Riddle

OK, for all you smart people out there, I have a riddle for you.

If you look at the date and time, you can come up with 9-12 digits. (mm/dd/yyyy hh:mm)

Thus it is possible for you to find a date and time that uses each digit, from 0-9, once and only once. (I'm not counting leading zeros.) The last time this happened was June, 30 1987 at 5:42 PM.

The person who can think of the next time it will happen gets a cookie.

Portal and Traction Radio

Well, I mentioned Team Fortress II and how much fun it is, but it has nothing on Portal.

Portal is a simple puzzle game. You move through portals to get to the exits of the different levels. At the beginning, it is very simple. You can place a blue portal, and you come out of the orange portal. You go in the orange portal and you come out of the blue portal.

But things get complex. Once you hit around level 13, it gets intense. And the puzzles are amazing. And it's a seamless motion from one to another. It gives you a lot of training on how the game works, and then it sets you free to figure out the rest.

What did I really like about it? It was action-packed. You aren't rushed through the puzzles like in a FPS where you have people shooting at you, but you aren't ever waiting for the good stuff to happen.

Also, it is very humorous. The female robotic voice guiding you through the trainings is hilarious in most cases. I was constantly entertained.

The game didn't take me more than five hours to complete. But it was a thrilling five hours of play. I hope they come out with a sequel or something, because I could play it again, even though I know all of the puzzles now. It was that fun.

I also wanted to share a radio player that I found online. It's supposed to be a gaming radio player, as you can control it inside of a game instead of having to Alt-Tab out. It's nice because you can quickly change gears by altering stations. If you're in a part of the game that is nice and relaxing, you can turn on some mellow rock. Once you hit an intense part, toss on the heavy techno. It's still in beta, but it's working alright so far, even as a non-gaming radio player. I'll be trying it in a game here sometime soon to try it out. At any rate, if you'd like to listen to music outside of the in-game soundtrack, give it a try. I've liked the music so far. And I can only assume as time goes on that they will add stations.

And I'll try to post more often about some random stuff so you all can have something interesting to read...at least I think it's interesting.

Team Fortress II

So I mentioned that I've been playing a lot of games. The Orange Box has been the focus of my attention since I got it, and let me tell you. Steam is amazing. Steam is like AIM for gamers. But the big difference is that you don't need to Alt-Tab out to talk to people while you're gaming. You can just Shift-Tab, and it doesn't hog enormous system memory. It also includes a chat program, but it can be flaky and vent is more reliable. But I love being able to see what games your buddies are playing, and chatting to them while they are playing them. (We had an idea to build a chat program that worked while gaming at one point, but not the time or the funding to build it. Watch someone go and start offering text message orders from a fast-food restaurant and steal that idea from us too. Curse needing to pay the bills...)

So in the Orange Box comes Team Fortress II. It is like Unreal Tournament gameplay-wise. There are different maps, with capture the flag (intelligence), or domination (node-holding) or assaults (attack and defend). But here's the biggest difference between Unreal Tournament and TF2. Classes.

Much like WoW, TF2 has 9 classes. Each one has its advantages and disadvantages. Scouts are fast and can pack a punch up close, but lack survivability and the ability to destroy enemy turrets easily. Demolition men have a grenade launcher and sticky-bomb gun, but lack a true gun. Medics can heal others and become invulnerable for a short time, but cannot heal themselves and barely stand a chance in a 1-1 situation.

Here's the fun thing. You can change your class every 3 seconds if you want to. If there's a sniper pissing off your whole team, sneak in there with a spy and pwn his backside. If there's an engineer building tons of turrets, be a soldier and rocket them to smithereens. If there's a whole group of pyromaniacs on a flag node, mow em down with a heavy. I've been each one for a good bit of time, and managed to get 4 points with all of them. By no means am I an expert at any one. (Though I think I'm a pretty good medic....who would have thunk it, huh?) but you don't need to be an expert to enjoy it.

With different classes, and different maps, it's easy to adapt to another team's strategies quickly. As a result, once you've gotten the hang of the game and have learned the basic layout of the maps, you learn quickly how to avoid death.

The game is very fast paced. When you start out, you feel like you're dying every 20 seconds. That's because you are. For the most part, that's how it goes. Unless you're a sniper in the back or a medic behind a wall healing people in line of fire, you'll likely get pinged by a sniper or blown up by rockets and grenades quickly. So what? Wait 12-15 seconds to spawn and do it again.

Some of the downsides include hacks for people. Some people seem to never die, some seem to move faster, and others even seem to be able to get a head shot even if you're jumping around like a maniac. It happens....players are either very skilled, very cheating, or very both. It still doesn't take too much away from the game. Join another server if it's bothering you too much. Another downside is the learning curve. It took me around 10 minutes per class before I learned how to work them properly. Not to mention the need to learn the maps and learn the strengths/weaknesses of each class in particular situations.

TF2 is a great team-oriented game that you can enjoy by yourself too. And my favorite part, is you can pick up a game immediately, and leave at any time...someone will come along to replace you. It's endless fun learning the different classes and how they operate. Your first backstab as a spy or your first head shot as a sniper are just as fun as the last one you did.

If anyone wants to chat and has Steam, add me to your friends list. My name is killerrobot007. Hopefully I'll see you there!

So what do I do now?

Interesting this should be asked this weekend. In recent history, in the post-WoW era of my life, I've been spending more time with my family. Some of that was long due, but some of it was honestly boredom. It's funny how WoW can fill the time so easily. It had the huge advantage of being able to hop online for even an hour and run an AV or an instance or something to fill the time. Heck, even farm for 15 minutes and feel like you were being productive.

Without that, I've been watching a bit more TV...mostly Pens games, but some Scrubs and South Park as well. However, I've found a plethora of new games to try out.

The first one that I got was Guitar Hero III for the Wii. This is Nick's Wii, but I paid for half of the game...and here is why. Bill (many of you know him as Bootz) got the game and brought it over. I was hooked. I've always enjoyed music, but have never really had the great motor skills with my fingers to be good at guitar. I'm sure if I practiced more, I'd get better. But I can't just sit down with a bass guitar and play for fun. It just doesn't work that way. With Guitar Hero, you can rock out to some of your favorite songs (I love classic and 80's rock) and feel like you're playing along. I've gotten pretty good in the last few weeks, and I enjoy it a lot.

Another game I started to play was Bill's idea. Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance for the Gamecube. It is my kind of game. Nick also bought Super Mario Galaxy, which is just classic. So I spent a good bit of time playing those games.

This weekend, Justin and I went to Best Buy at 4:30 in the morning and bought the Orange Box. It contains Half Life II, and its Episodes 1 and 2, Portal, and Team Fortress II, all for $25. Team Fortress is addicting beyond all belief, and I'm not too far into Half Life II, but it's good so far.

I'll probably review these games in depth once I play them more, but that's what I've been playing. I missed a lot of good games in the last year and a half, and while I enjoyed WoW, it feels like I have to play catchup now. And so far, it's been a good time.

Ethix Systems: Part 2

As I mentioned, I got invited to a networking group for our business. What is a networking group? A networking group is a group of businesspeople who meet once in a while (in this case every week) and they "network." For the most part, each person gets to give a 60 second commercial about their business. The idea, is by sharing information about each others' businesses, it will encourage people to spread the word about your business, and you should be able to market your business more effectively.

At this networking group, we met several business professionals who were very willing to work with us. When we began to meet with the different people, they were very interested in learning our story. Since we were young and very new to the business world, these meetings were very good for us. We got to learn a lot of things about how to market ourselves. These professionals offered introductions to other business people, and word about us and our services spread. Unfortunately, it didn't spread too quickly. We had a long time of having very little work. If it weren't for some of the smaller jobs that we did for the people in our group, we would have had nothing to do at all.

As time went on, we began to realize something. Most of our work had come from website design and smaller tech support projects. We hadn't gotten very much programming work. But this wasn't because the work didn't exist. It was because of how little we marketed it. It is much easier to tell someone "we build websites" and "we fix computers" than to say "we build software." However, we decided almost a year after starting our business, to stop marketing our website design and tech support services, and to begin talking about software development.
As time went on, we slowly learned what to say to people to explain what we do. It's a lot easier one on one, so we scheduled a lot of meetings with people one on one to explain what we do. As time went on, we realized the situation that we were in. Not only can we build software well, but there aren't many people out there who can do it. We have a very solid niche market as a result. We are only just now starting to tap that market. As time goes on, people will find out more about what we can do, and will take advantage of the computers they likely already have in their place of business.

If anyone reading this doesn't know what I mean by "building software" it doesn't surprise me. You can start to get an idea about it by checking out our website at www.ethixsystems.com. However, if you want to learn more....tell me. I'll try to explain it better in another post.

Ethix Systems: Part I

Well, since I mentioned in the last post that I would probably post about our business, I think I'll do just that.

Nick (many of you know him as Rubix), my other friend Matt, and I went to Saint Vincent College not 2 years ago. In 2005, Nick had a brainstorm that we could start our own tech business. At the time it was an idea. We didn't know anything about business. But we knew that we were smart, and we could solve all sorts of problems. We figured, as long as you can provide a good service, you should be able to make it in the business world, right?

We formed our company, Ethix Systems LLC, in February 2006 formally. In May, we graduated from SVC, and we went immediately to work.

As I posted before, it's very interesting for people who haven't thought about it, where work comes from. If you ask a high school graduate, they assume that they'll be getting a job. Well how does one find a job? He asks companies if his services are needed. And where does this company get its money to pay you? It gets paid for a product. Who pays them? Their customers.

And then comes the clincher. Where do the customers come from? It's like a company that wants a website. They assume that just because they have a website, people will visit it. "If I make it, they will come." It doesn't work like that, and it doesn't work like that in business either. So we had to market ourselves. We tried cold calling. That sucked balls and didn't work. We got one job from cold calling. Fortunately for us, we ended up meeting a woman who invited me to a networking group. For those of you who know not what a networking group is, you'll have to wait until tomorrow. Because that's when our business finally started to make some money...

From Twiddling to Spinning

So for anyone who didn't know, I own my own business. I should post some time about how it got its start, how our first year went, etc. Since I haven't posted in a while, I think posting about my business is a good way to get back into it.

It's interesting when you're hired as an employee, how easy it is to realize that work must be acquired. It was easy to forget that when I worked at US Steel as an intern. In fact, it could have been easily forgotten that we even made steel. I answered the phone and tried to help people fix their computer problems. Nothing related to steel at all.

At any rate, if a business is at the point of hiring employees, it likely means that they have so much business, they can't do it on their own. But getting to that point isn't easy. There are a lot of times here when we have nothing billable to work on.

We build custom software. It's a good line of work for the most part. There's very little competition. Most people who are good at building software are terrible at marketing. There are few overhead costs. We don't have to buy supplies very often. We just need our computers and our servers running. It was a good business to get into.

The biggest challenge that we face is finding work. Finding people to pay us to build them software. It isn't the easiest task, but we welcome the challenge.

Now back to last week. We have 3-4 projects coming down the pipeline, but they are taking a good bit of time to get going. Getting clients to sign a sales contract and commit to paying us is often an issue. So we were filling the time with whatever we could. Internal stuff, catching up on accounting stuff, it got boring. Plus with every bill I paid, I knew that the bank account was shrinking ever so slowly.

This week, Tuesday morning came as usual for us. Nothing really to do. But then at 1:00 we got a phone call. It turns out someone had a rush job that they needed quoted for a price by 4:00, and completed by 6:00 Friday. Now this project we quoted at 72 hours of work. That's a lot to get done in 3 days time. We quoted them, they signed a contract the next day, and we got to work.

Not only did that happen, but we had a request we'd be waiting for 2 weeks to get, come in the same afternoon. We had two other phone calls from a web design firm looking for a quote on some work for their customers. And I had been trying to setup meetings for the week, assuming that we had nothing to do.

In other words, 5:00 rolled around on Tuesday, and I looked back at the last 4 hours, and thought "WTF just happened.".

I'm not complaining about getting business finally. But I will say, it would have been nice for it to have spread itself out. Now, at least we've pushed enough stuff until next week to guarantee that we won't be bored then.

My dad told me last week, a lot of the times it's feast or famine. I guess I got a taste of starving in the Sahara and being picked up for Thanksgiving dinner at my grandparents. ("Are you sure you're full? Have some more!" my grandmother says.)

Hope everyone's doing well. I'll try to post more often with some more of my life's annals.

Silence

My car's battery was dying, so I took it to the local Advance Auto Parts and had it checked. Once they determined that the battery needed to be replaced, and went ahead and replaced it, I started driving away to an unfamiliar sound. The sound of silence. (Thank you Paul and Arlo.)

My car stereo must have blown a fuse when they did the test. I would need to get it fixed. Wow was it quiet. I started singing songs in my head, because I couldn't stand the quiet. The only time that it's ever quiet for me is when I'm ready to go to sleep. When I'm sitting at my computer, I'm listening to music. In my car? Listening to music. All of a sudden, the silent drive of 15 minutes seems to take much longer. Music always seems to make the time fly by. I would need to get that stereo fixed stat.

The next day, I turned on my car, and again no sound. Same thing the day after, and the day after. Some of these were pretty long drives too. 20 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour sometimes. One particular day, I was driving back from a meeting, and I started thinking about an idea that I had. 30 minutes later, I pulled into my driveway, and I realized that I just did what I haven't done in a long time. I thought through a brainstorm, because it was so quiet. I could concentrate. Instead of thinking about who should win the Steeler game, or what insurance company would save me 15% if I spent 15 minutes at their website, I was thinking about what I should be doing, who I needed to call, and some ideas for our business. Another day, I was pondering the meaning of life (I didn't find an answer, sorry to disappoint. Maybe by next blog entry.)

So it came to the weekend, and I decided that I wouldn't get my radio fixed. Not quite yet. I'm content with the silence in my car. I've started even working on my computer in silence as well. I think better when it's quiet, and so now I think more. Which is a good thing. And you know what I think? I think more people should try to spend less time listening to something, and spend more time just listening.

Family

Now that I'm not playing WoW anymore, I've neglected my blog and haven't posted in a while. I actually started writing a journal (diary sounds so 13th grade girl) instead of keeping a blog, with some of my thoughts on life and just a way to get it down on paper.

But I decided this morning, after waking up that there were some things that were meant to be shared.

I had a dream last night that we were having a family gathering at my grandparents' house, as we often do. My mother's grandparents host our big annual family reunion, going back to perhaps my great-grandfather's children I think. There are usually a lot of people there. And every year, my grandparents look more and more tired in the week leading up to it. I think they are around 80 years old (Is that terrible of me not to know? understand at least this, my mom has 3 siblings, my dad 7. I have around twenty something cousins. Remembering everyone's age is out of the question for anyone outside of your extended family.)

Anyway in my dream, I saw my grandparents doing the hosting of the party, but they looked much older and slower than they usually are. Especially my grandfather. He was going up and down steps that looked much more like ladders when he climbed them, and at the end of the dream, he collapsed in the grass outside. He had simply passed out, because he sat up. I made him stay laying down, and it wasn't too long before I woke up, covered in tears.

I decided to share this because of another story that I have to tell. In the summer of 11th grade (2001 it would have been) I went to Governor's School for Health Care from July 1 through August 4. I met someone there who I ended up making good friends with. We talked about a lot of stuff. One of the things we ended up talking about were our grandparents. He had lost the grandfather that he had been so close to, and impressed upon me the importance of spending time with grandparents while they are on this earth.

We had one weekend that we were able to go home, and so on that Saturday my dad was headed over to visit his parents, and I decided to tag along. My grandmother was a house-wife, having had 8 kids. I never talked to her much, most of my time spent over there was with my cousins. But while I was there I took the time to talk to my grandmother. It couldn't have been more than 15 minutes, but it was something that I had never done. I could tell that she enjoyed it.

The morning after I came back, August 5th, I found out that my grandmother had passed away in the night due to heart failure. Apparently she had a disease that doctors have given her one year to live...in 1991. She lived another 10 years, and saw her 17 grandchildren (at the time) grow up. And I had gotten to say goodbye before she left.

This helped me immensely. I don't know if I would have had peace in my heart without those valuable 15 minutes of time that we spent.

I still have 3 grandparents left. I am blessed in this way. But I know that someday they will be gone. I know that someday my parents will be gone, and all of these aunts and uncles that I hold so dear to me. And so my message is this.

Make sure you spend time with your families. Families are wondrous things. They pull different people with completely different personalities together in a loving relationship. Although some families would call themselves dysfunctional, they are still bound by love and the time shared together. I have a very strong family, and I am eternally thankful for that. I pray that I am able to spend more time with my grandparents before they go. But it could happen in 5 minutes to any of them.

You may never get that last hug before they go, so you'll never be truly ready. Even if it's just 15 minutes, make sure you spend time with those you love, just in case something does happen. They will appreciate it, and you will too.

Have I beaten WoW?

So with Rubix leaving and Murien not playing nearly as much, and Bootz dropping off of the face of the earth, it leaves me little left to enjoy on WoW. To be quite honest, for a while now, anything other than raiding and PVP has been old. I hate to be a poor guildie, but I'd rather be playing Starcraft (old school FTW) or Zelda: Twilight Princess or Evil Genius (my current flavor of the month) than running Arcatraz for key fragments. It just isn't fun for me anymore.

Playing other games for the first time since I don't know when since I started playing WoW got me thinking. Why has WoW been an endless source of entertainment for me? Why has it taken this long for the game to catch up to me? For a solid 2 years I have played this game, and now it has finally ceased to entertain. I know a lot of it is the people who I encountered. Also a lot of it is the enjoyment I get from learning how to play better and better.

In the end, I think if I were to quit WoW, right now, I would feel like I've beaten the game. No I haven't seen Magtheridon go down. No I haven't seen SSC or The Eye. No I haven't become a Justicar or a Gladiator. I haven't beaten any decent 2v2 teams by myself. So why do I feel this way?

I guess in the end for someone to have felt that they have truly beaten WoW, they would have to level 9 characters, one of each class, to level 70, complete Karazhan, defeat SSC and The Eye, kill Illidan and Mannaroth, and get Gladiator on each one in PVP. But what's the use?

I'm a priest. I will be until the day I quit WoW. Sure it'd be fun to be a paladin or a shaman or whatever else. But the grind involved is not worth the reward that I would reap. I'd rather spend time outside of the gaming world for enjoyment.


But in the end I've come to realize that I've become just about the best priest that I can be. No I'm not the very best PVP priest. Even when specced properly, I'm not the best. But I'm pretty good, and I've had some good fun. No I'm not the best PVE priest. But I've done some crazy things in my time and had a lot of fun doing it.

I guess beating a game may not truly come down to actually doing it. Watching the cut scene in the end of the game isn't truly the point of winning a game. If you've beaten the game without cheat codes, the knowledge that you've truly beaten it is enough. I could join a heavy raiding guild for a month and tell them that I don't want loot....just to experience the fights. I know that I could belong there, because of the things that I've done. But I wouldn't enjoy it. That's like beating a game with God-mode on. If I'm going to see those fights, I'm going to see them with TN.

Back in March of last year, I joined Silver Hammer. I was hesitant to join a raiding guild. I didn't want to have to commit large blocks of time to raiding. I didn't want to have to say "sorry I can't do that, I'm busy on Monday nights." But I joined, and I loved it. Same with TN. But for example, today I got asked by my church choir "Why don't you sing with us? Rehearsals are on Wednesday nights." But Wednesday nights are Gruul's nights.

So now you see my dilemma.

I don't think I'm going to quit WoW altogether. I was addicted for a long time, and it wasn't a big deal. I'm sure I'll post something about how WoW has helped me as a person at some point here. But I will likely not be online guaranteed for raiding nights, or for arena. It will be more of a "I feel like playing WoW tonight." And if someone's online and wants to run Arcatraz, that will be fine. If we are going to kill Void Reaver, assuming I'd still be wanted, then I'd come as long as I felt my skills weren't rusty. But I think that it's about the time in my life that I need to stop structuring it around WoW, and start structuring it around...well, my life.

Farewell Rubix

It's official. Rubix has cancelled his account. His time on Cenarion Circle is through. And I doubt he'll be coming back.

This really changes my perception of WoW in a lot of ways. While I love the people in my guild, the primary reason for me playing was to have a good time with my friends. Bootz hasn't logged on in weeks, Rubix has quit, so we're down to myself and Murien. In very little time, I expect my attendance on Azeroth and the Outlands will be minimal.

I realize that it will happen eventually, as we all know it will for us all. However, it's much like having your grandparents pass away. You know it's coming. But the day it happens, the shock is still present.

I have noticed attendance being sluggish from the guild as of late. I doubt that it is directly correlated to Rubix and Bootz leaving. Maybe everyone has different reasons at this point.

I don't intend on quitting WoW altogther (well unless Murien does, and then that'll probably be it for me.) but I do intend on limiting my time to mostly raiding and arena. Those are the two things that keep my burning ambition alive. It's what challenges me the most and is thus what I enjoy the most about the game.

This isn't a goodbye, but an explanation as to why I haven't been posting as much lately, and why you may not be seeing me much anymore. When you live in a house with only one other person, and they aren't playing WoW, there's really less of a reason to do it.

I fully intend to support the guild raids and whatnot. I also hope that we can recruit some new mages soon, cause replacing him is going to be tough.

Heroics vs. Karazhan

So obviously, the progression for level 70 content goes as follows:
1. 5 man regular instances
2. Karazhan and Gruul's Lair
3. SSC and The Eye
4. Black Temple and Mount Hyjal

So where do heroics fit in?

I'd like to suggest that heroics belong on the same tier as Karazhan.

Now most people look at the gear coming out of Karazhan compared to the epic heroic gear, and say that clearly the gear from Kara is better. The item level is higher. You get more loot.

This is true. However, I would like to suggest that Karazhan is easier than heroics.

Preposterous you say. But think about what makes 25 man raids so difficult. There are three elements to a solid 25 man raid.

1. Organization/Team Work - having a good raid leader, good class leaders, and people who know their roles in a group are essential in a good 25 man group.

2. Determination - the attitude to keep trying until you are successful, and not be frustrated.

3. Solid Individual Play - each individual must perform up to high standards of DPS, healing, threat, mana, whatever efficiency they require.

Now lets look at how much Karazhan affects the people in these categories.

1 Organization/Team Work - Does a great job at teaching this. People learn their place in raids.
2 Determination - Does a relatively good job with this. However, it's easy to just follow the flow and blame a bad night if things don't go well...there's a lot of randomness in boss fights in Kara.
3 Solid Individual Play - If everyone does poorly, no one is going anywhere. However, most fights are easy to 9 man if the group has done it for a time, so missing one person usually won't kill the group.

Now lets look at 5 mans.

1. Organization/Team Work - Since the hardest part often of heroics is the trash pulls, everyone needs to be clicking with crowd control and working together. Even if there isn't a specific leader, everyone should be taking control of their piece of it and working together.
2. Determination - If you aren't determined, you won't end up with any epics. Only if you down the last boss will you be getting superb gear. Without determination, all you'll be getting is a repair bill.
3. Solid Individual Play - If your 20% of the group sucks, you won't be killing many heroic bosses. That's just the way that it is.

I'm not talking about heroic Mechinar either. I'm talking about heroic Shadowlabs. Shattered Halls. Arcatraz. The ones that used to be part of the Eye attunement. Even with a group that had Karazhan on farm, and taking 5 key people in that group, these heroics were really tough. It took a great team effort.

My point is, if you can't complete these heroics, it doesn't mean that you don't belong in the Eye. However, if you can complete these heroics, it means that you do. I'd rather see a lot more people running these heroics. It's the best way to truly learn what it takes to get prepared for the Eye and SSC. Karazhan teaches a lot. But how to truly excel at your position....run heroics.

How to Win in Raids: Determination

Last night we defeated Gruul. Yes we've done it before. Yes we've done it easily before.

But how many times did it take us last night? We had 7 true attempts, not counting the bad pull. That means that before going after him our final time, everyone knew that we'd attempted the fight 6 times and failed.

It reminds me of someone trying to parallel park in a space. I've parallel parked many times before. It isn't all that difficult once you've done it for a while. But lets say you go to turn into a space, and you cut it too hard. You pull back out and try again. Still you can't get in there right. A third, fourth, fifth time. You still can't get in there.

How many of you would give up at this point? I know I would. I'd walk an extra 3 blocks than sit there all day trying to park into that space. Well last night, knowing that it was our final attempt, we went in there and got the job done. The driver behind us was flicking us off, and we knew we only had one more go before he went postal on us. And we parked right up 3 inches away from the curb and got to blow a kiss to that asshole driver behind us.

Determination in a raid is not something that can be taught. Every raid is going to have "one of those nights." The key is to not give up. Usually a raid goes downhill on a boss after around the 3rd attempt. Progressively worse and worse. That did not happen last night. Everyone buckled down, and we had by far the best attempt on the final one. That's a sure sign of a strong raid mentality.

So as we start running The Eye, don't forget how important it is to stay determined. Stay hungry. That boss is one attempt away from dying. So you might as well give it your all and kick his ass. Make sure you're doing your job as well as you can. Because if we have all 25 people thinking that way, there's no way we'll be stopped.

The Eye

Last night in the Eye was a really good time. I haven't stepped foot in there before, and I've only really watched the Void Reaver fight on Youtube once, so just being there and kicking ass was a lot of fun.

It reminded me not of Karazhan for some reason, but of running the new 5 man instances when BC came out. It was very mysterious, and everyone was working hard to figure out how to defeat the trash. I remember running Mana Tombs for the first time, and having the mobs that mana burn. Youch.


It was like that last night. Yes we wiped a lot on the trash. But most groups do. We learned how some of the mobs work the hard way. But we got to Void Reaver in 2 hours. That's probably better than many groups can say. Plus, we only had one mage.

I had a really good time. I hope everyone else did too. I'm really looking forward to Sunday. I think Void Reaver is getting his ass kicked.

Just as a note to anyone wondering....Circle of Healing is not very good at all. I can see it being useful in 5 mans. And it has its uses in Void Reaver. But by the end, I was casting Renews and Greater Heals. There's no way to guarantee that everyone in group 2 will be taking similar amounts of damage around the same time. It's just impossible. I'll be going back to my usual scrub 23/38 again. I'm very disappointed. On the other hand, I've never had bigger Greater Heals thanks to all 5 points in Empowered Healing. But I'd definitely rather have Imp Divine Spirit in the raid.

A final note on last night. Everyone listened and paid attention. That means more than anything in there. We didn't have any dumb wipes. Sure a few times, people weren't where they needed to be sometimes, but that happens during fights we aren't familiar with no matter what happens. Thanks to everyone for making it a lot of fun. Can't wait for Sunday.

Divine Spirit vs. Circle of Healing

So I am still rejoicing over the possibility of having 30% mana regen inside of the FSR. (35% with the primal mooncloth bonus. It'll be very interesting to see if they nerf it and make it not stack with Meditation....then I can get out of these ugly ass robes someday.)

However, it still highlights one of the biggest errors that Blizzard has done. It regards the duel-healing trees. Every other class can afford to be a healer sitting at 0/0/61 in their resto tree. We priests are forced into going at least 14 in Disc for Meditation (especially now) and Inner Focus, and at least 18 into Holy for 15% mana reduction on Greater Heal. Most priests even consider 10% increase to healing essential as well, which means 30 points in the Holy tree. I know that I do.

So lets see. 14 points in disc, 30 points in holy. No big deal, right? You can go 14/47/0, and that gives you plenty of room for change. Or if you wanted to go higher in disc, you could go 31/30/0 and get power infusion. And if you really don't care about the 10% healing, 42/19/0 isn't a bad spec, especially for PVP and the changes to Pain Suppression.

All of this would be true, except for one thing. The 21 point talent in the disc tree. Divine Spirit.

Most non-priests don't know that this buff is a talent. Like the paladin Blessing of Sanctuary, it requires 21 points in a non-healing tree.

So wait, I don't hear paladins complaining. This is because the order of blessing preference for a tank goes something like this: Kings, Light (assuming pally healer), Might, Sanctuary. How often do you have 4 paladins in the raid? Sanctuary isn't really an essential buff. Divine Spirit is huge.

It gives 50 spirit. 50 spirit means the following to a priest:
1. 31.25 mana per 5 outside of the FSR.
2. 4.68 mp5 inside of the FSR. (6.25 if you have 3 pieces of Primal Mooncloth)

Now since I'm a human priest with Spirit of Redemption, I get 15% increase to my spirit.

58 spirit means 40.6 MP5 outside of the FSR, and 8.125 MP5 for me with 3 pieces of primal mooncloth.

Since I average 60% of my time in the FSR, Divine Spirit gives me an average of 21.1 mp5. This isn't quite Blessing of Wisdom quality, but it's still great.

Plus, as a priest I get 20% of my spirit converted to damage and healing. That's another 13 damage and healing.

So now you look at the numbers and you say, that's really not a huge deal, is it?

But remember that this is a raid buff. Every druid, every shaman, every paladin, every mage, every warlock, every hunter gets this buff. I don't care if you don't itemize for spirit. If you aren't casting for 5 seconds, you're getting some mana back from your spirit. This is an enormous buff for healers, since spirit is a primary stat of theirs.

So that's the 21st point talent.....but that's not all! Then you can spend an additional 2 points to make the buff increase everyone's damage and healing by 10% of their spirit. Again, for druids and priests, that's another 100-150 +damage and healing. For a mage/warlock, sure it's only 15-20 +damage, but who says no to that? It's huge for tanking paladins, who get threat based on their +damage.

So this is why most healing priests are 23/38/0. I'd love to afford some extra points in the holy tree for Circle of Healing, 2 more points in Empowered Healing, maybe even Lightwell. But until Blizzard realizes that Divine Spirit is monopolizing our talent specs, things need to change.

The problem is, with the change to Meditation, Divine Spirit is actually buffed. Spirit gives us even more mana regen now.

I hope that Blizzard wakes up and realizes that Divine Spirit should be given to all priests, much like Innervate was given to all druids. It's an enormous buff that we can't go without, and it should not corner us into a given spec.

New Meditation completely changes everything

So now that it's blue confirmed that Meditation is getting buffed to twice its prior effectiveness, to the point of getting back to the days of 3 piece tier 2 set bonus, I honestly don't know what to say. I mean, thanks. It's an enormous buff for me. I stack spirit like it's cool. During some raid boss fights, I've had 700 spirit. 700 spirit gives me 438 mana every 5 seconds outside of the FSR. With the old meditation, this gave me 66 MP5. Now with the new meditation, I'll get an additional 66 MP5, without being nerfed in any other way.

66 MP5 in the FSR. I average 60% of my time in the FSR. Over a 10 minute fight (Nightbane), this means I am now getting an extra 4752 mana during the fight. O. M. G.

I think a lot of the problem is that most priests liked to pretend that they were paladins. They stacked their MP5 and spammed Greater Heal Rank 1. Now, that might actually be feasible. Having close to 300 MP5, now I can spam a lower rank heal for a much longer time. Especially if I'm smart about using my Clearcasts and Bangle. This means wonders for us priests in PVE. Druids will be getting a similar buff, and shamans will be buffing their groups with an additional 20 mp5.

So the question is, why? We all know that paladin healing is somewhat OPed with their uncanny ability to spam heals on a target and never go OOM. Even in PVP, they can keep healing long after they are oom, just due to their mp5 regen and their heal efficiency. So I understand the need to equalize. But what will this mean for us priests, druids, and shamans? Will they actually use us in PVE 25 man raids now for anything other than shadow?

An interesting thought though. Now that spirit will likely come back in fashion, and dwarves/draenai are getting their fear ward distributed, are humans the ultimate PVE priests? We get desperate prayer for in a pinch, we get fear ward every 3 minutes, and we have the 10% passive spirit bonus. How about them apples.

Do all you priests who rerolled dwarves for fear ward, I pity you now. You had your fun. Now is my time.

New Patch sooner than we think?

I found this post on worldofming.com, which I read regularly. Although none of these are official, I think you'll agree that it's kinda crazy.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=1365.0

Fear ward for all?
Pain Suppression targettable?
Mana regen much higher for priests and druids?
Enhancement shaman and ret pally buffs?
33% of your +healing becomes +damage?
Soulwell for mage food/water?
Blind is a physical effect?
Shadowstep usable outside of stealth?

All this and more!

If they do this for Fear Ward, I will cry tears of joy. Paladins can tank Nightbane! Big Bad Wolf won't be a little bitch because of a bad fear. Warlocks might actually die in PVP!

The +healing to damage conversion is crazy too. I have around 1300 +healing in PVP. Having a static +433 damage because of that? Insanity. In PVE, it's around 1750....does that mean my shadow word pain will actually be worth casting?

It will be interesting to see which of these items makes it to the official patch notes and which ones don't.

Lots to Talk About

Just wanted to take some notes here about some things that I thought about tonight

1. You'd think that a patch worked on for around 8 weeks would have fewer issues than those rushed into production.

2. Running Karazhan with a new main tank, a new offtank, less than preferred healing, and random lag/DC/UI issues made for a slow start. Thanks to everyone who stuck around and worked hard to get to that backdoor tonight.

3. Running PVP with a frost mage is so much more fun than running with a hunter. Unfortunately for Gully, if anything focused on him, we were usually just about done. I couldn't deal with crowd control, silences, counterspells, and the healing debuffs. With a frost mage, namely Yimii, it made things incredibly easy for me. I was always focused. The fight was determined almost always in the first minute of the fight. If I was alive after a minute, we usually won (except for the viper stinging hunter/priest combo). We ended up winning more than we lost, and I think that our synergy wasn't even all that great, because I'm used to being a healbot. Now if I respecced to a more PVP oriented spec like 28/33/0, we'd do even better. More damage, more longevity, and less likely to be burst.

4. Azi has issued a challenge to bring your best dueling spec and he'll video tape it. SO tempting to go something like 41/20/0. Dueling spec, here I come. You aren't ready for this Azi. Bring it.

5. 2v2 with a good warrior would be fun too. Cmon Azi, lets do it! Also fun.....battleground PVP as a warrior/priest team running around. Can't wait to find a night to do that too.

6. Gruul is tomorrow. If we one shot Maulgar and Gruul both, we're headed into The Eye or SSC. Bring your A-game, and lets pwn those noobs.

Spell / Ability Rotations

OK. How did I determine what abilities I should use on the Dr. Boom test? Well what I used to do was say "how much damage does an ability do over it's course of time." For example, unstable affliction did 1600 damage over 18 seconds. But this doesn't truly give an accurate total for how DPS should go. So what I did was, I compared how much damage each spell did per CAST TIME and ranked them.

Here's how my list looked:
Curse of Doom
Unstable Affliction
Corruption
Siphon Life
Immolate
Shadowbolt

So, when I was doing Dr. Boom, I treated my DOTs as if they had a cooldown equal to their duration. I went down the list and cast each spell once. Then I spammed Shadowbolt (with a Lifetap tossed in here and there) until the DOTs faded. Then I reapplied each one. You treat every spell individually and consider your options. If the target has Curse of Doom, Unstable Affliction, Corruption, and Immolate on him, then I cast Siphon Life. In doing so, I ensured that I always used my highest DPS ability at any given moment.

Hunters can do the same thing. They need to determine which ability hits the hardest. Serpent Sting, Arcane Shot, Multishot, and Steady Shot. And go from the highest DPS to the lowest.

Alarion: Concerning your fire mage, if you have improved scorch you obviously want to keep 5 stacks up as much as you can. Once you have the 5 stacks, see which hits harder....scorch or fireball (damage per second that is) and then use that spell. Since your highest DPS spell is not on a cooldown, then that's what you should use all the time. Mages are easy. Rubix has a decent arcane spell rotation that's a little different, but most fire/frost mages spam one spell the whole time.

Give it a try. Check which of your abilities do the most DPS. You'd be surprised sometimes.

How I did that much DPS

So before I did any amount of DPS with my warlock on Dr. Boom, I projected to myself that I would really love to break 500 DPS. This is not only because this is how much you should have to be able to beat Gruul, but because it just seemed like it shouldn't be able to happen.

I look at combat logs every time we run Karazhan and Gruul's Lair. I can see exactly what everyone's performance in there was. For the most part, new people in Karazhan are doing around 300-350 DPS. By the time 2-3 weeks go by, I've talked to them about their specs, and they've gotten some brand new shiny epics. Their DPS usually goes up to around 400 once they do that.

Finally, once I talk to them about spell rotation. Now THAT's when they start hitting around 500ish DPS, which is enough for Gruul.

So you're telling me that with greens and quest item blues I can do over 500 DPS? Can I get a starting position in Gruul? Hold your horses. There's a lot to take into account.

1. My hit rating is 22. I missed on Dr. Boom around....once. Maybe twice. My miss rate on Dr. Boom would be close to 15%. Goodbye 15% of that 563. That means 478 DPS.

2. Then you have to take into account the periods of silences. On average, I've seen a mage be hitting him 75% - 80% of the time. Now warlocks would have more of that time casting, since we could be casting DOTs. However, I'm going to go with a loss of another 20%, simply because while you're being ground slammed, you can still be dotting him up. Loss of 20% means 383 DPS. Ewww.

But wait you say. What about shadow priests? What about curse of shadows? Hmm. Misery = 5% increase. Shadow weaving = 10% increase. Curse of Shadows = 10% increase. 25% increase worst case if a shadow priest and another warlock is there. So we're back to around 478 DPS.

Now guaranteed, I'm missing something. It's quite likely that with only 490 spell damage, I shouldn't be able to do that kinda of damage on Gruul. However, it's fun to speculate. :-D

So how did I figure out my spell rotation for my warlock? I'm going to explain my method here tomorrow, which also applied to hunters as well. So if you're a lock or a hunter, you'd best listen up. This will help you immensely (just ask Pat).

The results are in, and....

The answer is.....*drum roll please*

563.

http://wowwebstats.com/phv6ibgrnpyrc?m

And here's the link.

I was totally surprised.

And I can't talk too long....gonna be a long day. But tomorrow will be a summary post.

See you then!

The Answer is...

Well, should I say it? Only 2 people commented.

We needs more comments before I reveal the true answer!

Just as a note about Azi and Bootz's guesses....wow you guys really have a lot of faith in me. Yes my spec is focused on raiding, but have you seen my gear? 490 +damage! To put this into perspective, Patricles has over 1000 shadow damage.

Pat and I went up to the ole Dr. Boom to play around and see what spells did more/less damage. By the time we were done, we had learned a lot about a warlock spell rotation and what it should look like.

One note, my DPS was really good on Dr. Boom, because he was a level 70 mob. My +hit rating is 22. On Gruul, my DPS would go down by around 14%. Kinda crazy, but true. (Also, Curse of Shadows and shadow priest buffs would be up, but you also have moving around to do.)

Guess you'll just have to wait until tomorrow to find out how I did. Bet you can't wait.

More guesses!

Also tomorrow, I'll post on what I think is probably the best way to determine what abilities you should use for DPS, especially if you're a hunter or a warlock.

Guess the DPS

OK, so I've been wondering what a poorly geared warlock can achieve on the Dr. Boom test. So I took my very own Tokanius. Check out his armory for his gear, buffs, and talents. And tell me how you think I should do DPS wise.

Note that I'm not saying how I should do in Gruul or in a raid situation. I'm saying on the Dr. Boom test itself. During the Dr. Boom test, you are allowed to engage at ranged, and you take no damage whatsoever. Thus, a warlock can lifetap to nothing and bandage without consequences.

Go ahead...I'd like to see what people think before I post my wow web stats link.

Serious guesses please. I'll give you a hint...it was greater than 100, and smaller than 1000. :-D

Karazhan: The Good and the Bad

I wanted to just summarize what I think is awesome about Karazhan, and what I think is lacking.

Good stuff:

1. The Karazhan bosses are very intertaining. From Moroes, to Maiden, to the Opera events, to Netherspite, to Illhoof, everything is pretty fun. It's much better than the usual tank & spank. Having the need for crowd control, positioning, moving around for survival, it's really a nice change from the ordinary boss fights.

2. The loot ratio. 10 people. 11 bosses. At least 2 pieces of loot per boss (3 from Prince.) This means on average, everyone will be getting 2 items every week (not counting shards of course). Much better than 40 people, 10 bosses, 2 pieces of loot apiece. You're lucky if you get an item in a given week.

3. The ranges of difficulty. To down Attumen, you can handle it with blues from level 70 instances. But by the time you hit Prince and Nightbane, you'd best have an epicced main tank and some well geared healers, as well as having some serious DPS. It really helps people get better over time instead of just smashing heads against a wall.

4. The fights that teach you how to play. Some fights are long regen fights, like Nightbane. Others are "WTF DPS PWNAGE FASTER" like Curator and Moroes. Some are a combination of this, like Prince. Others require survivability and adaptability more than DPS, such as Netherspite and Shade. These are the fights that make you a better player.

The rotten icky bad stuff:

1. The randomness. Not knowing what you'll get for Opera makes preparing a group for it slightly difficult. At least we figured out that you send a naked person in, and once they die you can reset and explain much easier that way. But not only the randomness of the fight choice, but fights like Prince where no one knows if you're going to one shot him, or if you're going to wipe 5 times because the infernals landed on top of you right as you get hit with enfeeble.

2. The ability for a single person to wipe the raid. Obviously if someone dies, it will be tough for the raid to continue. But if someone moves one step to the left or to the right......very different story. Netherspite is like this....Shade is like this. Sometimes lag can mean you twitched your trigger finger, which means a wipe. This can be extremely frustrating.

3. Repeat drops. Seriously. Can someone fix this? Seeing the same stuff from a boss gets old, and it gets old fast.

4. Group makeup. Having a lot of fights where ranged DPS is encouraged gets frustrating, not only for the rogues in the group, but for the group leaders as well. Class balance is great, but not being able to do a fight because you don't have the right group makeup? I understand that you can't win a fight with 5 tanks and 5 healers. But sometimes I wish that the restrictions placed for certain fights (warlocks on Illhoof, warlocks/mages on Oz, paladins on Maiden) were somewhat reduced.

5. Running the same thing for no reward for 4 months. Now this isn't true. It has been very rewarding seeing everyone get their upgrades and usually turn themselves into fantastic players. I admit though, knowing that I won't be getting any loot myself can be frustrating when you're paying for repair bills. Fortunately, we're getting to the point of having plenty of people geared up and ready to take on 25 man content.

Looking forward to moving on beyond Karazhan. Because with a few exceptions, most of the good points of Karazhan apply to SSC. And new content is always more fun.

Why is WoW BC getting old faster?

WoW seems to be going downhill for a lot of people fast. It's funny how the original game took people by storm, and the content lasted forever. People ran Stratholme and Scholomance probably 300 times (at least I did) and it didn't really get that old. Then people ran MC a ton until that started getting old. But people ran the same instances a lot. For some reason, that's just what people did. When they announced the expansion, the big thing was PVP to get the grand marshal gear. Now, in BC, I find myself very indifferent about the different instances. I don't know them like the back of my hand like I knew the level 60 instances. And yet I grow tired of them already.

There could be several reasons for this:

1. It took people a while to truly learn how to play their class, and so they spent more time running instances that slowly got better. Now in BC, people already know what they are doing, so mastering an instance takes no time at all.

2. The only way to get gear that totally made a run EZ-mode was to raid MC, ZG, or AQ20, all of which took a long time to achieve. Here, a few trips into heroics and Karazhan can achieve the same thing. Good gear is more easily accessible as well due to the drastic improvement of BG and arena gear, both of which are more easily acquired due to game-play time instead of learning how to play.

3. The second time around, the game isn't nearly as fun. To a point, doing the same things over and over is unavoidable. At some point, doing the same things, such as dailies and farming, becomes tedious and thus less enjoyable.

4. Fewer changes. There were patches coming out every 1-2 months back then with new content, or changes to a class, etc. We've been sitting on the same patch now for almost 3 months, if not longer. Without new additions or big changes, people get bored easily.

5. Higher expectations. We know how amazing WoW was the first time around. WoW reborn should be 50 times cooler. But remember, the dungeons are shorter, take less time to complete, and it takes less time to obtain good loot. As a result, you don't really grind for a piece of gear forever, quite like waiting 5 months for something out of MC that you really really wanted.

At any rate, I'm afraid that as time goes on, fewer and fewer people will keep interest in the game, and we'll start to lose some quality people. This will not only make raids harder to do, but it will also mean less enjoyment, since these are people we've spent a lot of time playing with.

I continue to play WoW because it's fun. But I do hope that some new content for casual's sake comes along. I look forward to SSC, but I hope that some newer things other than Zul'Aman come along as well. Because for 3-4 other nights in a week that I hop on WoW, running around doing dailies and heroics can get old quickly.

Feel free to comment with your opinions on this subject.

Was I Right? Or Was I Right?

Who called it? we downed Gruul by 7:30 server, and headed over to Mag's Lair. Nice work everyone. It well extremely smoothly, and everyone had a good time. We got some experience in Mag's Lair, which was huge for our progression.

It's a completely different story than our Kara run on Tuesday. That run was very slow moving, and we barely got through some of those bosses.

People may wonder why this is. Here is why. Let's look at our roster from Kara.

Trystery, Murien, Bootz, Wynri, Shaena, Athos, Thanosia, Eraagon, Chloes, Doofis, and Oncoi.

3 of those people weren't with us in Gruul, mostly because either they don't quite have the numbers yet. Thanosia, Athos, and Eraagon aren't quite ready for 25 man content. Some spec tweaking as well as some work on gear will help their causes. It's amazing what a difference that can make though.

I will say this though. The lowest DPS that a DPS class had was 433. That's awesome. That means that we aren't just winning because 5 or 6 people are pulling everyone else along. That means that everyone earned that kill.

In Mag's Lair, things will be a little different. In Gruul's having 6 hunters is a great thing. In Mag's, we're going to need a little more class balance. That's not to say that we can't do it. But having only 1 warrior, 1 rogue, 1 shaman, and 2 mages makes it really hard for interrupts on the shadowbolt volleys and the dark mendings.

There will be a much steeper learning curve on this one. A lot of groups just skip it and head for SSC or The Eye instead. We're on the cusp of SSC guys. Hang in there another week or two.

SSC!

Why aren't we there yet? A few reasons. Obviously we need to down Gruul every week before we can pretend that we belong in there. We've taken some significant steps toward doing this. Namely, Wynri shouldn't take nearly as many crushing blows this week, which should make keeping him up a lot easier. Last week on attempt 2, we had the DPS to down him. Wynri took two crushings in a row, and that was that.

This week, Gruul will die. As long as we get the right turnout. So lets think for a minute about this timetable.

6:00 Pull the mobs before Maulgar.
6:15 Pull Maulgar himself.
6:30 Pull the guards before Gruul.
7:00 Start Gruul
7:30 Gruul is dead
7:45 Head to Magtheridon's Lair or SSC!

We know we can do it. We just need to execute. We need people to show up on time rearing to go. We need that fire in peoples' eyes. Like the night when we downed him. I could tell, we were on a mission. We need that attitude again. We WILL kill him.

A lot of people are getting antsy. They want to see SSC. So do I. Karazhan is old news for me. Been there, done that. We have to move on soon, or we're going to hit that proverbial brick wall of MC soon. This is about when people started to leave because we weren't hitting BWL yet, and we were still grinding out MC. Some people had the gear from MC and didn't need anything else. Others didn't have it yet. If we don't move on soon, I'm afraid we're going to start losing some well geared players. So we need everyone to work hard this week and prepare. Help anyone else who's in your class to make sure they know that Gruul is going down. Do everything you can to make it happen. Attitudes are contagious. Be there at 6:00 ready to pull. We have enough flasks, we don't need the Skyguard event. Lets just get grouped up and kill Maulgar as quickly as we can.

Are you ready? I am. Lets do it!

Gear Taking Etiquette

A lot of the reason people get so ticked off in WoW is because of gear. There are 3 kinds of people in WoW with regards to loot.

1. The Cartmans. Some people call them loot whores. These people will roll on anything that is useful to them, even if it's an upgrade of one stat. This becomes more apparent when the player is a hybrid (druids, shamans, and paladins beware).

2. The Dumbasses. These people don't know anything about what is an upgrade for them, and will roll on things that they don't need, and will pass on things that should be absolutely essential.

3. The Brady's. These people are so nice, that anything, no matter how nice it is, is someone else's until no one else needs it. Even if you're sitting around with a green quest trinket, and the other guys have blue trinkets, you don't really need that trinket.

Everyone probably tends to act like a Cartman or a Brady for the most part. The dumbasses just need to learn what stats are good for them. Taking some time to sit down with them and help them see what they need gear-wise and to learn what is an upgrade and what is not, is essential.

The Cartmans' and the Bradys' are tough eggs to crack sometimes. Put them in the same raid, and all of the Cartmans' will have all of the loot, and the Bradys' will have none. Not a good situation.

Now in playing WoW, you have far more Cartmans' than Bradys. So how do you deal with Cartmans? A smart Cartman (one with Kenny sharing his body) will wait until no one else needs an item before he rolls on it. Now, lets say you're an elemental shaman. If there are no other shamans in the party, you get dibs on anything that drops that hunters don't want. But when it comes to trinkets, rings, necklaces, and cloaks, you have to be more tempered. It takes a long time before you end up with a really nice necklace for all of the roles that you play.

So remember, you have a primary role. If you're a healer, you can roll on any healer loot that is an upgrade. If a DPS item drops, and no one else wants it, roll with any other healers who would want it. Make everyone who could use it roll. If they won't, then it's yours.

Just remember the following things:
1. If you've gotten an item that night, and you keep rolling on stuff, people will start to wonder if you're a team player. Yes it's frustrating rolling on the second best neckpiece and then having the best neckpiece drop. It's part of the game. Just remember that if everyone in your group is part of your team, at least a teammate got it.

2. If you're sporting an epic cloak, and an upgrade drops. And you roll and someone with a green cloak rolls, see what you can do to let them have it. It's an enormous upgrade for them, and it will make the team stronger.

3. Try to take "frequency of use" into context as well. Lets take Murien and myself for example. Murien will once in a while go moonkin or DPS in an instance. No one wants to see me DPS (QQ) so I might as well let Murien have first dibs on DPS gear. It only makes sense.

4. Come prepared as to knowing what you would like to drop. Nothing is more annoying to someone who wants an item than to have to wait 30 more seconds to find out if that would be an upgrade for someone. If you're serious, research the fight. Let there be no surprises. Find out what that proc rate is...find out if it's a true upgrade. If it isn't, then don't roll. If it is, roll big.

Don't forget that not everyone in the group is necessarily reliable. You can't be letting a newcomer have 5 pieces of loot if other people need them. If things drop and no one needs them, no sense in letting them sit there and be sharded. Might as well take it (Burdin and Azi come to mind. They aren't Cartmans, just extremely lucky. Except for Azi; he's still a Cartman, cause he's a fat short guy who yells obscenities.) But remember, these people can hop off of the face of the earth. This is one reason why I let newer people come and roll even if they haven't run with us before. If they have been running with Team Blue, then they are considered a part of the team and thus reliable. As long as the loot is being used by someone in the raid, it's helping the group.

Just try to remember these things when that item drops. People will respect you a lot more if you follow these guidelines. If anyone wants to add their own rules, stick em in the comments. I'll be happy to add them to the list.

Tough Night in Gruul's

OK, everyone who was at Gruul's last night knows that we struggled heavily. Things just felt depressing. I don't think everyone was truly prepared. Yes we had some newer folks, but you'll have that. As we get more people involved in Karazhan and filling spots, you need some newer blood.

New people aside, we had the group to kill him. There are a few mechanics healing and tanking-wise that I'll be helping to work on. DPS on our 2nd attempt was spot on. But for the 3rd and 4th attempts, it felt like a lot of people just weren't really there.

There were a few things beyond our control last night that didn't help things. Around 5-6 people disconnected or had terrible lag during multiple attempts. When you're just barely killing a boss, you can't have that. It's beyond our control though, so it isn't worth worrying about.

But there were a few things going on that needs addressed. I know that if you're reading this, for the most part you all know what needs to go on before a raid. Namely, preparing. If you're going to be late, please park your character. Please make sure that you've repaired and that you have reagents, flasks, potions, food for buffs, and whatever else you need. If everyone had done this, we would have gotten far more than 4 attempts on Gruul.

I'll be mentioning this to several people who didn't really follow these guidelines. It's common courtesy to be prepared. If you're holding 24 other people up, you may not have a spot for very long.

Also, ventrilo etiquette was discussed. I personally have no problems with keeping ventrilo lighthearted and fun. But with 25 people trying to intensely concentrate, chatter needs to be minimized during combat. Azi, I think that you know that your yelling was inapproporate, but you apologized. Apology accepted. You were frustrated, and I can't say I wouldn't have done the same thing in your shoes.

I think we all need rejuvenated for that fight. Lets all try to focus on bringing our A game next week. Instead of being ho-hum about Gruul, if we start talking about it ahead of time and get people psyched up about it, we should have the right attitudes necessary to down him.

We're getting better every week. More consistency from our DPS has been key. Everyone wants to get into SSC and Magtheridon's Lair. We'll get there soon. But we've got to focus and do the little things first.

In conclusion, lets be more ready to take the leap. For those of you who have newer people in your class, talk to them. Help them to understand why what I've mentioned above is so essential. We really need to help people make the leap from casual to serious with regards to being on time and being prepared. If we can do that, Gruul will die everytime we go in there, and we can finally move on to bigger and better things.

The Economics of WoW: Part 4

So you've determined your best stat, whether it be strength, or spirit, or +damage. So now what? Should you get the items that have only that stat? Is a green item with 40 +damage better than an epic with only 35?

Lets go back to the goldfish/ice cream example. Lets say you bought 50 ice creams. You eat the first one, and it's amazing. Best ice cream you've ever tasted. You eat a second one, and a third one. Soon your brain starts to freeze. You eat a fourth one, and your head starts pounding. At that point, you're starting to wish you'd bought some goldfish, right?

That's called the Law of Diminishing Returns. For each of item A you consume, its value to you diminishes. So you may LOVE the first ice cream, and REALLY LIKE the second, but by the time you've eaten enough of them, you'd rather have something else.

The Law of Diminishing Returns applies in WoW as well. Lets take a mage for example. Mages like spell damage and +crit. Lets say the mage is starting out with 0 spell damage and 0% chance to crit. A Frostbolt will hit for around 655. So what's better? 900 spell damage? Or 800 crit rating? (Blizzard sets 9 spell damage equal to 8 spell crit on gems) 900 spell damage means your frostbolt hits all the time for 1325. An 800 crit rating means that you crit 36% of the time. That means that your average frostbolt hits for (655*.64) + (1310*.36) which is 891. So the spell damage is better, right?

But wait, if you swapped 90 spell damage for 80 crit rating and took 810 spell damage and 80 crit rating, what happens? Your average frostbolt non-crit would hit for 1280, and your crits would hit for 2560. Your average frostbolt would then hit for (1280*.96) + (2560*.04) = 1331.

What does this mean? It means that the Law of Diminishing Returns applies in WoW as well, although it needs worded differently. Each +1% to crit benefits you in the same way. However, the more +crit that you have the less valuable it becomes. This is because the more +crit you have, the better chance there will be that +damage will be more beneficial. The same thing goes with +damage. The more +damage you have, the better chance that +crit will be better for you.

Another thing to think about is how Blizzard handles items with only one stat versus items with 2 or 3 stats. If an item only has stamina on it, it may have 60 stamina. However, an item of the same level might have 30 int and 45 stamina on it. The more stats an item has, the more of each stat it is given in general. This is why the set pieces often have a good bit of a lot of different stats, as opposing to the tailoring pieces that have a ton of very few stats. The tailoring pieces may be a lower level than the set pieces, but depending on how important those stats are to you, it may be beneficial to keep one or the other.

Another note: You need to know where you're at. If you have 500 spell damage, it's a completely different situation than if you have 1200 spell damage. The stats that you have drastically change what different stats mean to you.

As such, try to be as well rounded as you can be. Don't just stockpile one stat. Try to get a balance of all of them. In most cases, this will do you better than just having one or two stats maxed out. But don't take my word for it....try it out for yourself.

The Economics of WoW: Part 3

So now that we've discussed the difference between Blizzard's "item pricing" and what you'd consider your item pricing, how do we take advantage of this? There are several ways to take advantage of the difference in opinion between Blizzard and you. One way is to determine what stat to maximize.

Lets take a DPS warrior as an example. When comparing strength and agility, 1 strength = 2 AP and 1 agility = 1 AP + .03 % crit. Strength by far outranks agility. Sure 33 Agility means 33 AP and 1% to crit, but 33 Strength would mean 66 AP. So strength is better than agility. But we know that Blizzard treats strength and agility as if they are the same. So warriors should be going after gear that has no agility and lots of strength. (Now this isn't necessarily true, but for this explanation assume it's true.) This is because instead of getting a neckpiece that has 15 agility, you could potentially get a similar one with 15 strength that would be worth more to you.

When you start comparing stats like this, you can begin to look for gear that has your very best stat, and start stacking it. For example, subtlety rogues and survival hunters get 15% increase in their agility. Human holy priests and resto druids get a 15% increase in their spirit. Arcane mages get 15% increase in their intellect. So stacking these stats only makes sense since you get an inherent bonus to them.

In my next post, I'll explain why you don't only go after this one stat that is your best (which seems like common sense, but there are some reasons you may not think about.)

The Economics of WoW: Part 2

OK, so when I left you hanging last, we were talking about $100, and choosing between ice cream and goldfish. So, am I drunk AND high? Nope. And here is how it relates to WoW.

The way that Blizzard creates stats for items is as follows. Depending on where you can acquire items, they have X number of points to go into them. It's kinda like an RPG when you're starting out and you get a certain number of points to go into traits for your character. Then they place the points in different places depending on how they want to itemize that item.

Now depending on where the gear is acquired, the item level is set at a certain value. For example, just about everything that drops in Karazhan has an item level of 115. Compare that with heroic epics which are around level 110. Arena season 2 gear is level 136.

OK, so items with a higher level are better, right? Well, that depends. If you compare the arena season 2 priest healing headpiece to the Headdress of the High Potentate, it's no question which one is better for PVE and which one is better for PVP. If it had stats for PVE on it, the season 2 would outrank anything from Karazhan. But it has stats designed for PVP. It has no spirit, and little intellect on it. But it has a crapton of resilience and stamina, which aren't worth nearly as much in PVE for priests.

So lets tie this all in together somehow by looking at 2 pieces of gear with the same item level.

Ring of Recurrence
Item Level 115
15 Stamina
15 Intellect
19 Spell Crit Rating
32 +damage and healing

Spectral Band of Innervation
Item Level 115
22 Stamina
24 Intellect
29 +damage and healing

These items according to Blizzard are the exact same. According to whatever formulas they use, it seems that 7 Stamina and 9 Intellect are equal to 19 Crit Rating and 3 +damage and healing.

But ask any mage or warlock which one is better, and it's an easy choice. Unless you're tanking someone like Krosh in the Maulgar fight, the Ring of Recurrance is a lot better. So how can this be?

It's the same as the goldfish vs. the ice cream. The person selling the goldfish and ice cream are assuming that you like ice cream twice as much as goldfish. Because to him, 2 goldfish = 1 ice cream. But this is where you need to decide which one you like best.

The same thing applies to WoW. Blizzard is giving you a set number of items that you need to choose between. The key is not choosing the gear with the highest item level according to Blizzard. An example of Blizzard's scales is 1 Strength = 1 Agility = 1.5 Stamina = 1 Intellect = 1 Spirit. But for me as a priest, my scale is more like 1000 Strength = 1000 Agility = 10 Stamina = 4 Intellect = 2 Spirit. So my item levels would be a LOT different. An item with 50 Strength on it? Worthless to me. An item with 50 Spirit on it? Much much better.

So your job when choosing your gear is to determine which stats mean the most to you, and figuring out what it means to Blizzard. If Blizzard ranks that stat higher than you do, then it isn't one you should go after. If they rank it lower, then go after it as much as you can. It's the single best way to get the most utility out of your gear. Your goal is DPS, or threat per second, or mana regen, or healing per second instead of happiness points. And your job is to maximize that given the items that you have access to in the game.

There will be a lot more posts upcoming about this subject, and I assure you, some will be almost as entertaining as the first post was.

The Economics of WoW: Part 1

Most of you probably know that I was a math/comp sci major in school. Most of you probably don't know that I was an economics minor in school. The reason I didn't stick with econ for very long was because I was terrible at theory. So take everything that I say about this topic with a grain of salt. Expect B grade material at best.

We all make real life decisions about what we buy. We manage our money (or in some cases mismanage) so that we have the ability to buy things that we want. Things that we need. But how do we do this? My answer is through some basic math equations.

They say that money doesn't buy happiness. Well it can't always, but it doesn't hurt, right? If you didn't have enough money for food, you'd be pretty sad, right? Me too. So you must have enough money for food. Assuming that you have money for food, clothing, shelter, WoW, and any other basic necessities, where does the rest of it go? Why for pleasure of course.

Well, not always. Some of it is invested in the future, but we're going to assume that you're dying tomorrow...(don't worry, there is indeed a reason.) So you have to spend your money to get as much pleasure out of today that you can. How do you go about doing this?

Well I for one would determine what would make me the happiest, am I right? Perhaps a trip to outer space would be cool. But I definitely don't have the money for that. Lets take the simplest example...lets say you have 100 dollars. You have the chance to purchase two items. Goldfish or mint chocolate chip ice cream. Now the ice cream costs you $2.00 while the goldfish cost only $1. So you can buy 100 goldfish, or 50 ice creams.

Ahh, but you tell me that you can buy 50 goldfish and 25 ice creams. Yes you can. However you want to spend it, for all intents and purposes, you need to trade 1 ice cream for 2 goldfishes.

So what's the next step? You need to know which one you like best. Do you like ice cream twice as much as goldfish? Lets say that you do. Then it doesn't matter which one you get. You'll be just as happy no matter what you do. But lets say you like goldfish just as much as you like ice cream. Then why not get 100 goldfish. That gives you 100 happiness points when getting the ice cream would only give you 50 happiness points. (no better phrase in the world for this....admit it. You wish you'd thought of happiness points.)

Now, before you think I'm nuts, my next post will make it all clear how this relates to itemization in WoW. Bet you can't wait.

Gruul 1% wipe

Yes last night was a slightly frustrating night in Gruul's Lair. We one shotted Maulgar, and then got to work on Gruul. Unfortunately, it seemed that it was incredibly difficult to keep Wynri up. Mostly this was because we only had 5 healers instead of the 6 that we had before. Once we made the necessary adjustments to add a few healers, we kept Wynri up. At that point we had 7 healers. And we actually made it to grow 17 with Wynri still alive. That was our 1% wipe.

It apparently just wasn't our night. Wynri would take very large hits right before the reverberation all the time. We had HOTs on him, but since there were only 2 of us assigned to him, it become very difficult. This happened 3-4 times, the reverb killed Wynri.

Makes a big difference sometimes when you have 6 healers with 5 of us specced for healing like we did last time. We ended up needing 7 healers, since only 4 of us were specced for it. Sometimes group makeup makes a difference.

Amazingly, our raid DPS was a lot lower than last time too. I don't know how they managed it last week, but we had 8793 raid DPS. Last night on our 1% attempt, we only had 6400 raid DPS. That's a huge difference. I think the reason for this is definitely attitude. Last night was a frustrating night, and morale was very low by the end. People were tired and probably not paying quite as much attention as they needed to be.

But every raid is going to have nights like this. It's apparent that we can do it. We just needed to plan properly for it.

In the meantime, everyone should still be searching for ways to improve. Whether it's DPS, or longevity of healing, or just looking for gear, don't forget that there is always a way to improve somewhere along the line. Work at heroics, come to Karazhan, do whatever it takes to find that extra 1% that we needed last night. That way we can make sure it doesn't happen again.

I know as a healer, I'll be more ready for next week than I was this week. Make no doubt about it.

Just some quick notes

1. PVP is a lot of fun, but only if you're grouped up. Every DPS class in PVP wants a healer to run around with them. Every healer in PVP wants a DPS class to run around with them. It's a beautiful relationship, and a lot more fun than going alone.

2. Still no patch. I find it amazing that when Blizzard released information about Zul Aman, everyone was all pumped and excited, and it began much drama. Here it is around a month later, and we still have a patch before it can even go on the test realms. The same thing goes for the next expansion. I see all sorts of posts on the forums about what the 51 point talents are going to be. WHO CARES? Shut-up and learn how to use your 41 point talents instead. No sense in talking about something that's over a year away.

3. I hate the Netherwing. I can complete 2 dailies in Skettis and 3 dailies in Ogrila in around 45 minutes. It takes me that long to complete 1 or 2 dailies down there. Screw them. (I've heard it gets better at friendly, but I'm not all about inflicting pain on my soul until then. Holy priest FTW.)

4. Wynri's a few badges away from his shield for tonight. Just 7 more. If someone wants to run him through Slave Pens or something if they are bored today, I plan on running him through the first 3 bosses in Mech, the first boss in Mana Tombs, and the first boss in Sethekk Halls if he really needs them before Gruul. Speaking of Gruul...

5...BE THERE TONIGHT. Show up like last week, bring your A game, and he'll die again. Everyone's improved since even last week. I know he should go down. That means YOU Azi.

Server Healer Rankings?

So last night before Karazhan, I went to help Bronton get a single badge of justice so he could get the 50 badges of justice shield. We hopped into heroic Mana Tombs and downed the first boss. While we were there, he was mentioning that he wasn't doing all that well as a tank that day. He mentioned that he ran some heroics and was really messing up left and right, which is a shame. I know that I've run with him, and he's been damn good.

But he mentioned when he was there that the Auchenai Crypts run healer said he was the 6th ranked healer on the server.

Now, my first question is who the hell did those rankings? Second question is why the hell do you advertise something without having proof? And third question is, where am I on that list? :-P

Seriously though, is there a ranking system in place by someone somewhere? I think it's absurd. Unless you put every healer in the same situation to see where they came out, it's ludicrous to think that you're #6 on the server according to.....what?

Last night I was on the top of my game (not in 5v5...sorry guys :-( ). We flew through the end of Karazhan. We started at 6 server, and by 9:30 server Nightbane, Curator, Shade, Chess, Prince, Netherspite, and Illhoof had kicked the bucket. During Curator, we played a 2 tank, 2 healer, 6 ranged DPS setup, which is possibly the best you can do for Curator....we were pretty lucky in our group makeup. But Murien was disconnected, and we body pulled. Now I didn't realize that Murien had DCed...all I knew was that healing was ridiculous...I was at 20% mana before I knew it. At that point, Murien came back online. He came back, only to DC again later. I had to use 2 mana potions, but we ended up downing him. Murien pretty much said that I just about solo healed Curator. I was on top of the world. I'm not usually one to boast, but I was proud of that. There's no way I would have kept it up without Murien there, even for a short amount of time, but it's good to know that we survived.

Later on, when fighting Netherspite at 40%, Alarion and Murien died...our two other healers. I hopped in the green beam, and started dishing out a lot of healing. I had to pop a potion and use shadowfiend, but we barely survived and downed him. And that fight is one of the worst for healing and chaos. I let a few people die by the skin of their teeth, but I felt really good that we one-shotted him.

So I don't know, judging by my performance last night, where am I on that ranking? :-P In all sincerity, I know that I'm a good healer. But having an excellent group that knows when to bandage, when to use a healthstone, when to pop a potion....these are also reasons we survived those fights. It takes the whole group. And I'm not just being modest. We had trouble in a regular Arcatraz yesterday, because DPS was low, and the people just didn't know how to bandage or to stay alive. The #1 healer on the server would have struggled with that group.

So I guess I still ask if these rankings exist and what they are based on. That way, I can discredit them, or get my name on there :-D.

Old Hillsbrad on Heroic

For anyone who has tried Old Hillsbrad on heroic mode...yeah it's awful.

Everyone has to be on the ball. Tanks, healers, DPS, everyone. It's meant to be difficult, but it's beyond that. It's ridiculous.

At any rate, Murien, Rubix, Alarion, Bootz, and I went in there. We wiped a lot. But we got through the awful part of burning the buildings, killing the first boss, escorting Thrall, or "The Sheep Breaker" as we like to call him, and killing the second boss. We escorted him to Tarren Mill, and met up with Tabitha. We engaged the final boss encounter. It was sloppy due to lack of experience. However, we figured out a strategy that would work well, and I do believe we would have dropped the final boss after the initial wipe.

So we zone back in, and the encounter is supposed to reset back to when Thrall is standing in front of Tabitha. This never happened. We had the final boss standing out in the middle instead. So when we couldn't find Thrall, we decided to engage the boss.

We got him down to 1% and wiped. Now it isn't what you're thinking though. It wasn't a true 1% wipe. He was at 1% for over a minute. Since Thrall wasn't there, he was unable to die. So, we kited him around for a bit, hoping Thrall would appear. No such luck.

So in conclusion, we all had around a 25g repair bill and all we got was 2 Badges of Justice.

I submitted a GM ticket, but of course they say that it's working as intended, and if Thrall dies you cannot kill the boss. Now in a future patch, they'll be changing the number of resets from 3 to 10, so that was a load of shit. The GM also said to reset the instance when I pointed out that you cannot reset a heroic instance. Then after waiting a while, he mentioned that a "soft reset" (meaning zone out and back in in 45 minutes) would reset the encounter. That's a load of shit too...I'm not waiting 45 minutes to fight the boss again.

At any rate, we weren't too pleased with the situation. I really hope they do something about that fight, because it is very buggy. Just a warning to you all. Stay away from heroic Caverns of Time, unless you have lots of gold, lots of time, and are wanting to smash any pride that you may have.

In other words, I'll be trying it again soon.

Arenas vs. Battlegrounds

If you've been doing arenas and are getting quite good as a team, I seriously recommend going to more battlegrounds as a group. It's truly amazing how morale-boosting it is.

I remember going into BGs with a smallish group (5 people) and usually doing reasonably well. When you have coordination, it's rarer that people die, and you can more easily take down horde with a group effort.

But wow, arena is 5 times more difficult. You're going up against 5 well trained people who know each other like the back of their hand. They coordinate so well with trinkets and cooldowns, it's very intense.

Now, flash back to battlegrounds. If you take your 5 man arena team into battlegrounds with a similar focus...say defending or attacking a node in AB. It's truly amazing what practice and synergy can do. Usually in battlegrounds, you don't have all of your cooldowns at the beginning of the fight, but neither do the other guys. It's really a lot more fun to try to take on 5 guys with 3 and win, or to survive 7 incoming guys with 5. I strongly recommend taking your arena team in there for some fun-filled gankings.

Gruul is no more

Well, Gruul has kicked the bucket. And this all despite the following:

1. One of our 700 DPS mages being on vacation
2. Two of our higher DPS people (fury warrior and affliction warlock) being stranded without internet.
3. Only 24 people in the raid
4. No shadow priests (mana batteries)

On our final attempt, we killed him at grow 11 or 12. We even made Murien a resto druid go moonkin, and he got darned close to 500 DPS too. 14 people were above 400 DPS. 10 had over 500. 5 people above 600, 3 people above 700, and 1 person above 800.

Truly an amazing job by everyone. Everything clicked. Healing was perfect. Tanking was perfect. And everyone gets to go home feeling really really great about themselves.

I do want to say here publicly (to the 1 person who reads my blog) how proud I am of the raid in general. I've talked to a lot of people who have really stepped their game up heavily. They have done the work. They have figured out their best DPS spell rotations. They have farmed what gear they need. And most importantly, they have worked their tail-ends off to bring their A-game when it matters.

I can't see Gruul not going down from this point on. We may have some bad nights where he doesn't die, but it won't be long before he's farm-bait. Look out Magtheridon....we're closing in fast.

Prepare for Gruul

Just a reminder to anyone who reads this to be ready to kick some Gruul ass in two days. This gives plenty of time to make sure you get everything that you have enchanted and gemmed, gather a flask or elixirs (if they will be significantly better than a flask), get enough food for each attempt, and come with your reagants, fully repaired, and on time.

I merely say this to help spread the word. I think Gruul is dying in two days time. We are extremely close. Our DPS is if not on the mark, right there and poised for the kill. We should have the healers this week, and Maulgar will be one-shotted (two-shotted if something goes crazy.)

So you definitely don't want to miss it. Try to get online for 5:30 server to make sure you're ready to go and reserve your spot. I know you won't want to miss it when we kill him.

Staying Positive

Have you ever had a really terrible night? I mean the kind of night where nothing seems to go right. Last night, we didn't start until 6:30 server, and we had 5 bosses to down. We downed Shade and Nightbane pretty handily. But when we got to Prince, we wiped three times, all due to the infernal spawns foiling us at every turn. They would surround us, land on top of us, do anything to prevent us from winning. We even wiped at 1% once.

May I borrow the saying, "When the going get tough, the tough get going." I asked everyone for their A-game on the next attempt, and wouldn't you know it, no deaths. Then we went and one shotted Netherspite and Illhoof too.

Gear and skill mean a lot in a raid. But a lot of it is attitude. It's really easy to lose focus when things are going poorly. But I think that it speaks volumes about our guild that we can indeed win in the end. On Thursday the other Kara team wiped on Curator all night and came out on top. In Gruul, wipe after wipe after wipe led to a lot of people saying "it just isn't our night." But everyone pulled it together and got Maulgar down. That is the kind of attitude that we need to be successful. And I'm proud to say that we have it indeed.

Does my spec really matter?

So I was thinking about mage talents the other day. It's truly amazing to me how they can have so many different talent specs, and yet still put out an incredible amount of damage. You see arcane mages, fire mages, frost mages, arcane/fires, arcane/frosts, and they all work exceptionally well at putting out huge amounts of DPS.

So why does it matter what spec a mage chooses? I mean, you could potentially switch depending on what gear you have. If you have a ton of +crit, it would make sense to go arcane/fire. If you don't have a lot of +hit, full arcane is a decent choice.

Other than that, does your spec really matter? As long as my damage output is the same, who cares?

Well, hold it right there. There's more to a good raider than the damage meters. You could be putting out 1000 DPS, and be a bad raider for certain fights. I'm not even meaning that you're pulling agro or anything so obvious. There are little things that can make a difference.

For example, if you're one of 3 mages, and you're an arcane mage. And the other two mages are arcane/frost. Your DPS is quite high I'm certain. But what if you went deep frost? Would that be better?

Technically, from a DPS standpoint, the answer is no. Deep arcane and deep fire have been proven to have better DPS than deep frost with the same gear. But if you went deep frost, not only do you get more survivability and utility, but you increase the crit chance of each frost mage by 10% for a boss fight. That's incredible! It won't show up on your damage meters, that's for certain. But it'll increase the raid's DPS by a lot.

Same thing can be said for what warlock curse to use. Obviously a warlock gets the most out of curse of agony. But if he uses curse of shadows or curse of elements, the raid's DPS goes up.

So now you're saying, "why don't one of the other frost mages switch?" I don't know, why don't they? This leads to one thing that I think is incredbly important for a raid. I like to call it spec-matching. Spec-matching means working with the other people of your class to determine if there are wasted talents for the group. For example, only one paladin needs imp blessing of wisdom. Other paladins could put those 2 talent points somewhere else more useful. Same thing goes for warlocks. Having shadow embrace is incredible for a raid boss. But only one warlock needs to spend those 5 points there. Everyone else can put them somewhere more useful.

Working with other people of your class can ensure that everyone is maximizing their contribution to the raid. Let the druid going deep balance get imp faerie fire, and have a second druid get imp thorns. Let one lock get shadow embrace and another get imp curse of elements/shadows. Let one priest get imp divine spirit and another get circle of healing. Working together on specs can mean a huge boost to a raid.

And boosting the raid means downing more bosses more quickly and more regularly. Which is a result everyone likes.

Never give up on someone

So last night, since we weren't raiding, I decided to run a heroic with someone who could really use the gear. Eraagon is a warrior in our guild, and he's been around for a while. He comes to Karazhan occasionally, and tries to get groups for instances, and often gets shot down.

The common misconception is that he's a poor tank. The primary issue with this is that early on, he didn't know how to tank. He had one set of gear, and whether it was DPS or tanking, he just swapped his weapons. As a result, he was a poor tank and a poor DPS warrior. A lot of people were very critical of him also, possibly explaining the fact that no one wanted to run any instances with him.

So I grabbed a group of 5 and we ran along into heroic Ramparts, which I've never run before. We brought along 2 mages and a shadow priest as well from the guild...all very well geared I might add.

Eraagon did an excellent job tanking. Sure he doesn't have a crap ton of HP (12404 with fort buff) but he did a great job of taunting mobs and kept agro reasonably well, especially when you consider that our mages and shadow priest were very well geared and generally are agro machines. He did so well that the majority of the group stuck around to go to heroic Underbog. While we wiped a few times on the first boss (agro issues due to kite-tanking) we got him down and everything else was a one shot. In the end it was a great night.

So don't ever think that any one person is hopeless. They might be, but they probably aren't. The first thing you need is the trust to help them to listen to you and your suggestions. Once they start taking your suggestions, and see that they work extremely well, they'll listen to further instructions from you. They'll listen to you when they make their talent spec...their gear selection. And they'll respect you and work with you for a long time. I've worked with a lot of people in TN to help them improve, and they all seem hopeless at the beginning. But it doesn't take too long before they start kicking some major butt on their own. It just takes a little invested time on your part to help them learn.

Successful Karazhan

Last night was what I call a successful Karazhan run. And not because we downed 5 bosses. Certainly many might think I was disappointed in not downing Shade or Nightbane first night. A little tough to do when you wipe a few times on any boss in there.

Here's why it was successful. The other Terra Nova team downed 4 bosses. They got to the back door. And on Thursday, they're going to go in and destroy the Curator.

It was a discussion we had on vent last night. The current situation is that one group was completing Karazhan, and the second group was barely halfway through it.

Now after last night, while one team saw a little more progression, both teams are closer together.

Does this mean that my team should be upset? We could do so much better if we kept the same 13 or so people. We could down everything in record time. But what's the point? We all have great Karazhan gear. What's next? Zul Aman in 2 months? No, it's Gruul, Magtheridon, and SSC and The Eye. That's what's next. And 13 people can't kill Gruul.

So I'm extremely happy to see both groups getting to the back door on the first night. Certainly, as we mix and match more, we're going to see less synergy. We may not even down Prince for a week or two. But you know, once we have 2 groups downing Prince regularly, it will all be worth it.