Month: May 2009

It’s been a pretty crazy week here, so many of my routines have gone by the wayside including regularly checking Google analytics.  I find that website completely fascinating, and I enjoy seeing exactly where my readers are coming from.  I think its amazing that I have multiple users reading my page in Thailand, Qatar, Malta, some hits from Iraq, and 3 users from the Isle of Guernsey, that until today I didn’t even know existed.  So in the daze of this ending week I completely missed the fact that at some point on Tuesday evening I passed the 10,000 unique visitors mark.

I am completely amazed that in just a few days over a month I have been able to bring that many people to read my content.  I am feeling validated on one hand, but on the other hand extremely expose considering I have had that many people digging around in my head.  For the most part, my blog entries are my stream of consciousness, and expound upon thoughts and ideas I have built over the last five years playing the World of Warcraft.  Regardless of the website showing some signs of success, I still feel very amateur and am still “finding my voice”.

I realize that a good deal of the readership came during the wowinsider bump, but each day I keep getting linked from more high quality blogs, and more regular readers.  I want to throw out a blanket thank you to every one of my readers for the support they have shown.  Also I want to thank the wow blogging community for quickly accepting me into their numbers.  Blog Azeroth has been a great community with tons of good ideas, helpful tips and constructive criticism.

Thanks for the Continued Support

Yesterday I honestly did not have it in me to make a post.  I won’t lie, the raid Tuesday night was pretty horrific.  Combined with the feeling of general uselessness that I had been feeling, the general “badness” of our attempts the night before pushed me in to a stupor.  This combined with not having a good deal of time to even formulate my ideas (still pushing up against a tough deadline at work), caused me to fail once more to make my daily post.

I spent a good deal of the day bickering back and forth with one of the other raid leaders, trying to figure out what went wrong and how to keep it from ever happening again.  The source of my frustration is that, we as a raid backslid.  The previous week we fought hard to down XT, and when we finally did I thought we had reached that magical click moment, or at the very least it felt like a click.  However this week, in our push to get some solid attempts in on Kologarn, we skipped Razorscale and Ignis and instead spent the night wiping over and over on the big dumb bot.

The failure of a few players to be able to react in a timely fashion to bombs caused us to wipe over and over.  There is nothing more disheartening than having a perfect attempt go south when a single player detonates the entire raid.  We fought valiantly, and our players kept trying to recover from the same few people failing to react.  I tried my best to keep calm, but officer chat quickly became a long string of obscenities abbreviated by the bit of sentence structure. 

We finally adjusted our strategy to be a bit more forgiving, and managed to pull out a win, but the whole process left me angry beyond reason.  The last thing I needed to post were back to back “emo rants” about how players need to “pull their heads out”.  So instead I refrained from posting anything at all.  Today I am feeling more confident and looking forward to playing cleanup on the bosses we left behind and then pushing on to get those illusive tries on Kologarn.

Springtime for Ignis

Last night I logged in not really sure what I would be doing.  Wednesday is usually the night I end up tagging along with some non-guild/raid friends on 10 and 25 man instances, getting a much needed break from tanking on one of my other raiding alts.  After the “failure to launch” of a 25 man Naxxramas, and the horrible fail that was a PUG 10 man Malygos, I settled down to dps as my retribution paladin in a 10 man Ulduar run by a friends guild.

I am one of those players that learn most by doing, and whenever given a chance I like to tag along with a different raid group and see how they approach fights differently.  Last nights run yielded an amazing gem.  Up until now we had been doing what I like to refer to as the “Box Method” for Ignis as illustrated by the Tankspot video.  The basics of the strategy are to move ignis in a 4 point path around the room as to minimize the scorch damage. 

The negatives of this method are that it causes the raid to spread out, and you have to have players capable of doing 5k single hits watching both pools.  This makes the healing assignments fairly spread thin, and AOE healing becomes fairly inefficient.  The other major issue you have is that during the fight Ignis will run to a random player and dunk them in the fire pot at his crotch.  Because of the travel time for players on the outskirts of the room guarding the pools, it can cause Ignis to lay patches of scorched earth in unpredictable locations.

I’ve drawn this diagram to help out my raid adjust to the new strategy.  Because of the way it looks on the diagram I have decided to start calling this method the “Clover Method”.  The melee becomes the stem of the clover and the scorch path I will make with the boss becomes the pedals.  The pull starts with me standing on the horizontal line that divides the room directly between the pulls.  One of our hunters will misdirect Ignis onto me, and as he moves into place, I will spin him so that my body is standing on the A in the diagram.

The first scorch always comes quickly so I will need to move to where I am standing on the B within a few minutes of the initial pull.  I will be standing just out of the range of the first patch of scorch.  The melee should not have to move to stay in range with the backside of Ignis.  The diagram places the Ignis dot for scorch B a little higher than it would actually be, but the diagram is easier to read this way. 

I will continue to move him to point C at the next scorch, still trying to make sure the melee can have constant contact with the boss.  When the third scorch lands I will circle strafe until I am back on point A, which should now be clear thanks to the timer of the first patch.  This process is repeated for tanking the boss until he dies.  The next issue in the fight is managing the adds.

Always in the past we have had 2 casters that are capable of shattering the constructs guarding each pool.  In this scenario the only pool where a construct will be shattered is the left side.  This allows us to have fewer casters tied up tending to the pool, and gives us a greater ease of recovery if one of them happens to go down.  We will continue to alternate our two deathknight offtanks, but the scorched earth will be in closer proximity and should allow for the adds to become molten faster.

This strategy worked beautifully on 10 man last night, and I am thinking it will translate extremely well to the 25 man version as well.  It takes care of many of the issues we seemed to have with the fight, and should make it more recoverable as a whole.  The biggest piece I believe is that the add maintenance should be far more reliable, since we are only really working in one smaller quadrant of the room.  Healing assignments should be much easier to maintain as well, and with everyone being clumped up we should be able to finally utilize our chain healers.

Raiding 101

Apparently players are starting to think I actually know what I am talking about.  How I managed to fool them is a complete mystery, but Nibuca of Mystical Chicanery has asked for my assistance on her newly adopted project:  Raider 101.  The goal of the site is to be a Wiki document to help players who want to improve their raid game by offering tips, tricks and tutorials.  I’ve only just learned about the site’s existence today, but in the small amount of time I have looked around it seems like a rather valiant effort.  I will be looking through some of the warrior related information specifically and helping to tweak it a bit, so I will try my best not to screw things up.

It definitely looks like a great resource to send your guild, raid and friends to who are looking for help answering various class related issues.  Unlike wowwiki or elitist jerks, the information is distilled down into easy to read basic howto guides.  If you are looking for some assitance, especially with alts, I would highly suggest you spend a bit of time browsing through the wiki.

A Pirate’s Life For Me

The last little bit today is a shameless commercial plug.  One of the founding members of House Stalwart,  Ed/Saggart/Sgian/Shadoes, has been working on a side project for the last several months.  At great personal expense to sanity he has become a member of the pirate band, The Musical Blades, and over the course of the summer has been touring the renfaire circuit with his unique brand of showmanship and musical prowess.  Many bands that frequent that scene are what I would call a Gimmick band, but in the case of the blades they are all truly amazing musicians capable of standing up against any act out there.

This past weekend they released their latest CD, “Live at Pubs and Pirate-Core”, which is a compilation of live recordings, piratecore and a few unreleased bonus tracks.  From what I have heard of the various tracks of the course of several lunch outings I would say its a good release.  I know over the past weekend at the St Louis renfaire they sold a good deal of copies.  While it still lacks my favorite track, “Run out the guns”, which is waiting in the wings for their next studio album, I was glad to see Derelict make its debut.

I would check out their myspace music page for some good examples of their repertoire, or if you are in the greater St. Louis area, they will be playing the next two weekends at the St. Louis Renaissance Festival.  I’ve gotten to hear a good deal of their unreleased material, and I have to say the next Studio album will be pretty amazing.  This is coming from me, who doesn’t normally go in for this style of music.  The festival atmosphere combined with perfect five part harmony is pretty near impossible to beat.

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Forgive me readers for I have sinned…  it has been 4 days since my last confession.  Friday was an extremely busy day for me, and then we had our long memorial day weekend here in the united states.  During which time I had zero desire to sit down and think of something worth reading.  I have all these “rainy day” topics in my head, but have been unable to bring myself to sit down and actually formulate them.

To further my sinning, I have begun to play a deathknight.  This is only a sin for those who know me well, and have heard me lament the fact that so many players abandoned “useful” classes to level a deathknight.  I lost my tanking partner in crime, an amazing feral druid named Sanctifi, to the dark class.  In addition to that we lost our best healing shaman to a deathknight.  However both were very open and up front about this, and both have become the two deathknights I look up to the most.  I patterned my DK after Roisen, at least in that I am leveling blood spec for maximum survivability.

I have to say that right now, leveling as a deathknight is much like I typed IDDQD in my chat window and turned entered “Degreelessness Mode”.  I started the weekend at 56 and as of last night was halfway through 64.  Right now he has taken the spot that the boomkin had, of my favorite non-raid activity.  If I keep this obsession up I will end up with a fourth 80 before I know it.  Yesterday I was happily playing along and “accidentally dinged”.  You can tell I am enjoying myself, when I am not watching the xp bar at all.  I need to slow down a bit, I have blown past my “leveling buddy”.

Dealing with the Guilt

As the main tank of our guild and raid, I carry with me a large package of responsibility, and with that comes a large degree of guilt and pressure.  Last night we had planned a second night of 10 man ulduar, in an attempt to push on and get Assembly of Iron and maybe Auriaya.  However yesterday I woke up with immense back pain, which I attribute to the extremely uncomfortable chair I was forced to sit in at the lake on Sunday.  As the day drug on the pain got worse, and when we arrived home from the movies yesterday afternoon, I took one Flexeril that I had from a previous back injury.

It completely knocked me on my ass.  I tried laying down for a bit before raid time, which caused me to get online a few minutes late, but this really had zero effect.  As I stand there, in the rooms just prior to the Assembly of Iron trash, I was quite literally unable to keep my eyes open.  I knew that without a doubt I would wipe the raid multiple times that night.  A few players noted that they too were not really feeling up to raiding, so I thought that if I stepped up to the plate and announced that I just couldn’t handle it, the raid would eventually dissolve. 

I am finding out this morning that this was not the case.  So this morning I am dealing with a severe case of guilt as I abandoned the raid, and the other players who were also not feeling up to raiding, apparently swallowed it down and pushed onwards.  So for other players who bring to the table a key role in a raid…  how do you handle the guilt when you can’t make it?  I still feel like me stepping out was the best option both for me and the raid, but I can’t seem to get past the sense that I failed as a whole.  Had I known the drug was going to have such a serious effect I would have just dealt with the pain.

Dealing with the Obsolescence

The other thing I am struggling with this morning is the general feeling of being obsolete.  It is really hard not to feel like the fate of the raid rests on your shoulders.  When you are reminded of the fact that your presence really doesn’t matter that much, it is kind of hard to swallow.  Last night, not only did the raid move on without a hitch in my absence, but they apparently downed a brand new boss.  Which of course, dropped a new piece of tanking gear, giving our off tank one more piece of gear ahead of me.  So this morning I am also struggling with that feeling that maybe my raid doesn’t need me at all. 

There are times I feel pretty bulletproof, but there are also times that I feel like I am wearing paper armor.  I am one of those players that strives to make sure I have the best possible gear for every situation.  It feels like, especially in Ulduar, that our class is even more gear dependant than it has been in the past.  With the crappy luck that I have had recently in getting the upgrades that I really need to remain viable, I am feeling very outmoded and ready for the recycle bin.

I should be excited and happy, that I have somehow managed to build a raid that is self healing and can keep moving along happily in my absence.  On so many levels I am, because I am proud of the fact that we have so many leaders in Stalwart, that any one of them can pick up the slack when something goes wrong.  But at the same time, it is very much a blow to my ego.  How dare the world not grind to a halt when I can’t be there!  I say that in joking, but at the same time, it is a bit disheartening that things went so smoothly without me.

Leading by Example

I felt it was important to make a post like this.  I have posted a good deal of raid and guild advice in the last few weeks.  All of it has been nurtured and compiled over years of leading a guild and raid.  But by the same token, I think its important for you the public, to see that even though the final product comes together smoothly, I have the same fears and doubts that every player has.  I am by no means special in any way other than the fact that I have a good bunch of loyal friends who will seemingly follow me to the gates of hell itself.

I am very much the type of person who will admit when I don’t know an answer.  Often times I don’t know, or don’t even know where to look.  However I am always willing to work through things as they come along.  Right now I feel guilty for abandoning my raid for the good of my own health, but I know that it was the right decision as I hit the pillow at 8 pm and didn’t wake for a second until the alarm went off this morning at 5 am.  Right now I feel obsolete because of the shitty luck I have had with gear, and the success that the raid has had without me.  However I know that many players simply feel more comfortable on the nights they are there, and that while things go successfully, they don’t necessarily go smoothly.  Me making this post, is in a way working through the issues I don’t know the solutions to publically. 

Every now and then you have a day when your normal pattern goes out the window.  This is one of those days.  I’ve juggled meetings, fires, phone calls, and all the while trying to wrap up one of my projects for a meeting at 4 pm.  Normally I spend my lunch hour devising my daily post and then writing it up when I get back into the office. 

Some days I set out in the morning knowing roughly what I am going to write about, other days the spark of inspiration comes to me throughout the course of the morning or during my lunch excursion.  Today… the spark has failed to find me.  I considered licking my Jeep’s battery at lunch for a “jolt” of inspiration, but I didn’t figure the raid wanted to take the chance of me going into cardiac arrest when we have so much to clear.  So here I sit, trying to steal a few minutes of time to sit down and compose anything worth while for my readers.  I have already typed two whole paragraphs so I seem to be actually doing this.

Forgotten-ramas

Last night was pretty frantic.  I had a slew of errands to run, involving the dreaded act of shopping.  I carefully juggling a list of items to buy at the grocery store, hurriedly put them away and made a plate to eat, all the while trying not to pass out from the heat.  When I finally sat down, frustrated and surly, I was looking forward to a quiet evening doing nothing much.  Alas this was not apparently the plan.

Last Sunday I had tried to help a friend get his other guilds 25 man Naxxramas run off the ground.  Unfortunately 11 am on a Sunday is a piss poor time to try and plan a raid on Argent Dawn.  After standing around for an hour trying to make people appear magically out of the ether, something I do quite often if you have read many of my posts.  They finally called the raid, and now here comes the tricky part, agreed that they would shoot for Wednesday, a part that I had apparently completely blocked out of my memory.

So imagine how utterly confused I was when I logged in last night to a barrage of tells from Lenwen, informing me of how many they were able to get so far for “the raid”.  So in my attempt to be a good friend, I resolved to spending my evening in a raid group.  The positive however is that I would be taking my relatively newly minted boomkin, Loamis.  After about 45 minutes of haranguing players to join the effort we entered the zone.

For Honor

It was for honor’s sake that I kept my word and attended the raid last night, and it was apt that the guild leading the raid was in fact named “For Honor”.  I have had minimal exposure to them, but so far I have to say they are a pretty like minded guild.  Shalomz was the raid lead, and did a great job keeping us moving along quickly, and at the same time still doing a great job healing while trying to juggle loot master responsibilities. 

They currently really only raid 10 man instances, other than trying to pug together a 25 man Naxxramas.  While we had a few players that I would label as terribad last night, all of the “For Honor” players seemed to really know their classes and be able to perform the roles assigned.  We had a few weak links in the healing and tanking teams, but overall the night went pretty smoothly given the very late start.  Really hoping that a few of the players take up my offer and apply to Duranub.  We could use the infusion of fresh players and fresh ideas…  especially some fresh caster dps.

R.I.P. WoW Insider

Late Tuesday, the beloved WoW news sight transitioned from WoWInsider.com to more flashy WoW.com.  With it went the clean and easy to read layout, that was replaced by a cluttered and confused one.  No longer is the site a pure news venture, but instead a bizarre WoW Social Networking/Twitter clone.  It would be hard for me to put into words how much I dislike the fact that they took this direction. 

However, now that they have, we the formerly loyal readers will have to adjust.  With the horrible layout comes a bunch of fairly slick features.  If you notice on the sidebar, there is a new wow.com profile link.  This links to my new Belghast profile page, which is much like your standard facebook-era social networking page.  The core functionality that will be the make or break feature of the design is the incorporation of an addon that promises to give you the ability to post twitter like “micro blog” entries from inside the wow interface. 

In additional to user written entries it also keeps a running log of various status changes in game, in the vein of keeping your friends updated on what you are doing.  Because of the raid last night, I did not really get time to set up the UI portion, but the blogger WoWGrrl has a good example of the type of feed you get with normal play. I hope to get my addon set up and feeding data by raid time.  The service offering reminds me of a much more verbose version of Raptr.com, which by all notions should have become a much bigger player in the “social gaming” community than it ever did.

The Fish Feast Effect

In closing, I present to you the fish feast effect.  When I presented the quandary, that I was busy and uninspired… Bellwether at 4Haelz suggested that I write about the Fish Feast effect.  Basically the general Fish Feast Effect happens only to the players who are responsible enough to bring their own class based stat food to a raid.  As soon as one or more of these players choose to each their own food, in an obsessive act of preparation for the coming fight, a fish feast will be “donated” to the raid. 

It is a truism that no fish feast may be laid down until at least one playing, preferably one of the more anal retentive players, has begun to eat their own food.  Bonus points are given if you can time the Fish Feast so that they have begun to eat, but not yet received the well fed buff.  It is also necessary that no less than one druid in bear or moonkin form must eat so that it places their butt firmly on top of the recently grounded platter, thereby making it difficult for additional players to benefit from the “feast”. 

 

Keep an open eye, and always observe the fish feast effect