Rebuilding: Pugging for Progression

     Sometimes it’s tough to rebuild. Personally I think one of the biggest problems my guild has faced since the release of Cataclysm is recruitment. In my experience, most guilds will invariably have some turnover when an expansion is released, and even to a lesser degree when a major content patch is released (or rather soon after). We’ve always run a fairly tight roster, preferring to have good people that you know how to work with over training up a bench roster of raiders. The problem is the best way to rebuild when those people leave.

     

     We have engaged in various forms of recruitment activity; from spamming in SW to posting on EJ and other well know WoW resource websites. By far the method we’ve gotten the best players from is pugging. Basically our strategy involves filling your remaining spots with pug players that undergo a relatively liberal vetting process, and the ones that work out well, you invite back. What I’ve found is that if you can get a good player to go with you into a raid 3 times, they will come to your website and fill out an app. It helps that we can clear about 6 bosses a night; killing bosses shows that the core of the group knows how to get things done. We usually end our 1^st day of raiding with some progression attempts at the very end. While these attempts do not always end in a kill, the overwhelming success that the run had in the night outweighs the discouragement that a pug may feel at wiping several times on that last boss.

     

     The downside to this strategy is that you have to teach a small number of people some fights every week. This is more of a strain on the raid leaders than it is for most of the group however; we don’t really schedule an official break, so most of us will dip out to get a drink or what have you while everything is being explained.

There is a definite benefit to not having pugs in the run however. As our ranks fill back up, fights are getting easier and easier. I’m really looking forward to the day when we get our last two kills and start hardmodes.

Going Gnome

I have a history of switching my toon around for racial spells. I started in vanilla as a dwarf priest for Fear Ward before it was a baseline spell. In Wrath, I decided I'd rather be human because Every Man and a bonus to spirit was more useful than Stoneform and a bonus to guns -.- . Now that I've done 90% of the Cata raid encounters, and all of the 5 man content, I've noticed that Every Man is nowhere near as useful as it once was. While I'll forever love my large dwarfish beard, I decided that I would try a gnome. I've found that I like playing a smaller character. The 5% bonus to mana doesn't hurt either! The only problem I have now is trying to avoid standing in the fire while admiring how frigging cute I am.

PW:S Nerf from 4.06

If you didn't see this coming then you just weren't paying attention. The PW:S spams-a-bility garnered by Disc priest in 4.06 was good, too good. There are multiple logs posted by top guilds with their Disc priests spamming shields like it was LK, being funneled Innervates and working a mana tide rotation just to keep it going. While nobody is going to complain about being OP from the 1st person perspective, I think most Disc priests can admit that it's more fun utilizing a full complement of spells and trying to maximize buffs and an effective spell rotation rather than clicking over and over again on unit frames with one button.  What I don't understand is how the 4.06 PW:S ever made it to live. Simple napkin math from looking @ patch notes indicated that with enough Mastery and SP, this was going to happen, so how did the dev's miss it?

Diagnosing Problems and Giving Feedback using WoL

He’s dead! My guild was previously stuck on Atramedes (bleh bleh bleh) for some reason for the last two weeks, and seemed to be making no progression what so ever on him. Every attempt ended the same way, boss @ 50%, and way too many people dead to kill the dragon for the number of shields we had left. We changed the strat many times. We stacked, we spread, we had designated people ring the gongs, we had whomever was kiting the flame ring their own gongs; the whole gambit. One of our officers (and healing lead) gave a mini-speech about how we seemed to struggle on fights that required more raid-awareness. She was right.

Feedback to fellow guidies is tough to give, and sometimes tough to receive. What I’ve found helps is getting cold hard facts to help support your feedback, and that’s where World of Logs comes in. It’s easy to argue with who said they saw what during the core of the fight, but a combat log sheds a stark like on the ins and outs of an encounter, assuming you know what to look for.

Step 1, figure out how people are dieing.

The easiest way I’ve found to identify what’s killing who, is to look @ the death log. Figuring out what’s killing people seems like a no brainer, but sometimes it’s tough when you’re in-game. When you’re looking @ an individual attempt (or series of attempts), try to find trends in what you see. For example in the screen shot below, I see players taking massive damage from Searing Flame, and then dying from Modulation.  

We figured out right away that we needed to get on the shield quicker to mitigate Searing Flame damage.

Soooo, we fixed our Searing Flame problem, but were still experiencing too many deaths, so back to the logs. The next logs we looked at showed tons of deaths from Modulation, but no significant damage in the log to proceed it. This means we had people carrying too much sound. So who do we talk to? We COULD just yell @ everyone not to stand in the fire, but yelling @ everyone often times does not work. Feedback needs to be personal, and specific. We started looking @ who was accruing too much sound by seeing who was getting hit by abilities that add sound.

You can easily determine who gets hit by specific spells right from the front page of your log. Scroll all the way down to the bottom of the main overview page and look for the window called the Spell List. This is a list of all the spells present in the log, and you can see details by clicking on them. Sometimes you will see a spell listed twice, but you can tell which one your looking for as soon as you click on them. In this case, the 1st Sonar Pulse shows the boss casting the ability, and the 2nd is when a player gets hit.

In this fight, we wanted to see who having a hard time dodging the Sonar Pulse, and getting too much sound added before Modulation. We can do this by finding the spell name in the list, and clicking on the link. This log is about 8 attempts, and indeed some of these are added from standing in stuff on purpose to get dead quicker after a wipe is called, but if you’re looking @ this in a more real time scenario it’s more relevant.

Now that I’m looking at a specific detail of who is getting hit by the bad stuff, I know who I should talk to. I usually do this in a whisper before I call someone out in vent out of courtesy. In the case of this encounter feedback would look something like this: “Hey man, you are getting hit by Sonar Pulse a lot. When I say a lot, I mean like 50% more than me, and 80% more than someone who is doing this right. I can’t heal you if your 1 shot by Modulation, so dodge more circles for me and I swear your DPS will be better than if you’re tanking the floor for ½ the fight.”

It’s amazing how effective a whisper usually works for me in this type of situation. I hardly ever have to take it to the next level, which for me is calling people out in vent during the fight, now that I’ve used the logs to pinpoint who I should be looking at.

Stuck

Ever been stuck on a boss? I mean stuck like you've watched all the videos, read all the strats, tried every variation you can think of and STILL can't kill a boss? It's very frustrating to say the least and my guild is going though it now.

It's Atramedes. Yes yes, I know. He's not a hard fight. Super easy on 10m as well, but for some reason on 25 my guild cannot get this guy down. Our best attempt tonight was 29%, but that was pure luck (imo). We can do 50% every time, but after that, people end up dieing. This is especially frustrating when there is nothing you can do to help as a healer. There isn't a real stringent healing requirement on this fight, everyone has to stay out of the bad stuff or they get a full sound meter and get one-shot by Modulation. I have people getting 20-30 hits of the sound rings even though the raid leader is really good about reminding people that keeping your sound low and not getting hit with anything is the priority in this fight. It doesn't help that we pug 2-4 slots every week, but some of our better pugs are joining up every week. But still, DON'T STAND IN THE BAD STUFF is a fairly core game mechanic for all players, isn't it?