the boss faster when he does arcane velocity
- Do NOT overshoot the boss (roll did exactly that for me >_<)
- If you can save at least 1 big raid cooldown for this phase


If any of the more experienced raiders have tips to add please feel free to do so :)

When you just don't have the people...

Within my guild we have 2 groups of 10mans. This has been like that for quite a while already, in fact we still name them after the names they had when they were formed while raiding Karazhan. (though we used to have 3 groups back then).

One group raids during the week, and the other raids in the weekend (my group). Like a lot of guilds we ran into heavier weather during Cataclysm and a lot of people left. And not only due to Cataclysm, but sometimes personal situations just change. Then some of the people from my group shifted to the week group because the times fit better in their schedule, and now...yeah now my group is short people.

Now, don't get me wrong. I am NOT trying to get people to apply for my guild through here at all. We have an application process where you need a sponsor, and this sponsor needs to have known you for a while already before they can sponsor you into the guild.

This application process is there for very good reasons, and has worked quite well for a looong time already. My guild has a brilliant atmosphere, and we like to keep it that way.

This does however bring problems with it. Because when you lose people, it is hard to fill up the raid again. And my raid group is not just 1 person short...no we could easily add 3 people to our roster.

I've been breaking my head over trying to find a way to fill the gap, but in the mean time the only way to actually raid is with pugs.

Now, I am the first to admit that there is absolutely nothing wrong with recruiting some pugs for your raid. After all, I did lead a 25man pug raid on sundays for about 2 years, and quite a few people of this pug raid became guildies. But bringing pugs does bring issues.

At the least they are not in tune with the rest of the group. Everybody is new to them, and while they can be good, playing with new people is always harder.

Then there are those people who are pretty good, but halfway through your raid all of a sudden have their own guild calling for them. The raid gets disrupted, at best you can find someone to replace this person fairly quickly, at worst you can call the raid and continue some other time.

And then of course there is the possibility of getting an absolute newb for a player. People who have all the best intentions, and maybe they even have the potential to be good, but they just haven't got a clue what they're doing. Every single detail has to be explained to them, while everybody is sighing in guild chat.

But worst is when you get the 'aso pug'. The pug who thinks that they are better than your group and they are a godsend and by their holy presence allow the world to keep turning. Quite often when you review logs these are the people who feel that they 'deserve' to stand in shit while the healers just have to 'pick up the slack'.

In the end none of it is ideal, but not wanting to recruit bodies, just for the bodies, I don't see other solutions on the short term.

Luckily we might have some sort of solution coming up, but until then I guess I'll just be sighing quietly every time I get up at 5 am to try and find pugs to fill up the raid.