raiding
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Playing healers (or not)
Relmstein had an interesting series recently on why healing classes are so unpopular. I know from experience that healing classes are rare, because some days there's a lengthy queue for my time starting from the instant I log on. The following is representative of my daily login attempt -- and is usually enough to make me go log on my rogue!Welcome to World of Warcraft![Guild] Friendlymage: Hey Lizzy - want to heal Scholomance?[Randomshaman] whispers: need healer for BRD! last spot!![Randomhunter] whispers: LBRS?[Randomwarlock] has invited you to join a group.You have declined [Randomwarlock]'s group invitation.[Guild] Lizzy: Okay!You whisper to [Randomshaman]: Sorry, going to Scholomance.[Friendlymage] has invited you to join a group.You whisper to [Randomhunter]: Can't, heading to Scholomance.[Randomshaman] whispers: pls!!! will pay 5g.You whisper to [Randomshaman]: I can't -- I'm already committed to going to Scholomance.[Raider] whispers: Hey, we need more priests for Razorgore, wanna come?[Randomshaman] whispers: 10g?You are now ignoring [Randomshaman].[Raider2]: We need healers for BWL!You whisper to [Raider]: Sorry, busy atm.[Raider3] whispers: BWL?
Warlock jokes are the funniest
From thatgirlcaitlin on the WoW lj group, an old joke with a WoW twist..."Just beyond the Undercity a great Necropolis landed. Drawn by curiosity, the Lady Sylvanas herself went to see what it was. From within emerged a warlock.With a booming voice he challenged the entire army of the Undercity. Intrigued, the Lady Sylvanis sent for her army and instructed them to meet with her in front of the Necropolis. Thinking that a mere 100 men could silence this warlock, she sent them in. As they disappeared from view Lady Sylvanas heard fighting erupt. Minutes passed and none of her soldiers emerged. The warlock walked out grinning. 'Surely you can do better!'Slightly annoyed, Lady Sylvanas sent in 200 men. Again, as they disappeared from view, she heard the sounds of combat. Again, no soldier emerged. The warlock came into view obviously amused. 'I'm very disappointed.'Furious over losing 300 men for nothing, Lady Sylvanas sent in her entire army, thinking this time the entire Necropolis would be razed to the ground. She listened to the fighting and when it finally ceased, one soldier emerged, obviously near the brink of death. As he staggered back to his Lady, he gasped 'It was a trap... there were two warlocks!'"Also from lj, thies posts: How to Kill a Warlock. So funny.
A second sixty in the making
I'm a serious alt-a-holic, with dozens of characters spread out across servers, factions, races and classes. After getting my first character to level 60 a few months ago, I've been exploring the endgame, but still spending time with my alts too -- and now my first real 'alt' character is about to reach 60. At the moment, I'm considering how to approach the 'main'/'alt' situation. There are many things I want to achieve with my main; the pvp and reputation grinds are nowhere near done, and there's plenty of bosses to fight and items to collect. However, I'm a little bored of the sameness of it all, and being able to experience these encounters from a different class's point of view is going to be refreshing -- and will involve a lot of relearning. Many of the raiding players I know tend to focus on their main character, only bringing out alts for special encounters or when the raidgroup feels generous enough to gear up the alt. Class balance being what it is, my main character (a druid) is more likely to be needed for raids and instances -- but I don't want my alt (a mage) to sit gathering dust in greens for the rest of time. For the time being, I think I will continue playing both characters, attempting to gear up my alt when I'm not raiding or PvPing with my main. Playing my alts is something that I do for a change of pace and scenery, and I'd like to keep it that way.
Death and Taxes: They're Just That Good
Death and Taxes has been hard at work racking up those world first kills, but they've encountered a problem with Kel'Thuzad - namely, the event begins, ends, and there's no Kel'Thuzad to fight. Nnep describes the problem thusly: ...during our buff period we noticed he sort of, uh, dissapeared. Phase one still triggered as normal, although afterwards when kel'thuzad would normally become an entity, a la thaddius, he was still missing.Not that you can blame poor Kel'Thuzad - several forum posters have speculated that if they were a raid boss and saw Death and Taxes running down the hallway, they'd disappear as well. Fortunately, however, Tigole claims this is not the way the encounter is intended - and perhaps we'll be seeing another world first soon.
Debuff Limit to Change in Expansion
Back at the dawn of time, the debuff limit was 8. That means only 8 debuffs could be on a monster at any given time - which lead to severe restrictions when you had 40 players attacking the same thing in a raid environment. (You would either always have important debuffs being bumped off or you would have very strict raid rules which only allowed certain debuffs to be used by certain players.) And warlocks, whose DOT spells actually made up good portion of their damage done, were reduced to shadowbolting machines. The debuff limit was later doubled, and currently sits at 16, which allows for a lot more flexibility. However, recently the CMs dropped what I consider to be quite the bombshell: in the expansion, in addition to smaller raid size, the debuff limit will be increased again - to 40. Combined with 25-player raids, that's a heck of a lot of debuffs...!
Death & Taxes on the Raid Size Change
If you've visited the forums at all, you know many players are unhappy with change in raid size we'll be seeing in the expansion. Suddenly, guilds that are the appropriate size and composition to regularly field 40-player raids are being told that the next wave of end-game content will only need 25 players. So they're faced with a choice - either leave 15 players behind, and trim down for smaller raid content, or add to their ranks and be prepared to organize two raiding groups. Well-known raiding guild Death and Taxes has their own thoughts on the change (though be warned, it uses some harsh language, to say the least). So what's a hard-core guild to do when the raiding game is changed out from under them? Well, I imagine we'll [Thanks Dave]
Attempting Strat 45
I've had the quest for the 45-minute Stratholme run for a while now, but never managed to get a group together until yesterday. Having read about the run I was reluctant to try a pick-up group, so I jumped at the chance to join members of my raid group to rescue poor Ysida from the evil clutches of Baron Rivendare.Most of my usual Strat runs have been slow-paced, with careful pulling and crowd control, but this Strat 45 was very different. Our group composition was interesting; we had a mage tanking, a druid healing, with a paladin, feral druid and hunter as everything in between. It strikes me that an experienced and versatile group is really a must for the challenge, especially a group used to working together.
How to win friends and influence raiders
Being in charge of a 40-man raid group is undoubtedly a tricky business, and something I've yet to attempt in WoW. While I have a lot of respect for those who take on the mantle of leadership, who put hours into preparation and strategies and recruitment, sometimes the lofty raid leader can seem too distanced from the rank and file of the raid.As a new member of a large raid group, I'm starting to see endgame content I've been reading about for months, and it's an exciting time for me. However, this is the point at which leadership is crucial in order to turn players like me (full of enthusiasm but lacking in experience) into fully-fledged raiders. But how? The following observations may seem obvious, but I've seen leaders who ignore every single thing below.
Alone together in Molten Core
Teamwork! Discipline! Socialising! Fun! The world of hardcore raiding, for me, defies description by any of these words -- although a few months ago, before I'd ventured outside a five-man group, I would have imagined it to contain all of the above.A recent Molten Core raid was a fine example of why endgame raiding can be one of the most boring things to do in WoW. I was assigned a role at the start of the raid (one which I generally don't like, but the raid composition was such that I was needed for it). For the next few hours I then constantly played whack-a-mole with health bars, with the frightfully exciting diversions of the odd combat rez or innervate.Any outside observer would have been surprised to know I was playing with other people. The various raid chat channels were quiet, devoid of any backtalk to alleviate the monotony of healing. I felt like I was alone, and could have been surrounded by NPCs for the most part without noticing a difference.Despite the quiet efficiency with which this raid sliced through every monster in sight -- despite the epic items that dropped, and the promise of more to come -- I spent the whole time wishing I was with my regular raid group, who wipe hilariously then pick themselves up to laugh about it, than sit stern-faced for hours clicking like a maniac. I'll take the "casual" style of raiding any day, thanks.
Alliance Shamans? Horde Paladins?
While previously Blizzard posters had announced an unsurprising list of classes available for the new Draenei and Blood Elf races, but now there appears to have been a change of plan. However, Gamespot is currently reporting that in the Burning Crusade expansion, Draenei will have the option to play as Shamans while Blood Elves will have the option to play as Paladins. While I initially wondered if this was merely wishful thinking, CM Eyonix has posted on the official forums confirming it. This rather changes the argument of faction imbalance and "easy mode" favoritism - and, while it may remove some of the unique flavor of each faction, it may be a good solution for overall game balance.[Thanks, Silvertusk]
Venturing Inside Naxxramas
There are a number of players out there, myself included, who haven't had an opportunity to see the inside of Naxxramas. This video doesn't show any players defeating any bosses, but gives us a look at the dungeon's design and what to expect in terms of creatures within - with the help of a dream vision potion.
So many dungeons, so little time
This thread in the raid and dungeons forum is not the first - nor will it be the last - to complain about the difficulty in scheduling an increasing number of raid dungeons. As raiding guilds seek to advance through higher level instances, some raids need to be cut out of the rotation - and for most guilds, Molten Core is getting left in the dust. Of course this means that players who are still missing the one piece of tier 2 that drops in Molten Core are now stuck without a way to acquire it, but it also has implications for unguilded players and up-and-coming guilds. When I joined my first raiding guild, I had part of my blue class set, as well as assorted blues and greens from Scholomance, Stratholme, Blackrock Spire, and Dire Maul. But for guild exclusively running Naxxramas, Ahn'Qiraj, and Blackwing Lair, that may not be sufficient gear to be able to contribute. As the leader of a small guild working towards gearing up for 20-player instances, I fear that this will intensify the problem smaller guilds have with players raiding for a while and jumping into guilds that have progressed further in end-game content. Though perhaps I am too pessimistic - will players soon simply be skipping over Molten Core to attempt Blackwing Lair in better gear coming from lower dungeons (dungeon 2 set, etc)? As the scourge invasion event completes on more servers we can begin to see what sort of fallout may come from this growing library of raid dungeons.
The Debuff Prioritization System
There's a limited number of debuffs that can be placed on any target - currently, the maximum is 16. This is enough where it's not usually problematic, but in a raid environment it's not difficult to hit that maximum, and when you do, the oldest debuff on the target is bumped off in favor of the new one. This becomes a bit problematic when, for example, the short-lived "shadow vulnerability" debuff left by a warlock's improved shadow bolt talent starts bumping off more important things. To fix this, Blizzard has long been working on a system that prioritizes debuffs and leaves the most important ones on, while letting the less useful ones get bumped off. However, Tseric informs us that the "basic structure" of this prioritization system will be going live in patch 1.11 - to much rejoicing.
Molten Core Done Quick(er)
Ever been to Molten Core? Well, some people have been there few too many times - as you can tell by watching this speed-run through the core by Norwegian guild The Axemen (EU - Ravencrest). Time? 70 minutes (though the video is only 36 minutes long, speeding through non-boss pulls). My best times through MC have been closer to three hours, and were more commonly three and a half to four, with loot distribution and the occasional stupid wipe, so I must say I find 70 minutes exceedingly impressive. And if you've never been to Molten Core, but are curious as to what the place is like, this video should give you a good idea of what you'd see inside.
Breakfast Topic: To Raid or Not to Raid
With the honor system's PvP rewards starting to look a little tired, and a new raid dungeon and tier 3 armor being released in patch 1.11, any player has to wonder what there is to do at level 60 other than raid. Of course there's more small dungeons coming in the Burning Crusade expansion, and the community managers have been vaguely suggesting future improvements to the PvP system, but for now the game seems to strongly push one towards raiding. What do you think of the existing raiding system - love it or hate it? Do you enjoy the raiding game or have you found other ways to enjoy Azeroth after level 60?
Breakfast Topic: What do you want from E3?
Another year and another E3 is upon us. Of course E3 is a source for gaming news across the spectrum, but Blizzard and World of Warcraft will certainly have a presence. We've already been told to expect more information on upcoming raid dungeon Naxxramas and the new tier 3 armor set contained within, but I've no doubt that Blizzard is keeping some surprises up its sleeves. More news on the Burning Crusade expansion? New Alliance race information, perhaps? Hero classes? What do you hope for from Blizzard at E3 this year? Tell us about it!
The Truth About Drop Rates
If you've ever participated in a raid, you've heard countless theories about what rules over loot drops. Perhaps the drops are decided by the class of the first player who enters the instance? Or the raid leader? Well, every time such rumors are posted around the forums, Blizzard denies that there's any system to it, saying that loot drops are completely random. Kylindra of Cenarion Circle server has put together a good write-up on drop rates and explains that "random" drops and fair drops aren't always the same thing.
Blackwing Lair Live Blog
alwaysBETA's Blackwing Lair live blog is up and running right now. So if you've never been inside Blackwing Lair but are curious as to what it's like - go check it out! Lots of screenshots are provided as well as details on what's going on.
Want to go to Blackwing Lair?
It's true - many players never have the chance to see the inside of these massive raid dungeons while others choose to avoid them. For those of you curious to see what the raid game is like, intrepid player (and blogger!) Zach will be live blogging a Blackwing Lair raid this Saturday, April 15th, at 7PM. So fire up a browser to alwaysBETA at the appointed time and see what large-scale raiding is like. As for me, I've got to wonder - how can you blog and raid at the same time?
Onyxia Hotfixed
Though I'm not sure how I missed this, a hotfix was applied on Friday evening fixing an unintentional change in the Onyxia encounter. If you missed fighting Onyxia during that time, consider yourself lucky - apparently she was using her deep breath ability to burn raids to a crisp every 10 to 15 seconds. No word as of yet on other raid related issues that were introduced in patch 1.10.
