Joel’s Scattered Thoughts

Time Management for Raiding Guilds - TheorySpot is an interesting article.

When you choose to do the hardest content first as a matter of guild policy you give yourself more flexibility in two routes. First, if you are suffering on content before the weekend, you can motivate people prior to the next raid week by spending the Sunday and Monday before the next reset clearing easier content offering a lot of loot upgrades. Second, if you are very close to killing a boss, it gives the opportunity to push for that boss while spirits are high without disappointing too many people for skipping an earlier zone. Do you run the risk of not being able to kill an important boss such as Kael’thas or Lady Vashj? Yep. And it will hurt, too.

Most importantly, though, is being able to adapt your raid for progress. Planning and organizing consumables for the beginning of the week is a matter of preparation, not doctrine. The principle for progress here is that you are able to raid new content any time during the week as necessary; be prepared to have that incredible class makeup you need for Magtheridon or Mother immediately after an instance reset. Your goal is not rigid, but fluid — if class balance is great on Tuesday then raid new content on Tuesday; if it is weak Wednesday, go to your old content; if it’s good on Thursday, go back to new content and put the remainder of old content off until Monday. In other words, planning to raid early gives you and your raiders preparation to raid any time at all, since consumables, gear, strategies, and goals are in place at the instance reset.

Want an easy way to say this to your raid without settling into the mindset of a fixed schedule? Just say, “you show up, we’ll make the decision based on who we have and what our class balance is.” It’s that simple. Even if you have planned where you are going and are going to keep content frontloaded 90% of the time, it’s still truthful to say that your decision will be based on class balance.

Never push a great raid to old content at the beginning of the week. Wait for the rainy days to do that and, if there are none, take your great raid to clean house before the next reset.

If I’m reading this correctly he’s saying as much as possible you should be pushing on to new content. Only do farming runs when it’s raid time and there just aren’t the correct class balances to progress.

A Complete Guide to Finding and Using Incredible Flickr Images looks interesting. The trouble is that given the general bent of this blog these days I’d need is more of a screenshot/fan art gallery.

General Tanking School - TheorySpot looks like a good idea. There is at least one tank that I will be training and having this list of things to cover will make a good reference.

Our static group hit 70 so now we’re off and flying! It took us under a year to get there, playing 2-4 times per week. It took us from about Jun 30, 07 to February 9, 2008 to go from 1 to 70 in World of Warcraft. We hit every instance on the way up except for Deadmines and Stockades. Usually we hit them at the low end of the level range and we still blew through them. It probably helped that 3 of us have had quite a bit of raiding experience.

I have now leveled a holy priest and a protection warrior. Apparently I like to do things the hard way. On the bright side I now have 4 level 70s, 2 tanks, 1 healer, and 1 DPS. 3 are Horde, 1 is Alliance. It’s too bad my healer is Alliance side or I could field something for any group. Sadly, my thought on reaching 70 is “Yay! Now who do I level next?” Jaimie is thinking of trying a shaman who would likely pair with my druid to provide a handy tank/healer combo. A friend of ours has a warrior around level 25 so if we can catch up we could group together.

Just a reminder as our static group nears 70. For anyone who is interested in number crunching / theorycrafting in World of Warcraft, Elitist Jerks is the place to look. Here is a meta-thread to give you a good place to start: Quick links to prominent class threads - Elitist Jerks

I think that Warrior 11/0/50 is going to be my build for the next while Cruelty just didn’t do it for me and I was constantly rage starved.

Tobold asked Would you quit WoW after a reset? I would not quit WoW after a reset. Right now would be a terrible time for a reset as our static group is almost to 70 (two thirds of a level to go!) and I don’t know if they would be willing to start over. For myself, I would almost welcome a reset in about 3 months.

I’ve restarted on new servers twice and my original server was brand new when I started. Having a server with nice distribution of toons across levels is fun. With most people starting at around the same time, most of the server population is close to the same levels so it’s easy to find groups. All manner of odd things sell or don’t sell on the Auction House. It’s a brand new world. Even if the quests are the same, the people you meet are different and it’s the people that make this game fun.

I’ve decided to change the look of my blog. I’m now using Retro Book 1.0. We’ll see if I stick with it, but so far I like it.

It’s screwed up, never mind.

(Post deleted)

My Own Kind of Freedom: A Firefly Novel by Steven Brust — The Dream Café might be worth reading. Mind you I have a stack of books that I’m going to read Real Soon Now. This one’s in digital format so it at least has a fighting chance. For some reason I find it easier to read books online than as physical books.

Rands In Repose: Out Loud looks like another good article on giving presentations. Maybe this year my presentation will go over better. Mind you, I don’t even have a topic so I’m not betting on it.

WOW Insider discusses a Paladin 40/0/21 -
aka Shockadin build. Note that many of the commenters disagree with the blogger’s choices of Ret talents. From what I understand, this is a healing/grinding build. It will let you heal well while retaining a strong amount of solo capability. Jaimie might want to check into taking a build such as this one.

For a nice listing of various paladin builds, see the WoWWiki article.

Looking at my last couple runs, I’ve had no rage problems, but losing tons of rage when stance dancing has been annoying. Thus I’m thinking of switching from Warrior (11/4/46) to Warrior (8/4/49). With either build I would consider taking a point off of anticipation to max out into either Vitality or Cruelty. I want to see how Cruelty does without Anger Management

Edit: I did some general running around last night and wasn’t too pleased with the 8/4/49 spec. I plan to test it out in an instance or two before changing again, but I was rage starved too often. I’m almost positive I’m going to drop Cruelty. It just isn’t working for me.

I need to do PvP on my warrior and paladin for the shoulders (if there were worlds enough and time, I’d also do it on my hunter). This seems like a good idea, but I’m really reluctant to take charge. I don’t like being a leader.

Losing AB is no fatality | Altitis

I wrote a simple macro which I would use 15 seconds before the game start unless someone else was taking charge.
The instructions? Simple.

Group 1: Mine. Group 2: Stables. Group 3: Mill.
Announce incoming in chat, and remember, 3 bases wins the game.

That’s all it took to go from a 1-9 win ratio to 4-6 with that toon. Something I verified over several dozen games.

Nowadays on horde, it works the same way, except the dispatches are sent to LM, farm and BS. I usually add a “stables last only after the other 4 are secured” after the first nodes cap for us. And you know what? It works.

This sounds amusing but definitely NSFW. 65 Million Boars - » Troxed Guild Leader Soundboard (direct link to soundboard)

World of Matticus has a good post on Structuring Your Casual Raiding Guild. Here are a few snippets I found interesting. I think that lack of some of these positions contributed a lot to the dissolution of my raiding guild. It was largely a one-man show so when he quit it was over.

Choose officers based on what your Guild Leader lacks. “The bottom line is that these are individuals that your Guild leader can trust and depend on.”

(Raid Leaders) “call for what it is that they want to happen. They might want a sheep on square, a misdirect on skull, or a trap on circle. They don’t care who does it as long as it’s done. They have delegated duties down the chain of command.”

For loot distribution, “No matter what system is used, always ensure that Officer discretion can come into play at some point.”

Here’s an idea for when I get bored with my hunter: Mirshalak’s Lair: Solo Scholo. My hunter is also an enchanter so I could probably get myself some very nice drops. Mind you I need to level my bear up to 70 first. Maybe I’ll start taking him along on my dailies.

The when and why of using Feign Death. | The Delusional Hunter

Repeat after me: Feign Death is an ability used by hunters to manage their aggro accumulation during a fight. It is not a tool for dumping aggro once you have stolen it.

…

Use it (Feign Death) every time it cools down

As a tank I hate dealing with this. Chasing hunters around trying to pull off of them is a royal pain, especially on my poor paladin who lacks intercept/intervene. If the healer dies, it’s my fault. I try to save everyone, but my tanking priority is roughly this: keep the healer alive, keep aggro on the main and secondary target, keep myself alive, keep off-healer alive, keep mages alive, keep aggro on extra mobs, keep rogues/warlocks/hunters alive, actually DPS the target. Mages get higher keep alive priority to to squishiness and crowd control abilities. Warlocks/hunters/rogues have aggro dumping abilities. Warlocks and hunters have pets to help them and a tendency to go after the extra targets where my aggro is weaker.

Less QQ, More PewPew has a macro for one possible shot rotation. I’ll have to try it out on my hunter. Mind you my poor hunter only gets pulled out for dailies and only when I have time to do an extra set of dailies, so she won’t be using this much.

#showtooltip Steady Shot
/script UIErrorsFrame:Hide
/castsequence reset 3 steady shot, !auto shot
/cast [exists,target pettarget] kill command
/cast arcane shot
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear ; UIErrorsFrame:Show

Aspect of the Hare: Pike’s World of WarCraft Blog: The Pre-Instance Checklist is focused on hunters, but isn’t a bad list for all classes. I particularly hate it when I forget to clean out my bags beforehand.