Why Guilds Don't Progress, and "Seeing Content"

Namthe recently quoted a (casual?) friend of his, whom responded to his (widly-held) complaint of raids being too easy...

Are you kidding me? You can’t wait 4 weeks for a new challenge while less hardcore players get a chance to see the content you’ve been taking for granted?

This made me stop and think, about what keeps guilds from seeing content? Is it difficulty?

I'm fairly convinced that it is not how hard Bosses hit, or how many HP they have, and that the 3.0 nerf won't result in any significant, widespread availability of content - it actually hurts the still-raiding player base.

The reason guilds don't progress comes down, plain and simple, to issues surrounding its members. Lets look at some situations...

1) A guild doesn't possess 10 or 25, active, raiding members (plus extras for replacements)

2) A guild has enough raiders, but they don't log on in unison.

3) The guild is a revolving door, and new members force the re-learning of old content, while keeping any consecutive time on new content from happening.

4) A guild does not have enough members willing to put in the time/effort/consumables/repairs to learn new bosses / boss mechanics.

Nerfing a bosses health and damage does not change any of those factors. There are no fights that cannot be overcome by a fairly-regular, dedicated, prepared group of people willing to put in the time.

Now, those seem like reasonable requirements. And you may be thinking - my guild is like that, why aren't we farming Kil'Jaden? 

Time. LOKI got off to a late start, and has consistenly progressed, but that didn't put us into deep Sunwell before 3.0. There are countless other guilds that didn't form (or get past the above barriers to progression) until recently. And what do these guilds need? - Another month of being about to work on content. 

Example: Kadomi and (Daughters of the Horde) just got Hex down (Congrats, btw!), and were working on Zul'jin. I'm positive that they would have killed him pre-wrath, and had a satisfactory conclusion to BC. Likewise, LOKI was on the cusp of downing Kalecgos and being a legit Sunwell guild. In both cases, another month would have provided what would have felt like a legitimate, capstone achievement. 

What we got, however, was an anti-climatic *poof*. Robbed of any real chalange, we now wonder the glove, uncovering map, working on achievements, and occassionally going into instances where the single perk is spending time with the people we've struggeled together with in the past.

Honestly - if casual player's real desire was to just see the content - they could always come back at 80. However, I'm willing to bet that the great majority of such lv 70 players have not gone back and "seen" all of BWL, AQ40, ect. And its not how hard a boss hits, or their max HP thats keeping people from doing those encounters - its the same reasons they aren't raiding current content - there aren't enough people interested in putting in time and effort.

Regardless, whats done is done: we have been left with meeningless content a month earlier then we should have. Sigh.

First Night with 3.0 (Long)

Part One: Summary of the Night

Part Two: First Impression of Warrior Skills/Talents

Easy.

Really the only word. Possibly to the point of uninteresting. Read on...

We cleared BT in under three hours. Three hours, and probably could have done it an hour shorter if we hadn't taken so long to realize our full potential, and swapped people less.

Najentus died in 1:46, before even doing tidal shield a second time.

Supremus died in ~3:00, after a single kite phase.

Akama died in 50 seconds.

Teron took ~2:00 min.

Bloodboil died in the middle of his second Fel Rage.

RoS didn't finish her first enrage, and had over 1:30 left in P2 when we pushed it to P3.

Shaz and Council were faster, but had no exciting landmarks.

Illidan was one-shot. He did shadow demons twice, the whole time.

All the trash was AoE'ed down. We did 3+ Supremus pulls at a time. Akama was done in two long pulls. Everything that was remotely close got done together, and with minimal tank damage, and tons of threat everywhere and on everything. And the efficiency of AoEing, combined with the 30% less health, made it just fly.

Now - for as exciting as this all sounds - it just felt too easy by the end. It felt like a run-through, and we aren't even rocking Sunwell Gear (yet). I had fun flexing my new skills (more later), but by the end, nothing was really challenging. Our healers were board to tears - since we were taking far less damage, and the fights were so short that their healing was a shadow of what it once was.

-Warrior Details-

I consider myself as having taken a low threat spec. No Impale, Cruelty, AttT, Puncture - and I still out-threated everyone on single targets. By a large margin. In avoidance gear. I had to try at some points, so I get the impression that threat talents will just reduce the margin of effort needed.

Shield Block: I macro'ed this into Shield Slam, by the end of the night. I didn't need the on-demand protection, and the extra threat/damage was nice. 

Vigilance: This was fun. I had DPS asking for it specifically, and it was pretty big in maintaining the large lead I had. I also tried to remember to stick it on people that were subject to large amounts of damage for its damage reduction component - Bloodboil's Fel Rage targets, and Illidan's Shadow Barrage Target.

Warbringer: The mobility was nice. The pace of the night was so fast, that I really liked being able to charge around - like when I intercepted the feral druid that was headed towards the next pull, then charged his target - that was fun to see in action.

Sword and Board: This was a general fun talent, and made secondary aggro a breeze. I'll take some time to get the sound/animation completely down in my head so that its automatic, but I see that in the future.

Shockwave: Between this and Thunderclap, I could tank most any sized group. My only complaint, was that there were times I got lazy while waiting for the cooldown to come up, and could have spent more time tab-targeting around. 

I still want to get some more experience with talents before I make final judgement, though.

I felt as effective at AoE tanking as our paladin. It was hard to tell without my fully configured scrolling combat text, but I think I tanked the bulk of pre-Shaz trash. Typically two AoE groups, a Pain/Pleasure Pack, and some servants - all together.

In Summary: I can't wait for Wrath, but its now more urgent. We now have power well above the content available, and need some content designed with it in mind. I really hope that raiding continues with its scheduled course until the expansion, though, and that people don't get disinterested. 

How Many Tanks ?

This question has plagued me for some time. How many full tanks do you need in a guild? Lets look at the various fights, and how many protection / feral tanks you may want.

Kara: Two for some fights, One for others. 

Gruul: Two for Gruul, as many as four for Maulgar

Magtheridon: As many as Five (depending on pre or post nerf).

T4 Summary: 2-5

SSC: 2-5 (Vashj is 2, Fathomlord is 4).

TK: 1-4 (Solarian is one, Kael/Alar is 4).

T5 Summary: 1-4

Hyjal: 1-2

BT: 1-3

T6 Summary: 1-3

Trend: The number of full tanks needed shrinks as you go up in Tiers (and I'm going with the assumption that you want a full time tank for progression fights) . On top of this, you assume that your going to recruit over the minimum, so that there are backups. Then there are considerations of tank types: you most certainly want a protection paladin for Hyjal, but you can't (without significant effort) have them tank Archimonde. Add a backup to each, and your looking at four tanks. Add another Protection warrior as a backup for Kael (where you may want two warriors, in addition to a protection paladin and a feral druid) - and now you have potential for five full time tanks logged on for a one tank fight (ie, Solarian, Archimonde, Najentus,  Teron, RoS). 

I'm curious to see how many tanks new 25 Man Raids will want. I'm excited that warriors and paladins will be generally interchangable, but concerned that it will put a squeeze on LOKI's fairly large tanking base (Three Protection Warriors, One Protection Paladins ((with a Holy that wants to Tank in Wrath)), and two Feral Druids). Worse off, I did the recruiting all in good faith, but now am not leading the tanking scene - leaving our new Tank Officer to deal with sorting it all out.

All of our tanks are great, and I don't want to leave any out - which is why I'm hoping for some generally higher number-of-tank requirements in Wrath. Hopefully, with the addition of the psudo-tanking Death Knight class (none of which we have players indicating strong desire to switch to) - encounters will be designed to better fit more tanks.

Lets Try This Shared Topic Thing

Blog Azeroth has something called Shared Topics. You probably know that. The current one seems pretty popular (How you would improve your Profession), and I haven't seen an engineering one - so I'll take a stab at it.

Current Major Perks of being an Engineer - 

• Flying Mount (Purely Cosmetic).
  
• Epic Goggles (In most cases, T5 equiv, with T6+ upgrade pattern being widely unavailable).

Current Minor Perks of being an Engineer - 

• Can craft BoE Epic Gun, Repair Bot, 
  
• Teleporters (of which my Teleport Gadgetzan was replaced with the CoT Rep Portal)
• Grenades (expensive)
  
• Outdated Trinkets (+45 Stam and a fun on-use, decent for tanks).

Future Perks - 

• Updated Stam Trinket. Seems awesome, but time will tell.
  
• Updated Guns - DPS and Tanking Flavors
  
• Bag Space Saving Items - Flavorful, and Functional.
  
• Portable Mailbox, Vendor, Auctioneer - As mailbox was suppose to be in BC release, I'm sceptical of all these.
• ...and my most hoped for, yet largest let down... Item Augmentations (Enchants) - including Belts ! (One, Two) - Note: These do not stack with enchantments.

Summary of Wrath Announced Stuff- 

More of the same, and a pretty big let down on item augmentations. Things like shooting flames from your hands are cool, but they really won't take the place of enchantments unless they are superior for at least some situation. And putting them on a spare item just brings us back to square one, where we had to carry them around as trinkets. The space saving stuff is cool, and is needed, but it won't be a reason to take the profession.

What I'd like to see - 

• An extra trinket slot granted through a belt augmentation (Holy Utility Belt, Batman!). Even if it were an engineering only trinket, this would put us in line with other profession's "profession only" type buffs. 
  
• The other item augmentations (cloak, boots, hands) could either be made to stack with enchants, or be buffed to the point that they are superior. IE, The parachute cloak could grant dodge or agility as well, the rocket boots may have stamina and passive speed increase as well, or the hand enchants deal random fire damage (similar to Fiery Weapon). 
  
• Better Ammo. Best in slot ammo would give us a guaranteed money maker. Something flavorful like bonus elemental damage or effects on different types of shells would be great as well (Frost Shells, Shock Shells, Screaming Shells (high threat). 
  
• Special "Clips" that stack ammo higher would also be a godsend to raiding hunters. Imagine a 1000 Ammo Clip that takes up one slot?
  
• Idols/Librams/Totems - Let us make Gutenberg's Libram, why not? Give us ranged craftables for everyone. It would be a little bit of a strech, but would make engineering king of at least one equipable slot (since JCing has taken us off the trinket pedestal). Even better, it would help take them off of boss loot tables 

Wrath Release Plans

By now, you all know Wrath is comming out on Thu, Nov. 13th.

I'm anticipating that the servers, ect. will be FUBAR all Thursday, or at least the chance is so high, that its not worth taking that day off. So - I'll be picking up my (and Aertimus's) pre-ordered copy after work on Thursday, and get them installed before she gets home. 

Depending on the congestion of Darkspear, we'll either dig in that afternoon, or that night after a nap. We're both taking off Friday (woo!), so the whole weekend is cleared for a non-stop wrath experience.  We don't plan on rushing through particularly fast - Aertimus is sure to keep me from that, but I don't plan on being a slouch either.

The only thing I'm still trying to figure out, is what I'll be sugesting our guild do as we level. My current idea, is to encourage all guild five man runs at our normal raid time, to keep people in the habit. We (officers) would help assemble groups, and use the Gbank to fund respec's. I wasn't with a steady guild over the Vanilla Wow -> TBC transition, so I'm not sure what will work the best. Idea's are apprecciated.