On the fifteenth episode of the Molsan Method podcast, I contemplate why I would move (or not move) my raid team to new content, and other things I’ve learned as a raid leader. (5:10)

Subscribe and Listen Daily!

Subscribe to the Molsan Method podcast on iTunes.
Add the Molsan Method RSS feed to your reader.

 

 Molsan Method Podcast - Episode 15 [5:10m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (27)

On the ninth episode of the Molsan Method podcast, I talk about the value of running Vault of Archavon in World of Warcraft as part of your raid rotation. (2:57)

 

 Molsan Method Podcast - Episode 9 [2:57m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (35)

On the sixth episode of the Molsan Method podcast, I talk about using the World of Warcraft addon LoggerHead to upload combat statistics to World of Logs (2:40).

 

 Molsan Method Podcast - Episode 6 [2:40m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (53)

On the fifth episode of the Molsan Method podcast, I talk about my World of Warcraft raid team’s struggles with Hodir in Ulduar, and victory over Onyxia (3:36).

 

 Molsan Method Podcast - Episode 5 [3:36m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (47)

My raid group has hit a virtual wall over the last few weeks, and I’m struggling with trying to figure out why. Is it because of the holidays? Is everyone more interested in playing with the new patch 3.3 toys? Is it me? Could it be me?!? Well, it has to be something because we are stuck.

Not only are we not accomplishing our goals for the night, we’ve been unable to successfully fill out a complete raid of ten players. We’ve had a couple of new folks join us recently, and I assumed that the new blood would invigorate our group and allow us to push forward. However, just the opposite has happened; we’ve slowed down, almost to a complete halt. Here is a list of reasons why I think we’re not able to progress, but I don’t have a good solution to combat these issues.

Farming Emblems: A Raid vs. LFD

Prior to patch 3.3, geared players could be enticed to run older raids because they were deemed as good sources for emblems. Nowadays, I think it’s more time-efficient to chain-run random heroic dungeons. My raid team runs for only two hours and can realistically only clear two wings of Naxxramas in that time frame. That’s only six or seven emblems per player. I’ve timed some of my recent heroic dungeon runs, and they take about forty minutes each (yes, I know, I go too slow). If one of those heroics is the daily, you could accumulate nine to fifteen Emblems of Triumph, and two Emblems of Frost in the same time frame. Of course, this assumes that one of those random dungeons is not the Oculus.

Stale Content is Stale

With each patch, the older content becomes less and less desirable. Despite Blizzard’s best efforts, players aren’t interested in regularly running Naxxramas, Obsidian Sanctum, Ulduar, and the first couple of bosses in Vault of Archavon. Unless the player knows with absolute certainty that the raid group will be able to faceroll through the dungeon, it’s not interesting. Now, one would think that a challenge would be enough to engage players, but, in my experience, it’s just the opposite with World of Warcraft.

I’m going to be implementing my own rewards system this week, offering up some of my crafting services to players that attend our events for the week. I’m hoping that this small incentive will keep everyone intrigued enough to show up and complete the raid. If not, there’s not much I can do to make the content more interesting than it already is… or isn’t.

A Wider Gear Discrepancy

A new patch brings us many things: new dungeons, quests, content, bosses, and horrible frame-rate lag. More than anything else, though, we’re showered with multiple tiers of new gear. Unless you can control how everyone in your raid plays when you’re not raiding with them, players are going to gear up in different ways. Some players can play all the time, and may raid with multiple groups. Others may mix up their allocated play times with heroic dungeons. Other players may only log in for your raid — and your raid only — for their source of gear.

This will continue to be problematic because the difference between your geared-out players and your weakest links will force you to make some tough decisions. If you try to incorporate older content, the players with all the gear will stop showing up. If you cater to the gear-score winners, you have to start excluding players… players that rely on your raid group for experience, loot, and, quite possibly, fun.

Planning

All of the above is making it a real chore to plan and coordinate raids. You certainly can’t please everyone all of the time, but I’m finding it difficult to even please some of the people some of the time. You know me, I’m all about pleasure, but I’ve been feeling a lot of frustration trying to schedule events that make the most sense for my group, and deal with holiday schedules at the same time. I’ve put a lot of effort into organizing this raid group, and don’t want to go on a hiatus. I want to be able to make the event interesting enough for players that play all the time, and enjoyable for new players just starting out. A challenging balance, I know, but it has to be possible. Right?

Nothing gets me going like the talk of “welfare epics.” Thanks to Aspect of the Hare, we now have a new classification for gear: “soulless epics.” Pike talks about a soulless epic in his latest post:

“I am having a really hard time convincing myself to replace it with stuff that is being held in sterile confinement in Dalaran and that I earned by doing ‘chain Heroics’. I feel like there would be no soul in said gear.”

I find it hard to believe that World of Warcraft players in this day and age would refuse an upgrade — no matter how it was obtained — because it was not accompanied by a “story.” The fact that the gear you worked ever-so-hard for in 25-man Ulduar is obtainable from an emblem vendor doesn’t make it any less special. Why? Because there’s newer content to experience, and better gear to be had.

The Game has Changed

Today’s WoW is all about gear. You are judged completely by your various in-game ratings (item level, gear score, arena ranking, etc.) and nothing more. Having purple-colored items with as high a rating as possible is how you are judged.

The days of being a tank and having a Quel’Serrar are over. The days when you judged a Hunter based on whether or not they had Rhok’delar are long gone.

Those were the days when your gear helped craft the story of your character. In today’s WoW, achievements help tell the story of your character. You have to realize that gear is simply a means to an end. How you pick up the gear is irrelevant, and does not tell the entire story of your character or you as a player.

Stop it with the Welfare Epics

There’s no such thing as a welfare epic. Period. Just because gear is now available by different means doesn’t make it welfare.

“I don’t really have any moral problem with the way ‘welfare epics’ are implemented.”

I’ll restate this from my perspective: I don’t have any moral problem with how the various methods by which you can obtain gear in the game is implemented. Believe me: if you’re relying on a healer to keep you alive in the heroic version of Trial of the Champion, you don’t care how he or she picked up his or her healing set. The fact that his or her headpiece came from Emblems of Conquest and not Ulduar doesn’t mean they are any less of a player. It just means they utilized their time in a different way.

Time is Money, Friend

World of Warcraft is all about the time you put into the game. You spend your time as wisely as you can in order to maximize your enjoyment. It’s as simple as that. When time spent produces gear that helps you progress your character, you feel a sense of accomplishment. The progression of your character then opens up doors for new content, gear, experiences, and even “stories.” This is the never-ending incentive — the dangling carrot — that players have to keep progressing.

How and when your paper doll was decorated with purple pixelation is not something you should rely on to tell your story. Progressing your character, gaining achievements, and working with your fellow guild members speaks volumes.

My new Emblem-of-Conquest-farming raid group ran 10-man Naxxramas last night. I had been wondering what was more efficient for emblem farming: a 10-man raid or running two or three heroics. We ended up clearing the Arachnid, Plague, and Construct quarters in two-and-a-half hours for a total of ten emblems.

If the Trial of the Champion 5-man heroic didn’t exist, I would say that your best bet is to farm a 10-man raid. However, a decently geared group can clear the ToC rather quickly (maybe 30 minutes?), and you have a chance at epic loot from each of the three bosses. You can probably clear at least two more heroic dungeons to go along with ToC, picking up a total of 9 to 13 emblems depending on which heroics you run.

Why the Raid is Better

In a raid, you’re going to get a chance at two pieces of epic gear from each boss: item level 200 in Naxxramas or item level 213 in Ulduar. On a farming run, most of the raid should already be well-geared, so if you’re looking for a specific upgrade, you’ll have a good shot at it. It’s also a quick way to upgrade your off-spec(s), in case you’re asked to fill a different role at some point… like if your group asks you to go Holy.

Why Heroics are Better

With heroics, not only do you have an opportunity to obtain some upgrades and pick up emblems, but you’re gaining reputation. Even though Wrath of the Lich King has been out for over nine months, many players — including me — are not exalted with every WotLK faction. Running heroics can yield around 1500 reputation points per run. If you’re farming instances, chances are you don’t need any gear from the factions, but there are enchants, recipes, and even mounts that are available at exalted faction standing.

My Preference: The 10-Man Raid

When it’s all said and done, farming a raid is fun… especially as a tank. As a tank, you’re setting the pace of the raid. You get in a nice rhythm with your healers and move quickly through the trash and from boss to boss. Here are some other reasons why I prefer farming a 10-man raid:

• Staying in one place instead of bouncing around from instance to instance.
• There is less of a chance that one of your group members is locked out of a particular dungeon because everyone knows ahead of time that you’re running Naxx or Ulduar.
• The expectations and consistency of a single raid dungeon will end up producing less downtime.
• Your chances of getting an on or off-spec upgrade in a heroic is very small.
• Did I mention it’s more fun? Sure, whether or not a fun time was had is objective, but, for me, running a dungeon with a 10-man raid group composition is my favorite way to experience content in the game.

Now that we have a week of experience under our purple belts, we’ll see if we can speed up the run a bit next week. I predict that, at some point in the near future, we’ll be able to clear all of 10-man Naxxramas in a single, three-hour night.

How many more times, treat me the way you wanna do
When I give you all my love, please, please be true
I’ll give you all I’ve got to give, rings, pearls, and all

When you’re progressing in a raid, you eventually hit a wall on a certain stage of the raid. It could be a particular set of trash mobs, but it’s typically going to be a boss fight. The question is: how many times do you attempt to take the boss down before giving up? When you do decide to call it quits, do you move on to a different boss, or call the raid early and hope that getting everyone back fresh and well-rested on a new day will give you a better approach?

My current 25-man raid group is struggling with both Ignis the Furnace Master and Kologarn in Ulduar. Last week, we tried to take down Ignis seven times, and Kologarn four times. This week on our first night, we had three decent attempts on Ignis, and only one on Kologarn.

Any Progress is Progress

On the whole (insert Preparation H joke here), our raid made serious strides in only one week. We two-shot Razorscale, and XT-002 Deconstructor went down with three fewer attempts than the previous week. It seemed to me that giving our all on Ignis until our raid time was up was the best strategy, but we were told to switch over to Kologarn with thirty minutes left in the raid.

I immediately thought that, at most, we’d get one attempt on Kologarn and I was right. It was as good as our first attempt last week, getting the right arm down only once before our tanks lost all their hit points. Beating up the trash to get to Kologarn seemed like a complete waste of time compared to two to three more attempts on Ignis. I would have appreciated more attempts on one boss, or calling the raid early if the raid leaders felt like we didn’t have the gear yet.

Our second night of 25-man Ulduar didn’t start out quite how I expected. I was asked to tank because one of the main tanks no-showed, but I declined. I’ve been a Retribution Paladin with this group for about a month now, filling in as a tank on certain fights when needed. We had three Protection Warriors in the raid so we were covered anyway.

I used to be one of the main tanks back when we started our 10 and 25-man Naxxramas raids, but was eventually squeezed out after the raid leaders recruited additional tanks. I don’t know if I was doing a poor job for them as a tank, wasn’t vocal enough on Vent, or just smelled funny. I probably will never know, but don’t really care at this point anyway since I’m enjoying playing with this spec.

Ignis the Furnace Master

We started out with Ignis since we had cleared the other three Siege of Ulduar bosses on the previous night. The path down to Ignis is huge! It definitely felt epic, and the homage to Molten Core with the two Molten Colossus giants was a nice touch. Dancing around the whirlwinds cast by the fire revenants was pretty fun. After our raid leader performed the thankless job of explaining the fight to everyone, and from their perspective (how he knows all this I’ll never understand), we engaged Ignis and began the fight.

The attempts — all seven of them — were chaotic with the tank dying early and often. We had some difficulties with aggro management, mainly because there is no aggro reset (sorry, old joke). I was tasked with slapping Ignis in the leg with my mace and staying alive when I was put “on the pot.”

I Out-heal Priests

What was most surprising was the amount of passive healing I was doing with Judgement of Light. I was showing up third on Recount under “Healing Done.” Come to find out, this is getting nerfed in 3.2:

Judgement of Light: Now heals for 2% of the attacker’s maximum health instead of a variable amount based on the spell power and attack power of the judging paladin.

Although I got a kick out of the Priests whispering me and wondering if I had changed specs again, this really doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. I’ll enjoy being able to simultaneously DPS and heal until this gets changed in the upcoming patch. Who needs a combat medic hero class anyway?

Raid Reassurance Time

We were reminded again that we wouldn’t be one-shotting bosses, even though all of us already knew that. Although I don’t think anyone is concerned that we’re not doing well and learning on each attempt, plenty of reassurances of how many attempts and wipes it will take us to defeat a boss were given out.

After the sixth attempt, the raid leader put out a vote to stay for another attempt, or move on to Kologarn. The majority voted to stay on Ignis, so we tried again. The main tank and off-tank switched, and the attempt was our best yet. We had Ignis down to 70% before any deaths occurred. We ended up wiping, and the raid leader put up another vote. This time, the majority voted to move on to Kologarn. This was strange to me because the last attempt on Ignis was clearly one where we had made some serious strides towards learning the fight.

Kologarn

We hit the trash hard on our way to Kologarn. When I say hard, I mean hard like you ran as fast as you could right into a brick wall. We attempted to sheep two of the mobs, but those were quickly broken by AoE. An exasperated voice on Vent pleaded for players to not break crowd controlled mobs, but this is probably some of our raiders first experience with a 25-man dungeon with crowd control. In Naxxramas, AoE was used on everything, so I don’t blame them for using AoE in their rotations.

We eventually made our way to Kologarn and had some decent attempts, four in total. We basically re-spawned the right arm once on each attempt, but called it there due to time constraints. I didn’t feel like everyone (including me) knew exactly what they were supposed to be doing on this fight, but hopefully we’ll be able to build on our experiences for next week. All in all another night full of learning experiences and several servings of humble pie.

The raid group I participate in ventured into 25-man Ulduar for the first time last night. Although this was my first official time in Ulduar (ok, I may have snuck in with a PUG a month ago that wiped repeatedly on Kologarn, but I’m not counting that), we had several raiders that had at least seen the 10-man version, and a handful that had experienced some parts of the 25-man.

Flame Leviathan

We took care of Flame Leviathan in one shot. I had heard that the fight was easy, but… it really was easy. I drove a Siege Engine and zig-zagged across the room with the other tanks while the gunners took care of the choppers. I had played a lot of Strand of the Ancients and Wintergrasp, so the vehicle mechanics of the fight were familiar to me.

Razorscale

Next up was Razorscale. Everyone understood quickly that we were not going to step in and one-shot every boss (although some were already looking ahead and boasting that we would be able to one-shot XT… more on that later). On the fourth attempt, though, everything came together.

The only dicey part came when one of the Death Knights popped Army of the Dead. Razorscale then started to violently spin around, wrecking havoc on our hit point totals. I personally wish Blizzard would disable Army of the Dead when Death Knights zone into raid instances.

A Fragment of Val’anyr Dropped. Now what?

After Razorscale fell, it was time to address the loot. A Fragment of Val’anyr dropped and the raid leaders didn’t know what to do with it. They ended up deciding to let the mace-wielding healers do a random roll. The raid leaders explained that whoever wins the roll will be allowed to pick up all future fragments that drop in the raid, assuming this individual shows up.

Prior to this decision, there was a debate on how this should be handled. Should the player with the highest level of attendance get it? Maybe our “best” healer? Or maybe someone that has some kind of Internet fame? I didn’t expect our raid leaders to have this completely figured out prior to the raid, but turning it over to a random roll seemed very strange to me. This was especially odd after they had decided to use a loot council for the Heroic Key to the Focusing Iris during our 25-man Naxxramas days.

XT-002

Next up was XT-002. The first attempt went okay, but since it was our first look at him (or is it her? Oh wait, it’s a robot), a few of us died early on and we weren’t able to recover. We continued to have difficulties on XT, particularly with the gravity bombs. One of our healers assigned to the main tank got the bomb right away on one attempt, costing us the tank, and a quick wipe of the raid.

What was interesting at this point was the constant reassurance that about 40% of the raid was giving to everyone else. I never got the sense that anyone was expecting one-shots of every boss, or that anyone was feeling disgruntled and frustrated with our apparent lack of progress. In fact, it was just the opposite; we were doing quite well, learning something new on each attempt, and getting back quickly with buffs and positioning.

On the eighth attempt, we finally put XT away to rest. Our previous two attempts were terrible, and I think it was because people started to fall asleep. Vent was very quiet at this point, but everyone seemed to perk up when one of our raid leaders explained that this would be the last attempt. Our healing was fantastic, the Pummellers, Scrapbots, and Boombots were dealt with accordingly, and, thankfully, nobody used Army of the Dead.