Another System for Raid Ids

Jeremy had a very interesting idea in a comment to the last post:

I just had an epiphany: Blizzard is building a Raid Finder for a mid-Cataclysm patch.

They just announced that raid IDs will be more forgiving: if your raid ID has killed the same set of bosses as another raid ID, you can switch over to the other raid ID.

Now add a Raid Finder that matches you with another group of players that all have a compatible raid ID. You join a raid, do your best, kill a few bosses, and then tomorrow, you log on again and join a different group that has the same set of bosses downed. It doesn't matter whether it's the same group as yesterday, as long as they've made the same amount of progress.

And there you have it: no more distinction between transient and extended content. Why should there be? Raiding is not rocket science, and the biggest barrier is that it's hard to find a regular group of people who are all online at the same time as you. Right now, nobody wants to PUG, because you'll just get locked to a dungeon with one boss down, and never see that group again. But with this feature, you can get a new group every day, and you can raid whenever you have the time for it. Brilliant!

(And Blizzard, if you're not working on this feature, you should be. It will actually make raiding feasible for all the players who are interested in and capable of raiding, but can't carve out regular weekly times for a guild raid.)

A system that implemented this isn't that hard to conceptualize (at least theoretically, real code always makes easy ideas hard). Right now, raid instances have an existence in the world. My character is tied to this specific raid instance, which exists even when my character is not online. And this has consequences. In the worst case, the raid id can be "stolen", and the remainder of the raid completed by another group, leaving most of the people in first group out in the cold.

But suppose a player's raid id was simple bit field, with 1 representing a live boss, and 0 representing a dead boss. So a player's TotC¹ id could be 00011, saying that they've killed the first three bosses, but Twin Valks and Anub are still alive.

For any given group of players, it becomes trivial to find the common set of bosses still alive. Simply bitwise-AND the raid ids together, and you can use the resulting mask to populate an instance with the bosses that no one has killed.

For example, Player 1 kills Beasts and Faction Champs (raid id 01011), and player 2 has killed Jaraxxus, Faction Champs, and Twin Valks (raid id 10001). 01011 ∧ 10001 = 00001, giving you an instance with only Anub'arak active. You can just keep bit-wise ANDing with all the players in the raid.

You can put in checks if you don't want early bosses to be alive and later bosses dead. Or you might not bother. After all, does it really matter if someone with Lich King dead gets to knock off Marrowgar the day after?

The key here is that there is no logical reason the specific raid instance needs to persist as its own entity. It can be generated at raid time so long as you know the set of bosses to populate the instance with. And since the bit fields are connected to the experiences of the individual players that week, you can easily generate the correct set of bosses for any given group of people.

You can also use the mask to determine whether to deny a new addition to the raid entry into the instance. If the current raid mask AND the new player's raid id is not equal to the mask, she cannot enter.

Even a Raid Finder wouldn't be that complicated to implement. The number of 1's in the result mask would make a strong foundation for the fitness function of the grouping algorithm. You want to group people such that they get an instance with as many bosses active as possible.

The hardest part, in my mind, would be making sure that an individual's raid id gets properly updated in each fight. You'd have to account for people intentionally disconnecting and joining at points in the fight in order to evade being tagged with the kill.

But as Jeremy points out, such a system would change raiding from being de jure extended content into transient content. It might still be de facto extended content, simply because a consistent group would be the best path to success. But it would put a lot less blocks in the way of individuals wanting to raid in a transient fashion, while still preserving the rule that "you can kill a boss a maximum of once per week".

1. I'm using TotC because I don't want to write out 12 digit bit fields.

Group Content and Group Creation

First, let us stipulate that there are two types of group content: transient; and extended.

Transient group content is content that is expected to be completed in a single session of play. The group is formed, the group completes the content, and then the group is disbanded. In WoW, group quests, battlegrounds, and 5-man dungeons are transient group content.

Extended group content is content that is expected to be completed over several sessions of play, and where the group is composed (more or less) of the same individuals throughout. In WoW, raids and PvP arena are extended group content.

Lately, I've come to the conclusion that transient group content is crippled without automatic group creation.

I've been playing a game (Age of Conan) which doesn't have a Dungeon Finder for groups. You have use a Looking For Groups channel, like in the old days. And it is terrible. It literally takes hours to form a group. I have never appreciated the Dungeon Finder as much as I do now. I remember having a lot of the same issues when I was playing Lord of the Rings Online. In fact, I stopped playing that game because I rolled a group healer and yet I found grouping to be too hard.

As well, because group creation is so hard, people seem to feel free to take advantage of the group with long afks, or generally do their own thing while the rest of the group waits for them. I remember that this used to happen a lot in WoW in the pre-Dungeon Finder days, but has since been eradicated from the game. Whatever the faults of the "gogogo" culture, at least they aren't wasting my time.

Without automatic group creation, the amount of time spent forming the group is excessively long, and makes grouping an unattractive proposition. I think this group creation time is really what keeps people from grouping up, more than any other concern such as rate of experience gain.

Other games have sort of approached this, while still leaving humans in control. For example, Warhammer Online had "open" groups, where you could just join a group instead of needing to be invited. While that was better than the old system, it still isn't as good as a fully automatic system.

It's interesting that the PvP side has always seemed ahead of PvE when it comes to this. Battlegrounds featured automatic group creation long before PvE. Perhaps it is because of a lot of the formative ideas for MMO PvP came from the First-Person Shooters and Real-Time Strategy world, where automatic group creation is the norm. While PvE grouping was stuck with the idea that it was important to let people choose their own groups.

Of course, automatic group creation is probably a bad fit for extended group content, if only because play sessions for the group need to match. In transient content, you know the play session matches because everyone is already online.

But it's also possible that I am wrong about extended content, that I am too used to the old system of making guilds, and I overweight the problems, and underestimate the convenience.

Perhaps an automatic matching system would be a good improvement for extended content. For example, a Guild Finder. Guilds could post what their schedules were like, or what type of guild they were, and players could do the same, and the system would automatically add people to guilds.

I think the bar has been raised for future MMOs. If an MMO has transient group content, it had better have automatic group creation for that content. As well, WoW needs to implement a system for group quests, as that is the last piece of transient content without an automatic group creation system. And group quests are noticeably the hardest content to find a group for.

Ask Coriel: A Holy Paladin AoE Heal Idea?

HolyPally - Barth writes in:

Basically it is obvious that the paladin needs some sort of AoE heal but nothing amazing because you don't want every class to be able to do the same things. You dont want a pally looking exactly like a priest and so on.

So my idea consists of giving paladins a talent in the holy tree which gives them a spell that is activated after receiving holy power from casting healing spells. Once a certain level of holy power is accumulated, then a single AoE spell may be cast.
E.g. Holy Light is cast 3 times then the ability is activated and ready to be cast. Or Flash of Light is cast 5/6 times then the same spell is available for use. By giving pallys the ability to only stack either the FoL buff or the Holy Light buff at one time, limits the spell so that it isn't overpowered. Also considering adding flexibility to the spell and making the FoL use of the spell different from the Holy Light use.

Also in regards to mana consumption you could put an increased mana cost on the spell when it is used with the FoL stacking so that you cant just spam FoL and get a powerful AoE heal equal to the heal gained from using Holy Light at an increased mana cost. Just a quick idea I came up with while I was reading your blog.

It's an interesting idea. However, it might not be "different enough" from Circle of Healing or Wild Growth. Both of those spells have a 6 second cooldown. It would take about 6s to cast 3 Holy Lights or 4-5 Flash of Lights. So in actual game play, it might end up playing just like CoH or WG does now. I'm not sure Blizzard wants to give us something equivalent to CoH.

It's not exactly the same, I know. For one thing, you can't cast the AoE spell at the start of the fight, you have to charge it up. However, I think it would end up being too close to CoH/WG for Blizzard to be comfortable giving something like it to paladins.

Like, if you look at the new AoE spells coming in Cataclysm, the shaman's Healing Rain and the paladin's Healing Hands, both those spells are continuous area-of-effect spells. Thus they will have very different gameplay than CoH/WG, and I think that is what Blizzard is aiming for.

Quest Rewards for Hybrids

This post was, oddly enough, prompted by Age of Conan rather than WoW. But you get a similar situation in WoW as well.

Most hybrids I know maintain multiple sets, even if they have one main spec and one offspec. So what do you do if a single non-repeatable quest gives rewards for both main and offspec?

Obviously most people choose main spec. But what if the main spec upgrade would only be a slight upgrade, and the offspec upgrade is a large upgrade?

One theory is that you should keep your main spec as advanced as possible, even if that hurts your offspec. Another theory is that you should use quests to advance your offspec. Your main spec will get better rewards in instances and group content. After all, it's much easier to get healing items while you are a healer, rather than fight with DPS for DPS items.

(Note that I am only talking about situations where questing would provide roughly equal rewards to instance loot. Like levelling or maybe the Quel'Delar questline.)

The specific incident that started me thinking about it was from Age of Conan. My main character is a level 35-ish Conqueror, which is a 2H or dual-wield class. I'm playing as a 2H Conqueror. There are two group quests in a chain. Both reward good 2-Handers, with the second one being slightly better than the first. But the second quest also offers a choice of a really good 1H, which would be a larger upgrade for that set of mine. Yet, I'm not likely to ever actually use those weapons. The 2H would be used all the time.

Unless, of course, I decided to respec.

Ah well, just getting a group going in Age of Conan is pretty hard, so this might be a non-issue in the end.

Interesting Vote Kick Changes

Zarhym posts:

We have found that most players using the Dungeon Finder don’t use the Vote Kick feature or abandon groups very often. For these players, we are removing the cooldown on voting to kick players from a dungeon party. In contrast, those players who tend to kick players or abandon groups more frequently will notice that the Vote Kick feature maintains its cooldown. The goal here is to make sure players who are generally patient can make use of the Vote Kick feature when they really need it, without giving a more powerful tool to those who try to kick others or abandon dungeon groups very frequently.

This functionality will adjust itself as a player’s behavior while using the Dungeon Finder changes.

This is a really intriguing change. In many ways, it's the first stab in WoW at using a player's past behavior to control the powers available to her.

There's an awful lot of functionality that would be really nice to have, but you can't include in the game because a very small minority would abuse it. Right now, if you can't give something to everyone, you can't give it to anyone.

I think the concept of identifying who exactly that small minority is, and depriving them of those powerful abilities might do a world of good in keeping the community on the straight and narrow.

I wonder if we might end up seeing things like this in world PvP systems, to moderate the corpse campers and gankers.

Oh, and for those people complaining that they "need" to be able to vote-kick freely because all their PuGs are terrible, I've done 40 levels with my lowbie warrior tank in the Dungeon Finder and have only ever kicked one player. Maybe you should look in a mirror for the source of all your troubles.

Top WoW Videos - #1 - Frame of Mind

I know it's been a long while since I posted one of these. I'm probably going to write a post on the AVR mod, and in a lot of ways this video is crucial to my perspective on that issue.

I wonder if Blizzard imagined, when they decided to hold the Ataris Music Video contest, that they would get the best WoW video ever made. The #1 video on my countdown is Slashdance's masterpiece, Frame of Mind.



First off, this is a superb music video. All too often, music videos either ignore the lyrics, or follow them too literally. It's hard to get the right abstraction, and that is something this video does perfectly. It nails the song, but does so in a way that was not intended by the original artists.

In particular, from 1:17 to 1:24, the lines We threw out all convictions/and traded them for substance, video and song match up beautifully. A lot of videos stand alone, or you could imagine the video with a different song. But here the song makes the video better, and the video makes the song better.

In many ways, this is the best machinima because it is not machinima. Most machinima treats the game world as though it was a stage, with the character models being used as the actors. It is not really that different from television or movies, save that CG models are used in place of flesh-and-blood actors. This video is different. It is something that could not be replicated in a movie.

To see what I mean, consider the main character of the video. It is not Sedrin the Night Elf Priest. The protagonist is the player of Sedrin, and we learn about the player as his actions are reflected in the virtual world. This video exists in the boundary space between reality and game, and that's what makes it so compelling.

The video also resonates with a lot of players. Every single player has made a character, and starting off the video with that instantly allows us to identify with the protagonist. As well, there is some tension between loot and friendship, and most players can identify with that and the sentiments expressed in the video.

It is a somewhat common story. A man makes the choice in his youth to pursuit wealth and accomplishment, and with the passage of time realizes that he made the wrong choice. The genius is in translating familiar WoW elements to that story, and using those elements to signal emotion. Using the first few levels (instantly recognizable to anyone who's ever rolled a Night Elf) to stand in for youth, the passage of time reflected as running through the zones as you level up, raid healing as moment of epiphany, the Deserter debuff (particularly elegant in my opinion), and the destroying of gear.

The final concept, and what really puts this video head and shoulders above all other videos, is the idea of the user interface representing the elements that stand between people, that prevent them from connecting at a human level. Somehow, I'm not surprised that a raid healer came up with this metaphor. It succinctly encapsulates the difference between game and world, between real and virtual, and was nothing less than a stroke of brilliance.

Quite simply, Slashdance's Frame of Mind is the best WoW video ever made.

Top Video List:

1. Frame of Mind
2. Here Without You
3. Tales of the Past III
4. The Craft of War: BLIND
5. Big Blue Dress

Ask Coriel: Ret and Prot Macros

John asks:

I’m running up my human female pally after being away from the game for about a year. I had played a warrior tank for a couple of years previous. Can you share some of your macro’s for tanking and retribution if you have any?

I don't really use a lot of macros for Prot and Ret.

For Ret, If you have On-use trinkets, you could bind them to Avenging Wrath.

#showtooltip Avenging Wrath
/use 13
/use 14
/cast Avenging Wrath

The only other macro I use is a castsequence for Divine Storm and
Consecration, to save button space.

/castsequence reset =10 Divine Storm,Consecrate

However, you cannot use this macro if you have 2-pc T10 (Ret).

For Protection, I'm not sure. You could use 2 macros to make the
96969 rotation easy.

#1: /castsequence Judgement of Light,Consecration,Holy Shield
#2: /castsequence Hammer of the Righteous,Shield of Righteousness

Then just alternate between the two buttons for easy-mode threat.
However, you have to be careful of fights where you can't use AoE
threat willy-nilly. For example, Deathbringer Saurfang in ICC. There
it is a bad idea to use Consecration and Hammer of the Righteous when
the Blood Beasts are up.

Any other good Prot/Ret macros out there?

Age of Conan: Rise of the Godslayer

Age of Conan released its first expansion, Rise of the Godslayer, last week. I know I ragged on Age of Conan a lot when it was first released, but I confess that it has rather grown on me. Maybe it is because I now have a system that can actually run the game fairly decently.

The thing about AoC is that they are willing to try new things at a slightly deeper level than most other MMOs. They're not always successful, mind you, but it's good to see them try. For example, the melee classes all use these combo-style attacks, where you attack from a specific direction, and your enemy has shields which shift.

(I actually found a good key-mapping for this. I use the Numpad, with 4,5,6 being the basic directional attacks, and the top and bottom rows being the specials with their respective directions. This system has made a world of a difference in how playable the game is for me.)

Meanwhile, healing is completely non-targeted. It's Heal-over-Time based with a little bit of positional requirements. Targets that are being healed get coloured circles around their feet, allowing the healer to see who is being healing inside the game world, rather than relying on the group interface.

Anyways, you can now accumulate free levels over time, making it an interesting second MMO. If you don't play as much, you can keep your character moving up with the free levels if you want, or spend them on an alt.

What's interesting about Rise of the Godslayer is that it is a "horizontal" expansion, rather than a vertical one. The level cap didn't increase. There is a new race, but you still have to go through Tortage with your new character. So you don't get to see the new stuff until level 20. Of course, my highest level character is 26, so I've never even seen most of the old stuff to compare it too.

It's interesting coming back to a game after a long absence. I'd completely forgotten how to play the Guardian, and so I have been trying different character classes to see if there's one I might like better. I picked the Guardian in a "must-have-pure-tank-or-healer-to-get-into-groups" phase, and I've since rethought that stance. I think it's better to pick a class that you like, and worry about groups later.

(Sidenote: Kalanthes of Ibis is really getting on my nerves.)

Some of the classes have some neat mechanics. For example, Conquerors have a self-buff that lasts an hour or so. But they can also throw down a Banner, which converts the self-buff into an associated group buff for 30s. After the 30s, the banner disappears, and the Conqueror gets her self-buff back.

It's a really interesting system that balances individual ability with the ability to give the group a buff. With the self-buff, the Conquerer can be as powerful as a pure DPS class. Throwing down the banner makes the group stronger, but the Conqueror weaker. If there are multiple Conquerors, one can buff the group, and the others can remain as strong individuals. I thought it was a rather elegant solution to buffing in general.

Age of Conan actually makes a nice complement to World of Warcraft, I think. They're kind of similar, but different enough that you don't automatically compare the two all the time.

Death with the Dungeon Finder

Traditionally, dungeons in WoW were in the hidden corners of the world. Players would get several quests leading them further and further until they finally uncovered the entrance. Deadmines is the classic example of this. This method was pretty good, reinforcing the idea of dungeons being in uncovered areas, while providing a storyline leading up to it. A consequence of this design was that players knew how to get to the dungeon.

With the new Dungeon Finder, this is no longer true. Now, if people die and respawn, they may have no idea where the dungeon is located. Then they have to use the Spirit Healer to respawn, and end up stuck in the middle of nowhere. Alliance has this problem very early, as the first dungeon is Ragefire Chasm, in the middle of Orgrimmar. A lot of people who haven't played Horde have no idea where RFC is.

Imagine trying to find Blackrock Depths if you've never been there before.

Not being able to find your way back to the dungeon is very frustrating. In Cataclysm, word is that Blizzard plans to address this problem by making the player "discover" the dungeon before they can access it through the Dungeon Finder. While this is a reasonable plan, it will cut down on the number of people who can enter a given dungeon at any time, making it harder to find groups.

My solution would be to change how death is handled in dungeons. When you die, the Release Spirit button should be disabled until the group is out of combat. Then if you hit Release, you respawn at the start of the instance. This is a simple mechanism that prevents graveyard-zerging, but removes a lot of the frustration from the run back. As well, it would train people to not release immediately, making it much easier to resurrect them after the fight, instead of having to hunt pixels to find their body.

Fall of the Lich King

It took a bit longer than it really should have, but at long last I have defeated the Lich King.


It was the second kill for my guild. The first was two weeks ago. We've had a rough spring, with a fair bit of turnover, but it looks like we're doing much better now. We're 6/12 in Heroics as well.

I really like the Lich King fight. It's hard, and complex. But it also has a lot of the lore woven through the fight, in a manner that's unique in WoW raid fights so far. Blizzard did a really good job of integrating the lore into the fight.

Not to mention that's a great event for paladins, as it features three paladins or former paladins: Arthas, Tirion, and Bolvar.

About the only element I'd quibble with is Defile. Defile is a touch too hard, at least on normal. As well, the stacking buff doesn't really help with Defile. But then again, you could argue that the LK fight is all about Defile, and once your raid masters that, then the fight is 95% won.

This fight is pretty nerve-wracking for a paladin healer. Heavy tank damage plus high mobility is always dicey.

Last but not least, I like the decision to make the last 10% a free-for-all. It was fun as a healer to throw up Seal of Righteousness and start tossing Judgements, Holy Shock and Hammer of Wrath. We even popped Heroism for style.

Review: The Guild Leader's Handbook

The good people at No Starch Press sent me a review copy of The Guild Leader's Handbook. It's written by Scott F. Andrews, a long time guild leader and WoWInsider columnist.

Preliminary Observations

The Handbook is a medium-sided softcover book, about 190 pages in length. It actually looks pretty classy, with just a coat of arms on the front cover. It's written well, and covers almost all aspects of guild management (save one major exception) in solid detail.

For the most part I agree with most of what Andrews has written, though this review may seem to dwell on the points I disagree with. But those are more interesting, so that's probably where the ink is going to flow. Please keep that in mind.

The Handbook is not WoW-specific, as Andrews does pull in examples from other games such as Eve Online. But it is from a primarily-WoW perspective, if that makes any sense.

Chapter 1 - Forging a Guild Identity

Andrews goes through the process of creating the identity of a guild. He lays it down as a step-by-step process of considering the various options such as size, focus, and the hardcore/casual debate. These are all essential elements that should be thought about before even starting the guild, and it is right that Andrews puts them right upfront. There's a nice flowchart at the end of the chapter that unifies all these elements into a cohesive whole.

I particularly like that Andrews uses the Guild as Business metaphor to start talking about guilds. It's much more useful than Guild as Nation-State.

Chapter 2 - Humble Origins: Foundations of a Successful Guild

In this chapter, Andrews goes through the process of creating the underlying structure starting with the name, policies, and tools like websites, forums, applications, and officers. A good chapter with often ignored concerns.

The real standout here is Andrews' concept of the Guild Policy Triangle made of the concepts Stability, Transparency, and Opportunity. Stability and Transparency are often mentioned in discussions about guilds, but this is the first time that I have really seen someone draw out Opportunity and weight it as important as the other two elements. And Opportunity really is that important.

On the other hand, Andrews' rules on naming guilds are just terrible. When almost every good guild has a name which violates your rules, that's probably a sign that your rules are rubbish. Andrews seems to disdain guild naming styles just because they are popular, and doesn't seem to understand that they are popular for a reason.

There is also an amusing segment on Paperwork. In one paragraph, Andrews bemoans the process of getting signatures, condemning it as "needless, mind-numbing bureaucracy." Then two paragraphs later, he strongly advises prospective guild leaders not to create a guild until "you even know half a dozen people who would like to join." One almost thinks that the game developers might believe that these two ideas are related.

Chapter 3 - Nonhuman Resources: Recruiting Players and Evaluating Recruits.

A solid chapter on the fundamentals of recruiting. It also includes a discussion on applications and people you should avoid.

If there is one problem with this chapter it is that it discusses recruitment from a general personality-based perspective. It does not address recruiting for competence, which is how most raiding guilds recruit. I'm not saying that competence is more important than personality, but a very common complaint on the Guild Relations Forums is that Sally is a great player but a terrible person. Or that Dave is the life of the party, but can't DPS his way out of a wet paper bag. Some commentary on this aspect of guild recruitment would have been most welcome, and it seems odd that it was skipped entirely.

Chapter 4 - Dramatis Persona: Dealing with Guild Drama

Ahh, drama. The advice here about how an officer should deal with drama is very well thought out.

However, Andrews also tries to divide up people into different archetypes to predict personality clashes, and I think he is far less successful here. For one thing, he has 10 archetypes and each one has two subtypes. He also tries to get cute and names the roles after traditional RPG classes. This makes the whole classification scheme rather non-intuitive. Like what's the difference between a Samaritan White Knight and a Wisdom-spec Priest?

Archetypes work best when they are "over-broad", rather than precise. I'm not sure that the classification presented here is actually helpful.

Chapter 5 - Epic Encounters: Raiding As a Guild

This is a very good chapter on how to raid. I've often observed that it's very hard to understand how a good raiding guild works until you've actually been in one. This chapter does a superb job. The section on Discipline alone makes the entire book worthwhile.

If you're a guild leader or officer looking at moving into raiding, or in the lower tiers of raiding guilds, I would highly recommend reading and understanding this chapter.

Chapter 6 - The Protocols of Plunder: Loot Distribution

This chapter goes through several loot systems: Loot Council, Basic Rolling, Suicide Kings (oddly put in the random section), Modified Rolling/Karma, and Point-based Systems. Nothing even moderately exotic like Wishlist, Shroud Loot System, or Vickrey Bidding is mentioned.

I don't really like this chapter. It's serviceable, but I find it rather lacking in structure. For example, Zero-Sum is discussed but not as its own system, but rather as a solution to inflation problems.

As well, Andrews scores each system based on three criteria: Complexity, Officer Effort, and Drama Factor. While those three criteria are important, they don't tell the whole story. If you go just by Andrews' scores, Suicide Kings is the clear winner, when it fact it has significant disadvantages that cause a lot of guilds to avoid it. In SK, loot that could be used is sometimes sharded, which is the cardinal sin for any loot system.

I think Andrews really fails to get across the idea that every loot system makes trade-offs, sacrificing some aspects to enhance other aspects. This chapter is good enough for a new guild, as it will give a general idea about loot systems. But there are better discussions out there. Angelie's thread on the Guild Relations Forum is probably the best starting point if you are interested in loot systems.

Chapter 7 - PvP and Roleplaying Guilds

I'll be honest, I skimmed this chapter as I don't care about organized PvP or roleplaying. Seemed decent enough, though.

Chapter 8 - The Burdens of Command: Managing Officers

This is a very strong chapter on handling officers, including important traits and roles, officer discipline, and handling burnout.

Chapter 9 - The Long Term

This chapter discusses what happens after your guild gets up and running. There are some very nice sections here, particularly the one on Morale. In particular, the idea of managing Morale Gains, not just Losses was insightful.

Sadly, Andrews' tendency towards terrible archetypes trips him up here in the section on Reputation. Describing a guild as an Angelic Kingdom or a Demonic Empire is less than helpful. To reiterate, archetypes have to be fundamental. The sign of a good archetype is that you don't actually have to explain it, that just the name carries all the connotations you desire.

Chapter 10 - IRL: Dealing with Reality

This chapter advises the guild leadership on situations where Real Life interacts with the game negatively. The advice seems pretty solid, though I don't have any experience with these situations so I cannot truly judge it.

Final Observations

The major issue that Andrews does not cover is Time Management. It's alluded to here and there, but I believe that Time Management is a crucial aspect of running an organized guild, and really deserves to be pulled out and examined on its own.

Other than that, The Guild Leader's Handbook is an extremely solid book on guild leadership. It is an amazing resource for a new or inexperienced guild leader or officer. Even an experienced guild leader will find some new ideas or inspiration in it.

Cataclysm Blessings

By way of Righteous Defense, paladin blessings are revealed to be:

Blessing of Might — Places a Blessing on the friendly target, increasing attack power by 11% and restoring 2 mana every 5 seconds for 1 hour. If target is in your party or raid, all party and raid members will be affected. Players may only have one Blessing on them per Paladin at any one time.

Blessing of Kings — Places a Blessing on the friendly target, increasing strength, agility, stamina, and intellect by 6% for 1 hour. If target is in your party or raid, all party and raid members will be affected. Players may only have one Blessing on them per Paladin at any one time.

Finally, one click, and the entire raid is buffed. We're a long ways away from handing out 40 5-minute Blessings in Molten Core.

I'm somewhat surprised that Blessing of Might still increases mana regeneration. I guess they want it to be attractive to casters. Still, I wonder why they didn't extend the Demonic Pact Spell Power boost to it instead of mana regen. However, that might make Blessing of Might too good.

As well, apparently Mark of the Wild will now have the same effect as Blessing of Kings, making Blessings much easier if you have both a druid and a paladin. A good move.

The thing I like best about the new Blessings is that they retain the ability to do "drive-by" buffing. It's odd, but I enjoy casting Blessings on random people who pass by, especially when out leveling, or when you come across a lowbie questing. One of the best changes in recent memory was when buffs were changed to automatically cast the correct version on lower level characters. I was a bit concerned that in order to get one-click Blessings we would have to give up the ability to buff random strangers. I'm happy to see that this is not the case. Excellent work by the dev team to recognize this corner case.

Ask Coriel: New Paladin Healer?

Cathak asks:

Been reading your blog for a few years now and Ive got bitten by the Healing Bug (IE, supporting my guilds raid as a Tank and a Healer). How exactly do I want to spec as a Holy Paladin, what should I Gem and Enchant for - should I just base what I do off your own armory profile? Additionally, as a brand new healer - should I go with a FoL or HL build?

I recommend going with a 51/20/0 build. It's almost identical to my build, only with Aura Mastery. AM is good, I just haven't gotten around to respeccing.

Gemming and Enchanting, it's easiest to go for Intellect, with Spellpower as a second choice. I like getting set bonuses, so I use SP/Int, Int, and Int/Mp5 gems, but many paladins just gem straight Intellect (with a couple of mult-colored gems to get your meta-gem bonus).

I suggest going with a Holy Light build. One of the things a new paladin needs to learn is not to be timid with Holy Light, but to be willing to use it a great deal, even if there is a lot of overhealing.

For Glyphs, I recommend Glyph of Holy Light, Seal of Wisdom, and Beacon of Light. I use Seal of Light to max performance on Valrithia Dreamwalker, but Seal of Wisdom is better for undergeared paladins.

I also like the BoL/SS tracker. It's really useful for tracking Beacon and Sacred Shield durations.

Other than that, paladin healing is just a lot of practice. Keep Beacon and Sacred Shield up on the tank, Judge as often as you can, use Holy Shock when you move, use Divine Plea early and often, and don't be afraid to bomb Holy Lights.

Cataclysm Tank Theorycraft

Via Honor's Code and Pwnwear.com, comes an observation at Blue Murder that, in Cataclysm, a 10-man tank will have just as much health as a 25-man tank. Therefore the 25-man boss cannot do more dps to the tank, though, because the tank will not have more stamina than in 10-man. However, 10-mans only have 3 healers, while 25-mans have 6-8 healers, so what are all these extra healers supposed to do?

I think this observation is looking at Cataclysm through the lens of the current game.

Right now, the most important variable for a tank is her Worst-case Time to Live. Because bosses hit so hard and fast, a tank needs enough effective health so that she can survive long enough for a heal to land. This is why Effective Health (Stamina + Armor) has been the king tank stat for so long. Effective Health directly increases your Worst-case Time to Live. Increasing your Time to Live from 2.0s to 3.0s makes a huge difference to the healers' ability to keep the tank up.

But Cataclysm is set to change this, by increasing a tank's normal Time to Live significantly. 2.0s to 3.0s is huge, but is going from 10s to 15s as important? Once the Time to Live is high enough, increasing it further doesn't really help anymore. If a tank has 60k health, but the most damage the boss does to her is 50k in 10s, she has significantly more health than she really needs.

In Cataclysm, the limiting resource is supposed to be healer mana. If a 10-man has 3 healers with 30k mana, then--ignoring mana regeneration--the raid can heal 90k mana worth of damage. A 25-man with 7 healers can heal 210k mana worth of damage. The extra damage can come to the tanks, or go to the raid or whatever. The incoming damage-per-second does not matter as much as the total damage taken and the efficiency of the healers.

Since the normal Time to Live will be high enough such that healers will have time to heal efficiently, tanks won't feel the need to maximize Effective Health. I predict that tank theorycraft in Cataclysm will shift to minimizing Damage Taken, focusing on Armor and Avoidance, rather than raw Stamina. Damage that is prevented in some fashion does not have to be healed, thus preserving the healer's mana. This increases the limiting resource available, and makes it less likely that the raid will wipe because the healers ran out of mana.

Of course, this prediction relies on the design direction where a tank can actually take several hits before dying. If that doesn't come true--if the Time to Live drops to a low value--then Stamina will be king once again.

Guest Post on 10s and 25s

Selynida emailed me the following regarding 10s and 25s:

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I had written this comment to your blog, and unfortunately I seem to have vastly passed the character limit... however I still wanted to provide it.

One thing that is often missed is looking at history, players flock to whatever provides the most efficient access to powerful epics. Look at raid/PVP history through the expansions:

Pre-TBC, Pre patch 2.0, players primarily raided to obtain the best possible gear. There was no alternative at the highest end (Naxx/AQ 40) and the PVP gear required an even larger time commitment due to the original honor system.

Patch 2.0 pre TBC, players flocked to Battlegrounds, because the dynamic had shifted. It was now possible to completely circumvent the first several tiers of raiding (ZG, AQ 20, MC and BWL) simply by doing battle grounds and obtaining gear at a much more efficient route. Guilds that had touted themselves as raiding guilds ended up collapsing and/or simply running PVP pre mades to quickly stomp randomly assembled pugs to get the gear and marks as quickly as possible. Yet, even this is a bit of poor view, as most of these pre mades never wanted to face another pre made, and actively sent scouts into the BGs ahead of the group specifically to see if they would have to put in effort. This behavior persisted until TBC came out and provided a gear reset making most of the gear negligible.

Post TBC, Arena Season 1 and Season 2, even with a new 10 man introduced, heroics, and new raid encounters, the Arena was played by almost everyone, PVE and PVP player alike as there was no requirements to obtain the gear. You could lose every game a week, and get gear that equaled or surpassed the current raid tier. At the same time, the raid tier was restrictive both due to the initial tuned level of the encounters, attunement chains requiring guilds to go out of their way to make it so members could even attend the raids (SSC and TK attunements), and under-itemized initial raiding gear from the first tier of raiding. Dancing for Points was born here. This persisted until a combination of raid gear was re-itemized, attunements were lifted and removed, encounters were retuned and Arena began requiring person ratings to acquire the best items.

Late TBC, pre patch 3.0, Badge of Justice drops from Karazhan were introduced and were able to provide gear of the equivalent from the highest tier raid that existed at the time (Sunwell Plateau). At this time, players began flocking to Karazhan and farming it extensively on characters of all gear levels, as well as doing the, now trivialized through gear creep, heroic five man instances in order to obtain gear that was on par with the best in the game. Karazhan became “The most popular raid of all time” not because it was the most fun, the dynamics of only requiring 10 people, or because of the gear that drops, but simply due to the high Badge of Justice/Time ratio. Unrealistic requirements were set by the vast majority of guilds resulting in a harder time to break into raiding, despite so much better gear being made available through it; all for the sake of plowing through the trivial content faster.

Mid TBC, Early seasons of arena gear provided through Honor resulted in Battlegrounds again receiving a surge in popularity. However, it wasn’t just the vast number of people playing so many Battlegrounds; it also was a large number of other issues associated with it. While it was providing gear that was a little behind the curve, it was being done at a much faster rate and with much less effort. Also, it rewarded mere attendance in some battlegrounds, and not actual participation resulting in many of the AFK Botting issues that have seen so many issues. Players didn’t want to actually participate, they simply wanted the rewards.

Late TBC, Post patch 3.0, boss ‘re-tuning’ and the removal of all attunements resulted in an explosion of guilds and raids going at least 4/5 in Mount Hyjal and also getting several bosses in Black Temple down. This combined with the still best Badge/Time ratio that Karazhan offered resulted in an incredibly fast gear up time from PVE. It was a similar situation as the end of Vanilla, after Patch 2.0, except instead of flooding Battlegrounds, guilds instead flooded the now substantially easier PVE content.

Early WoTLK, Early raid content was again tuned on the same level as post patch 3.0 TBC bosses were resulting in a much lower entry level for getting into raiding than ever before. Between the additions of easy to obtain epics at a much faster rate than other avenues 10 and 25 raids began to flourish. All content was regularly cleared by a majority of guilds with the exceptions of achievement kills (Sartharion with additional Drakes, 6 Minute Malygos, etc). Since the quality of gear from the 25 man raids were so much better than anything else available, many players who only wanted to PVP went to the PVE game simply to obtain certain weapons (Betrayer of Humanity, Envoy of Mortality, Turning Tide, etc) to actually do the activities they wanted to.

Early WoTLK, Vault is added. This happened concurrently with the previous point; however, a special note should be added to Vault. Vault provided a substantially easier way to obtain many pieces of gear, both PVE and PVP at a fraction of the time. It was substantially easier than the actual content of the level (with the potential exception of Emalon; though this was rectified with Koralon and Toravon so much lower tuned). Each season Vault was updated to provide gear, and with the short hiccup that was Emalon the bosses remained trivial compared to the actual raid encounters of the actual tier. This provided a fast easy way to obtain easy epics of the highest level in a fraction of the time. I would honestly like to see the stats on number of times Vault has been run. I suspect that it has far eclipsed Karazhan as the "Most popular raid of all time."

Late WoTLK, Badge of Triumphs and the Random Dungeon Finder were added to make 5 man encounters substantially more enjoyable. By adding Frost Badges into the mix once a day, it even encouraged more people to be in the system. This was again touted as a huge success (And comparatively speaking, it was) but for the wrong reasons. The vast majority in the system weren’t running the heroics because they enjoyed running heroics or doing dungeons, but they were doing it because it was simply the most efficient way to obtain easy gear. It was faster and more efficient to run heroics through the queue system of the Random Dungeon Finder than it was to run any previous level of content.

Throughout the history of this game, players flock to the easiest ways to get high quality loot. It doesn’t matter if that way is PVE or PVP centric, players will go to the highest quality for the lowest effort. Currently 25 (Or at least early Tier 10 content in 25s) is the highest quality for the lowest effort, with so many bosses killable by a majority of guilds all rewarding close to the best loot in the game. When Cataclysm is released, the best loot will be equally rewarded from 10 or 25 man content. However, even if it is just a logistical issue of not having as many to compete with as many people and needing less people to form a successful raid, the 10s will flourish; and it will be touted as a success of the system, similar to Arena Season two, and the RDF systems were, but it will be claimed as such because of how “Fun” it is.

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Pretty much everything Selynida has written is true. However, one crucial aspect may have been missed. People always flock to the the easiest ways to get the higher quality loot. However, there is a question of whether they do this in addition to their preferred activities, or instead of those activities.

In the past, people have always done their regular activities. When PvP was the fastest way to loot, people still did large raids. They PvP'd as well for gear, but they didn't give up raiding.

That's the real key, I think. This is pretty much the first time in WoW that activities will become mutually exclusive. So events may play out in unforseen ways.

10s versus 25s

Big Bear Butt asks, "Can 25 man raids really be as fun as 10’s to play in, if most people have to be bribed to take part in them?"

I don't know, BBB. But one could ask, "If 10s are really that much more fun, why do they need higher quality rewards? Surely the extra fun is more important than the lower level loot."

But both questions miss the point. Or more accurately, both questions twist the situation, conveniently ignoring many aspects of the problem.

Here's how I look at it:

1. 25s are more fun than 10s.*
2. 25s are more significantly more work than 10s for the officers.

* Not really up for debate. Just accept that I personally find 25s more fun than 10s.

So it's a question of marginal value. Does the extra fun outweigh the extra cost. In the current game, the calculation is, "Does extra fun + greater quality loot outweigh the extra cost?" The answer for a lot of people is Yes. However, there are still a lot of people who answer No and do mainly 10s. Or they don't consider 25s more fun, so the decision is solely "greater quality loot versus extra work".

In Cataclysm, the question will be, "Does extra fun + greater quantity of loot outweigh the extra cost?" I think that a far greater majority of officers will answer No. And people who are willing to lead guilds are the heart and soul of the WoW community. The rest of us will follow their lead.

As for quantity versus quality of loot, we've debated that before. For some reason, quality is far more important to PvE. Witness the fuss made over Best-in-Slot gear versus gear that is just slightly worse.

The only time quantity of loot actually matters is if gear becomes very hard to obtain. For example, the switch from tier set pieces to tokens. Blizzard is not going to cripple 10s by making the quantity of loot low enough to actually be a factor worth considering when debating between 10s and 25s. Or if they do, the howls when the only item that drops off the boss is Spell Power plate--or something else unusable--will quickly force them to reconsider.

25s may drop more loot, but 10s will drop enough loot. And at that point, I don't think the extra fun will outweigh the extra work for the officers.

On the other hand, perhaps putting all this extra work on the officers was a bad idea in the first place. I've been raiding for several years now, first in 40s and then 25s, and I've seen a lot of officers burn out. As I mentioned above, these players are usually the heart and soul of the guild and community. Perhaps sacrificing 25s is worthwhile if it keeps them playing and involved in the game at a comfortable level.

Cataclysm Raiding Changes

Well, Blizzard has posted some changes to the way Cataclysm raids will be structured. Here are the high points:

* Shared lockout between 25s and 10s

A good call. Repeating the same boss multiple times a week was a bad idea.

* Normal versus Heroic toggle on a per-boss basis

This is okay. I prefer separate instances because it makes it a lot easier to structure your time, especially for a limited-time guild. On a per-boss basis, it's fairly easy to misjudge the amount of time needed to finish the instance. You either fail to kill the end boss, or have time left over which you could have used to practice a Heroic mode. Neither of these results is particularly ideal. If Heroics were a separate instance, you keep going until you clear it, or you run out of time. Very easy to schedule.

* 10s and 25s to have same difficulty level

We'll see if this works. 10s might end up being much more rigorous in class composition requirements. Every class you double up on means one entire class won't be present in the raid. At least a 25 can count on at least one of each class.

To be honest, I think raid buffs and debuffs will need to be scaled back significantly for this to work. The difference between a 10-man which can cover every buff and one which can't is huge.

* Multiple shorter dungeons

Sure, why not? Might be better for PuGGing. A good PuG might be able to clear the entire instance, while if you get trapped in a bad PuG, you only burn half your raiding opportunities.

The problem with multiple dungeons is that you can end up with what happened with Tempest Keep and Serpentshrine Cavern. People will kill 1 boss from one instance, then go to the other instance and kill a couple before heading back. Cherry-picking bosses in order of difficulty, and generally wasting time.

I think this would work best if there was a clear progression in difficulty. Instance A is harder than Instance B. No randomly-accessible Loot Reaver.

* Gating is staying

Good. I like gating. It gives you something to look forward to every couple of weeks. And the race among the top guilds is far more interesting. You don't get the situation where one guild jumps out ahead early and rides that all the way to the end.

* PvE will earn Hero/Valor Points, like PvP Honor/Conquest (Arena) Points

This is pretty good. The PvP model is much better model for vendor-sold gear, especially when the top level Points will be converted to the lower level at the start of a new Tier.

No more having to run to the Money Changer in the Dalaran sewers to get the correct type of Emblem necessary.

* 10s and 25s will drop the same loot

Saving the controversial change for last. I think that this change heralds the death knell for 25s.

The thing is that it does not matter how many people want to do 25s. What matters is how many guild or raid leaders want to do 25s. The administrative costs are disproportionately placed on a few shoulders. Even if they really like 25s, I can see more than few guild leaders cracking and saying, "Screw this, it's much less headache to just take my core and do 10s and get the same loot."

I like 25s better than 10s. 25s are much more intricate, and I like the camaraderie of hanging out in the paladin or healer channel, bemoaning the lack of proper loot dropping. The whole group within the group aspect. I will be sad to see them die. But this change does simplify things a great deal. As well, it allows Blizzard to keep loot in a much tighter band, so we hopefully will not see the rampant loot inflation of Wrath.

I don't really think the extra amount of rewards for 25s is going to make much of a difference. If 10s drop 2 pieces of loot, 25s must drop 5 pieces just to maintain parity. If 25s get a 50% premium, then they drop 7-8 pieces, which is a little ridiculous. It might work if 10s dropped 1 item and 25s dropped 4. But imagine the howls in a 10-man when your one item turns out to be holy paladin spell plate (or any item which no one can use). And since it is 10s, the odds are higher that the item will be unusable due to your raid composition. Extra gold or Valor Points is unexciting, especially if Valor Points are capped. Might as well do the 10-man and daily heroics. That's much less effort for the raid/guild leader.

I do wonder what affect this will have on guild recruitment. Guilds always have attrition, but in a 25s guild that attrition can be "smoother". Maybe you lose one person a week, but that's only ~3% of your raiding force. Meanwhile, losing one person in a 10s guild is a loss of ~8% of the force at one time. So recruiting for 10s is "spikier". Whereas you can always apply to a 25s guild and they might take a flyer on you because it's only a slight increase in the size of the raiding force. But a 10s guild doesn't really have that luxury, I think. One additional person is a much larger increase in the raiding force.

You know, this analogy between recruiting and healing is kind of interesting. Smooth, steady damage versus spiky damage. Maybe I will look into it later.

Conclusions

So that's my take on Cataclysm raiding. Overall, many good ideas and changes. The best of Wrath (except Ulduar-style heroic toggles¹) is being carried forward. However, I think Cataclysm will see the slow death of the 25s raiding scene, especially among the Aristocracy and Gentry tiers.

1. I really should write a post about why Ulduar-style toggles are much better than interface toggles.

Healing Dreamwalker as Retribution

The other night I got to DPS in Icecrown Citadel. When we got to Valithria Dreamwalker, I decided to try healing her specced as Retribution but in Holy gear.

The key talent that makes this idea possible is Sheath of Light. You get a really powerful HoT ticking away on Valithria, one that lasts for 12s while you are in the dream world. The other advantage you get is that Sanctified Wrath might let you get off an extra Avenging Wrath.

The raw total was very close to the healing I do as Holy, if not slightly higher. Holy Light did 54% of my healing, while Sheath of Light did 46%.

Of course, my Ret build is not designed for this. It is a regular Retribution build with DPS glyphs. You could do something like 23/5/43 and run Glyph of Seal of Light to completely maximize Dreamwalker healing. But it's really not necessary. It's just a fun thought experiment.

The other advantage that the Holy build has is that you can cast Beacon on Valithria and add extra healing to the raid. I've found that doing this is valuable at the very end of the fight, keeping the raid from being overrun.

Star Pony

I've made my feelings on RMT and micro-transactions pretty clear. I have not bought a Star Pony, nor am I likely too. Of course, I don't begrudge anyone who did buy a Star Pony. Money spent on entertainment is pretty much all equally worthwhile or equally worthless.

One thing that's missed in all the hoopla is how few people actually purchased the Star Pony. The raw numbers have been eye-popping, of course. But when you look at it as a percentage of the player base, maybe 5% at most have purchased one.

To be honest, this is pretty much the ultimate cosmetic item. It is a flying horse made of stars which is usable everywhere, and which every character you have can use. The only cosmetic item that could possibly top it would be a Dragon made of stars.

(Note to Blizzard: I would strongly consider purchasing a Star Dragon. It would be just too over-the-top awesome to resist.)

And that 5% is 5% of a market that is already willing to shell out money on the game. Sure, some Free-To-Play evangelists will insist that without subscriptions, more people will spend money on cash shop items.

These people are wrong. In my--admittedly cynical--view, there are two types of people in this world: freeloaders and people willing to pay. Freeloaders won't pay anything if they have a choice, no matter what incentives you put in front of them. You have to force them to pay if you want to get any money out of them. The people who are willing to pay would probably pay the same amount regardless of how that payment is structured. The only real advantage is allowing them to try out the game without forcing a commitment.

So yes, Star Pony brought in a fair chunk of change. But it is dwarfed by the non-sexy, yet reliable, subscription money. Any game that looks at the Star Pony and decides to bet their future on a cash shop has been blinded, and will end up failing. If you haven't made an MMO worth subscribing to, you haven't made a good game.

(Yes, that includes you, Dungeons & Dragon Online. Five times a very small number is still a very small number.)

Off-topic Note: While Star Pony is a very nice mount, the best mounts are still the paladin charger and [Ashes of Al'ar].

Beacon of Light and Cataclysm

Beacon of Light puts paladins in an odd place, power-wise. In my view, Beacon breaks down as follows:

No Beacon = Underpowered.
Beacon healing one tank and one non-tank = Balanced.
Beacon healing two tanks = Overpowered.

Right now, the only thing keeping Holy Paladins in check is that they are abysmal at raid healing.

Blizzard has posted that they want to do something with Beacon in Cataclysm:

Currently on live, Beacon of Light is a tool that allows paladins to target more than just the main tank. In Cataclysm if it just doubles their healing, it is going to be overpowered. We have two ways we might handle this and we’ll experiment to see which feels better. The first is that Beacon only works on some heals, such as Flash of Light or Holy Light (but not the big one). An alternative idea is that Beacon increases the mana cost of a heal cast on a beaconed target, since you’re essentially getting a double heal. Under this model, Beacon itself would cost no mana.

The thing is that--as I understand it--healing is supposed to slow down a lot. Healers won't be GCD-locked, but more constrained by mana.

But here's the problem: if you're not GCD-locked, why spend 1 GCD to heal 2 people at double the mana? Why not just heal Person A with the first GCD and person B with the second GCD? It's the same amount of mana, but it's much more flexible.

I suppose the only allowing FoL to transfer is another solution, but is it really going to be worth the mana cost of Beacon? Beacon is actually a fairly expensive spell.

Traditionally, AoE healing works not just because it is time-effective, but because it is also cost-effective. If you can get full use out of your AoE heal, it is usually more efficient than using multiple direct heals.

Basically, I'm not really sure that the current Beacon of Light makes sense in the Cataclysm healing world that Blizzard is aiming for. It's been a godsend in Wrath, don't get me wrong. If we didn't have Beacon, I'm pretty sure that Holy Paladins would not be taken to raids. But in a slower, more controlled healing world, Beacon becomes extremely niche, with a prohibitive mana cost.

It might be best for Blizzard to just rework Beacon of Light entirely. For example, the new Healing Hands spell¹ would match the name "Beacon of Light" superbly. In fact, Beacon of Light is a far more appropriate name for that mechanic than the current one. In the current mechanic, the Beacon target is more of a black hole, sucking healing in from the rest of the raid. With Healing Hands, the paladin literally becomes a beacon of light, radiating heals outward.

My recommendation would be to get rid of the current Beacon mechanics, rename Healing Hands to Beacon of Light, and either make a new 51-pt talent or a new level 83 spell.

1. Healing Hands (level 83): Healing Hands is a new healing spell. The paladin radiates heals from him or herself, almost like a Healing Stream Totem. It has a short range, but a long enough duration that the paladin can cast other heals while Healing Hands remains active. 15-second cooldown. 6-second duration.