34 hours casually

Update: OK, it's not much. Everyone can kill Occu'thar. Except the Agamaggan horde on prime time. Also, Wednesdays are rBG days here, we had 2 teams running rBGs, and we could already buy our first S10 items.

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In the first raid lockout, our guild spent 34 hours in raid. That's almost 5 hours every day of the week. Such schedule is tight, even for a HC guild. I guess only World top 500 guilds spend that amount of time raiding.

How can I claim that we did not transform into a very dedicated HC guild? Because we neither have attendance requirement nor fixed team, therefore that 34 hours are not for 10 people. About 50 people raided. There were raids on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday attempting on Beth, killing her on Friday. The composition changed even within one raid. Looking up logs 19 people attempted on Beth. Shannox tries were on Sunday and Monday, with 15 different people. Rhyolith died on Tuesday, with another raid. There were several trash runs, 2 Argoloth runs and there was a BoT-BwD boost raid. So while 340 guildy hours were spent in some raid instance, the median was around 13 hours.

Of course some people raided more. I raided 21 hours this week, 4 in a boost raid, 6 on Beth, 5 on Shannox, 2 on Rhyolith and 3 on dedicated trash runs.

This is how non-top raiding should work. You log on any evening and if you want to raid, you do. However most "casual" guilds don't raid at all, or raid 3*4 hours on a fixed schedule with a fixed team. Why can't they do it like us?

Because our raiding system is supported by the behavioral rules of the guild. Boosting and "being nice" are unknown here. Anyone and everyone are subject of fail gold and raid kicking if he messes it up. We are discussing wipes openly and point out who messed up. This and only this allows us to kill things with random people. We can give a chance to everyone because if he fails, we can kick him without risk. No officer will whisper you that "HEY! X is my little bro be easy lol". If he would start a drama on /g for being removed, he would get his gkick in no time. You can take anyone exactly because you are not stuck with him. There is no more risk taking a new person than a few wipes, where the exact number depends only on your tolerance.

In social guilds such raiding is impossible as you are stuck with "friends" who constantly and irreparably fail. The "carry the failer" is a core social idea, so fixing it has nothing to do with any kind of gaming decisions. It can only be fixed by acting asocially.

People are also pretty tolerant on being benched, because it's mostly done by /roll and they know that the new gear the people inside got did not give them a tiny bit of priority getting in next raid. Just because X was taken instead of them, it doesn't mean that X is "more liked" ore "more in the favors of the leadership", because liking is not even definable in an asocial environment. Socials take "not being chosen" as "they hate me". On farm raids (on the second lockout Shannox, Rhyolith and Beth will be farm too), everyone who shows up prepared get spot to some bosses including one he chooses (so if you want Beth, you will get Beth).

WTS/WTB Shannox trash

The PuG update: 1 tank, 4 healers, 5 DD, 3 of them on legs, 2 on adds. Currently #6200. We are permanently recruiting, just read the rules.

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There is trash in almost every raid. They have several purposes, like RP (the dungeon has a better feeling if it's full of busy minions of evil), slowing progression, giving bad players something to do besides wiping and "g2g". Anyway they are here to stay.

In Firelands, there are a lot. Especially before Shannox. You just kill and kill and kill them and wait for Shannox to show up. However this trash is different. They have something of value, besides the low chance of giving a BoE (although that's still a good money this early). They give reputation until honored. They keep giving after that too, but way to little to matter. Killing them gives a 378 back at friendly and a waist on honored. No wonder that /trade is full of "LF3M 2 tanks 1 healer to FL trash run u need 999999 ilvl" spam.

Of course those who raid regularly are already honored or will be in a week. After that the trash will be just waste of their time.

How could we turn these annoying turtles, giants, dogs and scorpions into profit? There will always be people who want rep. New people, alts and casuals (and of course M&S but we don't want them). All we need is a raid leader who forms a short trash run to clear them up to the boss(es). My idea is to pay every member of the trash run X gold and this 10*X is paid by the raiders who arrive to the trash-free raid.

The trash raid starts 45 mins before the real raid, they clear up the trash, get their gold and leave. The real raid kills the boss, everyone is happy. Of course nothing stops a raider to participate in both raids. The price will obviously rise over time, as less and less people need rep, so it simply becomes a work they do for salary. The raiders pay to save time, the trashers get paid for their time on the top of the rep and trash loot.

I made the first pre-raid trash run on Monday, before Shannox firstkill, with only 3 people who participated in the real raid. The rest were non-raider or new people who had an opportunity to participate in our effort in Firelands and also to get a preview of raiding. The trash raids, similarly to the 4.0 boost raids can help new people to practice raiding without pressure while getting loot.

The pre-raid trash run also increases raid time without increasing the commitment demand from raiders. They spend the same amount of time inside as before, but it's all boss time.

4.0 raids and casuals

The Pug update:Wowprogress says we are around #7500 (changing fast with updates). Pot was 20K on the boss and 15K on trash.

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We had a boost raid run this weekend. We had 3-4 boosters and 6-7 new people, which is very good ratio. The boosters ended up with more than 4500 gold over 4 hours of run, which isn't bad. Most of the gold was of course paid for T11 shoulder and helm. We will definitely run more boost raids, they will be regular on the weekends.

The nerfs are just atrocious. A list of nonsense:

• 1 guy instant killed at Halfus (normal). Still, new record kill
• Valiona meteors survivable, blackout needs 2 people to stack on target to be OK
• Council can be killed with one huge blue patch in the middle
• Cho'gall can be killed with full worships, people 50+ corruption in P1 and all kind of crap you can imagine
• Magmaw down with every single chain failed, except the last one when 2 healers jumped on it
• Omnitron oozes do 50K damage on hit, easier to kill them by walking into them than by spells
• 12 adds on Maloriak tank and I did not notice it as healer. Nor the guy who stood in the fire breath with debuff.
• Atramedes was always easy but now you must purposefully stand in the fire to get 100 sounds
• Chimaeron's double attack barely hits offtank
• Nefarian adds just die, P2 adds cast over 8 seconds, lava damage so little that people could swim from one pillar to another (and they did as healer died on one pillar due to not being able to get on it)

Does it means 4.0 is casual friendly? I doubt it because of three things:

• If you are casual, you have trouble doing 7/7 troll heroics a week (if you don't, you are not casual). Your time is better spent in 3 troll runs that drops 24 ilvl 353 for 5 people, 420 valor points, 1200 justice points than in 4.0 where you get 20 ilvl 359 for 10 people, 0 valor, 700 justice.
• Finding 9 other casuals is an organization nightmare. You will most probably have to go with 3-4 M&S and that's really bad since trash is not nerfed. 6 casuals and 4 M&S might be able to faceroll Halfus but can't get to him. 
• There are still mechanics that needs a few people to do it right, especially tanks. So reading up on the boss, at least in the dungeon journal cannot be skipped. You can do it a bit slow, get a few ticks, outheal once, but not always. All out on shielded robot, interrupting aberrations so they swarm at P2, not stacking on droid offline, not gonging searing flames, not interrupting Nef P2 adds or standing in his fire and many more will still wipe the raid. And we know the casual response to wipes: "sry g2g".

Who will benefit from this change:

• Alts: for a bunch of raiders it's very easy to have an alt-gearing run. I guess they could do 12/12 in 3 hours with 330-340 geared alts.
• Non-raider ranked (casual) members of raiding guilds as they can tag along with altruns.
• New recruits of raiding guilds, as the guild can run initiation-BWD runs: some officer go with 6+ recruits and based on their performance promote them to members or kick them without risking progression time on Firelands.
• Good people stuck with "friends", as they can finally clear 4.0 raid content.
• New members in our guild, as we have paid boost raids. I think many good players believed they are not good enough and now gave it a try. I'm sure they both got confidence and raiding experience.

So Blizzard managed to do something good, but the M&S, and unfortunately the casuals won't really benefit from it. We will.


PS: second bidder rule is not used on our boost raids, explanation here.

The curse of Slagworks

TB is a great place to observe the lack of strategical sense of people. They either don't understand what's going on, or they don't recognize that speaking up and organizing the battle is much more important than just fighting

Now a dilemma came up, which exist only because of the mentioned lack of thinking: the "crazy Slag" defense. It involves everyone, except maybe a rogue or druid to be at Slag. The point is simple: the attackers come alone and unbuffed, we are in a zerg, buffed. They res unbuffed and die again. They also have people in other bases spamming "take Slag FFS", so for 15 minutes we just grind them at Slag and they kill nobody. Since they have no kills, they have no promotes, so they can't drive sieges and we win in 15 mins with around 100HKs, no deaths and all towers up (which provides 200 extra honor). The lone stealther caps bases that they abandon when they finally spam "all to slag ffs" enough times, just to annoy them more and make them yell "ffs we shudnt have left ww", which leads to 4-5 of them being AFK at WV.

No doubt that the Crazy Slag is preferred in every possible way: more honor, more honorkills and much more annoyment to the horde, making their more intelligent players abandon TB (they get practically no honor), leaving only the mindless lolkids on horde side.

However there is a catch: between two equally strong teams a defender using Crazy Slag always loses as the attackers have GY closer and they have capture speed bonus. So Crazy Slag strongly depend on us being superior than the horde. What makes one superior? Better gear and PvP skills, having enough healers and being organized. So the leader of TB must be able to guess these values before calling "all to slag". He also has to be fast. Can't inspect everyone one by one as the attention span of the lolkids is measured in seconds, if the leader waits a minute, they will be everywhere and most probably already dead, promoting the horde. So practically he can do a role check and look out for names of exceptional players and also known idiots who must run to the enemy GY LOSing the healers.

This makes leading TB pretty difficult. The people know and want Crazy Slag. But they are unable to see if the circumstances are bad and also completely unable to notice their own shortcomings. Arthasdklol can't understand that him standing at the door in 0 resi gear is the reason for calling for normal defense (rotate the map).

Since the leader is mostly selected random, there is a risk of some clueless guy getting lead and calling for Crazy Slag without thinking, losing TB. In this case the intelligent players inside must recognize the situation and be vocal about defending WV too and also doing it, as lolkids will surely run for the "omgipwnthemalllol" Slag.


Before Crazy Slag, TB was a simple "follow the protocol and collect bonus honor". Unless we had an unusual concentration of morons, we never lost. However Crazy Slag put a "you must stand up and lead or lose" to the table. If a guildy simply does his job, he will probably lose. He must take initiative and lead if he wants to win. Must sabotate the decision of the stupid leader to go for Slag, taking all the crap for "ffs we could win if u wudnt go ww". He also must do the Crazy Slag when available, whispering and yelling to lost newbies to come Slag fast.

Since Crazy Slag, there is no peaceful playing. You must lead or go down!


Finally a corresponding moron, with clear evidence, that The PuG made a difference in the norm of being nice with "casuals" and "new players":

Arachnophilia

Beth'litac, the first Firelands boss is down, providing hunter shoulder, maelstrom crystal, BoE orb and legendary fragment (staff is for sale here). Standard tank+DD+healer up. The trick we used is hunters downstairs using distractive shot on roping spiders, bringing them down, making P1 damage trivial, so healers started P2 with mana up.

If you want a guild with no attendance requirements, no one yelling at you on voice chat and still killing bosses on first week, come after reading the rules.

Wowprogress is overwhelmed, we'll see results soon where this kill put us. We expect 1-2 more bosses down this week.


This fight also shown me something that the developers are struggling with: melee unfriendly fights. Actually the whole game became melee unfriendly by the introduction of the healing circles on the ground. These are short range, stationary AoE heals. Ranged can stand in it. Melee can't. So healing melee takes more time and more mana than healing the same amount on ranged. So healers hate melee. If you are hated by healers, you don't get spot unless you outdamage the ranged by a large margin as it's always easier to find an OK hunter than a healer. To fix this, the healing circles must be removed, made player centered (healing rain is now a raincloud following the targeted player), or redesigned charge instead of duration based (like lightwell, stays down until depleted by users).

Don't panic!

People swarm to new lands like lemmings. The /2 is full of "LFM Firelands trash run". Many guilds started early, fighting with bugs to do be among the first to get the new shinies.

We are raiding of course, but not more than usually. There is simple no point rushing. Firelands, the Mark of the World Tree and all other content are staying here for months. Unless you are in a competitive world top guild, skipping even weeks wouldn't matter. Of course I'm not suggesting to purposefully skip something you'd like to do.

On the opposite: do as you wish, stick to your own schedule, don't start to panic and "Oh my God I forgot the dailies with my alt and I must run 2 more troll HCs or I won't cap my Valor and Tol Barad is coming and I need honor points to replace that last Bloodthirsty Gladiator piece to vicious and my auctions are expried and I'm out of eternal fire and and and.... ".

Look at your gear, progress, gold. Would it be significantly better if you would act like a crazed mouse when Cataclysm started? Remember how laid back you played in the last month. It will be the same 3 months from now. You - just like the guy who got a week holiday with canned food and the guy who was away for a week - will be exalted with Avengers of Hyjal, nearly full 378 with some HC pieces, unlocked all mark vendors and sitting on a pile of gold you can't spend.

Again: HC raiders who do 7/7 this week and 3/7 HM next are different. But they are different in skill, not time. No matter how many of your alts do the dailies, you won't get more progressed in hard modes.

It sound like and invitation for slacking, but actually working in your own pace is more effective than rushing. Less well done tasks pay better than more messed up. Rushing even in a trash farm doesn't provide anything else than repair bills. Plan, think, always remember the meaning of life: 42!

 PS: we are currently on Beth'litac, 33%, she'll be down today, with the people who happen to be online.