3.53. Time for a Beer Run

RaidComp, a raid buff management tool that
allows raiders to strategize efficient rotations,
(Source: MMO-Champion.com)

How Very Meta

There was more to my rotations that simply bringing two tanks, six healers, eight melee and nine ranged. Equally (if not more) important was to look at each week's rotations and determine if the scheduled twenty-five people collectively brought all the needed buffs. I had a bit more play in the line during Wrath of the Lich King, when compared to the raids of their forefathers back in Burning Crusade. Up to my neck in naga and/or blood elves, certain buffs could only be provided by a single class -- it was for this reason alone that forced my hand into changing mains midway through WoW's first expansion. The mana-regenerating Replenishment was a lifeblood only a shadow priest could provide, and since I couldn't come to rely on others to step up, I made the sacrifice myself. I like to think that this contributed to our turnaround, giving our casters a few more rounds to finish a foe.

Paying close attention to your raid's buffs was a metagame that extended as far back as Vanilla. Turn the clock back a bit further, and I can remember a time when certain buffs simply weren't available...and you had no choice in the matter. Razorgore the Untamed was a totem kiting fest for the Horde's shamans (until a patch wiped that option away), while some Alliance gleefully exploited a paladin's Divine Intervention, trivializing the encounter with the sacrifice of a single player. The Alliance also held the upper hand in progression with Blessing of Salvation (again, thanks to paladins) while the Horde continually smashed their faces up against threat walls. Late into a boss fight, it wasn't uncommon for a Horde raid leader to order warlocks and mages to perform a final act of self-sacrifice, running headlong into the boss until dead -- an unfortunate yet effective way to prevent a caster from overtaking the main tank's threat. And of course, who could forget a dwarf priest's Fear Ward? Tremor totem may have seemed stronger, but I'm here to set the record straight. Hoping for a tremor pulse at the precise moment you need it doesn't hold a candle to the discrete control granted by an instant get-out-of-fear-free card that Fear Ward delivered. The lack of buff parity in Vanilla was tangible, and anyone raiding in that era knew the truth: the Alliance was easy mode. Anyone who tells you otherwise wasn't raiding during that time. 

...or probably has a love affair with the Alliance.

Fast forward to Wrath of the Lich King. The patchwork of raid buffs brought by individual classes crossed much more territory; this was the result of more classes sharing duties with formerly unique buffs -- a term hardcore critics refer to as "homogenization". They saw class homogenization as a dulling of class diversity. And in typical Ghostcrawler form, Greg took to the forums and defended Blizzard's new mantra of "bring the player, not the class". He argued on behalf of Blizzard that players shouldn't need to kick their best friends to the curb in order to bring that one dwarf priest for Fear Ward. His argument spoke to me personally. I had experienced, first hand, the result of having to make painful decisions to bring certain folks while leaving others behind -- it had even affected my own raiding character. The metagame of yore seemed unnecessarily harsh. Logistically, it was dreadful to plan for. It was counterintuitive to bench a seasoned player lacking buffs in favor of a player that could barely spell his own name without drooling all over himself...just to get the buff he brought. So, while players ranted publicly how Ghostcrawler and Co. were watering down the game, I looked at my weekly rotations with optimism, free of stress, picking players like a kid in a candy store. Making use of online tools like RaidComp, the matrix of buff coverage was easily filled out week-to-week. Throughout the course of Wrath of the Lich King, I almost never had any reason to be concerned.

Almost never.

"High Shaman Mairne Ragetotem"
Artwork by Carmen Torres

Nerf Shamans

There was one buff the Horde held over the Alliance's head in Vanilla: Windfury. The totem's buff radiated across the four players sharing a group with a shaman, granting them an occasional second attack in each tick of the swing timer. Back in Vanilla, haste had yet to be implemented in any capacity, so this "instant second attack" design made for a devastatingly strong melee group. You can thank Windfury for the reason shamans were deemed "overpowered" in Vanilla. When a tauren draped in Earthfury stampeded into Tarren Mill wielding The Unstoppable Force tightly between cloven hooves, giant swaths of Alliance were cleaved in seconds, sending night elves to their graves and forcing paladins to earn a label of their own...scrambling to bubble through the damage and hearth away in terror.

Over the years, Windfury saw a number of changes. Most notably, the self-applied weapon buff began to diverge from the totem buff granted to the shaman's party. While extra attacks continued to proc off the class-specific weapon imbue, the totem conversely took advantage of a newly appearing stat: Haste, a flat increase in attack speed. By the time Wrath of the Lich King arrived, Windfury Totem had converted into delivering a 20% haste buff to its group. This slightly less potent totem buff was still brilliant when paired with well-played melee. The Windfury totem buff was a gap closer. Buffing the right melee was often the difference between laid-back, enjoyable boss kills, and repeated 1% wipes. Therefore, having Windfury was vitally important to the success of the raid, so it was my responsibility to ensure we had someone bring it each and every week. I couldn't think of a better person to take up this job than a veteran of Descendants of Draenor: Bheer.

In DoD's early days, battered and bruised below Blackrock Mountain, a warlock named Kragnl was one of the faces that helped put us on the map. Under the leadership of my first warlock officer Gutrippa, he faithfully made his weekly penance in Molten Core. In the days of never knowing who would show up week-to-week, those few individuals who were consistent are the ones who remain clear in my mind today. Kragnl was a regular in the 40-Man and was present for many clears of the Core and the Lair. Never causing drama or questioning authority, Kragnl was representative of someone I hoped many others could strive to emulate. It was sad, then, to hear that he would be leaving us at the start of The Burning Crusade. So many classes and roles were in such heavy flux throughout TBC; it would've been nice to have one more person I could rely on to be faithful to the roster. But it wasn't for a new guild, he promised, just the dreaded "real life". He assured me he would be back if he could make it work.

It meant enough to him to do so.

Snippet from the
Raid Slot Template

The Drinking Cow

My instant messenger popped-up one morning, revealing that Kragnl was returning to WoW for Wrath of the Lich King. He inquired as to whether or not there was still a place for him in Descendants of Draenor. Of course! I concurred without hesitation. He informed me he'd be switching things up, retiring the warlock and bringing a druid named Beercow to the table instead. He was excited about the new possibilities that druids had in Wrath, as they were now capable of so much more in a raid setting. 

To the hardcore naysayers: a little homogenization wasn't necessarily a bad thing. For many, it breathed new life into the game.

We scrambled up to level 80, making weekly updates to the Raid Slot Template, a forum post I created during the reboot of the guild. It acted as a single point of information for all forthcoming raiders on who we had ready to hit the pavement, and where our abundances and shortages lay. My plan with the forum post was for it to enforce one of the guild's new edicts: I won't tell you what we need, you tell me what you enjoy playing. The intent of this new ideal was to produce a raid of passionate players, as opposed to a disjointed mix of folks halfheartedly playing a role they were forced into...just to see content. Guildies kept their eye on the Raid Slot Template, saw which classes/roles were filling out, and where the shortages became most apparent. This new information, I wagered, could lead them to introspect and make a more informed decision about cutting over to class they enjoyed playing...that we also just happened to lack.

Beercow was the first player to take advantage of this.

The warlock-turned-druid noted the increased surge of interest in tanks. The advent of the death knight -- coupled with the broadening of other capabilities to existing warriors, druids, and paladins -- made for a healthy abundance in the tank category of the Raid Slot Template. He was in contact with me daily, over the forums and instant messenger, doing the math and sizing up his chances at a regular druid spot in progression. Between myself and Dalans, two officers had tank spots locked down every week. In Wrath, three tanks per 25-Man was still feasible, with four being an extreme exception (sacrificing DPS as a result). Realistically, this meant only one floating tank spot per week for Beercow to squeeze into, yet we were overflowing with warriors and death knights trying to vie for a spot in progression. He expressed his concern, so I sat down with him and reviewed the holes in the Raid Slot Template, discussing a possible contingency plan. To Beercow, being a part of the progression raid team was of the utmost importance; in the back of my mind, it meant he was determined to claw his way up to Elite. If that was the case, I wanted to do everything in my power to make it happen. 

One glaring deficiency stood out in the Raid Slot Template: any semblance of a dedicated enhancement shaman. It seemed that no one had yet to express an interest in filling that particular niche. Was it a possibility? Absolutely. Something new, fresh and exciting to try -- and with the thought of being the only regular, consistent enhancement shaman in 25-Man progression, Beercow saw it as an opportunity to stand out as a pillar we could rely on. His chances of seeing every raid shot through the roof.

Thus was borne Bheer.

With the same tenacity he demonstrated years earlier during Vanilla, Bheer signed up consistently each week for our 25-Man progression raid as the sole enhancement shaman. It was easy to justify a rotation every week. Not only did it mean that Mail melee gear wouldn't go to waste, he would be bringing Windfury to his partners. The demand for Bheer's unique talents and buffs skyrocketed. When not in the 25-Man progression raid, he found more to fill his plate with throughout the week. Bheer became a member of the infamous Eh Team, helping produce a nonstop stream of 10-Man achievement spam in guild chat. I'm happy to say that he fulfilled his duty to become a pillar of the 25-Man and remained one of the most dedicated, reliable raiders in 25-Man progression.

...which is what made the blind side that much more difficult to deal with.

2.26. 9:53

Positioning for Leotheras the Blind
Source: WorldofStrats.com

The Totem Trick

Players were dying to bad luck. The uncontrollable whirlwind was too much for them to handle, and a series of ping-pong movements across Leotheras' underwater cave picked people off one-by-one, bleeding them out. Chief among the bleeders: yours truly. My shadow priest had only been a part of progression for a few months and her gear was essentially unchanged from the moment she first set foot in the Cavern. Not due to a lack of progression, mind you...but more a product of the poor itemization that SSC offered shadow priests in The Burning Crusade. With little option to augment her attire, I was forced to fall back on Blain's age-old idiom, repeating it to myself as a means of staying motivated.

In the end, your gear doesn't make you succeed. Gear won't make you good. Your skill at the game will.

If gear wasn't the solution to my problem, I would have to find a way to survive without it. I'd have to make my own luck. Just as anyone else in the raid.

Sifting through the logs and forum threads of guilds well past Leotheras, we made a clever discovery: a shaman's totems could be targeted by Leo during his whirlwind. The epiphany was a relief, yet bittersweet. I was already dealing with the guilt of benching my shaman in lieu of being the only consistent Replenishment provider of the raid -- and the subsequent loss of control I perceived as a result of giving up healing. But, with the discovery of this tactic, I felt worse! If only I had Kerulak again. I could drop totems seconds before the whirlwind, bolting for safety and once again bringing control to the chaos that unfolded. It wasn't an option. I'd made my choice. Zanjina was there to be a mana battery, and I accepted this decision inexorably.

I had to put my faith in the team. Only they could kill their inner demons while I dealt with my own.

Descendants of Draenor defeats Leotheras the Blind,
Serpentshrine Cavern

The Blind Killing the Blind

The intricate dance began with Blain setting Eacavissi up for Demon Form tanking. Our trusted warlock geared for the fire resistance necessary and wrestled for control of the boss via Searing Pain, a spell with increased threat -- vital to a warlock tank. As the fire vulnerability stacked too high, Blain called Sir Klocker for a Divine Intervention, cleansing our warlock of all his debuffs, sacrificing the paladin in the process. The expired paladin would return to life via Breginna's battle resurrection, as Blain's carefully choreographed strategy continued to unfold. As for the whirlwind, Blain laid it out on the table: he'd announce to the melee when it was time to get to safety. At that point the shamans would drop their totems and head for the hills, while the remainder of us dashed into the nooks and crannies along the outer edges of the room. The hope was that by being out of line-of-sight, Leo would prefer the totems over players, saving us from a painful bleeding death.

Once we got the timing right for getting out to safety, the totem gimmick appeared to do its trick. Leo spun into a mad frenzy, bouncing back and forth between various sets of shaman totems like a pinball working on a high score. Every precious second the gimmick granted us grew the margin of error further, allowing us a flatter learning curve; a more approachable encounter. With a greater margin of error, the raid team began to close in on the final 15% with everyone alive. It wasn't long before we were into the final phase, having to deal with both Blood Elf and Demon Form at the same time. This was the real madness, and it was intense. Having already used Divine Intervention, Eacavissi's life fell into the hands of the healers, which realistically only lasted ten or twelve seconds before the fire vulnerability burned him to a crisp. Lacking that warlock tank, the Demon Form pummeled the raid with blasts of fire damage as he walked the threat list, looking for a new target. Meanwhile, the Blood Elf form hacked away at the tanks while healers struggled to keep them alive, moving to avoid incoming blasts of fire in the process.

With the whirlwind continuing to bounce between player and totem, I ran to the back of the room to get out of line-of-sight. To my horror, Bojax and Raziei followed me, yet stayed in plain sight. Leo headed straight for us; there was nowhere to run. A single thought jumped into my mind. You're doomed. Doomed by your own blind players. As predicted, Leotheras struck the group I cowered amongst, and the bleed ticked of handfuls of my health. Facing imminent death, I sprinted from the room, laid on a final Vampiric Touch and Shadow Word: Pain, then collapsed to the floor. My attention turned to the roster. Gunsmokeco was still alive. Ekasra was still alive. The shamans continued to blanket the raid with their chain heals, dropping more totems to act as targets for the spinning saw-blade. The tanks were staying alive. DPS was staying alive. Leo's health ticked down to 3%....2%....1%.

And it was over.

A cheer filled vent as Blain added the icing to the cake, "with seven...seconds...remaining."

We beat the enrage timer by seven seconds, clocking our first official kill in at 9 minutes 53 seconds. As close a shave as any could get...without bleeding out. I glanced down at the damage meters, to see where I placed.

Ninth.

Any progress is better than no progress.

That Public Relations Spin

It was time to start moving our recovery plan into action. Ater, Blain and I decided to set a new precedent for the guild -- one that separated the wheat from the chaff. In order to identify "rock stars" in the environment we'd bred, a certain level of diplomacy was needed. That involved careful language and setting the expectations of the players appropriately. The first part of that plan came about in the wake of our recent success. The proof was right there in front of us; after Blain's return, we'd gone from seeing no progression in months, to 5/6 and 1/4 across Tier 5. That fact alone spoke volumes -- that we absolutely possessed the potential and crew to accomplish great things...even Illidan himself. We just needed the right leadership. In the face of that mounting evidence, I moved to the next step in the plan -- a promise I made to Ater. Acknowledge the accomplishments of the team.

At the close of the weekend which produced our first Leotheras kill,  I created a new section in our forums called "Accomplishments". Here, I demonstrated to the guild that their work was not going unnoticed; that their individual contributions had real value and worth. To leadership, it was clear as day that Blain's return had caused an about-face in our approach, but my next move wasn't to bolster the rogue's ego, it was to affirm to the troops that what they brought to the table each raid night was a quantifiable contribution. Regardless of what organizational changes brought about our recent success, I wanted one message to be common: It was because of the raid team that we were back on track today,. What went on behind closed doors in the officer channel was no longer relevant, who we happened to be talking about or which "carries" were next on the chopping block. The public face of our success is what was most important now, and we wanted to hammer that home. The raiders would focus on these accomplishments, and in turn, have less time to devote to rumor and innuendo.

I let the guild know that this forum topic would never be purged and would stand for eternity as a reflection of the many great deeds that the guild had accomplished in progression. I played it up, big-time. The forum thread was even made viewable to the public for others to see. Members of our team could use it to show off to their friends in competing guilds, maybe even entice them into joining. We'd call out a show of thanks to those individuals who helped us work through the boss mechanics, so that players could see their name in lights, make them feel important...

...make them feel like they were good at something.

The "Accomplishments" forum thread was the start of a revolution in how I approached the management of DoD; it was an audit trail of our success. A means to show thanks for the effort players were giving us. A reminder that each individual player was important. A sales pitch to anyone interested in investigating our guild further, to see if we had something to offer them...

...and all the evidence I needed to start leaving certain people behind.

2.12. The Accidental Florist

"Crying Tree of Life"
Artwork by Okha (Oksana)

Fauxliage

Kerulak was all I knew.

Since the game's launch in November of 2004, all of my end-game knowledge and expertise as a healer had been funneled through my Tauren Shaman. Like many players, I had a number of alts on my account, to break the monotony and see the world through a different pair of eyes. But my alts were low-level and I looked upon them as a hobby in-between polishing Kerulak's gear, assisting with attunement runs. My priority was first and foremost my shaman, Kerulak, so the prospect of putting him on the bench was unnerving and left me feeling a loss of control. My muscle-memory had long been cemented around totems, chain heal, and big single target greater healing waves. Earth Shield was still relatively new, having been added at the start of TBC, and was technically my only legitimate HoT (albeit one that lay dormant until reacting to damage). That is, if you don't count the pathetic heals-over-time that came from a Healing Stream Totem.

I feared the pain of breaking down that muscle and rebuilding it.

Part of the problem was that I was spaz. As far back as I can remember, I struggled with keeping my shit straight as it began to hit the proverbial fan. In emergencies, microseconds before death, I was at my absolute worst from a play perspective. I had a habit of freaking out and spamming a multitude of buttons as I scrambled for my life; in many cases they were the wrong abilities in the wrong order. In order to prevent myself from tripping over my own branches while playing on Breginna's character, it was important for me to keep shared functions in the same places. That muscle memory was all I had to rely on when adrenaline was pumping and I was about to flip out on the keyboard and mouse. I needed to ensure I was a contributor, not a detriment, by bringing this Druid to raids. Embrace the spaz.

My strategy in approaching the adjustment from Shaman to Druid was based around a single concept: Both are healers, so find whatever similarities you can, and map Druid abilities by function to the same keybindings you use with your Shaman. The starting point was the spell both the Shaman and the Druid shared: Nature's Swiftness, granting an instant cast to an otherwise long-casting spell. With Kerulak, the macro was mapped to Greater Healing Wave. This time, it would be Healing Touch. Kerulak could perform an emergency pool of mana regeneration through Mana Tide Totem, so I took my keybinding for it, and changed that to Innervate. Since Healing Touch had taken the place of Greater Healing Wave, I looked at my options. Chain Heal was more of a staple than Lesser Healing Wave in my eyes, and for the Druid, Rejuvenation seemed to follow suit. As a result, I chose to map Regrowth to Lesser Healing Wave, and made Rejuvenation my base spell. I reasoned that, since Earth Shield is what I'd use to protect a tank, I converted that mapping to Swiftmend -- with the expectation that I would have said tank loaded up with HoTs as the prerequisite.

As I wrapped up the changes, all that remained was Tranquility, taking the place (far more significantly, I might add) of Healing Stream Totem. Like an anal retentive chef, I dragged the metaphor even further, replacing Ghost Wolf with Travel Form and Revive with Ancestral Spirit. By this point, abilities were varying wildly, but it came down to function more than naming convention or even the difference between instant and non-instant cast. As for Ankh, a passive triggered upon death, the paradigm shifted the furthest in the form of a druid's Rebirth. This clutch ability was something the raid would rely on me for, so I needed the ability bound front-and-center. When the spazzing began, someone would need to come back from the dead while the raid remained in combat. I stuck to mapping functions in this manner in the hopes that re-learning healing from the ground up would be painless and quick.

Just like how Magtheridon intended to end our pathetic lives.

The Druid Talent Trees during The Burning Crusade

The Feels of Heals

Healing on Breginna's Druid was an entirely refreshing experience. I took advantage of the perpetual-motion machine that was everlasting attunement requests, and leapt in to help as much as possible. I was amazed at how much simpler it was to keep people alive. The freedom to heal while moving was a luxury that Druids took for granted. One can only know the pain of having to keep a Main Tank alive and stay out of the fire at the same time by playing a healer other than a Druid. It required extreme discipline to shuffle around as little as possible in order to maximize cast time, but all those restrictions went out the door with the Druid. With a Disney-like innocence etched into the bark that was the Tree Form's face, I pranced around 5-man heroics like The Arcatraz, The Steamvault, and Shattered Halls, waving my twig-like arms in the area, dolling out HoTs like they were candy, while bouquets of flowers and nature flourished behind me.

This was how the other side lived.

When it came time to return to Gruul's Lair for our weekly run, Ater and company had already been briefed on Breginna's story. The sudden loss of Kerulak from the raid turned the attention of a few raiders, and that was to be expected. I explained myself in Vent and waved to them all from my bird's eye view, gliding down out of the Blade's Edge sky and shifting into humanoid form at the entrance to the Gronn's cave. Yes, there was ribbing, and that was to be expected, but I took it in stride as this is what we did for one another in a family setting. Breginna may have still been new, but she was no less important than the players who had been with us since as far back as Blackwing Lair. We looked out for one another, and joked about each other's ability behind the wheel. We did this because if there was ever truly a legitimate concern about someone's incompetence, the jokes would be a little less playful, would sting a little more...have a little more bite.

They were certain to leave teeth marks.

Behind the wheel of Breginna, High King Maulgar was a bit less stressful, a little less chaotic. I got the hang of layering up Lifebloom to smooth out the otherwise jagged health bar that sat just below Ater's name on my screen. I was the only Resto Druid in the raid, so when I heard a call out for a battle rez, there was no need to debate or question who was being addressed. A button click later, the dead were back in biz, rushing toward the Ogre King with blades in hand. Gruul was equally less taxing. Moving out of the cave-ins was a cinch, as I shuffled the little wide-grinning Tree out of harms way, flinging its arms into the air for heals as I went. Other healers would run low on mana, call out for help, and without giving it a second thought, out came the mana-regenerating magic imbued within Innervate. When I took on the task, I wasn't sure if I would acclimate to the Druid as quickly as I had, but keeping my button functions the same pounded the learning curve into a flat pancake. The High King and Gruul were once again down, and I bid on items on Breginna's behalf, keeping her geared and growing in strength while she was away.

Hanzo plays Breginna during her absence for work,
Gruul's Lair

Magtheridon's Lair

April had come and gone, and with it, the task of digging into TBC’s raid content had finally commenced. But to say we were progressing would be a stretch. Three weeks of the High King and three weeks of Gruul landed us squarely at the beginning of May, and we still had not yet completed Tier 4. Yes, there were issues. Two pieces came from Karazhan, a 10-Man raid not officially on our roster. Two pieces came from Maulgar and Gruul combined, but with only three King kills and a single, solitary defeat of the Dragonkiller on our belts, Tier 4 equipped raiders were still a long way off. But as Blain had taught us, gear did not make a bad player good, so we repeated this mantra every time we slammed up against another wall.

This time, the wall was about to come down on us.

The remaining piece in Tier 4 would come from the pit lord Magtheridon, a pit lord shackled deep beneath the bowels of the Blood Furnace, where Illidan drained his blood as a means to fuel his army of Fel Orcs. If there was any shred of a doubt in the back of my mind that Blizzard misjudged the difficulty for their entry level raids, that doubt was excised from my brain once we set foot in the pit lord's lair. I was none too thrilled to dig into this fight. Word had spread among the raiding community about the sheer ridiculousness in difficulty the boss posed. A few short weeks after The Burning Crusade launched, I remember reading an article on WoW Insider about how Death and Taxes themselves said, not in so many words…

"Fuck that."

DnT leap-frogged past Magtheridon entirely, diving into Tier 5, uninterested in wasting any time dealing with the foolishly designed mechanics of a boss that desperately screamed out to be re-tuned. The High King and Gruul were tough and unforgiving, that was never in question. But they were doable with a raid comprised of team members that were sharp, took accountability for their own actions, positioning and performance. A pro-team could absolutely take out these pro-bosses.

But even professional teams make mistakes, yet still come home with the championship trophy; it's because the game might be complex and technical, there's room for error and recovery -- there's room to breathe.

On the twelfth night of Magtheridon attempts, I felt like I was drowning.