So 3.2 is here, probably a little earlier than we anticipated, and it is still making me cranky. (Cranky enough to not blog, but not cranky enough to stop playing!) Allow me to summarize:

GOOD

• Oracle pet!
• Adorable raptor pets with giant heads!
• New dailies!
• Raid timer extensions!

BAD

• Too many raid settings. Four different versions of Wyrms is not actually four different bosses.
• Three different types of T9. Some need badges. Some need general tokens. Some need class specific tokens. Some need tokens AND badges. I need a flowchart.
• The armor is still ugly. If you’re going to make all clothies wear the same style of gear, at least give us a rad menacing warlock design!

I kind of know what Blizz was doing, at least in part, and I appreciate that new recruits will be able to gear up faster now on their own and get to T8/T9 readiness without us having to run them through Naxx. Still, as one of my guildies said on patch day, the fact that you get three Conquest tokens from three bosses in the new 5-man really devalues the badges we’ve gotten so far in 25-man Ulduar (25 man regular, not 25 man Heroic hahahahahah oh man where am I).

Oh, and the bugs have been outstanding, although that’s to be expected with a patch and doesn’t really bother me. Our server was dead for most of patch day, and last night in Ulduar we had the awesome quintuple bots bug on XT. I’m not sure if everyone found them so amusing, but the sight of an ocean of bots swarming towards us — and the associated cries of panic on Vent — kept me giggling for the next hour. Never have I wished so badly to be DPS and on Mind Sear duty.

Anyway, on the guild front we have been toying with P3 of Yogg, and with the raid timer extension I feel pretty confident that we’ll get him down by next weekend. Then I think we’ll focus on hardmodes and dabble a bit in the new Colosseum. I admit my 21 shards and I selfishly hope the guild spirit is still up to learning Three Lights in the Darkness.

I suppose I can’t really complain too much. Summer doldrums are over, there’s some new content to be had, and I have bets with friends over which one of us will be asked to leave Blizzcon first. And, hey, at least T9 won’t make me look like a paladin.

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Raiding Ruminations, Technical Issues, WotLK Colosseum, gear, patch, raiding, Ulduar

Well, okay, I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself here, but I started to feel a change in the wind last week and this week it seems to have fully arrived. We have at least 29 signups for every night this week, which means three viable rosters right out of the gate. We had 35 people sign up for Yogg-Saron night. 35!

And speaking of that giant hellbound head, we made some pretty sweet progress on him, finally, on Sunday. P1 just seemed to click for us, and suddenly we could complete it flawlessly. We had one tank at the top with most of the raid, getting the adds down to 40%. Then a rotating team of three tanks moved the adds down to Sara. Once in the middle, they were finished off by a group of four ranged DPS (and two healers to keep everyone alive.)

That same day we also had some attempts with 2 or 3 successful brainroom trips, and P2 really came together as more of a .. strategic chaos, at least. And we did it all with 24 people! Yogg feels doable now.

Every late May I start to feel anxious. I hate slow summers. To be honest, I didn’t know if I had it in me this year to keep the guild rolling again. It takes a lot of patience, encouragement, determination, and a group of really awesome understanding guildies. And I was probably more brutally frank with the guild this year than I’ve been in past summers. Anyway, some tips that helped me survive summer doldrums:

Nag and Cajole
I have the contact information of a lot of guildies, and I try not to abuse it. However, if I’m staring at 22 people online and am desperate for a tank, you’re getting a text message. I also send out PMs and IMs reminding people to sign up, and post nagging messages on the forum with lots of smiley faces.

Make the Most of Things
So my texted threats ammounted to naught, and I still have 22 people online staring at me when raid time rolls around. Try to not just cancel everything! People logged on, they arranged their schedules around this time, and you can still get some value for those 22 folks. Break into 10 mans and do achievements or get gear for newer raiders. Have you done Vault this week? Sarth 2D and 3D still have some fine gear drops! You don’t have to go the entire standard raid time, but do something, get some upgrades, and be upbeat about it. Part of my job is PR, whether I like it or not, which means I have to be positive to those online even when I’m cranky about attendance.

Threats and Hissy Fits
Use this category sparingly. In fact, I don’t think I used it at all until this year. However, there was a point at which I felt people needed to be reminded that running 3 raids a week and killing YS is pretty important to me (and to others). I got a little tyrannical, for me. First, I reminded people that I can keep filling raids through recruitment, but when everyone is back in Fall it’s the new recruits who were there all summer long who would get first dibs on “their” spots. Second, I instituted a “roster bonus” system where people who signed up and attended our least popular night (which was also YS night) would get first crack at the other two more loot-laden rosters. This was not a popular decision, and caused quite a bit of handwringing. It certainly got people’s attention focused on the attendance issue, though. I have a mandate to run a casualcore guild, and that is what I will do!

Other Stuff!
Recruit people, but not too many or else you’ll have 50 signups come winter. Play with your raid days — are they optimal for summer? Talk to your core crew and let them know how things are going, and what you’re doing to get the raid back on track.

All in all, know that things WILL get better. Your raid group may not be making any progress right now, and that’s okay. It’s summer, it happens. Just keep things rolling, keep people moving and talking, and eventually this too shall pass. I hope.

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Guild Management guildleading, raiding

A popular topic on WoW-related Twitters this week is whether it’s viable to have one person be a combination of healing and raid leader. I admit, I sort of giggled. I’m guild leader, raid leader, healing class leader (or would be if our healers weren’t all little anarchists who dislike authority — for which I love them dearly), and quite often top of the healing charts. And it’s not because I’m some kind of amazing multitasking super gamer, trust me. The keys are delegation, trust, and triage.

A couple of jobs ago a boss told me a very wise thing: don’t be afraid to hire people who are better than you. I followed that during my brief stint in middle management, and I definitely follow it with the guild. I have people who are better than me at most things — making strategies, mathcraft, creative solutions, tanking/DPSing, mods. There are folks on my team who are far more vigilant about stuff like proper flasks than I would ever think or care to be. I know my strengths, which are good people skills, good critical thinking skills, and solid attention to detail. Beyond that, why not employ people who are better than I am?

During a raid, for the most part I leave many things to their respective geniuses. Sure, I’ll go into a new boss with what I believe is the best strategy, but after those first couple of attempts, I’m quite open to input and people know it. As raid leader, a big part of my job in our guild is simply to be the critical thinker and, yes, decision maker. I sort out the ideas and details coming in from people who are more clever with strategies and observations than I am. “If we tank him to the side we’ll get fewer bots.” “The rogues are a little slow on DPS tonight.” “Elementals are easier if we tried this…” I read everything, decide if we should do it, and then lead appropriately.

That’s not to say that I don’t try to keep my head on a swivel and watch how things are playing out, but wearing so many hats means that things will run smoother if I also rely on others to help.

Which brings me to the next issue — trust. This may come as a shock, but I can be a bit of a control freak. (Ha ha ha!) One thing I have had to learn as a simultaneous guild/raid leader and healer is to trust others to help. For example, my good friend and fellow officer bugged me for months to let him handle the looting and bidding on raids. Eventually in a fit of being overwhelmed I relented, and having that extra time during loot to handle raid issues has turned out to be a huge boon. As another example, If I am particularly swamped I trust the healers to sort their crap out because they are adults and awesome players and they should know to do that.

(My guild is much like Dueg’s old one when it comes to healing assignments. Our motto is “heal things, don’t die”, and it works for this outstanding team. They are smart, funny, care very much about healing, and little wingnut individuals, each and every one of them. My only regret about all the things I do on raids is that it keeps from chatting with them more.)

Finally, triage. Don’t worry about what isn’t important. If people whisper me ideas or strategies, I very rarely ever whisper back. I just use them or don’t. Any whiners of any sort are immediately told to save it until after the raid. Any non-raid tasks are just ignored. No, I am not guilding your alt while I’m in Ulduar. Semi-important things get passed to officers to handle. And woe betide anyone who whispers me mid-raid about recruitment. We have a saying in the Cats that goes “Send ‘em to Blas or Kinch”, our two notoriously cranky officers, and mid-raid applicants go STRAIGHT to them with a vengeance.

So by working with your own strengths, and relying on others to fill in what you’re missing, it’s possible to wear many leadership hats at once and still get things done. Good luck!

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Guild Management guildleading, raiding

It’s been a tough couple of weeks on the 25-man Ulduar front. Summer doldrums, patch days, and at least one night where we all just had the dumb have combined to mire us in the Keepers of Ulduar, with Vezax perpetually out of reach (not to mention Yoggie). Even our two 10 man groups had developed a bit of lethargy or fallen apart completely in the face of Mimiron.

With that in mind, I set about putting together a Really Kickass Group for u10 this weekend. The key to a good 10s group, I find, is not just numbers or situational awareness — a lot of it is just making sure you have the buffs and class synergy you need. Blizz can chant “bring the player, not the class” all they want, but that’s not going to make me feel any better about attempting hard modes without Kings or Heroism. Some class tricks are still essential. The group I was in on Friday night was Prot Warrior, Feral Druid (cat/OT), DK-of-many-specs (DPS/OT), Enh Shaman, Boomkin, Shadow Priest, Destro Lock, Disc Priest, Holy Priest, Holy Pally. We were lacking any misdirect or tricks of the trade, but otherwise it definitely covered all the basics.

This set up, and the players to go with it, kicked butt. Previously our 10s had focused on just killing as many bosses as possible or scouting new ones for the 25-man raids, so I suggested that we try something different and give the achievements a shot. And we did!

First up was Orbital Devistation, which we got on the second try with ease. We left up the Storm and Life towers. Engine passengers were tasked with shooting plants. For 10s we only use one bike and have one person on Flame Leviathan at a time (in Heroic we use three bikes and two launchees), and rotate so there are Demo passengers gathering pyrite at all times. Keeping up that pyrite stack is really key to this encounter, particularly as you add towers.

Next was our first true “hard mode”, killing the heart on XT. I know this used to be one of the most difficult hard modes in the game before the nerfs, and we.. one-shot it. If you have the raw DPS needed, hard mode is arguably easier than regular XT! We pulled him between the trash piles on the left of his room, facing the wall. Melee moved to one corner with light and gravity bombs. Ranged stayed roughly in a straight line at max range, and moved backwards for gravity and forwards for light. Casters picked off sparks, with a little help from melee when necessary. As for the heart phase itself, we had everyone DPSing, healers included, and were probably about 3 seconds away from not making it in time. Healing was pretty intense — I’m glad we had three of us. Anyway, we nabbed not only Heartbreaker, but also Nerf Engineering.

Kologarn (OOOOOOOOOOOOOOBLIVION!) passed without event, although we gave a half-hearted try for With Open Arms and got dang close. (Hit Kolo’s body, and ignore the arm until he squeezes someone. DPS the arm until he lets them go. You have about six squeezes until his arm dies, so DPS the body hard.)

So, an admission: since 3.1 came out, I have wanted the Crazy Cat Lady achivement. My guild is the Cats, I am, technically, a lady, and frankly we’re all crazy. It just seemed like the achievement made for me. So when we got to Auri, I knew what had to be done. And indeed, this achievement is insane! We had a tank on each Sentry keeping them separate but not TOO separate so as to be terminally feared away from the healers. DPS made killing the Feral Defender their top priority (usually we ignore it on regular mode) because healer interrupts were extremely bad. It took probably an hour or so to get this achievement, and a healthy dose of luck. Get feared at the wrong time, or damage spikes on all three tanks at once, or an interrupt on the wrong healer and everything tumbles.

We capped off the evening with a few attempts at Thorim’s hard mode. We were worried at first that we wouldn’t even be able to start it, but with five people down the gauntlet Sif was still waiting for us with 30 seconds to spare. (And an achievement for our troubles, Siffed.) That was where our luck ended, though, as the raid got torn to pieces within moments. I think our best attempt saw Thorim down to about 40%, which is nothing to sneeze at. This achievement needs a little more research and maybe more frost resist gear. That Sif is a mean apparition!

Even more important than the achievements is the fact that everyone was in great spirits after this run. It was nice to get together with friends in the more relaxed 10-man environment and just kick the stuffing out of everything. And the good mood spilled over to Sunday, where the same group with a few switches finally killed Mimiron on 10s (and Freya+1) — a one-shot, no less! Often I curse the tandem 10 / 25 / hard mode setup that Blizz favors now, but I have to admit that occasionally it works out pretty well.

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Achievements, Raiding Ruminations Achievements, raiding, Ulduar

When we first started raiding, back in Zul’Gurub days, we just random rolled for everything. Over time, random rolls will give a statistically fair distribution of items amongst players, and at that time our uber-casual guildies expressed fear and concern over the dreaded DKP. In fairness, I didn’t see a real need for it, and after reading a couple of things about zero-sum systems I certainly didn’t want to have to adjudicate such a beast.

Things went well until about halfway through ZG when a guildie skipped for a more progressed guild. One of his reasons for leaving was that he had “bad luck on rolls with us”. What? Your guild doesn’t.. well you see, random numbers.. it.. it just doesn’t work like that. And this is true, in theory, but one thing I learned is that people are superstitious by nature. Given the lack of any obvious rhyme and reason to loot distribution, they will invent patterns to explain things.

We knew we had to change when we started Molten Core, but again we didn’t want anything resembling DKP. This time we went with Suicide Kings, which is essentially a loot priority system. One of the big draws was that absent raiders never “dropped” spots. They stayed where they were, and people moved around them. This was essential for a pretty fluid raid roster. (Usually raiders #30-#40 were just whomever logged on during the night. Grats on 60 — now come to Molten Core!)

SK served us well until about the middle of Serpentshrine Cavern. The problem was that people were camping that top spot for a long time, passing up lesser upgrades for that one big item that was “worth” going to the bottom of the ladder. As well, our hybrids wanted to collect off-set gear (which was reasonable) but didn’t want to drop completely for it. By this point our SK system riddled with handmade exceptions, and we were trying to refocus the guild to be a little more serious about raiding anyway. It was time for.. almost DKP.

Since then, we have been using our own variation of the Shroud Loot System, and I think it works wonderfully. It gives players a little more leeway to set their own priority on upgrades, and also doesn’t need many (if any!) built in exceptions.

Basically, it goes like this: the average player will receive 8 points for the average night of raids. You get one point for being on time, one for being there at the end, and one for every 30 minutes of raiding. Killing a brand new boss is a +4 point bonus for the night. You don’t receive the points until the end of the raid, and you can go into negative points.

There are only two bids: 8 and half. That’s it. If an item only receives 8 bids, then all the bidders roll for the item. If there are any half bids, then the top bid wins. The idea is to provide a lower priority bid (8), but with the possible consequence of having to roll against others for the item and lose. Sore losers are told, “If you really wanted it, you should have bid half!”

And that’s .. pretty much it. I like this system a lot because it is simple to maintain, and the half bids regulate point inflation for the most part. We don’t specify whether something has to be on- or off-spec (and what does that really mean in the era of dual specs) or that people should stay in their armor class. If a ret paladin wants to bid on leather they’re welcome to do so, but they are going to have a mob of cranky rogues and ferals on the guild forum to answer to later.

We also give loots to initiates who make 8 bids, although that can be a bit of a contentious rule. I like it though – I think it represents the friendly kind of guild we are, and if someone has made it through the application process, let’s give them some gear!

And if you don’t like it, you should have bid half.

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Guild Management guildleading, raiding