Roll on [Awesome Epic]

Player 1 rolls 82 (1-100)

Player 2 rolls 15 (1-100)

Player 3 rolls 185 (1-200)

Player 4 rolls 91 (1-100)

Player 4 receives [Awesome Epic]

- #4: You sure you don’t need this 2. I got a really cool ring last week, and I see you’re using 397 legs.

- #2: Oh no, you should definitely keep it, because I won this trinket a few days ago. I can wait for the next token.

- #4: Well ok…. /opens trade with #1. You know, I think you should have these 1, I mean, this would give you 3 pieces, and then you’d be one away from a 4-piece.

- #1: But it might take me weeks to get another tier token, and you can use it now. Just keep it already!

- #4: You know, maybe I should give it to #3. They use their off-spec once an expansion, but what if we need them to swap on the final boss this tier? They need to be prepared!

Wednesday I spent about an hour trying to get rid of a truly excellent trinket, because, well, you know. I didn’t need it. It’s probably a good thing we have a roll system as opposed to say, open bartering, or we’d never get loot distributed. As it is, I think we redistribute the wealth so frequently that it would be impossible to do any kind of “accounting” as to who actually received what and when, which makes me blessedly thankful that we don’t have one of those pesky point systems.

The first time I encountered a companion system was in Neverwinter Nights, and I thought it was awesome. Although I had played many tabletop adaptations (Icewind Dale, Baldur’s Gate, Wizardry, Might & Magic… I could go on for a bit) these games all featured a party-type system. You controlled a party of adventurers that allowed you to select a wide range of skills to meet the many challenges you might face throughout the game. While a later play-through might feature a party comprised entirely of Barbarians, I know I tended to take a warrior, rogue, cleric, and mage as my base party whenever possible to cover all my bases.

NWN changed this up a bit. While it was still in the tabletop tradition, instead of a party of adventurers, you were now a solo hero. Depending on the class you chose to take, this could make some things a bit difficult. I usually play a paladin or cleric, and having to hope that I could smash open boxes without destroying the valuable cargo inside was always a bit of a frustrating point for me. And then came the companions. I almost always chose a thief to complement my meaty sword bashing skills. While early companions weren’t all that great in AI capability (no really stand HERE!), they enhanced the solo player experience without detracting from your solo hero storyline.

Taking this same concept and inserting into an MMO, however, makes me a bit uneasy. Sure, there have been times when I’ve run across a group quest and thought “Damn, now I’ve got to talk someone into completing this with me,” but it’s never really been a serious issue while content was fresh (in the same expansion pack at a minimum). Once that grace period is over, finding a group for a quest becomes a major pain in the rumpus, and I could understand how a companion could be awesome; however, I find bumping those quests down to solo content just as viable for “dated” content.

The main problem I have with a companion system is that it doesn’t give you any reason to interact with anyone until you reach the level cap. You might still choose to not do group quests because you don’t want to deal with other folks, but I find that group quests usually involve a strong enough incentive to make grouping a worthwhile endeavor. Especially for a fresh game, making those little connections while you’re all bright eyed and bushy tailed about new experiences gives you a stronger incentive to keep at the game later, when it bogs down either because you’re done with the “task” of leveling and getting ready for whatever end-game options are available or contemplating rolling a new character to repeat the leveling experience. Knowing that their are folks that you can chat with, even if you’re not actively grouped or participating in the same activity any longer, provides a nice incentive for players to keep playing your game instead of finding the next best thing.

On the flip side of all this, I know I have experienced group fatigue. Usually when I log into an MMO instead of a PC or console game, it’s because I want to chat or do a group activity. However, sometimes I’m between games, and you can only replay Metroid so many times before you start dreaming about marble balls in mazes. I like having the option to play by myself. I like the option of just breezing around doing my own thing at any level and still feel like I made some kind of progress (however truly insubstantial it might be). I think WoW has actually done a pretty good job of this providing a good mix of solo-able and group activities from L15 to end-game, and although I generally pursue solo activities in LoTRO, it also provides a great system for solo and group content.

Sometimes You Just Want a Quiet Night

I’ve played other MMO’s that put all the emphasis on group play, and although I can’t speak for everyone, it definitely diminished my time ponying up the bucks for their products. DDO, on the surface, seemed to take care of that pesky travel issue. The entire town is riddled with portals to sewers, islands, and deserts where an adventuring party can pulverize a wide range of baddies. Many of the instances are outdoor, providing a wonderful exploration experience for the new player. However, it got old so quickly, because the only thing to do in the game was log in, look for a group, and run an instance. I found myself relying on other games to fill in the gap. FFXI also lost my business after I started my 3rd character and realized I was going to be nothing but grouping once I hit level 8 or so. Although there was more outdoor travel available, depending on the location, you needed a group just to get somewhere, much less accomplish anything when you arrived.

I also found that play-time ended up being tiring in these games. It was almost impossible to pop on to play for a short 1/2 hour session–heck, it could take that long just to have someone notice you advertising for a group. Unless you had a block of time to commit to the game, then it wasn’t even worth logging in. While I understand and appreciate the social/group component in MMO play, if I can’t find activities that I enjoy doing solo & in a group, I likely won’t be playing the game very long. I expect my MMO to be robust, and to keep me engaged in a variety of ways, not because I think MMO’s are the end-all and be-all, but because MMO’s fill a unique niche in my gaming life.

Even worse, the games that I’ve played that limit play to group activities can sometimes end in frustration. Sure, you quickly build up a list of folks that you’ve enjoyed grouping with, but there always comes that time when insomnia hits, you have a day off, or you just have some extra time on a Saturday afternoon that you’ve devoted to spending in game and you can’t find a bloody soul to play with. “That’s ok,” you think, “I’ll just go with a new group. It’ll be nice to meet some new people.” And as you faithfully call out to fellow players to complete some task or just kill time for the day, you rapidly reach the wall because you can’t find a group. Even worse, you have absolutely nothing to while away the time with (unless you really like rearranging furniture at your ‘house’) because all activity is based on your ability to find a group. Talk about frustrating.

I suppose my continued exposure to MMO’s has left me with rather high standards. I expect robust communities with chatty folks and people interested in group play, but I don’t always want to participate. Being able to piddle around on my own, and still feel accomplished is an important requirement for me in any new MMO, but I also know that I am just as likely to leave when I find myself in a ghost town, or where it’s hard to find community activities on a regular basis.

Going solo isn’t a bad thing, but I think a robust MMO community must balance the needs of the players who MMO to group, and those who don’t.

How do you feel about solo activities in MMO’s? Do you find yourself connecting easily with others for group play, or are you discouraged (or disinclined) to participate with other players?

- You are nothing but a DPS farmer.

- What’s a DPS farmer?

- If you don’t know, you’re just showing that you are one.

Well damn, thought I, maybe I’m a dps farmer too!

You see, once upon a time, there were farmers.

They tilled the fields and made sure yummy produce was available for the eating. And it was good.

Then some other things happened: industrialization, the birth of the computer, and WoW. (I’m sure there was some other stuff too, but you get the idea).

Early WoW explorers discovered a new type of farming: gold farming.

People got paid to play the game, rack up loots, make a lot of gold, and sell it to other players. Sure, they made people who played the game for fun and not profit a little hot under the collar, but it’s a job right?

Then, there was farming that could be enjoyed by all, such as AoE farming.

A great tool for the adventurer in need of cash.

But DPS farming? Is that where you go out and kill DPS? Get rid of your extraneous DPS by selling it to other DPS players who just don’t have enough?

Although I wish I’d captured some screenshots of the conversation in question, I’ll share what my fragmented memory can dredge up:

- You should give other players a chance to DPS.

- How come you can’t DPS?

- Because you’re just showing off. If you’d done less DPS, we wouldn’t look so bad.

- So I should contribute less DPS? And not do my job, why?

- But you weren’t doing your job. That’s why your DPS is so good.

- So, I was killing the boss, switching to adds, and staying out of bad stuff, and I wasn’t doing my job how?

- See, you’re just a DPS farmer. You shouldn’t even come to LFR and give the rest of us a chance.

- Wait. Because I did great DPS, didn’t cause a problem, and didn’t win any loot, I somehow made your LFR experience worse?

- Right. Because you’re a DPS farmer.

Apparently DPS farmers farm bosses. And it is bad.

I’m not sure I’ve mentioned it, but it’s been a long, long time since I’ve been a dps raider. I raided in vanilla as a rogue, and started a mage in BC; but for all intents and purposes I’ve spent 4 years of raiding as a tank or a healer. Benchmarks for these roles are a bit different, and while I always felt that I covered them exceptionally well, there’s just something very real and tangible about a dps meter. I’m not saying it’s the end and be all of the dps role, but you can bet your buns that it brings quantifying your effectiveness into very sharp focus.

I’ve been mulling over this more and more as I’ve truly become a hybrid role in my team. I’ve got two roles that I’m spending a significant time trying to master, whereas I’ve usually only had to worry about one. The other wasn’t bad per se, but just not as well polished. As I began to LFR, I made sure that some weeks I did the fights as restoration, and sometimes as balance, just so I had a general handle of the basic mechanics of the fight for both roles.

But it didn’t really come into focus for me, why I was so good on some fights and so bad on others until I had a friend come back to raiding. We were rolling through Firelands at the end of a raid week, getting folks mounts and working on our 3rd legendary, when he said something that made it all make sense:

I do so poorly in Firelands. I’m afraid to let the guild bring me in here because I look so bad. But I know the DS fights so much better, I’m just now figuring out how to maximize my dps on some of these fights.

Click Went the Lightbulb

When you’re learning a new encounter, you’re learning more than the dance steps and what not to do. You’re learning when your rotation will be interrupted, when the best time to line up your cooldowns is, and how to avoid huge gaping holes in your damage/healing up-time. Those fights that I’m really good at are always the ones where I learned the fight from the beginning.

While you can always pick up your game at a later date, you are going to be behind the curve. While those 100 wipes went into training you on a perfect response time for damage or healing, now that you have to switch, those same responses have to be retrained to some degree. Not drastically, not game-altering die-in the fire every attempt: but enough to make you look a little less polished, and not as effortlessly awesome as the guy standing next to you.

And that’s when my second bright idea occurred to me: players I want to raid with, players that I respect for their skill are those that utilize every tool in their toolbox. It doesn’t matter that you know every step in the dance of death if you don’t know whether you should be burning your incinerating cool-down now, or in 5 seconds when it’ll last through the next burn phase.

I’ve been running more PUGs than usual the last few weeks, partly in an effort to get more players kitted up for 85, and in part because I’ve been running more LFR. And while it might sound a bit snobbish, I’m always pleasantly surprised when I see someone using not only their huge raid cool-downs, but their cool-downs for personal protection. While it’s usually not necessary to use a Tranquility, pop into Tree, throw out some treants or pop a Barkskin, these are tools that make encounters easier, more efficient, and make me able to perform when I step into Heroics.

Learning an encounter isn’t so much about the dance. Every dance can be conquered (or at least fumbled through). The harder part, the challenging part, is fitting my skills, my little square blocks, into the round holes that appear through the encounter. When I’ve been most successful, when I’ve really made my mark in an encounter, it’s because I utilized every possible ability that it made sense to use to up my dps/healing, reduce my damage taken, and meet all the goals of the encounter.

Those flawless raiders that I respect and envy aren’t flawless. No one is, but what they do with grace and consummate skill is utilizing their class to its maximum potential. I may never be there, at least not 100% of the time, but that’s always my goal. Discovering how and why I perform differently on different fights was one step in helping me nudge me towards that ideal.

Why you ask?

Because I think we didn’t meet a single tank who understood what a solar beam was.

While a well-placed solar beam is sometimes placed on a lone caster to lure it into your tank’s waiting arms, more often, a solar beam would be dropped directly on a packed clump of mobs only for the tank to… remove them.

So ignore your cat-like reflexes which pull you out of dangerous AoE bad stuffs, and stay in the bloody solar beam! Your boomchicken will thank you.

This is a public service announcement brought to you by the Moonkin Sanity Council, Chapter 2493. Thank you for your support!

First up is my new mount which I can’t decide whether I want to ride or secretly covet. I almost wish I’d waited to roll on it so I could have seen my whole raid team decked out on one, but I just couldn’t help myself:

It’s just such a pretty mount, and it’s my first “boss” mount, so come what may, it’ll always be an important part of my story with Production Company.

The second is more because of the circumstances around the shot. I was doing this quest in Loch Modan where you hide in a bush in order to sneak up (and spray) your unsuspecting victim. I suspect that they intended you to use the bush as you reached your quest objective, but instead, I ran around the entire area in my “disguise”:

As I aggroed my 2nd murloc on the way to my quest objective, my husband asked:

- What do you call a dwarf and a bush?

- I dunno. What?

- Russell.

Gotta love the corny!

Yor’sahj the Unsleeping is an early healing/DPS check for your team. While we’re not as concerned with kill priority in terms of making sure we’re running in the right direction, knowing what combinations you get will help you plan your healing strategy appropriately. For this encounter, we utilized 1 tank and 2 healers, although this may vary based on your raid composition.

Before discussing the strategies involved, it will help to be aware of some background information.

Oozes

In heroic mode, Yor’sahj will spawn 4 oozes. Your raid will whack down one of the little darlings, leaving you with 3 to worry about. There are 6 possible combinations, and  this chart should cover ooze priorities for 10-man teams. Keep in mind that, depending on the circumstances and abilities of your particular team, it might not be 100% accurate. 

The Debuff

Dealing with the debuff is the same on heroic as on normal; however, the damage will be higher than you faced on normal mode, so I’ve included this list as a refresher for which abilities trigger the debuff to stack.

Keep in mind that having a raid member reach a 5th stack results in a wipe.

As a general rule of thumb direct healing adds a stack, while indirect healing does not. Paladins are the main exception to this rule, hence their increased value (and QQ from the rest of us about their overpowered awesomeness). Most HoT ticks, after the initial application, do not apply stacks either, although some cool-downs are exceptions.

Druid

No stacks

• Leader of the Pack
• Frenzied Regeneration (Including 4-piece T13 bonus)
• Efflorescence
• Bloom from Lifebloom

1 Stack

• Swiftmend
• Rejuvenation
• Wild Growth (per player)
• Lifebloom (per stack)

Raid Wiper

• Tranquility (applies 1 stack per tick)

Paladins

No stacks

• Beacon of Light heals
• Guardian of Ancient Kings
• Lay on Hands
• Word of Glory
• Divine Storm

1 Stack

• Holy Radiance
• Light of Dawn

Other Information

• Divine Shield does not clear or prevent stacks.

Priest

No stacks

• Desperate Prayer
• Echo of Light
• Guardian Spirit
• Prayer of Mending
• Vampiric Embrace (shadow)
• Power Word: Barrier
• Divine Aegis

1 Stack

• Holy Word: Serenity
• Prayer of Healing
• Lightwell
• Penance (per channel, not per tick)
• Power Word: Shield (with or without glyph)
• Binding Heal (target and player)
• Holy Word: Sanctuary (players leaving and entering will gain an additional stack)
• Renew
• Holy Nova (all targets)

Raid Wiper

• Atonement
• Divine Hymn

Shaman

No Stacks

• Earth Shield
• Healing Stream Totem
• Spirit Link Totem
• Feral Spirit (enhancement)
• Stoneclaw Totem (with glyph)

1 Stack

• Unleash Life (Earthliving Weapon itself gives no stacks)
• Chain Heal (per person)
• Healing Rain (players leaving and entering will gain an additional stack)
• Riptide

Non-Healing Classes

None of these abilities will cause stacks. This is provided for informational purposes so you can yell at these people to work on healing themselves during tough phases ^^

Death Knight

• Death Strike, Blood Shield, Death Pact, Rune Tap (including glyph), Blood Parasite

Hunter

• Chimera Shot

Mage

• Evocation (including glyph)
• Ice Block will not clear stacks

Rogue

• Recuperate

Warlock

• Healthstone, Drain Life, Fel Armor, Death Coil

Warrior

• Frenzied Regeneration, Blood Craze

Miscellaneous

Draenei

1 stack

None of these abilities will cause stacks.

• Trinket, weapon or set bonus procs
• Grounded Plasma Shield (engineering)
• Health potions
• Bandages

General Strategy

The fight will be very similar to normal mode–there’s just more damage! Some general things you should know:

• Stack unless you have a green ooze.
• Purple phases will be much more frequent on heroic.
• Be sure that Deep Corruption stacks properly on your raid frame of choice (spell ID 105171)
• If you have a yellow ooze, be prepared to use a major healing cool-down.
• Mana will be tight until your 2nd blue orb.

Healers should split the raid between them to avoid cross-stacking of the buff. If you have a paladin, assign them the tank. If you don’t have a paladin, choose your healer with the absolute strongest single target heal. Damage during a purple phase is moderately light, so try not to panic and heal sparingly. Using stronger heals is a must. Also, keep a tight eye on the debuffs cool-down. It will reset once during the phase, giving you a bit of breathing room. At the end of a purple phase, one healer should follow the ooze team to top everyone off. Other than the massive healing required during a yellow ooze phase, keeping the tank alive during the debuff is the biggest challenge. You may see difficult combinations back to back, so use major raid cool-downs sparingly.

During your first blue ooze phase, the DPS should whittle the mana orb to ~30% when it drops, but should not break it until a 2nd orb appears. Be sure to have all mana cool-downs available for after the first mana drain (Mana Tide Totem, Hymn of Hope, etc.) This ensures that mana for the rest of the fight is always available and pain free. Make sure that your tank stacks on the mana orb whenever a blue ooze is incoming. Since most ooze combinations require stacking, having the raid on/within the mana orbs dispersal range will ensure that mana does not become an issue.

Druid Stuff

In order to be successful on this fight, it is important to keep a beady eye on your HoT application, and make good use of Healing Touch/Regrowth. You should pre-HoT your raid team prior to Yor’sahj absorbing the oozes on every purple phase. Pre-HoT’ting the tank with Lifebloom is acceptable, but is unlikely to have any great benefit. Tree of Life and Tranquility are poor choices for any purple phase, which makes Druids somewhat undesirable in terms of healing cool-downs in comparison with other healing classes.

If your raiding team has a class with a pet (warlock/hunter/DK), you can use the pet for Lifebloom (mana conservation) and to bounce Swiftmend off of to provide Efflorescence without adding a tick to a player.

This is a good fight to maximize the haste in your set above the Wild Growth “cap” in order to give you more cushion in applying Healing Touch to targets.

Some friends and I were running a few of the early Cataclysm heroics. One of my buddies had rolled up a new shaman, and was interested in getting him geared up enough for some LFR action. It’s been awhile since I’ve been in an early Cata heroic, but said friend was a bit disappointed in the folks he’d met so far, and wanted a strong, friendly group to make the experience more enjoyable.

We queue up for our first heroic for the night, a Deadmines run, and get a tank. As soon as we queue in, he says:

I haven’t played since BC. This is my first time in the dungeon. If there are any tips or pointers that would make things easier, let me know.

We thought it was nice that he’d said something. Perhaps because most of our party was overpowered, we didn’t bat at an eye. We could probably survive without a tank for stretches if we had too. I told him it wouldn’t be a problem, and I’d fill him in as we went along.

And away we went. At breakneck speed. It wasn’t too fast, but it’s the type of pulling I’m used to seeing in experienced tanks: it was beautifully done, and honestly, a pleasure to work with. As we neared the first boss, I started typing. I think my instructions were fairly simple:

Normal tank fight until second phase. He’ll become untankable and summon fire. Just stay out of it.

The fight went fine, even though I think he must have grazed the fire sometime as he didn’t get the achievement, but nothing horrible either as it didn’t even make a blip on my healing radar. But the best part of the night was as soon as the fight was complete:

That was awesome! I wonder what’s next?

When’s the last time you ran across someone so excited to be playing the game? Who enjoyed seeing a “simple” boss die? Who wasn’t calling someone out for being bad because they were, you know, geared for the dungeon they were *in*?

As we were clearing our way to another encounter, my group started chatting about how much fun we were having with this tank. It wasn’t that he was playing his character well, which he was. It was that he was having such a fun time doing it. He wasn’t overly chatty, he didn’t really talk except to acknowledge some instructions I’d doled out as we traveled from boss to boss, but we had fun with this guy. At the end of the dungeon, he apologized for his lack of experience. We did our best to reassure him, and asked to run another dungeon. Repeat of dungeon 1: fun times.

As we were saying our good nights, I asked if he’d mind sharing his real ID: while we didn’t run dungeons a lot, if we were all available, we’d love to get together again. He readily agreed, and since then, we’ve chatted back and forth a few times as he continues slogging through dungeon after dungeon on whatever goals he’s trying to meet. Poor fella didn’t even know LFR existed until I let it slip last night.

In the same time frame, my hubby has made a new connection. He’s been playing as a balance druid since Karazhan when he decided to stop bleeding his targets to death, and instead, to drop orbital laser beams from the sky. He was running a random heroic a couple of weeks ago, and apparently salvaged a horrific pull with a well-timed rebirth/tranquility before he valiantly sacrificed himself for the group. A fellow group member congratulated him on his quick responses and the group finished the dungeon.

Then he got a whisper from a random boomchicken. Apparently, that group member that congratulated him had been working on her own laser chicken. She was ready to learn everything balance druids had to offer, and succeeded to spend a few nights grilling chatting with the awesome guy she discovered in a PUG. Although he’s been playfully referring to her as “the stalker,” they’ve had quite a few good chats, which I imagine will continue.

This is how you build a community in an MMO. You do it one encounter at a time, one friendly soul at a time. But in order to have these experiences result in communities, you have to be willing to let them happen.

You can pin all your hopes and aspirations on your guild experiences. You can even narrow down where you want to play in order to *hopefully* facilitate meeting like-minded people.

But to say that tools like LFG and LFR destroy community seems a stretch to me. Maybe some raiding guilds are suffering, but guilds in general: those huge 500 people guilds that people join to level alts and hang out with a great group of folks? I can’t imagine they’re bothered a bit. Just because you find more than your share of bad apples in large, random groups doesn’t mean that community has died.

How do you build a community in an MMO?

Play the game. Talk to people. Be willing to accept that maybe not everyone left in the virtual universe you inhabit is a total dingbat before they say “Hi.”

Community isn’t created by developers, and it can’t be destroyed by them either. Community has been, and always will be in the hands of the players. At their root, guilds are tools to facilitate group play and communication. Maybe the newest tools, LFR and LFR, doesn’t fit your expectations, but that doesn’t prevent you from utilizing it to make connections, or even eschewing it all together and forging bonds in a completely different way.

I choose to be an optimist, to look at the bright side of things, because despite all the bad experiences I could share: they don’t matter. They don’t ruin the game for me, but finding people to share my gaming passion with do make the experience better in so many ways that I can’t help but fail to describe them.