Sunday 25 March 2018

Alpha Access Acquired

Background Down loader downloading
I have never been in an Alpha, I have been in all Beta's since cataclysm, but to be in an Alpha, that is something new, more bugs and even less finished stuff I guess. But yeesh,, apparently I can not download faster as 3 MB/s... so it took about 4 hours to get, and to make things more interesting, the progress bar doesn't actually move, I had to restart the Battle Net app to see how much I had left to download....Alpha indeed.

My first ever Alpha Screenshot

The view from the top window

Starting Pyramid... all the steps....

I only did a little bit, best thing so far... Balance has its own Cast-bar, separate from caster-form... worsts thing... slow dps due to no moon-spells.....

Monday 19 March 2018

Pilot Balloon

The Dutch word is  'Proefballon' which translates to Pilot Balloon according to Google Translate, or, 'to put out a feeler'. That's what Blizzard seems to be doing with these Q&A's. Says something that may seem controversial, and see how the community reacts, well, there where some reactions.

I read a lot of them, and I saw a lot of videos on it, although I am still waiting on Tallisin & Evitel, but to quote them, it was a shit-storm. The biggest continuing thread on the official forums was started by someone who is against it, who basically said: You Abused it, now loose it.

And if you haven't  seen the Q&A, and aren't into following vlogs and/or blogs, I am talking about the current Personal Loot versus Master Loot discussion. And it seems to be going down the same road it was with Nostalrius. A very Black and White discussion.

And all this about a little question in an Q&A, which was shadily answered, and pointed towards split raiding and tier-sets...  so let me get a few thoughts in, because so many, either pro or against, are so much generalizing stuff, that it feels so wrong.

First of, all the guilds I ever been in where done with ML, but none was Loot Council. There seems to be this generalization that ML=LC. And although I think think Loot-Council is the best loot-system to help any guild, I do see the pitfalls of it. And a lot of the negatives about ML seem to make the assumption that ML=LC.

Master-loot is the system for Raid-groups with at least 80% from one guild to manually distribute loot themselves. This can be done with several systems, ONE of them is Loot Council, but there are many others, most known are Dragon Kill Points, Gold Dragon Kill Points and Effort Points/Gear Points.. more commonly known DKP, GDKP and EP/GP. So please stop using ML=LC... it is not true.

And although I am not a fan of the DKP system, I am in Innovation, where we use a Blind-bid DKP system. What I don't like about it is another blog, maybe, but I knew beforehand this was the system, and it is a system to make sure the Raid grows in power, not the individual. Most Master-loot systems are.

I also see a lot of assumptions that only Mythic Raiding Guilds us Master-loot, by both non-organised raiders and by mythic raiders, this is also not true. Innovation is a Heroic Progression Guild. We aim to clear Heroic every tier, and will see what happens after that. Getting into Mythic is a little bit harder, you need a steady 20 people in the raid, and maybe you actually need to class-stack? But that is a discussion about if you can be a heroic progression raider.. this was about loot-systems.

Basically, any organisation wants to control how it grows, and a guild is no different. Master-loot for any guild is better because it helps the raid, not the individual. And any system with even more RNG is basically worse.

Most comments that are against ML seem to be from players who had a bad experience with it, mostly because they where on trial. And by default, for a long time, trial members have less right on loot than non-trials. That is the idea behind it, a trial period is there to see if a player fits into the guild, and if it doesn't work, the raid doesn't want to loose to much.

Now Innovation actually does allow trials to bid on stuff. They just have no DKP to start with, so they have to do a few raids to get some DKP, although in my experience, most Trials will be getting loot within one raid-week (I did, way back in Cata), And this system, how we distribute loot, is accessible to all on the forums of Innovation. So you know what you signed up for.

What a lot of people seem to forget, is that Guilds want make sure the Raid-group gets stronger, and that is the reason behind all the loot-systems, to make sure the group gets stronger, and how do you do that? Innovation does it by giving DKP for every raid you attend, so gear has a higher chance to end up with players that have a higher attendance, because that will let the power of the raid grow.

The problem with Personal Loot is that it doesn't let the raid grow, but the individual. Especially how it works now, where trading is only allowed when the Ilvl is lower (or the same??), not taking in account if the item is actually better or worse for a player, looking at you trinkets.

And although the raid will be better of in the first few weeks, because PL does give more loot, after that, players will get duplicates, or the RNG hates you, and you will never see that trinket. Although Mathematically seen, after enough raids, everyone will have their stuff, but how many? And does that help progression?

There is also a very bad thing about PL that already happens in LFR. The whispering/begging for gear. Now I know this seems to be opposite about what I said about Guild-raids. But I was talking about them as one being. The players are still Individuals.

I STILL WANT BETTER LOOT.

Let that be clear, I want Mardah to have all the sockets and forged stuff... but because I am in a guild, I will not be to sad to see it go to a guildie. But, if I have it in my bags, and it is better for me, I will want to keep it. Because I am an individual...  not a group. There was this comment somewhere, as long as it isn't in your bag, it isn't yours.

I am actually afraid allowing only Personal Loot will actually create more drama, because how would a guild deal with gear that is already in someones bag? At the moment, that is up to the player in Innovation with BoE's. and Luckily a lot of them are given up for bid, if the drop is not needed by the player.

In the end, at least for me, and Innovation, Master Loot combined with Blind-DKP works. Why should that be changed? Does it hurt you if we do it that way? And if you don't like our rules, then do not join, find somewhere else to play, no harm done.

So, yes Blizzard, this Pilot Balloon did generate a lot of discussion, But if you got any wiser...  no idea. But I won't like it, even more RNG in a RNG-World.

Sunday 18 March 2018

Lessons of Space-Time


 Well.. that didn't take long, after some invasions, emmisary-quests and LFR's I bought a shoulder-token on the Vindicaar  and BINGO, hunt completed, maybe to soon. I do like shoulders with Eyes on it.

Lorinthe is timely-wimey....

Other stuff I am doing these days includes some low level levelling without heirlooms. Taking advantage of more character slots and allied races, I am just hitting stuff. No rush with them, no need to get them to end-content, I already have enough to do there, if I like to do it.

My Lightforged Paladin reached 58 and Northrend todays, which makes me wonder. If I am not mistaken, lvl 58-60 may have the most dungeons available, all the vanilla ones, 2 from Outland, and 2 from Northrend, all dropping loot on the same Ilvl, I may actually freeze XP... is that still possible?

[It seems level 80 has the most different dungeons available, 4 more than level 60]

Kyaria in Northrend, before the new gear drops.

Friday 16 March 2018

A Brief History of Time

The world got a lot less smarter this week.

Some Neil once said that everybody is made of Stardust... 
he forget that some are actually made of stars.

And now I am determined to get at least one Legendary...

Lorinthe, Destruction Warlock, wants some Shoulders.....

After last post, I went to Germany for a week, and when I returned Innovation had cleared up to Aggramar, and I joined in for the Sunday Madness. After the Coven-kill we did extend lockout for a day at least, so we had some tries on it before I went on vacation, and I clearly remember that I was in the mindset that a kill was near, we just needed to handle the CC a little bit better.


I also found out that rooting an already rooted add removes root.. when did I miss that memo??


After 2 hours of pulling, Aggramar went down. The fight isn't that much different than on Normal, except for the CC on adds, and I didn't found it very challenging, we had 18 pulls on him before the kill.

Mardah ground hugging during Aggramar Kill

After Aggramar, we poked Argus... and got a below 50%-wipe as our first result, not that bad, one more pull later, the raidnght ended, and we got the message from our Guildleader.


Lockout will be extended untill Argus is down.


Oh boy...


So for the next few raidnights we threw everyting at Argus. And we found out that the fight itself is strangely build up.


Firts you have Phase 1, big black zones of dead that overlap on timer and it took some time before we got it under control. Getting a spot of death on you while cone of death is being cast can make things ineterstin, while also trying to get the buff on you, and hoping it was not placed in zone of death, and praying people didn't run to early for cone of death. In the end it was decided that getting the buff was not important. Just make sure you survive the death-stuff.


Phase 2 is..well.. not exciting. Dont's stand in lines of death. If you have a small orb over your head, move away, if you have Big Ball run to the entrance...and pray that the glowing tank reaches you fast enough. So, yeah, this phase didn't gave us much trouble.


Phase 3, the dudes are here. This gave us a little bit more trouble. We first went for the empowered dudes, and ignoring the others. But that also meant no interrupts where cast... so that idea was quickly abonded. Next tactic was focus one dude, until dude is dead, than focus other dude. Which dude you had to focus was determined by the dudes vulnerability.


For me that was (facing entrance) first to the left (arcane) and second to the right (nature). This worked very well...except the few times we forgot to interrupt... onto the last phase...


HERE COME THE WIPE JOKES


The last phase was madness. The orbs over your head re-appeared, but this time, no saving when you had the big one. You die... luckily there was a tree that could rez some people, but while death, better collect orbs, so we do more damage.


Than the swirlies..so much swirlies, and standing in swirlies means death... but we didn't want you to die to swirlies, because rez-tree had a limit on rezzes.. so stay out of swirlies. And than suddenly the tank died.. what is actually what is supposed to happen... phewww...


Big Spheres of Growing Zones of Death incoming... every time 1 more...


That one was the killer, we had several below 5% wipes because of this, well actually because we had lost to many before... this was truly a 'through wiping, we learn' ability, but...  there was one problem.


We could execute all phases well, and than we suddenly had a below 5%-wipe because we couldn't handle 7 spheres... we even had a 0.2% wipe... so there was this fear that we would have a lot more of these wipes... but we lucked out... just before 21:00, within one week after downing Aggramar, and having suffered 33 wipes (9 less than on Coven),  Argus fell over.

Innovation lines up for the Kill-pic