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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Werking with the patch

Patchwerk has been up on the PTR for testing purposes. There are two versions of him, one of which is a tanking test version.

This is a great thread of a guild called Premonition from the Sen'Jin server that did hours of tank tests on the PTR. Of course, this is only with current PTR 3.1 changes and some bugs (Druids don't have our Savage Defense buff we were supposed to get among others) but it's a good read for tanks (and for GM's who want to learn more about their tanks). Funnily enough I am geared almost exactly to the druid in this test so this is a near perfect representation for me to work with.

Doubtful that this type of fight will exist in Ulduar but it gives a good idea as to what damage the tanks should be taking during certain boss encounters.

Dk's are severely overpowered at the moment but only because they have a ton of usable cooldowns that can be kept up at a much higher rate than any of the rest of the tanks. I expect this to come down to a more respectable level (or the other tanks to move up).

This is by no means a such and such class is the best tank test, just how to look at our performance at different stages as well as to see what problems are there that need to be overcome in 3.1.

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WoW Tank Repairs

I mentioned in yesterday's post that we pay for our tank repairs, and that I would talk about it in a future post. Rather than make you wait I misaswell post about it now.

Currently we pay the nights repairs of any member of the guild that is assigned to tank in our 25 mans. This includes our traditional tanks, our off-tanks, and even the special tanks(Leo/Illidan Warlocks, etc).

This rule was a hold over from one of our previous guilds that we liked(the rule that is). Our thinking is that the tanks are taking the brunt of all the damage and without that we wouldn't be able to progress.

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WoW Blizzcon News - Day 1

Some of you may have been there, some may have been keeping up with the news by friends(like I was), some maybe even got the DirectTV broadcast(which from what I hear cut out a lot), and yet some of you may not know anything about the goings on of Blizzcon.

For all you noobs out there Blizzcon is the annual Blizzard Convention held in California(because they are too cheap to do it on the east coast). Usually at this even there is much hype of the brand new games or expansions that Blizzard is coming out with. Normally there is some major announcement that they wait until this day to tell people. Oh and of course there is always lots and lots of lines to get your swag or to play that new hyped expansion or game. And you get to watch people as they walk around dressed up as their favorite World of Warcraft or Diablo or Indiana Jones(oh wait he wasn't created by Blizzard?) characters.

Unlike past year this year's announcements were pretty bleh. I am happy that I didn't care to want to go to Blizzcon this year(not much of a convention guy to tell you the truth, maybe if it were say in New England). The ultra major news they released at their opening ceremonies was that the Wizard class would be playable for Diablo 3. /yawn I personally have never gotten into Diablo myself but even people who did play it thought that wasn't a good enough announcement.

For us WoW fans though we did get some announcements in the form of the Class Panel discussion held later in the day with Tom "Kalgan" Chilton and Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street("There is a rumour on the forums that I'm a hot chick. You know it's true!"). I'm not going to talk about specific class changes, if you want info on that then visit WoW Insider's live-blog or the shortened version at MMO Champion.

I just want to hone in on the things that will effect us for raiding. The largest announcement for us in this session was the announcement of the ability to dual spec. Now not all details were given out at this so don't get too too excited just yet but the announcement is well received by us anyways.

What is Dual Spec? Well from the discussion today it's the ability to hold two separate specs and interchange them when needed. This will let people change their spec at whim without physically going back to the trainer. There was no mention as to how this will be implemented or if it will cost more gold. This will not be able to be used in the middle of arena matches though so no "OMG it's a Ret pally, spec ferlol!" moments, sorry. Dual specs will not mean just one set of gear although it will still mean certain classes will be able to do it without carrying more gear(IE - shadow priest to holy priest).

So how does this help us? Well the obvious. The "I need 3 tanks to kill all this trash to BigBossDude but he is a one tank fight", the "o crap, master healman has dc'd but we are on fast trash timers here", the "man you suck as resto, go boomkin and be useful" moments come to mind. Now you can have everyone come prepared for two specs and never have to cancel a raid because you are missing something but have a plethora of another. This is great news for the single player as well as the raid leaders!

Oh but there is more, the panel also has brung to light the reason why they are making all these class spec changes. "Bring the player, not the class" is their new motto. They don't want to make ability's so overpowered that you need to cancel the raid and they don't want it so that only one class has it. One example to this is that feral druids and warriors now have a viable aoe tanking ability. They want to make skill and gear worth more than buffs("Jimmy can't come ->No Wind Fury -> Cancel the raid")or potions(Potion lockouts, drum lockouts, etc). Buffs will not stack anymore but aura's and most buffs are raid wide. There will be multiple ways to get the same benefit which means you will have more room to bring who you want, rather than who you need. They want us to bring good players, not have to suffer with sitting out the good ones while the ones that need to learn are inside.. learning.

Lastly(I know you have already reached the TL;DR phase), they are making the game have less emphasis on threat. They rather have fights have emphasis on moving around and healing, not halting all dps cause the tank has not enough aggro. No more staring at aggro and waiting 5 minutes while your Pally builds up enough threat for you to cast 3 frostbolts and wait again. Now you wait a few seconds and unleash hell!

Some of this stuff is coming out with the new patch, some we will have to wait for a while, but all of it spells some great changes for us to look forward to. Raiding with these new changes is going to be exciting and it will really lend opportunity to some interesting fights for them to come up with rather than the same old stuff with a new model(not that it wont happen anyways).

Thanks for sticking with me through this long one. If tomorrow brings more pertinent info from Blizzcon I will try to keep updated. Until then, back to your regular scheduled blog.

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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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