It’s amazing how phenomenally boring it is when everyone in your department is on vacation.  I went from being so busy I could barely see straight, to essentially sitting here babysitting an install process where I am communicating with a third party over email.  I am sitting back at my desk now after a quick jaunt into the adjacent tower, to a break room that always smells like a curious mix of burnt popcorn and wet dog, for a quick infusion of caffeine.  Hopefully the clock will learn to move faster.

Crusader’s Coliseum

Yesterday we began to receive a trickle of information about the next big patch and the content it would include.  Amongst the blatant nerfs and lackluster “tradeskill improvements” were a smattering of details about the new raid dungeon.  Firstly I like that it is shaping up to be 3 unique dungeons, with their own merits.  The thought of a semi random sequence of bosses that has been hinted at before also seems very favorable.  When Northrend was released, Violet Hold was both the most loved and most hated dungeon due to the random bosses.  If there really does end up to be a random element, I hope that they at least do the smart thing and have some of the items on a shared loot table, like we saw in Naxxramas.

The most intriguing tidbit however is the concept of the “Crusaders’ Tribute”.  Honestly I think you could call filing your taxes a “Tribute Run” and I would at least do it once, just the sheer merit of the enjoyable memories I had doing tribute runs in Dire Maul.  Adding an extra special, sneaky, challenging way through a raid dungeon sounds like good mojo to me.  Granted everything they are saying, makes the new tribute run sound absolutely NOTHING like the original.  However count me in for running through it a few times.  I just hope that it does not turn me back into the frothing asshole, barking a furious string of orders amongst the expletives, that the Zul’Aman timed runs did.

A Few of My Favorite things

This patch seems to be the “oh yeah, here are a bunch of things we forgot to do ages ago” patch, in order to play catch up for the next big paradigm shift.  I am breaking from my normal format and doing a change / comment type structure.

• Block Value: The amount of bonus block value on all items has been doubled. This does not affect the base block value on shields or block value derived from strength.

• On-Use Block Value Items: All items and set bonuses that trigger temporary increases to block value have been modified. Instead of increasing their block value amount by 100% like other items, they have all had their effect durations doubled. This applies to Glyph of Deflection, Gnomeregan Autoblocker, Coren’s Lucky Coin, Lavanthor’s Talisman, Libram of Obstruction, Tome of the Lightbringer, Libram of the Sacred Shield, the tier 8 paladin Shield of Righteousness bonus, the tier 5 paladin Holy Shield bonus, and the tier 5 warrior Shield Block bonus.

This is pretty much too little too late, but it is nice to see.  It is painfully obvious that block is not cutting it, as in comparison with the other options like dodge/parry, so I am glad to know that they are going to address this in the future.  It both excites and frightens me to think about what zany scheme they will come up with as its eventual replacement.  For now I just hope this is going to be good enough to make it “less than useless”.

• Emblem System Changes

• Both the 10 and 25 player instances of the Crusaders’ Coliseum drop a new Emblem of Triumph.

• Any dungeons that previously dropped Emblems of Heroism or Valor, such as Naxxramas or Heroic Halls of Stone, will now drop Emblems of Conquest instead. Emblems of Conquest can still be converted to Valor or Heroism.

• The heroic dungeon daily quest will now reward 2 Emblems of Triumph and the normal daily dungeon quest will reward 1 Emblem of Triumph.

• The existing achievements to collect 1, 25, 50, etc. Emblems of Heroism, Valor, and Conquest have been converted to Feats of Strength since Heroism and Valor Emblems are no longer attainable.

• New achievements have been added to collect various amounts of any combination of emblems.

I have seen MUCH gnashing of teeth regarding this one in the last twenty four hours.  Pretty much this feels exactly like the same elitist complaining that happened when 2.4 was announced and the stats on all the new badge gear was shown to be roughly equivalent to that of black temple.  While I have posted against the general dumbing down of content, I do think that from time to time you need to help the player population “catch up”. 

As a raid leader, we are having the same problem this summer that so many other raids are having.  Summertime means waning attendance, and it is becoming increasingly harder and harder to find a fresh infusion of players who are already Tier 7.5 era geared to fill in on Ulduar raids.  Making it so that every player can get the same level of emblems regardless of it being heroics, 10 mans, or 25 man raids makes it that much easier to catch players up who have the drive and skill, but not the gear.  Trust me…  this is a GOOD thing for raiding in general, not to mention for adding flexibility to your raid making it easier for players to gear up offset gear.

• Mote Extractor now has innate tracking for gas clouds while it is in your inventory. Tracking of gas clouds has been removed from goggles.

It’s always the most simple items that seem to make me the happiest.  Since I graduated out of the rather impotent engineering helm, to better tanking options (amazing that the last one served me well until tier 6, but this one was replaced by a nonset piece in the first dungeon), I’ve had to ritually enchant my belt with Spynoculars so that I could see elemental nodes on the mini-map in game.  Now this practice becomes a think of the past and makes room for…

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  Spynocular belt enchantment changed to a Brassbolt Rebreather, allowing engineers to breathe underwater.

Yep you read that right.  Now engineers can put a place an enchant on our belts that will allow us the ability to breathe underwater.  I can finally remove my Deepdive Helmet from my inventory and finally and forever upgrade my Mastercraft Kalu’ak Fishing Pole, to my trendy Jeweled Fishing Pole with the spiffy phoenix wings.  Like I said, it’s always the dumb things that make me happy.

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  Players with 300 or higher cooking have a chance to find a Waterlogged Recipe in the Bag of Fishing Treasures awarded by the Northrend fishing dailies. This item can be traded to other players and rewards several Dalaran Cooking Rewards when turned in.

Another stupid change, but one that makes me very happy.  Considering I enjoy doing the fishing daily quest, this will allow players to catch up on the cooking patterns they are missing, since in general…  the cooking daily sucks.

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  Potion Injectors now increase the amount gained by 25% when used by engineers. Quantity produced by recipes for Runic Healing and Mana Injectors has been increased.

If this is how I read it, that engineers will now gain a 25% bonus from using health and mana pots from an injector, this is a pretty monumental change.  Since we only get one shot off a pot per boss fight, this is an “oh shit” button that I hold in reserve.  Anything that gives me a little more health is a very very good thing.

 

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  The Nexus: The Oculus & The Eye of Eternity  – Vehicles (drakes) used in these instances now scale with item level.

Thank you soooo freakin much for this change.  Heroic Oculus is without a doubt the most scabrous piece of crap a seasoned player will ever have to run their friends through.   Almost every single player I know who is stalled on the Champion of the Frozen Wastes title, is hung up on this silly requirement.  Trying to teach someone who has not been through this place a dozen times or more how to do all the events is sheer torture.  If you manage to get all the new players through to the final boss, trying to give them a crash course in how not to suck at flying a drake can give water-boarding a run for its money any day in the race for most extreme officially sanctioned torture method.  Any small boost in our ability to pull it off with dead weight is a miracle.  So once again…  Thank  you blizzard.

The Just Plain Wierd

There are several things in the upcoming patch that are just plain kooky.  Patching in Northrend Children’s Week, when the event is almost a year away from happening again…  what the heck is the point.  Giving rogues the ability to wield axes when there is only ONE endgame main hand axe currently…  what exactly was the point here.  Putting Ravasaurs into the game finally in Ungoro Crater, only 5 years too late…  not entirely sure what the point was here either.

Honestly this patch feels like a combination of all the scraps left lying on the floor after they build other patches.  This is the chum to ready the waters for something bigger.  I can only imagine that the something bigger, is ultimately Icecrown, and this patch will serve as bite sized nibblets to tide us over until the real meal.  The nerfs to Deathknights and Retadins were probably needed, but I would still rather seem them bring up other classes to their level rather than push those excelling into the dirt.  We will just have to see how everything shakes out after the inevitable months of PTR service.

You can tell that you live in a connected society when opening your inbox on a day like today, you are assaulted with dozens of automated messages from the various sites you have signed up on before…  all wishing you the most sincere Happy Birthday.  So apart from my wife, the first birthday greetings came rolling in from a chorus of mail bots over night.  I’ve tried not to talk much about real life here, saving it for mostly game based topics (much to the ire of some key individuals), but on a day like today I figured I would make an exception.

Makes you realize how small the world has become, as the well wishers start rolling in on every platform imaginable from facebook to email to IM.  Birthdays lose their lustre as an adult.  Gone are the elaborate birthday parties and the months of being told no because it was “close to your birthday”.  Forgotten are the party games, and the looking forward to gifts…  because chances are if you really really wanted it you’d have gotten it yourself.  What you are left with, however is probably the most important part of birthdays.  The realization that there are all these people out there, who genuinely care about you, enough to remember that you do in fact have a birthday, and stop for a moment in their busy days to wish you a happy one.

Stabbity to Sliceity

Over the last few days I have been helping one of my good friends who has always been a dagger rogue, try and build a Hemorrhage build.  The whole process has made me realize exactly how different the life of a stabbity rogue, as I call them, is from that of a Sword/Mace/Fist rogue.  First you have to have the background that I have raided as a rogue many times, but never ONCE played a rogue that used a dagger for anything other that part of a macro to equip it only long enough for an ambush.  I don’t like positional attacks, and in general I hate the stealth dynamic…  so the real question is why the hell did I play a rogue in the first place?

I’ve always modeled my rogues off of the Swashbucklers of those classic sword fighting movies.  As a result I have either played a combat swords build, or a hemorrhage build, both of which support that play style very well.  I guess I never really thought about the differences in the styles, until sitting down with someone I feel to be the most adept rogue I know, and going over the basics of how to play “hemo”.  I felt like Master Yoda, asking him to “unlearn” what he has learned. 

I’ve never claimed to know much about being a rogue, nor really excelled at playing one either.  There was a time when I could easily top the meter in “alt” runs, but most of it was by sheer brute force.  It was not until today that I realized that the two play styles are almost as different as say a Feral Druid and a Resto Druid.  Were I to sudden switch my focus to daggers, I would have to go through the very same “101” training to even know what abilities to use.  It is funny that five years into wow, I still learn new things on a regular basis.

The Ugly, The Bad…

This week has brought two drastically different raid experiences so far.  In Duranub, Tuesday night we had probably the hardest time we have ever experienced trying to pull together a workable raid.  It was nearly impossible to find enough healers to make the raid work.  Normally we run 6-7 healers on our 25 man raids, and this gives us plenty of healing across the board.  However last Tuesday we were able to pull together what could be best termed as 4 1/2 healers.  Within a few minutes of starting the raid, one of those healers got pulled away on a work emergency.

We sat there after Leviathan trying desperately to make things work.  We had one of our “retired” raiders, magically show up when needed and helped solidify the ranks enough for us to keep moving forward.  It was a very very bad night.  We only managed to get Leviathan and XT down, and when the fill in healer needed to leave we were forced to call it early.  It was far from our worst night, but it was very trying on the raid as a whole and caused by nothing but attendance issues hitting all at the same time.  The people who were there made a valiant effort, but at the end of the day we just didn’t have the oomph to continue.  The hardest decision a leader can make is knowing when we simply do not have the needed resources to keep going.

The Amazing!

Now we scan forward to last night, a night that I honestly thought I wouldn’t be able to raid.  Our little 10 man group is having the same regular attendance issues that our 25 man has been, but through some luck we managed to pull together a group with relative ease and get into the instance only 15 minutes late.  We have yet to actually EVER start on time, so only 15 minutes late, instead of an hour late, seemed like a breeze of fresh air. 

We had a pretty unorthodox grouping, including 3 mages…  but we made it work pretty well, even though we struggled with some DPS issues throughout the night.  Each fight seemed to take twice as long as normal.  Part of this was caused by the fact that the DPS warrior realized late into the evening that she had been in half tanking gear for the majority of the night.  The other issues seemed far less intangible, since the damage numbers didn’t look all that off. 

The amazing part however is how smoothly everything went.  The mood of the night was light, and we joked back and forth throughout the raid.  Everyone just seemed to do their jobs without prompting, and the night saw us clearing Flame Leviathan, XT-002 Deconstructor, Kologarn, Auriaya, and Razorscale in our 2 hour window.  This was by far our most successful night yet in the 10 man raid, and sets us up for attempts on Hodir first thing Monday night.  Auriaya caused a few false starts, but once everything fell together we downed her like she was on farm status with very few issues.

Change the Randomizer

For as much fun as we had, the main frustration of the night was not the low dps.  The annoyance du jour came from the fact that every single boss that night dropped Paladin and Shaman loot which quickly got DE’d.  Had we a shaman or paladin, this would have been a great night, but since we rarely if ever have them…  seeing those item drops just adds to the frustration of loot in general.  It would be nice if blizzard would change the way loot worked, so that only items usable by classes in the raid would drop.  I realize this would take alot of work, and change the whole dynamic of loot in general…  but isn’t it about time?

Blizzard made great strides with the addition of tokenized loot (set tokens/badges), and other games like Warhammer have created versions of universal loot in the “repairable” items system (ruined gear that repairs into something useable by your class).  I think it is time for one of these companies to truly push the paradigm to the next level and introduce “intelligent loot”.  So that if you come into an instance with a warrior, priest, warlock, mage, and rogue…  you would see an item usable for one of those 4 classes drop from each boss.  Granted there would be ways to game the system, but surely there has to be some solution available.  Nothing is more annoying than an otherwise amazing night tarnished by the fact that so much loot went to disenchant.

Over the last few days I have made a series of posts titled GroupCraft.  It is my attempt to create a general guide on how to get groups going in the World of Warcraft.  In my guild this has been an issue, with players simply not sure how best to approach the process of pulling together groups.  These resulting posts are an expanded version of the basic advice I have given on our own forums.  In an attempt to make the final posts easy to find, I am creating this quick summary post with links to each of the individual articles.

• Preamble:  Networking
• Part One:  Communication
• Part Two:  Assembly

Previous Sections

• GroupCraft:  Networking (Preamble)
• GroupCraft:  Communication (Part One)

Assembly

In the previous two sections I have covered a basic theory of networking in online games, and some pointers in how to better communicate your needs and intentions to your fellow players.  Each of these lays the key groundwork for grouping, but has little to do with the actual building blocks of the group itself.  Today’s topic however will cover the true meat and potatoes of dark art of GroupCraft…  the ability to assemble a group from nothing.

Assembling the group relies very much on the two tenants covered earlier.  First as I have said before, you will need a stable pool of players to draw from, and in order to achieve best results you are going to have to bring more to the table than just the looking for group channel.  On top of this, you need the ability to communicate your intentions clearly to the players that you are attempting to recruit into your group.  Not everyone wants to be a leader, but there comes a time where you must decide to learn to fish for yourself.  These guides are my attempt to pass on some of the knowledge I have accumulated.

Know The Roles

Everything we ever needed to learn about building a group we can learn from the original Final Fantasy for the Nintendo console.  For the time being we are going to forget those abominations known as Red Wizards even existed… damned dirty hybrid casters.  Essentially the world can be divided into 3 teams for the sake of GroupCraft.

Tanks – This is the heavily armored badass who gets his jollies by pissing off the mobs.  The more mobs he has pissed off, the happier he is.  This is the guy who keeps everyone alive by deflecting all the attacks his way.

Healers – This is the life giver who furiously watches your health bar making sure that you get topped off when you need it.  They are the heart of the group, and make it possible to keep moving at a steady pace. 

DPS – These come in various shapes and sizes but essentially all perform the same role.  They make things dead.  Since burning crusade DPS classes have pretty much all been interchangeable for the sake of grouping, and all you simply need is a player behind the keyboard that can pay attention, and react to changes in the environment.

Final Fantasy was really the first game that introduced class balance, and allowed the players to pick and chose their own groups.  The “core” of the group was always comprised of some class that could take large amounts of damage, and some class that could heal the group up.  From that point on it was left to the individual style of each player.  Granted this concept has been alive in pen and paper gaming since its inception, but FF1 was the first title to really display this well and clearly for the video gaming audience.

Build Your Core First

The key to building a group easily is to lock down your core classes first.  Every group must have one healer and one tank to remain successful, so it is always best to make arrangements for a tank and a healer first before filling any other roles.  For me this was easy, considering my main character Belghast, is a tank.  All I had to do to complete my core was find an able bodied healer.  For DPS, you need a ready reserve of tanks and healers to be able to pull in for grouping purposes. 

I have a number of DPS Alts however, and have been able to do this all pretty simply, so long as I get to know the tanks and healers and their personal preferences.  I always find it amusing when you see someone looking for more, stating all they lack is a tank and healer.  In truth, if you do not have a tank and healer, you do not have a group.  Locking down the core, allows you gauge what kinds of dps will complete then quintet the best.

Tanks and Healers more than any player live in a constant deluge of people asking them to do things.  A few months after the release of Burning Crusade, there was a great drought of able bodied tanks.  As a result I found myself logging in every night to a barrage of 15 or more tells.  With Wrath of the Lich king, the absence was initially healing, so as a result all of the healers I knew were the ones in high demand.  As I stated in the communication topic, it is always best to try and directly communicate with your healers and tanks.  More than any other classes they are almost always in high demand, so it is not realistic to expect them to respond to open channel questions.  However once you find a handful of stable tanks and healers, your group assembly will go much easier.

Know Your Missions

When assembling a group it is extremely important for you to know the mission at hand.  Each dungeon or raid requires a few key elements for utmost success.  For example, it is impossible to complete the Deathknight wing in Heroic Naxxramas with at least two able bodied priests for the mind control.  Another example, is that for Emalon, Deathknight tanks have the ability to completely negate the “Nova” effect through the use of their Anti-Magic shell.  Regardless if it is a raid or a 5 man instance, each favors a specific balance of classes.

It is important that as a leader, even if a reluctant one, that you do the basic research into the various abilities that the mobs will utilize in whatever dungeon or raid you are focusing on.  It is important by the same token to know the abilities of each class that you can utilize.  There are key judgment calls that allow the leader to know when best to utlize crowd control methods, or when to just try and AOE tank the content.  Each group combination you choose will place very specific constraints upon the encounters.

Know Your Classes

It is important that you familiarize yourself with the various abilities that different class and spec combinations offer.  Get to know details like that a Retribution paladin offers passive AOE, so you have to be wary of the crowd control you choose, and that they offer the strongest replenishment and have an often times under utilized crowd control method called Repentance.  Another example is that you should know that a Feral Druid and an Arms Warrior feed off each other since both classes rely heavily on bleed effects, or that a Mage and a Balance Druid are best friends so should always be placed in the same group.

There are numerous traits that each class and spec combination have, and it takes time and research to learn how to best utilize the inactions of each.  If you take leading seriously, you will do the leg work on wowhead or wowwiki to understand how each class works and various things you need to watch out for when that classes uses some of its core abilities.  In addition to DPS complimenting each other, you will learn that certain healer/tank combinations work better than others.  There is no easy way to digest all the information at once, but it is something you need to be aware of as you start piecing together groups.

Closing Thoughts

Over the course of these three posts I have tried my best to present some ideas on the general topic of how to best get groups rolling.  As I have stated before, I originally started formulating this concept with the release of Burning Crusade.  I noticed that some players were able to pull together groups easily, and others were not, and slowly I began to learn from the techniques each was using very subconsciously.  As members of my own guild complained at a lack of being able to get into groups, I compiled the first draft of this in the form of “Bel’s How to Get Groups Started Primer”.

Since then I have collected and refined my methods and these last three posts have been a much expanded version of the core concepts of that guide.  Ultimately, no matter what I say, some players will still be hesitant to get the ball rolling, preferring to wait in the wings for someone else to do it.  This is fine, we can’t all be chiefs… however in my opinion you have to take responsibility for your own happiness.  When something is not going like you had hoped it would, then you need to seize control of your own destiny and figure out how to make things happen.  I hope this guide can serve as a starter, for players to go off and formulate their own grouping theories.