<ring> <ring>
Wife: Hello?
Me: Hi Honey!
Wife: Hi Honey, how are you?
Me: I’m good, can you do me a quick favor?
Wife: Sure, honey. Where are you?
Me: I’m in the car, on my way home. Say, can you check my Facebook and see if anyone has commented on my Wall’s link to the YouTube MATRIX fart fighting video post ?
<one-one-thousand> <two-one-thousand> <three-one-thousand> <oh-crap-one-thousand>
Me: Honey?
In some guilds the simple offering of 20 Alterac Swiss may be all that is needed to join the ranks, but not so in the Order of Copernicus. To join the vaunted ranks of our Guild you must meet a pretty stringent requirement… You must work with us, be related to one of our guild members, or be the personal friend of one of our members. This means that pretty much all of our guild members know each other personally. In fact there are only a few of us that don’t live reasonably close to each other. Sure our membership rules do allow for a Seven Degrees of Separation from Kevin Bacon kind of thing, so in theory we could eventually have a member that only one of us knows, but so far that has not happened… nor has Kevin Bacon joined our ranks.
The make up and close ties within our guild give us some pretty unique dynamics. The Center of Excellence, from where many of these musing first originated, is actually our lunch break. Not only does the Center of Excellence help us develop blog posts but it also has kept our members very familiar with the other’s classes and races. This has allowed even the most casual of us to leverage off of the knowledge of those of us that are more… involved. I believe this is a large reason of why we perform so well as a team in our raids. We know each other’s strengths and weaknesses, we know what to expect from the others on the team.
Another major impact of who we are is reduced drama. We deal with each other personally and professionally on a very regular basis. We are not anonymous players to each other, which brings with it a high level of respect when we interact with each other in game. When drama does occur, because it naturally does, it gets resolved quickly and usually without deadly fallout. Read the rest of this entry »
Ahhh… The Fail Whale! It’s a majestic creature of the sea that swims happily around bringing with it death and destruction. Punch & Pie is no stranger to the Fail Whale. His unwelcomed presence has been felt on our raids in the past and will undoubtedly be felt in the future. On occasion however, the Universe provides an opportunity to exact remorseless justice on those that have wronged you. This week’s raid was Punch & Pie’s opportunity to exact that justice. This week we mercilessly beat the Fail Whale until Epic Loots shot from his crappy, little blowhole. Yes that is right ladies, gentlemen, and gnomes… Punch & Pie brought the Awesome this week!
The Order of Copernicus has some seriously talented DPSers. They know their classes well and they are proud of the numbers they produce, at least the frequent posting of recount in raid chat and on WOW blogs certainly seems to indicate as such. However, a thought recently occurred to me, are the DPSers the sole owners of those numbers they are so proud of? Yes, the DPSer certainly produces the numbers. Their gear and skill is undoubtedly the source of the big numbers but bear with me for a bit, and think about it. What about the Tank? If the tank cannot hold agro on the Mob we don’t get big DPS numbers, we get a bloody mess on the floor. In fact good DPSers throttle their threat output to ensure that they stay below the tank’s current value to avoid becoming a stain on the pavement. Failure to stay below the limit the Tank has established can lead to wipes as Mobs run wild having their way with the DPS and healers alike and enrage timers are missed as Raid DPS output plummets. So the tank certainly sets the max numbers produced. If the tank can only handle an average DPS output of 1.5.k, we probably aren’t going to be seeing too many end game DPSers comparing their e-peen in raid chat, at least not alive ones. So when big DPS numbers get posted in raid, shouldn’t the Tanks have some bragging rights?
Now what about your friendly raid healers? You know those casters at the bottom of the DPS charts that always bitch about the abundance of Hit Rating on Spell Power gear and the Pine Beetle ? (It’s an epidemic people) I am aware that some, not all, but some DPSers are able to pull themselves away from their singular focus on their DPS rotation long enough to move out of the various lakes of fire and other nastys that generally prove to be hazardous to the health of raiders. However, even those DPSer that are willing to make that ultimate of DPS sacrifices still require the removal debuffs and an occasional life saving heal. Sure you can argue that good DPSers should be avoiding raid damage and that should limit the amount of support they need from the healers, take a step back and take a look at the big, punch-drunk space goat with the dinged up armor . If he goes down, who do you think is next on the hit list? So like it or not, those cloth wearing “squishies” are the reason why raid DPS can be sustained.
So if Tanks set the DPS limit, the DPSer creates the potential for big numbers, and the healer ensures the DPS numbers can be sustained, who really owns those big, pretty numbers in recount?
Swanny
My dwarf buddy has two problems. Well at least two problems for this type of a forum.
1) He doesn’t get a chance to raid much
2) He has a burning desire to top the DPS Charts in the raids he can get in
So whats a brutha to do? Exactly what any Hunter can do. You see, he is not the lucky recipient of drops, or have the highest average gear score. He just knows how to search for the best items that he CAN get. Badge gear, Vailt of Archavon and 5 man gear, and BOE gear. Sure it’s expensive but what else you going to spend your gold on. Besides I’m sure the mats for the new Leatherworking items (Drums of the forgotten Kings, Drums of the wild) will sell at a nice mark up once patch 3.2.2 drops.
Anyhoo, lets get down to business shall we. I am going to go through Swanny’s gear piece by piece and let you know how you can get it.
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