Oh, hello.
It's been a while, eh? Two months is the longest break I've taken from this blog in a long, long time.
What have I done in the time away? Nothing much, really. I worked on some home projects, I've gotten together with my collaborator and we're working seriously on our first real game development project, I've managed to cobble an outline together for my novel that I'm very excited about. I've even rejoined my old dungeons and dragons group that players just about every week on Thursday nights and that is a great way to kick up my heels and hang out with friends I haven't seen because of my raid commitments for a long time. Hanging out with my son also takes up a lot of time, and I'm really enjoying the summer, going to the playground with him, hiking in the parks or taking him to the various zoos, gardens and museums in New York.
And.... I've managed to continue puttering about WoW without joining another hardcore raiding guild. I'm kind of glad on the one hand and kind of missing it a lot on another. It's a weird thing to game in an old and familiar if very casual way.
I transferred back to the Alliance side on my old server and my old friends and I started raiding a couple of nights, quite casually, and it's very slow going compared to what the rest of the expansion has been like.... but it's not without its charm.
For one, playing with old, familiar faces is great. I love hearing Thistle and Washburne and Kaelie and Sticky and Issacc on vent. They're all awesome and it feels like home to be raiding with them again. We've also met a couple of new friends who're quite awesome to raid with, very funny and nice and good players to boot. For another, I'm enjoying returning to a leading role that I've missed in my last two guilds - true, tanks always have some level of authority but I'm enjoying running raids again.
The not so good is the difference in playstyle between hardcore raiders and the more casual raiding that we're doing now. It's not that the players are better or worse, it's just different. There's a difference in attitude, there's a difference in the approach to problems, in the approach to wipes - I have a great appreciation for what hardcore raiding taught me, which was the value of quick recoveries and repeated attempts to learn rhythm and fix problems.
More than any of that, though, is the value of wiping. I had well over a hundred wipes on Heroic Amber Shaper when we killed it. Nobody was frustrated by those attempts, even when those wipes were coming 7 or 8 minutes into a fight near the end, as we were experimenting with ways of minimizing phase 3.
In a more casual environment, a dozen wipes feels like too much and I wonder if I'm not just pushing too hard and maybe I should just lay back on the throttle a bit.
Anyway, I'm really only playing 2 nights a week and not having a steady raid team certainly hurts. We typically wind up picking up at least PUGs every week it looks like, and that isn't helping matters any.
But. All that aside, I'm enjoying the game. I don't have any delusions of chasing a US top 200 ranking or anything anymore, but with 2 nights a week, I'm looking to get together a group that clears through normal modes and hanging out with friends.
Of course, if we should find that our skill and gear level improves, I would not say no to pushing a bit harder on the accelerator and start pulling heroic bosses now and again. But not at the cost of the new stuff I've added into my life.
Someone has to get that gear, after all. 5.4 looks to only be a couple of months away....
If you want to raid with us Tuesday and Wednesday nights from 9pm to 12am CST, I'm looking for a tank and healer and maybe some ranged DPS. ;-)
Showing posts with label casual. Show all posts
Showing posts with label casual. Show all posts
Thursday, June 27, 2013
Monday, March 12, 2012
I don't care about 25s
Harsh toke, guy!
Maybe it would be more accurate to add a suffix to my title. Maybe "...and that's okay!" or something, but the point is a very real one for me.
I have been raiding since TBC, and I remember just how difficult and harsh it was to try to get into a 25 group. After doing Karazhan and Zul'Aman, my guild had two 10 groups but were incapable of getting a 25 group together even for the rest of T4. At one point, we managed to get a group together (between three 10-person guilds) and do Magtheridon but that took an epic effort to find enough people who weren't already spoken for by the 25-person guilds. Trying to get into 25 guilds was nigh-impossible (at least on my server) as by the time I started raiding, Black Temple was the flavor of the day and nobody wanted to have to gear up a new tank through T4 and T5.
As a raid-officer during TBC, I know exactly how hard it is to put together 25s. No question there.
When Wrath came out, the idea of choice was a superficial one at best - 10s were both vastly undertuned, the gear was a hand-out and in many cases, inferior to the gear you got in 25s. How many 25s raiders do you know who ran 10s to fill in that BIS piece vs. 10s raiders who ran 25s for BIS trinkets? 10s were absolutely the red-headed-middle-step-child of raiding in Wrath, but there was a lot of potential there, and it allowed for guilds and smaller groups to see end-game content.
Cataclysm went further in consolidating the 10s and 25s by rewarding the same gear from both while providing a small incentive to do 25s over 10s. The main controversy here was that both raid sizes shared a lock-out, and trust me, this was an incredibly good thing for many of us.
In Wrath, as a competitive raiders, I had to do both 10s and 25s every week, to maximize my badge count as well as getting a shot at the BIS loot that I had no access to in 10s. This made raiding a chore, and seeing the same content multiple times in the same week was incredibly frustrating in addition to having to do daily dungeons and weekly raid challenges. Anyone who did T9 in 10s, then H:10s, then 25 remembers just how stressful, frustrating, and time consuming it was to stay competitive.
So, what do we have with Cataclysm?
- 10s and 25s share a lockout
- 10s and 25s share the same loot-tables
- 10s and 25s provide (roughly) the same difficulty level
- 10s and 25s share the same content in terms of raids, bosses, cut-scenes, etc.
In this kind of environment, there are still a few factors that matters in making a decision about whether you do 10s or 25s:
- Prestige (25s)
- Intimacy (10s)
- Competition (25s)
- Ease of organization (10s)
- Speed of gear acquisition (25s)
- Difficulty of execution (25s)
Given this - why do we still see 25s dying and 10s thriving?
Because raiding in Warcraft is driven as much by developers as it is by the open market of ideas. Blizzard created the environment, and the WoW player-base chose 10s overwhelmingly as the raiding size of choice in Cataclysm. From hard-core progression oriented 10s groups that pushed content and finished the hard-mode raids in a competitive time-frame with 25s to casual raid groups that worked for five or six months to clear a raid on normal mode, 10s was where it was at in Cataclysm.
Given that 25s are more difficult to organize and execute (issues that are Human Resource problems in nature), and 10s are easier in that sense, I have a lot of sympathy for 25s. Officers in 25s are much better at wrangling their staff together and explaining and organizing their fights than officers in 10s. I've been in both situations and I know exactly how much easier it is to build and train a 10s group.
So, do I actually care about the woes of 25s? I'll be honest: I kind of don't, but that's okay.
I'm sure 25s don't really care about 10s complaining when we complain.
- We can't class-stack as easily
- We don't have access to all the buffs and debuffs
- We wind up wasting tier tokens due to a lack of class diversification
- We have such difficult recruiting due to the number of 10s guilds raiding
- One person's performance being 10% of output makes it nigh impossible to carry on progression
They don't see these things as an issue for them, their deep rosters allow them to overcome these issues much more easily.
We can both complain about our individual raid-size issues and with the decline in the number of guilds tackling 25s, recruitment is certainly a huge, huge problem for them. You have my sympathies, but I certainly don't think 10s are the reason for it in a deliberate or malicious way - it's a market-place of ideas, and ideas sink or swim based on what people want.
If the general player consciousness says 10s is the way that a majority of raiders want to tackle content, there isn't a whole lot Blizzard or the 25s can do to make a change. This has happened before - 40s became 25s, and now are becoming 10s. Fans of the 40-player raid-size still complain about how 25s aren't like how it was, and 40s were the truly epic raids. At least 25s are still around, provide challenging content, and remain the tier of competition across the world.
As a 10s raider, I enjoy my raid-size and don't really want a whole lot more than what I have. The problems of roster management in 10s is very different, but I'm not going to blame it on the 25s - they have their own problems to deal with and I wish them the best of luck. But I do hope that they don't feel it necessary to demean and ridicule 10s in order to make their point - I'm sure that's not their intention.
I might not care about your problems, my brothers and sisters among the 25s guilds, but I still love you as fellow raiders. Even if you might scorn my affection as a lowly 10s raider. ;-) <3
Maybe it would be more accurate to add a suffix to my title. Maybe "...and that's okay!" or something, but the point is a very real one for me.
I have been raiding since TBC, and I remember just how difficult and harsh it was to try to get into a 25 group. After doing Karazhan and Zul'Aman, my guild had two 10 groups but were incapable of getting a 25 group together even for the rest of T4. At one point, we managed to get a group together (between three 10-person guilds) and do Magtheridon but that took an epic effort to find enough people who weren't already spoken for by the 25-person guilds. Trying to get into 25 guilds was nigh-impossible (at least on my server) as by the time I started raiding, Black Temple was the flavor of the day and nobody wanted to have to gear up a new tank through T4 and T5.
As a raid-officer during TBC, I know exactly how hard it is to put together 25s. No question there.
When Wrath came out, the idea of choice was a superficial one at best - 10s were both vastly undertuned, the gear was a hand-out and in many cases, inferior to the gear you got in 25s. How many 25s raiders do you know who ran 10s to fill in that BIS piece vs. 10s raiders who ran 25s for BIS trinkets? 10s were absolutely the red-headed-middle-step-child of raiding in Wrath, but there was a lot of potential there, and it allowed for guilds and smaller groups to see end-game content.
Cataclysm went further in consolidating the 10s and 25s by rewarding the same gear from both while providing a small incentive to do 25s over 10s. The main controversy here was that both raid sizes shared a lock-out, and trust me, this was an incredibly good thing for many of us.
In Wrath, as a competitive raiders, I had to do both 10s and 25s every week, to maximize my badge count as well as getting a shot at the BIS loot that I had no access to in 10s. This made raiding a chore, and seeing the same content multiple times in the same week was incredibly frustrating in addition to having to do daily dungeons and weekly raid challenges. Anyone who did T9 in 10s, then H:10s, then 25 remembers just how stressful, frustrating, and time consuming it was to stay competitive.
So, what do we have with Cataclysm?
- 10s and 25s share a lockout
- 10s and 25s share the same loot-tables
- 10s and 25s provide (roughly) the same difficulty level
- 10s and 25s share the same content in terms of raids, bosses, cut-scenes, etc.
In this kind of environment, there are still a few factors that matters in making a decision about whether you do 10s or 25s:
- Prestige (25s)
- Intimacy (10s)
- Competition (25s)
- Ease of organization (10s)
- Speed of gear acquisition (25s)
- Difficulty of execution (25s)
Given this - why do we still see 25s dying and 10s thriving?
Because raiding in Warcraft is driven as much by developers as it is by the open market of ideas. Blizzard created the environment, and the WoW player-base chose 10s overwhelmingly as the raiding size of choice in Cataclysm. From hard-core progression oriented 10s groups that pushed content and finished the hard-mode raids in a competitive time-frame with 25s to casual raid groups that worked for five or six months to clear a raid on normal mode, 10s was where it was at in Cataclysm.
Given that 25s are more difficult to organize and execute (issues that are Human Resource problems in nature), and 10s are easier in that sense, I have a lot of sympathy for 25s. Officers in 25s are much better at wrangling their staff together and explaining and organizing their fights than officers in 10s. I've been in both situations and I know exactly how much easier it is to build and train a 10s group.
So, do I actually care about the woes of 25s? I'll be honest: I kind of don't, but that's okay.
I'm sure 25s don't really care about 10s complaining when we complain.
- We can't class-stack as easily
- We don't have access to all the buffs and debuffs
- We wind up wasting tier tokens due to a lack of class diversification
- We have such difficult recruiting due to the number of 10s guilds raiding
- One person's performance being 10% of output makes it nigh impossible to carry on progression
They don't see these things as an issue for them, their deep rosters allow them to overcome these issues much more easily.
We can both complain about our individual raid-size issues and with the decline in the number of guilds tackling 25s, recruitment is certainly a huge, huge problem for them. You have my sympathies, but I certainly don't think 10s are the reason for it in a deliberate or malicious way - it's a market-place of ideas, and ideas sink or swim based on what people want.
If the general player consciousness says 10s is the way that a majority of raiders want to tackle content, there isn't a whole lot Blizzard or the 25s can do to make a change. This has happened before - 40s became 25s, and now are becoming 10s. Fans of the 40-player raid-size still complain about how 25s aren't like how it was, and 40s were the truly epic raids. At least 25s are still around, provide challenging content, and remain the tier of competition across the world.
As a 10s raider, I enjoy my raid-size and don't really want a whole lot more than what I have. The problems of roster management in 10s is very different, but I'm not going to blame it on the 25s - they have their own problems to deal with and I wish them the best of luck. But I do hope that they don't feel it necessary to demean and ridicule 10s in order to make their point - I'm sure that's not their intention.
I might not care about your problems, my brothers and sisters among the 25s guilds, but I still love you as fellow raiders. Even if you might scorn my affection as a lowly 10s raider. ;-) <3
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Dragon Soul Nerfs
This feels familiar, doesn't it?
I'm glad we've killed Deathwing a couple of times by now, and have the fight down pat and dry at this point or I'd be really pissed as I was over Ragnaros. As it is, I'm just shrugging it off, as I don't really see the point in further tuning this content as it is, if you'll excuse the elitism for a moment, relatively easy compared to pre-nerf Firelands, but difficulty is a relative thing.
That said, Madness of Deathwing is no Ragnaros. And Madness of Deathwing is certainly no pre-nerf Nefarian. It's more on par with, I don't know, Cho'gall maybe, or Ascendant Council in terms of difficulty. Once you know what to do, the fight is entirely a breeze and the right setup lets you breeze through so much of the fight it's not even funny.
To be fair, we had a number of wipes on Madness. Spine took us a night. But ever since we killed these bosses, it hasn't been a problem and we more or less 2-healed the whole place except for Zon'ozz and Spine. If we do all normal modes next week, I imagine we can clear out the place in less than three hours. Though I think our Raid Lead might want to do Heroic Morchok and Heroic Yor'sahj.
I don't know. I don't know that we're particularly great and our gear was more or less at normal-Firelands level when we started this tier. We even missed about two weeks of progression when we didn't have people over the holidays. So are the nerfs necessary? Not for us, they aren't.
But I think they probably are necessary for the guilds that were stuck on Ultraxion or Lootship or Spine. Those fights do have relatively steep DPS requirements.
Are you having trouble 2-healing in the 5th minute when you're getting hit with 300k every second? Can you get one of the adds down before the Sapper spawns? Can you take the hits of fire throughout the fight without loosing people? Can your tanks taunt swap and chain CDs to survive phase 2? Is everyone able to dodge fire and cones at the same time? Do Bloods overwhelm you in the third plate phase over and over? Do you just need a bit of DPS to get over the hump on that 4th limb of Deathwing or to clear the last 2% in phae 2?
If yes, then this will help you get over that little bump and that's not a bad thing.
Maybe another two weeks of gear will help, maybe you need a different strategy or composition, or whatever, but I've been there going in on the same fight, night after night after night and not being able to kill something and feeling the frustration with making absolutely no progress. I remember two years ago (holy crap) that the 5% nerf helped us down Sindragosa when she was wiping us with sub 5% enrages or something crazy for two or three weeks in a row, and then the week the buff hit, we killed her. It stung a bit, but I was just glad to finally be on Lich King.
As it is, my expectation and my performance is based on completing at least all of normal content pre-nerf and as long as I can manage that, I'm happy. And we've more than managed that this time around. To everyone else who's waiting to get over that hump - I hope you're able to make the magic happen before the nerfs hit, but if not, I'm sure you'll have those shiny titles after January 31.
I'm glad we've killed Deathwing a couple of times by now, and have the fight down pat and dry at this point or I'd be really pissed as I was over Ragnaros. As it is, I'm just shrugging it off, as I don't really see the point in further tuning this content as it is, if you'll excuse the elitism for a moment, relatively easy compared to pre-nerf Firelands, but difficulty is a relative thing.
That said, Madness of Deathwing is no Ragnaros. And Madness of Deathwing is certainly no pre-nerf Nefarian. It's more on par with, I don't know, Cho'gall maybe, or Ascendant Council in terms of difficulty. Once you know what to do, the fight is entirely a breeze and the right setup lets you breeze through so much of the fight it's not even funny.
To be fair, we had a number of wipes on Madness. Spine took us a night. But ever since we killed these bosses, it hasn't been a problem and we more or less 2-healed the whole place except for Zon'ozz and Spine. If we do all normal modes next week, I imagine we can clear out the place in less than three hours. Though I think our Raid Lead might want to do Heroic Morchok and Heroic Yor'sahj.
I don't know. I don't know that we're particularly great and our gear was more or less at normal-Firelands level when we started this tier. We even missed about two weeks of progression when we didn't have people over the holidays. So are the nerfs necessary? Not for us, they aren't.
But I think they probably are necessary for the guilds that were stuck on Ultraxion or Lootship or Spine. Those fights do have relatively steep DPS requirements.
Are you having trouble 2-healing in the 5th minute when you're getting hit with 300k every second? Can you get one of the adds down before the Sapper spawns? Can you take the hits of fire throughout the fight without loosing people? Can your tanks taunt swap and chain CDs to survive phase 2? Is everyone able to dodge fire and cones at the same time? Do Bloods overwhelm you in the third plate phase over and over? Do you just need a bit of DPS to get over the hump on that 4th limb of Deathwing or to clear the last 2% in phae 2?
If yes, then this will help you get over that little bump and that's not a bad thing.
Maybe another two weeks of gear will help, maybe you need a different strategy or composition, or whatever, but I've been there going in on the same fight, night after night after night and not being able to kill something and feeling the frustration with making absolutely no progress. I remember two years ago (holy crap) that the 5% nerf helped us down Sindragosa when she was wiping us with sub 5% enrages or something crazy for two or three weeks in a row, and then the week the buff hit, we killed her. It stung a bit, but I was just glad to finally be on Lich King.
As it is, my expectation and my performance is based on completing at least all of normal content pre-nerf and as long as I can manage that, I'm happy. And we've more than managed that this time around. To everyone else who's waiting to get over that hump - I hope you're able to make the magic happen before the nerfs hit, but if not, I'm sure you'll have those shiny titles after January 31.
Monday, January 3, 2011
Current Progression Ladder
A lot of folks are getting really upset with the level of difficulty that Heroics represent, and casual players in particular are frustrated with their inability to get groups to successfully run heroics.
I totally understand the issue, as I find myself wondering how someone who's not used to reading will handle movement mechanics while juggling add management on fights like Heroic: Corborus, or the constant running, dodging cluster-fuck that is Heroic: General Husam. How do they manage the interrupts and burn phase of Heroic: Baron Ashbury? What do they do when they run into Heroic: Ripsnarl?
But I think another way to look at this, is that in the first tier of content, Heroics are now officially a level of gear and difficulty above normal dungeons. This is the reason, a month into the expansion, we still have world-first top-end guilds working on heroic modes in Raids after all the time they spent on them on the Beta.
For the last year, this was the lay of the land:
Top-End: Retired
Hardcore: Heroic: Lich King.
Serious: Heroic: ICC and Helion
Everyone else: Any content in the game. Even normal LK was ridiculously easy by August/September.
At the end of the expansion, that made sense. Right now, there isn't all that much end-game content in the game and I think, the lay of the land is this:
Top-End: Heroic Raids
Harcore: Raids
Serious: Heroics/early raiding
Casual: Everything else
I think if we approach the current difficulty level with this lens, it makes sense. Yes, casual players who're not raiding and are not used to the level of difficulty that raid-bosses and non tank-and-spank bosses present are going to have a hell of time in heroics. They can either train up to them or they can wait till 4.1 drops when all the Valor gear will become Justice gear.
The 3 normal dungeons at 84-85 are also great for training and you can outfit yourself in a full 333/346 set from normal dungeons, Justice Points gear (sl0wly), reputation items (some 359 items there too), and crafting. I don't think it's a slight if you have problems running Heroics right now.
Think back to December or January when you queued up and got Heroic: Halls of Reflections. You knew it was work. You knew it was effort. Now, scale that up to every heroic. That's what this is. And I for one am enjoying the ever-loving hell out of it.
As for me - so far I've killed every boss except for Heroic: Commander Springvale and Heroic: Erudax. I'm chomping at the bit to kill Erudax because it'll complete my meta but Heroic: Grim Batol has been kicking my ass for a while so I'm giong to give it a break for a bit.
I'll start writing up my impressions of the dungeons so maybe it can be helpful to folks having trouble in heroics.
Time to complete all the other dungeons with guild-groups and then prep for Throne of Four Winds. Raids start on the 11th. Eeeeek!
I totally understand the issue, as I find myself wondering how someone who's not used to reading will handle movement mechanics while juggling add management on fights like Heroic: Corborus, or the constant running, dodging cluster-fuck that is Heroic: General Husam. How do they manage the interrupts and burn phase of Heroic: Baron Ashbury? What do they do when they run into Heroic: Ripsnarl?
But I think another way to look at this, is that in the first tier of content, Heroics are now officially a level of gear and difficulty above normal dungeons. This is the reason, a month into the expansion, we still have world-first top-end guilds working on heroic modes in Raids after all the time they spent on them on the Beta.
For the last year, this was the lay of the land:
Top-End: Retired
Hardcore: Heroic: Lich King.
Serious: Heroic: ICC and Helion
Everyone else: Any content in the game. Even normal LK was ridiculously easy by August/September.
At the end of the expansion, that made sense. Right now, there isn't all that much end-game content in the game and I think, the lay of the land is this:
Top-End: Heroic Raids
Harcore: Raids
Serious: Heroics/early raiding
Casual: Everything else
I think if we approach the current difficulty level with this lens, it makes sense. Yes, casual players who're not raiding and are not used to the level of difficulty that raid-bosses and non tank-and-spank bosses present are going to have a hell of time in heroics. They can either train up to them or they can wait till 4.1 drops when all the Valor gear will become Justice gear.
The 3 normal dungeons at 84-85 are also great for training and you can outfit yourself in a full 333/346 set from normal dungeons, Justice Points gear (sl0wly), reputation items (some 359 items there too), and crafting. I don't think it's a slight if you have problems running Heroics right now.
Think back to December or January when you queued up and got Heroic: Halls of Reflections. You knew it was work. You knew it was effort. Now, scale that up to every heroic. That's what this is. And I for one am enjoying the ever-loving hell out of it.
As for me - so far I've killed every boss except for Heroic: Commander Springvale and Heroic: Erudax. I'm chomping at the bit to kill Erudax because it'll complete my meta but Heroic: Grim Batol has been kicking my ass for a while so I'm giong to give it a break for a bit.
I'll start writing up my impressions of the dungeons so maybe it can be helpful to folks having trouble in heroics.
Time to complete all the other dungeons with guild-groups and then prep for Throne of Four Winds. Raids start on the 11th. Eeeeek!
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