Guild Ranks and Guild Banks

Most guilds approach guild ranks as if they were in the army. They set the ranks as if they were a hierarchical chain of command, where each rank commands the ones below it.

But realistically, most guilds are small enough that there's really only one power relationship: Officers and Members. Officers command members, and that's pretty much it. The actual hierachy is very flat, regardless of the number of ranks.

So rather than looking at ranks as a chain of command, it might be more productive to look at them as mutually-exclusive "tags". These would label your membership in specific ways. For example, many raiding guilds will have "Raider", "Guild Friend", and "Alt" ranks. There's no chain of command present in those ranks, though some will be higher-ranked than others. It's just a way of labelling characters to make it easy for the leadership to sort them.

So what other ways of labelling characters might there be? One example I found on Elitist Jerks (sadly, I don't remember the guild that did this) was a guild which had the "Tank", "Healer", and "DPS" ranks. Now this is very useful way of categorizing members for a raiding guild. It allows the leadership to quickly see at a glance exactly how much of each category they have online. This is especially useful with hybrids, as you could have 3 paladins online, and each in a different category.

This setup was pretty interesting before 2.3, but with the introduction of Guild Banks, it becomes downright amazing. Permissions in the Guild Bank are tied to rank, and having different ranks for each role has a lot of benefits. For example, you could dedicate a Bank Tab for each Rank. Healers would have their own Bank Tab, dedicated to healing materials. (I forsee a lot of mana potions being stored.) Tanks would have their own tab, etc. You could even split up DPS into "Melee DPS" and "Ranged DPS" and give each of those groups their own tab.

The other advantage comes with repair costs. You can set different withdrawal limits for each role/rank, and perhaps give the tanks a larger allowance to fund their repairs. There are a lot of intriguing possibilities with this setup.

The key idea here is that treating guild ranks as a power hierarchy is possibly the most limiting way to look at ranks. Approaching ranks from a different angle can allow a guild to use their Ranks and Guild Bank much more effectively.

Who is Willy Toledo?

He appears to be a Spanish television/movie star, and he's a paladin who likes "body-to-body" fighting.

As an aside, the word "paladin" in Spanish sounds awesome.

Sadly, what jumps out at me is that once again Blizzard is promoting the paladin as a melee character. Why is it so hard for their raid/class team to understand this and shape the class accordingly?

Tidewalker Down!

I forgot to take a picture, but my guild killed Morogrim Tidewalker tonight. I got to be the pally tank for the murlocs, and even got to respec Protection.

We've been bouncing around from boss to boss for the last few months, so I'm really happy to see my guild buckle down and just work on a new boss. Hopefully this trend will continue, and we can get back to serious progression.

As for Tidewalker, I think the vast majority of the wipes were my fault, until I evolved tactics that reliably dragged the murlocs to me. We had some issues sorting out healing and positioning, but I think it finally clicked and we just took him down. We did stack the raid with an excessive amount of healing (11 healers!), so we have to learn to do the fight with a normal raid group. However, as I think I have nailed down tanking the murlocs, we should be able to do it with a more normal 7-8 healers.

It was really awesome to be able to do something other than spam heals in a raid. I've really missed just doing different things in a raid. We're probably still too healer-light for me to go Prot full time, but I hopefully that will change soon.

Ask Coriel: Seal of Command vs Seal of Blood

Larry writes:

What's your opinion on SoB versus SoC as it pertains to Retribution Paladins (especially in PvP)?

Both scale based on AP and both can crit, so they are both potentially good Retribution Seals. Now, SoB does 35% of weapon damage every hit, and SoC does 70% of weapon damage at 7 ppm. If I assume a 3.6 attack speed weapon, you get 16 attacks (rounding down) in one minute. On average 7 of those will proc SoC. If you're doing 800 damage a swing (white, non-crit), you'll do 12,800 damage. With SoC 12,800 + 3,920 = 16,720 damage in one minute, without crits and ignoring all other variables such as miss, parry, glancing, etc... If you use SoB, you get 12,800 + 4,480 = 17,280 damage in one minute.

Theoretically SoB does slightly more damage than SoC at the cost of dealing a percentage of that damage to you. SoB is also significantly cheaper in terms of mana than SoC, and in a PvP environment is (in my opinion) more reliable, though the self-damaging component is more of a negative. Another thing I'm taking into consideration is how often Vengeance can be proc'd. It's essentially 9 extra attacks a minute that can stack Vengeance. Obviously, the usefulness of this changes depending on your crit rate, but I assume most Retribution Paladins are sitting in the vicinity of 30% crit.

Now, in PvE extra crits for Vengeance isn't that great - you get 3, and it's staying up until the mob is dead. The extra procs might get you to 3 marginally faster, but as the fights are much longer and more likely to be consecutive, it's not a huge deal. However, in PvP, where you might only be fighting one or maybe two people, getting to 15% is more important. Obviously, there's times in AV where there's plentiful targets, but I think the extra attacks are worth it.

Finally, the Judgment damage. It's higher on SoB in general, but you take a decent amount of damage, and with SoC it's fairly low unless the target is stunned. Which means if you start an encounter by Repentancing a target, then you can unload a lot of damage in a few seconds, but after that, it's barely worth Judging.

For now, I'm using SoB. My Judgments are higher and the damage is more consistent. The possibility of huge bursts of damage is nice with SoC, but anyone who's been fighting and had a string of non-procs knows that frustration, especially at 3.6 attack speed.

The final consideration, which is more of a PvE thing - is down-ranking the Seals, as the Seals themselves worth off of a percentage of weapon damage; only the Judgment portion suffers from lowering the rank of the spell.

I think you are fairly correct in your assessment of SoB versus SoC for PvE. However, I'm not sure that the extra chances to crit are really worth using SoB over SoC in PvP. Sources of crits include:

1. White attacks
2. Crusader strikes
3. Seal procs
4. Judgements

You only affect one category of these by using SoB, and you give up burst damage, and you take more incoming damage. In my PvP experience, burst damage is what kills people. Not to mention that it's far more likely that people can be stunned for extra JoC damage.

As Vengeance lasts for 30s now, I think there are enough opportunities to refresh it, that using SoC over SoB will not hurt you. However, I have not really played in a high-resilience environment, so that may change things.

As for PvE, SoB is outright better than SoC. As you noted, it does more damage, and is more consistent. Additionally, the self-inflicted damage actually ends up having synergy with Spiritual Attunement, giving you mana back from splash healing, which increases your longevity. As well, SoB allows you to use the weapon with the highest DPS, as opposed to using the weapon with the highest damage range. That makes you a bit more flexible when it comes to gearing up.

Imo, SoB is a very good Seal. It is different enough from SoC that there are situations where SoC is better than SoB and vice versa. Really, Blizzard should remove Seal of Vengeance and give all paladins Seal of Blood.

Rewards, Time, and Skill

jrodman, in a comment to the previous post, remarks:

You seem against systems that measure time instead of skill, but the whole honor-marks system measures time instead of skill. The old peak-system *also* measured time instead of skill but measured how much time you spent in a single week instead of cumulatively.

I am not necessarily against systems that measure time. For example, Reputation is a very good system for rewarding time spent. What I am against is reward systems which encourage "incorrect" behavior.

If time is the behavior you want to reward, then reward time. But in Battlegrounds we don't want to reward time, we want to reward people participating in PvP. The hard part is defining participation in PvP. In particular, it's very hard to tell if a person is defending a vital node, or is merely slacking. It's very easy to over-reward attacking, which leads to all offense, no defense games.

So we use time as a proxy metric for participation. But it's not a perfect match, and the AFK'ers exploit the difference between time and participation.

Imagine if AV had zero rewards. No honor, no reputation rewards. How would people play? Most people who actually bothered to go to AV would go there to win. There would be no point to being afk (unless you're a weird passive-aggressive griefer). People who need to go afk because of real-life concerns, would still go afk.

People only go AFK in AV because of the way the reward system is structured. Multiple quick losses can be worth more than a drawn-out win. You don't lose anything for indulging in negative behavior.

Secondly, when it comes to PvP, I believe that rewards should bias to the skilled. I think the Arena system is a fairly well done system (with the exception of being able to "sell" high-ranked teams). It rewards the highly skilled, but is still attractive to the less skilled.

Arena rewards victory, and time spent. But the reward for time spent is not linear, you don't get more arena points if you put in more games. You just need to do a minimum amount of time, and then victories determine the scale of your reward.

AFK in AV

I think that while the steps Blizzard has taken to combat people who enter Alterac Valley and then sit in the cave and go Away From Keyboard are a start, there's still a ways to go to fully solve that problem. The central issue is that a person who is AFK in battle either ends up with a gain in honor, or at worst, they stay level. There is no actual penalty for being AFK.

Sure, there is an opportunity cost involved. The AFKer doesn't gain as much honor as she could. But most likely she is doing something else, a non-WoW activity such as watching TV or surfing the net, that would prevent her from actively participating. The potential scenarios are:

1. Watch TV, don't have WoW running.
2. Watch TV, sit AFK in Alterac Valley.

In the worst case, the rewards for the second scenario are equal to the rewards for the first scenario. So there is essentially no reason not to AFK while watching TV if you can.

It all comes back to Coriel's First Law of Skill:

If the metric used to measure skill cannot decrease, you are not measuring skill, but time.

Honor cannot decrease. Thus it measures time, and people will come up with ways to make it look like they are putting in the time.

The AFK Debuff needs teeth to be useful. It needs to have an actual honor penalty in order to make scenario 1 preferrable to scenario 2. Unfortunately, this might open the doors to griefing as sub-groups in AV try and declare other people AFK when they are not. An example might be a group of 70s trying to declare any non-70 in AV as AFK, in order to force them out.

Ask Coriel: Healing Shields

Kashinboner of Aman'thul writes in:

Noticed on your armory that you have the Triptych shield...I got the 33 badge healer shield already when that dropped last week. I ended up deciding not to swap and the shammy got it for his healing set.

Wouldn't mind you thoughts on the relative strengths of the two...I am trying to stack MP5 at the moment, so it was a bit of a wrench letting the 8 MP5 go.

[Triptych Shield of the Ancients]
[Light-Bearer's Faith Shield]

Triptych is probably slightly better than the Badge shield. You lose about 13 +healing in exchange for 8 mp5 and a touch more sta, int, and armor.

That being said, they're very similar, and it's arguably better for your raid for you to keep your shield and let the shammy have this shield. That way your raid has two epic healing shields rather than just one. I'm a fan of spreading the wealth and trying to minimize the amount of loot sharded or disenchanted.

Now, if the Triptych was going to be disenchanted, then grab it, but I'd let other people take it (even for offset) first.

Realistically, the next major shield upgrade is [Aegis of the Vindicator] off Magtheridon.

The New Alterac Valley

I love the new Alterac Valley. The reinforcements mechanic is excellent.

In my first game (as Alliance), we swept down to Frostwolf Village in an old-school rush. It did not work out well, as the Horde recaptured the towers and graveyards behind us, and the waiting defense shredded our offense. So we went back on the defensive, but that ill-fated attack put us behind by 100 points or so. Finally, as the game wound down, we were losing 40-150, when our second offense managed to punch through and kill Drek'thar. It was a great, nail-biting game.

The best thing about the new AV is that healing feels so much more worthwhile. Intellectually, I know that healing is quite powerful, and keeping my team alive is the best strategy, but the cost of death used to be so low that it was hard to really see, especially when I could have more fun swinging a giant hammer. In the new AV, every player I save from death is another reinforcement that we have. The cost of death has increased, and that makes healing more valuable.

The new reinforcements mechanic would go very well with Warsong Gulch. If WSG had about 50-75 reinforcements, it would stop the stalemates that drag out forever. In general, I do think battlegrounds need a time-limit. Having alternate paths to victory is also important, as it allows you a variety of strategies, but one of the paths should be a time-limit. The reinforcements mechanic is a good one, as it increases the cost of death and makes people play more strategically.

Everything I Needed to Know I Learned in Karazhan

From Sussemilch of Sanctum Patria, Moon Guard (via the WoW forums):

Attumen taught us not to waste time.
Moroes taught us that everyone needs to be paying attention.
Maiden taught us that some strategies are better than others.
Opera taught us to expect the unexpected.
Nightbane taught us to look out for each other.
Curator taught us that there's a time for everything.
Aran taught us to never give up.
Illhoof taught us to think about who we bring along.
Netherspite taught us that sometimes you should just run away.
Chess reminded us to have fun.
Prince taught us that sometimes bad things happen to good people.

Ask Coriel: Improved Righteous Fury

Alfred writes in:

Love the blog! Keep up the great work. Was just wondering though...I noticed you have Imp Right Fury. Does this only apply to offensive holy spells for the increased threat or to healing spells as well? Did you just grab that for soloing? Im guessing you don't have this up while healing correct?

Righteous Fury does apply to healing spells. However, paladin heals are innately lower threat (50%) compared to priest, druids, or shaman heals. And because we run with at least three paladins, I always have Salvation on.

A paladin will have 0.5*0.7*1.9 = 67% threat. A priest with Silent Resolve would have 0.8*0.7 = 56% threat. So you have a bit more threat, but not that much more. Plus, I find it's better to be higher than the other healers on the threat meters. That way, if an add does get loose, it comes to you rather than the priest. With plate and Imp RF, you can take a couple of hits.

Keeping Imp RF on gives you 6% damage reduction all the time, which helps with splash damage. Salvation will "muffle" the effects of Imp RF. So you can keep RF up pretty much all the time in raids if you have Salvation. If you don't have Salvation, you should probably turn RF off.

If you need to watch threat, or if you don't take any splash damage, you can always turn RF off. For example, Nightbane is a fight I wouldn't run with RF, because when Nightbane lands, threat can get tricky, and I don't want to pull aggro and wipe the raid.

As well, it's useful when soloing or doing PvP, and it helps me to tank 5-mans without needing to respec. In the end, there's not a lot of better choices for those 3 talent points. I could drop Imp RF and Blessed Life and pick up Imp Might, but other than that, I don't think there's any other talents that would be more useful.

One last caveat, if you melee to keep Judgements up and you use RF, use Seal of the Crusader rather than Seal of Righteousness. You don't want extra threat from the Holy damage of Righteousness. You probably won't pull aggro, but better safe than sorry. For example, I keep Judgement of Light up on Void Reaver, so I put up Righteous Fury to help mitigate the pounding and run SotC. SotC also has the advantage of speeding up your swings, so you can spend more time healing.

Guide to Blessings

Table of Contents

I. The Basics
II. The Blessings
III. Blessing Priority for each Class
IV. How to Organize Your Paladins
V. Mods

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I. The Basics

Blessings are powerful buffs that paladins can cast on allies. In raids, Blessings are the most desired contribution of paladins, and most 25-man raids bring at least 3 paladins in order to maximize the number of Blessings.

A Greater Blessing lasts for 30 minutes, costs a reagent, and is cast upon an entire class at the same time. The normal versions of the Blessings last for 10 minutes and are cast on a individual. A paladin can only cast one Blessing on a player at one time. If she casts another Blessing, it will overwrite her first one. Each player can have a blessing from each paladin. Thus, if there are 3 paladins in the raid, each player should have 3 Blessings.

There are also three "tactical" Blessings: Protection, Sacrifice, and Freedom. These blessings last for 30s or less and will overwrite other Blessings. Paladins often forget about these Blessings, but they are useful in specific circumstances. However, the rest of this guide will only consider the long-term Blessings.

I'm a firm believer that paladins are responsible for determining which Blessing should go on which player. Multiple people crying for different Blessings is tiresome. It's okay to remind a paladin if a Blessing (especially a normal one) wears off.

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II. The Blessings

Blessing of Salvation reduces the threat generated by the target. Salvation is the first and greatest of the paladin Blessings and should almost always be the first Blessing cast. Salvation is not a safety net, it is a "damage-enabler". It allows DPS to do up to 42% more damage. They can start earlier, hit harder, and not waste time/energy/mana on threat dumps. Some DPS (rogues, mostly) will try and complain about Salvation, and request Might or Kings instead. My philosophy is that if you don't need Salvation, you aren't doing acceptable damage.

Blessing of Might adds Attack Power, both melee and ranged. It will generally add more damage than Kings, even accounting for the additional crit. Thus it is usually the second Blessing of choice for classes that rely on Attack Power.

Blessing of Wisdom adds significant mana regeneration. Again, the amount of mana returned is generally much more than the extra mana gained through Kings, and it is the second Blessing of choice for the mana-using classes.

Blessing of Light increases the healing done to the target by Paladins. It's usually the second Blessing placed on tanks, and the fourth or fifth Blessing placed on the raid. It does add a large amount of +healing, but only for the paladins, so it's value greatly depends on the number of paladins in the raid. As a rule of thumb for blessing tanks, if you have enough paladins to make Light useful, you have enough paladins to cast both Kings and Light.

Blessing of Kings increases all stats by 10%. It is the 11-point talent in the Protection tree. Most healing paladins will dip into Protection to pick up Kings. Kings is the first Blessing placed on tanks because it increases the tanks' health. It is generally the third Blessing placed on the raid. Kings is a very powerful Blessing, and is the reason most raids use at least 3 paladins. Unlike the other Blessings, Kings scales with your gear. At the very high end, it may be a better choice than Might or Wisdom.

Blessing of Sanctuary reduces incoming damage by a small amount, and deals Holy damage on a block. It is the 21-point talent in the Protection tree. It is important to note that Sanctuary's damage reduction comes before armor. Usually, only a Protection paladin picks up Sanctuary, though a Holy paladin will sometimes go 40/21/0. While it isn't a bad Blessing, it isn't as useful as the other Blessings. It is helpful on a tank handling adds that are to be AoE'd. I also prefer Sanctuary over Light as the fourth blessing on the raid, as it helps dampen the effect of splash damage, which non-paladins are usually healing.

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II. Blessing Priority for each Class

Warrior (tank) - Kings, Light, Sanctuary, Might
Warrior (DPS) - Salvation, Might, Kings, Sanctuary, Light

Druid (bear) - Kings, Light, Might, Sanctuary
Druid (cat) - Salvation, Might, Kings, Sanctuary, Light
Druid (other) - Salvation, Wisdom, Kings, Sanctuary, Light

Warriors and druids usually cause the biggest hassles when organizing buffs. DPS warriors do not have ways to drop threat, so Salvation is very important to them. At the same time, putting Salvation on your tanking Warriors ends extremely badly.

As for healers, I generally prefer to put Salvation on them first. It's safest, and you don't want to lose your healers to adds, or if the tank gets incapacitated.

Hunter - Might or Wisdom, Wisdom or Might, Kings, Sanctuary, Light
Hunter (Survival) - Kings, Might or Wisdom, Wisdom or Might, Sanctuary, Light

Because Feign Death is a complete aggro wipe available every 30s, hunters do not need Salvation. Additionally, not having Salvation will give them more control over trapping and improve the effect of Misdirect. Might will usually do more damage on short fights, but Wisdom will do more on long fights.

Hunter pets get the same Greater Blessings cast on the Warrior class. This is a source of great amusement to paladins.

If you have a Survival hunter with Expose Weakness, Kings can provide more DPS for a 25-man raid. The hunter needs at least 800 Agility for this to be the case.

Mage - Salvation, Wisdom, Kings, Sanctuary, Light

Paladin (tank) - Kings, Light, Sanctuary, Might
Paladin (DPS) - Salvation, Might, Kings, Wisdom, Sanctuary, Light
Paladin (healer) - Wisdom, Kings, Salvation, Sanctuary, Light

Paladins are all over the map as well. Since paladin heals are innately low-threat, you can get away without Salvation. As well, paladins wear plate, so if a healer must pull aggro, it's better to let a paladin do so.

Priest - Salvation, Wisdom, Kings, Sanctuary, Light

Shaman (healer/caster) - Salvation, Wisdom, Kings, Sanctuary, Light
Shaman (Enhancement) - Salvation, Might, Kings, Wisdom, Sanctuary, Light

Rogue - Salvation, Might, Kings, Sanctuary, Light

Warlock - Salvation, Wisdom, Kings, Sanctuary, Light

Warlock pets get the same Greater Blessings cast on the Warlock class. If the warlock uses an Imp, make sure that Phase-Shift is turned off while Blessings are being cast. A phase-shifted Imp will not receive any Blessings.

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IV. How to Organize Your Paladins

Given all the conditions in the last section, setting up paladin blessings can seem like a daunting task. This is the system that I use to assign paladin blessings. You don't need the full 5 paladins. If you only have 2 or 3, just drop the remaining Blessings.

Paladin 1 (should have Kings and Improved Wisdom)
- Greater Kings on the Warriors. If you have a third paladin, cast Greater Light instead.
- Greater Wisdom on Hunters.
- Greater Salvation on everyone else.
- Cast individual Salvation on the DPS warriors.
- Cast individual Kings on the paladin or druid tanks. Again, if you have a third paladin, cast individual Light instead.
- Cast individual Kings on Survival hunters. If you have a third paladin, stay with Greater Wisdom on all hunters.

This position is the most annoying one in the raid, as you have to make sure that the DPS warriors have Salvation but the various tanks do not. If necessary, you can use Blessing of Sacrifice or Freedom to "clean off" Salvation. If you don't have any tanking warriors, you can cast Greater Salvation on the warriors.

Paladin 2 (should have Improved Might and Wisdom)
- Greater Might on Hunters, Rogues, and Warriors.
- Greater Wisdom on everyone else.
- cast individual Might on Retribution Paladins, Enhancement Shamans, and Feral Druids.

Paladin 3 (should have Kings)
- Greater Kings on everyone.

Paladin 4 (should have Sanctuary)
- Greater Sanctuary on everyone.

If you don't have a paladin with Sanctuary, just use Paladin 5

Paladin 5
- Greater Light on everyone.

If necessary, paladin 4 or 5 could also cast individual Wisdom on Retribution Paladins and Enhancement Shamans.

This system makes it easy for paladins to buff. There's only one complex buffing strategy, that of Paladin 1. All the other paladins are responsible for one or two Blessings at most. So give the extra responsibility to your paladin who is best at remembering to rebuff.

Finally, remember that Blessing priority can also change on specific fights. If there's a lot of splash damage, you might want to prioritize Kings over Might/Wisdom. If threat is not an issue in the fight, you should drop Salvation to the bottom of the priority list.

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V. Mods

I recommend the mod PallyPower to keep track of your Blessings. You can assign Greater Blessings by class, see the time remaining on each Blessing, and the range of people in each class. You can also see the Blessings being cast by other paladins who are using the mod. You can cast individual Blessing by right-clicking, allowing you to easily rebuff people who die.

Odds and Ends

Trinket Macro

Mystic Chicanery posted an absolutely beautiful macro for those of us who juggle multiple sets of trinkets. Simple and elegant. You see it, and it's an immediate "I can't believe I didn't think of that" moment.

Raiding as DPS

I got roped into a Gruul's Lair raid on Valarin. We got High King Maulgar down, and a decent attempt on Gruul. It was an interesting experience as DPS. It's a lot less stressful than healing, but there is a distinct lack of feedback. I would rank my performance as pretty poor (~400 DPS, was doing Curse of Tongues/Shadows), though to be fair I haven't put a great deal of work into Valarin. No enchants and 55 hit rating makes me sad.

The other thing I find that drops my DPS significantly is having to switch focus. I had to banish/enslave a felhound once or twice, and I'm pretty sure my DPS plummeted during that time. As a healer, I'm used to switching targets on my interface, and not selecting targets in the actual game (or even Tab-targetting). It's a skill that I really need to improve.

The other thing that was interesting was seeing a guild that had not really learned how to raid yet. I really pity the paladins in that guild. Everyone was demanding different buffs. Also, there were a couple wipes from mistakes like people accidentally aggroing mobs. I think Tharok put it well when he said that people "have not learned to respect the encounter". Simple things like running beside the wall while positioning, maintaining maximum distance from the mobs.

The best part, though, was that my repair bill was less than 5 gold.

A'lar the Phoenix God

My guild is attempting A'lar at the moment. We have Phase 1 down, and are working on Phase 2. It's a neat encounter. One of the biggest things in this encounter for healers is range. Trying to maintain range while tanks are switching off is pretty hard. I might have to go get a UI mod which visually marks people who are out of range.

Advertising

I'm experimenting with Google Adsense, and have put an ad on the sidebar. I think it doesn't clash with the visuals too greatly. Adsense is fairly easy to use. My biggest concern is that I can't seem to block goldselling/powerlevelling ads. As it isn't really very lucrative, I'll probably end up taking it down in a week or so.

Time

I've been thinking a lot about the difference between Time and Difficulty in an MMO. Which should be rewarded more: beating a difficult challenge, or beating a challenge which requires a lot of time? Is there an equivalence point? Does it matter if game time matches real-time? Is there a difference between a task which can be accomplished in 5 hours at a stretch or one where you have to spend an hour a day for 5 days? Which of those two options should get a greater reward?

Derived Stats and Spell Damage

The damage done by a spell or special ability (non-crit) generally takes the form of:

TotalDamage = BaseDamage + Coefficient * PowerStat

For melee attacks and abilities, the PowerStat is Attack Power. For spells, the PowerStat is +damage or +healing.

What's interesting here is that Attack Power (AP) is built into the game from the very beginning. It's a derived stat, meaning that it's value comes from other primary stats. Different classes use different primary stats to boost AP. Warrior, paladins, and shamans boost AP through Strength. Rogues and Hunters boost AP through Agility. Druids use a mixture depending on what form they take.

In contrast, spell damage is tacked on to this system, and only starts appearing at the high levels. Even though it behaves in the same manner as AP, it is not a derived stat, but a completely separate one. It's also different in that it's actually a collection of PowerStats, each boosting a specific spell school.

In my opinion, the Attack Power system works better than the spell damage system. It's simpler and more elegant. Additionally, it works with the five primary stats, and allows different classes to value gear in a different manner. A ring with +Agi means different things to a warrior, a rogue, or a hunter.

It's probably too late for WoW now, but reworking spell damage to mirror Attack Power would have a lot of benefits. Let's call the new PowerStat Spell Power (SP). For example, mages and priests could get Spell Power from Spirit, while warlocks and druids could get Spell Power from Intellect.

This immediately differentiates the classes. You could tweak the rate at which Spirit or Intellect is converted into SP and balance each class without seriously affecting itemization. For example, maybe 1 Spirit = 3 SP for Mages, but 1 Intellect = 2 SP for Warlocks.

The other major advantage comes with paladins and shamans. The melee-magic hybrids. For these two classes you could have Strength convert to Spell Power as well as Attack Power. This would mean that both sides of the class would scale with the same stat.

We don't really need a power stat for each separate school of magic. The only place where it's significantly used for damage spells is the tailoring epic sets. 90% of the other damage gear in the game only uses +damage/healing.

As for +healing, let's pretend that you get twice as much +healing as +spell damage. (It's not exactly twice, but it's pretty close.) So 1 Spell Power = 2 Heal Power. Taking a look at the equation above, we can go:

TotalDamage = BaseDamage + Coefficient * PowerStat
TotalHeal = BaseHeal + Coefficient * ( HP )
TotalHeal = BaseHeal + Coefficient * ( 2 * SP )
TotalHeal = BaseHeal + ( Coefficient * 2 ) * SP

Instead of using a different PowerStat for healing spells, we can use the same PowerStat and simply double the coefficent on healing spells. It accomplishes the exact same thing!

Converting the spell damage system into a mirror of the Attack Power system would accomplish many goals. It would simplify the number of stats on gear. It would allow you to differentiate classes by getting them to place different values on the primary attributes. It makes the primary attributes more valuable for spellcasters. It allows melee-magic hybrids to scale with one stat, rather than chasing two. It causes both offensive and defensive spells for healers to scale at a similar rate, rather than having extremely powerful healers who can't hurt a fly.

Housecleaning

I've upgraded to Blogger's new templates. As part of this upgrade I've decided to drop the pseudonym "GSH" and simply use my real name when signing posts. I'm not really sure why I'm doing this. To be honest, the double layer of indirection (Coriel -> GSH -> Rohan) was getting a bit weird, especially when responding to emails.

I'm totally fine with signing a blog post or a forum message anonymously, but it somehow seems wrong to sign an email as GSH. It may be the fact that a blog or forum post is a one-to-many relationship, while an email is one-to-one.

Since I'm using my real name now, I figure I might as well use a more real email address as well. It'll save me the trouble of actually remembering to check the one I made specifically for this website.

Other than that, the upgrade broke my essential posts section, so I'll have to rebuild that. It doesn't look like I'll be able to easily do it in a nice compact form for the various series of posts.

If you notice anything that has changed for the worse, or is missing, please post a comment and I'll try to fix it.

Server Mergers

Several people, including Tack, have suggested server mergers as a solution to the problem of consolidating talent. I don't think this will solve the problem. I've been watching the show Numb3rs lately, and I feel inspired to make an analogy which may not actually reflect reality or mathematics.

<Professor Charles Eppes>

Imagine that a WoW server is like a bucket with a hole in it. The people on the server are like drops of water. If you fill up the bucket, water leaks out, and the bucket eventually empties.

A high-end raiding guild is like a plug. You put the plug in the hole, and the bucket stops leaking water.

Merging two low population servers is like pouring water from one leaky bucket into another leaky bucket. The amount of water increases, but the increase is only temporary.

The bucket still has the hole and, without the plug, the bucket will still eventually empty.

</Professor Charles Eppes>

Might work a little bit better with blurry visuals and random fluid dynamic equations being written out with chalk.

The analogy is crude, but you can see why I believe server mergers won't fix the problem. If you're lucky, a server merger may result in the creation of a hardcore guild which revitalizes the server. But that's not guaranteed, and the option for the hardcore to transfer is still very attractive.

The Consolidation of Talent

I believe that Blizzard spends a disproportionate amount of resources on endgame content. The number of people who will see the Black Temple or Sunwell is a tiny fraction of the playerbase. The amount that this fraction pays in subscription dollars does not cover the cost of content produced for them, or the amount of customer support they use.

I also believe that these resources are being spent well. That it is important to retain the hardcore, to create content for them and keep them in the game. It is my belief that the hardcore have many beneficial effects for an MMO. They provide a spectacle for the other players, are the engine which drives the economy. They serve as aspirational models, and players that everyone knows about.

The hardcore act as hubs in the social network of the game. Without the hardcore, the world would seem emptier, and the network that binds people together, keeps people playing, would fray, and I believe the casuals would fall away.

So if the above is true, let us consider the impact another aspect of WoW: Paid Server Transfers.

The hardcore seek out the hardcore. They want to progress, and the best progression is found with like-minded people. And because they are the hardcore, they are willing to pay the fee to move to a different server. High-end raiding guilds recruit across servers. There are servers where the hardcore have congregated, which boast multiple Illidan-killing guilds. Servers like Mal'Ganis or Korgath.

This Elitist Jerks thread is an example of the situation. The majority of high-end guilds are on PvP servers. The hardcore on PvE servers would like to be able to transfer to such servers. And the phenomenon magnifies itself. If some of the hardcore leave the server, it becomes harder for the remaining hardcore to succeed, making it more likely that they too will transfer.

But what happens to the old server when they do transfer?

If the hardcore are nodes in the social network of the server, removing the nodes damages the network, and will eventually causes casuals to leave. And remember that the hardcore will consolidate themselves on a few servers. For every server the hardcore flock to, there are five or more servers being abandoned by them. Casuals will not pay to transfer servers. If the social network of their server is too badly damaged, they will simply leave the game.

On the other hand, if the hardcore are not hubs in the network, if the server will happily survive without them, then you really have to wonder if spending all those extra resources on the hardcore is worthwhile. Wouldn't it be more profitable to cater to the customers who don't require as many resources to satisfy?

Paid Server Transfers allow the hardcore to consolidate themselves on a few servers, damaging the many servers they leave behind. Blizzard needs some mechanism to push the hardcore in the opposite direction, to cause them to spread out. In the past, overcrowding and server stability was one of the main forces opposing the drive to congregate. Unstable servers caused Death & Taxes to move to Korgath, revitalizing that server. But as Blizzard's technology improves, it is less likely that unstable servers will push the hardcore to spread out.

Ask Coriel: Improving a Retribution Paladin

Firelight, from Steamwheedle Cartel, writes in:

As a raiding retribution paladin i'm really looking forward to 2.3 and the upgraded DPS it brings for me!

I wondered if you could take a look at my gear and tell me what you thinked about it, and what i could do to improve! Obvious upgrades for my are t4 shoulders and legs, and i'm only 5 nethers away from upgrading my chest armour as well.

Being one of the only ret-raiders in my server (that i know of) i've been finding it hard to gain acceptance from my peers who just whisper about me behind my back (retnoob etc) so i'm just wanting to be accepted by being able to do more dps!

You will need to change your talents once 2.3 comes out. I would suggest taking some points from Benediction and finishing off Fanaticism and Improved Blessing of Might (Build). Also, if you don't need Blessing of Kings, you could take 3 points from Protection and put them in the new Pursuit of Justice (Build - the last point goes in Pursuit of Justice). I'm a fan of speed increases as less time running equals more time DPSing. If you need to keep BoK for raiding, consider putting the Cat's Grace enchant on your boots.

On gems and enchants, I think you are putting a little too much weight on critical strike rating/agility, and not enough on Strength. Your crit rating is nice and high, but your AP is a bit low. Also, always go for Strength instead of pure Attack Power, because you get bonuses from Divine Strength and Blessing of Kings.

As well, once 2.3 comes out you're going to need some more hit rating, and you'll get 4% extra crit from talents and racials. Not to mention that Vengeance will last twice as long, so you can keep it up with a lower crit rating.

I would go:

Red slots = Bold Living Ruby (+8 Str)
Yellow slots = Rigid Dawnstone (+8 Hit) until you have 95 hit rating, then Inscribed Noble Topaz (+4 Str/+4 Crit)
Blue slots = Sovereign Nightseye (+4 Str/+6 Sta)
Meta = the one you have is good, but you might also want to consider Relentless Earthstorm Diamond (+12 Agi/+3% critical damage)

As for enchants, you look pretty good. Put a +6 all stats on your chest. If you can squeeze out an extra +16 hit rating (maybe from gems), consider using the Lower City head enchant. It will give you a little more AP and some more mana.

To be honest, you look pretty solid already. You just need to tweak things when 2.3 hits, and I personally would place more emphasis on Strength over crit rating when gemming.

Also, and I'm just throwing this out as an option, if you switched from armorsmithing to weaponsmithing, you would get access to some really nice weapons. But that's a big change, and you do have a decent weapon in Hammer of the Naaru, and you may not have a backup chestpiece.

Any other advice readers--especially Retribution Paladins--would give Firelight?

The Paladin Community

Looking over the comments on Threat Reduction for Retribution, it seems that people on the outside don't really understand the paladin community. You see comments like "First you asked for X, and now you're asking for Y?"

The paladin community is the most fractured of all the classes. There are four main factions: Holy, Protection, Retribution, and Hybrid. The different factions want different--often opposite--things and that leads to the confusing nature of paladin feedback. Each side generally champions one tree, and does not really care about the others. The only exception are the Hybrids, who generally support all three trees, but oppose efforts to overspecialize them.

The next complication is that the Holy faction is at war with the Retribution faction. Retribution derides Holy as "healbots", and Holy calls Retribution "retnoobs". If I can indulge in some armchair psychology, the reason both these factions are at each other's throats is because a paladin is both melee and healing/support. Protection and Hybrids still try do both melee and support, though in different ways. But Holy gave up melee, and Retribution gave up healing, and by attacking each other, they try to convince themselves that what they sacrificed was not of value.

So for example, the Retribution faction asked for threat reduction and increased DPS in raids. The Holy faction opposes out of habit. Protection doesn't really care, and the Hybrids are generally supportive.

Then Retribution gets permanent threat reduction, and the Retribution faction is happy. However, the way the threat reduction is implemented hurts the Hybrid ideal, and thus the Hybrids are the paladins objecting.

The final complication is race. Alliance paladins generally view the Blood Elves as interlopers, and the Blood Elves are more than happy to antagonize them back. As well, a large percentage of vocal Blood Elf paladins are Horde raiders who rerolled after seeing the effect of Alliance paladin healers. Where the Alliance paladins were sort of "pushed" to the healing side when they started raiding, the Blood Elves embraced it from the very beginning, and are often the most militant of the Holy faction. Ironically, the Horde-specific Seal of Blood is extremely good for Retribution, a fact which seriously annoys the predominantly Alliance Retribution faction.

So that's a quick guide to the paladin community, and why different paladins complain about different buffs/nerfs. I belong to the Hybrid faction, and thus I'm generally supportive of all three trees, but not of talents that overemphasize one aspect of the paladin at the expense of the others.

Question about Raiders

I'm thinking through an idea for my next post, which which will be relatively complex. But I want to make sure that I am not missing a possibility somewhere, so I'm asking for feedback on a couple of underlying assumptions.

Assumption 1: 25-man raiders are a small minority of the playerbase.

Assumption 2: A disproportionate amount of development time is spent creating content for them.

Can anyone refute these assumptions?

Also, assuming 1 and 2 are correct, why is it worthwhile for Blizzard to create content usable only by such a small portion of the player base?

I have my own ideas about that, and I've written about them before, but I'd like to see if anyone has any other reasons that I may not have considered.

Edit: For reference, here is the last article I wrote on the subject.

Threat Reduction

Blizzard is giving Retribution Paladins threat reduction:

After further discussion and testing we’ve decided to add threat reduction deep in the paladin's retribution tree. Fanaticism will now reduce threat caused by all actions by 6/12/18/24/30%, in addition to its current effect.

It seems like Blizzard is equalizing all the melee DPS specs at 30% threat reduction. Rogues, Feral Druids, Fury Warriors, Enhancement Shamans, and now Retribution Paladins will all have the same level of built-in threat reduction.

The only negative is that this talent will make it very hard for Retribution Paladins to tank or off-tank. So much for my Ret OT build. To be honest, I'm not sure I really approve of building such a large, permanent disadvantage into a talent. It seems against the spirit of talents.

In general, a paladin with talent points is always equal to or better than a 0/0/0 paladin at every task. This holds true for pretty much every class. But now it's possible that a Ret paladin will be worse than a 0/0/0 paladin at tanking. And that doesn't really seem right to me. Maybe the increased damage from the other Retribution talents will make up for the loss of threat.

I mean, Shadowform is an awesome talent for Shadow Priests. Would it still be a good talent if it was permanent? 99% of the time a Shadow Priest will be in Shadowform, but being able to turn it off is a lifesaver for that 1%.

Still, from a pure DPS point of view, this is a massive buff. Now, just kill Seal of Vengeance and give all paladins Seal of Blood, and Retribution will be in solid shape.

Then Blizzard can start work on the harder task: fixing Holy.

Hit Caps Post Updated

I've updated my Hit Caps for Bosses post to reflect the Expertise changes in 2.3. Take a look and tell me if you see anything that should be changed.

Also, if anyone can point me to the definitive Dodge cap number, that would be greatly appreciated.

2.3 Patch Notes

The 2.3 Patch Notes are out. Some first impressions follow.

Expertise: We have added a new stat and associated rating called expertise and expertise rating. Expertise rating converts to expertise at the same rate that weapon skill rating formerly converted at. Each point of expertise reduces the chance for your attacks to be dodged or parried by 0.25%.

Weapon Skill: All items and abilities that granted weapon skill have been changed. In most cases, they were converted to expertise or expertise rating. Ranged attacks do not benefit from expertise, so ranged weapon skill has generally been replaced by critical strike bonuses or hit bonuses. In a few cases, talents have been changed to other effects to avoid granting players excessive amounts of expertise

Bah, I have to go rewrite my +Hit Caps guide. Basically, this removes the disparity between the first 5 points of weapon skill and the subsequent points, which is a good thing. Hit caps will generally rise across the board for physical damage classes. At first glance, expertise rating is roughly equal to hit rating for melee dps classes, and twice as good for tanks. It also raises the possibility of capping out both hit rating and expertise rating, and always hitting/critting the mob.

Healing: Almost all items and enchantments that provide bonus healing now also provide a smaller number (approximately 1/3) of bonus spell damage. There are a few items and enchantments where this was not possible, such as random-stat items and Zul'Gurub enchantments, but this is now the case on virtually all other items.

Awesome! Simply awesome. I can solo in my raiding epics, and even add extra damage in between heals. Heck, I might even be able to disenchant my spelldamage set now and free up a entire bag worth of bank space!

Blessing of Light: Lower ranks of Flash of Light and Holy Light are now properly penalized when used with this Blessing.

This nukes downranking Holy Light pretty hard. Which is how it should be. In my opinion, costs are what maintain balance, and messing around with costs leads to degenerate gameplay. To be honest, I think Blizzard should do away with down-ranking entirely, not even offering it as an option. I think the game would be better for it.

Cleanse and Purify range increased to 40 yards.

Another great change. No more healing and then finding out you're out of range of a Cleanse.

Crusader Strike (Retribution) cooldown reduced from 10 to 6 seconds.
Exorcism mana cost reduced.
Hammer of Wrath mana cost reduced.
Holy Wrath mana cost reduced.
Improved Seal of the Crusader (Retribution) benefits folded into the base spell. This talent now gives the benefits of the Sanctified Crusader talent instead.
Judgement of Light: The combat log will now show the mana gained from rank 5 of this ability as Judgement of Light instead of Seal of Light.
Pursuit of Justice (Retribution) is now 3 ranks and increases movement speed by 5/10/15% and also reduces the chance you'll be hit by spells by 1/2/3%.
Sanctified Crusader (Retribution) renamed Sanctified Seals, which now increases your chance to critically hit with all spells and melee attacks by 1/2/3% and reduces the chance your Seals will be dispelled by 33/66/100%.
Vengeance (Retribution) duration increased from 15 to 30 seconds.
Vindication (Retribution) frequency and duration increased and now reduces all attributes by 5/10/15%, not just Strength and Agility.

Various Retribution buffs that seem aimed at PvP for some reason. I'm sure that it will help there, but threat reduction seems a curious omission, given that DPS warriors and Enhancement Shamans got extra threat reduction.

Weapon Expertise (Protection) renamed Combat Expertise, now increases expertise by 1/2/3/4/5 and total Stamina by 2/4/6/8/10%.

Solid change. I predict that the standard Protection build will drop Reckoning for Weapon Expertise. As well, with the changes to Improved Seal of the Crusader and Pursuit of Justice, the new challenge will be bleeding enough points from Protection to fill out Retribution.

Corpses that belong to someone in your party, but that you cannot loot will say in the corpse mouseover who has loot rights on that corpse. This will help skinners who want to know who to talk to in order to skin their corpse, as well as master looters when special loot drops on a normal monster. Everyone will then see that there is a monster that the master looter has loot rights on.

It comes late, but no raid shall ever be faced again with an unlooted Core Hound. Let us mourn the passing of the defining experience of Molten Core: "Loot the Hound!"

Lowered the fireball damage of Defias Pillagers.

Their unholy reign of terror has finally come to an end.

Elite mobs outside of pre-Burning Crusade dungeons have been changed to non-elite.

The burning question of 2.3: Has Hogger been nerfed?

Other than that there's a lot of UI cleanup changes, new low level content, a new 10-man, and guild banks. There's also some crazy Arms/Fury warrior changes which I don't really understand. All in all, a very full content patch. I don't think PvE Retribution paladins are going to be too happy, but it looks fairly decent otherwise.

Time to Max Level

In patch 2.3, Blizzard is reducing the amount of experience required to level by 15% (for levels 20-60). Most people are happy about the change, though there are some people (such as Tobold) who questioning if this devalues the existing levelling game.

I would like to look at it from a sightly different angle. Let's define a concept called Time to Max Level. It's basically the amount of play time the average player would have to spend for her first character to reach the level cap.

Here's my question:

Should Time to Max Level depend on the value of the max level?

I think that it should not, that Time to Max Level should be independent of the numerical value of the max level. That there's a sweet spot, probably around 8 months, where someone who is new to the game and plays a couple of hours a week can eventually reach the cap. Reaching the cap is a major milestone, and should be in reach of every player. If that basic goal seems out of reach, it's very discouraging.

When WoW first came out, many reviews praised it for being easy for even casual players to hit the level cap. The actual number of the cap didn't matter, only that people could reach it.

But if it takes 8 months to reach 60, and 4 months to go from 60-70, that's 12 months to reach the max level. And when the next expansion comes out, that's another 4 months. Soon it will be impossible for a new player to reach the max level before the next expansion comes out.

Of course, if you add more levels, you need to make the levelling time faster for the earlier levels in order to keep Time to Max Level constant. So I think that Blizzard is on the right track with speeding up 20-60 levelling. I hope they continue this trend with the next expansion, speeding up 60-70, and trying to keep hitting the level cap within the reach of even the most casual players.

Choosing Your Battles

With the removal of attunements, there is a point where a T4 raiding guild is faced with multiple possible paths for progression. Many guilds, in my opinion, are choosing a path which looks deceptively easy, but has a lot of negative repercussions.

After a guild kills Gruul, there are three or four possible choices for the next boss to focus on: Magtheridon, Hydross/Lurker in Serpentshrine Cavern, and Void Reaver in Tempest Keep. Of these bosses, Void Reaver is the easiest, and Magtheridon is probably the hardest. Given that Void Reaver drops T5 shoulders, a lot of guilds choose to tackle him after Gruul. I believe that this is a mistake, which ends up hurting the guild progression in the long run.

Casual raiding guilds, especially those on a limited schedule, need to organize their schedule for progression. There are three competing constraints that a raiding guild needs to follow:

1. Maximize the time spent on Progression instances.
2. Minimize the time spent on Farming instances.
3. Maximize the number of epics gained from the Farming instances.

You need to spend time on boss fights to learn them. The more time you spend on a fight, the better your progess is. But you still need to farm a beaten instance for gear in order to improve your raid. Spend too much time farming, and you won't get the experience on fights that you need to beat them. Spend too little time farming, and your raid won't improve gear-wise. (Not to mention that your raid will get discouraged from the lack of loot.)

The key to sustainable progression lies in how you manage your farming time.

So, keeping this in mind, let's look at the three options again. What happens after you put the target on farm?

If you kill Void Reaver or Lurker/Hydross first, your farming instance is Gruul's Lair. You'll get about 7 epics for your farm night, and you'll probably have to add Karazhan runs to supplement the extra gear. Or you'll end up working on SSC, but farming Gruul's Lair and Void Reaver, which takes a fair bit of time and nets 10 epics.

On the other hand, if you tackle Magtheridon first, it may take a bit longer to learn the fight, but once he's down you have a farm night of Gruul's Lair + Magtheridon, which is very fast and gives 12 epics. This allows you to give the maximum amount of time to the next raid instance.

In fact, I believe that a guild should ignore Void Reaver until SSC is complete and becomes your farm raid. Even though you can kill him earlier, going after Void Reaver earlier is non-optimal for the three constraints listed above.

In my opinion, raid progression should go in the following order:

1. Karazhan
2. High King Maulgar/Gruul/Magtheridon
3. Serpentshrine Cavern
4. Tempest Keep
5. Mount Hyjal
6. Black Temple

You should concentrate on one instance, and farm only the instance behind it. As you move down, you drop the oldest instance in favor of farming the next instance. For example, once you've killed Magtheridon, move into Serpentshrine Cavern and drop Karazhan. Once you've killed Lady Vashj, move into Tempest Keep and drop High King Maulgar/Gruul/Magtheridon.

Note that this list is not organized in order of boss difficulty. The objective here is not to cherry pick bosses as you are able to, but to optimize for the three constraints. Maximize progression time. Minimize farming time. Maximize loot from farming.

I believe that is the best recipe for long term success.

Blizzard's Secret Weapon

I don't really understand game companies. They say a lot about copying Blizzard, but then they never do. There has been one constant about Blizzard games ever since the first Warcraft: Odds are the game will run on your machine.

And this is crucial. If your machine can't run the game, why would you buy it? Blizzard constantly sets the system requirements low. They make their games available for Macs. They deliberately stylize their art so that it still looks good on low end machines.

Warcraft, Diablo, Starcraft. Time and time again, Blizzard pulls the same trick, and no one else seems to learn.

And yet other companies do not seem to realize this at all. If you can't run the game, you won't buy the game. I play on a laptop, with a built-in video card. No nVidia, no ATi. And yet WoW runs, looks halfway decent, and thus I give Blizzard my money. I'm not going to go spend a couple thousand dollars just to play your game.

It's not the only reason Blizzard is successful, but I think it's a major one.

The 10-man to 25-man Transition

I used to believe that Blizzard made a mistake by starting raiding with a 10-man and then forcing guilds to move to a 25-man model. I thought that running two Kara groups and having to increase in size would be too much work and organization for most guilds, and would prevent the majority of guilds from really experiencing raid content.

I think I was wrong.

The data that has forced me to change my mind comes from WowJutsu. WowJutsu is an automated ranking site that crawls through the Armory. It notes when new loot from raids appears on characters and uses that to determine which guilds have killed which bosses. It's not perfect, but it is fairly accurate for the most part.

On the side, they have an automated list showing what percentage of raiding guilds have killed each boss. For example, only 3.37% of raid guilds have killed a boss in Black Temple. By comparing the number of guilds on two bosses that come right after each other in progression, we can see which bosses guilds are "stuck" on.

When examining the 10 to 25-man transition, we look at the end bosses of Karazhan and the first boss of Gruul's Lair, High King Maulgar. First, we make an assumption:

Assumption 1: If your guild has killed Maulgar, your guild has killed Nightbane.

This is a pretty reasonable assumption to make, in my opinion. From WowJutsu, we see that 74.51% of all raid guilds have beaten Nightbane, and 72.68% of all raid guilds have beaten High King Maulgar. This means that the vast majority of guilds who beat Nightbane go on to beat High King Maulgar. That they are able to overcome organizational challenge of getting 25 raiders. The conversion rate is a whopping 97.5%.

But maybe the assumption is wrong. Maybe there's a number of guilds who have killed HKM, but not Nightbane, and that's skewing our results. So let's soften it to:

Assumption 2: If your guild has killed Maulgar, your guild has killed Prince Malchezzar.

Honestly, if your guild has killed HKM, there is zero excuse for Prince Malchezzar to still be alive. Now we see that 88.88% of guilds have killed Prince Malchezzar. Again, the majority of guilds who beat Malchezzar go on to beat HKM. The conversion rate here is 81.8%. That's lower, but it's still very reasonable. 80% of all raiding guilds are able to navigate the transition from 10-man to 25-man.

I think that this is a reasonable result. It's not perfect, but between the Nightbane and Prince Malchezzar numbers, it's evidence that going from a 10-man to 25-mans was not a mistake, and the transition is within the capabilities of most guilds.

Respawns and my Guild

After some thought, I think I might hate trash respawns because they are disproportionately affecting my guild.

My guild raids 3 days a week, for three hours a night, from 6:30 to 9:30. We can go longer, but there are people who have to leave at 9:30, so we have to do swap-outs.

Most trash now respawns on a 2-hour timer. That means that trash respawns in our third hour of raiding. So we're always faced with the choice of reclearing trash and extending the raid to get more attempts in; or calling the raid early. We very rarely get to end the raid on time.

If trash respawned on a 4-hour timer, we would almost never see it respawn, and thus I would not really care about respawns. Or if we raided for four hours a night, it would be an inconvience, but a relatively minor one as we could reclear and get in several more attempts before ending on time.

Is a three hour raid window unusual? I don't think so. I think it's a very natural slice of time for a more casual guild to schedule a raid. Unfortunately, it just happens to mesh badly with 2-hour trash respawns.

My Gear Philosophy

One activity that I find very interesting is the making of gear lists. You see people making lists of their ideal gear, and then running instances over and over until they get the exact gear that they want.

This is something that I don't do. Mostly because Lady Chance and I have an understanding: if I want an item, it will not drop.

The only items that I have ever really wanted was the paladin Tier 2, Judgement Armor. I was in a guild that cleared Blackwing Lair. Yet I entered TBC with only one of the eight pieces (the gloves, I believe). I never got my helm to drop from Onyxia. I lost the roll for the legs to a paladin wearing a necklace from Scarlet Monastery.

So I follow a different philosophy: If you do stuff, loot will drop. Do a variety of instances, and upgrade whenever possible. Even if the item is not the "ideal" item for that slot, take it if it is better than your current gear. Spend your DKP freely, and do not hoard it for the perfect item. As long as you keep doing instances, things will work out. Work on all your sets at the same time. If you are Holy, and a good Ret piece drops, spend DKP on it.

Of course, show some courtesy to your fellow players. If something is off-set for you, and main-set for someone else, let them have it.

As long as you keep doing stuff, loot will come. I don't think it's worthwhile to worry about what the "absolute" best piece of gear for the slot.

About the only exception to this philosophy is crafted gear. It's worthwhile to look over the crafted gear in the game, and see if there are any pieces there worth working towards. But this is because crafted gear is not random.

So that's my philosophy. Don't sweat the "ideal" drops, and continuously upgrade. Eventually you'll end up with decent gear.

Seeking Divination in Retribution Changes

So far, Blizzard has announced the following changes for the paladin class:

• Mana cost for Exorcism, Holy Wrath, and Hammer of Wrath lowered
• Vengeance duration increased to 30 seconds
• Improved Seal of Crusader benefits put into base spell, talent benefits replaced with those of Sancitified Crusader
• Sanctified Crusader renamed to Sanctified Seals, which increases chance to critically hit with all spells and melee attacks by 1/2/3% and reduces the chance your Seals will be dispelled by 33/66/100%
• Crusader Strike cooldown reduced to 6 seconds
• Vindication frequency and duration increased and reduces all attributes by 5/10/15%
• Pursuit of Justice is now 3 ranks and increases movement speed by 5/10/15% and reduces the chance to be hit by spells by 1/2/3%.

These changes are interesting. First, the change to Vengeance means that a lower crit percentage will be required to maintain perma-Vengeance, and that Vengeance can be maintained even on fights which require a little running.

The Vindication, Crusader Strike, Pursuit of Justice, and Sanctified Seals changes are significant buffs to PvP Retribution paladins.

The change to Improved Seal of the Crusader is interesting. It takes the one major raid buff that Ret paladins have and puts it in reach for Holy or Prot paladins to pick up.

However, the glaring omission is threat reduction. Right now, PvE Retribution paladin DPS is limited more by threat than anything else. Without a threat reduction mechanic of some sort, these changes will not increase Ret paladin DPS.

However, these changes do open the door to a potentially more interesting possibility.

Disclaimer: This is complete speculation, and probably isn't correct.

Lets look at the breakdown of Retribution DPS. Assume that the paladin does 100 points of damage and is at the threat limit. From my experiences, the damage breaks down as follows:

- 55 points from Auto-attack
- 18 points from Crusader Strike
- 18 points from Seal of Command
- 9 points from Judgement of Command

Now, the change to Crusader Strike means that Crusader Strike damage will jump from 18 points to 30 points. But the paladin is still threat-capped at 100 points. So the new breakdown will look like:

- 55 points from Auto-attack
- 27 points from Crusader Strike
- 18 points from Seal of Command

What does this mean? It meanst that the paladin no longer needs to Judge Command.

This has two important ramifications:

1. You can use Seal of Command (Rank 1). Combined with no judging, This means Retribution DPS becomes very mana-efficient when threat-capped.

2. 100% of your damage scales with Attack Power. Retribution does not need Spell Damage anymore.

So what should Blizzard do with all that spell damage on Retribution? You could add extra Strength, but you're already threat-capped. Instead, you could replace it with straight +healing. Retribution gear would feature Str, Sta, Int, and +healing.(The fact that +healing now gives a little boost in spell damage only makes this option better.)

So now we have a mana-efficient melee character, with a decent amount of +healing, and who is expected to have to hold back DPS because of threat issues. Add to that the fact that Vengeance now lasts twice as long. This allows the paladin to break off DPS and toss a heal without Vengeance falling off, while staying near the threat cap.

Perhaps this is Blizzard's latest attempt at creating a paladin who melees and heals.

Crazy? Maybe. Reality? Probably not. Madness? Sparta. Worth trying? Definitely.

Retribution using Seal of the Crusader?

A reader writes in:

I have heard a lot of outcry for some sort of heal-per-dmg component to the ret paladin, as some people see that all we bring is an extra 3% crit to the raid (which in my opinion is invaluable depending on your raid group). I however am in the process of purchasing my Khorium Champion, and then the mats for a Battlemaster enchant.

I also plan on using a modified physical damage build with seal of the crusader ALWAYS on to get as many procs from the weapon, the enchant, and of course the wisdom and light that I can keep indefinitely judged on mob from any other paladins in the group. the build I have right now is linked here. I was wondering what you thought about it. I have aura mastery to benefit caster dps who stay at their max ranges from Sanctity Aura. I was wondering where you think those last few talent points should be allotted to.

I realize the nerf to my possible damage output by using a less than 3.6 speed weapon and not using Seal of Command, but I feel like those are tradeoffs I would gladly take to see the amounts of stacking heals from procs, and judged light, and mana recieved from judged wisdom.

I don't really think that this is a good idea. The problem is that you give up a *lot* of damage by not using Seal of Command. As well, SotC does not improve as you get better gear, while SoC does, so as time goes by you are giving up more and more damage.

The trade-off is something like losing 30% of your damage for extra Light, Wisdom, and Battlemaster procs. If it was a smaller number, like say 5% or less, then it might be worth experimenting with. But something like 30% is way too high to lose.

If you take a DPS slot in a raid, your first priority is to provide massive amounts of damage. Paladins already do lower DPS than other classes, and what you propose would lower that still further.

What this type of playstyle is really good for is grinding or farming. Here you can use the extra procs from Wisdom/Light to keep your mana/health up and reduce downtime.

If you have a slow green or blue 2H, try using both these strategies on some mobs with a damage meter enabled. (People say that you can use the Deathstalker in Shadowfang Keep, I've never tried this.) SotC will add the same amount of damage to a slow weapon as it will to a fast weapon. So you can see how much DPS you do with SotC vs SoC, and you can see if the trade-off is worthwhile. Just keep in mind that the gap between the two will keep growing as you get better gear.

Then you can make a decision on whether to invest in the sword and the enchant, or if there are better weapons out there.

Utility is good, but in the end you will live or die by the DPS you put out. For a DPS player--which is what a Ret paladin aspires to be--maximizing DPS is more important than maximizing utility.

Those are my thoughts, but my advice is to try them both out (before buying the expensive weapon!). It could be that I am wrong, and the difference between the two is much closer than I think it is.

Patch 2.2 First Impressions

Ahh, patch day raiding. So much troubles. My raid UI was completely messed up with groups being stuck in the middle of the screen. If you have that problem, type /reloadui until you can click on them, then close them immediately. After doing that several times, things got cleaned up nicely.

Also, my UI scale seems off. Everything seems very slightly larger, and things are not fitting together quite perfectly.

I think the new sound engine is working well. Everything seems to sound a little bit better to me, and the game performed slightly better. As well, there are new sounds scattered about. I haven't tried the Voice Chat yet.

The buff changes are extremely nice. 10 or 30 minute buffs are great. Also, the changes to pet buffing are really nice. If you're wondering how pet buffing with greater blessings works, it goes like this:

1. Hunter pets share blessings with Warriors. Buffing a warrior will hit all the warriors and hunter pets. The jokes just write themselves.

2. Warlock pets share blessings with Warlocks. Buffing a warlock will hit all the warlocks and their pets. The only exception is a phase-shifted imp. If the imp is phase-shifted, it will not receive the buff.

This is a great change, as it means that the pets get buffed without any extra effort on the part of the paladin.

The nerf to Blessing of Sacrifice was muted. The cooldown was reduced to 30s, which is the duration of the spell. So that means you can still use it in PvE on tanks. It is still useful in PvP, but it can be countered by Purge.

I haven't tried out the new Seal of Vengeance yet, so I can't comment on it.

Other than that, the patch looks pretty decent. Many people have commented that it's not worthy of being a "full" patch, as it doesn't have a lot of new content. However, I think introducing a new sound engine is a big enough change that it warrants its own patch.

Raids and Trash Respawns

Questionc, in a comment to a previous post, writes:

The way you describe the trash spawn, it doesn't really sound any different from respawns used in any other part of the game... as an instance time limit. A good example of this is Scarlet Monastery, where failure is taking so long that you have to fight to get out of the instance.

And honestly, it's a good gentle mechanic. It's fair for them to put a time limit, and much nicer than just kicking you out of the dungeon if you take too long.

The problem with this is that there is a fundamental difference in expectations between raid instances and 5-man instances.

When you go into a 5-man instance, you expect to clear it, even if it is your first time going to that instance. You may wipe once or twice, but the general expectation is that you will finish that instance. In this case, an instance time limit is a good idea. If you hit the trash respawn, it's a sign that something is wrong, and perhaps it might be a better idea to try again later, maybe with a different group or after gearing up a bit more. If you wipe enough that trash respawns, it is unlikely that your group will successfully complete the instance.

In contrast, in a raid boss fight, you expect to wipe a lot. That the fight is intricate enough that learning and mastering it will take multiple hours. It took us two or three evenings to refine our strategy and master The Lurker Below, and he's generally considered an easy boss in SSC.

Respawns, rather than being a time limit, are interruptions in the learning process. As well, they are interruptions which eat up a lot of valuable time. If you raid from 6-9pm, and you get respawns at 8:30, you may as well call the raid. That means you lost half an hour of learning time, which is a lot for a casual guild.

Respawns are annoying because they make you waste time. Time is the one thing that casuals do not have a lot of. It takes a lot of coordination and administration to gather the people necessary for a raid, and some of that work gets tossed away because Blizzard decided to have respawns.

If we didn't have respawns, we could make better use of the time we have available, we could accomplish more. Probably not a whole lot more, but still. Trash respawns are obvious busy-work. We've already proven that we can defeat them once, why do we have to go through it again? We want to focus on the boss, why not let us focus on the boss?

The point is that respawns are unnecessary. Different guilds have different time constraints. Given that learning bosses is an activity which requires multiple hours, it would be best if guilds could raid to match their own constraints, rather than having to deal with frustrating, artificial constraints as well.

As for the idea that respawns are needed to slow guilds down, I don't think that is true. Respawns don't stop the elite guilds. Multiple guilds have already completed the raid content in WoW. Why slow down the non-elite guilds to an extra degree? Solid and demanding boss fights will keep a damper on progress.

I guess it boils down to the fact that I really don't like "artificial" barriers to content. The content itself should provide the challenge. The challenge in raiding is mastering the boss fights, not clearing the respawned trash that you've already beaten once that evening.

(Which is not to say that there should be no trash. Trash provides little "mini-challenges" and makes the instance feel alive. But once the challenge has been met, that's the end of it, and the trash should stay dead.)

Priests are the Hybrids of Healing

I had an amusing thought about healing Priests in WoW.

Traditionally, the problem with hybrids is that while they can do multiple things, they can't do them as well as a pure class. You can tank, heal, or DPS, but not as good as a pure tank, a pure healer, or a pure DPS. And when putting together a raid, rather than taking two hybrids, you get better performance by taking 2 different pure classes.

If you look at the healing classes, you can see the same pattern emerging. Paladins are the best single-target healers in the game. Druids are the masters of heal-over-time spells. With Chain Heal, Shamans are number one when it comes to healing splash damage.

Priests can do all these things. They can direct heal, they have a solid HoT, they have decent splash heal tools. But they aren't the best in any one category. They're second-best in all 3.

Priests are the hybrids of healing. And thus they suffer from the traditional problems of a hybrid class.

The Lurker Below

We killed The Lurker Below in Serpentshrine Cavern last night. It's an interesting fight. Basically, Lurker is a giant fish and you fight him on a couple of islands. He does a "spout" which is basically a beam of death. You have to dive underwater when he spouts to avoid it. If you kill all the trash, the water around Lurker is superheated, and does 500 damage every couple of seconds. If you don't kill the trash, the water has these crazy fish which will kill you very fast. There's also a phase with naga adds. It's a control fight more than a burn fight.

I really hate trash respawns though. The trash respawned after a few attempts, while we were still on Lurker's island. So we did this very complicated warlock summoning chain to get back to the platforms where the trash were and killed them again before finally downing Lurker.

Seriously, Blizzard, trash respawns are a terrible mechanic. Just let us work on the boss in peace and at our own pace. Heck, because of respawns we stretched the raid out an extra hour, just because we were so close. If the trash hadn't respawned, we could have killed Lurker and ended the raid on time.

Most guilds have their time constrained by outside, non-game factors. Adding extra time constraints in-game is unnecessary. The elite guilds who don't have outside time restrictions don't really care about trash respawns, and it's been shown to have very little impact on them. So why punish the non-elite guilds like this?

Theorycraft vs Trial-and-Error

In response to the previous post, Jason comments:

Hmm what this is showing me is that DPS actually takes a lot more brains and initiative to play well. More than it does to play a tank or healer well. As tank and healer might have results slapped in front of them, so they can correct easily.

The DPS game is more subtle and requires keener observations and more diligent research.

This is not quite true.

(As an aside, I don't really understand why people care if DPS or healing is innately harder or easier. I care if one is unnecessarily harder.)

There are generally 3 ways that people learn to play:

1. Theorycrafting. This means looking at the math behind the game, and extrapolating tactics based on the math.

2. Trial and error. The player tries something new, sees if it works better than the old way, and decides whether to use it or not.

3. Appeal to authority. Get someone who is better to tell you what to do.

The third one inevitably chains back to the first two, so we'll discount it for now.

Of the first two, most people learn through trial and error. As they get new abilities, they try them out, and based on their experiences they use the ability or not.

A few people, though, are theorycrafters. They build mathematical models, and the models imply that certain abilities should be better than others. They test out the abilities and use the results to improve the model.

Certain activities are easier to learn or improve with different strategies. For example, crowd control is generally learned through trial and error. The difference between a good trapper and a poor one is more a matter of practice than theorycraft. Healing is very similar. Theorycraft helps, but the better healers tend to be the ones who heal a lot.

Trial and error requires feedback. Test something, see the result, incorporate the change. If you can't see the result, or if the result is hard to understand, you can't use trial and error to learn something.

So raid DPS is hard to improve if you use trial and error, like most people do. However, doing good raid DPS is relatively simple from a theorycraft point of view. Where the theorycrafters go into their long discussions and crazy math is determining the optimal raid DPS. But you don't need optimal DPS to start with, you just need good DPS.

Here's a general algorithm for doing high DPS:

1. Rank your spells from highest DPS to lowest DPS.
2. Cast the highest DPS spell.
3. If you cannot cast the highest DPS spell again (because of a cooldown), cast the next highest.
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3, going down the list as necessary.

It seems very simple, but following this will provide you with a decent spell rotation for every class. It won't be the optimum rotation, and you might have to drop a spell because it costs too much mana, or does too much threat, or has a really short range. The work comes in ranking your spells correctly. (The main trick here is that when calculating DPS for a non-burst fight, you only look at the cast-time of the spell, not the lifetime of the spell. For direct damage they're the same thing, but not for DoTs.)

This is a good starting algorithm to develop a rotation. After this, you have to consider "enablers" such as Mangle, or Improved Scorch. These are spells which have a lower DPS, but improve spells above them on the DPS chart. Then you have to see if the DPS lost while casting the enabler is made up by the gain on the rest.

And then after that, you have to consider mana costs, which is where it gets complex. But getting a decent DPS rotation is not very hard from a theorycraft point of view. (Getting the single best rotation for a given fight is where the fun lies.)

A very simple example is the Frost mage rotation. If you ranked the spells, it would probably look something like:

1. Summon Water Elemental (3 min/45s cooldown)
2. Ice Lance (against a frozen target)
3. Frostbolt
4. Fireball
5. Ice Lance (against a non-frozen target)

So when looking at the DPS rotation, you go Summon Water Elemental first. Then you can't cast Summon Water Elemental again, so you move down the chart. The boss isn't frozen, so you move down to Frostbolt. You can cast Frostbolt again and again, so you don't go further down the chart. When Summon Water Elemental comes off cool-down, you cast it again.

That's a relatively simple rotation (in the game you should also Cold Snap to reduce the cooldown on the elemental). But the basic principles apply to every class.

So that was a really long post, but it essentially boils down to: raid DPS is easier from a theorycraft point of view; healing is easier from a trial and error point of view; and tanking is a bit of a mixture of the two. The problem is that the majority of people learn using trial and error, not theorycraft.

A Perfect Example of Improving DPS

BigRedKitty posted a perfect example of what I was talking about in the last two posts.

A hunter named Jeor has been trying to improve his DPS. His complaint:

So again I have to ask, what am I doing wrong? what is the secret that no one is telling me? is it my shot rotation? something about my build or gear? is there a special macro that no one is telling me about?

The key element here is that Jeor doesn't know what he's doing wrong. He's not stupid or unwilling to improve. However, the game has not provided him with any of the feedback he needs in order to improve.

BRK talks to him, tightens up his spec (Beastmaster), changes his shot rotation, and does a little re-gemming, and the results are staggering. Jeor provided WWS parses for Gruul attempts for the week before his tweaking and the week after. He jumps from 451 DPS to 964 DPS, a gain of over 500 DPS!

Look at Jeor's first week shot mix. Not using Steady Shot enough? Check. Missing shots? Check. Not using Kill Command? Check. The same hunter mistakes, again and again.

Compare to his shot mix the next week. Now that's acceptable DPS.

BRK's post was very useful precisely because of the WWS parses, only 1 week apart. Feedback improves your play, and DPS players don't get feedback from the game, so they have to go outside it (to BRK in this case) in order to get the feedback they need to improve.

Response to Comments on Bad DPS

(See the previous post.)

First off, believing that "most people are dumb" is an adolescent fantasy. Most people are average and want to get better. They just don't know how. What works in one area doesn't work in another area, and that dissonance causes them problems.

If you're a guild working on T4 content, take a WoW Web Stats log of your raid. Or take a look at one of the numerous WWS posts on the Raid and Dungeons forums. Over and over you will see the same mistakes. And it's not even "mistakes" like frost vs fire.

You'll see:
- Hunters not using Steady Shot
- Hunters missing shots
- Rogues using Shiv instead of Sinister Strike/Backstab
- Dagger rogues using Sinister Strike
- Rogues missing attacks
- Rogues using Eviscerate instead of Slice and Dice/Rupture
- Warlocks not keeping DoTs up
- Cat Druids not using Shred
- Mages missing spells
- Mages using many different spells instead of their best spells
- Shadow Priests not keeping DoTs up

You'll see the same mistakes, again and again. And at some point, you have to wonder if there's a reason that all these different people are making the same mistake, and how things could be changed to keep them from making such systemic mistakes.

Also, I'm not saying that healers and tanks are perfect. It's just that our mistakes tend to have immediate consequences, and thus we try to correct them on the very next attempt.

You do occasionally see systemic tank and healer mistakes. Tree Druids who don't stack Lifeblooms, Priests who spam Flash Heal, Prot Warriors who don't Shield Slam.

(The fact that Paladins only have 2 healing spells, one of which is spammed on a tank, makes it pretty hard to have systemic errors. About the only one I can think of is paladins not using Lay On Hands.)

Healer/tank mistakes tend to be of the immediate, tactical variety, such as healing the wrong person, or BoPing a warlock with Moroe's Garrote instead of saving it for a healer/mage. The thing about tactical mistakes is that you realize the mistake quite soon after you make it. That "feedback loop" is there, and that makes it easier to improve.

Why are DPS Players so Bad?

One of the largest problems in early TBC raiding is DPS players. Quite frankly, most DPS players don't seem to know how to do acceptable amounts of damage.

This wasn't an issue in pre-TBC raiding because the early WoW 1.0 raid DPS requirements were abysmally low. It wasn't until you got to AQ40 that DPS had to start performing anywhere near their full potential.

Let's take Gruul the Dragonkiller. If your DPS does an average of 500 DPS, you are looking at a growth 16 kill. If your DPS does an average of 600 DPS, you're looking at a growth 12 kill. Is asking for 500-600 DPS really too much for your DPS players?

If you look at the WoW Raid & Dungeons forums, you'll see a lot of newer guilds posting WoW Web Stats logs, and asking for help. And time and time again, you'll see the response focusing on the DPS players and how they are underperforming. People not packing enough +hit, using a bad spell rotation, using direct damage instead of DoTs.

If it was just a couple of people with problems, we could say that it was an issue with the player. But the scope of the problem is so large that I think it points to systemic faults in WoW.

DPS players have never had to reach 500 DPS before in the game. All solo mobs and quests are killable with much lower DPS. And it has to be this way, otherwise paladins or other low-DPS characters would never be able to kill anything. So for a DPS player, solo mobs die so fast that there is no need to tune her damage to the higher output.

Boss fights are also much longer than regular fights, and that means that Damage-Over-Time effects become more powerful than Direct Damage. A very common mistake is to see rogues using Eviscerate instead of Rupture. But this makes sense in regular play. Most mobs don't survive long enough for Rupture to finish. Instead, using Eviscerate to kill the mob faster is the way to go. The problem is that the rules change when it comes to boss mobs.

Another common mistake is not packing enough hit rating. There's a large jump in misses between level 72 and 73 mobs, especially for spells. Players who don't know about that jump often don't pack enough hit rating. They go for stats like crit, which have proved more useful in regular play.

The other major problem for DPS players is that they don't have enough feedback. They're just pouring damage into a central pool, and it is really hard to tell if your individual contribution is enough. In contrast, healers get immediate feedback. If a healer doesn't heal competently, people die. This forces healers to improve at a much faster rate. Similarly for tanks, if a mob gets away, or if DPS is consistently pulling off the tank, the tank knows she needs to improve.

So far, the common theme is that regular play, including 5-man instancing, does not prepare DPS players for raid boss fights. And when you combine that with the lack of feedback during boss fights, it's no wonder that DPS players are having problems, especially when first getting into raiding.

The only real way to improve DPS players currently is out-of-game research and theorycrafting. It would be better if there was a more organic, in-game way, to prepare DPS for raiding.

Time Management Article

Ciderhelm posted a superb article on the TankSpot forums: Time Management for Raiding Guilds.

For most people, thinking of the top tier of raiding guilds conjures thoughts of people who do nothing but play a computer game in a dark room somewhere. In fact, this is often not the case -- time for career, family, and friends are still very much a part of their lives.

The key is in time management.

It's very well written, and is very insightful. It also has tips on how a lower tier guild can take advantage of some of the time management techniques to improve their own progress.

Money Quote:

What players do not understand is how real a factor time is on the guild welfare as well as their own. Spending time gearing up for new content is almost never as well spent as time actually working on that content. This is especially true in the Burning Crusade, where stat differences and gear progression between Karazhan and Black Temple is relatively small; keep in mind that Nihilum cleared through Black Temple just 3 months after raiding began. Gear is good, but it is not key. [Emphasis mine]

Mages and AoE

If mages are supposed to be the kings of AoE damage, why do we always use warlocks in fights which require AoE?

Take Illhoof, for example. The standard strategy is to have a warlock spamming Seed of Corruption on Illhoof to take out the imps. But why not use a mage? Does it just come down to the fact that the warlock will be a lot easier to heal?

It seems a bit odd. If mages are supposed to be the best at AoE, they should be the first choice for fights which require AoE.

More Healing Macros

I made and tested a couple of new macros tonight. I find that I am not very good about using short-cooldown trinkets and spells, and so I decided to try and come up with macros to use these automatically.

Holy Light Macro

#showtooltip Holy Light
/cast Divine Favor
/stopcasting
/cast Divine Illumination
/stopcasting
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
/cast Holy Light

This macro attempts to cast Holy Light(Rank 11) with both Divine Favor and Divine Illumination. I'm a Flash of Light spammer, so when I need to pull out HL11, it's usually worthwhile to pop both these cooldowns.

Flash of Light Macro

#showtooltip Flash of Light
/use 13
/use 14
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
/castsequence reset=10 Holy Light(Rank 5), Flash of Light, Flash of Light, Flash of Light, Flash of Light, Flash of Light

This macro attempts to pop both my trinkets whenever I cast my Flash of Light. This ensures that I get maximum usage out of my trinkets. The castsequence is so that HL5 keeps Light's Grace up fairly often.

You can adapt this macro so it works with any spell you spam (Fireball, Sinister Strike, etc.):

#showtooltip spell
/use 13
/use 14
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
/cast spell

If you use these macros, you should go into Sound Options and uncheck Enable Error Speech. Otherwise it will drive you mad. Note that text error messages are cleared before you cast the actual spell. This is so you can see "Out of Range" or other useful errors.