Madness

I’ve downed Madness of Deathwing three times this week in ten man mode, the first three times I’ve ever done it. I did it for the first time on Saxsy on Monday night with most of RRT’s regular A team raiders. I did it for the second time on Jana on Thursday night thanks to a surprise invitation from a friend to join her guild’s run, as they were one dps short. I did it for the third time last night on Saxsy.

I never killed an “end game” boss in Vanilla or Burning Crusade, so the only thing I really have to compare it to is the Lich King fight. But first, I want to give a basic description of the fight as I understand it.

There are four platforms in the fight. At each platform is one of Deathwing’s tentacles, each representing 20% of his health. Also at each platform is an aspect, who provides a buff of some sort to help you during the fight. The trick is that once you have completed a platform, that aspect’s buff is gone, while the aspects whose platforms you have not yet cleared continue to provide their buff.  I’ll explain the buffs after I explain each platform’s fight because it makes more sense to me that way.

Everything is from memory so it may be inaccurate, but I want to set forth my actual understanding of the fight, not what’s written in the dungeon guide. If I get anything wrong, let me know.

At each platform there is the tentacle. Shortly after you’ve started on the tentacle, a big stalk called a mutated corruption appears on the other side of the platform. This must be tanked and does a lot of damage, so it is your priority over the tentacle.

The next thing that happens is Deathwing will cast an Elementium Bolt. This travels from the tentacle to some point in the platform. When and if it lands, it will explode, doing insanely nasty damage to everyone and continuing to do damage on a periodic basis until it is destroyed. Destroying this is your top priority; if the corruption isn’t down by the time this is cast, you switch from the corruption to the bolt.

Some point later (based on time), Deathwing will cast Hemorrhage.  This creates a bunch of Regenerative Bloods.  Those must be AoE’d down quickly; if they are not destroyed within a certain amount of time, they will regenerate to full health.  I think there are five of them per platform. These do not usually spawn until after the corruption is down, and they take priority over the tentacle.

Twice during each platform, based on the health of the tentacle, blistering tentacles will spawn. These are immune to AoE damage and must be single targeted down. They do quite a bit of raid damage and are your top priority when they spawn. Ideally you want to manage the dps so that these do not spawn at the same time as a hemorrhage.  I think they spawn when the tentacle is at 66% and 33%, which would certainly make sense, but I’m not certain.  It’s about that.

At some point Deathwing will cast Cataclysm. This creates a dps race on the given platform; if you destroy the tentacle before the cast is complete, the cast will be interrupted and you can move on. If the cast is completed, all of Azeroth is destroyed and you will be forever blamed in the afterlife for your poor dps.

Now for the buffs.  Going from the leftmost platform to the rightmost:

• Alexstrasza will burn off Blistering Tentacles, effectively removing that mechanic from the platform fight;
• Nozdormu will slow the Elementium Bolt, effectively allowing you (with good dps) to prevent it from landing and causing the large raid wide damage;
• Ysera will provide Dream, a clickable buff that will heal you and shield you from damage;
• Kalecgos provides a general damage buff and an automatic proc that damages nearby enemies.

Of these, the weakest buff is Ysera’s, and her platform should be cleared first. The strongest buff is Kalecgos’s, and his platform should be cleared last. In LFR, the elementium bolt does not do a tremendous amount of damage, so Nozdormu’s buff is considered the second weakest and his platform would be done second. In ten man, however, the damage from the elementium bolt is so severe that we have decided to do Alexstrasza’s platform second. Thus, in ten man, with each platform numbered from left to right, we do them in this order: 3, 1, 2, 4.

After the last tentacle comes stage two of the fight, where you attack Deathwing directly. This is a cyclical fight, with the cycle theoretically continuing until the enrage timer hits. In practice, the damage will eventually be too great to stand, or you’ll kill Deathwing.  More on this later.

The first things that spawn are elementium fragments.  These will cast something called shrapnel on a random member of the raid, which causes damage to that person and anyone near them. Ysera’s buff is back so if you are targeted it’s a good time to use it.

Next spawn two Elementium Terrors. These are on a timer and will spawn regardless of whether the fragments have been killed. These do nasty stacking damage to a tank and are probably the number one source of wipes in the fight (and disheartening wipes, because at that point you’ve been fighting for 12 minutes). They should be dps’d down sequentially; if someone doesn’t mark the first one, bonk your raid leader on the head.

After the Terrors are down, it’s back to fighting Deathwing until the next fragments spawn. On LFR most people switch back to the fragments. On 10 man, we’ve determined that after the first Elementium Terrors are down, it’s better to pop Time Warp and tunnel on Deathwing, hoping to kill him before the next Terrors spawn.

So that’s the fight.  Now for some thoughts.

Someone once described fights as falling into three categories:

• Fights that challenge your tanks and healers;
• Fights that challenge your strongest players;
• Fights that challenge your weakest players.

The final two fights of ICC in the WotLK expansion were the third category of fights, and they’re of the sort that are universally acknowledged as the hardest ones. A misplaced ice block cast on your weakest raid member would wipe you on Sindragosa. Your weakest raid member not getting out of defile on the Lich King fight would wipe you. In both fights one person, through lack of raid awareness, could wipe the raid very easily.

Madness of Deathwing really isn’t that sort of fight. At this point you need solid contributions from everyone, but a single dps performing badly can’t wipe you (except to the extent that you no longer make the enrage timer). Putting it another way, it seems like it would be very easy to carry an inexperienced and less talented dps to get their achievement and title, especially as the content gets nerfed. That was never the case in WotLK; everyone needed to know what he or she was doing.

In this way, the fight is a little disappointing, and seems quite a bit easier compared to Lich King. And I think that’s reflected in how quickly we were able to down the fight; instead of weeks of work learning the mechanics, we were able to down Madness of Deathwing the second week we saw it. I’m happy we were able to do it. But I think when people complain about content being dumbed down, this is a prime example. I felt it was too easy.

Of course, a good part of that may be because LFR gave us a familiarity with the mechanics in a setting where it was easy to get down. I wonder how hard the Lich King would have been if we had been clearing him for weeks in easy mode. I still think the Lich King fight was much harder, though.

Also worth noting is that I Like Pancakes is now two years old. I’ve had my ups and downs over the past two years, but in total I think the process has been very rewarding. I encourage anyone who thinks he or she might like it to start a blog and start writing. It’s a nice place for expression.

Why I Play

I complain a lot here.

I complain about not getting loot. I complain about people who are bad in dungeons. I complain about being depressed. I complain about people RPing things incorrectly, rudely, perplexingly, or whatever.

In some way it’s because this blog can be an outlet for that frustration. In some way I think complaining about idiots can be funny.

But I also think it’s important to remember that WoW can be a wonderful part of your life.

Yesterday was an amazing day.

I’ve had some amazing times in WoW. All you have to do is look at my entire Shadowmourne experience and you can see the happiness the game has brought me. I’m sure there are other blog entries floating around like that, describing fun times. The thing about Shadowmourne was that it was a long process, and I knew that if and when it culminated it was going to be amazing.  And it was.

Yesterday, on the other hand, took me completely by surprise.

It started innocently enough. I was playing the game while some work was being done in my house so I basically was RPing while that happened. The Blue Recluse was empty so I went to the Cathedral steps (the major RP hangout). And boy, did I get RP.

Let’s see if I can run down the people I met, in order.  I apologize if I mix things up.

First person I met was B. She said she knew me and I thought she was someone else at the time, but she later revealed herself to be a different friend of mine. She was dressed in a pink bunny outfit and had some very hilarious things to say about a death knight who was playing exactly to type and trying and failing to grief people who were having fun while she was being miserable.  We actually spent most of the morning together. I added her to my friends list.

Then there was G.  G was a paladin with a very interesting hairstyle. I like to look for uniqueness in MRPs and little details I can pull out and talk about. We had a conversation about hair. It was fun. I had never met her before and I added her to my friends list.

B grouped up with me and A and S to have a fun conversation. A is a friend of mine who I call the most stylish Draenei on Azeroth. S is a worgen hunter who I always seem to have a pretty good time with and who I am liking more and more.

At some point I met D. D is a rogue engineer, one whose MRP I quite liked. She assumed three different forms during our brief conversation: a draenei (from a transporter malfunction), a blood elf (from an orb of the Sin’dorei), and her natural human form. We had a very silly conversation about the pink dress from AQ20. I added her to my friends list.

Shortly after that I met X. X is a frost death knight and plays her like Emma Frost; dripping with ice and chilling anyone around her. I love the idea. She was also playing a pale draenei with white hair, wearing the Mooncloth robe, and thus was one of the more beautiful character models I had seen in some time. We had a fun conversation. I added her to my friends list.

Then I met L. L plays an illusionist worgen mage, one who crafts solid illusions out of mana gems, kind of like mirror image but with more permanence and, according to her MRP, with sufficient skill as to fool most people. She also plays her with other abilities that to some might make her seem overpowered, but to me make her seem utterly fascinating. And she has an interesting history, one that I feel I only scratched the surface of yesterday. We hit it off almost immediately. I added her to my friends list.

If you’re keeping track, that’s five people I’ve added as friends so far, and it wasn’t even noon yet.

B then spoke of how much she liked the pink dress and how much she wanted it. What she hadn’t realized was that it dropped off of an easily solo-able boss in AQ20. I offered to take her and we were off. It didn’t drop, but it was fun.

After that I ran into M. M plays a night elf mage, and by her description she reminded me quite a bit of Anivile. She was also very warm in responding to my compliment of her MRP. We got to talking, and I found out she was an officer of a small guild, one that I thought was perfect for one of my leveling alts. I joined the guild, and I think it’s fair to say that I hope she’ll be a new friend, along with another person in that guild who I met briefly.

Then in the afternoon, Momori logged in for the first time in what seemed like forever. Momori is one of my absolute most favorite people in the game, one who I might drop almost anything to go talk to. She’s someone who has encouraged and helped me with my drawing, and generally been a really good friend in the brief times I’ve been able to talk to her. Seeing her was fun. We had an all to brief RP, but it resulted in one of what I considered to be my most hilarious lines ever (one that would take far too much of an explanation for anyone other than Momori and me to understand, sadly). I had to leave the game after that, sadly, but it was incredibly good to see her.

When I got back in the evening, I didn’t have too much of an expectation as to what would happen. I met up with B again and met her RP boyfriend, which was fun.

Then I spoke to K. K is someone I “met” in raid finder; I actually knew her alt from before then, but I didn’t have experience with K the character until then. She is, as of Cataclysm, the best dps warrior I know, someone who if she tries would outdps me by a fair bit (she wasn’t trying all that hard in the LFR). She is also someone I have RPed with a bit, and what bit I have RPed with her has been fantastic. She’s very friendly, very social, and we seem to get along great.

K asked me if I would like to join her guild for attempts on Madness of Deathwing. I had run with Jana earlier in the week with my guild’s B team, but that was as a sub and I was unlikely to make their second session. After talking with an officer to get approval, I said yes, and we were off.

Their guild was trying a very different makeup than RRT had used to down him. They were using seven dps, two healers, and one tank (as opposed to the more traditional 5-3-2 setup that RRT used). This led to different strategic choices, such as needing to stop dps on the main tentacles to wait for hemorrhage to be cast, and so on. As always, it was a frustrating encounter because the progression bits were on the last platform, ten minutes into the fight. But after four attempts (maybe five), we got him down, and Jana has the achievement and title I didn’t think she would get until DS had been nerfed to the ground.

Jana didn’t win any loot, but I would have felt bad if she did; she was a guest of a guild and I felt happy just to be there.

So, if you’re keeping count, my day had:

• 7 new friends;
• A new guild for my leveling alt;
• A first-time run to get some RP loot for a friend;
• A return of one of the most awesome people I know;
• A kill of the final boss in the expansion for Jana, the character on whom I have spent the most time in this game, by far.

It was one of my best days ever in World of Warcraft. It reminded me of why I play the game.

Coming Home

“I think it’s time for you to come home,” she said.

On Friday it was hard to imagine that this would happen. I had done everything I could to distance myself from Red Royal Trading, to cut off ties, and just generally make it so I could not go back.

On Sunday night I rejoined Red Royal Trading. I rejoined as a Roleplayer, not as an Officer. I’m not sure if they would have let me be an officer but the point was moot because I didn’t want the job anymore.

The officers voted on whether to let me back in. I’m told that the vote was unanimously in favor. I’m not sure how many arms the guild leader had to twist to get that to happen; as a close friend for two and a half years I believe she would have invoked her guild leader prerogative to pull me back in regardless. I am told she had to twist no arms, and the welcome I received certainly suggested it. If nothing else the welcome back made me feel wanted, which is one of the things I felt like I needed in the first place.

Nature read me the riot act for a while, which I probably deserved. In the end we ended up back on good terms, mostly, which is a good thing. She has rapidly developed into an important friend in my game, and one of the best types of friends: someone who isn’t afraid to metaphorically slap you across the face if you’re acting like an idiot.

Dari and Syn welcomed me back with open arms. For Ani, I don’t think I was ever gone.

Monday night came guild RP, a time I used to dread. This time, however, Saxsy took charge of her relationship with Ani and took initiative to insert herself within the company. The gist of the matter is trade involving the formula for an improved arcane powder, known only to the mages in Eldre’thalas. RRT will start by purchasing the formula and selling it within Stormwind. More ambitiously, RRT will start a small processing plant within Feralas to create the stuff itself, hoping for a larger supply. Eventually, if all goes well, there will be larger facilities on the Eastern Kingdoms (I’m thinking Dun Morogh) to create massive quantities of the stuff with the intent of cornering the market on arcane powder.  Saxsy is in charge of this, and she dreams big. There will be hiccups along the way and I think they will be fun to RP. More importantly, it gives her a role other than “assistant to an unwanted villain” that had distanced her and made the RP not fun.

After guild RP, there was a continuation of A team’s run in Dragon Soul. The idea for it was that my raid team had gotten within 10% of downing Madness of Deathwing and they wanted to give it another shot. Anivile had been the mage for those attempts and she was no longer available. So, despite my actions, I was called in (allowed in?) and we were off.

There are some things as a raid group we don’t do as well as the more serious groups I have been in (most notably, Storm). For instance, RRT does not, in my mind, recover from wipes as quickly as my previous guilds, resulting in fewer possible attempts on a progression fight. Nor do I think RRT is especially good at identifying specific flaws in techniques; we are pretty much on our own when it comes to improving DPS and the like. But we have strengths, too, one I don’t think I fully appreciated until we went up against Madness. On Madness, I don’t think we tried the same exact strategy twice. We had tanks altering their cooldown usage each time. We had changes in time warp use. Every single wipe we discussed what went wrong and what might be done to make it better. Never did we just go again for the sake of going again. And ultimately we hit on a strategy that seemed like it would work. The very first time we tried the strategy, it did work. We won the fight, and we now have shiny titles.

I have at least two blog posts in my head about Madness of Deathwing, but I will save them for later. The takeaway is that I saw something there, and learned something there. RRT is not a conventional serious raiding guild. That does not mean that we don’t have pretty clever people running it.  We’re able to get surprisingly good results in a short matter of time. I’m proud to be a part of that, my idiotic statements in the past few weeks notwithstanding.

No loot dropped for Saxsy, but at this point I didn’t really care.

I was home. I was wanted. What I wanted, I had again.

…

Leaves are falling all around, It’s time I was on my way.
Thanks to you, I’m much obliged for such a pleasant stay.
But now it’s time for me to go. The autumn moon lights my way.
For now I smell the rain, and with it pain, and it’s headed my way.

So I’ve got to ramble on.

This is one of those entries where I have no idea what I’m going to say when I start it. Most entries have a point, a structure. A series of paragraphs leading to a conclusion. That sort of thing. This one, this one I’m rambling, and I don’t know where it will end up.

I had a tweet a while back about my ideal guild. It was one that had two raid teams, both of which needed a fire mage, raided from 8-11 my time on various days, and RPed. I wondered if I would be able to get anything close.

Red Royal Trading was close. They had two raid teams, both of which needed a fire mage. They RPed. The only difference was that they raided from 10-1 my time, which was okay on the weekends but didn’t really work during the week. Although I never really gave that a shot; lately I had been staying up until 1 during the week anyway.

I think that just reflects a poverty of the list more than anything. Obviously I want something different because if I didn’t, I wouldn’t have left in the first place. Would I have? Obviously not.

There’s one blog entry of mine I find myself coming back to now: Want vs. Need. There, I said, among other things:

One of the things I like most about playing the game as a social activity is the feeling of being wanted. I really enjoy it when people say they want to run with me, or implicitly indicate that by asking to run with me on unscheduled runs. I can tell, for instance, when Leafie wants to run with me by either her reactions to things I do, or simply because she’s running with me when she could be doing something else. It’s a good feeling.

I won’t kid around. I’ve said for a while now that the reason I left my guild was because I wasn’t having fun. That was a dodge. It was undoubtedly true, but it’s a step removed from a much better explanation. I wasn’t having fun because I wasn’t feeling wanted. For the longest time in RRT I felt like I was wanted. Maybe even cherished. But lately I felt unwanted.

For some people that was true. It’s very easy to see yourself as unwanted when that’s what you focus on. It’s very easy to see yourself as unwanted when you look at yourself and think “my dps is crap, at the bottom of the heap”.  It’s very easy to see yourself as unwanted when someone makes a chance comment about there being too many people on a particular token. It’s very easy to see yourself as being unwanted when you hate where you are, when you hate your particular RP circumstance, and ultimately, when you don’t want yourself.  When you go through a bout of depression it’s very easy to see anything, any small little thing, that confirms your opinion of being worthless and horrible and hateful and unwanted.

Of course, that’s not really true. It’s certainly not the whole story.

Synelyse wanted me. She wanted me to be in the raid group. She wanted me to be in the guild. She wanted to RP with me. She wanted to have fun with me, because she knows that when I’m in a good mood and when I’m cheery I can be the best friend in the world to her. More than that she knows that the two of us have shared pains and joys for the past three years now, something I once said I wanted to continue for the rest of my life.

Anivile wanted me. She wanted me to be her companion in RP. She wanted me to teach her how to be a better mage. She wanted to talk to me, laugh with me, run instances with me, raid with me, and do just about anything. She wants to be my friend and she wanted me in the guild with her.

Darishea wanted me.  She wanted me to RP with her. She wanted me to run old world instances to help her get RP outfits. She wanted to show me the RP outfits she created. More than anything else I think she wanted me to be with her, the motivating factor to ask me to go with her on those old runs rather than anything.

Nature wanted me. She wanted me to RP, to create some amazing scenes that neither of us really ever felt would be possible, and which I really can’t explain and have the explanation seem believable. She wanted me as a friend to talk to when things were bad, when she was hurting. She certainly wanted to talk to me because we have talked for hours on end. She wanted to be my friend.

Could I go on? Sure. Even the person who complained most about too many people on her token wanted me there; I remember her saying some things in what was an ultimately unsuccessful effort to get me to stay in the raid group.

And I have no doubt that there are some people within the guild, some people I don’t know about, who have laughed with me, shared my joys and frustrations, and just don’t know how to tell me what I meant to them. Synelyse has told me that they’re out there.

I threw that all away.

I threw it away because I couldn’t imagine it mattering. I couldn’t imagine people being able to get over my whining about loot, my insistence on procedure, or the way my RP was stuck in a frustrating scene (to everyone) of superior villainy.  (Can you imagine Saxsy as a villain?  I can’t.)

So what now?

Maybe I need to refine my definition of an ideal guild. Instead of basing it on raid schedules or slots or RP or whatever, I need to be simpler.

My ideal guild is one that wants me.

The problem with that definition? I had that.  I threw it away a few days ago.

The Morning After

A long time ago there was a film called “The Day After”. It was a television film, endlessly hyped, set to show the aftermath of a full scale nuclear war.

Kind of feels like that now.

Jana and Saxsy have been guildless for about ten hours now. The fallout continues to rain from that, and will continue for some time, undoubtedly.

Does a part of me think I made a huge mistake yesterday? Sure. Even if I weren’t one to doubt myself I think I would doubt a decision like this one, made in the manner in which I made it. On one hand it was the culmination of perhaps a month’s worth of frustration, but on the other hand the actual decision was made quickly, without talking to anyone.

Do I wish I could have handled it better? Definitely. I don’t think there was any way I could have left with style, grace or dignity, and I think right now that how it happened was likely the best way possible. In bridge, more advanced instructors make a distinction between the best result possible (one that takes into account that you and your partner may not be the best players in the world) and the best possible result (the ideal result with best play). This was almost certainly not the best possible method for leaving a guild.  But I think it might have been the best method possible.

Do I wish things could go back in time? Absolutely. Go back a couple months. I think I was happy then. I was in a guild with my best friends, starting to raid again, looking forward to new content, feeling like I was a positive influence on everyone in the guild. I thought people liked me, and I thought people respected me. I no longer think these things. I don’t know whether it’s because things changed during those two months or I simply became more aware of how people actually felt. Probably a bit of both.

I’ve done what I can to try best to move on. Gone from my bookmarks are links to the guild forum and the guild World of Logs report. Gone are my vent links (I’m hoping that my channel within the vent will be deleted quickly). I went through the guild forums and deleted my posts and pictures; hopefully by now my account will have been deleted, but I suppose it doesn’t matter. I’ve deleted drawings of guild members from my deviantART account (save for Ani, who I think is going to get kicked from the guild anyway). I’ve deleted a couple RealID friends, and a bunch of people on my friends list. Like a good fire mage, I’ve been burning bridges.

I spoke with Ani a bit last night. I think and I hope she understands why I did what I did. We’ve shared a lot of feelings and frustrations about the guild. More importantly, I’ve shared my own feelings and my own frustrations about things in general. She’s a good friend.

I haven’t spoken with Synelyse yet. I hope to do that today. I have absolutely no idea what will happen with that. I have no expectations. I am told that she was hurt by my decision, something I believe is undoubtedly true. I may be understating that. She was very angry with me before I left. I hope I can convince her that my leaving was the best thing for both of us. Beyond that, I’m not sure what I hope for.

I’m really not sure where things go from here. I have a feeling Jana and Saxsy will remain guildless for some time. I think it will be a while before I feel ready to join another guild.

Things Blow Up

Well, that was quick.

Or maybe it was slow.  The writing was on the wall a few weeks ago, I think.

There’s no good way to leave a guild. It is, at its heart, a rejection of what the guild is, and what it stands for. It is a rejection of the people who have worked hard to make the guild what it is. And that can sting even if an average person who’s been in the guild a couple weeks decides to try something else and move on.

I had been in Red Royal Trading for over a year now. I became an officer just over ten months ago. And as I have said several times, I was the senior most officer in the guild. If the guild master were to leave, I believed that she would have passed the guild to me. Whether that’s true or not, it’s a reflection of where I believe I stood in the guild.

I left the guild today.

There are maybe a billion reasons for it, but they boil down to one: I wasn’t having fun. There are three rules in Red Royal Trading, and rule 1 is to have fun. I was breaking that rule. The hows, the whys, the wheres, well, you can read this blog and figure that out.

I’ve written about our GM before. She’s a good person and like a good person has tried quite a bit to figure out what it was that was making me unhappy. I think this actually led to a vicious cycle; I sensed that some people were resenting me for this special treatment.  Today it all boiled over and I realized that I just had to end it. I was unhappy. This was making her unhappy, which was making a whole lot of people unhappy, all with one root cause. Me.

So I left the guild.

I don’t know what will happen going forward. I don’t know if I’ll be able to find a guild for Jana or Saxsy, whether I’ll be able to raid with either of them, or whether I’ll even be able to find some guild to RP with.  I think it’s safe to say that a lot of RP relationships just came crashing down this evening.

Raid relationships crashed down, too.

And, in all likelihood, friendships I didn’t deserve will too.

Goodbye, RRT.  We had some fun times. Let’s try to remember those.

Saxsy’s Haste

That might be a good title for a short story, but alas, it’s not. Rather, I wanted to delve into what seems to me to be a very interesting if technical aspect of Saxsy’s current gear.

I use SimulationCraft to model the dps of my characters. Sometimes I use it to determine whether one character should do more dps than another character. One of the things I like about it is that it will spit out stat scale factors: numbers that tell me, in theory, how much an extra point of a given stat would be worth. A while ago I ran the numbers on Saxsy and got what was a surprising result:

• A point of Crit was worth 2.2076 dps.
• A point of Mastery was worth 1.5892 dps.
• A point of Haste was worth 1.2706 dps.

These results were surprising because Mastery is almost universally held to be the weakest stat for a fire mage. Any site you go to will tell you that Int>Hit>Crit>Haste>Mastery, with the only exception being at lower levels where haste is better than crit. So how does haste go to be the lowest valued stat in this setup?

In that particular gear setup, I had followed standard reforging rules. I reforged mastery to hit, until cap, and then either mastery or haste into crit, where possible. This resulted in the following ratings:

• Crit of 1544 (33.47% as buffed)
• Haste of 1675 (22.3% as buffed)
• Mastery of 938 (13.23% as buffed)

Why is haste valued so low? I think because at that point it reaches some of what are known as “soft caps”: values of haste above which you will gain an extra tick of a periodic spell.  I went into this a little while ago, and with these values you can see that it’s driven by combustion. At 1996 haste, I would get an extra tick from combustion. Since my tier bonus gives me up to 500 extra haste and should be fully stacked before I hit combustion, or lifeblood should give me 480 extra haste, I should always get that extra tick of combustion. Haste then is valuable for speeding up my cast time, but that has diminishing returns.

(It is also possible to get extra living bomb and pyroblast ticks from haste, but one extra tick requires so little haste and two extra ticks requires so much haste that it’s not a practical goal.)

Here’s the problem with taking SimCraft results for granted. If I took those weights and plugged them into a tool like Mr. Robot, it would tell me that my reforges are incorrect. Instead of reforging mastery into something else as a first priority, I should be reforging haste as my first priority. Mastery should be my second priority. Logical thinking, based on the weights that I gave it.  I did that, and got a new configuration of gear that gave me these stats:

• Crit of 1538 (33.44% buffed)
• Haste of 1342 (19.48% buffed)
• Mastery of 1266 (15.06% buffed)

I ran that through SimCraft and was disappointed to discover that this reforge reduced my dps by about 200 points. What was more interesting to me was the change in stat value:

• A point of Crit was worth 2.2287 dps.
• A point of Mastery was worth 1.5208 dps.
• A point of Haste was worth 2.285 dps.

That’s right!  Haste now was the most valuable stat, just as it was prior to T13. It’s not difficult to see why.  With a haste rating of 1342, a full 10-stack of Stolen Time wouldn’t get me an extra tick from combustion, and I’d have to rely on Lifebloom and Stolen Time in conjunction. And in general the lower haste is, the more valuable a point of haste will be.

In any case, that obviously was not the right reforge option. If I went back to Mr. Robot and plugged in these new values, it would tell me all sorts of things about reforging mastery and crit into haste and changing some of my enchants, and it would all likely be wrong. The reason it would be wrong is that the value of a given stat is not static; it varies based on what your stats are.

In any case, I decided to do a bit of reforging on my own. My hit % with this reforge was at 17.02%, a value I quite liked because it was minimally over the hit cap. I didn’t want to mess with that. What I did do is in places where I could reforge mastery or haste into crit, I reforged mastery instead of haste. This got me to the following stats:

• Crit of 1534 (33.42% buffed)
• Haste of 1516 (20.95% buffed)
• Mastery of 1096 (14.11% buffed)

Running these through SimCraft resulted in a dps reading more or less equivalent to the first set.  My stat weights were as follows:

• A point of Crit was worth 2.1797 dps.
• A point of Haste was worth 1.5317 dps.
• A point of Mastery was worth 1.5266 dps.

Mastery and haste had achieved a near equilibrium. I have a feeling that this is in fact the optimal reforge for my gear, one which involves a combination of preferences of reforging haste and mastery. It’s not one I’d get from Mr. Robot. It’s one that acknowledges the varying value of a given stat.

Ultimately this makes very little difference. As I noted above, even the completely messed up reforge away from haste strategy ended up reducing my dps by only 200. But I think it’s interesting as an intellectual exercise. I also think I need to squeeze every bit of dps out of my current gear, because the way things are going, it’ll have to last me to the next expansion.

Status

I have had a couple posts floating around my head in various unfinished stages. One of them isn’t really floating; it’s a post on Jana’s background that perhaps is a third of the way done and incredibly long already. Another post is on a very interesting feature of Saxsy’s gear, in that reforging according to static SimCraft stat weights would be a mistake. I apologize for not getting those posts out sooner.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted, and usually that means I’m on a vacation of some kind or I haven’t had any ideas of what to post. This time that’s not true. It’s that what I am thinking about posting are things that, for various political reasons, I probably shouldn’t post.

I won’t be vague. I haven’t had all that much fun in the game lately. A part of that is certainly because of Saxsy’s legendary inability to get loot. To illustrate how bad it is, she is at ilvl 386 equipped right now. She has run every A team Dragon Soul raid our guild has been in, and has been part of the first kills of seven of the eight bosses in Dragon Soul (our guild hasn’t gotten the last boss). Jana, in contrast, has been in exactly one Dragon Soul raid, that to sub for a B team member for all of an hour. She has downed two bosses and gotten nothing from the instance either. Her item level? 386.

Yes, Jana and Saxsy are more or less equivalently geared right now. When I announced this to the guild some people offered their congratulations. I would far rather have the character that is actively raiding be better geared than the character who is not.

This is not fun.

But there are other things going on, and they’re more important. I hesitate to even bring them up here because I know that it will probably just make things worse. In fact, I really don’t want to get into them much. I’ve talked to my guild leader about them but there’s only so much talking you can do before you have to take action of some sort. Talking doesn’t change the situation.

I imagine that if I stopped raiding the reaction from a fair amount of my raid team would be “Great, that’s one fewer person on my token. Let’s get a hunter or a warlock in here.”

I imagine this despite the fact that I have never won a single tier token nor have I even won a single piece of loot.

Is it true? Probably not, after several minutes of reflection. But I think that sums up the attitude of a fair part of the people on my raid team. They view characters as interchangeable parts and what is more important to them is loot balance (as in, having three or four people on each raid token) rather than who is actually raiding with them. 

Our last week of raiding should have been a smashing success. We got past two new bosses, and made several reasonably good attempts on the last boss of the raid instance. Instead it was marred by people fighting over loot — particularly loathsome to me when said people are talking about the third or fourth piece they’ve gotten in the past two weeks and I’m sitting there having never won a roll, my third piece of T13 loot sitting in my bags for over a month for an inability to get a fourth.

What does this all amount to? I don’t really feel welcome in my raid group anymore. I don’t feel like I’m part of a team.

Could this all be minor squabbles blown out of proportion by the fact that I’m not feeling well generally? Sure. But I think when I’m not having fun it really makes sense to try to figure out why I’m not having fun. Beyond that, it’s not like there are a shortage of things to point to and say “This is not fun.”

I felt like I’ve been here before.

Long ago, Jana was indisputably my main. She was the character I raided with, the character I wanted to progress with, and so forth. But along came Traxy and despite her lesser opportunity, she eventually passed Jana in gear. Obviously the comparison is not perfect because back then I was raiding with Traxy and Traxy is a different class than Jana. But it underscores the greater similarity.

Back then, I wasn’t happy with my guild. There were all sorts of reasons for it. Some of them are present now, some of them are absent now. But the feelings are similar. I am not happy where things are. I feel like I have to make a change.

So it was that last night I logged into Traxy, for the first time in a long time. Through a combination of her own 4000 justice points, donations from guild mates, and a couple runs through old heroics, she jumped her ilvl from 317 to 347 (although that 347 is an odd mixture of dps and tank gear). The idea is that she may once again tank for Storm, a guild that has downed heroic Morchok, who apparently needs a tank, and whose professionalism in raiding is unparalleled. In theory I can do this and still RP on Jana and Saxsy and even raid on Saxsy on the weekends (some people who do raid hardly log in other than to raid).

In practice, though, it’s a credible alternative. It’s one thing to say “Hey, look, unless things change within our raid group, I’m leaving.” It’s quite another to be able to point to an alternative and say “I’m going to raid over here. It’s more fun.”

Maybe things will change, and maybe raiding on Saxsy will become more fun. As I said, there’s nothing in practice that would stop me from raiding on both Saxsy and Traxy. But maybe things won’t change. Maybe the feeling of being unwanted will be confirmed by people complaining about how crowded my token is and wanting a generic hunter or warlock in my place.

At least then, I’ll have somewhere to go.

QQ

This is a whining post.  If that bugs you, feel free to move on to read something else. I hear there’s lots of stuff on the web to read. Maybe you’ll find something you like better.

Our raid team went up against Warmaster Blackhorn Friday and Saturday night. We cleared the bosses before him in about two hours, so we were able to spend one hour on him on Friday and all of Saturday on him. We didn’t get him down. We never came particularly close, only twice getting to the point where Blackhorn himself was on the boat, and never dropping him below 60%.

Blackhorn is a frustrating fight because there is always something you could have done better. Maybe you could have blocked one more Twilight Barrage. Maybe you could have cast more living bombs on the Dreadblades and the Slayers. Maybe you could have gotten on the drakes faster. It’s a very hectic fight and it’s one that leaves me constantly thinking I’m getting only 75-80% of it right.

In any case, at the end of Saturday night’s raid, the GM left us with the thought that we just didn’t have the gear for the encounter, and had to do a better job gearing up. She instructed us to run LFR before our raid nights, instructed people to run LFR, get their valor tokens, get valor gear, and gear up.

This frustrates the hell out of me.

Here are the item levels of our dps (using Ani and not G because G doesn’t seem to want to raid any more):

• Rogue: 392
• Feral Druid: 394
• Frost Death Knight: 395
• Anivile: 388
• Me: 385

Yep, that’s me, bringing up the rear. Why am I bringing up the rear? Because I cannot get gear for the life of me.

Remember my post on White Whales, when I was thrilled to get the Variable Pulse Lightning Capacitor? That was over two months ago, and I actually started getting into the mindset of raiding regularly after that. How many pieces of gear have I won from raiding regular raids since then?  Take a guess before you read on.

Ready?

Zero.

Nada.

Zilch.

Zed.

Nil.

I have busted my butt getting Saxsy geared up since that time, but it’s been all valor points and justice points and LFR and five mans. I have one piece of gear that one of our raiders graciously gave me, the tier headpiece from Ragnaros. But for that, I have not gotten any gear from the Firelands runs nor have I gotten any from our Dragon Soul raids. My amulet, cloak, boots, wand, and first ring are from valor points and are all of the best-in-slot-for-non-heroics valor gear there is. Any further valor gear would theoretically be replaced with a Dragon Soul drop, if I can ever get one. My bracers are the best in slot crafted ones.  Saxsy has gotten five drops from LFR, two of which she can’t use yet because it doesn’t make sense to break my 2 piece T12 without replacing it with 4 piece T13. I have spent over sixty thousand gold gearing Saxsy up, and that does not include gemming it or enchanting it (and my gear is fully gemmed and enchanted).

That’s not to say that nothing has ever dropped from Dragon Soul. But those drops have been rare.

The shoulders off of Morchok (the only item off of him I would consider using) have dropped once. I lost the roll. They would be replaced by tier anyway.

The belt off Zon’ozz has never dropped. Nor has the proper tier glove token. The wand has dropped three times now, though. The first time, I lost the roll for it. The second and third times I had the valor wand (which is better) so I didn’t bother rolling.

The trinket off of Yor’sahj has never dropped, nor has the proper tier leg token.

Neither the ring nor the staff has ever dropped from Hagara. The bracers have dropped at least twice now, but they’re inferior to the cloth bracers I spent a total of 48 thousand gold to get. The shoulder token has dropped once, but I lost the roll.

The chest token has dropped once from Ultraxion.  I lost the roll.

The shared loot trinket dropped once. I let Ani have it because it was a much bigger upgrade for her.

And that’s it. You will note from the list above that every single one of our dps is on the same Vanquisher token, which makes the lack of drops of it very frustrating; every drop is but a one in six chance to win and there have been two drops so far. Meanwhile, our backup warrior tank has (I think) three pieces of 397 tier because he gets a token all to himself.

I try to push out my dps as best as possible, but as our group concluded, we just don’t have the gear for Blackhorn. And for whatever reason, I just cannot get gear. It’s been three weeks in LFR since Saxsy has gotten gear (she got beat out for the second best trinket last night by a warlock scrub who was doing half her damage and was probably just spamming shadow bolt).

And now we’re getting nerfed.

Look, I can trounce LFR. I am regularly top dps on fights within the LFR. But in our ten mans, I am usually third or fourth. This nerf promises to drop my dps by about 5%, or around 1500 dps on Ultraxion (for instance). I am falling further behind, and I just cannot get gear.

I know I said a few weeks back that gear would come. I’m not so sure anymore.