A problem with the attunements is that SSC and TK are boring and take too long and few wants to do them because of the excessive trash, even though almost all the bosses are great. Even the trash in BT is too much. Teron's trash should be halved for example.

If Blizzard is worried about the progress speed there must be better ways than mindless trash. I'd even prefer the old Nef system where he took was it 10 minutes to reset after a wipe, as bad as that was. Or reduce the trash but make it harder.

Regardless, if a guild has cleared the tier 6 instances it should get trash free tier 5 instances! Maybe you could get 10% less trash in the previous instances for every boss you kill.

An other thing that needs fixing is the BT gems. We have a backlog of around one month and we only allow gemming of the best gear if there is a gem shortage. The problem is red gems and an easy fix would be a new transmutation recipe taking two non-red gems and turning them into one red gem.

This is mostly due to the horrible way some classes work with itemization. A lot of classes/builds scale the best with spell damage. Even classes that like high crit like Fire, Arcane mages, Destruction locks, really actually scale better with +12 spell damage in every slot than +5 crit/+6 dmg. Shadow priests, Affliction locks don't want anything other than +12 spell damage gems. Hunters and rogues want +agi or +AP.
So what do you end up using ? Red gems, Orange gems, Blue gems (for tanks).
Better hope your healers don't insist on getting +22 healing ones too.
In addition, there are no good stats on certain gem colors for loads of classes. Yellow ones are almost always inferior to orange, green ones go completely unused.
If I were Blizzard I'd be more worried about having the gems be more or less equally desirable than about them having the same stat budget.
I guess a transmute formula would help alleviate the problem.

Rogues should be using yellow gems for +hit :s

I make far more money cutting Dawnstones than Noble Topaz, even though the orange gems are almost universally superior (and I have all cuts for both colors). Cut Dawnstones sell better because Dawnstones are cheaper, and thats because Dawnstones are worse. Same deal with 4 defense/6 stam Talasites versus 12 stam Star of Elune. The Talasite sells more because it's one third the price.

To me it's an economics problem. Not everything is precisely as valuable as everything else, and that's exactly why it's so interesting. By the way, you CAN transmute the gems using the Auction House. Sell five Lions Eye for 300g each, buy three Crimson Spinal at 500g each.

I do think that the keying system is an ok concept but needs to be more lenient.

We dropped SSC and TK like steaming turds once we downed Kael. But we have had no turnover since then which allowed us to just work on new stuff. Losing players is brutal with a keying system, especially if you need to recruit. Then you blow 2-3 days clearing crap since most servers do not have a ready supply of recruits with the vials.

Having Archi drop a consumable key seems like a good solution to me. Any guild that can set foot in Hyjal can kill Archimonde in the next week or 2. If they wanted to take an easier approach that teleport guy at entrance of BT could maybe give a quest to loot an attunement consumable from Akama. Akama is also 2 weeks max for any new guild in BT to kill. These solutions would leave a relatively minor window for guild problems to really derail a guild for T6.

Whatever they do they have to find a way to not force T6 guilds back to SSC/TK.

Sure, it works with Dawnstones. It works less well if the second horde guild on the server hasn't even seen Leotheras.
The +10 hit rating gem pattern is also a pretty rare drop I think so it's not even available.

I agree about the gems. We have a stockpile of 50 of every gem, except Red. We have maybe 10-15 of those banked at the moment, and we don't give them out easily.

Blizzard fucked up and didn't include the recipe in the game, though they said they did, much like it took them 2 months to actually stop being retarded and put the mystic dawnstone recipe in the game.

It's rare but you do see them from time to time. I think some people farm trash outside of normal raiding hours and split the profits from selling all gems, but I'm not sure. I don't even know how many people this would require. To be fair, Mal'Ganis has 7 total alliance and horde guilds that can enter Black Temple, three of which have killed Illidan, so no, it's not a normal server.

Another thing to consider is that you don't have to use the absolute most optimal gem in every slot immediately, especially if you have a stockpile of 50+. The mages might want 12 spell damage, but a 6 damage, 5 crit Lionseye is still pretty good-- probably better than 9 damage, and definitely if it earns a socket bonus. And it frees up a Crimson Spinal for classes whose second best gem isn't remotely as good as their red cut (like shadow priests).

While we're on the subject of epic gems, what the hell is up with Royal Shadow Amethyst and Dazzling Seaspray Emerald? I understand having mp5 on a gem sort of screws up the budget, but can't they just load up the other stats more? For reference

Royal Nightseye - 9 Healing, 2 mp5
Royal Shadow Amethyst - 11 healing, 2 mp5

Dazzling Talasite - 4 int, 2 mp5
Dazzling Seaspray Emerald - 5 int, 2 mp5

and for comparison

Teardrop Living Ruby - +18 Healing
Teardrop Crimson Spinel - +22 Healing

Bold Living Ruby - +8 str
Bold Crimson Spinel - +10 str


What the hell? It's like the extra itemization points are lost into the void of the mp5 which can't be fully upgraded to the next quantity. I realize they can't upgrade the mp5 on it, but they should at least shift the points to the other value to make these gems an actual worthwhile upgrade. This in part is what causes the imbalance in demand between the different gem colors.

I agree that there needs to be some backflagging mechanism or an otherwise (not necessarily easy) but QUICK way to attune someone for hyjal. Having to choose between keying a good friend or two that either took a break or are on a more casual raiding basis, and progressing on Mother/Archimonde is a really hard choice. When you are killing 10+T6 bosses whilst trying to learn new fights it doesn't leave any time to go back to the old instances on a regular basis unless you want to severely slow down your guild's progression.

I like the idea of backflagging when you kill Archimonde, or maybe when you are Ashtongue Exalted you can flag 1 person per week, or something along those lines. I never thought it would be a problem, but there really is TOO much to do for a guild in 1 week so you ultimately have to make some pretty tough decisions as a guild leader.

Somewhat contradictory here. The main purpose of high amounts of BT trash (in my eyes) is to give you plenty of gems and hearts that you will be needing. Not to mention best of slot items.

I understand the argument that red gems are far too popular, but that isn't really the trash's fault

I like your idea of a transmute system, however I think it is highly unlikely and would honestly rather them just make the other gems more usable.

I think you're right on the points dissappearing into the void. I believe the [Royal Nightseye] should actually have only 1.5 mp5 but they rounded it up. So when you upgrade it to the [Royal Shadowsong Amethyst] you actually pay 0.5 mp5 to bring it up to 2mp5 but you see no benefit as it was already rounded up on the previous gem.

I'll throw my hat in the ring as a casual raid guild.

Raiding is too harsh - not hard, harsh - for the majority right now. None of the encounters I've seen is too hard; you dodge x, interact with y to stop z, dps the boss and heal the tanks, and collect loot. It's not overly complex, in fact in most cases it's more entertaining than WoW Classic bosses were, but it is overly harsh for your average guild. When that one guy in your raid stuffs up a minute into the encounter, you just wiped. You didn't wipe NOW (unless he was a cube clicker), but you wiped about 6 minutes from now, when the slow bleed started by his death completes its job.

Someone said that it's no longer your average ability / skill level that determines how far your raid will go, but rather that it's your "lowest common denominator" that does. Unfortunately, I see this proven true night after night. The concept may be well and good for the top one or two guilds on each given server, who have a constant influx of applicants (both transfers and otherwise), but for pretty well everyone else it leaves members with absolutely no recourse to get past a boss.
You did everything exactly right. You, in fact, over-did your job and picked up slack that was barely there in the first place. None of that, however, means anything, because "that guy" wiped the entire raid, all by his lonesome.
That isn't fun.

It's also not something that most guilds have the luxury of fixing. Not everyone who plays this game reacts quickly enough, or has a good enough hardware setup, or whatever else, to meet the requirements Blizz has set for a successful raid. By the same token, not every guild has recourse to booting / benching any player that isn't "better-than-average," and thus spends multiple nights wiping for no fixable reason - which leads to some of your skilled players losing patience and applying to a more progressed guild, only worsening the problem.

Middle-range guilds don't draw many, if any, transfer applicants. Middle-range guilds also don't draw many same-server applicants, for that matter. The turnover rate in guilds of high-quality players is high for middle-range guilds, and low for top-end guilds... the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, so to speak. Success at raiding breeds opportunity for more success (more qualified, competent applicants, further eliminating "that guy" from your roster).

This is what I see as an officer in a "casual" raiding guild. We have one or two of "that guy" in our guild, and little way to recruit past a need for him - even were we to be willing to just step over nice players who frankly aren't terrible (they just aren't above average). You need to be more hardcore to survive now - it used to be you needed to be more hardcore to stay on the bleeding edge (which was fine).

I agree that the fundamental problem is that you have 23 good raiders in a 25 man raid. If those 2 are that seriously behind the rest of the guild though, there are huge benefits to replacing those two people. I admit that it's difficult to do, but it's not impossible, and it's worth the effort. If your server has 3 guilds in the same situation, there are 69 such players and you only need 25. The problem IS solvable, either by them joining your guild or the other way around.

What I've found to be the bigger problem is that guilds don't boot bad players, either so they don't hurt their feelings or because they lack an exact class replacement. If you stress high quality standards, people will work harder to meet them.

See, we do still try and recruit past the ominous "that guy." On a server as small as Perenolde, though (particularly Horde-side), the pool of people that raid at all just is not really there. Stop by our realm forums some day, there's usually a spate of recruitment threads by guilds of all stripes, at all times. We do try to fix it.
I think there are many guilds in this situation - their server isn't large, so the "pool" to draw on is small. The best players wind up highly concentrated in one or two "top" guilds, and don't go anywhere.

When your guild isn't at the leading edge of content, though, you don't attract transfer talent, which means you're "stuck" drawing on your own server's already-small talent pool - just like everyone else is. A lack of success, or even a stall, breeds less success.

Also... often "that guy" really isn't a bad player. He's not the guy who was always AFK in MC, or never even showed up on the healing meters, or whatever. He's the guy who was in the lower portion of your healing meters before tBC. Is "that guy" a better-than-average (and sometimes, even an "average") player? No.

You still can't always afford to "trim the fat" when your guild is, say, in the early stages of SSC. You start looking like you have a superiority complex, with no backing for it.

We really shouldn't have to push such a "hardcore" guild mentality just to be months behind the leader guilds. The gap has widened.

Well if the good players won't come to you, you could always go to them. Have you considered doing a full server transfer to a realm with a more active raiding scene? It's an expensive process for the whole guild but if that's really what you want-- access to better talent-- it's something you can do to encourage new recruits.

As long as players can transfer servers, only the top 25% of servers or so will have seriously active raiding scenes. The rich get richer is more an issue of servers, not guilds, because there are tremendous benefits to all guilds on a server with 10 raiding guilds than they would have on 5 servers with 2 guilds each.

Anyone have the numbers on say, a Fire Mage that replaces 3 bluecon red gems with 3 purplecon red gems, over say a 5min spam feast fight where agro doesnt matter?

edit: just say a 900-1100 dps mage.

For some reason this strikes me as hilarious; you're quite literally throwing thousands of dollars at Blizzard to account for what ultimately are flaws in the social mechanics of their game.

EDIT: I'm not really saying it doesn't make sense to do this in some circumstances as far as your guild is concerned, I just think it's pretty darn funny that Blizzard makes out like bandits on the deal.

That's an increase of +9 dmg. If he's straight Fireball nuking with no lag, 10/48/3, and 5/5 Fire Vuln up, that's 12 dmg per Fireball (13 with CoE, 14 with CoE + Misery). I suppose we should consider with Misery + CoE. 14 dmg per Fireball, every 3 sec, is 4.6| dps, so over 5 minutes (300 sec), it's 1400 extra damage.

This doesn't take into account crits at all. With a 30% crit rate, that would be about 1900 damage.

It's not a flaw in the social system. It's a result of allowing server transfers. It's much easier to recruit if all the good players are on the same server, so the introduction of transfers made it possible for people to move closer to the recruiting equilibrium state of everyone on the same server. (Of course, server lag still prevents this from being taken to its logical conclusion.) As a result, most servers are left with few competent raiders.

It's server transfers that generate server transfers, not social dynamics.

Either way it is a huge issue. Taking my server for instance. We got into BT/Hyjal at the end of June. The second "best" guild on the server has not downed Lady Vashj, Solarian, or Kael. We will likely complete BT before another guild even gets into the place.

Talented people are bailing off the server left and right because 1) we aren't recruiting, and 2) it is easier to join a well established guild than it is to build one from a mediocre one or from scratch.

Tedv,
Your a bit idealogical about your responses. No casual guild is going to transfer off a server barring some serious issues. Warsong has had several guilds jump ship during free server transfers and a couple that have paid to transfer. The ones that paid to transfer did so because of Drama and the fact the Warsong is the defacto Brazilian/Russian server. The Brazilian players and Russians all made a concerted effort to consolidate on warsong in the early days ow WoW1.0. The Free transfers were all in response to the 45 Minute queues and some of our more progressed guilds getting frustrated that they had a small pool of players to pick from even though we had a high pop server. Language Barriers are a prevalent issue. You cannot get a pug group going for any 5 mans if you don't speak BR for the most part.

I am digressing, and I apologize, but I definitely sympathize with chromaticow, on a server with a small pool of players filling a raid with 2-4 average to below average raids guarantees a day of little to no progression.