Actual Results May Vary » World of Warcraft

Raid Recruitment, and an IRL analogy.

Emma — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 12:13:01 +0000

It’s been a while since I made a World of Warcraft post, but this is one that has implications for the world outside of Azeroth as well.

As some may know, I’m a guild leader in World of Warcraft. I oversee a group of people who like to kill imaginary monsters made of pixels for imaginary loot. Anyway, I was recruiting for a raid leader (someone who coordinates the fights against imaginary pixel monsters, for the uninitiated) in Trade chat today, and had the following conversation with a mage (all spelling errors reproduced faithfully, comments in [square brackets]).

Mage: ill join [ill join? What about joining is so ill?]

Me: You’re interested in leading raids for us?

Mage: yeah ok

Me: I have to say, you don’t sound very keen

Mage: gonna let me join? [not if you keep this up]

Me: What experience do you have at leading raids?

Mage: done them all about twice and had no wipes [wipes, for those not in the know, are when everyone dies a horrible flaming death of doom and you have to start again]

Me: Led them? On which toon?

Mage: yeah. This 1

Me: well I know that’s not tue because I’m looking at your armory [online character record, it's a US game so it's spelt funny] right now and you have nothing but 2 BH [Baradin Hold, a facerollingly easy raid] runs.

First of all, what the hell? He had to know I could access his armory data, so either he was hoping I was stupid, or trolling. I’m hoping it’s the second option, I don’t like to think someone believes me to be that stupid.

Second, this is kind of like people who lie on their resumes, in a sense. It used to be, in World of Warcraft, that you had to ask around to find out what people were like, how many times they’d done a raid, and so on. Now, with linkable achievments granted every time you kill a boss the first time, and with the WoW Armory keeping track of the number of boss kills, it’s easy to see someone’s progression and experience just by looking them up online.

Now look at the real world. If I apply for a job and say all sorts of things about how I’m so mature and responsible and you want to hire me, is that going to stack up against what a quick Google search will say about me? For me it will, as I’m pretty straightforward about my quirkiness in interviews and my CV’s personal profile, but think about those people who fudge (or just outright lie) on their CV and their interview. I wonder how likely they are to get caught out now? Obviously recruiters IRL have nowhere near as much information as I have access to for in-game recruitment, but surely they can reach more information than ten years ago. Thoughts?

Good PUG, Bad PUG

Emma — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 03:29:01 +0000

So I’ve been able to queue for heroics for about a week now in World of Warcraft, but to be honest, I’ve had enough bad experiences in Normal Dungeons that the idea of shackling myself to four other players for even harder content sounded like a nightmarish hell. Still, our guild’s due to start raiding some time in the next millenium, and the next level of gear is in Heroics. You know what that means. I have to queue for heroics.

Warning: Huge slab of text below, including exerpts from in-game chat logs. If you don’t play WoW, read at your own peril.

I started off queueing as DPS. There, I’m one of three and if I screw up it probably won’t mean a wipe unless it’s a BAAAD screwup, or someone else screws up simultaneously. After a few days of heroic DPS, though, I got bored. Yeah, Boomkin is pretty overpowered, but I just don’t enjoy dps that much. Hit boss/adds, don’t stand in fire/falling rocks/spiky rocks shooting out of the ground/purple smoke/circle of light. Unlike healing, which is heal tank, don’t stand in (insert list), also remove debuffs where possible, also keep rest of group alive. So, I eventually queued as heals.

My first dungeon was BRC, and my group was awesome. No, but really. They were all guildmates, they were obviously coordinating on vent or simlilar because they were so smooth, so good. We had deaths on every boss except the final one, but it wasn’t because people were bads – it was just bad luck or a small mistake. On Rom’ogg, I got two-hit and got back in to the instance when the tank was down at about 40K – I healed him up, rebuffed the group, and off we went. At Corla, someone got feared just after they stoood in the purple light – the stacks hadn’t dropped off the add, and the tank’s interrupt didn’t go off. So, we dusted off and went back in again. Second time, worked like a charm. Karsh Steelbender we wiped on because the tank didn’t drop the stacks of superheated armour and we all got fried. Second time though, worked fine. It was great. We skipped Beauty and went on to the final boss, which was smooth as. We backtracked and tried beauty three or four times, but we kept breaking CC so we called it a day.

The reason that this was a good group wasn’t that it was flawless. We died several times during the encounter, and I spent about 80G on repairs for that run. It was a good group because everyone discussed strategy, went over the fights and positioning, and didn’t throw blame around when people died. If someone screwed up (turns out I’m REALLY bad at simultaneously CCing two adds and healing), they took reponsibility, we moved on. None of this “OMG I died healer u noob learn 2 heal” or “OMG it hit me tank learn to aggro lololol” or “omg stop stealing my aggros stfu noob”. It was “sorry for the deaths there guys, I was stunned and hadn’t topped up your health enough”; “Sorry about pulling there tank, I accidentally used an AOE ability and pulled the guys around the corner”; “I say, old chap, might I have a cup of tea while we wait for this boss to move?” Ok, so that last one was a lie. Still. It was a good run.

I’ve had many, many, more bad runs. I’ll tell you about just one, though. This one’s a bit of a wall of text.

First bad run (directly after BRC, as it happened) was healing Heroic Vortex Pinnacle. Zone in, we get this (names changed to protect the idiots):

I’ve healed it on normal though and the mechanics were pretty simple. Unlike, say, Stonecore, which is a pain in the arse even on normal (I’ve yet to down the first boss in Heroic. It’s that bad). So, this one should be easy, right?

Nope. I was going OOM after every other trash pull and I couldn’t figure out why. I was using the most efficient heals I could, and I wasn’t overhealing much. So, I flick recount over and look at the “healing taken” pane. Guess what? The tank was only taking about 30% of my healing. That’s bad, mkay. The tank should ideally be taking about 70-80% of the healing in any dungeon, because if they’re not that means that it’s being spread around to other players It’s higher if, say, you’ve got lots of melee dps and there are aoe damage effects from mobs. We had hunter, mage, and DK. Damage was pretty evenly spread between the dps. So, I start looking more at what the dps are doing, trying to figure out where this damage is coming from.

In VP, there are these mobs that are all lined up on a ramp like debutantes, or ballroom dancing contestants, and if you pull one you pull that whole side of the ramp. These mobs also cast a lightning storm spell. Would you believe: the dps are standing right under the storms? Ok, I think, maybe because I’ve been healing them through it they don’t realise how much damage they’re taking. I’ll back off on the healing, see if they get the point. So, I back off on the healing and only top them off to keep them at about15-20%. There’s one DK in particular who shits me off so I let him drop down to 5%. Fight stops, I heal everyone up. What do you know, we get to the end of the trash pull and I’ve got half mana left, which is fine – getting to the next fight it regens to about 2/3. This means I can get four trash pulls instead of two without need for a drink. Next pull. More lightning storms.

“Guys, don’t stand in the storms. You’re ranged, you don’t need to stand there. Find another position, please, or I’m going to stop healing you. It’s a waste of mana when you stand in stuff, and I don’t have mana to waste”

This made me unpopular.

So, we eventually get to Altarius – the one with the wind. Turns out that in Heroic, he has tornadoes too. Well isn’t that fun. I did point out that I hadn’t done this on heroic, and asked if anything was different, but as I was typing out “do I need to know anything” the tank ran in and off we go. Sure, it would have been better if I’d read up on the instance beforehand. I’ll own to that. But you don’t run in without checking that your healer is ready! So. We wipe on Altarius very, very swiftly because the group of tornadoes spawned right on my head. Which sucked. REALLY sucked. Could’ve happened to anyone though, really. So, I zone back in and get very entertained by lighting strikes killing me every time I zone in. Because I’m bored, I zone in a few more times, giggle like a maniac as I get zapped, and eventually get bored with that and wait outside the portal for the wipe. We get back in, and this is the conversation that follows. No, really, I’ve copied this out of the chat log. I’ve just changed the name of the IdiotDK again.

Yeah, so I made a few typos. Apart from that I thought it was masterful.

This was a bad PUG for a number of reasons. I’m not exempting myself from this criticism either.

Mistake 1: Communication, or lack thereof. In this group, there was little communication, what we did end up getting had a distinctly “STFU L2P noob” vibe about it. This just makes everyone on-edge, and makes for a bad playing experience. Whatever happened to the groups that chat politely, or at least say “well done” when something goes down? I have to admit, I’m as much to blame as anyone else in the group for that one. About all I said was “get out of the fire ffs you bastards”.
Mistake 2: Believing that Gear = Skill. The fellow I’ve christened IdiotDK decided that because my average iLevel was low, this meant that I was a bad healer. This is a fairly common misconception, and I think we can squarely lay the blame for this on Wrath heroics where if you had the gear, you could heal. In Wrath, your ability as a healer was solely and purely determined by your gear, assuming you weren’t completely stupid. Actually, even a one-eyed marmoset could heal in Wrath heroics by randomly mashing buttons if they had the gear. A stupid, one-eyed marmoset – then you’ve got trouble. However, if you’re willing to use Crowd Control, and be responsible for avoiding the damage that you can, then having a healer who is only a few iLevel points over the heroic threshold isn’t a problem. Sure, you’ll sometimes wipe – but you know what? It’s not Wrath any more guys. Dying does not mean that you are lol l2p noobs. Dying means that the instances are harder, and sometimes you just get unlucky.
Mistake 3: Playing like it was Wrath of the Lich King. This follows from Mistake 2. Wrath Heroics were, to be honest, face-rollingly easy. Crowd control, mana management, threat management – these were unknown quantities in Wrath. I regularly used to heal the Brann event with several party members standing in the fire. Hell, some days I healed in Boomkin spec and did half heals, half dps. It was FACE-ROLLINGLY EASY. I cannot say this enough.

Basically, if you end up in LFG with people who understand that we’re not in Kansas any more, you’re fine. People CC, people discuss strats before you go in, targets get marked, there’s a clear dps order, etc. Sometimes you’ll die because you’re unlucky and the boss hits you twice in a row. So, because everyone in the group realises you’re not in Kansas any more, you all release, go in again, and try the Boss.

If you end up in LFG with people who are quite happy thinking they’re still in Kansas, you’re in for an incredibly painful time unless you’re running with Ascension, who by now far outgear the heroic content. They will ignore CC, assume that everything can be AOElololol’d down, and not bother moving out of the fire because “gud heeler keep u alive, rite?”.

I suggest that you put the WrathBabies you come across onto your ignore list. It’s a pain in the royal arse, but it’s about all you can do.

Cataclysm: My Thoughts So Far. May contain spoilers

Emma — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 10:37:41 +0000

So, Cataclysm. Thoughts after the break!

Vashj’ir is very pretty. It’s entirely underwater (except for the flight paths out), you get an EPIC SEAHORSE, and the 3-d nature of combat is fun! It does get a little confusing at times when I think I’m in range to loot and it turns out I’m waaaaay over there, and was confused because of camera angle and the 3-d nature of, well, water. Rewards are good for resto druids, lots of Haste and Spirit. The way you follow the wreck survivors through the whole zone is pretty damn cool.

Mt Hyjal is also very pretty, but I don’t like it as much as as Vashj’ir. The loots are better for balance druids though, lots of Hit and Spellpower. It’s marginally better for mining than Vashj’ir, but that might also be because it’s an 80-82 zone and it’s now two days into the expansion. The storyline doesn’t seem as fluid either; you’re basically running around putting out a lot of fires – none of them difficult – which makes me wonder why Malfuriou Stormrage isn’t doing it himself instead of recruiting (apparently) the Herald of Whatever to do it for him.

Queues are a bitch. And I say this in the nicest possible way. While it’s normally great to play on a high-population server, it becomes a tad irritating when you have to queue for an hour to get into the server. It’ll die down in a week, though, and then I can be happy again.

Balance druids are WAY OP. Like, WAAAAAAAY OP. I’ve been using my boomkin spec to level, and boy is it fun. Something about taking down fifteen things at once that makes it fun fun fun!

Guild experience seems good, but it’s a bit of a bummer that there’s a daily and weekly cap. To be fair, though, if there weren’t then the mega-guilds would be waaay ahead. As it stands, we’ve got a guild of about 15 core players and another 50 floaters (half of whom haven’t been online in months) and with the levelling we’re doing in Cata, combined with the extraordinary PvP efforts of a few players, we’ve been hitting the cap daily.

Did I mention that the QUEUES ARE TEH SUCK? Like, REALLY TEH SUCK? I started writing this post 54 minutes ago, and I’ve still got 20 minutes left in the queue. I was meant to be running dungeons with the guild tonight, but we all see how that that’s gonna go.

So, overall, this expansion is WIN. Mind you, it’s a Blizzard effort and they’re reknowned for being addictive and awesome, so I shouldn’t really have expected less.

And here’s a video of a man getting naked and going into a hay baler. Just because. This has absoulutely no relevance to the above post.

A little slice of heaven, on a sandwich of pain

Emma — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 03:13:15 +0000

You can always be guarenteed of an adventure in the world of PUGs. I’ve already touched on this in the post “I lost my marbles in BRD“. Back then, Telaru was level fifty-something. Surely, in the last 20+ levels, things have improved? Let’s look at today’s tree-healing runs and see.

Run 1: Violet Hold. Paladin tank. Rogue, Mage, Warlock dps. All very straightforward, dps is timely, nobody dies. Everything goes well.

Run 2: Drak’Tharon Keep. Death Kernigget tank. Death Kernigget and two hunters for dps. Tree heals (let me hear ya holla y’all). The run went something like this:

Tank holding aggro. Good. DPS killing things. Good. DPS standing in the giant black circles of death dealing fog, not so good. Please don’t stand in the circles guys. OK, they’ve moved. Tank pulling spiders out of room and through doorway. Good. Tank… is running through the second lot of spiders without stopping? Tank has run into the next room and intiated the first boss? Tank has… left the party what the hell guys? Ok, the other death knight has picked up the aggro and is… running back into the spider room? Why are we going there? That’s weird, cos now the spiders are all dead and we don’t need to go here ooooooh dearie me, the offtank has left the party. Ok, that’s fine, we can just queue for another tank and dps. Wait, why am I being eaten by a horde of baby spiders? Where has everyone gone? Guys? Guys? I’m being eaten by baby freaking spiders over here. (Your Group Has Been Disbanded). Oh, shit.

Run 3: Ahn’kahet. Pally tank. DK/Priest/Hunter dps. Hunter forgot ammo, I got disconnected (and yet I didn’t get booted), and it somehow turned out to be one of the smoothest runs I’ve ever done. Then, just for good measure, everyone got the Instance Achievment. I was the only person in there who’d actually run it on that character. And it was our tank’s first character, so he’d NEVER run it before. It was serendipitous.

Of course, I went back for more. I’m currently queued for Run 6, writing this as I wait.

Most days in World of Warcraft are a mix of the decent, the bad, and the truly awful. We go back, though, in search of that one dungeon, that one group, that magic moment when everything runs smoothly and we’re all in sync like clockwork. We’re all looking for our own Ahn’Kahet. Most days, though, we end up with Drak’Tharon keep, and wonder why we bother.

I lost my marbles in BRD

Emma — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 22:30:05 +0000

In WoW, I have two characters that I play a lot.

There’s my hunter Aralena, the first (and only) character to make it to 80 on my account. Playing Aralena in grouped boss fights is throwing out every shot I have, and then it’s basically a race to see how soon I can hit a button after it comes off cooldown. If I hit my initial abilities in the right order, it all works. On trash pulls, it’s a case of throwing misdirect on the tank and then volleying down anything that blinks. There’s not a great deal of finesse involved and it lets me put out some awesomely awesome numbers in the dps meters while I look around at the scenery.

This is why I prefer playing my resto druid (for haelzor!) Telaru, currently at level 53. The tree thing is fun. Playing Telaru is either very straighforward (rejuv, let it tick out, rejuv, YAWN, imma dance now) or scary as all hell (regrowth rejuv swiftmend ohshit ohshit ohshit nature’s swiftness healing touch CRAAAAAP OSHIT HEAL TRANQUILITY DAMMIT THERE GOES MY 8 MINUTE COOLDOWN), depending on whether the tank is boring (pulls less than 5 mobs at once) or insane (pulls three patrolling mob groups with a healer and a caster in each group). I prefer the second – insane pulls that keep me on my toes and that test my reaction time better than trying to hit something as soon as it comes off cooldown. I like having to think about what button to hit. I like playing a healer, rather than dps. I like the challenge.

Or at least, that’s what I thought until today’s LFG fun and games on Telaru. Turns out that sometimes, if the tank isn’t pulling fast enough, the dps will just go sick and pull stuff all on their own (no, I’ve not been guilty of this yet). When you have a DK tank with twice as many hitpoints than anyone else but still can’t tank multiple mobs and loses threat when someone else sneezes, this is a bad sign. When the pally with only 3K hitpoints decides that he’s going to pull extras because the main tank is going to slow, and then the main tank can’t pick up the aggro, this is an exceptionally bad sign. This is about when I should have left the party and said sayonara, adios, bye-bye.

But, I didn’t. Fool that I am, I remained. I remained through trying to heal three tanks at once. I remained through spamming heals on the squishy who couldn’t do anything without pulling aggro. I remained through the aimless wandering that convinced me, more and more, that our tank had no bloody clue what he was doing. Eventually, 45 minutes into what should have been a twenty minute run, everyone else just… left. It was me, and the tank, and the whistling wind in Blackrock Depths. At that point, I chose to keep hold of my remaining sanity and bugger off. Given my inability to learn from my mistakes, though, I went right back in later with another, equally nuts group.

If you find my marbles, can you please give them back?

With a moon on my head and a heal in my hands

Emma — Tue, 04 May 2010 00:30:01 +0000

In World of Warcraft, I have a lovely druid named Telaru.

This is Telaru. She is a happy dancing cow.

Telaru is a resto cow. She enjoys healing, long walks through the Thousand Needles, and screaming at the tank to pull more than 3 but less than 8 mobs, tyvm. When she heals, she wears a moon on her head, yelling to all who will hear that “if you can’t see the moon, I can’t heal you!” This leads to occasional jokes about the healer mooning people. World of Warcraft is srs bzns.

But what’s this I see? Could it be a GIANT OWLBEAST OF PEWPEWLAZORBEEM BOOMBOOMPEWPEW???

Telaru uses BOOMKIN DANCE! It's super effective!

Today, Telaru got to level 40. She now enjoys healing, screaming at the tank, and nuking the crap out of anything that moves.

For more exciting news about Telaru, you can follow her RSS feed here, or you can follow the combined feed of Telaru and Aralena (my Hunter) here.