Third 90 and more to come I suspect

My Druid ding’ed 90 in WoW last week, which makes a tally of three level ninety characters: a Death Knight, a Warrior, and a Druid.

Next will be my slowly leveling Shaman who is now level 71 (the toon in the top left if the image below) and a long time lost Shadow Priest who is level 82 (bottom left character).

In my character list I also have a handful of 85s and then each class smattered down to a lowbie Monk at level 13. I do not really want to repeat the 85-90 grind so many more times, but the leveling path in Pandaria is so fixed there is little choice. Perhaps I could level by only queuing in Dungeons and just farm my way through the Pandaria starting area for materials to sell. That will only be moderately dull as well but will ensure my lowbies have the ability to increase their professions.

The Wrath of the Lich King content on the baby Shaman is sensational by comparison to 4x more Pandaria zones and a Cataclysm story.

If I cannot raid regularly in 5.4 due to work & life, then I might as well start working on these alts. Getting through the levels is something I can do whilst also being interrupted, and it is not “hard” content to do.

I’m a tricksy treasure horder

My alts are getting to the levels where I can start gathering some of the fun things, like the treasures of Pandaria and the rare kills. That aspect is more enjoyable to me that the leveling process.

Who’s that new Monk?

After a bit of mucking about I’ve followed the horde of wow players in Mists and created a new Monk, as my distraction and newbie toon. After a few posts about names I followed at least some of my own advice and called the Monk Tetsuho, which is an ancient Japanese firearm (or could mean silly Australian for all I know).

The plan is when I’m capped or frustrated beyond reckoning with the main, this little monk will get some play. I’m in no rush.

One alt down, four to go

I’m on a leveling mission: Get each of my toons to the highest level possible before the expansion.

I recently ding’ed 85 on my Warlock – Arkham, which is the second character I ever rolled in World of Warcraft. Now I move onto the remaining four: Priest, Mage, Rogue, and Shaman. For leveling I am using only dps style, and only infrequently doing the 5-man dungeons. As while I know the Dungeons are fantastic for gear and XP, I cannot commit to playing very long due to kiddlet interruptions. I don’t want to be that guy, who goes AFK for ages and needs to be kicked from the team.

As far as the Warlock goes the updates for the class in Mists of Pandaria look very appealing from a cosmetic perspective. It is tempting to fusk around and see if they still play as ruthlessly as they did in The Burning Crusade.

Next highest character is the Shadow Priest at level 81, which I created toward the end of TBC and has almost (a brief journey into Ulduar) always been an alt for Alchemy and Herbalism. Yeirah, you’re up. Get to the face-melting.

Related articles

• Such a silly silly wow’er (typhoonandrew.wordpress.com)

Clarified some Main and Alt thoughts

The feedback on my help-im-frustrated-by-mains-and-alts post was really good. Well great actually, as it had a range of side, which both challenged what I thought about the issues, and also supported many of the doubts I had – which is to say that nothing in that topic is straight forward.

I’d really like to know if I’m off my rocker on this issue.

Well I wasn’t incorrect, but I wasn’t 100% perfect either.

A some key points of differentiation on the issue were:

• Longevity of the raider within the team. Some even said 10 vs 25s were different, and while I disagree I can see that it may make a difference. Churn within the team is exacerbated when somebody switches.
• Attitude and level of cohesion within the team, which really tempered the level of support vs the impact.
• The reason for the switch, being Gear greed, Need of the team, burnout, or preference. This was key for basically everyone, a player who witches for gear only was pretty much reviled by the information I found, and I support that view too. The other areas are gray, especially if you have a raider doing something that they’d not prefer for the goals of the raid.
• Another key point was consistency. Applying a rule without bias was important to a large number of players, and I can understand why. Nobody want to feel that they are on the detrimental side of an exception. We all like to be special, unless it is to our disadvantage, but most people are happy if the dice come out in their favour.

As part of the post I also went digging on my own and found a large number of articles that helped. The short version of the outcome is that I’m now more confident that my overall approach is good, but also humbled a bit in terms of approach. I took the stance of being a neutral guildmaster, rather than a people person (I’m not an overly emotional people person by nature). I think I missed the emotional impact that this discussion could have on the team, especially the guys pondering a switch. I suspected that there would be impact, but not the degree of impact I saw.

I’ve promised to be typing up the official version of the policy this week (what an idiot I am for creating my own deadline), and it will be largely as drafted, but with tempered delivery. The clarifications I had to think about in response to the post really were the items that might have helped some of the discussion, if only I’d had 6 brains to draw from in the beginning.

Some of the sources I went to read are listed below. Now this list is not all articles devoted to the actual topic, it also contains perspectives on Alt-ism, and why it is good and bad. Often a good point is well made in parallel:

• Furious Dwarf, Why alts shouldn’t be a part of your raids
• Manalicious, How playing my alt was hurting my raiding
• Grumpy Elf, When is Alt not a Alt
• Raging Monkeys, more Alts more burnout
• Groups of Words, Definition of Main vs Alt
• The Kabal Guild, Their Policy.

Wow ‘eh? Of course I’d have you re-read the my post and the discussion after it too, as there were some damn fine raiders who spoke up, but these links are good.

Thanks to Isisxotic, Jez,  Leit, Karegina, and Rakk.

Help! I’m frustrated by Mains and Alts

There is some background drama in my guild at the moment, which centers on the topic of rewarding Alts vs Mains in progression raiding: Should there be a penalty for switching mains, what about regular alts, and how do you handle loot in these scenarios?

Without naming folks I’d like to get some feedback from people who read this blog (as you’re clearly an intelligent bunch of high spec people).

I’m pretty open about having a more relaxed attitude toward my personal progress, but I take the policies of the guild very seriously. Heck, I’m the GM I should take it bloody seriously. I think a guild needs guidelines to protect against the people who would abuse the system, and sometimes that causes some angst to the players who would never dream of being selfish.

I said this in 2008: Often the feel of a discussion about progression can hurt feelings, or call out those with strongly held beliefs.

Yep, it sometimes sucks, but its the way of things. We have laws for the same reasons. A guild needs to protect the many, through consistency. I’ve seen more than enough dickheads in guilds in the past, and thankfully they are now all ex-guildies. The set we have now in Insidious are pretty solid people.

What is happening now is that we have a few raiders who wish to switch to different roles or different characters within the raid team. It raises potential drama as until now we’ve never created a policy that stipulated how that occurred or what the affect was.

A player joins a team, and selects a role (meaning a Class and Spec choice) in a team and should stick to it. Sometimes that role might be a Tank, Dps, Healer, whatever. There are also times when the player needs to switch spec for some reason. All good, that is normal. The actual reason for the change is basically irrelevant to me.

This so so that the team can learn to be cohesive, progress well, and be rewarded. Gear and entertainment are essentially why people are Raiding, so the team should do everything to make that happen.

But what happens when a member wishes to switch either character or spec?

I don’t mean for a fight, or even for a single run, I mean what happens when the Druid Tank wishes to become a Death Knight Tank (eg. a change of Character with the same role)? If that is allowed, is that new DK also OK to grab Plate Dps gear before the Warrior Tank? What about all the leather Agi gear, trinkets, and other items that druid has taken which is “lost” to the rest of the team.

Or when a main Dps decides they wish to Heal? What do you do when that really nice Staff drops and two healers both want it – one has been waiting as healer for months, and the other started healing last week.

After many years playing my gut tells me that switching mains causes drama and disruption within the team. The affect might be small, but it is there. It could also be large, messy, dramatic, and a total pain in the arse.

What happens when the player has to play the old-main because the raid can’t fit the new main selection, or they need the old role because now they need to recruit? Do they gear gear as a main or alt?

I believe that there should be a period where the player is de-prioritised for loot. In affect I think that any character that the player brings to the raid should be treated as an Alt for loot distribution while the team adjusts.

This is so:

• The switch over to a new Main is discouraged. The carrot is the new character or role, the stick is that they have to give something up too.
• The other raiders are not competing straight away for loot against the new Main.
• If the player decides they don’t like the new role after all and change again, they have not taken gear away from another player.
• If the player has to play the old role, they do not take loot which they won’t use in the long term either.
• other players can know and see directly what is a Main vs an Alt.
• when the raid leader decides, the interim penalty period is dropped and the person is now a Main.
• That period might be a day or a year depending on all sorts of things like gear ilevel, participation, attitude, competing roles, flexibility, competency, etc. I suggested the period be flexible so that we have choice.

The counterpoint view to this is that people should be able to switch characters and roles as they wish at any time, and they everyone can be trusted. I’ve been told that there is actually no problem here at all. Having a policy is not needed, and that it is insulting to some people within the team as it seems I don’t trust my raiders. Thus this post was born.

And that counterpoint is partially right. I don’t trust that we won’t have drama, and therefore I want a policy. Make it a rule that applies equally, and there can be no favorites.

To me the idea of no rule is just chaos, and serves people who have many alts more than it serves focused players. I think it will lead to wasted loot and drama very quickly.

I see the new Main as being almost the same as a new player joining the team. There is a time where you’re not sure how everything will share out, so having some protection in place for the people who have been consistent is important.

What are your thoughts?

Please post, comment, etc as I’d really like to know if I’m off my rocker on this issue.

Raze – the Dungeon Warrior

After capping out on Valor points on Mortigen primarily by running the ZA/ZG instances over and over, I decided it was past time to continue to level something else. I turned to my Warrior, recently renamed to Raze.

Raze wearing random drops. Fist weapon as a Tank? Hell yeah.

After a quick review of gear I decided that a small expenditure of Justice points and some new AH green gear will see it well resourced to finish the late level 70s. It worked so frigg’n well that I passed through to 80 without really noticing.

Being a Tank at 70s to 80 was much better than I remembered. All the instances were still very quick to queue up for, and it didn’t take much to remind me of the strats for Wrath normal dungeons. For the most part the dungeons were the same speed as when we did them as over-geared 80s.

As ping’ing 80 was so exciting, I jumped straight into a few Cataclysm dungeons and found that they were harder, but still ok. I was surprised as I recalled the 80-85 normals to be a total wipe fest, and it was totally the opposite as a Warrior Tank.

Three runs later I had 4 upgrades for my Tanking gear. Booya. Pinging the Warrior through normals will be a great fun distraction I’m adding to my week once Mortigen has his weekly Valor cap. Bring on the beautiful rested xp, the awesome range of Warrior control cooldowns, and some mean dps in tank spec. The Warrior is now 82, and I’ve got to discover the entrances to the next set of dungeons so I don’t just keep killing the same two sets of bosses over and over.

Insane alt-a-holic rules

There are some things I’ve been doing with Alts that will drive me insane eventually.

Having one DK character active was a tad dull, so I added a Priest as another. Then I found that my second choice of toon was interesting for a short time, but not fun overall, so I added a Druid instead. Then decided to add a lowbie alt Hunter to be silly on; and then was impressed by a Tank I saw and added my old Pally.

But having seen a DK, Druid, and Pally tank, I felt like I was missing out on having a Warrior, so pondering starting a Warrior. But my Shaman also has ok gear as heirlooms, and the Mage will get some play soon.

So Death Knight, + Priest, + Druid, +Paladin, + Hunter, + Warlock, + pondering a Warrior or Shaman, + Mage afterward…

Yes, I’m an Alt-a-holic again. So now I need a rule set for what to play.

How to have a casual Alt character?

Been struggling with which toon to play other than my Death Knight, and circling around the problem of so little reward for so little time spent. Adding an alt as a casual toon will mean even less time playing the already casual Death Knight; which will slow the even further his advancement. But I really feel the need for an alternate to always doing melee tank or dps all the time. Just a quick break on another toon now and then is what I’m after.

So what are good strategies for gearing a casual alt?

The Erosion is getting worse

My toon called Erosion was an Undead Rogue. He was bad and I loved the fact he was built for the purpose of killing Topper McNabb. But that is history and we all know that (a) Erosion gets worse of over time, and (b) I love a good experiment.

So to make Erosion worse I’ve re-rolled the character name as a Dwarf Hunter.

Erosion - Wearing shirts is for pansies

I’ve always bitched about hunters. A lot. Its not that I didn’t like them per-say, but I always found that 40% of the bad players were Hunters (I know that they now all re-rolled Death Knight, but hey).

But I have a confession…I rolled one. [ insert dramatic music ] Well I’ve rolled them before, but this one is potentially different. Usually this means getting 3 levels of Huntery goodness and deciding that I hate it and stopping. Sometimes I get near level 8 and think it might be ok, and once I got to level 10 and then couldn’t be farked.

This time though I’ve reached over level 10 and tamed a pet. By god that makes a difference.

Anyone who thought the Death Knight was easy had better re-roll Hunter and see what a click-to-kill experience farming is like. A typical combat goes like this:

1. Target mob with left click
2. press 1 to start macro for Hunter’s Mark and PetAttack
3. press 2 for Concussive shot
4. press 3 for Arcane shot
5. let the autoshots flood by
6. loot

It could not be easier than that! If I fart around with a cast sequence macro, and use tab targeting I’m sure I can get this down to something that a Drinking Water Duck can do.

The worst part fo all this: its fun.

Distractions and comedy

Been flat out recently with work/life balance all out of wack. Somehow still found the time to devote to my online addiction. The stuff below has been distracting me. *Intollerant rant warning*

Distractions

After a time my attention span lapses and another Alt appears. My last effort got a Mage to level 41, and before that I was tooling around with a Druid who only hit 17. Recently I took up again and am playing around with a Druid again; damn they are a great class to grind with. All the Druid class needs is a long stun or 100% effective flee button and they’ll be unstoppable.

As an aside the Druid and Hunter combo that got killed by the huge dinosaur in Un’Goro made my day. Not becuase they were kill stealing moments before, and not because they died fighting it; but because they then stood there long enough for it to kill them a 2nd time on its return path. That made my night.

Please also check out the iArmory if you have a iPhone or portable device; its great. Huge kudos to Elad from Omen of Clarity for this tool. And if you need a 2nd opinion check out this review.

Comedy

“MMORPG – Many Men Online Role Playing Girls”, was said in a forum post a while ago, and I like it. I have a few female toons too. You’ve all heard the line “I play a girl because I’d rather look at one”, well that might be so; but personally I play female toons because some of the male character models are crap. /Shrug.

This post on badges, with a V rather than a B got the attention of a Blue; but I really think the Blue created the storm in this teacup. If the purile kiddies need to post and giggle, let them. It might help keep them away from screwing up actual content, or pugging. We can’t shut them down, so having them all drooling and one-hand-playing in a forum thread is ok as long as I don’t have to moderate it. Or ban their accounts from posting till Lich is released.

Achievements

Enchanting 375 on my Warlock was a long time comming by I’m really pleased to get there. Not that there is much more that can be done at 375, but it adds to the sense of completion and character progression.

Engineering almost 375 on my Paladin, so that will happen soon; which does not add anything that I can use, but is still nice to have.

Skinning at 300 for my Druid; so now ready to skin and enjoy the grind upward to 375.

The Swearjar has over $20 in it now, and I have no idea what it will total by the time WotLK hits.

Multi-toon is mandatory

Why is it that we have alts, and some of us have a huge stack of them?

Firstly I though it could be an attention span thing (ohh, shiny pretty blood elf), or a side of our personalities that likes punishment. But then I got thinking about the way I play, and in all seriousness there is merit and good reasons to have a few Alts.

I believe that and it makes sense to find ways to avoid grinding the same activities each day. Yes, there will be posts about players being bored, and starting new toons, but what Alting does is teach you about other classes.

You get to see the role and potential of another class, and appreciate the differences between that and what you are used to. Warrior vs Paladin vs Druid tanking for example are all different. All the healer classes have special tricks, and I’d be staggered if Warlocks, Mages, SPriests, Boomkins, and Shamans couldn’t learn something from each other about DPS casters.

You also get a degree of sympathy for players using a class that you play. A dps’er who starts playing a tank has the opportunity to learn why Tanks do some things, and everyone should play a healer at some stage of WoW. It will cut the bitching by a 3rd. However please don’t be that player who gives unsolicited advice constantly to those around them; because other players hate you. Especially so if you are not doing an awesome job with the toon you are playing at the time.

Why I will roll a Death Knight

Altitis posted about why he will definetely roll a Death Knight, and it got me thinking. His reasons were due to the immediate level 55 toon, and be an immediate Tank. Yep, I get that and agree totally.

However I’ll be rolling one for a few more reasons too. Firstly they will have new content, and I love to see contents so thats an absolute given. Blizzard will have to spend at least some time making the DK starting area something worth being in.

Secondly I need to understand them as a class. As one of my primary toons is a tank, I will need to understand how the DK can be applied to a group; and the best way I have found to do that is actually roll one. I also have a Warlock and its not often that a Warlock will surprise me with a tactic that I have not seen or done before. The Death Knight offers a potential for a new range of abilities and I want to know them all. Especially as I think we will see an absolute truckload of them on every server.

And thirdly I’m an Alt-a-holic, so there is no way i wouldn’t be playing one in some capacity. I might wait a few days so that I’m not standing next to every other level 55 DK saying “LFG pls”.