Drama Mamas: The etiquette of loot runs for cash

Drama Mamas Lisa Poisso and Robin Torres are experienced gamers and real-life mamas -- and just as we don't want our precious babies to be the ones kicking and wailing on the floor of the checkout lane next to the candy, neither do we want you to become known as That Guy on your realm.

The whole point of a lullaby is to lull the child to sleep, something Mr. Ricky Gervais loses sight of in the above video. The whole point in building up the guild bank funds is to support guild raids -- but isn't that also the whole point of proper gear distribution? Does the guild in this week's letter miss the point, or did they just improperly handle the situation?

Dear Drama Mamas,

I am a core raider in a comfortable semi-hardcore 25 raiding guild and I am quite frankly, shocked. Recently our guild has progressed deeply into Hard modes territory here in Cataclysm content, our first Heroic kill being Halfus (and our longest heroic boss on farm). I am grateful that we are finally getting somewhere after going through some rough obstacles, our hard work has rewarded us nicely. However the issue we face now is how much gold our guild bank has, currently we have quite a bit saved up for repairs, flasks, and feasts. The thing that worries me is that our officers are going a little crazy over this. This past week we sold some heroic chest pieces and rotting non-set pieces which drop off Heroic Halfus that people already had. I am OK with this because I am one of those people who gotten their heroic chest and happen to be on a rotting token already.

We killed Halfus, and the Raid Leader was exchanging the rot loot for gold and I find out that some not rotting loot was getting sold as well to the buyers we brought with us. I really can't imagine what was going through their minds when they were willing to sell loot some our main core raiders still needed, I did what I thought was right and pointed out calmly in a tell that I understood that we need gold to fund our hard modes and that I don't think I should forfeit to someone who is paying a ridiculous amount of gold for something that I have yet to receive my self. Suffice to say I got a bad guilt trip after getting the epic that I wanted and I've been feeling pretty crappy about it since it happened not to mention all the snark from other people, more importantly I feel like a complete lootwhore. Was I right to fight for something I wanted (and rightfully earned)? Should I have let them sell off something I didn't have so they could make more money for the bank? How should I even treat this incident? Please help!

Sincerely,

Shocked

Drama Mama Robin: In order to avoid loot drama, the leaders of the loot run (whatever its nature) must be explicit at the outset what the rules are. If your raid leader had made it clear before the run that all loot would be sold to the wealthy buyers, then you could have decided beforehand if you were willing to spend your time for just gold rather than loot and gold. Making it a nebulous "some" or "at our discretion" isn't fair to either the buyers or the guildies.

Did the RL in fact inform you beforehand that there was a chance of something you needed being sold? If so, then your guildies have every right to be annoyed at your behavior. But that does not seem to have been the case.

Unfortunately, while the leaders are to blame for being unclear, placing blame is not going to improve your relationship with your guild. Here's what I recommend:
Suggest some gold-only runs be done for wealthy buyers. State that you will be happy to attend with the idea that everyone goes in knowing that no loot will go to anyone but the buyers.Set up a gear wishlist forum thread on your guild's site, with your officers' permission. Request that all of the raiders list what specific gear they are looking for to complete their raiding sets, along with where it drops. If it's clear what the holes are in your guild's raiding gear, the leaders can make appropriate decisions as to what things to sell in combo loot/gold runs ahead of time.Volunteer to help some lesser-geared guildies in heroics.Excuse the cliché, but actions speak louder than words. Actually showing that you aren't just out for yourself will go a long way in repairing your reputation with your guild.

Drama Mama Lisa: What I'm wondering is if the officers were planning to leapfrog over the drops they were selling and snag hard mode loot for guild members. Perhaps they were planning to prioritize those of you who didn't have certain drops with hard mode versions. It's hard to say exactly how well thought-out their plans were -- but whatever was in the works, of course, it should have been crystal clear to every single guild member first.

At this point, if I were you, I think I would keep an eagle eye out for loot irregularities. Have the guild policies been clarified since this incident? What about the rules for the pickup raids? More importantly, do you feel confident that the rules are transparent and that guild members are being treated fairly? There's nothing remotely inappropriate about being curious and asking for details about the loot process in your own guild. If you sense you're treading on uncomfortable territory, you may want to ask why it's so touchy.

As long as loot distribution seems to be going off without a hitch, though, you can chalk things up to an oversight or misunderstanding and turn your attention back to the social fallout from this little incident. Let's hope that a good portion of the snark you're getting is merely a little rib-poking fun. Still, it has to feel awkward to have been the one to blow the whistle -- and Robin's right, you've definitely got some public image polishing ahead. As long as you're obviously doing your part in guild raids and following whatever loot rules are in place, though, it's just a matter of time until your epics are no longer the hot topic of conversation.
Dodge the drama and become that player everyone wants in their group with a little help and insight from the Drama Mamas. Remember, your mama wouldn't want to see your name on any drama.

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Around Azeroth: Curse of stone

Warlock Shamefully of Frostmourne (US-H), more recently known as Old Stoneface, has learned an important lesson about life in Azeroth. Specifically, he learned that it's not a good idea to spend two hours farming Volatile Earth and then go AFK for dinner. Those earth elementals have funny ideas about revenge. (Thanks to Shamefully for this texture glitch screenshot.)
Want to see your own screenshot here? Send it to aroundazeroth@wowinsider.com. We strongly prefer full-sized pictures with no UI or names showing. Please include "Azeroth" in the subject line so your email doesn't get marked as spam, and include your name, guild and server if you want to be credited.

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How to reserve a room for BlizzCon 2011

Going to BlizzCon 2011? That makes two of us! But if you're like other confirmed con-goers, you may have had trouble reserving a room; lots of hotels in the area are telling callers that they're sold out for the days BlizzCon takes place. This is not necessarily true!

We've discovered that Blizzard and/or the Orange County Visitor's Center has reserved many rooms in the hotels surrounding the convention center specifically for BlizzCon guests. In order to claim them, though, you have to call the Visitor's Center directly. If you have a specific hotel in mind, you can ask for it, but they can also hook you up with other hotels that fit your price range. There's no cost to reserve a room, and you have until Sept. 1 to cancel the reservation with no charge. You just need a credit or debit card to have on file.

The number to call for reservations is (714) 765-8868. They're open normal business hours, 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Pacific time.

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The OverAchiever: Mountain O' Mounts from professions

Every Thursday, The Overachiever shows you how to work toward those sweet achievement points. Today, we are convinced that archaeology's RNG won't apply to us.

There are a number of interesting (and by interesting, perhaps I mean "occasionally very expensive and likely to drive you insane via RNG-laden accessibility") mounts available from professions, though for some of them, you'll have to be a practitioner in good standing before you'll ever be able to learn them.

Regrettably, I am the bearer of some very bad news this week concerning the Vial of the Sands for all those of you who like circumventing the highest costs in the game.

Also read:

Alchemy

There's one mount available from alchemy, but you're if the alchemist in question, you'll have to spend a fairish amount of time involved with high-level (450+) archaeology as well. If you're not an alchemist, you can buy it off a player because the Vial of the Sands is BoE, albeit a very expensive BoE.

Sandstone Drake You're going to spend an awful lot of time digging up tol'vir artifacts for a shot at the recipe for this bad boy, but I have to admit that I really liked the implementation of the Vial of the Sands all the same. Granted, we started off with an absolutely atrocious amount of RNG involved in getting this, which has been ameliorated somewhat, but how can you not love the idea of digging up a thousand-year-old alchemical recipe from a jar buried in an ancient desert city? Anyway, the recipe's available as a random drop from Canopic Jars, which you'll find alongside tol'vir artifact fragments. Most of the time, the jars will contain Mummified Organs (oh, eww), but eventually you'll hit pay dirt and the get the Vial recipe. However, creating an actual Vial is a hugely expensive undertaking. Even if you're an herbalist/fisherman and can easily afford to create the eight Flask of the Winds, Flask of Titanic Strength, and Deepstone Oil necessary, you'll still have to blow your daily Truegold transmute 12 times (or buy it off others) and shell out for the non-negotiable, 5,000-gold Pyrium-Laced Crystalline Vial and the 3,000-gold Sands of Time (eight of them!). It used to be possible to save yourself something like 8,000 gold by running a goblin character out to Yasmin (the seller) in Uldum to take advantage of Best Deals Anywhere and the guild perk Bartering, but Blizzard seems to have hotfixed that happy little trick out of existence just a few days ago. Sorry, folks.

Archaeology

There are two mounts available from archaeology (three if you count the Vial of the Sands required for the Sandstone Drake above):

Fossilized Raptor This one's relatively easy to get and will probably pop up before too long if you consistently work on fossil artifacts. Judging from comments on both Wowhead and the forums, most people seem to get it around 200-250 archaeology skill, but as with just about everything else concerning archaeology, don't bank on it. You might get it as early as 100, but you also might find yourself putting multiple copies of gray artifacts together at 525 before it finally pops up. That's rare, but it can happen. Console yourself by saying that everyone has at least one nightmare artifact eluding their grasp in archaeology.Ultramarine Qiraji Battle Tank This one's statistically more likely to be that nightmare. Like the Vial of the Sands, the Qiraji Battle Tank -- or, more accurately, the Scepter of Azj'Aqir that summons it -- is a tol'vir archaeology item, which means you're not going to get a shot at it until 450 skill at the earliest. You'll find some people on Wowhead with horror stories about having thousands upon thousands of useless night elf and fossil artifact fragments by the time they work their way through the tol'vir rares, but as far as I recall, the situation was improved by Blizzard's hotfixing an increase to the number of tol'vir spawns in Kalimdor. Is it worth it? This is the only qiraji bug mount available outside of the Temple of Ahn'Qiraj raid unless you're one of the extraordinarily few players with the Black Qiraji Resonating Crystal, so my answer is yes.Blacksmithing

There are no mounts available from blacksmithing.

Enchanting

There are no mounts available from enchanting, but there are faction-specific pets as of Cataclysm. We'll cover this in a later guide to the new pet achievements we talked about in The OverAchiever: New achievements in patch 4.2.

Engineering

There are three mounts available from engineering, but beware: Neither of the two flying machines can be learned by non-engineers, and the motorbikes are both very expensive (though less so than the Vial, above).
Flying Machine (engineers only) The Flying Machine is actually pretty easy to build for an engineer fresh to Hellfire Peninsula, provided you've been keeping up on your profession leveling. You'll have to mine up a ton of Fel Iron for the various materials, but nodes are plentiful in Hellfire and Zangarmarsh. Assuming you can get your hands on enough, this is an absurdly cheap mount to build, and hey! If you're Horde, this also means never having to fly an ugly-ass wyvern! Reason enough for me to level engineering on my tauren warrior.Turbo-Charged Flying Machine (engineers only) The epic version requires a hell of a lot more time, if for no other reason than the need for eight Khorium Power Cores. The problem with Khorium Power Cores is that they need -- wait for it -- Khorium, and this is a rare spawn that can pop up on any given Outland mining node. With Outland depopulated since the end of The Burning Crusade, you'll often find yourself alone in a zone flying from one node to the next hoping against hope that some damn Khorium will spawn. While you can check the auction house and occasionally Qiff in Netherstorm's Area 52, you may not have much luck on a small to medium server, and the little Khorium you'll find there tends to be expensive as hell.Mechano-Hog (Horde)/Mekgineer's Chopper (Alliance) WoW's own motorbikes! I still remember when these were introduced in the Wrath of the Lich King beta. But you know how the Vial's so expensive because of a non-negotiable materials cost? Well, the motorbikes are what that was patterned on. Titansteel's cheaper than it used to be (then again, how could it not be compared to the opening days of Wrath?), but the Salvaged Iron Golem Parts are 3,000 gold, the Goblin-Machined Pistons (eight of them!) are 1,000 gold each, and the Elementium-Plated Exhaust Pipe is 1,500 gold. Oh, and they're also only available from a vendor in the Storm Peaks' K3, unless your engineer gets lucky and "skins" them off mobs in Ulduar. Yes folks, it's a gold sink, but judging from the number of them infesting the average server, it's an effective one. Also the subject of the achievement Get to the Choppa!Fishing

There is one mount theoretically available from fishing, although you couldn't prove it by me:
Sea Turtle Ye gods. Yet another horribly random fishing drop that eludes yours truly. Oh well, it's not like Blizzard hasn't given me another crack at it. Once available only as a very random drop (El's Extreme Anglin' pegs it as 1 in 2,000 to 1 in 5,000) from any Northrend pool, its availability has been expanded to all pools in Azeroth's Cataclysm zones as well, including Tol Barad. Getting this is often best combined with One That Didn't Get Away so that you're making yourself miserable for the purpose of multiple achievements rather than just one. However, as someone who fished up umpteen million Fangtooth Herring in Wrath without once seeing either a Dark Herring or a turtle, it's also possible that you'll make yourself miserable for the purpose of no achievements. Bitch, bitch. Moan, moan. Also the subject of the achievement Turtles All the Way Down.Inscription

There are no mounts available from inscription.

Jewelcrafting

There are no mounts available from jewelcrafting.

Leatherworking

There are no mounts available from leatherworking.

Tailoring

There are three mounts available from tailoring and, like their flying engineering counterparts, they're tailors-only: Flying Carpet (tailors only) Like the standard-issue Flying Machine for engineers, this is a fairly easy starter flying mount to make if you've been keeping up with your professions when you reach Outland. The flying carpet mounts were famous for a period in Wrath for situating character models right in the middle of them -- by which I mean half on top and half below -- leading to a rash of people who appeared to have been eaten by ambulatory rugs. Curiously enough, this also wound up being an issue with the stone drake models when Cataclysm went live. I wonder if the issue was caused by the same errant bit of code.Magnificent Flying Carpet (tailors only) Like the Frosty Carpet below, this was originally intended as the epic flying counterpart to the Flying Carpet, but it's trainable and has a much cheaper materials cost.Frosty Flying Carpet (tailors only) Whenever I see one of these (well, the carpet mounts more generally), I'm immediately transported to that memorable night in Sunwell when our raid leader was chewing us out over our abysmal performance on what was supposed to be farm content. After a particularly appalling series of wipes on the Twins, he paused to catch his breath between (accurate) denunciations of our performance when we all heard a tinny little voice over Vent. Turns out our DPS warrior had leaned back from his computer and was quietly singing A Whole New World to himself. The raid never really recovered that evening. What does this have to do with the Frosty Flying Carpet? Absolutely nothing.
Working on achievements? The Overachiever is here to help! Count on us for advice on Azeroth's holidays and special events, including new achievements, how to get 310% flight speed with achievement mounts, and Cataclysm reputation factions and achievements.

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WoW Moviewatch: relax vs. Bastion of Twilight

This relax vs Bastion of Twilight movie is actually an intro spot; it's just the opening sequence for the guild's other videos, such as relax vs Heroic Cho'gall. Nonetheless, the video has captured many folks' imaginations, and it's been making the rounds of the community in the last few days.

This animation is a lot of fun and does a nice job of reminding us of each fight in the Bastion of Twilight. My wife points out (with some amount of validation) that the holy priest doesn't live through Cho'gall in this fight, either.

[Thanks to Lilydruid and Alex for the tip!]
Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an email at moviewatch@wowinsider.com.
Tags: bastion-of-twilight, guide-to-machinima, machinima, movies, relax-vs-bastion-of-twilight, world-of-warcraft-movies, world-of-warcraft-videos, wow-created-movies, wow-fan-movies, wow-guide, wow-machinima, wow-machinima-guide, wow-movie-guide, wow-movies, wow-video-guide, wow-videos

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WoW Moviewatch: Million Miles from Home

This is a new movie by Dreyfus Xano, inspired by a Soosdon video from a while back. Xano's machinima is actually chock-full of references to other members of the machinima community; there's so many shout-outs in here I can't separate them all out. Million Miles from Home also has a guest star you probably recognize: Nananea.

Xano has been working on his machinima skills for a little while, and Million Miles from Home represents a significant step up for the creator. Using a story within the video helps give the action some frame and motion. That technique definitely seemed to help Xano's work, so I'd encourage him to keep working within a narrative framework.

Million Miles from Home won't be everyone's cup of joe, but I think it's worth the watch. I definitely hope to see Xano keep creating, and I look forward to the next.
Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an email at moviewatch@wowinsider.com.
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Totem Talk: State of the enhancement shaman address

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement, and restoration shaman. On Saturdays, Josh Myers tackles the hard questions about enhancement. Can we tank? Can we DPS with a two-hander? How does one shot web? The answer to the first two is "no," and roll a hunter for the third!

Despising Blizzard Entertainment is easy. When things go wrong in a raid, when filthy boomkins and surly shadow priests pass over you on the DPS charts, or when buff homogenization leaves you feeling like there is no reason for your raid to bring you to progression content anymore, it is exceptionally easy to point to Ghostcrawler (lead systems designer) and say, "This is your fault."

The complaint I most often hear used to demonize Blizzard goes something like this: "Blizzard doesn't care about enhancement shaman. We're the redheaded stepchildren of WoW." Beyond just being offensive to the fiery-follicled and to stepparents everywhere, Blizzard does have a history of dealing with enhancement shaman issues.

So today, we're taking a journey of perspective. The Burning Crusade has long been heralded as the pinnacle of enhancement's glory, at least in terms of PVE. To me, it was enhancement's high school jock years. We may look back with fond remember whens and nostalgic feelings of pride and accomplishment, but the real thing will never measure up to the stories we tell about it.

The Burning Crusade: The pros

In many ways, The Burning Crusade is seen as the high point of enhancement shaman in PVE. In an era before buff homogenization, when totems and Bloodlust were both constricted to your party, it was nearly impossible to run a 25-man raid without an enhancement shaman buffing your melee group. Windfury Totem was not the raid-wide 10% haste buff it is today but was instead a mini-Windfury Weapon for your friends, offering them a chance on main-hand weapon attack to proc another attack. We also were the only party member who brought Grace of Air (+agility) and Strength of Earth (+strength) totems. Finally, we buffed our friends with the then spec-specific Unleashed Rage, as well as being the only melee spec to bring Bloodlust.

In The Burning Crusade, we were the exact opposite of Blizzard's current bring the player, not the class motto. You brought an enhancement shaman or your melee spent the entire raid whining to your melee leader that their DPS was too low.

The Burning Crusade: The cons

Unfortunately for enhancement, all that glitters is not gold. Enhancement's potential was limited to a 25-man setting and diminished in anything with smaller group sizes. A 10-man raid like Karazhan or Zul'Aman was not likely to be stacked with melee players, and in a heroic 5-man, you were almost guaranteed to not have all melee DPS. Coupled with the fact that enhancement had no crowd control in an expansion where heroics were designed around having crowd control unless you were best friends with a protection paladin, most enhancement shaman kept a healing set ready to get their daily heroics done.

Enhancement got the glory of being every rogue and fury warriors' best friend, but it was sort of being like being stuck as the perpetual wingman in every bar/party/social gathering you ever went to. Looking at logs for Brutallus, the last Patchwerk-esque fight of the expansion, three years ago, it was very common to see rogues with Warglaives of Azzinoth hitting 3,100-3,200 DPS, while enhancement shaman topped out between 2,000 and 2,100. In current content, a 1k DPS difference is paltry, even "balanced." In The Burning Crusade, a 1,000 DPS difference was around 33% less DPS than the top DPSers. In Cataclysm terms, that would be doing Pit Lord Argaloth in a 25-man raid with everyone in BiS gear and having a shadow priest do 30,000 damage per second while a flawlessly played enhancement shaman scrapes by at 20,000.

On top of that, the enhancement shaman rotation of old consisted of three main buttons: We laid Searing Totem once per minute, we hit with Stormstrike (a two-charge debuff that was largely consumed by elemental shaman casting Lightning Bolt and moonkins casting Wrath), and we cast Earth Shock. Beyond that, we totem twisted. Totem twisting was the highest art of playing enhancement in The Burning Crusade, requiring the enhancement shaman to drop Windfury Totem every 9 seconds. Since it buffed each of your party members with a 9-second buff, you would drop Windfury and then on the next global drop Grace of Air Totem so as to buff your melee group with agility for the next 7.5 seconds before you had to drop Windfury again. Only in between the gaps of totem twisting were you encouraged to use your own two damaging abilities. We also ran a Windfury Weapon setup on both of our weapons, as Flametongue Weapon scaled terribly. This meant more off-hand Windfury hits eating our possible Windfury main-hand hits, further hampering our DPS.

As if all of that wasn't enough, itemization for enhancement was miserable in The Burning Crusade. Since Shamanistic Rage was our only way to replenish mana and was on a 2-minute cooldown, we were forced to use agility/intellect mail, even though strength was the stat that gave us attack power. We had to primarily look for pieces that had attack power as a secondary stat, as our primary attributes gave us none. Strength/agility items like Karazhan's Mithril Chain of Heroism were uncommonly good for enhancement, but they didn't fit the normal gearing model and were few and far between.

Even worse, melee hit rating and spell hit rating were two different stats, as were melee critical rating and spell critical rating. Since we received all 9% hit we needed to hit melee hit cap through talents (six through Dual Wield Mastery and three from subspeccing into restoration and wasting points on non-DPS talents) and there was no spell hit rating on agility gear, we were stuck with a 14% chance to miss on our Earth Shock casts, as well as having a terribly low critical chance with Earth Shock. Also, since we shared gear with hunters, expertise rating was nowhere to be found on our mail gear, meaning we had to look to certain key items like Shard of Contempt and Skyshatter set pieces to even approach expertise caps. Unlike Wrath of the Lich King, there were no expertise gems in BC, making expertise caps much harder to reach.

This wasn't the worst of enhancement's itemization in The Burning Crusade. Case in point: the incredible two-piece Cataclysm Harness bonus, where your melee attacks had a 2% chance to reduce the cast time on your Lesser Healing Wave (now Healing Surge) by 1.5 seconds. That's right -- our two-piece bonus had absolutely zero influence on our DPS. Combine that with the Fist of Molten Fury, the off-hand fist weapon that was designed to accompany our tier 5. Despite looking like our tier gear, the 1.5 speed meant that any enhancement shaman raiding the content where those weapons drop would never actually use them.

Nostalgia can be a great thing, as happy memories are way more pleasurable than sad ones. Unfortunately, nostalgia in regards to World of Warcraft is often remembered while wearing rose-colored glasses. While there's truth that being an enhancement shaman guaranteed you a raid spot in The Burning Crusade, playing one was much akin to being the kindergartner who gets the gold star for picking up all his friends' toys but who never gets to play with them himself.

Because of the Industrial Revolution-esque working conditions of The Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King was welcomed with open arms by every enhancement shaman leveling to 80. Nearly every issue we had in BC was addressed.

Tags: class-help, enhance changes, enhance DPS, enhance evolution, EnhanceChanges, EnhanceDps, EnhanceEvolution, enhancement, enhancement changes, enhancement DPS, enhancement evolution, enhancement history, enhancement in burning crusade, enhancement in cataclysm, enhancement in wrath of the lich king, enhancement shaman, enhancement state of the spec, EnhancementChanges, EnhancementDps, EnhancementEvolution, EnhancementHistory, EnhancementInBurningCrusade, EnhancementInCataclysm, EnhancementInWrathOfTheLichKing, EnhancementShaman, EnhancementStateOfTheSpec, featured, guide, guide-to-shamans, shaman DPS, shaman-guide, shaman-info, shaman-talents, ShamanDps, talent, talents, world-of-warcraft-class-guide, world-of-warcraft-guide, wow-class-guide, wow-class-help, wow-guide, wow-shaman, wow-shaman-info, wow-talent-guide

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