Sometimes You Eat the Bar...

... and sometimes you kill Kel'Thuzad in 2.5 hours with minimal wiping.

Well, it took me an hour to put the raid together, but still, 2.5 hours for a PUG to clear Naxx-25? I dare say that's a fine accomplishment.

Successful PUG'ing at it's finest. We had some messy kills, but we chain-pulled the instance and I had no issues with any boss.

Not going to be able to do another one this week because of personal commitments, but I think I've started something good for the server. Epics for PUGs - a new charity, by Cathmor.

I'm A Triple Threat

In a VoA-25 PUG the other day, I was #2 on damage done and DPS. This did not impress me.

What impressed me was that I was #1 on healing, #2 on damage taken, and #1 on over-healing.

I didn't throw more than 1 Flash of Light during the fight, so I'm guessing that healing was attributed to my Judgement of Light.

I knew Archavon was easy, but I didn't think he was so easy that the healers can let JoLight outheal them.

I wonder if it's possible to kill Archavon with no heals aside from Judgement of Light, Divine Storm, Mark of Blood, and Vampiric Embrace (or is it Vampiric Touch? Whichever one is the heal-y one)...

Someone get me a well geared tank, a blood DK and a shadow priest. I have an experiment to run.

EDIT: Maybe a comp like this - Judgement of Light, Mark of Blood, Leader of the Pack, Healing Stream Totem, Vampiric thingy, Divine Storm, Sacred Shield, and Art of War'ed Flash of Light to keep the tanks up. Prot paladin main tank, feral druid switches to bear when the main tank gets picked up.

I think it's just crazy enough to work.

If It At First You Don't Succeed...

... wipe, wipe again.

Last Thursday I lead a PUG Naxx-25 raid. It took a while to get things rolling and most of the DPS was iffy at best, but we were able to clear out most of the instance in one night.

The roadblock we ran into was Thaddius. For some ungodly reason, about 5-6 people in the raid either could not handle the Polarity Shift. At the first shift, I would undoubtedly have 4-6 fried, smoking husks of raiders at Thaddius's feet. I was employing my tried-and-true stock car strategy for Thaddius: group up, turn left. These fellas, however, just couldn't grasp it for one reason or another. When questioned about their inability to grasp the simple concept of "go around the fata$$ boss to the other side," I got reasons ranging from absolute silence and no acknowledgement of my question, to "sorry my comp sucks," to "that's not how my guild does it."

I don't care about your reason for sucking. I just want you to fix it or get out, you're mucking up my raid.

That's what I said in my head. What I said out loud was more along the lines of "all right, as a reminder to everyone, positives are on the LEFT, negatives are on the RIGHT, and everyone needs to stack up at max melee range. Make sure to go around Thaddius clockwise, meaning to your LEFT, when switching sides on the Polarity Shift." I didn't call anyone out publicly. We also didn't kill the boss.

On Monday, after I had taken care of work, class, dinner, and all that jazz, I logged in to finish what I had started. The only bosses I had left up were Thaddius, Sapphiron, and Kel'Thuzad. It took me 30-45 minutes to form up the raid, and then awaaaaaayyy we went, straight to Thaddius. Same strategy - group up, turn left, positive left, negative right.

On the first Polarity Shift of the first pull, 4 people got fried. 3 of them were DPS, and we hit the enrage because we were short on damage despite burning 2 Heroisms. I wasn't doing this again. Names got called.

"X, Y, Z, and Q, what happened, why'd you die?"

X, Y, and Z told me it was a connection issue - they got disconnected mid-fight (or so they claimed). Q said he flubbed it and went to the wrong side.

"We good now? Everyone know where they're going and stable?"

No objections, so we pulled again.

This time, only X and Y got fried. Thankfully, we were able to kill Thaddius without them.

I'm seriously considering imposing loot restrictions in my PUG's for people who can't grasp the fights. If you spend a fight dead for more than 33% through your own actions (i.e. aggro pull, incorrect switch on Thaddius, etc.), or cannot manage to do 1.5 times as much damage as the tank on the boss, then I'm not awarding you loot for that boss. Gevlon would be proud of this line of thinking, I bet. The sad part is I check everyone's achievements before I invite to make sure they've killed most/all the bosses in Naxx on any difficulty and do a spot check on gearing. These jokers passed my screening, and then went and got themselves cooked on Thaddius.

And now for the happier portion of my post.

Before the raid I had declared that the Key to the Focusing Iris would be looted by me so that I could lead a Malygos-25 PUG as well. We were able to 2-shot Sapphiron (the tank got Deep Breathed on the first breath during the first attempt - he claimed he was behind the block, but his death proved otherwise), and I grabbed that sucker. After a 1-shot of Kel'Thuzad which had absolutely zero complications...

... all right there were a few, as in a few special people not understanding the idea of spreading out to avoid getting Frost Blasted, and others standing in the red swirly death of the void zones...

... I handed out the loot and then proclaimed that we'd be raiding Malygos! Huzzah!

After I filled the holes in the raid voided by those that left, I formed up the raid at the Eye of Eternity. I employed my guild's 6 minute Malygos strategy and had one of my guildie's DK alts take care of spark management. I did this instead of letting the tank go whereever he pleased so that the added damage in phase 1 would off-set any failure by PUGs to shield themselves in phase 3.

I'm glad I did, because several people took beams to the face and took a tumble into the black abyss. We beat the enrage timer handily without them, though. The funniest part is the Malygos-25 kill was my first true attempt at the 25-man version. I got the heroic Denyin' the Scion and Spellweaver's Downfall achievements from the kill.

I can now say that I've successfully PUG'ed every 25-man encounter in WotLK with me at the helm. I'm a WoW-approved cat herder.

DPS Numbers Need Context

Ferraro's recent conversation with a random priest reminded me of an exchange I experienced last night with a death knight. I was forming a pick-up group for Obsidian Sanctum 10-man, starting with 5 people (myself and 4 guildmates), and needing 2 healers, 2 tanks, and a ranged DPS (since the DPS I all ready had were 2 melee and a ranged - I was hoping to leave Tenebron up, I needed some AoE). In response to my trade chat spam of "LFM OS-10 need tanks and heals," this death knight whispers me...

DK: need DPS?

Josh: ranged only

DK: oh

DK: but i do over 2k dps!

Josh: I don't care how much DPS you do.

DK: why are you such an asshat @_@? (that's a direct quote)

Josh: because your DPS number means nothing without context

DK: how am I supposed to tell you my DPS?

Josh: you don't

DK: huh?

Josh: what buffs did you have? what boss were you fighting? without context, your DPS value is meaningless.

DK: so what's the correct way?

Josh: just don't disclose a number

DK: ur like that cat in alice in wonderland

What's the point in all this? When attempting to entice someone to invite you to their group, telling them how much DPS you did once is not very useful. For example, if I ran a DPS meter when I fought Thaddius, I might see that I did 6,000 DPS. Should I go around telling people that I can do 6k when trying to join a PUG for Malygos? Absolutely not! The fights are very, very different, and the Thaddius fight inflates numbers greatly because of the polarity buffs.

Linking a WWS report is informative. Then the recipient can look at the entire situation - what boss was killed, how long the fight took, what buffs you had, and so forth. Without this context, your DPS number becomes a mutant statistic, a number who's relevence has been warped and lost. Interested to know more about when a number crosses the line from useful to impractical? Read Dr. Joel Best's Damned Lies and Statistics: Untangling Numbers from the Media, Politicians, and Activitists. Without correct context, any number can melt into absurdity, as Dr. Best notes.

So what should you do when trying to snag a PUG invite as a ret paladin? Well, simply saying "I'll go" in response to trade chat spam will usually suffice. If the raid leader presses you for details, dish out your relevent ratings - unbuffed attack power, hit, crit, expertise, haste, & armor penetration. If he or she still wavers, then you can fall back on a statistic, but carefully. Use Patchwerk, as he's a standard DPS check, and be sure to include detail on the size of the raid, what relevent outside buffs you received, and how long the fight took. For example, I did about 3,300 DPS on a 4 minute Patchwerk-10 kill with Blessing of Might, Blessing of Kings, Gift of the Wild, and Horn of Winter, and Sunder Armor on Patchwerk. Yea it's cumbersome, but at least it's useful.

That said, I'd just stay away from telling people how much DPS you do. If a raid leader presses you for a number and doesn't care about the details of how that number was formed, he doesn't know what he's asking for, and you might not want to be in his raid anyway.

EDIT: More evidence of my untapped blogger ESP abilities - BRK just posted this about how asking for a hunter's stats before a group invite is folly.
/creeped out

Of PUGs and People

I want to do more 25-mans, but don't want to commit to an X-day-a-week "mandatory" schedule or spend precious hours wiping with a$$hat FPUGs. I also don't want to transfer or leave my guild (which I cannot do 25's with, since my classes will clash with their raid nights this semester). I'm in a predicament.

That was me, circa January 23rd when I wrote this post. Today, I stand here a new man.

I PUG'ed some 25's. I'm not entirely sure why I ignored my inclination to avoid what ordinarily ends up being hours of wasted time, but the allure of shiny new gear overtook me.

I'm also pissed about it.

First up, a pure pick-up group in trade chat was seeking healers and additional DPS for Obsidian Sanctum. The group was not terrible. They were doing it with no drakes up, which I can understand since it was a PUG. The drakes went down quickly, even though the trash pulling was painfully slow. No one died to flame walls on Sartharion. The tank bit it with 5% left on Sarth, but some death knight picked him up and we burned the crap out of him. Cool beans, I killed a 25-er that wasn't Archavon!

Then the loot happens. It's not on master looter, and it's a PUG... not everyone is on Vent, but the raid leader calls out "everyone pass, we'll /roll for stuff." Being an untrusting S.O.B., I didn't do anything, I just held my rolls for everything that I cared about. Fury of the Five Flights, the Conqueror glove token, and the satchel and bag, along with Illustration of the Dragon Soul and a Vanquisher token, dropped. Four of six mattered to me.

Some a$$hat paladin rolled greed on everything. Glad I didn't release my rolls. We /roll for the loots, and I lose the "fair and square" rolls for the blessed trinket of awesome and Conq token. I pass on those and they go to dumba$$ paladin ninja greed roller, who did not bother to /roll at all, and has not said anything in raid chat to this point, and is not on Vent to hear the commotion. I don't wait around for the satchel and bag, I just leave. There's no point in me sticking around, even if they do put in a GM ticket to transfer the loot from this guy to the "true" winner, that winner isn't me, and I don't care enough about the bag or satchel to deal with it.

Master loot for the win, people. Don't PUG without it.

After a break for some food, I come back on and get a random tell whilst questing in Icecrown - "hey wanna come to naxx?" Not being saved to either version, I am intrigued. I grill the whispering warrior from a guild I'd never heard of about the group and the rules - he says they're master looting and doing /roll for everything, main set priority. It's a 25-man run: they've cleared all but the Construct wing and are just looking for a few healers and a DPS or two. It's mainly a guild run but they don't have the numbers to keep it in-house, so they're filling the rest from without. I didn't bother to ask how he came to whisper me, but I would later learn he just did a /who paladin and I came up. Hooray for names that come early in the alphabet, I suppose.

When I'm done grilling the poor guy, I say "sure I'll come, but FYI, I'm ret." "Aw dammit," the warrior responds. I suppose he was hoping I was holy. I suppose he also doesn't know about this blog. And he probably has no idea that I haven't had a single point in the holy tree (aside from Divine Strength when it was located there) in months.

He invites me anyway, though.

After they round up additionals, I find that there's only one other paladin in the group, but there are a few DPS warriors and death knights for me to compete with for plate drops, and plenty of priests to grab the conqueror tokens. Oh well, something is better than nothing, I guess.

They wipe twice to Patchwerk due to terrible healing on the hateful tanks. Sign #1 of terribad FPUG. But third time's the charm, no deaths. Huzzah! I end up #10 on damage done, but #1 in effective DPS. I waited a few seconds before starting my damage, 'cuz I was afraid of getting hateful'ed like the first 2 times. Nothing I want from him, so I navigate the frogger boss and wait to move on to Grobbulus.

Several people keel over in the middle of the slime highway. Sign #2 of terribad FPUG. Whatever, lag and such, or maybe they haven't been here (eep, worse thought...). I wait for them to fill positions that were vacated in the raid so we can pull Grobb.

Grobbulus goes off without a hitch, even though they took forever to pull. I definitely think I was top or near top damage on him, as one of the hunter's recount meter put me at #3 in damage from Patchwerk to the end of Grobbulus.

Then came Gluth. Gluth is, I think, a simple fight. Tanks trade aggro, a few people slow and kite some zombies and keep them the hell away from Gluth, and rogues/hunters keep the big bad doggie from enraging. Other than that, kill the zombies when Gluth does Decimate, and then go back to stabbity-stabbing the dog in the arse.

Apparently it's not so simple for other people. The 3 kiters had tons of trouble keeping the zombies away from Gluth, and then the DPS didn't switch to the zombies fast enough. Our first attempt, Gluth ate a handful and healed nearly to full. Double you tee eff.

Raid leader determines that it's a kiting problem and asks for additional kites. No one steps up, so I say "f*ck it" to myself and raise my hand. I throw on my prot gear for additional health and armor, buff up Righteous Fury, and get ready to run around like a maniac tagging loose zombies.

The second attempt goes better, but the tanks die due to terribad healing, and the other kiters don't drop their slowing effects (Earthbind Totem, Frost Trap) in good spots. Wipe.

Not wanting to sit there while things get sorted out and the raid leaders of this quaint little guild reinvent the wheel, I chime in on Vent. I assign the slowing effects to zones and have them drop their shiznit in those zones. I swap the paladin healer from tank healing to kiter healing and have him use Righteous Fury to keep the zombies in a controlled area. I then tell the other kiters to pull stuff off the healers ASAP and run around tagging everything.

Dead dog. I are effective raid lead.

Conqueror chest and shoulders drop. I lose both rolls. I are sad paladin.

More replacements are shuttled in as we move to Thaddius. I have a mini-panic attack when they start discussing strategies over Vent that involve the tank being stationary and the random rabble of this PUG needing to watch their own charge, their own relative position, AND the tank's charge and his position. Not only is that more complicated for everyone but the tank, it also makes the melee stand out if they don't have the same charge as the tank. The way I'm used to doing Thaddius, if you're positive you're on the right, negative on the left, and everyone rotates around Thaddius clockwise if their polarity shifts.

I explain this to the raid lead in whispers, and he says "hmmm, good strategy, but we'll try it this way once or twice first."

Everyone gets fried on transition.

They then shove Thaddius on the right side of the platform and have the tank in the corner, and they have the DPS shuttling in and out according to their charge.

Morons cross the charges in transition and fry almost everyone. The remainder, who aren't morons and did what was described, keep going until the enrage. I was DPS-off for most of the fight, as I had to stand at range to avoid frying the opposite-charged melee DPS.

I plead with the raid leader in whispers to put the generally accepted and successful "rotate clockwise, don't suck" strategy into use, but the raid falls apart due to the lateness of the hour. Anger abounds, but I politely leave the raid without further discussion.

Hours spent, and nothing to show but a handful of tokens, a hefty repair bill from Naxx, and further confirmation that I hate PUG'ing instances for a variety of reasons. WTB a Leftovers-type raid system for Malfurion-US 25-mans...