How to Nerd Rage While Winning Friends and Influencing PvPers

Last night, I did something that I don't usually do in WoW.  I went on a major nerd rage during our rated PvP group.  I was leading the offense and was calling targets and telling people to CC stuff and things were not going down.  I saw targets that were not the kill target going down first.  I even had somebody say they were CCing the kill target literally 2 seconds after I said that person was the kill target.  In addition, someone who was not a BG leader was trying to change our strat in a Warsong Gulch, which I won't give away what our strat is.

Sometimes nerd raging is helpful.  Sometimes, it is not.  I'm sure we have all heard the audio with a raid leader just berating everybody in a level 60 Onyxia raid which has the famous phrase "More DoTs".  Just berating the whole raid usually does not get the results you are looking for.  That usually brings down the morale of the group.  A better technique would be to rage against one or two people who are not doing their jobs correctly.  That way, you may change the behavior of those one to two people instead of bringing down the entire group.

Also, the language of how you say it is important.  I'm not saying don't curse.  I said "fuck" at least once last night during my nerd rage.  However, endless cursing without content is useless.  If you are just cursing endlessly and not providing any help to people, you are just endlessly cursing for no reason and people don't know why, which tends to piss people off more than help them. 

Also, nerd raging is for during matches only.  After matches are for constructive criticism.  Don't continue raging after matches.  People accept nerd raging during a match because of the time constaint of the match.  People don't want to berated after the match.  After the matchs where I did nerd rage, I brought up issues that occurred during the match in a critical way, but not in a rageful way.  In high pressure situations, nerd raging is usually accepted.  However, nerd raging should not occur after a match.  After a match is a time to calm down and look at the situation as a whole.  Sometimes, you may even find that your nerd rage was over the line after calming down a little.

Final thing that is needed to properly nerd rage is balance.  It is okay to point out faults during nerd rages.  In real life, I work with a boss who routinely picks out faults, sometimes even faults that are not there at all.  However, something my boss doesn't do is make compliments when good stuff occurs.  If your team is doing a good job, tell them they are doing a great job.  Nobody likes constant nerd raging at them without any compliments on what they are doing right.  If you return a flag that is very difficult, compliment your part of the team.  If you have balance, your team will accept your nerd rages knowing that they will get complimented when they do stuff properly. 

Site News: New Blogs, Drunken Podcasts, and New Update Schedule

I have not done a general site update in quite some time, so I decided it was time to give an update as to what is going on with the site.

First off, I want to say the biggest thanks to everybody who comes to the site.  In 2011, we have already had over 10,000 visits in the first three months of this year, something that almost took the entire 2010 to achieve, so thank you very much for your continued support.  I know blog posts have been a little slower coming around than usual, down from the every day schedule I was keeping, but I am glad you still come regularly.

Second, I want to announce that I was on the Leet Sauced podcast for episode 20, Redhawks Strikes Back.  I really would encourage you to check them out, not just my episode, but all 20 of them so far.  These guys are quickly becoming some of the most popular people in the WoW community and I'm glad to call them friends and guildmates of mine.  Pick it up and I gurantee you will laugh your ass off and learn something too.

Third, during the podcast, you will hear me mention my new Rift blog, Redhawks Ascension.  I know a lot of WoW players are very interested in Rift as well.  If you are interested in even learning a little bit about Rift from someone who has played WoW, you will enjoy this blog.

With a new blog, it also has brought into attention my updating schedule.   As I mentioned earlier, I have been trying to update this blog every single day and Redhawks Ascension when I have something to say.  However, to consolidate my time in a little more orderly fashion and to provide enough content for two blogs, this blog will be updated twice a week on Monday and Thursday.  Redhawks Ascension will be updated on Tuesday and Friday.  This will also give me a little break during the week.  Of course, if big news breaks (patches, major WoW news, etc.), this will get thrown out immediately and I will update whichever one it is more pertinent to update during that time.

So again, I want to say, thank you very much, and I hope you continue to enjoy the site and keep coming.

How to Fix Feral Druids in Rated BGs

I know a lot of the PvP feral druids have complained about their state in Rated BGs.  In 4.0.6, they lost the ability to shapeshift out of snares.  In 4.1, they are nerfing Lifebloom, one of the few healing spells that feral druids can use that was somewhat helpful.  They used to be the ideal flag carriers due to the fact that they had travel form, which could help them move across the map quicker, and bear form, to help mitigate damage by increasing their stamina and armor.  However, they have been religated to about 4th line, behind protection warriors, protection paladins, and blood death knights.

So looking at, there could be some ways to save the Feral Druid in rated BGs.  Here are a few non-game breaking things that could be done to fix it.  I'm not suggesting do all of these, because that would break the game.  I'm saying maybe do one or two of them.

1) Make Shapeshift Useful Again - This used to be their biggest advantage.  Even as a moonkin, I routinely practice changing in and out of moonkin form to break snares.  (Mainly because I still can.) Giving them this back would give the advantage needed for them to become competent flag carriers again.

2) Kitty Heroic Leap - While a giant bear jumping the distance that a warrior can is absolutely ridiculous, the idea that a cat could do it is much less so.  Feral kitties already get Feral Charge, which is basically a jump behind an opponent, just use the same animation for heroic kitty leap. 

3) Fear - This is likely not gonna happen, but couldn't a bear have a roar that scares everybody off of him for a few seconds.  I don't think it is completely unreasonable to have.  Call it Terrifying Roar and make all enemies fear for 8 seconds.

4) Nerf Lifebloom Only For Casters - In other words, the game can already recognize if you have spellpower gear on and what your spellpower is.  Make it that if your total spellpower is above 6500, your Lifebloom is nerfed appropriately. Again, very unlikely to happen, but would give some benefit.

5) Make Barkskin Protect From CC. - Barskin is the ability that decreases the amount of damage you take.  Why not have the added benefit to have it free you out of snares, traps, etc. for its 8 second duration?  Paladins have Hand of Freedom, which removes movement impairing effects.  It would act very similarly to that but would also have the damage mitigation.  Either that, or make it a glyph that would decrease the amount of mitigation, but give you the CC protection.  Heck, if they make it a glyph, I would consider getting it for my moonkin/resto.

I'm sure there are other ways to get bears back up to the flag carrying positions they have held prior to 4.0.6.  I'm also sure that Blizzard is working on a way to balance it out so that all the tank classes can be reasonable flag carriers in rated BGs.  Hopefully, sooner rather than later.

Money for Virtual Goods - Intrinsic Value versus Personal Value

This past weekend, my fiance and myself were discussing things that we do in games that cost money.  We both play Smurfs Village on the iPad, which is a cross between a party game and Farmville with adorable Smurfs as the workers.  We both have probably spent around $25 buying Smurfberries in the game to help us along.  The game doesn't require it, but it makes it easier to play.  With some of the players in game, that is probably nothing.  I'm sure some people have put hundreds of dollars into their Smurf village.

During the course of this discussion, we came up to the fact that it is kind of weird to pay for things which have no intrensic value.  I brought up that in the course of playing World of Warcraft, which she does not play, I have bought two virtual pets for myself, a mount, and pay monthly to watch an AH that doesn't really exist.  That is outside of the normal fee just to play the game.  However, these items have personal value for me.  I still use my sparkle pony in my rotation of mounts since I use Gogo Mount to randomly pick a mount.  I also still pull out my little moonkin and my pandaren monk every so often.  And of course, I use my remote AH all the time.  Add in all the time getting gear that just helps me play the game better, and I have probably spent as much as people who put hundreds of dollars into Smurf Village.

The reason I bring this up is we have the newest mount that can be bought in game soon, the Winged Lion.  A lot of people are going to complain again that they are having to spend money to get a mount.  To those people, I say that it may not hold any intrinsic value to you, but to some, it may hold a personal value.  If they want to spend their money on a flying lion, it is their money and not of importance to you.  You both have different values.  In addition, some people may not get achievements like "Glory of the Cataclysm Raider" where they can get mounts and this is their way to get something new.  Basically, whether or not you pay for a mount, it is your decision.  You must determine the value for you, not for everybody else.

Will I be getting a winged lion?  It depends.  I will be honest, from the datamined pictures on MMO - Champion, he kind of looks ugly, so I'm thinking no.  However, new pictures may come out where it looks incredible and I may change my mind.  But the value for me is how cool the mount looks?  The Sparkle Pony looked awesome, almost like something out of Ulduar.   Unfortunately, I can't say the same thing for the winged lion.  Maybe seeing it in action will change my mind about this one.    

The point is to all the people QQing about another mount, just let go of it.  It is not your money, it is not required, and it does not give an unfair advantage to someone.  It is a mount.  And if you do buy one when they come out and are on the Ner'zhul server, fly around the dwarven district in Stormwind so I can take a look at it.  You may sway my decision.

Vivid Dream Emerald - Useful for Moonkins?

When patch 4.0.6 came out, there was one new green gem added to the game that is centered around PvP, the Vivid Dream Emerald.  The Vivid Dream Emerald provides + 20 resilience and + 20 spell penetration.  In PvE, our blue gemmed slots will be gemmed with the Purified Demonseye, which is +20 Intellect and + 20 Spirit.  So the major question, would this gem be more useful than Purified Demonseye for PvP.  The answer is possibly depending on your situation.  I'm gonna break this into two different categories:  moonkins with offspec other than restoration and moonkins with a resto offspec.

In addition, if you are going for spell penetration cap, the cap is 228.  There is an enchant that will get you 70 spell penetration for your cloak.  There is also a PvP cloak, Vicious Gladiator's Drape of Diffusion that has 201 spell penetration.  It makes it look like you could hit the cap with just these two items, but you don't want to sacrifice hit for spell penetration, which depending on your gear, you might be doing.

Moonkins with Other Offspec -  Looking at the moonkin's vicious 5 pieces for PvP, this is the slot breakdown.

1 Meta Socket - Meta Gem of Your Choice (See prior blogs for my PvP choice)

3 Red Sockets - Use Brilliant Inferno Ruby

2 Blue Sockets - Usually Purified Demonseyes

2 Yellow Sockets - Usually Reckless Ember Topazs

If using PvE gemming strategy, you would end up with + 200 Intellect, + 40 Spirit, + 40 Haste.  If you take out all the blue and yellow sockets and replace them with Vivid Dream Emerald, you give up 40 Spirit and 40 Haste for + 80 Spell Penetration.  Even with the enchant on a cloak, you still wouldn't hit the spell penetration cap.  To hit the cap, you would also have gem with the Vivid Dream Emerald in your pristmatic slot in your relic, in your belt buckle slot, and in 2 red sockets, which means now you are giving up 80 intellect (assuming you would have used Brilliant Inferno Rubies for all those slots) as well to hit the spell penetration cap.

All this math comes down to a single fact.  If you are just building a moonkin PvP set, you will need to get the Vicious Gladiator's Cloak of Diffusion.  Once you do that, you won't need to gem with the Vivid anyway.  If you need the Vicious Gladiator's Cloak of Meditation for being hit capped (since it has Spirit on it), you will need to gem with the Vivid Dream Emerald to hit the spell penetration cap, but be prepared to give up a lot of helpful DPS stats to get it.

Moonkins with Resto Offspec - First thing that is necessary is knowing spell penetration does nothing for heals at all.  It has no benefit.  A few blog post ago, I mentioned that you can switch out 2 of our moonkin 5 piece to get the resilience bonus for your restoration spec and pick up more spirit.  The two pieces in particular were the shoulders and the chest.  The two blue gem sockets and one of the yellow gem sockets are still around.  So now, you have 60 spell penetration in a restoraton set that doesn't matter about it. 

If you are a moonkin with a restoration offspec, you should never gem spell penetration in your gear, which means you can forget about the Vivid Dream Emerald.  You can save up your Conquest points and get the Vicious Gladiator's Cloak of Diffusion to use just for moonkin alone and get the spell penetration enchant.  But have it as a seperate equipment set, not as a part of the shared set.

So all in all, the biggest advice I could give is go for the Vicious Gladiator's Cloak of Diffusion and forget about using Vivid Dream Emeralds entirely.    However, remember, don't sacrifice hit for spell penetration.  It is useful, but not more useful than hit.

How to Get a Rated BG Group from Trade Chat

Last night, I did something that I thought was a little bold on my part.  I tried building a PUG rated BG group.  I mostly did it just for fun to see how it would go.  Here is the thought process behind building a rated BG comp from PUGs that I developed during the night.

1) Lay Down the Requirements - I had a lot of people message me when I posted I was looking for more for rated BGs saying they had 1k to 2k resielience.  The fact of the matter is most people I have run into in rated BGs have at least the Bloodthirsty Gladiator set and quite a few have the full Vicious Gladiator set for their class/spec.  If you are coming in with less than 3k resilience, you are gonna get smacked around a bit.  I made it crystal clear that everybody had to have at least 3k resilience.  The other requirement I had was that everybody needed to download Mumble for communication sakes.  Believe or not, some people have problems downloading Mumble.  I had people refuse to come to a pretty good rated BG group because they didn't want to download Mumble.

2) Setting Up an Ideal Composition - Knowing that 2 of the current 3 rated BGs involved capture the flag, I built the PUG rated BG group around this.  Here is the composition I decided to go with:

One flag runner (Prot Warrior, Feral Druid with Tank Gemming/Enchanting, Blood DK, Prot Pally)

Three main heals (Any healing class would be fine, but prefer three different healing classes.)

One DPS/Heals - Somebody willing to DPS in Gilneas but heal in the other two. (Moonkin/Resto druid is excellent for this.)

Five DPS split into three categories:  Three heavy CC ranged classes (Mage, Warlock, etc.), one heavy CC melee class (Subtelty Rogue usually),  and one high DPS (any class)

3) Questions to Ask - Of course, if you meet the class and resilience requirement, it doesn't mean you would get in necessarily.   I asked each person about their rated BG experience.  First question I usually asked is what is your current rated BG rating.  Having a low rating did not necessarily exclude you from coming, but I was going to keep more of an eye on you and if you started failing, you would be replaced.  In addition, some people with really high resilience has just had problems finding rated BG groups, so I was willing to give people a chance.  I also asked about their arena rating to get an idea of how much they PvP, etc.   This is all important.

4) Breaking Hearts - Sometimes, you have to let people down easy.  For example, I got about 5 mages asking to come.  However, we were already full on mages.  So I would whisper them back and tell them that we are full on mages, but hang around and if something happens, I could bring them in.

5) Set Up Expectations - Once everybody gets in your communication device of choice, you should set up expectations.  I told them up front that I would explain strats as we got to the BGs.  I also told them to make sure they are communicating and calling their CC.  It is important to tell them what you are expecting from them as a rated BG team up front.  Find the problems early and correct as soon as possible. 

As one of the leaders of my guild's rated BG group, I also have additional important roles.  I need to watch these PUGs to see who I would and would not want to bring back if we needed people again.  There may even be people we want to encourage to come join our guild and our rated BG group. 

Final thing I can say is give yourself some time.  It took about an hour and a half to build a group I was comfortable with, we went into one Gilneas BG, won, and then had two people drop.  We replaced one but could never find a healer to replace the other, so after about 30 minutes of going through trade chat, we had to call it.  The lesson I learned last night is to get on early to start finding people if you think you may need to PUG some people for your normal rated BG group.

Blizzard's New Patching Strategy - A Great Deal

Last week, Blizzard mentioned that the new Firelands raid would not appear until patch 4.2, skipping patch 4.1 entirely.  This is a huge shift from their strategy in Wrath of the Lich King.  In Wrath of the Lich King, Blizzard released 3.1, which was Ulduar; 3.2, which was the Argent Tournament; and 3.3 which was Icecrown.  Yes, they did add Ruby Sanctum in 3.3.5, but that was just a small addition like the VoA bosses.  However, in Wrath patches, they only added 4 more 5 mans with 3 of those coming in the Icecrown patch and 1 additional BG, Isle of Conquest, in 3.2. 

If more frequent patching means more stuff for everybody, I am all for it.  Look at what we know we are getting in 4.1.  We are getting two 5 man dungeons with epic gear and rare mounts in them.  And we know for a fact that Abyssal Maw is coming in 4.2 with the Firelands raid.  And they still likely have 2 tiers of content after that.  With going back to old world content, they are opening up the ability to have all the dungeons tuned to level 85 heroics.  We could easily see 5 - 7 more 5 mans and at least 3 more raids.  If they add in a few more BGs then it will be absolutely perfect.  We know for a fact that we are getting 3 15 man BGs retuned for rated BGs.

In addition to expected content, they are going to be adding in guild quest, new questing area for Firelands raid, and new achievements. Who knows what else they are going to have for patches 4.2 and beyond.  Path of the Titans may make a comeback.  They might fix archaeology to not make it more boring than fishing.  The more they can push our in smaller patches, the happier everybody will be.

The main reason I think the are doing this is because of what I'm calling the great drought of 2010.  In December 2009, they released Icecrown.  From December 2009 until December 2010, there was only one minor content patch and no major content patches at all.  As much as I loved Icecrown as a raid, by the time July rolled around, it was getting kind of stale.  Hopefully, this new strategy from Blizzard will prevent another content drought from occuring.  In fact, Blizzard can't have another drought like that.  Rift has already come out and is garnering a lot of attention.  Star Wars: The Old Republic comes out this year and will garner a lot of attention as well.  If they have even a 6 month drought this year, there are two viable MMOs ready to take their place this time.

So bravo Blizzard for doing smaller content patches to help keep the game fresh.  Hopefully, this strategy will pay off for you in this year where you may have the hardest competition yet.