As a shadow priest, you have a decent amount of control, you’re reasonably hardy, but you do not have many methods of saving your partner in a pinch.  That means, in a team with two damage classes, you want to get either a frost mage or a rogue for a partner.

If you’re keen on the security of running with a healer, be prepared for some long games.  You’re a very survivable class, and you can live easily enough if your healer gets CCed (crowd controlled via a silence, stun, polymorph, or the like).  That said, you can and should dispel your partner whenever able.  This is doubly important if she is your means of survival.

Arenas are About  Opportunity

At the most basic, you’re trying to live for long enough to see an opening, and take it.  A Druid’s partner with no HoT (Heal over time) effects on him is an opening.  A player with his death knight partner three quarters of the map away is an opening.  A paladin who just activated divine plea is an opening (you dispel it and kill him, fyi).  Learning to recognize these openings will allow you to gain wins.

The warrior finishes his bladestorm and your health is low. You jump off the bridge of the Nagrand Arena as you cast a Power Word: Shield and book it toward a column.   His paladin healer is halfway across the bridge, inches from your rogue.  Bad move.  Your rogue gets a blind on the paladin, and your flight from the warrior brings you even farther away.   While running you’ve been applying DoTs.  Vampiric Embrace has refilled much of your health, and you turn and fear.   The warrior breaks this, but not before you’ve disarmed him.   Too late, he realizes his health is low and he’ll be unable to put up his Shield Wall without weapons.  A Mind Blast followed by a Mind Flay finishes the job.

Arenas are FAST

Not only do you have to see openings, you need to act on them with ninja speed.  Keybind any ability you imagine you will ever use.  Now unbind your backwards button.  Walking backwards is aways too slow.  Change your turn-left/turn-right buttons to strafe left/right.  Know what spells can be cast while facing away from an opponent or while he’s trying to stay behind you (Vampiric Touch, Shadow Word: Pain, Devouring Plague) and the ones you’ll need to get some distance to cast (Mind Blast, Mana Burn).  Think fast, play faster.

The paladin charges as you discuss with your partner who to kill.  You place your focus macro on the healer, cast a DoT on the incoming paladin, then find yourself silenced. Puzzled, you slowly back away from the paladin before realizing you’re dazed.  Too late, you conclude the paladin is protection specialized.   He follows his initial attack with a judgment, hammer combo that gets you dangerously low on health.  You try to apply your shield, but the paladin uses his Hammer of Justice and you’re stunned.  You pop dispersion, hoping to live through the stun.  The paladin pops his wings and burns you right through the 90% damage reduction.  You should have been more prepared.

Look for Patterns and Outplay them

If the enemy team answers your fear, damage, silence, kill attempt with a quick CC and some line of sighting, repeat the attempt but swap to the other target (the line of sighting should work against the healer this time).  Figure out how your enemies are playing, and try to counter their patterns.  Related: break your own patterns.  Playing an effective style is good, but don’t let your opponents counter you too easily.

You’ve been running circles around pillars with this resto shaman and his warlock partner for what feels like forever.   The warlock keeps trying to burst you to death, but your frost mage partner is keeping him pretty well locked down.   You notice the shaman is being very careful to stay behind the pillars, but his warlock is staying close to him, careful to stay in healing range.  You stop using your fear and wait for all of your cool downs to become available.  They’re playing tight together; you pop your AoE fear and both of them are sent running.   You Mana Burn the last of the shaman’s resources and place a DoT on each of them.  Disarming the shaman after the fear, you kill his mana tide totem.   Without mana, he cannot support the heals on his partner and himself.   You kill the shaman quickly, and the warlock leaves.

Know Your Partner

Duel your partner.  Duel them fifty times.  Hell, duel them a hundred and fifty times.  The point is, you should know each others strengths and each others weaknesses.  If you know your rogue partner dies quickly if disarmed, you’ll be watching for that in a match to help her out.  If your frost mage partner can’t stand being offensively dispelled, you’ll know to look for that.  The best way to up your PvP game is to duel each other and ask questions.  Duel while on a voice chat program together, if possible.

“Damn. You schooled me. How did you kill me through dispersion? Really? That does a lot of burst, eh? Can we try that again, but I’ll use my fear earlier this time?”

Communicate!

This feels basic, but it is fantastically complex.  Good 2v2 teams strike a balance between communicating ever nuance and being unable to hear each other.  At its simplest, you should both know who you’re targeting, what CC abilities to use when, and when big cool downs are used on either team.  Vent, Team-speak, the in-game voice chat program, skype, or some form of verbal communication is a MUST.  You both should talk, and you shouldn’t have to press a button to do so.  Most voice programs will let you do this, and you should explore features to make it easy for you to talk when you need to.  If you can’t read your partner’s mind yet, at least be talking!

“Who are we on?”

We’ll open on the druid, and hard switch once hits HoTs fall off.   Use your silence then and I’ll sheep the warrior.   If he’s not dead by then, I should be able to finish him with a counterspell.”

Great! Call out if you get CCed and when you’re using your trinket.”

Master all of these things, and you’ll have yourself a killer 2v2 team.   Encourage your partner to do the same, and you’ll start gaining some serious points.  Don’t get discouraged if it takes a little bit of time to start making serious gains.  If this is a new skill set for you, you’re going to be changing some habits.

If you feel like I’ve left something out, or you have a question or comment about a particular match-up, feel free to leave a comment here or email me.   Next week we’ll be talking about gear choices, talents, and keybindings!   Until then, go rack up some arena points.

© Kirei for A Gamer of Sorts Blog, 2010. | Permalink | No comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 2v2, Arena, dueling, duels, how to, PvP, shadow priests, spriest, World of Warcraft, WoW

Protective, shimmering radiance fills the air as you crouch, watching the spot the dagger-wielding rogue disappeared.  A Fear Ward is active, but your feet are numb.  You pace, reviewing your plan of action as you renew your shield. Suddenly the rogue is upon you, stunning you in place and crippling your movements.  This was expected, you reassure yourself whilst spamming the Psychic Scream button.  With only 60% of your health remaining a momentary break in the stun-lock lets you send the rogue running.  As you run the other direction to create distance, you apply Shadow Word: Pain and Devouring Plague.  You turn to Mind Flay him, but he wraps himself in a cloak of shadows and vanishes.  Typical.

Round two will begin soon, but you know you’ve taken care of the hard part.  You’ve lived, and that’s often enough.  A quick Prayer of Mending and a Renew will top your health back up; this isn’t the first time you’ve been grateful for your healing powers!  Before you can return to Shadowform, the rogue has opened up again.  Knowing that without a 15% damage reduction you’re a softer target, you disperse into a cloud of effervescent mist.  Once safely taking almost no damage as the rogue continues to stun, you retake Shadowform.  He’s triggered your Prayer of Mending, so this assault has actually returned vitality to you.  All is going according to plan.

You cancel your Dispersion and fear the rogue.  Once again, you run the other way, but this time, you turn around and blast him with Psychic Horror.  The rogue drops his daggers and cowers in terror.  You apply all of your damage over time effects, knowing even if he returns to the shadows such effects with finish him off.  Unleashing your Shadowfiend for extra damage, the ethereal demon transports itself the 20 yards to the rogue.  Whether too distracted to notice the fiend, or too concerned with the damage you’re now dealing to him, the rogue closes the distance to you and attempts another stun lock.  You accept this, knowing your DoTs are killing him while they heal you.  Too late, he notices the Shadowfiend.

As stuns hit diminished returns and you find sweet freedom.  You reapply DoTs and hit solidly with a Mind Blast.  Appropriately, you kill the rogue with a Shadow Word: Death.

This is dueling.  This is Shadow Priest PvP, Part 1.

Strategies vary by opponent, but the basic toolbox of your abilities stay the same. You should keep your Power Word: Shield up at all times, and spend as much of the fight in Shadowform as possible. You have a few very strong CC (Crowd Control) abilities: silence, fear (in the form of Psychic Scream), a cower/disarm effect (Psychic Horror), and Shackle Undead. As much as possible, these abilities should be used offensively. It is also quite possible for you to “reset” a duel by healing yourself to full and using Dispersion or Hymn of Hope to regain all of your mana. This is not an ability every class has, so if you manage to control a class for a few moments, get some distance, heal up, and not be too low on mana, usually this spells a win.

A few duels aren’t very difficult, others take some time to master.

Against Hunters, you first need to know if your opponent is Beast Mastery. This should be obvious by their exotic pet (spirit beasts, giant lava gos, that sort of thing). If they are, get your DoTs up on them and stay in their melee range. This prevents them from using some of their best attacks, and gives you the perfect opportunity to fear both them and their pet. You should do this every time fear is off cooldown. If he uses Beastial Wrath, use your disarm/cower to survive, or pop Dispersion with your DoTs up on him. This keeps you healed, and means he’s wasted a cooldown. Disarming him before going for a kill also helps, as he will be unable to use Deterrence.

Duels against Marksmen or Survival Hunters are similar, but you want to make strong use of your silence. Silencing a hunter prevents them from trapping you. Always trinket if he’s going to blow you up, and remember your disarm prevents him from using most of his damage. Use it.

Against Balance Druids, Dispel is your best friend. Dispel the Moonfire and Swarm they put on you, and dispel the Barkskin and HoTs (Heals, over Time) they use on themselves. Fear will ruin their Treants, so use it when they throw them at you. Burst them really hard, and you win. Let them burst you, and you lose. Silence and Psychic Horror should give you the edge.

Restoration Druids are at once easy and hard. If you have your DoTs up and they’re behind on HoTs, fear and then Mind Blast, Mind Flay, Silence, Shadow Word: Death should finish them. The trick is getting them to this place. Try to save your Shadowfiend for moments where you’ll need to make them fight for health, and constantly Dispel them. When you do pop the fiend, be ready to dispel Roots off him.

Feral Druids can rip you apart, and they’ll rage out of your fears. That’s okay, turning around and facing them pretty seriously ruins their damage potential. Abolish Disease is your friend, so keep it active. This is one of the few fights where Psychic Horror should be used defensively. It will not disarm the Druid (they fight with claws, after all) but it will CC them for 3 seconds. Use this to DoT, kite (read, run away) and Mind Flay them as they chase after you. They have an instant cast cyclone that will create trouble. Don’t forget to dispel HoTs, and when you’re going for a kill Silence them (even in cat form).

Against a Holy Paladin, dispel their Sacred Shield and keep your DoTs up. Try to silence them if they get low and go for the kill. Remember, if they get one heal off, they almost reset the match, so you may have to out last their considerable mana pools.

Against Retribution Paladins, silence them early. Most of their damage is holy, so while a disarm helps a little, your silence is your best tool. They can kill you through Dispersion if they pop Avenging Wrath (you’ll notice the wings), so pop it early if you need it. If you keep their damage low and yours high, you’ll win. If they bubble, Mass Dispel it if they’re going for a heal-to-full. If they’re running around, just keep yourself alive and kill them in 12 seconds. Protection Paladin duels are similar, but they’ll have more burst damage and less sustained damage. Survive the burst and you win.

Shaman duels can be long, but the same basic rules apply. Keep your DoTs up, and silence as soon as the grounding totem is used. Against an Enhancement Shaman, if you fear him and his wolves you win. Save your fear for that moment, and just as he trinkets/the fear ends, disarm him. Elemental Shamans have a lot of burst damage, so if you can Line of Sight them, do it. Try to do most of your casting (Vampiric Touch and Mind Blast) while he’s silence so he cannot interrupt you. Against a Resto Shaman you may need to kill some totems. Your wand triggers a global cooldown, so its best to get close and swing at it with a dagger, than be in range for a fear. That, followed by or right after a Psychic Horror, should spell a win.

Against a Warlock, you always want to try and fear the pet at the same time as the Warlock. Doing this early in the match can spell an easy win. Pet management is also a skill not a lot of Warlocks have. If the pet is simply on aggressive, you can pop your Shadowfiend when going for a kill and fade the pet onto your fiend. This doesn’t always work, but when it does it feels great. Dispel Shadow Ward off him, and anything off yourself other than Unstable Affliction (if he’s an Unstable Affliction Warlock). If you have a Warlock low, don’t be afraid to run away, Disperse, or just Line of Sight him and let your DoTs do the dirty work. Silence is your friend. If the warlock is Destruction, always dispel his Nether Protection asap!

Against any Warrior, make good use of your DoTs and keep your shield up. Fear is good, although he’ll break it right away. That still forces him to turn around and run for a second, and often that’s all you need to get out of a stunlock. You can disarm his Bladestorm, or you can use disarm to prevent him from using Shield Wall. Either is a strong choice.

Against a Discipline Priest, you need to fight the fear/dispel war. Your fear has a shorter cooldown, so this is very winnable. Don’t fear into his fear ward, dispel it first. Dispel everything off him, and save your cower effect and silence for when he’s low on health and without many buffs. If it turns into a mana burn war, he will win. If the other priest goes for that, try to put in some significant damage. If he’s too cocky, you win. If he goes defensive, go back to dispelling.

Rogue fights often look like what I described above. The key is, you can reset the fight, but his Cloak of Shadows can do that too. You need to live until after he’s cloaked. Don’t waste your disarm before that. DoTs and defensive play will win you this fight.

Fights against Mages are easy, unless the Mage is Frost (which they all are). Practice and get good at Shadow Word: Deathing a Polymorph. Get DoTs up on him easy, and dispel him and yourself. Pop your Shadowfiend, and don’t be afraid to dispel it as well. Silence him when going for the kill, and Mass Dispel his Iceblock and burst him down. Devouring Plague’s upfront damage is your friend, and you’ll chase him a lot and you’ll need damage while moving. Save Shadow Word: Death for the Polymorphs.

The final duel you will commonly encounter is against an Unholy Death Knight. Dueling a Frost DK looks a lot like fighting a Retribution Paladin, and Blood Death Knights are Warrior versions of us. Either fights aren’t too bad so long as we keep Abolish Disease active and silence/fear/disarm them. Unholy Death Knights are a different story.

Here’s why: Unholy Death Knights talent into a permanent pet and a way to make their diseases un-abolish-able. Anti-Magic Shell, if timed right, will also ruin our damage and absorb a poorly timed CC ability. I try for a very easy silence, and then apply all of my DoTs. While silenced, the DK will try to CC you with the ghoul. Eat that, and be ready to fear them out of the silence. During this time you should have abolish disease up. The immune to abolish effect requires  that they be death coiling you, so your silence just bought you some time. Just like a Warrior, they’ll break the fear right away (although unlike a warrior, they turn undead. You could try a shackle, and it will win you the match if it works, but usually its too risky). Psychic Horror the Death Knight before he can get his Anti-Magic Shell up. If you manage this play perfectly, burst him down and tell your friends all about it. If you do not, you’re in for a long game of kiting, Line of Sighting the Gargoyle he’s going to pop out, healing to reset (which he can do too) and dispersing with DoTs up on him. Don’t be afraid to get him low, throw up DoTs, and Disperse. This is a challenging fight.

And this, my friends, is how you duel on your priest. Do a lot of it, as its one of the best ways to get good at PvP. You’ll notice I’ve excluded duels against shadow priests. To this I reply: bring it.

© Kirei for A Gamer of Sorts Blog, 2010. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Calsong, dueling, Mind Spike, PvP, shadow priests, World of Warcraft

I’m going to start with quoting three bullets from last week, explain them even more vigorously, and then finally explore the areas where there should be rules.

1. Make sure all members are familiar with the rules.

Unfortunately, this is much harder than it sounds. You (and your officers) will often parrot people your rules, until up to a point your members are so familiar with them, they will start warning each other i.e. “Dude, we don’t do that.”

You have to make sure that the posts that explain your rules are simple, visible and accessible. Try to have a link at your rules on the front page. To give you an example from GamerOfSorts: Had your website a familiar layout, make sure to have a link to rules next to “Home/About/Guides” etc.

Take care of your presentation. Divide the text with logical breaks;

• Social Rules,
• Loot Rules,
• Raid Rules,

and so forth. Bold the important parts. Italicize the kinky emphasize. Use Bold & Underline for key sections.

Read your rules over and over, and cut down unnecessary information. Don’t bother giving out examples (have a thread for rules questions instead). Keep the word count down.

Be firm. “We ask of our members to respectfully agree with the loot rules, and should they find themselves in a position where they personally think are wronged with the loot cousnsnsns zzzz…” NO: “Respect the loot counsel’s decisions. Disagreements should be posted on X forums.” Short and effective. Your members shouldn’t have to bear through a poor attempt at 15th Century English Literature to read what they’re supposed to do.

Repeat your rules and your members privileges at every opportunity. If your raid provides free mats for enchants, repeat it after each raid. If your guild policies that members should be at the raid doors before 15 minutes, repeat it 30 minutes before the raid. Assume the best of everyone, and everyone can honestly mistake or forget. Your job is to make sure they’ll forget the less and less.

2. Don’t be afraid to enforce your rules. There should be a good reason to have a rule. If you don’t even care about enforcing a certain rule, it shouldn’t be a rule at all.

When you’re making your rules, start from the basics and forget about everything your guilds had previously. Do not make rules that are there because you had them in every other guild you were a part of.

You have to be just when enforcing your rules. A non-enjoyable part of being a Guild Leader is being the Officer of the Officers. Officers have a tendency to bend the rules to their interpretations. For example, you guild may offer mats for enchants, but only for main chars. Your officers, with access to the guild bank (presumably) may think it’s OK for them to take the mats for their alts as a reward for their hard work -you have to step up and say “No”.

There may or may not be incentives and/or rewards for Officer ranks and above. If so, make sure your members know the limit of these rewards. If not, make sure your officers know about that before they step up.

If there are clear cut rules that you’ve presented to your members and they’ve agreed upon them, you can get away with pretty much anything. There are quite a few guilds who are solely made to support the Guild Master, and that explicitly remarks the Guild Master gets the pet/mount/fluff items that drop. Is that a selfish way to play the game? Maybe. But at least the guy is open with his interests and asks for people who have no qualms about it. However, if you illusion your members into equality and fail to provide it, deliberately or not, you’ll face the wrath of your members soon enough.

3. Don’t change them at all in the early stages. Plan ahead to have sensible rules in place, listen to your first recruits’ input on rules, but keep them as they are. It’s better to stick to something and try it out then try to be flexible and have no stones set up.

I’ve explained this bit last week, but let’s open it up. Rule changes are funny little things. They come in two fashions:

• De facto changes within the guild that reflects how the previous rule’s become obsolete.
• Drastic measures taken by the Officers to cut down certain actions.

The rule changes that come from the bottom, from your members, should belong to the first group. An example would be: Your guild used to raid Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Sundays. Suddenly, you have a shortage of people on sundays. You make a public poll, and see that Thursday would be a better option. You then change the rules accordingly.

For the second example, say your guild has a rule to use flasks in progress raids. Several people slack about it, despite the measures you’ve taken. You introduce a rule to kick these people from the raid after second warning, downrank the raid (A Cataclysm feature -hint hint!) and continue the raid with 2 x 10M groups. In this example, you didn’t really change the rules in fact, but the penalty is now more punishing.

In both cases, rule changes should reflect the liquid manifestation and needs of your guild. They should also serve a specific purpose. Don’t make rules just for the sake of it: “From now on, members will pay 1k gold to guild bank each week, just in case we’ll need the guild in the future” = WTF /gquit.

Remember: If you need a rule, enforce it. If you don’t need a rule, delete it.

Closing up, here’s a nice template to give you an idea/inspire you with your rules structure:

Social Rules

• Guild-chat conduct
• Ventrilo Conduct
• Member-to-Member disputes (Outside of Gchat or Ventrilo facilities)
• Exercise of Social Rules and possible punishments

Raid Rules

• Raid days and times
• Gear / Gem / Spec / Enchant / Consumable requirements
• Informative requirements (Watching the fights, reading tactics)
• Raid chat / Ventrilo Raid channel restrictions
• AFK / Raid break rules

Loot Rules (DKP)

• Amount of DKP earned per hour / boss kill / first boss kill / start of raid-end of raid
• Minus DKP rules for punishments
• Starting bid / Overbid / Off-spec Bid rules

Loot Rules (Loot Council)

• Introduction of Council
• Loot priorities if applicable
• Loot criteria like:
• Upgrade value
• Performance
• Activity
• Outside-of-raid helps
• Solving Loot Disputes / Reporting Loot council misbehavior complaints

Officer Rules

• Officer jurisdictions and extends of power
• Loot Council Head: Responsible for ultimate decisions in LC.
• Banker: Responsible for Guild Bank management.
• Class Officer: Responsible for Recruitment and performance of its class
• Tank/Healing/DPS Officer: Responsible for Recruitment and performance of its role
• Raid Leader: Responsible for herding sheeps.
• Guild Leader: Responsible for herding sheeps that herd sheeps.
• Daily/Weekly/Monthly meetings and/or reports
• Rewards/Incentives to Officers if applicable

Miscellaneous

• Guild members’ conduct in Trade Chat/Realm Forums/Realm PuGs
• Unofficial raids policies (Alt Raids, Previous Content Raids)
• Guild bank donations
• Guild bank benefits
• Monetary (Gold) rewards and prizes
• Other niche rules

Join me next week when I explain the art of charming best players in your realm to be your personal slaves great assets to your guild!

~DKS

© Kirei for A Gamer of Sorts Blog, 2010. | Permalink | No comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: changing guild rules, DKS, dps meter, Guest Posts, guild leadership, guild rules, Guilds, starting a guild, World of Warcraft

I’ve previously expressed that I was on a journey to find a guild for Cataclysm. Let’s take a look at what constitutes a guild: A guild is congregation of several people sharing the same interest within the game.

The reasons why guilds make or break is the player-base shares different interests. Gchat and interesting persona can only carry a guild so far -even if your blood relative is in the same guild, if it doesn’t fit your needs, you will eventually want to drift apart.

This is the reason why you must have a solid foundation to build your guild upon. Take your time, plan ahead in patience. The crucial mistake Guild Leaders or Guild Applicants share is the burden of time. You feel it’s just too late! Don’t get drifted apart by this rush. Odds are, you’ve been unlucky with your current guild [or even unguilded] long enough already, that it won’t hurt to lose a week or two to thinktank for yourself.

To have a solid player-base that share the common interest, you have to emphasize on two major points:

• Rules
• Applications

You’re finding a guild, because you want to make a guild that suits your interests. Thus, your personality will play a large role in how your guild will turn out to be. Most long-running guilds have ancient traditions, usually rooted back to the Guild Leader’s niche rules when the guild was born. At the early stages, of course your guild won’t have a tradition. To develop that tradition, you have to find like-minded players, that share the same interest with you.

Rules play a large role in this. From the simple social conduct rules to convoluted loot rules, these will be the boundaries within your members will play.

• Do you like to say “Fuck” every once in a while? Is it accepted in Ventrilo/Gchat?
• Are certain words or topics banned from Gchat discussion (Such as politics/religion, I’ve even seen some guilds who don’t tolerate the use of ‘lol’ in gchat, or any Real-Life discussions for that matter. Yes, it’s true.)
• How do you distribute the loot? What method of DKP? How is Loot Council is going to decide who gets what?
• What’s the minimum raid attendance (if there is any)? What are the members’ obligations during raids?
• Are alts permitted at all? One? Two? All?
• What’s the power structure of the guild? How much power do Officers have?

Rules set in the early stages, while can be subject to change, will have uttermost importance as to shape your guild.

• Make sure all members are familiar with the rules.
• Don’t be afraid to enforce them. There should be a good reason to have a rule. If you don’t even care about enforcing a certain rule, it shouldn’t be a rule at all.
• Don’t change them at all in the early stages. Plan ahead to have sensible rules in place, listen to your first recruits’ input on rules, but keep them as they are. It’s better to stick to something and try it out then try to be flexible and have no stones set up.

The last part is crucial. Think of you as a charming casanova, and your guild/guild members as the hot girl next door. You want to be charming, dazzling, charismatic and firm. You need to impress. Like Girls, guild members often appreciate their leaders trying something boldly and failing, than being undecided and sloppy. Do try and fail, if you must.

In the early stages, your guild is your’s. You’re the God, you’re the prophet. The guild is non-existant, the sync between guild members is yet to be developed, and the only thing people in your guild have in common is that somehow, you’ve managed to charm them.

Now at this part, be confident in yourself -You’ve just successfully hooked up the girl. If you were full of shit, the girl wouldn’t even get anywhere near you, so you can be sure you have some desirable qualities. Your members joined your guild with certain expectations. Just like you don’t change anything at all about yourself on a random girl’s input in the first date, you don’t change your guild a single bit in the early stage. Your members trust that you enforce over half of the rules as they join you, they join you because they liked the structure. If you start compromising now, how can they be sure you’re not going to compromise about something else that was your selling point for them?

They won’t. And they surely will lose respect, blazingly fast.

[And just like with a girl, you will eventually start compromising things and develop yourself over time, when you have a relationship with your guild members. But it's the first day/week/month still, you probably didn't even have the third raid sex yet, be patient, bear the insults, the remarks, the complaints.

People should like you and your guild for what it is -and if they don't, you'll lose the people that do like you and your vision, and without them, you'll find yourself as a Guild Leader of a guild you don't even like. And what was the reason you were finding a guild, again?]

Applications is another area where most guilds fail. In my experience, most guilds recruit someone because of one of the reasons:

• They desperately need a class/spec and will give a shot to anyone who has decent spelling (and even compromising the last one in some, most-depressing cases)
• They weren’t actively looking out for a certain class/spec, but holy holy shit, holy shit, the guy is awesome/full epic/ex-ensidia/actually a girl.

I’ve heard a lot of views on recruitment at the early stage, where people commonly think you should mass-invite and then weed out the weak. This often fails for a number of reasons:

• People who are genuinely of your salt, but depressed with the large number of people they do not enjoy playing with, leave over time.
• Your “Maybe I’ll kick” members invite their friends over, and even if some of their friends are good, you lose one, you lose them all.
• Your invitation profile is so bad, that you couldn’t persuade the target-audience to join you, and you have a guild-full-of-awfullness.
• Your girls are actually guys.

You have a specific vision of how you want your guild to be, right? Then why do you invite people who don’t actually fit in the profile? To kill one boss faster? At what cost?

People will often tell you not to be picky at the beginning, but once you establish yourself, weed out the weak and invite elites as you make yourself a name. I suggest you do the complete opposite: Be very, very picky in the guild, even if it means you only have five people to do Heroic FoS, and only when you already have an established guild, relax on the applications and give a shot at trials who mildly interest you.

Going back to our “I’m Mr. Sexy Pants, Guild is Hot Chick” analogy, mass-inviting early on is like the guy who hits on every girl who may or may not have a pretty face. You might be the most charming guy ever, but if you set your standards low, that’ll be the only thing you get. Vice versa, even if you aren’t the Mr. Charms, if you keep your standards high and don’t compromise, girls will start thinking what you do have that you don’t even give a crap about the allegedly most beautiful girl in town.

Remember: You want people to want you. Be the belle de la balle. If you have five members, arrange Heroic runs. If you have 10+, do some 10 men raids. If you have a full out guild, then bathe in the joy of 25 men.

Doing 25 men raids is not your priority -if it was, you could simply join a VoA PuG. Doing 25 men with good people (Or if you actually want a guild for 10-mens only, then so be it) is your goal. But don’t mistake it for your priority. Your priority is a good guild, and only you know what it means a good guild, so sell yourself and your vision, and be firm in them.

It might be glaringly obvious, but you should handle all applications at the beginning personally, talk with people, talk with their current/ex guild, chat on Ventrilo, dig in deep. Even long after your guild has been established, and certain officers [that you trust with the guild's culture and tradition] are looking at the applications, view their application and listen to why your officers want to invite this fella before actually inviting them over.

You’re building a guild to play with pro people/friendly people/people who will lick your ass/girls, and you should not compromise from it, least you’ll lose your interest in the guild and either the guild will fall apart, or you’ll be forced to leave and have officers grab the reins to take the guild to a direction you didn’t want it to take.

Until next week,

~DKS

DPS Meter

© Kirei for A Gamer of Sorts Blog, 2010. | Permalink | No comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: cataclysm, DKS, dps meter, Guest Posts, guild, guild leader, World of Warcraft, WoW

I’m very much a result-oriented person. As a Magic: The Gathering tournament player, I’ve learned being forced into making choices to maximize your results. For those who don’t know, in MTG, you have a 60 cards deck, that you build from a rather large pool of cards. So, every addition to your deck is absence of another, and thus your choices must be well-prepared in advance and you have to justify every card you put in.

Enter WoW.

When I was 14, I was a member of a long-aged Clan that also had a WoW Guild. The guild wasn’t a tremendous success, as we were wiping on ZG like there was no tomorrow. The lack of progress was getting to everyone’s nerves, and one day, officers canceled the raid because they were fed up with it. Being the zealous rebel-upstart I was, I anounced I was going to lead the raid (as a member) and with my thin, adolescent voice cracking on the TeamSpeak, I’ve led the guild to its first Bloodlord kill.

Ever since, delibarately or not, I’ve found myself in the position of officer or raid leader in almost every guild I was a part of. But I have to admit, leading herds to a bosskill has been one of my favourite passtimes in WoW.

In guilds that I was a raid leader, I often had two kinds of guild leaders: The ones who were obsessed with the guild being theirs and lacked me the support on items I demanded; and the nice, kind ones that failed to support me on harsher rules I needed. I’ve had to put up with Warlocks in one guild, where the drama ensued after we found out one of the Warlocks didn’t even have First Aid.

Just as I was about to kick the player from raid after his “Lol, I Life Drain it’s ok lolol”, Warlocks CL spoke up: “I don’t have FA either, and I see no point to it.”

It’s like teaching people to stand on their two feet, alas. Eventually, both the member and the class leader leveled up their FA after much spam from the guild (and a lack of healing from healers).

This is why I’ve joined numerous guilds that were just starting off, as to establish myself as a core member, to have a word that counted. Succesful as were my campaigns and our progress (Three times in BC I’ve picked up a Karazhan guild and brought it to MH’s steps), the guild leaders who grabbed the T5/6 would often hop off to an established guild, and before I could say anything, the guilds would collapse.

I’m not going to talk about the Hardcore guilds I’ve been just a member of, they were so despicable… Arg.

I see where I’ve failed now. It’s been five years now, and still I don’t have a guild that I enjoy the company and the gaming I crave. I wanted to not think about guild a lot, to cater the big and small problems that popped up everyday.

I’ve decided to build a succesful guild that’s intended to storm the Cataclysm Hardmode right out of the box.

It’s not an easy undertaking, certainly. But I’m no stranger to officer room discussions, neither to the hidden mechanics that make guilds work. And I’m willing to go the extra mile to get what I want. Remember the bit I said how I was result-oriented? I certainly know what I want, and I have a good idea how to get it. This is why, instead of just signing a charter and wishing for the best, I’m having massive preparations to have a solid structure ready.

Back when Ensidia moved over to Tarren Mill, my home-server, the elitist bunch of our guild was discussing their gear and talents and how they were sub-optimal. In the past, in my crave for all kinds of theorycrafting, I had read Ensidia/Nihilum guides and disagreed on certain aspects as well. But I didn’t fool myself to remember that the most important thing you can min-max is the communication and dedication in the guild.

There goes a saying, if you piss hard enough, you can pierce a mountain. Maybe some of the talents and rotations of Ensidia was indeed, suboptimal. Maybe it worked for them, maybe it gave them a couple of percentage less damage. Still, their exploits are speak for themselves, and just being able to execute strategies dedicatedly, and having a good communication, they’ve acheived what they’ve acheived. This sort of dedication is what I’m shooting for.

I intend this blog as to be my weekly output for my preparations I’m doing in anticipation of Cataclysm. I hope that my blog will help officers and guild leaders better handle the problems they’re facing and give them some insight. Likewise, I’m looking forward to discussions in comments to improve myself. And of course, if you’re an European (Horde) reader who’s genuinely interested in the idea, I would love to chat with you.

As for the topics themselves, I’ve got a good bit of ideas, but I’m open to suggestions in case you want me to touch on a specific topic.

Until next time!

~DKS

http://dpsmeter.blogspot.com

© Kirei for A Gamer of Sorts Blog, 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: cataclysm, DKS, dps meter, Guest Posts, guild, guild leaders, World of Warcraft, WoW

Uh it’s been a long week for me . Soz for the slacking…I’m back on track though, so here’s today’s post.

Since season eight got implemented, I got quite a few upgrades for my gear. I got the wrathful neck, back, bracers and boots in the first weeks of the patch, I got my honored ICC rep ring <3, relentless shoulders , wrathful offhand and I think that’s about it. I’m around 2.3k arena points and I think I’m saving for the expensive main hand weapon , the one that costs 3.9k arena points and you need a rating of 2.2k or above in the 3v3 or 5v5 bracket. Not sure if it’s possible though. I mean I’m pretty undergeared at the moment and even if we’re low on rating we only meet like full relentless geared people. I’m still running around with 2 furious parts + titan-forged leggs… sigh

Anyhow…

In the 2v2 bracket I’m running as destruction with a resto druid, and it’s going quite well ( actually I’m running as destruction in all brackets). We are both undergeared, by… A LOT and we are playing at around 2000 rating.

In the 3v3 bracket, I’m playing a Destro Lock, Rogue , Resto Druid setup and we are around 2000 rating. Besides the fact that, again… we are undergeared … it’s going pretty smooth and I have high expectations from this bracket.

5v5… This is my first active team, there’s like 10 people in the team so the setup always changes. If I were to pick a 5 man dream-combo, I’d go for Discipline priest, Restoration Druid, Enhancement Shaman, Arms Warrior and Destruction warlock.

With this setup we won like 12 matches in a row at around 2000 matchmaking. The team is at around 2000 rating but I’m low with my personal rating since I haven’t played too many matches.

As a next post, I’ll be doing a ,,How I play lock in 2v2”.

Keep in mind that I am not a ,,Pro” with the warlock class.

I’ll be giving tactics, tips on how I play the setup, tricks that I use versus other setups and so on ( note the fact that I use ,, how I play the class” and not ,,how TO play the class”) So… be sure to check the blog every now and then, for updates.

If you have questions, any questions you can find me online on Thebanned on Sylvanas-EU, or just simply use the comment section bellow.

Until next time, I bid you Farewell.

Thebanned

Oh… as a side note I might be joining you alliance bastards soon.

© Kirei for A Gamer of Sorts Blog, 2010. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 2v2, 3v3, 5v5, Arena, Gear, News, PvP, Updates, Warlock, WoW, Wrathful

PvP = Player versus Player (also known as ,,I kill you”)

So, why did I quit PvE?

Well, back in Burning Crusade and even vanilla WoW, I was one of those hardcore PvE fans. Wasting nights over nights wiping my butt off trying to fulfill my destiny, clearing the World (of Warcraft) from the likes of Illidan and ,,friends”….yeah, epic times. So, what stopped me from pursuing WoW villains?

When Wrath of The Lich King came out I was in my last year of high school so I could only play WoW casually.

There I was, a couple of months into the new patch, looking at my level 70 warlock and warrior, both geared Black Temple and Mount Hyjal-wise, asking myself what to do.

So, what did I do?

Deleted the characters, canceled my payment, changed my pass to something I would never remember, got myself a new mail and started a new life… on another account. Why did I do that? I honestly have no clue. I felt like I wanted to start all over again, and so I did.

I started my new journey through Azeroth and Kalimdor on my shiny new account on a brand new, yeah you guessed it, Warlock…

On 13-06-2009 Thebanned dings 80.

As months went by, I found myself unwilling to invest as much time in WoW as I once used to. So, the decision was made… PvE no moar. PvP ftw. But I guess time wasn’t the only reason why I quit PvE. I know I was around level 75 when I first set foot in Dalaran and while discovering the likes of it I would stop every now and then to inspect random people. Not only were they full epic, but more than half of ‘em were equipped in ,,tier 263″.

Has PvE really become that easy? Nah, I trust Blizzard with scripting bosses, they’ve always kept encounters as challenging as they could.  …   To be honest they made WoW way too casual. I mean , I know you still need to put alot of effort to be one of the best, but the random casual player has access to too much gear. Where are the times when a Bloodfang rogue would strike fear into the hearts of his foes? Where are the times when a warlock with Malefic Raiment would make half of Shattrah City /amazed? Yeah I miss those times. I liked showing off. <3. So I guess that’s why I decided I should start PvP. I can’t find PvE as rewarding as it used to be.

I was damn wrong when I thought PvP took less time than PvE…

I started grinding PvP gear and, of course, trying to learn the basics of warlock PvP. Battlegrounds after battlegrounds, day after day , night after night, I was the squishy  warlock that every melee would target ( /sigh ). But as weeks went by, my waiting was slowly being rewarded. Now that my gear was molding into shape, I had one more issue to solve … Skill anyone? After weeks of ganking people throughout Northrend and some serious Durotar dueling, I decided I was ready for arenas.

,,Lf 2 vs 2 arena team mate, I’m a skilled and decently geared warlock, whisper me for more info”

A player of the priest class whispered me and so my journey through arenas began.

Let me say that, dueling and 1 vs 1 PvP is nothing compared to arena PvP. It took me a while to get used to it, but my fast learning skill + my no-lifer play style got me to ,,master” (I’m your average skilled player, far from mastering any class… nah, this is me being modest :P) the warlock class in no-time and even though we were facing opponents that outgeared us by far, we were doing fine.

On 22-12-2009 we got ourselves to 1800 rating.

As my gear was getting better and better I started playing other brackets as well. At the end of season 7, my first arena season, I was around 1800 rating in all brackets ( 2vs2, 3vs3 and 5vs5 ).

It also seems that I’ve been awarded with the Challenger title at the end of this season.  /flex (even though that’s pretty easy to achieve :P).

Anyhow I’m getting up to date with the gear this season and definitely going for a better title.  So, wish me luck, I’ll need it.

© Kirei for A Gamer of Sorts Blog, 2010. | Permalink | No comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Illidan, Level 80, PvE, PvP, Thebanned, Warlock PvE, Warlock PvP, WoW, WoW PvE, WoW PvP

Most players that don’t play the class themselves consider the warlock class to be unfair, over-powered, un-balanced…. But, is that really true? Being a warlock player myself I would by all means disagree. So, to shed some light on the topic let’s take a quick look on the most frequently used PvP specs, shall we?

Before discussing about the specs, a key aspect of the warlock everyday PvP spec needs some attention. The most important talent of the warlock class is Soul Link. This buffs your survivability and it’s a mandatory talent for every PvP spec. Sadly, this makes you pretty pet dependant. The 20% damage reduction, is … Huge. Without this there is no chance for you to ever ,,go pro” when it comes to warlock PvP. So, keep an eye on your pets my fellow warlock players cause if it dies…. You will most likely join it soon. /Mourn

Destruction

Well this is the spec that everyone whines about… Let’s discuss the ,,up’s” and ,,downs” of playing the fire spec. What’s good about this spec? Huge burst of damage and when I say huge, man I mean HUGE with double the font size and bold on top of that.

Wall of text inc, bare with me wow lovers …

Let me explain: You’re a 23k health Lazor chicken (also known as Boomkin, Chicken of doom, CluckCluckBoom, or simply Owl).So, you’re flying around, farming your daily flowers and suddenly you stumble upon a warlock with around 24% of its overall health left. You decide you should gank this poor soul and so it begins. Jumping out of your Crow form with your mighty Moonfire spam surely looks frightening but no, not for this warlock. In a moment of panic he unleashes a mighty Death Coil upon you followed by wisely put together crowd control + damage combo and in the following second you find yourself spam clicking the ,,release spirit” button. As you browse through your combat log trying to find the name of the rogue that ambushed you, you notice that there was no such thing involved, but you do see that the warlock basically 3 shotted your feathery ass. Full of anger and powered by the overwhelming nerd rage within you, you head bash an alt + tab combination, google random warlock forums and start flaming everything and everyone, passing around random insults regarding the ,,Overpowerness” of the warlock class.

Now let’s generalize. It’s the people that fail at playing their class that flame and call other classes Op.

Well, Mr. QQ person, I think you did a mistake there in that duel, don’t you think? I think you used vanish too early.  ,,NO!!!!  WARLOCKS ARE DAMN OP MAN, I HATE THEM I HATE EM! NERF LOCKS!!!!”.

Oh, and we also have the more peaceful QQ’ers…. You know the type …  ,,Man I lagged …. Bad isp”. Come on, you know them… We all have one inside us. <3.

Now getting back to the main topic, burst of damage is one of the most important assets of the destruction spec also the Nether Protection buff provides a huge survivability against caster classes. All good so far, but what does the destruction spec lack? Survivability … You are quite vulnerable to melee classes and even caster classes could easily render you useless, since Nether Protection can be dispelled, purged and even spell stolen.

Affliction

My favorite spec <3 , dot and run away like a little girl matches my style … Maybe that came out wrong … Anyways, this spec provides a good damage output , while having a decent survivability and a huge amount of maneuverability. All this comes however at a pricy cost … the lack of damage burst…

Demonology

This spec is definitively epic…epic…epic. It has huge survivability, huge maneuverability, huge damage output, it has burst, static damage everything you could possibly ask for. Three words: pure epic ownage. But, yeah… there is a but. It’s a cooldown dependent spec… yes ,,I WIN” button exists. Every 3 minutes you pawn, but you can /afk between cooldowns cause the only weapon worth mentioning that you have besides Metamorphosis is an angry steroid fed pet, yes, yes it’s the Felguard <3.

In my opinion: Affli > Destro > Demo. It’s just a personal preference though. All three specs are PvP viable. It’s just a matter of personal play style.

So what makes the warlock class so imba? Simple. The player behind the keyboard. Just like every other class. Getting owned by warlocks? Reroll one, learn it and find out how to render it useless. Only after you’ve discovered the weaknesses of every class in the game will you be ready for hardcore PvP.

My point?

No class is Op.

Or maybe just mages … but that’s another topic  ^_^

Peace.

Thebanned

© Kirei for A Gamer of Sorts Blog, 2010. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: PvP, Warlock, Warlock PvP, Warlock Talents, World of Warcraft, WoW

Let’s give a warm welcome to Thebanned. He’s from Romania and plays on the Sylvanas (EU) server. He’s into arenas and has hit 1.8k rating. He’s hoping to go for a title in the upcoming season. Be sure to wish him luck!

Scary isn’t he? He looks like every Warlock that has destroyed my poor little Spriest before I could blink. Wait.. why am I letting him onto my blog?!

He’ll begin posting in about a week on life as a Warlock and other random WoW related things. Stay tuned for his About page, due to be up in the next day or two.

Here’s a link to his armory. O.o Pink Battle Bunny Crew? Oh my. Death from pink.

In case you were wondering, I’m still on the lookout for WoW bloggers! So keep sending me your work, I love reading it!

© Kirei for A Gamer of Sorts Blog, 2010. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: General - WoW, guest post, new writer, PvP, Warlock, World of Warcraft

Being that I have shiny keys syndrome… I get distracted easily. I have stopped playing WoW and have been playing other games and writing about them. With such a major change I feel as though I have disappointed or lost a few readers. Understandably of course. So I am looking for a WoW blogger to keep up the interest. Let me get into more of the details.

I’m looking for:

A class oriented poster. Alts can be fun, and I myself have posted about my alts every so often, but I need a focused blogger. I would prefer a Shadow Priest since that was what I posted and focused on. I am open to other classes though.

A blogger that will post at least once a week. I don’t expect a post a day, or even two a week. I do, however, expect you to post and keep active. That can be one big post or a bunch of little posts throughout the week.

A blogger that will be consistent. I want to be able to rely on you to get those posts out.

A blogger that can correct their own grammar and spelling. I’ll be honest. I have a hard enough time correcting my own I don’t want to proof read and correct everything you send me.

This is not a paid position. I wish I could pay you, but I can’t. My blog does not make any money. I don’t have ads up. Hosting, newsletter fees, domain fees, and anything else comes out of my own pocket.

What I offer is a site that is already getting traffic as a place for you to get your name and writing out there. A self hosted site that already has an audience. GamerofSorts.com has a Google page rank of 2 and an Alexa Rank of 844,117. It’s not high, but as you can see I do get a little bit of traffic.

If you are interested email me at GamerKirei@gmail.com with an example of your work (more than one if you have it), a realistic amount of posts you can do a week, a link to your blog (if you have one), any questions you may have (I like questions ) and a little bit about yourself. Afterall, we’ll be in essence working together and I want to get to know you!

You can also use our contact form. Link is at the top of this page.

© Kirei for A Gamer of Sorts Blog, 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Blog, guest post, World of Warcraft