After Action Review: 5 hour Karazhan
Stormseekers raided Karazhan last night, as we do every Friday. We only started twenty minutes late, we had a 30 minute afk healer, and ran two hours late, but we got everything but Illhoof. Had we started on time and everyone stayed, it would have been a little over four hours, start to finish. The question is: how can we improve upon this?
Our raid time is supposed to be 8 - 11, with invites starting at 7:45. I think this is reasonable, but, oh, I dunno, people that want to raid should be on the character they want to raid on when invites start. that would help. We’re slowly building a base of non-guild players that have run with us and are likely yo do so in the future; contacting them before 8 and getting them invited and summoned will help too.
We cleared Attumen, Moroes, and Opera (Romulo and Julianne) in under an hour. This was pretty good for us. We were decent on chain pulling, but we can do better than we did. The second half was pulled too slowly. If we have two people in the raid who are tanking, they should just about always both be tanking. I would really like to see us pulling until the boss and only stopping there to drink and redo any short buffs.
We really would need to be more ruthless with invites. Tanks need not just the mitigation to survive, but the threat for the heavy hitting dps to burn things down without restraint. Some of our dps is threat capped, even with Salvation. I think we need two separate groups: a one-night clear group racing to clear Kara faster every week with the best we can bring, and then our second group focusing on a two-night clear to gear newer members and useful alts. We cannot afford to bring someone in a dps slot when they are only hitting ~350 average dps. Personally, I’m aiming for 500 dps in dps classes. I don’t think this is unreasonable for a group trying to chain-pull and clear Kara in one night. Not if these are the people who are running Kara for badges because the only upgrades are in 25 man content.
Personally, I need to stop bringing Lushere (my druid tank) to Karazhan as DPS. Sure, I can put out a respectable 600 dps, but it’s offspec for me, and in less than excellent gear. Tanking, I am more than prepared and have no problem doing 800-1000 TPS. That should be a nice ceiling for anyone we’re bringing. It’s pretty rare for anyone to be over 1000 dps in our raids. Heck, it’s rare for anyone to be over 700, but we do have a couple of people.
But while I am dpsing, I need to work on my rotation. It was a bit weak and I was off by 25-50 average dps. I wasn’t keeping Rip up as much as I should have. That was due to not paying enough attention and poor positioning choices. Since I was leading the raid, I spent a lot of time planning and marking pulls while we were killing. I need to get more fluid using the camera to look around and using hotkeys to attack the current target and set hotkeys for marking. Hotkeying marking would shorten the time in-between pulls also.
So, for the internets: how do you do one-night, three hour Kara clears? What group comp do you think is mandatory? What dps levels? what tanking stats (armor/health/threat) would you consider minimum for this sort of fast-clear?
Social Environment
Some people have taken issue with the recent wave of account bans that Blizzard enacted several days ago. TJ, and the Bloggingest Guild in Warcraft: Aetherial Circle on Drenden, had one of their friends banned. They, perhaps rightly so, are certain he did nothing that would warrant having his account banned, even if he cheated*. I don’t know the fellow at all, but the Aetherial Circle people all seem very nice from the blogs and it really sucks that they’ve lost their friend.
Whether the ban was appropriate or not, there seems to be a complete lack of information coming from Blizzard regarding it. He was not provided with specific information as to why he was banned, just which section of the ToS or EULA (I’m not sure which) they believe he violated.
Blizzard has a pretty poor reputation for their service and communication. At times, apparently, lying to their customers (consider this). What we do know is that Blizzard has a woefully ineffective system for communicating with and responding to customers, even when Blizzard asks for feedback!
World of Warcraft is not just a game, it is a social environment. Non-gamers may not understand, but the relationship that are formed because of virtual interactions are just as “real” as any others. Some of us spend as much time playing with the same set of people, the same set of friends, as at a full-time job! The goal is to forge a group identity and accomplish goals no individual could alone. The very essence of most people’s World of Warcraft experience is in being a part of a guild, or a raid, or PuGs, and being involved in relationships with other people. These relationships are the strongest element keeping people playing. Blizzard seems to forget that it is because of those relationships that their game has grown to be the success it has. If they start banning people, they really should be very explicit in why they have done so: people are less likely to be angry when they are empowered by - at the least - having full information.
Kirk at Priestly Endeavors has a very thorough look at contacting Blizzard and how their corporate structure is part of the problem and ways that it can be worked with. Lamaa, I hope this can be resolved quickly, and at the very least you can be told exactly what the violation was. To the members of Aetherial Circle, I hope you get your friend back.
EDIT: As Kirk pointed out in his comment, he posted even more information.
Kitties Pounce!
A brief introduction to Druid Cat Form DPS.
Note: this will probably be entirely invalidated by the release of Wrath of the Lich King. Deal.
TLDR version: Wear good rogue gear, get a Stranglestaff. Get behind things, mangle, shred three times, wait until you have 80 energy, rip, repeat.
While Cat Form druids have a lot of similarities with Rogues, there are some notable differences in play style. It is possible, using pounce, maim, and shifting to bear form to bash, for a small amount of stun-locking, but it is not going to last very long. Unlike rogues, who can have a variety of specs and playstyles that ultimately all stabstab, kitty dps is a pretty streamlined endeavor.
Solo DPS
When soloing, I find the best way to deal with single enemies is to pounce, shred twice, then mangle until it dies. Ferocious Bite can be handy if the mob is a runner or self-healer and you kill them with it. Maim is useful to stun the self-healers if you won’t kill them in one blow. If there are two or more enemies, I kill the first enemy the same way, then on the remaining enemies using mangle to four points then rip, cycling between them all.
Raid DPS
The biggest difference about dpsing in a raid environment is that you usually can be behind the target. Whatever the main target is, you have two main goals: keep rip up and keep mangle up. You keep Rip up because it is your best DPS finishing move. Aim for four combo points then hit it after the previous rip has just faded. You aim for four combo points because the additional benefit of the fifth combo point is not worth aiming for, and if you crit on your last combo point, you get that benefit for free. A five point rip is good, but not good enough to be your goal.
Mangle is important to keep up because it increases the damage from Rip and from Shred, and if any rogues are using bleed effects, they get a nice bonus too. A general rule is to start with mangle, then Shred for DPS until you have four combo points. At that point, let your energy regen until you can Rip then mangle right away. If you have a buffed crit of 30-35% it should only be three attacks before you have your four combo points, so a tight 12-second cycle should be possible.
On certain fights, such as Prince Malchezzar, where you expect to be running out of melee range, I often try to get my rip cycles to line up so that I rip right before I run out of melee range to keep the damage ticking nicely.
Gear and Stats
The core of kitty dps is based on the same stats as a Rogue: ap and crit. Agility is a very nice stat to stack because it generates both! A general goal is to get crit to 30-35% to keep the combo point cycles quick. AP always generates more damage. Hit rating is nice to have, but I wouldn’t recommend going out of your way to chase it. Getting hit capped is important, but a lot of rogue gear (which you’ll be wearing) has it, so most of your hit rating needs will be taken care of along the way. Expertise is of little value, as you should be attacking from behind. Haste will increase your white-damage dps at a rate of 1% haste to 1% white damage. Depending on your gear/rotation, your white damage is probably half your damage, so 1% haste is .5% dps. Correspondingly, crit is beneficial to everything but rip and pounce, which are probably no more than 20-25%, so 1% crit is .75% dps- a better value, and it will help build combo points faster.
Personally, I would suggest looking for gear with the following order for stats: Agility, Crit, AP, Hit, Haste, Expertise. Any bonuses to stamina or intellect or mp5 is basically worthless for DPS. You need a certain amount of stamina, but that is an arbitrary amount based on any damage you expect to take. Intellect and Mp5 are marginally useful is if you intend to powershift.
For a weapon, get a good Feral AP weapon. The large amounts of AP those proved even on green items outweigh almost any non-FAP weapon.
Powershifting
Kitty DPS uses energy, just like a rogue. Energy regens at 20 points every two seconds. If you have a large enough mana pool, it is possible to "speed up" the energy regen by using the Furor talent. If you have that talent at max ranks, you generate forty energy when you shift into Cat form. If you shift out of cat form and then immediately shift back in, you get forty energy. This can be done pretty simply using a macro:
/cancelform
/cast Cat Form(Shapeshift)
I wrote this from memory, so you may want to shift-click the cat form into the macro from your spellbook. There are other options for the powershifting macro, including some that check energy and/or mana levels, but this does what I need. Also, this lets me click from flight form into cat form while in the air and not getting a silly error message.
You will probably lose an auto attack by doing this, but if you do it at zero energy , or as close to zero as possible, you get a net benefit of 20 energy. This can be handy if you are in a situation where you are using Ferocious Bite, as it reduces you to zero energy.
As druid class lead, I think I should have some quickly available references for people new to the druid class or to each role. If any of you have thoughts on this or see something glaringly, horribly, wrong, or have questions, comments, etc, let me know!
It’s not fair!
I have killed Curator many, many times on my Druid and have never seen the T4 druid token drop.
I have killed Curator once on my shadow priest, and the token drops. I was the only one in that raid that could use them.
WTB Malorne gloves tonight, kthxbai.
Somehow I ended up in charge
I have been promoted to Druid Class Lead for my guild, and at least half-time raid leader. It’s strange to be responsible for so many decisions: who goes to the raid, what bosses do we skip because we have a group that cannot do it, who gets what if we have drops.
Aside from those little concerns of the raid, what should I be doing now that I have power and authority? While it would be satisfying to gkick a few people, I don’t think I have the ability to do that, and our ethos as a guild doesn’t support that sort of behavior. We’re casual.
I am definitely going to be trying to forge our diverse troops into a raiding force. Unfortunately, we don’t have people consistently showing up for our Karazhan raids. Too many of our dpsers respecced to tanks (which we didn’t need) or don’t do enough dps. Some of that problem is with gear: if they showed up for Kara that would be ameliorated. Some of it is with Skill, and that’s a harder issue.
The role of the Class Lead, as I understand it, is to be the expert and guide in preparing guild members for raiding. This is critical moving into 25 man content, or ZA. I don’t care how good your gear is, if you are an enhancement shaman stacking stamina gear and casting lightning bolts while using 1.8 speed weapons, you’re dps will be too low to be useful. If you’re a retadin and spend the whole night on vent waxing rhapsodic about how great ret dps is, please be above the tank. As things stand, ret dps still needs to dps, or go home.
Skill can trump gear, to a certain extent. A player who knows how to use their class to the fullest can overcome deficiencies in their gear. I’ve seen blue-geared shaman out-dpsing epic mages. I’ve seen green/blue paladins out-heal epic paladins. We don’t need to train theses people, just help them get the tools, the gear, they need to excel.
The ones who, no matter how many epics we hand over, cannot keep up, they need to learn, quickly, or we need to look at our priorities in raiding. We cannot progress without people performing their best. The people who can do that need to be at the core (hopefully they are the entirety). How to handle the rest is where the raid ethos and the casual guild ethos aren’t meshing right now. If we get into Gruul’s, and our DPS needs to do an average of 500+ dps, someone only doing 300 is a hindrance if there is someone else for that slot.
But how to get this agenda supported by the remainder of the leadership? What’s the hook? We have five or so people gearing up all their alts as the core of our two Karazhan raids. Most weeks we can’t get ten people from our guild into a raid, let alone run two entirely separate raids so we have, not just the character base, but the player base to move forward.
Matticus had this tweet:
95% of guild problems can be solved with a gkick. The remaining 5% can be solved with recruiting.
I think this problem is more the other ratio, but we do need to clean up our raiding ranks and make a more clear direction for people to earn spots in a raid. And we need enough people online to fill the spots with people who can do the job.
Armored Bears!
I’m watching The Golden Compass right now, and I have two comments:
1. My bear should get armor, it’s just that cool.
2. We should get bear mounts on Northrend. It would be sooooo neat to ride a polar bear across a glaciar.
Links with commentary
Real content to come (sometime, perhaps later today) for now, links.
Guild Updates and Wrath News - Faithful Affliction
Of course the expansion will bring a reset for everyone and possible main character changes (possibly myself included). That plus the fact that we will be well into 25 man content by then may lead to us sticking to the 25 man versions. Of course with the announcement that the 10 mans will be on separate timers we will probably do both.
Preceding that we find out Thuenderman expects fairly quick progression into 25 man content. This is not hubris, he has the info to back it up, good luck. After that quoted section, he outlines some thoughts on raid progression in Wrath with its 10/25 split. They’re good ideas and something many guilds will need to think about.
Balancing the Spectrum - Chick GM
Every guild has an identity and goals. It’s what draws people to your guild over another. But, even within a guild there’s a spectrum. No matter how "hardcore" your guild is there is someone who is the most hardcore and someone who is the least hardcore. No matter how talented your guild is, someone out there is the most talented and someone is the least talented.
My job is to bridge the gap. How do I keep my hardest core and least skilled player working together? How do I drive policy and raid nights to cater to the majority while still keeping both my most skilled and least skilled players involved?
It’s very easy on teh intarwebs to forget there are real people at the other end of a blog site or ont he other side of an avatar. When you’re responsible for organizing them into an effective team, there are distinct issues due to the medium of communication at our disposal. Auzara shares some tips on herding cats
The Process - Two and a Half Orcs
Twitter scares me.
I don’t have twitter.
Twitter shouldn’t scare me.
Dammerung: Twitter is your friend, it is nothing to be scared of. Just make sure you can see it’s hands at all times. >.> <.< It’s only paranoia if you’re wrong.
/gasp /breathe - 4 Haelz
After the run, I thanked them all for the raid invite, and left the raid. Not more than fifteen seconds later, a box popped up over my head. I had been invited into Sunder.
Grats Bell, I hope it works out for you!
We Are Iron Man - BigRedKitty
In other news.
The next BRK Event is in pre-planning! You want a hint?
Well, you can’t have one.
BRK is such a tease. Just be sure you (and maybe four of your friends) are ready for this mysterious event July 5th, 7 pm.
Times they are a-changin’ - Tank Hard!
The first thing you should do when trying to gear a tank is get enough stamina AND avoidance. If you don’t have a baseline level of each, you are going to run into trouble….
So all the Sunwell tanks are realizing that 22k fully buffed is enough and are now gemming for avoidance. There are still a few die hards out there that are clinging to all stam all the time, but most have made the shift.
Personally, I couldn’t be happier. I finally get to use my socket bonuses and I get to think before numbly sticking 15 stamina in every socket. So, shortly after I hopped on the Effective Health Bandwagon, I get to hop right off again. Now my biggest challenge is to loosen the guild bank’s vice-like grip on the crimson spinel supply.
What’s key is the "enough stamina AND avoidance" before jumping onto the effective health bandwagon. Not getting hit is a very goof thing, but if you do get hit, you’d better be able to survive it. Now give my bear a shield, rawr!
What Do You Need From A Guild? - Lady Jess
I often see posts in various communities about guild moves, server changes, and the like to suit that particular players needs. To be honest the thought of starting over terrifies me, but I suppose if my needs weren’t being met I’d have no choice. This got me to thinking “Jess, what do YOU need from a guild”. I tried to ignore myself, however the voice of Lady Jess can be very convincing. Again she says “You KNOW it would make a good topic for my blog!”. Ok, Ok, I get it.
It is a two-way street. The Guild gets players working together for common goals, the individuals get… loots, funs, etcs. Aswaith Auzara’s post above, sometimes The Guild’s goals won’t match yours or the loots and the funs aren’t. Lady Jess shares some of the things she feels are important in a guild. They sure sound good to me, but probably not hardcore enough for some.
Fel Forge Romance - Unbearbly HoT
I still get a little googly eyed around Fel Forges. Maybe it’s just all the smoke.
Aww…
Wow, well, not WoW, just wow
This is what happens when you get linked to by BigRedKitty:
Thanks, BRK!
And, for the person who searched for "define mqosrdps"- go here, it’s at the end of the post.
For the Herd!
This evening was BigRedKitty’s “Running of Da Bulls,” recast as a tribute to his friend and guildmate, Sharvan. This is what I saw during my 5-10 FPS…
Thank you, BRK, thank you.
