Blog Changes

Faced with a different direction in my gaming & the way that Hunter has changed, I've decided to go a new direction with my WoW blogging.

I'm moving my efforts to a blog entitled OrdoSerp. The page itself is up and there are some posts already, but I'm still in a "building" phase with the look and feel.

The exciting part is the broader scope of OrdoSerp. Instead of just following Beroth's activities, it will be a blog about and written by members of my little alt-guild the Order of Serpentis. While I have no doubt that I will be the major contributor, at least one of my friends has already written a post.

OrdoSerp will still include tips for hunters, but will also include insights about all the classes we play. It will be a place for us to share our screenshots & group achievements. It'll be a place where we discuss balancing between our time & the various Raiding guilds we belong to.

So, please join us at OrdoSerp.

This blog will remain available for the time being. But remember, Wrath changes everything!

What's Old Is New

The recent Echoes of Doom patch & events have created a lot of excitement for my little band of friends in our little alt-guild. Before the patch, most of us were off on our merry little dailies, on various "main raiders" in various raiding guilds or leveling alts. At first the patch seemed to drive us further apart with folks running to the far corners of the old world seeking achievements. Then we started to come back together to farm old-world instances and re-do heroics. The Headless Horseman boss, the plague & the invasion all helped to drive us back into instances and re-equip long-forgotten Argent Dawn trinkets.

This excitement (and some serious dps increases) made us hungry for more. So, 7 of us ran over to Kara on a rag-tag group of Alts & mains to see if we could down Attumen and get at the event boss for the quest.

I know what you're thinking. Why not grab 3 more? This, again, is our little group of friends who've known each other for years. Our group time is for getting away from PUGs and guild politics. It's "us" time.

Our group consisted of:

Kara-Level Geared Feral Tank
Crafted-epics DPS Warrior/OT <---New Raider. He's Cherry!
Mint green Ret Pally/OT
T4 Enhancement Shaman/backup healer
T5 Frost Mage
New Epics Hunter Alt
T5 Geared Resto Druid

Attumen went down easy-sauce. It was so easy for my feral druid, that I hardly noticed that I was tanking both of them. We moved up into the servants quarters and after a "learning pull" we regrouped and downed the event boss easily. Well, since we're right across the hall, let's go kill Moroes. We should be able to get him, right? Why, in fact, we pwned him. I tanked him and all the adds, while a fury warrior picked off a mob one at a time for the group to kill. I built a high enough threat on Moroes that I put my back to him and fought the adds, thus avoiding blinding until I had to hit him one last time. Only lost one player when he blinded me and we ripped him a new one. So, hi on this achievement (but so late for a Thursday night) we called it and scheduled to return 10AM Saturday morning to see what else we could kill. And what happened Saturday? Fear the BEAR!!! RAWR! We mowed our way through Maiden & the Oz fights. We took a short break to lounge on the terrace and swat this gnat named Nightbane. What a wuss! We took a 5 min bio to make the rest of the instance think it was harder, thus preserving Nightbane's last shred of dignity.

We found Curator lacking and pwnd him accordingly. Illhoof slew one of our numbers and we just kept coming. It was cake. We moved on.

Our first real challenge came at Shade. And even with the "mistake" we nearly won. Rinse-repeat...one dead badge dispenser. On to Chess...

Amazingly, the with only 7 players, Chess event proved difficult. We lost the first attempt. We had to move more pawns into position and make some adjustments. It's still "free" loot! Running out of time, we rushed up the stairs, ganked Prince Malchezaar and called it "lunch."

Wait, what about Netherspite? Pah! His loot table sucks. Let's go try some bosses in ZA instead.

And so, after a break for afternoon chores and meals, we regrouped and killed 3 ZA bosses.

It was truly an experience. As someone who loves raiding, but grew tired of the drama of raiding, this was fun. We're grearing up and getting to know our abilities under the new system. We're seeing stuff "alone" without getting friends and guildies to slum with us on our alts. It was just great.

The Lich King's Agents Are All Over

I was killing Zombies today on Beroth out of sheer frustration and then I started getting these messages. Apparently, so did Flyv. Looks like he's going to the dark side.

Go Phillies - Kill All Zombies

My gaming group are all converted to Phillies Phans because the sooner they win, the sooner I'll be online on my Bear tanking for them. I've been glued to the TV or radio every game of the playoffs.

When I am on, we've been enjoying the patch. The changes to the Bear Swipe mechanics make Rhus a genuine AoE tank. The changes to Hunter shot mechanics mean that I can enjoy dps with-out freaking out about clipping shots. If not for the stupid lag issues, I would give the patch 10/10 for excitement, game improvements & all around crunchy goodness.

So, how do I feel about the zombie plague? It's "exciting" and I'm not sure that's a good thing. I've completely given up playing my lowbie shadow priest. I'm avoiding cities. The whole thing is screwing with the tranquility of our little PvE server. Still I approve, even if I don't like it. It feels right and adds to the anticipation of the expansion. I just wish that it wasn't so disruptive.

Obsolete

Welcome to patch day, otherwise known as the day that just about every tip on this site becomes obsolete. I hope that you all are as excited as I am about the prospect of no more steady shot clipping.

Since stepping away from raiding, I've been looking, without success, for an alternate direction for this site. The truth, as I've mentioned before, is that I've been focusing on my feral druid & on my lesser alts. Flyv has even encouraged me to rename my site & become a full-time druid blogger. I don't think that's going to happen. One of the reasons I got into this blog was that I wasn't finding blogs from raiding hunters that felt "accessible." I wanted to simplify the theory-craft and number crunching I read so that the casual player or the ALT player had a resource. Feral druids, on the other hand, already have people like Karthis, Flyv, Kalon & countless more.

So, what does the future hold? I'm not super excited about joining the droves of Exotic Pet "fan-boys" when the servers come up tonight. Yes, I'll be going with a Beast Master spec for now. Yes, I'm prepared to tame something exotic. But, I'm not sure I plan to stay there.

At this point, Rhus will be my main for Wrath. When I hit 80, I'm hoping to get my small group of friends motivated to do 10-mans with various friends in different guilds including the gang in QSS. Beroth, I plan to level in a more relaxed pace. I'm hoping that a solid PvP/PvE hybrid emerges by the time he hits 80. I'm eying a MM/SV hybrid idea.

For now, I plan to go with a 56/5/0 build at 70. It's far from ideal, but allows me to experiment with some of the new BM talents while retaining the same feel.

As for Rhus, I'm grateful that Karthis posted a Pre-Wrath Talent Spec the other day which matches my plans almost exactly (making me feel smarter than I actually am.) I'm tweaking and should have my decision by server-up in a few hours.

My biggest annoyance with the new expansion is timing. Yeah, Oct/Nov is great for the holiday rush, but it's also a busy time of the year. The Phillies are in the playoffs, Football season is in full swing, new shows are on TV, we've got this huge election thing (and I'm a politics junky), the "honey do" list is as long as my arm and there's the whole holiday travel thing. Who's got time to play WoW?

Dealing with Latency Issues

This week my inbox had a plea for help from a hunter named Tripswitch over on the EU server Emerald Dream.

Please give me your advice on how best to maximise my dps. I have a level 70 Hunter, Tripswitch, http://be.imba.hu/?zone=EU&realm=Emerald+Dream&character=Tripswitch, playing on Emerald Dream, an EU server. My latency hardly ever drops below 600 and averages around 700 and being located in South Africa, I don't think this will improve. I have installed Quartz but not bartender and I have Omen running. I am using the Talon of A'lar trinket but have recently read that it doesn't affect auto shot so have been trying the Bloodlust broach instead. I cannot see a difference between the two when used with the Skyguard Silver Cross trinket. My questions are these - is my high latency an insurmountable problem or can it be overcome with macros? Is the Talon of A'lar useless, as commented on in thott and wowhead? IF not, what macro can you suggest to use with it?

Thank you for any help you may offer.

Tripswitch has outstanding gear. He's clearly progressed through T-4 content and is making headway into T-5. The first issue, by all accounts is the Talon of A'lar trinket. I have heard nothing but bad things about it. All the hunters in my guild that spent time in TK have one. I don't think any of us have ever used it. It's theoretically good for PvP, but not when you would rather have the PvP-trinket & the Skyguard Silver Cross equipped. Trip is also a Beastmaster and very few have arcane shots in their normal shot rotation. My gut still says stick it in the bank and hope it becomes useful in early WotLK.

Poortyr, my guild's hunter-rep and all-around pewpew king maintains a list of recommended shot macros which I'm going to post here for you.

Digging up this old thread to post the 3 macros I use the most often,taken from wowwiki and Stareye. All are spammable,and one is a mana burning macro,use with a keen eye on your mana pool

3:2 macro

#showtooltip Steady Shot
/cast [target=pettarget,exists] Kill Command
/castsequence reset=target/3 Steady Shot, !Auto Shot
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear(); UIErrorsFrame:Show()
/script UIErrorsFrame:Hide()

1:1 macro

#showtooltip Steady Shot
/castsequence reset=2 Steady Shot, !Auto Shot
/cast [target=pettarget] Kill Command
/sript UIErrorsFrame:Clear();

SS/AS/Arcane/KC macro (aka the mana burner)

#showtooltip Auto Shot
/cast !Auto Shot
/cast [target=pettarget, exists] Kill command
/castsequence reset=5 Steady Shot, Arcane Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

this one clips your Auto Shot by design,but the results are worth it.Try them all and see which works best for you.The first 2 macros listed are contingent on shot speed,the 3:2 being for 1.80 sec and above,the 1:1 for 1.80 sec and below.enjoy!

One note: If you want to fool around with the Talon of A'lar, then try it with the "Mana Burner" macro. This macro would theoretically maximize it's DPS generation.

Now, on to the issue at hand: Latency.

Latency is a Steady Shot rotation killer. The potential for shot clipping grows steadily after 2-300 ms of Latency. When mine blooms over 1000, I generally go watch a movie. All classes are hamstrung by latency, but hunters (especially beastmasters) get pounded. Why? When you're trying to precisely get two shots off together in a span of 1.5-2 sec, every millisecond counts. If you hit 1000 latency, that's a full second. For a mage or a warlock, it can mean that your over-all dps is slower, but for a hunter it means that the rhythm of your shot can be so out of sync that none of your autoshots are being cast. That can be a 40-50% reduction in damage.

That said, consistency is still your friend. If your latency is high but steady, then you can compensate for it and maximize your dps potential and gaming fun. I would start by performing a test.

Step 1: In addition to Quartz, download Recount. It's one of several dps chart options. I'm suggesting it because you can pull up graphical on-screen reports that show discreet data about shots fired, damage done, misses, crits, everything.

Step 2: Load all the macros from Poortyr's list. Keep them all handy. Put the "3.2" macro on you favorite keybound key. Keybinding is essential for the test.

Step 3: Fly to Area 52 and find Dr Boom. From the rocks above him you should be able to target him. Here's where you can start experimenting with your shot selecting, keyboard layout and even your trinkets. Attack him for 2 minutes at a time (using your Hunter's Mark as a timer.)

My first recommendation would be to try spamming your macro key and reviewing your data. The recount chart can actually be kept up when you're doing the test. You may need to reset the data between tests. Still, you should start to see patterns. In this basic test, you want to have your AutoShot & SteadyShot hit almost evenly.

Next try using Quartz as a timer and time your Steady Shot casting.

Step 4: Take the shot method that you are most comfortable with and go farm your favorite mobs. As a skinner, I'm sure you have a few you like.

Step 5: If after steps 3 & 4, you feel that the latency & shot selection is still causing you loads of problems, try a re-spec to Marks or Survival. Both slow your shots down. The longer the lead-time, the more chance you have to compensate for your high latency. Survival hunters are very gear dependant, so you may find this problematic. Marksmen on the other hand have a very similar feel to Beastmaster (only slower) and have a lot of tricks (even in Raids) that are overlooked. A good MM can keep up with Beastmasters, especially in situations where the BMs can't use their pets. Also, MM's are great in PvP with scatter shot & silencing shot.

Good luck!

Trinkets & Gear

Today, I secured the Badge of Tenacity for Rhus. For the unaware, this little blue trinket is one of the best feral tanking trinkets in the game. I have been told by multiple sources that Bears are still using it in Sunwell. That says a lot. The 308 Armor is multiplied by 400% in bear form. The extra boost of agility when I activate it gives me a big boost in dodge and is one of the closest things a bear has to an "oh shit" button.

So, my tanking trinkets are set with the Badge and the Darkmoon Card: Vengeance. The question now is which do I keep equipped when I need to use the Medallion of the Alliance? I plan to pose this question to my "experts" and make sure to share their answers with you.

My druid's wishlist (excluding raiding & 10-mans) is nearly completed. I'm just a few badges away from the Band of the Swift Paw and should secure the Vindicator's Band of Triumph in short order. I plan to get at least one more piece of PvP gear, the Merciless Gladiator's Dragonhide Gloves, but it's for PvP, not for my tanking set.

So very shortly, I will be running out of non-Kara/Raid upgrades for Rhus. Sure, there's more stuff out there, but most of it is from honor & badge grinds. With Wrath a few months away, I don't feel the desire to grind Skyguard or Ogri'la when Beroth has already been through it.

Observations from a PvP n00b

For the better part of two years, I never got into PvP. I play on regular servers. During the first year of play, my gang leveled a set of alliance toons, then horde toons then got into raiding. During the second year, we had Burning Crusades & raiding. Now that I'm not raiding & I'm waiting for WotLK, I've spent more and more time in PvP on both my hunter & druid. Of course, the big reason is the gear for feral druids. Even with the lame bonuses to healing, the Merciless Gladiator's Sanctuary set provides much needed help for a non-raiding Bear who wants to tank. I thought I would provide some of my observations, for PvP n00bs like myself. Again, I am not a PvP expert. These are just my observations.

General Flag/Base Control
Every Battleground (except WSG) have bases to control and hold. You'll see a lot of people in BG chat yelling "Fight at the Flag" and/or "Don't fight on the road." What does this mean and what do I do?

When your team controls a base or flag, it's essential that you never let the enemy draw you away from it. A sneaky rogue or druid can come around and cap it on you if you do. You've got to fight at the flag and interrupt people trying to cap. Fighting away from the flag or chasing runners is the worst thing (and I do it all the time still) you can do. It's better to die on the flag than live on the road.

However, this is not true when your enemy is defending. Fighting on the flag that you're trying to capture allows defenders to interrupt your allies trying to cap. Lead them away and do everything you can to distract the enemy. I've helped capture numerous flags this way.

The 2-Minute Trinket
The most cost-effective piece of PvP gear you'll ever get is the Medallion of the Alliance. This 8k Honor item provides 20 Resilience & removes all movement impairments on use. The 2 minute cooldown means you'll get to use it more than once in a battle ground. The 5-minute trinket has no resilience & isn't that much cheaper. The next more expensive trinkets are not cost-effective for the amount of resilience they provide. It's also something that you can keep in your inventory when you aren't PvP'ing. Several instance bosses stun. Some heroic instance fights have mobs that will stun and eat your healer for breakfast. There are also some raid bosses that nearly require raiders to have this trinket.

Warsong Gulch
My friends (even the ones who PvP a lot) avoid this like the plague. Even those saving for a PvP set will simply make an excuse to avoid getting the pants. I've done it, but not enough to provide suggestions.

Eye of the Storm
The most effective strategy I've seen for EotS is to immediately divide, attack 3 bases and most importantly ignore the flag. Even if you can't get three, it usually puts the opposition into a defensive mindset. Once you've gotten your 2-3 bases, defend them. At this point, steal the flag from the middle, but do not cap it right away. Once a lead is established, you can concede a base and take the middle to start running the flag. This strategy almost always works but a surprising number of players ignore it and go right for the flag.

Alliance Strategy called out in chat usually looks like this:
1 FRR, 2 MT, 3 DR. Don't go for flag until we've got 3. Call out inc.

Arathi Basin
I love/hate Arathi Basin. If I'm in a good AB, I can stay there forever. There's nothing better than a hard-fought AB, win or lose. There are a lot of strategies for AB, but the most effective I've seen involves going for 4 bases but basically defending a triangle of 3 base using 3 defenders on each base and a roaming group of 6 running from base to base assisting in their defense.

Alliance Strategy called out in chat usually looks something like this:
1 LM, 2 GM, 3 BS + ST. Call out inc.

Alterac Valley
There's so much to say about AV that I can't do it all here. If you've never been, it can be very VERY confusing. Start by reading in a good, basic strategy guide like the one at Wowwiki.

The basic idea is to destroy your opposition's resources & kill their boss before they can destroy yours. Alliance usually sends groups 1-5 south to take Frostwolf Relief Hut & the East & West Frostwolf Towers. Groups 6-8 usually go to Iceblood Garrison, kill Galvangar & then take Iceblood Tower & Tower Point. Once all these things have fallen, they kill the boss, Drek'Thar. Defense usually "happens" but it's not the primary objective. If the Horde slow the Alliance down, they usually win or turn the whole thing into a turtle.*

Lately, the Horde have been using a heavy "back-capping" strategy involving 7-10 players re-taking Iceblood Tower & Iceblood Graveyard. If they are fast, it's very effective and they can re-take Tower Point and win the game fairly quickly. I have yet to see the Alliance effectively manage this. In these situations, Alliance wins only because of bad horde play or by out-muscling Drek and extra warmasters with extra tanks & healers.

*Turtle: Turtling is a strategy when one faction or another is forced to concede everything but one location. It's usually seen in WSG & failed AV's. Usually, it's just a time-sink. A WSG turtle can force the opposition to get frustrated and sloppy, but usually means you're going to waste 30-40 minutes for 60-70 honor & 1 badge. An AV turtle usually involves most of the Alliance being forced back and defending the last bridge to Dun Baldar. It's a slow, hard grind but can be rewarding for both factions if it's the battle-ground's holiday weekend.

Farewell & Hello

It's been months since I've posted in the blog. No point in going through the wherefores and the whys. Basically, some changes happened after returning from my raiding absence to make me rethink the whole raiding thing. I've been spending 80-90% of my WoW time leveling & gearing my feral druid, Rhus. It's been great. I reclaimed that missing something about the game that I lost when I became burned out from raiding. So in June, it was a quiet farewell that I made to raiding with QSS. Beroth is still a "friend" in the guild and I still keep tabs on their progress.

So, what am I doing? Playing Rhus with a small group of friends. We are unfortunately too small of a group to do Kara runs and some of the group is still raiding with various guilds, so there's been no pressure to find the extra people to do it.

Early in the summer I challenged myself with a question. Could I get myself geared enough to tank all the heroics without ever setting foot in a raid instance? The answer, with some help, is still undecided. I've had to farm a lot of material and/or rep for "charity epics." I've spent lots of coin on buying patterns for BoP gear like the Boots of Natural Grace. I got my Cenarion rep for Earthwarden & my SSO+Scryer rep to make the Shattered Sun Pendant of Resolve one hell of a nice piece of gear. The other part has been a big PvP grind. I've already collected 3 pieces of the Merciless Gladiator's Dragonhide set and am working on a 4th. It's an excellent Kara-level bear alternative and can be worked on at your own pace.

I've also spent hours reading through the blogs of two friends and excellent Feral Druids: Karthis' Of Teeth and Claws & Flyv's Warcraft Blog. Both blogs have been invaluable in teaching me about attack rotations, gear itemization & for giving me ideas about what to go after. Rhus (my druid) may never be as geared as them or see the bosses they see, but I like to think that I'm making the most of things. Damn has it been fun trying to get non-raid Alts through heroics, learning to PvP on a completely different toon & trying to get my 2x2 team up and running.

I'm working on some questions for Karthis & Flyv about specific gear and for heroic strategies. Since I only get 4-6 badges per week & can only grind so much honor and/or reputation, I've got to be selective about my wishlist.

More to come? Perhaps...

Barely A Week As Survival

After returning from my unexpected break from WoW, I felt something was missing. I needed to shake things up. A few days later, I was having a discussion with a fellow guild-hunter about Survival Raiding. I plunged head-long into research and posted several times on my guild forums asking people what they thought.

The key insights that I will share with you here are as follows.

Survival raiding is all about support. If you have a regular raid group filled with warriors, rogues, feral druids & other hunters (but not other survival hunters,) then your Expose Weakness can be a major boost to the raid. If you are willing and able to take yet another dip in personal dps, you may have 3-4 spare points to add to Improved Hunter's Mark.

Before even considering Survival, you must be willing to sacrifice. Your personal dps will go down. You will spend a ton of gold & mats to maximize your agility. If you were a beastmaster, you will feel slow. If you were a marksman, prepare to learn "new" slick tricks. Scatter Shot & Silencing Shot are replaced by better trapping & Wyvern Sting.

The most painful thing for me was the math. To consider Survival, you've got to be able to boost your agility over 700 & your crit to 33% (before buffs.) Lightning Reflexes will only go so far, so do your math. Even then, SSC & TK gear may not be enough. Re-gem'ing to all +agility gems may not be enough. You may find yourself, like I did, scouring the server for enchanters who could do expensive +agility enchants.

There aren't a lot of great discussions or guides to Survival Raiding and there isn't a "cookie cutter" way to build one for Raiding. Some of it depends on what you are raiding. Do you need improved traps? Some of it depends if you plan to do other stuff and want Wyvern Sting. Still, if you look at the specs of enough survival hunters and talk to enough people, certain obvious trends come out. You must take Lightning Reflexes & Expose Weakness. You should try and get Mortal Shots from the Marksmanship tree. Much of the rest appears to be personal preference. You can boost your own DPS by taking 7 points in Beastmaster for Focused Fire. You can take the aforementioned Improved Hunter's Mark. OR, you can round out more points in Survival to improve your general PvE & PvP potential.

Last week, I went ahead and bought about 400 gold in new gems, raided my stash of crafting mats, paid for the re-spec and got myself into places like Kara & Heroics for practice. As I played with it, my base agility & crit hovered right around the minimum, which was fine for practice.

My Issues:

My first real issue was my Wolfslayer Sniper Rifle. At a base speed of 2.7 seconds, it's ideal for Beastmaster. (I run at a base 1.9 sec.) However, with my gear, I found myself at 2.3 seconds. You wouldn't think that being 0.4 seconds slower would be a problem, but it was. At 2.3 seconds, my shot macro timing was off. It was too slow to get into a rhythm. It was also too fast to weave other shots. I was still forced to stop casting Steady Shot in order to cast Arcane Shot or apply Scorpid Sting. This lowered my dps further and kept me from doing my most important job, keeping Expose Weakness up as much as possible.

My second problem was the amount of sacrifices I made (based on my gear) in the way of gems and other bonuses to get a barely good enough agility bonus. How could I justify swapping to Survival at just over 700 agility when other hunters in my guild could swap and be closer to 900?

But hey, there will be gear coming right? Yeah, I considered that. As I looked at the best upcoming hunter gear, I saw that most has haste boosts. How can I even consider Survival when I'm salivating over a potential base attack speed of 1.5 sec?

My final issue was and is personality. Even if I got a new, slower weapon & continued to get Agility gear, I have a rapid fire personality. I like the speed. I love BIG RED pet. I knew this going in. And, I probably would have learned to like survival if not for the gear obstacles.

It's not surprising that so few hunters like survival. I'm glad I tried it. I don't mind having wasted nearly 1,000 gold (not including enchanting mats) swapping to and then back again. The push was rewarding. I picked up some new gear. I learned some new tactics. I got a ton of badges. While my gem swaps had to be replaced, my attack power to agility enchantment conversions can stay right were they are.

Would I be willing to do it again? If my guild asked and if I could meet a number of basic criteria, yes. I would want to have a base (unbuffed) 800+ agility & 35% crit to consider it. I would want to have a slow-fire weapon like the Serpent Spine Longbow.

A Return to WoW

Real life has a way of screwing over my virtual life. Thankfully, after weeks of being sick and weeks of recovering, I'm actively playing again.

Like Riding A Bike, Only Not
Right before getting sick, I had dramatically altered my UI and promised to post about it (Ooops!) Well, the promised post isn't showing up anytime soon. Lord, it's hard enough to remember how to play. My first night back to playing Beroth, I went on a raid. The joke of the night was about me finding appropriate buttons. Thankfully, I remembered the basics like send pet, my shot macro & feign death. The rest, however, was not like riding a bike. Even though my basic structure was similar to my old UI, I didn't know it...and I hadn't looked at it for almost a month. Still, DPS was fine. I didn't drag the raid down. I didn't wipe us. We did farm content, so I generally remembered the pulls. It's all good. Tonight could be harder since we'll probably be doing stuff I haven't seen before.

Affliction: Better than Chicken Soup!
While I was sick, I would log on from time to time and try Alt'ing. I needed something mindless (no thinking and easy to do) to play. Since I already have a hunter a friend recommended Warlock. My friend even went out of his way to write me instructions (that's how sick I was) on casting rotation and talents to pick by level. If you've never played a Warlock, I suggest trying it. I thought Hunter was easy for farming. Dot, dot, drain...Oh is it dead? Well, that was easy! Rule #1: If you can fear it, you can kill it. Now that I'm feeling better, I hope I can work this toon into my play-rotation.

25 or 6 to 4!
Until yesterday, I had only been to Sunwell once. I know people who are walking around in exalted Sunwell gear and I wasn't even Friendly until yesterday. So, feeling better and having a quiet day to myself, I decided to make up for lost time. I think I went a little over-board. Instead of just doing the Sunwell dailies, I did the maximum. If you've never done 25 dailies, try it once. You can stack most, but not all of them. I made well over 300 gold before selling greens or the leather I skinned.

The key to doing 25 dailies is time-management. You can do about 15-16 dailies in under 2 hours, if you're smart. The bulk of the Netherwing & Sunwell dailies are stackable. The trick is that you'll also need to do some others. I filled up the remaining slots with the Skyguard bombing runs, the cooking daily, and the Outland-related Sunwell quests. Quests that I did but would recommend avoiding (because they are complete time-sinks) are Disrupting the Twilight Portal & A Slow Death.

Operation Alt-Squad Update
Rhus & Co are all level 58 now. We stalled when I got sick. I'm not sure if it's because I'm the tank or they are just such good friends, but they all waited for me to get better. Over the weekend, we did the tribute run in Dire Maul North. I did the run a few times back in the day. At the time, we had level 60 toons (and most had Pre-BC raid gear.) That said, it was still the smoothest tribute I've ever seen. Some of that is the 2.3 nerf. A lot is our no longer being complete n00bs. Still, I like to think some of it was my tanking skills. I really like Druid Tanking. How much do I like it? I've even wondered if I might want to swap mains in the expansion. *gasp*

Your Own Private DE'er
My other project of late is making my own disenchanter. When I farm leather or run instances, I often come out with a bunch of green-quality gear. Most is not worth the price of an auction, but the mats are valuable. Being able to DE it without mailing it to a friend would be great. Here's what you need: A level 35+ toon w/ 275+ enchanting. This will allow you to DE level 65-70 items. This can be done fairly quickly with a mage or warlock (pick tailoring and enchanting.)

How's my project going? Well, I dusted off gnome mage and finally got him to level 35. Admittedly he's stalled at 225 enchanting. I need to farm or buy silk/mage-weave to keep going. This has to take a back-burner to getting Beroth back into form. I'll keep you posted if I come up with any tricks to get from 225-275 without actually questing in the appropriate zones for the mats.

Missed this Blog
Admittedly, I missed writing in this blog and I hope I didn't lose too many readers for being gone so long. Blogging can be a tough thing. There's little to no tangible reward to doing it. You put yourself and your thoughts out there for anyone to bash. Unless you're a professional, your blog(s) aren't exactly a top life-priority. It's easy to be forced to deprioritize a beloved blog. Hopefully, we can dust this one off together.

Coping with RL

In RL, I've been really sick...living on the couch and getting my WoW fix by reading the forums on my ancient laptop. I've not had the energy to work on writing up my UI updates or to even log on to do dailies. Then it hit me, there's something blog-worthy here and I don't have to strain my medication-hazed brain to write about it. What am I talking about? Coping with real life in a raiding guild.

In order to survive, serious raiding guilds have to create requirements. Our business is downing bosses and it requires a full complement of employees. Guilds tackle this problem differently. At one extreme we have ultra hard-core guilds who require players to devote all of their free-time to WoW. How extreme can these guilds be? I have a friend who was once kicked from a raid because his latency was too high. In these guilds, joy is derived only from conquest. Kang, that time-traveling warlord from Marvel Comics, would be proud. At the other extreme, we have the casual guild that raids. I was in one of those once, I'm not sure they've ever downed Gruul. That's not good business. Kang would recommend wiping them from the face of Outland!

My guild takes a different approach. Leadership stuffs the roster with WoW-addicts (like myself) who have RL issues that keep them from being able to play night after night. We are all, deep-down, hard-core players, but we have jobs, children, health issues, pending nuptials....You get the idea.

This enables members to go on week-long business conferences or take their S.O. out for dinner without jeopardizing their membership or the balance of the raid. As a guild, we still have requirements about raiding 2 nights a week. We still expect members to show up, but understands and accepts real-life. That's not to say that folks can make excuses night after night and expect to retain membership. And they certainly can't disappear for several weeks and expect to come back as if nothing has happened. Communication and dedication to the guild are still required.

This is the perfect kind of place for me and for many of our members. I couldn't stand the lackadaisical approach to raiding from my previous guild, but RL keeps me from being able to commit to the hard-core standards of a 4-5 night a week raiding guild. Simply-put, QSS represents a welcome and needed balance that keeps the game fresh and enjoyable for me.

On a personal note: I have a RL philosophy of "in all things balance" and I strive to obtain it throughout my life.

There are, of course, downsides to this approach. I have identified two connected issues as the biggest.

Progression & Gear: At our core, our most dedicated and regular members are geared higher than our actual progression. I've got my "all purple" set with 2-pieces of T5, crafted belt, and 70% of the best gear available before Black Temple and Mount Hyjal. From a gear standpoint, I should have been downing stuff in Mount Hyjal 2 months ago. The problem here is the ever-shifting make-up of the raid and the significant amount of drops needed to gear up and teach everybody the bosses. This was felt most on Vashj and is no doubt the #1 reason why we didn't down Kael before 2.4 hit. And when a regular, like myself, who has been involved in the first-time kills of 8/9 of our last bosses out of the mix for 3 weeks, it hurts the dynamics of the guild. (And makes Beroth a frustrated hunter!)

Organizing & Managing Raiders: Because of our structure, we are forever needing new recruits (who are not under-geared n00bs), we are forever planning raids based on the dynamic of the sign-ups and we are forever being nagged by our raid coordinator about light sign-ups for this night or that. It's painful on our leadership. It's painful on our members when we have to "indoctrinate" a new recruit or show a regular an old boss for the first time because she doesn't usually play on a Tuesday.

To manage these two issues, a really smart leadership structure was developed. We have what I like to call "the One" structure (this is a Babylon 5 reference.) We have the "one" who is the guild leader. She manages the day-to-day and keeps everyone in line. We have the "one" who is raid coordinator. He is in charge of personnel planning and deciding where we are going. We have the "one" who is raid leader. He's the field general. Each of them have very different personalities.

The other coping mechanism is our forums. We have regularly updated kill threads and strategy guides posted by our raid leader. These guides include links to videos and boss guides, but they also include details about how "we" do it. This helps our players a lot. No two guilds are alike and as a guild we learned we had to think outside the box to achieve.

The final coping mechanism is class rotation. Leadership has a preferred mix of players. Ours likes to have 2-3 hunters in the raids. We have 4 active hunters. We've worked out a rotation of "preferred" nights. Each class does this and it helps immensely when the nightly draft happens. If I sign up for Wednesdays, I expect to be drafter because it's my preferred night. BUT, if I sign up for Tuesday, I expect to be wait-listed.

Well, there you have it. Not my best piece of writing and it took longer than usual to do. I hope it gives you some ideas about your guild dynamics. No, QSS is far from perfect. But for me it's home. I can't wait to get back!

Out Sick

Sorry for the lack of posts. I keep promising this detailed analysis of my gear and UI changes, but I've been under the weather. As soon as I'm 100% back and caught up on other stuff, I'll finish up.

The Guild-Breaker Dies

Another Dead Boss on the Landing

Last night, we 3-pulled Vashj. She's dead. We felt good. It felt right. It's been a nervous few weeks. I've always felt that the guild was good enough, but I've read and heard so many horror stories about guilds dying because they couldn't beat Vashj. That monkey is off our backs. We still need to drop her a few more times, but now we've done it.

I've been working on some theory-craft on the way I play Beroth. I need to organize my notes and write it up. Expect those posts soon.

Hold the Line

Beroth & Tribalrog on the South Stairs

Vashj attempts continue and are getting better all the time. I've slowly migrated to working the South Stairs with help from Shallas (rogue who floats across the South & East zones) and a healer. Tonight, it was our Resto-Shaman's turn. He admitted to being nervous, but I only had to pop one health stone in phase 2 all night.

I'm proud to say that in two nights of working the zone, I don't think a single elemental has gotten past us. This isn't all about me. I'm "alone" for 60-70% of the time, but Shallas sweeps every now and then to take some pressure off me and people up top help out when the tainted spawns in my zone. Slowly the guild is learning the whole fight. We had several pulls into phase 3 over the last 2 nights.

Sure, I wish she was dead already. But man it'll feel like we accomplished something when she finally drops.

Weapon of Choice

The other week, the Boots of the Crimson Hawk pattern dropped. I int'ed for them and got them. The boots looked awesome and are ranked higher in the Armory. I wasted my last 2 Primal Nethers making them and Poortyr donated mats for me. When I did the final tally on my dps potential, I lost over 30 dps by swapping boots. It was a harsh lesson in trusting the Armory ranking system. My guild lost out on being able to sell the pattern & I wasted an int. Needless to say, I'm back to the Fiend Slayer Boots until I can int on the Cobra-Lash Boots from Vashj.

I don't like making the same mistake twice, but I hate doing theory-craft math on my own. I can't trust the Armory to know everything. (Remember, the Armory & similar databases look at gear as a whole for your class.) The trick is to find a good calculator to help and to invest the time to plug in gear and tweak numbers.

I've been using Cheeky's Spreadsheet on Elitist Jerks for a hunter calculator. To use the spreadsheet, you must enable macros. In other words, use at your own risk. The spreadsheet itself can take time to get used to. The good news is that you will learn about your gear no matter how much work you put into it. The big thing to understand is that the numbers are still theoretical. It's up to you to maximize your potential.

But Beroth, that sounds like a lot of work. Why can't I just trust the Armory and read the forums? If you aren't serious about endgame or don't mind the occasional downgrade, then by all means, do so. But let me show you what I'm talking about.

I plugged my gear into the spreadsheet and got approximately 900 dps unbuffed (including Pet.) That translates into roughly 1050 dps w/ raid buffs & food. (Again, these numbers only hold up in theoretical situations. My actual numbers will vary.)

Once you've gotten all your gear organized, you can play with gem options & pets to find your best combination. Simply changing a few gems can add 10-20 dps. Swapping pets can make a huge difference. Sometimes you may want one pet, but your gear/build dictates than another is better. The first time I used the spreadsheet, I swapped pets, changed my food & spent nearly 400 gold on gems to add over 50 dps. I have the raid stats to back it up!

Putting the Spreadsheet to the test

You may have read that Beastmasters prefer the Wolfslayer or the Barrel-Blade guns over all other ranged weapons. But have you ever tested it? I have.

I currently use the Wolfslayer Sniper Rifle. The armory ranks it as 9th with an item level of 115. Whole threads have been devoted to the Wolfslayer being the 2nd best Beast Master weapon in the game. Let's take a moment to compare it to the highest ranked weapon in the Armory and see what happens.

Weapon - Hunter DPS - Total DPS - Buff'ed DPS (Aspect of Viper)
Wolfslayer Sniper Rifle - 655.52 - 914.11 - 1084.06
Serpent Spine Longbow - 647.73 - 903.85 - 1068.91

Let's now add the 13th ranked weapon
Barrel-Blade Longrifle - 668.37 - 926.81 - 1098.72

What gives? The Beast Master talent, Serpent Swiftness makes the statistically worse gun becomes better because of it's faster base speed. This is the prime example of why you can't just trust the Armory. You've got to take time to understand your gear, your talents and how they all work together. A good spreadsheet will help.

PS. My theoretical DPS w/ Aspect of the Hawk is over 1200! If only I could sustain that w/out running out of mana! Imagine if I had my own dedicated Shadow Priest! My numbers also don't include short-term buffs such as rapid fire or effects like shaman heroism.

Knowing My Limitations

The following is a rambling rant about my embarrassment over my failed attempt to kite the striders on Vashj last night.

Our guild has been working on learning the Vashj fight for a few weeks now. Based on our group make-up, our hunter class lead stepped up and became the Strider Kiter.

Don't bother with comments about using this class or that class. I've heard it all before. We simply had a gap in our list of properly-geared, properly-experienced & properly willing players. But I digress...

Poortyr stepped up and that says a lot about him. He did an admirable job, but he rode a very difficult line with aggro management. We had a hell of a time putting enough DPS into the thing while keeping from drawing aggro. Still, he tried really hard and I was impressed.

Last night, he wasn't in the raid. Our raid leader asked for another volunteer and I accepted. What followed were 3 disastrous pulls. I can kite something, anything (as long as I can keep it at range) all night long if I have to. Hell, I could make the strider follow me anywhere I wanted. The problem was that I couldn't seem to hold aggro and folks were clearly starting to get frustrated.

What went so wrong? *Sigh!* Where do I begin?

Well firstly, I was apparently getting the Blessing of Salvation buff on some pulls. Nobody ever puts that on me. I never EVER even noticed it until it was mentioned via a whisper. I'm a hunter. Only on rare occasions do I ever want salvation. I prefer to Feign my way out of it. This is my fault for not noticing it. I was ready to kick myself!

I needed practice. There was no way I was going to learn to gen more threat without serious practice and adjustments. It's really frustrating to be the linchpin in a process and having to learn as you go. Ever wipe & ever loooong ass run is a long time for 24 other people to have to wait for you to learn something. In the back of my mind, I knew that Poortyr did a much better job right out of the gate. He learns faster than me and has more experience. He's a better player than me. (There, I said it!) I couldn't step in and pick up right where he left off no matter how much I wanted to. I needed time that I didn't have. *SIGH!!!*

Even after learning to combine kiting (no problem) with threat gen (problem), there was no way I could be certain I would succeed. I've read on the forums where people claim that hunters can kite her, but never any details about gear, dps or talent specs. What if I needed to be a survival hunter or a marksman? What if my spec is fine but my shot rotation wasn't? What if it was just me? Maybe I'm just not good enough? I felt like I was letting the team down.

Even more frustrating was the knowledge that I was sucking at my job and wasn't doing a job I was more suited for...stair duty. My dps was completely wasted on those pulls. I can actually tell on our web stats page where I went from kiter to stair duty. I went from 12-14th to top 6.

It was before the 4th pull when I was "removed" from kiting. Yes, my ego was bruised a little. But, I felt good because I didn't back down from the challenge. Our Elemental Shaman got put on kiting duty and from what I could tell, did an excellent job. We did a few more pulls, but still didn't get to phase #4. Still, everyone saw improvement.

The experiment is over. I'm glad it's done. I wish I could have gen'ed more threat. I don't know if I'd ever want to try again. But, I definitely know my limitations now.

Note: the even harder part was what happened next. We were rewarded for our hard work on Vashj by going to Mags. He's farm for us, but we have some new folk who could use his gear. Unfortunately, I've never done the cube clicking and I was a clicker. We wiped the first attempt. I know that my click was out of sync with the others. I couldn't tell if this was my fault alone, (someone clicked early and I clicked late) but I was the only person to fess up to a "mistake" when our raid leader asked who screwed up. So, I got the flack.

Basically, the whole night felt like I was front and center showing off all my imperfections and it sucked. Sigh...then we dropped Gruul really fast to see if he would drop anything useful, but still my trinket didn't drop!

What a shit-ass night for me!

Understanding the Potential for Guild Drama

A *sigh* really long time ago, I was a freshman in college. My football-player/wrestling-team roommate -- To know me is to know how bad that pairing was -- comes home from his Jr Philosophy 101 class having achieved an actual intellectual epiphany. He tells me that belief constitutes reality. His example was the idea of the earth being flat. So many people believed it that it might as well be true. This moment of intellectual clarity snowballed into into a serious discussion about paradigm shifts.

What does this have to do with raiding guilds? Wait for it...

Raider "years" are like dog-years on some kind of exponential curve on HGH. Every week is like 3 or 4 years and sometimes things speed up even more. Because they happen really, really fast, everything gets really intense. Worse still, our time is short. We are hurdling to the next patch & soon the next expansion. There's this overwhelming need to achieve NOW!!!

Actually, it reminds me of High School....only I like raiding!

Emotions run high. Sometimes people do things we just don't like. Sometimes bosses don't drop as fast as we want. Much like water molecules places under pressure & heated, we get frantic and need to explode from time to time.

Small little dramas play out on guild forums, in Vent or in /guild chat on a weekly basis. Sometimes several things crop up at the same time. Because of this hyper-stimulated reality, any of these little things can become big things quickly. Worse still, observant individuals can see these separate occurrences and draw the conclusion that there's full-blown "guild drama." Those members then share their concern with other members and then suddenly false assumptions become the reality. Is perceived drama real drama? If enough people believe so, then yes...the world might as well be flat!

You were wondering how I was going to tie all that together!

To put it another way...

On any given day anyone can log on or read the forums and have their own little Chicken Little moment. The key to surviving and not becoming Chicken Little is to learn to not sweat the small stuff. What constitutes the small stuff? Here are some examples:

Small Stuff #1: The Awkward Breakup - We had a member leave this week for a first-tier guild. Some members question the way he did it. I wasn't too pleased either, but I thought about my own "bad" exit from my previous guild. To bad-mouth him would be to give into my own hypocrisy. He took his shot at running with the "big boys" and got it. Good for him. We lost a dissatisfied member. Good for us. In the fullness or raider-time, this was a blip. It was a non-event. Who knows what the face of a guild will look like in a few months. This is small stuff

Small Stuff #2: The Slighted Member - A guildie wrote a really frustrated sounding post this week about not getting respect or support. Take this with the recent departure and Chicken Little says, "The guild is falling!" Certainly, this is a problem. Steps need to be taken to help this member if we can, but this too is still small stuff.

Small Stuff #3: Mods - This is my own personal story. Another member still refuses to use Void Reaver Alarm. The mod only works right if everyone uses it. In other words, this other player is hurting me. It feels selfish and I wanted to quit the raid the other night because of it. Leadership is aware of this. They will deal with it. There's nothing more for me to do. I can't control him or them. I can only do what I think is right. This is small stuff. No really, small stuff...gotta keep telling myself that! Small stuff!

Look back at these stories. See how easily any one of them can become a drama in the hyper-fast world of a raiding guild? Imagine if they all happened in the same week. Imagine looking at tomorrow's sign-ups for Vashj pulls and worrying that it might get canceled. Think how easily any one of us can lose perspective in the face of all that.

Actually, sign-ups are light for Sunday's pull...Wait, all that stuff was this week.

OMG!!! THE GUILD IS FALLING!!! THE GUILD IS FALLING!!! ;-)

The lesson here is that perception may be reality, but it's a clouded one full of misunderstandings and lost tempers. Learning to look past the little things allows us to change our prospect and stay focused. Knowing how to acknowledge that we are over-stimulated and thus extra-sensitive keeps us from doing stupid things like starting potential flame wars from passive aggressive posts. The goal is to have fun and slay monsters. The second we forget one, we generally fail at the other.

Seriously, some psychology post-doc should do a study on effects of being in a raiding guild.

Ignore Stupid - The Personal Journal of a Bank Alt

Today, we delve into the life and times of Narah, my bank-alt.

Hi I'm Narah the "failed" experiment. I hit level 10 and like a cold slap in the face, LRNs stopped playing me. I'm not sure why he stopped. I've got hot cans and a great rack! Is he the only heterosexual male who actually prefers male toons? Seriously, that's so lame. What's wrong with him?

Anyway, after months of living in cyber-limbo worrying that I would be deleted and replaced by some skeevy gnome or a hairy dwarf, poof! I'm back! At first, I'm so like "Where are we going?" But then I was sorry I asked because guess where I ended up? Ironforge! Instead of being replaced by a hairy dwarf, I'm shopping with them?!? Actually, I think I'm developing a thing for short men, rawr!

OK, where was I...Ironforge, right!

So, you may ask, why Ironforge? I know I did!...loudly, often and until I got tired and looked for a Starbucks...

Turns out that instead of a life of adventure, I've been turned into a supply-whore. Actually, not as bad as it sounds. Seriously! On one hand, I'll never see the world. On the other hand, I'll never have to pick up spider ichor! BLEH!

Also, I'm a professional shopper! Wahoo! Now, I know what you're thinking because I thought it too! Neiman Marcus here I come! Baby needs a new pair of shoes...I mean, Beroth totally needs an extreme makeover! Yeah, not so much. Turns out I spend most of my day talking with Auctioneer Lympkin. After work, we like to grab some banana bread from Myra and then see if we can get men buy us drinks at the Stonefire Tavern. Watch out for the Dwarven Stout, it'll put hair on your chest! Really, you don't want to get your boobs waxed it's...painful!

Wow, talk about diarrhea of the mouth! I'm soooooo sorry. I'm supposed to be giving you suggestions about living as a bank alt/personal shopper!

The reason I didn't get booted off to cyber-oblivion is that having a bank alt is a serious must for raiders. Note: It's not that he doesn't like my curves; he just doesn't want to play a priest. Go fig! I'm so easy..wait, I mean, I make things so easy! I'm not one of those sluts...I mean night-elves! Woah! Gotta focus...

Think of it this way, I'm like having an extra bag at every mailbox. I also allow you to run your utility addons like Auctioneer. The value of doing your Auctions here with me, instead of out on your main is that I protect your raider from dreaded addon bloating! There's nothing worse than starting a Tidewalker pull and feeling bloated! Or so I'm told. I'm not going near him unless someone gives him a couple bottles of Beano!

A bank-alt is also great for the dreaded "stock-pile." After a while, even the minimalist end-gamer acquires too much crap. The obsessed player might have 3 or more every-day toons. Someone's got to keep them organized and focused. That's where I come in. Not only am I a personal shopper, I'm an office manager! I keep this ship afloat. See, you thought I was just a bubble-head, but I'm more like "Legally Blond" only with short red hair and no way I'm wearing that much pink!

So, here are my survival tips for surviving the mean streets.

- First off, a girl can never have too many bags. Make sure that sugar-daddy of yours sets you up right!

- Don't let him undress you as make you dance all day for coin. It might sound fun at first, but it's really degrading. Let those night-elf witches do the dancing! You're here to shop! I got myself a nice White Traditional Hanbok from Lisbeth's place in Stormwind. It turns heads without saying "Look at me, I'm a slut!"

- Learn to report spammers and slap that ignore button hard! Seriously, those bastards should be sent to the third ring of hell or Molten Core. I can do it faster than you can say, "Amex or Visa?"

- Start your day off right. Fire up Auctioneer do a scan. It goes something like this, "Yo Lym! What's hot today!" Then you buy low and sell high! Those shirts on Wallstreet got nothing on us girls in the trenches of Ironlag!

- Always shop in the most accessible places like Ironforge or Undercity. Seriously, too much running around and you can get big calves. There's a reason why Darnassus and Thunder Bluff are empty. They are like really bad Outlet Malls....too far away and with bad prices.

- Unless you want to go all Carry, turn off General Chat. Seriously, it'll rot your brain. Heck, I'd turn off Trade for all the morons there, but you never know when a sweet deal will crop up. Just try not to pay attention to the dorks that yell all the time. They are Trolls. The first time you yell back you end up in a shouting match and they win. The second someone yells more than 4 or 5 times in a row, give em the ignore-slap! Speaking of a full ignore box, I just delete the spammer names after a while to free space. No reason to grab another addon. Addon management is too much like work as it is.

Wow, have I wasted this much time? Goodness, I've got to go see what the prices are like for Heavy Knothide Leather. If I don't sell this stuff soon, Beroth will let Relan* start shopping. That moron might know how to wield a sword, but that doesn't mean he's ready for the auction house!

Seeyabye!

*Relan is my "abandoned" warrior. I gave him a tux & a big-ass samuari sword. Now, he carries excess Leatherworking mats for me.

Another Successful Operation Alt Squad Run

I keep forgetting to take the damn screen shots!

Saturday's operation took us deep into the heart of Uldaman. We were a bit over-level since everyone quested during the week. The new leveling rules just make it so easy that I dinged 2 times while writing this sentence.

Once again, we AE cleared the place and did it in near record fashion. It was just plain sick how powerful we are. We discussed hitting Maraudon next week to "stretch" ourselves, but I don't think it will help. Everyone will probably be over level 45 by then and Maraudon looks like it's been nerf'ed a bit. Our first real tests may not happen until we start hitting Black Rock or Dire Maul. The trouble is quests. I want everyone to have the quests, but everyone has different amounts of time. If we all prep for Maraudon, but are over-level again then we should go straight to BRD for the challenge. But if we prep for BRD and someone isn't up to it, then we have to go to Maraudon. The answer may be to get started early enough to check everyone's level and do the pre-quests together.

Next time, I promise some zany screen shots of our mages bouncing through the fight casting Arcane Blast or something.

Winning Always Makes It Better

I'm a basketball fan. I have been since my father would take me on the Broad Street Subway to the old Spectrum to see Dr J battle the likes of Magic Johnson & Larry Bird. (Yes, I'm that old.)

When Allen Iverson was with the Sixers there was always controversy, except when they were winning. Ah, when A.I. & the Sixers won together, there was no talk about practice,...

"PRACTICE!?! We're talkin' about practice?"

...there were no discussions about Larry Brown not liking A.I., and nobody cared if one of his so-called friends borrowed the Bentley and got caught with drugs. The simple life lesson I learned here is that winning always makes it better!

Tonight, there were no frustrated players. Why? We 1-shot Leo, 2-shot Karathress and got Lady Vashj to phase 3. That's right, we didn't get her down, but we got over the major hump. We saw the 3rd phase and we saw what we need to do to go the distance.

Any frustrations that anyone had last week about sign-ups or recruiting were gone tonight because we kicked ass and took names.

Leadership even discussed forgoing TK pulls this week so we could pound on Vashj some more. Nobody complained. Everyone is hungry for her blood. Tonights raid had the same feeling and electricity that we had just before we dropped Void Reaver & Tidewalker. On both bosses, we turned a corner and then suddenly -- almost unexpectedly -- succeeded. I felt that way on our second pull. The corner was turned. I suddenly knew how to increase my dps. I suddenly saw less adds appearing. All 4 cores were used. Yes, we promptly wiped, but that's not the point!

We can do it. We've got the muscle. We've got the teamwork. The when may still be in question, but I believe now.

Who knows, maybe Friday will be the day!

Did We Lose Perspective?

I'm torn here because I don't want this post to look or sound like the airing of dirty laundry. I realized, however, that this is exactly the kind of issue that guilds deal with and that it's the continuation of the story for those who read about our guild's development. And so, I press forward...

I'm in a great guild. I've got great leaders. We've got great members. This weekend things got a little haywire and I'm not sure what to think.

I was sick most of this weekend and had to delist from the raids. I just can't run. Well, it couldn't come at a worse time for QSS. A lot of people were absent this weekend. Sunday's Vashj pulls were canceled. Tonight's pulls are ongoing, but it took some work putting together the group.

Forum posts from leadership came out expressing frustration with sign-ups and a mention of potential recruitment were made. The unintended tone of the message was that "we" the absent were to blame and that we would be replaced if we can't shape up. Heated discussion ensued.

For the record, I don't think that this was the intent of the message. I think this was the earnest desires of leadership coming through. They are committed to progression. They are committed to being "hardcore" about raiding.

Two schools of thought grew out of the discussion.

School #1 in the discussion were those frustrated at the lost opportunity that this weekend created. Having 5/6 SCC & 3/4 TK bosses cleared w/ 2.5 nights of raiding remaining for pure progression is a raider's wet dream. Having Sunday canceled and Monday put together on a shoestring is a progression raider's nightmare. Frustration is natural. The posts from this group were from leadership & the most hardcore of us.

To be honest, if I weren't sick this weekend, I would probably have been from this camp.

School #2 in the discussion was the backlash from the people who felt like this was no big deal and that leadership was over-excited about nothing. We've been the "new" QSS for less than 2 months now. We've had a new raiding schedule for two weeks. This is just an adjustment period. These posters, in many ways, over-reacted to the apparent over-reaction of the first school.

I found myself agreeing with these posts, but I wasn't sure if it was my personal guilt for missing the raids or because they were right.

My takeaway was that they were both right. I felt like the frustrated people were right to be annoyed and were even right to consider further recruitment. I also felt like the second school was generally correct in their assessment that this was an odd weekend and that we all need to give things time to solidify.

My second takeaway was much less profound, included some expletives and generally had to do with people needing to step back and gain some perspective.

I was confident that the discussion had been resolved. Leadership would consider recruitment over the next few weeks. Players would consider their overall time commitment. I personally resolved myself to consider changing my personal schedule to help the guild. I also resolved myself to not get sick again...yeah, that'll happen.

Except then, I see this: Que Sera Sera is Recruiting. I was surprised. Not by the fact that it was done, but by the speed at which the event occurred. Is recruitment right for the guild? Won't it cause even more signup issues? How big can we get before loyal, hardworking members get pushed out for new recruits who simply have better schedules and maybe fit the slot a tad better? How hardcore are we?

I think this weekend may have been more telling than the guild split on that front. We may have graduated to hardcore. If so, there are some truths that QSS leadership & members must face and deal with.

The truths about being in a hardcore raiding guild are simple. If you aren't leadership, you are akin to an employee. There are benefits (raids, free enchants, network of helpful people) but you must be productive. Failure to show up for work, even with a good excuse, hurts the bottom line. The company will only show you as much loyalty as your productivity demands. You won't necessarily be "fired" from your guild for going on vacation or skipping a few weeks for a deadline at your other job (the one you actually get paid for) but there's nothing stopping it.

I'm not saying this will happen to QSS. I'm not even saying I disapprove if it does. I am saying that I am cautiously optimistic about the next steps for this guild both for our members and for my own raiding.

P.S. I still stand by my earlier comments about QSS being great. So, if you've got the skills, take a hard look at the post on Karthis' site.

Grin and Bear It

As previously mentioned, my collection of WoW-playing RL friends rolled up some Alts recently. We're hitting old instances together and it's been a complete blast. On Saturday, we did Scarlet Monastery twice to accommodate everyone. Both pulls were done AE and both were complete clears in about 2 hours each. It was, to say the least, a blast. One of the best parts was being able to group with our friend living over-seas. (Thus the reason for the second "late night" run.)

Each of us is trying something new. Each of us is "stretching" a little in our new roles. My wife -- a full-time raid healer -- is playing a frost mage. I'm bear tanking.

For a long time, we've had tank issues. Various members of our group have been "stuck" doing it. Heck, I remember in PBC, I would often pet-tank several instances. It was never pretty, but we often got the job done.

Since, Scarlet Monastery is my first real tanking experience, I thought I would talk about the trip. First off, as a beastmaster hunter I know a little more about tanking than the average ranged player. Which is to say, I don't know much. BUT, I do farm leather by letting my pet collect 2-4 mobs at once and then taking them down one-by-one.

Here's what I've learned from my experience.

1) Swipe is your best friend. It seems like whole pulls can be done with just using swipe. During AoE pulls, I discovered that shifting my position and tabbing through the targets, allows me to put swipes on more than 3 mobs. It's not full-proof, but it helps.

2) Using Growl too soon or on the wrong mob doesn't do shit. Target of target is a lifeline. In a group, it's good to have party target frames to help find the mob that pulled off.

3) You can't keep all the mobs in a 4-6 mob AoE pull. The trick seems to be to keep as many as you can, and do your best to grab back 1 or 2 when they start beating on the mages. Eventually, a mage or warlock will die. Oh well! As long as it wasn't the healer and the party didn't wipe, it was probably still a good pull.

4) Thanks to Karthis, I've learned when/how to use charge. I was charging to open pulls when I first started. Reading his post recently, I saved it to grab the stray spellcasters OR save my healer.

Anyway, I'm interested to see what future levels hold. Deep down, I'm still a hunter. Still, it's a great change of pace. I can't imagine ever switching to druid, but who knows.

The First Time Ever I Saw Her Face

Here's two screen shots from our first visit to Lady Vashj...

And so it begins

How many things can you find wrong in this screen shot?
Besides the fact that I'm dead!

Guild Loyalty

TKC recently commented on my recent post Building A Raiding Guild: View from the Cheap Seats. Now, Dear Abby I am not, but I felt a plea for help in this comment. So, here we go...

The guild I am in is having a similar problem. We are a small guild and consider ourselves to be a 'casual' raiding guild. The core of the guild is solid but the problem is that it is just not big enough to progress. We have troubles filling out 10 man raids. We can't get more people because we can't progress. We can't progress because we don't have enough people.

So an idea was hatched to get the core people into a bigger guild (one in which we know a lot of the people) and leave the current guild a social/leveling guild. I, for one, am for this idea. However, there could be a problem for me. It has to do with my real life schedule. I can't raid on weeknights because that is when I work. If we try to move into a bigger guild I may not get the invite due to an inability to do weeknight raids.

So I am kind of stuck. I want to show some loyalty to the guild. I wouldn't be where I am without them. On the other hand, I might have to find myself a late night guild if I don't get the invite to the bigger guild.

Oh well. Any ideas?

This is tough situation. It's more than just a question of guild management but personal needs. And that's got to be where my response has to focus. So, here's the question for TKC and for the rest of you: Why do you play?

Do you play for the social aspect, the challenge of end-game raiding, PvP, or a little of all of them? No answer is right or wrong.

You see, at some strange place, potentially bordering on unhealthy, rests the game of WoW. How much time a person can and should invest in it is a personal decision. The ramifications of that decision can mean the difference between a healthy social life or a healthy set of raid gear. Again, no answer is right or wrong.

Your little guild placed progression over the social aspect when it decided to join up with the larger raiding guild. The decision to honor social relationships remained, but it was not the core focus. If it's OK for them, why isn't it OK for you? I see no reason why you can't honor your social relationships and join a different raiding guild that fits your needs.

Again, the question: Why do you play? If your primary objective is social, then keep your tune in the social guild and learn to PvP or something. If your primary objective is to raid then you need to find a new raiding guild that fits your schedule. If your little guild is really worth the loyalty you've shown, then they should even be helping you find a better fit.

I hope this post helps. Good luck!

Welcome to the Plateau

And no, I'm not talking about that over-farmed spot in Nagrand with all the elementals....

I'm talking about the kind of plateau you hit when you're studying music or losing weight. These are moments when you've been going strong and then suddenly level-off for a while. Sometimes you see them coming. Sometimes they happen quick. Often it can be frustratingly unexpected. You know what I'm talking about...

You've dropped 5lbs every week for 2 months and then suddenly you can't drop another pound no matter what you do. Heck, you catch yourself gaining a pound or two back. It's disheartening. It's frustrating. It's confusing. What's going wrong? The answer? Maybe nothing.

In the case of weight loss, you've simply hit the point where the "easy" pounds have all dropped away. The body has adjusted to your diet. You can probably keep dropping weight, but at a slower pace. You may spend a few weeks gaining weight. It happens.

And no, I'm clearly not talking about weight loss here. This week QSS hit the plateau. We've been taking down one or two new bosses a week for over a month now. But this week, we struggled with some of our most recent kills. They aren't "farm" content yet. In fact, there were at least two nights this week that were downright painful.

It's easy to lose prospective when this kind of thing happens. I blew my cool about preparation & downloading mods on a guild-forum post. Karthis wrote a very stern post about evaluating performance. Did we go too far? Again, maybe.

The truth is that this seems completely natural. As you know, we are not a "lean" raiding guild. Every raid has a slightly different mix of players. We all know each other by now and play well together, but there are going to be nights where things don't click or someone is still learning a fight.

So, it might take a few weeks where we have to struggle with A'lar & Karath. We may even backslide a bit on other stuff. Maybe we're further from Lady Vashj than we think. That's not just raiding, that's life. We'll get off this plateau soon enough.

Building A Raiding Guild: View from the Cheap Seats

Head over to Karthis' site and read Building a Raiding Guild and then come back to me when you're done.

As most of my readership knows, I'm a member of Karthis' guild. Heck, most of you found me from his blog. The following is the view from the cheap seats.

I joined back in Oct. At the time, I had a painful separation from my previous guild. They were "casual" raiders too. It wasn't going well. It was an awesome group of people, but they were lost. They wanted to progress, but not change. There's a lesson there.

Because I was a class rep and a raid coordinator who "took" 4 other raiders with me, it was a messy break-up. All told, three of us were officers. We saw the writing on the walls. No progression to be had here! It was painful because I was close to the guild leader and we've never spoken since. Since we had friends in QSS, we decided to give it a go. I'm glad we did.

Note: I never want to be "leadership" again!

As a group we came in "middle of the pack." Yet, for some reason our crew seemed to be an infusion for them. The guild's two main hunters were feeling burned out and were losing motivation. Too many huntard apps and not enough respect. The three (and later 4) of us clicked perfectly. Game on!

Not long after we joined, bosses started to drop. QSS was on a roll and we were along for the ride.

Meanwhile, the atmosphere in QSS was good but admittedly confusing. It was clear in guild-chat that there were two camps of people: The serious end-gamer & the casual player. I'll be honest here. The end-gamers did not give our casual players enough time or respect. The casual players were completely clueless about how frustrating they made things for the end-gamers. It was a bad mix at times, but it was also a fun place to be. For all the troubles, we were a good casual guild that raided. It was what I was looking for at the time.

Then Karthis came along and changed the entire flavor of the guild. I was very concerned. I was finally making friends and understanding the clicks. People were going to be kicked out of the guild. I didn't think that was right. I was scared that I had joined a new guild just to see it fall apart around me.

Thankfully, the guild split has come and gone. Instead of falling apart, QSS is thriving. Since the beginning of December, we've cleared 11 new bosses. We're planning a "first look" pull on Vashj and folks are actively working on their Black Temple attunements. We are getting "noticed." Real raiders are app'ing with us. Not bad for a guild that was struggling to get by Lurker at the beginning of November!

This is what Karthis and the rest of our leadership have accomplished for us. They realized what "we" wanted and changed to get it. They learned the lesson that my previous guild failed to grasp.

This is the part where I very respectfully point out some of the negatives to Karthis' great experiment as a warning to those of you out there thinking about trying it.

From the prospective of someone who stayed and feels generally respected by leadership, I'm ecstatic about the decision to split the guild. If I may sound extra harsh for a second, from a raider's prospective, "those people" were dead weight. How much do I think about the "sister guild?" Well, that's the thing...

There's nothing that tells me that we did right by Serenity. I wouldn't notice they even existed if it weren't for the fact that I joined the joint chat channel. I only did that to be a team player. And on the joint channel, what do I see? I see the guild leader and people from QSS who are making a show of support. I don't know that I've ever seen actual members on that channel, but I know they exist!

The other day, I was doing a stack of previously ignored quests in Netherstorm. I saw a few members of Serenity running around too. They weren't on the channel. I didn't know them. Sadly, I felt no compulsion to even acknowledge their existence. Frankly, they were just competition for my kills.

Again, this is not to say that Serenity can't or won't work. I've known the guild leader for a while now. He's great people. He and his wife are perfect to lead a social guild. I'm not privy to "management" decisions. Joint-guild Karazhan runs might actually happen. They may be a huge success for Serenity & for QSS member Alts. I just don't see the inter-guild "marketing" to prove it. The chat channel has become one more thing on my window to ignore.

At the end of the day, leadership made the best decision to advance us as a raiding guild. But before trying it, ask yourselves what you want your guild to be. Realize that you will hurt people's feelings. Know that the whole sister-guild thing could take more work than you realize. Know that you could split the guild and still not succeed.

Note: I mentioned the part about being glad I'm not leadership, right?

Finally, an extra thank you and an apology to Karthis. I didn't warn him this was coming. I hope he doesn't feel that I was questioning his decisions. I love what he's doing to QSS. It's totally working. I just hope the same can be said for Serenity.

I R HUNTARD

Tonight, our guild went to SSC and downed Leotheras the Blind & Fathom-Lord Karathress. This is only our third kill of Leo and our 2nd for Karath. In the process, I had some serious huntard moments. Since I'm totally down with self-defaming humor, I'd thought I would share.

First I wiped us on the last trash pull before Leo. It was BAAAAD!!! It was, WTF? Where are the soul stones and the bubbles bad! It was bad enough that I just ran back. I didn't even wait for a res. I just ran. The guild went to the next pull knowing full well that this was my personal walk of shame.

Now in my defense, the goofiness of the trash pull didn't start with me...it just ended there. I was sitting in the back of the raid drinking and healing my pet. My glorious leader missed the pull and our tank called me to "quick grab it now." I rushed forward having only seen the pull twice (and one of those was a wipe too.) As I got there, I had a vague recollection that maybe I should have left my pet behind, something about proximity aggro from the guys holding Leo's prison. Sure enough, splat!

I really think that Blizzard should incorporate the *splat* sound into the game for monumental deaths. Especially n00bs who get stepped on by Fel Reavers. That never gets old. But, I digress...

Now, I'm a basketball fan. When your premier 3-point shooter goes "cold" the best thing to do is to keep feeding him the ball until he gets his stroke back. That's how my class rep is with the hunters. Keep making us pull. When he's not around, I usually coordinate us, and I do the same thing. Well, this was not one of those days. I should have swapped to the point or the 3-spot and dished the ball.

And more importantly, I'm not the premier shooter. I mean, I'm not a bench-warmer...I've got game! I'm a threat! But if I'm off, pass the ball somewhere else! What are you stupid?!?

On the first Karath pull, I sent the shaman MD (intended for Karthis) right at our main tank. He and I both realized what had happened about 1 second too late. I couldn't even fire. I just stood there dumb-struck as the raid died around me.

Such is the life of a hunter. So much power. So much potential. We wipe raids for breakfast!

The good news is that I did get my head out of my ass and do the rest of the pulls right. I also did very well on damage finishing second on the Leo death & top 6 on the Fathom-Lord death. I just felt bad and so very n00b-tastic.

And this is perhaps the point. I'm good! That's not ego or hubris. I'm a solid raider. I still make mistakes. *SIGH* The key is to keep shooting. The key is to not be satisfied. On Friday, I'm right back in the thick of things, doing my job, keeping my aggro down and my dps up!

Lock & Load!

Good Shot Rotation Post

I wasn't going to post anything new for a few days, but my random blog searches has yielded a really nice shot rotation post I just had to share.

Less QQ More PewPew: Shot Rotation

The author, Drotara the Orc does a great job of illustrating shot-weaving and clipping as it relates to your autoshot & the global cooldown. After you're done reading it, come back to re-read my earlier post on shot rotation. I think this explanation about the timing mechanics flow right into my instructions for implementation.

STOP ALL DPS!!!

As a raider who blogs, there's a temptation to write lengthy boss strategies. A number of my friends specifically devote themselves to this cause. You won't see that here. Why not?

Dude, we point and shoot...then we shoot some more! We aren't bears, trees, locks, AoE or any of that shit. There's no secret strategy for hunters in this fight or that. We find a target and we kill it dead! Any general boss guide will tell you the basics of what you need to know.

There are, however, tidbits that improve this fight or that. There are specific questions that can be answered like: "How do I use my pet in the Lurker fight?" and "What kind of MD rotation should be used on Void Reaver?" So, from time to time, I'm going to list those tips.

Dealing With The "STOP ALL DPS" Call

On several fights, there will be moments when the raid leader calls for a dps stop. Everyone, including healers, must stop all threat generation immediately. This is usually because of add spawn or a boss aggro dump. You stop or you die. Heck, you stop or the whole raid could die.

Here are some tips to help you prepare for those moments.

• First off, don't use Serpent Sting in these fights. Personally, as a general rule, I don't use stings in boss fights. Don't worry if you disagree with me about their use in general. Just be careful about their use in fights with aggro dumps. You've got enough to worry about without timing their use.
• Use a macro button to recall your pet. You want your pet to live, hotkey it! Oh and obviously turn growl off! One of the hunters in my group takes this one step further and doesn't even teach his raid pet growl!
• Because sometimes FD is on cooldown, don't rely on it for the stop all dps call. You'd rather save it in case you come in too soon after the tank picks up the mob anyway. Instead, come up with something else to stop your rotation. Make sure it's something you can do fast and instinctively. I personally like to turn around fast and start hopping. I know, it looks silly, but it works. You can't shoot stuff that are behind you and most of your shots stop when moving. Once you've done your little turn on the catwalk, then you can click whatever buttons you need. Again, instinct is the key here. Redundancy is also important. That's why you saved FD in case you F'ed up the spin.

Choosing the Right Melee Weapons

This is the first of my selected "reader questions" that I'm going to try and tackle.

A reader noted that all the "raiding" hunters he sees have big two-handed axes. He wanted to know if there were good weapons for double-wielding and if so, why he rarely saw them.

It's a great observation. And the answer is an emphatic YES, there are some phenomenal weapon combos out there that can help hunters excel. So, why don't you see us wielding more sword-dagger combs? Before I get to that. Let's look at some weapons.

First, what factors make a good melee weapon for a hunter? Let's look at a few appropriate epic choices:

First we have "standard" hunter fair...

Legacy drops from the Opera event in Karazhan and is my current melee weapon. It's got a little of most everything a hunter wants: Agility, Stamina, Attack Power and even some much needed MP5. The only things that could make it better would be extra crit & hit.

Now, a one-hander to consider...

Netherbane is a reward for killing Al'ar the Pheonix God in the Eye. It has a ton of Agility, Stamina & Attack Power to be combined with the right second weapon.

And for those of you who want epic quality, but aren't raiders, let's consider a faction reward.

Guile of Khoraazi is avaliable for those who have reached exalted with the Consortium. Yes, it's very "basic" epic fair, but it can really make a solid second weapon.

Finally, an example of things to not choose.

Heartrazor drops from Solarian in the eye. It's stats are deceptive. You see agility, stamina & attack power. Don't be fooled! The attack power bonus only works in melee. If you're doing enough melee to make this worthwhile, roll up a rogue because you're playing the wrong class! Watch for this stuff. Don't waste DKP, badges or gold on functions that don't work for hunters. (This goes for enchants too!)

OK, so we now see what works: agility, crit, hit, stamina & Mp5. We've also seen what to avoid: strength, abilities that only work in melee...OH and caster weapons!

There's actually a huge list of one-handed weapons that give us most, if not all, of the things in the first category. So, why do so many raiding hunters run around with Legacy? For me, it comes down to two key factors: competition & availability.

When Legacy dropped in my run, it was handed to me. There were no points, rolling, or loot council. It was me or disenchant. And that's the key. The only real competition for that item are other Hunters or the occasional Enhancement Shaman. On most other appropriate choices, I can have a ton of competition.

When Netherbane dropped the other night, all three hunters salivated, but one of our enhancement shaman practically fell out of her chair and screamed into vent. It was a perfect weapon for her. How could we compete with that?

When a really nice dagger drops, how can I justify asking for it when it would mean so much more for a rogue or shaman?

And in order to replace Legacy with two one-handers, I'm going to have to compete with the shaman, the rogues, dps warriors, and other hunters. And, to make it worth doing, I'm going to have to win not once but twice.

No matter how you do loot in your guild, this is not a win-win situation. Especially since I just want the freaking stats! I don't care what kind of dps the weapon does.

Yes, I know that was a long-winded answer to something I could have said in a paragraph or less. This was more fun. So, let me throw two questions out there.

What item do I most want as a replacement for Legacy?

Looking only at our current content (We've not reached Black Temple or Mount Hyjal yet,) my #1 choice is currently Trollbane. It's got solid agility, stamina & attack power. It beats Legacy because the gem slots enable me to customize based on my other gear.

Are there any two-weapon combos that would make me consider going for them?

Admittedly, based on the competition & time, I've not put a lot of thought into it. That said, I have a "fun" answer. I'd have to go with the two fist weapons from Al'ar: the Talon of the Phoenix & the Claw of the Phoenix.

Anyway, I hope this was helpful and informative. It was certainly fun to write. I know that all of my focus was on epic gear. Don't worry. There's a lot of good options to choose from while leveling. So before signing off on this post, here are a few tips to help with that.

- You never know when a new "perfect fit" weapon will turn up. Skill everything and try to keep them skilled up as much as possible. That way you can always equip that upgrade right away.

- Don't overlook Polearms. I used Grimlok's Charge for a very, very long time.

- Unless you're skilling that weapon, learn to avoid using it for more than a wing clip or a disengage attempt.

Now, go shoot something!