Market time

• Cooking
• Players who have learned the first recipe in each of “the ways” can discover a questline that starts on the Timeless Isle: “Noodle Secrets Long Forgotten.” Heroes will search for a long-lost pandaren recipe allowing them to build and run their own noodle cart. The all-new questline will revisit some old zones and dungeons, culminating in a solo scenario with a unique time-management mini-game.
• The noodle cart allows a player to set themselves up as a vendor and distribute powerful noodle soups to their faction.

So, now get people shouting, buy noodles here, only five-five-ninety-five, fresh noodles...  I have visions of twenty-five noodle carts during boss fights...

Alt Appreciation : Druid

Alt Apprecation, Druid week (started by World of Lae)

So, yeah, druids. Well, my current main is a druid, but do I have alt-druids? There are some low-level druids running around, but they were made for short-time fun mostly. The only druid I played to level 60 or so is long gone, that was a kitty iirc.

What is an alt exactly? Let's go with two simple rules:

1. A character I once played till the level cap of an expansion.
2. A character I am currently playing.

Simple rules, so that means Tamarian of last week was a real alt btw, levelled to 85 during Cata, and... that means Mardah also falls into this category, levelled to 80 during Wrath when this was still more a Tankadin-blog.

As mentioned some years ago, Mardah actually started on another server, and for a long time was a level 3 sitting in the Night Elf start zone. After I stopped raiding I levelled her up, I remember a Sunken Temple run where I healed, dps-ed and tanked, this was back when ST was Big. Somewhere along the line I brought her to Argent Dawn to play with some friends. I actually did a PuG-raid of ICC with her, as a Tree.... back when tree-form was needed for healing.

There was this heroic moment when I solo-healed 10-man Saurfang from 80% down, because the Shaman-healer got the omg-healme-debuff, and died to it....  reincarnated, and died again...  Do mind, I was not really raiding so my gear was meh... but I managed it...

At the start of cataclysm, after my paladin levelled up, I levelled Mardah. Disgusted by the fact that my beloved tree-form was gone, I went Balance, and I liked the lightshows. So much, that I actually applied to a guild, and started raiding again. Now with Mardah as main.

So, keep up acting all, some day, it may become your main...

The perfect raid?

Last week I put up an archive post considering raid-number-crunching. That post was made during cataclysm, but look, we gained Monks, so let's do it again.

I am using several basic things here. First up is raid spots. In a 25 man raiding guild with 3 nights of raiding you will have 75 raid slots per week. Now if you add a required attendance of 67%  (two-thirds), you'll find that you actually need 37.5 raiders to fill all slots. If all those 37.5 raiders raid twice a week, they will take up 37.5 times 2 is 75 raidslots.

Now we have different roles, so I also will take those apart. And I will listen to "Bring the player, not the Class" so no class will be favored because they may just be the flavor of the month. Although some nice gimmicks may help (looking at warlock portals)

Tanks

Every raid needs 2 tanks at least, raiding through Throne of Thunder, I noticed a lot of fights where three tanks where actually more helpful, and actually 25-raids should need 3 tanks (imho). So if we go with 3 tanks for 3 raids, we get 9 tank-slots. 9/2=4.5 tanks needed. Now if you have a lot of turnover, or tanks actually only raiding twice a week, then maybe you should go for 5, but I'll take the number 4, because not all fights need 3 tanks, and some dps can step in probably. So; 4 Tanks

But which classes? Well, we have three plate-tanks, and two leather tanks. Two classes which use a Shield, the leather classes in the same pool as the leather-dps, so gear to divide among more. I would say at least 2 plate-tanks, and 1 leather-tank, fourth can be anything I guess, now if I would have gone for 5 tanks, it would have been easier...mmm.

Healers

"Every raid needs 5-6 healers, and on hard fights 7" -end quote. So let's go with 6 I assume, and again looking back at the last tiers, six seems to be the number. Throw the number 6 into the equation, and you get 6 times 3 divided by 2 is 9 Healers. Seems a little bit low, but again, a dps might jump in I guess, for now, let's go with 9 Healers

So, which classes? Let's look at gear, monks and druids share the same gear, the rest of the healers dip in other stuff. So two of each healer, except for monks and druids, which together should be 3, thus making it 9.

DPS

So basically, what is left are the DPS, so 37.5 minus 4 minus 9 makes 24.5. I will up the number to 25 here, probably because it always feels DPS have a higher turnover. So 25 DPS

Now it gets more interesting, if we go with 2 for each class, we end up with 22, missing 2.5. If we consider that 4 classes cannot be healers or tanks, the so-called 'pure' classes, we may add 1 each for those to even the score a bit (and also looking at tier-tokens). So, we end up with 26 DPS. Which is one to high...  luckily we can easily drop a rogue because they deserve to...well, more because melee always seems to get the problems in raids, and I had to exclude some-one.




So, a 'Perfect Guild' would have the following composition:

4 Tanks
1 Warrior, 1 Death Knight, 1 Monk, 1 Paladin, 1 Druid (One Tank designated as Main-dps/OT)
9 Healers
2 Paladin, 2 Priest, 2 Shaman, 3 Monk+Druid
25 DPS
3 Mages, 3 Warlocks, 3 Hunters, 2 Rogues, 2 Shamans, 2 Druids, 2 Monks, 2 Priest, 2 Paladin, 2 Death Knight, 2 Warriors

Because the quality of the raider is more important then the class, this is not written in stone, although a 4/9/25 dividing is probably a good template, that all depends on the availability of different players in your guild.

If you have more healers with uncertainty, you could go for 4/10/24 for example.

Now, to actually let these numbers loose on Innovation, but that will be another post....
And there is also another aspect, which I may hit up on next...

Alt Appreciation : Death Knight

Normally I am a lone blogger, I have/had some feedback due to Single Abstract Noun, but mostly I keep to myself on this little piece of the internets, not mingling that much with fellow bloggers.

But when World of lae started this, well.. being althoholic and all, maybe I should Join.

So here we go,

DEATH KNIGHT

Death Knights, the former enemies, lots of lore as they used to be a Horde-class, something to do with dead orcs orso.  DK's where the first new class introduced in World of Warcraft, and a Hero-class at that. You start at level 55 in a DK-only zone, and when you got out, you are level 58, decked out in blues, and ready to storm Outlands.

I have made several Death Knights over the years, mostly because one of the things is that you end up with 30 gold, which was very nice for lower level alts.

I fondly remember tanking in Outlands as Dual-Wield Frost. I really liked that, but Cataclysm killed that spec. That was actually the deathknell for most of my DK's. The only one levelled to 85 was Tamarian, a Tauren, during the days of SAN.

Tamarian was once shown here: "He is coming"

Tamarian is already a Tauren Male there, but I am pretty sure he use to be a human female...

At the moment I have no plans or space actually, to level another one, or to level Tamarian. He is now on Steamwheedle Cartel on a leave of absent I guess.

Actually, while looking into my Death Knights, I only encountered two others, both below lvl 60, so apparantly I deleted some of them. So, mmm, apparently I am not really a Death Knight Player.

Here he is, riding that Death Knight Horse over Ogrimmar.

Thunderforging Thoughts

So did it work? Yes and No I suppose.

The idea behind Thunderforged was that you could still get some better gear from long-defeated bosses in the raid.

In that case it worked. Before patch 5.4, the first boss was killed so many times, that no one wanted anything of that boss anymore, so it was a sort of 'waste of time' to kill that boss, but you had to. With TF-gear, there is still a chance to get some better gear.

So yes, the TF-stuff is working as intended, good job Blizzard.


....well, yes, the idea was good, but it did mess up some stuff did it not?

All guilds I raided in, and I suppose a large percentage of the raiding guilds, uses DKP (or some form of that) to distribute gear. The more you raid, the more DKP you get, the more gear you can 'buy'. But, up until 5.4, the Ilvl of gear in a raid-dungeon was always the same, with maybe the end-boss having a little higher Ilvl-gear. That is no longer the case.

An other thing is, that it seems a lot more loot drops these days from bosses. In ToT every boss drops 6 pieces of gear. I don't seem to remember how much TBC-bosses dropped, or Dragon Soul for that matter. But 6 seems a bit much. The effect of this much gear is that a lot of people expect to get best in slot items all over, and are actually not going for 'lesser' pieces.

I, for that matter, would not go for a mastery-item. It's my weakest stat, and I know other and better gear will be coming.

Now combine the increased drops with the possibility for TF-gear, and what do you get?

Raiders bidding a lot less on non-TF gear.

Now add some non-BiS gear to the mix, and now we have a genuine problem. Raiders not bidding on items because it is not BiS, although it may be an upgrade to their current stuff.

And that is a problem methinks.

It is a whole cascade going on. If less people bid on stuff, it goes away for less, so more dkp gets hoarded, which is only used on BiS-TF gear.

Oh, and then we have this free-loot system handed to us, by rolling a die. The reason why I didn't had to bid on any weapon since Ji-Kun, because I got a free TF-staff....

Now this all comes from some frustration.  Innovation uses a blind-bidding dkp-system with a bleed bid. The amount of times I had to 'pay' the bleed (20% of your bid) is amazing. A piece of gear would drop, and I knew it would be an upgrade for several people, and then it seems no one actually bid, or just bid low. Raiders are 'afraid' to use their dkp, for fear of not having enough when a TF-item drops.

And worst part of this is, that it actually seems to work. Yes, seems, I have no time or actually the will, to actually delve into every raider and see how they have geared, and what they have bid. But it seems that if you only bid the minimum bid on non-TF gear, and in that way only use your DKP really for TF stuff, you will be better geared.

It used to be that you used minbid or lower bids on non-BiS-stuff, but now all non-TF gear is non-BiS.

So, in that case, Thunderforged did not really worked. It made all non-TF gear (except for Tier stuff) weak, and not wanted. So how do you solve that?

Maybe the easiest way would be to put Thunderforged on a different dkp-system, but that means you have twice the administration, which officers really like  :p

Maybe the free loot from coin-rolls should no longer get you a free item, but an item to upgrade you weapon to TF, instead of bosses actually dropping TF-stuff.

But, in my humble opinion, One raid-dungeon should not drop different I-llv stuff all over the place.

Archive: Numbercrunching Innovation

Already a long time ago, I posted this on the Innovation web site, because there was a little mystery why we didn't hade enough raiders. It consist of two parts, the first being the original post. And then a second part, after we had some discussion on forum/guildchat about who was coming. There was a large gap between people being invited iirc, and people actually still playing. Because the forum is being replaced, I save it here (it was the original purpose of the blog).

This is no longer the case, Innovation actually has a bench these days

Although I might just do this again on the current raiders in september, just to see the difference.

This was published on the innovation forums, 23 november 2011

Hello Innovation,

My expertise on numbercrunging has been called upon. with the recent cancelled raids and forced 10-mans, there seems to be a problem in the guild considering availabilty of people. Note, I say availabilty to raid, not actually raiding. When I applied for Innovation, I read that Innovation raided 3 days, and you where expected to turn up at least two. That's something I will take as a basic for the next couple of paragraphs. Every raider in Innovation should be available to raid 2 days/week.

Before I continue, I know real life happens, but normally speaking, there are also people who are available almost all the time, so a little lee-way is already here.

As mentioned in another post, basic mathematics:

3 raids of 25 man equals 75 raidspots/week. If everyone is available 2 days that week, we end up with 75/2=37.5 raiders to make sure we actually have 25 men each night. This same reasoning can be applied to all 4 classes. And because this is Innovation, I will be rounding up a bit. In the end this will lead to 40 active raiders. I will also use the base of 2 tanks/6 healers/16 dps for every raid. 

Tanks

3 raids times 2 tanks is 6 tankspots/week, 6/2=3, so Innovation needs 3 tanks to function properly. But... 3 is low. It actually means that if 2 tanks can't make it (a real possibility), we can't raid. Adding an extra tank would probably solve this (at this moment preferably a Tankadin, because we don't have it), but it is not really needed, we luckily have some plate-dps able to tank very well.

Healers

3 raids times 6 healers gives 18 healingspots/week, 18/2=9, so 9 healers needed. At the moment we have 10, which I actually consider a little bit better then 9, because of the same reason as with tanks. A little extra buffer is not bad. And if needed, some can go dps for a night.

DPS

37 raiders- (9+2)=25 dps left to fill up the roster... we have 24, so one short. But with dual-spec this could be handled.

So, actually... there should not be a problem...And yes, there is a little difference with rounding, but I'll take care of that later. This current number actually has a logical conclusion: If we have to cancel so many raids (or downtune), Innovation-raiders are NOT available 2 days/week.

So, with this information, I changed the numbers a bit. I tried to figure out the best raid-member-configuration. And I made a graph.

I went with the following premises:

• 2 of each healer
• 2 of each dps
• 1 of each tank
• add 1 druid and 1 priest-healer
• add 1 from each 'pure' dps-class (total 4)
• add 1 shaman and 1 druid-dps, because of different roles

With these simple rules, we should need 40 people, giving the chance for fifteen people not to be online. Seems an high enough buffer.

Now don't go all oh-noes-I-am-not-needed. The graph is ideal, If I make a graph considering roles it looks a lot more nicely for everyone:

Now the numbers of melee and ranged can be mixed a little bit considering availabilty. And the question is, do we need another tank? But looking at both graphs, I can make a (and againa simple one) conclusion. We could use 1 more tank (preferable a tankadin), one more ranged (preferable an elemental shaman) and one more melee (deathknight or enhancement shaman), although the latter could also be a ranged (shadowpriest or warlock) considering the unfriendly-ness of current raids towards melee.

If any raider should quit, a replacement should be looked for in the lowest column. E.g. if a mage quits, don't get another mage, but try to get a warlock.

So, a list of people to look for is probably:

• Paladin - Protection
• Death Knight - DPS
• Shaman - Elemental
• Priest - Shadow
• Warlock
• Shaman - Enhancement

For the record, I also looked at long afks's, and a number of 40 should be enough to accomedate for those. Unles more then 7 people are going AWOL, then the officers have something to decide  :p

TL;DR

So with all these numbers an end-conclusion is reached, and an actual plee to my co-raiders. Innovation has the numbers to field 3 25-men raids/week. A little extra buffer couldn't hurt. See the possible recruitlist above, although getting any extra DPS at the moment would also not hurt the number of not-cancelled 25's. But..

I hereby ask all my co-raiders a question, do you want to raid guild-wise, or do you just want to raid sometimes. We are in a guild (or for some in the community :p), and we all want to play. But, and this is my opinion, not the officers, you should also consider your fellow raiders. If you know from yourself that you can only raid once per two weeks, why are you actually a raider in Innovation? Cancelled Raids don't help anyone. And I do ask to at least try to be there twice a week, or thrice per 2 weeks. There are some people who are more available, but that goes only so far. It's not fun to see only 19 signups on the roster. Take a look at yourself, and ask yourself: What do I actaully want, What can I actually DO? We are in a Guild, and, how corny it may sound;

It's not what Innovation can do for you, It's what you can do for Innovation.

Oh, and one other question, all 37 raiders got an invite to next week (not the alts). How long does it take to actually hit accept/decline (or tentative if you are not sure). 

Disclaimer: The long text above is largely mathematical, and there will be different opinions by others, at least I hope so  :p, I ain't the almighty numbercruncher. All opinions are my own, and only my own. I am not an officer, just a fellow raider who wants to raid 25.

Mardah

No officers where harmed making this essay......

This was posted on the Innovation-forums on 24 november 2011

So, after some recent info, I went back to the crunching.

I now looked especially at who accepted an invitation last 2 weeks (7 raids), and went home with that.

Two things. First, to Kris, I now what you typed, but I looked at who accepted, which means even with erratic availabilty I have 8 healers. Secondly, because I looked at actual invites, I lowered the favorable numbers of Healing, Tanks and Melee with 1.

I also took out recent leavers, and added one Retri-paladin (namely Sponchebob, and welcome by the way :p), this way I removed 10 names from the list I use, and added 1.

And now the graph;

Well...  that is a complete different viewpoint... although an extra Melee and Healer wouldn't hurt.. the problem lies with Ranged. Last two weeks only 7 ranged actually accepted an invitation. Which is half of what we actually need. Looking at the graph, we probably need to find 10 more players, luckily, most of them are DPS.

Looking at it from another point; Over the last two weeks we had an average of 19 people signing in. That's 6 raidspots low, which are 18 spots/week, which again with an average attendance of aroun 67% would mean 9 more people are needed. 

Because I also know there are some people coming back shortly (due to RL getting less hectic, or other reasons), I would say, get 9 more people...1 healer, 8 dps.

And looking at what we have now, another possible recruitmentlist:

Healers:

• Holy Paladin OR Priest (no idea which spec)

Melee-dps:

• Enhancement Shaman OR Deathknight

Ranged:

• 2 Warlocks
• 1 Mage
• 1 Shadowpriest
• 2 Elemental Shamans

Actually, another Druid-Dps would also be a posibility... if we weren't swarmed with druids at the moment.

Mardah

REMINDER: This is archive-material, so no longer the case, any numbers above ar out of date..
especially considering we have Monks now.

Turns lights on

I think I have written about this before, the fact that I only write when something comes up in my mind, and while enough came up in my mind the last few months during Innovation's Journey through the Throne of Thunder, I choose to keep them for my own... mostly.

There are different factors for that, both Real Life as WoW-life, but I think the most important is that I have no idea how to write about tries as only a simple soldier.

Two years ago... or is that four...  it was easier. Being officer/raid leader, I could just write the truth and be done with it, but the truth will hurt people most of the time. But back then I was in a progression-focused Guild, and if you did not try your best, well, you would be 'asked' to be better or leave. That was how that guild functioned. Innovation functions different.

In the past I could just use a name when someone did something wrong (or right), because well, if you did it wrong, it was your problem, not mine. But now that I am a simple soldier, I can not put some name down, because he may get offended by it. As a non-officer I feel that it is not my position to open question fellow raiders...well....  at least not on an open blog, privately though :p

So, a lot of times I wanted to write about stuff, but did not do it because I didn't want to offend someone. I have to find a way around that I suppose.

It also had an effect on non-guild wow-things. Just because I had to much possible blogs running around in my head, that I could not actually focus on a subject.

Well, because I hardly blogged during 5.4, I can at least do a nice 5.4 look back series I guess. So, let's see if I can finish the posts called like 'Why Thunderforged is bad', 'Innovation vs Throne of Thunder, a Boomkins view'. (Yes, rough working titles)