Ok, so I’ve talked about it enough.  Here is the new guild:

Grown Ups
US - Korgath
Alliance
http://grownups.wowguildbank.com

If you are stuck on a server you can’t seem to find a decent guild, or are just tired of your guild not being able to focus and organize - BUT don’t want to get tied down to some hard-core 6 night raiding guild, this might be a good option.  People will be held accountable, people will be teachable, people will be relaxed.  We’re going to do things a bit different, keep it small and efficient.

If you are the guy who is prepared for your raid, on time and waiting on all the other slackers - you read up on the encounters and /facepalm when your guild mates screw up on things they should be able to handle with a bit of prep time.  This might be the guild for you.  Please come check us out if any of this sounds good to you, register on the forums- email me, etc.  Please read the About page, the FAQ page and the application README.  I want to be upfront and honest with everyone involved so you know what you are getting into.

Thanks!

Am I in a World-class guild?  No.  Have I ever been?  No.  Can I raid more than 2 nights a week?  No.  Do I have any experience or expertise in building a guild, let alone a world class guild?  No.  Should you keep reading?  Probably not.

This is a series on how to create a world-class raiding guild.  I am a project manager IRL.  This is what I do- plan, organize, test, execute.  I really, really enjoy doing that in an IT environment, gaming environment- whatever.  It’s also my blog, and I think I can do this, so just quit QQing and read.

STEP 1:
Re-roll horde.

I’m serious.  Horde quests, characters, racial traits, cities, and characters are just better.  If you have someone who has a character above level 40 for the horde and alliance - I’m pretty sure about 99.8% of them will tell you Horde is better.  Let’s take a gander at the horde racial traits:

Cow: War Stomp/Endurance/Cultivation/Nature Resistance
War Stomp: Activate to stun up to 5 opponents within 8 yards - lasts 2 sec - 2 min cooldown
Endurance:  Max Health increased by 5%
Cultivation: 15 skill bonus to Herbalism
Nature Resistance:  All Tauren get +10 Nature Resistance

Classes:  Druid, Hunter, Shaman, Warrior, Death Knight
Thoughts:  The immediate thought would be to roll warrior here, and that’s ok- but there are other classes to look at as well.  Druid would be a decent choice, the extra health, the stomp, etc.  Hunter could be an option - again for the stomp to get some distance from a mob/player to kite.  Plus cows get to ride dinosaurs.


Undead:  Will of the Forsaken/Cannibalize/Underwater Breathing/Shadow Resistance
Will of the Forsaken:  Activate to become immune to Fear, Sleep, and Charm effects. Can also be used while already afflicted by Fear or Sleep - lasts 5 sec - 2 min cooldown
Cannibalize:  Activate to regenerate 7% of total health every 2 sec. by consuming Humanoid or Undead corpses within 5 yds - lasts 10 sec - 2 min cooldown
Underwater Breathing:  Underwater breath lasts 300% longer than normal
Shadow Resistance:  All Undead get +10 Shadow Resistance

Classes:  Mage, Priest, Rogue, Warlock, Warrior, Death Knight
Thoughts:  Undead is a cool class, but wow I think they kinda got screwed with racials.  Will of the Forsaken is nice- but I would argue everything else is kinda trivial.  Shadow resistance is OK.  Maybe priests and tanks?  If they were so cool- I would say maybe skip them.

Orc:  Blood Fury/Hardiness/Command/Axe Specialization
Blood Fury: Increases your damage and healing/AP (whatever) , but reduces healing effects on you by 50%. Lasts 15 sec.
Hardiness:  15% resistance to stun and knockout effects.
Command:  Pet melee damage increased by 5%.
Axe Specialization:  Expertise with Axes and Two-Handed Axes increased by 5.

Classes:  Hunter, Rogue, Shaman, Warlock, Warrior, Death Knight
Thoughts:  Hunter.  Warlock.  Warrior.  Maybe Shaman.  Hunter.  Hunter.  Orcs are probably the best race in the game?  This race SCREAMS hunter.  And Warlock.  Death knight too.

Troll:  Berserking/Regenerating/Beast Slaying/Throwing specialization/Bow Specialization
Berserking:  Increases your casting and attack speed by 10% to 30%. At full health the speed increase is 10% with a greater effect up to 30% if you are badly hurt when you activate Berserking. Lasts 10 sec.
Regenerating:  10% health regen bonus, 10% active in combat
Beast Slaying:  5% damage bonus to Beasts
Throwing specialization:  Your chance to critically hit with Throwing Weapons is increased by 1%
Bow Specialization:  Your chance to critically hit with Bows is increased by 1%.

Classes:   Hunter, Mage, Priest, Rogue, Shaman, Warrior, Death Knight
Thoughts:  Trolls are underrated.  Berserking would be nice for a tank, I would think a Rogue would die to quick to get the full benefit in a fight.  Regenerating would be really nice for a tank.  The Bow specialization would be nice for hunters.  So tank.  Maybe hunter.

Blood Elves:  Arcane Affinity/Arcane Torrent/Magic Resistance/Mana Tap
Arcane Affinity: Enchanting +10
Arcane Torrent: Silences all enemies within 8 yards for 2 sec. In addition, you gain 5 + 1/Level Mana restored per Mana Tap charge currently affecting you - Instant - 2 min cooldown.
Magic Resistance: All resistances increased by 5.
Mana Tap:  Reduces target’s mana by 51 and charges you with Arcane energy for 10 min. This effect stacks up to 3 times. Amount of mana reduced is 50 + 1/Level - 30 yd range - Instant - 30 sec cooldown.

Classes:  Hunter, Mage, Paladin, Priest, Rogue, Warlock, Death Knight
Thoughts:  The arcane torrent/mana tap thing is nice, it’s a very quick stun - but the mana restore is another nice tool to get some mana back.  Any of the classes listed would be a decent choice if you didn’t like any of the other races.  Or you just wanted to be a BELF chick.

You have your options, start picking up roles.
Tank:  Cow, Troll, BELF*
Melee/DPS:  Orc, Troll, BELF, Undead(meh)
Healer:  Undead, BELF, Cow
*pally tanks

The point is- you want to be able to justify your race.  If someone wants to be a Blood Elf hunter - make them tell you why.  Because they want a “hawt toon” is not a good answer.  You are looking to match the best races up with the best roles.  Make sure these arguments you are getting are PvE centered.  Because I want to pwn stunned n00bs is again - not a good excuse for the BELF hunter.  We are creating a World Class PvE guild that will pwn BOSSES.  Always think “Will this help me in a boss fight?” and remember that some/most bosses are immune to stun effects.  Sure there will be a boss or two in the entire game where you could prove some moderate utility - but over the long haul using our example, an Orc hunter is probably the best race/class combo.

So - do you disagree with my thoughts on each race?  Which horde race is best for which class?  LET ME KNOW!

Ever been there?  Proud of your little corner of the digital divide?  Just purely happy for your team, your guild - for their success?  Man, last night was that night for me.  Bobo’s House of Gank voted on what to do on Wednesday and people decided they wanted to go to SSC and kill trash for recipes, and random epics.  I got on late and was invited into the group.

We had 22 people in the raid, and killed the trash around Lady Vashj, Tidewalker, and Lurker.  The DPS was eye-opening.  I think we could actually raid SCC if you look at the dps alone.  The overall raid healing and fight mechanics are where we lacked, but it was a ton of fun.  We got a few drops - and I won a roll for the leatherworking pattern - Boots of Utter darkness, which is kinda a rogue item.  I like the hit and crit on them, and I think I’ll use them.

We tried Lurker, with about 2-3 of the 22 having ever seen him.  Strategy was laid out, deep breaths were taken.  I think something was off with my Deadly boss mods.  Or maybe I’m a n00b.  Both?  The spewing thing seemed like it wasn’t really when the timer said it was.  Then I was WTFpwned by it.  It lasted about 30 seconds total but with 22 people all but 2-3 inside SSC for the first time, some of them still in greens (including me) we got him to 91%.  Pretty cool if you ask me.  Then the raid ended and we all went our separate ways.  It was fun, laid back, and new.  It was Bobo’s.

Bobo’s Magtheridon try number 2:

We owned all the summoners in very quick fashion - with Mag being released inbetween the 2nd to last and last summoner. Plenty of time to get him picked up and against the wall, ready to click on the cubes and interrupt the Blast Nova.

-> enter wiping from 10pm server to 1am

AAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGG.

I honestly don’t know why we kept wiping. I’ve never been a cubie clicker, I’m pretty sure all you have to do is click on the cube and be still, not casting anything when Mag starts his Blast Nova cast. We just couldn’t coordinate this for some reason. Either a clicker would somehow die, or forget which cube to click, then they would click early and try to click again only to have exhaustion and be locked out. It was pretty frustrating. Our guild leadership and raid leader was wonderful, calmly trying to figure out the problem, calmly adding suggestions to help. At the end of the night, I had to remember this was (including me) most folks SECOND TIME they have ever seen Mag.

We can chalk it up to experience, and keep trying I suppose. I really think once we get Mag and start on Gruul, we might really start to get some progression going. WE JUST NEED TO CLICK BETTER!

/wrists

I’ve never been to Magtheridon.  It reminded me a lot of Ony with just a few pulls to the boss.  The fight doesn’t seem that complicated.  Handle the summoners, drag Mag away from raid, click on cubes when he is about to nova. 

Except that about 85% of our raid had never set foot into the place.  As a matter of fact, it’s one of the first few Bobo’s House of Gank 25-man raids we’ve ever done.  We wiped a few times trying to handle the elementals (we only had 1 lock) from the summoners and finally had a run where we burned all the summoners down really fast and didn’t loose ANYONE.  Mag was pulled right up to a corner, everyone was settling in for some DPS.  Everything was going great, we felt like we had things under control. 

Then we had a 15-20 second lag spike.  This of course ruined this chance at a kill, and wiped the raid.

At the time, we just thought- “hey bad luck, lets rez and do this again”.  We felt really good about everything that was happening and people were doing great.  The next 3 attempts were plagued with a really perplexing issue of aggro.  Our main tank (a paladin) would throw his shield to start the fight, and the mob would immediately take off towards a warrior on the other side of the room.  Then once somehow 3 summoners aggroed at once to the initial summoner and roflpwned us.  The behaivor of the summoners was vastly different than the first 3-4 tries we did.

It is possible that it was just late and the tanks weren’t as sharp picking up their assignments as they were at the start of the night, but it didn’t really seem that way.  It honestly seemed bugged.

Oh well, I probably would have lost a roll for something and been pissed, but it was fun doing new content and getting close on the first night of attempts!

I logged on to my hunter, found that the hearthstone was burned and for some unknown(known?) reason I was in the Exodar. How did he even GET THERE? I logged out in Honor Hold! HE’S FIVE!!!

So thwarted by my son, I turned to the horde. My Rogue was the logical choice, so naturally I chose to play my Mage. Back to SM I go, this time to the armory. After no less than 4 groups joined, filled, and disbanded (don’t ask) I finally got a solid group and off we went. I was 35 when we started, and halfway through the instance a 37 ret? paladin was the top of the charts. I looked closer and saw that I was SECOND! I love my fire spec, but I’m sure that I’m doing it wrong and could get it a bit more refined.

But MAN, is it fun. Big crits, tons of burst damage, great crowd control. Downside: I have to drink nearly every pull. My +fire damage gear makes me a glass cannon. If I don’t kill you fast, I’m pretty much a squishy snack. I’ll have to tweak this a bit to see if I can get a bit more utility out of some more balance - some intellect, stamina mixed in.

I really enjoy playing my mage. This is my fourth character into the Scarlet Monastery, and I think for this instance, Mage is my favorite.

Any thoughts on my Fire Mage build?

I ran SFK last night with my Horde warrior, Shemoos. I love Shemoos. There was a hunter in our group, who will remain nameless. He was a huntard. The kind that makes BRK shed tears. I didn’t really notice it much, until we started getting into the tight hallways and I saw him on numerous occasions meleeing mobs. At first I didn’t say anything, I usually don’t. Then our healer died while he was meleeing a mob to death. Ok, now I’m concerned. And I voiced it:

I don’t know if he understood. He could have saved the healer, distracting shot with a pet sent in with growl turned on would have done nicely. Or a trap. I feel like my comments above were pretty light and not demeaning in any way. We got to the next boss, Commander Springvale and killed him. He dropped the Arced War Axe. Maybe, MAYBE a hunter would benefit from this weapon, but I think I could argue that the 2 WARRIORS and the PALADIN in the group could use it much better. The huntard Need rolled. I went psychotic.

Now, I know - he didn’t win and it shouldn’t have been a big deal. He refused any suggestions or hints, and was set on meleeing even though our healer was getting crushed. He was mad about not getting the roll! I should have let it go. There was some BRK instilled huntard rage set deep inside me, waiting to erupt on some poor sod. This was the sod. Finally, I had pity. I suspected this guy might even be a farmer of Asian ethnicity - his level 20 pet boar was aptly named: Boar. In any case, I finally decided to point him in the right direction and let BRK handle this walking atrocity.

I had no reply from the huntard. I might have been ignored, he might have rolled his eyes. I hope he gets to BRK, for the love of Elune…

I got a chance to wander into the PTR yesterday, and got a group for Magister’s Terrace (normal). The MT (as I will refer to it from now on) is in the northeast portion of the zone. In the PTR - if you go to the flightmaster in Ironforge, you will see that you automatically have a flight path out to the island. The first thing I noticed was the barrage of blue exclamation points. There are daily quests EVERYWHERE! This might be a gold mine for all you aspiring daily quest doers. I hit the map, joined the queue and had a group in about 2 minutes from touchdown.

The instance itself is typical blood elf in the look and feel. You are faced with a ton of those “O” corridors throughout the instance that are familiar with Blood elf construction. You can reach the first two bosses amazingly fast. The first boss, Selin Fireheart is guarded on both sides by groups of summoning blood elves, and in the front 2 undead guys who look like they are cannibalizing a poor little green orb. They keep saying things like “I’ll never stop”. It’s kind of eerie. Once cleared, (we LoS pulled the groups of summoners into the hallway and aoe/focus fired them down. And just nuked the 2 undead guys) the boss is elevated on a platform in front of you. I recommend that you go from the hallway entrance around him on either side and engage him “from behind”. The reason is, once engaged, he puts up this magic ward that prevents people in the opening of the hallway from moving into the actual chamber. Make sure you are completely in the room before you engage.

I wasn’t able to tell what kind of melee damage he did, but he does periodically do a decent amount of AoE/drain life debuff damage- I’m still trying to figure out what it was called, and what it actually does - but I was taking about 1-2k damage every other second for about 10 seconds it seemed. If you can heal yourself through this as a priest, pally, druid- I think you would be fine. Oddly enough, you can cast spells through the ward, and we ended up killing him with 3 people on the wrong side of it. He dropped a healing cloak - Cloak of Swift Mending.

You clear a few hallways - and then all the sudden you face a large corridor with about 1 million of the little Brightscale Wyrms. Paladins and mages are great here, cutting the large groups down extremely quickly. The next boss is Vexallus. Apparently he is very similar to The Curator in Kharazan. He spawns something that zaps certain people with electricity bolts. For a brief second I was able to target the spawned thing, and I thought I would be able to burn it down, but right after it zapped someone it disappeared and we could not target it. There was no perceivable warning to when they hit. He targeted our mage with these (see the video) what seemed like every time. It visually enlarged the mage, and seemed like he was taking a large amount of damage even after the lighting bolts hit. Somewhere around 15% he “Overloads” and starts shooting the electric bolts all over the place. We kinda just stood there and took it, and actually this is what killed me in the fight. He pulses the bursts at about 1.5k and it seems like the range for the bursts is very long - over 30 yards. I would love to try to spread out somehow, and see if that range is finite or not the next time. He dropped a dps cloak - Cloak of the Coming Night. The video:

Then things get a bit tougher. You wind back down around, beat up some of the big sentinels, and get to a courtyard where there are 6 mobs per pull. I guess I should back up and explain some of the trash mobs you’ll encounter. Sunblade Blood Knights will hit like a 70 elite should, but this guy also heals - so he’s often a priority to kill first. The Sunblade Mage Guards drop this sphere thing that looks exactly like the bubble shield from Halo 3. It isn’t. It reduces spell damage and healing done by the target (whoever is in it) by 75%. I don’t think that Rogues or Warriors will have any problems if they are targeted - I’m pretty sure it only applies to healing THEY do - not healing done to them. The Sunblade Magisters get a spell haste bonus every cast, so kill them quickly. Sunblade Physicians heal, so you need to CC or kill them quick. The Sisters of Torment do a seduce type curse that takes you out of the fight, so stunlock, or crowd control them as well. FYI - the Sunblade guy that I tried to mind control - was IMMUNE. Yes that resulted in a wipe.

There were 3 in our group that weren’t focused and always leaving for something, so the run we had was plagued with AFK’s and looong pauses between pulls. We did not get to the third boss.

Overall, I liked the instance. You can get the first two bosses REALLY quickly. If you have a complete group with good CC and everyone is on the ball, this seemed like it could be an extremely fast instance. Chalk another one up for the casual players.

Link Dump:
http://www.wegame.com/user/wrathofgod/
http://www.wowwiki.com

I changed my favicon. To most of you this is really stupid and you could care less. It’s actually the same picture you see here. in this post. I like lolcats, and I’m really not sure why. I think cats are stupid actually and I like dogs.

Thanks to the Blog Azeroth people who put up some great resources so dumb people like me can do really cool things. Ok, so this favicon thing may or may not be cool, but I like it. They have a really nice guide over there on how to do this, so feel free to check em out and join up. I actually downloaded a plugin (Digital Ramble’s favicon manager) for Wordpress that manages this for you and it works for me so I guess I like it.

Link dump:
http://www.blogazeroth.com
http://www.digitalramble.com/favicon-manager-wordpress-plugin/
http://www.icanhascheezburger.com