I haven’t been writing recently for a number of reasons, prime of which is having nothing to write about. There’s only so much you can say about a raid encounter that kicks your arse week after week. So I’ve been on hiatus from blogging, and from doing anything other than raiding in WoW. The other thing that’s keeping me busy(and I really should be working on now!) is NaNoWriMo. When you’re channeling all your energy into writing fiction around an ever-more demanding  job, something’s got to give, and recently it’s been this blog.

I’m still here, though, and some things have changed, while others stay the same. I’m still tanking, still cursing the overly hardcore, but I’m generally chilled out more. The other thing that’s changed is my race. That’s right, the gnome is gno more (groan) - I switched to the draenai race. There’s a couple of reasons, but mostly I was bored of looking like a gnome, bored of the line-of-sight issues that gnomes suffer from on sloping terrain, and just generally being short.

Historically The Hidden Circle’s tank groups have also lacked heroic presence in 25-man raids too, lacking a draenai tank as well as group arrangement not generally being kind to us on that front. So I picked my new race knowing that all of our tanks would get a potential threat boost from the change. Ironically, we also took on a new draenei Death Knight tank in the same week, so now we have two shots at the buff depending on who is around on a given night. The other consideration is that I liked the look of the Draenei most out of all the other options. I would always hope for the spacegoat race to come up when I experienced a transporter malfunction, as the animations always looked the best, and given I have to stare at these pixels every time I play I may as well make them pixels I want to look at.

So, a whole new me. And I’m happy about the change, even if the changes were mostly for cosmetic reasons.

After a few too many “close, but no cigar” moments on the 25-man heroic Northrend Beasts encounter, it’s been suggested a couple weeks’ more gearing up is needed. I can’t honestly find a reason to disagree with that decision, given the number of times things have happened that could be avoided with just a little more practice. And how are we practicing? In 10-man heroic mode, of course.

It’s worked rather well – we breezed through the first four bosses in our first twenty-five attempts or so. None of the held us up for too long. However – then, along came a spider, in the shape of Aub’Arak.

70 attempts, and several changes of strategy later, things are getting… somewhere. We can get to phase three much of the time, and then things just fall apart. And there’s the gist of the problem. Raid makeup.

And I don’t mean the classes we’re bringing along. I mean the players.

Raiders are generally one of four archetypes:

• Excellent at doing their jobs, but impatient with others who aren’t so excellent
• Excellent at doing their jobs, patient with others
• Reasonable at doing their jobs, but able to improve
• Bleeding awful.

Now, fortunately, we don’t have many of the latter (and they don’t generally get invited to raids). Most people are somewhere around the second, and unfortunately we have some people who fit into the first category. Ordinarily this isn’t a problem as progress can be good enough to keep them satisfied. Unfortunately, sometimes, things don’t go the right way fast enough. It just takes a few words. In this case, the words were:

“Guys, I don’t think this is working. I want to give up”

Of course, no-one paid much attention to this. After all, the hardcore player expressing doubt is something that most of us have come across at one time and another, and we try not to pay it much mind. Unfortunately the subconscious isn’t so easily fooled. The next attempt, our DPS was down a full 15%. Not so much as to stop us getting to phase 3, but enough that phase 3 was now more of a problem.

It didn’t get better. After a few more goes, the raid was (not unexpectedly) called. The few negative comments made (not directed at any one person) had been enough that on some level raid performance was predestined to fail.

Next time, I hope we will have a different raid makeup, one where everyone is at about the same level of improvement, or able to be patient enough with the others.

Bosses aren’t the hardest thing a raid has to face. No, that honour goes to the raid’s own members and their expectations of each other.

Of course, I’ve always gone for the sillier end of the spectrum. I play a gnome warrior, a class that never should have existed if there was such a one, ride around on an elekk or a mammoth. I’ve always liked the look of the proto-drakes, and I’ve not been lucky enough with the RNG nor sufficiently hardcore in PvE nor PvP to get hold of one up to now.

I’d been planning this since before Achievements were even released. Joined the Brew of the Month club, kept all my seasonal clothes in the bank, and waited. Most holidays weren’t an issue, the two big issues being Christmas, where I didn’t log in at all between 14th and 31st December, and Childrens’ Week and that ridiculous “Capture a tower in AV” achievement. I managed all the RNG achievements long before they were toned down too.

Now though? To be honest I’m a little burned out on holiday achievements. I’m not honestly sure if I can force myself to do it all again on my druid. Maybe I’ll give Brewfest a miss this year and start again with Hallow’s End. Part of the appeal was it was all content that was new to me, and that just isn’t the case any more.

On Namthe, as mentioned before, I’ve had:

• Many, many players with sub-1k DPS output
• Healers who couldn’t keep me up and blamed it on me
• People who didn’t see a problem that the tank was doing more damage than anyone else

On Dru, I’ve had:

• Countless heroic, and pugged, runs where *nobody died at all*
• A fast, relaxed and effortless Naxx-10 pug (that regrettably I had to leave early)
• An Obsidian Sanctum pug that went equally smoothly (and got me a title)
• invitations to several raids on the back of healing a heroic 5-man

Funny how things turn out, every pug I heal seems to be fantastic, and every pug I tank turns to pain. Given my tanking gear is likely to be at the top end of pug tanks (Some I’ve healed in the last week have had less than 25k HP), and my healing gear is at best average, I do wonder why this is. I do know that I’m not about to declare healing my calling in raids – tanking’s still my main love – but I do wonder about why things always seem to go so much better when healing compared to tanking.

Having started my WoW career in 2006, about six months before the Burning Crusade’s release, I never got to see much of vanilla raiding – Zul’Gurub a couple of times, maybe the odd Molten Core pug. On the other hand, I did acquire a full set of Tier 0 gear from the 5-man dungeons (which tells you how much I ran those).  In those days I played a rogue, not the warrior that’s so defined me now. Most of the raids I’ve since seen, with the exception of Blackwing Lair, and one thing sticks out compared to the more modern encounters.

Vanilla raids were rubbish.

The only encounters I’ve seen which were at all difficult (and I’m not talking about steamrollering things 20 levels later here) were the Twin Emperors and C’thun. Tactics were at best necessarily simple to cope with the fact that you needed 40 people to all do the right thing. Even the 20-man raids were the same- there was a little more complexity, but not much (and it was usually of the nuke adds / nuke boss again variety).

Vanilla Raids were ugly

Take a walk into Molten Core, just to the entrance, and look at the trash. There’s lots of packs, and they’re almost all identical. Or, walk into Zul’Aman and screengrab a few of the bosses. Now compare them with bosses in Zul’Gurub. The difference is huge – it’s as if it were a different game!

The same ugliness was what greeted us in the first raid of Lich King – Naxxramas had the same treatment that Onyxia is going to get. The same ugly sprites greeted us as we entered the first wing. The same overly simple tactics that were a challenge with 40 men suddenly seemed so much easier with 10 or 25.

This is why, when Onyxia sticks her flame-wrapped head around the door, I won’t be excited. Of course, I’ll run the raids, but given the makeover Naxx had, I don’t expect anything more than a few million more hitpoints and a tendency to hit slightly harder than a pillow. So while Ony will be back, nastier than ever, and I’m sure there’ll be lots of players clamouring for a chance to beat her again (or for the first time), I fully expect disappointment. Some things should stay in the past. Onyxia, I’m afraid to say, along with all the other pre-TBC raids, is one of those.

A raidleader needs to have the trust of his raiding team. Without that, it is very difficult to understand his decisions, to agree when a wipe is called. Look at it from another way – while you or I might have trialled in a raid in the past, the only person whose opinion really mattered was the leader. Did you do your job well and not put anyone’s nose out of joint while doing it? Trial a new raidleader and you’ll have twenty-four others you need to get on your side, or they won’t listen when you need them to.

I’m in the position of knowing enough about two equally-progressed guilds on our server. Their raidleaders are polar opposites – one never raises his voice, almost never swears. The other is a barrelful of expletives, ready to vent on Vent at the slightest irregularity. Remember, these are equally progressed guilds, but swapping raidleaders would be a disaster, because of the management style each set of raid members expects. It might be an insurmountable barrier.

I’ll leave you with an anecdote from my raidleading days back in Karazhan. We were undergeared and had managed a double pull, which our two priests had managed to get under control with on-the-ball shackling.

Then our (on the lower edge of competent) holy paladin dropped a consecrate under the shackles, making things ten times harder. The next thing heard on teamspeak was my bellow of:

“Which f***ing idiotic paladin did that?”

I’d never sworn at a raid member before, and I never needed to again. Sometimes an unexpected curve ball from a raidleader can do good. That can only work if the raid already has a well defined set of expectations of its leader.

Not so long ago, in fact, only last week, I said that Sartharion with three drakes up was still almost impossible for a prot warrior to main tank. Funny how these things work out.

Pretty much exactly the same as last week, we downed Yogg early in the evening and again had the qaundary of what to do for the rest of the night. Once again being without Feral tank or DK, I was unceremoniously plonked down in front of the dragon, a Gnomish sacrifice. This time, though, we had a Plan, deserving of the capital P. It was  Plan that required careful communication between myself and the healers, but not much else. If you too want to main tank Sartharion as a warrior, here’s what you will need:

• Two Priests – one  Discipline, one Holy
• One Paladin (spec doesn’t really matter, but don’t use your paladin offtank for this)

Tanking is much the same as with two, one or no drakes still up.  There is only one pain point through the entire encounter, and it’s at the moment that the second drake lands. At this point, if you’re lucky, the first drake will be dead. If not, it’s still achievable but you’ll need to be even more on the ball. At this point you need to call whenever there’s an incoming firebreath, for the appropriate cooldown to be used:

• Guardian Spirit
• Shield Wall
• Pain Suppression / Last Stand
• Hand of Sacrifice

By the time four breaths have come and gone, the second drake should also be dead, and you can (more or less) stroll to victory. Surprisingly the Tier 8 set bonus doesn’t help so much as you might expect, because the breaths come so often and unpredictably. Cooldown spec is, I think, more of a hindrance than a help here (by the time things are back off cooldown you’re a lot safer anyway).

So the moral of the story is – nothing’s impossible. It just takes careful application of your abilities, most especially the ability to communicate. Hav faith in your abilities and the rest will follow.

If you’ve done six impossible things this morning, why not round it off with breakfast at Milliway’s, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe?
- Douglas Adams

So? I hear you say. Trash rarely drops anything useful, and it’s there to slow us down.

Quite, I respond. It’s there to slow you down. This isn’t a bad thing, and it’s got nothing to do with how long it takes for you to clear all the bosses in an instance. Instead, the trash adds just enough delay to the instance. The delay is important.  The amount of trash present is also important, in that there has to be not too much and not too little.

I’ll go further than that. I’ll say that ideally each boss should be prefaced by 10-15 minutes of trash. Not so much that it takes you ages to clear, not so little  that it takes no time at all to get through.

The reason for it is this – Bosses are a time for concentration. Trash (which while being possibly lethal) is not in the same way. Sure, everyone needs to pay attention on the trash just as the boss, but by and large the trash is much easier than the boss, especially when it’s been learned, allowing a short space of time in which to recharge ready for full concentration on the boss.

Add to this respawn timers. Naturally there’s a short break between each attempt, but that’s too filled with analysis of what went wrong before, changes in strategy. By the time the ready check is made most players will be lucky if they’ve had thirty seconds of break. By adding a respawn timer (90 minutes may be the ideal, 2 hours is the most common) there’s an enforced break from the boss to allow raiders to recharge and return to the boss with a fresher mind.

Without the trash, I can see attempts on harder bosses within the Coliseum getting worse as the raid goes on, that tiny break provided by trash missing, leading to lack of concentration.

Guild sites should show: Where they’re at in progression, raid times, loot system, and an app link somewhere visible.

Sounds mostly sensible enough

• How far you’re progressed? Definitely makes sense for a prospective applicant to know if they’re horrendously undergeared for your content.
  
• Raid Times? Yep, makes no sense to apply to a guild if you’re never going to match their raiding schedule
• Application link? Make it easy to apply, of course. If you don’t you’ll lose out on applicants who can’t find your application form.

But the other one? Loot system? I completely fail to see why that should ever be something that needs advertising. In my experience, there are two types of applicant. There are those who are interested in raiding for its own sake, seeing the gear obtained as a means to an end (seeing more content, beating more difficult encounters). And then there are the people who want to get the gear so they can stand around in Dalaran and /flex at lesser-geared passers-by.

I’ve written extensively on the subject of loot systems before. There are some good, some bad, they’re all capable of being gamed in different ways (and if you meet someone who says their system is perfect, they’re a liar). But when someone asks the question “What DKP system do you use?”, in my experience what they really mean is one of two questions:

“How soon can I get to looking hardcore in Dalaran?”

or:

“How long will I have to put up with this crummy guild before I’m geared enough to find a better one?”

Players in well-progressed raiding guilds are almost inevitably there to experience the journey, not the destination. By asking the DKP question up-front, a prospective member is showing that they are thinking of their reward in terms of the pixels they can decorate their character with, rather than the satisfaction of having beaten a tough encounter.

If you’re interested in progression for progression’s sake then so long as it’s fair (and let’s be honest here any progression-oriented guild has to have a fair loot system or they’ll implode into a black hole of drama) it shouldn’t matter exactly what that system is. Almost all the players who would want to join your guild should be there for the teamwork, not the high-ilevel purples.

Progress should be its own reward. So long as the loot is distributed afterward in such a way as to make further progress as easy as possible (however you choose to define that), it shouldn’t matter too much how it is distributed.

“Shield Block also grants you 20% reduction to magical damage taken”

On the face of it this sounds absolutely fantastic. However, having looked closer, I’m not so sure. Just taking the tier 8 content into account that I’ve seen so far (ie, everything up to General Vezax), exactly how useful is it?

• Flame Leviathan. You’re in a vehicle. Nothing to see here, move along
• Ignis the Furnace Master – well, there’s Scorch, so it might be useful if you’re an offtank standing in the fire for a long time, but that’s about it
• Razorscale – Useless in phase 1, nice to have in phase 2, but Flame Breath comes too quickly to negate it all the time. So kind of useful, but by the time you have 4 pieces of tier 8, you probably have good enough gear to survive the breaths anyway.
• XT-002 – Pretty much all physical damage, except for bombs, and if you’re getting hit by those you have bigger problems
• Kologarn. Again, all physical damage. Move along, nothing to see
• Assembly of Iron – Fusion Punch was made for the bonus. A nice reduction on an ability which can be reacted to. A decent use for it at last.
• Auriaya – well, if your raid’s doing it right, Sonic Screech will hit for so little as to be trivial. No really good uses here either.
• Hodir – Well, Frozen Blows might count, but odds are that if you’re wearing full frost resistance gear, you don’t have the 4-piece bonus. And if you don’t have full frost gear, you’re likely to be wearing SBV gear (Frozen blows that are completely blocked do no frost damage).
• Thorim – Steadily increasing physical damage. Not really much help
• Freya – Nothing hits very hard, really. I guess it might be useful for holding Exploding Lashers in place, but really, why dice with death when you don’t have to?
• Mimiron – Leviathan Mk2′s Plasma Blast was made for the set bonus. But after that? Maybe to relieve your healers a little in phase 2.
• General Vezax – again, if the tank’s taking magical damage, someone’s doing something wrong.

So, not great, really. In a fit of curiosity I looked over some old Sartharion + 3 drakes log parses to see if it might have been useful there. It definitely wouldn’t help enoughwith main tanking Sarth himself – the breaths come too often for that. For Shadron, Tenebron and Vesperon, maybe, but not a huge amount.

So, yeah, there you go. I wouldn’t say to knock yourself out trying to get the 4-piece warrior tier 8 set bonus, at least not yet anyway. There just aren’t enough practical applications to make it the killer upgrade it might appear to be on first sight.

EDIT: Veneretio points out that the set bonus comes into its own a lot more once you start to attempt some of the hard modes. I can see how that might be the case, but as I’m not yet running hard modes, I’ll wait to see them before completely reversing my opinion. On top of that, not everyone cares too much about hard modes.