I have to say the l2teach comment is one of the more thought-provoking in the discussion. While anyone reading this would be hard pressed to define themselves as casual, it's easy for those people to be in a casual guild. Mine just downed Gruul, and that was an arduous process to say the least. Our strategists and theorycrafters all knew what to do, but instilling that wisdom onto the other 20 people in the raid is a huge task. Even if you assume you only need to teach the last 5 people in the group, its daunting.
How are people doing this? Do you take people back to Shattered Halls and make them fight Nethekurse? Do you just evaluate people based on gear, and use that as a baseline for where they have been? Would heroic keys be a suitable means of measuring individual player progression?
More importantly, how do you go about telling that person that they aren't carrying their weight and are being replaced? We had to do this last night, and it caused some waves. Is this where you define yourself as a social vs. progression guild?
Last edited by Kiralyn : 07/25/07 at 6:15 PM.
Reason: spelling like a nub
What would help immeasurably is if the game itself carried an inherent element of teaching. Like the hunter & priest class quests, but much more thorough, and implemented throughout the level range.
Imagine if every 10 levels, when you went to your class trainer, you were given a quest series to help you learn how to play. And explicit in-game instruction on how to perform the quests. They did this (partially) with the rogue poisons quest, but they failed to make the training aspect explicit (i.e. actually give you orders to stealth in / sap the guard / lockpick / vanish).
The quests should be instanced, so you can't get a higher level to cheese you through them. For a rogue, level 10 could involve practicing how to gouge and get behind a mob, level 20 could involve bleed kiting, and so on.
At the level cap, there could be a series of "challenges" that reward with gold, titles, or suitable equipment. Zone in, you're dressed in specified gear, pointed at a target dummy, and the quest is "Sustain 1000 DPS for 1 minute". Or if you're a priest, your challenge is to "Heal this NPC while he tanks that mob, and don't pull aggro". Or "heal these 5 NPCs", or what have you. Hunter - "kite that mob and stay inside these range limits from it". And so on. A shaman - you're placed in a group of 5 and told to optimise melee DPS against a dummy, or caster DPS. Or made to offheal while nuking, or some such.
You could offer a temporary respec as part of the quest, so that allows you to build a quest that can only be done by a fire mage, or only by a frost mage - your original spec gets restored when you zone out.
There could also be more general teaching quests that apply to multiple classes - a training dummy that fires orbs at you (or at NPCs moving around you) to teach you to move, and so on. And freeform training. Go into your training hall, choose a combat dummy, set it to your level of choice, and whack it for a while. At the end of the session it gives you a readout of your damage done. Or dial up a dummy that does fire damage to test your resistance, or your interrupting skills, or similar.
Make the game trainers actually *train* you. Make the training halls and training dummies actually be useful! It'd make theorycrafting easier too, which may be why they don't implement it. But frankly, we shouldn't *have* to piss about with quest mobs like Dr Boom, or level 57 alts versus level 60 invulnerable servants, just to get good statistics.
Of course, not every aspect of playing the game can be boiled down and put into kit form like this, but a heck of a lot can. Theorycrafting and teaching needs to be democratised and brought into the game, as part of the game and not be the province of the select few.
You can very much see that WoW was based around the expectation of aggro being obfuscated. The whole advantage of having a hunter, which is hard to keep up respectable numbers with, was that they were safe DPS. You could bring a mage or a warlock but you might end up with a wipe whereas a hunter could play dead and keep up the burst. Now that threat is laid bare by the meters you can ask hunters about their experience raiding in the expansion... its like looking at a slow downward slope, dull and predictable. If encounter has wacky aggro or requires safe DPS or extreme range, a hunter might have a shot; Else bring a better DPS class to the encounter and have the hunter on standby. Now the developers have to struggle to find ways to make viable a class like that, with its main gimmick so weakened.
They already have; the solution was to make hunters Primary dps limited by mana and the hunter's ability to weave. A good BM hunter with appropriate group synergies is fully competitive, top-tier DPS nowadays.
(Shaman have long struggled in the same way, with totems being an interesting idea but not very good in practice. I can't say with absolute certainty having not played one at max level, but I very much get the impression that 90% of the reasons they're brought into groups isn't for abilities coming from that main selling point of the class)
Shamans are usually desired for windfury, which is a totem. Admittedly Shamans have been distilled down to their air totem choice with the other three being relatively static, but it is still part of the totem system and it is still their biggest draw.
On the subject of Class trainers actually, you know, training players, I always thought that the Priest quest around level 10 was just the biggest joke you could ever imagine. No matter which Priest you choose, at level 10 you get a quest to (drum roll), go cast Power Word: Fortitude on an NPC. And then they made you heal them (can't remember if it was Lesser Heal or Renew).
It was at that point that I realized that it was me that was going to have to figure it out for myself. And that's not entirely a bad thing.
* Mods, especially threat meters, make so much of a difference that they become obligatory
My guess is that they don't do that much difference in practice, however I do guess people feel safer with them. Now I don't have any experience with the extreme end game of TBC but from what I've heard the old wow was way more sensitive to threat. There exists few broodlord lashlayer and vael and people managed those without threat meters.
Same with vent/ts, a lot of people I've met maintained that you MUST have it when you raid in WoW. And yet Nihilum seems to do fine without using it when they raid.
My guess is that they don't do that much difference in practice, however I do guess people feel safer with them. Now I don't have any experience with the extreme end game of TBC but from what I've heard the old wow was way more sensitive to threat. There exists few broodlord lashlayer and vael and people managed those without threat meters.
Same with vent/ts, a lot of people I've met maintained that you MUST have it when you raid in WoW. And yet Nihilum seems to do fine without using it when they raid.
Pretty sure Nihilum uses KTM in their videos. I think that is how they gauge their offtank's aggro on Essence of Desire - and Illidan OT.
I don't understand the statement that "My guess is that they don't do that much difference in practice." They do, seriously. Threat meters have made a big difference for well over a year now (maybe two).
A working KTM on bloodboil incredibly helps one of the hardest parts of the fight: tanking and aggro management.
Really on nearly every fight you're going to get benefit from using KTM/omen properly. I'm not sure where the last comments come from though.
* Mods, especially threat meters, make so much of a difference that they become obligatory
Threat seems quite a bit "out there" to me, we're taking a "guess" on what the threat currently is even with those mods, and from time to time they are wrong. Dial the example back a step, and you have several examples of "standard" mods people use, that really are not as invasive as judging threat during combat.
There are also mods that do things that you'd expect from the standard blizzard UI, but are lacking. In having a conversation with another raid leader about gear choices for DPS casters, I was answering "which item is better" type questions, when I stopped and simply said "do you understand why one is better than the other?" I found out this individual was not using RatingBuster, so the items in questions, while having similar +damage numbers, had different hit/crit ratings, which is not an intuitive mechanism to figure out nor is it well explained in game (out of game there are excellent explantions, obviously). I had this person install the mod, and why I was giving the advice I was immediately became clear. That's one example, I'm sure there are others.
And while mods are one thing, macros are another. Any macro-savvy warrior probably immediately made an Intervene macro, similarly with Tankadins and Righteous Defense. There are other macro examples (/stopcasting and sheeping macros for DPS casters, etc) that are commonly used by raiders, there are entire threads dedicated to them and their usefulness.
The general conclusion of these examples is that casual folks don't go after these mods/macros, but they make a pretty big difference in results.
What would help immeasurably is if the game itself carried an inherent element of teaching. Like the hunter & priest class quests, but much more thorough, and implemented throughout the level range.
As frustrating at times as the hunter quest was (not getting to use my pet, having to buff up) it did a very good job of teaching me skills I had never used before.
Explicitly: I learned that strafing away from a mob at the right angle lets you move full speed without getting dazed, and how to do jump-shot kiting. I had easily leveled to 60 and been raiding ZG and MC without knowing these things, and I think almost every hunter who did the quest benefitted from it. From a learning-to-play perspective I'm sad they've stated/implied they aren't making more of these.
Pretty sure Nihilum uses KTM in their videos. I think that is how they gauge their offtank's aggro on Essence of Desire - and Illidan OT.
I don't understand the statement that "My guess is that they don't do that much difference in practice." They do, seriously. Threat meters have made a big difference for well over a year now (maybe two).
A working KTM on bloodboil incredibly helps one of the hardest parts of the fight: tanking and aggro management.
Really on nearly every fight you're going to get benefit from using KTM/omen properly. I'm not sure where the last comments come from though.
My comment about Nihilum was about TeamSpeak or Ventrilo. I'm sure they do use threatmeters.
But if you say threatmeters do that kind of a difference I will just have to believe you, as I said I don't have any experience with end game in tbc.
On the subject of Class trainers actually, you know, training players, I always thought that the Priest quest around level 10 was just the biggest joke you could ever imagine. No matter which Priest you choose, at level 10 you get a quest to (drum roll), go cast Power Word: Fortitude on an NPC. And then they made you heal them (can't remember if it was Lesser Heal or Renew).
It was at that point that I realized that it was me that was going to have to figure it out for myself. And that's not entirely a bad thing.
My personal favorite was the old warlock quests for your level 40 mount. Here is some of the text:
Ah, good, you're here. I sent a <succubus/infernal> after you to get your attention, but it seems you were able to get here before it found you. No matter.
There has been some talk lately of your growing power--that is good for you, possibly bad for others. But those are irrelevant points. The point is, I feel you've proven yourself and therefore are deserving of... hehe... a blessing of sorts.
Above Ratchet in the Barrens you'll find a man named Strahad. I believe you've crossed paths before.
Ah, <name>, you've seen fit to grace us with your presence. How wonderful!
I hope you do not expect us to wait on you hand and foot also. You may be growing quickly in power, but you still are a pup when it comes to true knowledge and understanding. If you're not careful, corruption will overwhelm you and your weak will.
But I should get to the point: Strahad wishes to speak to you. He is still residing in his tower overlooking Ratchet in the Barrens. I suggest not taking too long.
Now I got a lump in my throat reading that. I always heard warlocks/pallies = free mount and now I was sure I was going to see the real cost of "free..." It sounds like you are going to the Barrens and your contacts are planning to backstab you to end your rise to the top. I imagined an ambush encounter that required clever use of the succubus to CC humanoids (which I was utterly terrible at) and I wondered if I would be able to do it or just bite the bullet and save for the normal human horse cost.
Upon arriving in the Barrens, the build-up amounted to: Strahad telling you it isn't easy to summon a fel steed and you must keep careful control over the power... and clicking a "Finish Quest" button to gain the summon fel steed skill.
Biggest anti-climax I had experienced that far. Nowadays the quest doesn't even exist anymore because I guess going to the Barrens was too harrowing a challenge for level 40 players. You just pay any warlock trainer 90 silver and its yours.
About what Faust said about his wife: In the beginning of tbc alot of the times when we wiped in raids I was frustrated on the "weak" raiders who I knew from pre-tbc and felt would stop our progress. I felt that with the cutdown to 25man just 2-3 "weak" player would be enough to sabotage the entire raid.
For more than 2 years I have been in the same guild. We have always been raiding 3 days a week and kept decent progression (SSC cleared and working on Kael phase 3/got to 4Horsemen pre-tbc). The guild almost solely consist of groups of people who know each other irl. I think we had many simililar players to Faust's wife pre-tbc, but they all evolved - for the better. Maybe some will refuse, and say the people we have inguild were different, but I don't think so. Currently we have 4 active female raiders, and alot of what Faust wrote I can recognize. They might not be the best of their class and they tend to die a little more often, but still they are nowhere screwing the raid over together in tbc as I had anticipated.
I would say ½ of our raiders are hardcore gamers and the other ½ is very casual, and it still works out. What keeps our raids/progress running smooth is mostly disipline. It's "good cop/bad cop", I as the raidleader try to be very calm and positive, and some of the other officers do the yelling and wake up calls also they administrate everything very strict and rulebased.
It does seem a bit odd to me how someone was doing good in raids pre-tbc can't keep up in tbc. It's not because she's fairly new to the game? When I look back myself, I was a total noob for more than the first year, only knowing about things related to my own class and not knowing ½ of the things in wow. I remember the raidleader yelling "more decurse" on vt at Sulforon and having no clue what that shit was about. You could say wow was infront of me as opposite to now, where today I feel confident in giving players from all classes advices, and feel I know almost everything worth knowing about wow, as I'm sure alot of you feel it the same way.
Timangi said battlegrounds and arenas forced people to think/learn and I agreee in that. That being said I know plenty of excellent hardcore raiders who utterly suck at the whole pvp aspect.
And to all the wise words about skills and how it effect players, then sure some pick up faster than others but I would also like to state that WoW is not rocket science
To be honest, the average level of awareness and performance has risen in TBC. Aran requires more attention to what's going on, shifting of focus, and doing two jobs at once than the front half of AQ40. The large number of stories that basically go, 'I can't keep up' shows a lot about average people. A lot of people freeze up, panic, or go to pieces under stress. That's why military training exists. "People do not rise to the occasion, they sink to their level of training" is a very accurate truism bandied about by people who have stressful, active jobs like soldier or firefighter.
There are people who do not freeze, or have learned not to do so. These comprise a lot of the successful raiding guilds and pvp groups. If you do freeze, as drill sgts will tell you, you have to work it out with repetitive training. Do it over and over until you can manage it. Because you will not unless you practice, and it's a very valuable skill to have.
On the other hand, there are and will always be a lot of people who just can't cut it at the current level. And those companies that chase the big blockbuster hits will keep cutting the level of play until further simplification won't make any more money. When will that be? Who knows.
As for EQ and how it taught people to l2p, it was just self-segregation. The people who were good would group with people who were good. People formed networks of similar skill levels. And those that were significantly below average just didn't level. In EQ this started about level 20. In WoW it starts at the level cap.
I'm raid leader of a fairly casual raid; we've got Void Reaver down, and are working on Magtheridon. My thoughts on the matter have been coloured heavily by personal experience, so I've posted accordingly.
We're in the rather unusual position of being an an alliance of casual raiding guilds playing at Australasian times on a US server. It means the inability to replace someone for performance reasons is doubly noticeable: for me to boot/not invite someone I'd basically have to consider them less useful than an empty spot. We've never actively recruited, and not because we lack numbers. Our first kills of Maulgar, Gruul and Void Reaver have had members from outside our 2 main guilds, and when we kill Magtheridon in the next fortnight, the same will apply then. There's a better than even chance that for any given raid I'll be "L2M <insert raid boss>" in the chat channel used by Aussie players on Kel'thuzad. Most of those people we already know, either through instancing or raiding at 60; it's not quite a PuG, but I'd kill for a little more reliability.
How casual are we? Before BC we had 5-7 guilds in our raiding alliance, raiding 3-5 nights a week, and we got Emps down before the pre-BC jitters stopped us in our tracks. From what I recall of the "What is an Average raid" thread, that puts us slightly above average, but only by couple of bosses. The time belies what really happened; which such a large, casual player base we were still running MC for gear upgrades while we were learning Emps. Many of the earlier comments in this thread rang true for us; people who played frequently but didn't understand game mechanics, or hadn't itemised efficiently, or any one of the dozens of little differences which make up the difference between a hardcore raider and someone who "just" plays the game.
Come BC and our guild alliance split up a little; I think we were better prepared than most for the transition from 40-->25 man simply because there were already internal divisions in our raid along guild lines. I ended up with leadership of both one of the guilds and one of the raids; my previous experience was limited to drunken world bosses and 20-mans on off nights. It's been an interesting experience building/rebuilding/continuing a raid.
Some interesting things have happened since BC; we're raiding a lot less, for starters. Last week was the first week we spent 2 nights in something that wasn't Karazhan. The player base ranges from people who could get into any guild on the server to people who hadn't heard of TK:Eye before we went there the first time. That, for me, is one of the biggest hallmarks of a casual raid; the difference between the "best" and "worst" player is far larger than in the high-end guilds.
Because of the restructuring we've had an influx of people; I'd say roughly 1/4 of our players never raided at 60, and another 1/4 were not particularly heavy raiders. I really think the 5-man BC instances did a great job of giving people exposure to more complex fights. While fights like Aran or Netherspite are still fairly complex and new to many people, the average level of competency at 70 feels much higher than it did at 60. Valthalak (UBRS Dungeon 2 boss) was considered tough at the intended level of gear, but he wouldn't seem out of place compared to Skyriss or Murmur, or even Attumen. Sure, we still have people die (!) to cave-ins on Gruul. Two of our better healers are Orb magnets. But I know that the problems we have with them are nothing compared to what we'd have had at 60. SSC/TK may not be harder than AQ40, but most casual raiding guilds didn't complete AQ40.
We're raiding a lot "smarter" at 70 than we did at 60. It's a combination of a lot of things; better use of mods/available tools, a more thorough understanding of game mechanics and more intelligent use of consumables, and a bunch of other things. We still have stupid wipes, but I can ask "What went wrong then?", and get an intelligent answer backed up with evidence. I think this is due to a trickle-down of general raiding know-how; I've been in many PuG 5-mans at 70 where KTM and vent were used, something that would have been unusual at 60. It's a continuation of the overall effect which has been happening across the game since release; the whole player base is learning to play.
We did most of Kara before the nerfs (never saw pre-nerf Nightbane, but we killed Aran and Illhoof before the changes from memory), but only got Maulgar down before 2.1. This was partly by design on my behalf; I had a rough idea of how hard the later bosses would be, surmised that they would essentially be impossible for us, and didn't bother pushing for progression. Pretty much every time I see a new fight now I think "gee, I'm glad they nerfed <ability X> into the realms of sanity". Without 2.1 casual raiding would have died, and I'd be playing a different game.
To finish this long, rambling selt-centered post with something short and on-topic: We went from Gruul to VR, and have gone back to Mag. In hindsight this was a mistake, at least for us. Mag is a more enjoyable fight with less trash, which are two things I think casual raiders value.
Last edited by Dancing Wu Li Master : 07/30/07 at 11:03 PM.
Looking for some advice for a "serious casual" guild (3 nights/week 3-4hrs). In the last 3 weeks we've downed Maulgar, Gruul, and now last night Lurker. No attempts on Mag yet.
Now we're at the fork in the road so to speak as far as where to spend time learning the next fight. The question at hand is do we learn VR, Mag or next in SSC (likely Morogrim as we gear our resists for Hydross)? We currently raid Tuesdays with Maulgar/Gruul, Thursdays SSC, and Sunday Kara. If we can get VR or Mag down we'd likely put either or both into the Tuesday slot.
Any thoughts or suggestions as to where focus should be next?
Looking for some advice for a "serious casual" guild (3 nights/week 3-4hrs). In the last 3 weeks we've downed Maulgar, Gruul, and now last night Lurker. No attempts on Mag yet.
Now we're at the fork in the road so to speak as far as where to spend time learning the next fight. The question at hand is do we learn VR, Mag or next in SSC (likely Morogrim as we gear our resists for Hydross)? We currently raid Tuesdays with Maulgar/Gruul, Thursdays SSC, and Sunday Kara. If we can get VR or Mag down we'd likely put either or both into the Tuesday slot.
Any thoughts or suggestions as to where focus should be next?
If I were you I'd go after Voidreaver or Mag simply due to better loot and reward for time put into the fight. Morogrim drops 2 items, Voidreaver drops 2 T5 shoulder tokens and one item, and Mag drops 2 T4 chest tokens, 2 random items, and his head for a ring. Raiding as little as you do I'd imagine that getting the most bang for your buck as far as time put into a fight goes would be important. As such your largest and most consistent raid wide gear upgrades would be from Mag and Voidreaver respectively.
Raiding as little as you do I'd imagine that getting the most bang for your buck as far as time put into a fight goes would be important.
That's exactly what I'm looking for, bang for the buck. Until we drop Kara off the schedule our learning time is limited so I'm trying to make the "best" decision.
Looking for some advice for a "serious casual" guild (3 nights/week 3-4hrs). In the last 3 weeks we've downed Maulgar, Gruul, and now last night Lurker. No attempts on Mag yet.
Now we're at the fork in the road so to speak as far as where to spend time learning the next fight. The question at hand is do we learn VR, Mag or next in SSC (likely Morogrim as we gear our resists for Hydross)? We currently raid Tuesdays with Maulgar/Gruul, Thursdays SSC, and Sunday Kara. If we can get VR or Mag down we'd likely put either or both into the Tuesday slot.
Any thoughts or suggestions as to where focus should be next?
I'd definately go for Mag next, VR after, Tidewalker after. Like aforemention, Tidewalker has a pretty cruddy loot pool and atm only drops 2 items, and is also a lot more random and a gear check on your tank.
Mag is an easy fight but really prepares your gulid for the level of coordination you need in figure fights. I think Mag is a near perfectly balanced encounter at the level its at, makes your guild have to learn to deal with fast DPS, lots of raid healing and multiple tanking, coordination amongst cubes, and heavy spike damage on a tank.
Void Reaver could be seen as easier than Mag, but again requires a bit of coordination some new guilds dont have. I'd test yourself on Mag first, learn those basic coordination skills you'll need for SSC, then hit VR, but bewared his trash is more punishing that he is usually.
Looking for some advice for a "serious casual" guild (3 nights/week 3-4hrs). In the last 3 weeks we've downed Maulgar, Gruul, and now last night Lurker. No attempts on Mag yet.
Now we're at the fork in the road so to speak as far as where to spend time learning the next fight. The question at hand is do we learn VR, Mag or next in SSC (likely Morogrim as we gear our resists for Hydross)? We currently raid Tuesdays with Maulgar/Gruul, Thursdays SSC, and Sunday Kara. If we can get VR or Mag down we'd likely put either or both into the Tuesday slot.
Any thoughts or suggestions as to where focus should be next?
Our raid group is very similar, we do three nights a week, two 3-hour runs, and one 1.5-hour run (DST Lottery/Mag-Head Ring night, bleh). Lurker may have been a fun goal for you, but ultimately, you're eating up a lot of raid time by clearing Hydross Trash and Lurker trash, just to kill a boss that drops two items, every week (admittedly, lots of good items though). Did you skip Hydross because of the tanking requirement?
I'd suggest learning Mag at this point, as he's a complete loot pool that most of your raid probably wants (especially if you're still clearing Karazhan). VR is a good alternative, but he suffers the Lurker problem -- you have to clear a lot of trash to get there. However, VR is still good because he drops three items as opposed to two.
While learning Mag, I'd ask your tanks to get their resist gear together (help them out too, it's a lot of crap). If you down Mag while they're still working on it, move onto VR. Mag is a great place for learning good execution practices too. VR is fun too, but there's an excessive amount of trash; we still clear VR ourselves on our schedule, but I don't really look forward to it anymore. Trash drops makes it easier to swallow though.
Obviously though, your highest priority is to get Karazhan off your schedule. Getting out of Karazhan ASAP is vital, as it's a complete sinkhole once you have the majority of your raiders geared, unless you're one of the few guilds who can concentrate enough through the sheer boredom to do a full Kara clear in a single night. And even then, it's a good sinkhole (how much stuff are you DE'ing?).
Good idea might be after a 25-man raid, just to ask for 10 man volunteers on who still needs stuff from Kara, and just raid Kara off-schedule.
In response to Silmeria, yes we skipped Hydross while we gear the tanks with Nature/Frost. It really wasn't too much trash though to get to Lurker if you abuse the pipes. We clear the 5 pack, bog lord guy, then 5 pack, jumped across and then worked on the Lurker platforms. Getting Lurker down definitely was a "feel good" thing as it helped cement our transition from 10 man to 25 man content.
We have 2 groups clearing Kara (when we seeded Kara after Gruul) and are hoping to get it to off-nights soon. We're DE'ing or giving as offspec easily about 50% of the Kara loot.
Last edited by Jokie : 08/22/07 at 6:27 PM.
Reason: .
Also keep in mind the SSC bosses will be dropping one additional item next patch, that might effect the way you want to spend your time (I know I'm happy about it).
In response to Silmeria, yes we skipped Hydross while we gear the tanks with Nature/Frost. It really wasn't too much trash though to get to Lurker if you abuse the pipes. We clear the 5 pack, bog lord guy, then 5 pack, jumped across and then worked on the Lurker platforms. Getting Lurker down definitely was a "feel good" thing as it helped cement our transition from 10 man to 25 man content.
We have 2 groups clearing Kara (when we seeded Kara after Gruul) and are hoping to get it to off-nights soon. We're DE'ing or giving as offspec easily about 50% of the Kara loot.
I would reccomend that you kill all the trash while headed to Lurker. Having your group more comfortable with trash mobs will make them more synnergetic, which is a great thing to have if you don't have hours and hours and hours to throw yourself at harder bosses.
Today in TK my guild nearly wiped on one of the pulls before Void Reaver, but we're so used to working with each other on trash now that the last couple of tanks/healers/warlocks were able to keep all their targets under control while 18+ people ran back from the graveyard and we killed the mobs. It saved us a lot of time since we didn't have to all run back, rebuff and re-pull.
I very much enjoyed reading your post, but from the other side of the fence. The entire expansion, I have noticed a deeper and deeper emphasis on reaction time to the unexpected or random. I am reasonably quick with a keyboard and mouse, I'd like to think, but others certainly are faster. My husband is much faster with the games he plays.
I do well on our DPS chart (warlock) in Gruul and Void Reaver but it's entirely cerebral and will probably be short-lived: I work on my dot uptime, getting nice gems, etc. and must spend double to triple the number of hours as my raidmates, studying strategy guides and reading forums like these and that is the only reason I have done well. My raidmates have gotten WWS and begun improving now, and dramatically, and I often worry that it is only a matter of time before they surpass me by such a large margin that I wouldn't be able to keep up. I take at least a tick or two of damage on every cave-in, panic if I get a ground slam, and want to scream when I'm trapped between two of those arcane orbs. I tried Arena and my hands basically left the keyboard every time a rogue stunned me, it all happened so fast that I couldn't even figure out how I died. I worry about the supposedly more complicated raid fights ahead of me and though I am happy to have enjoyed content and done well as a member of the team so far, I am looking forward less and less to the future raid content. I already imagine myself getting people killed because I was two seconds slower when something random happened.
Every raid night I become worried if we'll only have two warlocks because then I'll have to enslave one of the felhounds on the Maulgar fight and it takes me forever just to find and target them since they start running around after healers the moment they're summoned.
Things before the expansion seemed easier. We made it to Twin Emps in AQ40 (but not past them) and for the most part fights were predictable and therefore reasonable to master. I can stand and shoot just fine. I can run out of the big fire or circle that appears on top of me. I know to run to the tank if something starts bonking me on the head. In my opinion, that's plenty challenge enough--does that make me a casual raider? This new stuff is crazy though. In Magtheridon I have to run, look around, banish, debuff and DPS and still make time to find my cube and click it on queue. Fortunately we've only spent a couple of nights there so I haven't wiped the raid [yet], but it takes a lot of physical energy to just play to par in a fight like that and honestly, afterward, the raid is simply draining. In Gruul, I only do well when I have the rock to stand on that doesn't throw me in the air, and the tank keeps Gruul within range of me. I do not think I've survived more than a minute or two in any of at least a dozen separate Karazhan visits to Netherspite. I'm always caught by Aran's blizzard. The elemental drops in Prince... thank goodness we have people with more "situational awareness" with a big raid icon on their heads that I can follow. Does it get worse? I want to hear that Gruul is as bad as it gets, but...
I'd like to see much more predictable fights. If I want an element of randomness I will turn off the computer and play cards. The randomness of the current raids requires me to be more than just a decent warlock... it requires me to be a masterful warlock with fast fingers and fast wrist and excellent hand-eye coordination. That coordination just hasn't come. I will always be decent and show up ahead of time fully repaired with all my consumables and all the right gems in my gear, and do good damage with the right spell rotation and raid-friendly debuffs on the boss and more, but I can't get running the second some random affliction hits me and starts doing 6000 damage a second. If that element were not there, some of these fights would feel a -lot- more accessible.
My apologies for a rambling post but I did want to post my feelings and definitely agree with Faust that there are issues with what the current raid content tests (and doesn't test) in the players who attempt it.
On page 5, we had a breakdown of roughly where the 'average' raiding guild was, the T5 crews, etc.
I don't have access to WoWJutsu here at work, but I wonder how those numbers stack up, a month and a bit after they were last compiled?
Has the 'average' gone up significantly, now that 4-6 weeks have passed? Are significantly more guilds actually making progress into SSC/TK, or are they still floundering on the 'loot pinata bosses'?
Most of my raid crew split off from my old guild to reform, and as expected, this set us back a few weeks. We caught up to where we were fairly quickly (under a month, probably 3ish weeks?) and then got an extra boss or two (up to 3/6) in SSC, and will hopefully one day get that last 30% on Leotheras for our 4th.
Therein lies the problem; on a server that is well behind the curve, and with an abysmally shallow raider pool (RP server, so even though the realm existed at release, the personnel shortages make my head hurt), we've been all but making steps backwards. Pre-TBC< raids were often cancelled in Naxx (and even earlier) due to lacking tanks, or healers, or just warm bodies. Now its those, or warlocks (for aoe/banish) or mages/AOE in general, and the average applicant is painfully behind in even regular 5 man, crafted and quested gear. I have alts that outgear these people embarassingly, and I'm not even talking about ones that I drag through Karazhan now and then to help balance out a crew.
So now it feels like we're fighting not to progress, but just to farm 'completed' content, and retain the interest of both our current members and get the apps coming in (there are 2 guilds for our faction that are significantly beyond us in content).
Thus, every old school member that bails on us for one of the higher guilds, or goes on an extended 'break due to burnout', or just flakes off for whatever reason, we're set that much further back, and the likelyhood of finding even a vaguely suitable replacement gets slimmer and slimmer.
It's disheartening, to look at the remaining bosses per week in SSC, and ponder just how to get these two zones cleared so that we can even access the next two, and that's with another instance and an expansion looming. They may be 6-18 months out, but they're coming, and it's daunting to be so far behind with little respite visable.
07/25/07, 2:58 PM
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