My Opinion: LFR is ruining the game

What does that title mean?  Let me explain.  I’ve said this all before, but seeing GuildOx rankings really slammed the point home for me.

First – understand that I don’t consider LFR to be actual raiding.  Its more like sightseeing.  Yes, I know that LFR is tougher now than it was back in Cata.  However, the increasing Determination buff means that you can continue to screw up and you’ll eventually succeed despite yourself.  Its a nice way for everyone to see the raid encounters without being accountable for their performance.  Its a good thing.  I am not anti-LFR.  I don’t run it myself, but I don’t hate it.  Its an aspect of the game that is available if you want it.

However…

I recently went on GuildOx to see how my guild stacked up against other guilds on my realm.  I was surprised to see that, on Sen’jin which is by no means a dead realm, only 20 or so guilds have completed Tier 14 raids on normal mode.  In fact, my guild *just* killed Amber-Shaper Unsok this week on 10 normal, and we are only the 25th guild on the server to do so.

I’m not even looking at heroic modes.  Just normal.  If you have cleared T14 on normal and done the first boss in T15, then you’re a top twenty guild on my server.

WTF?

What does this tell me?  It tells me that guilds (at least on my realm) aren’t really doing progression raids anymore.  Since raiding is such a large part of the game, I can’t imagine that people aren’t raiding.  The obvious conclusion is that people are getting their raiding fix through LFR, and not so much in guild raids.

I have a problem with this.

In my personal vision of WoW, guilds and interpersonal interaction are the heart and soul of the game.  The need for cooperation to overcome obstacles is what the original raid encounters were built on.  Communication, people doing their job, everyone having a role… these were the skills that set the foundation for the more fun and challenging raid bosses.  LFR doesn’t have much or any of that.

I really, really don’t like this model.  Yes, LFR gets people into raiding, and that is a good thing.  But its being used as an expected part of the gearing path.  People run Thone of Thunder (LFR) in order to gear up for Throne of Thunder (normal).  What is this nonsense?  Run a raid to gear for the same raid?  How is this different than the ToC days in Wrath, when you ran 10 man to gear up for 25 man?

There isn’t even any sense of anticipation or buildup.  A new patch comes out with a new raid.  A week later it opens up on LFR.  Then… Boom!  In a couple of hours of pugging you have cleared the newly available raid content.  It trivializes the time and effort of raid design.

For me (and this is just my approach) I am looking forward to seeing Throne of Thunder.  I’m looking forward to figuring out the encounters one by one and progressing through it.  I’m looking forward to hearing the vocalizations of the bosses and getting to know their story and their personality.  I’ll see it when I get to it, after my guild clears tier 14.  All of that anticipation is lost in LFR raiding.

WoW is a great MMO.  WoW is a mediocre single-player game, and LFR has allowed it to drift into that mode.  LFR as a way into raiding is fine.  LFR as a true alternative to guild raiding is not in the best interests of the game, in my opinion.

(What?  You don’t care about the story and anticipation of raids?  You only care about gear?  This isn’t the blog post you’re looking for.  Move along.  Move along.)

Current raid status and how it is affected by the new tier of raids

With patch 5.2 about to drop and bring a new raid tier, my guild finally completed Mogu’shan Vaults on normal mode this past week.  We’ve definitely been far behind the curve in this expansion.  This is very different than our situation in Cataclysm, when we kept up with the raid content (normal mode) as it was released.

This time around we’ve been hurt by the dps checks.  We spent a long time on Gara’jal before we could beat his enrage, and then another long while on Elegon with the same problem.  Our raid dps isn’t up to par (separate post coming on that) and as a truly casual, friendly guild, we don’t try and pick and choose our raid composition.  We take who wants to come, for better or for worse.

This week we will be setting our first steps into Heat of Fear, and we won’t see Terrace of Endless Spring until some time after that.  The new Tier 15 raids are in the more distant future.

Unfortunately, our experiences in the remaining tier 14 raids will be somewhat disappointing for a couple of reasons – one that is raidwide and one that is personal to me.  Here’s the point of view of a truly casual raid guild on the current situation.

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For the raid, the challenge of HoF anf ToES will be vastly diminished on two fronts.  First, they are getting nerfed by 10% in the upcoming patch.  While we could disable the nerf, it makes no sense to do so.  Guild morale will be improved by quicker progress through the raids, and it catches us up to current content faster.  Its just a shame that we won’t see the fights as they were designed.

In addition, the new T15 raids will soon be available to us at LFR difficulty.  That will allow our raid members to get higher iLvL gear, further reducing the challenge of the tier 14 content.  It took us three months to get through Mogu’shan Vaults.  I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we finished the next two T14 raids together in half that time.

On a personal level, I refuse to enter an LFR raid until I have seen it on normal mode first.  I have yet to ever see a single boss from Heart of Fear or Terrace of Endless Spring.  I won’t do the new raids on LFR either.  My raid-mates don’t have the same stance on this, and they will be gearing themselves up in LFR.  As a result, I will personally fall behind them in gear.  (although I still expect to lead the raid in dps, for what its worth).  That’s disappointing in the short run, but it will all work out eventually.

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I think that our current position is not that uncommon.  We are currently ranked #43 on our server and #11,155 in the USA.  There are still lots of guilds behind us in progression.  Here’s the question: is this situation damaging to casual guilds?  Will we see guild defections to move to more progressed guilds?

Next week, when new gear is dropping and people are getting new items from the new raids, it can certainly generate gear envy.  In a guild that is still working on T14, a jump to a T15 guild might be appealing.

I don’t think this will happen in our guild, since we are a pretty tight knit group.

WoW hasn’t really had the “feeder guild” issue since Burning Crusade.  The difference between then and now is the presence of LFR.  Back in BC, if you were in a Karazhan/Gruul-level guild, your only chance to see SSC and then Black Temple was to guild-hop.  Today, you can see all available content on LFR difficulty.  Will that be enough?  I really think so.  Time will tell.

Legendaries for all

Legendaries!  Apparently, placeholders were datamined for a slew of legendary items as rewards – axe, mace, fist, shield, gun, staff, knife, and sword.  The speculation is that there will be some kind of questline, possibly associated with our friend Wrathion, and that it will offer legendary items as a reward to any class.

Nothing more is known.  No one knows if this speculation is accurate, or if so then how easy or hard they will be to obtain, or how many a guild can get.

This gives me, as a guild leader, some trepidation.  Until now, legendaries have been on the rare side and entirely associated with raiding.

Here’s how our decision-making process went in each tier:

• Ulduar – legendary healing mace – went to our long-term and best druid healer, who was also an officer in the guild (never finished the weapon)
• ICC – legendary axe – went to our long term, dependable paladin dps (never finished the weapon)
• Firelands – legendary staff – went to our long-term mage, who was our top dps and also an officer in the guild.  When she quit WoW, it went instead to our very long-term priest, who was an officer in the guild.
• Dragon Soul – legendary daggers – went to me, the very long-term GM of the guild (and the only one who has a rogue main)

All of these decisions seem very sensible to me.  The guild could only grind out one legendary at a time, and in each case the recipient was someone who had been in the guild for years and years and was a very proficient player.

However, to the average member of the guild, all they see is that the legendaries go to the guild officers.  That can create resentment.  I think that we managed it pretty well.  I don’t think there was anyone who really challenged the decisions, and no one was so offended that they quit over it.

If there are more legendaries, though, then the more people will want them and there will be more in-fighting.

Obviously, with so little information I will have to reserve judgement.  However, I’m a little nervous about how this will play out.

Playing a Rogue in Mists of Pandaria

Now that the expansion release is looming before us, we can expect that the way the class is playing currently in beta will be very close to the way it plays when MoP goes live.  That means its a good time to look at what has changed. For the most part, the rogue will play as it has played in the past.  The main combo-building attacks and finishers are mostly unchanged.

Changes to Talents and Abilities

The largest change is the new talent system.  We still have our assassination, combat, and subtlety specs as always, but the choice of spec impacts the baseline abilities, not the talent tree.  In the shared talent trees, the choices are aimed at utility rather than damage increases.  As a result, there will be very few “mandatory” talents and there should not be a cookie-cutter build that everyone uses.  I anticipate that there will be a number of talent choices that will be changed from one raid boss to the next depending on the specific needs of the fight. All rogues will have the same talent trees to select from.

The things that make each spec unique are no longer from talents (like Mutilate and Blade Flurry were talents previously).  These abilities have been rolled into the base abilities for each spec. Here are the base abilities which are unique for each spec (these are not all the rogue abilities – just the ones that distinguish the specs from each other):

Assassination	Combat	Hemorrhage
Assassin’s Resolve (passive)	Ambidexterity (passive)	Hemorrhage
Improved Poisons (passive)	Blade Flurry	Master of Subtlety (passive)
Mutilate	Vitality (passive)	Sinister Calling (passive)
Envenom	Revealing Strike	Find Weakness (passive)
Seal Fate (passive)	Combat Potency (passive)	Premeditation
Dispatch	Adrenaline Rush	Backstab
Venomous Wounds (passive)	Restless Blades (passive)	Honor Among Thieves (passive)
Cut to the Chase (passive)	Bandit’s Guile (passive)	Sanguinary Vein (passive)
Blindside (passive)	Killing Spree	Energetic Recovery (passive)
Mastery: Potent Poisons (passive)	Mastery: Main Gauche	Mastery: Executioner
Vendetta		Shadow Dance

There are a few changes and a couple of new abilities (detailed below) but most of these should be familiar from the current game. A lot of people have complained that the talent system is “dumbed down” in MoP.  However, when you look at the lists you can see that the talents that everyone would have selected (Mutilate, Blade Flurry, Premeditation, etc…) have been turned into baseline abilities. With the main attacks and distinguishing moves rolled into baseline abilities, the talent system is pared down to a smaller number of interesting choices rather than a huge list of mandatory clicks.

This is the talent tree that is shared by all three specs.  Note that you only select six talents – one every fifteen levels.

The big brouhaha in the rogue community is over the level 60 talent tier, where we have to choose between Preparation and Shadowstep (or Burst of Speed, but I don’t think that will be popular).  These are both abilities that have been the heart of the subtlety spec for a while, and now they are available to all specs (but only one out of the two!).  Shadowstep is great for leveling, but I think that Preparation will be enticing for raiding or pvp.  You can change your talent choices from one fight to the next at any time using a reagent made by scribes.

I think that we will find that there is no “best” spec.  Your choices will depend on your preferences and playstyle and on the mechanics of the fights.  For example, in the level 90 tier, Anticipation is useful to prevent wasted combo points, which is most likely to happen on single-target fights, while Versatility improves your Redirect, and that will be helpful on target-switching fights.

Also – Prime Glyphs are gone.  Prime glyphs that were “mandatory” have had their effects rolled into the base abilities.  Most Major/Minor glyphs are for utility or personalization.

New Abilities

In the lower levels, assassination rogues have been given Dispatch.  This is an execute-phase attack, much like Backstab became in Cataclysm.  Dispatch hits hard when the target is below 35% health.  However, this attack has another role.  The Blindside ability (gained at level 70) gives assassination rogues the chance to proc a Dispatch at any time in the fight (and it costs no energy!).  Thus, the assassination attack sequence will not be a set rotation, but instead will have to be modified on the fly due to Dispatch procs.

While the other specs have been tweaked and had some abilities shuffled, they haven’t gained anything really new at lower levels.

Of course with the new expansion come new abilities for all specs.  They are:

• Shroud of Concealment (level 76): Extend a cloak that wraps party and raid members within 20 yards in shadows, concealing them from sight for up to 15 sec.
• Crimson Tempest (level 83): Finishing move that consumes combo points on any nearby target to slash at the flesh of all enemies within 8 yards, dealing Physical damage based on combo points and causing victims to bleed and suffer an additional 30% of the initial damage over 12 sec.
• Shadow Blades (level 87): Draw upon the surrounding shadows to empower your weapons, causing your autoattacks to deal pure Shadow damage and your combo-point-generating abilities to generate an additional combo point when used.

Those are pretty interesting.  Crimson Tempest is being hailed as a new era for rogue AoE.  No longer must we just spam FoK or start Blade Flurry and watch our combo points and debuffs drop.  Now that FoK generates combo points, we can FoK and then mix in Crimson Tempest for a true AoE rotation.

Shroud of Concelament will be useful for bypassing trash in dungeons with your whole group – especially useful in the Challenge Modes.

Shadow Blades is a dps cooldown.  The shadow damage will allow your autoattacks to bypass armor, which is nice but not awe-inspiring.  Each spec will manage that differently depending on their procs and other cooldowns.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see this buffed a bit before it goes live.

Weapons and Poisons

One thing that rogues will notice right away in MoP is that their thrown weapon slot is gone.  Now rogues have a Throw attack (replaced by Deadly Throw perhaps or Shuriken Toss at level 90) but no dedicated thrown weapon.  FoK uses the equipped melee weapons (and their poisons).

Also, there are no more fast and slow daggers.  All daggers are now 1.8 speed.  This is to smooth the proc rate on poisons and get rid of the advantages to having a slower main hand and faster off hand.

Most surprisingly, the poison system is overhauled.  No longer do you actually apply poison to weapons.  Now, poisons are a buff to the rogue.  You can have two poisons – one lethal and one non-lethal.  Both poisons can proc from either or both weapons since they are a buff to the rogue and not the specific weapon.  Lethal poisons are Instant, Deadly, and Wound.  Non-lethal poisons are Crippling, Mind-Numbing, and – if you spec for them - Leeching and Paralytic.

Gameplay

From my little time spent in beta, gameplay as a MoP rogue is very similar to gameplay as a Cata rogue.

I will say that having Shadowstep in any spec is a big gamechanger, and adds fun to questing and soloing.  Since I’ve never played subtlety for any length of time, I was like a kid with a new toy, popping around Pandaria.

As an assassination rogue, you’ll still use Mutilate as your main combo point generator, and envenom as your  finisher.  You still keep Rupture going for the energy return from Venomous Wounds.  Your Envenoms still refresh SnD.  The big difference is that Blindside procs let you hit Dispatch in between your other attacks, which adds some variation to your rotation.  Cold Blood is gone, but there are two damage cooldowns – Vendetta and Shadow Blades.  In beta, there are a lot of comments about assassination being energy-starved.  We’ll have to hope that problem clears up by the time you reach the level cap.

Combat rogues will play exactly the same way they play now.  Sinster Strike and SnD/Rupture/Eviscerate are still the finishers.  None of the major abilities or cooldowns have been removed.  Rupture damage has been buffed so it is a higher priority finisher than Eviscerate.  Revealing Strike now has a chance to proc an extra combo point, which makes it more attractive to use.  Bandit’s Guile now follows you when you switch targets, which is convenient.  Still, this will be the same cooldown-based spec that we are all familiar with, using Adrenaline Rush and Killing Spree liberally and now including Shadow Blades.

Subtlety rogues are losing exclusive rights to Shadowstep and Preparation.  Other than that, the general style of play is similar to the way they played in Cataclysm, but the rotation is somewhat streamlined.  Backstab/Hemorrhage are still the main attacks.  The most important change is that the energy gain mechanism from Energetic Recovery has been shifted from Recuperate to SnD.  That means you won’t have to keep Recuperate up anymore.  That’s one less finisher to juggle.  Rupture and SnD will have longer duration, making it easier to maintain their uptime.  Hemorrhage now applies a DoT to the target, but no longer increases bleed damage.  Sanguinary Vein has been buffed, so Rupture uptime is vital.  The other cooldowns remain the same – Premeditation, Shadow Dance, and now Shadow Blades.  Sub rogues will be happy to have FoK/Crimson Tempest as viable AoE in Mists.

Summary

There are no sweeping changes to the rogue class.  Blizzard has long maintained that rogues are well-designed, and they have not made large-scale changes for a long time.  Despite this, the number of rogues declined during Cataclysm.  Will Shadowstep for all rogues help bring some players back to this class?

Is the LFR expected or optional?

I was reading and posting in an online forum on a WoW-related topic.  In the discussion, someone spilled the beans about the ending of the Dragon Soul raid and storyline.  Another person said, “Dude, put SPOILER ALERT on that so we know not to read it if we haven’t done it yet.”

At this point, the person who had asked for the spolier alert was raked over the coals in the way that WoW trolls really know how.  They accused him of being a failure at the game because, at this point, only a total loser has not cleared the Dragon Soul in the LFR.

I stepped in to disagree, saying that I preferred to raid with my guild and so I, also, have not done the LFR raids yet.

Then the tide of opinion turned against me, saying that I should be running LFR to get gear to help with normal mode raiding.  The fact that it is super-easy was the main argument for its necessity.

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I feel like I’m part of a dying breed in WoW.  The main joy of raiding for me is playing with my long-time gaming friends.  There is no thrill in loot.  Loot lost its appeal to me back in BC when epic purple gear became more common than rare blue-level gear.  My joy comes from the shared experience of overcoming the obstacle that the devs have set before us.  For that reason, I’d much rather run the raid in normal mode, using gear I got in normal mode Firelands and by running heroics.

Basically, I see the LFR as a nice alternate path for those who want/need it.  I don’t see it as a necessary part of the gearing-up process.

Am I the minority here?

I’m OK with the Firelands nerfs

As the fallout from the nerfs trickles through the blogosphere, and I read about how trivial the content is now and how terrible it is that the nerf bat came so quickly, I am going to weigh in here on the side of support for Blizzard.  These nerfs are good for my guild, and I think that my guild is fairly average in the wide spectrum of WoW guilds that raid.  If its good for my guild, it must also be good for a lot of other guilds.

We’ve stalled in T12.  It sounds like I’m making excuses, but these fights play to our weaknesses.  My guild has always had trouble with highly technical fights, going back to Thaddius and Heigen in Naxxramas, Rotface in ICC, and the Double Dragons in BoT.  In past raids, for every technical “stand here then here then move here” kind of fight, there were also some fights that just measured throughput or skill at using your class abilities.  We excelled at some and struggled with others.  Firelands mostly seems to have “dance” fights with lots of target switching and little room for error.  Its not our strong suit.

As a result we’re stalled at 3/7 in there.   Some weeks we only get Shannox and are blocked by Beth’tilac and Rhyolith.

We’ve stalled in previous raid tiers as well.  However, Firelands feels… different.  In the past when we would stall, there was the feeling that if we all just got one more gear upgrade, or maybe just got one good break to fall our way, then we’d find success.  That expectation of success being just out of reach would keep us coming back and back and back.  For example, we wiped on the Lich King over 60 times, and it never got old or boring.

Firelands hasn’t given that feeling.  Wipes on Rhyolith don’t usually feel like we’re teetering on the cusp of success.  It doesn’t feel like one more upgrade or one good break would make the difference.  We just get annoyed at the fight mechanics.  Its much like Heigan back in the Naxx days, when people would wipe doing the dance, and no amount of gear could fix that.  So it is with the current content.  It has become frustrating.

For guilds like mine, this nerf will bring a fresh feeling to the raid.  Perhaps you don’t insta-die from every misstep.  Perhaps if one dps misses his spot and is killed, the raid can still pull out the victory.

Does that make it easy-mode?  Perhaps.  Does it diminish our accomplishments?  In some eyes, certainly.  However, given the choice between killing the nerfed bosses, or gradually having our raid team lose interest due to frustration, I’ll take the nerfs.

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Edit: I will admit that I am puzzled as to why Blizzard doesn’t implement a more gradual nerf the way they did in ICC.

OK, now I’m happy

In a post last week, I mentioned how we were 11/12 in current tier raid bosses, and how I felt like we hadn’t accomplished our goals.

Now there is a huge weight off my shoulders.  In preparation for tonight, we cleared the first five BWD bosses on Thursday, setting us up for a big finale to the current tier of raiding.

Our goal: in a single night before patch 4.2 lands, learn the Nefarian fight, practice it, and defeat him.

Our result: success!

It was a really tricky night.  We ended up with a very melee heavy raid with only a hunter and a mage for ranged dps.  That meant that pushing two crackles in Phase 2 was out of the question.  Instead, we decided to go with no crackles in Phase 2 and pushed quickly to Phase 3, starting Phase 3 with Nef at about 75%.

At our normal raid quitting time we had gotten Nef under 10% and we could taste victory.  Typically we are strict about ending raids on time.  However, that quitting time is largely because of me, being the old man of the group and also being on the east coast of the US, and usually having to wake up at 5:30 AM.  Today, though, I am on vacation, and so I gave my ok to push on and the rest of the raid enthusiastically agreed.

A couple of attempts later, we managed to burn him to the ground.

As old as my guild is, this is the first time that we have cleared all raid content before it was nerfed or we outgeared it.  Its a huge moment of success in the history of the guild.  Normally I don’t brag on the guild in the blog, but I’m exploding with pride and I just have to let it out.

Most of us got our fancy new titles, and we were also able to purchase our Dark Phoenix Mounts.

Now we can happily move on to Firelands raids, satisfied with our current progress.

I also feel like this is a success for casual guilds.  The current raid tier has been widely discussed as being too hard for casuals.  My guild does have a core of pretty intense players, and that core is the engine that drives our raid team.  But overall we are a very casual bunch.  Our raid composition changes from week to week.  We have no attendance requirements.  We /roll for loot.  We have a mostly open admission policy with no applications.  We have people from age 12 to 60+, and maintain a family-friendly atmosphere.

Because of this, I take pride in our success.  We’re certainly not the only casual guild to succeed.  Seeing as this is the only guild I have ever been in, its the only one that matters to me.

Happy patch day, everyone!

 

Accomplishments

We’re 11/12 in T11 raid bosses!

What does that mean?  It means different things to different people.  Wrath really re-trained me on the meaning of raid accomplishments.  I need to appreciate the game again.

In Burning Crusade, there were not a whole lot of guilds that progressed through all of the available raid content.  Most guilds were Karazhan guilds – staying at the introductory raid level.  Many guilds or guild alliances moved up to Gruul/Magtheridon raids.  Fewer made it through SSC and TK, and fewer still made it through Black Temple.  Simply killing a boss was often a big deal, and clearing a raid tier was a huge achievement.

Wrath changed the paradigm.  With a myriad of ways to get gear, you could skip raid tiers.  Then with infinite tank threat and infinite healer mana most raids quickly became puggable.  Thus, a much larger portion of guilds were able to clear current raid content.  Simply killing bosses was not that big a deal, and clearing raid tiers was ho-hum.

Now things have shifted to a middle ground.  There are still various paths to get gear, so you’re not locked out of any raid content due to gear.  However, the raids are tougher and the game a bit harder, so pugs are less successful and it is harder to carry lesser players.  As a result, fewer guilds are making it through raid content.

I am musing on this because my guild just killed Al-akir.  As indicated at the start of the post, that makes us 11/12 in the current tier of raids.  This is rarified air for us.  Our guild has been around since vanilla, and we have never cleared a current tier of raids before the new tier was released.

So here we stand, one week before Firelands comes, and only Nefarian standing in our way of clearing all available (non-heroic) content.  We have two nights of raiding scheduled before the patch.  One night will be used to clear BWD and do some learning attempts on Nef, and the second night will be dedicated to taking on Nefarian.

What does all of this have to do with Wrath attitudes?  I think that I am not fully appreciative of what we have done.  Inside, I feel like we are still behind the curve, which is a holdover from Wrath attitudes.  I need to let it sink in that we are well ahead of the typical guild here.  Only 24,500 guilds have killed Al’akir, which is less than half of the guilds that have downed Magmaw.

I’m not trying to toot my own horn.  I’m just being introspective.  When we finally killed Al’akir last night, I didn’t yell with happiness, but rather let out a sigh of relief.  Back in the Karazhan days we were all so happy when we killed a raid boss for the first time.  Has Wrath ruined that for me permanently?

I think that if we get Nef this week I’ll actually be happy.

Time flies when you’re not posting

Wow – its been two weeks without a post.

There hasn’t been much to talk about.

Rogues

I think some rogues are disappointed to see the current state of dps.  For many of us, we are of the opinion that the so-called “pure dps” classes (rogue, mage, warlock, hunter) should out-damage the hybrid classes.  I know that there is much disagreement on that point, but its a fairly commonly-held opinion.

Right now, according to stateofdps.com, shadow priests are at the top of the pile.  Balance druids and unholy death knights are also ahead of rogues on that list.  Keep in mind that list is just from the top 200 World of Logs parses, so there is plenty of variation in individual guilds and raids.

In my guild’s raids, our shadow priest is definitely giving me a run.  If I’m not right on my game he’ll pass me in dps.  On some fights, like Conclave of Wind with a lot of movement and target switching, he has already passed me.

Notable on that list at the State of Dps web site, assassination is still ahead of combat in every fight except Halfus Wyrmbreaker.  Presumably that because of the combat BF cleave running up big numbers when downing the adds.  Also of note: subtlety is at the bottom of every list, and they couldn’t even find enough sub rogues to make a good statistical sample.

I’m still running combat for heroics and assassination for raids.  I can’t bring myself to even try the sub spec.

Guild

We’re at the point of decision making with our guild.  We want to do 25-man raiding.  Really we do.  We try almost every week.  But we have a lot more success in our 10-man raids.

If it was just about loot, loot, and more loot we’d switch to 10-man raids in a minute.  There’s more to the game than loot, though.  There’s camaraderie and the chance to play with friends.  There are more than 9 other people that I’d like to raid with, so we keep banging our heads against the wall trying to find 25 people who can work together.  Still, its getting close to the frustration point for many of our players.

My guild is still keeping up with the daily XP cap.  We’re at level 17 which got us the G-Mail perk.  We also got the recipe for the Seafood Magnifique Feast.  We have over 1100 guild achievement points, which puts us at #3 on our server.  Since we don’t push raid progression, that’s a nice measure of our dedication.  We have not lost too many people due to apathy.  I suspect that we might lose a couple to Rift, but we’ll have to wait and see.

My Playtime

I barely run heroics on my rogue now.  They have certainly become easier now that gear has caught up with dungeon difficulty and people have learned the fights.  I have not had many failpugs in the past couple of weeks.  I still cannot get a ranged weapon or wrist drop, though, and its starting to annoy me.

I’ve leveled a paladin tank.  I really hate tanking heroics.  Well, mostly I hate marking targets.  So, instead of getting heroic drops I geared him up the old-fashioned way – I bought him stuff.  I spent over 20k buying BoE and crafted items on the AH.  He’s geared enough that I was able to off-tank a Halfus Wyrmbreaker kill, so I guess that’s acceptable.  The only problem with this gearing method is that I don’t have any reputations high enough to buy him an arcanum or any other goodies.

I’m now working on a shadow priest.  I eventually plan to switch him to Disc and heal, but for leveling its shadow all the way.  Wow, he does a ton of damage.  Its easily faster than leveling on my rogue was.  I don’t even have to stop for mana.  I’m actually pulling 2-3 mobs at a time just to make things interesting.  That’s weird for a clothie toon.

Auction House

The glyph market has almost completely dried up.  I’m just making enough to break even with my weekly raiding costs, and with buying gear for my alts.  I may have to start looking for other gold-making markets now.

That’s all that is going on with me right now.

Boo! Blizzard takes away Guild XP from achievements

Last night, on the first night of play in a brand new expansion, I was in Deadmines on a level 80 character.  Not heroic Deadmines – regular Deadmines.

One of the amazing things about WoW is the way it can appeal to many different playstyles.  When a person logs on they can do so with the intent of:

• raiding
• questing
• instancing
• farming
• playing the auction house for gold
• leveling professions
• leveling alts
• getting achievements
• being social

And, until yesterday, there was one more option…

• leveling your guild

Of all the things that excited me about Cataclysm, the guild leveling was the big star.  I had every intention of doing anything I could to get my guild to level and start getting perks for my guildmates.  The daily cap on Guild XP was reached by about 6 AM, so the other option (I thought) was to get guild achievements which (until yesterday) were supposed to be able to exceed the daily cap.

With that in mind, one of the first things I did in the game was to get a group of four officers to start blitzing old instances and get some “Guild Run” achievements.

We sprinted through Deadmines and got the achievement splash for it.  After all the “grats” I checked the guild XP meter and it hadn’t changed.  We did Shadowfang Keep and got the achievement, and again no change.

I turned to the internet and found the blue post about guild achievements.

We have decided to remove the added bonus of gaining Guild Experience from Guild Achievements earned. This change will realign Guild Achievements with our philosophy held for normal Achievements, which are intended to be predominantly their own reward (barring the rare exception of special achievements that grant an additional reward.) Previously, the experience reward had been seen as an additional side bonus and not something that should have been significantly skewing the advancement of guilds. During the beta, we greatly increased leveling speed across the board and since most characters were copied from templates, guild experience from Achievements didn’t seem imbalanced. It has become clear that an imbalance does exist and should be addressed to ensure that guilds progress at the rates expected within the daily Guild Experience limits.

Ouch.

The reason this hits me so hard is that it actually took away an entire mode of gameplay.  It actually removes one of the options from the list I made above.  Chasing guild achievements was about the most exciting thing about the expansion for me, and was going to be my primary activity for the first week of the expansion.  Now I can only help my guild by questing and instancing, which is back to the same-old-WoW.

As far as I can tell, any sizable guild will level at the same rate as all the other sizable guilds, because we’ll reach our daily cap every day.  Will that mean that my guild and, say, Premonition will be at the same level?  That makes no sense.  It doesn’t hurt anyone for some guilds to level faster than others.

Blizzard gets a big thumbs-down from me on that one.