Casual Raid Leader

I’m a fairly disorganized type of personality.  Its just the way I am.  It hasn’t changed much in the last 30 some years of my life.  If you saw my bedroom as a kid, It was always fairly full of piles.  Like most typical males, I knew exactly what was in each of those piles though.  I always got myself in trouble when I actually cleaned up…. because then I could never remember where I put anything.

In many respects that hasn’t changed much.  I’m a bit older, I have less crap… so the floor is generally cleaner.  Though my kids seem to suffer from my organizational abilities… which is a bit frustrating… but hey.

However… there is one area that I do function well in organizing thoughts.. and that’s developing raid strategies.  No… I’m not revolutionary.  I’m not on the bleeding edge developing strategies that nobody has ever ever seen.  I’m talking about adapting strategy to the group your running with.

Professor P… and Palatable Placement Process

Professor Putricide as a whole kind of stymied us for a little bit.  Not because I viewed him as particularly hard, but because we got to him right during when we had some people getting married and forming raids was a bit difficult when 4 of your core raiders are out and two of them are healers.

We started with what I’d call the “traditional” strategy of starting on the orange wall and then once the green slime was down everyone runs toward the green wall.. and back and forth.  Just a few minor problems.

1. The setup is stupidly easy, but… that works for the pull, after that everyone is running different paths through the room leading to…..
2. Slime puddles being spread all over the room.  It makes it extremely hard to get them all if you get a bad spread.  Which means you can actually get screwed in the fight because of it.
3. People aren’t good at moving back from the green wall to the orange wall.  You’re first instinct is to stop and DPS when you’re in range of the boss.  Meaning the melee ran all the way across the room and the ranged stopped about half way.  Leading to… the green slime almost inevitably picking that ranged dps standing in the middle of the room where its impossible for anyone to get to them before they get smushed and dead.

This kind of left me in a quandry.  I like the simplicity, but what I determined was that the strategy left us with two major gaping problems.

• There was too little time on DPS.
• There was just too much movement involved.  Too much time running of course meant… less time on DPS.

But inspiration… lands in the most unusual ways some days.

“A Friend of Mine Was Telling Me…..”

So our second tank mentions casually in raid that a friend of his told him they did the entire fight by just moving along the green wall.  My first reaction was….”That’s insane… that’s actually closer to the green slime.  I’m kind of failing to see how that’s helpful as we’ll get blasted around MORE often.”

However… I let it percolate in my brain and then it hit me….. The room is roughly a diamond.  (Yes… I’m going old school ASCII rather than doing something like Microsoft Paint…)

…………________……………..
………../…………….\…………..
………./………………\………
………/………………..\…
……../………………….\
……..\…..O…….G……/
……….\………………./
…………\……………/
………….._______/

What occured to me… is that the distance from side wall to side wall was roughly the same as the distance from where the slimes appear and the front of the room.  We could tank him up by the table at the front of the room and just deal with the slimes there.  For people hit with the green slime, we stand right up front and don’t move.  For people hit with the orange slime, they have a couple of seconds they can stand still while it closes on them, then they can kite it up the green wall.

Benefits:

• We aren’t running all over kindom come.
• The slime puddles are pretty tightly controlled.  So its easier for the abomination driver to deal with them.
• The only time people have to move is for the orange slime.
• The abomination only has to run about two steps out to spit on the slime.
• When phase 3 transitions, you’re all pretty well grouped up.  You can just start kiting him down the Orange wall and blast him into oblivion. 

Well… lets test that theory!!!!

Cleansing Totems SUCK!

The funny thing about the fight… cleansing totems actually affect the giant abomination effect.  It doesn’t appear as a disease on my debuffs, but sure as heck… cleansing totem clears it.  The first two times we tested our theory on tanking him by his experiment bench, we thought there was some effect by the bench that prevented you from doing exactly what we were attempting. 

We moved slightly up the green wall to try it again.  Again, the abomination just disappeared after a few seconds.  I’d grab a new one and boom… suddenly gone.  Ok it MUST be something by the bench… yeah … yeah that’s it.  We’ll go back to the old strategy.  We’ll tank him further back and just go straight across again.. 

BOOM… same effect.  Ok at this point I was pretty frustrated.  I mean I’ve driven the abomination before and this has NEVER happened… what the hell!?!?!?!?!

Suddenly the shaman looks up sheepishly… “Um… sorry… I forgot to change my totems from the Rotface fight… I still had a cleansing totem down…”

Whoops…. That kind of sucked.  Oh well… we learned something important.

Abomination driving 101

One thing I’ve learned is that as simple as it sounds, driving an abomination is not an easy task if you don’t stay on target.  Being the abomination driver is about focus.  You have to priotize your tasks and do them well or you make everybody else’s job that much harder.

First rule:  Thou shalt ONLY drive the abomination…
Second Rule:  Thou shalt NOT call out things to the raid… if you’re watching the raid.. you aren’t doing what the hell you’re supposed to be doing.
Third Rule:  If there’s an ooze (or gas cloud UP) Thou Shalt Spit at it first!!! Above all else.
Fourth Rule:  If there’s a slime puddle up…. thou shalt drink it.. and drink it quickly… spam the drink button as if you’re life depended on it…(it does…)
Fifth Rule:  IF the ooze/cloud has spit on it… AND there aren’t any slime puddles up, give it a good whack with a mutated slash. (or two… or three) 
Sixth Rule:  If there aren’t any slimes you have to deal with… AND there aren’t any slime puddles up… Always keep mutated slashes on Professor Putricide when possible.  It helps the DPS overall.

Some people may be able to ignore number 2.  I find personally, I can’t call things out for people AND drive the abomination.  That tends to lead to me falling behind on sucking up the slime puddles.  Which causes even bigger problems.  Getting behind on slime puddles means you’re highly likely to be overwhelmed and never able to catch up.  As soon as you see three slime puddles on the floor at one time, you’re pretty much fighting a losing battle.

I’ve been pondering over the last couple of days…

Yes.. I know.. hard to believe.  I do that a lot, but since the announcement of the new POTENTIAL raid structure, people have been all over the board.  So I thought I’d sit down and think about the implications from a 10 man perspective.

I hear you… OMG… not a 25 man player?  What’s WRONG WITH YOU!!!

Actually… we do raid usually once a week on 25 man, but to be honest, we do it because… we feel like we kind of have to.  As Blizzard said, it almost feels manditory.  For the people in our guild who are more loot centric, they want to see the 25 man gear, and to be honest they’d much rather do it with us and people they know then some random PUG which falls apart after the first damned wipe on Marrowgar.

However I wanted to take a moment to break down a few considerations that the sorry… “25 man whiners” haven’t thought about.  Sorry… I know you really think 10 man is EZ MODE, but lets be honest… some of the fights in 10 man ARE harder and when you’re using 25 man gear in 10 man instances?  Well… gee… Its a wee bit easier on you there….

Loot Table Size

Ok I’m picking a few of what I’m going to deem a “non special” boss to look at the loot tables. 

       BOSS    -> 10 man loot options / 25 man loot options

1. Marrowgar  –> 12 Loot in 10 man, 15 loot in 25 man
2. Lady Deathwhisper -> 12/15
3. Gunship Battle -> 12 /15
4. Festergut -> 12/15

Ok a very easy pattern.  Lets assume the loot tables are unified.  Its probably going to shrink those tables slightly, but maybe not.  So we’ll assume since some 10 man loot (which is arguably better than its 25 man counter part for best in slot) gets moved to 25 man and some pieces get shrunk down.  So now we’ll keep an average of 15 loot per boss.

Odds Are?

Simple math folks…. Ok we’ll assume blizzard goes truly bare minimum and only drops 6 loot per 25 man and 2 loot per 10 man.  (though I threw in 7 loot as well just for reference)

10 man Analysis.
2 loot out of 15 possible
Chance of seeing a specific drop:  13.33%

25 man Analysis.
6 loot out of 15 possible
Chance of seeing a specific drop:  40%

OR

7 loot out of a 15 possible
Chance of seeing a specific drop: 46.7%

Ok.  So very simple numbers, but what does this mean?  In 25 man, I’ll concede that you are competing with a lot more people for gear than you were in 10 man.  In 10 man, its more likely we only have 2 melee dps.  In a 25 man, we’re going to have probably 5-6 or more.  So the first time a melee trinket drops in a 10 man, they’ll get up half their DPS right out of the gate.  That’s good, but look at the loot table.  With a much larger loot table, the likelyhood is that we’ll see that trinket a LOT less in 10 man than you would in 25 man. 

So the odds of actually getting it go down substantially.  Not only do you need to get it to drop in a much larger table.  The odds of someone getting something that someone can use goes up.  The table is larger, but to be honest, its going to take a lot longer to gear the entire group up.  There may be specific trinkets which are considered the “god trinkets” for certain classes that could take a 10 man team MONTHs to see, where a 25 man team may see the same drop twice a month.

Millions of Shards!!!

Sharding loot is not that uncommon of an event in 10 man or 25 man.  I’d actually anticipate that sharding of loot might become a bigger issue in 10 man than 25 man moving forward.

For the 25 man, its true you’ll see more drops more frequently.  So in theory, you’re going to see the same drop more often.  So once or twice a month you’ll see a set of ranged dps bracers for a cloth caster lets say.  But you probably have 3-4 casters who can use it. 

In 10 man, the problem might be… you have a single hunter and no casters wearing chain.  Lets assume you’re three healers are a pair of priests and a druid.  Now every single drop you get with plate healing or mail healing is more likely to get sharded or handed off for an off set.  Could gear up an off spec faster?  Possibly, but in a 10 man, you’re less likely to see all of the drops being useful to someone. 

With the additional consideration of the “mastery” bonuses for wearing armor in your proper type, I could see a lot of people prefering to avoid “downranking” to lower gear types unless the mastery bonuses are largely neglibile.  Sure.. people will probably do it for a couple of pieces, but would you as a plate wearing pally downgrade half your set to cloth knowing your losing a bunch of mastery bonus?

In 25 man, the amount and frequency of drops makes it much more likely that people will be matching their “class” type of armor along with the ability to get gear at a much more rapid pace.  With a much broader amount of classes available, the likelyhood of SOMEBODY being able to use a drop is much much higher than in a 10 man where the first time you’re lone pally gets their bracers, forever more, if that piece of loot drops, its a wasted drop.

For 10 mans, its  a lot more painful too if you have multiple of a class.  If you have two feral druids, you may find it incredibly difficult to gear them both up effectively over time.    In 25 man, having 3 feral druids and 2 rogues isn’t as big of a deal considering how much more frequently you’ll see the dps/tanking leather dropping.

We come to a point in every expansion where you can start to see the cracks in the pavement.  Unfortunately it always seems to be that summer right before the next expansion is coming out.  Summer is always a slim time.  Players have way more important things to do.  I know I do…. I have a lot of family time start kicking up.  My daughter gets into soccer.  My kids are out of school and generally much more active playing outside, going to parks etc.

Students get out of school.  So you get this mixed splurge of people looking to get involved with end game raiding who have been completely tied up with school and those who are busy with family and vacations and all sorts of other committments trying to balance their lives and their play time.

However for WoW, the cracks in the pavement become a lot more prominent in my mind about this time in every expansion.

Tanks and Healers and Burnout O’ My!

It seems to me at this point in every expansion, the tanks and healers start looking for something else to do.  I know I do… I love tanking, its a part of me and I’ve had numerous friends tell me that they can’t see me doing anything else.  They’re pretty right.  I love the challenge inherent with tanking.  There’s something to be said with standing there getting your face beat in so that everyone else can do their job.

However I ran into the same problem in my last expansion too…. I really want to be doing anything other than tanking for a while.  Not full time, but at times, I just want to swap to my off spec or an alt and tear stuff up.  I’ve been tanking the same instances for probably a year and a half at this point… I’m tired of tanking.  Do I find new places like new bosses in ICC exciting?  Yes… but for the start of ICC, I’ve done the same bosses.. the same way… for months at this point.  Its not surprising… its not new… it just… is.

I was talking with our of our primary healers the other day.  He basically expressed a desire to pull out his warlock and just (pardon the expression) “tear shit up” for a while.

Adding Cap Stones

At this point in the expansions I’ve noticed a lot of people getting a bit burned out in general.  I’ve been monitoring other bloggers who have pushed themselves beyond what they wanted.  I’ve seen some struggle with major accomplishments.  I’ve watched some who have accomplished things beyond their wildest imaginings.  I’ve seen still others burned out by taking on too much.

At this point in every expansion, I feel we try to add some sort of capstone to our experiences.  Some people want to know they just completed ICC.  Some want to know they’ve attained the highest possible Arena rating they can.  Some… just want to get their first character to 80 and just see the heroic dungeons.

We all have our own version of capstone that we want add to our play experience.  I personally want to finish ICC.  Sure… I want to get more level 80s too, but lets be honest… most of my experience in this expansion has been focused on raiding.  I don’t do it every day, but I really wanted to make a solid run at getting all the way through ICC… and that goal is in my reach.  I think at the very least Blizzard has proved that 10 man raiding is viable.

Now if I could only convince them that 25 man shouldn’t get ALL of the best upgrades, I’d be good….

I had an old friend of mine stop by last night to chat.  We’ve played together since he was just a new player back in the Burning Crusade days.  He did the traditional WoW route.  He started as a hunter because EVERYONE told him to play one.  Its simple they said.. and you know what?  He got pretty damned good at it, but it wasn’t quite fulfilling for him.  Ok that’s a lie.  Due to financial difficulties at the time that Wrath came out, he just couldn’t afford a copy.  So he did what any redblooded casual WoW player would do.  He started an alt.

Since that time, the Alt became the Main as far as raiding is concerned.  He’s learned by trial and fire how to tank.  He’s discovered that he really likes it.  I mean hell…. who wouldn’t like getting their face beat in day after day. 

Lets be honest, its a very high profile position in a raid.  What’s the first question the healers ask?  “Who’s the tank?”  Who do people pin their hopes on in 25 mans and 10 mans?  The Tank and the healers, but honestly.. tanks are more visual.  When you’re looking at killing the boss, you see the tank.  You half the time don’t notice the guys propping him/her up and keeping their furry …er… plated…. buttocks up and running.  Its not fair to healers, but it is what it is.

We keep in touch from time to time.  He has moved on to tank on the Alliance side on Whisperwind.  I’m of course tanking on the horde side on Thunderhorn.  So as I was babbling on, we got to talking and the conversation kind of progressed like this….

Me:  Rough night in ICC.

Him:  Which boss?

Me:  Not a boss, more of just a general feeling of people being off tonight.  Not terrible, just didn’t quite make it as far as we wanted.

Him:  Yeah?  …. hey do you mind if I ask you a question?

Me:  No sweat

(queue… long wait)

Me: Uh oh.. must be a long question??!!!

Him:  Ok… so I’m pondering is it normal to feel like you want to be the Main Tank and not the Off Tank anymore?  Is that a normal feeling? 

Good question… lets pursue it shall we??? (more…)

Some times you just kind of run dry.  You try and try to come up with things to say… and in the end you just sit there..and can’t really think of anything that you’ll find that important.  What’s most interesting about taking a break is that it does wonderful things for your creative juices as well as kind of putting you back in touch with why you do this.

I think when I started this blog, it was for an entirely different reason than why I write now.  I won’t ever be a Matticus. 

I won’t ever be hard core theorist.  What I am… is a 30 something disorganized raid leader with a little bit of whit and a whole hell of a lot of sarcasm.  Plus I have some good friends who watch here looking to see what I am doing from time to time.  Which is encouraging.  I’m not an expert at anything in particular.  Some people would say I probably don’t give myself enough credit, but to be honest, I believe in thinking you always have group to grow and learn. (more…)

I know… its been quite a while since I posted anything here.  To be honest… I just haven’t had it in me.  While I’m going to take a week or two to think about it, at this point I’m likely coming close to the point of shutting the doors down here.

Now… why?

Well lots of reasons.  Not the least of which is… I am a very busy man.  I have a lot going on with my kids.  I’m extremely busy at work, and I find my free time in the game filled with a million details as we work our way through Icecrown Citadel.

When I I first started this blog to be honest I was bored at work, I had a lot of free time and my kids were younger.  Since then my son’s in Karate 4 days a week and we’re trying to juggle everyone’s schedule and I have a different situation at work. 

I love to write, but its just not something I feel I have the time to do well…  I’ll give it a couple of weeks to just kind of mull over, before I put my final decision here.  In that mean time, I may post… or I may not.

*salute*

Happy raiding folks.

Last night was a good night to die!!!  Well for Saurfang it was.  We had spent Wednesday working on clearing the first three bosses, but as we thought we’d only have 5 attempts at Saurfang, we figured we’d hold off after a long night of raiding to do Saurfang on a fresh day.  Thursday I knew would be a very busy day for me.  My daughter had a music program at school, so I really didn’t anticipate having time to raid, but about 8:30 I jumped online and there the group was.. waiting for me to show up.

So we headed on in to Icecrown Citadel.  I suspect there was a bug as we were granted 8 attempts at Saurfang, but I’m not going to complain… we downed him.  Lets crank it up and see what we learned about Deathbringer Saurfang. (more…)

The new LFG system has left us with some cool ideas.  This particular post is based off of an idea we were tossing around in guild.  The idea is to challenge your group, specifically your tanks and healers will be put to the test.  What’s the 15 minute challenge?  Turn the page and lets see shall we? (more…)

So I’ve been pondering a bit about what makes the new five mans hard and yet interesting.  I noticed with TOC, that about a week after running it, plenty of people had already converted it from… OMG… this is NEW to… yeah… we’re gonna run it, but only because it has gear we need… and its quick…

But what is it that has made the newer instances like Pit of Saron so interesting?  Why do they seem like they are a hell of a lot more fun? (more…)

Its funny how we kind of find ourselves in a rut.  I think in an MMO, its kind of a natural thing.  You end up stuck… you’ve done most if not all of everything in the game and then.. things slow down… they crawl to a halt and you find yourself just filling in the spaces….

I’m sorry if you disagree, but Blizzard in my opinion has proved why they deserve the king of the hill for MMOs.  With the release of 3.3, they’ve redefined what it is to play WoW… again. (more…)