It has been nearly a month since the release of cataclysm, and one thing is certain… we aren’t in Kansas anymore.  Long gone is the wrath era of brute forcing instances with easy AOE tanking.  Long gone is the era of healers being able to spam the tank through anything.  What is left in its wake is a series of instances that require actual forethought and planning to complete them successfully.

Over the last few weeks I have noticed a real reluctance in my guild at least, to run heroics.  There is a certain amount of fear surrounding them, so this has created a divide between the haves and have-nots.  There is a group of stubborn individuals that have waded waist deep in the heroic madness and as a result have come out extremely well geared replacing every slot with heroic level items or at best epics.

The other group of players, has timidly stuck their feet in the water only to get them chopped off.  During the wrath era we as a player base were used to steamrolling content without really trying.  Instead we have returned to the burning crusade style of dungeon running, where even in great gear you can wipe quickly if you don’t keep focused.  I come to tell you all there is hope, so long as you approach these instances with patience and understanding that you will be wiping, you can walk away with upgrades and more importantly experience.

Forming the Party

Back in June of 2009, I created a series of blog posts that I titled Groupcraft 101.  It covered the key skills needed to successfully form groups, and for the most part everything I said then applies today.  However during the wrath era, crowd control was an unneeded hindrance to generating threat on multiple targets.  So as a result we pushed hard through the instances, tanking them by the seat of our pants.  Today, party balance is more important than it ever was.

Get the Tank and Healer First

The key to forming a group fast is to lock down your tank and healer roles first.  Generally speaking as a tank, I have a good working relationship with all the guild healers and many of the server community ones.  As a result it becomes trivial for me to find a healer willing to run an instance.  As a DPS however you need to keep lists of both tanks and healers. 

What I find works best is to message the healers and tanks directly.  In general, your tanks and healers stay busy the majority of the time.  I know personally I am unlikely to notice a request in open guild chat or chat channels.  When I am not tanking an instance, I am furiously working on dailies.  As a result it tends to work best to message the tanks and healers directly.

Get Balanced DPS

Now that you have your tank and healer, its time to move onto picking out some dps.  In general once you have the core of your group locked down, picking up a few dps goes quickly.  There are definitely some things you need to think about while forming your party.  Firstly try and make as balanced a group as possible.

Pointers for a Balanced Group

• Choose a good mixture of both ranged and melee
• Make sure you have at least 2 forms of crowd control
• Try and choose 3 different classes for your dps
• Try and choose a mix of plate, mail, leather and cloth classes to limit loot contention
• Make sure you state what you are expecting out of the players up front

Know your Crowd Control

Now that you have a well balanced group formed it is important that you understand what each of the classes brings to the table.  In wrath, our dps were essentially big dumb cannons and all that we really cared about was how much raw damage they could push.  In cataclysm, a player needs to be able to master all of the abilities of their class.  Interrupts need to be applied often, enrage effects need to be tranquilized and most importantly all of the crowd control methods need to be mastered.  Here is a quick rundown of various classes and what kinds of crowd control they can bring to the table.

Deathknight

• Chains of Ice – While not a solid form of crowd control, can be used to help kite mobs for the party.  Kiting a hard hitting mob has become a very viable way to help break up the damage being dealt to the tank.

Druid

• Entangling Roots – Rooting melee mobs is a very effective way of locking something down.  Breaks unpredictably, so druid will need to watch it and be prepared to reapply.
• Hibernate – Very effective way of keeping a beast or dragonkin locked down for 40 seconds.
• Cyclone – Locks target down for 6 seconds, mana intensive and needs to be reapplied often.  Very susceptible to diminishing returns.

Hunter

• Freezing Trap – One of the most versatile means of locking down a target, with the right talents a hunter can even keep two targets trapped at once.
• Wyvern Sting – Puts target to sleep for 30 seconds, however the cool down is 1 minute.  Good to use as a CC for when something breaks unexpectedly.

Mage

• Polymorph – The traditional pinnacle of crowd control.  Stable, can be reapplied quickly, and works on both beasts and humanoids.
• Frost Nova – Freezes all targets near caster for 8 seconds.  Not stable CC, but great for stopping incoming damage in a pinch.
• Ring of Frost – Improved version of frost nova, places target on ground and freezes everything in it for 10 seconds.  Again handy for stopping damage from unexpected adds and giving time for more stable cc to be applied.

Paladin

• Repentance – Retribution paladins can lock down demons, dragonkin, giants, humanoids and undead for 1 minute.  Negative is that the cool down is also 1 minute, so it cannot be reapplied early to keep a target locked down.
• Hammer of Justice – Stuns target for 6 seconds.  Great for stopping incoming damage and buying time to lock the target down with another form of crowd control.
• Turn Evil – Fears a demon or undead for up to 20 seconds.  Not the most stable crowd control but great in a pinch, and in areas without large number of adds.  Remember using this one alot on the Moroes fight in Karazhan.

Priest

• Shackle Undead – definitive undead crowd control.  Shackles a target for 50 seconds, can be repplied early to keep a mob locked down for longer.
• Mind Control – For dps priest, this is a great way to keep the most annoying mob in the pack locked down. Lasts up to 30 seconds, cannot be reapplied early so a stun or similar short term CC might be needed to allow priest to reacquire.
• Psychic Scream – Causes 5 targets nearest to caster to flee for 8 seconds.  Great way to get targets off of the priest temporarily, or scatter unexpected adds long enough to allow dps to finish off a current target.
• Psychic Horror – Causes target to tremble in fear for 3 seconds, and disarms them for 10 seconds.  Another short term crowd control.

Rogue

• Sap – Incapacitates a beast, demon, dragonkin or humanoid for 1 minute.  Negative is that it cannot be reapplied.
• Blind – Incapacitates a target for 10 seconds.  Great short term crowd control.
• Gouge – Incapacitates a target for 4 seconds.  Another good short term stun.
• Kidney Shot – Stuns a target for up to 6 seconds (dependant on combo points).
• Cheap Shot – Stuns a target for 4 seconds.  Not extremely useful as it is an opener from stealth, but if desperate to buy the party a few seconds of time this paired with a vanish can help separate a pack.

Shaman

• Bind Elemental – New to Cataclysm, works like Shackle Undead but for Elementals. Binds target elemental for 50 seconds, can be reapplied early.
• Hex – The Sturdy "sheep".  Transforms target Humanoid or Beast into a frog for 1 minute.  45 second cool down so if you are careful you can reapply early.  Fairly resistant to occasional AOE damage.
• Earthbind Totem – Falls into the same category as chains of frost, useful for slowing mobs while kiting.

Warlock

• Fear – When glyphed this because a great crowd control.  Causes target to be feared in place for 20 seconds.
• Enslave Demon – Controls a demon for up to 5 minutes.  Great way to remove a mob from the pack and turn it into a pet.
• Banish – Banishes a Demon or Elemental for up to 30 seconds.
• Death Coil – Fears target for 3 seconds, great way to temporarily reduce damage to the party.
• Seduction – Succubus is able to seduce a target humanoid for 30 seconds.

Warrior

• Intimidating Shout – Causes 5 targets nearest to caster to flee for 8 seconds.  Short term crowd control.
• Intercept – Charges to target and stuns them for 3 seconds.  Short term crowd control/interrupt.
• Hamstring – Slows target movement by 50%, useful for letting a warrior kite a mob away.

Sheep the Moon

Now that you are comfortable with all the possible crowd control options at your disposal, it is time to think about how you plan on marking the targets.  Its important to set up a scheme, and assign certain players certain symbols.  I’ve been in groups that randomly mark targets with no real semblance of order.  The problem with this is that each pull you end up having to explain what the targets mean, which slows down the run.

If you choose a stable symbology, it allows you to mark the targets quickly, and the crowd control to know immediately which target they should focus on.  For example, I always mark sheep or hex with the moon and I always use square for the trap.  This allows players in the guild to have an understanding of how I will always mark the targets.

Equally as important as is to agree on some method of pulling.  When on ventrilo I usually give my CC a countdown of “pulling in 3, 2, 1”.  When running with a hunter, since trapping takes some setup time, we often agree CC on hunter trap.  Regardless of what you choose, it is important to explain to your party what methodology you plan on using, and stick to it from pull to pull.

Pass the Prozac

With all of the above taken care of we move on to the final and most important thing to a successful heroic.  Stay calm, be patient, and understand that more than likely you will be wiping more than once during the course of your heroic.  My first time in Stonecore, we wiped 3-4 times per boss while we were getting used to it, and I still considered it a very successful run.  So long as everyone stays calm and focused on the fights you will recover quickly from any mishaps and keep progressing forward.

Cataclysm has been a return to the core fundamentals of instancing, and with it there have been alot of growing pains especially for those who never spent time wiping in burning crusade heroics.  Truth be told, wrath was an extremely easy expansion, and as a whole it made even us veteran players soft.  There is alot of things we all will have to unlearn and or relearn.  I know personally I have to stay in contact with my healer and watch my cool downs anytime unexpected bursts of damage come in, or the healer runs into mana shortages.  Likewise the DPS needs to do everything they can to reduce the damage they are potentially taking, and stay in communication with the group as a whole to make sure crowd control targets are covered and kept locked down.

So long as your group is able to keep a level head, and is willing to constantly keep adapting and learning you will quickly get used to the ramped up difficulty.  Last night I gathered a group of guild members and managed to run 3 heroics in a row with only one wipe due to a bad pull.  Each of us have been running heroics on a daily basis, and as a result we are used to the ebb and flow of the instances, and now know which mobs to crowd control, which to kill first, and which to try and avoid.  Before long your own groups will move as smoothly, and your gear score will improve with the influx of new heroic items.

Stay Calm, Be Patient, and Stay Focused on the Objectives

Lately we have been prepping for this audit at work.  Preparing the type of reports that basically say, please oh please don’t find justification to try and outsource the department.  So all the writing and wrangling of words has left me pretty unwilling to write anything on my blog.  We’ve been beating our faces against Blood Queen 25, while fighting the traditional "it’s pretty outside" attendance breaks.  All of my game time outside of raiding has been devoted to pushing up my shaman.  I managed to cross the finish line this Wednesday, and have been working on gearing up since.  I cheated and got a few pieces of gear crafted, which allowed me to instantly begin queuing for heroics.

Things I Learned in Randoms

Over the course of 5 characters I have gotten pretty good and pushing them up quickly, but this time I kept taking breaks in order to run random dungeons.  I found them entertaining diversions from the quest grind.  All of my friends and guild-mates can attest to the fact that when I start seriously leveling I am dead to the world.  I zone out and stop paying attention to chat, tells, and the outside world.  These groups helped to pull me out of this bubble every now and then and wake me up, as well as keep feeding me a ready source of much needed upgrades.

Problem is, I found it really hard to wrap my head around the idea that I was playing beside folks who you were honestly experiencing the content for the first time.  Being a tank, I have ground these instances into the ground for various members of my guild.  It feels like I have run all of these dungeons, be it old world, burning crusade, or Northrend, hundreds of times between my various characters.  Having geared several different tank characters, it feels like I can pull most of them in my sleep. 

So I was just floored the other day, while sitting in Halls of Stone normal, and I realized that I was the only player who had ever been in the zone.  We all started out as nubs once, it had to happen, but for most of us that time was so long ago we can barely remember it.  I talked about the Veteran handicap, a few posts back, and honestly it was smacking me in the face once more.  I sat there trying not to get frustrated as the players stopped to smell the "granite", as it were.  Instead of being frustrated at the slow pace, and how hard I was having to work to make up the low collective dps of the players, I forced myself to take a different approach.  I could have been an elitist jerk, like so many players are these days in randoms, pushing the inexperienced out of the way for the safety of a fast run.  Instead I offered suggestions, explaining how to tank the bosses, how to keep from getting too many mobs on the various pulls.  I chose to take the role of the mentor, rather than the brat.

Kindness Repaid with Indifference

One of the nasty side effects of the random system is that players are nameless and faceless commodities.  Before the group matching system, we had to actually make connections on our server to real living players, and our actions had consequences on whether or not we got groups again.  Now we know, there is always an endless supply of more players to be abused.  If we don’t like something about a DPS, punt them, because we know that DPS are literally a dime a dozen.  I personally don’t run alot of randoms as any of my tanks, because I don’t enjoy being pushed to skip bosses, skip packs, and generally do whatever it takes to complete the zone and get those players their frost badges as fast as humanly possible.  I’ve always found this detracts from the game.  Which is highly ironic considering I have always been known within my guild and circles for my fast pulls.

The part of the anonymity that I dislike the most is the fact that no one communicates at all.  Wednesday night I was running Forge of Souls normal mode, with a decent group.  Since I had just dinged 80 a few hours beforehand I was obviously not dishing out a ton of damage.  I was charting in around 2000 dps, which in my mind is more than enough for normal mode FoS.  I was johnny on the spot, dropping the right totems at the right moment, doing as much to support the team as I could.  Shortly after Bronjahm I was kicked from the group without warning, or notice.  The only reason I could possibly think, was that my dps was lower than the rest of the party.  What is distasteful, is that me being punted from the party was just a meaningless transaction to the rest of the party, who didn’t even bother to give a reason why.

Gearscore is Lazy

The growing apathy created by the random system, and the prevalence of addons like Gearscore has lead to a weird environment on most servers.  Players in general have unrealistic requirements in their head as to what is really required to do something.  On Argent Dawn for example, the requirement to get into any raid seems to be 5000 GearScore regardless of what the raid is from ICC 10 to the Weekly.  Granted you can get to this made up number of 5000 pretty easily, with a certain amount of time spent gearing, but it doesn’t actually mean anything.  I know personally I regularly have players fill in on my ICC 10 on their alts with GearScores of 4500 or less and do just fine, still being able to clear everything we have been able to clear in the past.

The worst thing is when I see people talking about Gearscores in heroics.  This honestly makes my bile rise a little bit.  We have arrived at a point where we expect to overgear the content so much, that it requires no effort at all.  Storming through the instance, killing everything so fast that it doesn’t actually need to be tanked, isn’t really doing the content "as intended".  I am not sure where these requirements have come from either.  I remember tanking all of the heroics that were available at the release of wrath, in nothing but blues…  why?  Because we didn’t have access to anything better yet a week or two after the game released.  Each of the dungeons has been nerfed a good deal since then, so if we could do them in blues back then, its certain that a player with 1500 dps is more than sufficient.  I laughed at a guy the other day in a heroic, that said it required 35k hp to tank a heroic instance.

We’ve become Lazy

I think basically we as player population have become lazy.  Many of the constructs we have now, were done for our benefit, and taken alone have been great things.  I have applauded how easy it is to gear players currently.  As a raid leader its great that we can grow up players from within our circle of friends and family rather than recruiting from outside.  I have applauded at how easy it is to get a group, but it has caused us to stop relying on our social ties as much.  I have applauded all of the AOE tanking changes in the game, because it is fun to pull entire rooms of mobs, but it has caused a generation of players who do not know how to CC, and more so NOT BREAK CC.  Most simply put, all these nice features that Blizzard gave us have caused us to forget how to play the game.

As I look forward to Cataclysm I am hoping beyond hope that we return to dungeons that require thought.  I want pulls that I have to reason with.  I want to have to know what abilities the different mobs do, and which one to kill first and which to sheep, which to trap and which to shackle.  I want us to have to think our way through a dungeon even if it takes a little longer to do so.  We have these constructs in the game, like the raid target system, that served so well in burning crusade, that really are optional other than marking whatever we want to avoid these days.  I don’t want things to be brutally stupid, and punishing.  I am not one of those Everquest fanbois that longs for the return of the corpse run.  I just want a reason to think again, and I want AOE tanking to be something that only the truly skilled could manage to pull off without killing their party.

It’s been a crazy week for me so far.  My sister in law was rushed back to the emergency room on Monday, and my allergies are going haywire and irritating my asthma to no end.  So I am barely here, however I wanted to get a post up regardless.  Today is the first of what I hope will be a series of occasional posts related to tasty, easy to prepare and most importantly fast food ideal for raid nights.

Every raider has been in the situation of getting home late from work, with only a few minutes left until raid time.  Without the time to prepare a full meal you are left with a few options.  Do you nuke a hot pocket or similar convenience food, or do you grab some chips or something to tide you over until after the raid.  My hope in these posts is to present you with additional fast options.

Boneless Wings

For years I have been a fan of the various wing restaurants, be it Buffalo Wild Wings, Wing Stop or Wings to Go.  They are great for lunch specials, but when you are craving boneless wings during primetime it quickly becomes cost prohibitive to go there often.  I am not sure exactly when it hit me, maybe it was watching the guy at the wing place I used to frequent every Tuesday prepare our order, but it dawned on me that I could recreate this experience at home.  Through trial and error I come to a technique that produces very similar results, or at least close enough on a limited budget.

Ingredients

• 8-10 Microwave Chicken Chunks (Store Brand, Tyson, etc)
• Bottled Marinade or Wing Sauce (Lawry’s, various Wing Sauces, BBQ sauce etc)
• 1 Quart Sized Freezer Bag (Store Brand, anything with a zipper seal)

Make the Chicken

Okay the first step in the process is to acquire a bag of microwave chicken chunks.  There are various brands on the market that will do nicely.  I personally prefer Wal-mart’s Great Value brand, just for price and ease…  but I know in my local area Tyson is very common and works equally well.  If you want a slightly different effect popcorn chicken works equally well, as do chicken strips.

Now cooking your chicken chunks a bit of an inexact science.  Basically what you are wanting to do is cook your chicken enough to make sure your breading is firm enough not to flake off, but not all the way as to not allow your chicken to dry out in later phases.  Closest estimate is for the 8-10 chunks mentioned in the list, you need to microwave them on high for 2 1/2 minutes.  This starts to crisp up the breading but leave the chicken still very juicy inside.

Marinate The Chicken

Now comes the time where you grab the marinade you have chosen.  I have found that any of the pre-bottled steak marinades work extremely well, as do the various bottled wing sauce mixtures.  I personally am fond of Lawry’s Ginger Sesame marinade as it gives a great Sesame Chicken flavor.  For buffalo flavor, I am fond of Budweiser Hot Wing Sauce, but it will vary to what is available in your area.

Take the quart freezer bag mentioned in the ingredient list and place the hot chicken in it.  Into the bag you will pour enough marinade to adequately coat the chicken, but it is best to be sparing unless you like extremely saucy boneless wings.  In general pouring a thick coat to the top of all exposed wings will be plenty to coat all the pieces.  As soon as the sauce is applied seal the bag up tight as to not let too much of the heat escape.  You also want to make sure you have a good amount of air in the bag, so that the chicken can move freely.

Shake the Chicken

Now comes the fun part.  Shake the hell out of the bag you just stuffed the chicken in.  You want to make sure all of the boneless pieces get completely coated with your sauce.  If any of the marinade pools up in the corner of the bag, you might have to squeeze it out with your fingers and continue shaking to ensure a thorough glaze.  Once everything is coated lay the bag flat on the counter top.  This helps to let the chicken soak up any excess glaze.

Caramelize the Chicken

This is the key step that makes your boneless wings start to taste like the real deal.  After your chicken has sat in the bag for a few moments, and we are literally talking 30 seconds at the most is needed, empty the contents of the storage bag onto your final plate.  Make sure to spread the chicken out, as it will now be clumped together from the shaking.  We will be microwaving the chicken again, and making sure it is in a evenly spaced will assure it receives even cooking.

Place the plate in the microwave and let it cook on high for a minute and a half to two minutes depending on how much sauce was used.  This extra cooking helps to “bake in” the sauce and will start to caramelize it a bit.  This is the step that gives your boneless wings the finished quality as though they came from one of the professional wing restaurants.  If you used one of the steak marinades or a thick wing sauce, it will give it a slight crispness to the texture of the sauce.

TLDR: The Summary

• Microwave Chicken 2.5 Minutes on High
• Place Chicken in Quart Freezer Bag
• Pour Sauce to Cover in Bag
• Shake Vigorously
• Lay Bag on Flat Surface and let sit 30 seconds
• Place Chicken on Plate
• Microwave Chicken 1.5 Minutes on High
• Let Cool
• Om Nom Nom Nom

Let Me Know What You Think

So Tuesday I posted what seemed to be a rather grim pronouncement that the Cataclysm raiding changes were going to signal the death of casual 25 man raiding as we know it.  On the day the announcements came it, it most certainly felt that way.  So like always I blog what I am feeling, and I felt fear and dread.  So after some time, and much talking amongst friends and confidants.  I have come to the conclusion that the sky really isn’t falling…  it is just changing colors.

Everything Will Change

This is just one more in a long line of game changing events that Blizzard has sprung upon us, and it honestly will change the way everything happens in game for the hardcore and casual alike.  However I am trying my best to adopt a "wait and see" attitude.  There have been so many times in the past that a blizzard pre-beta pronouncement never actually makes it into the final draft.  Do I think this is one of those cases?  Honestly probably not, this seems like a fundamental shift in design that could be happening for one of many reasons. 

My honest believe if that blizzard is trying to condense the raid experience and make it simpler to design and manage.  Right now we have so many raiding options, and as a whole the raiding content is more open to the masses than it ever has been at any point in the past.  However there are so many variants of raiding, and Blizzard has been attempting to make the game viable for all of them.  It has to be hard to balance encounters so they are challenging but doable in a 10 man strict guild, but at the same time offering a bit of challenge to players who are fully 25 man geared.  I think they have been disheartened by seeing all their un-gated content steamrolled in a matter of weeks.

When the designers asked themselves how these players are able to burn through content so fast, it is pretty obvious that they came to the conclusion that it was due to being able to run both 10 and 25 man raids.  You can see the evidence of this decision in the outrageous jump in price between t9 and t10 badge items.  The base prices for tier 9 were 30 badges for shoulders/gauntlets and 50 badges for helm/chest/legs.  We have an extreme jump when you go to frost badge loot to 60 and 95 badges respectively, when there are fewer zones actively dropping frost badges.  The designers obviously were expecting all serious players to be clearing both 10 and 25 man in order to get badges to purchase their gear.

Is it really a problem?

I pose the question… is it really a problem that players who are able to run both 10 and 25 man raids will accumulate gear faster?  I personally have never had a problem with the fact that more time spent in game equates to more rewards.  I am not jealous of the players who have racked up a full suit of heroic mode gear, nor am I jealous of the players who geared out their t10 before me.  Not everyone in this game can be equal, and since I am not on the hardcore track I am obviously going to be a little less equal than others.  Is it really worth the impending schism in order to fix a perceived problem?

I know it has to suck as a developer to spend 6 months of your life working on what you believe to be the ultimate dungeon, only to have to decimated by the most serious players within the first week.  But that is life, people are going to do things you didn’t expect, use tactics you never thought of, and literally throw themselves at the content over and over until it falls down.  I feel their heart is in the right place, in trying to make the entry level of content less confusing to players and make it so they don’t have to "mudflate" the prices of gear so badly as the expansion goes on.  However I honestly feel the current model creates far more opportunity for the casual players, than the proposed model would.

How things are now, it is relatively easy for a newer player to work their way into one of the many successful 10 and 25 man casual raids that form every week on my server.  If you show up at the right time, show the right amount of effort, and listen to the right things…  you can get a regular invite back.  All raid leaders are constantly looking for fillers, especially during the spring doldrums that we are going through.  Leaders often times use their 10 man as a more controlled environment to check a player out before unleashing them onto the bigger raid as a whole.  These changes will blow all of this away and resign 10s to "alt" raids, where they currently rely heavily on seasoned veterans to push through the content at a decent pace.

Positive Changes

While I am still not happy about the changes and the implications they are having, it has had at least one positive effect.  I have come to the decision that the future is far from certain right now.  With the changes to the raid structure and the impending guild rewards system looming on the horizon.  These things might very well spell the doom of casual raid alliances like Duranub.  This got me to thinking, much like when someone gets a dread disease.  If tonight were going to be the last raid we had together, how would I want it to be?

I’ve come to the conclusion that  regardless of our future, I want to make sure we make the most of the tail end of wrath.  By this I don’t mean burn through all the content, I mean really enjoy the most of our time together.  I have been trying to really relax and enjoy the raiding experience, and hopefully my changed attitude will trickle down to the raid members.  The last thing I want to do is go out stressed, agitated and frustrated at what we aren’t doing.  I want to be able to enjoy the time at hand and relish all the things we already have.

I know this is a bit of a 360 from the attitude I had on Tuesday, but sometimes life does that.  It takes the realization that our time might be numbered to really be able to enjoy the time we do have.  So I challenge each of you, to really savor the friendships you have with your raid friends.  Cataclysm will be another bombshell like Burning Crusade, and we have no way of knowing right now how it may change each of us. 

So lets all enjoy what we have today.