Reviving 25-Man Raiding

It seems to me that there is a perception (whether based on reality or hyperbole, I cannot say for sure) that the growth of 10-man raids has created a stranglehold that is slowly - but inevitably - suffocating 25-man raiding to the point of extinction. There are many reasons for this: blog articles such as "The last gasp of 25-man raiding" on WoW Insider and "Dont let the 25man raids die..." from the official World of Warcraft forums , as well as my own personal experience indicates that there is, at least, some truth to the notion, but whether it has been a mostly-completed shift in average raid size due to changes to raid design philosophy made for the start of the Cataclysm expansion or remains a continuing trend of 25-man raid erosion is uncertain.

Regardless, whenever people call for Blizzard to instigate a revival of 25-man raiding, they always seem to not only cite the same reasons for its demise - at the forefront of which is the substantially higher investment of leadership and organizational effort required to run and maintain a larger group - but also propose the same solution: incentivize larger raids with better quality or greater quantity of loot. (I admit, I have been guilty of this very thing, myself.) However, Blizzard has rejected this approach, so it's time to reexamine the problem and see if any other viable solutions present themselves.

When we break the problem down to its base factors, here is what we get:

1. Blizzard does not want to offer incentives to run 25-man raids over 10-mans.
2. Blizzard's philosophy seems to be that roughly equivalent effort should yield roughly equivalent reward (on average).
3. 25-man raids necessitate significantly more logistical overhead than 10-man raids.
4. 25-man raiders feel the additional organizational requirements negate the "roughly equivalent effort" portion of part 2 above.

You see the point of conflict here, don't you? So where are the potentially viable solutions? If Blizzard's stance is "equal effort -> equal reward" and 25-man raiders' stance is "25-man raid logistical effort > 10-man raid logistical effort" and therefore "inequal effort should -> inequal reward", where is the flexible point from which a compromise can be reached?

Right here: "25-man raid logistical effort > 10-man raid logistical effort". In other words, Blizzard needs to reduce the organizational overhead encountered by 25-man raiders. How? By investing some development time and energy into improving the in-game tools used by raid leaders for raid management.

I don't believe it will ever be possible to eliminate the differences between 10-man raids and 25-man raids, but significantly improving certain in-game tools can serve to bring the two groups into greater parity. It's not true in all circumstances, but generally speaking: simple tools favor smaller groups whereas feature-rich tools favor larger groups. This is because leaders of smaller groups can mentally compensate for tool deficiencies much more easily than in leaders of larger groups, where the sheer volume of additional details to keep track of can quickly become overwhelming.

With that said, below are some concrete examples of how tools can be improved, as well as why these suggestions would benefit 25-man raids in particular.

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In-Game Calendar - While significantly better than no calendar at all, the design of the in-game calendar facilitates 10-man raiding far better than 25-man raiding, because the information it provides is so limited. Organizers of smaller groups can more easily memorize the information that the in-game tool leaves out, whereas organizers of larger groups may feel pressured to use out-of-game tools (which are more difficult to get Average Joe raiders to use) to compensate for its lack of features.

• Problem 1: What does "tentative" even mean? I don't mean in terms of dictionary definition, but rather in terms of how invitees to events use it. Does it mean "maybe, if I feel like it"? "Probably, but there's a chance something might come up"? "I might have other plans and I'm waiting to hear back from people"? "I'll be half an hour late, so don't hold a spot open for me, but if you can't find a replacement I'll be there eventually"?
  
  
• Solution 1: Add an ability to attach short notes to attendees for both event organizers and invitees. That way people have a way to communicate important things (such as what they mean by "tentative") in a place that organizers are much more likely to see it and keep track of it.
  
  
• Problem 2: "Do we have enough tanks and healers?" The in-game calendar tells you what class characters are, but not which roles they are willing to perform. It's easy enough to just remember who can do what for 10-man raiding, but keeping track for 25-man raids can become a real pain, especially when you add raid-ready alts to the equation.
  
  
• Solution 2: Allow event creators to also require invitees to select which role or roles they are willing to perform when signing up for the event. Display this information not only in a format easy to read at a glance (similar to the display the current calendar has for how many of which classes have signed up), but also allow event organizers to see a list of everyone who signed up for a certain role and the option of confirming a single role for each attendee who has selected multiple roles (that way there's no confusion amongst leadership and amongst attendees about who is doing what). Oh, and don't forget to assign confirmed roles automatically in the raid frames when an organizer presses the invite button!
  
  
• Problem 3: "Wait, who's alt is that, again? Did he really sign up on all 7 of his characters?! How many people do we actually have, then?" (i.e.: The current in-game calendar system is character-based, while actual raid attendance is player-based.) Again, this is pretty easy to mentally keep track of in 10-man raids. Not so much in 25-man raids.
  
  
• Solution 3a: Allow event organizers to invite RealID and BattleTag friends, not just individual characters. Consolidate characters from said RealID or BattleTag invite into a single listing to avoid confusion (possibly with each signed up character listed in a mouseover tooltip or as an expanded drop-down listing under the consolidated one), and allow each eligible character to be signed up and select roles individually so that the invitee can pick and choose which character(s) to attend with. To preserve privacy, such multi-character listings should be displayed as BattleTags (minus the identifying number) and no character should be listed until and unless the invitee has signed up with it.
  
  
• Solution 3b: Implement a "bring the player, not the character" toggle for event creators. If the toggle is enabled, any player invited to the event on any character can sign up with any other eligible character in addition to the invited character. This includes selecting roles individually for each character. The initially invited character would serve as the "primary" character for display purposes. Again, to protect privacy, no character other than the initially invited character would be displayed on the listing unless the invitee has chosen to sign up to the event with that character.
  
  
• By "eligible characters" in Solutions 3a and 3b above, I mean either institute Blizzard-set general eligibility requirements (such as requiring the character be level 90 to sign up for a Mists of Pandaria raid); or allow event organizers set a custom minimum character level and/or minimum average item level; or some combination of the two. Any character that does not meet the eligibility requirements would be prevented from being signed up for the event, thereby assuring some measure of quality control for event organizers.
  
  
• Problem 4: Calendars are meant to be a convenient way of keeping track of various events. Having to swap characters to check the in-game calendar events for each character is not at all convenient.
  
  
• Solution 4: Give players the option to share their in-game calendar across all their characters (or at least all characters of that faction on that realm), rather than having to log into and out of each individual character to check and reply to event invitations. The fewer hoops players have to jump through to access and use tools that make raid planning easier, the better.
  
  
• Problem 5: Who gets to raid? Since 25-man raids require a larger bench of extra raiders to fill up raids during times of lower attendance, deciding who gets to raid during times of high attendance becomes a significant concern. The current in-game calendar offers virtually no tools to help raid leaders make informed decisions.
  
  
• Solution 5: Implement significantly better sorting options for event invitees. For example, the ability to sort or filter invitees by role as proposed in Solution 2 above; by sign-up time, since the current mouseover display requires parsing the tooltip of each response individually and is inefficient for larger groups; or even by past event attendance for events created by the same person. The goal here is to put 25-man raid organizers on a more even footing with 10-man raid organizers by ensuring they have all the tools they need to plan and manage raids without having to resort to more feature/data-rich out-of-game alternatives (such as requiring raiders to sign up for raids on websites or via forum threads) since that only serves to raise a barrier of entry to larger raids that smaller raids can avoid.

Loot Distribution Tools - Loot distribution is one of the most important duties held by raid leadership, as loot itself is one of the driving factors for many raiders. Sadly, the tools for distributing loot are largely lopsided in favor of smaller groups due to the fact that fewer pieces of loot have to be distributed per boss kill and fewer players are likely to be interested in any given item that drops. This means that while 10-man raids can get by with simpler looting rules - or even automated looting systems such as Group Loot or Need Before Greed - and thus can sort through drops fairly quickly, 25-man raids often spend a sizable chunk of time waiting for some poor loot officer to sift through all the whispers and bids and loot council discussions before finally having to manually dole out the goods via Master Loot - and as a result are more susceptible to having the entire raid grind to a halt because half the players have suddenly turned into immobile Gorlocs who are too busy coveting potential shinies to actually keep the raid progressing.

• Problem 1: "Whisper me your bid for [Item] now!" "If you want [Item] please link what your currently have." "[Item] - /roll now if you want it!" (i.e.: Master Loot does absolutely nothing to help inform the loot master's decision, so loot masters waste a lot of time gathering basic information.)
  
  
• Solution 1: Add a new feature so that when an item that a player can equip drops and loot is set to Master Loot a small window pops up (similar to the roll window in Group Loot or Need Before Greed) on which the player can click a button to indicate interest (or disinterest) in the item. For the loot master, rather than players be sorted purely by which group they are in within the raid, interested players would be sorted first, and the item currently equipped in that slot by any given interested player would be shown upon mouseover. This way the loot master can focus more quickly and easily on distributing the loot.
  
  
• It also might not hurt to allow the raid leader and raid assistants the ability to access this loot information as well, so that the loot master does not have to pass that information on to them in the event of a loot council. If that's too much to add to Master Loot, consider adding it as a new Loot Council choice.
  
  
• Problem 2: "This boss' corpse smells! Why does my face have to be so close to it?" With the addition of the 2-hour grace period for trading Bind on Pickup items, it is more efficient for the loot master to simply take everything first and trade it to the winners later rather than have to kneel over the boss' corpse for the next few minutes sorting things out.
  
  
• Solution 2: Allow loot masters assigned under the Master Loot system the ability to keep the loot window open even after moving away from the corpse or chest they are looting. This way the loot master can proceed to the next trash pack with the rest of the raid and distribute loot without interrupting the pace of the raid, and without feeling like they have to circumvent the in-game loot distribution tools to actually distribute the loot.

Guild Finder - I've never actually used this tool, but I've heard tales of its inadequacy. Extremely vague options for activity types and times, severely limited space for guild descriptions, inability to offer invites to offline applicants, etc. If the stated intent for raid sizes is going to be to let players decide which raid size they enjoy the most, then the tools for finding such raids need to be worth using. This is especially important considering that larger raids already have a greater barrier to entry in the fact that they require more like-minded people just to exist, in addition to suffering from a higher rate of natural attrition purely due to the numbers involved, so guild/raid finding tools are especially critical to their health.

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That's quite a lot already, so I will do everyone the favor of stopping there, but the above is just the tip of the iceberg. There are probably dozens, if not hundreds, of other potential solutions Blizzard can consider to ensure a more even playing field between the raid sizes. Everything from improving the in-game voice chat feature (smaller raids can more easily make do with self-hosted VoIP programs whereas larger raids often have no choice but to pay for professional service) to ensuring that setting one's graphics to bare minimum will still accurately convey raid mechanics (since 25-man raids naturally require a larger share of any given computer's resources) and beyond has an impact, and though it may seem insignificant at first, the cumulative effect holds the promise of 25-man raid revival.

Mists of Pandaria and the Possible Return of the Shockadin

Thus far in the Mists of Pandaria beta I haven't really done much of anything. Most of my "adventures", if they can even be called that, have involved running around Stormwind City and experimenting with the various spells, talents, and glyphs available in the beta thus far. However, one of the things that I have been noticing—and getting increasingly excited about—is that a preliminary look at what's available seems to suggest that the Shockadin may be making a return soon. The evidence for such is still slim, but ultimately it comes down to two particular glyphs:

• Glyph of Holy Shock: Holy Shock, as you may know, is one of the signature abilities of the Holy specialization, and is the reason why the Shockadin is named such. While it isn't a particularly powerful damage-dealing ability initially, the glyph halves its healing potential in exchange for doubling its damage-dealing capability. Considering how central Holy Shock's damage is to the entire concept of the Shockadin itself, this glyph is essentially what makes the Shockadin potentially viable.

• Glyph of Denounce: Denounce is a new Holy-only ability learned at level 20 that basically acts as our spammable ranged nuke. It's incredibly cheap, and has the added benefit of preventing its target from being able to deal critical strikes for 4 seconds after being hit. When glyphed, Denounce also gives the Paladin a 6-second buff that increases Holy damage by 20%—and virtually all damage a Shockadin deals is Holy damage, which makes this glyph a significant boost in DPS.

While the two above glyphs essentially act as the heart of the beta Shockadin, there are some additional factors to be considered

• Sacred Shield is one of our level 45 talent choices. It provides a 30 second buff on a single target that occasionally acts as a damage shield, but also increases the critical effect chance of Word of Glory by 30%. While this may not seem like that big of a deal, the lack of a Holy Power cost (unlike its alternative, Eternal Flame) and the buff to Word of Glory allows the latter become the go-to Holy Power dump. Since Holy Paladins have no way to spend Holy Power for offense, Word of Glory becomes the next best thing thanks to the Glyph of Word of Glory.

• Glyph of Word of Glory: This glyph causes Word of Glory casts, regardless of target, to also grant the casting Paladin 10% additional damage for 6 seconds. While this buff shouldn't make Word of Glory a rotational ability, since the damage boost won't make up for the lost global cooldown, it does at least mean that casting Word of Glory is slightly less of a damage loss than either Light of Dawn or Eternal Flame, which are the only other Holy Power-consuming abilities available to the Shockadin. Plus, combined with the Sacred Shield talent, Word of Glory will likely be significantly more potent for self-healing than the alternatives, as well.

• Sanctified Wrath is one of our level 75 talent choices, and allows Holy Shock to be cast without cooldown whenever Avenging Wrath is active—and that's in addition to the 20% increased damage from Avenging Wrath itself. Considering Holy Shock is the hardest hitting ability in the Paladin arsenal, and that Holy Power is significantly less useful for a Shockadin due to the fact that it cannot be used for dealing damage, Sanctified Wrath is really the only choice amongst the level 75 talents that makes any sense.

I'll probably be experimenting more with the Shockadin as I get more time for the beta test, but from basic target dummy tests it doesn't seem like it will fare too badly. It almost certainly won't be up to Retribution's standards, but given it's high potential for healing in a pinch, I think the trade-off may be worth it. At the very least, it seems like it could be an effective Holy leveling/PvP spec, if nothing else.

When It Rains, It Pours

About two and a half weeks ago, TRI Mark 3 (the 10-man raid group I run with) had an absolutely momentous night. Not only did we manage to defeat the Madness of Deathwing for the first time as a group, but thanks to saving our Dragon Soul raid ID from the previous week we managed to have enough spare time to go back and do a full clear of Firelands for the first time, as well.

Then life happened, and I've barely been able to find the spare time and mental bandwidth to do much of anything else, including play the Mists of Pandaria beta, for which I've received an Annual Pass invite but have yet to anything with beyond installation. Fortunately, absence does occasionally make the heart grow fonder, and so I've been itching to get back into the thick of things, both in terms of the game and in terms of the blog. Let's see if the Mists of Pandaria beta will help stoke that particular fire. =P

Ultraxion

On Thursday, the casual 10-man raid group I run with managed to take down Ultraxion (on normal, not heroic). While I know that's not really a big accomplishment in the grand scheme of things, I think it's reasonably decent for a group that raids a fairly laid-back 3.5 hours per week.

Of all the fights we've faced thus far, I think Ultraxion has been my least favorite. Part of this is because while I was the healer lucky enough to get to pick up the blue crystal - which is the final (and, in my opinion, most appealing) of the 3 crystals to spawn - the vast majority of wipes occurred prior to its appearance. The other part of why I dislike the encounter is, I think, because its mechanics are designed in such a way that just one single failure from any individual in the raid almost invariably leads to an unnecessarily slow and drawn-out wipe. Now, I don't mind single failure wipes or slow wipes in and of themselves, but both mechanics together mean that raid groups like mine with particularly limited raiding schedules are disproportionately punished.

If a single failure is going to result in a wipe, then I'm of the opinion that said wipe should be brutally quick and immediately recognizable, because not only does it reinforce the idea that certain mechanics are extremely dangerous, but also makes it so that people can give the encounter another try with minimal delay and a reasonable opportunity to understand what just happened. Similarly, I think a slow, drawn-out wipe should provide ample opportunity for the raid group to try to recover and rally itself to a victory. Combining the two disproportionately punishes the people with the least amount of raiding time, since those are the same people who are most likely to have the least experience with gauging whether a given situation requires a passionate or pragmatic approach.

Brief Thoughts on PvP

Lately, I've been getting more and more into PvP in WoW. Part of this is because how efficiently I can cap out Valor Points these days - all it takes is one day of Raid Finder and one day of raiding and I'm either capped, or extremely close to it. As such, it makes little sense for me to run heroic dungeons, because I've already obtained most of the meaningful upgrades they provide.

The other significant reason, as silly as it may sound at first, is the introduction of Void Storage. I think one of the biggest problems I had with PvP in the past is how squishy I'd felt, and since I didn't have enough bag space for a full set of PvP gear with which to unsquishify, PvP would easily become a source of frustration rather than enjoyment. Thanks to Void Storage cleaning out much of my bank and bags, I now have the inventory space necessary to maintain a complete set of resilience gear (well, nearly - I'm still using a PvE weapon because it's better than what's available from Honor Points), and as such I find myself leaps and bounds tougher to kill.

Momma said heal you out!

Rather than being frustrated by my own helplessness in one-on-one scenarios, now I find I can easily survive as long as I need to in such situations - often long enough for reinforcements to arrive or for my opponent to get bored and try to find someone less difficult to kill. It's gleefully heartening.

Plus, it seems that more and more of my raiding friends are also taking a new interest in PvP. While I certainly still queue solo almost all of the time, just the mere prospect that I know people I can go to for advice and the occasional Horde-slaying somehow makes the whole experience all the more enjoyable. What a difference a change as simple as that can make.

Another Healer-Friendly Grisly Trophy Place

Yesterday, I posted a couple of places in the Shadow Wardens area of the Molten Front where healers can more easily acquire Grisly Trophies for the Darkmoon Faire monthly quest Test Your Strength, given by Kerri Hicks (The Strongest Woman Alive!). Unfortunately - for the sake of argument, anyway - let's say you haven't unlocked the Shadow Wardens daily quest hub yet. Instead, you chose to first recruit the Druids of the Talon...and that's as far as you've gotten. Well, fear not! There's actually a semi-decent place for a healer to grind Grisly Trophies on the Druids of the Talon side of the front, too.

Healer go down the hooole!

The place you're looking for is known as The Molten Flow, a massive cavern which can be accessed through the a giant hole that opens up in The Furnace area during the Into the Fire quest given by General Taldris Moonfall. If you follow the leftmost path through The Molten Flow, you'll run into a cavern filled with Charhounds.

What distinguishes these mobs from most other level 85 mobs is their total health - or, rather, their lack of it: they only have about 31,000 hit points. This means that they die remarkably fast, even for healers. Additionally, since they're sleeping in packs on the cavern floor, it's fairly easy to grab and AoE down several at a time. Once you're in the right place, there are really only two things you have to worry about: a single Flamewaker Hunter that patrols through the area, and the respawn timer for the Charhounds themselves, which can be anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes, depending on how many other players are in The Molten Flow.

D'awww. Aren't they cute? Time to murder them all!

Good luck and happy hunting!

Farming Darkmoon Faire Grisly Trophies as a Healer

If you've visited the revamped Darkmoon Faire, you've probably run into the quest Test Your Strength, for which Kerri Hicks (The Strongest Woman Alive!) requests that you gather a whopping two hundred and fifty Grisly Trophies off of reasonably challenging enemies across the world (of WarCraft). Now, for whatever reason, Blizzard decided that when people are partied up, rather than giving everyone an equal shot at being able to loot a trophy, it would instead only drop for the person who attained the killing blow. In other words, it means that healers will inevitably get the smallest share of trophies in a group, since we are usually more preoccupied with keeping everyone alive than with trying to snipe kill shots.

Considering that, in addition to the group dynamic above, healers also tend to have the slowest killing speeds out of the 3 roles, it means that any healer who doesn't have a damage-dealing off-spec will have to either spend a disproportionately large amount of time trying to complete this quest, or they'll have to learn to play smarter rather than harder. In the spirit of that idea, here is a place healers can go to maximize their Grisly Trophy acquisition:

In Patch 4.2: Rage of the Firelands, Blizzard added a brand new quest chain and a variety of daily quests that told the story of Archdruid Malfurion Stormrage's offensive into a place in the Firelands known as the Molten Front. As it turns out, the Molten Front is a fantastic place to farm Grisly Trophies if you know what you're doing, especially if you've progressed far enough to enlist the aid of the Shadow Wardens. The key to this are two quests given by the Shadow Wardens:

• The Wardens are Watching is a daily that is occasionally available from Marin Bladewing at the Forlorn Spire. It's not always available, but when it is, it can be a particularly helpful quest for a healer collecting Grisly Trophies because it grants you a Shadow Warden guardian who will help you kill enemies in The Widow's Clutch and close to the Forlorn Spire...so long as you don't attack and capture a Druid of the Flame. Since killing blows from pets count for the pet's owner, this means that the Shadow Warden guardian can help deal damage for you without sniping away your chance at looting Grisly Trophies.

The Wardens are Watching this area here. It's fascinating.

• Enduring the Heat is a guaranteed daily quest (unlike the above, which has a random chance of being available each day) along the Shadow Wardens route. The quest asks you to head into the Igneous Depths and destroy 8 blue runes inside the cavern. While inside, fire elementals will spawn and try to kill you, but by standing on the runes you will receive the Flame Protection Rune buff which significantly reduces the damage these elementals deal to you. Additionally, when you destroy the rune, not only will it detonate and instantly kill any nearby elementals, but it will also credit you for dealing the killing blow, thereby granting you Grisly Trophies. What this means is that if you simply run onto a rune and stand on it, wait for elementals to gather up around you, and then detonate it once you're surrounded, you'll get plenty of Grisly Trophies with very little effort. Unfortunately, if you're the only one doing the quest at the time there's a maximum of about 6-8 elementals up at once per person, but even with that limit you should still get between 48 and 64 trophies just from intelligently handling this one quest. Considering that you'll have to complete a good few other dailies to unlock this quest for the day, chances are that you'll only have to do the chain once or twice to fill up your Grisly Trophy quota.

If you can't take the heat...stand on the runes. They help. ;)

Happy Feast of Winter Veil!

The Feast of Winter Veil has official begun in-game, and so I wish you all a fantastic holiday season! Just remember to take it easy on the nog. =P

Patch 4.3 Discussions on PlusHeal

So, I'm not sure if I've mentioned it here or not, but I'm one of the administrators over at PlusHeal, a forum community for World of Warcraft healers. One of the things I do there on occasion is to compile lists of useful and informative posts, either according to recent timeline or based on a particular topic. Now that Blizzard has officially confirmed that Patch 4.3: Hour of Twilight is being released today, my most recent update is all about 4.3 discussions.

Since the compilation won't go live for a few more hours, I figured I'd give you, dear reader, head start, just in case you want to read up on it right this instant. =P

General:

• What to do when 4.3 goes live??
• 4.3's New Dungeons and Raid
• 4.3's Tier 13 Set Bonuses
• Which Tier Set was your Favorite?

Druids:

• 4.3 Resto Druid Patch Notes
• Druid Tier 13 Preview

Paladins:

• calling eventual holy pally aoe heal nerf
• [HOLY] Paladin 4.3 BiS List
• 4.3 Stat Importance
• Patch 4.3 PTR: Official patch notes
• Paladin Tier 13 Preview

Priests:

• Scoops' 4.3 Holy Priest BiS List!
• 4.3 PTR Notes
• new DA bubble not a bug
• So what tier will you be wearing?
• Priest Tier 13 Preview

Shamans:

• Shaman 4.3 PTR Changes
• Shaman T13 Bonuses Revealed
• Shaman Tier 13 Preivew

5-Player Dungeons:

• End Time
• Well of Eternity
• Hour of Twilight

Dragon Soul Raid:

• 4.3 DS 10 heroic, how many healers?
• 10H Morchok kill
• 10N Yor'sahj the Unsleeping
• 4.3 PTR Dragon Soul Raid video - Hagara the Stormbinder
• 25H Ultraxion. Do you like 1second GCD capped PoH spamming? Me too!

So if you're interested in healing and an amazingly phenomenal forum community, feel free to head on over to PlusHeal and join the conversation.

PlusHeal: Join the conversation

More Transmo-Gryph-ication!

I finally managed to get all the Valor Point upgrades for my Retribution set yesterday (plus a spiffy new axe), so I decided to celebrate the occasion by putting together my Retribution transmogrification set:

My purples are actually purple!

The entire above set, which is comprised of the Soulforge set plus Verigan's Fist, consists of pieces that can no longer be obtained. For those who like the look but don't already have the necessary gear, don't worry—the upgraded Darkmoon Faire will offer replicas of Soulforge pieces in patch 4.3, and you can seek out a Commanding Mallet to replicate the look of Verigan's Fist.

A Sand-Filled Vial

Today, this happened:

Wait...did I just drink a vial filled with sand?!

It took me ages to gather up the necessary materials, but thanks to some very good deals on flasks on the Auction House and my relentless determination to annoy all my transmute-capable friends, I managed to obtain a Vial of the Sands. Since I know no one who is willing to be recruited into World of Warcraft for the purposes of getting me an X-53 Touring Rocket, this was my only real option for a passenger-carrying flying mount. Now, I just need to find a passenger to carry around. =P

Do not anger me, for I have plenty of BBQ sauce!

On PvE Scenarios

I was sorting through some of the news from this past BlizzCon and I was reminded of an upcoming Mists of Pandaria feature that I had completely forgot about: PvE Scenarios. These scenarios will essentially be smaller, lighter versions of PvE dungeons, and without the physical dungeon aspect (i.e. in an instanced open world environment). They're supposed to be similar to the various group quests found throughout World of Warcraft, but repeatable and with Valor Points as a reward.

Personally, I've been waiting for something like this since PvP Battlegrounds were introduced back in patch 1.5 way back in 2005. Back then, I was replaying my way through WarCraft 3: Reign of Chaos and I ran into chapter 2 of the Orc campaign which entailed escorting a caravan of kodos through the Barrens and defending them from centaur and harpy attacks. While playing it, I found myself thinking, 'Hey, a quest like this would be awesome to have in WoW!'

Now there's a chance that such a scenario will be made into reality, and I think that's just flat-out awesome. I really hope Blizzard takes the time to flex their storytelling muscle with the feature, because it seems like an excellent opportunity to push the Alliance/Horde conflict in a PvE setting, as well as reintroduce some of the minor characters that we haven't seen for a while, such as Gryan Stoutmantle.

Well, That Sucks

I wish this post could be about how my raid group took down Ragnaros and now we're good and ready to see the Dragon Soul raid of patch 4.3. Unfortunately, we didn't. We managed to get into phase 3 again, but things just didn't pan out.

As it stands, I'm not sure what the plans our for my raid group and Firelands once patch 4.3 finally launches. It's possible that we'll bring back a second day per week for raiding old content, but I get the feeling that the other members of the raid are ready to move on and not look back.

I think the most frustrating thing about this situation is that I am probably the reason why we didn't manage to defeat Ragnaros, since I'm the one who was bringing up changes in strategy and other tactical adjustments over the course of the night. Maybe if we'd just stuck with the same plan and tried to slowly and steadily push further into the fight, we'd have been better off. All I know is that unless Blizzard decides to hold off on releasing patch 4.3 until several weeks after Thanksgiving, we've pretty much officially failed at taking down the end boss of current content while that content was still relevant, and that's something that irks me endlessly.

On the Rivalry of Mastery and Beacon

Holy Paladins have traditionally been known through World of Warcraft's history for being the healing class with the smallest healing toolkit. Over time and expansions, our tools have grown more numerous and eventually Blizzard standardized healing abilities to some degree in Cataclysm, but generally speaking our toolkit has rarely had an excess of abilities that performed the same basic task. The current Holy Paladin mastery—Illuminated Healing—and one of the tree's defining activated abilities—Beacon of Light—seem to me to be the new exception.

As things currently stand, both Illuminated Healing and Beacon of Light are two tools that essentially share the same primary function: to act as a health buffer for tank healing. However, the two act in such conflicting ways that they feel like rivals competing for a single job rather than two distinct utility abilities that each have their place in our toolbox. The way Beacon of Light is designed makes it less appealing, even with Tower of Radiance, to cast directly on the buffed tank unless absolutely necessary, but the Illuminated Healing mastery makes it more appealing to cast directly on the tank and thereby bypass Beacon of Light's whole purpose. Since both Beacon of Light and Illuminated Healing are wasted on targets that are not consistently taking damage, the only time the two effectively work together are when multiple tanks are taking damage simultaneously and for prolonged periods of time, which only happens in raids, and even then not on every fight.

The problem is made worse by the rules governing the Holy Radiance ability in patch 4.3. Even though the ability is being redesigned as an active heal rather than a passive one, it still won't be allowed to transfer through Beacon of Light, unlike our other AoE healing ability, Light of Dawn, and our other primary Holy Power generator, Holy Shock. However, it will be allowed to benefit from the Illuminated Healing mastery, which makes it feel like it should be used on or near tanks in order to not risk making the tank's health less stable.

I hope Blizzard doesn't leave the situation as-is, especially as design moves forward for the upcoming Mists of Pandaria expansion. To some degree, it feels to me that if the two abilities can't (or won't) be made to play nicely with each other, then either one should be altered to fit a more distinct role or the two should be rolled into a single ability.

Transmo-Gryph-ication

This is the gear set I plan to use for my main once 4.3 finally launches. It doesn't quite match 100%, but it's close enough that I think it looks decent:

For Great Justice!

The items are:

The 5 items of the Paladin tier 4 Justicar set:

• Justicar Diadem
• Justicar Pauldrons
• Justicar Chestplate
• Justicar Gloves
• Justicar Leggings

Plus:

• Girdle of Truth
• Boots of Valiance
• Gryphon Rider's Stormhammer
• King's Bulwark

Here's a closeup of the shield, because the above image does not do it justice (har har!):

Rawr!

On Ragnaros and the Raid Finder

The raid group I run with is currently 6/7 in Firelands (normal). This means that of the 7 total bosses, we've only managed to kill 6 of them. The final boss, Ragnaros the Firelord, continues to elude defeat, and this annoys me to no end. One of the reasons we haven't downed him yet is time: we only raid 3.5 hours on one day per week, not factoring in the 15-20 minute break we take midway through the raid. Compared to many other raids, this is a pittance, but overall it's an understandable reason to be stuck on the final boss—people have other things to do and one of the accepted truths in the TRI family of raids is that real life is more important than the game.

The other reason is that the Ragnaros fight is a complex one, and small losses eventually cascade into bigger problems later on. Eventually, this can be overcome through practice, but given our limited time investment, our progress is slow. Part of this can be helped with things like addons, but not everyone uses or wants to use addons, and considering that I refused to use addons throughout raiding in WoW prior to the Burning Crusade expansion, I have no room to criticize. Still, the limited progression is frustrating to no end for me.

This, I think, is why I'm looking forward to the Raid Finder so much. Perhaps it will be a way for me to get my fill of progression without becoming increasingly and irrationally frustrated with my regular raid group. Perhaps it will allow me to get more practice on various boss mechanics so I'll be less likely to screw things up when time is of the essence. Perhaps it will expose me to new strategies so I can step forward with actual, concrete suggestions for improvement instead of just "this doesn't seem to be working".

I wonder, if at some level, I'm just drawn to the potential promise of the Raid Finder more so than its pragmatic realities. I still haven't had a chance to experience it first-hand yet, so it's quite possible. Maybe it will come out and I'll just be left with a sense of disappointment, or maybe it will allow for everything in the above paragraph and me a better, happier player. The mystery is exciting. I hope the wait is worth it. =)

On 11/9/11's Class Q&A

Blizzard had a live Class Q&A event this morning where the class designers Celestalon, Ghostcrawler, Koraa, Watcher, Wradyx, and Xelnath all participated to answer questions about World of Warcraft classes in real time. Unfortunately, they provided absolutely no answers for Holy Paladins, which makes me a sad panda.

Now, I can understand why they provided no answers. Earlier, Zarhym (@talkingcongas) posted the following tweet showing some of the statistics for the event:

Some #WoWCiL perspective stats: 1 hr 39 min live. 2 hosts. 6 devs. 4 mods. Over 130,000 readers. Over 10,000 comments/questions submitted.

In comparison, the class designers were only able to answer about 108 questions, so there was only about a 1 in 100 chance for any given question to be answered. Still, though, absolutely no answers for Holy Paladins is a real disappointment.

That said, I did participate in the event by submitting my own question. If you're curious what I asked, here's my submission:

Rumor has it that the upcoming Mistweaver spec of the Monk class will be a healer that stands in melee range of the boss while healing. Is there any truth to this, or is the rumor unfounded? If true, and if the heal-from-melee paradigm works out, has there been any thought to giving the plate-wearing, shield-bearing Holy Paladin a similar treatment?

Since I know not all Paladins are interested in a heal-from-melee playstyle, I'm not at all surprised that my question went unanswered. Still, I hope the more dynamic Monk playstyle works out and is successful enough for Blizzard to adapt it towards the Holy Paladin. It still annoys me that our healing plate may as well be cloth and our shield slot may as well be filled with an off-hand frill item for all the use they get in raiding.

On Patch 4.3's Holy Radiance Change

I'm not quite sure I like the upcoming change to Holy Radiance. The fact of the matter is that the current incarnation of Holy Radiance feels like it satisfies the potential that Paladin auras always had, but haven't truly been able to fill as always-on, free-to-cast abilities. Blizzard can't really make auras any stronger than they already are due to balancing issues, but Holy Radiance worked nicely as a short-term, mana-expensive buff that could bridge the gap between aura and non-aura.

Personally, I would have preferred that Light of Dawn have been made the chain-castable, mana-using AoE heal while Holy Radiance were powered up and turned into our AoE Holy Power spender. One of the benefits for this (in my mind, at least, since I'm sure there are plenty of Paladin healers who would disagree with me) would be to emphasize the idea of using the play area of the screen to heal rather than the UI. It's always kinda bugged me that tanks get to play with bosses, damage dealers get to play with the environment, but healers have to play with the UI rather than the friendly characters/positioning. There's already enough whack-a-gnoll with the single-target heals, so I feel as if AoE healing should take a different approach.

On Item Squish

On Friday, Blizzard posted a Dev Watercooler post by Ghostcrawler about troubles they're running into with exponentially increasing item levels. If you haven't read it yet, I highly suggest you at least give it a once-over, because the various figures work to explain the problem really well. As a quick summary, the core issue is that item levels are increasing exponentially compared to character levels, and Blizzard is not quite sure how to deal with it. On one extreme, Blizzard could leave things as-is and figure out a better way to communicate and compute large numbers, while on the other extreme they could squish item levels back down to a more manageable level, but risk alienating the playerbase with the perception of a very major nerf. If Blizzard does nothing about item levels, then it needs a better way to communicate the numbers we'll be seeing on our screen (after all, it's somewhat hard to tell the difference between 100000 and 1000000 at a quick glance). If Blizzard does squish item levels back to into line with pre-expansion content, then players will suddenly feel like they've been nerfed extremely hard because their abilities that were doing thousands or tens of thousands of points of healing or damage will be brought back down to doing hundreds of points of healing or damage instead, which could be potentially disheartening even if all of the other numbers (such as target health) were brought down the same way.

Personally, my solution would be to set up a slow squish system. It would be a significantly larger undertaking up front, but it would allow for item squish to happen without making players feel like they were nerfed into oblivion. Essentially, how it would work is that Blizzard would set a hard upper limit for item levels, and set things up so that whenever tier of items would normally be introduced above that limit, those items would instead be introduced at that limit and nearly everything else would be squished a little downward instead. For example, if the upper limit were set to item level 500 and a gear tear would normally add 10 item levels above that, instead of coming out with a new tier of gear at item level 510, the current and previous tiers of gear would be squashed down to item level 490 and below and the new tier would be introduced at item level 500.

What this does is that it essentially splits one massive nerf into dozens of tiny nerfs that are far less jarring. Damage and healing numbers wouldn't suddenly jump down from the thousands into the hundreds, but instead would effectively cap out and slip down slightly (and temporarily) every time a new tier of gear was introduced, and slightly more for each new expansion. Item levels for any given tier would eventually slip down to where they would have been if Blizzard had followed a more linear methodology, and that would act as a floor so that the numbers eventually settle where Blizzard wants them to be. At some point, the exponential curve will flatten out and the hard cap can be done away with.

Of course, as I mentioned earlier, this would require significantly more work right off the bat than either of the solutions Blizzard has used to highlight the problem. For one, all items would have to be made able to scale downward so that Blizzard can squish them repeatedly until they reach the desired item level. Secondly, it would mean tweaking the numbers for every raid boss every patch, or possibly linking boss numbers to expected item level numbers so that the bosses scale down naturally. Ultimately, it would probably be a very complex solution to program and implement without taking up massive amounts of developer time, but I also think it's a more elegant solution than the two Blizzard has shown publicly.

That said, I doubt the two solutions Blizzard has shown are the only options they have up their sleeves. I think it will be interesting to see how Blizzard decides to deal with the problem as Mists of Pandaria inches closer to release.

Why I Stopped Blogging

Sometimes, when I think about this blog, I feel like I owe the 3 people who may actually check it on occasion an explanation as to why I simply haven't been around here, even though I've been as active as ever on Twitter and PlusHeal. Part of the answer is personal and has to do with real life, and I'm not going to get into it here, because, quite frankly, I don' wanna *stomp stomp* *pout pout* so there! =P

The other part of it about how World of Warcraft has changed these past few years. There are, at the very core, two reasons why I play World of Warcraft—the story and the raiding. The storytelling in Cataclysm has been leaps and bounds better than its predecessors, and I have to give major kudos to Dave Kosak for that. Having major lore characters actually going out into the world and doing things is fun to watch, and getting to help them do those things is a joy to experience. Getting to see the plot unfold first-hand is amazing, and my only real problem with it is that the factional divide locks me out of experiencing some very key moments in Alliance lore unless I play a Horde character (such as the full story of Gilneas). Unfortunately, the storytelling does not make for a particularly blog-worthy experience unless I decide to take things in a more RP-centric direction, such as Flinthammer Hall or Travels through Azeroth and Outland, because everyone who is interested in the story can simply log into the game and experience it for themselves.

As such, most of my blogging desire is a result of the raiding aspect of the game—an aspect which I've been equal parts frustrated and content with for since Cataclysm launched. It's not so much with how Blizzard is handling raids (although I'm saddened that Blizzard's 10/25 raid lockout changes have essentially wrecked my old raid group), but rather the inescapable feeling that I'll eventually have to move on from my raiding group of the past 6-7 years if I'm ever to find the style of raiding I'm looking for. The fact of the matter it that, among other things, 10-mans are just not my thing. The days of Upper Blackrock Spire and running Karazhan weekly alongside the 25-man raids during the Burning Crusade have firmly implanted into my head the idea that 10-mans are supplemental large dungeon groups rather than raids proper, and it's an idea I just can't shake no matter how hard I try. Hopefully, though, the introduction of the Raid Finder feature in patch 4.3 will allow me to experience the best of both worlds—raiding with people I know and have a vested interest in seeing succeed, without feeling locked out of running larger, more epic raids.

All in all, between the upcoming storylines and upgraded game systems, I'm becoming more and more excited about the next big patch by the day, and that excitement is the reason why I'm trying to get back into blogging—I finally feel like I have something to say again.