To Re-roll Or Not To Re-roll?

I was listening to The Instance (best WoW podcast currently out there IMO) today and they were talking about how a lot of people are not playing mages anymore. They had people respond from a previous episode as to why that may be the case and a lot of the responses were that mages weren't competitive DPS anymore and they have been been dumbed down to being a portal/table slave. While my mage is still 70 (he's been an alt since day 1) so I can't say much I have to disagree with that assessment. Our mages are consistently in the top 5 almost every fight (ok maybe that's the other classes faults but still) but this isn't actually the argument that I am getting at (I'm not a mage blog nor do have enough knowledge about them to converse about it). What I am interested in is the fact that all these people rerolled from their mages to other classes to the point that mages are now in shortage.

A while back my guild, No Vacancy, was in dire need of priests and our server had a huge lack of healers in general. I have heard that many servers have the same issues with tanks. It seems that this epidemic has a very circular pattern. Back in BC on Drenden Shammy's were so rare that people would recruit a fresh 70 in all greens to raid just so they had one for their guild (not to mention that Sunwell pretty much needed them so it was almost forced on us). But now in NV we have a plethora of healers (including priests) with at least one healer app (and one more interested). In fact our issue now is that we have a need for a tank (sorta) where before we had too many.

How does a guild maintain what they need, while not over-recruiting and having people on standby all the time?

I can't say that I have a 100% foolproof solution for that. People leave guilds for various reasons but particularly they leave because either 1) they don't get into enough raids or 2) they want better progression that isn't happening. Not every guild can be the top successful progression guild on the server that achieves everything. Even those guilds have people leave over time to other guilds on other servers that are just that much more progressive (albeit probably slightly less often than the "mid-level" guilds). Our attempt at solution is to sub more often if we have more than 25 in one night. In Naxxramas we ask who needs anything from a given wing and ask who does not. Those who do get in, those who don't sub out. For the bosses (such as Malygos) where virtually everyone needs an item the higher ranking people get in while the initiates and general members sub out. While this doesn't work all the time to keep people, it keeps our turnover rate not too terribly high. Very few people leave because of not being able to raid.

My point is that for those who enjoy playing their class/spec but find it under-appreciated or for those having a hard time recruiting a specific class/spec because it's ill played, hold on because everything comes full circle sooner or later. It usually doesn't take very long before Blizzard changes a class to be really wanted or for players to re-roll because they didn't like their previous class. Also, server transfers are always an option. There are always guilds looking for every class/spec and vice versa.

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WoW Patch 3.0: Time to respec

So patch 3.0 is coming out today. We get to sit around for hours twiddling our thumbs waiting for it to get implemented and then it's a free for all. We get our talent points refunded to us and now it's time to respec.

Since you are going to be asked by guildies the information that you do not currently have in your head, and I'm sure you don't want to do all the research ahead of time, here is a great post by Anna of the Too Many Annas blog. Be sure to send everyone you need to first to my blog and then to these other great blogs to help them out with their specs. Keep in mind a lot of things have changes since even October 8th when this post happened but it at least will steer people in the right direction as most changes have been updated in subsequent blogs on the various sites.

If you have any other sites to add to the list provided by Anna then feel free to post a comment for others to see here on my blog.

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WoW Class Research: Mage

Mage is another class that I have played.  In fact, it's the class that I am currently working towards getting to 70.  Right now he is 65 and I sort of hit a wall where I haven't put much time into playing him.  I haven't quite got to the point where I am gearing him up for raiding but I have done some research here and there.

WoW Mage Forums - How to pewpew and QQ all in one spot!

EJ Mage Sweet Information - Much detailed information for mages.

Wowwiki Mage Thingy - To tell you the truth almost all of my info has come from this spot for leveling my mage.  In fact, it is probably the single best resource for most classes, especially for starting out.  Go here first for basic info then go to the above for extra info.

Surprisingly enough I couldn't find any up to date mage blogs.  I'm sure there are good ones out there, just didn't find them.  Let me know about some that you use and I will gladly post em up.

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WoW Addons #2 - Class Addons

As I mentioned in my previous post, I'm going to talk a little baout class specific addons. There of course a million addons out there and umpteen amount of them are class addons so I'm not going to delve into all of them. Being as I don't even play every class in the game I can't give a great representation of all the addons out there from personal experience. But from research and personal experience combined I'll put up a few that people might find useful. I'll also group up some class types at the end of the post so I'm not putting up the same addon for like specs(IE - tanks and healers). I'm making an attempt to only put up addons which will help with raiding, not addons like CritLine which aren't that useful in raiding respects.

Druid:

Outfitter - This addon is a must for those of us who choose a class which requires a million gear changes all the time. You can save different sets for whatever reason you might have and interchange those with a click of a button. You can also set it to automatically do that but a lot of the times that screws you up more than it helps as you get stuck in the wrong gear for the wrong occasion often.

Druidbar - I just found this one and I'm not sure why i never looked before. It shows your mana while in cat/bear form. Really useful for powershifters or tanks like me who pull with moonfire and find with chain pulling and no good mana regen that I can pull and be stuck in caster form by accident.

Hunters:

Personally I don't use any addons for my hunter that are hunter specific but a good one that is useful is Zhuntermod. Helps with organization and such. I'm sure a more seasoned hunter has specific mods but mine is only used for farming.

Sorren's Easy Rotations - Helps you with your hot rotations to get that extra edge (and makes it so you don't just have to spam 1).

SimpleMD - This one requires the other hunters to have the addon but it lets the hunters know when the hunter Misdirect cooldowns are up so there is no failures on overlapping.

Mage:

Dagassist - While useful for others, sorta, it's greatly useful for a mage. It gives you a dropdown where you can cast your ports and open your tradeskills and such. Cleans up those hotbars like a pro!

Cryolysis - Give syou a circle thing that you can use to do about everything.. I personally didn't find this addon that useful but I know mages who swear by it.

Paladin:

PallyPower - I've already harped on this last post but it is such a great addon that I had to include it.

Priest:
Not much a shadow priest needs specifically that I could find. I don't own a priest alt.

Prayer of Mending Tracker - Tracks your Prayer of Mending, duh!

Rogue:

I'm sure there are some that some rogues use but don't they just turn on auto attack and kill things?

Shaman:

TotemTimers - Keeps tracks of your totems timers and lets you put them down when they are about to expire.

Shaman Friend - Gives you a lot of Shaman related dohickeys. (Can you tell I don't play a shaman?)

Warlock:

The ones I knew about seem to be out of date so I don't want to give out ones that don't work anymore. There are some out there though.

Warrior:

StanceSets - Helps you switch Mainhand, offhand, and ranged based on your stance so you can quickly switch from dps to tanking or etc.

Tanks:

Damnation - This one is great because it automatically removes Salvation from you when you get into bear form, defensive stance, etc(or if you are already in those forms/stances). That way if there is a reason you need to be in bear form you are going to be able to get that threat much faster without having to thumb around looking for the salv that was cast on you.

TankPoints - To let you compare gear to make sure you are staying above the needed caps for encounters.

Healers:

Healbot Sucks. The top healers in No Vacancy use X-perl + Clique for their healing. I've heard others use Grid instead of X-perl.

DPS:

Quartz - Helps with maximizing your dps. For casters is lets you know when you can cast again based off of your connection speed. For melee it gives you your swing/shot timer so you can time your yellow damage and not lose too much of your white.

Most Everyone:

SmartBuff/SmartDebuff - They can be downloaded seperately for those classes that can buff but cant debuff or vice versa. This lets you buff your party members by rolling the mouse wheel backwards, it can also be setup for other various things. It gives you a warning when buffs on other peopel are going to wear out so you can stay on top of it too. SmartDebuff gives you a small frame where you can right or left click those who have the debuff and it will remove it.

Decursive - Does the same thing as SmartDebuff. I've just used SDB for a long time so I never used this one but I know most of the debuffers in the guild use this one so had to include it.

ControlFreak - Makes crowd controlling cake. Puts a movable box on your screen where you can set the sheep/banish/etc target and keep it CC'd while you dps on your current target. Shows a countdown of when it will wear off and makes a noise at you when it breaks.

DurabilityStatus - Very small window that lets you know where you armor is at and if you hover over it you will know how much your repairs will cost.

MinimapButtonBag - Takes all of these addons that I'm giving you and puts the minimap buttons that you have accrued into one single button.


Tommorrow I will finish up my addon section by chatting about External "addons".

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