Holy Trinity 2.0 – Healers

I’m going to start with Healers, because as in the Intro post, I think there is an issue with DDs requiring heals when they make a mistake.  The DD discussion would feel out of place considering current mechanics – that is, without first removing the ability to heal DDs from Healers.

What changes would I make to DDs so they are more self-sufficient? That is, so that others could not compensate for them in the event of major failures?  Well, aside from encounter design that’s basically just “go DPS that add over there” or “use some ability to CC or otherwise control this add”, it seems that the biggest help DDs get is from external healing.  Hrmm, that’s maybe something we could change.

You might say, “Of course they get external healing (from Healers), that’s because they can’t heal themselves!!”  In current design, no, they can not.  Currently, Healers are expected to heal all damage from all sources done to all players.  But what if Healers couldn’t heal DDs?  What if GCDs were too constrained, or casts were too long, or healing was more channelled?

Let me give some examples. 

A change could be made to make healing require a very strict use of GCDs such that missing too many would lead to tank death.  This might be too harsh penalizing those with less than stellar connections, and less than perfect understanding of the class.  The idea here is that Healers would litterally not have the GCD requirement to use heals for DDs.

Changes could be made to make more (all) healing spells channeled.  Think a healing version Mind Flay. Having all spells be channeled might be boring, so asomething would likely be needed to keep healing interesting.  The idea here is that putting a quick HoT on the DDs then continueing to heal the Tank is out of the question.  Channeling a heal for the DDs would obviously mean the Tank isn’t getting heals for the duration. 

Alternate: “Charged” heals – just pressing the healing button casts a very small, very expensive heal.  The longer you hold down the healing button, the more efficient the spell gets.  More mana would be used, but healing amount would go up at a higher rate. When the button is released, the heal is cast/mana used based on how long you held down the button.  This technique could possibly be used to also throw in some heals for DDs, but they would be very inefficient and likely not enough to cover mistakes – also takes away from Tank healing at the same time. 

Similar idea with long cast times – starting a 5 sec cast on a DD means the tank won’t be getting healed for at least 10 secs (5 secs for the DD heal to go off, then another 5 for the Healer to get a 2nd heal for the Tank.)  Similar problems with the channeled/charged strategy in that this would probably be a pretty boring playstyle only pressing a button once every 5 secs or less. 

What about this?  Make healing spells cost a ludicrous amount of mana (maybe 2-4x current costs). Then give Healers a buff they can place on the tank that reduces the mana cost of heals back to “normal” levels (50-80%).  This way, healing Tanks is equal to current mechanics, but throwing a heal on a DD would cost a huge portion of the Healers mana pool.  The cost of the buff would also be hugenormous, leaving out the idea of putting the buff on the DD, then healing him, then putting it back on the Tank and resuming business as usual.  The idea is that DDs litterally can not be healed, and that healing a DD would be a mistake on the part of the Healer.

Other obvious changes would need to be made, such as removing AoE healing, and/or modify it so that it can not be used often.  I like the idea of the old school 5 min Tranquility, and wouldn’t mind keeping that in – but everything else would pretty much go.

There are probably other ways to ensure that Healers do not heal DDs during an encounter.  These are some I came up with off the top of my head.

Here’s what got me thinking about this in the first place.

Tanks and Healers “learn” immediately. 
For Healers – not enough heals = people die.
For Tanks – mob wasn’t positioned correctly and killed/damaged others.  Threat, etc.

Not only that, for the most part, they know WHY they failed.  Didn’t dispel quick enough, didn’t taunt, didn’t use my cooldown, healed the wrong target, etc

DDs don’t have the opportunity learn quickly, ignoring non-universal duties such as interupting, CC, etc.  An individual DD’s damage is combined into a pool of all the others in the raid.  Arguably the best indicator of DD failure is “standing in the fire” and dieing, thus dropping DPS output to zero for the remainder of the fight (I hesitate to include this as Tanks and Healers can also do the same, and thus isn’t a DD specific duty).  Aside from that it’s not until AFTER the fight is over when you can tell if an individual player is pulling their weight (typically).  Even more so, you typically can’t find out which specific DD is underperforming (or if you can figure that out which specific DD failed – WHY did he fail?) without utilizing 3rd party resources (combat log parsers/addons).  There’s nothing in a boss fight that pops out and says “DD you failed!”, like there is for Tanks and Healers. The best DDs can do without 3rd party help is how well they “feel” they are performing.

At least in my totally biased opinion.

So the lesson is Ande hates DDs?? What does this have to do with the Trinity?  I think most players will agree that Tanks generally have enough to worry about in a boss fights, as do healers.  Most might also agree that many times DDs have very little to worry about – at least in comparison to their tanking and healing counterparts.

Again remember that some things are not DD specific, and thus I do not include them as “something DD has to do”, such as “moving out of fire” or watching for various other mechanics.  Everyone in the raid does that.  Tanks and Healers do those too – in additon to their role specific duties.

The general idea is to make DDs responsible for themselves more – make it so that others can not as easily compenstate for their failures such as in tanking or healing.  What do I mean by that?  As above (generally speaking) the only on-the-fly way to recognize DD failure is “standing in the fire”, but (also as above) that is not a failure specific to DDs as Tanks and Healers can do the same.  Also, typically, when a DD stands in the fire and does not die – it’s now the responsibility of the Healer to heal him back up before he does die. 

A very bad DD failure results in a death, thus likely hurting the rest of the group.  Bad DD failures put pressure on the rest of the group to overcome said failure – whether from lack of DPS, standing in the fire. 

Tanks and Healers have a certain synergy between them.  DDs have very little between either, and most of it isn’t specific to the DD role, but generally applied to all in the group.

So the next few posts will introduce possible changes to this model without removing it.  There will still be a need for Tanks, Healers and DDs, except that their responsibilities would change within group encounters.

No, that’s not what I did.  What I said was that using gear as a basis for future performance is a flawed theory.  The addon does a good job at what it was programmed to do – give an overall summary of a player’s gear.  Yes, I also know that you can further inspect a player by targetting them and typing “/gs” to get more details about their spec, etc.  Used in that fashion, the addon really isn’t all that terrible.  It does give an overview of what instances and bosses the player has killed and not killed.  It does also give a good estimate of caps, such as Hit and uncrittability (for tanks). 

It is still not that perfect by any means.  And although, I really do not want this to be entirely about the addon, I fell like I need to explain somethings – mostly to (re)illustrate some of my points.

For one, it subtracts points if you are missing some stats, or have some of another, non-optimal stat.  Missing stats, I totally understand, like being under the Hit or Expertise cap.  Additional stats, does not make sense.  For example, if a tank is wearing the best in slot shoulder enchant, he would be subtracted points, because it has resilience on it – which is useless in PvE.  Although true, it’s still the BiS enchant for that item slot.  Why am I being penalized by an addon for having BiS enchantments?  A tank with a non-optimal enchant – the Sons of Hodir one – would techncially be rated higher than I by the addon, all other things being equal. 

Other examples are less obvious such as a DPS Warrior wearing a piece of Mail or Leather gear with a small amount of Intellect on it – even though it is likekly much better than an equal level Plate piece.  Healers having 1 or 2 +Hit items, even though they were likely huge upgrades, etc. 

One thing to note is it only takes into account things you have on your character, not things you don’t have on your character.  Did I confuse you?  As above, if a Holy Priest has some +Hit items in his gearset, he would be subtracted points, because Hit is a non-optimal (in 99% of situations) stat for healers.  This is true.  What the addon fails to recognize is if that Priest is completely missing any gems or enchants. 

PallyA and PallyB are both Ret Paladins with the exact same 16 relevant slots of gear.  PallyA has maximum enchants and gems, and is a prime example of a cookie-cutter Ret Pally.  PallyB has zero enchants and zero gems.  The Gearscore Addon will give them the exact same score.  Which would you rather have in your group?

Plus – at least for some classes – higher item level gear is not always an upgrade, especially considering trinkets et al.  DMC: Greatness anyone?

Who Cares?

As I’m sure you’ve heard many times, and as I also stated in part 3 of this series, “A bad player with a 5k GS will do better than a bad player with a 4k GS.”  This is also stated on the Curse page for the GS addon.  Firstly, as I tried to prove – or at least state – in my previous posts, low DPS is not the cause of wipes in most raid encounters.  Lack of execution – or as I like to see it lack of competency – is the cause of most wipes in raids.  How can I tell if a player is comptent?  (Plus, you just admitted the player is bad – why would you take them, regardless of gear?)

Proper enchantments.  Although properly upgrading your gear doesn’t automatically make you able to move out of fire, and DPS the correct target instead of mindlessly AoEing, it does tell me one thing.  It tells me that you took at least 5 minutes out of your ultra-busy schedule to read up on a website.  It tells me you are competent.  If you spent 5 minutes researching a basic part of your class (gems and enchants), then I could also assume that you spent another 5 minutes researching the proper spell rotation for your class.  Although this is only inductive reasoning, and not deductive logic, I think it’s a safe pretty assumption. 

Conversely, if a player does not have any gems or enchants, or if they are totally wrong, I can assume that they spent no time researching their class – or they did, but didn’t understand it.   I can also assume the same about their spell rotation.  If they do not fully understand how their own class works, how can I expect them to understand how something they do (or not do) can affect the entire raid?  Again, purely inductive, but I have a hard time believing someone can understand that switching DPSing the adds (even if your individual DPS suffers a small bit) is more beneficial than continueing DPS on the boss – if they don’t understand basics of their own class. 

Show me you know WTF you are doing – what you do with the gear available to you.  The item level of your gear does not show me this.

Truely Overgeared

OK, sometimes, the raw item level of a player’s gear does show me this.  But it’s usually only in the absolute most extreme cases.   Even then, there are other indicators of the player’s competence beyond gear. 

Say you are putting together a PUG for ICC.  10 or 25 man, doesn’t matter.  Assume you are one of the clueless PUG leaders that thinks a higher GS equates to a higher chance of success, and are asking for for a minimum 5k GS before they can join the raid.  You get a whisper from a Mage saying he has a 6400GS.  You of course, invite him, as a 6400 GS player in the raid will surely mean a much higher chance of success! 

While you are not incorrect, there are other ways you could have come to the same conclusion.  For one, he would likely have the Kingslayer title attached to his name.  That in and of itself, says he has experience all the way though, including, the Lich King.  A closer look at his gear would find that he has many ivll 277 pieces, indicating that he’s killed a few bosses on heroic mode. 

And that’s pretty much the only time gear will be a likely indicator of future performance – when it’s basically overboard (the same is true for the very low end of gear).  A look at that player’s achievements would bring you to the same conclusion - and is totally independant of gear.  I’d be willing to bet that all of his gear would not only be gemmed and enchanted correctly, but that it would be the exact same setup you would find on a site such as EJ.  All of this was totally obtainable without knowing the item level of the gear he currently has equipped. The fact that you knew the item level of his gear only brought you to the same place, but only because he’s overgeared and overqualified for what you plan on doing (6/12 or 9/12, whatever).

But I Want to Lead a Raid, I has to use Something!!

Do you?  Successfull PUG raids have been happening since UBRS.  What tools do you think they used back then?  Most likely - nothing.  Part of that was because nearly all players were at roughly the same gear levels.  But isn’t that about how it is now?  With the exception of alts that just hit 80, and those doing hard mode instances, I’d have to imagine most players are in the 5K GS range (+/- 400).  Is that a big enough difference to include or exclude a player from your raid? 

As I stated in my previous posts – why not use another metic.  Something besides gear.  Or at least something besides the raw item level of the gear.  In a pefect world, players would visit a theory site such as EJ to learn about other classes if they plan on leading PUG raids on a (semi-)regular basis.  Of course that’s a lot to ask.  Even as a full time raid leader for a progression oriented guild, I did not know everything about every class or spec.  To this day, I could not tell a cookie cutter Warlock from an off-the-wall one.  But that’s OK, there are tools out ther to help you.

What Matters

Is there a perfect way to guess the future performance of a random player?  No, not likely.  But there are better ways than looking at the item level of gear.  I personally think achievements are a decent indicator – although I admit they are not perfect either.  I do think they are better than looking at the item level of your gear though. 

If a player has heroic modes down (even of the last raid tier), you can assume they know all the mechnics associated with them.  Also – many heroic modes require multiple attempts to get down, meaning the player will likely not bail out on the first wipe of the evening. 

No (relevant) achievements isn’t necessarily indicitive of zero potential, but it is similar to a high school grad applying to an Engineering job.  I’d definately let someone with zero achievements into a run that was going for 6 or 8 ICC bosses, but would not expect that player to be able to handle more than that, and especially not any heroic modes.  If you’re planning on leading a run that’s only going 6/12 in ICC – do you really need people that have a 5800 GS?   (That levle of gear is basically ready to do hard modes. )

Tools for the Job

Firstly, the failure or succuess of any given encounter is totally independant of gear.

Of course when I say this I’m talking about your average run of the mill normal mode encounter.  Heroic modes do not count.  Resistance based encounters do not count.  For pretty much every other fight in the game  – what gear the raid is wearing is more or less irrelevant. 

What are instances dependant upon?  Execution.  Move out of the ooze, cleanse the debuff, switch to the add, interupt the Cast of Doom.  Failing to properly handle those situations is generally what wipes a raid – and none of them technically require gear.  There are only a handful of encounters with strict enough enrage timers that they could argueably be considered “gear checks”.  The vast majority of encounters focus more on execution of either proactively or reactively dealing with a specific ability. The vast majority of fights either do not have hard enrage timers, or have extremely generous ones that essentially render them null.  Simply put, low DPS/healing numbers is rarely the main cause of a wipe.  For the cases that it is the cause (gear checks) – keep reading, I go over that below.

The item level of a player’s gear does not tell me if he will be able to correctly handle the above scenarios.  I’ve seen the argurment that, “A bad player with a 5k GS will do better than a bad player with a 4k GS.”  I would argue that can only be theorectically true for tanks.  A healer with 5k GS that can not dispel or heal the correct target is useless.  5k GS ranged DPSers that continue to DPS Saurfang while the Beasts are up are not helping the raid – but rather hindering it.  A 5k GS tank that fails to move out of Marrowgar’s fire, or Deathwhisper’s D&D can be healed through much easier than a 4k GS tank could – but that’s about the extent of it.

Again – the failure or succuess of any given encounter is totally independant of gear – as it does not show that a player can adequately prevent things that actually wipe raids on the majority of fights.  It is mostly failure to react, or prepare for specific events.  It’s lack of execution.   Or as I see it, competency – that is, the player knows what to do, just fails to actually perform the act needed to ensure he survives or the boss dies. 

Min/Maxing

Secondly, even entertaining the idea that fights are dependant upon gear – gear is not a minimum, it’s a maximum.  It’s impossible to do 10k single target DPS with a 3k GearScore – that just has to do the limitations of the game.  It is very possible to do 2k DPS with a 5k GS – there’s nothing hard coded that says for every point of item level, all mobs around you take XXX damage per second.  Your gear only acts as a limiter in what you can do (to an extent), but does not provide a basis for any minimums. 

You can say that a player with a 5k GearScore “should” be able to do XXX DPS.  If you’re making that assumption, you’re assuming the player is competent enough to research his class and spec, and put forth effort into ensuring his character performs at a high level – that his enchants/gems/glyphs/etc are all appropriate.  If you’re assuming that, then it really doesn’t matter what gear that player has on – as we’ve all ready established his competencies – and as above, that’s what determines the success (or failure) of raids anyway. 

As above, there are a handful of fights where gear may very well be the determining factor in success (tight enrage timer, DPS burn bosses).  If we’re assuming that the game designers made it hard, if not impossible, to kill the boss without a certain level of gear – we must also assume they designed the fight knowing players would have a high enough skillset to make good use of the gear (again, that they are competent).  See also: previous paragraph.

If a raid can not fully utilize their gear (can not pass the “gear check”), then - technically speaking - the raid’s gear must increase in order to compensate for their deficiencies, as that’s what gear does.  Now we’re at a catch-22.  A raid needs better gear – which drops from the boss they can not kill.  But they can not kill the boss, because they need better gear.  The onus is on the player to utilize his gear, not the gear to carry the player.  

But the gear can not lift the player up to that level.  A player that does a paltry 2k DPS with a 4500 GS, will surely do more DPS with a 6k GS.  Assuming all things stay the same, his gear simply allows him to output more damage via increased AP/SP/Crit/Haste/whatever.  But will it be enough?  Assume Festergut with his 9.5 mill HP and a raid group of 2 tanks, 3 healers and 5 DPSers.  Assume the tanks are doing 1/2 the damage of a DPSer, so in essense you have 6 DPS.  You need an average of ~5280 DPS to kill him before his 5 min hard enrage timer.  Going from a 4500 GS to a 6k GS would have to increase his DPS 264% in order for him to do the average needed to kill Festergut.   The player above that does 2k DPS with a 4500 GS will not do 5280 with a 6k GS.

Again, gear does not give you a minimum only a maximum.  When strategizing any particular encounter, you are only worried about minimums.  “We need a minimum of 100k raid-wide DPS to kill the boss.”  “We need to heal at least XXX dmg that the boss will do to the tank.” “We need to cleanse the debuff.”  Gear - which gives us a player’s maximum potential - is irrelevant.  Now it’s no longer a “gear check” fight – I.E. does a player have this gear level – but more of a “can the player(s) fully utilize the gear they have?” fight.  It’s a competency check fight.

Therefore, gear does not tell if a player can do the bare minimum even on supposed “gear check” fights.

More is not always More

Lastly, this one is slightly ironic, but still needs to be said.  Again, as above, you see this all the time, “A nub with a 5.5k GS is better than a nub with a 4k GS.  I disagree.  If you accept that what I said above – things that wipe a raid are gear independant – then the gear on the nub is irrelevant.  What is relevant is that he is a nub.  A Hunter with 5.5k GS that stands in the fire, or doesn’t DPS the Beasts on Saurfang, isn’t going to be any more help than a 4k GS Hunter.  Actually, if the 4k GS Hunter CAN move out of the fire, and CAN DPS the Beasts, then he’s more than likely going to be more valuable to the raid than the 5.5k GS nub Hunter.

Gear only makes things quicker and more efficient for those that all ready know what to do.  Gear does not turn nubs or scrubs (or whatever term you feel like using) into competent players.  Gear can not boost an incompetent player’s performance to an acceptable level.

Ironically, gear acquired through the badge system undermines the whole gearing system if you’re looking for PUG raids.  In a guild scenario, this is not really a problem.

But in a PUG – gear in and of itself – holds about as much bearing as the player’s name.  And here’s why.

Reasoning

PUG raid leaders – by definition – are not the raid leader for a guild.  There may be an extremely  small percentage of the population that leads successful raids for their guild, and also leads PUG raids on the weekends.  Although I’ve done zero research on the subject, I can safely presume that these players are in the vast minority.  When you PUG, you’ll not be getting a typical guild raid leader.  PUG leaders typically have little to no experience leading successful raids, and certainly not when the raids are brand new.  They will usually wait until everyone is overgeared (or otherwise intimately familiar with the instance) then go back (either on their alt, or main) for additional loots.  That in and of itself is not wrong, or bad.  But the method(s) they use to build these groups are wrong – at least one of them.

It goes back to what I said in part 1 of this series that there’s a misconception that gear = skill.  Players assume if you have a certain level of gear that you obviously possess a specific set of skills and are also prepared for challenges related to your level of gear.  Although I said it in part 1, I’ll restate a couple things here.

One of the main problems with this assumption is that players can attain a very high level of gear without having to overcome any challenges and without displaying any skill whatsoever.  It’s not to say that everyone with badge gear is completely unskilled – it’s just that they have not had to “prove” themselves in order to get the gear.  All you really have to do is not piss the rest of your groups off enough so that they kick you.  A player dies every boss attempt because he doesn’t move out of the fire?  No biggie, the healer just rezzes him.  A player doing 1500 DPS in full Tier 9 gear?  No biggie, the others think that’s “good enough” for “just a 5 man” anyway.  But at the end of the day, this player will be able to buy high level gear via the badge vendors.

“Theory”

So you and I know that gear in and of itself does not equate to skill.  But then why do 99% of PUG raid leaders still require you to provide an arbitrary number, that’s solely based on just the item level of your gear?

A PUG raid leader is trying to get the best players available.  They are also wanting to just get in, kill some bosses, and go home.  He’s smart enough to know that he will not be getting the creme of the crop, as they are doing raids with their guild.  He is – unfortunately – stupid enough to think that any measure of gear is indication of future performance.  I’d like to say it’s not entirely his fault, but it pretty much is.  I’d like to say there aren’t other means available to measure one’s possible performance in whatever raid you’re wanting to do today – but there are.  Past achievements for one are a huge indicator of how a player is likely to perform in future raids.  A player with 2 bosses killed in Naxx, 3 in Ulduar, and 2 in ToC?  He’s probably just done enough of those instance in order to get the weekly raid bosses a few weeks for 5 “EZ” Frost badges.  A player with hard mode Ulduar achievements has the potential to be magnitudes more valuable to any raid.  I personally would take the Ulduar hard mode guy over the “weekly raid farmer” guy even if he had an inferior gear score.  His résumé is better.

There are other options available, such as checking the gem/enchant selections of the player and verifying it against a site such as Elitiest Jerks.  These other options generally require much more work to inspect each player in the raid – either upfront,  or on the spot – as they need to verify caps and theories regarding each spec in the game and how it pertains to the individual player.  Multiply that by 9 or 24 players in the raid and it’s no doubt that PUG raid leaders are looking for the easy way out.  So they choose an easier method of selecting – supposedly – better candidates.

Their “theory” is that a higher level of gear equates to a higher chance of success on the upcoming boss (or rather a lower chance of the player failing).  The big problem with this (other than being a lazy and inferior way to judge players) is that;

• encounters are designed more or less gear independent
• encounters are designed around meeting minimum levels of performance, while gear only provides a maximum level of performance
• the benefits that additional gear does provide are only shown (ironically) on players that do not need the additional gear to be successful

Those last 3 points I go over in more detail in part 3 of this series.

raid on

~Ande

You probably either hate it, or love it.  For those that have been dwelling under a rock for the past year, GearScore is an addon that calculates the item level of all pieces of gear you’re wearing and converts it to a common number – the credit score of addons if you will.  The addon has received increased visibility lately, mostly from players that do not like that they were denied a spot in a PUG raid due to their gear score.

Players blame the addon for trying to summarize their abilities and capabilities into a singular non-granular number.  Although the addon highlights the problem, I do not think it lies within the addon itself, but rather with common (mis)perceptions.

Way Back When

Way back when Molten Core and Blackwing Lair were the end-all-be-all of raiding, it was easy to spot those that had raided.  If you had gear with purple text, you had done at least Molten Core – as that was the only instance that dropped it (aside from one-off craftables and ultra-rare drops).  If you had BWL gear, it was assumed you had also done MC, as BWL required MC level gear – and the only way to get MC level gear was to do MC.  There were no badge vendors because there were no badges.  You went into an instance, helped kill a boss, and hope he dropped loot that you wanted.  Epic gear came only from doing 40 man raids (aside from the one-offs above).

Back then, gear did equate to experience.  If you had 5 piece Tier 1, any player would assume you knew at least about 1/2 of Molten Core and the various mechanics and challenges related.  If you had a few pieces of Tier 2 gear, one would assume you knew all of MC + most of BWL.  There were probably players that were “carried” to their gear but that had to have been few and far between. (I’ll probably go over “carried” in another post)   If you had the experience of killing Baron Gedon, then you also had the skill set required to help kill him.  Since gear pretty much equaled experience, gear also equaled skill.

Now

But we’re not level 60 anymore are we?  Badge vendors allow players to farm 5 man heroics and buy gear that’s equal to – or better than – gear that drops in raid instances.  How quickly (or slowly) you acquire this gear is irrelevant.  The fact that it can be done is the only thing that matters.  Gear no longer equates to experience, and therefore, does not equate to skill.  It’s no longer accurate to glance at a player’s gear and determine what (if any) experience they have in a raid environment.  Well, at least when referencing the item level of the gear – which is more or less the only thing the GearScore addon uses.

You can still look at a player’s gear and make some assumptions if you’re smart.  Does any of the gear say “Heroic” on it in green text?  Then that player has done at least a hard mode encounter ranging from Ulduar to ICC (depending on the piece).  Does a specific piece only drop from a boss and not available from a badge vendor?  Then they likely have experience (and skill) from that boss.

Evaluations

I think that’s one of the failures of the GearScore addon – it does not value items that can only drop in a raid (heroic/hard mode especially) higher than items that can be bought via doing 20 or so heroic 5 man instances.  Killing a boss gives a player invaluable experience that they can use for any other encounter they come across in the future.  One of the ways to prove that you’ve killed a boss is the gear that you acquired from the kill.  When you are able to acquire gear that’s equal to the gear that drops off a boss via a much easier means – and then try to judge players on that gear – the system no longer has integrity.  It’s not so much that one method is “harder” than the other, it’s that there are multiple methods to acquire the gear that do not share similar requirements nor obstacles. When this happens you can no longer say, “Joebob has this piece of gear.  Therefore, he must know how to do <insert random boss mechanic here>.”  All you can ascertain is that he has ample time on his hands to run X number of dungeons to get the currency to buy the gear – which require little to no skill.

And that’s why the GearScore addon is starting to lose its value toward the end of this WotLK expansion.  It’s not that the addon was poorly coded, or uses improper means to come to its actual “gear score”.  It’s just that using gear as a basis for player experience (and therefore expected knowledge and performance in future raids)  is now flawed, as a player no longer has to experience anything of significance to get gear.  To put it another way, you’re using an arbitrary number to build a group with certain expectations.

In that, you’ll always fail.

I’ll go over this more in part 2.

raid on

~Ande

So what makes a Hardcore player?  What makes a Casual player?  And why can the two never get along?

Two Worlds

The two terms; “casual” and “hardcore” are more or less antiquated – at least when referring to WoW players.  I think the terms still have a place in WoW, but I really think that they are used too frequently, and in the wrong fashion. 

I remember the terms being tossed around at level 60.  At the time, it mostly refered to whether or not a player raided.  Back in Molten Core, many guilds measured progress in weeks and months, not days.  The amount of time required to raid was massive.  Both time spent inside of the dungeon raiding, and time spent outside preparing to raid.  I can remember farming materials for Fire Protection Potions for about 3 hours per week.  That was JUST for the potions.  Not to mention the other endless materials I had to farm for resistance gear, mana/HP potions, repair bills, reagents, etc.  I spend as much time farming as I did raiding!! 

The vast majority of the player base just didn’t want to put forth this much time and effort for 1 instance.  They started labeling themselves as “casual” because they felt like they played the game for fun – and not a second job.  This of course led everyone else (the raiders) to be labeled as “hardcore” – since they obviously had no lives, jobs, or other things to do outside of the WoW world.

 Which of course, is just silly.

Simplification

Blizzard has improved end-game hugenormously since level 60.  First with the introduction of the badge reward system, and then removing any sort of prerequisites such as keys and attunements.  They have tried very hard (and suceeded) in making raiding not only for an elite few, but for everyone.  Raiding is no longer for the best of the best,nearly any player can participate if they want to.  Naxxramas for instance is broken down into 5 wings, which can be tackled all at once, or broken up over time.  So long as a player finds at least 9 others that share his mindset and schedule, he can raid.  Gone are the days of endless farming of resistance gear and consumables for just 1 boss or just 1 night of raiding.

Now that’s not to say that everyone has an equal start when it comes to raiding.  Those that are able to play more will advance more quickly – it IS an MMO after all. 

Hardcore

I believe the term “hardcore” still has it’s place in WoW.  Guilds such as Ensidia and Premonition fall into the Hardcore category – the best of the best.  These guilds are striving for world firsts and often play for many, many hours at a time to get them.  I don’t think I can give an exact measure, but very few guilds/players fall into this category compared to the vast amount that play WoW.  As of this post, only 3 guilds in all of the US and Europe have completed the A Tribute to Insanity achievement (a few Asian guilds have done this also, but Guildprogress.com does not track these).  Only 39 guilds total (out of over 100,000) have cleared the Heroic version of the instance at all, earning them the (comparatively) easier achievement A Tribute to Skill. 

These guilds are Hardcore.

Casual

In my eyes a casual player is one that does not raid at all.  They may not be interested in any of the challenges end-game brings.  I know one particular player that has probably 20 characters – all Hunters - with maybe one of them being level 80.  There’s nothing wrong with playing the game like this at all.  Some could argue that there’s more to do while leveling than there is at the end-game as a whole. 

Somewhere In-between

If you raid on a set schedule – you’re not a “casual” player.  You’re a raider.  Just because you’re not busting out the hardest encounters on track with the worlds best doesn’t automatically make you a Casual player – it makes you a raider.  As above, raiding no longer requires countless hours of preparation and commitment.  Any player can raid so long as they can commit to a set schedule and handful of hours per week.  You can even divide “raiders” into sub-categories if you wanted to.

Competitive Raiding

This is how I’ve been referring to my own guild – a Competitive Raiding guild.  We do not strive for world firsts, but we do not want to be the last guild clearing content either.  We are trying to compete at the server level challenging other guilds on our server for progression.

Relaxed Raiding

This is what I’ve begun to refer to guilds that raid, but at a much slower pace than other raiding guilds.  Guilds that are maybe 1/2 way through with Ulduar at this point.  Maybe they’ve got their feet wet in ToC.  They typically have a set raiding schedule, but sometimes not.  Some of these guilds just raid on the weekends, whenever the appropriate number of players log in.  They may raid back to back nights one week, then not raid at all the next. 

Majority Rules

I really think that the vast, overwhelming majority of WoW players fit into one of the 2 above categories, rather than an oversimplified “casual” or “hardcore”.  Most of us are here to play the game at our own pace.  Sometimes that’s quick, sometimes that’s slow – but we all want to play the game.  And in WoW, that basically means raiding. 

Let’s abolish these 2 antiquated terms, and try to think of some more meaningful and accurate.  Because if you’re talking about Casual and/or Hardcore players, you’re talking about a very small minority of the overall population.

Raid on.

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Raid on.

Any player can have 1 Flask active at a time, or 2 Elixirs – 1 Battle and 1 Guardian.

For the most part flasks to give slightly more benefit than having 1 of each Elixir (by about 10%). This both due to pure itemization, but also because certain Elixirs don’t do much for certain specs. Melee DPS doesn’t get much use out of any of the Gaurdian Elixirs for example, while tanks get little use from Battle Elixirs (depending on gear level).

Flasks also persist through death, while Elixirs fade just as any other buff when you die. Which means even though Elixirs are generally about 1/3 as expensive as a flask, if you are dieing often, Flasks are actually cheaper in the long run, while also offering better buffs..

If you anticipate dieing fairly often (progression content) Flasks are always the best option for both your coin purse, and your performance.

Are Flasks really that good?

Flasks are basically temporary buffs you can give yourself.  For WotLK, they come in 4 basic flavors; AP, HP, SP, Mp5.  But how do they stack up to other buffs?

Comparing Flasks to even the best enchants in the game – Flasks just flat out smoke them. How many melee DPSers have +110 AP or Berserking on their weapon? (all of them I hope…) The comparision between 110 AP and the Flask of Endless Rage is obvious. The Flask gives 70 more AP, or 63%. Berserking averages out to ~140 AP over the course of a fight. The Flasks  still comes out ahead, providing 29% more AP than THE best melee DPS enchant in the game. This is also without taking into consideration buffs you typically get in raids, which further increases a Flask’s effectiveness over enchants.

The same is true for casters and their appropriate enchants and flasks.

Technically speaking – you’re better off using a Flask than enchanting your weapon. Ever see someone in Dalaran with good gear that had no enchants on it? Not Flasking in a raid is pretty much the same thing. (This isn’t to say you should not enchant your gear!!! Read below for more)

But Ande, flasks are expensive…

On my server, most flasks go for about 30g each, some for 20g each. My guild raids 3 hours a night, predictably. This means at most you will spend 100g (rounding up even) on flasks for the night. I, as a plate wearing tank, spend about the same – or more on repair bills every night.

There are quests in the Argent Tournament arena that will give ~26g each, that take about 5 mins to complete. 1 stack of most gatherable materials (ores, herbs, leathers) go for ~20g each. 3-4 quests, or 3-4 stacks of mats will cover your flasks for one evening of raiding.

Or even better. Do like I do. I buy the mats off the AH, then take them to one of our Elixir spec Alchemists to make for me. Elixir spec alchemists can proc additional flasks up to 5x. 5 Flasks for the price of one – BOOSH. I usually buy mats for 10 flasks at a time off the AH (one weeks worth). Costs me about 200g (buying mats is cheaper than buying finished product). More often than not the Alchemists proc an extra 4 for me. 14 Flasks for 200g (14g 40s each – about ½ what they go for on the AH). Two weeks ago I got a 5x, and a 2x proc, giving me 20 flasks for same mats as it would have took to make 10.

Using the examples above for farming, or daily questing, you’d only have to do about 8 quests, or grind 8 stacks of mats to cover your flasks for the entire week. Most players can do that within 1 hour.

Cart Before the Horse

One of the players in my guild, brought up the following point (slightly paraphrased). 

If your DPS/heals suck adding 180 ap or 120 sp isn’t going to do shit – your DPS/heals will still suck.  You’ll get more benefit if you work on your rotation.

My response -

Well, by that same token the same is true for Pally buffs, Mark of the Wild, etc. (How many people bitch when they don’t have Might?  Every-fucking-one.)  Same as wearing only 1 trinket, or ring, instead of 2 each. Each individual buff is not game breaking, I admit that. But each buff stacks with all the other buffs. Taking a flask and eating some delicious fishes increase your AP by 240 or SP by 166 – that’s at least as much as an item level 226 item gives you. This is increased more by things like Trueshot Aura that stack with every buff you get, including Kings, Might and the whole lot.

I also agree 110% that you’d get more bang for the buck by working on your ability rotation or priority.  But it’s a moot point here.  Also – even if you’re DPS is good with 3800 AP, it will be even better with 3980 AP. Which as I stated above, is the same as the difference between a wearing 1 trinket/ring or 2.

Prep for Wiping

This statement was also brought up:

I see no point on flasking or wasting fish feasts on a progression fight until we are past the point of wiping because of boss mechanics.

Most guilds/players do the exact opposite. Learning bosses takes time and money (gold).  Again, by that same logic, we probably don’t need to be wasting reagents buffing players for each attempt either.  Which of course – is just silly.  You use every advantage you can get.  In this case, it comes in the form of an inexpensive, temporary, personal buff

Once you have the boss/instance farm status, is when you recoup the gold from the previous month’s learning process. After you can clear the instance in 2 days without breaking a sweat is when you want to slack off on buffs, not when you’re still wiping on the same mobs over and over.

The first week or 2 in an instance will cost money – loads and loads of money. But even only after a few weeks in Uludar25, my guild was killing 5-6 bosses in 1 night with very minimal wipes (I think most wipes are on trash even ). Worst case scenario, I don’t see how a player could not at least break even on those nights of raiding. If you can kill 6-8 bosses in 1 night in Ulduar, you’ll pickup about 150g just from the bosses. That’s not even counting the money from trash.  That pays for flasks right there, with some change left over for repairs.

The Good of the Many

Individually Flasks are just a nice buff, but when they added en masse to a raid, it makes a big difference.

This is another comment someone made. Assume a 25 man raid with 3 tanks, 6 heals, 6 casters, 8 physical DPS (Hunters included as physical). All casters taking flasks increases raid-wide Spell power by 1500 (to compare an Ulduar geared Mage has ~2100 unbuffed SP). All physical DPS flasking increases raid-wide AP by 1880 (before buffs even).

If we’re assuming a melee DPS can crank out a conservative ~4k DPS with his ~5k AP(buffed), and a Mage will put out 4k with his ~2500 SP(buffed), Flasks add an extra 3800 DPS to the raid if everyone uses them. That’s like cloning a DPSer and 26 mannning it.

The difference between a green quality gem and a Epic quality gem is 8 STR/Agil or 10 SP. The cost difference between the 2, depending upon the AH, is about 100g. Assume the average Naxx/Ulduar gearset has 5 gem slots in it (not counting Meta) the average player spends close to 1000g to increase their STR/Agil by 40 (40 or 80AP depending upon class) or increase their SP by 50. Enchants are very similar in this too.

Spend 1000g for 80 AP, or spend 40g for 180 AP?

Summary

There’s no reason to raid without Flasking. Most people will enchant and gem their gear as soon as they get it – which they should, no doubt. The combination of some gems and enchants can run a player a few hundred gold easily for just 1 piece of gear. Multiply that by the 9 (or 11 for Enchanters) pieces of gear that have enchants available, and most players will spend literally thousands of gold enchanting their gear. There’s no reason you can’t spend 100g for a nights raid – especially when a single flask gives you much, much more benefit than every single enchant in the game.

If your gear makes up the majority of your stats, then Flasks are the icing on the cake.  Flasks are nearly as good as a single piece of gear. Running without one is like running with lower quality gear, or no gear at all.
Wiping 4x on a boss, costs most players as much as buying 1 flask off the AH. If everyone in the raid was using a flask, would you have wiped at all?

Plus, no one likes cake without icing anyway.

Raid on.

How I Learned to Love Extra Credit Achievements

My guild has only just recently been trying for hard mode encounters in Ulduar.  We started off doing only 10 man, and just about as we got Yogg-saron dead, the guild grew large enough to do 25 man.   This of course required us to take a small step back to gear the newer players.  I am just now feeling comfortable enough to start working on the hard modes for some bosses. 

I won’t lie – the hard modes for us were really……hard.  For every failed attempt at the hard mode encounters, I realized that we could have taken smaller steps toward learning the mechanics of each fight rather than jumping headlong into the hardest versions of them.

Little Achievements Lead to Big Things

It began with a look at my own achievements one day, just curious as to what I had done, and what I was close to completing.  I was pretty amazed at how many very easy achievements we had never got.  Not hard modes or anything, just the other little “extra credit” achievements you can do.

For example on Kologarn.  He has no hard mode, nothing that gives extra loot anyway.  A simple achievement (in theory) is to not stand in the eye beams.  That should be a gimme IMO.  It’s not much more than the standard “don’t stand in the fire” mantra we all know and love.  Granted the “fire” follows you this time, but you do have a 2-3 sec window to get out of the way before it actually does damage to you.  But in my 16 kills in 10 man and 9 kills on 25 man, we’ve never managed to do that.  I remember one specific attempt, I noticed a ranged DPSer stand there and eat the eye beam every single time – didn’t move 1 inch.  Like I said, there’s really nothing to that achievement – just move outta the damned eye beams.  Doesn’t require 7k DPS.  Doesn’t require some odd ball gearing or spell selection.  Just move.

The same is true for these other achievements we have yet to accomplish. Cold in Here, Don’t Stand in the Lightning,(gee, I wonder what you have to do for that one….) Shadow Dodger, etc.  I could go on, but you get the idea.  None of these require massive gearing or near perfect coordination – just the same stuff you should all ready be doing in the first place.  No one could expect a group of players to get these on their first time through the instance.  But – as above – after 9 or even 16 times, you’d think it would be old hat by then.  But alas, the fire is still too much. 

One Giant Leap

Even before I started thinking about Ulduar hard modes, I had an unwriten “rule” regarding these types of encounters – mostly stemming from the Tier7 days.  My rule is:

Let’s do the normal mode first.  Let’s perfect the “easy” way of doing this encounter.  Let’s have everyone live through it, and not stand in the fire before we go and turn it up a notch. 

And I think that’s really why it’s taken me so long to even consider trying the hard modes.  We can reliably clear to Yogg now 1 shotting every boss save Mimiron and General – typically a 2 or 3 shot for those gents, although we 1 shot them all last week.  But we never do it cleanly (I think at the end of our General V kill we had about 10 people up).  How can I expect someone to do an extremely hard fight such as Firefighter when they can’t even move out of Kologarn’s eye beams reliably?  That’s the only freaking thing you have to watch out for the entire encounter.

I wasn’t going to jump into Sarth3D when people are still eating lava waves multiple times per fight, and I’m not going to try Mimiron’s Firefighter when melee DPS keeps eating Land Mines in the first phase.  To me it just doesn’t make sense to drive in the Indy500 when you don’t even know how to work a manual transmission.  One step at a time.  Learn the basics, then move on to the hard stuff.  You wouldn’t let a high school grad perform brain surgery would you?

I think there’s 2 main contributors to these “dieing to easy stuff” scenarios.  No motivation and just pure laziness.

Good Enough

Some players have no genuine interest in hard mode encounters or the little “extra credit” achievements.  Although I do not share the same mindset, I can perfectly understand it.  Some players feel that just killing the boss is good enough.  These players may not necessarily be standing in the fires as above on purpose (although they are usually the ones doing so), but they will generally have little interest in learning any new mechanics.  If a boss has any new tricks up his sleeve for hard mode, these players generally don’t give a crap. 

To them, killing a boss with 1 player left alive is the same as killing it with 25 players left alive.  So long as they get to see purples at the end of it – that’s all that matters. 

And not to say there’s anything wrong with that really.  Many guilds and players prefer to do only normal modes.  But – if your guild/raid is seriously considering attempting these hard mode encounters, these players will likely need to be replaced.  There is very little you can do as a Raid Leader to try and motivate these types of players into wanting to do hard modes.  I hate to use the word “carry”, but that’s essentially what it comes down to.  If you don’t have to desire to push yourself to the maximum of what you can do, you will have to be carried through hard mode encounters. 

It’s Just…

The other contributor of  “dieing to easy stuff” – is just pure laziness.  One of the things that really irks me, is when players say something along the lines of, “It’s just xxxx.”  It’s usually, “It’s just a 5 man”  “It’s just Naxx”, etc etc.  It’s usually the response you get when asking why they haven’t used a flask, why they don’t have a food buff, why they aren’t moving out of an AE damaging ability. 

This entire mindset really boggles my mind.  Does this mean the player adjusts their skill and awareness based on the instance or encounter they’re doing?  Why?  If you devote 100% of your attention to the task at hand when attempting Yogg-saron, why would you not do the same for Auriaya, Hodir, etc?  Why is it important to focus on BossA, but not BossB?  Granted there’s probably 10 or 12 things to watch out for on the Yogg fight, versus say 2 or 3 for Auriaya.  But that doesn’t mean you should be watching TV for Auriaya, and then suddenly pay attention on Yogg.  You should be paying attention all the damned time.

I’m gonna have to try this the next time I tank an “easy” boss like Ignis.  “Ande why didn’t you taunt?”  “Meh, it’s just Ignis.”  Well see how well that goes over.

If you can’t do the easy stuff on the easy bosses, there’s no way you’re going to be able to manage the hard stuff on the hard bosses.  Players should be constantly striving to improve their skills, not getting stale by 1/2 AFKing through an encounter.  Just because you’ve killed the boss 3 times before is no reason to slack off on the 4th attempt.  There’s always room to improve, always more achievements to learn, always more hard modes to do.

Just so long as you remember to take them in baby steps.