Au revoir

It’s been a bad week.  My son was dangerously ill (he’s fine now thank goodness) and my husband had his MRI, but we haven’t had the results yet so we still don’t know if he has a brain tumour or not.  I must have been having a moment of madness when I decided to start a WoW blog.  I had so many ideas that I wanted to write about but right now all of them pale into insignificance.

So there you go, I don’t intend to update for a bit, maybe forever.  Better to stop now when I’ve hardly started I guess.  Sorry if this sounds blunt but blogging is just not a priority at the moment.  I’ve met some lovely people and I’ll still be lurking around reading my favourite blogs.  Au revoir.

Weekly round up

I still need to fish up one more gold coin to complete The Coin Master achievement, but I have a sneaky suspicion that Brann Bronzebeard decided to pocket his coin rather than throw it into the fountain.

The guild had a great weekend, it’s hard to believe that less than two months ago we were seriously thinking about disbanding.  We cleared all quarters of Naxx 25 except the Four Horsemen, and Tabbitha finally got her heroic Naxx achievement (Instructor Razuvious was the one boss I’d always managed to miss).  We’ve also had several new recruits and more on the way.

I really don’t like doing dailies, but I persevered for long enough to reach exalted with the Kalu’ak this weekend, which also gave me 15 exalted reputations.  Finally got my fishing pole and cute Pengy pet!

Time for some volunteer work in Agmar’s Hammer.  Below you can see Matron Twinbreeze and Matron Tabbitha caring for the taunka ophans.

Moving from 10 to 25 man raiding – attendance

How does a guild doing 10 man raids make the switch to 25 man raiding?  You might think the first step would be recruitment.  Not so fast!  First you need to learn to optimize what you already have.

Observe current activity

Most evenings our guild has about a dozen online, just enough to do a 10 man raid.  However, the last few Saturdays we’ve had 20 online.  Spend a week or two observing activity patterns so that you can plan your 25 man raids for the busiest day.

Review past activity

I found this a very eye-opening step.  Apart from Scen (our guild’s main tank) and myself (usually raid leader), hardly any members had more than 50% attendance over the last month.  Looking further back, the percentages were even lower, so it actually seems that attendance has improved recently.  Another interesting thing I noticed is that whilst the healers and offtanks have reasonable attendance, we seem to be running with different dps each raid.

If your members have low attendance, ask yourself why.  Maybe they do shift work and are unable to attend raids some weeks?  Maybe they already had all the loot they need or are bored of that particular raid?  Maybe they just didn’t realise a raid was planned?

Another useful exercise is to compare who signed up and who actually turned up.  Recently I’ve been disappointed that people are signing up for raids and then not bothering to log on.  Of course unexpected things do crop up, but if it’s starting to become a pattern then it might be time to remind your members that you expect them to be reliable.

All this is only possible if you keep detailed raid records.  If you don’t do that, I really recommend that you start now.  As well as helping to solve issues like “x has already won that item and isn’t wearing it” or “y has already had that tier token for mainspec”, it allows you to build up a good overview of who attends what and when.  I used to keep records by hand and write them up in a thread on our guild forums, but nowadays there are a number of addons that will do the job for you with a minimum amount of hassle.

Plan for future activity

By now you should have a fairly good idea of when people are online and why.  It may be worth bearing in mind that just because people don’t play on a certain day, it doesn’t necessarily mean they are not available.  For instance, some of our members often don’t play on Fridays, because they know that many people will be out for the evening and therefore there are unlikely to be any guild activities planned.

To confirm your observations, run a poll or questionnaire on your guild forums asking what days and times people are likely to be available.  Even if you have done this in the past, do it again, as people’s schedules can change.

Changes you can make now to improve attendance:

• Choose fixed raid times that are convenient for most members. I’m aware that many 10 man guilds just raid whenever they have enough online, but if you are serious about making the switch to 25 man raiding then it’s important that people know when to show up.  Be prepared to review your schedule when necessary.
• Make sure members are aware of your raid schedule. Your chosen raid days should be clearly stated on your guild website and in the guild information panel in-game.  Notify all members by in-game mail when any changes are made.  Put raids up on the calendar at least one week in advance.
• Give members an incentive to attend. If your members are bored, offer motivation in the form of attempting achievements and hard modes.  If your members are frustrated, make sure to include some easier content as well as progression raids.  Find a way of rewarding good attendance and reliability.

By reviewing and improving your guild’s attendance, you may find that your guild is closer than you thought to 25 man raids.

Female orc <3

I’ve always had a soft spot for female orcs.  Shamans in particular look fantastic!  I’ve never rolled one though, apart from my death knight bank alt, which doesn’t really count.

It seems those pesky goldsellers have also realised how cool they are.  Forget level 1 warriors popping up all over Orgrimmar, female orc rogues are the way to go!

Of dungeons and dragons

I’ve been levelling my little hunter alt Aleisha a bit recently and reached level 53 today.  Scen has been farming Stratholme for runecloth to turn in for rep, so I got boosted on the condition that I looted all the cloth for him.

This evening after Naxx we decided to go and pay Onyxia a visit.  She was very unobliging and refused to drop any hunter loot, so I got to skin her by way of revenge.

We haven’t done any old raids since the expansion was released, but there is a Zul’Gurub run planned for tomorrow afternoon and we’re hoping to do more if people are interested. I’d love to collect my tier 2 set on Aleisha before I level her much further.

In TBC I found that doing old raids was a good way for the guild to have fun together without any stress or pressure.  Since WotLK we’ve been too busy with all the new content to revisit old stuff, but now people are starting to show an interest again.  Looks like we’ll be making the occasional trip to slay some dragons.

OOM!

We ventured into Ulduar yesterday, killing Flame Leviathan and getting XT-002 Deconstructor to 8% before we had to call it for the night.  Hoping to go back this evening and kill a few more bosses.

I found that mana was a big issue for Tabbitha, as she was completely oom with mana potion and innverate used by the end of the second heart phase on Deconstructor (we had no replenishment in the raid).  It was so bad I had to resort to spamming starfire and completely ignore eclipse procs.

Whereas before 3.1 I used to run with 3/3 Intensity and 1/3 Moonglow, I now have 3 points in both Intensity and Moonglow and am actually considering putting some points into Dreamstate as well.  Patch 3.1.2. with the innervate change can’t come soon enough for me!  In the meantime, I’ll be respeccing, reglyphing and regemming.

Making the switch

I have a few posts planned with ideas for guilds struggling to make the switch between 10 man and 25 man raiding.  But before that, I thought I’d tell you a bit about my guild so you can see where I’m coming from.

In TBC, we were a small guild of friends with a strict no-recruiting policy.  The only way to get an invite was by befriending an existing member.  Back then raiding wasn’t our focus, clearing Karazhan and Zul’Aman was just something we did weekly for fun.

For me, one of the highlights of WotLK was that every raid would have a 10 man setting in addition to a 25 man setting.  It was so exciting to think that we would have the opportunity to experience all the same content as the bigger raiding guilds, rather than be stuck farming the same two raids week in week out.

In reality, the 10 man progression path hasn’t been as easy as we expected.  The raids themselves are easy enough, but keeping a 10 man guild together isn’t!

In TBC we never had set raid times, but would just raid whenever enough people were online.  Disorganised I know, but it worked for us.  We soon learned that this approach just wouldn’t cut it in WotLK.  With raids being so easy to pug, our members were often off pugging whilst we were trying to put a raid together.  I honestly never expected to have to schedule raids right at the beginning of the reset week, just so that people wouldn’t go and get saved to pug runs!

Previously our members had always valued friendship and fun more than epics.  But seeing how easy it was to obtain 25 man loot, those values were tested.  In many cases, members left as soon as they were geared up enough to be accepted into 25 man raid guilds.  We basically became a feeder guild for the best raiding guilds on the server.

We eventually realised that if we wanted to continue raiding at all, we would have to recruit for 25 man raids.  Being on a very low population server with far too many raiding guilds already doesn’t make that an easy task! When we did manage to find recruits, often they upped and left as soon as they had enough 10 man gear to finally be useful to us!

So here we are.  We’re starting to see the light at the other side of the tunnel, and thoughts of typing /gdisband are no longer so attractive.  We’ve raided Naxxramas 25 twice so far with the help of a few pugs, clearing 3 wings.  Last Saturday we had 20 members online, which is pretty much a record for us.  Ulduar 25 is still a fairly distant dream, as many of our new recruits need gearing up, but Ulduar 10 will be there to keep us challenged in the meantime.

We’ve learnt a lot on the way, and hopefully I will be able to share a few ideas for anyone whose guild is in a similar position.

Things I do in Dalaran when I’m bored

Despite having lots of people online today, we decided not to organise anything as we’ve been raiding a lot this last week and everyone needed a bit of a break.

I completed a few achievements (including the dreaded PvP ones for children’s week), added to my pet collection and attempted to tank heroic HoL as feral (we didn’t wipe although the three mages all died once or twice), but I also ended up spending quite a bit of time just hanging around.  Here are a few things I like to do when I find myself in Dalaran, either waiting for heroics, sorting out raids or just plain bored.

Higher Learning

I didn’t even know you could get a pet from this achievement until I happened to notice it whilst browsing through WarcraftPets today.  I found the Kirin Tor Familiar Guide by Sateena very useful, so from now on I’ll be dashing around madly checking those spawn locations!

I Smell A Giant Rat

Go fishing in the Underbelly to catch a Giant Sewer Rat pet.  You can also catch Magic Eater fish and pick up a few vials of Underbelly Elixir for fun buffs.

The Coin Master

Fish in the Eventide Fountain to complete the achievements A Penny For Your Thoughts, Silver In The City and There’s Gold In That There Fountain.  I am a very indecisive person, so a Titanium Seal of Dalaran to help me out with all those difficult decisions would be wonderful!

Daily Quests

I try to keep a stockpile of cooking ingredients in my bank, so the daily cooking quest is usually very quick to complete.  I’ve bought all the recipes and got my chef title, so now I’m saving up my cooking awards to buy my chef’s hat!  One of the five daily fishing quests can also be completed without leaving Dalaran.

Baby Spice

There is a certain guild on our server who stand around spitting on everyone who is less “epic” than them.  Sometimes a pinch of baby spice mysteriously slips out of my pocket and lands on them.  It also happens to taurens on mammoths with size-increasing buffs.  *shrug*

So what do you do when you are hanging around in Dalaran?

Welcome to Mumma Bear

Hello and welcome to Mumma Bear.  I will be blogging about World of Warcraft from the perspective of a female gamer, raid leader and guild leader.  Please check back as I write down my thoughts on anything from raiding to achievements to professions, and feel free to leave comments!  Here is a little bit about my characters by way of introduction.

Tabbitha – level 80 tauren balance druid

This is my main character.  She was created as soon as the Sporeggar server went live when Burning Crusade was released.  I levelled her mostly as resto and it took over a year for her to reach 70 (could there be a connection there?).  She began raiding as a healer, until I fell in love with the boomkin dance, and has been a laser chicken pewpewing damage meters ever since.  Since dual spec was introduced in patch 3.1, she also moonlights as a feral druid.

Tike – level 80 troll protection warrior

I rolled Tike purely to tank so she has been protection from the start, way before levelling as protection was popular.  I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with her.  The hate bit usually happens after tanking for stupid dpsers, which results in me doubting my tanking abilities and not playing her for a few weeks.  The love bit?  Well she’s a troll!

Madalie – level 80 undead holy priest

Madalie was originally on a different server but I moved her to Sporeggar when PvE to PvP paid character transfers were introduced.  I levelled her as holy (I’m starting to see a worrying trend here) and raided with her at the beginning of Burning Crusade, which is partly why it took so long for me to level Tabbi.  Thanks to her, I will never have to respec Tabbitha resto again when the guild is short of healers!  She has shadow as her dual spec but hardly ever gets to dps due to a lack of gear for it.

I also have a level 70-something troll rogue (my only male character), a 70-something night elf hunter (my first high level character), a 60-something dwarf priest, a 50-something blood elf hunter, a level 39 blood elf mage and a host of other low level alts not worth mentioning.