Revisiting the Circle of Healers

Miss Medicina asks some additional questions related to the original Circle of Healers non-meme.

These were my original answers, I answered only from a holy paladin perspective, though I do have a druid, shaman, and a leveling (73) priest. In the recent months I've begun playing the shaman and the druid more, healing a Malygos run on my druid in mostly iLevel200 gear as well as TotC10 in some 219s.

1. Reread your original answers to the questions. With the benefit of hindsight, score your own work in terms of its cringeworthiness.

Looking back in hindsight, very little has changed from my original post, except for now I'm running two holy specs and using them situationally. One is a 53/0/18 and one is a 51/20/0 build.

2. Has your class's healing improved in the area you identified as its weakest?

Holy Paladins still don't have a group heal aside from judging light (which our protadins do) and the glyphed holy light splash.

3. Have you changed your "least favoured class to heal with"?

My dislike of playing with other holy paladins has faded some, having two in a 25 man is very helpful, especially when the other paladin is capable of preforming at the same level as I do. The number of deaths our tanks have in 25 man content is super low because we just don't let them die.

I now greatly detest healing with most Discipline priests. I absolutely abhor it.

While I understand the benefits of the disc build there are some major flaws and issues with every single priest succumbing to the nauseating discmania that the priest blogger community and who knows who else has been making noise about for months now. It's starting to feel like priests are going to disc just because they want to be radical and different, a rebel. ... Yet everyone is doing it.

I guess a bad holy priest still carries their weight better than a bad discipline priest and it's pretty rare for me to find a discipline priest that actually carries their own weight on my server despite the discipline spec being at epidemic levels. The disc priests are the "omg I own't heal anyone but the tank" types. (My priest was a disc tank healer before it was cool, way back before Horde had Paladins. Y'dern young disc whippersnappers, it's my lawn, get off of it!)

At this point, I refuse to recruit any more discipline priests for raiding. It may be the player's 15 dollars a month, but it's the raid's 360 and we have a priority of getting things done over how 'fun' penance is. For new recruits it's go holy or go home. One disc priest is enough (or even too much when we have all three holy paladins present in raid).

4. Did you read the entries from others in the webring, especially your class?

Yes I did. I read a lot of the entries for all the healing classes. As a healing lead and a person who has all four classes covered it's very relevant to my interests.

5. If Yes to #4, did you learn anything that made you a better healer?

Honestly, I don't really remember at this point. *nervous laugh*

6. What tools/resources or information do you think you would need to improve as a healer and how could that help the community at large?

The resource right now that would improve me as a healer would be a computer that runs at higher than 8FPS in raids.

I'd love the ability to broadcast settings and information to other healers in a fast, useful way. I'd love to broadcast my grid status indicators to other healers while in game--I can say, "Hey, send this setting" and give the rest of my healers bits of my setup without having to sit down and instruct them (or remind them) how to configure their grids.

This would make more of my healing core respond quickly to debuffs that require quick healing responses from players and may alleviate stress from me trying to heal two tanks plus the bone-spiked people on Marrowgar.

7. What did you identify as your worst habit as a healer? Have you improved in this area?

I identified my worst habit as a healer to be being too lazy to do a jump stop-cast to curb overhealing. As my haste has continued to skyrocket, I've actually gotten worse, not better, at this. At this point it's virtually impossible for me to do a stopcast in the tiny window where I can. I flip between being methodical and waiting for damage before dropping bombs and just spamhealing proactively. I'd rather overheal than lose a tank in a sudden damage spike.

8. What did you list as your favorite healing spell and your least used healing spell for your class? Are these answers still true?

My favorite spell is still holy shock and it's only going to get better when I approach my 4 piece T10 bonus that will give me back my super fast holy lights (possibly near instant) when holy shock crits.

/nod

Must... cast... faster!

As a Paladin healer, I find myself with an urge to stack haste. Must. Cast. Faster.

Raid buffed, my itty bitty healadin sits at:

38.5k mana

2700 spellpower

53% haste (895ish from my gear and food buff (33%), 15% from judging, 5% from wrath of air totem)

The only way I can increase my mana is more gear or changing my weapon enchant from spellpower over to the wowclassic int to weapon (and I'm tempted to).

My problem is that when I'm playing, it feels like my heals just aren't fast enough. But my holy lights are coming so fast that I can't even jump and stop cast, because they'll go anyways. So I'm casting fast enough, it just doesn't feel like it.

When I'm in a boss fight, the type that are fast and furious, my heals feel like they take forever. When Naxx was the only raid content out there, I recall fighting Patchwerk and having such a sensation. I've had similar sensations on Hodir, Mimiron, Yogg, Festergut, Rotface, etc. Some of these fights feel like they take forever. Festergut has a very unforgiving enrage timer, but it feels like the fight takes forever. I keep thinking, "Is it dead yet? Oh man kill it quick." I've had similar feelings when playing toons, including non-healers, as far back as Molten Core. I recall having such feelings on the salamander bosses (where I played decurse bitch on my mage) as well as on Rags, Vael, Broodlord, Hakkar, Jindo, Mandokir, Arlokk, and Thekal.

I've figured out what it is that happens that makes me feel like everything is 'too slow'. When I'm really really focused I seem to go into a heightened state of awareness or something. It's like time slows down to a crawl and I'm thinking critically and casting each heal methodically. It's like that scene in The Matrix where Neo slows down time and dodges a bunch of bullets, but with gaming. (Humorously enough, I drive a Matrix.) A few months ago I decided to call the phenomenon my 'healer trance'. I can't really control when it happens, when I do go into it, stuff gets done something fierce.

Dear readers, do you ever experience similar states of mind when playing or does the Altoholic need to step into a sanity well?

A Title Well Earned

I usually don't use my "The Patient" title on my characters. It feels like superscrubville.

Last night, right before bed, I hit up a random dungeon on my resto druid.

There was a warlock, a rogue, a mage, myself, and a dk tank in heroic Nexus.

The warlock pulled agro and died. To my glee, he was running rankwatch and notified me that my res wasn't the right rank. (I had hit 80 in my other spec and wow didn't update my spells on the resto spec, so I'd been using downranked spells. I had fixed all of them but the res.)

The rogue died to agro and/or stupid.

The warlock repeatedly pulled agro and began to complain.

After the first boss, the tank got iceblocked and the locke got instagibbed and nerdraged more. He went on to say he had multiple tanks and how the guy should l2tank and hold agro better. I noted I had several tanks as well and suggested waiting for the tank to get threat.

The mage left group, probably sick of the raging. I queued up and we got a ret paladin.

Meanwhile, the tank ragequit and the rogue went linkdead shortly after, leaving me alone with the raging warlock and the newly added ret. I couldn't add a new tank because of the offline person preventing it.

I initiated a vote kick but it failed. The warlock cursed the tank, saying they were bad. The ret reached us. I got out of treeform and sat my healery cow ass down and told the warlock point blank that he was doin' it wrong. I told him he would have made a better impact in the other player's gameplay if he had been constructive and polite with his feedback instead of attacking. The locke continued to be a jerk, not liking that I told him he was wrong.

I initiated another vote kick to remove the warlock and this time the ret, having seen the warlock be an ass, quickly agreed and we punted him. We then punted the offline person and queued up.

The ret said to me that he agreed with the idea of giving positive constructive useful information and said that he himself had bad dps and he didn't know why, that he was on his first 80 and needed help.

I told him some spec tweaks he could do (with the ret only seal that acts as a cleave now for trash and the other seal for bosses). I told him to get some more hit (8%) and to get rid of his agi gems (why he had agi gems I don't know) in favor of strength gems and strength/hit gems (until at 8%) and then str/crit gems. I told him to stay in group after the instance was done and I'd help him more.

In the middle of my talking we got new people and went back to playing to finish the instance. There was an elemental shaman in group who had made note of me explaining ret stuff to the new ret paladin and started asking me questions too. The elemental shaman was also a new 80 and wanted to go resto but didn't feel geared enough yet. They asked me where I got this item and that item. I happily answered their questions, gave them some gemming tips, and tips about healy addons.

After the instance I scrambled to an AH while the ret was still in the group. From there I suggested (linked) which enchants to get for his gear (+hit to gloves, icewalker to boots), told him about sons of hodir and what to search the webs for to find out how to open the ebon blade faction. Suggested a meta and what gem to use to activate it. Linked him those gems along with the str/strcrit/strhit gems.

Finally, I told him about Elitist Jerks forum for gem/rotation/spec reading and sites like wowpopular to look at specs at. He thanked me and logged off for the night.

I hearthed back to Dalaran and looked at my character paperdoll, noted I had no title selected, and clicked my title dropdown. Sure enough the "The Patient" title was there, it's been there for a while, I remember turning it off. I selected it and turned it on because it felt like I actually earned the title.

Altoholic's Guide to running PUG and Open raids

What you need:

You MUST have:

• Working knowledge of bosses and strategies behind them.
• Working knowledge of what various classes bring to the table and how to best utilize them.
• The ability to communicate clearly, simply, and effectively.
• Understanding of raid composition.
• A strong sense of fairness.
• The patience of a saint.

Strongly recommended:

• A working mic.
• Access to a voice chat server where you can speak. (This is my affiliate link for the service I use. A 60 man server costs about 20/mo and the site lets you give a link to others if they want to pitch in. I have a larger server to support two 25 man raids and a 10 man raid in tandem, most groups won't need that much space unless they're huge.)
• A small group of friends who are strong, good, patient players to set the pace and back you up.
• WIM or some other addon that gives you tell windows. You will be in tell hell and people will get upset if you miss what they're saying.
• If you don't already have one, make a channel in game and give it to your friends in and out of guild. Invite good players to it. In essence, build your own looking for group channel with good people.
• oRA2 or an addon that lets you have a magical invite codeword.
• Get a World of Logs account and run some parses. You may want to create a second account if you already use one and make a fake guild if you don't want the parses to show up in the guild info. (I don't care.)
• Discourage meter spam. Tell people that you'll post a log parse at the end of the raid and people can see how they did. Meter spam is annoying.

Setting Up:

Figure out your loot system:

Before anything else, you must decide a way to handle loot, that's what people are there for, to kill bosses and loot epics. How will you deal with patterns? BOEs? Main set? Offset? Stuff no one wants? I'd strongly recommend that you, as raid leader and loot master have final say, you can explain that your reason is not malicious, but simply that paladins don't use spirit, hunters don't use expertise, etc.

I'd strongly suggest banning players selling loot to others, that they should only roll on items that are an upgrade. Make it clear that there will be consequences for such behavior: Having a chat with the players' guild leader. Public blacklisting.

Ask your backup to keep an eye on the gear of people winning rolls, if someone is winning but has better you have the right responsibility to question it.

Write it down somewhere. Put it in a macro and use the macro to post the rules. This way Blizzard has a record of it should someone baw. You must explain how the loot will word before you begin the raid. This will give people an opportunity to leave if they don't agree before drama happens.

I've used several different psudo loot systems over the years. You can read about a few of them here.

I often use "no vent, no loot" to get people on the voice chat.

Invite friends and family:

• Tell your guild you're putting together a run and for people to send you a tell with their preferred spec and other specs they are willing to play.
• If you already have your friends and family channel populated, send out a call asking for the same as in guild.
• If you have one or two people in your social circle who're really cool, ask them to go to the summoning stone and lead up summons with an occasional "type 1 for summon."
• Designate someone to link the vent info periodically to herd cats into the voice server info for you.

Sort your resources:

• For 10 man runs, you need 2 tanks (one with a dps offset), 2.5 healers, and 5.5 dps, half range, half melee. (Having a healer with a dps offset can be that extra .5 healer .5 dps.)
• For 10 mans I put melee and tanks in group 1 and ranged/casters in group 2. My 10 mans usually have 2 melee and 3 ranged, a hunter usually winds up in group 1 because of the imbalance.
• For 10 mans, I like 1 tank healer and 2 group healers, one of which can be relied on to top off the tanks if the tank healer gets mezzed. A tank healer is usually paladin or a disc priest, but a strong druid or shaman that you trust can also tank heal if needed.
• For 25 mans, you'll need 3 tanks (two with offset), 5-7 healers, and a 15-17 DPS. An even split between melee and ranged is generally a good idea but sometimes you have to roll with what you got. I like to do 3 tanks / 6-7 healers (can have some switch to deeps if we're doing ok) / 7 melee, and the rest ranged.
• For 25 mans, I put all three tanks in group 1, all the healers in group 5, with overflow going in group 4. I put ranged casters in groups 3 and 4. If I have two resto shaman, one will be in group 4 and I'll put mages, elemental shaman, moonkin, and shadowpriests in with them so those casters can take advantage of the mana tide. Warlocks can lifetap, hunters can viper, so they're low priority on getting the extra mana tide.
• For 25 mans I like bringing 2 holy paladins for tank healing, a disc priest to help heal the tanks and bubble the raid. I like the rest to be group healers. (There are lots of bad disc priests on my server who refuse to do anything but tank heal. For this reason I don't take pug disc priests to my open runs. We have one already and that's enough.)

Hit the Raid Finder:

• Check the raid finder first. If there are people in there, send them a polite tell and see if they want to go. You can ask them if they've done it before, if you feel people have to do X DPS (4k?), ask them if they think they can pull their weight. I like to ask people if they can follow directions, get on vent, and get out of the stupid.
• You may get responses like the one I give on my alts: My dps is a little lower than what you're asking but I follow directions well and don't stand in the fire.
• Gearscore is a fallacy. Just because someone has gear doesn't make them good. Check for gems / enchants. You can put gear on a bad, they'll still be a bad. A good player will do decently regardless. Give your friendly neighborhood underdog a chance, you may be pleasantly surprised.

Hit the Looking for Group channel / Trade:

• Fill out your tanks and healers first. They will be the hardest to find, trying to get different classes of each type is ideal but not always necessary.
• Examine what you still need. Are you missing a class? Ask for it.
• Send out a call saying you're seeking what you need last.
• Don't be afraid to start a few short if after asking a few times you get no nibbles. If you're missing 2 or 3 dps in a 25 man, it's not really a huge deal. People will ask, "Is that spot taken? I have a friend."

Getting Started:

Introductions, Behavior Expectations, and Raid Rules:

• Once everyone is in the instance, spam your voice chat macro. Either you or someone you've delegated should count your vent channel to count everyone.
• You could say on your voice chat, "Click no please" and do a ready check. Call out people who said yes, often times it's just "I wasn't paying attention" and you can just say "hey, pay attention". Make people who actually aren't on voice get on voice.
• If someone refuses without good reason (such as being deaf), boot them. "No vent no loot."

• Introduce yourself (outloud and in text, if you've written stuff out in macros, you can use those). "Hi, I'm X, I'll be your raid leader and master looter tonight. If at any time you have questions or comments feel free to send me a tell. I might not respond immediately but I do run an addon that saves all the tells for me to read and respond to."
• Explain expected behaviors and the purpose of the run, "We're here to kill bosses, loot epics, and have a good time regardless of guild tag. Please leave the attitude and drama at the door. No spamming meters ore gearscores please, I'm running a World of Logs parse and would be happy to give you a link so you can see how you did after the run." "You're free to talk on vent during trash pulls but please hush during loot cycle, when I'm explaining boss fights, and when the tanks need to communicate." "We don't play the blame game here. Please refrain." "Please don't do fake rolls, they make my job really hard." If you're paranoid you may screenshot it all.
• Explain the loot rules and let people know if they don't agree they're welcome to leave with no hard feelings.
• Set your tank windows in oRA2, set your main assists, set them in the basic wow interface too, and put lucky charms on the tanks for the people using healbot.
• Say who your tanks and who are people you should assist off of are.
• Put lucky charms on people you know will be in the right place at the right time.

Once you've done your speech and setup then you're ready to begin.

Begin!

• Explain the fight as simply as possible. ("Kill boss, kill adds, kill boss, kill adds, get out of the fire, win." ) If you have a friend in raid who's good at targeting adds to die (Snowbolds in northrend beasts) tell everyone to assist off of them.
• Warn people there may not be a wipe or two.
• Give healing assignments.
• Say things like, "If you don't know where to go, stand near _."
• Engage the boss.
• If you can, call out the names of people who need heals or dps to help them. Being bonespiked or having a snowbold on them, if you see someone standing in the stupid, very calmly say "Hey _ you're standing in the fire, move."
• If things go awry, stay calm. It's up to no you to keep a cool head no matter what.
• If you wipe, laugh it off. "Let's try this again with feeling and more add killing and less standing in the fire this time!" "Hahaha now that we have that out of our system let's try it again!"

Distribute Loot:

• Distribute your loot using the method detailed earlier and follow your own rules. You must stick to your word, your credibility is on the line.
• If someone wins multiple things you may consider asking them if they'd graciously pass to the next person. Most people can be fair, especially when treated fairly and positively.
• If there's a dispute or question about loot, say you'll go back to it and move on to the next item then go back to the trouble item.
• Do a countdown, if people don't respond within countdown time, they don't get to have a chance at loot. Doing /rw Itemlink Roll. (wait a while) /rw 3 /rw 2 / rw1
• If you're doing rolls, say who you see as the highest roll. People will let you know if there's a higher roll you missed.
• I use the Comix addon which will make a Phoenix Wright-esque "OBJECTION" sound, word bubble thing on my screen if someone objects. My raiders can /object at me to get my attention and say privately to me, "That dagger has expertise on it, it's no good for a hunter."

When the raid is done:

• Thank people for attending.
• Invite them to join your channel if they'd like to attend again.
• If you have to call it because people are leaving because of wipes / being tired, say sorry to everyone. Consider coming back the next day.
• If you've offered to help with gems / enchants, say where you'll be and follow through.
• If someone wasn't doing well and seem to be confused on gear/gems/enchants/etc consider investing some time on them after the raid. I strongly encourage it, you can turn non-raiders into raiders with a little guidance. You may want to read this if you're proceeding with helping confused players.

Always...

• Be firm.
• Be fair.
• Be honest.
• Be patient.
• Be generous.
• Lead by example.
• Give second chances.
• Let bygones be bygones.
• Let people know where they stand.
• Be Positive - Rather than yelling at people for getting knocked into the whelp cave, say "hey, stand on _ symbol if you don't know where to go." People respond better to positivity than negativity.
• Give people a chance to save face and attempt correct issues in private. (If they make a public stink after you've tried conflict resolution in private, you may find it necessary to calmly put your foot down. Just don't run wild expressing your irritation)

Never...

• Yell.
• Blame.
• Shame.
• Get angry.
• Change your own loot rules in the middle of the run.

Good luck and happy raiding!

Altoholic's Pug Raid Loot Systems

I've used a few different loot system variations with my pug raids.

How Altoholic Handles...

BOEs:

People are allowed to acquire BOEs for their main spec only. If there is no one who needs the items, they go into the raid bank. Banked items are not sold but are given out for free to people who can use them later on regardless of guild tag.

If you're a cool, nice, skilled but ungeared person and you happen to wind up grouped with Altoholic or associates, you might find yourself being handed phat loot just because you deserve a reward for being awesome.

One recipient of such sharing was later revealed to be the alt of a guild leader on the server US-Misha who thanked us for our help and offered to pay us back, which I declined. In return, he offered an open ended invite to his guild, which I won't take because I love my server and my guild, but telling someone they're always welcome in your home is kind and meaningfulgesture. The player was a resto druid in blues and greens, a fresh 80, healed me through a timed HCoS run without issue. This was before the new LFG system and easy triumph badges.

While watching them, I noticed them do things that indicate a smart, good player. A lot of them were little things that I'm not sure most players would notice. I noticed them because I have a resto druid as well as everything else, and I do the same things he was doing. An example of the things this player was doing was they stood with me in the consecrate during the gauntlet so the healing agro from their hots would just bring the mobs to me. It's common sense, but common sense isn't very common, and sometimes it separates a moron from a good player.

All the items given had been sitting in the raid bank for several months, they could have rotted there longer or they could have been used to really make someone's day. In the end, our random acts of kindness may wind up inspiring others to do the same.

Enchanting Materials:

Enchanting Materials go to the raid bank. The raid bank provides enchants to participants in raids who have won loot. This is considered payment for services rendered.

We also offer free rare quality gems to go in said gear. We'd offer epic but we don't have huge supplies. We will trade an epic for an eternal of the type required to transmute rare to epic if we have an epic gem in stock.

People respond very positively to this, a lot of them are like, "Wow. That's really generous."

It's a good boost to reputation.

As usual, we don't sell enchanting mats gained from raids.

Patterns:

Patterns are open rolled but must be learned immediately. If no one can learn a pattern it goes in the raid bank and will be given to someone who can learn it. These are not sold.

Other Things:

Crusader Orbs, Runed Orbs, etc are opened for random rolls when I'm in open groups. If it's a mostly internal group we simply bank them. If the items are banked they're used to craft people gear... for free.

"Loot System" - Carriers and Soaks

One of the loot systems I employ uses /random 100 with main spec coming before offspec, with a few exceptions.

• You are considered the spec you are invited as with a few exceptions.
• In essence, if you are invited as DPS and you try to roll against tanks on tank loot claiming your main spec is tank isn't acceptable.
• The exception is if someone who wants to come as DPS to get gear for their offset and we ask them to run their main spec (tank/heals) to make the raid work.
• If you're running as an offset, that set is considered your main set and you won't be able to roll against main set healers against healing loots if you're DPS. People have to choose wisely.

There are people who need gear. They wind up soaking it up, possibly winning many items in one run and getting geared out pretty fast.

There are raiders who have almost everything and are just coming along to get that one special piece they really want. These people are carrying the raid and we appreciate them a lot. I welcome them to express to me that they're in the raid for a particular item they really really want.

If it drops, I ask the people who have been soaking to graciously pass the item to the carrier. Typically they do and the people who are helping carry the raid have a really good shot at that item they really want (though sometimes more than one carrier wants something, but a 50% chance is better than a 10% chance).

Everyone gets what they want. Everyone's happy. The system works.

The biggest downside is that sometimes someone might get lucky and get more stuff than others.

"Loot System" - Categorized Loots

I use a loot system for TotC25 that splits loot into categories and operates under more of a 'one phat loot' type of style... with a big of luck.

Unlike a normal one phat loot, it's possible to win more than once and you don't screw yourself out of that awesome trinket or weapon that drops later in the instance if you take something that's only good for you and would otherwise just be sharded.

The Loot Categories are:

[Armor] - Armor and Armor Tokens, Shields, Offhands.

[Weapons] - Weapons, wands, maces, etc.

[Bling] - Rings, Necklaces, Trinkets, Cloaks

You roll 100.

When you win an item of that category you reduce your roll by X number.

I chose 25, so if you've won something you roll out of 75. Then 50. Then 25. If you've won four items of a category type you can't roll anymore on that. :p

It's possible to beat other people out with a roll of 75 if everyone rolls real low (bad luck) and you don't.

You can win a weapon, a ring, and a piece of armor before you reduce your rolls.

The advantage of doing this instead of "one phat loot" makes it so people who've already won something don't just leave because they have no hope of getting anything else.

Other Rules:

In both systems, the loot master has final say on everything. This assures that people get loot that's good for them. No spirit for paladins unless no one else wants it, no expertise for hunters, etc.

Trying to sell loot to others will result in removal/blacklisting.

People who cause loot drama typically aren't invited back. If someone is a jackass, they may forefit their right to loot.

In some cases, I may demand certain things for people to be eligible for loot, but they're pretty rare and exist to motivate people to do things like prevent a wipe.

"No vent no loot." "If you don't kick on faction champions you get no loot." "If you die to the stupid, no loot."

Good luck and happy raiding.

Altoholic's Guide to giving someone "The Talk"

So you just got out of running a PUG raid... and there was this guy or girl with crap that isn't gemmed or enchanted. He or she won an item that would have been great for one of your regulars and the regulars are pretty upset.

You gave it to them because you follow through with your loot rules. The person seems nice enough but they haven't got a clue. You've decided to try talking to them, that they just mind wind up being ok if someone actually pointed them in the right direction.

You've got your clue-by-four clenched in your fist.

You send them a tell.

The Approach:

Approach the clueless person with a "Can I help you with these problems you're having" approach rather than attacking them. If someone feels they're being attacked they're going to put up a defensive wall and not listen (and thusly continue to be bad).

Do: Hey, I saw you were having some trouble with the raid today, could I talk to you about it and see if I can't help you out?

Don't: You really sucked in raid. L2Enchant your gear, scrub.

Private Help:

Sit down and camly talk to the person, privately. No shaming, no insults. Just helping and explaining.

Pay close attention to their responses, if they're like "fuck you, it's my 15 dollars, rar" don't bother. If the person is actually open to information, they're worth spending time and resources on.

If they don't have gems/enchants, encourage them to get them. I often sit down and provide rare gems for people. I have 100+ of each type of rare gem and tons of enchanting mats laying around gathering dust.

Ask them questions: Are you hit capped?

If they say they don't know, tell them what the cap is. Tell them if they're not at cap they should get some stuff (ench/gems) targeted towards hit.

Offer them gem/enchant/spec advice or ask someone in your circle of friends who's good at the class to come down and calmly help you.

Help them with spec/rotation/etc. Tell them about resources and tools that can help them better their gameplay. (Elitist Jerks, class blogs, tankspot videos, power auras, dbm, decursive, etc.)

Do a before and after on a target dummy. Praise an immediate improvement.

Once you've put them on the right track, leave them with a few thoughts.

The Language of Gear:

Use conflict resluiton speech and tell them they should keep their gear gemmed and enchanted.

Say, "when you don't do ___ it makes people feel like ____, and this upsets them."

You can check out this blog entry for a way of how to explain how people feel when others don't enchant their stuff.

In Closing:

Congratulations. You've just put a clueless player that may have been considered on the path to being a good raider.

In a few months you might just find the person you helped having a great time raiding because you were willing to spend a little time to point them in the right direction.

Cheers!

Silly Psychological Personality Types

I've always thought of the Myers Briggs Type Indicator as a silly fun pseudoscience not really to be taken seriously. The fact that my test results have varied wildly over the years, including getting tied scores on several occasions has definitely added to that viewpoint.

Recent observations of my guildlings indicate they don't quite understand my methods, my thinking, and why I lead and do what I do, and my timing in doing so. I began writing a post that might share some insight into what is driving me to do what I do. Some of the ideas and ethics I have as a leader would be things I'd require people who'd be formal officers to follow.

In compiling my post I went back and revisited my very first MBTI result, a result I got when I was in a 'leadership' class in high school, which was INTJ. I was one of the only introverts in the class of about 60, after all it was leadership training for class officers and club leaders.

I skimmed the wikipedia page on INTJ and noticed the Keirsey Temperament designation of "Mastermind" which immediately invoked images of Pinky and the Brain in my nerdy pop-culture flooded brain. I went and read the article and found it to be a pretty eerie resemblance.

The idea of being the reluctant leader, the person who steps up to the plate when a leader is needed and no one else will step up, has always been how I am. The mastermind's feature of taking up leadership when the current leaders are, well, doin' it wrong. My experiences in being part of WOW guilds run by others is that most leaders are doing it wrong, they make the same mistakes over and over again and ignore people saying, "Hey, don't do that, watch out for this". I tire of people making the same mistakes over and over again and that's probably why I've stepped up to the plate.

Later MBTI tests have resulted in ties of INTJ and INFJ. The difference is if someone values hard thought or personal consideration. The world is not black and white, both people and logic matter, isn't that a logical conclusion. (You see what I did there.)

More recently, I've been ESTJ and just today ENTJ. I'm like WTF Mate?

I went back and read through things again and went back and paid more attention to the INTJ article, particularly to the cognitive functions, particularly the shadow functions.

My conclusion is that I'm INTJ "Mastermind" personality, I'm currently operating as 'leader' and as part of getting the job done I operate as other personality types. I'm putting on and taking off hats as needed to. I wear the INFJ "Counselor", ENTJ "Fieldmarshal", and ESTJ "Supervisor" hats as needed.

With this theory at least it's sensible silly psudoscience.

I did see something in INTJ that reminded me of the writings of a certain goblin.

"They generally withhold strong emotion and do not like to waste time with what they consider irrational social rituals. This may cause non-INTJs to perceive them as distant and reserved."

Regardless, I may have to make my vent phonetic, "Are you pondering what I'm pondering?"