Approaching Hodir: Aug 2009

You may have heard this fact quoted in serious discussion about World of Warcraft: According to Malcolm Gladwell, 10 000 hours spent doing an activity (before the age of 21) is all that is required to become a “virtuoso”:

showing masterly skill or brilliance
a virtuoso performance _source

The average World of Warcraft player spends quite a bit of time in the game. To many it becomes something of a part time job: voluntary and unpaid, unfortunately. Play for a good few years and you could very well have approached that 10 000 hour mark.

Do you dare type /played right now to find out?

I first heard this fact quoted because I follow – and watch – a lot of the TED lectures. And, since I’m a gamer and avid World of Warcraft player, Jane McGonigal’s mostly upbeat short lecture on how Gaming Can Make a Better World really resonated with me.

It’s nice to think that, while I may never be a brilliant violinist or pianist, I might have some kind of special skill in something, even if it is a game played by millions. Actually I quite like the notion that many otherwise ordinary people – like me – might also be secret World of Warcraft virtuosos.

But there’s something that nags at me. And maybe a real artistic virtuoso could throw their two cents into the conversation (although, frankly, the idea that an artistic virtuoso from another field might also be reading this WoW blog seems highly unlikely).

Once you reach that level of mastery… what next? Are you always a master? Is it possible to lose your mastery without practise?

You see, I’m fairly confident that I’m past my peak. If I did attain the level of mastery required to be considered a virtuoso of World of Warcraft at some point (let’s disregard the fact that I’m well over the age of 21!) I’m certainly not as brilliant a player as I once was.

One expansion and many patches and over six months of no practice or play has definitely been a setback.

The only real metaphor that works for me is comparing skill and proficiency in the game with athletic ability. I have some of that (athletic ability, that is) and it’s something that I’ve had to work very hard at over a long time. It’s hard not to talk about artistic ability without running into arguments about talent and how talent contributes to mastery. You can have the same problem when talking about athletic ability. But I can honestly say I have zero talent in that area. Any mastery I have, I worked at.

Over time, and with lots of hours of practice, I can see that I’m better: I can run faster and for longer. Presumably if I ran and practiced long enough, I could reach some level of brilliance. But if I stopped running for six months I wouldn’t be able to pick up where I left off and perform at the same level.

Nobody expects this of athletes.

So is this expected of an artistic virtuoso? Is this expected of a World of Warcraft virtuoso?

I’m just not sure.

I received a bit of flack from readers since returning to WoW and writing for the blog. Because I tend to be vague about stuff that I say that I mastered years ago, and because I’m so clearly a novice right now in the game, my credibility seems to be in question.

I’m OK with that. It seems to me that for some players, they can reach the level of a virtuoso and maintain that level of mastery for years. And perhaps they are writing from that view point: having reached that level of mastery they have not wavered or had a set back that makes them doubt their own skill. And they cannot even imagine that, once attained, they might one day lose that proficiency.

However, I am most certainly at a different place. I am past my peak. I can say, for certainty, that I reached my peak as a raider at some time between Trial of the Crusader and Icecrown Citadel. And if I have any doubts, well I have game play footage of my raiding from most of those tier and earlier ones too. And I can see far less errors in my decision making when I watch footage recorded at my peak vs my ascent or decent from that place.

For example I always get caught up watching back our Hodir (I Could Say This Cache Was Rare) capture. There’s a moment when I’m not gathering additional damage buffs by stacking for storm power or standing near a comfy fire and every single time I watch it I think:

that’s a wasted moment – why didn’t I move into a better position?

only to see – before the thought has fully formed while I’m watching the capture – my past virtual self spring into action and step right onto a safe zone because Flash Freeze is imminent. I had the next move lined up way in advance. And I knew exactly what I was doing at the time.

And even if I didn’t take a break from the game at the start of Cataclysm I knew that my skill level wasn’t at its best anyway. Too much farm content at the lull in Icecrown Citadel progression and too many changes to the Shadow Priesting game.

As a guild we hit a point where we snagged on Heroic Professor Putricide for months and months. This meant that the earlier bosses were well and truly farmed and didn’t require much attention. And the final bosses were on normal and also didn’t pose too much of a challenge (although I don’t want to imply that you could AFK through the Lich King encounter).

But I’m pretty sure paying attention for one night of the raiding week while working on progression content and repeating familiar content the other 75% of the time didn’t keep me at the top of my game. I know I got lazy. Perhaps you did to?

There’s a fairly simple model floating around regarding MMOs. The play trend is described as so:

Novice -> Mastery -> Burnout -> (presumably quits game and picks up another game)

I don’t think I ever described myself as “burned out”. I certainly never reached a breaking point that made me consider deleting my characters, my account and unsubscribing. I never stopped subscribing – even during my break.

Like many others, I have played the game with varying degrees of commitment and mastery for years. I’m certainly not the first player to take a long break and return to the game. And I’m sure that some players have come back even stronger after a break.

Maybe the more realistic model looks something like this:

Novice -> Mastery -> Break -> Novice -> Mastery -> Repeat!

or you could take it a step further and look at mastery closer to training for sports:

Novice -> Training -> Mastery -> Off season break -> Training -> Mastery

I like that cycle I think because the most satisfying feeling is breaking from “training” mode – when you’re aware that you still have room for improvement – into “mastery” mode when you feel powerful as a player. When everything seems to come easily and anything is possible.

What do you think? Do you think attaining the status of a World of Warcraft virtuoso is like learning to ride a bike? Once learned, you are always that proficient? Do you think it’s something that you have to practice to maintain?

Throne of the Four Winds (Picture by MMO Champion)

I hopped onto WoW last Friday night expecting to do some BC raids in preparation of the next patch and transmogrification.  Instead I found myself heading back into the raiding game thanks to an old raiding buddy, Dopz, who was determined to help me get some gear and up my average item level (post Friday it was sitting at 330 which I believe is one step above abysmal). Unfortunately we didn’t have any tanks online who were willing to help so we had to PUG them + 1 extra DPS.  And that’s how I found myself sitting in front of some genie dudes in Throne of the Four Winds ready to heal some big baddy bosses in my extra fail gear.

What I discovered pretty quickly was that gear or no, healing is like riding a bicycle – it doesn’t matter what the blizzard developers change once you’ve done it long enough it’s all muscle memory.  After healing for what feels like forever, I was back to my old ways in no time.  Even after 9 months I could still remember all my click casts in Vuhdo (well except for dispelling but that’s another story!) and it became clear to me that I still love raiding and drove home how much I miss it.

We started the first boss which is 3 (I only ever saw 2 but I’ve been assured there were 3) little genie/efrit things and we wiped.  This was sad, but the good news was that I wasn’t the cause hooray! We subsequently came back (after I accidentally flew to The Vortex Pinnacle) wiped again, and I was probably part of the cause this time.  We had changed platforms and I was now on the dude that does steady AOE damage.  This was much harder for me to keep up purely because my gear was well below optimal and I ran out of mana!  Our raid was not going smoothly so far and I could feel impatience from the PUGs – we were at our limit of issues before we lost someone.  And typically that’s when the baby woke up and needed a feed.

Roughly the same time Caitlin woke up, Angelya from Revive & Rejuvenate’s little Sproutling woke as well.  I think the two of them had planned it in advance it was that well timed! I felt terrible but I had to AFK – babies and their tummies come first.  My partner knowing how much I had been enjoying myself, wipes and all played as me just to keep things going and while Caitlin had a marathon 30+ minute feed I discovered on Twitter that they did kill the boss and the 2nd one without us nursing mums. I even got a nifty new belt – Gale Rouser Belt of the Wavecrest and a Spiritcaller Cloak which I think the guild “donated” to me or was a gift from Goodiemania?  I’m not quite sure it was getting late by that stage and I’d just been in a dark room for the last 30 odd minutes so was half asleep myself but either way I was grateful for it!

As we got ready to do a heroic dungeon, we were all set and Caitlin woke again this time needing a nappy change and full bedtime routine to calm her down again.  And that was the end of my night.  I felt really bad – I had managed to pick up loot without actually doing anything other than make people wait around for me.  I had become that player.  Every guild/PUG has one and in my past life as a heroic level raider I couldn’t stand them.  In fact players like these were exactly why I joined a raiding guild in the first place – who wants to PUG a raid just to stand around waiting for that tank to get the phone, or that healer to brb?

Now I don’t have one of those dream babies that go to bed at 7pm and wake up again at 7am in the morning.  I don’t have a bub that is remotely like that and most of the time I and quite ok with it – I know it won’t last forever.  Occasionally though it would be nice to know that I could definitely play for a 3 hour period straight without having to worry about getting up to give her a feed.  I know there are a lot of WoW players with babies that managed to keep up raiding while looking after their young ones and I am in awe, unfortunately I am just not one of them.  So I’m not quite sure where that leaves me.  I got a taste for raiding and its going to be hard to go back to farming old school raids/dungeons now, but I can’t commit to any type of raiding schedule without being the player that makes everyone sigh in frustration.

I guess its back to leveling and solo play for Lath again.

Caitlin has also been participating in some baby boss fights as part of Nymphy’s Cutest Little Babies in the World of Warcraft series.  Anyone wanting a few moments of pure squee should check out their adventures here:

The Cutest Little Babies in the World (of Warcraft)

The Cutest Little Babies in the World (of Warcraft) – Part II

And because I’m a proud mum and its been about 8 months since I posted a photo – here is my little girl @ 9 months.

Caitlin rocking the 80s vibe (photo taken by Instagram)

So surely I would remember off by heart the “glory days” of my early raiding and my hard sought after weapons? Nope.

However, because I’m sentimental and also because I used to be a graphic designer (probably more of the latter than the former) I do have visual, eye candy, memorabilia, pre-71-Disenchanting:

Cassandri's BC Gear - click to enlarge

I particular enjoy reliving the complexity of the level 70 gemming system for Shadow Priests.

What I’m really wearing is all the Mage gear I can get my hands on that isn’t specifically equippable by Mages and only Mages.

That said, if a Frost Mage rocked up in Frozen Shadoweave to raid he would have been laughed out of the room at the time. Mostly just for being a Frost Mage. Unfortunately not for being a Mage.

Ha! I don’t think I’ll ever tire of Mage jokes.

By the time I put together this wallpaper they had already homogenized stats in the move towards Wrath of the Lich King. A lot of those item were sought after initially for their +Shadow Damage. I spent most of level 60-70 grinding the materials for my Frozen Shadoweave set in preparation for level 70 raiding. I’m sure that’s a big part of why I love the set so much.

The Spellstrike Hood, Belt of Blasting and Darkmoon Card: Crusade are all crafted item. However, they do require some pretty tasty materials available only to raiders and the wealthy. I remember having these items, I remember valuing them. I remember some of the materials.

What I don’t remember is pretty much everything else: everything that was purchased with Badges of Justice. Even though I would have put in scads of raiding hours to accumulate all those Badges (or Emblems or Valor Points or whatever they’re called now as Currency) but once the shopping was done I didn’t really care about those items anymore. I certainly didn’t remember their names.

This led me to think about what I could remember from Wrath of the Lich King. Surprisingly, I tend to remember weapons and trinkets. And I think I know why: these are the items that, in a DKP system, I had to wait a very, very long time to get. I never won a weapon or trinket on a roll. I was never the only one in the raid who could use an item, or wanted it. I always had to fight and, more often, wait patiently in the wings for the healers and other casters to get through their wishlist first.

I remarked to a guildy only a few days ago that my strongest memory of ICC was waiting patiently for the Phylactery of the Nameless Lich to drop not once, but twice for our raid. This was one of the few items that very few classes and specs wanted – great for Shadow Priests – all I had to do was wait for the other Shadow Priest, an officer, to get it then the 2nd one would be all mine.

My luck being what it was, I only just got it right before the end of Wrath of the Lich King. About 6 months of hardmodes before I saw that reward. Now that’s how you come to value and apprieciate an item.

Both Badge/Emblem and raiding items are purchased with currency: really the Badge/Emblem system is just Blizzard’s way of putting in a DKP system across the game that’s not tied to one guild. You gain currency or DKP by spending time and killing difficult bosses. You spend currency by purchasing items.

So why do I value one – DKP bought gear – over the other – Badge purchased gear? It must be the chance to drop.

I think when your goal is to purchase an item for 100 Emblems or 1000 Valor Points while you’re earning those Emblems or Valor you stop thinking about the item and just start thinking “I need 22 more Emblems”. When it’s a boss drop you spend the entire raiding week thinking “Please let this week be the week that Dislodged Foreign Object drops… and even though Orlith has way more DKP than me, please let next week be the week that Dislodged Foreign Object drops again… and it will finally be mine”. /evil laugh

Just repeating the name of the item so many times mentally makes it easier to remember.

Of course it probably helps that four or five others in your raid group are coveting the same item. It becomes desirable, spoken about in hushed tones, because everyone wants it.

Perhaps they should randomise the Emblem/Valor/Justice Points vendors. Make it so that only 4-5 days out of a month they stock Mercurial Vestment. And I’m not talking about a set schedule. Waiting for the Darkmoon Faire is annoying and tedious.

What do you think?

Here are some other gems (well, my appreciation of these things might be greater than your own) that I found in the same folder:

Cassandri early 80 Naxxaramas Gear (HoTs & DoTs launch)

Lathere stats and gear at the end of BC

My rogue in her level 70 gear

Going where no level 70 could ever go...

I had the good fortune to log in late on Saturday night and find about 15 members of my guild tagged by the location Tempest Keep. I jumped right in expecting the group to quickly kill Kael’thas Sunstrider and disband for the night.

Boy, was I wrong!

Kael’thas is the final boss of Tempest Keep – The Eye (TK), a Tier 5 raid from the Burning Crusade. My guild in BC didn’t fully clear Tempest Keep but we spent a lot of time there – and in Mount Hyjal – instead of fast forwarding straight into the Black Temple for the lootz.

I guess you could say the equivalent would be a 25 man guild now spending time wiping in Ulduar instead of going straight from Heroics to Icecrown Citadel. We liked Tempest Keep and Mount Hyjal and we were quite happy to spend our raid time there.

I’m still happy to spend raid time there.

These days lots of people trek out to Tempest Keep in Outlands just to kill Kael’thas Sunstrider for the chance to drag the Ashes of Al’ar (the remnants of his pet phoenix, and an earlier boss in the zone) from his cold dead hands. And because you can skip every single boss in the zone and just go straight to Kael’thas – well, that’s what everyone does.

On a side note new players would be forgiven for thinking that you would get the Ashes of Al’ar from, well, killing Al’ar. I know that’s what I thought for a very long time. But you would be wrong.

I guess once you kill Al’ar, Kael’thas sneeks up behind your raid, gathers the ashes from the floor, then runs back to his room and council. Although this certainly doesn’t explain how you can get the Ashes from Kaelthas when Al’ar is still alive and flying around in circles.

Kael’thas also drops a piece of Tier 5 armor. You can get two pieces of Tier 5 from Tempest Keep: shoulders from Void Reaver and the chestpiece from Kael’thas.

I think most of the participants in this guild run were a little bit tipsy by the time I joined. They were very suggestible (hence why they had been dragged all the way out to Tempest Keep in the first place). So once we realised that the Ashes were tell and truly missing from Kael’thas’s corpse someone decided to totem pull Al’ar on the way out. From there it didn’t take much convincing on my part to talk the group into a quick Void Reaver kill for a chance at my Priest Tier 5 shoulders, too.

They’re angel wings for heaven’s sake. I must have!

We went on to do a near full-clear of Serpentshrine Cavern (the other Tier 5 raid instance with more yummy Avatar gear) and ended up in Mount Hyjal.

Finally I had my very first pieces of my Tier 5 Avatar set in my bags. I was absolutely thrilled. You see, every single PuG BC raid – run during Wrath, that is – that I’ve ever joined has stolen my tier pieces from me. Often by ninjas. Or greedy players who want to profit, or simply vendor a tier token belonging to some other class. But that’s another story.

Our group was made up of Classic raiders and both BC and Wrath babies. It was certainly interesting to hear what the newer players thought of Serpentshrine Cavern (is this a lot of trash or what?) and Tempest Keep (pretty!) and we spent quite a bit of time speculating what we could expect of Cataclysm.

The general consensus seemed to be that Blizzard are trying to roll back to the challenge of the Burning Crusade raids. It was funny to realise that people – myself included – still remember the tactics and strategies they used to defeat each trash pull in SSC/TK and Mount Hyjal. Can you say that about any trash in Icecrown Citadel? Hmmmm not really. Even the trash in Ulduar seemed fairly forgettable.

But one thing I think they have improved during Wrath of the Lich King is the raid zone designs. The layout of Icecrown Citadel, Naxxramas (although I’m loathed to attribute that to Wrath design) and Ulduar are superb. I get lost in all the BC raid instances and did at the time, too. The layout of each of the Wrath zones are quite logical and usually contain multiple wings – each ending with a boss – fanning out from a central room.

And just to make sure you don’t do too much running around Naxxramas, Ulduar and Icecrown Citadel all have teleporters to send you from place to place or recover quickly from a wipe.

The amount of mobs and distance you need to travel to get anywhere in Serpentshrine Cavern isn’t fun. The trash in Tempest Keep was a bit too nasty. I still get lost in the labyrinth that is Black Temple. A death on the timed trash in Mount Hyjal leading to a wipe meant you had to start all the trash all over again.

In Mount Hyjal the base camp is lead by Jaina – which is particularly annoying – and a bunch of friendly NPCs. Swarms of undead minions come racing over the hill into the camp and your raid has to kill them quickly or you’ll be overrun.

My guild really struggled with Mount Hyjal back in the day so rule #1 was simple: let the enemy come in close to your army and the NPCs will help. This seemed to be particularly difficult for our Rogues who liked to creep over the hill (and out of line of sight of course!), edging closer and closer to the enemy base just visible in the distance.

Well as you can imagine at level 80 things are a lot easier. We didn’t need help from Jaina or the NPCs and were, in fact, quite keen to escape the base camp. We went over that hill. And we went right up to the Abominations that guard the gates of the Undead/Scourge encampment. And we went right in past the spawn point for a look around.

What’s up there? A pretty convincing zigguarat set up and quite a few Elite Necromancers and such. A mini Plaguelands perhaps, or Naxxramas on grass. Unfortunately all the buildings were empty. But the facade was definitely convincing. View the screen capture in full.

Props to the game designers for that one!

We completed Mount Hyjal and I left one of the most fun raid nights that I’ve been part of for the last six months. Icecrown Citadel eat your heart out. I can’t wait to see what they’ve created for Cataclysm. This is the expansion when it might just all come together.

ps. In one night I’ve gone from 0/5 Tier 5 and 0/8 Tier 6 to 3/5 Tier 5 (missing the helm and shoulders) and 1/8 Tier 6 (got the helm now).

The winning screenshot entry

Approximately a month ago, our guild entered the Oceanic Guild Screenshot Beta Contest and in the final week of the draw we were lucky enough to be chosen as a winner!  Only 25 Oceanic guilds were picked in total so this was a really lovely surprise for our guild, and a great way to reward and re-motivate members this close to the end of expansion.

The contest awards 10 beta keys and as a 25 man raiding guild, I certainly didn’t envy the officers having to choose which 9 other players (GM automatically gets 1) would be selected to form a 10 man raid group ready to test the first tier of raiding content released with Cataclysm.  In the end the players were chosen not on what is considered perhaps the best group make up, but on their longevity, attendance, performance, attitude etc.  We’ll find out first hand if Blizzard’s moto of “Bring the Player, Not the Class” still holds true in the next expansion.

Our Beta raid make up will be:

Tanks:
Warrior
Death Knight

Healers:
Priest
Paladin
Druid (Me!)

Melee DPS:
Paladin
Death Knight

Ranged DPS:
Priest (Cass!)
Mage

Hybrid (DPS/Heals):
Shaman

We also have a Fury Warrior and Shadow Priest with Beta Keys from the guild giving us a 12 member roster for testing over the next 8 weeks.  We’ll be raiding on Gilneas (US) PvP Server so if there are any readers on there currently testing out the content make sure you say hello.

Thursday nights are now officially back on the raiding roster and I can’t wait to keep you all posted on what it’s like raiding as resto!

Oh no! Shadow Trap!

From the brief time I’ve had on the Beta, I doubt that Cataclysm will be launched before mid December. Even though that’s still 2 and a half months away I very much doubt my guild will keep raiding that long. In fact I’m getting that sneaky feeling that things will wrap up probably within the month.

It’s easy for me to be worried and upset about this because I’ve just come back from a 14 week break from WoW with no raiding. Many of our raiders have been slogging it out 4 nights a week for the entire patch and entire expansion without a break. Each time we’ve gone into a guild crushing fight or brick wall, there has always been another raid instance coming out on the horizon to look forward too.

Nothing refreshes a group of raiders like new content to experience, strategies to debate and loot to theory craft. Unfortunately this time there isn’t anything until the expansion and its becoming increasingly tough getting people to show up for our Heroic Lich King attempts.

Barthilas is an incredibly competitive server with over 50 guilds working on 25 man hard modes and it’s ranked as the 4th server overall on progress. No, not Oceanic progress or even US progress. We’re talking every single Blizzard server you can possibly play on. On many servers progressing to 11/12 hard modes is considered a big deal, on Barthilas that’s nothing to write home about.

We’ve had a really tough Icecrown Citadel raid patch. Its stuff that all guilds have experienced before. And it’s the kind of thing that a lot of guilds are experiencing right now here at the end of the expansion. Some guilds hold it together. Others call it quits.

Each time our raid group gets geared and shows some good progression and unification, we seem to lose some of our geared players to other guilds, real life or burn out. Even though there are many players out there with the experience and drive to join us and keep it all going, recruitment for skilled players is fierce. There is always a guild out there ranked better than you. Guilds like mine often have to take a chance on players who haven’t got any hard mode experience (forget the gear!) to fill the loss of our best players. It’s a buyer’s market.

Gear isn’t everything. But working with the same group of 25 people day in day out, week in week out, and knowing each others strengths and weaknesses is simply priceless. No matter how good the replacement is even in shitty gear they still need most of their trial period to catch up on the lingo, rhythms and strats that your guild uses.

We’ve been pretty lackadaisical about completing Glory of the Icecrown Raider however this is the week that officers have scheduled in time to complete the last couple of achievements. I expect that at least 15 of our raiders will earn their Icebound Frostbrood Vanquishers and the cynical part of me wonders how many of those players will bother to turn up again next week. Some might: perhaps just those who haven’t completed their full 277 BiS sets. The real raiding die-hards can always be counted on (every guild has them – they simply thrive on raiding just for the social factor, challenge whatever, raiding just does it for them).

Many raiders have been burning through their DKP over the last couple of raid lock outs to finish their sets. And I can’t help but expect those players to go casual or simply stop turning up once they’ve got everything they want out of Icecrown Citadel.

The solution can’t be to just keep recruiting new players. Every single player that leaves now is leaving with a full 277 set that can’t be replaced so easily.

I’ve been back to full time raiding for a couple weeks now. When Greatcloak of the Turned Champion finally dropped I was baffled to find that I was bidding my DKP against two other healers. Surely it had dropped before? I looked back through the DKP logs to find that, yes, it had dropped several times. And each time it had gone to a player who has since either given up raiding, gquit or simply hadn’t shown up for raid.

Cass likes to count back the number of times that Dislodged Foreign Object has dropped (at least five times I think). And point to the sole raider in the group who currently has it equipped.

To make matters worse every single player that leaves muddles our raid composition. If you’re attempting Heroic Lich King with two Hunters and only one shows up (and has to leave early at that!) for the night then it’s very difficult to adjust and see any progress.

Why do players give up and stop raiding now? Perhaps the end of an expansion is a good time to reevaluate your RL vs WoW priorities, yes. But I think at its heart there are two big problems: loss of meaning and the do-hardmodes-really-count? dilemma.

If you’ve only seen the first four bosses in Icecrown Citadel I can see how killing just one or two more bosses could help you see something new, something awesome. Something epic. But if you’ve seen all the bosses in Icecrown Citadel and experienced all the small changes to mechanics that come with hard modes is there really anything new or thrilling to experience?

And what does it matter if you really finish Icecrown Citadel anyway? We already know newer, bigger stories and challenges are waiting for us in Cataclysm. If you want to save Azeroth and be a hero do you really need to kill the Lich King again? How about Illidan? I don’t think so.

So how do you incentify and keep your geared players motivated? I wanted to write this post and offer a whole bunch of solutions and suggestions.

But I have none.

Do you remove a raid night to try and curb burn out and guild expectations? Or do you come down harsh and really penalise people who don’t turn up?

Do you remove the pressure and call off guild raids? And if you do that are you simply admitting defeat? Because surely those who still want to raid will go looking for other guilds now. Which means you have to start from scratch when the new expansion launches.

I don’t think there is a magic solution to this out there, but if you know it please feel free to share it with the rest of us!

What's this? I can't remember the last time I saw one...

If you are a regular reader you may have noticed that my achievements have recently been updated and show that I have been raiding again.

I lasted on casual for a total of 14 weeks, and now that I can stay awake past 9pm and have more energy (sadly 18 weeks and still throwing up daily, what is the go with that?) I decided to try finishing out the expansion.

This may also have something to do with the fact that my other half is completely enmeshed into Starcraft II leaving me twiddling my thumbs in the evenings.

One thing hasn’t changed in Vitare since I left (and came back). We still can’t find a single Warlock to join our guild.

I thought considering wow.com linked to my Applying to Raiding Guilds post this morning, that this could be the perfect time for a shameless recruitment message because there is something I am seriously missing since being back on the raiding scene this last week, and that’s summoning stones.  To quote the Australian tourism industry’s completely fail Lara Bingle campaign… Warlocks, where the bloody hell are you?

One of our raiders last night theorised that they had decided to reverse engineer their ritual of summoning to instead banish them to a better place away from pestering raiders whispering for summons.

So if you are an Oceanic player, or someone that is looking for a GMT +10 Timezoned guild that please have a look at Vitare!

<Vitare> is an Alliance raiding guild on Barthilas (Oceanic PVP):

Australian Daylight Savings Time (ADST)/Server Time (+10GMT)
Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Sunday
7.00pm – 10.30pm

And we’re looking for Warlocks that:

• Have a stable internet connection and don’t disconnect
• Can attend each of the four raid nights on time
• Do wicked (like really good 10k + with ICC Buff) DPS
• React quickly (to fire or whatever the bad stuff may be)
• Have Icecrown Gear (Preferably with a majority of ilvl 264 pieces) and is keen to do wipe work on hard modes

Experience with the Icecrown Citadel hard modes isn’t essential. We often recruit raiders who come from very successful 25 man raiding guilds when they want to bring the challenge back into their raiding. Experience and skill at playing your class is essential.

Vitare’s 25 Man Progression:
11/12 ICC HM, 4/5 ToGC, 5/5 ToC, Ruby Sanctum NM

Vitare’s 10 Man Progression:
11/12 ICC HM, 5/5 ToGC, Ruby Sanctum NM. A Tribute to Insanity, A Tribute to Dedicated Insanity (Server 1st)

PS: We’re also looking for a Holy Paladin and Holy/Discipline Priest for any Oceanic healers out there interested in finding a new home as well.

See those skeletons all over the ground? Yeah.

I just finished watching the latest episode of Big Crits. They’re so happy that they’re now 8/12 Heroic ICC.

Ha. Ha ha ha ha.

Well the first eight or nine Heroic modes in (25 man) Icecrown Citadel go down pretty easy. I’m sure the Big Crits guild will get Lady Deathwhisper next without too much trouble. But then they’re probably going to hit their heads against the wall also known as: Heroic Professor Putricide.

Having suffered about 2-3 months of wiping on Heroic Putricide we earned our first Heroic kill just this week. Compare that to the time it took us to get the nine heroic modes before that: less than 1 month. The ICC buff was at 15% when we killed Lady Deathwhisper and it was 25% on our first Heroic Professor Putricide kill.

I’m not sure that I’m qualified to offer tips and tricks for other Shadow Priests out there attempting this fight. But surely I’ve devoted such a large amount of game time to dying on this fight and I can share some hard-earned wisdom. 

Stuff for Shadow Priests

Dispersion and Unbound Plague

Unlike the regular version of the Professor Putricide encounter, in which you should use the Tear Gas mass stun as a chance to Disperse and regain your mana during the phase transition, in Heroic mode you should save Dispersion for:

(a) an opportunity when you can’t really DPS anyway but need mana. This includes when you are the target of the red Gas Cloud (when you are the target of Gaseous Bloat) and will be running/kiting the cloud around the room, or, if you get hit and smacked with the Malleable Goo debuff.

But ideally you should use Dispersion for:

(b) extending the time you can hold Unbound Plague. Everyone in your raid should download and run the mod called Plagued. It does a simple little announce countdown that helps you monitor when the ticks of Unbound Plague are going to get too painful and you need to pass it off. Most guides/guilds recommend that you hold it for 10 seconds, 10 ticks. The Plagued mod counts down from 10 to 1 to notify the players around you. When the timer reaches 2 or 1 seconds to go, use Dispersion. Dispersion will numb the pain for the next 6 seconds. Just make sure you pass it off to someone else before Dispersion wears off because that 16th tick really, really hurts.

Your Shadowfiend and the Green Ooze

Talented, your Shadowfiend will be down on a 3 minute cooldown. And you should summon him twice – during the Phase 1->2 transition and the Phase 2->3 transition. Get him to attack the Green Ooze and he will help absorb the knockback damage. I like to wait until the first knockback before summoning my fiend, it’s usually players running to the second or third knockback point that having an extra friendly around to spread the damage really makes a difference.

Just be careful of this one little thing: if you’re currently using a macro (it’s often tied to Mind Flay) to get your fiend to use its Shadowcrawl ability, and you have the Gas Variable (thus, are attacking the Gas Cloud and not the Green Ooze) you need to make sure you don’t accidentally command your fiend to switch and appear right on the Gas Variable. Might be worth ditching the macro for this fight – after all, it’s not so much about the damage your pet deals, it’s about the damage it can absorb.

Professor Putricide: he’s right behind you!

Just because there’s a Gas Cloud or Green Ooze hanging around it doesn’t mean that you should let Vampiric Touch and Shadow Word: Pain drop off Professor Putricide. On a good attempt I can keep my DoT uptime fairly high, but on an unlucky attempt Professor Putricide will often be out of my range, or my Variable target will need all the DPS we can get (when you have a bunch of healers and tanks all with the Gas Variable you’re going to really need to focus fire if you’re one of the few DPS with the Gas Variable).

In Heroic mode Professor Putricide tends to spend a lot of his time hanging around his table – and he always heads there while you’re busy with the transition phases. Now, it could be different depending on what positioning strategy you’re using, but for me Professor Putricide was inevitably behind me when it was time to refresh my DoTs. This is quite annoying because I tend to rely on enemy nameplates to keep my targets in view/range and tab targetting to select them. And there are many occasions during the fight in which I can’t see the Professor’s nameplate.

Vampiric Touch, Shadow Word: Pain and Devouring Plague can all be cast with your back to Professor Putricide. Rely on a Focus frame or your DoT monitoring addon of choice instead of nameplates. And you can go a step further and create a macro for targetting Professor Putricide when he’s behind you:

/tar Professor Putricide

Simple! Actually because I’m so hesitant to spin my view around between my Variable target and the Professor I tend to let Shadow Word: Pain expire and just reapply it when it suits me (usually when I’m flying through the air from a knockback!) instead of trying to face the Professor to refresh SW:P with Mind Flay. This isn’t great for mana conservation, or for extending a boosted Shadow Word: Pain indefinitely, but it’s better than nothing.

2/2 Improved Vampiric Embrace and Divine Hymn

I love Vampiric Embrace so I always talent into 2/2 Improved Vampiric Embrace. The first time we got the Professor into the final phase I was the last to die – a steady stream of damage will keep you alive long after the damage aura has killed your teammates.

As we started refining our Phase 3 approach I got put on a Divine Hymn rotation (the other Shadow Priest in the guild would chant her hymn around the 12-15% mark and then I would follow her, and then our healing Priests would follow me). I really disliked this approach – reciting my Divine Hymn was usually the closest I came to death. In our kill neither of us Shadow Priests used Divine Hymn, although I think maybe one of our Holy Priests may have used hers.

There’s no reason why you shouldn’t be the last DPS standing, too!

Improving your DPS

Absolutely the most effective way I was able to improve my DPS during this encounter was to keep all my DoTs running on both the Professor and whatever Gas Cloud/Green Ooze was up (or my Variable target during transition).

From there it’s a case of minimizing your movement. You need to be very careful not to get caught out by Malleable Goo and I would recommend being overly cautious while you’re wiping/practicing – move even when you’re fairly sure that you’re in the clear. You cannot afford to be hit. However, once you’re fairly confident that you aren’t being hit, try not to move unless you actually need to.

Unfortunately the stuff that will mess up your damage are all pretty important:

• being a good, thoughtful, Unbound Plague carrier
• intentionally stacking to absorb Green Ooze damage
• kiting the Gas Cloud if you are targetted
• moving away from the Gas Cloud before it retargets
• moving away from path of Malleable Goo

I would also argue that, as ranged DPS, getting the Gas Cloud variable is a pretty big DPS loss. In our strategy we had our ranged DPS continue to stack and absorb the Green Ooze damage even when they couldn’t DPS the Green Ooze themselves because they were debuffed with the Gas Variable. This mean that, if the Gas Cloud was kited out of our range, we couldn’t really DPS the Gas Cloud. As a Shadow Priest, you can still contribute by keeping your DoTs on the Professor.

By the way, a more experienced player told me that you should be aiming for 9k DPS from each of your raiders. On a lucky attempt (Green Ooze Variable, not targetted personally by the Gas Cloud, only carried the Plague once or twice) I could reach over 10k DPS. I saw a bit of a DPS drop once we hit Phase 3. On your average attempt I was still hovering around 9k DPS. If I got hit by Malleable Goo? 8k.

And every single attempt I had my ass kicked by our Hunters.

General Stuff for Ranged DPS and Healers

Zoom In

I think a lot of players, especially us ranged DPS, like to zoom their camera out to maximum distance so that we can see everything. In Professor Putricide having your camera a maximum distance can make it harder, not easier.

Ideally, you want your camera zoomed in close enough so that you can read the character names of the players standing nearby, but far enough away that you can judge which three directions Professor Putricide has thrown his three Malleable Goo.

I can’t stress how important it is to be able to see who’s standing nearby. We have 3 – yes, three! – Moonkin in our raids at the moment and 2 Hunters with that trinket that turns them into an ugly looking Gnoll. Our 2 Mages are fairly easy to identify because one is a Human and one is a Gnome. I’m also not the only Shadow Priest in the group.

We used vent to coordinate the spread of Unbound Plague. And the responsibility lay with the person currently handing Plague: when they were ready, they would run to pass it to the next carrier. But within the first few seconds of catching the Plague they had to call out on Vent who they intended to pass it to. And if your name was called, you would do your best to make catching the Plague safe – moving away from the rest of the raid (if you were a bit close to others) and then staying completely still while you identified who was trying to pass it to you.

Communication: Be Clear

When I would hear:”I’m passing the Plague to Cass”, my thought process immediately switched from juggling cast bars, DoTs and targets to:

Who said that? then Where are they standing?

Where am I standing? Do I still have an infected debuff from the last time I took the Plague? If so, can I afford to take it again? Are there people standing too close to me? Am I in the green ooze knockback area? Am I close to the Gas Cloud spawn point?

Professor Putricide casts Malleable Goo!

Oh crap. Is there a goo coming towards me? Of course there is. How can I avoid it and still be close to the plague carrier? Should I take the plague early?

It’s pretty easy to see how dealing with the Plague can take your mind off dealing damage. Now imagine that the person called out “I’m passing the plague to Cass” and I get half way through that distracting thought process only to realise that they’re actually standing 20 yards away and the other Shadow Priest in the guild is right next to them… they just got the name/person wrong.

Or, when you get the Plague and are unable to easily see if the Moonkin standing next to you is actually Player A, B or C. If you call out “I’m passing the Plague to… er that Moonkin nearby… wait! don’t move away” you distract three of your damage dealers all at the same time.

Pivoting for Malleable Goo

One of our newer healers was really struggling to avoid Malleable Goo and he was very upfront about it. It wasn’t that he didn’t see the timers or wasn’t trying to look and move out of the direction of the goo. He was. He was just having problems accurately determining the path of the goo flying through the air.

After a couple hours he pinpointed the problem: his camera was zoomed out so far that the ceilings and walls of the laboratory kept interfering, forcing him to pivot his camera view (when Malleable Goo was cast) to strange angles to see the room.

Try it – zoom in for Professor Putricide!

I feel like dancing! Yeah!

On Tuesday (maintenance!) and Friday nights I attend a dance aerobics class called BodyJam. If you’ve never heard about it before, it’s the brainchild of this guy from New Zealand. Every few months they release a new dance routine. Instructors around the world learn it, and turn around and teach it in their classes. We all learn and dance the same routine to the same music.

So Tuesday nights and Friday nights I tend not to think much about gaming. Well, that was until the latest routine was released and I found myself surrounded by 40 odd people awkwardly performing the male Human World of Warcraft dance.

[youtube qJt-vzUS4XM /dance BodyJam style]

Of course, in BodyJam they call this piece of choreography their “Disco Block” and with dance moves like the “Travola” I think it’s safe to say that they were inspired by the same film that the Blizzard animators based their /dance emote on. Regardless, watching the guys in my class all doing the point/hip thrust in unison was gold. Pure gold.

[youtube 066_q4DIeqk John Travola in Saturday Night Fever ... and the WoW dance]

That small piece of choreography was the reason I first drew parallels between my dance class and World of Warcraft. Now consider this:

My best friend and I both attend the Friday night class. Our instructor is very vocal, and likes to take little pauses in the class to explain particularly tricky dance moves before they occur in the routine. She’s not a great dancer.

The instructor who takes the Tuesday night class is a brilliant dancer. He doesn’t say much and he rarely talks through the choreography at all. He leads by example. And the participants in the Tuesday night class just seem to be better dancers.

My friend can’t make the Tuesday night class, but it’s the class of the two that I prefer. If you don’t see the raiding correlation already think of it like this: lengthy, pre-pull fight explanations vs important, succinct directions mid-combat. I know which I prefer.

You see the thing is, even though all the instructors teach the same routine, the end result when you watch them dance can be hugely different. Dancers have their own style, and since this is far from professional dancing, there’s nothing to stop them from approaching the dance moves the way they want – with subtle emphasis on different poses, relaxing into some moves and putting energy into others.

Both my friend and I pick up the choreography pretty quickly. But I think I imitate my Tuesday night instructor’s style a hell of a lot more than I do my Friday night instructor. Sometimes the way my Friday night instructor explains choreography is really helpful, and sometimes the way my Tuesday night instructor explains the choreography makes more sense to me.

I know that I’m better at BodyJam because I am learning from two very different teachers. But the Tuesday night class teaches me more, because the skill of my peers is higher: I can look around the class and think “I like the way she kind of leans into that bit, maybe I’ll try that next repetition”.

It’s no different in raiding. You can learn so much by watching raiders around you, if you are in a skilled group. If you look around mid encounter, your most skilled DPSer is probably keeping their movement down to the absolute minimum. What are they doing to position themselves in advance so that they end up at the right place at the right time?

If there’s another player of the same class/spec as you watch and see how and when they use their mana-regenerating abilities. I know, for example, that the other Shadow Priest in my guild prefers a different timing/sequence on when they like to use Shadowfiend and Dispersion during the Lich King encounter. Try things their way. See which you prefer.

Last Tuesday, a tiny Colombian girl showed up as our BodyJam instructor while our regular teacher was off sick. Not 10 minutes into the class she decided that it was time to ramp up the difficulty. She started teaching flourishes, adding minute changes – additional kicks or arm movements where previously there might have been a simple step. Then she kept pushing us to try them. Then she scolded us for not working hard enough.

Yes, there are hard modes in BodyJam. And tough raid leaders!

It occurred to me that BodyJam has already mastered what Blizzard are trying to do with their Normal/Hard modes. Your typical dance routine is taught as:

• learn move A
• learn move B
• repeat A + B a few times in sequence
• learn move C
• repeat A + B + C a few times in sequence
• learn move D
• and so forth

In a typical dance routine if you struggle to get the hang of, say Move C, then it doesn’t matter how many additional steps are tacked on, you’ll always get hung up when you reach Move C and feel forever out-of-time or behind the choreography from that point onwards.

[youtube WyDMMsAUL24 How the choreography is taught]

BodyJam is taught very strangely in comparison. You never pause the music, and the routine – which might be made up of say 10 moves each with a count of 4-8 beats – is hardly ever taught in A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H etc sequence. Instead you might learn Move D + a few beats to march on the spot + Move F, repeat that a million times, and then learn Moves A + Move B + Move C and then revisit Move D and Move F and they’ll sneakily turn those few beats pause in between into Move E.

The learning curve is just perfect. Simply perfect. Of course, they probably spend countless hours user testing to get it just right. But it pays off.

The video above is the equivalent of learning Move A + Move B + Move C together. See how some of it is taught at half speed for many repetitions as participants learn the technique? And some nuances aren’t necessary to explain at all (chest pumps and the like), they’re low priority, and you can pick them up on your own.

So when you learn a brand new routine, you might finish the hour long class feeling as though you followed along all the way. After a few classes you realise that you executed every single move, no matter how small. And after a few more classes you start to add style and perfect each move and smooth them altogether.

Then your instructor brings out the “Advanced” options.

The strange thing is, once you’ve done the routine with all the additional advanced flourishes, you realise this was what the routine was always meant to be. The normal difficulty, the one you first learned, actually had a whole bunch of resting beats and simple marches and side steps just waiting to be replaced by elaborate hand/arm or feet movement.

It’s not until you complete the Advanced routine that you even notice all the pauses and mental breaks built into the Basic routine. The timing and positioning of both the Advanced and Basic routines are identical, there’s just a hell of a lot more going on in the Advanced version.

This is what I think Hard mode vs Normal mode in World of Warcraft raiding is meant to be. It’s not until you do Rotface on Hard that you realise that the room is designed to be flooded with slime from the wall. You realise that Ranged DPS were always intended to, well, stand at range instead of stacking with the melee (a typical strategy for normal mode) and puddle jump, dodge slime spray and cope with vile gas without passing it to others.

It seems silly that the transitions in Normal Professor Putricide are, well, a brain rest moment. In Hard mode you don’t get a break, instead you have to carefully kill both a green ooze and a gas cloud at the same time.

If I took the Lich King encounter on Normal mode – a seriously complex fight with many many phases – and decided that was the equivalent of a BodyJam Advanced routine, how would I simplify it for a more Basic routine? Remember: the object is to keep the timing and positioning the same.

First off, you could remove the spawn of Raging Spirits during the transition phase. You wouldn’t remove the transition phase entirely because it’s important to teach people that they need to move to the “safe” outer reaches of the platform while the Lich King casts Neverending Winter.

You could further simplify the first phase by removing the Necrotic Plague ability. Instead, perhaps the Shambling Horrors would slowly die of their own accord during Neverending Winter. This would still teach the raid to position in a triangular shape, with a tank for both the Lich King and the Shambling Horrors.

You could simplify the second phase considerably by putting Defile and Summon Val’kyr on a joined timer so that they never occur at the same time. Defile would be cast, then 30 seconds later Summon Val’kyr would be cast, then 30 seconds later Defile and so forth.

The best Hard mode encounters, in my opinion, are those that make you feel as though this is how the encounter was meant to play out. My least favourite Hard mode encounters are when the damage health and boss health are simply boosted: like Blood Queen Lana’thel.

7pm. Everyone's here. So what are we waiting for?

I don’t actually know what Raid Leading is. If I had to I think I would define it as:

Raid Leading: The silence that preceeds a ready check. When nothing is said on vent or in guild or raid chat.

Well, nothing is said that is related to the actual raid or game. I usually like to fill this silence with daydreams and commentary on my dinner, or even more likely, my plans for desert. But I’m pretty sure that in that silence your Raid Leader is frantically organizing players to change into their off spec, assigning tanks and checking that the healing team are prepared.

Others have defined Raid Leading as: more than just doing a quick boss strategy explanation. This definition seems to me to be extremely misleading. Yes, explaining the strategy is an important part of leading a PuG raid, or a very casual guild that has as many new raiders as regulars, but in a guild raid there really isn’t any need to go over the strategy or fight tactics at all.

I would imagine, although PuG raids aren’t my forte, that Raid Leading a PuG raid would mostly consist of filling the raid spots, choosing and explaining strategies for each boss, and dealing with disconnects and replacements. And maybe dealing with loot.

Presumably in a GDKP run Raid Leading is a similar job. With the collection and distribution of gold added in.

But in a guild run, I think a Raid Leader seems to have a slightly different job. They choose who is tanking, DPSing, healing for each encounter, who tanks what, perhaps even who heals whom. They set the pace of the run: deciding when breaks are taken, when players should be subbed in or out, when it’s time to try something hard, or relax and do something easy. They must identify, on wipes, what was at the root of the problem and solve it.

If they cover encounter strategy or tactics at all, it’s usually only to draw attention to something in the strategy that the raid isn’t executing properly.

Of course, having done none of them (PuG raiding leading, GDKP raid leading or guild raid leading) the job description of Raid Leader seems quite mysterious to me. It’s something that remains just out of the scope of my knowledge.

I’m not sure what the winning formula is for a Raid Leader. But I do agree, as I’ve read in countless blogs, forum topics and comments, that it’s best not to expect your Guild Master to also take on the job of Raid Leader. The success of the guild and the success of the raid can be intertwined, but the actual role description for each is completely separate.

Furthermore, I’m convinced that the best Raid Leaders are players who, Raid Leading aside, have the easiest job in the encounter.

Raid Leading, mid-combat, must require you to really play your own character with just half your brain. The other half, surely, is busy orchestrating the 24 people around you.

In the Burning Crusade our Raid Leaders (in our guild) were, depending on the night, a Hunter and Warlock. This is in the days when Hunters could bind their entire rotation onto their mouse scroll up or down function and when Warlocks spammed Shadow Bolt. And, damn it, they were proud of it. Hunters and Warlocks may not be as simple to play as they once were, but I still believe that ranged DPS make excellent Raid Leaders simply because they have the best view during combat. It makes troubleshooting after a wipe quite a bit easier, and improvisation mid-combat more informed.

In my experience tanks often take on the role of Raid Leader but I believe that this is because they are expected to lead parties from an early age, so to speak, not necessarily because they have the best view. I think some tanks would argue that they can devote their attention to Raid Leading mid-combat simply because, as the tank, most of the time they exist outside of the fight mechanics. Instead of running out of fire, poison and/or void zones often they get to stand still and mash buttons.

In Vitare, our Raid Leader is a tank. And (I think I must have mentioned this like 50 times on the blog – sorry!) he’s been away overseas on and off for the better part of six months. This means that, honestly, for the last six months, we’ve really mashed together our own way of doing things. While no single person currently holds the title of Raid Leader, I think about 5 or 6 people (and, no, not necessarily the officers) have sliced up the role description of Raid Leader and taken on small pieces of responsibility.

At points in time we’ve tried to appoint an “official” raid leader, and some plucky raider will step up to take the title. But, well, they tend to burn out really fast. Not having our own permanent Raid Leader has probably cost us at least three amazing raiders who have all quit the game or guild.

So after we lost our last Acting Raid Leader during last week’s raid lockout, apparently over a particularly nasty disagreement in Group 1, one of the Officers put it out there: we need a new volunteer. What really surprised me was that about three raiders put my name forth, not for an Officer position (something that I have simply refused to do for quite some time), but for the Raid Leader position. This was quite the most flattering comment I’ve received in game, and also the most confounding.

I don’t even know what Raid Leading is. Let alone how to do it!

In hindsight, I think I know why my name may have been put forth. When I finished university and started my first full time job I was surprised to learn, a year in at my performance review, that my manager wanted to pay to send me away to a course called the Young Manager’s Program. I, on the other hand, was campaigning quite hard to do an expensive ASP.net course. I wasn’t the slightest bit interested in pursing a career in management (I’m not now, either) even though clearly my boss thought I was perfect material for management.

After a time I changed positions, changed departments and somehow ended up as the Acting Manager of Marketing for a month when my new boss got married and went away on his honeymoon. I found this particularly disturbing. I had no knowledge, education or background in Marketing at all. Unfortunately, I learned the truth about middle management during this month. Most of the time your day is veered off course by employees and their petty complaints. Not surprisingly, my experience as an Officer in a World of Warcraft guild was pretty much the same: an endless stream of personal complaints from guild members that really had no relevance to anyone else but the parties involved.

My workmates and boss at work all thought I had done a pretty great job as Acting Manager of Marketing. But what it taught me was that I can and will lead, when necessary, but I don’t enjoy it or derive any personal satisfaction from it.

You know how I said above that, in the absence of a full time Raid Leader, the guild seemed to just soak up those responsibilities as a collective? Well I think I soaked up one of those responsibilities. I now no longer play my Shadow Priest with 100% of my functional brain, instead I play my Shadow Priest with about 30% of my brain and use the other 70% to become a live, spoken, Boss Encounters Add on.

Most likely it started way back when we were learning how to defeat the Blood Princes on normal mode. I tended to stand at the 11 yard mark sandwiched between our Discipline Priest and one of our Holy Priests. And us Priests, we like to stick together. Add to that my empathy for healer tunnel vision (I see green bars) and the fact that I really do very little in Blood Princes, that I ended up watching their backs more than my own.

“Flame orb, run Nys!”

This progressed into calling out other random things. I was always the one who marked up the Blazing Skeletons and announced their position over vent during Dreamwalker. And these days I think I must talk more than anyone else mid-combat while I call out all kinds of random things – usually the things that have tripped us up as a guild in previous attempts: from Lady Deathwhisper’s Ghosts to Rotface’s Slime Spray and Festergut’s Pungent Blight.

See:

2) I’m Helpful

This person is always ready to help. In fact, they will always try to help, whether or not the help is actually needed. Has sort of a soothing, neutral voice so that they can be understood on Ventrilo easier, but people wonder if they actually used to sound like that before they started calling out Snobolds in the first place. Most likely a Ret Paladin or a Hunter, I’m Helpful will be the person who calls out everything needing to be called out, whether it is wandering plague on Arthas, Snobolds on a character, the fact Steelbreaker just died, or that someone is standing in a fire.

This person is probably immensely helpful since even though everyone has DBM installed, no one is actually paying any attention to it, and this droning, sonorous voice is probably their wake up call. Deep inside, if people don’t hear this voice, they will be surprised when things actually happen.

As long as I’m not healing (a job that takes significantly more than just 30% of my brain) I’m quite happy to call out these things, tell people when to run away, to even scold players for standing in the wrong spot at the wrong time. I find it very easy to do: I simply hit my push-to-talk key and say exactly what what’s going through my own head. There’s almost nothing that I announce on Vent that I’m not reminding myself about mentally anyway.

But it’s not because I desire to take on the responsibility. I do it because I think it needs to be done. And as soon as someone else starts chanting “ghosts” over me on Vent I’m quite happy to check that off my to-do list and focus on other things.

Cassandri as Raid Leader? I don’t think I could do it. Raid Leading, whatever it is, is so much more than just calling out cues over vent mid-combat.

But knowing that people in my guild think I could do it makes me wonder if I should push myself a bit harder, expand my boundaries. Perhaps I should revisit my level 17 Paladin and queue as a Tank. Never-mind that I get lost in Ragefire Chasm and that I have never tanked or led a 5 man before.