Guest Post: Loot Differences Hurt the 10-Man Guild

This post was written by a long-time reader and commenter, Kayeri, who is active on many Druid blogs. She writes now about a concern that affects her personally, and many others.

This is something that has occurred to me from time to time in various forms and I’ve even seen it referred to on some of the many blogs I read, without ever addressing it directly. So Bell has generously allowed me to air my concerns and perhaps we’ll get back some ideas worth thinking over. What really catalyzed this post was a frustrated comment made the other night by our guild’s best tank, a protection paladin, before she logged for the night.

“Without 25’s I can’t improve my character and if I can’t improve my character, why play the game?” This concerned me deeply, because in the year I have known her, I have never once seen her express such intense frustration. If someone like this can be driven to that level of frustration, it’s time to get this out in the open and talk about it.

When Blizz first announced it was implementing the dual 10/25 man tracks for raiding, I was thrilled. I’d always felt a sense of incompletion in Burning Crusade as my guild wasn’t (and isn’t) large enough to do the 25-man content and complete the story arc of that expansion. That was not going to happen in Lich King… hurrah for Blizz! Then they told us 25-man loot would be better than 10-man. I shrugged it off at the time, because undoubtedly 25-man content would be more difficult than 10-man. I was still riding the high from being able to do the entire expansion storyline.

Well, the more difficult encounters at 25-man never really happened. The encounters, for the most part, are on par in difficulty. Yes, there can be slightly different mechanics or additional adds thrown in for the larger raid, but in overall difficulty per player, IE how hard each player works during each boss fight, is not significantly different in 10 and 25. With the exceptions of Patchwerk and possibly Kel’thuzad, I really am working no harder in a 25-man than in a 10-man.

So why the loot difference? Encounter difficulty is the crux for me. Better loot should be rewarded for more difficult encounters which means I should be working harder in 25-man encounters than 10-man to earn that loot. It is definitely more difficult to coordinate 25 people than 10. That’s a given. Herding 25 cats is obviously harder than herding 10. But is there any other reason? During the encounter, you’re doing pretty equivalent work whether its 10 or 25. Is that what Blizz intended with the dual raid track? I don’t know, honestly.

The effects on the 10-man raid guild are not good. People leave because they can’t get top flight gear. The last 4-6 weeks have seen the largest population drop we’ve ever experienced. People, including me, have started pugging more to get better gear. That means less time working together and the guild’s teamwork has suffered for it. Also, 10-man guilds are recommended as ‘gear-up-and-move-on” guilds, and that’s not what we want to be. Worst of all, it has been seen in general chat when assembling pug raids on our server, “Don’t bother psting me if you’re in that 10-man Naxx crap!” It’s not frequent, but it is happening.

So is there a way to balance things so the 10-man track can access the gear they need to be the best they can be without reversing course and hurting the 25? The one thing we all have in common is we want to be the best player/raider we can be. To do that, we all need the best gear we can get our hands on. 10-man raiding guilds are handicapped in that by size alone. And the plain fact is, I love my guild. I’ve cultivated genuine friendships there. I’ve hosted guildies in my home and visited other in theirs. It’s an atmosphere I feel comfortable in and that matches my needs. I don’t want to leave and I won’t. If there is a balance point out there, I’d love to find it, because I want to enjoy my guild AND have the best gear I can get my mitts on.

Guest Post: The Job of a Raiding Moonkin

Macbook is a raiding moonkin on the server Stormscale US. You can read about his journey as a moonkin over at his blog, Moonkin.

If you're reading this, you must be a little interested on being a PvE moonkin. That's fair, though, because the latest patch with new talents and the WoTLK expansion have made moonkins a very viable source of raid buffs, single-target DPS, and AoEing.

Most people underestimate the difficulty of raiding as a Moonkin. They say, all Moonkins have to do is push 3 buttons, what else? I've never heard a statement more false than that one.

For starters, the main job of a moonkin is to provide its buff to the entire raid. Since the patch, your Aura of 5% crit now affects the entire raid group, and if you specced in Improved Moonkin Aura (which I believe every raiding Moonkin should), you're also throwing an extra 3% spell haste to your raid, which may not sound like much, but is actually huge. Your Insect Swarm will decrease the chance of the enemy to hit the tank by 3%, and your Earth & Moon talent will basically increase the DPS of the casters in the raid by 13%. As you can see, many of your talents really help the raid out, and you should have most or all them even if they don't directly increase your DPS.

Since the patch, I've seen a lot more moonkins floating around my server, probably because resto gear with a balance talent spec is almost as good as just having balance gear. Even with all the increase in Moonkins on my server, and even going up against Moonkins in better gear than me, I am still putting out more DPS. Why? I know my role, and I am specced appropriately for it.

99% of raid leaders have moonkins for single-target DPS, not AoE. If your guild is any good, you're not having problems downing trash, its the bosses that are hindering you. Still, I see moonkins who spec points in improved AoE spell damage, which doesn't affect your single-target DPS. I see moonkins with weird casting rotations that are not mana-efficient, meaning they have to pop their innervate on themselves, instead of giving it to a healer.

The key word in balance druid is, well, balance. You need to find the middle ground between having high DPS (aka Boomkin/Doomkin), and still helping the raid out substantially. For example, dotting Moonfire on a boss doesn't really help the raid out, and isn't really mana efficient. My casting rotation involves simply keeping Insect Swarm up, and spamming Starfire, and then rinsing and repeating. Its simple, yet very high-dps and very mana efficient. I never run out of mana even on 5-10 minute fights -- if I get low, I pop a Mana potion on myself and save the innervate for a healer.

You should always make sure to have enough mana to battle rez someone as soon as its needed, and obviously always carry the appropriate reagents. In fact, if you get the Glyph of Unburdened Rebirth, you never even have to worry about carrying the seeds for your BR, which cleared up 2 slots in my bags.

Anyways, this was a pretty large overview, but in the grand spectrum of being a raiding moonkin. I usually manage to stay within the top 3 of the damage meters in my 25-man raids, even while using up tons of mana on Battle Rezzing and Innervating healers. Make sure you build your talent tree on something that you are comfortable with, but always make sure to realize your primary roles. In most cases, AoE should come secondary, so points in AoE talents or buffing existing ones are essentially wasted, in my opinion.

Thanks for the opportunity to post here, and hope you enjoyed it!

Macbook

Macbook blogs about being a moonkin, and he keeps a Moonkin blog.