Monthly Archive for April, 2008

My favorite 5-man instances

Inspired by Naissa and Part Time Druid I want to write up a short list of my favorite instances. A few important questions for any of the following instances are: is it pretty? how is the loot? do I like the boss fights? how is the trash?

1. Arkatraz
First it’s so pretty. I really like the way this instance is set up. The path you go in here is nicely done with just the right amount of trash. It is not too easy and the first boss is really mean on Heroic. But I just love the second and third boss. The way they are set up next to each other and each with their little quirks. Finally a boss where my healing style really matters, where tank and healer together make or break the fight. I also like the final boss. The length of that fight and the nice event. There are some really tough trash fights in here as well. So it is kind of my favorite instance. I like all the Netherstorm instances but Mechanica has some really ugly trash fights that tend to explode in the healer’s face and I don’t like the bosses there at all and Botanica just takes too long to finish.

2. Zul Farrak
I think this must be my favorite leveling instance. Right between Uldaman and Maraudon during leveling which I both hate. The biggest reason for this must be that it’s open air – good for druids – and a very bright instance as opposed to all those “dungeons” you usually get to visit. I have lots of great memories of doing the stairs event. Another plus is that Zul Farrak is part of that really really long questline on trolls that finishes up with Zul Gurub (or does it continue with Zul Aman?). The other bosses besides the stairs are ok, the loot for druids is nice for that level.

3. Magister’s Terrace
Still very new but it looks promising. I’ve only seen this instance twice so far. The boss fights are varied and interesting. The trash is very hard and has made us wipe way too much. It may be that I’ll tire of this instance after a few more visits. But it has got a certain brightness and some “open” areas. There are a lot of distinct “moments” in the instance. Besides a lot of those 5-piece trash groups there are a few special pulls that make visiting this instance interesting. For example take that last 6 mob pull before Kael’thas or the little mana wyrms before the second boss.

4. Scarlet Monastery
Been there, done that and way too often. But somehow this instance has so many fond memories and so many funny moments to remember that I must list it here. It was my first “real” instance (besides some attempts to clear Black Fathom Deeps with 2 hunters and my druid at level 27 because we didn’t know about tanks and healers) and I remember that group with two rogues and a paladin quite well. I also remember one of the rogues rolling on that caster dagger because he needed int …. I even believed him and did not roll. I remember wiping on bad pulls in the cathedral and farming the instance for cloth. I know that even a 70 mage can wipe in the cathedral. I remember the visits to the Headless Horseman last year and so many other fun moments. It also has the coveted open areas even if I cannot use Roots in there. I remember a guild raid with 10 guildies just before they removed the “raid” option from the 5-mans. Such fun we had.

5. Sethek Halls
Actually I like this instance for something very specific: stealth runs. I remember my first two visits ending in awful numbers of wipes on Ikiss. I hated that guy. We never got him down. Of course I have learned by now that you should leave the “professional gimps” at home in the inn in Shattrath. So yes maybe it was a problem caused by the group. But ever since I went there on my first level 70 heroic stealth run, laughed at the sheeped rogue and got my “rogue” shoulders I have enjoyed the Ikiss fight. Of course this instance provides us with something else: epic flight form and that is the second reason it is listed here.

I think I should do the other list, too, the instances I really don’t like. Which will take far longer to write up because it is hard to find those I really hate the most.

Fishing Addiction?

I guess one could say that I like Fishing in the game. I don’t think it’s an addiction. You decide. Of all my characters two have not learned the skill and only one of the others is below 100. Those characters didn’t make it past level 20 either. The others have the following skill levels: 375 (Yashima), 234 (Thalya), 110 (Lakshmi), 202 (anonymous Hunter alt), 145, 106, 154.

It is possible by the way to fish in Outland with a skill of 234. Using Seth’s Graphite Fishing Pole and the hooks from the Fishing Daily, it is possible to catch a few fish in the Zangarmarshes. Thalya even has a fisher woman’s outfit for the occasion complete with boots, gloves and nice blue pants. A hat would be a good thing to have ;)

Right now I am mostly fishing with my hunter to feed my pet and to level cooking with it because I am selling all other cooking ingredients for a nice profit on the AH.

Here’s a short list of Fish that gets you through most of your cooking to 300 (the cooking ranges are till the recipe turns yellow). Except for the Level 15 and 45 fish there are always two alternative fish/recipes. I only listed the “best” areas to fish for certain fish. You will always get some elsewhere and anywhere you fish you may get other fish below those of the level you are looking for.

My preferred (Alliance) fish recipe vendors are Catherine Leland in Stormwind (on the canals near the mage quarter) and Heldan Galesong in Darkshore at the beach. A visit to Gikkix in Tanaris is also important to get all the fun recipes he has.

You will need some fish for cooking

  • 3 Stacks of Level 1 fish
  • 3 Stacks of Level 5 fish
  • 4 Stacks of Level 15 fish
  • 3 Stacks of Level 25 fish
  • 2-3 Stacks of Level 35 fish
  • 2 Stacks of Level 45 fish

This should get you up to slightly above 300 cooking or so I estimate. If you have visited Gikkix and got some more fancy recipes for the other fish you found those should yield you another 20 points I guess, so you may not need as many of the Level 35/45 fish. On the side you may get some of the fish Alchemist‘s need.

Time to solo

It always happens sooner or later with my druid: she respecs. I don’t respec as often as some people I know. My respec costs are usually 15gold which is the minium after the first 3 respecs I believe. I stick with my spec for a month or two usually. Often longer.

I know some people in the guild respec to tank for just an evening of Kara. After all what’s 100g today? I think it’s still a lot. Others – who raid 25 mans – complain about rep costs of 500g over a couple of evenings spent wiping. I still like my respec costs low.

I think it’s time to be feral again. Druid is my favorite class and Yashima my main and all my RL stress aside when I am playing but not playing her something is amiss. Right now I am in solo mood. I don’t feel like grouping at all. I feel like stealthing around as a lone kitty … so far instead of respeccing I have been playing alts. It’s fun but not as much fun as Yashima – or is it? What is there left to do but grind out a few Alchemy recipes or farm herbs or do dailies?

Grouping or PvP. Grouping is cool and all that. I like my instances. Sometimes. If PvP was my mood I’d stay a healer.

But as bear I could easily get myself some of the stuff I want for my alts. I could go hunting and check out all the new feral stuff I got since the last time I was a cat. I have of course tested it and the stuff rocks even in resto spec …

I am ranting today, am I not?

I am just a bit confused what I want to do with the game. Which part is fun? Which part isn’t and I only grind it out to get to some part afterwards, that I think would be fun again?

I think advancement is the thing that provides the most fun in the game.

Advancement can be many things: levels, honor, BoJ, talent points, gear, profession skills, gold, faction points. Only shortly before another addon all things that end up advancing my gear become de-valued in my mind. Why set a goal of 100 BoJ only to reach it a week or two before WotLK is released? So I am not really willing to invest time in goals that relate to gear. I have other goals in the game that are not going to be obsolete: leveling professions, completing my list of Alchemy recipes, leveling alts, getting mounts for the alts, making a lot of gold, completing certain quests.

Most of these latter goals are solo-able while gear usually isn’t. Most people are after gear. I am, too. Until I believe the effort to obtain better gear is not worth the time that I will be able to have fun with that gear. The later we are in the cycle of an addon the more effort it takes to improve my gear and the less time I have to enjoy the improvements.

I think it happens to other people, too. Only not to everybody at the same time. So the time when a coming addon is starting to move people out of the “need gear, let’s do XYZ” mood into the “I’d rather level or get my epic mount” mood is the most difficult for guilds and players because when the strongst incentive for grouping is slowly failing it becomes more and more difficult for players who still want to group to find others.

Those people then – more or less rightfully – complain about not finding groups. Which brings us yet another difficult phase for the guild. The ever returning “we’re not doing enough as a guild” complaint. I can already feel it coming in a month or two.

So anyone still with me down here at the bottom of this rant? How are you dealing with the changes in attitude when an addon is looming on the horizon of Azeroth? Does your attitude change at all or do you keep going the same as before? How does your guild deal with it? Is it a time of trouble for guilds?

In-game pressure

Just like Leafy I sometimes just quit the daily grind this game seems to become every once in a while. It’s not just dailies that put pressure in the game. One of my main goals is always having the gold to buy what I want. Dailies help with that and somehow they sometimes make me feel pressured to to do them. It mostly ends with me playing another character or not playing at all.

There are very few dailies I really enjoy. I think the pvp daily and the dungeon dailies are good ideas. The collecting daily that just rewards you a bit extra for doing some gathering is a nice one, too. I do the fishing daily because it is quick and I want one of the rewards. I like the randomness of the reward, too and I like fishing. I used to like the bombing runs. Most of the quests get old really fast. Plus all those that require killing something aren’t much fun with Yashima anyway. I wouldn’t notice the resto spec as much if I didn’t have a level 70 mage as well.

But beyond gold these dailies don’t provide advancement (factions are barely that …) unless counting that Thalya’s fishing has gone up and beyond 225 due to some motivation to fish with her because of the quest.

Just today I read an article at Tobold‘s about how important fast advancement is to him and his wife. So important they started new alts. I love gaining a new level, new skills, new talents. I really enjoy leveling professions and while taking away some time from the guild to just play at my own pace for a bit I found that I can make money without dailies and have fun leveling.

My little hunter alt had been sitting at level 24 for at least one and a half years. She was broke and her kitty was hungry. So I gave her 20 gold to start with and started playing. At first there was a lot of rested xp. So I got a few levels really fast.

The true fun only started a bit later when I decided I did not need another Leatherworker and spent some time grinding up my mining skill. My inventory was always full and I kept having to sell stuff. Because of my ton of addons reloading the user interface (aka relogging) takes a long time and I decided to auction off my stuff directly from this character as opposed to my usual procedure of sending everything to my Disenchantress.

Next I activated Auctioneer on this character. Since I don’t usually buy a lot on the AH, I just put everything up I have, trusting into the addon’s prices after a few scans. I sold everything. From clam meat to raptor eggs. Bronze bars and green items. Recipe I picked up from vendors and the surplus of fish my kitty wouldn’t eat. I sold all the leather.

At some point along the way I decided I would not keep anything she would find except for cloth for bandages, potions and food. I am usually banking all kinds of stuff for “future use”. Not this time. Everything went up for sale. You will not believe all the stuff people buy on the AH. I sold some of the Christmas outfits for 10 gold each!

I have now leveled her to 31 and she is sitting on 340 gold. This includes about 100 gold from a few lucky AH flips and I still have auctions up for about 100-150 gold.

Thanks to all the people who do dailies and pay outrageous amounts of money for lowbie stuff I can level, have fun and still make quite a bit of money. I love dailies!

Don’t let yourself be pressured to play another game than the one you want. It’s a game! Go have some fun with it :)

RL vs WoW

And as always WoW loses. Which is right as I want it. However there’s not much to write when I am not playing a lot.

When RL gets too much I usually switch to a bit guildless alt playing. I find it close to impossible to only play “a little” when the guild is involved. So much of my online time with guild characters is spend chatting, resolving issues and actually “working” for the guild …

Also playing neglected alts usually has the advantage of fast advancement because of the rest-xp that usually lasts for 2 levels and I get to learn new modes of gameplay. Except for my baby-druid all my alts are the first/highest character of that class …

So I’ve been playing my anonymous little Hunter twink for a bit. Got her from Level 24 to 26 in the last few days. This choice of alt shows I’ve been reading too much BRK. ( Way too much ;) )

She’s fun to play and I even made some macros for her, trying to use the /assist pet macro I saw on WoWInsider the other day.

Of course she’s specced Beastmaster now, she used to be Marksmanship (see link to BRK above for reason for respec at level 26). She is running with her first pet from the Nelf starting area: a pretty dotted kitty. I’ll have to go hunting for new pet skills soon :)

Kara Healing Follow-up

Tonight was our follow-up to the run on Wednesday. On Wednesday we wiped on every single boss and in between we died as well. We only managed Attumen, Moroes and Maiden and it hurt.

This morning I talked to the Moonkin who had driven me crazy during the last run. I told him how he made me feel like an awful player and how it didn’t help to have him tell me what to do all the time. He said he was sorry and he didn’t mean it that way. I think he was pretty mad about the Furor Warrior thinking he could off-tank with that spec. People make mistakes I told him and he should know best that it is the style of our guild to laugh together about it and then do our best with a bad situation/setup. I told him since he was always very vocal on TS he needed to be more positive and encourage people rather than put them down.

Sometimes it is quite hard to be in a fun guild that doesn’t take raiding serious. It is much easier to tell the Furor to go and re-spec right then and there. It is hard to have fun in the face of complications. Sounds weird, doesn’t it? But the style and mood of a run sometimes needs to be carefully worked at. Sometimes you have to remind yourself that you are not in it for the loot but for the nice event and the fun. It is part of our guild identity and when the going gets a bit rough we still need to maintain the positive attitude. It is easy to be positive when everything works out.

Well tonight at 8p.m. we were meeting in Karazhan again. A few changes on the roster from Wednesday. The second Resto Druid didn’t have time so we had a Resto Shaman as second healer. The Prot Warrior tanked with his Prot Paladin instead and the Furor had respecced to Protection. Instead of the Enhance Shaman we had a Hunter with us (Tenobaal of course). After two hours the other healer had to leave. We got an uber-epic Holy Priest from a big raiding guild instead – fine with me of course ;)

The Moonkin had taken my advice and tried to not repeat his behaviour of Wednesday and he did do that quite well. There was so much improvement … I didn’t tell him even though I usually think it is important to give positive feedback. I am afraid if I tell him too soon that he did good that he may revert to the state as before.

So how did the run go with the new (and improved) group setup? Incredible. My first death was on some stupid trash pull before the chess event. My second death right after the chess event. Yep – we downed Opera, Curator, Aran, Illhoof and Prince on our first try tonight. It was a great run, very smooth and very nice. We had good fun in Teamspeak and everybody seemed quite happy. Not to forget there was some good loot and I got a healing ring from Illhoof and nice feral shoulders from the Chess event. Tenobaal got the Prince’s Bow on his first try ever … he never wiped once on the Prince in his career and got that bow ;) He also got Romulo’s Poison Vial which we practically had to force on him. There was no loot drama tonight and nobody to be blamed – we just didn’t wipe ;) Well only on trash – twice.

All in all a successfull evening.

Am I a bad healer?

On Wednesday I was healing a guild Kara run. Finally another run for which I had time. The guy organizing it had asked nicely when would be a good time for me because I had complained a little bit about all the runs being on Thursday lately – my pen and paper night.

I was looking forward to the run very much. My first run since I specced to Resto at least 4 or 5 weeks ago.

This is going to be a long and whining rant about my worst ever Kara run. If you don’t feel like reading such a rant I totally understand

Before I go on to tell you about the run, here’s the group set up:

  • Main Tank – Protection Warrior
  • Off Tank – Furor Warrior (we only found out he was Furor after he wiped us the first time *g* he’s a nice guy and a good druid tank with his main though he prefers being a so-called “aggro-kitty”)
  • Healers – 2 Resto Druids with about 1350 (me) / 1500 +Heal
  • DPS – Moonkin, Mage, 2 Warlocks, Shadow Priest and Enhancement Shaman

We have never told anybody: “You can’t come we need more CC”. But looking at the setup at the beginning of the run and thinking of Moroes and Maiden made me go “oh noes”. It’s a lovely group isn’t it?

I have not healed a lot lately: only 2 MrT runs and a bit of PvP healing because I just did not have time to play. The other Resto has only been 70 for a few weeks but it was his third Kara run and he is quite purply equipped and has already surpassed my gear-level (with PvP epics ). We should have been well equipped to handle anything up to Curator in my opinion.

Our first wipe was on Attumen when the Furor Warrior noticed he just could not keep aggro. So on the second try the Prot Warrior just tanked Attumen and his horsie. It worked quite well and I got more optimistic again.

Then we spend some time figuring out why we all had different versions of Omen. Not so bad for a healer but for everybody else. So we took some time getting that fixed.

We had some deaths on the stairs up to Moroes with the AoE groups. This is not too far out of bounds, happens to all kinds of healers when people bomb to early or too lonely.

Only problem this time was people kept going afk all the time. This is not quite our usual style. We try to concentrate afk times on a minimum.

We got to Moroes quite late.

Now go look at the group setup and tell me what you think happened? Exactly. 1 real tank, only one Shackle, no Traps, no Paladin and only one single person who could get out of the Garotte once – the (fire) mage, also no dwarfs today. The Moonkin decided he was going to tank the first of the DPS targets – the “two” tanks would tank the other non-Shackled adds. It didn’t work really well. We had three or four tries I believe and every single time I died after getting off about 4-5 heals. On the final try we made it. Our Shadow Priestess had announced that this would be the try and it was. I still died but was rezzed. Thanks to Soulstones and Battlerezzes I had to go repair after Moroes.

Now my problem is not dying a lot. After all we downed the boss with one of the worst group setups you can imagine.

I had another problem. The Moonkin is a know-it-all kind of player who decided to blame me and my bad healing for every single problem of that raid. He kept going at me “I need heal, heal me!” when tanking that Moroes add, when both the Warriors were really low on Health and any heal on him would have meant one of them dead.

He announced after a wipe: “Give Yashima a soulstone, she needs it, she dies all the time” with an intonation like it was my fault getting aggro when I had to fire off all my cooldowns (Swiftmend + Nature’s Swiftmend I mean) at the start of the fight because the Furor and the Moonkin would be taking way too much damage more than any of them could counter in Aggro. When HoTs are not enough I go to the bigger heals. And HoTs were not enough. The Moonkin kept advising me loudly until I yelled at him.

I have realized now, why one of our healers (well his alt is a Holy Priest he only leveled to help the guild!) has taken an indefinite break from the game, telling me he found healing to stressful and couldn’t take the blame for all the wipes anymore. That Moonkin is on nearly every run!

I am not that terrible a healer. I have played Resto on and off for over 3 years now. I know my theory and my gear isn’t that bad. I have healed MrT lately and I healed Heroic Arkatraz when totally undergeared for that instance! Those are not trivial instances. I have also Healed on a few Kara runs before. I may be a bit rusty currently but with that group setup the task of healing on the Moroes encounter was quite difficult and I was glad we took him down at all.

Taking the blame for all the troubles of that raid was really taking the fun out of it for me. I am usually one of the more vocal players on Teamspeak, trying to provide leadership. So when the fun is gone for me, it can happen easily that the mood goes down for everybody. I try to be cheerful as best as I can … but that evening was too much for me I nearly asked on of our guild’s other healers who was on idling somewhere in Shattrath leveling his Enchanting to jump in for me.

We continued to the Maiden after Moroes, it was slow going somehow. I was down and so was chatting a lot with other players to vent some of my frustration. I got a lot more friendly *cough* advice from the Moonkin on the way to the Maiden. Loudly on Teamspeak for everyone to hear. He never ever stops talking anyway.

One of the problems with me is that I easily blame myself for troubles of a run anyway so I was an easy target for him.

We got to the Maiden and noticed there was only one person who could remove the Holy Fire. Well too bad.

We then proceeded to wipe on the Maiden because I was too stupid to run in to be able to heal through her Repentance. Somehow nobody had the idea to spare us Healers the stress of that and just try to get up all the HoTs on the tank. With two Restos that might have been enough.

So I took the blame for another 3 wipes. I just never managed consistently to time my step forward right and was stunned for most Repentances.

On the fourth try the Shadow Priestess announced again that we would down her now. Well I told her too announce it for luck. We finally did. I still didn’t quite manage to not be stunned but the Moonkin had decided to help with healing (not without whispering me of course).

After the Maiden our raid time was nearly up and when I asked how many people needed to leave there were at least 4 who had to got to bed so we called it quits for the night. Which was ok with me.

I apologized to the group and said I had not healed a lot lately and was sorry for the run not being of the usual quality. I thanked everybody for participating as I always do. The Moonkin interrupted my final speech by going “So we are all your guinea pigs?” He meant it as a joke, I’ve known him too long to not know he meant it as one. But it was more of an insult actually after all he had said that night.

I had very little fun on that run. Very little.

By talking to others about the run I found out the Moonkin is getting on just about everybody’s nerves. So I guess when my “enrage phase” is over I’ll go and take a nice long chat with him to tell him how he pissed me off and how I think he might be pissing off more people and that it might be a good idea to keep his mouth shut every once in a while.

Guild Meetings

Last Tuesday we had our quarterly in-game guild meeting. Does your guild meet regularly in-game outside of raids?

We have had these meetings from the beginning but only since last summer have they become a regular feature. We decided we really wanted them to be every 2-3 months and the next one should always be announced shortly after a meeting.

Meetings are organized by the guild leadership, which means me or the guildmaster. Currently our guildmaster is under a lot of RL related stress, so it is my job to do these meetings.

I usually announce them in the forums 2 months ahead of time and keep pushing the thread to remind people. The last two times I also created an event on our web event calendar for people to sign up.

The announcement slowly evolves into an agenda with topics to discuss during the meeting. People either write messages to me or tell me stuff that they feel should be on the list. I keep the post up to date. Sometimes I have my own ideas and there are a few standard topics:

  1. (Duels until everybody arrived)
  2. Welcome
  3. Invitations New Members (not always on the meeting but sometimes there’s a meeting coming up anyway so we invite them there)
  4. Promotions
  5. Group Foto
  6. Finale – Event (often PvP, this time we went to AQ20)

We meet up in Menethil usually, on the ship that has been our meeting place since we were Level 20. If there will ever be guild housing, Menethil will be high up on my list of favorite locations. Everybody joins the “meeting-raid-group” and we expect people who participate to at least listen in on our Teamspeak.

The guildmaster and I usually moderate these things. Mostly it is us talking and talking and talking. We often whisper with each other during the meetings to give each other cues when to take over a certain topic or call it to an end. Whispers are also helpful to give the other hints when he’s being too harsh or acting on assumptions the other knows to not be true.

We need to introduce a real moderator though who people can send a tell to that they have to say something. Because most discussion by members happens in chat still because they don’t want to interrupt everything on TS.

These meetings are always helpful in discussing issues that have come up and making sure the members know they are being dealt with. It is an important time for all of us where we can make sure that a large portion of members hear about certain topics and can give us instant feedback.

This has become even better since the meetings are more regular. Every 2-3 months is pretty often. Mostly issues come up a few weeks before a meeting and it is now easy to tell people “we’ll talk about it at the meeting” when it is in 3 weeks already. We don’t have things pile up anymore.

After a meeting I usually write a protocol and upload some screens for everybody to take another look at what we talked about.

For example our last agenda included:

  • invitations of 3 new members and assignment of mentors to them
  • promotions of 3 long-term and trusted members to veteran members (Technically they have those rights officers would have in other guilds. We don’t have officers, but nearly half the active members of the guild are veterans now.)
  • a quick vote on some re-organization of ranks to give alts of veteran members also invite privileges
  • reminder to use the forum more
    • caused by too many people writing too little and being not integrated well enough into the guild.
    • We have at least one member who is not using the forums at all. So there was some issue about either forcing him or let him live with the consequences. But the only consequence that would show we are serious is a gkick and nobody really wanted that or they should have said so. I hope the complaints about this specific member will cease as he is not causing trouble in any other way and I know we will never get him to use the forums
  • reminder of our loot guidelines
    • caused by someone complaining about someone else being a loot whore
  • the guild’s Kara runs, just a little check if there was any kind of complaints about the runs being too often or not often enough, if there were any issues with the organization. There seemed to be none or at least nobody said anything, so now they can stay quiet for another 2 months. It’s just important to ask …
  • guild loyalty – becomes an issue when people aren’t quite sure of their goals in the game and start writing applications to other guilds while still with us. I am sure most guilds hate this kind of behavior and so do we. Most of our members are big on loyalty and anyone who shows any kind of disloyalty quickly gets singled out. I had to remind everyone that if they weren’t happy or thinking of leaving they should do so “nicely” and if they didn’t know how there are people they could and should talk to
    • of course this came up because one of our two hardcore raiders, who raid with another guild, applied there, was found out and quickly retracted his application there and …. oh well it was quite a mess. After a lot of apologies he is still with us. But people doubt his loyalty.
    • tuesday he messed up again, he was online at the time of the meeting but preferred to run MrT for the gazillionst time. You can imagine that people were pissed at him. There were silent calls / tells for consequences but when we asked about it loudly on TS nobody really called for a gkick. So it all ended with the GM going to have a nice long chat with him, telling him people were mad. He apologized … but this issue is not resolved. I guess the guy really likes our guild … but he needs to do something to get back into the membership’s good graces.
  • guildbank – some member who quit the game donated a large sum of gold to the bank so we needed to discuss what to do with the gold and decided to let it lie there for a while – at least until the next meeting
  • final event. This time we went to AQ20 with 15 people and had lots of fun with “easy mode raiding” and downing Ossirian with the guild for the first time.

So do you do these meetings? How often? What do you talk about? Are they helpful?