Growing as a Player

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No matter what your role in a raid is, tank, healer, or dps, there is always room for improvement.  Now I know that there are dps meters and healing meters and…well…good aggro management used to judge how you are doing as a player.  However, that is not what I mean when I say growing.  True for dps, being higher on the dps charts than someone else can mean that you are pushing your keys in the right order; and for healing being highest on healing done can be a real ego stroke.  Nevertheless, those things are superficial to what makes a good team player.

Today I would like to discuss other things that make you a good player, other than topping charts (though chart topping is good!).  For all three roles, the first step is avoiding damage.  If you are tanking you have to be using active mitigation, as well as moving out of as much bad as you can and still feasibly tank your mobs.  If you are playing a healer or damage dealer, this means sacrificing some healing and damage dealing to move out of things.  Healers, this also means letting people stay damaged if it means having enough mana to finish the fight, or even letting them die if they are continually taking avoidable damage because they are too focused on winning to move.

Communication is another important tool to work on.  It doesn’t have to be a speech, but a quick “I’m oom” or “heading left” can help out your raid quite a bit but only if you are willing to speak up and say something.  While it is true that a lot of talking on voice chat can be very distracting, no talking can mean a wipe.  Communication also includes knowing the fight so that you can effectively do your part.  If you do not know the fight, you need to communicate that as well.  This is probably the number one thing that people do not work on, when trying to improve their game.

Do not be afraid to try something new.  On your off nights, try that talent you have been wondering about, or change your reforge priorities.  You may find that changing a talent here or there, or changing your reforging can give you the freedom to move more, or survive a little longer during heavy raid damage.  You may also find that it is a total flop and it was the worst thing ever, but you never know if you do not try.  Do not be afraid to pick something that considered suboptimal for your class by players who play differently than you do.  Design your talents/glyphs and such to suit your play style, do not change your play style to suit the talents.  Unless you are trying to play as say a dps in tank spec, in which case, please pick a role.

To wrap this up, do not become a complacent raider.  Once you stop trying to improve all aspects of playing the game, you have stopped growing. While you should still try to beat out the other dps in your raid, do not do so at the expense of doing poorly in other aspects of raiding.

Something important to me!

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I haven’t had a post in a couple of weeks, and I’m working on that, however, I’m going to take the time to relay something important to me:

My friend Restokin is doing some great things in Autism Research, and she also could use some help with funding her research at Penn State. Click the link to read more about her and what she does, and what she needs help for.
http://www.restokin.com/2012/11/the-positive-side-of-video-games/

A few months ago, she was a big help when my son and his family was looking for resources to get through some issues. Please help her get the funding she needs to help Autistic children get the help they need! Every little bit helps!

Nat Pagle will be my BFF

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Well, eventually he will…I haven’t had the patience so far to dedicated myself to doing the fishing for it daily.  But since I’ve had to explain to Kurby the process for getting rep with Nat Pagle a couple of times, I figured I’d do a quick blog post about it.  All of my knowledge on the subject has came from the wonderful El over at El’s Anglin!

The only way you can get reputation with Nat Pagle is to fish up rare fish from Pandaria   There are three types of fish and you can turn in one of each per day.  You can also only ever have one of each in your bag.  Theoretically you can fish up one of each, turn them in then fish up another of each for the next day if you don’t have time to fish every day.  Sadly they also have a very low drop rate, so you may be fishing a while to get them all, or you may get lucky and get them quickly.

You get one from sha touched water, one from inland water, and one from ocean water.  Before patch 5.1 you could only get them from open water, but El reported on twitter the other day that they also now drop from pools in those locations.  The fish are Spinefish Alpha (sha touched water), Mimic Octopus (ocean water), and Flying Tiger Gourami (river water), each are unique bind on pickup.  The catch rate between pools and open water is about the same, however fishing from pools nets more valuable fish, however if you want to just sit in one spot and aimlessly fish while watching netflix fishing from open water does have it’s perks of not having to move!

El states that it will take an average of 6000 casts to reach best friends with Nat Pagle, so don’t expect this to be a breeze.  I personally have other things I’m working on at the moment so I limit my progress to fishing for raid food at the moment.  For the best and most current information, visit El’s Anglin at the link above.

 

The Making of Little Chromie

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My daughter watches us raid sometimes, and during one Dragon Soul encounter, she decided she wanted to be “The Red Dragon Lady!”…which, as most of you should know is Alexstraza the Life-Binder:

Borrowed from:
http://wow.zamimg.com/uploads/screenshots/normal/205873.jpg

Well, My daughter is 9, sooo that just wasn’t happening.  Maybe when she’s 30…and I’m dead….maybe.

So we searched over all the dragonkin we could think of that she may like and we found this image of Chromie:

 And my daughter absolutely loved it.  So, I sat out to find the stuff to make my girl child into Chromie. (*note* we did use the shoulders from Chromie in Andorhal image as our basis to make the ones in the photo)

I bought a child’s choir robe, a child’s black graduation stole, some various embellishments, a blue pendant and a blonde wig.  I did the entire costume with a (low temp) hot glue gun and some tacky glue.  Kurby constructed the shoulders out of felt, black paint and more embellishment.

The gown, I glued embelishment to the arms and bottom

Added the stole which I added the gold embellishment to as well.

Kurby hand crafted the shoulders from felt

We made the gold part of the front from some extra fabric and tried it on her

and then we added in the shoulders!

All in all, the costume probably cost me about 40 dollars to make, including all the supplies to put it together, and it made me one entirely happy child!  She really enjoyed seeing replies to her photo on twitter!  Thank you to everyone who gave the kind words and encouragement as we were piecing the costume together and getting opinions!

Who’s the best healer for the job?

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As someone who went from a shadow priest who’d never raided before, to co-leading a guild within the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, I’ve had my stumbling ground when it comes to deciding how to best approach the healing assignments in a fight.  And it was stumbling at first…I really didn’t know much about the other healing classes, and not only that, I was making my decisions base on the healing class, not the healer.  While healing today is much different than healing in Wrath, overall, some classes are suited to one role or the other.

Paladins are, in general, better suited to tank healing, they *can* successfully raid heal, but in general, they thrive better with tank healing.  Discipline priests are strong tank healers, but they lack the aoe of a holy priest.  Holy priests can be wonderful tank healers, so long as they aren’t also responsible for cranking out raid aoe healing at the same time…which can be said about all healing classes.  They can perform both roles, just not at the same time.  (I haven’t yet healed on my Monk, so I can’t really talk about the state of monk healing!)

More importantly though, is the play-style of the healer.  Some people are really great at tank healing (no matter their class) and others *coughs* Kurby *coughs* can’t focus on just one person and make much better raid healers.  Talking with your healing team is a good way to find out who may be suited to a particular role.  Also observation is key, if you’re trying to figure out how your team is going to work together, look at the logs and see who tends to focus and who tends to spread the love.  If your assigned tank healer spends most of their time healing the raid, and the other healers are healing the tanks, perhaps the assignments should be adjusted.  Don’t be rigid in your decisions if it isn’t working!

 

That Daily Thang

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World of Daily Craft.  That is what it’s called currently among many of the folk I follow on twitter.  Upon hitting level 90 and looking at daily options, many people simply log out for a few hours to collect themselves before taking a few calming breaths and logging back in to get started.  But really, daily quests do not have to be as overwhelming as many people make them out to be.

Start small.  Eliminate the daily quests that you don’t need to do, in order to complete what you do want to do.  If you are a raider, you can cut out the secondary quests.  Tillers (and the cooking quest) can be great, but, also unnecessary right away.  Find someone willing to cook your food for you, or buy it on the auction house.  This will get expensive, but, in the long run you’ll have more time for other quests.  You can also cut out Angler, Lorewalker, and Serpent dailys.  That leaves Klaxxi and Golden Lotus, then Shado-Pan and August Celestials once they are opened.  If you have a buddy, group up and finish them in about 1 to 2 hours a day.  Yes, that is still a LOT of time, but it’s also about 25 daily quests.  If you don’t have a friend to group with, see if other folks in the zone will group with you.  Once you max out your reputation with Klaxxi and Golden Lotus, stop.  (You do want to max it though, for a ring and neck piece, if you’re a raider).  If those 4 at once are too much for you, finish the first two entirely, then start the second two.  It’s not like its a race you know, valor caps will still dictate what gear you can buy and how fast you can buy it.

If you aren’t a raider, and gear isn’t of the utmost importance, pick your dailys that you want to do and don’t stress the rest.  If I weren’t a raider, I would spend much more time on Nat Pagle rep than I do now!  Granted I’ve had some time between semesters of school to work out a lot of the reputation, I still haven’t found the time to fish my 3 rare fish a day and keep my sanity as well.

Quite a few people I know aren’t running heroics because they feel the gear rewards aren’t very rewarding. Once you hit the magical LFR ilvl of 460, it feels less important to do random heroics for epic loot that is so rare, you feel like you have a better chance of getting the headless horseman mount while running dire maul.  Sure I’ve seen an epic in a heroic.  Once.

So, don’t let the daily thing get you down.  Pick and chose your battles (pun intended), because once it starts feeling like work it ceases to be fun.  Don’t burn yourself out!!

 

Guild Leader’s Perspective: Offspec

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As some of you know, I started this expansion with the intention of going Guardian/Resto as my spec, as our guild was down a tank, and well…I love resto.  Currently I’m sitting at Guardian/Balance because we had 2 healers, 2 tanks and one dps at level 90 for a while, so I needed a viable off spec for doing daily quests and heroics with.  Now however, I’m left with the question of what off-spec I will be using for raiding on my main.  I am mainly using Guardian for EVERYTHING except perhaps heroics, and balance only for heroics.  I don’t like playing balance.  I’ve tried.  I am just not really good at following the nuances of it that are required to play it well.

That leaves me reconsidering my resto off-spec…however, the question comes to mind, when exactly would I use this offspec?  Heroics–We have two full time healers and a part timer already.  Raiding?  It’s possible then for me to go healing and us pug in a tank it’s much easier sometimes to get a pug tank than a pug healer on our server..but as the content gets on farm, we won’t need me at all as a healer likely.  I could try feral, but then I’d need to regear for it (because who wants to dps in dodge gear?) but I don’t think I’d be much better at that than I am at balance.

So, what do I do?  I talk with my raid leader and ask what he would like for me to off spec as.  He asked me to either go resto or be prepared to go resto as needed.  As guild leader, I actually don’t make the raid makeup based decisions.  I trust the raid leader, to know what needs we have for the raid, and he makes raid based decisions.

 

Questing Courtesy

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Now that some of us have made it to level 90, we’ve done a lot of questing.  Questing to level, questing to get rep, questing to get food, questing to get mounts.  Pretty much once you reach cap, you still have to continue progressing your character.  Questing can get to be tiresome and frustrating.  But you know what makes it even worse?  Asshats.

Yep, I said it.  Asshats.  People who run up to take stuff they clearly see you fighting towards, or dot that mob you are heading for.  They also kite a big group of mobs over your aoe, then, they drop aggro!  That is like the BEST one…they live and you…well…hopefully you don’t die, but usually when it’s me, I do, because I’ve already pulled what I think I can handle.

Don’t get me wrong, I”m not talking about the folks who are questing in the same area and occasionally grab a mob you were going for…it happens.  Or the person who was running for their life and honestly didn’t notice you fighting for yours.  Usually, in those situations, the person says sorry and moves on (or helps even!).

Questing is a noncompetitive sport, there’s enough stuff to go around for everyone. You don’t have to be an asshat, you just have to wait a few moments for stuff to respawn.  In fact the more people who are working in an area questing (at least in the newer content) the more mobs and items spawn!

Some common courtesy tips:

  • Don’t steal mobs.
  • Don’t train your mobs on someone else.
  • Don’t take a resource someone is fighting on top of.
  • Don’t skin mobs until the person killing them walks away, if they leave them, they likely aren’t a skinner.

Yes, I do realize I’m preaching to the choir here, but, as someone who can only comfortably kill one goat at a time, it gets really old.  (dumb fatty goat steaks)

A Quick and Easy Guide to Daily Quest Hubs

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Ok, so you’ve hit 90, you’ve got time on your hands and you want to do ALL the dailies, or, maybe you just don’t know where they are.  This is a Quick and Easy guide to the various factions and where to go for your daily quests.  Please, keep in mine, my priority list may not be the same as yours.

Professions:

Jewel-crafting – do your research
Alchemy – make any transmutes you can
Inscription - do your daily research
Tailoring – make your cloth
Cooking – Pick up the daily at Halfhill

Main Factions:

The Klaxxi–Located in Dread Wastes, you’ll need to have done at least part of the zone to open up the daily quests.  I strongly urge you to do the whole zone because the quest rewards are high enough gear level to get you into heroic five man content.  I would make this a high priority daily hub.

Golden Lotus – Located in the central area of Vale of Eternal Blossoms (where the “log in screen” statues are).  You need to have reached revered status with Golden Lotus to open up Shado Pan and The August Celestial faction daily quests, and as a result their epic gear.  I strongly urge prioritizing these daily quests over all others.

The August Celestials – You need to speak with the Quartermaster located under your capital city once you reach revered with Golden Lotus, each day they will direct you to where your help is needed most (aka where the daily quests will be).  In addition, there are always daily quests up for them in the Cradle of Chi-Ji, which is the largest of the Islands off the coast of the Krasarang Wilds.  From what I’ve found, if Chi-Ji is your breadcrumb, then that is the only daily hub you will have for them for that day.  These daily quests should become a priority once you open them.

The Shado-Pan–Their daily quest hub is located in Townlong Steppes at the flight path closest to Niuzao Temple.  Enchanters are going to find their best enchants with these guys.  These daily quests should become a priority once you open them.

Order of the Cloud Serpent–This faction is purely for fun items.  They have the Jewel-crafting patterns for the mount, and the Cloud Serpent mounts at Exalted   These are fun, and if you have time to do them, they are located at the Arboretum in Jade Forrest.  If you don’t have time, they aren’t going anywhere!

Secondary Factions:

Tillers– The tillers give us the ability to grow our own farm, which can be used for any profession, and even to farm motes of harmony once you reach the proper reputation. To get started with the Tillers, check out the information I posted here.

Anglers–Nat Pagle is back again along with some friends.  This rep is entirely to give you things to make fishing easier, if you enjoy fishing head over to the Anglers wharf in the Karasang Wilds.

Lorewalkers: This faction gives Archaeology a nod, there is a mount you can get as well.  You should see Lorewalker Cho at the top of Mogu’shan Palace to get daily quests.  To reach exalted with the Lorewalkers however, you do not need archaeology or daily quests, Michael Sacco at WoW Insider did a really good post about that!

These are the daily areas I’ve opened up so far, I hope this quick guide helps!