Alts and Naxx loot runs

I have a story I'd like to share that, while it doesn't make me proud to do so, I feel like I should comment on nonetheless.

Last night, I was helping out, along with one other well-geared guildie, in a 10-man Naxx run organized by another guildie solely for the purpose of gearing up his alt that had recently hit 80. This particular run was well organized, speedy, and had a relative minimum of time-wasting. We eventually made it to, and downed, Kel'thuzad within about three and a half hours, which is next to unheard of for a pug. It was an excellent run, even by the standards of most guilds. In my opinion, my guildie handled the job of raid leader with professionalism and competence while maintaining an air of fun and relaxation.

Our guildie managed to put together a fantastic raid that ran Naxx with ease, somehow convincing well-geared players to come out of boredom, badges, or the one item they still wanted. Our tanks were geared out, wearing 25-man Naxx gear as well as Ulduar gear. Part of our success was also attributable to our healers - both druids, one who was in full 10-man hardmode and 25-man Ulduar gear, the other had just dinged 80 the same day and was being escorted through by his more seasoned friend. Both were competent healers and got us through the majority of the instance without a scratch. We wiped once on Kel'thuzad due to an unfortunate Frost Tomb targeting the MT, but otherwise the run went smooth as butter.

The newly-minted 80 druid was also in here trying to gear up, and as a result, he and my guildie were the only ones to roll on most of the gear. And, aside from spellplate that nobody needed (as the only plate-wearers were Warriors), the majority of the gear that dropped was healing gear in some fashion with no competition for the pugged druid. We also had five pieces of tier gear drop, one of which nobody could use, but the others were rolled on by both the druid and my guildie. The druid won all four rolls.

Now, this irked me a bit, as the pugger was basically benefitting off of my guildie's willingness to let him come, despite being undergeared (very undergeared, in fact) and being in direct competition with him for the majority of the caster loot. One of the tier pieces, the chestpiece that dropped from Four Horsemen, the pugger very kindly gifted to my guildie after my guildie (rightly, I think) complained about losing the last two rolls for it and currently wearing a mid-70s chestpiece, compared to the pugger's level 80 gear. The next two tier pieces, both rolled, and my guildie lost those two rolls as well.

As the run went on, the pugger recieved at least two helms, a mainhand/offhand combo, boots, a neckpiece (possibly) and several other pieces of gear that immediately replaced the items he walked in wearing. My guildie received one piece of gear in all besides the chestpiece the pugger passed to him, in a run he organized, put together, and coordinated for that expressed purpose. The rest of the raid, all puggers except for three guildies including myself and the raid leader, were beginning to rumble a bit at the loot-whorishness of the pugger, but the guildie leading the raid quite correctly and fairly gave him all the gear he rolled on and won with little comment, whether my guildie needed it or not. By the end of the run, the pugged druid was in more than half epics, if you counted the tier pieces he recieved but had not turned in.

Fast forward to Kel'thuzad -- we down him on the second try with little trouble and the tier 7 headpiece drops for both our undergeared players along with the other loot. The pugger rolled on one of those pieces of loot (I think it was a cape) and recieved that, and then both rolled on the headpiece token. The pugger won that roll as well.

However my guildie had apparently had it by that point. He masterlooted the helm token to himself, explained that he couldn't let the pug druid take that piece of loot along with all of the other gear the druid had also won, pointed out that he had recieved two pieces of gear in all (and really, it was technically only one) compared to the pugger's 10 or so, and the rest of the raid voiced their agreement. The well-geared friend of the pugger in question said simply "wtf." and left the raid, followed by his friend.

Was this the right thing for my guildie to do?

Now, while some, including myself, would argue that my guildie was justified in looting that helm to himself, no one, not even my guildie could say it wasn't techinically "ninja-looting." Ninja-looting or not, after recieving at least two other helms and most of the other tier gear that had dropped, I think that pugger should really have passed on that last bit of loot. Most people, I think, would have at least considered passing on it, if not done so. Most people would also argue that the pug druid was a loot-whore through and through. But does that make what my guildie did right?

My take on it is that it might have been ninja-looting, but it was quite defensible ninja-looting, if there is such a thing. I wouldn't say it was the right thing to do by any stretch, but I understand my guildie's frustration and justification for doing so. The pugger was obviously taking advantage of the run my guildie had set up, having both phenomenal luck with drops and rolls, and phenomenal opportunity in having a geared-out raid run them thru Naxx immediately after hitting 80, not to mention having a raid leader that would actually accept them. I think many people, whether they have geared friends or not, would be extremely lucky to have that same opportunity, and in my opinion my guildie was gracious enough in letting him come, to say nothing of freely giving him all of the gear he rolled against him for and lost. While my guildie took advantage of the pugger at the end, in my opinion, the pugger was just as guilty of doing the same as my guildie was, and perhaps on a greater scale when you think about it.

Of course, most people don't care about the specifics of the gear involved--I mean, Naxx10 gear isn't even as important as the VoA mammoth to most people, and you hear of that mammoth getting ninja'ed all the time. So let's turn this incident into an ethical and moral dilemma:

In this situation, what would you have done?

Expansion speculation

So, since I seem to be on a roll today...

I'm very interested in all of the expansion speculation. I like the idea of two new species and (I hope) a new hero class, as well as an underwater, naga-land landscape (the Maelstorm). I would totally reroll as a Worgen, if that ends up being one of the new species, and I bet my wife would too. The biggest doubt in my mind that Goblins and Worgen will be the new expansion's species is lore considerations: it seems like even more of a shoehorn job than blood elves and the Horde was.

In my opinion, although Lich King brought a huge number of improvements to gameplay, lore, and questing, the endgame content has been something of a bust. Say what you will of brutal, back-breaking encounters in TBC, but they sure gave guilds bragging rights after beating them. Although I never had a chance to see them, you still hear people talking about Kael'thas, Vashj, and Illidan, and even some of the minor bosses, in a kind of awe-inspired tone. Hell, even Magtheridon, Nightbane, and Gruul get some mentions. Naxx was really a poor way to open up raid content, and definitely spoiled veterans and newbies alike, in a very bad way. Nobody cares or is impressed by Gothik (who used to be a guild-breaker), Razuvious, Four Horsemen, or even Kel'thuzad.

Ulduar was neat in concept, but it's getting phased out too quickly. Now the cutting-edge raid will be gladitorial-style combat? Seriously? Where's the epic-ness in that? I mean, the only big lore connection I have heard of is Anub'arak's return as an actual boss, instead of the panty-waisted excuse for a schoolgirl his 5-man incarnation is.

I really hope Blizzard comes out with the new expansion inside of a year. We need to move out of Northrend. I, for one, am sick of it already.

A note to puggers

I really dislike it when people specify "x DPS minimum for invite" or other related criteria. It is literally impossible to quantify expected DPS unless you are talking about one specific situation. For example, on a Heroic Target Dummy. And I do 4k+ dps in a well-constructed 25man raid but I'm not going to brag about my 2800 dps on a target dummy. The only other option is, like the theorycrafters at Elitist Jerks, to simply assume that the player in question has all available raid buffs period. This assumption makes sense when comparing top end capabilities of classes in progression guilds in progression content. However it makes little to no sense to compare these imaginary situations to reality when you're spamming for group members in Dalaran.

So, if you're one of those people that sits in Dalaran spamming Trade with something to the effect of "LF 1 DPS 10 man Ulduar 4k dps please" you're an idiot. You're not even going to guarantee you're going to get a decent dps'er either. Depending on your group makeup and buff synergy, in a ten-man raid my 4k+DPS in 25 man Naxx can turn into 3k or less. It's just how the game works. By the time you lower your "required DPS"to an accurate and representative level for the instance you're finding group members for, the less useful and discriminating your ad is going to be.

Therefore, please don't encourage meter padding and bads that raid with one eye fixed on Recount with those LFM ads.

What you want is a 2.8k dpser who will stay alive to the end of the fight, rather than a 3.8k dps'er who dies to a void zone ten seconds into the fight. You're not going to be able to find that kind of player much more easily than simply taking who you can find (in an appropriate level of gear) and giving the instance a go.

Coming up

Stuff I'd like to accomplish (WoW-related) in the next couple weeks:

• Finish levelling enchanting to at least 400
• Continue working on Netherdrake rep (I seriously want one for some reason. I think I have always been jealous of those people flying around on them in BC). Want to get exalted in two weeks with some lucky egg farming.
• Make a Wispcloak for my healing set.
• Enchant my healing set, including head and shoulders. Consider using Cowl of Vanity (gemmed and enchanted) for my healing helm instead of Cowl of Innocent Delight as I am now. Was going to save Vanity for a DPS helm once I got enough +hit to replace Faerlina's Madness but Ulduar is shifting priorities. I don't want to spend 250g doing that to only replace it in a week.
• If I swap helms, it seems likely I will have to switch in Legwraps of the Defeated Dragon (which is arguably only a marginal upgrade if at all) to replace Leggings of the Instructor, an awesome item even though they come from 10 man Naxx, just to make up that +hit. I was hoping to hold out for Kel'thuzad's leggings, but the likelihood of getting those if they drop is slim. However swapping out Leggings of the Instructor when in Shadow spec will make them into full-time healing legs, a role they excel at.
• Run 10 man naxx for some non-dps items to fill out my healing offset. Notably belt and neck. As a corollary, pick up whatever's available in 25 man Naxx. If we actually run it. Otherwise 25 man Naxx is getting pugged like whoa, bads and all.
• Work on fishing and cooking now that those balls-tastic quests to progress past 225 are gone. Considering letting Zerkker be my cook and fisherman, but it will be a while before I can cook useful food for my priest if I go that route.
• Somehow find the time to do enough dailies to fund all this AND pay for progression raids 3 nights a week.

This is all a tall order. The money issue is a big one, as the gear switching, if I go ahead with it, will gain me very little actual improvement in exchange for 500g all told (about 350g for the gems, 160g for the enchantments). Considering I hit 4000 dps fairly easily I don't think anything's particularly wrong with my gear setup that I would need to fix right now. I'm not going to be zerging 10 man Sarth+3 anytime soon, but that wasn't in the cards anyway.

And this is all assuming I have the time to accomplish any of this.

Updates

Not much to post about recently, unfortunately. I'm working on getting several scattered objectives done in-game in during raid downtime.

I'm finally levelling enchanting, and working on getting that up. It's difficult after selling off most of my BC materials for cash flow long ago, when I wrote off enchanting as ever becoming relevant to me. I'm regretting that decision slightly now. I'm also monitoring the Bookclub channel and hearthing back to Dalaran and snagging the books when people report them up. It's the lazy man's way to a new pet. I quickly found that camping the spawn points was tedious, and time consuming, and not my thing at all.

Finally, I'm running old raids (did part of Sunwell last night) and trying to see the content I didn't get an opportunity to see in Burning Crusade. We wiped on Felmyst three times and almost wiped on Brutallus despite far overgearing the encounter. I can definitely see why Blizzard is moving away from these types of raids. The amount of min-maxing that was necessary to down these bosses at 70 was simply unfortunate. I quit at Eredar Twins (Mary Kate and Ashley?) but it seemed like that encounter was even more demanding than Felmyst was. I'd still like to see Kael'thas and Illidan (Vashj already taken care of). I'd also like to get into a discussion of Blizzard's raid design strategies and how they are changing, but I'll save that digression for a later time.

Updates in the raiding arena include big pushes to get all of our Heroic: Glory of the Raider done. It probably would have been done earlier had our guild been pushed to do so, but getting some people to wrap their heads around the new raiding model seems to be difficult. Completing the current content as-is is no longer "enough" to be considered hard-core. Not that I care about that necessarily, but the fact remains that the content isn't much of a challenge that way. Fortunately, now it's been made clear that completing those achievements is a big deal and as much a part of progression as anything else. We'll see if these pushes will exacerbate the attendance problem that we're having at the moment because most people consider us "done" with 3.0 until 3.1.

3 Drake Sartharion is still an issue, despite the fact that we're insanely overgeared for it. We're now able to consistently kill Tenebron before Shadron lands, and yet still lose people to Flame Wall and Void Zones. Execution is a BIG problem, needless to say. The more we practice it, the more we can see that this encounter is really not as hard as it's being made out to be. Seeing that and continuing to fail at it is demoralizing, to say the least. Simply replacing those people that consistently fail at it is unfortunately not an option. If there was a method of penalizing people that fail at Void Zones and Flame Wall in a way that wouldn't contribute to the attendance problem, I can't think of it. Unfortunately, simply completing 3 Drake Sartharion is the least of our problems if we're going to actually finish Heroic: Glory of the Raider.

An even bigger problem we're going to have is with Heroic: You Don't Have an Eternity aka "6 minute Malygos." Our best kill, a one-shot last Wednesday, took approximately 8 minutes, 30 seconds. Although we haven't tried the alternate strategy specifically for a 6 minute attempt (all ranged in one spot on the outer ring, all melee killing the lords), I can only fear for the results when we do if execution in encounters continues to be a problem.

Also, last Wednesday we missed Heroic: Shocking and Heroic: The Safety Dance because of one person (though different people) on both attempts. On Heigan, the fail was so close to the end of the fight we didn't even have time to wipe it and start over. We were that close. The Thaddius fail was right at the beginning of the fight, but at that point our achievement run was pretty much over and I think it was a wise decision to not attempt a second try. Our track record with that encounter isn't the best. I think that says a lot right there. Fortunately, as long as we have the healers, Heroic: And They Would All Go Down Together isn't too bad. The strategy for that fight is much more like the original version of 4 Horseman, and I think it will be equal parts of fun and frustration.

If we manage to get all of those achievements done, I would guess a good plan could be to award the best achievers with Heroic: Subtraction, Heroic: A Poke In The Eye, and Heroic: The Dedicated Few runs. Then we would try for The Immortal.

Ouch. We need three weeks, if we really turn this around, to complete this achievement, and that's if we one-shot The Immortal. I can hope (yeah, right. I know). Otherwise we can practically kiss any chance of getting a Val'anyr any time this millenium goodbye.