Joel's Scattered Thoughts

Notes on things that interest me

Posts Tagged loot

Losing Gear Progression in WoW

Oct 21

Posted by Joel in World Of Warcraft | No Comments

Spinks has a post on Losing Gear Progression in WoW.  The part that interested me was when she says this about Ulduar: “There’s no benefit to going there either, you’d be better served for rewards in the newer easier instance.” This is something that really annoys me about WoW.

There are currently 13 heroic instances.  On my newly 80 alts it makes no sense to run any of those instances except for Trial of the Champion and maybe the daily.  I buy/craft/quest the gear I need to get up to acceptable levels, then run ToC as I have time.  If it’s a slow day, I might do the daily as well.  There may be an occasional upgrade from some of the other instances, but ToC is so much more bang for the buck that running anything else is mostly a waste.

What if when new patches bring new instances and new currencies, the old instances start dropping the new currencies as well?  The loot would still be better in the new instance but at least running the old instances would not be a complete waste of time.  It makes sad to see those old instances going to waste.  (I’m even sadder about not having heroic max level instances from BC and Classic, but that might be a little much to ask.)

Make running old instances rewarding!

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Looting the Guild Bank

May 20

Posted by Joel in World Of Warcraft | No Comments

thief When I canceled my WoW subscription, I deliberately left people with access to the guild bank and a message to help themselves.  Wouldn’t you know it, two non-contributing players decided to clean it out.  Not take a reasonable amount and ride off into the sunset, but drain the bank dry of others’ contributions over a period of a week or two. 

REDACTED

In case you were wondering, it was a sting.  I was feeling nasty and paranoid and was curious to see how their ethics would hold up. 

I did give everyone access to the full contents of guild bank. I did tell the guild to help themselves to the contents of the guild bank. The blame is mine. By the letter of the law, they have done nothing wrong.

REDACTED

Conscience for sale: 2400 gold

By their fruits ye shall know them (Matthew 7:16)

Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties – but right through every human heart – and through all human hearts.
– Alexander Solzhenitsyn

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Healing on a Shaman

Feb 27

Posted by Joel in World Of Warcraft | 1 Comment

With my shaman at 80, I now need to figure out how to heal with a shaman.  The only thing I’ve healed with him is Karazhan at 70 and things have changed since then.

I’ve managed to get a lot of good gear thanks to LootRank, some luck at the Auction House, and my friendly neighborhood leatherworker. (Thanks Hidi!)  My plan is to respec and get into some instance runs this weekend.  I may try to finish off the initial Sons of Hodir questline first though.

Anna has a lovely guide to resto shaman healing spells.  PlusHeal talks a little more about spell rotations for different situations and provides some advice for new healers.  Lodur on World of Matticus has a post on Being the Shaman Behind the Meat Shield. 

It’s been a while since I ran as a healer.  For now the plan is to keep tanking on my warrior as my main role, but it’s good to have options. 

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8 Questions Your Guild Should Ask Itself

Feb 10

Posted by Joel in World Of Warcraft | No Comments

Matticus posted 8 Questions Your Guild Should Ask Itself.  Since his focus is on raiding, that’s where this quiz aims.  Here’s how I’d answer them for our guild alliance.

  1. Do you have a clearly defined identity? We are a raiding alliance.  We aim to allow people to raid even when they can’t commit to a regular schedule.
  2. Do you have a clearly defined schedule? We raid 2-3 times per week.  Raids are scheduled in advance and posted on the website.
  3. Do you actually FOLLOW that schedule? Yes.  First pull is at raid start time (or a little earlier).  If it isn’t within 15 minutes of raid start, the raid is cancelled.
  4. Do you have legitimate and fair looting system, with defined rules that are followed? We’re using roll – need for main spec, greed for offspec or alts.  We’re still working on some of the finer details, e.g.  what happens when you change mains/specs? 
  5. Do you have a plan for progression? Our main focus is 10 player progression.  So far our speed has kept pace with Blizzard’s release of new content.
  6. Do you have fun playing together? Yes, that is one of our reasons for existing.  When it’s not fun, stop playing.
  7. What is your vent environment like? Family friendly with some innuendo. 
  8. How are you with female players? About 1/3 to 1/2 of our players are female.  It’s not a novelty to have female players. 

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Raiding as Ret

Jan 25

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I raided as Ret for Friday’s run.  It was fun to do a ton of DPS.  The amusing thing for me was that I had one piece of instance loot – the rest was quest rewards, craftable stuff, or rep rewards.  My one piece of instance loot was a leather belt from Heroic Utgarde Keep, so nothing too impressive.  I still managed to pump out a respectable amount of DPS.  My damage dropped through the floor when I had to DPS and raid lead, so I don’t think I’ll be doing that again. 

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Why Raid?

Jan 18

Posted by Joel in World Of Warcraft | No Comments

It seems that loot drama is inevitable.  Raid leading is a stressful thing (and the pay sucks).  It seems to me that a decent raid leader, like a decent manager, is a jerk (the great ones are not, but that’s a whole other plane of skill).   Right now, if I want to raid, I have to raid lead.  Why raid?

The thing I like best about raiding is that it provides a chance to overcome challenges as a group.  Naxxramas is easy for advanced guilds, but for us it’s a challenge.  I’d say that Naxx is pretty much perfectly tuned for us right now.   We are downing bosses but it’s taking us a number of tries for most of them.  The fun of overcoming a challenge as a group is the reason I raid.

I don’t know where I want to go with raiding.  The thought of spending the next two years raiding doesn’t sound like fun.  How many times do I want to see Naxx?  

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Dancing with Heigan

Jan 14

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We ran Naxx last night and I had a blast.  My favorite bit was the Heigan fight.  We didn’t come anywhere close to downing Heigan (our best attempt was around 69%) but I enjoyed myself immensely. 

Part of my enjoyment came simply from not screwing up.  I tend to screw up on movement and positioning so it was great to do it right.  Another fun bit was having the raid discuss whether I sounded more like an optometrist (“Which looks better to you, one or two?  two or three?”), and aerobics instructor (“One, two, three, four. Move!”) or a music teacher (“One and two and three and four”).  We had a newish healer and a different off-tank and things still went fairly smoothly.  One of the main reasons I’m enjoying running Naxx so much is that it’s a challenge, but not an unbeatable one. 

I expect Saturday’s run to involve a lot of wipes – we’re doing Heigan at least a couple times.  If that doesn’t work, we’ll move to Instructor Razuvious or Patchwerk for a change of pace.  I deliberately saved Sartharion for Saturday’s run so that those who can only show up then are still going to get some loot. 

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Alts and the Raider: An Officer’s Perspective

Jan 13

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Sydera at World of Matticus discusses Alts and the Raider: An Officer’s Perspective.  We just went through some of this entering Naxx.  It hadn’t been a big deal before Wrath as we had Karazhan on farm by the time we started to bring in alts to do more than fill in temporarily in key roles.  

With Wrath, we’ve had an overfull raiding roster pretty much every raid night.  Deciding who can come and who can’t has been a major headache for me and has led to hard feeling a couple of times.  Some hadn’t decided on their spec and are willing to respec as needed which then leads to loot issues.  Does a paladin without a declared spec get to roll on DPS/Tank/Heal loot?  We ended up adding a new rule requiring raiders to declare a main toon and spec even if they are not playing that toon/spec at the moment.  Farm content is going to be more of a free-for-all, but we’re a ways from having anything on farm at this point. 

It’s naive of me, but I hadn’t even thought about this till someone brought it to my attention.  Probably one of the reasons I hadn’t thought about it is that the loot didn’t affect me directly.   I had blithely assumed the more alts, the merrier.  With more alts we could have multiple people for any given role and we could pull in different toons to give everyone a chance to play.  I missed considering the politics of loot distribution, especially in these early progression days when one piece of loot can make a big difference to someone’s raid viability. 

epiclewtz

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Bleep The Sons of Hodir

Dec 25

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The Sons of Hodir rep grind is at least as annoying as I expected it to be.  I’m barely into friendly and I hate them all.  The quests are very poorly set up and allow for ninja looting of quest items.  I’m going to be dropping a lot of cash at the Auction House buying rep.  At least they could have given us two factions with shoulder enchants.

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Recognizing Bear Loot

Nov 24

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Still no Bear Tank Pawn scale, but if you’re sick of waiting this is where I’m going to start research for building one: Recognizing Bear Loot.

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Zero sum gold

Sep 26

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Gevlon of Greedy Goblin discusses loot distribution.  This time of transition as we move into the new expansion is a great time for thinking about this kind of thing.  As always, Gevlon manages to come up with an original take on the subject – one firmly founded in the practical wisdom of Goblin philosophy.  

Zero sum gold: People bid for the loot with gold, highest bidder distributes the money equally between the raiders. So if you win a Karazhan loot with 1000G bid, you have to pay 100G to everyone else (and 100 to yourself). This way the others get something too, just like in zero sum DKP but with the difference, that money is not bound to the guild, you can spend it wherever you want. So

  • It encourages preparation and demanding others to prepare, since no loot or money if no kill.
  • If you kill, you surely get something (money or loot)
  • Encourages farming or business, since you have better chance to loot if you have more money.
  • Allows PuG-ed people to come and equally participate.
  • Encourages participation in bosskills where you don’t want loot (since you get money).
  • Encourages well-geared players to stay in guild, since while they can’t get loot until the guild downs their boss, in the meantime you get very rich. This point is extremely important for the guild’s tank-keeping potential. Tanks are needed to be geared for the bosses, so little or no drop for them. But this way they are saved for farming which is hard for tanks.
  • No mod, administration, or tables needed (though 24 trades can be a pain, it can be decreased by giving all the money to the raid leader who distributes it at raidend.)

This is the goblin way!
By the way someone can say that "encourage farming" can backfire, people will spend more time farming (or worse, buying) gold, than preparation for raid. I don’t see it a problem. The system encourage people to check for the preparation of others, if the raid is unprepared, no loot or money. It’s true that the guy with the more money will get the loot, but he distributes this money, so next time you will be the guy with the more money.

The big thing I don’t like about this system is that it may encourage gold buying.  Even if the others don’t buy gold, when you’re dealing with limited playtime and you’re bidding against someone who plays 12 hours a day, you’re going to lose.  What happens when a warrior-only item drops and there’s only one warrior in the raid – does the warrior get away with bidding 1g for the item?  I’m sure there are other problems I’ve missed too.

Anyone have any thoughts on how the problems with this loot distribution system could be overcome?  I’d bet there’s a solution out there in real world economics.

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Community Raids

Jul 25

Posted by Joel in World Of Warcraft | No Comments

Life of a Nin had a post On Raiders and raiding which discusses summer slumps in raiding and lack of progress.  He mentions the idea of a large scale raiding alliance as a possible solution.  You stay in your guild, but raid with people from the raiding alliance at the times that work for you on the raids you want to run.  One example of this in action is Leftovers Community Raiding.  For further reading, see the WoW Insider article. 

paperwork I really like the idea, but thinking about the overhead scares me.  The loot system would have to be 100% impartial.  If you have the points or win the roll you get it.  If there is even the slightest room for favoritism the whole thing would fall apart. 

How are troublemakers handled?  In the relatively small guilds I’ve been in, there have been a number of disruptive people.  Sometimes it was just a bad night.  Sometimes it was a regular occurrence.  How do they avoid blacklisting someone for having a bad night while keeping the troublemakers from stirring things up?

It looks like Leftovers is an Alliance group on a role-playing server.  Looking at their setup tempts me to pull Flint out of retirement and give it a try.  Sadly, Flint would lose the provable distinction of having leveled on a PvP server as a holy priest.  I’m also not sure if I want to get into raiding on him again.  It’s definitely something to think about. 

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Getting Better and Better

Jul 15

Posted by Joel in World Of Warcraft | No Comments

It’s strange but I think if I were to resume playing my priest, Flint, I could do a better job than I did when he was my main character.  It would take me a bit to get back into the swing of healing and my first few runs would doubtless be scary things.  However, I think I have a better grasp of how to play than I did back then.

pardon_improvements

Flint was my first max level character (twice).  It’s not surprising that I would make some really noobish mistakes, such as the time I mind controlled a Dark Iron dwarf in Gnomergon, ran him over the nearest ledge, and watched in horror as he pulled most of the rest of the instance. The simple fact that I’ve had more practice means that I play better.

There are a lot of resources out there that I didn’t know about on Flint.  Heck, there are a lot of resources out there that didn’t exist when I was playing Flint.  Loot lists, message boards, theorycrafting, rotations, macros, and strategy guides have all helped tremendously.  Now I know why I shouldn’t be rolling on that spell crit mace against a paladin.  I did a decent amount of research while playing Flint, but nothing compared to the research I’m doing now. 

Having leveled a warrior, paladin, and hunter to max level and getting a warlock, shaman, and druid a decent chunk of the way there means that I have a better idea how the different classes are played.  There was one warrior that annoyed the crap out of me because he wouldn’t watch mana bars at all.  Now I know why he loved to chain pull and I am aware that I don’t NEED to have full mana for every trash mob pull in an instance.

Raid leading has taught me even more about the different classes and how to get people to work together.  I was good at healing my group, but terrible at carrying out any other heal assignment.  I would get nervous whenever someone’s health would drop and would toss out heals to unassigned targets.  That’s fine every once in a while, but not as a general practice.  I’ve learned to trust my teammates to do their jobs while I focus on doing mine.

Now I want to roll up a priest to apply the lessons that I’ve learned.  Maybe I’ll do that once my other toons make it up to 70 (or next time I want another alt). 

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Tankadin Gems and Enchantments: A short guide

Jul 14

Posted by Joel in World Of Warcraft | No Comments

I won the Crimson Girdle of the Indomitable from Moroes while healing on my paladin for our second group. I switched back to prot to speed run some five mans and discovered midrun that I’d forgotten to gem it. Oops! Maintankadin :: Gems and Enchantments: A short guide confirmed that I should be gemming this up for stamina. Now to find a couple of Solid Empyrean Sapphires to gem it up.

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So You Want to Raid Lead

Jul 12

Posted by Joel in World Of Warcraft | 3 Comments

We have a couple of people in our guild alliance who are interested in raid leading.  I thought I’d give them a hand by pointing out some useful posts and tips.

Strategies

mistell As a raid leader, your key task is to provide a strategy for raids.  I find that Bosskillers generally provides solid guides.  The nicest thing about his site is the links to other guides, including video guides.  I’ve found that Pillage has a lot of very detailed guides.  What makes Pillage’s guides so useful is that they cover trash mobs as well.  When you don’t need a full guide – just something to refresh your memory – WoWWiki is the place to go.

Addons

There are a number of addons out there that make life easier for a raid leader.  Here are a few that I’ve found particularly useful.

ORA2 provides information about the raid’s status, cooldowns, main tanks, main assists, and so on.  A lot of the functionality has been rolled into the default UI, but ORA2 provides a better interface and some enhanced functionality.

RaidBuffStatus gives a complete overview of the Raid’s Buff Status.  Does the hunter have an aspect up?  Did that freshly resurrected warlock get a new int buff?  Is someone ignoring your pleas for full raid buffs before a tough boss?  Did people "forget" consumables again?  A quick Ctrl-Click and you can whisper the buffer to remind them.  If you feel like being less discreet about it, you can let the raid know who’s slacking off.  About the only things this doesn’t seem to track are weapon buffs (oils/blacksmith stones), healthstones, and soulstones. 

Deadly Boss Mods and BigWigs provide critical information for boss fights.  As raid leader you need to know when a boss is about to use their special abilities and these addons help you keep track of that. 

GuildRaidSnapShot in combination with our guild site lets you do two very useful things.  First it keeps track of who was at a raid.  Second, it tracks the epics that drop.  If you install this addon, it will prompt you for a DKP value, just leave the field blank and hit enter.  After a raid, you will have to go to our site and upload the snapshot.  Once you have uploaded the snapshot, you can click on the "Purge" button the pops up next time you log in.

There are addons to help you with marking targets – I personally find it just as easy to keybind the symbols and use that.

Loot Systems

50dkpminus Now we start to get into the really messy stuff.  What makes loot systems messy is that we try to make them fair. 

Is it fair that the priest who’s been there for every raid, supplied consumables and enchants to everyone, and has played with great skill loses a roll for a cloth belt to a PUGed shaman who happens to be resto for this week’s raid but is going back to enhancement next week? 

Is it fair when a new rogue loses a str/agi/attack power dagger to a priest who likes the way it looks but who has been around long enough to have the points needed to bid on it?  These are the types of situations that loot systems are intended to regulate.

Thus far, we’ve been using need/greed rolls for loot.  It’s the simplest system to implement, but as in the priest example above, it can lead to gross unfairness. 

Here are some overviews of loot systems.
DKP Loot Systems
Other Loot Systems
Saraid Article on DKP

We’re going to stick with rolls for now, but this is something we really need to think about particularly as we move into 25 person raids. 

WoW Web Stats

20070705

WoW Web Stats is a very useful tool.  I don’t place a lot of faith in Damage/Healing meters. (How to top the healing meters :) )  However, they can provide some feedback.  If you’re DPS and you’re not staying ahead of the holy priest, there’s a problem.  If you’re a prot warrior and you have 3 times as many shield slams as revenges, there’s a problem (hangs head in shame).  Big Red Kitty has a guide to an earlier version of WoW Web Stats – just jump down to step 10 as a lot has changed for the previous 9 steps. 

I will post a detailed guide for anyone who needs to upload a WoW Web Stats Report.

Player Gear/Spec Evaluation

005duelme We haven’t made a big deal out of spec, all we ask is that raiders be specced for their role.  Don’t show up in a resto spec and plan to DPS.  Don’t show up looking to tank as a paladin without Holy Shield.  Do a search on WoW Wiki for [class] builds to see some of the standard builds.  Go to Elitist Jerks to see what are key talents for a given class/spec.  If someone wants to fill a role while not having speced for it, they can expect to be greeted with skepticism and will have to work harder to prove themselves.  (Off specs can work, I knew a holy paladin who was an amazing tank in the pre-BC days when paladins were only supposed to be cleansebots.) 

Some quick evaluations tools are be.imba and WoW Heroes.  These are very valuable to raid leaders.  These tools will let you know that Raider X is geared up enough to run Black Temple while Raider Y isn’t geared up enough for Karazhan.  Note that these tools depend on what is visible in the armory and that they are only estimates.  If your prot warrior logs out in his DPS gear, he’s going to have a terrible score.  As Warshrike demonstrated last week, a DPS that’s undergeared for Kara can still rock the damage charts in Zul’Aman when played by a skilled player. 

THE END

There’s more to be said, but this should give you a good start.  I have a lot of fun raid leading and I hope you do too!

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All Purple!

Jul 3

Posted by Joel in World Of Warcraft | No Comments

I got the last few badges for my cloak last night and now Tristam is decked out head to toe in epic gear.

It was a fun run (except for Prince). We sped through and went from Moroes to Prince in 3.5 hours. We downed Moroes, Opera (Romulo and Julianne), Curator, Shade of Aran, Netherspite, Chess, and Prince. The fights were smooth as could be except for Prince and oddly enough Chess. We lost at Chess for the first time ever. (I figure since I took the Warchief I jinxed it.) We had a lot of melee DPS so Prince was rough. It took us a couple tries but we got him.

Justin brought his rogue last night and made out like a bandit. I think his rogue now has more Kara loot than his warlock who’s been raiding for the last four months. Of course, now I expect his rogue to put out as much DPS as his warlock. :)

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PvP gear vs. dungeon loot

Jun 11

Posted by Joel in General | No Comments

Every time someone talks about how much S4 loot is better than T6 gear, God ganks little Timmy and takes away his white kitten.

And feeds it to Magtheridon.

metaquotes: mephron (in worldofwarcraft) on PvP gear vs. dungeon loot

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Loot Rank for WoW

May 21

Posted by Joel in World Of Warcraft | No Comments

Loot Rank for WoW looks like another useful tool. I like this one because it lets you rank the stats that matter to you as well as specifying where loot can be obtained. Then it gives you a top-ten list of the gear that matches your preferences.

For example, hit rating matters to my hunter because she’s not hit capped. At the moment, hit rating is pretty important. Once I get 15ish more hit rating, it won’t matter anymore. My hunter may do 5 mans, but will most likely not be seeing any Kara or badge loot (let alone Black Temple loot). I can restrict my search on those criteria.

Note that using a pre-made template from the forums then tweaking it is a good way of getting some quick answers.

A Dwarf Priest has a detailed guide to using Loot Rank.

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Chardev.org

Apr 25

Posted by Joel in General | No Comments

Chardev looks like it might be a useful site. I wish it had a way of filtering items by drop location (or at least showing the drop location on the tooltips). It does me no good to look at a lovely piece of Sunwell loot. (via The Hunter’s Mark » Elune Bless Death & Taxes)

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The Badge Pick Order: 2.4 Edition – Warriors

Apr 10

Posted by Joel in World Of Warcraft | 1 Comment

The Badge Pick Order: 2.4 Edition – Warriors – TankingTips.com gives a nice breakdown of Badge loot and the order to get it in. I still haven’t completed normal Magister’s Terrace (first time due to lack of crowd control, second time it was just too late at night when we got Kael). I’m not totally sold on passing up the Gnomergon Auto-Blocker trinket.

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