Guild FAQ Archive

The Group Loot rolling system in place by Blizzard isn’t horrible, but it has some major shortcomings. One of which is the player’s own definition for the options presented to them. Blizzard has set aside Need, Greed, and Pass.

Working backwards, Pass is fairly straightforward in that you are essentially saying you don’t want the item. The game mindset has also adopted “you don’t want the item yet” so that an Enchanter can work their mojo. The players aren’t really passing on the item, they’re just not interested in it’s current state…

Greed is even more straightforward. The drop represents a financial return, be it vendored or more likely, sold in the Auction House. However, because of the adoption of the Enchanter-based change in the definition of Pass, Greed has adopted another definition of what an Enchanter should choose when it is their duty to dispose of the item. The trustworthy Enchanters aren’t merely going to pocket the item and vendor it…

And then there’s Need. There are two levels of need, which is a shortcoming of this system: Need and Want. We should be all fairly clear on the Need definition — being that primal drool-inducing state where we imediately discard whatever crap item we used to have occupying that slot in order to embrace this jewel from the heavens…

It’s the other use of Need that we’re not too unified on. When they only Want something, most players in a PUG will roll Need, or at least ask the group before doing so, if they’re more polite. However, in guild, there’s a tendency to roll Greed instead, often against the enchanter. Well, that is one way of saying that you don’t Need the item, but statistically speaking, you’re shafting everyone else…

Roll #1: 50% Want vs. 50% Enchanter.
Roll #2: 20% each (5-man), 10% each (10-man), etc.

Assuming the Greed/Want roll failed, the Enchanter d/e’s the item, and everyone rolls. Overall, the Want has a 35% chance to win something (assuming a 5-man), while everyone else only has a 16.25% chance to win the shard. That’s not fair to the others… so what if he doesn’t roll on the shard? Well, that first roll still counts as 25%, leaving only 18.75% to the other 4. These odds are even harsher in a 10-man group: 30% vs. 7% each, or 25% vs. 8.33% each, respectively. So, no matter what, if you roll Greed for an item you Want, you’re shafting the rest of your team.

The counter argument is that if you roll Need instead, then you have a 100% chance to get the item, and the rest of the team has no chance at all. Good! At least you could use it, even if it’s only something to rub in peanut butter and parade around in the basement… uhm. Yeah.

The way PUGs deal is asking first. We try to set up our looting rules so everyone just kinda “knows” what is going to happen, and that the asking, and the “approval” is implied. To make it “fair” to the rest of the team, we do consider it a Need. You could avoid the ramifications of needing something, which currently is nothing more than Loot List bragging rights (shut up, Necro), by hitting Pass, but then you have to watch as your beautiful peanut butter baby is sharded and some fat cow with a shield walks off with its remains…

In short (too late): You want? You need!

There’s a tie for the Friday Night Fight. This isn’t the first time the polls have had ties either. It’s starting to happen quite frequently. We can either wait for more votes, go for a tiebreaker, or we can arbitrarily pick one (or by some rule, like the hardest or easiest or whatever). We don’t really have a guild position on instance ties…

There has also been some reservation about joining Instances by those who didn’t get what they wanted… Although it is understandable that some may really need to do LBRS and UD Strat wins, that they really don’t want to go there, or don’t think they’re up to it, that they might not sign up, and that is any member’s perogative.

I think it has more to do with the pending expansion. Players would rather level alts and get set for the rush and excitement of the Burning Crusade rather than grind reputation or visit Scholomance again (hey, I’m leveling Kurdt). There are exciting rewards possible, but the Beta rumormill has shown so many juicy items available just above 60 that it’s hard to try getting anything better for your character right now if you’ll replace it by the end of January.

However, I’ve heard many reports that some classes and class-types, particularly healers, will not have quite the selection in the expansion. Many are saying that the natural raid-instance progression will continue to be necessary, since making headway in the 70-level instances and raids is proving very difficult without Tier2+ (that’s from Blackwing Lair, AQ40, and Naxxramas) or equivalent gear (gained along the way to 70). As a result, and as part of the guild’s attempt to “do everything”, we have developed the HFC Progression Page (now featured in the side navigation). This page shows the instances we’ve been in, completed, and have yet to complete, in order of progression difficulty. World events are not listed, although we may list them later.

And lastly, there are partial instance guides for Sunken Temple and Blackrock Depths for the quickly-approaching-60 group of mid-level characters.

Patch 2.0: Windfury and rockbiter at the same time? Maybe the enhancement tree isn’t as pointless as I thought….

Okay, let me dispense with my personal bias and own up to my own whiney behavior as related to the enhancement tree for shaman talents… I thought it was going to be the most awesome thing ever to be able to run into a fight with a 2H weapon sporting a healthy windfury buff and lots of strength/agility gear. For a short while there it was but as other players gained more power from their own talent trees I couldn’t blindly fly into a melee situation and hope to prevail (or even live). I think this is a good thing because you have to learn how to use your talents and spells rather than simply click and auto-strike, dropping a shock every once in awhile. But to me, the enhancement tree seemed to cost too many talent points and provide too little reward or leave too few talent points left over for totem and spell talents. But still, melee is fun.

The new classes of shamans in the guild seemed to have learned this much sooner than I and are currently having fun with their ‘toons in dungeons and on quests, showing admirable maturity and understanding of the class. It won’t be long before I’ll be asking Maanae, for example, how to get some part of the class tweaked for certain effects. The mere fact that I’ve spent over 200gold all told to re-spec Ungulataur over and again tells you that I love the shaman but I’m never truly comfortable with my build.

Well, all bets are off with the next patch and I don’t mean the BC expansion pack. Guess what, dual-wielding is on the test realms right now. Yes. Dual-Wielding. For shamans. It will only be available as a talent point in the restructured talent trees (no, I doubt it will be on the Restoration tree ) but I have the feeling that I will need to reconsider my recent scoffing at the enhancement tree as this seems like a part of Blizzard’s overhaul of player balance in PVP. So to those considering the Enhancement tree, please do it and have fun with it and ignore my bitterness about the whole utility of it. Changes are coming that will make me eat my words (at least I hope so) but most importantly, we’re not a guild that tells people how they need to play their character. I feel like I’ve crossed that line a few times between advice and condescention. Spec the way YOU want to play and teach me, the old stuck-up battlecow, a thing or three about how to play the class. What weapon type and buff works best in the main hand? What off-hand weapon buff is better in what situation? These are just a few things that we get to figure out when the patch drops. With two 1H epic weapons in my inventory, I’m sure glad I held off on spending the big Gs to enchant them.

Congrats to everyone involved with downing Drakk. Even though we didn’t get to play with our new kiting strategy, the quick-thinking and fast reactions of the hunters kept him busy long enough for the rest of us to take out his guards before focusing on the big conflag-spamming pussycat himself. Greater fire resist and smart players saved the day. I think we also found that even shamans that aren’t full Resto-spec can be useful. It was a helluva fun way to get some pretty decent drops, complete some quests, and spend some quality raid time with a great guild.

So if Patch 2.0 hands shamans an undeserved but completely welcome cookie for their enhancement-tree loving selves, I may have to come full-circle back to the tree that started it all. I for one, having eaten my words, can’t wait.

We have several new guildies, so please welcome them all. Among them are Codeine and Malacrus, but there are several others that I cannot recall offhand…

For all members, new and old, make sure you have made a login in both the forums (where we hold several discussions and where the high and mid level instance votes live) and the scheduler (so you can sign up for instances in advance so we know who and how many are interested in a particular run).

We have a loose guideline for the sorts of events we run on a weekly basis, the most common of which:

• Monday Farming Runs: where we run mid-to-high level instances that are easy to do in a farming fashion for gold, reputation, or other similar objectives, such as BRD, LBRS, or Scholo.
• Wednesday’s Mid Night: a mid-level instance, decided around midnight each Monday based upon the votes in the forums, ranging from Razorfen Kraul up to Maraudon, with a current emphasis on Scarlet Monastary, since that’s where the bulk of our midlevel members are interested in.
• Friday Night Fight: the big instance of the week, for level 58 or higher characters. Our current progression is to the final boss of UBRS, General Drakkisath. This instance is also decided by voting in the forums.

So, once again, welcome!

Over the past couple of months, we have been running several mid-level instances, ranging from Razorfen Kraul to Zul’Farrak for our mid-level guildies. This has been mostly an on-demand system so far, with nothing particularly organized or scheduled.

In order to help accustom these players to the way our democratic instance decisions and signups work, we have created a new poll in the forums to let people indicate which mid-level instance they are most interested in visiting. You can vote for mid-level instances, and weekly, these votes will be used to create a scheduled event.

To participate in the votes, you will need to create a login for the forums, and to sign up once the instance is decided upon, you will need to create a profile in the scheduler. Good luck!