We’re recruiting!

It seems like everyone’s recruiting these days.

And so are we!

I’ve lamented many a time about the poor sod of a server that is Shattered Halls but I have yet to leave, as many of those before me have, because this is my guild. I’ve worked really hard in the last 2.5 years to keep it alive and keep it thriving.

I think the fact that it almost died once but came back stronger is one major reason why I’ve yet to give it up. Where other Alliance guilds have failed, we’ve succeeded. We’re the oldest guild on the server, the only one of the true original guilds that are still standing.

And now we need your help!

For those who are looking for a new home or thinking of looking for a new home (or know someone in this situation), Catalyst on Shattered Halls is recruiting! We’re looking for:

• 1 holy paladin (high)
• 1 mage (high)
• 1 enhancement shaman (medium)
• 1 uber-dps boomkin (optional)

Our website is http://www.catalyst-sh.com and our application forum is http://www.catalyst-sh.com/forums/18 – I’m also available for questions, etc. via email, comments, or PM via the guild website.

UI Remake for the 20384570857th time!

11/18/09 Edit: Two raiding videos added to show new changes from the original post yesterday. I have since hijacked even more of Benea’s UI. I feel so dirty.

I follow UI threads avidly, checking them at least once a day Mondays – Fridays (gee, I wonder why!). Sometimes, even multiple times a day (they don’t get updated very frequently). I’m a huge Benea fangirl so I usually end up changing mine up and copying some of her UI elements when she updates hers. I’m not a huge fan of the square unit frames from her most recent iteration but I did end up using it for ToT, player’s pet, and focus’s target. I definitely jacked the 2 big buttons on either side of my action bars though.

Grid makes its reappearance in the middle of my screen, bigger and badder. To be honest, I don’t know how long I’ll keep this one. I have the UF’s lined up on the left side, Power Auras Classic and DXE bars on the right and … I don’t know. I feel like it blocks out too much stuff on the sides, which prevents me from screaming at people to get out of fires if they’re behind my unit frames. Change opacity maybe?

Solo:

Target, ToT, Focus while casting in a party:

Target in a raid setting:

I also hijacked the unit frame set up and cast-bar-over-portrait idea from Asylla too. I was totally unoriginal this time and just picked up things that I liked from other people and put it all together. I think I might have changed it just for the sake of changing it. :(

I changed all the textures in Grid and PB4 too after these screenshots were taken, which could be seen in this video of me getting facerolled in EOTS:

I moved the BG map after this EOTS after I saw that it was sitting right under the faction meter.

Don’t know the half-life on this UI but until I can figure out what I want to do with the unit frames, it’ll probably stick for a little bit. If not, I’ll just go back to the old one. Reflux ftw. ^_^

Here are 2 new videos I took to show what it looks like in a raid with the new unit frame placement. First one is ToGC10 on my priest:

This second one is ToC10 on my shaman:

What about the main healer?

Wrathy over at Avenging Wrathy put up a post last week about what it meant to be the main tank. It instantly led me to think about the corollary that is being the main healer.

The post touched up on what the main tank means now. The main tank of days past is the one who took on every boss. Adds? That’s for the off-tanks. The MT always took on the boss. This was the guy who could take the heaviest beating. This was the guy you could rely on to know exactly how to turn the boss, where to tank it, and was usually a warrior. :-P

Nowadays, the fights are more gimmicky, more dynamic. Northrend Beasts – you need 3 tanks. Twin Val’kyr – you need 2 tanks. There are enough boss fights out there with multiple boss NPCs that there’s no “main tank” anymore. You better make sure all your tanks are geared to the hilt to be able to coordinate to work together as one tank unit. But in the event that you’re the healer assigned to healing the tank taking on the biggest, baddest boss on each event, the concept of the main healer is still relevant.

what defines the main healer?

According to WoWWiki.com –

In a group, the character primarily responsible for healing everyone in the group; in a raid, the character primarily responsible for healing the main tank. Although Blizzard designates Priests and Druids as "primary healing" classes, all healing capable classes with proper gear and spec can function in this role.

What happened to the benevolent healer behind the MT? This person who learned how the tank takes his hits, the one who knows the exact path that the tank will lead the boss on every pull, the one who has never seen a single day of raid healing – what happened to this person?

She’s still around, sort of. Except now, there are also 2 other people in this camp that make up the tank healing unit. With more tanks, come more tank healers. It only makes sense!

The MH, as it could be abbreviated, is the one charged with rallying the other healers. She gives the healing assignments and was expected to be the best of the best on the team. She understands class synergy, understands the strengths and weaknesses of the classes involved, and can explain the fight strategies from a healer’s point of view.

The healer’s point of view of any given fight is dramatically different from DPS or tanks. We need to know when the mass AOE is coming to prepare for it ahead of time. We need to know when the boss is going to do his super-ultra-cool-spike-damage-move on the tank. Our version of any given fight is different from any other roles. And as a main healer, knowing how it’s different is imperative.

Wrathy quotes someone named Zothor later on in his post. In short, the gist of it is that if the MT goes down, the raid will perceive it as his fault, that he’s under-geared for the encounter, even if he doesn’t get a heal for 10 seconds.

I have to say I disagree with this. When a tank dies on a boss, you can bet your shiny nickel that the next thing you hear on vent is said tank asking, “Why did I go down?” The MH is just as prone to mistakes as the DPS are but that’s the price of being a “main anything” – your mistakes don’t go unnoticed and you sure as hell can’t afford to make the same mistakes.

the weight on your shoulders

A lot of guilds institute some kind of progression loot priority, gearing their tanks and healers out first over the DPS. By this rule, I echo Wrathy’s sentiment – your toon does not belong to you. It belongs to the guild.

Progression run? The run’s not getting off the ground without you.

The tank died? Rest assured that the combat log is going to be pored over and combed through to see if you healed him in the last 5 seconds of being alive.

Main healers are support. You support the raid by supporting its tanks. If they fall, you fall with them and you can only imagine the pain of being crushed by their weight. It’s not a job for the thin-skinned nor the squeamish.

Of course, I’m exaggerating. Mostly. The raid expects more from the main healer. If a DPS dies, it’s not so bad – the fight goes on and no one’s going to pick on any of the raid healers. If a tank dies, it’s your skin that’s going to flayed.

This probably deterred everyone from even considering taking on this job but for those who can thrive under pressure, it’s a rewarding job. You feel like the raid is yours. Its successes are your successes; its failures are your failures. You own a piece of it in yourself. You nurture hope for the raid’s success even as wipes and failures try to trample you as you guard over that glimmer of hope. Every tired cast, every sigh-laden spell – you feel as though you’re throwing your proverbial self into every heal (“Crit, please! Crit!”)…

I’m going to stop myself here before I try to wax poetic any more. To everyone who has ever wondered what it would be like to fill the shoes of a main healer, I say go for it. It’s fun. ;)

Happy belated Halloween!

No faction transfer, nothin!

Give me my Arcane Torrent.

I got to raid as a blood elf in the middle of an alliance raid for all of about 15 minutes before our first wipe on ToGC25. Dying restored my Night Elf self. Boo.

Forward this email to 10 other people . . .

Looks like I’ve been tagged. I’ll get you back one day, Paolo, one day. /doom

I also have to tag someone else and keep this going. Who heals with a different class… I only read priest blogs and have only just recently started reading shammy blogs with the same level of dedication. Let’s get Llyra over at Healing Way. Let’s cross our fingers that Llyra’s into Internet memes!

Post this questionnaire, with your answers, on your blog. Pick the healing class you know most about (or is the focus of your blog) for the questionnaire, and then send it over to another healing blogger you know and love who heals with a DIFFERENT class. Include a link to the blogger who sent you the questionnaire, as well as a link to the blogger to whom you are sending it.

• What is the name, class, and spec of your primary healer?

Raesa, 53/18 GHeal-spamming Disc priest.

• What is your primary group healing environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans)

Mostly 25-man raids and heroic 10-m raids. I pursue PvP via playing 3s with a 60/11/0 Disc spec.

• What is your favorite healing spell for your class and why?

Penance. Nothing else for a priest is quite as shiny or flashy.

• What healing spell do you use least for your class and why?

Lolwell. I haven’t been holy since I raided Serpentshrine Cavern during a time when CoH and Lightwell were both avoided (pre-3.0 which was before CoH became OP). I’ve never used Lightwell. Ever. I’ve never specced into it. Also because I was the IDS bitch and talent points were hard to come by.

• What do you feel is the biggest strength of your healing class and why?

I love the fact that priests are the only healer class to have two different talent trees to fulfill 2 different healing roles. I feel special! Other classes have talents in the same tree that benefit either tank healing or AOE healing but no one else has a whole other tree and a whole other play-style.

• What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your healing class and why?

We wear cloth.We are the only healer class that has to compete with 2 other DPS classes for gear, as well as amongst each other. All that cloth with haste/crit? It’s delicious! For everyone!Resto druids only compete with moonkins.

Resto shamans compete with each other, maybe pallies if loot policy allows for that (but rarely).
And holy pallies get all the spell plate they want.

And btw, we’re really squishy.

• In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best healing assignment for you?

Specifically for me, I feel I’m best utilized as a primary tank healer, although I will say I provide awesome support for a holy pally. I’ve been a tank healer since I started healing – that’s what I like doing best. I’ve tried raid healing as holy before but I don’t enjoy it as much as I do on my shaman.

• What healing class do you enjoy healing with most and why?

I most enjoy healing with a resto shaman. I think it’s the fact that they add another mana regen cooldown to my toolbox, as well as providing 2 caster buffs via totems – especially Wrath of Air for someone who takes crit over haste (by a small margin right now as my crit is kind of low).

• What healing class do you enjoy healing with least and why?

I have to agree with Paolo here and also say pallies. Being a single-target healer myself, I would feel more secure with someone who can complement my weaknesses rather than someone who shares it.

• What is your worst habit as a healer?

Ha! I have to say my worst habit is also straying from my assignment moreso than is healthy. Sometimes you want to save that dying mage with a bubble but in the process, your tank takes a 40k Impale tick and it’s game over, man, game over!

• What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while healing?

Healers with a superstar/prima donna complex. I run my healing team tighter than the entire raid is run in general and when someone thinks s/he is the bomb-diggity at what he does and doesn’t think he needs to acknowledge and follow directions, it drives me up the wall.

Unresponsive in the healer channel?
Doesn’t confirm assignments?
Go find a new guild.

• Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other healers for PvE healing?

Yep. I don’t feel the priest class is ever especially underpowered nor overpowered. I mean, there could be a few tweaks here and there to optimize a few things but priests are always on par in terms of class balance after every patch…

• What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a healer?

I never use Recount. I use World of Logs to check up on spells used, buff uptimes (e.g. Renewed Hope), stuff like that but otherwise, I go with real-time intuition. That and I keep an eye on my scrolling combat text and adjust accordingly. Post-wipes, I use the Recount death log to see what went wrong that might have caused tank deaths or healer deaths.The other day, I was really mad at myself for letting my tank die in ToGC25 on Gormok but when I checked Recount, I saw:

7.57 (100%) Gormok the Impaler’s Impale hits Gaar for 39854 damage.
7.67 Gormok the Impaler melee hits Gaar for 17653 damage.
BAM! Dead.

What. He went from 100-0% in 0.1 seconds. That’s when I knew to hate the boss, not myself.

• What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your healing class?

To be honest, I haven’t really run into people with misconceptions about my class other than the usual, “Oh, priest? Heal the raid,” because everyone assumes every priest is holy and disc is only for PvP. Either way though, my server seems pretty educated about disc vs. holy priests (well, except this guy).

• What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new healers of your class to learn?

That would have to be learning to use the right glyphs and the right spells. I’ve picked up a few disc priests while recruiting before and I have to say, it seems really difficult to understand that if you’re investing full points into Imp. PW:S, Soul Warding, and glyphing for PW:S, you should probably use it. Cuz, like, you know, it’s not, like, Renewed Hope benefits people with, like, the Weakened Soul debuff or anything.

• If someone were to try to evaluate your performance as a healer via recount, what sort of patterns would they see (i.e. lots of overhealing, low healing output, etc)?

They’d probably see a lot of bubbles floating around in the raid, a lot of recasts of PoM even though the stacks aren’t used up (better than letting it expire when no one but tanks are taking damage, I say).Come to think of it, I’m probably one of those healers who would drive me nuts. I stray from my assignment, take risks that might not pay off in the end, and I sometimes don’t follow the really simple rules we put in place for the less situationally aware because I know I am [situationally aware]. Yeah, I would hate myself…

• Haste or Crit and why?

Yar, both. One over the other at different levels when one is lacking. What am I even trying to say? This questionnaire is too long.

• What healing class do you feel you understand least?

I’m going to say… resto druid. I have a resto shaman and have healed all the content in 3.2 with her (minus ToGC). I’ve leveled a holy pally that I’m going to get to 80 one day but my one and only druid only made it to level 12. Now, I’m waiting for Worgen druids so… I’ll just have to read up on druid healing until then.

• What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in healing?

Let’s see – for purely healing, Grid (and extensions), Clique, PoM Tracker, and that’s about it. All of heals bound in Clique are macros that pop trinkets and other cooldowns while in combat. I also use Power Auras Classic for prompts of when certain abilities can be used.

• Do you strive primarily for balance between your healing stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why?

I definitely strive for balance with an emphasis on spell power. A lot of disc priests lament their lack of throughput compared to other healing classes and I’ve noticed it myself – my resto shammy only has about ~2k bonus healing (or whatever they want to call it) and her LHW hits for 4-5k non-crit while my priest’s FHeal hits for 4-5k with 2.5k bonus healing. Healing Wave hits for ~11k while GHeal hits for 9-10k. WTF?The trade-off is in the bubbles, the mitigation, which is not quite as obvious. And spell power will boost both direct heals and shields so that’s a no-brainer.

 

What’s different?

Remember Ridia?

Well, looks like that level-capped NE priest I always wanted has finally come to fruition. I was debating going human just for the PvP advantages but I chose aesthetics over practicality (I hate the human casting animations).

I might go back when my cooldown is up. Or go dorf for the hell of it for 3 days. Or I might just stay NE. I need a new helm though because all the NE haircuts look gross with the helm displayed (and I love my ninja mask).

“We deserve it!”

Shortly after our 10-man group got our rusted proto-drakes, an officer from another guild had a conversation with one of ours regarding Alliance firsts on the server. Once I got wind of the conversation, I have to admit, I couldn’t control my laughter.

She wasn’t congratulating us. She was essentially QQing and demanding that Catalyst would not attempt Trial of the Grand Crusader (10) until her guild downed it first. Her reasoning?

“We deserve an Alliance first!!!”

My dear, pray tell, on what grounds does anyone “deserve” a faction first?

Is it because progression is linear and just because we manage to down something first while both guilds are working on it at the same time, it somehow justifies your claim to entitlement? Or because we’re sitting at Alliance first that we should sit on our hands until some other guild gets a chance at it?

So I laughed while the conversation was divulged to me as it went on. Normally, I’d laugh and move on but Eristhan.com popped up in my reader with her latest post today and reminded me of this particular conversation.

The same officer from the other guild who QQ’d said that some of her guildies were going to “give her crap” for wanting to do ToGC (10) instead of going back into Ulduar (10) to get their rusties first. She later went on to bitch and moan that no one in her guild respected/listened to her (other officers included) even though she felt she “did the most work.” When asked why she thought that was the case, she said it was because she’s “a girl.”

Just to give a little bit of a background on my exposure to a male-driven society – I work in proprietary trading. Prop is essentially the division of a bank (e.g. Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, etc.) that invests the company’s own capital into the market vs. managing other people’s money. (Okay, before anyone decides to direct hate at me for the whole financial collapse, shut it. I was still in college when the recession was in diapers getting ready to poop itself into the big poop machine it is today.)

Prop (and much of the finance field, really) is predominately male. The typical WoW raid and guild environment is pretty much what I would see in everyday life. In fact, I probably see more aggression in general on a good day at work than I would in a raid wiping on trash.

Back to the subject at hand.

Posts that depict male players as sexist, and then explaining the reason for why that may be so by giving examples of female stereotypes that feed the issues, are not helping in leveling the playing field for both genders. It spreads awareness that this problem exists, yes, but it only reinforces the fact that these stereotypes exist and that there’s a reason for them to exist, which is the fact that they might be true. Remember Lodur’s post and Sydera’s response? What a shitstorm that was.

The physical world where we might interact with hundreds, maybe thousands, of different people on a daily basis – it’s too large for all of us to realistically consider changing it. We can only control what we do on an individual basis. Our universe in-game is much smaller and we are granted the ability to change that universe with ease, to control the experience we gain from it.

I believe that, yes, it is completely possible to find a handful of bad apples together in one guild who think nothing of the female players that coexist with them in the game. What I don’t believe is that in the case of 20+ people is that everyone discriminates against one officer because she’s “a girl.” I do believe that she’s lacking something critical that would help her be a more effective leader. I believe everyone, at some point or another, is lacking something critical that would make him/herself more effective at whatever it is that s/he does.

Instead of just experiencing the issues mentioned above, I would implore everyone to try to control what they get from the experience. In any given situation, 25% of the way people react is based on the actual message and 75% is based on how the message is presented. I think if each of us stopped for a second and thought how we could best express our opinion towards someone who said something to provoke us without being confrontational, we’d probably realize that there are actually quite a few reasonable and rational people out there.

No one deserves to be treated badly but that doesn’t mean we all deserve to be treated well for no reason either.

Because My Job is to Please You

- V for Vendetta, awesome movie!

So as an officer/co-GM/someone in a position of power, my sole responsibility is to do everything I can to make you happy right? And if I don’t, I can expect some kind of riot/mutiny?

Anyway, since Trial of the Crusader came out, our roster has jumped back stronger than ever with almost 40 people waiting for a spot on Tuesday nights (when we do normal 25m TotC). We take 25 in – 3 tanks, 6 healers, 16 DPS, kill stuff, do the same to Ony, and call it a night.

We have almost 10 people left out with nothing to do for the week if they didn’t make it in that week. We also have 4 TotC 10m groups that run every week so most of us have 25m-ready alts.

How do you deal with so many mains being benched every week?

Our GM proposed the idea of a joint PUG with another Alliance guild (who is having the same over-population problem) where all loot is up to /roll with some limitations:

• One item per person that applies to both main spec and off spec (choose carefully). Each person can get a second piece if everyone else who is ahead in loot priority passes.
• Everyone is only allowed to win 1 trophy and 1 orb per run max.
• There’s an entrance fee of 300g per person that gets split between the 2 guilds (weighted by # of people brought by each guild) and deposited into the guild vault for repairs, what have you.
• The entrance fee would be waived for Catalyst mains that were asked to sit by raid leaders during our own TotC25 run where we had a surplus of people.

Some guildies instantly felt the 300g entrance fee was excessive and it was ridiculous that they had to pay to raid/gear out their alt. The main point of the joint PUG run is really to help out the mains in both guilds that didn’t get to go with their guild’s run yet the people who were complaining were actually the people who get to go on the guild runs week in and week out but want to gear their alts.

Well, guess what happened next?

HEY WAIT! WHAT ABOUT A SECOND 25-MAN TOTC AND ONYXIA GROUP?!

My GOD! Why did we not think of this before?!

Truth is, we did. We decided against it.

RIOT! THE OFFICERS DON’T WANT US TO GET LEWTZ!

Guildies will always, always, always overlook the issues that are the least relevant to them. Let’s take a look:

• The guild uses DKP. How will we award DKP between all the mains and all the alts between 2 25-man raids?
  • Our mains and alts share DKP pools. If we award DKP for every single boss kill in both raids, you will have some people earning 2x the DKP as other people. Those who are raiding on 1 character suddenly fall behind at an exponential rate in DKP. It becomes mandatory to raid on 2 characters to stay competitive for loot.
  • We award only DKP to only mains and only mains have to spend DKP for gear. Alts will get a chance to roll off for any items that mains pass on. Where’s the motivation for alts to come when they know their chance at loot is slim to none? Okay, maybe they’ll come anyway but manually selecting the characters to award DKP each time is going to be annoying!
  • We split the DKP pools of mains and alts. Now, each character has its own DKP pool to draw from. Ideally, mains will still have priority over alts, even if an alt has more DKP and is willing to bid more DKP. Let’s go back to the problem in option 2. Does this mean neither group gets off the ground anymore because none of the alts want to go?

We considered these problems a long time ago. We decided that ultimately, it wasn’t worth the trouble. Of course, assuming alts don’t want to go as a result of probably not getting loot is a bit presumptuous of me but let’s pause for a second here.

I’ve learned that in times like these where it seems like your entire guild is running blindly forward trying to catch an idea that they think sounds like a brilliant idea (and they might even have gotten you thinking about it too), someone needs to step in and bring everyone back down to Earth.

What is your guild’s goal? Is it to have the most members and run multiple raid groups? Or did you intend to just have 1 raid group and your philosophy is quality over quantity? Will starting another group cause more problems than it resolves?

And you learn that as often as you want your members to feel important, like they have a say in affecting the guild they belong to, it might be a better idea to trust your own judgment and see it for what it is – a waste of time. Put your foot down, say what you have to say, and put the issue to rest, even if your decision doesn’t please anyone.

At the end of the day, if what you did was better for the guild’s health and progression as a whole, you’ve done your job.

Monday’s not a post day.

But c’mon…

This is worth it.

It was epic. The tanks died at 4%. Algalon killed all the healers and melee DPS except 1. We had two ranged DPS who were just pew-pewing away. The one melee dps who stayed alive fell into a portal by accident and survived.

We all thought we were going to wipe so everyone who was dead released (except me).

No one remembered Algalon stops fighting at 3%.

In the end, 4 people got the achievement and the titles.

EPIC

Blogroll, please!

Updated the blogroll a bit.

Added the following:

• Empowered Healing (empoweredhealing.blogetery.com)
• eristhan.com (eristhan.com)

I’ve been leveling my shaman very consistently over the last 2 weekends (went from 60 to 74!) and I have high hopes of getting my second healer.

I’m having way too much fun playing enhancement though (wolves are OP):

• I have solo’d every group quest to date.
• I killed a level 74 warlock that tried to gank me when I was 70.
• Instant HW while taking down 10 mobs at once is awesome.
• I wear hunter loot lulz.
• Fist weapons are cool.

Is she going to be my new main? No, but she’ll be my gold farmer and 10m raid healer. :)