Becoming a member of the Blogging community as I recently have  I figured I’d go ahead and post the first of the shared topics from Blog Azeroth here in my own little corner of the world. It will also add some druid to the place, since druid has been strangely absent as of yet. So, without further ado, on to the question.

Q: What do you enjoy about the class you play the most?

I’m looking at the question and the little Maerdred inside my head is saying to me, There’s two ways to read that question. First, What do you enjoy about “the class you play the most often?”. The other is, What do you enjoy the most about the class you play? So, Little Maerdred is begging me to answer both. That littke bugger almost always gets his way, but this time they’re being combined.

A: The sheer number of things that I enjoy about playing the class I play (druid) could fill 10 Guild banks. I love shapeshifting. Not the act of it – which is kind of cool if you take a chance to watch closely – but the ability to do so. On a daily basis I have the ability to change from a Night Elf, into a Bird, a Cheetah, A panther, a bear, a seal, and a tree… How cool is that? I think it’s the coolest thing about this class. But seriously, I have grown to love the Druid’s ability to do just about everything. I loved leveling Feral as a cat, and having the ability to tank if I needed to, or heal if I needed to. Once I got to Raids, cat DPS was not very good, so I specced healing, and I’ve loved it ever since.

I love our community. Druids have been some of the most helpful, friendly folks I’ve ever met in this game. I love that about my class.

Flight form… I love jumping off of the Scryer tier and hitting flight form before I hit the ground. Heck, I love jumping off Netherstorm and hitting flight form before I die. Rez after some world PVP and instantly hit flight form and get out of range.

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So I know we’ve been raiding for like a year at level 70 already, but we had NEVER tried Doomwalker before. For some background, the active ratio on my server is about 4 horde to 1 Alliance. It may be worse than that, BUT it has always meant that the first thing the Horde guilds would do as soon as they were up was kill Domwalker and Doom Lord Kazzak. We honestly never had a chance.

So, tonight we had our chance. After a 2-shot of Morogrim with a lower geared pally tank on murlocks, we killed Gruul, and then decided, rather than split into 3 or 4 heroic or PVP groups, we were going to try Doomwalker. We got about 10 other guild members together and headed to SMV.

On our first pull, we lost about half of the raid to the first earthquake. I was one of them. Earthwuake and Chain Lightning FTL.  BUT, from about 60% to4% we had about 15 members on him going to town, until the healers went OOM and the enrage timer kicked in and he one shot our tank. 15 minutes later, we tried again. and got to like 10%, wih a similar problem. Try # 3 15 minutes after that, 27 of 35 people left alive, Doomwalker Dead. RD first! Some plate dropped for a tank, and a Caster Dagger which went to a mage.

Man I wish the neck had dropped! I was the healer there with the best loot scenario.

Perhaps tomorrow I’ll be awake enough to remember the fight and explain it a little.

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So, last night was Tuesday, that means it’s SSC Farm night. 7:00 Server rolls around and we all roll into SSC in our PVP gear after hearing “Bring PVP gear, there’s horde here and they’re being Jackholes.” PVP gear? I don’t have PVP gear. Lucky for me by the time I got there, the 54 horde who were messing with our Raid Leader were scared off by the 20 Raging Daisies whoi had shown up to raid.

But I digress. We walked into SSC with a full 25-man raid, including 2 new server transfers from Illidan. See, we got Free Transfers this week! it’s great…. So, yes we had these new transfers and one of them is in BT/MH gear. Why did he transfer to a SSC/TK guild? I have no idea, but hey geared out healers are fun. So, we started trash, and things were going fine. Hydross went down without issue. Lurker, one-shot. Crack boss… pwned. Mini Crack boss did however, take one casualty, but trash was down, so he was just swimming, not dying. Then, we get to Leo…

Here’s where it got fun. We had a DPS warrior DC in the middle of a pull, causing the whirl to kill all of our Melee, causing the MT to call for a reset… Then, we had our ranged dps not able to move out of the way when he was whirling, lost 2 healers and the FR tank died almost instantly. Then we had a Shaman who had never been to the fight, who couldn’t log on vent, not hear for DPS to stop, and he pulled agro on Demon Form, died, and the tank couldn’t get Agg back…

Yay… Next pull was almost flawless, but of course, with two new members in the raid who we should have been impressing, something nooby has to happen. My own personal Inner Demon comes out and starts kicking my tail. So, what do I do? Turn to face him, TAB target him, hit moonfire, instantly pulling me from tree form to caster form. Starfire… oh crap that’s getting inturrupted, Wrath, Wrath, oh damn! heal me heal me! Dead…

Yes. I forgot to heal myself. You’d figure with 7 healers and a Prot Pally standing next to me with nothing to do for a minute, I might get a heal, but nope… nobody notices the poor little tree getting his bark beaten off. So yes, I died, but the gang gets ‘er done and Leo finally goes down. I believe it was 5 attempts total .

Next up Karathress. I’m on Main Tank duty, I’d never done this before so I hop into rddruids and ask Keed what he usually does. “Stand in the hall and when Regil pulls go to the pillar on your left. move from pillar to pillar when kiting totems. Keep a full LB stack on yourself and him, Rejuv on him as much as possible.”

OK. I got this. that’s easy. LB, LB,LB… oh that shadowbolt thing the boss does silences… that’s fun. ok. (frantic) LB, LB, LB. Oh hey, I have more healers, less frantic… Kite, LB, LB, LB, Kite, LB, LB, LB, Kite, oh crap I’m dead. Yeah, again. I forgot to heal myself… In my defense, Mailenhanced’s Chain heal should have been healing me, but apparently there was a LOS issue. So, I died again, the boss died and we all went home after a long night in SSC.

Thursday is Moro and Vashj. Let’s DO IT!!!

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I had planned a nice long post about how to be a good officer, then I realized, I’m not sure I AM a good officer. So then I decided to write a how to on Recruiting, but decided, we don’t do a very good job at recruiting. So, what is a guy to do? Trying to provide content and help myself work through an issue within his own guild. So here’s my thing. How do you recruit?

There are a few ways to look at recruitment. And a few ways to define which you should use. First, what kind of guild are you? this will help you to define who you need to recruit, and how to do so. Second, should you be passive or active in recruiting? Third, Where do you recruit; do you use the Guild Recruitment channel in game, the Guild Recruitment forum, the realm forum, your own website?

So looking at this in some sort of coherent order, Let’s first find out what kind of guild we are. Are we an end-game raiding guild? Check. Are we a casual raiding guild? Check. Are we a “friends and family guild? Check. Are we a PVP guild? Check. Are we a twink guild? Check.

OK. Crap. We’re a pretty complicated guild. How many “Raiders” do we have? Well, right now we’ve got a list of about 15 Hard-core raiders, and about 30 casual raiders, and about 30 others who wish they were one or the other, but aren’t there yet skill or gear-wise. So, Do we want to recruit more Hard-core raiders, or foster some of our casuals? That’s a big question. If we can fill 25-mans 4 times a week with the right group composition to kill every boss we need to, we don’t need to recruit Raiders. So, yes. We can fill our 4 25-mans a week, so why recruit Raiders? Don’t. Casual Raiders. We have a large group of these people who want to raid and maybe get to raids once or twice a week. They run heroics and kara’s and Arenas, and have some great gear, but not the experience in the 25-man dungeons we require of a hardcore raider. Recruiting more of these folks would make spots in these heroics and kara’s harder to find, but it could also open up another kara each week. We already run 4-5 Karas and pug others every week. Why not add to it? Sure.

Family and friends, this is a no brainer. Invite them. We’re a family oriented guild. we love friends of members, and family. I don’t care that your brother’s only level 23. As long as he doesn’t spend all day in /g chat begging for Stocks runs, or free gold, I’m cool with it. Now, most “Raiding” guilds do not feel this way at all. In fact, any “hardcore raiding guild” considers 60 characters to be too many. Last I checked, we have over 300, spread over 180 accounts.

PVPers. “Hey guys I ran AB with like 5 guys from your guild and it was awesome. ?How often do you run premades? I’d love to get in on that. Maybe d some heroics and do you have a slot for a hunter in a 5v5?” Does (s)he know his/her class? How’s the gear? The folks who played in that AB, any good memories, any bad? ok. cool. Let’s get the invite out, but hey dude, you probably won’t make it on a 25-man over Gruuls any time soon. “It’s cool. I only want to PVP.” OK. Invited. we’re open to anyone.

So, with this strategy, how do we recruit people? Well, we’re doing a pretty bad job of it, I think. We have a recruitment forum, a new applicant posts a cut-and-paste application and our officers and members look it over. If anyone wants to “block” the application, they can do so, explaining their action, and offering the applicant a chance to defend them self. If nobody blocks the application, the officers have a chance to ask class specific questions, request an in-game interview, or an instance run. After this process, three officers must sponsor the application and the applicant can be invited.

Our four principles are very important to us, and we make sure that people have a firm grasp on them. Those four principles are these:

1. We are winners. We do what it takes to win. Winners may lose, but they learn from it. Winners don’t repeat losing patterns; they make changes and try new things. We don’t quit until we’ve won. By winning every battleground on the server, we will gain respect.

2. Winning requires Preparation. All Raging Daisies must take the time to learn their character’s roles and abilities, gather their gear, and form the right raid. If you enter a battlefield underprepared you are hurting your team, and hurting our Guild. Endgame instances are key to being properly prepared, and we are an endgame raiding guild.

3. Respect. Raging Daisies conduct themselves with pride and character. Foul language, lewd behavior, loud behavior and boastfulness all are signs of disrespect. Raging Daisy’s both give and get constructive criticism; that is how we help each other, and its never personal – it’s about winning. Personal attacks and other forms of disrespect directed toward guild or non-guild members are unacceptable.

4. Help each other. Raging Daisies works because the whole is greater then its parts. None of us would be winners were it not for the great team we have assembled. If the team fails, we all fail. Time spent building up other Raging Daisies is the best way to insure personal success.

Given out principle of respect, we foster a G-Rated atmosphere in guild chat and ventrilo. We also expect our members to follow this guideline in party and raid chat, especially with PUGs. We don’t want one bad apple to make us look bad as a whole to the rest of the realm.

Now, All of this said, and with the concept that we are pushing progression to the end of SSC and TK, I personally believe that we need to make a change to how we recruit. I am all for the Friendly atmosphere that we foster, but I am also aware that people are joining us to raid, or at least trying to. People are looking at us as the most progressed guild on our server alliance side, and everyone wants a piece of that pie. We ask people to specify Raiding or Casual in their app, but since we’ve pretty much told all Raiding applicants that we’re full, and spots are scarce, so we’re going to stop recruiting, What’s to stop them from “saying” that they’re casual, getting invited, and then causing guild drama for not getting invited to raids? nothing.

So I think we need to change how we do things, and I think Closing all recruitment is the start of that. I also think that we need to look at recruitment like most other raiding guilds and open recruitment for a specific need, and close it off for other classes/specs. I feel that anyone applying for a “casual” spot should have a relationship with at least 2 current members who can and will vouch for them. I feel that anyone applying for a raid spot should be made aware that we will not have a raid spot for them every night until they can prove them self better suited for the role than another member. (we use the “raider” rank for this in game)

I also think that we could split the guild, have one for Raiders, and one for Alts/family/friends/casuals, but maintain a strong bond between the two groups. Does this work? I have yet to see it done, so I can’t say. What I can say is this. If we keep going down the road we’re on, we’ll hit maximum density, and will split apart at the seams. We need to stop that from happening.

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Yesterday a few guild members were hanging out in Nagrand and saw that there was a chance to retake Halaa, so they asked in /g if anyone wanted to head over. I was on an alt, so Instantly I hearthed, logged over to Maerdred and asked for an Invite. About 8 of us hopped over to Nagrand and found, our Holy Priest had already captured Halaa on her own. So, we did what any good group of PVPers would do. We stuck around to defend against the incoming horde.

They never came. So, with a Rogue, 2 DPS Warriors, 2 Holy Priests and 2 Resto Druids, we went knocking on their door at Garadar. A few showed up to make it interesting, they were pretty smart and picked on the healers first, then went after the warriors and rogue. After a few assaults We noticed they had taken over the Bombing sites, so we went back to defend.

Not an easy task. One horde had taken all 4 rally points, and was not easy to locate. After killing him a few times, he got reinforcements and about 9 horde shoerd up, not a single healer among them.  Needless to say, we destroyed them, 4 times over, and by then it was time to get ready for a football game so I left the group and logged.

I post this basically because it was fun. I was pretty much dotting everyone I could, and wrath spamming, since the 2 priests and other resto druid were more than enough for heals. Roots, swarm, moonfire.. I forgot how fun those spells are.

I think the most fun was the Mage who jumped off the cliff, expecting to slow fall to safety who died to Moonfire spam in mid-air before even starting his descent. While I’m not good at PVP at all, I still enjoy it in the right atmosphere. I wish my guild did more by way of World PVP and Premades… But trying to progress to BT/MH isn’t easy, so much of our time is spent in PVE world…

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Why am I writing this Blog?

That is a good question. I am writing this blog for many reasons. First of which is that I love to write. I have not written seriously in almost 10 years. Other than forum posts and tutorials for work and my guild, I have done almost zero writing in ten years. I love to write. Why haven’t I been?

People tend to tell you to “write what you know.” I have a hard time believing that Anne rice has had intimate encounters with Vampires, but I can see the wisdom in telling someone new to writing to write what they know. So, I know World Of Warcraft. I have been playing for 2 years, almost non stop. The Druid I call my main character has been a part of me for nearly 19 months of the past 24. That’s quite a bit. So, that’s another reason why I am writing this.

The big reason I decided to write this, however is Blog Azeroth. I found it a week or so ago when browsing one of my favorite Druid Information sites, Resto4Life. It sounded like an awesome idea. A group of people with the same passion. A group of people to bounce ideas off of, and to share ideas and thoughts with. If I get no readers, I will be glad for the fact that I have written all of this for myself. If I get hundreds of readers, I will have nobody to thank but Phae.

So, other than that, why am I writing this blog? I don’t know. I’m not sure what I want to get out of it. I don’t think this will be a hotbed of theorycraft. I’m not all that good at that specific aspect of the game. this may turn into a narrative of my life as a Druid. It may turn into an outlet for RP, which is something I have not gotten into at all within this game. It may stagnate and become a silly fad I never took much interest in. Whichever it is, I’ll be glad for doing it.

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So, the world of blogging is a fascinating one. I read numerous WoW blogs weekly and decided, if I can give myself a schedule, I can probably come up with a couple of posts a week. Now, I could link to a blog I’ve read. Or post about what so-and-so said, but I figure I’ll start fresh right about now and talk about something that matters to My fellow Druids, and all WoW Players alike.

Loot rules. What are they, what does this even mean? Well if you don’t know that, you probably haven’t been playing long enough for it to be an issue.

Loot in WoW becomes important, sort of, when people start entering into 5-man or larger instances. Within a party, the party leader can choose from a variety of loot types. This basically changes the way loot (items) are handed out. I’m sure we all know the standard WoW loot types. FFA, Group Loot, Need Before Greed, ML. What I want to talk about are “Guild Loot Policies.”

There are a bunch of them out there. The three that I’ve used are DKP, Loot Council and “Modified Rolling”. All of these have perks and all of these have drawbacks.

DKP rewards players for killing bosses, (it could be renamed to BKP, since the D stands for Dragon, and most Bosses in WoW aren’t Dragons) Each time you are involved in a Boss Kill, you recieve a set number of DKP. These numbers vary depending on who implemented the system. DKP is pretty much currency. You gain DKP for killing a boss. You spend DKP for purchasing an item that drops from the boss.

Loot Council pretty much takes a group of people, usually guild officers, and this group decides amongst themselves which person gets the Item. Some guilds use Tank and HEaler Priority, some use other tools. I’ll get into this later.

Modified Rolling is where everyone interested in the item rolls a die… /roll 1-100 The modifiers are, you can raise the lower number based on certain criteria, such as hours raided without an item reward, or some other traceable amount. You can also Raise thetop number based on criteria. What we used was, “This item is best for Holy Priests, but all other healers can also roll. Priests can roll 1-150.”

Currently, We’re using a Loot Council system with traceable units of hours raided and loot received. These are split amongst 10-man and 25-man raids, and also by instance. We can sort by any number of criteria, and the ratio of loots:hours is used to hand out the loot. This is a simple and fair and completely objective. Which most loot systems strive to be. We add subjectivity to them, invariably as all guilds do. We utilize a “size of upgrade” check for items, as well as “Main Spec and Offspec”.

So, basically if I have 100 hours raided and 10 loot items received, I have a ratio of .1

If a new member has 10 hours raided and 1 item, he also has a ratio of .1

If it’s a similar sized upgrade, I win because my hour total is higher. If it’s a larger upgrade for him, he wins due to this (and I’d probably pass anyway). If it’s a larger upgrade for me I win, unless I pass. If It’s a rogue/cat DPS piece, the rogue wins. If it’s cloth the Priest wins over the Druid… All things being equal that is.

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