I love it when I get pushback from raiders adamantly stating that they can DPS in whatever spec they want. Heh, I counter that by saying I can fill the raid with whatever player I want.

It’s been a little over two weeks after Mists drop. I find myself keeping a stack of those talent changing reagents handy because I know I’m going to keep altering them between pulls and trying something new. Even Angelic Feather, a talent that I had previously written off, is something I’ve found useful for on Feng. I drop it strategically in front of people as they’re rushing Wildfire out of the raid.

Progression minded players are always going to look for the best choices. When leaders are looking at the roster and deciding who to take, DPS is a big component (but not the only one). They’ll take a look at player A and player B. If player A is specced different than player B but both are geared similarly and there’s a 12000 DPS difference between the two with A on top, suffice it to say we can come to the conclusion that A’s spec is far superior (or his play could be that much better).

If the raid chief comes in and asks player B to switch specializations to what A is doing, B should switch because that’s a huge benefit to the overall team.

Believe me, I’d love to see the day where all specs were created equal. Where cosmetics and rotation were what ultimately dictates what we players want to do. But we’re not quite there yet. There’s always going to be a superior spec or two among the different classes. We want these bosses dead so we can move onward to the next one. Of course, it needs to be said that different bosses means different strengths and weaknesses.

The line between talents are a little blurrier. There’s a general “theme” among them, but there’s something unique about how each talent approaches that role. Now, there may not be a right answer when it comes to selecting talents. But there’s a “righter” answer. Think to yourself how that can best be done with your talents.

I mentioned earlier the example of Angelic Feather. I noticed when using Body and Soul that there were times where people received Wildfire more than once and I couldn’t shield them again. I switched to Angelic Feather and placed it between the raid and the agreed upon Wildfire point. Feedback has indicated that those feathers are a big help in getting people out quicker.

And then there’s the food buffs.

How much are you willing to work for an extra 25 stats?

The cost/benefit for an extra 25 of your main stat just seems to be obscene. Is it really worth it? I don’t know. I figure those stats are only worth it if you’re coming across 2% wipes or phase transitions. This is, you know, assuming that you’ve already maxed out your character as best as you can elsewhere.  I’ve almost hit max cooking, but I still need to whip up more banquets.

Oh and a bit of hotfix news!

That clicking bug seems to have been resolved. That one’s been giving us fits. We’ve had to wipe a quarter on our attempts due to inabilities to interact with the object.

Priests also received a buff: 25% healing to Prayer of Healing and Prayer of Mending. Not sure when it goes live, but hopefully soon. Yay!

I chuckle slightly to myself when I get messages from players who are excited (smug) after using an Elder Charm of Good Fortune on Sha of Anger throughout the week.

For those of you not in the know, those Charms are used to give you a bonus roll on any raid boss. It has a chance of giving you flasks, gold, or an item off that bosses loot table. Using it on outdoor bosses or LFR gives you a little something extra for your efforts. You might get gear that you can use for raiding or for PvP.

However, those of you who are clever should know to actually save these when you’re raiding normal or heroic modes. If there’s something specific you want off of a boss, wait until the bonus charm UI kicks in and activate it then. In addition to the standard loot that drops for the raid, you can get a crack at a specific item off of that particular bosses loot table. You don’t want that dirty PvP gear, right?

We managed to get the Stone Guard down last night after a few hours of gruelling attempts and the charm roll sprang up. Can you guess how much bonus loot we picked up in a raid of 25?

Not 2.

Not 4.

Not 7.

Try ten extra items.

Our raid received a total of 16 usable raid items last night off of the Stone Guard.

Personally, I feel that the charm system is a godsend under the loot council system. The bonus roll fires off and the raiders receive their rewards in their bag. When we get around to distributing raid loot, a player that would’ve wanted a set of legs might’ve won some from the bonus roll and won’t need it from the main loot window allowing us to ship it over to another player that needs it.

I’m actually curious as to how EPGP and DKP and other points based guilds are going to deal with loot gotten from the charms. Are they going to be considered “under the table”? Should players contribute a minimum number of points whenever they win even though it’s their charm to be used?

Hit 90 within the first 18 hours of day 1 on a diet of Amped and pepperoni steaks. Rice never tasted so good on the second day. I celebrated my 25th birthday yesterday with nothing but heroics and scenarios! Whew! Real party’s happening on Saturday so I have some more time to gear up for raids next week.

As more and more of my guildmates and friends are hitting 90, I’m getting increasingly asked “What do I do now to get myself ready for next week when the raids open?”. You should be exploring any reasonable method you have to increase your gear, your reputation, or your professions.

Your Klaxxi reputation should be up if you cleared out a reasonable portion from Dread Wastes. Go to Niu Zao Temple, by your 450 ilevel gloves.

Go do Scenario: Arena of Annihilation

The first thing you can do is tackle the Pandaria Ring of Blood set of quests. Thankfully, this time it isn’t outdoors where it’s subject to other people stealing your kills or tagging your mobs. Open up your Scenario Finder and queue into it. Accept the quest within and you’ll get yourself a nice 450 weapon.

Do the Temple of White Tiger quest

In Kun-Lai summit, you’ll eventually run into a quest where you help out Anduin unlock the Vale of Eternal Blossoms (Temple of the White Tiger). If you’re leveling up, you can skip and bypass those for now. Once you hit 90, the only way to unlock the area is by completing that quest through.

Spec your level 90 talent

I admit, I forgot to do this.

Unlock Flying

Once you’re 90, head over to your faction foothold in the Vale. On the top floor, there should be a flying trainer next to the flightmaster.

Level up your professions

Check with your guild bank and see if there’s any open mats you can use. For tailoring, I’m seeing a ridiculously large number of cloth drops and I was able to get that out of the way quick.

BTW Enchanters, I don’t know abut you, but I’m thrilled at how easy it is to switch between dust and essences. You?

Start Golden Vale dailies

There’s many factions you can gain reputation with. But in order to unlock the meaningful ones (Like Shado-Pan), you have to start at the Golden Pagoda with the Golden Lotus in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms. I believe Ruins of Guo-Lai is the first step.

Buy justice points gear

You can’t do it yet until you hit revered with a few of the factions, but you can shore up your gear some as you steadily gain reputation. The justice point vendor for all the factions is located in Niu Zao temple in Townlong Steppes. He’s on the fortifications at the back.

Dungeons

You need 440 item level to queue into heroics! If you need to, mix and match some gear from other specs and queue in before switching back to to your main set but only if you’re off by 1 or 2 item levels)! I found myself able to heal a DPS geared tank, even! Heroics aren’t as challenging nor as difficult as the Cataclysm initial set of heroics were so you’ll find them a little more forgiving and you can get away with it for now.

I know, I shouldn’t be encouraging it, but I’ll make an exception.

Grats to everyone that’s hit 90 and others that are about to! Can you think of anything else you should do at level 90? (Or other questions?)

It’s the final weekend before Mists drop. I’ve spent the past few nights frantically getting myself and the guild ready for next week’s expansion. Mists marks the third straight expansion where I’ve held tenure over a guild. After going through two expansions, I’ve a pretty good idea of what guilds and players should do to help get ready. There’s plenty of posts from others on that already. In this case though, I’d like to share what I’ve done personally and how the guild’s faring.

Personal preparation

Consumables

• Flask of the Draconic Mind
• Mythical Healing Potion
• Swiftness Potion
• Swim Speed Potion
• Volcanic Potion
• Drums of Forgotten Kings
• Severed Sagefish Head

Rearranged my bars so that they were all there for easy access in case I need to refresh.

My character

Had to readjust a ton of my stats and enchants. I’m not tackling raid bosses anymore so I’ve adjusted stuff out of hit rating. Switched my talents and glyphs to better account for leveling. I also started putting my gear into void storage that I wasn’t planning to use or banking things that I didn’t necessarily need.

Day planning

If you’re playing at midnight, make sure you rest up and crash first. Take a nice long nap. I plan to go to bed late afternoon/early evening. Also, set an alarm so you don’t oversleep. Make sure you stand up and stretch every hour or so. Jog in place or do something to keep the blood flowing. Don’t overdo it on the energy drinks. They’re a great short term burst of awareness but you’ll end up crashing after the effects wear off. I’ve got two cans of Amped waiting just in case and I plan on making a few sandwiches (and pepperoni sticks).

In fact, read this post by Serrath if you plan on undertaking a gaming marathon as the post includes tips on staying healthy and mentally alert. Hell, ignore the rest of this post and go read Serrath’s.

Guild preparation

With the help of the other leaders, we went over the guild and what needed to be done.

State of the Guild address

Collaborated with the officers on this one. The State of the Guild address is designed to look back at the previous expansion and highlight the negative along with the positive. The next part should include guild plans for the future and what the intentions are. If there’s anything new or different you’d like to focus on, this is where you specify it.

Be specific in your goals and set something that’s both tangible and realistic. Aiming for a world first might not be realistic but looking to clear out an instance on normal or hard mode before the next tier of raiding opens up can be. If there’s anything you want your guild to do, mention it (such as farming for mats).

If there’s a timeline for your raiders to hit the cap, mention that too. With us, we’re raiding the moment the instances become available be 10 or 25.

The guild bank

We engineered a massive sell-off of everything unessential. Anything that we couldn’t move was sent to our offshore guild bank. That guild bank is used to sit on older mats which aren’t as used as much. We’ve asked players to deposit any raw materials or BoE items they come across into the bank if they were willing to spare it for disenchanting and other profession levelling purposes. I’ve converted and cleared out several bank tabs for this already. There’s still a tab full of gems and food that need to a vetting out (but we’ll get to those later). Deposits will be open for people to use mobile banking to dump stuff into.

By the way, I’m glaring daggers at the guy who deposited 16 x Enchant Weapon – Avalanche.

Personnel management

We’ve been working hard at recruiting and adding players to our ranks. One of the biggest recurring problems throughout Cataclysm was raid days lost due to attendance. The final number was absolutely unacceptable to me so we’ve made a concerted effort to resolve that. Players on our PvP team have expressed interest in raiding. We’ve also been referred a few times (5 guild member referrals gets you a t-shirt, if they pan out).

Our current roster sits at:

• 3 tanks
• 16 melee
• 16 ranged
• 13 healers

Ranks

I only made one change here. We used to have two raiding ranks: Authenticated players and unauthenticated players (this helped with bank access rights). Most members in the raid have authenticators. I changed the second rank to raid trial members instead to help track those easier. We were running into problems where we’d occasionally forget to “promote” players. The other ranks consist of officers, alts, social members, and our dedicated PvP teams.

My bad.

Revising the site and reviewing policy

One of the very first things we did was re-examine all of site documents. Anything that was outdated was immediately updated. Special care was taken on our recruiting forms. We decided to re-do it from scratch since a few of the questions that were Cataclysm specific were no longer applicable. We took a hard look at each question and asked ourselves if it was something that we really needed and managed to knock off a few that we felt could be answered elsewhere.

Most importantly, I updated the guild background with a picture of Chen Stormstout in the middle of our logo. Have to Mist-ify the guild site somewhat.

Now it’s just a matter of resting. We’re a day and some change away from a whole new continent of really fun stuff to do!

Tomorrow’s going to feel like the longest day ever. 

I participated in a neat Twitter discussion last night about the merits of combat res. The original point started with the desire for Priests to gain access to a combat res. From a lore perspective, I can understand that. Priest are the flagship class for healing for any fantasy-based game. They embody the essence of healing. It makes sense for a Priest to be able to bring their allies back from the dead in the middle of an engagement.

But not in WoW.

Priests are extremely well rounded as it is and the addition of a combat res cooldown would tip them over the edge in desirability. Abilities to group heal, single heal, save lives, and so forth is just enough for them. Mechanically speaking, I can’t imagine why it would be necessary at all.

Actually, if I had it my way, I’d argue for the removal of all in-combat resurrection spells from the game entirely.

That’s right. No more soul stone, no more raise ally, no more rebirth.

All gone.

Individual player accountability would have no choice but to go up. Can’t really be as reckless anymore. Can’t take those risky, stand-in-fire-for-extra-DPS moves because that safety net is gone. All you need to do is ask yourself how different you would play if you knew that the only way you were coming back to life is on the next attempt. You’d play tighter, right? You’d check your threat closer. You’d watch timers better. You would do everything you could to make sure that YOU don’t die. The psychology of a combat res provides the raid with that safe comfort knowing that there’s effectively 3 extra lives in play (on 25).

This isn’t vanilla WoW anymore. We don’t need 40 people to run raids. I remember when combat res spells had no limits. Back then, those second chances were a necessity. There was only one difficulty level: Punishing. It was one of the main reasons why druids were so sought after (Read: Job security). Each combat res was another player and another chance at getting through the encounter. Burning Crusade was much the same way.

It’s certainly useful for progression. Those unsuspecting boss attacks and abilities that come out of no where can be solved with a simple combat res. If combat res spells were gone from the game, the overall amount of progression wipes needed would mostly go up across the board. It might even slow the game down overall since content would last a little bit longer. I’m inclined to believe that most guild first boss kills utilize the maximum allowable number of combat res’s.

Yet, another part of me can imagine the pain and frustration for raiding guilds dealing with players who just can’t seem to cut it. Combat res’s have that cushion. If it were out of the game, player deaths in raids would be magnified and not easily as forgiven by peers. Hell, if I kept dying to the same stupid mechanic week after week without getting any better at avoiding it, I’d be super discouraged too. But then I might come to the conclusion that the stuff I’m doing is just something I’m not currently capable of and would come back after a few more raid finders or normal modes.

What about disconnects or buggy boss mechanics? My guild has experienced countless heroic Zon’ozz wipes due to weird ball bouncing bugs. Don’t get me wrong as I’m grateful for the option to bring back the dead from unfair and undeserved deaths. We’ve also had people disconnect or crash at the wrong time and a combat res helped save the 8 minutes we would’ve lost from a wipe and having to do it all over again.

Disconnects will always happen until we level up or tech to the point where computers are crash free and we’re all hardwired to the internet without any possibility of losing a connection. Bugged mechanics? Then it’s time for additional testing or go with abilities that are proven to work. It doesn’t feel right to me to use player abilities to offset encounter errors.

So long as combat res is still in the game, I’m not going to shy away from using utilizing it. It’d be crazy not to. It helps make up for the inevitable mistakes that occur. I feel like it’s a requirement. It’s a crutch. It’s something to lean on. It’s there to give players like me hope that if I screw up, I can maybe count on something to bail me out, even though I hate it.

After a player-saving-Life Grip, Rebirth is the only other spell that says to the player “You screwed up and died. Here’s me saving your butt and giving you another go. Don’t mess it up.”

Before death knights and warlocks could revive players mid combat, I’d occasionally  join raid pickup groups on my alt that didn’t have druids. Every move, every step had a purpose. I sacrificed a little bit of DPS to move away from projectiles faster. I didn’t want to get tagged and risk getting destroyed.

Ultimately, combat res or not, you are responsible for your well being. Whatever happens, don’t be that guy whose name the raid leader puts on the “Do not Res” list. I guarantee you, most raid leaders have such a list. That list is there because they know that if they res you, you’ll most likely blow your chance and die again anyway.

Anyway, that’s my piece. What do you think? Do you believe it continues to be invaluable or should it just get cut?