Just a heads-up for those of you who raid with 2 or more resto druids in your raids.

There is currently a bug with the 4-piece Tier 10 bonus, whereby the procced Rejuvenations can be overwritten by another druid’s cast Rejuvenation.


For example:



• Keeva cycles her Rejuvs through the tanks/melee.

• Bob cycles his Rejuvs through the ranged/healers.
• Keeva’s 4pc set procs a new Rejuv on one of the healers.
• Bob continues to cycle Rejuvs, and casts one on the healer that just received Keeva’s proc Rejuv.
• Bob’s cast Rejuv REMOVES Keeva’s procced Rejuv.


Obviously, this is bad, and severely cripples the usefulness of the set bonus in 25man raiding.

If you run with only a single druid in the raid – it won’t matter. But if you have multiple druids, they’re going to be removing each other’s Rejuvs all the time.

Waiting on news of it being fixed.

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On a more light and cheery note regarding PUGs, an undocumented change in the recent patch was that if you join a dungeon group that is partway finished, you will now be teleported to the group, rather than having to make your own way through.

I blogged about this problem earlier, and I’m so happy that Blizzard listened! Well, probably not listened to me.. but to people in general complaining that it was difficult. And, in all honesty, I witnessed many LFD groups that would simply give up or 4-man, because it was too difficult to explain to someone how to get to the group (and failing that, the group would have to run back to the start).

Now if only they would make it easier for dead newbies (and forgetful veterans) to find their way back to instance portals..

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I’m back from my little break!

Sadly though, my first post is going to be a rant. But it can’t be helped – this is something that absolutely infuriated me, and I need to write it down so I can let it go.

It’s long, and there are no pretty pictures – I apologise in advance!


Next time I decide to PUG a raid, someone slap me

I haven’t raided for a couple of weeks now; and Inexorable cleared ICC on Sunday, so I wasn’t saved. I decided to keep an eye out for a PUG that might need a healer. Partly out of boredom, partly missing raiding – but also because I felt like helping out a group that might be struggling to find one last healer. I saw a group looking for that one last raid healer, and I put my hand up.

Now – we are the server first guild, but I don’t think I’m a better person that everyone around me. I don’t throw my guild tag around like I’m royalty or anything. But I am pretty well geared, and I like thinking that maybe I can help a lesser-geared group by injecting a seasoned and geared ICC player into the raid. No ego – I genuinely figure that my gear can help “carry” some lesser-geared healers. And since many groups can sit in Trade chat for ages, trying to find healers, then I can speed things up for them. I like that feeling – helping strangers.

I didn’t recognise a single name, and barely recognised a couple of guilds. Most of the people were from guilds I had never heard of (alt guilds, I think).

It wasn’t too bad. We wiped a couple of times on Marrowgar; I think the healing was a little low, so whenever a healer would be spiked, the tanks almost died. I spent a lot of time bombing the tanks. But we did it.

Lady Deathwhisper is where the drama happened.

Deprogramming was the raid weekly – awesome. It’s practically free badges. Grab Darnavan, pull him aside, and tank him gently; profit. It’s one of the easiest weekly raid quests. Free stuff!

BUT

30 seconds into the fight, Darnavan was at about 40% health and dropping rapidly. Either people don’t know the quest, didn’t pick it up, didn’t read it… or maybe they were just blindly killing anything near them, I don’t know. I play with nameplates up, so I can instantly see who is who; I suspect that few puggers do the same.

We wiped. Not because of Darnavan, mind you (this is important), but because Deathwhisper’s other adds were dancing through the raid and smacking people enthusiastically in the face. I died to them very early on, so I was able to lie on the floor and watch what was happening.

When we got back from the wipe, someone said “we usually do it the easy way – just kill Darn.” My head nearly exploded. Why would you pick up a quest that spawns an add that you’re meant to protect – and then kill him? Why not just.. not pick up the quest? (/kaboom)

Anyway, I explained to them that it wasn’t Darn killing us, it was the adds. The quest is free badges, it’s easy, guys. The raid leader said “Darn stays alive.” Cool.

We wipe again, and then it turns into a fight. More people want to forget about doing the weekly. I explain again that Darnavan is not the one killing us, it’s the normal adds running around and killing people. I get a whisper from someone saying “We’re killing Darn, the RL said so.” I said “No – the RL said he stays alive.” “Wateva, I wasn’t killing him anyway.” I extrapolate this to mean that the bulk of the raid probably doesn’t know what’s going on.

We stand around for a while, trying to fill a few spots that opened up after the wipe. People keep blaming things on Darnavan being up. I keep trying (in vain) to explain that raid members are being cut down by Deathwhisper’s adds, NOT Darnavan.


Your thick

“Are you that thick” says one of the DPS. “He WWs the raid, he needs to be tanked.” (WW= whirlwind)
“He’s not the one killing us – it’s the adds. This isn’t hard – he just gets tanked to one side, it’s easy.”
“Your thick.” (ugh)
“There’s really no need to be a jerk.”
“Well your that thick, you don’t even know how it works.”
“I do know how it works, and I’m telling you, Darn is not what is killing us, it’s the adds.”

(other people try to jump in and say the same)

“Your thick. He needs to be tanked or he WWs the raid.”
“He IS being tanked.”
“By who??????”

I didn’t answer, but I wanted to say “By the tank from your guild, you idiot” – I had Darn in focus and watched the whole time as he was tanked by the warrior. So this DPS guy didn’t even know that his own guildmate was tanking Darn, as required. He was doing an OK job – but probably needed to tank him further away so that he wasn’t whirlwhinding near people trying to kill the normal adds. Other people in the raid tried to explain this, but it was ignored.

He keeps calling me stupid. More sheep vote to kill Darn to make it easier. I keep (calmly and politely) trying to explain what the raid’s genuine problem is (the adds running rampant, with no pickups and no focused DPS on them), and that Darn is not a problem. Others try to back me up.

I’m called stupid over and over. They latch onto the fact that I’m in the leading guild. I guess that makes me an easy target – it’s easier to blame one person for the raid’s failings than to actually listen to what the real issue is.

I’m getting frustrated, and finally ask him what his ICC experience actually is. I was trying desperately not to play the “I’m in the top guild, I know what I’m doing” card – but I was becoming increasingly frustrated with this guy telling me I was an idiot, when I could SEE what was killing the raiders. I’m not an idiot, I know how the fight works, and I could see what was going wrong.

Me: DPSguy, can I ask what your ICC experience actually is?
**Someraider has left the raid
DPSguy: lol he asked and then left, what a retard
Me: Hi, I’m still here. You’re kinda special.
Raid: lol

(what a jerk, seriously..)

I’m handed raid leader by the current RL who doesn’t feel confident leading. I felt bad for the raid leader

The guild’s tank says “and don’t you dare kick (the DPS) out – he is our second best DPS.”

I desperately wanted to kick both of them for being jerks, and for threatening me, but I knew that the raid would just see it as me being nasty – and probably dooming the raid. It would just make me the bad guy. So I didn’t.

More telling me how much of an idiot I am, etc. More of some of the other raiders trying to back me up. More of his guild siding with him. “We’d better do the quest or Keeva might die if he doesn’t get his 5 badges.” I don’t correct them on my gender, I feel it would be unwise at this point.

More insults. Again, I try to explain how the raid is dying, and what we need to change. More “your thick”.

I lose my temper (such as it is) with him not listening, and say “You’re an idiot, seriously.” I know, pretty nasty stuff huh

Hilariously, his guild then jumps on me, and I get people saying things like “Why would you yell at your team??” Translation: “I can’t believe you would be so rude to your own raid members, what kind of horrible raid leader are you?” It was one of those “are you f#$king kidding me?” moments – I’d been abused and insulted for the past 20 minutes, while calmly and politely explaining the problem – and then when I finally get annoyed and call him an idiot, I’m the rude one! Me!

He throws out a few more sarcastic comments about me being a retard, stupid, not knowing the fight, blah blah. Sarcastically wishes the group “good luck”. Then he drops group.

I sigh and say “What an asshat.”

His remaining guildmates jump on me again, this time in private whispers. Get a load of this one, it was hilarious:

W: Hey nobhead
W: a little politeness goes a long way you know

lol!

Prefixing advice about being polite with “hey nobhead”. Wow, wow, wow. I got TOLD.

The tank also abuses me – you know, the one that was tanking Darnavan but nobody knew about it? Yeah, he told me off for being rude, too. Rich.

And one or two other guildies went at me… telling me I shouldn’t come to PUGS and “try to take over”. I wasn’t taking anything over, I was telling them what they were doing wrong. But they wouldn’t have it. To them, I was arrogant and ignorant.


Wasting your breath

I absolutely cannot stand ignorant or stupid people who think *I* am the ignorant/stupid one (refer to my post about split DPS in FOS and the group getting angry at me for asking them to single target). They simply would not listen – they refused to. I was watching the fight – I could see what was killing people, and it wasn’t Darnavan. Hell, I tanked Darnavan for a while after a couple of healers went down and the OT died. They really had no clue – they didn’t even know that he was being tanked (BY THEIR OWN TANK) – I think they thought he was running through the raid the whole time? Who knows.

I’m not a stupid person, and I really hate it when people just keep barfing “your stupid” (yes, your) rather than approaching things intelligently. “Your stupid” as a counter-argument to everything you try to say. It was incredibly infuriating. Especially since it ended up making me look like I made the raid fall apart because I wanted 5 extra badges. I didn’t give a crap about 5 extra badges, it became a principle thing – that they simply weren’t listening to what was actually going wrong. Darn. Is. Not. Killing. Us.

In hindsight, I should have said my piece, then put a bet on the fight that killing Darnavan would not make it any easier for us, that the adds would still wipe us. But I didn’t think to do that.

So in the end, I looked like a jerk, because I insisted on making them do the quest that was OBVIOUSLY wiping the raid.

I’ve never blacklisted a guild before – but after being abused by several of them, I won’t ever group with members of that guild, ever again. What a bunch of ignorant, rude, and unbelievably infuriating jerks (with the exception of the raid leader who was very nice).

I’m still really angry about it. I love to PUG, because I really enjoy helping people. Especially inexperienced people. I like to think that I’m helping them to get a little further than they might normally get. I didn’t need any gear from ICC (maybe a token?), I just thought I would find a group to help out.

And I ended up getting told that I’m stupid, and being abused in whispers by a bunch of ignorant idiots. Definitely an experience to forget, and a guild to avoid.

I’m not sure when I’ll PUG a raid again.

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I know I’m meant to not be here, but I found this the other day and thought it was really cute.

http://www.skinpress.com/orangy/

It would suit a Wordpress tree blogger who is looking for a nice, light makeover.

Enjoy

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Hi everyone.

You may have noticed in the last few weeks that my posts have been infrequent and pretty low-quality.

I’m working on some big personal projects at the moment, and I have next to no time to play the game or to devote to my beloved TBJ. Lately I’ve barely had time to post – in fact I’ve barely been able to read my favourite blogs at all

I’m not happy with the current state of things – I would prefer to take a break from blogging for a short time, rather than continue posting content that I feel is mediocre and below the standard that I expect from myself (and that you guys all expect from me).

I’ve also gone “casual” in my guild and have cut my raiding back to almost nothing. Luckily, with the ICC buffs, fewer healers are needed; plus our healer team kicks ass, and we have a good officer team who can survive without me – so now is probably an opportune time for me to step out, because it doesn’t impact on the guild too badly. It sucks a bit – I’ll miss the first Lich King kill, and I miss my guild (even though I’m still around). But I really do need to focus on RL for now.

So, rather than force out sub-par posts, I’m going to press pause on TBJ – just for a little while. I’d rather step back for a while than write posts that are disappointing.


Aka’Magosh!

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Lath from HoTs & DoTs is compiling info on how guilds make their money (and how they spend it).

Here’s how we run ours.


Making money

We sit around the 70,000 mark; I don’t like to fall below 50,000.

We charge 100g for all offspec items (main spec items are on EPGP). This is a small “trickle” income.

We also auction off all BOE epics within the guild – again, offspec or alt – you can’t buy main spec gear with gold and cheat the EPGP system. The items must be for your character/s, not to sell for a profit.

This is a fairly new tactic, because our gold was dipping low and I wanted to bump it back up again.

All BOE epics are in full view of all members; they then send me a minimum and maximum bid through the mail. The minimum bid is approximately half the normal AH price. If there’s not much interest, or if there are tied bids, I usually post on the forums to drum up some interest or get people re-bidding.

On Tuesday, the bank is cleared “old” BOEs; the BOEs that have been won are held in my bags until I get payment for them; the leftovers are sent to my bank alt to AH at full price.

This way, guildies get super bargain BOEs (someone got a Wodin’s neck for 5k – they are selling for 13k), and the bank still gets a nice income. The guild gets plenty of time to put their hand up for epics, and if nobody is interested – I can still sell for a good price on the AH.

Patterns are usually offered for free, and I just sell off any surplus.

I also sell anything that we have in surplus – eg we always seem to have thousands of Infinite Dust.


Spending money

Repairs are open to everyone, trials and alts included. Nobody ever has to worry about repair bills.

Feasts are provided (although guildies often donate these, so the bank doesn’t always pay).

Enchant mats, gems etc are half price.

Flasks can be purchased if there are none on the AH, but nobody relies on them.

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Here’s a fun mini-post.

Time to fess up: What have you learnt – and then slapped yourself on the forehead because it was so dopey that you didn’t already know?

Here’s mine – today I learned that if you are converting 100 badges of Triumph down to Heroism, you don’t have to shift click and then click all the way through to 100 Conquest.. then click all the way through to 100 Valor, then alllllllllll the way through to 100 Heroism (zzzzzz).. you can just click in the little space for the number, and then type in the number you want to convert.


*scrunches face up*

Now it’s your turn to confess, so I don’t feel so bad!

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The boys!

(well, most of them – there are a couple missing from the photo)

“When’s dinner?”

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Another string of migraines, this one Fri/Sat arv (that’s afternoon for non-aussies)/Sun night and (lucky me) waking up with one on Monday morning.

I went to work, and then packed up and went home again after 40 minutes. Codeine is my friend, but it knocks me around terribly. And it seems to only be effective for about half an hour or so. I suppose I should be grateful for that, though.

So I came home and went straight to bed for several hours. I think my migraines are mostly brought on by stress, which tightens up my shoulders, which sends pain up into my neck and head. The problem is that when I take time off with a migraine, I lose about $200 in wages for the day, and that adds to my stress, because sometime this month I will find out if my main job is being extended for 2 years, or is going to end in June. So basically, at the moment, any migraine has little chance of abating, no matter how I baby it. Lying down just feels like I have my head on a block of cement – but I try anyway.

BUT – what I forgot was that today is the day that my new 24″ widescreen monitor was set to be delivered!




(That’s my 17″ non-widescreen beside it. You have my permission to laugh at and/or pity me)

So I’m hopped up on Forte and admiring my shiny new toy, which will be so handy for me. For play – it means I can have Warcraft on the big screen (and be able to see more around me), and have vent, MSN, forums and strats up on the other. No more tabbing out to blog or write, and missing ready checks.

For business, it means I can have my work in front of me, and sites to the right, refreshing as I need. Or notes, or spreadsheets, or photoshop, or whatever. I find it SO valuable to be able to have two workspaces, instead of constantly switching between the two. I’m working on a new website at the moment and it’s such a pain in the butt to have to keep switching windows to see my changes each time. I think I’m actually more excited about the changes it will make to my work. So, so handy!


So.. my head is still hurting, and I’m losing money (ugh.. stress!) but at least I have an awesome new monitor setup, right?

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I’ve noticed a few people on my feeds lately, frothing about Frozen Orb ninjas. The whole thing is actually really interesting to me.

Previously, servers were islands, in their own bubbles, with their own particular loot rules that were shaped over time.

I’ve seen some weird ones. Like “pass on everything that drops and then just /roll” – which I find bizarre, considering blizzard’s UI has a built-in rolling function and there’s no wasted time re-rolling and then physically picking up your loot. I’ve managed to get myself into some heated arguments about this, with people getting REALLY nasty at me about it, because they genuinely believed it was the fairest system. I really, REALLY don’t get how it’s a good idea to pass and re-roll on every little green that drops in a group – it strikes me as a huge waste of time, rather than using the built-in tool. The buttons are right there! But hey, to each their own. There really is no point arguing about it.

The point is – over time, servers will develop their own loot systems, with their own quirks. Although to outsiders these systems may seem bizarre, it works well enough for them. Much like Australia invented the platypus, yeah? An animal that looks like someone cut and pasted a bunch of other animals together into some weird amalgamation that surely can’t work – but it seems to do alright for itself. I’m certainly not going to argue with one, at any rate.


LFD and bursting the server loot bubble

When the LFD system came in, I noticed some people Needing on Frozen Orbs. On my server, Greed was the norm, so at first I was annoyed at these “ninjas”, being greedy and taking the orbs when the rest of us were Greeding. But, as it kept happening, I realised that they weren’t stealing from me – they were just used to rolling Need on their server. It was the normal system for them. A quick look at the web and WoW forums confirmed my suspicions – it was a fairly widespread phenomenon. So I started rolling Need, too, so that I wouldn’t miss out. No biggie.

It wasn’t what I was used to, but if I wanted orbs, I had to adapt my idea of how loot is handled in groups. I could either continue to roll Greed (and almost always lose), or adapt and start rolling Need with the others.

If I want orbs, I am basically forced into adapting to rolling Need.


Evolution of cross-server, intra-battlegroup loot systems

Now, maybe it’s just me, because I’ve always been interested in evolution. But I think it’s pretty cool to think about how these different loot systems settled in – and why they’re causing problems at the moment.

I suspect that gradually most battle groups probably settled into either Need OR Greed as the norm. Not every server/group settled into Need – I think there are a number of them out there that still use Greed.

Basically, either everyone on the server/battlegroup stuck with their system of Greeding, or more and more people started to Need until eventually the Greeders were weeded out by natural selection. That is, “If everyone keeps Needing, I’m going to roll Need from now on, too!” .. until gradually everyone on the battlegroup becomes a Needer, because it becomes pointless to roll Greed anymore.



The evolution of ninjas


Over time, if there are enough Needers around, then the battlegroup will eventually tend towards being predominantly Needers. Particularly, of course, if everyone is interested in the orbs (I’ll go over this later). Whereas if most people don’t care about the orbs, they might just hit Greed as an “I don’t really care” button.

If orbs are desirable, more and more people will become Needers, and the Greeders will either be forced to roll Need to compete, or simply accept the fact that they can never win with a Greed roll, and give up rolling Greed. The Greeders must adapt and become Needers if they want to compete for orbs.

So, on battlegroups where Needing is prevalent (or gathering momentum), Greeders will be in decline; and, eventually, will likely become extinct.

However, pockets of Greeders will continue to exist on battlegroups that remained isolated and never adopted the system of Needing the orbs.


Orbs: from vendor fodder to coveted item overnight

Now, previously, orbs were all but useless to many people. I know that many were just being vendored, because the AH price was so low that it wasn’t even worth selling them. So I suspect that the only people still Needing were those who A) still needed them for professions, or B) didn’t particularly need them, but were clinging to the principle of the matter – that they deserved the 5g vendor price as much as anyone else in the group.

To be honest, I started passing on them because I didn’t need them, and I figured maybe someone else did. I just didn’t care about them.

But in the near future, you’ll be able to use orbs to buy lotuses and eternals (and a new flying carpet recipe wheee!). Prices jumped from 5g to 30g literally overnight. Suddenly everyone wants orbs – because they’ll be worth a lot more than 5g in the patch. Whether it’s because you want cheap flasks for raiding, or you want to make a buck selling cheap flasks for raiding, or you need eternals for crafting (etc) – almost everyone “needs” the orbs now. And that “need” cropped up literally overnight. BAM.

So all of these sudden orb ninjas are probably just people who have read about the changes, and have decided they had better stop passing/greeding on orbs, because they are now quite desirable.

As a result, I think what we are seeing is a sudden, massive shift towards Needing orbs by default.





Needing will probably be the norm

There’s really no point in getting upset about it – unless you come from a battlegroup where everyone continues to simply Greed (and I think this will be rarer and rarer as time goes on), you’re going to come up against people who Need. They’re not necessarily trying to ninja from you; it may be that they have always used Needing as the default way to deal with orbs; or, like many people, they realise that orbs are now useful and they want their fair share of them.

I genuinely believe that a TINY minority of those Need rolls are people who are actually actively trying to maliciously ninja the orbs.

My advice: roll to match the highest roll in the group. If someone rolls Need, you can roll need too. If everyone is rolling Greed, you should probably do the same to be courteous.

Of course, if you’re first to roll, and you roll Greed, then you could lose out if someone rolls Need later – which is precisely the reason why many people just roll Need to be “safe”. For most people, it’s simply the path of least resistance; everyone roll Need and nobody can “ninja”. To them, it’s second nature. Or the Needer in your group may be someone who is tired of missing out “doing the right thing” and Greeding, and has given up to become a Needer from now on.

In a world full of Needers – if you stick to Greeding, you won’t be able to compete for orbs. Will you give up and die out, or will you adapt?

And so the wheel turns…


(oh man I’m such a nerd, I’m laughing at myself right now..)

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