Redwolf's Journal (continued)

I haven't been keeping up with WoW news so much in recent months. The investment-to-payoff ratio of following development news several months in advance just isn't worth it to me most of the time. Someone mentioned the recent developer blog post(s) on raiding last night, though, so I thought I'd take a peek. I do love seeing behind-the-scenes rationale for changes to a game like WoW, so it's neat to me. I've long said Blizzard is not stupid, but reading through posts like this does make it clear how tricky some elements in such a huge game can be. Hindsight is 20/20, they say. It's really easy to overcompensate or create new issues in the attempts to fix old ones. Each adjustment in the difficulty, size, or lockout mechanics for raids was well-intentioned and meant a an improvement. Some succeeded, others failed, and almost all uncovered or created new issues entirely. Blizzard certainly isn't the only company, and WoW not the only game, to suffer from th...

Sure, Blizzard staff make a lot of comments I agree with at times, but rarely do they strike home so much as these, especially the first part (emphasis mine): "There is a group of players that wants to do group raiding, but they aren't well served by the current difficulty choices. This would include the friends and family type guilds that don't remove players because they aren't performing at their best. In Wrath of the Lich King, 10 player normal difficulty raiding served these players well, but there is now a gap between Raid Finder and Normal difficulty. When 10 and 25 player had separate lockouts and different loot, they were really different difficulty levels as well. Things were somewhat easier in 10 player difficulty, as it had the lower tier of loot and should be more accessible. Now that both 10 and 25 player difficulty offer the same loot and have a shared lockout, there is a need to ensure the difficulty is similar for both raid sizes. This eliminated t...

I slack in reporting/recording. Ah well. In WoW we did get in some attempts at the beginning of Heart of Fear a couple weeks back. We were seeing improvement with each attempt. Though some people (I won't name names) seemed almost unable to avoid dying to attenuation, it was the third platform and the mind control that roadblocked us. Honestly, we might have gotten further, but the encounter bugged (heh) on us. Two of us stood there under mind control with everyone else dead and... the encounter did not reset as it should. Servants to the Empress forever! Muahaha! Well, until we dropped group and zoned out, but the encounter still didn't reset so we called it for the night. This past weekend, we were short a person or two and finally decided to tromp back into Ulduar (25 man, no less) and see what achievements we could knock out. Flame Leviathan took a few attempts, just because vehicles limit level scaling. Razorscale's achievement took several attempts because it wa...

... for me. Well, I do get my money's worth as far as play time. About two months in, however, I'm starting to flirt with burnout. Progress so far: My main character is max level, and capped blacksmithing and mining. I've gone through all the notable reputation paths with her. Her gear is raidworthy via valor points in tank spec and LFR drops in DPS spec. I have a stack of motes of harmony on hand for whatever. I have not done much with alts at this point, though I have capped out alchemy, enchanting, and inscrption with tailoring not too far behind. I don't have the Pandaria/rep-based patterns for thos professions, but most of those are only directly useful to the alts I'm not playing that much. I've seen all of the heroics a couple times, though only about half the scenarios, and have seen through the first three LFR pieces, at least. In progress: I'm making slow headway through the cooking ways. There are a couple Tillers yet who aren't "bes...

Well, hey, that's what Normal mode of Mogu'shan Vaults looks like. At least up until the first boss. Ha! We sooo got our collected asses handed to us. Not that I expected anything different at this point. After half a dozen attempts on the Stone Guard, I have a better personal feel for how it needs to work, but we kept losing one or more people early and things just collapsed from there. This raises some question of how much of the problem is skill/performance versus gear. We definitely have some people undergeared at this point, but when you look at it closely, the actual difference in defenses/DPS/healing between item level 440 (roughly where you come out of leveling up) and 470 (heroic dungeon + a few epics, required level for LFR) probably amounts to around 5-10% of whatever numbers you're looking at. Everything else is how well players execute rotations and react to the situations presented in the raid encounters . So how do you whip people into shape such that the...

Yay! One long journey over. Saturday night, our guild finally assembled a Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa's Rest. With several of us at level 90, we were able to stomp through some group pulls that would once have been lethal and made good time through the bosses. We even had another druid get a firecat-transform staff from Staghelm. And while it felt like more, it looks like we were even able to take down Ragnaros on our third attempt of the night. Or course, our guild leader had to redo the final turn-in quest in Stormwind because the first time he was still in a raid (which prevents interaction with most quest objects), but that just means twice the pagentry with dragons over the city. And thus, we've officially "finished" Firelands. And let us never speak of it again. Actually, it's not that bad, though I would wish any place we spend that much time in again might be a little more diverse visually at least. And now I wonder what we'll be doing with our raid nig...

Almost to our second weekend in Mists of Pandaria. It's an interesting (good or bad?) time. People have different definitions of "casual versus hardcore," but our guild has never been bleeding-edge. No, there are people who've already cleared the first raid on normal and are chomping at the bit to hit it on heroic next week. Some people have gamed the system to increase reputation levels up to revered/exalted already and farmed materials to make epics. Some people hit level 90 on day one. And while some of us push pretty hard, none of us are quite at that level of involvement. "Slow down," as the pandaran NPCs often say. But... we do have five members (even if only 3-4 show up frequently for raiding) at level 90 and working on reputation and dungeons. While I haven't done any heroics, at least one person has. I've only seen a couple scenarios, but some have run several. I am keeping up with my couple favored reputations and their dailies, though...

... To borrow the line from Alysrazor. That's probably one of the most immediate and striking benefits of hitting max level - being able to go train up the new flight skill. Suddenly, you can be almost anywhere on the map and safe (by being elevated above the mobs). You can drop in and get out of busy areas relatively reasily. You're not limited to the set flight paths when getting around. And, yes, you can trivialize the flow from one area to another. It's something I came to understand back when I first gained the ability to fly in WoW. I don't begrudge being forced onto the ground for a new continent - it doesn't make a lot of sense in-game, perhaps, but I feel it really is good to experience things that way before being able to fly over everything. So, yeah, I managed to hit level 90 with my paladin last night - second in the guild, though I've certainly not put as much time in as the people with level 87 monks running around. Saturday night's raid w...

Has it really been six years? Wrrf. Long time to be playing a game. Last night was... not good. Our worst raid night in some time, even though we filled out the slots. We went into Firelands and the night was full of fail that ended up with only having downed Beth'tilac, Shannox and Rhyolith (and Alizabal in BH). Not pretty. Why? Well, I can't point to any one thing, but I can see some of the issues: - Second-tier alts along instead of mains in a few cases - Changed rotations/effects that people aren't used to yet (leading to complaints about running out of mana, etc.) - Addon issues with them not working or throwing up errors - Some just inexplicably bad performance (deaths to Smouldering Devastation, mis-targetting on Rhyolith's feet, and I don't want to count how many of Shannox's traps people stepped in) That may bode ill for any further attempts before people settle into MoP, I fear, but we'll see. As for myself... well, I'm not graceful w...

I'm still sort of amazed that we plowed through both Dragon Soul and all of Firelands save Ragnaros last night. @.@ All went pretty well, too. I was sure Beth'tilac was a wipe when we lost a healer early on, but we recovered. Rhyolith felt like the fight ran long, but we made that too. Staghelm was our most problematic fight. Down two or three people by that time, we fouled up a phase change and died once. The second time, when we started the fight he jumped straight into cat form, skipping his first scorpion phase and pushing us into phases I normally never see - but we managed to win out that time. Still no firecat staff for our second druid, though, sad to say. But more essences and a few upgrades for people here and there.

The announced release date for WoW: Mists of Pandaria. Hmm. Well, it's later than I would have guessed a year ago, but it seems fairly in-line with the things that have come up in the last six months. A month after GW2 releases and as some have pointed out, it slips in before the first wave of annual pass purchasers expires. Seems reasonable and predictable from a business perspective. If I'm surprised by anything, it's that we're hearing the date only two months out - and I'm only very minorly surprised at that. So... two months to "finish" anything in Cataclysm before driving ahead. Without a Ragnaros kill and some heroic Firelands raiding, that's probably not enough time to finish out Dragonwrath, though I'm not sure where we are on that precisely. I'd like to get a new shield (from Warmaster Blackhorn) and the 4-piece Protection bonus (probably a chest from Ultraxion), but neither of those things reaches "goal" level for me - ...

RL schedules have pushed raiding back to a later hour the last few weeks, but once everyone was present, we managed to hit the ground running last night. The zone debuff went from 25% to 30% and it was noticeable, with bosses in the first half of Dragon Soul proving... well... easy. Of course, Hagara's ice walls can still kill you if you run into where they're going. Ultraxion was a bit rough because some people died along the way, leaving us short on DPS and putting us right up against his enrage mechanic. He fell as we did, victory coming probably only because of our priest's Spirit of Redemption "resurrect." Blackhorn wasn't bad. Spine of Deathwing is still the hardest between coordination and damage, but we got that in our first go too. And so with several people who hadn't even seen the LFR version of Madness of Deathwing, we tried it and wiped once. I fear that might have been mostly my fault, though it was my first time tanking it in any form and...

Went into Saturday night with a good deal of uncertainty. We ended up getting together a roughly-normal raid group, even if it was late, did Alizabal and made it through Ultraxion in DS before we were losing people to weariness. Not bad, really. I do wish we could avoid having one or more people run off to town for fifteen minutes or more to turn in tokens and upgrade gear. My feeling is generally: If what you entered the raid with is good enough to progress, it's not worth the delay (and demotivation to those left waiting) to get what's probably a marginal upgrade. I picked up a new axe for my DPS set and didn't immediately use it because doing so would have taken me below the hit cap without reforging other things to balance. Admittedly, many times an upgrade isn't an issue in that way, but still. And on another note, gazing at the future, it appears the first legendary item questline in MoP offers a reward for just about everyone. But that begs the question of wh...

The weekend raid went well, clearing up through Blackhorn in DS without major problems. We had some personnel issues that made for a late start, but did have a full group. Our execution on Zon'ozz is somehow miraculously better than when we started there, and I don't believe for a moment the actual game mechanics changed. I picked up an axe that will probably tide me over until some point on Pandaria.

We started "late" by some standards (though it's becoming more "normal"), but did well. We got a little off-target partway through the fight with Zon'ozz, but downed him our first time. Maybe people are grasping something or stars aligned, I don't know. Ultraxion went better than last week right off, and we worked up to a kill on our third attempt. Warmaster Blackhorn gave us a new variety of chaos, and we took a break after two attempts to pop over to Baradin Hold only to come back and finish Blackhorn on our next try. And with pre-fight descriptions becoming briefer, we pressed on to Spine of Deathwing. That got hairy, but we even beat that on our fourth shot. Madness of Deathwing is long, though (in much the same way Spine is - repeat the same stuff with things getting harder along the way), and folks were getting tired so we called it there. Still, anytime we jump from four doable bosses to seven is pretty amazing and feels awesome.

The night's raid felt relatively successful to me, if short. We started a little later than ideal, with several regulars delayed by real life. We went straight into Dragon Soul, getting tripped up a little (but less than usual) on Zon'ozz - downed him on our third try. We lost a couple people on Hagara that we shouldn't have, but carried on through that fight just fine. And we set up to try Ultraxion for the first time. The trash is hectic and we all died, but thankfully after the waves of drakes so we didn't have to do them again. I think I want to suggest more DPS taunt-assistance. Taking possible melee hits isn't fun, but it's the flames everywhere that really kill people. As I figured, Ultraxion himself comes down to "is everyone in the group using Heroic Will correctly." Any tunnel vision or bad timing will probably kill the individual outright, which makes it less likely the remainder can pull it off. DPS and healers are iffy. If a tank bites...

So Saturday night's raiding went well enough. There were no real arguments. We downed two bosses in Baradin Hold quickly, plowed through Firelands up through Staghelm (with two wipes on Baleroc), then did the first half of Dragon Soul (with several wipes on Zon'ozz). That was long (about a four hour stretch), but fairly successful. Still, a few things bother me a little bit. First, there's a bit of a rift I perceive between people wanting to do more Dragon Soul and people wanting to keep doing Firelands. I recognize that Staghelm's staff is pretty much unique at any level, and I would like to see a Dragonwrath in the guild, but otherwise Firelands is feeling pretty old. Most of the fights, I can do in sort of an automatic sense. Only Rhyolith really requires any breaking of pattern for me. I have no idea why one person (who is third or fourth to start it) wants Dragonwrathy parts when the first one isn't must more than halfway done after all this time. And we ...

So let's see... We were going to be roleplaying offline Friday night, but that just didn't work out. One person was away camping, we knew that. One said she'd be there, but almost never is - no surprise there. Another is frequently eager to play on Friday nights, but got caught up with things and spaced it. That left us at GM+2 players, which is just below our usual threshold of continuing a game. And since we didn't know until the three of us were already together... well... bummer for us. We chatted, hashed out details of a druidy shapeshifting spell, and that was about it. Saturday's WoW was slow to get started, with lack of communication over who would be present when. Once we got started, though, we did make solid progress even if we had people too tired to continue after Alizabal, Firelands up through Staghelm, Morchok, and Yor'Sahj. Decent drops for a couple people, but Staghelm still hasn't coughed up a second druid staff for our group and I'm...

Need more long weekends. Was this was restful because it was three days long, or because it was one more day than usual (ie. would I get accustomed to three-day weekends)? Either way, I didn't do much. Finished repacking the books I moved and slept in some. Not exciting and sometimes even depressing, but restful. Of course, this morning sucked at work, but what can you do? In WoW , we managed more success than expected. Still no druid staff drop from Staghelm for our second druid, but we beat Zon'ozz in Dragon Soul. I'm still not sure whether we improved any or it was a matter of blind luck with the "ball." I lean toward the latter. Hagara was a little confusing at points, but ultimately wasn't a problem for us. At least one person expressed a desire to hold the lock and progress, but I'm wary. I think Ultraxion is going to involve more wipes than the fight should simply because people won't press their encounter-specific button at the right time. T...

Last night was good in that we had a full raid group, and people to spare. We went through 6/7 in Firelands (as usual). We one-shotted Rhyolith and Beth'Tilac. We got one of our more involved players to exalted with Avengers of Hyjal. We got our guild leader to the ilevel 391 pre-Dragonwrath and a couple other upgrades were had. All of that's good. It seems like it's just now being realized that we're still somewhere close to 10 Firelands clears away from actually having the legendary Dragonwrath. To which I can only think "Really? It's just dawning on you now how long it'll take?" I died twelve times over the course of the night. That is... unusually high. We actually did okay on most of the bosses, though Baleroc was tough with 1/2 healers being new to the fight. No, most of those deaths (and some wipes) were on trash. That's stuff that should only happen when people are truly careless. Like backing into adds. Or not having someone jump on ...