Reviewing PvE performance.

Constructing a raid group is all about synergy, understanding and trust. For success, you really need to ensure that your 10 or 25 people are adding up to more than the sum of their parts and that they will act or react in a way that is considerate to the rest of the group. In most efforts to cover this topic, commentators will attempt to follow this statement with either a dressing down or a staunch defence of how important "output" is. Bearing in mind "output" is something of a subjective term, it's hard to establish just how important it is when variables throughout an encounter will considerably skew it one way or another. What I find frustrating is that a lot of the discussion devolves into the value of damage meters; even more frustrating is that many people seem to make terrible inferences from a very shaky grasp of logic.

1) If you like damage meters, you like spamming them in party and judging everyone's ability based upon them.
2) If you don't like damage meters, you're a casual baddie who isn't interested in improving your own performance.

Alas, human duality (and stupidity?) precludes people from getting beyond these two extremes and assessing the value of damage meters more objectively. I like damage meters, hate judgements based purely on them and am very interested in performance improvement. But in this world of "output" and raid-wide symbiosis, damage meters and parses are becoming an everyday part of the raiding experience. Whether you like them or not, their influence grows with each passing day. If you want to be a raider of progression content, it's best you accept that someone is going to be poring over what you're doing and trying to judge your performance accordingly.

Context here, is key - I've just come off the back of a raid last night that was, with no exaggeration, one of the most enjoyable I've had in a long time. We welcomed a new member into the fold, put together pretty much our strongest group, the composition in the raid was complementary and the person I asked to sit out for the night did so cheerily and with no argument. When you add that to a one-shotting of every boss we went for (heroic Halfus excepted - I always balls up a couple of pulls) and the inclusion of an achievement we didn't have before, we all had an absolute blast and can't wait to raid again tonight.

A lot of people believe there is more value in a post-mortem after a bad raid night, and there is value in that opinion. When things are going badly, it's worth knowing who's knuckling down and, conversely, who's throwing in the towel. But when things have gone well, you get a glimpse of that hard-to-appreciate concept that every guild should be looking for, particularly when starting out:

Potential.

Last night, I saw a bucket load of potential. Not only in performance, but in attitude and raid... Togetherness. Last night was people playing for one another in a complementary fashion that saw everyone's "output" increase. Yes, our new warlock is now indoctrinated with the "Blame Zell" mantra; that's unfortunate. But we broke several of our own records, passed out some nice loot, got a new achievement and even recovered from three deaths against the Ascendant Council to one-shot it. Oh, and our warlock was new (slightly lower geared than most of us), while our Shadow priest was in a dud spec that put her way under the hit cap. The point it's worth coming on to is whether or not "output" matters in such an environment. The thing is, that's actually a bum question.

Last night went so well BECAUSE the output was generally high across the board.

Damage meters and parses are invariably used to haul people over performance related coals for no actual benefit. If the tank threat was a bit lousy, healing was slack or DPS was low, then I'm confident there was a reason other than laziness and I don't actually need a meter to tell me that. The way we do certain encounters doesn't necessarily help certain specs and, in some cases, will hinder them. Our Feral's DPS is always low on heroic Atramedes because he never spends any time behind the boss. Our Retribution paladin never does high damage on Al'Akir because he coordinates the stormling strategy. Our aforementioned Shadow priest often falls behind due to a willingness to throw out heals or go the extra mile in avoiding damage. And no matter who I ask to do a job that will impact their DPS negatively, they're always happy to do it because they're far more interested in raid DPS than their own.

The key to all this, and where meters play the biggest part, is in each player's self-evaluation. As Kripparrian likes to say, you shouldn't necessarily set a number on someone's output; "you need at least 12k for Cho'gall" can easily cause someone to get there and start slacking off. You should be turning up to every single raid, determined to do more damage or more healing than you did the week before. Your meter can tell you if you're improving your uptime, getting in more globals, choosing your abilities better or taking fuller advantage of your procs. Each week, you should be fighting against yourself and not necessarily the rest of your raid because an encounter simply may not be made for you, making cross-class comparison totally pointless. You're not just fighting to beat enrage timers (be they soft or hard), you're fighting to make the encounter easier, and thus more enjoyable, for everyone. The Raging Spirits when fighting Arthas played no part in the enrage timer, but the difference made to everyone by high DPS finishing them quickly was glaringly obvious.

Gear, spec, encounter specific tasks, latency and raid composition all mean that a straight one-for-one comparison has no value. Instead, use your meter to maximise your OWN performance and you'll start to see across the board improvement in "output", enjoyment and success.

If raiding had a holy trinity, that'd be it.

Output, enjoyment and success.

When to start the Firelands?

With patch 4.2 on the PTR and guilds already in there testing raid encounters, it strikes me that the patch itself isn't too far away - probably within around 3 to 4 weeks. Roughly speaking, that means my guild has around four resets to catch up, as best as possible, with the progression of other guilds on the realm prior to the Firelands. This is a bit of a dilemma because, though we're 3/13, some of us are still missing gear slots that will make our transition into the next content a bit more difficult. It's no exaggeration to say that many guilds below ours on the progression chart are significantly better geared than we are due to a couple of re-rolls and a late start for our guild (we're 5th Horde on Argent Dawn at the minute, after only three resets and an imperfect set up).

The question for me as a GM is whether or not we keep working on the heroic modes to up our guild standing now, or simply farm the heck out of the current content to make sure we're ready for Firelands. Similar to this question is the one of direction; do we tear up the Firelands on release, or do we dedicate a reasonable amount of time going back to tier 11 to finish them off?

I distinctly remember Kadomi talking about this back when Trial of the Crusader launched. Her guild all wanted to get into the new raid for shiny purplez, but she herself was more interested in putting Ulduar to bed by killing Yogg-Saron. Now, ignoring the fact that Ulduar was an absolute belter of a raid and Yogg-Saron was an incredible encounter that anyone should be sad to have missed, "progression" is based off of current content because it's the most relevant and challenging. The problem now, however, is that heroic modes have muddied the waters of what is considered "finished" and "unfinished". Yes, we've finished the current normal content by becoming Defenders of a Shattered World. However, we've not grabbed the heroic achievements yet, nor the titles that go with them.

This is made all the more compelling by the fact that nobody on Argent Dawn has even come close to killing Sinestra yet.

It's totally understood that Argent Dawn is a very slowly progressed realm; it's to be expected from an RP realm, really. But on a server where realm firsts are a very real possibility for us, turning a blind eye to the prestige that would go with being the first to best the heroic versions of Al'Akir, Cho'gall, Nefarian and (particularly) Sinestra is tough. There can be no doubt that some of the other guilds up there will dive straight into the Firelands to gear up and cheese earlier heroic mode encounters, but I just don't know if it's wise to pursue such a strategy. And even if it is wise, is there actually a "strategy" that exists at all? It would be stupid to ignore the similar prestige that would go with being the first to kill Ragnaros or to construct Tarecgosa's Rest, so is that the better option?

I thought the heroic modes introduced in Cataclysm were designed specifically for the best of the best to race each other with. They weren't designed for the average raid group, even those who are above average or even better. The tiny percentage of players that have killed Sinestra to date are an obvious testimony to that fact. But heroic modes have also added a certain amount of frustration, because some are easily achievable by those outside the top 1% and this inclines me to think that they're perhaps more accessible than I previously thought. Therefore, the completionist in me wants to see the full complement of 13/13 heroic, with potentially a server first or two, while the competitor in me wants to be the first to kill Ragnaros and start work on a shiny staff for our Shadow priest.

I'm interested to know what you guys think; should we just move on, or should we keep an eye to the past while certain encounters remain undefeated? Obviously we're going to need some Firelands gear, but is running the risk of slowing progression on current (4.2) content worth the prestige of grabbing a server first Sinestra kill?

I honestly don't know.

600,000 vote with their feet.

My previous entry this week was just a quick musing regarding something that's been in my head for a while and how a certain turn of events influenced my haste to write it. This entry is right off the bat, as I've read that Blizzard have just managed to "misplace" 600,000 World of Warcraft subscribers; and Mike Morhaime has attempted to explain why this is.

Essentially, the playerbase of an MMO doesn't decline in a linear fashion, according to Morhaime, but rather how quickly players consume content. The crux of his point lies in the fact players have nothing to do and, therefore, stop subscribing. Now, let's be realistic - I have no clue of the actual numbers, how the fluctuation appears over a period, what the Blizzard business model is or (to be frank) what I'd say/do even if I did know these things. But even if we ignore the lump of subscribers who have left to try Trion's Rift, or the time that's elapsed since launch, I think it's absolutely staggering that this drop would be blamed on a lack of content from a team that deliberately chose to postpone the 2nd raid tier of this expansion.

Too long, didn't read (or see the bizarre contradiction)?

Tier 12 was held back due to players still being busy with tier 11, yet over half a million people have supposedly ditched their subscription because they don't have enough content.

While I need to remind everyone that business speak is designed to cushion the blow to those with finance at stake, putting out a contradictory message like this is all the more remarkable considering the shaky application of logic that accompanies it. Even if we were to accept that players had consumed current content faster than ever before, that's hardly a cue to cancel a subscription; you're more likely to do other things in game, or play something else until the next major content patch. Call me old fashioned, but I'd only cancel my subscription if I didn't intend to come back.

Leaving aside those subscribers who are not playing because they're fed up or have nothing to do, Blizzard has to accept the possibility that well over half a million people have just left Azeroth for the last time, and a truckload are potentially about to follow them out the door.

If that does turn out to be the case, what exactly has Blizzard done wrong since December '10 that they did right previously?

I've waxed lyrically about my love for the PvE model during The Burning Crusade, but there can be little question that Wrath of the Lich King was our most successful expansion to date with getting players in. At launch we had seven new zones, 10 five-man heroic instances, three raid instances (potentially 20 encounters), a world PvP zone and all the battlegrounds/arenas you could want. Cataclysm launched with five new zones, 9 five-man heroic instances, three raid instances (potentially 25 encounters) and the obligatory PvP content. When you toss in rated battlegrounds, the complete revamp of the old world and an absolute mountain of new quests and achievements, the argument for "not enough content" barely seems credible because Northrend had a lot less to offer.

So why the drop?

I do consider things like shared raid lockouts and point caps. Only being able to run a raid once per week may be a contributing factor purely because raiders want to raid. The reason for having ANY cap on content-currency has still yet to be lucidly explained to me; why do I need my Justice Points capped, and why the paltry sum of 4,000?

For me, however, it's not a question of content - it's a question of accessible content. We can be in no doubt on this front, gentle readers. The content of Cataclysm, particularly in PvE, has never been more ostracising than it is now. Both heroic dungeons and raids have been created to keep a large percentage of people out of them, which in turn gives people less to do by default. I need not explain what this has done to the WoW community, a community that is now deeply segregated between the "can" and "can not" camps. In addition, the shared raid lockout seriously impacts on those in 10 man guilds who enjoyed creating PuG raids for the 25 man versions - yet another hammer to the sense of community that has been eroded so badly since the launch of Cataclysm.

This is not a cry for nerfs, by the way. Personally, I think five-man content should be challenging because it's endgame for many, many people. Blizzard clearly agrees with me here. But you cannot make something both endgame difficulty, yet also be part of the progression path into raids. All you're doing here is wasting a raiders time in content he has no wish to play and alienating those who find the going too tough.

Please, please, please bear in mind that this is only my opinion from what I've seen, read and experienced. I do not presume to tell Blizzard how to fix their game or placate an increasingly frustrated playerbase. But an addition to this frustration is the perception that the company itself doesn't care and won't step in when it should. Too often CM's do nothing other than lock or delete posts because of a spurious rule infraction, or flat out tell a poster with a concern or complaint that they're wrong. This is terrible customer service - yes, you can try and paint the scene from the perspective of the company. But when you say to someone who's taken the time to post on a forum (however unintelligible it may be) that his opinion or view is invalid or incorrect, you're basically telling him not to bother bringing the subject up. The complete unwillingness to police the community or deal with things like harassment or, particularly, rampant item theft merely reinforces this view.

I've got to be clear, this isn't a death knell for WoW at all. In fact, many will see it as a horrendous overreaction. But when half a million people ditch your game, with goodness knows how many more frustrated or hacked off, a far harsher look has to be taken at what's going on than simply blaming the decline on a lack of bosses.

In fact, such an assertion will surely see a lot of players resolved in their view that Blizzard is losing touch with them.

"LF3M rogues for heroic..."

"Many crowd control abilities no longer cause creatures to attack players when they are cast. The creature will not attack the player when the crowd control wears off, and nearby creatures will not become hostile to the player either. However, if a visible player gets too close to the target creature, the creature will remember and attack the player when the crowd control effect wears off. The intent is to make it easier for dungeon groups to manage crowd control assignments and pulling packs of hostile NPCs. The abilities affected by this change are: Hibernate, Entangling Roots, Wyvern Sting (will still cause hostility when it begins to deal damage), Freezing Trap, Polymorph, Repentance, Shackle Undead, Blind, Hex, Bind Elemental, Banish, Seduction".

So saith Blizzard, so shall it be done.

It's been a wee while since my last blog and I reckon this topic is as good as any other to ease myself back in - I've been on vacation, after all!

Most of the commentary regarding this projected change revolves around two camps:

1) A nice quality of life change to smooth out and speed up dungeon runs.
2) A significant PvE nerf, caving in to the demands of "bads" everywhere.

Let me start off by clarifying what this change is actually going to do before commenting on how effectively it will do it. Roughly speaking, every crowd control listed above now works like Sap. That's literally it. Once applied, it will have no affect on nearby mobs, and there will be no effect on the mob itself once the CC wears off. Some people have moaned that CC isn't such a big thing in the Zandalari instances, so Blizzard are way off the mark again.

I disagree.

First of all, particularly in Zul'Aman, there are several pulls that are made markedly easier by controlling a couple of mobs. Secondly, and possibly more pertinent, is the change to those below the gear floor for the Zandalari instances. With those touting mainly raid gear now queuing exclusively for some action with the trolls, the lower dungeons of Cataclysm's launch are now robbed of their better geared players - bringing CC back to the fore again. Essentially, anyone running any heroic dungeon is going to benefit from this change.

The key word here is "benefit". I am overwhelmingly in favour of this change, and those against it have utterly missed the point if you ask me. If I can be blunt, this is only a very small mechanical change, subtly implemented, but is one of the most positive things I've seen from this development team. Perhaps this type of thing is a sign that the new team are growing into the job and "feeling" out solutions a bit better. Let's hope so.

There will be almost no alteration to those in guild groups coming across this change, while the lesser skilled and practiced (or those in PuG groups with less communication) will be able to learn the finer arts of CC at a more manageable pace. Not to mention, this will speed runs up significantly by players simply applying their CC and then dealing with the pulls more effectively.

The added benefit to me, of course, is the annoying "immune" message that sometimes pops up. For some reason that nobody can discern, certain mobs are immune to conventional CC and this can blight a run. Planning out a pull for five minutes, only to see it shot to ruins because a humanoid mob ended up immune to Polymorph is absolutely no fun whatsoever.

Alas, this change will not solve many problems encountered in a PuG.

- The tankadin that obliviously mashes his AoE buttons, breaking all the CC.
- The shaman who won't cast Hex as, according to him, there's "no need lol".
- The mage that continuously tries to Polymorph a scary elemental.
- The rogue that doesn't think kicking a healer is all that important, really.
- The warlock that DoT's up the caster that he feared less than 3 seconds ago.
- The warrior who forgets that auto-running into mobs WILL still aggro them all.
- The hunter that didn't potty train his pet, swearing blind it was on passive.
- The myriad of players that don't grasp why attacking before the tank is bad.

We've all seen them. Bad groups will remain bad, and nothing Blizzard do will ever change that. To wrap this up, I think Zarhym said it best:

"We promise that the average group will still wipe in dungeons even with this change. We have plenty of data to back that up that supposition".

Indeed.