I believe that people can always do better, as players and as a whole raid. I haven't been farming BT for 8 months, but for now I can clearly see how we can improve. Maybe in 2 months we'll be on top, but as long as you are perfectible, you should keep trying to do better.
The question is, is there a point where you can no longer improve the raid's performance ? I remember back when we were doing AQ, we managed to do a BWL run in 2 hours, without trying to speedrun or anything, it just went very smooth, and I was wondering, why don't we always do it this way ? I've never reached any degree of perfection, and to be honest it's the first time I've finished the existing content (I don't count the C'Thun FK the day before Naxx is released), I don't know how we will evolve, but, aside from loot which is a very existing motivation, improving the performance is clearly the main goal.
It's a shame that the new combat log patch isn't being released right now, before sunwell. The ability to parse and analyze combat more cleanly, along with the time for the mod authors to make sws/recap/assesment etc to account for them would be a nice use of this lull.
Theres always room for improvement, currently we are trying to best our speed records every week and reward our members with DKP bonuses when we do. Clearing Hyjal in less than 2 hours and BT in less than 4 hours is now commonplace. Personally I quite enjoy this to liven up the raids a bit and make them more interesting, its in the spirit of the timed event in ZA which I also enjoy.
The main problem these days is from members getting sick of farming and quiting the game, attrition is quite high and incomming recruits quite often need to be attuned and geared up completely. On average we are losing 2-3 players every other week. Its quite impressive for guilds to have been at this stage for 8 months and still keep trucking, most of our memberbase are getting bored out of their skulls after just a few months of farming.
Its gonna be quite the dissapointment if Sunwell turns out to be cleared quickly or even bosses beaten on PTR, we'd rather prefer the place to be tough as nails (obviously not due to bugs in the fights) and last us a couple months at least.
I believe that people can always do better, as players and as a whole raid. I haven't been farming BT for 8 months, but for now I can clearly see how we can improve. Maybe in 2 months we'll be on top, but as long as you are perfectible, you should keep trying to do better.
Nothing you said here is wrong. But gear is part of improvement. When a zone is on farm for 20+ clears most of your 'A team' is down to maybe 1 real upgrade, and a small handful of pseudo-upgrades. The real challenge is finding people to come pickup the shard loot without scrubbing up your raid too badly.
As far as keeping focus, we decided to drop Hyjal for a couple weeks which turned out to be a very welcome change amongst the raiders.
Pick a few bosses each week and go all out on them, stack the raid for DPS, use consumables, push the envelope, even though it's completely un-needed. Our turnover has been pretty low on most of our DPS classes (with the exception of our dual warglaive rogue ebaying).
This may not hold interest for healers to the degree it does for DPS, but the fact that we're stacking the raid for damage, and that our tanks are often wearing DPS gear for these encounters, does make the healer's lives more interesting.
Most guilds stopped running SSC/TK a long time ago. We did too, but once Illidan was on farm we started going back. We sell about 5 raid slots per run, and are building up a substantial supply of gold to blow on whatever we may need to advance as rapidly as possible through Sunwell. More recently we've also started selling Hyjal/BT runs as well.
That pretty much covers what my guild has been doing in an "official" capacity. But there are other things that people are doing too:
3) Arena. I've never been a big PvP person myself, but with all this time available, why not right? Virtually every person in our guild has at least one arena team that they give some focus to when we're not farming content.
4) Alts. We've had groups of 4-5 people roll up alts together, get them to 70, and turn them into semi-persistent heroic groups.
As soon as Sunwell hits PTR we will probably be spending 6 days a week there, and virtually stop playing on our live server. Of course logistical limitations may interfere with this plan. The chances that Blizzard will actually be able to have a lag free PTR that stays online seem low, given how many guilds there are that have nothing better to do than help test Sunwell.
I hope (but doubt that it will happen) that Blizzard will set up a separate PTR realm that is by invite only, and only give invites to guilds that have killed Illidan. Barring that, they could set up a PTR which has dueling and arenas disabled on it. That would keep most of the casuals from copying there and lagging it up.
It's a shame that the new combat log patch isn't being released right now, before sunwell. The ability to parse and analyze combat more cleanly, along with the time for the mod authors to make sws/recap/assesment etc to account for them would be a nice use of this lull.
There'll be the 2 or so months 2.4.0 will be on the PTR. Hopefully that'll be enough time to get everything up and running again for live.
As soon as Sunwell hits PTR we will probably be spending 6 days a week there, and virtually stop playing on our live server. Of course logistical limitations may interfere with this plan. The chances that Blizzard will actually be able to have a lag free PTR that stays online seem low, given how many guilds there are that have nothing better to do than help test Sunwell.
I hope (but doubt that it will happen) that Blizzard will set up a separate PTR realm that is by invite only, and only give invites to guilds that have killed Illidan. Barring that, they could set up a PTR which has dueling and arenas disabled on it. That would keep most of the casuals from copying there and lagging it up.
Is anyone else seeing an issue with the idea that basically every guild that has downed Illidan to this point is planning to spend significant time on the PTR? Unless Blizzard realizes this and adds more PTR Realms, does special invites for top 50/100 guilds, or does some sort of scheduling where guilds get access to a special PTR a couple nights a week (others on other nights). This is a unique opportunity for Blizzard to test the hell out of an instance, with an essentially unlimited number of overqualified testers, I mean... 50-100 guilds all hit the PTR at once, and you can test and toon a boss in one night.
Well, to keep me going I decided to drop all my professions and go enchanting/leatherworking on my main to be better prepared for sunwell. Additionally, like someone else said before, the only real challenge left is always to beat my previous best dps, so in that regard I'm well served for that as well.
<Eej> YOU"RE GONNA PULL
<Eej> IF YOU SQUEEZE OFF ANOTHER ARCANE BLAST
<Spectear> You've obviously never played with Manly.
<Spectear> That's hardly a reason to stop DPS. Very Manly Staff
Is anyone else seeing an issue with the idea that basically every guild that has downed Illidan to this point is planning to spend significant time on the PTR?
*points to his post on P1*
Its quite impressive for guilds to have been at this stage for 8 months and still keep trucking, most of our memberbase are getting bored out of their skulls after just a few months of farming.
Heh, a little less than 7 months since the first clear. And for anyone below the top 100, at most, 4 months
It is probably not needed for a guild to keep farming up to SP's release; make sure your raiders get the most part of their items, afterwards relax, do not exhaust them by farming continually. Once the 2.4 PTRs are up, try and interest your members into spending as much time on them as they can; keep it up until 2.4 goes live.
One thing that should be avoided is entering into the 2.4 era after a complete period of relaxation though; if you did not explore the PTRs with your guild, mount a few raids in the Black Temple and Mount Hyjal 3-4 weeks before it's out, warm your players up and allow them to enter the progress mindset again.
Personally I'm always trying to improve each week on particular fights, I always look forward to Teron and seeing if I can beat my previous best DPS. I honestly don't mind farm content one or two nights a week because we clear it out efficiently and nothing quite beats the stories told during the trash clear to Teron. :P
Yesterday and the day before we cleared Hyjal and BT without a single wipe. It probably felt like a greater achievement than most of the first kills we had in those instances.
These kind of new goals (although in this case it wasn't an actual goal in a sense that we aimed for it) can keep the game fun and challenging. One of our members has come up with the idea to make a fixed 10 man group for ZA in order to get everyone a bear mount (guaranteed drop from the 4th timed chest appareantly).
If you're out of goals for now, taking it easy for a couple of weeks/months might not be such a bad idea either. At least I know I enjoyed having a bit more time to spend on making dinner each day!
The PVE endgame needs a massive revamp. Being 'done' for 6+ months is just wrong.
Its very difficult to keep raiders focused and entertained when doing the same thing for the 20th time, especially when the reward payoff is getting worse with every trip.
There needs to be something like EQ's AAs, IMO. Even if they are different, less powerful, whatever. There needs to be *some* tangible reward for running the same damn thing for the 20th, 30th or 50th time.
Backflagging needs to be fixed. Its stupid to ask a guild with Illidan down to run TK and SSC every time you need new members to join the guild.
Itemization needs to be looked at. There are a few items that too many classes/roles want. Trinkets in general, too rare. Conversely there are a number of drops that are too similar to other drops.
The nature of boss loot needs to examined. Its too easy to get bad streaks and get the same thing over and over again and/or to never see the drops you do want. I dont think anyone wants 100% tokenized loot but I'd take that over the current system. At the very least loot tables should shrink.
The PVE endgame needs a massive revamp. Being 'done' for 6+ months is just wrong.
Its very difficult to keep raiders focused and entertained when doing the same thing for the 20th time, especially when the reward payoff is getting worse with every trip.
There needs to be something like EQ's AAs, IMO. Even if they are different, less powerful, whatever. There needs to be *some* tangible reward for running the same damn thing for the 20th, 30th or 50th time.
Backflagging needs to be fixed. Its stupid to ask a guild with Illidan down to run TK and SSC every time you need new members to join the guild.
Itemization needs to be looked at. There are a few items that too many classes/roles want. Trinkets in general, too rare. Conversely there are a number of drops that are too similar to other drops.
The nature of boss loot needs to examined. Its too easy to get bad streaks and get the same thing over and over again and/or to never see the drops you do want. I dont think anyone wants 100% tokenized loot but I'd take that over the current system. At the very least loot tables should shrink.
I think there are threads for all of these things, but to rehash: the current system of gear reset/a few dungeons/gear reset is fine. The only real problem (after the bugs and balance issues got sorted out) was pacing. As it's been said innumberable times, if Kara/Gruul/Mag were released in January, SSC was March, TK was April, Hyjal was July, and BT was August (or something like that), everyone would generally be much happier.
Backflagging would be nice. There's a thread on it. Itemization and item distribution have their flaws this time around (hello Warglaive of Azzinoth), but I think the raid itemization guy generally did a good job with the 2.1 revamp and deserves a pat on the back. They're getting better at it, that's for sure.
Shrinking loot tables would be ok if more trash epics were very good items. That way they could keep the amount of items available from instance x, make trash more interesting, preserve the random nature of drpos, and be more likely to avoid some bad loot streaks (hopefully).
01/07/08, 6:52 AM
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