My least favorite day - April First

Tomorrow is April First, and is quite possibly my least favorite day of the year. Yes, I'll even rank it above Valentine's Day and Christmas, both of which I really dispise (nothing like obligatory gift giving). No, the reason I hate April Fool's Day is everyone and their brother thinks that thier 'new' joke is somehow funny, or that lying has somehow become acceptable. It really gets out of hand when pranks turn personal. This is usually the time I set someone's car on fire, but not as a joke. I suppose that's really my problem. I generally escalate things far beyond where they may be percieved as funny. "Ha ha, logged into your account, took you to Desolace and destroyed your Hearthstone!". My response might be "Funny. I just deleted all your stuff, sent a series of nasty messages to the CM/GMs, got you forum banned, used your account to sell gold, and of course - set your car on fire". See, the last part just puts it over the top. So to everyone planning on writing a "I quit" post, or pulling some practical joke on the blogsphere, just remember - I may not know who you are or where you live, but if your car is on fire, you might want to give me a shout.

OT - Cleaning up my feed reader

Not really WoW related, but it's certainly appropriate these days. Over the course of the year bloggers come and bloggers go. I certainly don't hold anythig against someone who chooses to step away from the game or writing - I've certainly taken my breaks in the past. Where I come to the challenge is when do I unsubscribe from them on the feed reader. Pulling them off my blog roll isn't really an issue, since they will eventually just fall to the bottom.

What I'm talking about is the reader I use to keep track of every blog I read. There's always this moment of hesitiation every time I prepare to unsubscribe from a blog I've found. Many bloggers go dark for a while and then come back, and I'm always worried that maybe they will return and I'll miss it. This is especially true if it's a blogger that I enjoyed reading because of thier style over thier substance. I don't really know why I worry about these things. My reader is now full of blogs that have either closed the doors, stopped blogging about WoW, or in some cases, have gone on to full WoW bashing. I don't really care what you want to write about, but unless you're just a good writer in general, I probably don't want to hang around.

The other group that I regularly unsubscribe from is bloggers that only give me a teaser in the reader. I don't want to be forced to visit your site just to check out your post for the day. So today I went through and ripped off the bandage. A whole list of blogs I unsubscribed to. It's alright. My organized side thanks me for getting rid of blogs that I just don't read and only hit "mark all as read" just in case there's something interesting. And it's now a lot easier to scroll through to the blogs I do want to read.

H-Atramedes down - 4/13

Add another notch to the two healed encounters - H-Atramedes went down last week. I really love this fight - even though on normal it's a snoozefest - just becuase of the interesting mechanic. Having a sound bar really puts a lot of weight on the shoulders of the individual raider as well.

Some of the differences

The first difference between normal and heroic is the add (shocker - heroic mode = adds!) that shows up and jumps on your raiders (think snowbalds from ToC). They can be interrupted, have low HP, and need to be nuked quickly. You can't target them until they land on someone, but they need to be focused quickly. Besides doing a little damage, they add 10 sound per hit, so someone can get in trouble very quickly. The second difference is Nef will occasionally mess with your raid by nuking a gong before you can click it. It's good to have someone as a backup gong hitter, because this can really bite you in the butt. Just make sure you don't hit two gongs if you don't need to. Finally, the damage is just crazy high. Fire moves faster and lasts longer on the ground, there's more sound disks (they always launch at someone, never towards the wall), and the disks in Phase 2 explode faster.

It's pucker time

This fight has a lot of spike healing, but it didn't have the same pressure feel as Magmaw. There are some lulls during the fight where you can nab mana via Divine Plea, and I personally like to stand with the melee so I can heal them with LoD and HR. I also snag a few melee swings to get just a little more mana if I can. The big difference is that any moment that may lead to "must heal now!" generally means your target is already dead. Of course I say that now, but my WoL and HPS says I was really cooking. Maloriak is next on the 2 heal list. It's going to be a week before we get ay attempts on him though, due to us missing a raider this week. Working on new H-mode bosses with a PUG isn't my idea of a good time.

2-Healing H-Magmaw

Our second kill of H-Magmaw occured this week, with us 'officially' 2 healing it. I say officially, becuase last week we 3 healed it for a few minutes, and then 2 healed it after our druid ate something nasty and fell over. Here's our WoL from the kill, it's definately easy to tell when his head was down.

Feeling Cataclysmic

I have to say that this is really the first fight where I felt like the healing was the way it was supposed to be in Cata. It felt like healing heroics in greens, being way undergeared, and just struggling - except, not.

The difference was, everything was working like it was supposed to. Cooldowns were used, mana was conserved and regened properly, and the raid flexed extremely well. One comment was made by our MT though that really made Monger and I /headshake. He asked if we shouldn't three heal it because everyone's HP was fluctuating so low - generally around 50-75%. Monger summed it up perfectly.

Welcome to Cataclsym healing.

That is exactly what it was supposed to be like. None of the hits that killed anyone on previous attemts would have been avoided if we'd run 3 healers or 5. You take a 150k shot, and odds are, you're smoked. Also, unless you're the tank, what the hell are you doing taking that shot? All that damage should either be avoided or mitigated. You don't need to be at 100% HP all the time.

How we did it

Our healing team is typically Monger and myself - Priest and Paladin. I suppose this is why I laugh at those who say they need a healer channel, especially in 10m (25 I can kind of see it). If I need to make a change with Monger it's just a /w away. If we're three healing, I have vent. It doesn't hurt that this isn't our first time healing together either.

For healing, I focused on the MT, while Monger healed the raid. If you look at our healing done by actor, you can see that about 50% of my healing was on Vonkaiser, and Monger was very evenly spread over the raid. Almost as if our classes were designed to work that way!

We used a Pally tank on Magmaw, with a DK picking up the skele adds. Parasites were kited by the hunter and frost mage, and nuked by everyone. Skeles were burned down as needed, and we timed an impale for the phase change and Bloodlust.

Bring me more

This is what I've really been looking forward to in Cata fights. This was one of the first fights I've finished near empty, and really had to dig out all the tricks on. I'm hoping for more of the same on Atramedes and Maloriak.

How we handle BoEs

I hate farming. Not real farming, because even though that's hard work there's something to be said about the pride of looking out on a field of whatever that you've grown. No, I mean farming in WoW. I don't care if it's farming herbs, cloth, honor, or what - it sucks. I don't get any satisfaction out of it, and I'd personally rather spend my time doing just about anything else.

Right now my current passion is arguing with Monger about what we can 2 heal and what we can't. Right now we're 2 healing H-Magmaw, 3 healing H-Chim, and 4 healing H-Halfus. I want to knock Chim down to 2...

Back to the BoEs

Fortunately, or not depending on your PoV, I'm not the only person in my guild who hates farming. We all do. Sure, some of us do it from time to time for various reasons, but none of us get excited about it. Personally, I think my hatred stems from back in Vanilla when I was working on my Thunderfury. I've never been a big AH player, I had no DPS gear, and I was a tank through and through. Heck, I didn't even have any real high level alts. So I ground out the gold I needed slowly but surely. Man that sucked.

While gold is exponentially easier to come by today, I still don't want to grind for it. Fortunately, there are those with really deep pockets, that ensure that we don't have to.

It started in Ulduar

Back when our 10m first got going in Ulduar, we recognized that we were extremely lazy as a group when it came to farming, and that there were plenty of folks out there dying to spend their hard earned gold on the epics and recipies we collected. Enchants were in high demand, patterns for epics, orbs, etc. We recognized early on that selling say, a tailoring enchant for 10k and then spending 1k to have it crafted for the single person that needed it, was way more efficient and profitable.

ICC threw a bit of a wrench into those plans, but there were still BoEs to sell, and it kept us from having to really work. GDKP runs at the end really loaded our pockets, but that doesn't have anything to do with BoEs.

What we pay for

Right now our guild funds every aspect of our raiding. Flasks, food, gems, enchants, repairs - you name it, we pay for it. BoEs are sold in guild (after one 'oops' at the start - sorry Thraxx) for 5k. If nobody wants to pay the 5k and use the item, we sell it on the AH. Once the gbank hits 60 or 90k, we knock it back down to 30k and split the rest. I think we've had 2 or 3 splits already since the launch of Cata. You don't get any interest on the money, so there's no use in having it sit there.

This type of thing really does wonders for all of us. It allows about 1/3 of the guild to raid on a second server with some older raid partners that aren't at the same level we are. Some of us take the time to level alts or just play less, and a couple of the guys are playing Rifts on the side. The biggest thing for me is there's no pressure to do anything but raid well. I'm not scrambling to get flask materials, fishing or herbing for my buff food, etc.

How far will the money stretch?

We've already seen a decline in prices for some of the items we get, heck the healing belt is probably better served as a Maelstrom crystal. But even if you figure each raider is spending 200g a night in repairs (sure, maybe more), and 100g a night in buff food/flasks/pots (heck say 300g), that's 5k a night we're spending. I don't think it's near that much, but say it is. One good BoE drop will net 20-25k, and a bad one will get 5k. While we do have dry runs (like last night in BoT), we generally get 2 or 3 BoEs a week. That's a lot of funds we're pulling in.

Who knows. By the time Firelands rolls around we may be dipping into our own pockets again. It's certainly possible. Firelands will bring a whole new round of BoEs and other profitable goods though, and I'm sure that we'll start to see some decent GDKP runs cropping up in the future.

It sure beats farming.

I could have 6 Holy Specs

OK - I don't know if I could really have six, but I could easily support three. One of the recurring questions to Blizzard is when will you allow tri-specs? I can see the appeal of the question, after all I think the dual spec system has been a fantastic addition to the game, but where would you draw the line? Also, when did the cost go to 10g, I really want to know that one.

As a Paladin we have three distinct builds that we can play. Holy, Prot, and Ret. While I leveled with a Holy and a Prot set, now that I'm down and dirty with raiding, I run with two different Holy builds - much like our Prot pally has two different tank specs, and I think our Retadin even picked up a build without Eye for an Eye just for tanking Chimaeron.

Who owns your second spec?

With a second spec runing you a measly 10g now, the question comes up as to who controls your second spec? Is it reasonable for your guild to expect that you maintain two different builds for handling different encounters? Should hybrids be expected to maintain an offset just because they can? Those are questions each guild and player will have to answer for themselves.

The availability of large and diverse builds kind of went away with the new talent system. Requiring 31 points in your primary tree really limits your flexibility, but I don't think this is a bad thing. The talents are already confusing if you don't know what you're looking for, and doubly so if you haven't done a lot of research. Do you put points in Blessed Life? Is 2/2 Eternal Glory needed?

My builds

For everyday healing, I run with a 31/5/5 build. 1/2 in Last Word, and 1/2 in Enlightened Judgements. Last Word is a talent that is just filler for most situations. A crit is nice, but odds are good that if your target is sub 35%, you're going to be rocking a lot of other stuff in their direction. Enlightened Judgements is unneccasry after 1 point - you'll have more than enough hit if you aren't gimping your Spirit. If you are gimping your Spirit, well that's another post.

For H-Chimaeron I run this build. This is more like a Shockadin setup, but without Blessed Life and Eternal Glory. In my logs I've found that over an average Chimaeron fight I'll get about 12 HP from BL and EG each. While that's 24 free HP, I need the DPS output in P3, and AM buys a few extra seconds for everyone else. This also lets me pump out some DPS on H-Halfus.

Those are my two 'standard' builds, but I'd certainly play with more. Builds that had cleanse and don't, some with Blessed Life, others with PoJ. I'd go crazy!

My point

I could fill up every available spec with some variant of a Holy build I'm sure. If we had unlimited specs, well then sure, I'd suddenly have 15 different combinations of PvE/PvP Ret/Holy/Prot builds, probably just because I could. There's certainly nothing wrong with just using a basic cookie cutter build either. I haven't found a fight yet that I 'had' to spec out of that for, it's just convenient.

Japan, Blizzard, and charitable giving

Spend two minutes on a blue tracker or the WoW forums and you'll find a dozen posts where players cry out for Blizzard to donate to a disaster relief fund, Red Cross, or some other organization to assist with the recovery in Japan. The sense of outrage expressed by some of these posters is mind-boggling.

Blizzard/Activision is a profit making company. Their job, through the making and sellign of video games, is to generate revenue. Period. Asking them to use some of their profits to help out Japan is like asking GE to donate a portion of each lightbulb sale. Yeah, it's great, and I think it would generate a lot of relief, but that isn't what they do.

Companies like this operate with huge budgets, and amazing expences. Blizzard announced in a blue post that they were matching company donations - an amazing feat. They are certainly under no obligation (and as a stockholder I want them to make the right choices) to do so, and this comes right off their bottom line. I'm guessing there may be some kind of tax incentive to do so, but they don't OWE anyone.

I think what they did with the Panderan is great, and I"m sure that the profits for every pet and mount in the Blizzard store far outpace the development costs. I'm also certain that this is true for pretty much every other profitable company out there. If you aren't making more than you're spending, you'll be outta business pretty fast.

So do I think it'd be great to see a pet or mount split the proceeds with the Red Cross? You bet. Unfortunately there are millions of people in need, not just the ones we see on television. Would the world be a better place if all of these organizations had the money they needed? Possibly. But that's starting to drift a little to close to the wrong kind of government for me (where everyone has the same things). There's a reason why Animal Farm didn't work.

Calling wipes, brezes, and other sundry stuff

I was catching up on my World of Matticus podcasts the other day, and decided to swipe one of their topics - when do you call a wipe or use a battle rez? When do you call for Bloodlust?

Calling a wipe

This is one of the more challenging calls to make as a raid leader. In a 10m raid losing a single healer generally means 50% of our heal team is gone, or the third healer that we've convinced ourselves we need is dead. If a tank dies, the odds of someone picking up his boss/adds is slim to none. If a DPS dies, we lost 15-20% of our DPS. That's pretty significant. We also only have one BRez until 4.1, and then it will be one of our tanks doing the rezzing - right into melee range (nom nom cleave).

While there are obviously going to be a lot of variables, here's a few basic guidelines.

Two or more people dead - in a 10m guild this is crippling in most cases. Some exceptions would be the final phase of a fight, particularly if it's a burn phase (i.e. sub 30%).

Death in the first 10% - generally the fight is better off being wiped if this happens. While we've made some really good attempts where we stray from this, they are rare.

Pre-phase 3 on H-Chim - We've tried all kinds of combos with this, and 99% of the time doing a rez before P3 just results in a whipe. Especially if it's one of the tanks (and it generally is).

How to respond to a wipe call

Now while I've been guilty myself of occasionally dragging out a fight for a few moments, here's a few basic guidelines to keep your raid leader from using your name as a test vehicle for some really colorful metaphors.

• Stop healing - Not after the next one, not after you blow a CD to see if you can get a massive heal - immediately. Stop doing anything that will keep you alive.
• Stand in the fire - This is one of the rare times you want to stand in the fire/Giant Big immediately. The faster you die, the faster another pull can occur.
• Taunt the boss - Odds are they'll one shot you.
• Turn your back - I remember putting my head in my desk last week when our DK tank announced that he lived for 45 seconds after a wipe was called and no heals on H-Chim. Where's that survival during a fued double strike? Hmmm?
• Don't run - this just drags it out, and your odds of escaping are almost zero. Hell, I get irritated at our hunter who FDs in Nef's pit. A-hole. Of course I also mock him when he misses the elevator. Dumb goblin.
• Die, get back, rebuff - look at the logs while everyone is getting food buffed or when you're flying back to the instance. Unless it's your assigned job, don't lie there waiting on a rez. Lazy.

How to call a BRez

This is something we really have to work on, as a BRez call needs to happen quickly, and without hesitation. Five people asking "BRez?" to the raid leader is probably going to get someone else killed. It's helpful to have a set of guidelines up before the pull. Some examples would be, first DPS in P3 of H-Chim, or don't rez pre 50%.

The last thing you want is questions around your BRez, or worse, someone walking away from their keyboard when a BRez goes out. Stay focused, and listen to the raid leader. Remember, it's better for them to be wrong than for you to be wrong.

Blizzard drops me a clue

So a few weeks/months ago I rolled a little Retadin on a server with a few RL buddies and the guy who was the best man at my wedding.  He quit playing WoW (the primary reason I rolled there), so I've just been tooling along doing Archeology and enjoying the fact that as Ret it doesn't take six days and seven nights to kill something.  I did some PvP, did a few random heroics, etc, but then Blizzard sent me a message.

 

They want me to heal

 

Every single heroic I run, I get more Holy upgrades than Ret.  It's not that I can't use upgrades to my ret gear, or that they've dropped and I just lost the roll.  It's just a straight up increase in Holy drops.  So this weekend I finally bit the bullet, dropped the 10g for dual spec (when did that happen?), and glyphed myself up.  It wasn't a bad experiment per se, because while I'm very familiar with the Paladin mechanics now, there's certainly a huge difference between Pistonhondo and Adgamorix.  Piston has enough spirit to almost gain mana while casting Holy Lights - Adgamorix is struggling to get heals off in time.  I'm amazed that .1 sec of cast time feels like it's really that long, but I can definately feel the difference.

 

So here I am, on the ragged edge

 

So now I've got a pair of Paladins, one Holy/Ret and one Holy/Prot spread out on two different servers, both factions, and PvP and PvE.  It's certainly interesting to see the difference when I play.  I don't know if it's the PvP server or what, but for some reason I have a different feeling when I'm on Adgamorix.  He doesn't have the gear, heroics are a challenge, but I actually want to do the heroics.  I suppose this is because there's actually something worth getting from his heroics, insteaed of just running a heroic for the sake of running it.

 

Of course there are a few things that I hadn't planned on when I decided to make a Holy build.  First, no mana pots, and no water(!) in my bags at all.  Now while I don't normally use mana pots anyway, at least not on anything short of a heroic raid boss, at the lower gear levels it's always good to have a few of these kicking around.  I'm also enchantless, have no helm or shoulder buffs, and don't even have a meta socket.  I certainly don't have the gold to buy another Tsunami deck.  Since I'm not raiding though, it's not really a big deal.

 

A sense of purpose

 

I think one of the reasons I don't enjoy running heroics on Piston is that there's nothing left for me to buy.  Sure, I could buy vendor mats or more heirloom items, but there's no real incentive to run them.  We don't do runs as a guild to increase our guild level, because really the perks aren't that great.  While having the bigger cauldrons would be nice, our BoE sales more than cover repairs, consumables, and enchants.  Because of this, there's no real pressure to do any kind of farming or collection of mats.  We're a small guild, and with folks playing Rifts, Dragon Age 2, and just enjoying the spring time, there's not a lot of folks on after a raid ends. 

 

Of course this doesn't really matter, because it's not like I'm socially active on Medivh, and with RealID I can still chat it up with the <Team Intensity> folks.  So that's not a big difference between the servers/play.  I'm obviously not bored with the game, or bored with healing.  My UI is identical, keybinds, etc.  Who knows why I 'feel' different on the other toon?  The only thing that I can figure is that I'm not in full 359 gear, and have something to work towards.  Though I'm still not doing dailies (hello tabards!), and I'll be damned if I"m going to level fishing or cooking on this toon (unless I can do it with the harvest fest). 

 

One thing that this little excercise has told me for sure though is that a DPS class just isn't for me.  My hunter sits at 58 or 60, my rogue is still on Malygos (I think I took him to Northrend when the servers were down one day), and hell my Warlock (that I wanted to play as my main in Cata) is still about 5 bars away from 85.  I suppose it's just time to embrass the fact that I am a healer, and that Blizzard wants me to play that.  Maybe I'll roll a priest up and see what the fuss is about there.  I've heard Disc is pretty good for leveling.

H-Halfus down - Not the way I wanted it

One of the big challenges around leading a raid is coming up with a strategy that works, and hopefully one that is repeatable. I don't like strategies that depend on luck or some sort of gimmick solution, though what constitutes a gimmick can certainly be argued. For example, is using a Retadin to 'tank' Chimaeron a gimmick - or using the mechanics of the fight to your advantage? What about chaining HoPs and Divine Protections on your tanks for Halfus? Both strategies are repeatable, though not by every group.

Not what we wanted

Monger and I were really torn on the Halfus strategy. First and foremost, we want the boss down. There's no bonus loot for making the fight extra difficult, or doing it your own way. There's just normal mode and heroic. One thing that we shoot for though, is to not follow a set 'strategy'. We've noticed time and time again that the strategy that works for one guild may not be the best method for us. We've defeated a lot of bosses using non-traditional methods (single tanking, low healers, etc).

Our goal for Halfus was to do a 2 healer, 2 tank, 6 DPS strat. The theory here was that with the extra DPS we would be out of the danger zone faster, meaning less healing needed in the long haul. We didn't get to spend a lot of attempts trying this (due to scheduling), and wound up using the safer (and more boring) 4 healer method instead. While I will admit that there were still plenty of pucker moments, the 4 healer strategy is certainly more stable. On the downside, we did hit the enrage timer once - but we're pretty sure that's because we lost a DPS on the first pulse in P2. Having 2 Lightwells was pretty awesome though, since you can click on them even during the knockdowns.

I will probably go with a modified Shockadin spec, similar to what I am using for Chimaeron, for our next Halfus kill. This will let me dish out some DPS without punching holes in my mana bar, once we get to P2. This was bringing back memories of some old raids where you'd call for every DoT you could get - even Holy SW:P.

What's next

Now we move on to Atramedes and Maloriak. We spent a good bit of time on Cho'gall, and it doesn't seem that bad. I suspect we'll probably get H-Cho'gall before we get the Double Dragons. We'll see.

Testing out a new healer

Last week we made a switch to our healing team, and fired our Spriest from healing duties.  Our Boomkin stepped up and strapped on the tree (that sounds oddly phallic), and performed admirably.  Our introduction to healing was a little rough on her though - so let me explain.

 

Elue has been part of our group (off and on) since Vanilla (I think, I drank a lot back then).  She didn't really start raiding with us hard core until Ulduar I think (maybe Naxx), but since she's sleeping with our Ret pally, she gets to tag along.  Don't get me wrong though, she's not a "Oh, you're so and so's wife, here's a raid spot", Elue pulls her weight and then some, and is always good for a laugh.  She was a boomkin back before boomkins existed, and she is actually the only person I know who might actually have boomkin feet in those shoes she wears.  I've never looked, but she's got some big feet.

 

Anyway

 

Anne's healing experience before last Sunday was limited to a couple of pulls in Kara.  Back when we were first working on the place, we single tanked it from the start.  This made pulling the ushers a challenge, so she'd heal while Wombcrusher would pop his wings and run in screaming - hoping to hold agro long enough to get killed and let the DPS burn one of them down.  <3 to you Toby.

 

Given this, you can imagine the excitement and joy that Elue felt when she was told that we needed her to step up and heal.  She got a few tips from our resident man of 810348103 alts, found a spec, and eased into the healing scene. 

 

By eased in, I mean we went straight to H-Chim.  WELCOME TO THE PARTY RICHTER.  We didn't kill H-Chim, but we got further than we had in the past.  Some changes need to be made still, but she handeld well.  At least on Vent.  From what I hear, she was cussing up a storm at the house.  We're definately a NC-17 raid group.  After a few hours of listening to our heads go squish there, we decided to knock Nef over and call it a night.  Having seen the fight many times, but having never healed it, managed to keep her whole platform alive and we one shot Nef.  Needless to say, I was impressed.

 

The evaluation

 

The real evaluation of a new healer takes time.  While you can always run heroics with someone, or even just bring them into a raid, you really need to put them to the fire to see how they respond.  Zerging through content you over gear certainly isn't a good test, and neither is taking them to a farm kill.  Of course by the same token, trying to evaluate a healer when you're first learning a new boss is also tough - so what do you do?

 

Try something different

 

Taking someone out of their comfort zone and tossing them into a new environment is a good way to see how they'll react to changing situations.  While you can't really gauge someone's ability to raid heal by sticking them in an arena match, you can get a feel for how they react uder pressure or to a fluid situation.  Another option is to give them a healing assignment that they may not be used to - say raid healing instead of tank healing.  While this may not give you an idea of their capabilities for their normal role, it again lets you see how they react to something new.

 

Try it short handed

 

This is another way to artificially incease difficulty.  Strat says you must three heal?  Try it with two.  Of course your whole group/raid has to be on board with this, becuase you might wipe more than a few times. 

 

Check the logs

 

This is the more conventional way to check out how a new healer is performing.  Did their assigned targets die?  Did they use CDs effectively and at the right time?  For example, blowing tranquility on H-Chim during a non fued phase is pretty dumb (that thump you heard was me running over Elue).  Are they running out of mana too quickly?  Barely outhealing the DK tank?  All these things are worth looking at.

 

Know your candidate

 

Right here where I ran over Elue, I don't mention that she's a brand new healer (not just for us, but in general), so holding her to the same standards I would say - Monger - is really urealistic.  People make mistakes, it's how you recover from them that really matters.  Are you evaluating someone who claims to be a top healer?  They better be wired tight.

 

At the end of the day, remember the most important thing is does the player mesh with your group.  I'd rather have someone who's not in the top percentage if I can get along with them, instead of someone who doesn't think Old Greg is funny. 

 

 

A look under the hood of Team Intensity

T11 buffed - just in time for T12

Well kiss my grits. Not one day after defending the T11 4pc as being at least decent (it's still not the worst set bonus I've seen), Blizzard goes and updates the patch notes to show a change in the T11 4pc.

Now grants 540 Spirit for 6 sec after casting Holy Shock.

Now that's a buff that I'm sure even Chase could get behind. If you manage to cast HS on every CD (which you should be anyway), that is a flat 540 buff to your spirit for the entire fight. Doing some quick napkin math, this works out to about 333.33 (repeating of course) mana returned per cast.

So let's see here...1873 mana per cast of Holy Shock, with 333 returned, means you're getting about 20% of the mana back on your cast. Assuming you're casting it on CD, you'll get 5 of these casts off every 30 seconds, giving you about 1665 mana back.

Stop the presses!

Oh my goodness, it looks like the mana returned from this is actually LESS than the mana returned before. The biggest difference (and I will admit, it is big enough to be the deal breaker here) is that we WANT to be casting HS every CD. Holy Radience isn't something we necessarially want to be casting unless we need to. So overall, we might see a slightly higher mana return from this change than we did with having our buff be attached to HR. I know for example that I cast a lot more HS than I do HR, so we'll see.

In the end though, it's going to be pretty much of a wash. It'll be enough of a change to help tide you over until you start picking up T12 (I assume we'll see T12 with this content patch), and I'll definately pick up a set of Cho'gall's shoulders now, just so I have one more piece to mess with.

The most common lie in a guild app

Over the years I've spent a lot of time dealing with guild applications. Designing them, reading them, critiqueing them, filling them out, etc. I've written a couple posts on how to properly apply for a raiding guild, and I still poke my head into recruitment forums just to see what other folks are producing.

Most guild application are fairly straight forward affairs, though some are certainly more developed than others. Like a job application, this is a guild's opportunity to get to know you before they take the time to actually speak with you. Because of this, it's generally your first (and often only) chance to tell them what they want to hear about you.

Typical questions are about your spec, role, playtimes (or playstyle), former raid experience, former guilds (and why you left) etc. They want to make sure they aren't getting a habitual guild hopper, or someone who just opened WoW for the first time ever. These questions are generally fair and easy enough to answer (if you put 30 sec worth of effort into it), but then we come to the big one.

The big lie

The one question that sets you up for failure faster than anything else, at least if you're being expected to tell the truth on everything.

Are you willing to sit out for another raid member?

Uh - what is no? Look, you're recruiting for my role here. Your board specifically says you have a high need for a Holy Paladin, hence my application. So why would I sit out for someone else? Maybe if it's an extreme case where we really need that one extra DPS, but then I want to know why you're not sitting that guy who you have 2 or 3 of his class in.

In all honesty though, I play to raid. I also think it's pretty poor form to expect someone to be on and available, but not actually raid. Requireing you to be on vent or (worse) sitting outside the instance logged in - on the CHANCE you'll be called in. Bugger that. I can make an exception if you're in a guild that is racing for world (maybe, and I mean MAYBE server) firsts. In guilds like Paragon and Vodka you do whatever it takes for those kills. Then you resume normal play again, and ratchet down.

Unfortunately, this attitude doesn't seem to be the popular one, because larger guilds need a bench to operate. You want your bench players to have some idea of the fights, and it doesn't hurt them to get gear. My only response to that is...

I don't care - I want a white one

Honestly, I could care less about Jimmy the 3rd Pally getting in to heal or what not. I don't play the game for Jimmy, I play for me. If I make the scheduling requirements to raid, I expect to be in there - every single raid.

There's probably at least one

I'm sure that of my few readers (and the thousands of raiders) at least one or two are honestly ok with sitting out for the good of the raid. Personally, I want to throw up and tell the applicant to grow a pair every time I read something like "I'm completely ok with sitting, because it's for the good of the raid that everyone gets a chance to experience the content and get some gear". /vomit