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.

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 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.

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.

A question that flies around a lot is if people are capable of learning HOW to be leaders. Obviously some people are more comfortable leading than others. For the not-so-natural leaders, teaching yourself how and when to use these new skills can be a difficult task as well.

First let us go over some of the skills that make an effective leader (not all, I’m tired and I’m sure I will forget some).

Confidence is the first thing that comes to my mind. This is a different kind of confidence than just believing in your own ability. You need to be able to trust people to do their job, and not feel the need to micro-manage all your raiders (this becoming extremely important in heroic raiding). Knowing that when you ask someone to do something they will be able to do it is a great tool in any raid leaders bag of tricks.

Respect for your team is another must. If you aren’t respecting the people that are under you, why will they respect you as a leader. This is going to help your overall raid atmosphere, and also bond the raid.

Dedication is required from you. It takes a good chunk of extra effort to have everything taken care of before raid time. Taking 15 minutes to sort out a raid roster 30 minutes before raid time will save you plenty of headaches and prevent drama when you rush it and make a mistake as your scrambling to put the raid together.

Time management is knowing if what you are focused on is worth your effort and if that energy can be utilized elsewhere with more effectiveness. Banging your head against a wall isn’t worth your tune unless you honestly believe you have a chance at bring it down before you go unconscious.

Preparedness is the last thing on my list (for now). This overlaps with dedication a bit, but knowing your raiders and their abilities and preparing for situations gone wrong is an asset that can save a wipe and kill a boss. When a healer dies during the last 30% of a boss fight, you need to know which tanks have which healer on them, and which one can likely spare a little attention so the slack can be picked up enough to kill the boss.

Now most of these skills should be able to be learned with the right amount of effort. However most people can learn what to do fairly easily, but when it comes to execution things can fall apart.

Learning the fine line between being not “present” enough and being a over controlling asshat can be difficult (this may sound extreme but it can happen). Learning when you’ve crossed the line between simple healing assignment and micro-managing your heal team is something I won’t be able to teach you. You know your raiders (at least you should) and know how much coaching you need to give them. Don’t assume, ask questions, get information. Ask your tanks if they know the fight and what they expect. It all comes down to the level of preparation you have come to expect your raiders to maintain, and also their ability to adapt with your direction.

Any time I write “expect a post” or “I’ll write more about this later” I seem to always slack off.

I think I perform my best when there are absolutely no expectations of me. Sad huh?

*complete subject change*

One of the things I love to do is browse the search terms people use to get to this site. I use a Wordpress plugin called Statpress, which is truly amazing. I love the completely random ones that end up here. I also take the search terms coming in and try to pick the good ones and use them as inspiration for new posts.

Well, enough of my rambling, I’m going get back to installing Ubuntu on this new computer I have. I’ll try to make a post later…. >.>

A few little updates…

Yes, I am still alive.

No, I haven’t stopped playing.

The guild is great, about to start 25 man raiding.

I do plan on finishing that list of promised posts.

If I didn’t post get the urge to post so late at night I’d probably have more here. I post from my phone about 95% of the time so it makes posts with slot of cross refernces and/links kind of difficult.

I’ve been busy working on a few side projects recently.

Expect a post tomorrow.

I’ve migrated to a new server. Sorry if anyone experienced outages over the last day or so. You should see great increases to the site’s speed and perfomance. :D

In WotLK, Blizzard changed their design philosophy regarding gear progression. Items dripping in 5 man heroics, are of equal “quality” as items dropped from ten man raids.

Now granted I see the design conflicts with the way they have set up the Emblems. If heroics and 10 man raids (referred to simply as raids further in this post) dropped differbt quality gear but the same Emblems, one would devaule the other. Either heroics would yield “over budget” Emblems, able to obtain raid quality gear at heroic level of effort, or raids your drop undervalued tokens that would be a waste of time.

However making them both drop equal gear and equal Emblems has it’s own issues. With heroic reset timers being 1 day and raid timers being 7 days, you can start to get a picture of what a new 80 is going to be doing more. Once the heroic gear is obtained, and (under the BC mantra) they are now “raid ready”, they are quickly let down that the raid gear is either a small upgrade at all or simply a side-grade (if at all). This leads to player boredom (I’ll touch on that subject in my already foreshadowed post regarding raid motivations). Once the bosses are killed once or twice the content stagnates and tension arises. Raid live off of progression (mostly).

My solutions to the problem are either:

1) increasing EoH item costs, and additionally rewarding better loot in raids/EoH, while also increasing the number of EoH dropped from raid bosses.

2) implementing a seperate Emblem for heroic content. This option would be more time consuming and isn’t really worth the effort.

To explore option 1 some more. Blizzard is introducing a new Emblem for new tiers of content. This will mostly settle the issue of 10 man raid rewards not competing with existing player gear. While I do think this is a good idea, I do not like having to live through 6 months of a single tier of content with people as frustrated and bored as they are.

Oddly enough, I didn’t have anything to write about until I opened the Wordpress app on my iPhone.

Then suddenly my mind was flooded by several topics. I just barely got them all written down before my fruit fly memory swept them out the door.

So I guess I can tell you to expect soon, but not really how soon, posts on the following topics:

• Ease of raiding content
• Heroic vs Raid iLvl
• 10 vs 25 man raiding
• Players desire to be best in slot
• Raiding for gear, or raiding for fun