How do you rank 52 bosses based on difficulty?

I was reading through Larisa's treatise on ranking the WotLK bosses from easy to hard when that question came to mind: how do you rank difficulty? There are certainly quantitative methods involving calculating how many guilds have cleared a certain boss, how many attempts does it take for the average raid to make it through an encounter, or how many guilds have [ The Light of Dawn ] achievement. We could also approach the question qualitatively by asking ourselves why so many raid leaders think Sindragosa is harder than Professor Putricide, discover why many guilds that kill LK seem to only kill Heroic Gunship, and evaluate what level of raid endurance is required to break a boss like Heroic BQ Lana'thel since she is nine bosses deep into ICC.

There are many bosses who seem difficult at first, but after breaking them immediately put them on farm status. Their gimmicks are just that: gimmickry. Once your team knows the gimmick, they rarely fall for it again and the boss dies week after week after week while random team members talk about politics or play terrible pop music over vent. On the other hand, there are encounters like Lich King that will always be hard regardless of gear level or raid awareness. The RNG clusterf*ck factor is extremely high on certain fights and well after they are on farm, still pose a stumbling block to a hardened, experienced raid that is just a little too burned out to climb and take the hill again this week.

So, I sat down and started to consider my own raiding history. I have fought every boss in WotLK. Except for LK, I have fought every boss in Hard Mode as well. I have destroyed most of them as two classes, sometimes three, and been a Main Tank, an Off Tank, a melee DPS, and a Ranged DPS for several of them now. I started to review my fellow bloggers "difficulty" criteria and saw that my fellow Descendant of Draenor, Aezil, had added his voice to the boss ranking debate. Given Larisa's and Aezil's previous lists documenting the high and low points of the Boss fights, I decided to do the same for Heroic Difficulty.

My scale consists of a few key points:
- How hard was the boss in equipment with the same gear score as what drops off the boss?
- After broken, how hard was the boss week after week?
- If not in ICC, do I want to go kill that boss in Hard Mode now? (Can I pug it?)
- What achievements made certain bosses switch from Easy to Hard mode?

20. Lord Jaraxxus
Strangely, this was the hardest spot to fill. Lord Jaraxxus is almost a loot pinata reward for clearing HM-Beasts. He has a lot of gimmicks and a lot of debuffs flying around, but really it's a straight tank and spank hard mode. Whether I put Lord Marrowgar or Jaraxxus in this spot really came down to which boss I personally had more trouble with. I enjoy Jaraxxus, few bosses have stealable buffs that make Mages perform at a godly DPS level. Ultimately, that won him the top (bottom) spot in my list. Let the QQ commence..

19. Lord Marrowgar
AKA "the guy who never drops the damned caster belt". I have to admit to having been relatively slow to master this encounter. While I generally do not die, I spend an extraordinary amount of time running around since he seems to cling to me like I have his favorite biscuits in my backpack during Bonestorm. The fact that Bonestorm does not stop the Bone Graveyard is a minor hiccup compared to other bosses in ICC, even heroic Lord Marrowgar is easier than regular Putricide and beyond.

18. Freya
Freya is a hard enough fight before [ Knock, Knock, Knock on Wood ] and a pretty crazy fight afterwards. Much like Mimiron, this is one of those fights where attempting the Hard Mode takes a regularly difficult fight and ratchets it up into the stratosphere of awesome. With a woman who drops bombs everywhere she goes and the deathstar laser sun beams, this fight is a gift that keeps on giving. Even now, running UldHM Drake runs, it is not one of the fights that I put down in the "gimme" column. Hell, even her trash wipes raids regularly..

17. Twin Val'kyrs
Once the orb strategy is figured out, this fight becomes almost trivial. Many times, I have fought heroic Twins, witnessed a 50% heal go off, and still defeated them. The only reason this fight ranks this high is because of where it is in the instance, the required gear to blast through the encounter focusing a single twin, and the amount of dancing required to properly avoid vortexes and attack shields. Is it harder than Beasts? Probably not, but I struggled with placing it above Freya.

16. Beasts of Northrend
Nothing makes me feel more like a gladiator in this arena dungeon than the Beasts of Northrend encounter. Recalling my youth and reading stories of gladiators fighting lions, tigers, and other strange and exotic beasts in the Colosseum, this encounter goes straight to the reason I play Warcraft. A three phase slug fest with the best Northrend has to offer from a huge centaur to an even huger Yeti. In heroic mode, the difficulty level jumps a full notch to give absolutely no leeway for slow dps, lapses of judgement, or laconic reaction times. The Beasts no longer wait for you to finish them off before the next set jumps on you like a pack of hungry wolves waiting for dinner. Where else can you fight two Jormungar and a Yeti at the same time? No where.

15. Valithria Dreamwalker
Given the changes going from the Dream to the Nightmare and the extra healing required due to health depleting, Valithria is not to be taken lightly. I have to say that as an arcane mage, I have a lot of fun on Valithria since the encounter plays to my strengths and allows me to open a can of arcane blast on anything that is moving (mostly thanks to our bad ass DoD tank squad composed of Pkizmet, Drecca, Klockerr, and Bretthew in both 10's and 25's teams). While switching to hardmodes might be a real step up for a healer, since I have never played one, I can delight in saying this hardmode is not that hard to me. =)

14. Mimiron
[ Firefighter ], /thread.

An incredibly difficult and detailed fight. This was previously my lipnus achievement for "good raider" vs "just a raider". Firefighter is no walk in the park now and never was back when 226 gear was the norm. This fight has a lot of stuff going on all the time and when you press the big red button that says not too, you add a walking, creeping fire to the whole dance of death with Mimiron's machinations. Even now, I like nothing in raiding more than bashing that big red button and doing my best to smoke down Mim's machines with 9-24 other people who know how to do it right, because when it's done right, it's a real beautiful fight.

13. Rotface
I would file this under "more and harder". Heroic Rotface and normal Rotface are pretty much the same encounter, Heroic is just more ooze damage that hits harder. The ooze kiting tank has to run his trailing oozes through the middle a bit more to avoid being rooted, infection victims take 25% healing instead of 50% healing, and there is a vile gas mechanic involved. I suspect for most HM teams, this encounter was just a speed bump on the way to the Professor, provided you had the original encounter down..

12. Sindragosa
I know I will get flack for putting her this low, but I don't view Sindy as a very hard encounter. Move the debuffed casters out of the raid, clear buffs more often, make an extra spot for the extra beacon, move along. If your DPS core is even half awake, this is a pretty easy encounter as far as HM's go. I think [ All You Can Eat ] might be slightly harder than the hardmode, maybe I'm just crazy. Maybe I really am living in an ivory tower of raiding or perhaps, collectively, the raiding skill of every raider in WoW has just increased to a point where these mechanics no longer seem that challenging. Either way, Sindragosa HM should be a single blip on the raid radar compared to the incoming flotilla of pain that other ICC HM's represent. Of course, this is probably the fight that got AVR banned..

11. Faction Champions
To be honest, I had a hard time rating the "hardest" encounter in ToGC. Time after time, Faction Champions ends raids, not kills them, ends them. Sure, the well developed, well oiled machines pick through the place at light speed, but they don't really have trouble with Anub or Faction Champs. Ultimately, Faction Champs lost due to Anub being just "too hard" for a lot of teams to complete anymore. Eventually, even the most green of PUGs still makes it through Faction Champs in current gear (3.3.3). Faction Champs is unpredictable, they target on a whim, agro at will, use every mean spirited trick in the book, but ultimately that chaos makes this fight very predictable: Blow up the healer as fast as possible, stay the hell out of hellfire, then use man advantage to widdle down the Champs. Almost identical to it's normal mode counterpart.

10. Anub'arak
Lets take a fight that involves adds management, boss healing, and boss kiting and kick it up a notch. While in normal mode, Anub can pretty much be killed by anyone just by assigning a hunter to full time orb duty, the Hard Mode is just about the exact opposite. Sure, your tanks will be taking more damage from having to deal with more Nerubian Burrowers armed with a shadow attack and you will have to find a way to deal with Burrowers during the burn down phase at the end, but nothing compares to the snow patch change. Limited to six frost patches which you must carefully guard the entire fight, properly kiting a giant beetle monster never became more fun (or important). This is still a challenge for ICCHM 25 teams, in my opinion.

9. Blood Princes
Shadow Prison, you are a son of a b*tch. For a class that likes to move about in a fight that requires you to move about, Blood Princes becomes an entirely different fight in Heroic mode for a mage. All ranged are now required to watch the skies with terror hoping a Kinetic Bomb does not spawn over their heads (incredibly difficult camera view to maintain, btw). Melee are taking debuff damage when they avoid vortexes and doing the "are you going to the right or am I?" empowered shock vortex chicken dance just became a recipe for both of you to die from shadow damage. A hard fight, a fun one, and definitely worthy of being ranked in the top half.

8. Yogg-Saron
This is probably one of the choices that I will receive the most feedback for. Other guilds seemed to have a real hard time with Yogg, but by the time we made it past Mimiron, this fight seemed like a walk in the park. We used a ferrying method to defeat the Guardians and then basically told everyone "Don't stand near the clouds". Not exactly rocket surgery. In 226 gear, this became a DPS race tied up into a CC race where the ability to run faster seemed to be the only thing holding you back from defeating tentacles as fast as they could spawn.

* Note: I have never done [ Alone in the Darkness ]. Perhaps this fight is incredibly more difficult without Thorim killing Immortal Guardians in phase 3, but I find that hard to believe. At some point, I'll find a team to head down there and beat it for that final achievement and perhaps change my opinion of this fight.

7. Blood Queen Lana'thel
BQ is one of those bosses where you find out if your raid team showed up to play or not. Heroic BQ is where you get punished if they left their berserker DPS back in Dalaran Trade Chat. Given the hard berserk timer and the fact that for the last minute BQ is doing 40% more raid damage via Shroud of Sorrow, everyone really has to bring their A game to down this boss. Hard fight, hard boss, excellent mechanics, and you even get to be a vampire for a while..

6. Lady Deathwhisper
Whether you are trying Full House or competing to kill her heroically, Lady Deathwhisper is no walk in the park, that's for sure. When we were 7/12 HM, Lady D was one of the five who stood against us for several weeks while we tried to master dealing with so, so many adds that just keep coming and coming through the whole fight while constantly watching that enrage timer tick down and down and down. We tried putting the ranged in several places, moved around the kill priorities, and did a fair bit of yelling, but eventually she was killed. Still, not the easiest fight in the world by a long shot.

5. Earth, Wind, and Fire
A truly magnificent achievement that turns three loot piñatas into a crazy dance of timing, logistics, and tank stretching. Which boss is pulled first? Where should we fight them? How little damage can a paladin tank do to Archevon and still keep agro over the healers and not kill him by accident (again)? This raid achievement is rarer than almost any other besides [ The Light of Dawn ], maybe. The definition of "Top 5" material.

4. Malygos
What more do I have to say? Who else skips the weekly when Malygos Must Die comes up? Who else remembers competing for [ Magic Seeker ] and still failing to master the encounter for weeks? I know I do. Malygos is still hard because your average raider has forgotten about the damned third phase drake flight. You know, that phase where you get to basically use the worst camera angles in the game to stare at a blinding disco light of healing auras and hope you are spamming the correct sequence (1112) to stack your flame debuffs on poor Maly before everyone "moves to the right", ignoring the fact that you are now raiding in three dimensions and your raid leader means rotate anti-clockwise in 2D. I enjoy fighting Malygos, one of the few fights I still get to arcane blast my ass off, do something cool by flying around on a disc to avoid bombs and kill some minions, and feel like a total f*ckup on a drake all in the same ten minutes. ([ You Don't Have An Eternity ], you say? Fugitaboutit. )

3. Deathbringer Saurfang
A soft enrage timer coupled with a boss healing mechanic rolled into a minion killing fight where the minions one-shot anyone who isn't a tank. What isn't to love? Our first kill had five marks active when Saurfang finally bit the dust. I have a screenshot of the [ Heroic: Storming the Citadel ] achievement with my iceblock up while trying to soak a mark to avoid wiping us (yet again). That's how razor thin this fight can be. Like every good fight, every player has to be on their toes, skills and utility spells that rarely see the light of day become extremely clutch, and the DPS cannot lose a second of time busting down the "Heart of Draenor".

* On a side note, I don't know about anyone else, but I was ready to murder the WoW Dev who put the roleplay intro into that fight and made it unable to be skipped. Almost as annoying as "Suffer, mortals, as your pathetic magic BETRAYS YOU! .. and I repeat this phrase over and over again!". Okay, maybe not that annoying.

2. Professor Putricide
+900% damage debuff anyone? Nothing rivals the unbound plague madness that is Professor HM. Even good DPS have trouble with the missing tear gas, mind the plague, double ooze phase changes. A full head above the rest of ICC and anything else in the game, except...

1. The Lich King*

Regular LK is a dance of death with the King of Icecrown Citadel. The encounter is hard for everyone involved and requires good timing, good group synergy, and no screw ups. Phase change, after phase change, after phase change. It's a workout, even for a guy sitting in front of an LCD screen. I don't look forward to triple HP Valks, whole raid Harvested Souls, or wicked spirits.. hail to the King, baby, and kudos to Blizzard for designing a truly worthy encounter for the namesake of the expansion and the most popular villain in contemporary MMO's.

Honorable Mentions:
- Gunship : One of the few ICC Hard Modes to not make the list. I see "LF1M ICC10, must have Kingslayer" all the time in trade chat, I know they want a Kingslayer just for HM Gunship. Is there such a thing as hard mode Karazhan Chess? No? Neither was there a hardmode gunship. We did [ I'm on a Boat ] during HM Gunship on the first try.
- Festergut : Professor Putricide makes a cameo appearance during Heroic Festergut to throw Malleable Goo at various team members while fighting the hard five minute enrage timer. If you didn't already master Malleable Goo dodging in regular Professor, this might have been slightly harder for you here, but really it should be a walk in the park for (almost) free 277's.

* the Lich King is the only HM boss I have not fought heroically. Just looking at the fight, I have no trouble understanding why it takes the best teams in the world weeks to figure this encounter out. I look forward to fighting through it with my DoD brethren and know that we have the smarts and determination to eventually get it down.

So, how did my Hardmode list stack up with your expectations? Do you agree with Sindy being so low and Malygos being so high? Can you even remember when Malygos was progression content? =) ... Read More >>

This week's Blog Azeroth topic is "What are you doing to get ready for Cataclysm?" and today is Friday, so I figured I might offer an homage (blatantly copy) to one of my favorite bloggers, @Anexxia of Bible of Dreams, and integrate some "Friday Five" into this post. I have to admit that right now I am not absolutely certain what my main will be come Cataclysm, nor what there is to do in Cataclysm that needs to be prepared for now, so my list is somewhat ambiguous and just paints the broad strokes of my increasingly granular Cataclysm starting gate strategy.

1) Wrapping up Azeroth as we know it today.
Lets face it, this might be the last time we get to see the barren version of the Barrens or Desolace. This is the last time Thousand Needles isn't a lake. A great deal of what we regard as "the old world" is going away. Being an unrepentant Achievement Whore, I can't help but think a great many of the old achievements are going the way of level 60 Onyxia and becoming Feats of Strength or just feats that cannot be accomplished anymore. I still have a great many feats left to accomplish on my mage: finally finish the damned World Explorer achievements (I've been doing them piece meal for months), wrap up Classic Dungeonmaster, and utilize one of the few remaining Saturday's between now and Cataclysm to win the Derby and finally finish Accomplished Angler. I had plans to be Battlemaster Ccyd by Cataclysm/Rated Battlegrounds, but unless I rediscover my love of WSG, that just doesn't look like it is going to happen.

2) Prepping my Hunter in case the Blizzard rework of the class makes them awesome at 85.
I have to admit that I love playing Hunters. I have had one in every expansion and it was my main through most of Vanilla when I was in a very competitive raiding guild on Eredar. With Hunters finally losing mana, I no longer have to worry about whether or not I'm in Viper or about the efficiency of my leveling DPS rotation since Focus will regenerate over time and with certain shots. I am looking forward to seeing what Blizz has in store for one of my favorite classes.

3) Strategically taking names I want for my goblin alts =)
I know it's mean spirited and probably against the EULA, but I have two character slots sitting on my account with level 1 orcs with names I want for my goblin rogue and goblin shaman. This probably makes me a bad person, but I'll deal with the karmic repercussions when the time comes.

4) Making friends within my guild's 10-man community
I anticipate scaling back my raiding efforts to just 10-man teams after Cataclysm goes live, so long as 10's are no longer second class citizens. I admit that I mostly enjoy 25's for the elevated rewards (both gear and achievements). I don't think the 25's environment is more enjoyable as raids switch from conversations *with* friends to broadcasts *at* raiders. I have had the joy of finally hitting ICC10 with one of the better 10's teams in my guild this week and it has only reconfirmed my earlier thoughts regarding problems I have with 25's, they're just too impersonal. Provided Blizz backs up their earlier announcements that they plan to make 10's and 25's equal, I don't anticipate hitting 25's after Deathwing rends a hole in the landscape.

5) Stockpiling gold for "Old Weather Flying" and Ms. Pilton's new fashionable bag!
While "Old Weather Flying" might be slight hyperbole, we all know it's coming: the fashionable gold sinks. I have the mounts, the bags, the bike, a Kirin Tor ring on my DK, and both a Grand Ice and Grand Vendor Mammoth on my mage. I loathe to admit it, but I like the fashionable gold sinks, they give me something to buy instead of just filling my bank account with useless yellow pixels (now I have useless mammoth shaped pixels that carry my friends). At some point, I hope they sell a two-seater flying mount like the X-21 so I can fly my wife around full time instead of just when she can hop on the bike.

On a side note: Does it seem like these posts are coming earlier and earlier? We don't even have a release date and we still have an NDA. When WotLK dropped, I started commenting about getting ready for my DK in Sept (WotLK dropped in Nov), it's May and we probably have six months of Lich King left. Enjoy it!

So, that's it. What are you doing to get ready for Cataclysm? ... Read More >>

I have to politely disagree with Cynwise's attempt to lure more people into the battlegrounds by placating the PvE Achievement Hunters. I think the battlegrounds are already weighed down by the inept socials who fancy themselves warlords. Children's Week has only exacerbated this situation by flooding Arathi Basin and Eye of the Storm with cross-faction communicated treaties and a weird form of flag detente. Needless to say, this week has been a real blast for me and I cannot help but think that it is because I am such an asshole. However, I would not want this to become the normal state of things.

We already have 10-20% AFKers dragging the team down, people who fight away from the flag when they should fight on it, people who fight at the flag when they should be taking towers, people who fight in the middle of the field of strife when they should be fighting on the road, people who fight on the road when they should be fighting at the flag, and now you want to add warriors running the dragon slayer rotation wearing quest gear and heirlooms to the mix. My point is, we don't need to lure the PvE crowd into the Battlegrounds: Cataclysm will do this for us with Rated BG's.

So, what has made this week so much fun? A few things that I have gotten kicks out of and a few easy achievements that have helped:
- Killing Flag Carriers in WSG has gotten me a lot of the way toward [Persistent Defender] and [Supreme Defender].
- [Frenzied Defender] was also attained while pissing off pretty much every PvE achievement whore in the Horde Flag Room.
- Set up detente in Tower Point spamming /wait to get my [Tower Defense] achievement.
- After finding the detente in AV around the towers, I have spent many games this week wandering tower to tower killing the lone red spamming /wait at me.
- I have spent no fewer than 11 EotS games grabbing the flag as fast as possible and wandering around the whole game without capping it.

What are the fun things you guys have been doing this week? Surely I am not alone in abusing the achievement hunters.

Enjoy your saturday!

* the observant amongst you would note that I have not posted in a while, unfortunately that is likely to continue through at least next week as my CISSP exam is a week from tomorrow and it requires much prep. Hopefully abusing carebears tomorrow in BG's courtesy of some nasty intentions will hold you over until then. ... Read More >>

This weekend has been one of progression for the 25-man DoD raid team. Working Heroic 25 ICC for the first time, we have progressed through Festergut and will have Rotface next week easily. It is more important now, than ever, to maintain the highest care and the most disciplined approach to raiding. As we learn and beat the encounters, the new 277 gear will flow and they will become easier every week, but right now,they are still refreshingly hard for us. This has been a welcomed change after weeks of working through Sindy on easy-mode in less than four hours and spending the other four working LK25. So, the disciplined and rigorous approach I generally take to progression raiding has returned in full.

I realized this morning that I go through logs every Monday morning to analyze my raids over the weekend during downtime at work. Frankly, I need to. I am far from the top DPS'er in Descendants of Draenor. In fact, I am one of the worst in the guild. Frequently, I am between 8th and 15th or 8.5-10k dps, depending on the fight. I hover in the bottom half of the DPS ranks. Like all scrubs, I attributed this gear at first. Everyone had better gear than me and so everyone should be doing more DPS. I observe with respect (and no small amount of jealousy) players like Setsero or Aeden who seem to effortlessly run the table on damage at will. I could complain that it is my class and not my skill or gear that is at fault, but we will look at that later.

After every fight, I check the charts and note down the differential between Setsero and I. I check his spell makeup and the average hits/crits of each. This is usually the starting point for a long monday morning where I look for rotations and try to spot the exact point where he pulls away from me. I started to analyze my logs rigorously and hunt down tricks and tests on the beloved EJ forums and Bosskillers in order to close the gap. That gap is very significant to me. What started as almost 3500 DPS has closed to 1000. However, something terrible has happened to cause me to seriously re-evaluate the reasons why my DPS is ~11% worse than Setsero's: my gear has passed his. What started out two months ago as a crutch excuse has been disproven and like a good, rational scientist, I have started to check my premises.



There are really only seven reasons that your DPS is worse than someone else's:

0) You do not know the fight.
As I said in a previous post, knowing the fight is the best DPS increase possible. Watching videos and knowing the strategy will keep you alive longer and being alive is always better DPS than being dead. A scrub in quest greens standing in the right spot puts out more DPS than the 6k+ GS Mage who died because he didn't get out of the damned slime spray fast enough. (You will sense a theme in today's examples =) )

1) Your gear is lower quality (264 vs 232).
All other things being equal, your gear is the largest factor in determining what your damage potential is. Note I said "potential". Your gear will only allow you to unlock that potential and turn it into damage.

2) Your spell rotations are wrong.
Many people would call this "skill". My damage potential is gigantic. I crossed the 6000 GS barrier last night, but the actuality is I might as well be wearing badge gear for all the help it is doing me. I suspect my "gap" exists somewhere in this area. I am running the standard ABx4MBAM rotation to death, this log shows that I am a damned ABx4MBAM missile throwing machine. Arcane combo, arcane combo, arcane combo. However, I am still getting killed on the meter. I would agree with calling this "skill". This is where the Archmage, who knows his class inside and out, starts to pull away from the newbs reading EJ and watching videos. He knows that sometimes one rotation is higher DPS than another. He is weaving instants without thinking while running around to avoid puddles and to drop off slimes. The Archmage's attention is focused on the fight, the damage is incidental to keeping himself alive and riding the highest possible DPS crest at all times.

3) Your talents are not set up correctly.
The talents are mathed to death on a great many sites. For a long time, I ran with the recommended cookie cutter specs and did very well (outside of 25-man w/ DoD). However, since I 'upped my game' and moved into the pro-leagues, I have found that the cookie cutter specs are not enough. I still have 2/3 Incanter's Absorption because IA is still a boost to me. I defended 3/5 Arcane Stability last week to @Psynister but have since dropped it due to many boss AoE's not causing pushback. The cookie cutter specs are only there to get you a good basis from which to work out of, but if you do deviate from them, be sure you know why. We all have horror stories of 57/3/11 Mages without Torment of the Weak and Warriors who never trained taunt because they never planned to tank. Don't be that guy, know why you have your points where you do and have the math and testing to back them up.

4) Your gear is not enchanted/gemmed correctly.
This goes along with knowing your talents. Arcane Mages gemming crit are doing themselves a disservice. Mages gemming Hit are likewise doing the same thing. Have the right enchant and the right gems in the right spots to get you going. However, as big a deal as people make out of enchants and gem choices, they are really not that large in the overall scheme of things. Sure, enchanted is better than not and gemming stamina is a dumb idea unless you are a tank, but in the end, they might add up to ~2% of your overall DPS. So unless you are a serious douchebag, don't sweat how many +sp/+haste vs +sp gems you need for each and every socket until you change out a piece of gear for an upgrade and have to buy the new enchants and gems anyways. This gives you a chance to re-evaluate your gear at periodic points and see which direction you are really moving. Constant re-gemming is expensive and the gain is not all that awesome for the two thousand gold it will probably cost you.

5) This fight does not lend itself well to your classes strengths
Some fights, you just can't win. It speaks well for Blizzard that when you look at Top DPS worldwide for ICC25 on World of Logs, each pure DPS class except rogue has a fight that they appear to be the best at. Fury warriors seem to excel at Marrowgar and LK, Hunters at Lady Deathwhisper, Druids at Festergut, Warlocks at Blood Prince Council, Mages at Blood Queen Lana'Thel, and DK's at Sindragosa. Of course, when you tick it up to Heroic ICC25, the fury warrior DPS just seems to run the table on every single boss. Sometimes, you just cannot be #1. Don't fret, do your best, compare yourself against the best Mages in the world at any given fight and use that as your benchmark for winning. Consider that they may be using a special talent tree just for that fight and you might only be able to get within delta of their DPS curve. Even if you end up short, you have done an amazing job of holding up your end of the short stick and hopefully those who are excelling at the current fight are doing a bit of carrying.


6) Your class is not properly balanced at this point in time.

After you have checked all six of the other reasons, you get to say "my class sucks right now". At this point, you can go post on the general forums and get shouted down by the social M&S who have nothing but anecdotal evidence and ad hominem attacks to counter your well reasoned and scientifically established claims. Oh well, the glories of the badge system is that you can reroll into a great class (warrior anyone?) and get it up to speed pretty quickly for ICC25.


In closing, your goal should be to do your best. Analyzing your character to death, as I am prone to do, has diminishing returns. Eking out the most from your gear and time is rewarding and a fun past time for some people. However, I think everyone can reach a baseline of acceptable competency with their class if they consider this list and give it a few minutes of thought when they receive an upgrade. After all, if you are not playing to at least average capacity, why are you playing at all?
... Read More >>

With the release of the sparkly space pony yesterday, the discussion of RMT (Real Money Trading/Transactions) has been resurrected in the WoW community. Mostly, this is class warfare at it's finest with varying opinions of "lol star pony" to "when can I buy epics?!?!" arguments going on. Before I even began this article, I knew that I would be presenting an unpopular opinion, but it is one that I feel is vastly underrepresented in the WoW blogosphere as of late. So, here we go: I have no problem with the star pony being for sale through the BlizzStore and I bought not one, but two of them. I cannot wait for Blizzard to figure out their next BlizzStore item that I can buy my little Mage and Hunter to flashy them up. If it is an item of equal or better value as my BoA Star Pony that flies at 310% on two of my three active characters, I'll probably buy two of them too.

Ultimately, I cannot help but feel that a great deal of the problem with the Celestial Steed being for sale on the BlizzStore is that a good chunk of players have no access to it and will complain about anything they do not have access too. A minority of players, though it has never been larger than now at the end of WotLK, have access to the 310% proto-drakes. I have three of them between my DK and my mage. I know that even now, defeating Firefighter and One Light in the Darkness is no easy feat. Becoming a gladiator worth getting a 310% mount means you are probably one of the top 0.1% of players in the world in your bracket (and millions of miles above the guys who criticize arena as "pillar humping/team composition manipulation" competition). These mounts are not criticized for being exclusive because the players feel the recipients have done something worthy of being rewarded with this type of item. However, the Star Pony is receiving completely different treatment.

The average WoW player allocates $15/month to their WoW play and will not tolerate a penny more. They believe with their $15 they have access to all that WoW has to offer. I believe they feel threatened by the BlizzStore's offerings because they either refuse or cannot pay for digital items. Some have attempted to circumvent their lack of out of game cash by paying in game cash for the Star Pony. An entrepreneurial guild member in DoD yesterday was offering 6,000g for the mount. He had in game cash and was willing to pay for in game items. Someone will eventually take him up on it. While many argue about the relative merits of paying real cash for digital pixels, I believe @Psynister of Psynister's Notebook said it best yesterday afternoon in this succinct tweet: "If you pay for television or go to the theater, you're still paying money for pixels." We are here to spend money to be entertained. If you want real accomplishments, there is a whole world out there waiting for you to discover the next groundbreaking vaccine. No one cares that you have a Bloodbathed Frostwyrm Vanquisher in the meatspace world and no, you can't put it on your resume. We are all paying money for digital entertainment. Even the top teams in the world are paying to play Warcraft. I have no problem paying a little extra for some flair, though I do recognize it is flair and not accomplishment. Notice that there is no "Achievement: Star Pony" in the game.

Others are leveraging a slippery slope argument regarding the use of the BlizzStore to sell epics. The policy thus far of Blizzard has been that they will not be selling epics, as in things that make your character better. The little XT/KT/Pandaren pets do not make your character better. Opportune moments where a buddy's XT pet shouts "Ahh, I BROKE IT!" that make me laugh in real life are not making my character better, they are making my warcraft experience more enjoyable. Anyone else notice these pets and doodads tend to come out between content patches? Now, instead of little companions we have the first mount being sold on the BlizzStore. For better or worse, after $2mil worth sold in 4 hours (thats 80,000 btw), it will not be the last, not by a long shot. However, it is a long shot away from Bloodsurge, Kel'Thuzad's Blade of Agony being sold on the BlizzStore. The mount only operates at the level of your current fastest mount. My mage's flies at 310% because I have earned a 310% mount on that character. The mount does not make my character better, it makes my character more flashy.

Flashiness is the fundamental issue. I cannot help but channel my inner Gevlon of Greedy Goblin and say the M&S/Socials are really the people who have a problem with this new mount. Standing around Dalaran on your new Star Pony makes you flashy and eye-catching. Not so much yesterday when there were about fifteen of us around the North Bank at any given time. However, the eye cannot help but look at flashy things. It works on fish, it works on people. The mount is extremely visible. Socials would say it is a huge sign that says, "Look, I can spend money on imaginary pixels". However, I think playing Warcraft at all is a huge sign that says "Hey, I can spend money on my entertainment". The Star Pony merely says I am more willing to allocate discretionary spending towards my (completely obsessive and invasive) hobby than your average WoW player. This is what the socials have a problem with. I am doing something they would not do (going against the norm) and paying for flashiness (getting something they value for it).

Before yesterday, flashiness really only came from two places: completing raids or getting extremely lucky in the WoW:TCG card pack lottery. As someone who does not enjoy looking like an idiot shelling out several hundred dollars on a card game played by 12-year olds, I appreciate that flashiness now comes from three places: Raiding, TCG, and the BlizzStore. Many, many people bought their spectral tigers, rocket mounts, or that crazy flamingo chicken mount off Ebay. Is buying a flashy mount like the Spectral Tiger off Ebay any different than Blizzard cutting out the comic book/card store middlemen, who jack up the prices of these "imaginary pixels" to well over a grand, and selling it themselves directly to their loyal customers? I submit that Blizzard is doing us, the players who are interested in these flavor items, a favor by offering them for a reasonable price in the BlizzStore. If the mount had come from the TCG, it would have been over $1,000 and well out of reach for all but the most extremely lucky or extremely rich. The comic book shop guys (and ebay pre-scratched code scammers) would have rejoiced at having yet another little cardboard card be worth several months car payments for a crazy imaginary horse. However, since Blizzard is selling it directly for a reasonable price, it just makes me smile at the joy my wife gets out of flying around on it.

So, I for one welcome our new RMT overlords. The next item is going to have to be better than the Star Pony since the pony is the new benchmark for "items I'm willing to shell out extra WoW funds for". I welcome the next game that involves micro-transactions and the next shiny distraction away from the fact that we are in a nine month gap between real content (end of WotLK, start of Cataclysm). The Lich King is dead for me. What else do I have to do besides collect achievements and crazy imaginary pixel mounts?

I welcome comments on this particular subject, especially if you are one of the silent chunk of players who are willing to shell out cash for items in game. ... Read More >>