I’ve always wondered about my guild’s “image” on the server. I have always considered us the less than mature yet determined/focused raiding guild, but introspection is unreliable. Sure my recruitment macro says “raiding focused, adult 10 man guild” but I mean how serious does everyone take that? I wish I knew how people saw us as a guild.

I know when I pug (before the LFG tool), I would go through a thought process before delivering that invite. Am I trying to recruit? (omitted. unrelated to this post). If I’m not trying to find a new guildmate and I’m just looking to get a heroic done, I always check the guild of the players that reply. If I get three whispers, I’m going to avoid <arrogant douche guild> and <terribad can’t pug VoA> but pick up <mediocre clearing ICC> because he’s probably got some gear, and some humility. ^more

I’m always fascinated by the social aspects of this game (and the internet in general), so please leave me a comment and let me know your thoughts on the subject.

Explained: My thought process is a little more complex, as there are many factors to judge, <super leet non-douchey guild> might be a good option, but its a hit or miss, as I could get somebody that’s a “friends and family” rank and they just be terribad.

With the release of patch 3.3, raiding has a new life. People are logging in again, and raids are getting roflpwnt. I am (as I’m sure every guild leader is) having to deal with a certain problem.

When times are slow and people just aren’t logging on, you might recruit a few new faces to fill in the gaps. Then when new content arrives and everyone decides to log on, you are left with one major problem: Roster overload. In this post I’ll be going over my exact strategy for recruitment, raid invites, and how I handle this particular issue.

In Fury Untold we don’t have a raiding requirement. I don’t want people to look at WoW like a job, so they have freedom to show up when they want or not when they don’t. The other side to this coin is they have to understand that I am going to keep a “healthy” enough roster to ensure that even if a few people don’t show up, we are still likely to be able to raid. Its the give and take of this type of system. I try to keep a few extra of everything: tanks, heals, and dps. This mostly sorts things out, but if everyone isn’t so understanding of why they aren’t getting into raids then you can have a problem.

How you handle raid invites, and making the process clear to everyone is very important. In Fury Untold, I value attendance and dependability over pretty much everything. If someone is putting forth the effort to show up to every raid, even after they out-gear it, I give them extra special brownie points. For the people who just gear their toon, then stop raiding till the next content patch take bottom of the list in my book. We are a guild and we need to operate as such. Just because you don’t need anything from the last tier’s raid instance, doesn’t mean everyone is in the same situation.

One thing that comes up a lot is integrating new members into a roster when there may be a little overlap. When I’m doing invites for a raid I consider new players as a sort of “clean slate”, whereas they don’t have any marks against them. So if I’ve got a guy that has been in the guild for a month, but has shown up to 3 raids a week every time, and a guy whose been in the guild for a year, but only shows up once in a while, I’m going to take the new guy with a good record. What this accomplishes is encourage the things I’m looking for in a raider: dependability, consistency, attendance. If your raiders are going to throw a fit and cry about not getting a raid invite when they know your invite policy, and what they’ve done to deserve being benched, then they might as well take their attitude and go cry in another guild. I have a very short patience for people who are self centered and do nothing but cause drama with it.

My last point for this post is what to do after the invites have gone out, and how to encourage people to show up each time, even if they didn’t get an invite this raid. We use EPGP and I offer a % of EP awards to people on standby. They have to be online (on any character, alt are ok) to sign their main up for EP gains, and they have to do so after every award. My point here being that you need to make logging on worthwhile, even if they aren’t included in the raid.

Everyone knows about the Armory, but all it does is give you the same data you see in game. What if there was a website that could take all that, look over it for you, and give you tips and tricks on ways to improve your character? ZOMG! It exists! In this post I’m going to be going over a recent audit of my Druid* and my Paladin to show you how to understand the website: Be.Imba.hu.

*Ignore the fact that he’s in two different sets of gear, these screenshots were taken over a short period of time.

Upon visiting the site you’ll see a form to input your region, realm, and character data. If you want to register for an account (its free) you can get a few extra benefits including guild and group reports, as well as forcing an update from the armory (avoiding cached data). After you’ve got your character in there, hit the Query Report button and it’ll fetch your character and process its (currently equipped) gear.

After the site has fetched your character, and “had its way with it”, it will display a quick summary of the gear and enchants near the top of the page. This will contain a quick overview of issues with the character, and the gear they are wearing. Right below that information is a list of the enchants, and any suggestions or upgrades that might be available.

By clicking on the “accepted”, “missing”, or (hope not) “improper” enchants heading, you can reveal a list of all the non-ideal enchants on your character, and by clicking the “…” after an enchant that needs improvement, you will be given options for upgrades. Please look at this information with a smart mind, sometimes they aren’t always good choices (particularly for weapon enchants). One particular thing to watch out for is Titanium Weapon Chain. While it does offer hit rating, disarm reduction obviously isn’t useful at all in PvE, therefore if you need the hit Accuracy is a much better option, however Berserking or Mighty Spellpower are usually better options (for dps or healing).

Right below that section you’ll see the gem breakdown, this will let you know what stats you’ve gemmed for, any missed socket bonuses (that you may or may not care about), low quality (“green”) gems in your gear, and finally and empty sockets that you have.

Now to move on to the Gear-O-Meter (which I have conveniently switched characters for). In this shot you’ll see what instances are “recommended” for you character in your current set up. This again should be taken with a bit of leniency, as what instances a person can run is largely dependent on the rest of the group. However this will give you a good idea of where your upgrades are going to be available from.

Finally is the characters raid history. This section provides a few pie charts (mmm pie) of your characters raiding history. I find this section more useful when I’m looking at new recruits for my guild, as I can see where they’ve been, how far they’ve gotten, and how many times they’ve done that.

When you hover over a raid instance, you get the breakdown of all the bosses, as well as how many kills your character has for those.

They haven’t added 3.3 support yet, so hopefully we’ll see that soon.

I’ll be posting a followup to this soon with an addon that has some what similar functionality, I’m just not at a computer with WoW installed at the moment.

Ok, so now after a long thought process after the release of 3.2, I’ve finally come to a conclusion. I don’t so much mind that Blizzard revamped the Emblem system to make older content more appealing to “geared” players, however I feel the addition of the daily heroic (and soon to be weekly raid) quests are bad for the game.

I don’t want to feel that I must run old content to get current tier gear. I think the addition of EoTriumph’s to the weekly raid heroic was a mistake, and should have just been two extra conquests. If you run one ToC lockout, you get 15 Emblems of Triumph. Doing the daily heroic each day, net’s you 14 EoTs each week.

I think its perfectly reasonable to offer “free access” to the previous tier of gear, having heroic emblems be Conquest and ToC dropping Triumph.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not being elitist. ToC isn’t hard and its pugged several times a day on my realm (I usually pug it 2-3 times a week on my alts), but I don’t feel that a players gear progression should be held to how many heroics he runs each week.

*rant over*

PS – Trying to get up the material for my Tank Grid/UI post, but having started a new job, I’m a little inundated with work right now.

What is the name, class, and spec of your primary tank?
Koriel, paladin, 0/58/13

What is your primary tanking environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans)
Mostly 10 man raids with the guild.

What is your favorite tanking spell for your class and why?
With such a wide arsenal, this is a extremely difficult choice to make, however I’d have to go with Avenger’s Shield. It’s just a phenomenal pulling ability that so many trigger happy dps have come to love.

Read more…

One of the things that can test a 10 man raid the most is one in which has a binary result of live or die. Examples of what I’m talking about are mechanics like KT’s Frost Blast (testing your healers), his Shadow Fissure (testing everyone), and Mimiron’s Rocket Strike (testing everone).

Mechanics like this test the spacial awareness of your entire raid. The reason these are such strong factors to go by is that for other mechanics (fire and similar effects), is that if your person isn’t paying attention and doesn’t move out of the way, a healer can usually save them if they are going above and beyond their call of duty. When JoeWarlock decides to stand in the fire on Razorscale, FurryMcDruid can save him by diverting a good chunk of his attention away long enough for him to realize he’s burning alive, however in Mimiron if you don’t move for a Rocket Strike, you’re dead.

This is especially important in a 10 man raid environment. In a 25 man raid, if one player dies, that is a loss of 4% to your raid size. In 10 man its a 10% loss overall, but could be one third of your healer team or 50% of your tank team. Losses like this are hard to tolerate in a small raid and are the cause of a fair amount of wipes. For progression content its absolutely necessary to bring your first string raiders. In situations like this its better to bring your more competent raiders (with awareness and fight knowledge) than your uber DPS that can’t seem to stay alive.

Building and succeeding as a ten man raiding guild can be a challenge. One of the downsides to raiding at this size is that roster flexibility is very difficult to overcome.

Whether it’s a short-term absence or a new spot to fill, ten man groups struggle with roster problems much more than larger raid teams. One healer out can make or break a night, same with any person really. Keeping a tight roster with minimal sidelining is always preferred, as it keeps the maximum percentage of your guild in the raid and comfortable with each other. However things aren’t always perfect.

Overcoming the slow nights can be handled in a few ways. Keeping a surplus on your roster, dual speccing, or revisting content.

Keeping extra seats on your raid roster is going to give you the flexibilty to take people that are the best for the job, however keeping those people around is going to mean benching someone when the time comes that everyone shows up (frequently). Depending on your looting system, a “standby” reward is an excellent way to keep the people on the bench happy while they BG, farm, or whatever occupies them on these nights.

With 3.1 bringing dual spec’ing, it’s much easier to fill holes in your roster in the event that you’ve got a person out. This is going to ease the amount of “extras” you need to recruit. Instead of having to recruit an extra tank, two dps, and two healers, you can say that on any given night you might have two people out. With actual roster composition aside, this could mean that you need to keep 3 people on the bench, tank/dps, tank/heal, heal/dps for an ideal coverage.

The last “option” for overcoming roster shortages involves running old content. As with any farm content, it usually takes less heals and/or tanks to cover the instance and since these are the most common roles to have shortages taking a night off and mowing over some easy bosses can be a way to keep people active. This also provides you with time to get some alts and newer raiders into the action and get them some gear to catch up to your core raiding team.

One thing I’ve always kind of lacked with this site is a clear focus as to what I’m posting about. I love guild management, as well as WoW sociology/player psychology discussion. With the recent changes I’ve made in my own guild, I’ve decided to take my experiences and share them here. I’m going to try to keep this blog focused on 10 man raiding and guild management in that atmosphere. I’m going to try to cover a wide range of topics and keep things fresh. I’ve got a few posts already in mind, so look out, you might get one later today if I get motivated before the realms come back up.

After reading the first few pages of this thread, the raid leader in me came out and got a new perspective on the upcoming Emblem of Conquest changes in patch 3.2 “Call of the Crusade”.

This post in particular has really struck the nail on the head. One of the problems I’ve run into recently (now that Naxx25 has officially been dropped), is roster change and the inevitable issue with gearing up new raiders. With the changes to Emblems, new raiders can effectively “catch up” to (current tier)-1, so in essence they are ready to start the content. The only issue I have with this kind of gearing is that weapons are not available (outside of raid drops) past iLvl 200. This means physical dps classes are going to trail behind a bit with this system, as they are more dependent on their actual weapons than casters, healers, and tanks.

Hopefully this will be a positive change, and hopefully won’t reduce guilds to their “weekly farm of Naxx25″ being the highlight of the week.

Today the patch notes for the upcoming 3.2 patch, The Call of the Crusade, were released. These are the first round of notes, and will likely change a fair bit before this goes live. I’ll be going over a few highlights from the list here, particularly things that pertain to raiding, and raid tanking, as those are my primary focus.

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.

I hate that this is first on the list of discussion, but I don’t really feel like rearranging it. This is by far my biggest issue with this patch. Blizzard’s whole implementation of the tiered Emblem system was to prevent players from falling back into The Burning Crusade’s issue of getting high-tier end-game quality gear, from farming tokens out of low-tier dungeons. Extending on my earlier post, this is just going to turn some guilds into farm guilds that gear people up for the next tier, but aren’t actually running that tier of content. Now while there isn’t a TON of gear to be had from EoC, you can still purchase T8 pieces from the vendor, and in my opinion getting T8 from heroics is a poor move on Blizzard’s part. Additionally the Emblem of Triumph rewards from the two daily dungeon quests is a further watering down of the system. You’ll be able to purchase Tier NINE gear from a Tier SEVEN level instance.

Mana Regen Changes:

• Mana Regeneration: All items that provide “X mana per five seconds” have had the amount of mana they regenerate increased by approximately 25%.
• Replenishment: This buff now grants 1% of the target’s maximum mana over 5 seconds instead of 0.25% per second. This applies to all 5 sources of Replenishment (Vampiric Touch, Judgements of the Wise, Hunting Party, Enduring Winter Frostbolts and Soul Leech).

I agree with this, in the current state, Intellect is a very nice stat for a healer (particularly Paladins), this coupled with the Divine Intellect nerf (15% to 10%) and Illumination (60% to 30%) should make paladins appreciate the mp5 a little more, and not be Holy Light spam bots.

DK Tanking Changes:

• Frost Presence: 10% bonus health reduced to 6% bonus stamina.
• Icebound Fortitude: Cooldown increased to 2 minutes.
• Veteran of the Third War: Stamina bonus reduced to 1/2/3%.
• Toughness: This talent now grants 2/4/6/8/10% armor instead of 3/6/9/12/15%, placing it in line with similar abilities of other classes.
• Unholy Blight: This talent has been redesigned. It no longer deals damage to nearby targets. Instead, when you deal damage with Death Coil, the target will take periodic damage for 10 seconds equal to 30% of the damage done by Death Coil. This damage accumulates in the same way as Ignite and Deep Wounds.

About time, DK’s are so completely overpowered at the moment. Stamina nerfs and armor nerfs are well deserved. Although I feel the nerf to IBF isnt enough, combined with AMS and AMZ (if specced) a DK still pulls WAY ahead on magic bosses (things like Mimiron’s Plasma Blast).

Now for the good stuff :)

Paladin Tanking Changes:

• Blessing of Sanctuary: This blessing now also increases stamina by 10%. This effect is not cumulative with Blessing of Kings.
• Exorcism: Now has a 1.5 second cast time, but can once again be used on players.
• Judgement of Light: Now heals for 2% of the attacker’s maximum health instead of a variable amount based on the spell power and attack power of the judging paladin.
• Righteous Fury: No longer has a duration or mana cost, remaining until canceled or death. Also canceled when a Paladin activates a different talent specialization.
• Ardent Defender: Redesigned. Currently, any damage taken by the paladin while at 35% health or below is reduced. Instead, any attack that would reduce the paladin to 35% health or below has its damage reduced. In addition, once every 2 minutes an attack that would have killed the paladin will fail to kill, and instead set the paladin’s health to 10/20/30% of maximum.

Now I know I’m a little biased here, but I love these changes. Threat being where it is, I feel the Exorcism change is a great one (to keep me in my 9696 rotation against undead). Changing BoSanc into a Improved Blessing of Kings is a great way to consolidate the blessings and make Protection Paladins not feel so turn between the two when running overgeared content. Judgement of Light, finally, no more arguing with our holy/ret Paladins who gets to judge what. I’ll never be caught letting my RF run out in the midddle of a boss fight again either. Saving the best for last, An AD that cannot be leapfrogged and also a mini Divine Gaurdian. Awesome, just awesome.

All healer mechanics that increased the targets armor by a percentage have been modified to give a 10% damage reduction. Good mechanic change, I’m guessing eventually this would have pushed Feral’s to the armor cap, and also helps non-DK’s out a little on magic damage bosses.

All in all, I like the changes to the patch, but I’m still very disappointed in Blizzard for not keeping with the tiered emblem system. I hated having to farm kara week after week to get certain badge items. I wanted to be pushed to new content and rewarded for going above and beyond the first tier of raids. Hopefully this is something that will change in the time between PTR and live.