Oh how me loves the rantings.

For those of you that wanted to comment on our ex-guildies post, do so here, I won’t be turning off comments in fear of someone saying something improper.

The original posting can be read here http://kidichka.wordpress.com/2011/01/20/the-threat-is-all-mine/

Edit: The link is no longer of interest since it has been censored to the public, yet again.

And herein follows my response.

Vasi, I admit, I have been looking forward to your posting after the little threat you made about it to Ven. I’m surprised you managed to go from writing about your gripes with your raid leader and raid healer to full on lies. Brings your words and actions into a very clear perspective when it comes to the guild and your participation in it.

To your first 6 points:

1. You were the one who outright insulted your raid leader, in game as well as on your blog. Leave your husband out of it since he has no choice but to follow what you do.

2. You posted on a medium that is read publicly by your fellow guild mates and officers instead of going to the persons responsible for issues within raid groups.

3. Yes, you were demoted by me after you decided to censor, then remove the opinions of your guild mates(many of whom have been supporting you with their participation in the raids).

4. I told you that the raid leader did nothing wrong, and she hasn’t, lets not forget you were the one to attack her. If you want, I can always post the unedited e-mails you sent me regarding the issue.

5. You replied to said e-mails trying to worm your way back into an officer and raid leader position, going as far as begging me not to kick the person in question you had the issue with(whom I have no intention of kicking).

6. And finally yes, I removed you, your family sadly had to go with you, since through all of this drama which you have created, you have lost the trust of the guild thats carried you up until now.

Now, apparently you seem to want to set yourself up as the innocent little guy that got jumped by a vast conspiracy within the guild. Good Luck.

This guild has carried you through Wrath. This guild suffered through endgame content on a 25man level because of your ineptitude. People you mention went out of their way to accommodate you every step of the way, providing you with gear that could have been more beneficial used elsewhere, providing you with positions that would have been better filled by other people. Yet, you seem not to notice any of this. Never heard a thank you for any of this.

Maybe I should mention the power plays you tried in the past, whining about how if something is not done your way well, tough on us, you can go and take 3-4 people with you when you leave a raid group, not giving a second thought to anyone else. Of course, I didn’t see you raise this tidbit in your own post, but I’m sure it just slipped your mind.

Let’s clarify, you were not demoted for speaking up. If everyone was demoted for that reason, we would not have a single officer. One of our current officers, to this day, is a very out spoken individual, and has been since before any of the people you have issues with were even with the guild. Think about that. What’s the difference between you and them? Simple, they understand that issues within the game, stay within the game. They’re either resolved or not, in the privacy of the guild, not put out for public consumption.

You say you’re not sorry for anything you’ve said and done. It’s a shameful thing you say that. You’re not sorry for attacking people who have stood up for you, supported you, considered you a valued member within the guild and their raid team. Your call, but by saying this, you do nothing less than spit in their faces and belittle their contributions to you. The snowball started with you, continued with you and ended with you, you just fail to realize this.

I’m not going to speak for others over you lovely character evaluations, but let’s not forget that the people you named have been the ones who showed you the trust and support while you were with the guild. One by one you insult them. If they wish to respond to you, they will.

As for myself, thank you. Thank you for showing me how belittling you can be. How wrong I was when I brought up and supported your involvement in the officer discussions. How misguided I was when I gave you the benefit of the doubt. Yet you call me and I quote ”Condescending, insensitive, ingnorant, and a bully with a large ego of a GM”. Your language in your posts, your e-mails are exactly these words, but I fail to see where you apply them to yourself. I’m sure in your mind you are the downtrodden revolutionary and I’m the big meanie. Think of it as you want, but also note the fact that not a single officer has asked me publicly or privately to give up the GM position. Being the GM is much like being a raid leader, it’s a thankless job that nobody wants to do. You were promoted with the abject reason that you could alleviate the shortage of raid leaders,that was the sole reason you were promoted and yet, you never did the job. You just wanted to be included without doing any of the work, then you went as far as insulting your raid leader, while in the background trying to be included on a team that does not need you. I can guarantee you one thing, if you were in my position in Wrath and Retribution, you had the title, you wouldn’t have a guild left over what you did.

As for my life, you know nothing about it but your statement made me laugh at how low you can stoop on trying to attack me. This in itself is entertaining because you didn’t mention me until I asked you to discuss your issues with me and then had to demote and remove you. The guild was sad to see what had to be done and they regretted the fact that I had to involve your children in any of this, but you lost their trust and they understand why it sadly had to be done.

In closing all I can say is this, learn how to lie about what happened better.

I want some of what Blizzards smoking

With todays blue post regarding the change to raids I wondered, What the hell game do Blizzard employees play?

I guarantee it’s not World of Warcraft.

Now you know I GM a guild and have been through thick and thin with them, but this change is just, silly.

Currently the guild runs 3 10man ICC raids and one 25man on the weekends with an Alts in Space raid on Wednesdays to gear folks or just to have fun. This boils down to having 30+ raid capable players in the guild who would all like to raid. Most of them get their fill with the 10man and those who don’t do the 10mans get their shot at the raids on the weekend 25man. With this change to raiding sadly it will look like we’re going to end up with people not being able to raid with the guild at all, since the 30 of us are already saved to our respective 10mans and it is highly unlikely they would want to sacrifice that for a single 25man.

Of course we could just do the 25man with alts, but we don’t all have alts that are ready for much more than 25man ToC, with the heavy support of some of mains in key positions.

So Blizzard, I ask you, WTF are you thinking? Why are you again messing with a system that does not need to be touched? Okay, yeah, I understand that some people or guilds can’t staff a 25man raid from their own guild, hell my guild went through that problem at one time, but why make such a huge sweeping change to punish those that can do the content? Blizzard I’m sure you’re getting griefed over this on the forums and rightly so. My 2 cents are there. You’re dropping enough unwelcome changes on us with Cataclysm as is, don’t make the list longer. You’re messing with a formula for raids that has been working for years, it does not need to be ‘fixed’.

The DPS side of things

Recently I was surprised at the amount of DPS we’ve gotten in our raids. Specifically what one Demonology Warlock did. A little about the player.

Teenager with a limited playing schedule who can only join us sporadically. I like him, I mentored him a little when I first ran with him and gave him a few tips. This was back when we were both with the Destruction spec. Since then he has switched over to Demonology, geared himself amazingly with a lot of hard work (surpassing my own little warlock) and has blown his DPS off the chart. Amazing and I have a lot of respect for him.

This has changed my opinion of some people who have more time to raid (or just generally more time spent in-game) who struggle to break out their DPS above the tanks. My previous blog post touches on this a little, but how can I approach someone about their lackluster performance week after week? We are in no way a hardcore raiding guild, but we do take it seriously. It is very disparaging to see someone with top (or near top) tier gear with a class that has a lot of DPS output struggling to break 3000DPS on a fight that does not require movement.

Here I think of fights like Saurfang for example. Mobility is not really required here unless it’s called for a single element (Blood Beasts to be precise, but they’re handled easily by ranged) and yet they struggle. How do I go and tell them they need to work out their class so it does what it can do with all that shiny purple gear and make sure they don’t take offense? I know some would take constructive criticism well, but you never know.

What are your ideas on this?

Random Ramblings

As I’ve written before I now GM a great guild. Our progression is fairly steady in current end game content with 3 teams killing the masses in the 10man and 1 team doing the same in the 25 man. The guild is generally satisfied with this, there are always a few who want to do more and keep pushing, but they know when to stop (or have been talked to about their eagerness). Now this is not a problem of course, we’re happy, we get it done, we meet our goals consistently. But…

I find it very strange how people seem to forget what they need to do when they switch up from a 10man to the 25. Most fight mechanics are the same, the only thing that changes is the number of people participating in most cases. Of course I understand that maybe not everyone has seen a particular fight, knows a particular mechanic or gets easily confused. But…

There are a wealth of resources available to everyone. Within a guild and on the internetz to familiarize yourself with what needs to be done. Even just a raid leaders description before an encounter should be more then enough. He/She has done the work to prepare you, did the research, tried it out and modified it in light of our unique styles of play. But…

The thing I don’t understand is why are there always a few people who think they know better? I can understand an experienced player (key word: experienced) being a step ahead then the rest in some cases, anticipating whats coming, positioning, etc., but not everyone is capable of this and that’s fine. But…

Lots of buts, eh? It goes on. It is an issue that I notice raid after raid and I can’t seem to find the way to bring the subject up to individuals without sounding condescending.

Maybe one day.

Maybe.

Why we should have able to get more than one offspec.

Since my Death Knight became primarily a tank I have had to come to terms with being asked to DPS most of the times for our raids. I don’t have a problem with this seeing as our main tanks are just that, main spec tanks that prefer to tank rather than DPS. Now, I have always been DPS so being asked to switch is really not an issue for me.

Having said that I started thinking about Death Knights and their unique position as being capable of massive AoE damage or massive single target damage. Right now my DPS offspec is Unholy, which is great for trash and heroics, but is very lacking for raid bosses. Since the unholy spec highly relies on doing damage to more than one target, our DPS output takes a steep dive once we encounter a raid boss. On the reverse side, Blood (or in very very very rare cases Frost) is the better spec for doing great single target damage in raids. Don’t get me wrong, as Unholy we can still go bat-shit crazy, but it leaves us with an empty feeling knowing we could do so much more if we were allowed to have an extra spec to switch to.

Now for those DK’s that don’t tank this is an easy enough solution since they can just nab 2 DPS specs as they see fit, but for those of us that tank, having the third spec option would help greatly.

Chime in, interested in your opinions as always.

It has been a while

Sorry for the lack of any updates here.

Specially to the 3 people who actually read the blog.

A lot has happened since then. People have come and gone. Raids have become more entertaining and guild life has been greatly improving.

Last I wrote it was about warlock DPS and now I think I’ll write up one on Death Knights after I finish this post.

Since the introduction of the new LFG system I can say most everyone has been farming the heck out of heroics. Some going in for gear, some for practice, but mostly everyone is going for the badges. About a month ago I decided I wanted to try my hand at tanking. My gnome DK began building himself a tank set, mostly purchased blues and a few crafted pieces donated by awesome guildies. As I have never tanked before this attempt was a tad intimidating. Once I put on my gear and got a frost tanking spec the only thing running through my head were the most horrible tanking experiences I’ve seen others have. Luckily for me the first place I hit was Utgarde Keep. All guildie run of course, (granted all 4 of them had healing off specs). It went as well as could be expected for a first time foray but the words of encouragement and suggestions bolstered my little shattered ego and I kept with it.

A month later I have built myself a respectable tanking set and have begun to OT for our guild raids in some cases. Right now I tank multiple heroics daily to help guildies out (if you read http://youyankityoutankit.wordpress.com/ you know she has a lot of toons that I run with for heroics) plus the occasional fully random PUG when I am utterly bored.

That’s all for now and I’ll get working on the tanking aspect of the DK. If you want to check it out, he’s listed on the character page or just look for Dethgnome (yes, had a racechange to Human) on Thorium Brotherhood.

Warlocks and the DotDotDotDead

Ah, the warlock. The Alliance side evil. The shunned, the hated, the feared. Also, one of the most fun classes to play.

Many people argue that the continued changes to this class have utterly ruined it and yes, I can see where they are coming from. Many warlocks of old have had a certain mindset as to what talent tree was for what purpose. I joined the ranks of the warlock in Burning Crusade, but never actually did anything with the character until well into Wrath of the Lick King.

I leveled to 60 in the Demonology tree and found it extremely irritating that my survivability depended solely on the hardiness of my Voidwalker. At early levels this was easy, especially before they changed the amount of damage, and thus aggro, a pet could keep over their owners. Nowadays a Curse and a Shadowbolt will rip threat off your Voidwalker or if you wait too long, you run the risk of it either dying, or you getting aggro because of your continued use of Health Funnel. As a leveling warlock survivability and downtime are your key areas of interest, thus I changed over to affliction. Affliction helps you keep yourself alive, do nice burst damage and gives you the option of a better Life Tap and also lets you steal your minions mana if you’re in a pinch. For soloing your way to 80, this is probably your best bet.

Raids and the warlocks you take with you.

Destruction, Destruction, Destruction. Yes, I said it, Destruction is the way to go for raiding. Yes, I am a Destruction warlock, but I tried Affliction as well. I opted to not bother with Demonology because the numbers are just too low. When most people see a warlock in raid the first thing that pops into their head is “omg i hope this guy has the 5k cookies for me and he can summon me back 9 times after i go to Dalaran because I keep forgetting to bring my things with me”. Well fellow raider, go f_ck yourself is what most warlocks are thinking before they join. Don’t get me wrong, we provide cookies, no problem, but don’t expect us to toss up a new Soul Well every time a late person comes in and demands to be treated like a star. Same with summons, we will toss up a stone, it lasts 5 minutes, get the most use out of it while you can and don’t expect us to throw one up every single time you feel too lazy to summon that epic flying mount to get to a raid location. The last thing you want is a surly warlock. We might not have the hunters fabled Misdirection, but a skilled warlock can abuse Soul Shatter to the same effect.

But I went off on a tangent there, back to the main idea. Warlocks and DPS(at least in the Destruction tree). Please please please realize that as a Destruction warlock, you will eventually become a threat whore. I have been blessed to run with a great paladin tank who knows what he is doing and can generate an awesome amount of threat. Even with this, I generally ride the edge of his threat. Now don’t get me wrong, I am by far not the best warlock out there, but I seem to have an inherent talent in bringing out the best of what I’m dealt in game. We’ve all heard the saying “it’s not the gear, but the player” one time or another and I fall into this classification.

Back in the days of old a warlocks DPS depended on the amount of dots they applied to a target and then spamming a single attack in the interim to actually do something. With Destruction warlocks we tend to use either Curse of Elements or Curse of Weakness in most raid encounters with the occasional Corruption thrown in when we have an extra second on a cooldown. I have run with many warlocks, in all talent trees, that claimed to get the most DPS out of simply spamming Shadowbolt at a target. Now i was fairly fresh at the time and decided to put this to the test in all 3 trees. Yeah, epic fail. Spamming a single talent will never give you maximized DPS. I could sorta imagine this back in the day when you gear stacked shadow damage and haste, but in today’s raids and the simplified gear, it is just not possible.

Incinerate is your friend, as well as a big tool since it is the spell that allows you to use Conflagrate. Conflagrate and Chaos Bolt are your heavy hitters, but Incinerate makes sure they hit even harder, plus Conflagrate is your only spell that hits huge, without a cast bar. Learn it, use it, love it. The best part about is, even before you get into Naxx or Ulduar, the Incinerate/Conflagrate spell combo will crit at least 8k on any target, ensuring you kill it, and kill it fast.

In a raid situation I urge everyone to hang back a moment, let the tank position and then do a bit of  “prep damage” before you unleash the abused inner child we all harbor. I cannot stress this enough for warlocks, sure, toss up your designated curse, hell, even toss up your corruption, but after that stop because if your tank is still moving you have a high chance of pulling the target off of them, I know, I’ve done it and yes, so have you. I tend to stick to the 5 second rule in most cases with tanks that I know, in any other case, 10-15 seconds. Make sure you know your tanks before you start riding their threat because yes, we can Soul Shatter, but the 3 healers between you and the tank sure can’t. Dead healers = qq. QQ = angry raid leader. Angry raid leader = qq. See where I’m going with this?

Once you get yourself situated you are now ready to start doing some hurt to the target. With all those nice buffs you got (or didn’t because everyone hates you for the crap you pulled last week after wiping the group 5 consecutive times because you couldn’t keep yourself and the darkness inside you in check) you will be doing some serious hurt. With most of your spells critically striking for upwards of 10k you know you hit the sweet spot. Remember to pace yourself, keep moving if there are AoE elements and to watch your threat.

Add-ons I use for my Warlock

I like to keep my UI clean and simple so I started using CTBarMod for my hunter and since then applied it to most of my toons. Lets you keep your screen very clutter free and every aspect of the UI is configurable to your needs. It is similar to Bartender, but has less problems and a lower memory footprint so those of you with older machines can get this instead.

Elkano’s Buffbar is an addon is use again to alleviate clutter, I like my buffs neatly stacked on the top right corner of my screen in a click through window that scrolls down, timers included and also fully adjustable to your needs.

DOTimer is one that gives a CD of your dots on a target. This addon is a bit more difficult to configure, but once you got the basics you need the rest you can turn off. Great to have for multi target boss fights since a simple mouseover will give you a popup on the pointer of all your damaging dots without having to click over to the target. Works great in PvP as well as in the dumbass ToC10/25 PvP event.

That’s it for now.

DPS and how to do it

I know many people have done a lot of research and writing about any DPS class involved in this game, yet every server is plagued by people who can’t tell the difference between DPS and epic fail. I don’t claim to be any sort of authority on DPS, but i think I’ve reached a level where I can contribute to the subject.

Within these hallowed pages I will share tactics, add-ons and other tidbits of information I have found useful over the years.

Let’s get this show on the road

After nearly 3 years of playing World of Warcraft there are some things a person simply cannot avoid. In my case it is the inevitable responsibility of raid leading. Let me make this clear, I hate to raid lead. No, seriously, I hate raid leading. Funny part is, I never volunteered to do it, it just sorta fell in my lap after our glorious leader had to take an extended leave of absence. Yeah, enough back story. Being a raid leader is a great responsibility that no person in their right mind would ever voluntarily do, but those of us who are stuck with it need to excel at it just to keep the masses happy. Don’t get me wrong, anybody can raid lead, but they cannot all raid lead successfully. Sadly there are more people out there that should never be given any modicum of authority over a raid then ever.

Our guild is luckily blessed with a very competent core of raid leaders. One is a married couple who have taken on the brunt of this effort, bright eyed and bushy tailed, and have settled into this role quite nicely. Our guild leader of course was our main raid leader for a long time, but real life interferes so he had to cut back on his participation. The newest raid leader we have shows promise, but we are afraid to drop him into the pot just yet. And then there is me.

Yes, little ole me. The raid leader. The number cruncher. The fight director. The “call your name out when you’re standing in a giant fire a blind man couldn’t miss” person. Yeah, that’s me. People usually take well to my instructions, but there is always one that wants to challenge the position. Luckily for them, I generally get cut off by Ms. Askevars hubby before I enter into a tirade of well worded, sarcastic and demeaning sentences over voice chat.

I will follow up in this blog with our raiding adventures as well as branch out into discussing current DPS classes I play.

Look forward to hearing from you readers,

The Raid Leader

is anybody out there?

Hello,

My name is Inq and I am a raid leader.

I am a raid leader in World of Warcraft.

This is the most thankless job on the planet in MMO’s.

In the coming posts I will expand on this theory and many others.