Bible of Dreams

The Benefit of Being a Hybrid

I have a thing for hybrids. My first character and long time main was a druid. And my primary BC alt was my shaman. And then, of course, there's my shadow priests. I guess I like to be able to pinch hit in the middle of a fight, and to have the day-to-day variety that being a hybrid allows.

I was reminded of this fact in our alt ICC this week. I got to bring my poor neglected shaman. We ran about 4 such alt runs this week since the weekly raid quest was Lord Marrowgar and thus we had a ton of interest. In our run, we ran into a few bumps along the way -- the bulk of them being in fighting the ice giant for the weekly ICC quest.

In true hybrid fashion, I started pumping out the chains of healy goodness whenever I saw things get hairy for our healers (or when we lost a healer.) Yes, this meant my DPS numbers, which had been great along the way as we cleared through lower spire, went into the toilet. But it also meant we were able in several cases to keep pushing forward instead of wiping.

I love having that utility -- to seamlessly swap between roles mid-fight to keep things rolling. But it is interesting that with few exceptions (such as a druid in our raid team who has dropped into bear on more than one occasion when a tank went down, saving us squishies from insta death) I don't see a lot of that. I see shamans insisting on putting down fire DPS totems when a totem of wrath would help the raid as a whole. Or standing and dying, DPSing, when they could easily toss a heal on themselves instead.

Yes, I feel the pain of the shadowformed priest or the Boomkin form druid who lose time and mana by popping out of their forms (I know I hate to do so except when necessary.) But it seems like for too many folks, the meter humping necessitates their never feeling there *is* a moment that warrants making an on-the-fly decision to swap their role for even a moment or two in the spirit of helping the team deal with an unexpected hurdle.

Whyfore all the meter humping? You don't do any DPS when you're dead. And no one cares how much DPS you pumped out on the boss attempts that failed. It's about the attempts where the teamwork was there, and the boss goes down. Not about how much DPS any one of us individually did. It's about how we played our role in the team as a whole. That MM part of the MMORPG.

Goblin Ladies!

Yes, I am going to do a real Love is in the Air post soon, but I had to share these goblin chick pix now. Too adorable! So far this is the highlight of this holiday revamp -- getting to run around as a goblin lady.

 

Friday Five: Weekend To Do List Edition

1. Kick Mimiron's butt in hard mode, then mosey on over to Algalon to do the same.
2. Clean out everyone's bank and carry-around bags, freeing up bag space for Love is in the Air.
3. Figure out which characters need what for the Fool for Love Meta-achievement (last year I focused on thi for my Alliance characters, plus I have 2 new alts created since then.
4. Try to find time to do the RDH on my 3 horde 80s and squeeze in lowbie randoms on my alts as well. Need moar badges!
5. Keep slowly but surely leveling on the alts, playing through rested XP then letting them rest.

What are your plans this weekend? Excited about the holiday starting on Sunday? I've been hearing from a few guildies who are bah humbug! about it...

Gathering That Primordial Saronite

My SO was honored to be announced as the raid member who would get to complete the Shadowmourne quest line. After the shiny happy feeling wore off, we had to turn our attention to the obvious: where the heck would we get all that primordial saronite?

There are three primary places to obtain your saronite:

• From your guild, who obtains them through random boss drops in ICC 25 (random as in some night every other boss drops them another night you get zero)
• Buying them with 23 frost emblems a piece from the frost emblem vendor
• Purchasing them in the auction house

We'd already been in the thinking about our saronite acquisition strategies due to the many shiny crafted pieces that 3.3 brought with it. I made myself the boots a few weeks ago, in fact. Our strategy has been as follows:

• Purchasing them in the auction house when they are up for 2k or less (i.e. there goes the SO's mechanohog fund)
• Pimping out the alts and making them gather emblems for us:
• • (3 for me and 3 for him) they can make 2 frost emblems per day doing a random daily heroic, plus 5 per week doing the weekly raid quest
  • Pushing those close to 80 alts to 80 to make them badge farm for us as well

It will take a little bit of time, but we don't need them all until we get our upper spire 25-man kills, so we're doing pretty well already. I've personally cranked up my crafting a bit to make some cash as well. Bringing in the saronite takes some time, but it's not nearly s horrible as you might imagine. Wish us luck!

Keeping it to Yourself: Lich King Edition

I've previously made the case for keeping Patch 3.3 Spoiler Free. And I have been happy to have kept myself in the cone of silence until I was able to see things for myself. But yesterday's buzz over the data mining of the Lich King cinematic makes it a good time to revisit the topic.

As soon as I started seeing the twitter buzz, I made my plea:

internets plz 2b keeping your lich king spoilers clearly marked so peeps don't get spoiled not by choice.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that Re-Tweeted a few times. It's nice to know I'm not the only one who wants to experience Arthas 1st hand when we eventually get to him. I wouldn't have watched a Sephiroth FFVII spoiler back in the day either. I don't shake my Christmas presents to try to guess what they might be. I don't read the final page of a novel first. I do like for a few things to be in the moment surprises.

First of all a big THANK YOU! to MMO Champion and WoW Insider for keeping their article headlines, which show up on feed readers all around the Web, clearly marked as containing spoilers inside, and not hinting at what they might entail.

I can totally understand the curiosity about what's going to happen next, and that some folks want to know now. I don't care if others ant the spoilers; I just hate when I get them not by choice. I'd like to think folks don't purposefully spoil stuff for others, rather that they get caught up and spill the beans. But the same way you wouldn't blab the ending of a new movie or the seasonal finale of LOST this year if you are on the East Coast to everyone, if you choose to read the spoilers, please think twice before sharing them some place the unwary can't avoid them.

GOOD: Behind an LJ Cut, behind a blog cut tag with lots of SPOILER! copy around it. BAD: On twitter, in guild chat, in various and sundry WoW chat channels. MARVELOUS: the #wrongspoilers the tweeps I follow were posting last night. Not only did a number of them make me LOL, they'll be sure to confound google real time search as well. mwahaha.

Happy Adventuring and thanks everyone for keeping this patch as spoiler-free as you have.

Weekend Reading List

I actually did an OK job of keeping up with blogs on my blogroll this week, and wanted to share some of the favorite things I've recently read:

• Practical Advice for Brand New Hunters. I want to point all the baby hunters out there to visit Pike's blog early and often, and to start with this post. tyvm.
• How to be a Good Raiding Hunter. Lots of great practical advice from Marks-365.
• The Warlock Way. Part pep talk for discouraged lowbie warlock, part PvP training schematic, Cynwise's latest post is a good primer on how to dominate your opponent as a warlock.
• Ice Crown Social: Saurfang. An  I Like Bubbles post, complete with drawing, to show how to set up your group for Saurafang, and providing an easy to digest explanation of the strategy.
• Raiding Shadow Priest Guide Part 2. Yes, I gave a shout out to Lucky Lurky's blog on Friday, but wanted to link to this specifically as it's a good overview of how to shadow priest post-3.3.
• Prot paladin AOE Grinding Guide. Yet another great leveling guide from Psynister, complete with glyph recommendations and talent choices as you level up.
• Gearing Your Sapling. Tree Burglar's guide for gear new level 80 restoration druids should stalk.
• ICC Plagueworks: How Not to Die a Poisonous Death. This World of Matticus post is primarily a guide for healers in this wing of ICC, also has some good tips for all of us to remember when dealing with the deadly trash.
• Improving the Quality of Conversation. This HoTs and DoTs post gives some good ideas for getting the conversation flowing when you're in a group of folks you don't know very well -- be they your new guild or your latest PUG.
• Leadership from Three Angles. Some thoughts from Kiss my Alas regarding leadership as seen from the top down, bottom up, and being inbetween.
• MIA Pets: Where Are They? Warcraft Pets reminds us of recently datamined or otherwise discovered pets that haven't made their way into our hot little pet collectors hands.

Friday Five: 5 Things That Made Me Smile This Week

1. Yes, being named an officer in my guild was totally the highlight of my week. I am incredibly excited about being empowered to help shape our future, and keep our raiding momentum going, along with the help of fellow new officers Moober and Ox, the latter of whom joins the fabulous miss Sawyer as the 25-man RL team! I am confident we will collaborate to do great things together.
2. Related to that, it's been awesome to get tells cheering me on for that promotion, including from a lot of folks whom  haven't really talked to a lot in game. I had a few old timers chat me up too which was cool. I know I am a new kid on the block when you're talking about a 5-year-old guild, but I promise I'll do my best to do right by them and myself. And thank you for such a warm reception.
3. I found a cool shadow priest blog to add to my reading list: Lucky Lurky. Go check it out. They have a couple of recent posts on how to shadow priest that may be of interest to folks.
4. I suckered yet another victim...er, guildie...into joining twitter. whoohoo! One.of. us.
5. We're hopefully going back into Ulduar tonight to try to get that last achievement out of the way so we can go and slap Algalon around. Thank you guys for pulling this together.

BONUS: Despite a rough week wherein we had two of our core raiding team members (who also scheduled our 10-mans) leave, plus our 25-man schedulers (who were also core raiders), go on hiatus, we dusted ourselves off as a guild and kept marching in the same direction. The week's raids all got scheduled. All the same old bosses got killed. And we had a good time doing it. No, we didn't take down anyone new yet, but we did hold it together, and that means a lot.

Happy Friday.

P.S. Today's screenie is my Boomkin, doing a Scarlet Onslaught quest wherein you play dress-up as an Onslaught Raven Priest. Apparently they are very easily deceived...

What's Easier to Overcome -- a DPS Check or Complex Execution?

The answer, of course, depends on your raiding team.

The DPS Check

If you take a look around (via WoW Heroes for instance) and the bulk of your raiding team shows that they can still grab upgrades from ToC 10 and ToC 25 and you are knocking your heads against ICC 25, then spending some time on gearing up in those instances, while regularly doing the weekly raid quest and daily RDH for Frost Emblems may be all you need to get over the DPS hump.

On the other hand, if all your team's upgrades are to be had in ICC, and you're having healing and DPS troubles, your answer may not be so simple. There may need to be some fine tuning of specs and rotations to get you past the Upper Spire bosses. Or the issue may be strategy execution more than it is the DPS per se.

Complex Execution

Alas, complex execution can't be purchased from a vendor. It is 100% dependent upon the time and effort your team is willing to put in.

There may need to be some dry runs of tricky strategies to work out good positioning, and allow folks to practice what they should do when they get marked with a spore for instance. (Hint: standing still where you are is not the right response.)There definitely needs to be no watching or talking on the phone while practicing. And to get the most bang for your buck, everyone needs to run back and rebuff and get ready to go for the next attempt quickly. This means no random AFKs, and being aware of what you need to do (buff the team, eat your food, renew a flask) before hitting YES on your ready check button.

Raiders need to keep your Vent channel clear and pay attention to the strategy and their role in it. If your raid leader asks you to do (or not do) something, you must be willing to act on it, not second guess it or worse yet, flat out do whatever you want instead without telling them. Basically, we're talking about trust here. The raid team needs to trust in their leaders and made a great team effort every time. This doesn't mean not speaking up if you have an idea for how to improve, but it does mean executing a strategy before deciding it doesn't work.

Working it Out

Trying to treat the illness before diagnosing the patient can only lead to frayed nerves and team tensions. It is on everyone on the team to understand their role, what's happening in the attempts, and if they die early, why.

• What's My Role? If you don't quite understand what it is you are being asked to do, it is always a good thing to ask clarifying questions. This is definitely a case of there are no dumb questions.
• What Strategy are We Using? Your group is going to be on the left -- does that mean the left as you run in or the left of the boss after he is spun around? Where are the healers standing exactly? Having a strategy that's spelled out (in words/pictures on your forums and read before the raid is preferable) can help decrease strategy execution mixups.
• Why'd I die? Sometimes it's a whoops! (uh-oh DPSer taunted a tank and died) -- own that and your team mates will respect you for it. Other times it takes some discussion to figure things out (Oh, the tank's healer got a spore and we didn't notice and pick up the slack on healing the tank -- whoops!)

The thing to remember is whether it's a DPS hurdle or a complex execution, it's always a team effort to make a go of it. Don't be afraid to ask for help from your teammates. Answer that raid leader when they ask "OK, what went wrong there?" And answer it honestly. And that will put you on the road to progression.

Wheeee! Guess Who's an Officer Now?

That would be me. Huzzah! To say that I am excited is an understatement.

Spoiled Alts Update

Baby Warlock Hit 35!

• Engineeering maxed out at 300; next skill up opportunity available at 50.
• Felhunter procured after much running around in Azeroth.
• Need to go to Gadget and visit Jordy Lapforge to learn the recipe for my gadgetzan transporter.
• Enjoying pulling out my sexy Arcanite Dragonling, especially when standing around in Dalaran on important business.
• Not yet hitting that mid-30s "OMGIAMTIREDOFQUESTING" slump, but I've only spent an hour or two in STV so there is still time.
• Overall just really having fun dinking around on her, even with her being in the bank alt guild and not a real guild. It probably causes me to be more immersed in what I am doing to never have more than 3 folks online at a time.
• Must mail her the mana return trinket that I have pretty much stopped using on the druid in favor of the blue trinkets she's procured.
• Enjoying the things that feel similar in playstyle to my shadow priest, but noting there is enough variety and difference that I don't understand when people say they are the same. No sir, they certainly are not. They just have a dark affinity is all.
• Have not yet random dungeoned on her but will start it soon so I can work on my pet choice and management.

Baby Druid crept up to 74

• Managed to eek out exactly 1 level on the druid this weekend.
• Spent rest of weekend thinking about how I didn't feel like playing the druid.
• Dragonblight's primary non-group quests completed, and thus onward to Grizzly Hills next time.
• In the "SICKOFNORTHRENDQUESTING" slump
• Had horrifying realization I have done some of these quests...6 or 7 times now, in the past 12 months. More if you count helping friends do them. Bleh!
• Had a Nexus run last weekend where she did 1600 DPS on a boss fight; in light of that, boggle at level 80 rogues in randoms not breaking 1k DPS. Why? Why?
• Recalling how painful the gear grind was on my druid when WotLK was shiny and new a year ago.
• Wondering if the druid will be shelved alongside the mage once she dings 80, rotting away save for a daily or weekly quest at a time.
• Resolved to keep slowly at her leveling, playing when it feels right to do so, not worried about the slowness of speed. 80 will still be there in a month. Or two.
• Will try to stomach the impatient chain pulling random instance tanks in order to get questing and XP done in a less repetitive manner.

After these two hit 80, no new alts! My Alliance shadow priest and mage still linger in the 70s so they'll be the last alt projects. Until Cataclysm strikes and I have to make new toons to see the new starting areas, that is.

;)

Happy Alting!