Should you wait for Raid Drops? Maybe Not.
Getting ready for raiding is a multi-faceted endeavor. You have to weigh the pieces of your current gear against each other and patch the weaknesses as quickly as possible, while keeping in mind long-term goals. With the incredible rewards from Badges of Justice, some item slots should be filled with Tier or Badge loot, with very little else being an option. But there are some items that can stand up to that level that are obtained outside of raids, and outside of pvp. They may be a bit trickier to find, but some of them are out there.
Feral druids are often brought to Karazhan as off-tanks so on single-tank fights they can go full-dps and help down bosses faster than either a protection specced warrior or paladin would. This is often the case, but not always. Feral druids can Main Tank everything in Karazhan, and can do very competitive DPS if they go only in that role. That versatility is also a weakness, because it means we cannot just focus on one solid set of gear, but need several.
Depending on the loot system you use, it may not be easy for all the items you need to be picked up in raids, or there may be considerable competition (those tricksy rogues!). Using programs like Rawr and Emmerald’s gear lists can help you find pieces obtainable outside of raids that can serve nearly as well, or sometimes better than, comparable raid drops. As an example, I’m going to contrast the Edgewalker Longboots and Bladed Shoulderpads of the Merciless from Karazhan to the Sunrage Treads and Shoulderpads of the Silvermoon Retainer from Magisters’ Terrace.
While +hit remains a good stat for all physical DPS classes until the hit cap is reached, the relative value it has for a feral druid is low. Because Socket Bonuses are for +Hit or +Stamina, all calculations will assume a Delicate Living Ruby (+8 Agility) in all slots. We will also ignore the values for Armor and Stamina. They are important stas, but neither contributes to DPS, so they are immaterial for this discussion. Since no items have strength and the characters other stats will remain the same, only the AP gain from the items is listed.
The Edgewalker Longboots provide 99 AP, +.825% chance to hit, 1.8% chance to crit and drop from Moroes in Karazhan.
The Sunrage Treads provide 86 AP, 1.44% chance to crit, 126 Armor Penetration and drop from Kael’Thas in Magisters’ Terrace on Normal mode.
How these items weigh against each other is dependant upon the remainder of your gear set. If you are at the hit cap without any additional hit rating, the Edgewalker Longboots’ hit rating provides no additional benefit. ArPen has a variable value depending on total amount of armor negation from all effects. On a high armor raid boss, the armor penetration from the Sunrage Treads increase physical damage by .69%. For Feral Druids, that means all damage but the Rip in you rotation is increased by .69%, or about a .5% increase in total damage at the minimum.
What we can say for certain is that the Edgewalker Longboots provide about 1 more dps, and .4% chance to crit, with the +Hit and +ArPen probably roughly equivalent in slightly different sets. The slight edge goes to Edgewalker Longboots. But consider that the Edgewalker Longboots drop in a ten man raid you can only run once a week, and the Sunrage Treads drop in a normal mode dungeon. They are well worth the time if you don’t already have better.
The Bladed Shoulderpads of the Merciless provide 74 AP, +.825% chance to hit, 1.59% chance to crit and drop from the Chess event in Karazhan.
The Shoulderpads of the Silvermoon Retainer provide 97 AP, +1.45% chance to hit, 1.4% chance to crit and drop from Kael’Thas in Magisters’ Terrace in Heroic mode.
Again, the overall gearset must be taken into consideration, but the Shoulderpads of the Silvermoon Retainer add about 1.5 more DPS and have up to .6% more chance to hit, and about a .2% reduction in chance to crit. The edge in this case goes to the dungeon drop, the Shoulderpads of the Silvermoon Retainer. As a bonus, farming for the shoulders in Heroic Magisters’ Terrace, you’ll hopefully have chances to pick up the Shard of Contempt and Commendation of Kael’Thas, which are two amazing trinkets for feral druids.
Knowing. Deciding. Raiding. Eating.
Lunchtime is one of the great times in the day. It interrupts the tedium of employment and allows for scrumptious eating (sometimes). Today I was set for Chinese food: General Tso’s Chicken, fried rice, crab rangoon… mmmmmmm. Then I walk past our kitchen area and someone is heating up an Italian dish and OMG I want Italian! Maybe. There’s a Noodles & Co. and their Parmesan Crusted Chicken Breast is pretty good. So now, I have to make a decision.
What I realize is that I do not like making decisions. I like knowing the answers.
Decisions are about consequences. Weighing benefits and costs. Answers are about facts. There is no relevant facts about lunch-I like both places and I will enjoy eating either. One costs more and will take longer to get, but the difference is negligible.
In WoW we face that same sort of issue. I like being the one that knows the answers, that knows the runs, that knows boss encounters and gearing, and, well, all of it. In that aspect, I think I lead raids well. I know the plan, I know the abilities we have available and I can communicate that.
But the other half of raiding, the deciding half, I hate handling. I hate putting the raid together because it is not a questions of knowing, but choosing. Is person A going to be useful in this raid? I can know the answer is "no," but the decision doesn’t stop there. Is there someone else who can fill the spot at all? What are the social consequences for passing them over or replacing them?
When the choices are made, we’re left with the consequences. When we have good results, that’s good, right? No one complains about getting more bosses killed or getting more epics. But what about when the consequences are terrible and you wipe over and over again on farm content and it isn’t because you don’t know how to do it, but because the choices made earlier are preventing you from doing it? How do you turn to your raid and your guild and say to some of them, "I don’t care what you think, I know you are not ready and bringing you again is going to hurt our chances to succeed?"
The StormSeekers has some exceptional people in its ranks, and some exceptional players. Some of those overlap. There is an increasingly widening gap between the top and the middle- Our efforts to move forward are being hit not by knowing how to do them- We’re not limited by answers- We’re restricted by choices and a guild culture that is not welcoming of the tough decisions we’re faced with. The culture itself being a choice we’re feeling the consequences of, the ripples and repercussions.
What the future holds for the StormSeekers, I have no idea. A lot of deciding needs to be done on both the leadership’s part and the members about what is important as individuals and as a group. We have made pretty big strides recently (three bosses in Zul’Aman, Lurker in SSC and Void Reaver in TK with Royal Steel, and completing Gruul’s Lair as a StormSeekers run (even if half the raid was out of guild)) and it seems a waste not to capitalize on those successes. The future for me holds Chinese food.
A Raiding Shadow Priest’s Primer
Some of the information here is going to be my opinion, some of it collected theorycraft wisdom. Feel free to argue with the first, disagree, even vilify, if you want. However, if the Theorycrafting seems implausible to you, take your arguments (and math) to the appropriate places where they can set you straight. If I’ve missed something, you think something else should be added, you have additional questions, or you want to flame this, leave a comment.
What is a Shadow Priest all about?
A Shadow Priest is a priest who has chosen to focus their talents and gear into their Shadow tree to DPS, rather than heal. Currently, the Shadow Spec is one of the most important raid specs due to the extraordinary utility of the spell Vampiric Touch, which returns mana to the priests party while the DoT is on the target at a rate of 5% of shadow damage dealt. Often, a shadow priest’s personal DPS contribution will be respectable, though not at the top of the charts, but the combined benefits of the mana regen, the Misery debuff, and the Shadow Weaving debuff lead to incredible value.
Shadow Spec
There is always debate over what the most optimal spec is. One point here, another point there. For the Shadow Priest, there are a collection of talents in the Shadow Tree that are "must-have" talents. Aside from those talents, the points can be distributed as desired, though some specs are overall more successful.
Tier 1: Spirit Tap vs. Blackout
General wisdom is it does not matter which of these you choose. In terms of DPS, neither provides any tangible benefits. In some situations, Spirit Tap can provide benefits (boss with adds and having Improved Divine Spirit), while Blackout has no effect.
From the perspective of purely raiding, the marginal benefit of Spirit Tap is better than the no benefit of Blackout. For Soloers and Farmers, the blackout proc can be useful when targeting multiple mobs.
One other thing to consider is the impact of stun procs in a raiding environment. Being an uncontrollable phenomenon, it can adversely affect pulls. Whether that is something that concerns you is a personal choice or between you and your raid leader.
Tier 2: Shadow Affinity, Improved Shadow Word: Pain, and Shadow Focus
Shadow Affinity is one of the most important talents for a Shadow Priest. Not only do our damaging spells generate threat, Vampiric Touch generates threat for its mana return (in much the way Healing does) and Vampiric Embrace generates Healing Threat. A Shadow Priest doing a full DPS rotation will be one of the highest threat generating members in the raid and this is the only passive regeneration available. Other than this, ask for Blessing of Salvation if you get close to the tanks on threat.
Improved Shadow Word: Pain increases the number of your SW:P ticks from 6 to 8. At 6 ticks, SW:P already gains the full benefit of +Shadow Damage. This talent adds two more ticks at full damage, after talents and stats. This is a 33% buff to Shadow Word: Pain alone, and does not count the damage possible from having the extra global cooldown.
Shadow Focus increases you chance to hit with Shadow Spells by 2% per rank. Spells have a 17% chance to miss a level 73 target of which 16% can be negated. With a 10% improved chance for spells to hit, that means a Shadow Priest only requires 6% spell hit from gear freeing up more item value to be spent on +Shadow Damage. If you find yourself with more +spell hit on gear than you need, you can reduce ranks of this at 1 rank per 2% of unavoidable spell hit.
Tier 3: Mind Flay and Improved Mind Blast
Mind Flay is one talent point and is one of the mainstays of Shadow DPS. This is your Frostbolt. A frostbolt that is channeled and has a terrible damage coefficient.
Improved Mind Blast is used to reduce the cooldown on Mind Blast. The spell has an 8 second cooldown, and this can reduce it to 5.5 at max ranks. How many points you need in this is dependent upon a number of factors. 4/5 gives a six second cooldown which conveniently brackets Mind Blast around two un-hasted Mind Flays and is a very common choice. 1/5 reduces it to 7.5 which counts for two flays and an instant (or 1.5 second cast). 5.5 is useful if you have enough hast to bring Mind Flay to a 2.75 second spell, or do a Mind Flay interrupt rotation.
Tier 4: Shadow Weaving and Shadow Reach
Shadow Reach increases the range on Mind Flay to 24 yards. Sometimes those 4 yards make all the difference.
Shadow Weaving has a chance of applying a debuff to the target increasing all shadow damage by 2% per debuff, stacking to 5. This debuff is added to or refreshed by any Shadow Priest in the raid. The math works out that 4/5 is about the least you should go with to get that stacked as quickly as possible. 3/5 is workable if you will always have another Shadow Priest. 5/5 is the fastest you will put it up and the talent point is not a waste, though it may not be the most talent point.
Tier 5: Focused Mind and Vampiric Embrace
Focused mind is part of the mana efficient series of talents, reducing the mana cost of two of your most used spells by 15%. Since much of the purpose of a Shadow Priest is mana, being able to cast more efficiently for longer periods enhances your ability to provide Vampiric Touching to your party members.
Vampiric Embrace… even if you never, ever used it, you would take it because it is the prerequisite for Shadowform. But you should use it. Improved Vampiric Embrace is more debatable because it significantly increases threat generation when it is used. If you have tanks that can handle it, Imp. VE is quite nice to have.
Tier 6: Darkness
+10% Damage? Are you crazy? How can you justify not taking it? Most classes get 5% buffs.
Tier 7: Shadowform
This is why you became a Shadow Priest, because you wanted to be swirly purply bringer of death. +15% damage done, -15% damage taken. Pure win. Sure, you can’t cast holy spells (pfft! like you wanted to heal anyway), but you were brought in to DPS and this helps you do that. This is one of the two defining talents of the Shadow Spec.
Tier 8: Misery
This provides a 5% spell damage buff to your raid. Yes.
Tier 9: Vampiric Touch
This was the talent that took a sub-par DPSer that should be a healbot and turned them into one of the most desirable raid-specs in the game. I explained it above – your casters will love you. This is the other defining Talent of the Shadow Priest, and it is no coincidence it is the 41 point talent.
Outside of those, the talent points can be spent in a number of ways. The current "best" PvE spec is 14/0/47 (something more or less like this). This picks up Meditation (for mana regen) and Inner Focus (for free casting) our of the Discipline tree, and spreads a few more points in Shadow to fill it out.
Shadow Stats
Because it is mostly completely correct, I’m going to quote a section from the Elitist Jerks forum thread: Shadow Priest 101: How to Melt Faces Effectively:
3. What are the important stats for a Shadow Priest?
Spell hit: Point for point, 1 spell hit rating returns a larger increase in DPS than anything else. However, this is because spell hit can become capped, and IS capped very quickly for shadow priests. Against a boss type mob, you will have your spells resisted 17% of the time. 16% of this can be negated via spell hit. Of that 16%, ten can be negated through talents alone, meaning 76 spell hit rating is needed. For every 25 points of spell hit rating above this cap that can not be avoided, you can drop a point in shadow focus to spend elsewhere. However, never itemise for spell hit unless you need 4-6 spell hit rating to drop another point in shadow focus and have an item that gives a +damage bonus with a yellow socket.
Damage: Damage is your bread and butter stat. It, once hit capped, is the one and only stat worth getting in the sense that every other stat is translated to damage to see it’s value. For purposes of other comparisons, one spell damage will be considered the baseline. It does not matter whether the damage is shadow damage only or generic damage, both offer the same value and hence take whichever is higher (if all else is equal).
Spell Crit: Spell crit affects every single shadow priest spell that can crit. Yes, both of them. Only MB and SW:D are affected by spell crit, and they only crit for 150% damage, meaning that spell crit is a fairly weak stat for shadow priests. The current accepted conversion is roughly 6 spell crit rating = 1 damage. Yes, it’s that weak. And it does nothing if you are not using MB or SW:D.
Intellect: Intellect is only useful as it converts into spell crit. Assuming kings, it’s about 20 int per damage. Again, a weak stat.
Spirit: Spirit helps regenerate mana with Meditation (which is getting buffed in 2.3) and also adds damage via improved Divine Spirit. 9 spirit is equal to one damage, assuming kings, along with the regen benefits.
Mana per 5 Seconds: This helps regenerate mana. Good if it’s on a piece, but not needed.
Stamina: You only truly need a baseline hp level on Doomwalker and Naj’entus, both of whom you can wear PvP gear for. Ultimately, don’t worry about it too much.
The only thing I would mention, in addition to this is that, following 2.4, the passive regen provided by Spirit is affected by Intellect in a rather complicated fashion, and the relative values are more important for mana regen than the absolute values of those two stats. The more +Shadow you have, the more mana return from VT, and the less passive regen is important.
To make the math even easier on Spell hit, this table from Shadowpriest.com breaks it down for you:
Spell Hit Caps:
* 76 hit is the cap with 5/5 Shadow Focus
* 101 hit before you can go to 4/5 Shadow Focus
* 126 hit before you can go to 3/5 Shadow Focus
* 152 hit before you can go to 2/5 Shadow Focus
* 177 hit before you can go to 1/5 Shadow Focus
* 202 hit before you can go to 0/5 Shadow FocusAll numbers rounded up to the next whole number.
1% hit = 12.6 hit rating at level 70.
Shadow Method
While some classes can use a simple rotation of spells and abilities, Shadow Priests require a more flexible system. Most Shadow spells either have long durations, long cooldowns, or both! Instead of a rotation, Shadow Priests use a Priority System, where spells are arranged in a conceptual order of importance, and each cast is evaluated as to which spell is the most important at that cast time.
Vampiric Touch is considered to be the most important spell of a Shadow Priest, and on any boss mob you can, it should be up as close to 100% of the time as you can make it. It is important to be aware of its duration, as you want one cast to fully expire before the next one is applied for maximum dps benefit. You want to use a DoT Timer addon to keep track of its duration and allow you to maximize its uptime.
While VT is the most important spell, it may not be the first spell you cast. The other spell you want as close to 100% uptime is
Vampiric Embrace, if it is going to be used, is probably the next most important spell. This spell on its own generates no threat, but does put you on an enemies aggro table. You can cast this any time after the pull, even while waiting for the tank to build threat, so long as you do not begin dealing damage.
Shadow Word: Death can be used to increase DPS, however the resultant self-damage is hazardous at times. Generally, any time your damage is increased (during Curator’s evocation, for example) or there is raid damage, you want to avoid using SW:D.
If you are using SW:D, you are probably also using Mind Blast. Mind Blast is on a shorter cooldown, so I place at a lower priority because it will not be taken out of combat as long to begin with. Also, if using VE, the health boost from MB+VE can soak some of the health lost by the SW:D immediately prior.
Mind Flay is the bread and butter of your dps casting. when you aren’t doing anything else, eat this. Or, I suppose, have your enemy eat this.
Shadow Style
As was noted above, Shadow Priests first and foremost want to be at or near the hit cap. Point for point, spell hit is the most important stat on items. Once you are at the spell hit cap, the only important stat is +Shadow Damage, and the more +Shadow Damage you have, the more lackluster the other stats become.
Shadowpriest.com has two excellent guides to gear. So excellent, in fact, I won’t even bother to summarize them here.
Best Raiding Gear Available
Best Pre-Raid Gear Available
A lot of the craftable gear is exceptional, and those lists reflect that. If you are a tailor, the Frozen Shadoweave set, while not the best, can last you well into tier 5 and tier 6, as will the Engineering helm.
Gems and Enchants
Gems and enchants follow the same rules as gearing in general. Spell hit if you need it, +Damage beyond that. For slots where that is not available, anything that improves your ability to regen mana (mp5 or spirit), threat reduction or stamina would be your choices.
For a meta gem, the current gem of choice is the Ember Skyfire Diamond which conveniently requires red gems, since you will be stacking the "Runed" gems (Blood Garnets, Living Rubies, Crimson Spinels). You should only use a different color gem if the total spell damage you gain is equal from the gems and the socket bonus to what a red gem would provide.
Shadow Links
Shadowpriests have ShadowPriest.com as an excellent resource for all things shadowy.
The Elitist Jerks forums have thread dedicated to the theorycrafting of this spec: Shadow Priest 101: How to Melt Faces Effectively
Apanthrope has a Gear Longevity Chart that, while not ranking gear, shows you the ranges people actually use it in.
He also has some interesting thoughts on Shackle and Mind Control.
The High King Lives!
Despite facing the awesome wrath of a raid of eight glaring from outside his cave. Yep, we ended up 17 people short to attempt Gruul’s Lair. So we decided to kill some trolls instead.
We spent a lot of time talking and waiting for people to get mana back and all that, so we missed the first timer. We missed it by less than ten minutes, so I think we can do it once everyone is on the same page. Pretty easy tank and spank, got the same silly robes that dropped the first and only previous time StormSeekers had killed Nalorakk. A nice, morale boosting one-shot to counteract some of the disappointment of not doing a 25 man raid.
Then we clear over to Akil’Zon. We tried the gauntlet, twice. Utter failure, twice. Our DPS needs to get much better at assisting to get targets instead of just hitting whatever. After that, we used a phase-shifted imp to pull the tempest down the hill so we could avoid the spawning adds. After all, “If you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying….” (that’s just about become my favorite quote now). Then we get to Akil’Zon. since I’m in just about the least progressed guild in WoW, I’ll assume most of you know how the fight goes, and for those of you who don’t waste your time in 10-man raids where the rewards don’t do you any good, here’s the WoWWiki link.
For a little perspective, we have some people who still have problems with “Don’t move during Flame Wreathe,” and “Run out during enfeeble,” so we tried to minimize the difficulty of the electrical storm by having everyone collapse to the tank a few seconds before. Tried five seconds, no one has to run that far. Wiped. Twice. Tried eight seconds (after reminding people that two attempts makes for no progression and it takes work) and wiped again. And again. But that time we got him to 3% before someone couldn’t run in.
A few more middling attempts, lost a couple of people. Attempt Nine:
We got the bastard down. No deaths. No one freaking out about being out of mana. (Though, most inadvertently, I tanked for one phase between electrical storms, oops.) Executioner and a Chestguard of Hidden Purpose. Stormseekers are now 2/6 in ZA.
The 25th Person
Groups of Words used a term about a month ago, the 25th person:
The Nth person is someone the rest of the raid plays around in order to make sure the common jobs get done. Good healers cover for the bad healer, strong dps makes up for weak dps, everyone covers for the tank who can’t remember to use their cooldowns, etc. This person, for whatever reason, just doesn’t help in raids that much.
And a lot of people have been writing about issues with progression, problems recruiting, guilds falling apart or going back to struggling on farm content. None of these issues are new or limited only to World of Warcraft.
While perusing the items in my feed reader today, I ended up reading a post on the TankSpot forums about meters and some perspective on them. A snippet from Horacio:
There can only be one best in any subset or group. Sometimes the players are evenly matched and compete head to head. Sometimes one is a clear leader. There are things that go into playing each class that are somewhat impossible to explain …. The point is, do your best but if you do not equal the elite player you know or hear of, don’t get down on yourself. The only meter that really counts is the “Boss Dead” meter.
I think there is a lot to be said for that view: that at the end of the day, the Boss Dead meter is the one that counts. Did you, as a raid, get the job done? If yes, can you get the next one? If no, why? Other tools for analysis need to be used at that point.
Sometimes, it’s an issue of gear. Perhaps more farm raiding needs to be done for newer members. Sometimes it’s an issues of skill and training needs to be done.
But sometimes, it comes down to the 25th person.
Every raid has to accomplish a certain number of tasks within a certain time limit to get that Boss Dead meter to tick. Sometimes the constraint is a hard enrage timer, sometimes it is when the healers are out of mana and the tank drops. Sometimes it comes down to how hard the tank is going to get hit (as on Gruul or trying to eat Netherspite’s red beam).
To use Gruul as an example (as that is something the StormSeeker’s are trying to overcome), the mechanics of the fight mean that any normal tank is going to get killed in one blow at some point. The damage output will become larger than can be mitigated. Most guilds aim for 13-17 growths, as I understand things. A number that I have both seen and done the math on, is needing average raid dps for a typical raid setup to be about 500 dps. Note, this is average. Average means for everyone in the raid doing even one point over that, someone else can do less. This basically is the secret to the 25th person, someone else does their work for them and picks up the slack.
This is perhaps okay on farm content, when the average is considerably below what you can do. But on progression content, there isn’t necessarily room for someone to be that far below the average for the raid. In the realm of wishful thinking, your lowest dps, constrained by class and specific mechanics of the encounter, is above the needed average and not far below the group’s real average.
This is why I like to use tools like Recount or WWS. Where am I on the needed and actual averages? Am I carrying or being carried? Who in my raids is falling into those categories? For the people being carried (with regards to needed averages, not actual), is improvement possible or are they incapable or unwilling to move out of the 25th person spot. Given the choice, I would never invite the 25th person, but so many times we are bound by factors of attendance or the nature of the guild to make choices that can almost inevitably lead to failure.
Casual raiding, to me, is the notion that this is okay, that you carry people as much as you can, and then no one gets farther because you are tied more to the 25th person than the Boss Dead meter. Hardcore raiding is saying getting the job done is more important than the 25th person. One being better than the other is a personal choice and tied to what you value.
What really matters is, when you make that commitment to raid, to using 24 other people’s time to accomplish a common goal, are you helping keep the actual average above the needed average. Are you helping get the Boss Dead meter up.
I think the 25th person is the reason so many people and guilds are having problems these days. The edge of progression has cut away the cream of raiders, and as you move down the tiers of raiding, the 25th persons get shuffled down. At some point there is no room for anyone to be carried, so they get dropped, picked up somewhere below and maybe they can function at that level. But then you get out of the hardcore raiding mentality and into the casual mentality and those people don’t get dropped anymore.
Lassirra of The Hunter’s Mark has written two pieces recently about that situation: Casual by Circumstance and a follow-up, More Casual / Hardcore Musings. Both address that issue where personal and guild progression cannot keep ahead of the 25th person and how you should handle those situations.
Know what you want, and know how far you’re willing to go to get it. Always make sure that “the juice is worth the squeeze”. – Lassirra
Gruul’s on Friday REDUX!
It’s been almost a month since I mentioned the Stormseekers were going to be trying to move into 25 man raiding in another post. I thought I would update all of you on how things have been going.
On the personal end, I had a few goals:
- Get a Belt of Natural Power. Done! Pricey to buy the Nether Vortexes and I’ll probably regem it later on, but for now, it is mine.
- Collect the last few badges to get the Embrace of Everlasting Prowess. One daily heroic and a freakishly slow kill-run to Watchkeeper Gargolmar in Heroic ramparts and that was finished up.
- Work on Fishing to get the Eye of the Sea. I think I got my fishing to ten or so. Won’t be pulling a Lurker Below up anytime soon.
- Replace the Gladiators Dragonhide Helm and Spaulders with the Merciless versions. Also done! It took an extra day because I spent 8k honor on the trinket for arenas. The Merciless Gladiator’s Maul and other assorted pieces for my druid are mostly on hold. The shadow priest could use some pvp loving; I’ve been doing arenas on both my feral druid and frost mage, both of whom could benefit from the S2 gear. That’s a lot of PvP and not a lot of time to do it in.
On the whole, not too bad, I think. Now back to the raiding.
That Friday run was interesting. I think we had probably half the raid from our guild, and some friends from other guilds, and some pickups, but we filled it and not too much after start time. We spent two hours on attempts on High King Maulgar and called it. It was a good learning experience and while we had an awesome mage as the mage-tank, he didn’t have gear awesome enough to do the job without super-awesome healers which we had too few of. And I’m not sure if the hunters were meleeing Kiggler, because they dropped super fast.
The Sunday following, however, we went with another guild, Royal Steel, and cleaned out that silly gronn’s cave. The StormSeekers got some valuable raiding experience and walked away with a disproportionate amount of tier pieces. We went back the next week to return some of the favor on that.
We also gave SSC a shot. Had a really easy time clearing trash (sadly no Wildfury Greatstaff) and had a couple of attempts on Lurker. This was not good. Spout killed a lot of people. The melee tanks were slaughtered by the adds without healing or dps. We needed more CC to handle the ranged adds on the island. Ah well, we gave it a go if not our best. We plan on heading back in this weekend and trying to make sushi (and if not, maybe we’ll find a staff on a body somewhere).
This Friday the StormSeekers are again venturing in Gruul’s Lair in fabulous Blade’s Edge Mountains. We plan on spending up to two hours killing ogres and maybe a Gronn or two. If anyone on argent Dawn wants to join, let me know here or in game where you can send a mail or tell to Lushere. We will probably be looking for healers and talented DPSers (by which I mean no 0/0/0 specs, kkthxbai). Good times will be had by some.
Gruul’s on Friday
Perhaps setting ourselves up for dismal failure, the StormSeekers hope to venture into Gruul’s Lair this Friday at 8 P.M. Eastern time.
With the incredibly large amount of guilds further progressed and the ease with which quality raiding equipment can be obtained, taking down the tier 4 raid bosses should be a snap! But it won’t be.
The first hurdle we have to clear is getting 25 people. Recently, we haven’t been able to run Karazhan without three to five non-guild members. Often, these PuG members are beneficial to our raid and I have no problem bringing them in (except as tanks. I don’t want to pug a tank). A lot of people say they want to run Kara and raid, but few bother to show up at raid time. Consequently, we have a couple of tanks and healers and dpsers basically ready to hit tier 5. But only a half-dozen or so. The rest of our membership flits in to WoW from time-to-time, expects to raid, doesn’t put in the effort and goes away for a while. The perils of the casual guild, I suppose.
Even if we had 25 people, we’re going to have a time of it trying to get 25 of the right people. I don’t know if we have a mage with the right gear to mage-tank. I don’t think we have any hunters with an NR set, nor a panzerkin. I don’t know if we can scrounge up 7-8 healers.
On top of that, the guild leader hasn’t been playing much (real-life commitments and all) and I haven’t been party to any discussions of strategy and composition if there have been any. We don’t have any sign-ups for this event. We haven’t had any active discussion of this event. It isn’t going to happen because no one has put in the work to push it forward. Even if it does, we will mostly have people undergeared who haven’t read the strategies or watched videos and it will be a long and painful night of wipes.
On the off chance that we do go, I have some things I need to get done before:
- Get a Belt of Natural Power crafted. I picked up the vortexes and need to farm about 5 primal life then track down a crafter. Short of the t6 belt, this will be the best I can get (not that I can get the t6 belt).
- Crank out seven more badges and pick up the new badge chest (Embrace of Everlasting Prowess). It’s such a huge upgrade from my current Heavy Clefthoof Vest it’s unreal.
- Hit up dailies on some of my characters: I need the gold to regem a bunch of gear.
- Try and work up fishing so I can do fishing dailies. Not because I care about fishing, but because the gem (Eye of the Sea) would be nice in at least one slot.
After that, I need to start hitting the battlegrounds hard again. With Arena Season 4 starting next Tuesday, I’ll be able to pick up a couple pieces of the Season 2 gear (spaulders and helm which replace the season 1 spaulders and helm I currently use) and pick up the Merciless Gladiator’s Maul for my DPS set. I’ll need thirty Arathi Basin tokens, twenty Alterac Valley tokens and 29K honor over what I have.
Anyone playing on Argent Dawn that wants to hit up Gruul’s Lair and enjoy a night of frustration and probably screaming on vent, let me know!
A note: I hope the wowhead links work. I finally got around to editing the header.php file but I’m at work, so none of this loads for me.
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?
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.
