Picking a boss kill order

With three raid zones of varying length, 8 kills under our belt, and no end bosses downed yet - picking where to start your week can be a challenging decision. Leaving out that everyone wants something different off the bosses, you still have to take into account travel time (unless you pre-seed your warlocks) and trash clearing.

So what's a guy to do?

BWD

I still want to call this BRD for some reason. Also, why didn't Nef just fly away when he started losing in BWL? Raid bosses are so dumb. Anyway, BWD offers us the following.

• More trash drops in total, but fewer mobs to drop them.
• Five bosses we've killed, though three of those have only been downed once.
• A summoning stone, more for the PvP hyjinks than any summoning.
• Low trash to boss ratio.

BoT

The trash in this place in insane, it feels like Molten Core or maybe TKE. I suppose that instances in Wrath kind of set the wrong tone for this, but still. After ToC and ICC (even Ulduar to some extent), it just feels like a lot of trash. On the upside, I think we've gotten at least one BoE a week off it, so that's something.

• Lots of trash to give us BoEs - even if we can't use them, that's a lot of gold for repairs.
• Two bosses we're fairly comfortable with.
• Halfus - he's kind of a crapshoot, especially if our MT tries crazy bubble rotations.
• Did I mention the trash?

Vortex

I don't know if there's a better acronym for this place, but for now let's call it the temple of suck. The drops are even more random than normal, and it feels like it's out of the way, even though you just hop the portal and fly over. Technically it's cloer than BWD, but with only one boss we're doing right now, it seems far.

• One boss - hopefully in and out.
• RNG is fickle - it could be one and done or a wipe-a-thon.
• Interesting council mechanics, though the wind gusts seem to be random as all get out.
• Short enrage, so at least it's over quickly.

As far as getting loot in our hands and moving on, I'm sorely tempted to repeat last week and do Twilight first. That's more gear in our hands, which will hopefully make the three 'new' bosses in BWD a little more manageable. While no amount of gear will help you if you wind up getting 100 sound, it does buy a little more time from either a DPS, mana, or stamina position.

Now if we could just get our OT to stop trolling the drama club for his dates, we'd be set.

Spell Power plate in Cataclysm

I saw this comment by GC earlier, and it got me thinking about gear and design philosophy.

Source

That was the initial intent, but some Shadow priests thought that felt unfair
that they had to have two separate gear sets to swap from damage to healing
compared to the druid and shaman, and we thought they had a point. As such it
will be slightly easier to gear up as a Shadow priest since they have more gear
options. Call it a perk, but probably not as powerful a one as Holy paladins
having their very own gear.

Pardon me? Now this was in response to a question regarding spriests getting gear with Spirit on it for their hit, when the original plan was for them to use Warlock/Mage gear.

Now, I know we're still in Alpha, but this kind of thing just frustrates me. If I understand the design philosphy properly, we should see the following gear sharing/breakdown in Cataclysm. This is of course assuming that the design of defense gear to go the way of the Dodo.

• Avoidance Plate - This should be plate gear with high Dodge/Parry/Block ratings, which should be unattractive to the DPS. Shared by DKs, Paladins, and Warriors.
• DPS Plate - The oppostie of the above. High hit, AP, Crit, etc. Used by the same classes, just their DPS bretheren.
• SP Leather - Boomkins and Resto druids.
• DPS Leather - I'm guessing this will be used by both types of Feral druids, as well as Rogues.
• Caster Mail - Resto and Ele Shamans.
• DPS Mail - Hunters and Enhancement Shamans
• Non Hit Cloth - Now looks to be the domain of Priests alone. Will have Spirit on it to make it unattractive to the Locks and Mages.
• Hit/Non Spirit Cloth - Locks and Mages will keep up the age old fued by fighting over their gear.
• Spell Power Plate - Holy Paladins.

/Boggle

Are you kidding me? Really? Every healer class except the Paladin will be able to swap specs and roll directly into a DPS role with this setup. Now, there might not be enough +hit from Sprit or what have you, and I'm sure that it won't be an instant top healer to top DPS type of switch without a gear change of some sort.

To be fair, the Paladin talent trees are still hidden, and I'm not in the Alpha. For all I know there could be something in the works for this. If they put some type of talent in that would convert Plate DPS gear/stats to Holy gear/stats, you would fix one problem and cause another. Even though they don't always want the same base stats (ArPen, Haste, Crit - what have you), you still have three classes competing for Plate gear right now. Adding Holy Paladins to that mix just puts more demand on that gear, though that can be adjusted with drop rates I suppose.

Unfortunately, having SP plate in the loot tables just frustrates everyone. Either the Healadin, because the drop rate is low, or everyone else because there's only one or two healadins in the raid. It's kind of a lose lose right now, and it will be interesting to see if Blizzard can come up with a good fix.

Here's hoping.

Val'anyr - Who gets it?

Yesterday Ferraro outlined Val'anyr the new healing legendary mace, and she did it much better than I could. If you're looking for a writeup on how awesome the mace is, that would be my first read. Instead, I'm going to layout how we decided how to assign the fragments within my guild.

First, a brief explanation on our loot rules. We don't use DKP, Suicide Kings, or pretty much any other method that requires administrative overhead to carry from week to week. We use a fairly straight /roll system, and we've managed to avoid any serious loot drama so far. You can see our complete loot rules here if you're really interested.

The problem that this opened up for us regarding Val'anyr was, how do we make it a significant investment for someone to get, and yet still keep the system fair? Back when I was tanking on my warrior in MC, I hoarded every DKP I could on the off chance that one of the coveted bindings would drop. I'm sure everyone has heard the horror storis of rogues getting the bow from KJ, and the drama-glaives were aptly named.

Sacrifice

After much discussion, we decided that in order to make the commitment to Val'anyr worth it, we had to include some sacrifice. This was posted on our forums for a week, and in the end only 30% of our healers decided to opt in.

Legendary Mace

With the addition of a new legendary item, and our lack of DKP, we want to establish early on who will get the mace - seeing as the shards only drop off hard mode bosses and it may be a bit before we see any shards. Given the status of the mace however, we want to make sure that the penalty for being guaranteed this drop is significant enough that the decision to go after it is not taken lightly.

At this time, we have decided that whoever is going to be awarded the shards will have to sacrifice ALL of their need rolls on loot. This means you will be the last person to get your tier 8, and the last person to get need roll loot. Any main spec roll will beat you - however you can rest assured that the first legendary mace will be yours.

All those interested should post in this thread before next Tuesday. Raid attendance will be considered - so if you skip out on the early nights knowing you get no loot, you'll lose your claim on the mace later on.

Thanks,

Officers of S-a-S

Drumroll please

On our first night in Ulduar, like many guilds, we knocked out the Flame-Leviathan. Of the 3 healers who posted interest in the mace (given the loot rules), only two of us were online and available to raid that night. The thrid healer bailed at the last moment, and forfited his roll due to missing the raid. While no shard actually dropped that night, the lords of the RNG were with me. Two weeks in, and I've picked up one fragment - and my paladin partner is giddy with the prospect of all her free loot. Her dice suck and she knows it.

YMMV

In the end, I don't think it matters how you handle this loot item - as long as your system is fair and consistant. We didn't add weight to someone's eligibility simply because they were an officer, or they always topped the meters (like those matter) in Naxx. We picked a system that was as fair as it could be, and we're sticking with it. Now I just need 29 more and a hard mode Yaggy kill...