Our officers met over this designation and decided on the following criteria.
For those who want to be considered as regular end game raiders, these two designations exist to help captains pick out substitute team members quickly and easily. To attain these rankings, however, you must at the very least have the mandatory addons, which at this point are Ventrilo, and Omen2. The recommended addons are Deadly Boss Mods, and Group Calendar. There are lots of other helpful addons, but this is now our official list; please contact an officer if you are having trouble with installs.
In terms of your rough gear scoring, we use the web page be.imba.hu ; this ranking software will quickly provide a score for those who wonder how their gear stacks up. Your Imba score appears near the graph of instances you are eligible to enter; and an Imba Score of 125 is mandatory for Raider membership.
You must run instances under a captain and that captain must then recommend your name to myself or to Aniscoria, the personnel officer; for final checking and promotion of your rank.
These three requirements; addons, gear score, and captain's recommendation, are all simple criteria we are going to use from now on for the Raider rank.
Veteran Raiders are those with the following additional statistics;
Gear Score must be at or above 200, in imba;
and you must have cleared both Kara, and Gruuls.
Any team captain may then make a recommendation that your rank be promoted to Veteran Raider.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Beginners Karazhan Team, 0727 and 0728
This team of Massacre members and random pugged chars was able to clear through Prince last night; and we could have done more if we hadn't run out of time. Along for their first real runs ever were
Thorthor, hunter
Loenwolf, rogue
Cathalii, priest
Veracity, shaman
and pugged from the crowd were newer members
Beotchsquach, priestess
Tagon, hunter
Tomatoned, Warrior
Newer members came out of it with at least one item, and in Thorthor's case, a slew of drops for his hunter. Throwing together these pugs on Sundays is going to be my consistent practice now, since it quickly gears these new members for participation in Kara runs and beyond; brand new 70s can run through Kara with an experienced team and gain entire sets of gear in one night. These runs accomplish more for me than the 'badge runs' and helps us attain our goals in Gruuls and Mags. Please feel free to use the pug folks identified above, as well as the chars from The Elite who ran with us, like Tagon, Warthelm(pally healer) (Dragonsdeaths alt) and Sithadan(warlock) (alt is holy priest, Alters). Expanding the useful group of our available healers and tanks can't but help our later efforts.
Thorthor, hunter
Loenwolf, rogue
Cathalii, priest
Veracity, shaman
and pugged from the crowd were newer members
Beotchsquach, priestess
Tagon, hunter
Tomatoned, Warrior
Newer members came out of it with at least one item, and in Thorthor's case, a slew of drops for his hunter. Throwing together these pugs on Sundays is going to be my consistent practice now, since it quickly gears these new members for participation in Kara runs and beyond; brand new 70s can run through Kara with an experienced team and gain entire sets of gear in one night. These runs accomplish more for me than the 'badge runs' and helps us attain our goals in Gruuls and Mags. Please feel free to use the pug folks identified above, as well as the chars from The Elite who ran with us, like Tagon, Warthelm(pally healer) (Dragonsdeaths alt) and Sithadan(warlock) (alt is holy priest, Alters). Expanding the useful group of our available healers and tanks can't but help our later efforts.
Friday, July 25, 2008
Karazhan, Blue Team July 24
With a brand new team composed of myself as a healer, we actually went through to chess event with only two healers total (Kokoro and myself) and managed to drop Netherspite, Illhoof, and Nightbane; Prince, we did with only Nistagmus and myself for most of the fight, healing the entire group! Kokoro died from enfeeble and Shadow Nova in the first few minutes, and Nist and I with a combined total of a bit over +1200 hps kept the entire group up; we lost Boramire at one point as the OT, due again to Shadow Nova and a really rough placement on an infernal that landed right between us, and Prince; but we succeeded, which was bloody amazing.
We also took through three new members; Apollock, Tryphosa, and Tamron. Each of them were able to experience Kara for the first time; Boramire was able to make it through to Prince as his own first. Apollock received three new epic pieces, due in part to the generosity of Blarlock who simply conceded the warlock loot due to the tremendous upgrades they represented to Apollock. This was, on Blarlock's part, a great gift and truly a team oriented decision, and is one of the best things about this guild.
Saturday at 6:00 p.m. this week, our next run with only Nightbane left; Stats for the run are at
Wowwebstats
As the MoA, my chars are able to cover these runs into Karazhan as backup chars; with a tank, hunter and healer I seem to be pretty flexible and able to help any Karazhan team out; if we don't keep scheduling runs the same time every night, hint, hint. I am trying to arrange to be available for the big nights, as backup, so that any run can form up roughly on time. My healer is now geared for end game instances, since I was able to badge loot my boots, and received a neck piece, and weapon, on this Kara run. My hunter is a moderate level dps, but survival specced for the cc in Karazhan; and since he is not my main, it is not a priority for me to run into Karazhan each week with a defined team.
We also took through three new members; Apollock, Tryphosa, and Tamron. Each of them were able to experience Kara for the first time; Boramire was able to make it through to Prince as his own first. Apollock received three new epic pieces, due in part to the generosity of Blarlock who simply conceded the warlock loot due to the tremendous upgrades they represented to Apollock. This was, on Blarlock's part, a great gift and truly a team oriented decision, and is one of the best things about this guild.
Saturday at 6:00 p.m. this week, our next run with only Nightbane left; Stats for the run are at
Wowwebstats
As the MoA, my chars are able to cover these runs into Karazhan as backup chars; with a tank, hunter and healer I seem to be pretty flexible and able to help any Karazhan team out; if we don't keep scheduling runs the same time every night, hint, hint. I am trying to arrange to be available for the big nights, as backup, so that any run can form up roughly on time. My healer is now geared for end game instances, since I was able to badge loot my boots, and received a neck piece, and weapon, on this Kara run. My hunter is a moderate level dps, but survival specced for the cc in Karazhan; and since he is not my main, it is not a priority for me to run into Karazhan each week with a defined team.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Master of Arms, and down to business
I was recently appointed to the Master of Arms position; and to everyone in the guild I wanted to say I appreciate your trust in me, and it is an honor to receive this promotion. I hope that I meet your expectations.
Down to business; our Karazhan runs are becoming steadily more successful, as are the Gruul's efforts. Our membership took a recent climb in the past two weeks, so more are joining the ranks; and as a result, more are asking to enter end game instances. Each captain is traditionally responsible for choosing the membership of their teams, but it could be simplified somewhat by guild rankings. I was asked to propose a system of ranking raiders as either Raiders or Veteran Raiders; and I am forming my ideas about how such a system would work. I am asking, however, that anyone with ideas about this issue please comment.
Second, we now have what may be three full kara teams; Blue, Gold, and 'Dom'. Additionally, I was running a weekend Kara run of pickup members from both Massacre and The Elite; as well as other qualified members of other guilds who had not yet run Kara. I will probably continue to do this, and call that team Kara PUG; but our newer members may wonder why we have four different teams with differing names, no real convention, and no way to contact team captains without more information. I am asking the captains, or any interested Kara team member, to comment on this development. We most likely need a single naming convention that is uniform and easily explained; colors, captains names, veteran down to rookie, any of these might do.
Down to business; our Karazhan runs are becoming steadily more successful, as are the Gruul's efforts. Our membership took a recent climb in the past two weeks, so more are joining the ranks; and as a result, more are asking to enter end game instances. Each captain is traditionally responsible for choosing the membership of their teams, but it could be simplified somewhat by guild rankings. I was asked to propose a system of ranking raiders as either Raiders or Veteran Raiders; and I am forming my ideas about how such a system would work. I am asking, however, that anyone with ideas about this issue please comment.
Second, we now have what may be three full kara teams; Blue, Gold, and 'Dom'. Additionally, I was running a weekend Kara run of pickup members from both Massacre and The Elite; as well as other qualified members of other guilds who had not yet run Kara. I will probably continue to do this, and call that team Kara PUG; but our newer members may wonder why we have four different teams with differing names, no real convention, and no way to contact team captains without more information. I am asking the captains, or any interested Kara team member, to comment on this development. We most likely need a single naming convention that is uniform and easily explained; colors, captains names, veteran down to rookie, any of these might do.
Friday, July 11, 2008
This kara run was not as successful as you would expect; we were low on dps, and high on tanks, so curator was not very successful. The flares simply took us out, one by one. I think this run again proves that two tanks are the limit on melee dps for curator; you need ranged, because your main job is flares.
Healing this fight is rough; the damage is spread across the group, particularly when a flare hits any group of us too close together. The extra tanks in particular are targets, repeatedly.
Stats July 10 Karazhan
Healing this fight is rough; the damage is spread across the group, particularly when a flare hits any group of us too close together. The extra tanks in particular are targets, repeatedly.
Stats July 10 Karazhan
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Gruul 0706
Gruul was our best effort yet, straight through to Gruul and only one wipe on him due to bad shatters. It was a 'grueling' fight, literally, since on the second successful attempt we lost nearly half the raid by its end. I was again off tanking, and we actually made it through 17 grows (not something any other guild mentions with any level of success, btw). He was hitting for over half my health at that point, as Varl dropped and I was tanking him alone by the very end.
Stats on this fight are posted; Gruuls Stats
An excellent job; now its on to Mag!
Kara PUG 0706
Ok, we tried the Karazhan PUG on Saturday; and made it through Opera, with some stumbles. We had new folks, like our barely geared off tank, and our lack of crowd control (only one hunter for traps, and not trap specced); and no one was really used to working with each other, although many of us were in Kara previously. The group however pulled together, and got through Attumen and Maiden in one shot; Moroes in two; and Opera in three tries. It was, actually, pretty amazing considering on Moroes, we had only a trap which broke repeatedly, and we were offtanking mobs with a dps warrior and a brand new 70 prot. We used stuns, minions (felguard, and felhunter) and pally fears to keep mobs moving when necessary; and I double tanked trash and adds when needed. Our dps was fairly low, actually, so every fight took much longer and we had OOM problems; but we still made it through to Opera, and I was actually pleasantly surprised at group cohesion and teamwork.
The Opera event was Oz, and our first attempts were wipes; I chose to tank Roar, thinking he was a real threat, but our successful try I tanked Straw, while Roar was simply feared around the room. The choice worked, and Roar was chain feared by one lock, Straw by another. Dedicating locks to targets worked better than just attempting to overlap fears. The fire suppression on straw seems to be about 50% successful, and he must be tanked the remainder of the fight, or he will take out healers and casters. Roar, however, can one shot clothies, but is easily feared for longer periods than Straw can be disoriented by fire.
The Opera event was Oz, and our first attempts were wipes; I chose to tank Roar, thinking he was a real threat, but our successful try I tanked Straw, while Roar was simply feared around the room. The choice worked, and Roar was chain feared by one lock, Straw by another. Dedicating locks to targets worked better than just attempting to overlap fears. The fire suppression on straw seems to be about 50% successful, and he must be tanked the remainder of the fight, or he will take out healers and casters. Roar, however, can one shot clothies, but is easily feared for longer periods than Straw can be disoriented by fire.
| Kara PUG | DPS | Total Damage |
Starrider | 378.7 | 161120 |
| Thundermoon | 485 | 153851 |
| Mirand | 351.3 | 145220 |
| Thesandman | 302.2 | 132491 |
| Eliminster | 310.2 | 104136 |
| Hiddenrage | 272.9 | 49701 |
| Boramire | 88 | 27205 |
| | | |
| | | |
HPS | | |
| Aezura | 627.2 | 268569 |
| Dniwek | 496.6 | 183016 |
| TaeBae | 380.2 | 124335 |
| | | |
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Zul Aman, July 5
Stats for our trip to ZA are below; we were short on dps, and actually took along an extra healer; which worked on Nalorakk, since the two tanks are actually dps'ing the boss; but did not work well on the clearing up to Akil'zon, which was a real struggle. A paladin (Aezura) was able to control the birds well by consecrating, using ret aura, and burning up the birds when they approached. However, moving up the path too fast caused a wipe when the tanks aggro'ed too many of the elite trolls; and if you go too slow, the birds are overwhelming. We just need a slightly different approach; either a third melee dps to deal with the elites as an off tank; or more dps overall to deal out aoe damage. Next effort will be on Monday, July 7; hope to see everyone then.
Stats: Webstat July 5
Stats: Webstat July 5
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Upcoming Weekend, and Standards
One of the things that caused me to leave Council of Armageddon, and come to Massacre, was the disorganization for the newer members and their failure to give folks any idea as to when they would be going to end game instances like Karazhan; they promised for over a month to bring folks in, and never did. Massacre was just starting out in Kara at the time, and I quickly became the tank along with Moonfala and Dom, in those very early days when we wiped on Attumen every week.
I promised if I got to make decisions over stuff like that, I wouldn't leave people hanging; and so every week I look to see what is going on the calendar, and I see who is attending Kara and who is not able to go. Weekends are now my times to be available to run instances, and my own interest isn't really in Kara anymore; but there are plenty who want to go, and we now have enough healers and tanks to run teams every week. I am not sure what happened with Gold, but I gave up my spot on Blue, and hope that Jumba is allowed to captain that team. My interest is in pushing new members into raids so the guild moves forward not back. Gold team is not scheduled this week, so I talked to The Elite and they have members ready to go to Kara, as do we; so on Sunday, the 'second team' for lack of a better word is forming up for the first time to jointly pursue a Kara clear; if you are a new member to Massacre, you should sign up for the chess event with Blue, first, to get into Kara and try for the pieces that drop out of that very easy event. You can sign up on Group Calendar as a standby, and put a note in your attendance line that you are available to sub in. If you are a member with blue raid gear or a dps member with extensive pvp gear, and have not been to Kara this week, please sign up on Sunday for the full clear.
Now, about standards; newer 70s are asking about going to Karazhan and raids, and I wanted to put down what I think the low average is for those players. Most of these minimums are reachable with blue equipment obtained from heroics or crafts.
For dps classes, your dps against ?? bosses should be over 380; a good average is over 400. Your average in pvp or in regular instances is not comparable since the ?? bosses are considered 72 for attack and defense calculations. Melee is not a major part of most kara fights, for reasons that pertain to boss fights; most bosses in kara inflict major damage on targets close to them, and while each fight is specific, for the most part no more than two rogues/fury warriors/ret pallys/feral cats are needed.
For hunters, partial survival spec is preferred, since on some trash mobs, we have cc problems that improved and clever traps can solve.
For healers, a rough estimate of all classes is in the neighborhood fo 1250 bonus heal; a main should be over 1400. Your HPS rate should be over 300, and preferably above 325, and you should know healbot like the back of your hand since it vastly improves the speed of your heals.
Sham healers obviously need extensive MP5 to last in any Kara fight, particularly the longer ones.
Tanks need to reach their defense cap; crits by bosses are lethal, so warriors need to be at 490, feral druids at 415. The other mitigation stats are not something I can speak to at this point.
If you have seen my past stats on fights, you can see that success comes with a combination of all the above, and no one stat carries the raid.
I am pursuing more runs with The Elite, and folks in other guilds, to keep our options more open; there should be no reason we can't run instances for being short 2 or 3 people at a time, or lacking preferred classes. Our successful run to ZA was a combination of three guilds; we could have cleared 3 bosses, but we did two successfuly, and everyone on that run now knows the clear to Halazzi. Those partnerships are vital to success in later instances, and we need help from other guilds to get there. Kara farming with guild only members is one thing; but the higher end instances will be easier with experienced members along, and our development in these instances seems to have hit a slow point.
I invite comments on this post; more people are reading this blog, and I am trying to keep it updated. This week was not fantastic for my scheduling anything until the weekend, so no sexy stats tables or anything. I look forward to our run on Sunday; and Saturday may be ZA and Blue team's Kara run, so stock up and be prepared.
I promised if I got to make decisions over stuff like that, I wouldn't leave people hanging; and so every week I look to see what is going on the calendar, and I see who is attending Kara and who is not able to go. Weekends are now my times to be available to run instances, and my own interest isn't really in Kara anymore; but there are plenty who want to go, and we now have enough healers and tanks to run teams every week. I am not sure what happened with Gold, but I gave up my spot on Blue, and hope that Jumba is allowed to captain that team. My interest is in pushing new members into raids so the guild moves forward not back. Gold team is not scheduled this week, so I talked to The Elite and they have members ready to go to Kara, as do we; so on Sunday, the 'second team' for lack of a better word is forming up for the first time to jointly pursue a Kara clear; if you are a new member to Massacre, you should sign up for the chess event with Blue, first, to get into Kara and try for the pieces that drop out of that very easy event. You can sign up on Group Calendar as a standby, and put a note in your attendance line that you are available to sub in. If you are a member with blue raid gear or a dps member with extensive pvp gear, and have not been to Kara this week, please sign up on Sunday for the full clear.
Now, about standards; newer 70s are asking about going to Karazhan and raids, and I wanted to put down what I think the low average is for those players. Most of these minimums are reachable with blue equipment obtained from heroics or crafts.
For dps classes, your dps against ?? bosses should be over 380; a good average is over 400. Your average in pvp or in regular instances is not comparable since the ?? bosses are considered 72 for attack and defense calculations. Melee is not a major part of most kara fights, for reasons that pertain to boss fights; most bosses in kara inflict major damage on targets close to them, and while each fight is specific, for the most part no more than two rogues/fury warriors/ret pallys/feral cats are needed.
For hunters, partial survival spec is preferred, since on some trash mobs, we have cc problems that improved and clever traps can solve.
For healers, a rough estimate of all classes is in the neighborhood fo 1250 bonus heal; a main should be over 1400. Your HPS rate should be over 300, and preferably above 325, and you should know healbot like the back of your hand since it vastly improves the speed of your heals.
Sham healers obviously need extensive MP5 to last in any Kara fight, particularly the longer ones.
Tanks need to reach their defense cap; crits by bosses are lethal, so warriors need to be at 490, feral druids at 415. The other mitigation stats are not something I can speak to at this point.
If you have seen my past stats on fights, you can see that success comes with a combination of all the above, and no one stat carries the raid.
I am pursuing more runs with The Elite, and folks in other guilds, to keep our options more open; there should be no reason we can't run instances for being short 2 or 3 people at a time, or lacking preferred classes. Our successful run to ZA was a combination of three guilds; we could have cleared 3 bosses, but we did two successfuly, and everyone on that run now knows the clear to Halazzi. Those partnerships are vital to success in later instances, and we need help from other guilds to get there. Kara farming with guild only members is one thing; but the higher end instances will be easier with experienced members along, and our development in these instances seems to have hit a slow point.
I invite comments on this post; more people are reading this blog, and I am trying to keep it updated. This week was not fantastic for my scheduling anything until the weekend, so no sexy stats tables or anything. I look forward to our run on Sunday; and Saturday may be ZA and Blue team's Kara run, so stock up and be prepared.
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Busy weekend for Massacre
NalorakkThis has been one really busy few days; in the last three alone, the guild
a) teamed up with The Elite, and downed Akil'zon in Zul'Aman. We burned through the bear fight and took out Akilzon after making some adjustments to our attack; you basically have one person call out the incoming storms so you don't have timing problems, and ignore the birds. We did have an excellent lock along who seeded the birds, but they were mostly a nuisance. As a druid, I kept out of the fight as a tank and stuck to heals, and dps'ing in cat form when I went oom.
We then cleared thru to the 4th boss Halazzi, and failed on him when a tank fell early. He is tanked like Nalorakk, with a lynx 'spirit' that pops out to attack whomever, at 75, 50 and 25% health. He is do-able with our group tho, I am certain we could drop him.
b) Back to Gruul, because no one wants to leave a large demon by himself for too long. We downed him in two tries, the first wipe caused primarily by really unlucky shatters and loss of both dps and healer classes. The second try went ok, but not great, due to again, a series of losses of classes like melee dps; we had over 60% of the group still up, but not enough to call it an easy run.
c) Karazhan, which Blue tried but was not able to complete. I wasn't able to attend, and a new OT was used; unfortunately from the stats I watched in the fight the green beam was not picked up quickly enough and 'Spite was receiving heals. We all now how that goes. Tonight is Tuesday; after server maintenance we are back to kara for a full clear if possible, with a new healer, new dps, and our two 'old' tanks.
I am choosing to give the captain position to someone else; I have scheduling problems in the immediate future due to my RL demands on my time. I am sure someone else can handle the chores, and I am grateful to everyone who ran with my teams for all the work and success we generated in a very short time.
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