Grade A Raiding

I'm beginning to think there's a problem with what the term "raiding" means. Perhaps the problem is mine... but, since this is my blog, we're going to assume the opposite is true.

It seems that, to many of the folks I raid with, raiding means "to go to a 10- or 25-man instance".

WRONG

Raiding is a mindset, people. It means you're trying to do things at the top level of your game. You're hyper-aware, ultra-sensitive. You are challenging yourself to, well... be all that you can be. The raiding mindset should manifest itself in several ways.

In combat, you are aware of a much larger portion of your surroundings than normal. You aware of not just a boss, but its adds. You are anticipating boss special abilities. You realize that you need to be in range of heals... need to check to see if someone needs Innervate... pick up CC on someone else's mob... tank additional mobs when the other tank goes down... know where and WHERE NOT to leave flame trails... etc. etc. etc.

Now, many of these things need to be learned, and that comes with practice. And we all make mistakes from time to time, and can learn from each experience. But there are some things that ought to be automatic. These are things specific to your class: having soul shards, poisons, flasks, reagents, pots, food -- all the things needed to raid. And they include basic actions like providing health/soul stones, feasts, buffs, etc. without being asked. If you're really of the mindset to raid, then these things are more habit than anything else.

Successful raids -- not to mention raid progression -- REQUIRE a higher investment of attention and interest. Successful raids have healers picking up heals for another healer that's stun-locked or OOM. Successful raids have hunter's CC'ing mobs that escape the tank to give him/her time to re-aggro. Successful raids have classes respec'ing for bosses that require it. Successful raids have battle rezzes given to the right class for that fight. Successful raids don't waste everyone's time going to get mats and resummoning. If we can't remember the basics, we're certainly not prepared to take on bigger challenges.

I'd like to see some junior- and senior-level raids... let's shoot for an A in Raiding 101.

How to Make Enemies and Alienate People

So, over the last week or so I have managed to g-kick someone and get three others to spend several minutes bad-mouthing me. I don't set out with this as my intended goal, but it seems to happen enough that I thought I'd share these things with you and let you decide and/or comment.

1. I need to get a gem cut. The guild JCs aren't around, so I go into trade chat. I've got the gem, will tip... can anyone help me out? I wish I could remember this guy's name, but EOA (early onset alzheimer's) has struck me in my young, handsome years and I just don't recall. So we arrange to meet in the bank, I give him the gem, he cuts it, trades it back and I put 10g in the trade window. He pst's me "Its' 20g." I give him 20g, and we make the trade, but I tell him that he really needs to make that known before he agrees to the deal. I mean, what if he holds me hostage for 50g? C'mon... you set the deal down before you do it, or you take what you get. He proceeds to call me a cheap so-and-so, and blah blah blah. Really? It's me that's effed up?
2. Running around on my hunter, and a guildy puts out a call for a healer for H ToC. My holy pally doesn't need it, but I agree to go to help out the guildy. Another guildy jumps in to help as DPS. I get to the dungeon and equip my lance as I'm running in. Once in, however, I see that the jousting phase is over and the three champs are awaiting us. I swap out my gear with the gear manager and get an error like something didn't swap right. I say in party chat "just a sec" so I can figure out my gear and buff up and... the guildy I'm there to help pulls (he's DK tanking). Okaaaaaay... so I heal us through it -- pausing long enough to say in party chat "not ready not buffed not cool" and we make it cuz I'm all leet and sh*t. :) So after the battle, I say in party chat "gimme a min to buff" and the other DPS guildy says approximately the same thing. DK pulls again. I run out. So does -- unprompted -- the DPS guildy. Needless to say, the rest wipe. DPS says "we'll come back in when you're ready to listen." I say "what he said". DK says "I didn't see you say anything. I don't watch party chat". I say "you have to when you're a tank... you have to make sure everyone's ready. it's your responsibility". DK says "uh... no i don't". I leave the party. So does DPS. DK proceeds to complain that I bailed on him and blah blah blah. The he says "your attitude needs to be adjusted". /gkick. My bad?
3. Get an H DTK (the daily) run pugged... I'm on Aldo. There's three DKs, me, and a shammy healer. We get in and during the first pull I look at the DKs and none of them have over 21K health. I ask the tank "do you have tank gear? are you def capped?" He replies "nope". Hearth. Leave party. One of the DKs -- he shall remain nameless (Raezor) -- starts harassing me via whisper. How I left early. How they replaced me with 'real' DPS. What a fool I am. How he's a geared tank that can tank 10 ToC. Blah blah blah. I look him up. He's 1700-ish in his Unholy spec, all dps gear. he's a respectable 2400+ in his Frost spec... BUT IT'S ALL PVP DPS GEAR!!! WTF? /sigh.
4. Run H ToC with Aldo, and then want to run the H daily since I didn't get to earlier (see #3). I grab three guildies and then a DK from my last H ToC run who seemed decent. First sign of trouble is he's using some emote to basically yell 'charge'. Ok, cute. But 237 times in one instance? C'mon. Then, he starts yelling at Cooplan to hurry up. Well, first of all it was like 1 minute of waiting. Second, it was Chazz, not Coop. Third, Coop is a 25 ToC geared mofo, and you have no business yelling anything at him. And finally, look at the gear around you, think about how easy this run is going to be, and STFU! I tell him to chill. We get to second boss and he's over the top of the stairs, grabbing mobs out of LoS where I can't shoot em and Coop can't heal the knucklehead (aka, Deathblunt). Takes me four posts in party chat to get him to wake the eff up and get back in LoS. We get to the last boss, and douchey emotes tapping his foot waiting on Chris while Chris was taking all of 20 seconds for something. We get done with the last boss, everyone loots -- including the daily item -- and I ask Chris to pass me lead. /kick. This guy had everything he needed, was a complete ass, and I don't kick him til it's over. He whispers me a couple of love-grams, including a C-Bomb. What the what?!?

Seriously... is it me?

A Holy Pally Spec-tacular!

I'm not going to go into a lot of details here -- many others have already said it, and said it better than I would. But, if you want to EXCEL at pally healing -- and give your raid the best chance at succeeding, you need to do some spec research.

If you do, you will find there are basically three approaches to healing:

• Focus on haste
• Focus on crit
• Focus on damage mitigation

Pretty much across the board, you will find that the haste approach -- which is really more of an enchant/gem/stat choice than talent differentiation -- is used while leveling and early (10-man Naxx) raiding, and the other two specs are what are being used by the top pallies (as determined by wow-heroes ranking). Yes, you can argue that a high gear ranking doesn't guarantee that they know what they're doing. Realistically, that's a failed argument for three reasons:

1. You don't get multiple, best-in-slot pieces without knowing what you're doing
2. These guys/gals are in the top raiding guilds, where they generally wouldn't survive if they didn't have skill
3. Many other information sources agree with their spec choices

Relying on haste just won't enable you to take on the levels of damage that many higher-level raid fights produce: Ignis, once he has several stacks, Hodir during Frozen Blows, Magnataur in TotC with Impales... and you can forget about Ulduar hard modes like XT during Tantrum and heroic TotC. During the first boss fight in heroic TotC last week, the three healers were doing a total of 11k HPS -- 5.5k of which was from the pally -- and they were being overcome with damage. And no haste spec can put out 5.5k HPS. It can't keep up because the health-per-second of Flash of Light is WAY lower than that of Holy Light. If a haste pally is in a raid that succeeds in those fights, it's because the other healers picked up the slack, putting their responsibilities in jeopardy.

Which brings me to the point: do the research. If you don't want to rely on what the top pallies are doing, then DO THE RESEARCH. There is a great article on wowwiki.com that compares the HPS output of all the heal spells (of all classes) as well as the mana burn rates of each. There are many blogs and sites out there that talk about why certain specs and talents are better than others. Here's just a few:

• http://www.holypaladin.net/index.php/holy-paladin-gear-haste-or-crit
• http://www.holypaladin.net/index.php/patch-31-pve-holy-paladin-talents
• http://www.wowpopular.com/Holy/Paladin/Talents

The primary objective is to really understand how certain talents benefit you in keeping the raid standing. There are certain talents that just aren't worth getting when you look at what benefits you could be getting from other talents. To know that, you need to really understand how all of the talents work, and how they work together. You need to understand how often you're going to be in certain situations while raiding, and if the amount of time a talent would be useful is worth it on the whole. That comes with experience. If you don't have that, then ask someone who does.

Gear and Raiding in Las Vegas... er... Northrend

I'm not suggesting what follows is the official guild stance... I think the topic is still undefined at this point. But, I'd like to get the discussion started so expectations are clear. Good, solid communication is not always easy, but is absolutely vital to keeping the drama meter from red-lining.

If you've been reading Shyste's blog, you know that one of the most difficult parts of raiding is figuring out who is part of the raid group. While we all know that skill is more important than gear, there are a couple of gear-related things that make a difference with respect to raiding:

1. Gear does make a difference to the success of the raid. Your DPS may be high enough, your skill and experience from other toons may be more than adequate... but if your gear means you have such a low health or mana pool -- for example -- that it weighs on the rest of the raid, you become a liability. Druids have to use Innervate on you too early in the raid. Healers have to spend more time concentrating heals on you, taking their focus (and mana) away from the rest of the raid. And if they don't, and you're taken out of the fight because you're dead or you're out of mana, you aren't participating and learning the nuances of the responsibilities of that toon's class with respect to raiding.
2. Gear tends to show if you've "paid your dues." Now, I know this topic can be controversial. But the fact remains that there are levels of experiences in WoW, and it's not fair to take the spot of someone that has done the things necessary to be properly geared for a particular level of play if you haven't done the same. It's not so much about making you pay your dues... it's about respecting those who have.

So... I think we should all be familiar with where our gear tends to suggest we should be raiding. Most of us are familiar with the wow-heroes site and its method of rating gear. Please check this site regularly and see what raids it suggests align most closely with your level of gear advancement. Use the guild query to see how you stack up with others in the guild. Set your expectations for inclusion in raids at those levels, and it will make raid participation selection a lot easier on everyone.

As always, I want to say that one of the founding principles of Sated is that we apply common sense and try to do what's right and fair. No set of guidelines is impervious to exceptions. It just helps the guild as a whole if we start from the same general baseline of expectations. As we apply these guidelines, we will learn and adapt... and keep Sated the best damn guild this side of the River Styx.

OPP (Over-Powered Pally)... Yah, You Know Me

A couple of words about paladin abilities and how that stacks up in the world of over-poweredness...

1. I have NEVER been in anything resembling a decent raid where a pally was anywhere near the top in dps.
2. In raids, pally healers are piss-poor raid healers, can't heal on the run for sh!t, and -- even when they're tank healing like they're basically limited to by design -- usually get out HPS'd by a marginally-geared druid.
3. They can tank.  I've heard they hold aggro well. Dunno overall how they stack up, but I've never heard anyone put any tank class above the rest. As a healer, I've always preferred to heal druid tanks... lots of health and they heal themselves a bit.
4. Pallies are good in PvP.  Yep.  Although -- in my experience (almost 13,000 honorable kills) -- rogues are the absolute worst to fight in PvP. But the real point is that different PvP character match-ups are harder than others. A rogue can take out a pally in no time. They can keep them stunned for pretty much the duration of the fight.  Bubble only works once.
5. Most of the people that bitch about pally's being OP have never had a level 80 pally or played them much in PvP. Before you say it, play it.

So... let's recap:  not great DPS, not great HPS in many cases, decent tanking, and near (if not at) the top in PvP. Hmmm... sounds pretty freakin balanced.

Even given all those arguments, probably the most important thing to keep in mind is this:  the people playing pallies didn't necessarily know they would be OP in PvP -- they picked them because the class is flexible like druids. Even if they did, they had no guarantee that Blizz would keep them that way. There's a big difference between saying a class is OP and saying that the players behind pallies are weak-ass bitches who run and hide in their bubble.

Trollin Along

I recently added a member to Sated:  Aldoraine, my hunter.  I started playing WoW about the time Burning Crusade came out.  My first character was a dwarf hunter named Kantuit.  By the time I hit 70 with him, BC was in full form.  I pretty much tricked him out in PvP gear -- which was easier to get than PvE gear at the time -- and had Kara on farm.

Then a couple of my playing buddies quit WoW and another couple of friends suggested I roll Horde and come play with them on Blood Furnace.  One was Fry from Malediciton, if you ever ran into him.  And that toon is Hazl.

But I always loved the hunter.  When WoW enabled faction changes, I jumped at the chance to transfer Kantuit over -- and he became Aldoraine.  [Fun fact:  Capt. Aldo Raine leads a group of Jewish-American soldiers on a Nazi killing spree in the movie, "Inglourious Basterds".]  <-- See that effin movie!!!!

So... right now Aldo is at 73 and leveling fast when I have time for him.  I'm leveling with a Marksman spec, but I will change over to Survival when he hits 80.  Should be fun.  By the way, Aldo's pets are Claude the bear, SneakySnake the wind serpent, Horneeforyu the ravager, and Chewonu the tiger.  Should work out when I get him leveled:  Hazl should be able to tank as well as heal at that point, and the hunter will be my dps outlet.

So... if you see Aldo around, give him a wave.  Just don't make any sudden movments near Chewonu.....

Raidin' Dirty

Haven't posted anything in awhile, so I thought I'd talk about the raiding we've been doing lately in Uld10 and ToC.

First, let me say I'm having a blast! Downing Ignis the other night, then again last night makes me incredibly happy. Then to down The Council and Freya... WHAT?!?! Sated in DA HOUSE! Gave the titantic trio another few runs for their money last night. The groups are varying and yet really melding and working well together. I'm 100% sure we can down Thorim in a couple shots, and... well... Hodir will fall one day, that cold-hearted son-of-a-Shytechris'-mom.

I'm a little concerned that we're going to have people feeling left out. I think the groups have been varying a good deal, but PLEASE don't harbor feelings of discontent. Air those greivances, boy (or girl)! Let's just keep the lines of communication open so hard feelings don't start festering. Schedules changed a lot with the start-up of the football seas... er... classes again, so it may take a few weeks to get a feel for the best raiding times and when folks are available. We've been adding some members, so I see it as a possibility we could get a couple groups running in the relatively near future. But the point is that Sated is really about friends having fun together... all of us. So if you feel like you're being excluded or left out, let someone know and lets hug it out, bitch.

I strongly encourage everyone to consider developing a healing alt and/or spec, as that's what we're the shortest on right now. Having more healers would have two benefits: (1) more people could rotate in, and (2) there would be less chance of not being able to raid due to a lack of healers.

One other added benefit of more healers is that it would dramatically reduce the chances that one of us would heal Ignis with a chef hat on... not that 4.5K HPS and 54% of the heals won't work, but it would have been nice to have the extra 4K mana and not need that Innervate (thx, Whoa).