June News/Discussion

[Mirajj]

June 2 News

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Cameron Sorden strikes again, this time musing about how to Retain Customers. This is something every MMO struggles with, and at this point, it's an interesting topic, There are several shiny new MMO's out there, and anything "new" in WoW is likely a couple of months off (most folks suspect last quarter of '08 for WotLK).

Amanda Dean takes a look at Arena Rating, and how it effects you and your team...and what can be done about it.

Matt Low takes a look at the PvP'ing Priest, and offers some suggestions and tips on how to better acclimate yourself that environment. If PvP's not your thing, Eliah Hecht has a nice article on gearing up your PvE Priest to tackle Karazhan and beyond.

One of the features I'm fast becoming fond of over at WoWInsider is the "Ask a Lore Nerd" questions. There are some really great questions in this installment, and if you are a bit of a lore geek like me, these series of articles are a great read.

Something I've been wondering about lately is a good question that is asked: Is It Too Much? It refers to hybrids, and the synergy they bring, though also wanders along synergy in general. Right now, there are some very hard and fast synergistic groups, and some folks that can't even really compete without some level of synergy (Hello WF to melee...). This can make life as an RL really hard, especially when making up a raid. There are a lot of ramifications of either reducing or increasing synergy to consider, as it's already a weighty subject.

A Tale For Guild Leaders, is a fictional work by Cathode. It's a good story, and brings about some good followup posts as well.

Oh, and Happy June! Don't forget to head over to Nagrand and have a chat with Gezhe so you can get your green gems for the month...

[Pantalaimon]

Something I've been wondering about lately is a good question that is asked: Is It Too Much? It refers to hybrids, and the synergy they bring, though also wanders along synergy in general. Right now, there are some very hard and fast synergistic groups, and some folks that can't even really compete without some level of synergy (Hello WF to melee...). This can make life as an RL really hard, especially when making up a raid. There are a lot of ramifications of either reducing or increasing synergy to consider, as it's already a weighty subject.

Oh lord, group makeup discussions. :wacko: They often make my head spin in our raids, and it doesn't help we often run with a fairly "weird" composition. It gets pretty hard trying to make it all work, and one of the comments is completely correct: there's usually no perfect, awesome jig-saw solution. *sigh*

Nice comment though, Mirajj:D I've been trying to lobby for a GoA group (resto-feral-2x hunter-spare, usually mage) for a while now, but have yet to see it in action for us:( The RL's addicted to his +crit I think:P Keeps yanking the feral into the melee group, usually bumping a warrior for it (warrior without WF. *sigh*).

Does anybody know of a EJ-style compendium for group makeups that I can link to the RL? Sorta lay down the law, like "make this group - brief blurb why" instead of discussions like these about the merits of various hybrids. Don't get me wrong, I wrote up a pages long discussion on hybrids in the officer forum and get the sense nobody really looked at it; they might respond better to an "established" source like EJ, or a post that tells them what to do without going in depth into why, I don't know.

[Mirajj]

I've been trying to lobby for a GoA group (resto-feral-2x hunter-spare, usually mage) for a while now, but have yet to see it in action for us

It took another hunter and I forever to finally convince RL's that Hunters can benefit from some group synergy over just being tossed "wherever" and usually ending up as the last floater in a 4 healer group. Sadly, it's been my experience that most folks just won't consider anything but "their" party when considering synergies.

[Mordekhuul]

Gurgthock started a post on the EJ forums to discuss group synergies and inviting ideas on how to minimize their effect on raid composition (the goal being to discourage raid stacking).

http://elitistjerks.com/f15/t26275-consoli..._vulnerability/

Some of the driving forces at work in high end raids, not that every raid does this to an extreme, but the forces exist and have affects:

Warlocks: Given equal gear and skill, add more raid DPS than any ranged class. Might seem obvious for the first three warlocks you add, that all drop curses to buff the raid (CoS, CoR, and CoE). However, it is interesting to note that even after the first three, the fourth warlock and beyond all get to use damage curses, and should out-dps mages at the same gear and skill levels, so there is no real reason to stop adding warlocks in favor of mages, even after three.

Shaman: Bloodlusts and more bloodlusts. Enhancement shaman is an obvious requirement for any melee group, adding ridiculous amounts of raid DPS by buffing the other four in their group. Bloodlust rotations add a lot of DPS as well though, in addition to the usefulness of totems being spread around the raid.

Add chain heal to that list, in addition to the prevelance of raid-wide damage going out in encounters where you can stack folks into groups, and you see another good reason to stack shamans.

One interesting side-note on the shaman stacking that exists is that some of it is a result of encounter make-up. If TBC raids didn't have as much raid-wide damage going around, or required a lot more spreading out, extra resto shamans would be in less demand, unless simply for totems/bloodlust. Gurgthock himself points to resto shaman as the worst healers in the game on single targets, in situations where chain heal won't be effective.

Melee Groups and the Death Knight: Note that if things don't change in WotLK, and assuming the DK needs windfury totem to be effective, and assuming he benefits greatly from attack power, there is a very real possibility that raids in WotLK might look to run two enhancement shaman as a matter of course. As is, with enh-shaman + arms warrior + ret paladin + rogue + rogue groups running around, you often have a 3rd rogue or bear in a secondary melee group. Add DK, and there is a pretty st rong driving force behind wanting not just a shaman in melee group number 2, but an enhancement shaman for the extra buffs he provides.

[Pantalaimon]

Gurgthock started a post on the EJ forums to discuss group synergies and inviting ideas on how to minimize their effect on raid composition (the goal being to discourage raid stacking).

http://elitistjerks.com/f15/t26275-consoli..._vulnerability/

Thank you for this link!:) It's interesting discussion; I wish we had the class compositions for the groups getting tossed around. Especially in terms of # of shammies, but I'm sure you've all heard me complain quasi-bitterly about that enough in various threads :D

Some of the driving forces at work in high end raids, not that every raid does this to an extreme, but the forces exist and have affects:

Warlocks: Given equal gear and skill, add more raid DPS than any ranged class. Might seem obvious for the first three warlocks you add, that all drop curses to buff the raid (CoS, CoR, and CoE). However, it is interesting to note that even after the first three, the fourth warlock and beyond all get to use damage curses, and should out-dps mages at the same gear and skill levels, so there is no real reason to stop adding warlocks in favor of mages, even after three.

I'm not sure I agree, and for one simple reason: mage-ecute. It's substantial, especially on bosses with a tough phase near the end of their health that you want to burn through (mind you, these are becoming a rare breed). Brutallus specifically, often held up as guilty of the worst raid stacking, often has 3-4 mages because of mage-ecute, to the point where it seems to be a jump ball for warlocks versus mages in terms of the meters.

I'd still argue that warlocks have a slight edge, besides the affliction lock, but I don't think it's crippling, and it's definitely not imbalanced enough to offset skill differences between players.

One interesting side-note on the shaman stacking that exists is that some of it is a result of encounter make-up. If TBC raids didn't have as much raid-wide damage going around, or required a lot more spreading out, extra resto shamans would be in less demand, unless simply for totems/bloodlust. Gurgthock himself points to resto shaman as the worst healers in the game on single targets, in situations where chain heal won't be effective.

Yeah, the TBC raids cater extremely well to chain heal for the most part. I do think that with Wrath blizzard is approaching things from their usual angle, namely instead of nerfing shamans they buff the other healers. Preliminary talents for other healers include a few interesting looking AoE heals for druids and priests. Poor paladins:P I do think this is the best way to accomplish balance, and they've had much success with it (see Shadow priests pre vs post BC, boomkin, most hybrids that have received cool synergies, etc.)

The only way I can see encounter design dictating a move away from raid healing with shaman healers is if we were required to spread out vastly, a la Archimonde, more often. Unfortunately, this would adversely affect CoH, PoM and the new hypothetical druid-AE heal before chain heal begins to suffer, so all healers would be more-or-less reduced to single target healing. Good for paladins, not good for anyone else, including but not limited to shamans. So I wouldn't count on many encounters being designed to nerf chain heal by reducing its ability to bounce around, personally.

Melee Groups and the Death Knight: Note that if things don't change in WotLK, and assuming the DK needs windfury totem to be effective, and assuming he benefits greatly from attack power, there is a very real possibility that raids in WotLK might look to run two enhancement shaman as a matter of course. As is, with enh-shaman + arms warrior + ret paladin + rogue + rogue groups running around, you often have a 3rd rogue or bear in a secondary melee group. Add DK, and there is a pretty strong driving force behind wanting not just a shaman in melee group number 2, but an enhancement shaman for the extra buffs he provides.

Barring the particular need for a second enhancement shaman, I don't see running with two melee groups as necessarily a bad thing. Thinking out loud,

Melee - Rogues, Warriors, DK, Some Druids, Some Shamans, Some Paladins
Ranged - Hunters, Mages, Warlocks, Some Druids, Some Shamans, Some Priests

Hunters can roll both ways, too, in terms of group comp. Also, in general the ranged synergies are pretty bad so the ranged that don't get an "uber group" don't suffer overtly. So with your standard 15 DPS, and up to three hunters, two melee groups give anywhere from 7-10 melee and 5-8 ranged.

Ranged has had their day in the sun since the beginning of WoW, and giving melee the edge makes a certain amount of sense. How long has it been that you bring ~6 "pure" nukers between Mages and Warlocks, and yet cap out at ~3 "pure" - two rogues and a warrior, usually - melee? Wrath offers reroll opportunities, and is probably the ideal time to do such a paradigm shift in terms of which classes are most in demand for PvE endgame.

[Mordekhuul]

I'm not sure I agree, and for one simple reason: mage-ecute. It's substantial, especially on bosses with a tough phase near the end of their health that you want to burn through (mind you, these are becoming a rare breed). Brutallus specifically, often held up as guilty of the worst raid stacking, often has 3-4 mages because of mage-ecute, to the point where it seems to be a jump ball for warlocks versus mages in terms of the meters.

I'd still argue that warlocks have a slight edge, besides the affliction lock, but I don't think it's crippling, and it's definitely not imbalanced enough to offset skill differences between players.

I kind of took it as a consensus around warlock vs mage DPS in raid encounters, not on experience.

If I look at my experience, we have one rogue and one mage that essentially blow the rest of our raid away on a regular basis. Higler (of many ZG deaths, as many Terenas lurkers know), regularly sits around 1580-1700 DPS on tier 6 encounters, and was at 1581 for a Lurker Below kill, while chain sheeping an add the whole fight, which is higher than most of our raid by about 100-200 dps (consistently).

Of course, by tradition as much as anything, we give preferential treatment to our mages in terms of group composition, though. Despite the fact that, in theory, a destruction warlock benefits as much or more than a mage from a Shadowpriest (due to DPS gained from not wasting globals on life tap), if we only run one SP (which is more often than not), it goes into this group: SP, elemental shaman, mage, mage, moonkin/mage.

Higler being a miracle worker influences that some though. Hitting his dps by a percentage is much worse than hitting a lot of our other ranged players' dps by the same percentage, in terms of raid DPS.

[Pantalaimon]

I kind of took it as a consensus around warlock vs mage DPS in raid encounters, not on experience.

Oh, it's not personal experience for myself, either. Our mage/warlock comparison usually goes Warlock, Mage, Warlock, Warlock, Mage, Mage, which is roughly in the order of gear (besides the affliction warlock beating two mages. <_<)

I was referring more to the in-depth WWS analysis of top-end Brutallus kills. I'm personally of the opinion that the Mage vs Warlock "consensus" thing is blown completely out of proportion, and offered anecdotal evidence as to why mages might sometimes be desirable. I seem to be in the minority though :whistling:Maybe because I've played both, with relatively the same amount of success. I just find my warlock much more enjoyable:)

It all comes down to player skill, as you alluded to, beyond the first two required warlocks (one of them being utility and not DPS, anyways, in affliction).

Higler being a miracle worker influences that some though. Hitting his dps by a percentage is much worse than hitting a lot of our other ranged players' dps by the same percentage, in terms of raid DPS.

Yeah when building caster groups we usually go by the player, not the class, for the same reason.

Edit: It just occurred to me, it's rather interesting that due to the nature of Windfury, we do the opposite when building melee groups. We would place a completely terrible ret paladin in the melee group before a ridiculously good dagger rogue, for example. Strange!:)

[Mordekhuul]

You mention melee synergy, and I agree, its the reverse sometimes. It made me wonder about healer synergy. Honestly, we pretty much screw our healers out of any.

As a raid, we have tended to focus on high DPS, and spread healers around however will best boost raid DPS except on a very, very small number of fights where it is all about healing...ok, the only exception for us is Najentus, where DPS is fairly irrelevant (you can either stabalize the raid after a tidal shield, or not - if you can, you can do it nearly forever).

Last night we had a strange raid make-up for vashj + gorefiend (first kill! still excited), particularly with me spec'd holy instead of my usual prot, and we had 5 healadins, one resto shaman, one tree. Group 5 was 4 paladins and one unlucky soul stuck there and destined to get no buffs. Enjoy group 5, paladins =)

[Pantalaimon]

Group 5 was 4 paladins and one unlucky soul stuck there and destined to get no buffs. Enjoy group 5, paladins =)

Say hi to Mirajj for me! :P

</troll>

Congratulations on Teron! It's pretty epic the first few times, huh? Bloodboil's a lot of fun too!

Yeah I think the general consensus is DPS get synergies, healers don't unless it's something intense like Naj'entus or Twins. :lol: We usually stick the five miscellaneous healers in a group together, have one resto buffing casters and one tree in the tank group.

[Concillian]

You mention melee synergy, and I agree, its the reverse sometimes. It made me wonder about healer synergy. Honestly, we pretty much screw our healers out of any.

As a raid, we have tended to focus on high DPS, and spread healers around however will best boost raid DPS except on a very, very small number of fights where it is all about healing...ok, the only exception for us is Najentus, where DPS is fairly irrelevant (you can either stabalize the raid after a tidal shield, or not - if you can, you can do it nearly forever).

Last night we had a strange raid make-up for vashj + gorefiend (first kill! still excited), particularly with me spec'd holy instead of my usual prot, and we had 5 healadins, one resto shaman, one tree. Group 5 was 4 paladins and one unlucky soul stuck there and destined to get no buffs. Enjoy group 5, paladins =)

I think this is the correct strategy. Healers, if they're skilled, don't really need synergies to perform their tasks well. This is especially true since the regen buff. About the only benefit would be wrath of air and really that's much better on the casters anyway.

You get overgeared DPS (who know what they're doing) and you can completely trivialize some encounters (Kael, Kaz'rogal, Gruul, actually most encounters just because there's less time to make mistakes).

You get overgeared tanking and you can trivialize certain gib fights (Tidewalker, Prince)

You get way overgeared healers and you can trivialize nothing. Healers gear doesn't tend to make or break fights. All the healers have had MP5 buffs over when BT and Hyjal were released (especially priests and druids, but others have received buffs as well). I can't speak to Sunwell, but it just seems like healers don't need raid synergies. What synergies even exist? Shadow priests? We don't even use innervates. Wrath of air? small and not signifiacnt compared with DPS. Moonkin aura? lol.

Concentration aura is about the only buff that healers can use, and that can be accomodated rather easily since a healing pally is usually not necessary in any one group anyway.

[Bolty]

I think this is the correct strategy. Healers, if they're skilled, don't really need synergies to perform their tasks well.

Totally true. DPS is the name of the game and it's what a raid should always synergize for. Higher DPS is better healing anyway; the shorter the encounter lasts, the more healpower healers can pump out in a shorter amount of time without running out of mana (or even worry about conserving any). It has an exponential effect.

As an extreme hypothetical, if raid DPS was high enough such that any boss enounter was 2 minutes or less, a Priest could just spam Flash Heal constantly without having to worry about overheal, etc. Ok, silly, but you get my point.

If you want bear mounts, or to get out of Kara in 90 minutes or less, you want DPS DPS DPS. Take only as much healing as you need minimum. The only factor in that is that the better skilled and geared your healers are, the less you need to bring to any raid - which also boosts DPS, which makes healing easier, which... :)

-Bolty

[Icebird]

I think this is the correct strategy. Healers, if they're skilled, don't really need synergies to perform their tasks well. This is especially true since the regen buff. About the only benefit would be wrath of air and really that's much better on the casters anyway.

You get overgeared DPS (who know what they're doing) and you can completely trivialize some encounters (Kael, Kaz'rogal, Gruul, actually most encounters just because there's less time to make mistakes).

You get overgeared tanking and you can trivialize certain gib fights (Tidewalker, Prince)

You get way overgeared healers and you can trivialize nothing. Healers gear doesn't tend to make or break fights. All the healers have had MP5 buffs over when BT and Hyjal were released (especially priests and druids, but others have received buffs as well). I can't speak to Sunwell, but it just seems like healers don't need raid synergies. What synergies even exist? Shadow priests? We don't even use innervates. Wrath of air? small and not signifiacnt compared with DPS. Moonkin aura? lol.

Concentration aura is about the only buff that healers can use, and that can be accomodated rather easily since a healing pally is usually not necessary in any one group anyway.

We got our first Brutallus kill this week. He hits hard. Very very hard. If you're familiar with Gurtogg Bloodboil, imagine Fel Rage for 6 minutes straight. I'm spending at least a third of the fight spamming Greater Heal 7.

Because the DPS is stretching themselves to the limit to beat his enrage timer (we hit the enrage when he was at 2% health on our kill, and managed to finish him off before he one-shot his way through the raid), most of the healers get absolutely nothing in terms of synergy support (not even a resto druid). The end result was that the other holy priest and the main tank healing paladin were going OOM by the end of the fight (I had fewer problems only due to the Avatar 2pc bonus and the Blue Dragon card). The priest had to get an innervate, and we had to hot swap a shaman mid-fight for mana tide.

The caveat to Bolty's statement that more DPS is always better is that your healing team has to keep that DPS alive. If players die early, you've negated the benefit of sacrificing healers and healer synergies for DPS.

As for what synergies help healers: Concentration Aura in some fights. After that, its mostly mana (mana spring, mana tide, vampiric touch). Bonuses to healing from synergies are usually a pretty small proportion of the overall healing, and simply switching to a higher rank of spell is the most frequent way of increasing heal through-put.

My raid leader is usually receptive to giving healers support when they feel they need it. In return, I try not to ask for a resto shaman or shadow priest unless I think its essential.

Our DPS does like to have frequent arguments about who should go where though. One of our Shadow Priests wants to be in a group where most of the other members have Drums of Battle. We had a long discussion about the place to put the Ret Paladin for Brutallus. Does he go in the Windfury group, or does the third rogue? (The Ret Paladin lost that day).

Chris

[Mirajj]

June 8 News

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swirly starts up a nice Pally Spreadsheet that he's working on, looking at the various values of gear. The thread itself goes in several good directions, and is filled with excellent advice and numbers for the pallies out there.

The Blizz Podcast went live on it's raids and dungeons version this time. There is some very good news in there, and some interesting news as well. Blizz apparently quite likes the Badge of Justice system, and is looking to expand on it for WotLK. I must admit, having been too often on the wrong side of the RNG, I like this change.

[Mirajj]

June 10 News

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We open up with some good news from the Lurkers Alliance on Stormrage. They put Kael'Thas down last night.

Do manners matter in a game? Is sportsmanship expected? Who determines the baseline for 'fair' in a game? Good questions, indeed.

Koraa posts (in a rather humorous manner) some pretty big WotLK news for Shaman. Their totems will be switching to Physical, making them, in the very least, castable while silenced.

[--Pete]

Hi,

Do manners matter in a game? Is sportsmanship expected? Who determines the baseline for 'fair' in a game? Good questions, indeed.

Buzzard doesn't make us line up and 'good game' each other, but they did give us a 'friends' and 'ignore' list.:)

--Pete

[Mirajj]

June 11 News

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That's right, Eyonix has stated that Arena Season 4 will be starting on June 24, 2008. This season brings about some interesting changes, including among them a personal and team rating reset.

A fun site to play with, this simulates the random loot aspect of Kil'Jaeden and Illidan. I decided to see what a years worth of farming (You can refresh the page to simulate a week/lock) would get me. I ended up with 5 MH Warglaives, 4 Thori'dal's, and 0 OH Warglaives. I also noted that (as a hunter, it interests me) Illidan's bow dropped about once every other month, and (as it looks cool, and tanks would want it) Illidan's shield dropped twice only. Back to back weeks, as well. I did, finally, get an OH Warglaive, 3 weeks into the "new year".

[Taelas]

I got one of each in less than three months.:)

[NiteFox]

Hah, got the OH Warglaive on my first try. I'll trade you a Thori'dal for it.

[Swiss Mercenary]

I was seeing bulwarks and black bows drop like candy, to the point that every warrior, paladin, and most of the shamans in my guild would be waving one around in three months.

[Mirajj]

June 17 News

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First and foremost, going back a bit, MEAT lets us know that the Diablo II Ladders are resetting. For a game that is nearly 10 years old, that's some pretty impressive news. But not everyone is happy about it. Indeed, even with reason. Head on over to MEAT's post to discuss it.

WoW's minimap has undergone a lot of changes in the years it's been used. Personally, I'm of the mind that the current version is quite handy, and I like it. I'm finding quests that I had missed before, and it's cleared some room off the hotbars with all the different types of tracking available at the map itself. But is it too much? Or not enough? Does it spoon feed too much to players, or are there still things that you have to find out by being an Explorer type?

Eyonix welcomes a new Community Manager to the forums, Zarhym. Well...he's got a really cool avatar, which is likely some NPC Death Knight.

As the expansion approaches, we were all prepared for Illidan. But, are you ready for Level 80?

One topic of interesting debate is the inability to transfer from a PvE server to a PvP one. That..may be changing.

EDIT: And an old feature makes it's new return!