An Argument for DBM

Sounds silly that we’d need an argument FOR DBM, right?  I mean, who DOESN’T use DBM, or their favorite equivilant?

Yeah, about that. Anyone who has ever tried to require an addon knows that someone, somewhere, will bitch about it. Back in BoO I tried to make everyone use DBM, but it was really hard when my co-GM couldn’t be arsed to use it himself.

“You don’t notice,” he’d brag.  “I know the fights.”

“Steve,” I said wearily, or more often angrily, “I notice every single god damn time you ask how long it is until something happens and I have to look at my DBM timers and tell you.”

He may have gotten away with that in Wrath, but such an attitude is a total no-go in Cata.  Fights are chaotic with MANY things to pay attention to, and stay out of–or in!  Add in trying to keep on top of your rotation and procs an you’re going to miss some things.

No, you will.  You WILL.  You absofuckingloutely WILL, stop arguing with me–oh here, look.  IT’S SCIENCE.

“Well,” some of the problem children may splutter, “SOME people notice.  SOME people can split their attention better.  I’m one of them.” 

Really?  Every single fight?  You’re never tired or distracted or have a cat walk in front of you or otherwise need of GIANT BLUE TEXT?

I call bullshit.

Go install the god damned mod.

(Thankfully I don’t have this problem with anyone in SiB, but I figured that someone, somewhere…)

Shake off the holiday dust.

I was rewarded for leveling engineering last night by getting firebombed by Deathwing.  This was initially really cool!  I mean, how could the GM of Stands in Bad not have Stood in the Fire?

…but then everything kept burning.  And burning.  I flew my ghostly gryphon over some of the rest of the zone–patches of fire, but not the blanket of burning that surrounded my corpse.  I guess Deathwing makes the lava beds of the Twilight Highlands extra-burny.

So I rezzed in a safe spot and tried to scoot around to nail my quest mob again, but oops!  The effect is larger than the graphic lol, where have I seen that before?!

But we’ll uh…we’ll pretend I didn’t die to the fire twice, okay?

Things I Learned: Elemental Invasion

1) Howling Blast will attract Many Elementals.  Many Elementals will kick my ass.
2) The Archbishop is a useless git who doesn’t heal or ANYTHING.
3) Solt stood in fire as DPS.  lol.  It does indeed hurt and will indeed kill you.
5) Solt stood in fire as tank.  lol some more.  …oh shit I’m tanking what is this halp.  :(
6) …Howling Blast still attacts Many Elementals and Many Elementals still kick my ass.
7) Popping Pillar of Ice means that either the boss will drop Bad on me, or the boss will move.  Sigh. 
8) HOOOOWWWWWLLLING BLAAAS-FUCK!
9) The run from the graveyard into SW is actually kind of annoying.

Full Steam Ahead to Cataclysm

In the past I’ve been a little vexed about the fact that Blizzard starts releasing information for the next expansion so far ahead of the release of the actual game itself. I’m assuming that the intention is to build hype and have people excited for what’s coming, and I feel like it definitely does that, with the added downside of decreasing interest in what we already have to play with. I couldn’t begin to estimate the high number of times I’ve heard “it won’t matter in Cataclysm!” in the past months, and it always makes me want to rage SO WHAAAAT, because whatever “it” is, matters NOW.

MMOs have an ever-changing landscape – there’s always a new patch looming around the corner, and and expansion in the works. After the changes have been announced and details start coming out, my preferred method is to chill out and have fun with them when the changes actually hit the live servers (or if I ever got a beta invite, test them there /cries). Cataclysm info has been flying around since before the alpha even started, and I haven’t been screaming every time I hear a spoiler, but I haven’t gone out of my way to find out any information either. I don’t get being worked up over things that may or may not even make it into the game in the future, and certainly don’t change the game now. Sure, our WotLK raids and gear won’t mean much after a few weeks into Cataclysm, but they’re what we have to play with now!

But there is one part of Cataclysm that DID catch my attention, and that I’m breaking pattern for: the changes to 10 and 25 man raids. Without the allure of different (better) gear from 25 man raids, I see no reason not to run 10 man groups exclusively. Having 25 people in a raid is great from a social standpoint, because it means that you can raid with all of your friends, but it also leaves more spots for people you might not necessarily get along with but need, and putting one together is a giant pain for the person in charge. My intent is to focus entirely on 10 man raiding in the next expansion, and I’m taking steps to make that transition as amazing as possible, right now.

If you’ve noticed that it’s been quiet around here lately, that’s because Amber and I have both been pretty busy getting our new guild set up. To make a long story as short as possible, I was getting stressed out over some guild drama and decided to leave Brotherhood of Oblivion. After others started leaving after me, I scrambled to get a guild put together that they could come to if they wished (since many were people that Amber and I had recruited and wanted to offer a home to) and so Stands in Bad was started.

Putting together a guild from the ground up is a really exciting process for me and one that I’ve never done before. We’re working on getting everything ironed out and all the details covered, and it’s a fun process. What I’m really trying to keep in mind is that this will be a close-knit guild focused on seriously progressing in 10 man content. So far we’ve only had one raid together, and it’s made me incredibly optimistic for getting a lot of little goals accomplished in the coming months, and our ability to mesh together and have a strong raiding force in Cataclysm. Bring it on, Deathwing!

Amber here!  Ironically I didn’t attend the first raid of our own guild.  Instead, myself and one or two others who had made the switch helped BoO run their ICC10 for the week, because this was all rather late notice as far as raiding was concerned.  I have not entirely forsaken BoO–Lyrandre is still there, though I refuse to wear the god awful tabard Steve prefers.  Despite the sadness over what is in essence a guild split, Steve seems somewhat re-energized by having sole command of his baby back and I wish them much luck! 

Although Steve and I shared a similar vision for BoO, in the end our joint command just wasn’t working.  A guild that raids with friends only works when everyone’s friends like each other…and well, I attract a different sort of person than Steve does, and not everyone was getting along.  I feel too much responsibility towards the people I bring into the fold to be happy when they were unhappy.  I liken SiB and BoO to be rather like siblings–we love each other for the most part, but do better with some space!  With RL friendships at stake we’re treading carefully, but so far it seems to be going fairly well.  With luck, we can retain ties with BoO and still do some stuff with our friends, without constantly forcing together the personalities that really clashed and cause further drama. 

The new recruits have taken it very well, for people who were plunged into OMG WTF with little warning.  I’m grateful for that.  To any new recruits we had still coming (I knew there were one or two) I won’t be upset if you are scared off!  If not, though, we still have room for you under either guild tag.  <3

The best part, though?

FULL TIME MUFFIN TABARD.

Flowchart Friday: Basic Raiding Strats

Brought to you by doing some Ulduar hardmodes, noting that the dps have approximately a billionty things that they have to do in every fight, while I go “HAHA, WHATEVER” and stand in the corner healing.

Success in the Face of Failure

Brotherhood of Oblivion: failing where we should succeed, and suceeding where we should fail!

On Thursday night we had two potential recruits listening on vent.  This meant one thing for sure: the night was going to go to hell.

I hummed to myself and made some flower wreaths for the handbasket.

First of all, Tim, one of our intrepid DPSers, had himself a non-working OS because he’s just clever like that.  Cranky Tank mosied over across the street to fix it before raid time…and bricked the mother board.

Slick, my love.

So we’re down a tank, a DPS, and…our other tank, as Steve’s computer is drafted while they try to fix Tim’s.  This leaves us our tank with strength gems in his gear and Andy, who’s been retired from tanking for awhile.

Right, so, no continuing ICC25 for us!  14 manning Naxx25 for the weekly raid quest seems like a splendi…

…Hunt just pulled an extra spider pack and we wiped.  Okay.  Well, let’s recover from that and go on to Anub, shall we?

Anub is easy sauce, it should just be a matter of-

…did we all just die?  We all just fucking died!

Fail.

Well, Steve’s here now, let’s 15 man it, then.  We magically succeed this time, and reform into an ICC 10.  Steve wants to bring his warlock and the warlock wants to bring his shaman.  For some reason I say what the hell, and off we go.

To wipe on Marrowgar.

Well, fuck.  Okay.  So we regroup and stomp him into the ground, and then proceed to…wipe on Lady Deathwhisper after one of the tanks unexpectedly goes down to a Hulk.

(Me, mid raid: are those big green things wearing purple shorts?  Raid: Yes.  Me: …)

So we regroup again, down the Lich Bitch, and head to Gunship!  One of the tanks dies on the way because I paused to eat chocolate.  Mm, chocolate.  Okay, so, we get to gunship and…

…the warlock smears himself on the deck, because that’s what warlocks do.  The DPS left loses control of the adds on that ship, the tank goes down, and we…wipe on Gunship.

We wipe on the mother fucking boat!

This does lead to the amusing discovery that you don’t die if you’re in a cannon.  This comes in handy for when we make our-by this point required-wipe on Saurfang (at something like 4% even).  Yes, I ran the fuck away from the boss to hide in a cannon.  This was after yelling at the rogue and hunter for hiding in the cannons when they can get out of death some other way.  Bitches!  MY WAY TO CHEAT DEATH GTFO.

So after dying our way through farm content, will all sorts of insanity on vent, you’d think the recruits would be smart and run away, right?

…no, they went ahead and transferred.

I invited them in the middle of our third wipe in an all guild Heroic CoS.

Yes, we even failed at H CoS (did you know that if you do the gaunlet without talking to Arthas, talking to him makes more elites spawn?  Yeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaah don’t send your healer). 

I love my guild.  I don’t always know why, but I love them.

Thoughts on Gearscore

I don’t know what my gearscore is.

I don’t care what my gearscore is.

I don’t ask anyone what their gearscore is. 

Gearscore doesn’t tell you what someone’s skill level is.  It doesn’t tell you how much DPS they can actually do.  It doesn’t tell you that they’re not a douchebag.  It doesn’t tell you that they know how to gem, or spec, or enchant what gear they do have.  It doesn’t tell you how much thought they’ve put into everything.

In other words, it doesn’t tell you a single.  Damn.  Thing-except how big your penis is and how many emblems you’ve farmed tormenting pugs in random heroics.

And your penis is not helping me out here.

I’d much rather take a look at someone’s gear and take a look at their enchants, gems, and general gear choices.  If I see a DK with a SP gem, then I know I’m in trouble in a whole different way than “oh he only has a GS of 2”.  There’s a difference between recently dinged and ignorant.  I’d like to know what I’m really dealing with, you know? 

So in short: gearscore can go die in a fire.

The Joys of Random Pugging

Edit: Broken recount is broken.  So let’s address the rest of the fail, because that’s still perfectly valid.  :P

If you don’t know an instance, speak up.   Better you ask than have your healer screaming obscenities at you IRL.  I mean sure, I’ll wonder inwardly how the hell you don’t know NEXUS, but that’s better than calling you a douchenozzle becuase you’re making my life insanely difficult, right?  I’ve had several cases of DPS wiping groups because they didn’t know fights already (though it makes more sense in the new heroics).  Bwuh?  ASK, PEOPLE.  At least for the new heroics, I stop and ask if people know the fights first.  If you don’t answer and then wipe us with something stupid, I’m going to be pissy. 

If a boss has spell reflect, it behooves you to notice your own dots stacking up on you and STOP.  PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD STOP.  If you keep taking a ton of damage, your healer is screaming JUMP at you in party, and you notice a stacking debuff?  Yeah.  Do it.  Please.

Speaking of heroic fails, my lovely tank healing, high crit, low haste build?  Yeah, it fucking sucks for heroics.  Oh the normal ones are fine, but if you get in the new ones with even a semi-derp derp group?  Yeah, kiss your sanity goodbye.  You can’t have low DPS in there.  You just can’t.  I know this because I tried.  And I couldn’t just group kick because they were guildies.  Bwuh.

How to PROPERLY Place Blame

I was sitting there innocently wasting time in Twitter instead of blogging or working on my Nano outline when lo, this post came to my attention.  I read it over and immediately noticed a massive problem: he was always blaming the wrong people.  I decided that it was my DUTY to set the record straight.

ETA: Don’t forget to check out other versions here and here.

Here, then, is a CORRECTED version of Mortigan’s list:

Amber’s Totally Fair and Unbiased Guide to Placing the Blame for Wipes

Cause of Wipe: The tank appears to be losing aggro left and right! 
Person to Blame:  The DPS
Possible Solutions:  First, cuss at them a lot and remind them to LOOK AT OMEN.  If they would just LOOK AT OMEN, then we wouldn’t have this problem.  CLEARLY, any and all aggro issues lay at the feet of the DPS.  I mean, they’re making it, right?  Totally their problem.  If that doesn’t work, take away the shamans weapons and make him DPS with mining picks.*

Cause of Wipe: The tank dies.
Person to Blame:  The DPS
Possible Solutions:  Clearly, the tank died because the DPS took too long to kill the boss and the healer went OOM.

Cause of Wipe: Boss immediately ignores tank and 1-shots the DPSers.
Person to Blame:  DPS
Possible Solutions:  Uh, DON’T STAND THERE, tardbuckets.

Cause of Wipe: The healer dies.
Person to Blame:  The DPS
Possible Solutions:  Misdirect onto the tanks correctly, hunters, or drop a frost trap!  AoE the adds down quicker! 

Cause of Wipe: The adds are killing everyone.
Person to Blame:  The DPS
Possible Solutions:  If you KILLED the adds then they couldn’t kill  YOU.  See also: previous wipe.  Alternatively, if you weren’t standing in fires all the time, the healers would still have mana with which to heal your legitimate ailments.

Cause of Wipe: The DPS is too low, and the boss enrages.
Person to Blame:  …the DPS!
Possible Solutions:  MASH BUTTONS FASTER AND WITH LESS FAIL.

Cause of Wipe:  People don’t know the fights.
Person to Blame:  the DPS
Possible Solutions:  Tanking and healing are very similar from fight to fight.  CLEARLY, if the strats are being mucked up it’s the DPS’s fault, because they don’t know what the hell they’re doing!  Go read strats, nubs!

*We honestly did this back in Kara.

Why’d I sign on for this job, again?

So last night, not only did we fail to reassemble our Ulduar25, but we then proceeded to wipe in Naxx.  Wipe in Naxx. 

Now, let me paint the scene for you: your GM and an officer, or two thirds of your tanks if you will, have worked lots of OT lately.  They didn’t have a weekend.  They are tired and cranky as all get out, and one of them is already such a cranky pants that his guild note is actually Cranky Tank.  Your healing lead and recruitment officer is not only feeling the weight of OMG NEED MORE PEOPLE ITS MY JOB TO FIX IT HALP, but she’s in a simmering PMS induced rage caused by merely existing.  Next thing you know, asking for a fort buff AFTER I’VE ALREADY BUFFED WHY THE FUCK DID YOU AFK OUT OF RANGE ANYWAY JACKASS is a major offense, and wiping on 4H is the end  of the WORLD.

…that was BoO last night.  We had a bunch of people that joined us because they wanted to raid, and then they failed to sign up and blew us off when asked for dailies and regular UK.  The rage build up is pretty high amongst the leadership and we’re facing a mass gkick.  Of course, since they haven’t been raiding with us anyway, it’s not like it’ll hurt us.  It’s just one more annoyance.

It’s not guild destroying, but it’s one of those lay low weeks, you know?  I’ve gone and spruced up and reposted our recruitment posts, so I’m going to cross our fingers and hope we get some nibbles.  Our DPS and healing cores need a good boost.  I hate when it’s attendance issues that get us because my mind instantly dumps all the pressure on me.  Bleh!