Haystealer got us a new vent and macro creation

so primarily i will just make this a quick macro info sheet and it contains our vent info.

go to macros either escape or click on the little computer screen that gives you the game menu or type /macro. Stay on the General tab for now and select new. Pick your icon and type the following. Now this might need some editing to work properly. However i tried to get all 3 situations in one macro, it will spam the guild chat for now

----------------don't type -------------

/p is for party

/ra is for raid

/g is for guild

------------this area -- info ---------

/p vent info

/p mercury.typefrag.com

/p port 14098

/p pw drinkmilk

/ra vent info

/ra mercury.typefrag.com

/ra port 14098

/ra pw drinkmilk

/g vent info

/g mercury.typefrag.com

/g port 14098

/g pw drinkmilk

more macro info can be found at

http://www.wowwiki.com/Making_a_macro

and a partial list of the slash commands can be found at

http://www.wowwiki.com/Making_a_macro

Thank you Hay

Would people be willing to use this for raiding?

www.curse.com - EPGP Loot Master

I've heard from a few raid leaders that this addon makes loot quite a bit simpler to decide who gets it.

The problem is, for it to be useful, everyone in the raid needs it installed. I know there are some people out there that don't use addons :P

So, post here if you're willing to use it :) or not :P

Raiding for the Holiday Season

What would people like to do for the next week and a half?

I'm gone at least two days this next week, it appears that Dan is also gone. In general, it seems that at least half our group will be AWOL during the holiday.

Do we want to just nix the Raid schedule until the weekend after christmas?

This Weekends Raid

Howdy Stampeders!

We didnt get a chance to do Uld on Friday or Saturday due to the absence of some people for holiday events. So on Sunday we did our raid and we did very well. We ended up pugging a tank (Sebbix) who did well. A special thanks to bama who came and tanked as the other tank as well as thanks to AFK who came and healed on her druid. We one-shotted all of seige as well as thorim and only stumbled once on auriyana (crazy cat lady). We had issues with some people only being able to come and rotated a dps too many times with my favorite part being when we had three moonkins and 5 druids total. The rotating dps slots cost us a lot of time but we made some new friends that we can always look up and still managed to kill things efficiently even when we had a new group makeup each battle. Also a thanks to morty who helped me explain the fights and thanks to dead who came and offtanked ignis. Looking forward to this coming weeks raid and make sure you sign up so we know youre coming!

~Gnark

New Tentative Raid Schedule (overkill mode)

Schedule Starts this Monday.

Raid time is 5pm -8pm server time. This gives us 12 hours of raid time in ulduar. We can either do that, or two 6 hour raid days.

• Monday - Onyxia / Historical Raid
• Tuesday - Ulduar 10
• Wednesday - TotC (10) Regular
• Thursday - Ulduar 10
• Friday - TotC 10 reg
• Saturday - Ulduar 10
• Sunday - Ulduar 10

Primary Focus: Ulduar Clearing every week
2ndary: First 2 bosses of TotC on farm
Tertiary: Onyxia and any older style Raid ppl want

These are the days that I will be leading groups and where.
For the core group members: Attendence to the Ulduar days is heavily stressed. You're slot in the group is reserved based on commitment & attitude, not performance.

For any TTS member: To start, we'll have available spaces in the core group, if you'd like to come, be online @ raid time and be prepared. Requirement: Gear score of 2250 or higher on http://www.wow-heroes.com/ or a permission of a raid leader.
Present Core Group
Tanks: Gnark
Heals: Danaris, Wad
DPS: Jinda, Cubex

These days are flexible in regards to when we do what. These are just the things I feel we need to do to progress to a point where we can get into icecrown when it comes open.

If you want to be considered for the Core group, please post a comment here and I will personally let you know and send you an invite. There are people not in the list that are in my brain only because they haven't clearly said yes or no or I haven't seen them to ask. Please, if you're interested, let me know.

On a side note: All core people, please look up the fights for ulduar, ony, and the first 2 bosses in TotC 10 man. I'd rather avoid watching 10-minute tankspot video's. A hint, goto tankspot.com, find the appropriate videos, write down what special moves the boss has and when/where you're supposed to move. Some people need to remember that they might have 2 possible roles. DPS/heals, Heals/tanks, etc.

Yay for long posts while Firewalled at work and avoiding College homework :P

The Grump

So, what do you do when ...

1. The Majority of the guild doesn't look at the blog. (or in a timely fashion)
2. People don't show up when they've signed up for a raid.
3. They don't look up the fights listed for that day
4. They don't have vent working. I don't know of a single raiding group that doesn't require vent.
5. People don't follow directions. Don't stand in the blue swirlies, don't get hit by the flame wall, run out when lightning nova is channeled.
6. The gear structure right now is such that ppl don't need nax, maly, or OS so don't get the group training in how to function tactically as a group and as an individual......
7. And lastly, ppl voted to only raid ~2 nights a week but only show up for an hour and a half.

Any one of these would & has just made me shrug and think, "eh, easily worked around." However, on nights where we /start/ with the "trash" raids (WG & OS) to get ppl tokens or the misc. gear/trinket that only drops there.... We started 15 minutes late then had 3 ppl bail after an hour and 15 minutes.

On a very serious note: With ToC regular/heroic gear with badges, every single person in this guild should have 3K dps in 10 mans on bosses. If you don't, you're doing something wrong. Regular Raiders were doing 5K dps with worse gear in 10 mans when naxx came out & the present badge/ToC gear is Ulduar equivalent.

Until ppl in the guild show some ounce of dedication, show up on time, know the fights, have geared their toons appropriately in the off-nights, have vent, and listen to directions.... I'm not going to be bringing untrustworthy people.

I'll be whispering the ppl I've seen show up faithfully. I won't be restricting it to just guildies. I will try to recruit the people to the guild but won't require it. I will also be more than happy to gear up the people that have the attitude to show up on time and know their character. I don't care if I have to spend a week running ToC reg/heroic to get ppl badges and gear. Knowing your class is more important.

This is not a guild raid group any longer, this is a closed group by invitation only.

This is not me trying to be elitist, this is me wanting to see icecrown before the next expansion pack comes out & still being TWO patches behind.

Update: Official Raiding Days

(all times server)
OFFICIAL - Mains Preferred. (not mandatory, just official)

• Every Friday [5pm-8pm] - WG / OS /Eye of Eternity
• Every Sunday [3pm-8pm] - WG / Ulduar / Naxx-10

Unofficial - Any Toon.

• Every Monday [5pm-8pm] - WG / Finish or Start Naxx

Dedicated Heroic Night (See comments)

Every Saturday [5pm-8pm] - the daily heroic, regular, + 1 more. Goal = 1 hour/instance

Comments that need to be said so that they are clear.

• Main Toons always come first. Main toon = 1 character which you declare to be your primary & is on the TTS guild roster. Alts come second. Non-guilds come third.

1. HUGE NOTE: This only pertains to the moment the invites go out. Once the
   invites are given out, it is a free for all.
2. Show up on time, or lose out, as a policy, we won't drop anyone once the raid starts unless an encounter needs a specific role filled that we don't have.

• Raids start at the designated time. Invites go out 5-10 minutes before. First pull happens at raid start time. Reasoning: If ppl only want to raid 2x a week, then we need to make the greatest use of this available time frame.
• Be Repaired, have buff-foods, pots, & reagents
• Please know the fights we will be doing that night. Youtube or Tankspot.com are good sources.
• Loot policy: Loot will be master-looted to a designated person until after a quarter/wing/section is completed then all the loot will be divied up.
• Once we have 10 ppl with a wow-heroes score of > 2200 we'll set a specific night where ppl can devote 2 hours to Trials of the Crusader raid, we're at 7 ppl atm.
• Once we get Ignis's fight down (2 kills in 2 weeks) We'll move on to the antechamber bosses & do the siege section one week/night and Antechamber the following.

Some Notes On the various Raids

Naxxramas

1. Spider [Anub'Rekhan, Widow, Maexxna] *links to strategies will be added shortly
2. Plague [Noth, Heigan, Loatheb]
3. Construct [Patch, Grobbulus, Gluth, Thaddius]
4. Military [Razuvious, Gothik, 4 Horsemen]
5. Crown [Sapphiron, Kel'Thuzad]

Obsidian Sanctum

1. 1 Drake Up, 2 Drakes Up, 3 Drakes Up

Wintergrasp

1. Archavon, Emelon, Koralon

Ulduar

1. Siege [Flame Leviathan, Razorscale, Deconstructor, Ignis]
2. Antechamber [Iron Council, Kologarn ]
3. Keepers [Auriaya, Mimiron, Freya, Thorim, Hodir]
4. Descent into Madness [General Vezax, Yogg-Saron]
5. Impossible [Algalon]

Trials of the Crusader

Onyxia [10-man guide]

Raiding, What do people want to do?

As far as I see it, we have a few options

1) Do we want to arrange raiding 3-5 times a week?
...... Justification: We seem to be gathering together nightly for heroics anyways, you'll get more badges/hr by doing naxx than you would by doing heroics, also, more ppl can participate in a raid than a heroic group.

2) Raid 2 Nights a week, Naxx/OS/WG one night, Ulduar/OS/WG the next, periodically keeping the raid ID's extended so that we can get full clears of what we want.

3) Ignore Raiding, continue w/ just heroics?

a) a firm note, I'll participate, but I won't set up or run any 25-man stuff other than OS. The drama and headaches that are caused are not worth the rewards.

b) There will be no set group, only occassions for Mains or ones like OS last night where we struggle along w/ alts. There won't be a preferred raid group, only whoever logs on first &/or who can raid the alloted time.

c) HUGE NOTE: While raiding, whatever toon you are on for that raid is your Main, whatever spec, is your main. Alot of guild drama is caused by mentalities like, "Thats his alt, this is my main, I deserve that upgrade." Random loot systems are as fair as you can get, roll on what you need, pass on what you don't.

d) For Raiding, a new loot system a friend instigated in his guild & seems to work well: Everyone Passes on all gear, one person, takes everything until the end of the raid time, then the loot is divied up by rolls.

e) What raiding times are best for everyone. I realize some people can't make it all nights at all times but, what are your general times, what days are definately not open. Are WoW calendar invites best for everyone? Do you need personal invitations to remind you to log on at XX time or are statements like raiding every tues/thurs/sat/sun @ 5pm server time good?

f) I have every sunday off, I'm open to the idea of getting a Naxx run going on sunday w/ the intent to do a full clear or shooting 1 hour per wing so 5 hours. This will of course be rough until all the people in the group get used to the pulls and wings.

g) If we get enough people on, maybe we can set up 2 raid groups.

What do you guys want (hopefully, more than the usual 4-5 ppl respond :P)

Fyska and Raid

Hey gang,

Wanted to share with you all that Fyska is stepping away from WOW. He wanted to make sure everyone knew how much fun he had playing with everybody. We wish him the best of luck.

Also, Tuesday's group got through Spider and Plague wings again, one-shotting 5 out of 6 bosses and 2-shotting Maexxna. We will be going for the completion Saturday morning at 7 am sharp. Invites have been sent out. Please read up on Construct and Military wings so we can be prepared.

See you then,
Dead

This morning's raid

Just wanted to drop a note about this morning's raid. Overall, a very successful group. Finished Spider and Plague quarters in a reasonable amount of time though definitely room for improvement. One shotted 4 of the bosses and I think everyone can guess the one that took the most time (Dance, dance, dance).

Hura has already set up the invites for Tuesday. I will be unable to attend due to a prior engagement but can help clean up any leftover quarters on Saturday morning if needed. I'll set up that invite soon.

New Raid Times

Alrighty. So Huracan and I will be leading a Tuesday night raid @ 5:45 p.m. and a Saturday morning raid @ 7:00 a.m. (hopefully my new job hours won't interfere with this). I haven't talked to Hura at length, but I know we will be concentrating on getting Naxx on farm, I would think to about a 3 hour raid. I'm also guessing we'll be throwing in some OS and VoA as well. Once we get some added gear to people, I really would like to give Malygos a try with a group of the Stampede's finest. Obviously, it would require a much greater study of the fight.

Anyway, if these times do not work out for you, please feel free to start up a group on a night that is available to you. I also need to talk to Lash but it might be time to start recruiting in trade chat. I'm thinking a sample would be:

"The Tauren Stampede is seeking new members of any class and/or spec. Must be level 70+ but more than welcome to bring in alts once a member. We are a friendly casual guild currently raiding 10 man Naxx and OS. Guild tabard, 5 tab GB, vent channel, website...Hear the thundering hooves of the Horde."

What do you guys think?

Guild Raids

Agenda #1: I know there has been a lot of discussion about who will be leading the raids from here on out. I am perfectly happy leading on the times that I am available and I think that Huracan is the same (I also think we share some available times). I think, if prodded, Glorn doesn't mind either and so would Lash if RL ever settles down for him. Perhaps Wada and/or Morty can be sucked out of "raid retirement" too. Anyway, I think that's what we will have have as far as raid leadership goes moving forward from here.

Agenda #2: I think we need to coordinate some specific times that most people are available. I will continue to have a Saturday morning going in at least some capacity, whether it be OS, VoA, heroics or Naxx. I'll also be available, starting the middle of June, on Tuesday nights. Please leave a comment with what days and what times work for you so maybe we can organize things better than the past month.

Agenda #3: We have the firepower in our guild to make a run Malygos and think this should definitely be one of our goals going forward. Let me know what you guys think.

Agenda #4: Lash commented a while ago that he thought my post signature was cool. For those that want to get one, just got to http://www.siglaunch.com. It's free and easy (does it sound like I'm advertising for them) and you can do one for each of your toons. For instance, I'll end this post with Sinscribe's:

Weekend Morning Group

Alrighty, so Sunday's run was a little disappointing.

Some observations:
1) Only 2 healers for our Naxx run and based on our inexperience (myself included) I think we really need 3.
2) A little low on the dps due to a few alts being used.
3) Knowledge of the fight a little lacking.

Fixes:
1) As much as I'd love to have a full guild run, it just might not be in the cards for us yet. So instead of bumping a healer spot for a guild dps, I think we need to pug a 3rd healer if there are not 3 available in-guild.
2) Low dps can really be fixed by coming on your main character. Most of our mains are doing nice dps/tanking/healing but some of our alts are a little bit behind. If you want to join a pug mid-week, please use your alt on that and bring your main on the weekend. If your main is already involved with the Wada/Maha group then obviously that's different. I think I will start scheduling for Saturday instead of Sunday as there seem to be a few more people on.
3) Please, please, please, please just check out youtube for videos on the fight. They are all over the place and it just takes a few minutes to find out the entire strategy of the boss fights.

Anyway, all that being said, we will try again this Saturday 7am ST. I think we'll try the Plague Quarter first just to change things up and then move on. I will send out invites this evening.

Useable Resources

Every day or so, I peruse the guild roster on Wow-heroes to see how people are doing on gear upgrades. One of these days, I'll take it one step farther and figure out what ppl need instance wide to help them.

A few people asked me to explain my spell rotation on Bandage the other day and it got me thinking. I usually power-level a toon to 75 or so and don't really pay attention to the mechanics of a particular class as they change very rapidly every 20 levels or so. Once I hit 75 now, I tend to focus on learning the techniques and focus of the playstyles.

The first thing I do is look the character up on the net, look for the highest damage specs, rotations, and the stat focus. For healing, this changes to Healing per mana efficiency of various spells, then stat focus. Also for healers, you have highest healing/minute and highest mana efficiency builds.

First: Check out http://www.talentchic.com/

Second: Google your class/spec "shadow priest wrath 3.1" and look for blogs, but turn security on your browser way way up and do a virus scan before you log into wow next. Ppl love to toss keyloggers into ads or other portions of sites.

Third: Look at http://www.wow-heroes.com/, look up some of the better raiding guilds, find a person who is the spec you're looking into, compare you're gear/stat focus/spec to theirs.

Fourth: Adjust your spec to focus on either heroic or raiding, get the best enchants you can afford (keeping in mind that unless your in full 200/213 gear, you're going to be getting upgrades so don't do the ones that cost 1+K gold apiece)

Fifth: look up your char on http://www.wowarmory.com/ and find craftable/questable/Reputation upgrades and make a list in a word file. List the SLOT for the item, then list the order you're likely to persue/obtain them. This will help with which instances to run.

Sixth: Glyphs are an insane addition to every spec. And they are completely spec dependent. These are an absolute necessity.

Interspersed Between 1-6: Talk to ppl who are masters of their spec, hell, ask for advice on general " Anyone on that can give me advice for specifics on XXXX class/spec" And then look up this person on armory/heroes and guage their char versus their advice.

Sixth: Here's something alot of parttime or periodic raiders dont like. When you raid, you're responsibility is to bring the most you can do the raid, that means bring potions, food, etc. Of even higher importance is that even though you may like a particular spec, if one does substantially better dps across the board.... use the higher dps one.

Example: A hunter in DnR had been marksman for years, kept the same spec. Last week, changed to survival. DPS went from 2.9 to 3.7K dps in the course of one night raiding. With research, he chose survival because alot of the fights in naxx/ulduar are AOE intensive which makes keeping pets alive difficult, and BM damage is greatly pet dependent but higher than survival when the pet survives.

One of the problem I think people are facing is that they don't raid fulltime so in their spare time, they lvl alts. Rather than focusing on one, and getting the best gear available, they spread that time commitment across 2-3-4+ alts.

Just as a frame of reference
Heroics: you're going to have 3-5 buffs.
Raids: You're going to have 7-20 odd buffs.
Test Dummies: will be lower than your actual dps output in raids/heroics. On the regular dummy I pulled 1.9K on a shadow priest. Heroic/Raid I pulled 1.4-5K. In actual heroics I pull 1.8-2K and Raids I've pulled 2.3-2.6K due to buffs and other factors.

For Heroics, if you can't sustain > 1.2K dps across the board, you're a liability. This might sound harsh, but the longer a fight lasts, the longer it takes to get that rift down, the more adds/spawns/damage etc the raid takes. Now, given that this is a game, and "liability" is a hardcore term. I don't define "liability" as "you suck" I define it as "you're character/rotation/gear needs more work." With gear and proper rotation, you should be around 2.2-3K dps or somewhere around there.

For Raids(10): 1.5K is the rough minimum unless there are proportionately better geared people to carry you. Well geared in raids should pull 2.5K+ dps. Truly obsessed people should be pulling 3K-5K+ dps depending on fight and class.

Before Wrath, I was uninterested in raids, focused on alts, had 4 70's and every craft to 375. I'd gotten into a few raids, but didn't know the mechanics/fights/ or how to maximize my dps in given situations. Didn't really care as I was enjoying the experience. Needless to say, the fights took longer than they should have and were rougher. Once wrath came out, I went resto with Wad, got invited to raids, and quickly learned the cost of the above mentality. Ulduar w/ one unaware person = wipe. Deconstructor has a 6 minute rage timer, requires 2.8K+ dps constant throughout. Try doing that with 1-2 people dead.........

:P, Got to love being bored at work with nothing whatsoever to do except spam a blog site :P

Blah

Did I ever mention that I hate changing guilds, its such a complete pain in the arse.

I left misfits for Dawning Vengeance, promised a raid slot, got ignored, noone was ever around to do anything. Very clique oriented.

So, I was invited to Dead N Red, people were welcoming, but were also very rude to non-DnR people. We're talking, I'd like to beat them up side the head with a bat type of rude.. Once I paid back my obligation to them for the gear they'd gotten me

I was invited to Wrath as DnR wasn't raiding at all, joined wrath, guaranteed a raid slot, the night we were supposed to start that week, the GM disbanded the guild so he could change servers w/ the ppl that the guild had geared the most.

Wrath became Dynasty, new GM has too many healers and would rather take a friend w/ less gear and wanted me to go Boomkin. They have no raid schedule, good people, but they spend 20 minutes between bosses. 3 hours = Spider + Plague Quarter, and Patch. Got ignored most of the raid as well, no healing assignments on Patch = 1 wipe. They listened to me after that.

When I offered to help tank patch as we were overstocked on healers, Despite the fact I had more of every stat than their best geared tank, they ignored my request, didn't even turn it down :P

Needless to say, DnR is approaching me again to heal for them. The two biggest antagonists in the guild (of 3) are gone. Accounts got hacked and they left. Wrath of God Maybe???. They're doing Ulduar-25 man tonight.

I've told them that I'd do it as long as people weren't horribly offensive or healer-bashing :P

It shouldn't be unreasonable to do Naxx-10 w/o me. I'm not irreplaceable but I know also that Morty is gone for a week, which is one of the reasons that I accepted. It would still be good for the group if they tried to run it, even if that meant pugging a couple of people. Spider wing should be easily doable.

I'm at work and didn't have time this morning to leave a note ingame about it.

Did I mention I hate changing guilds?

Weekend Morning Raids

Hey guys,

Just an update on our weekend morning raid group. We were able to do VoA on Sat AM with only 2 people pugged, however we got run over when trying to do OS. We just did not have the dps necessary to get through things. Sun. AM we breezed through OS with a different group. No wipes, no deaths and people were suggesting we should do with 1 drake up (we only had 2 tanks so we could not).

So we are going to have to put a minimum cap on dps to join. I'm thinking 1400+ is a good place to start. Though I hope we can eventually get to the point where we can take one or 2 people that aren't hitting this number, for the time being only these people will be invited and the rest will be pugged while we learn some things. My hope is to do VoA/OS for one more week, maybe 2, and then begin on Naxx.

If you aren't hitting the required dps number, please read up on some rotations and tactics. I would really love it if we could get a full guild run with no pugs sometime next month.

Thanks for understanding and feel free to whisper me in game if you have any questions.

New Raid Days

New Raid days for the regular group and anyone wishing to partake

Sunday thru Monday are designated for naxx-10.
Tuesday post-reset is designated for 10/25-man OS and WG

We're going to start at the usual time (5pm server time).

If there's any problems, contact either Muertedehoof or me

Saturday Morning Raid Group

Hey gang,

So I'm thinking while some of us (myself included) get a little more experience in raids, we are going to dedicate the Saturday morning crew to doing Obsidian Sanctum and Vault of Archavon runs. This will give us opportunities to gear up still and won't be quite the shock of jumping into the Naxx fire. We will start out with the 10 mans (majority made up of guildies) and perhaps we can add enough after those to pug some 25 man groups. Yesterday, we had myself, Sayjinquan (now Bamapriest), Yuk, Zerk, Morty, etc. try this and it seemed to work out. 7am ST seemed to be a little early for some so I'm going to bump it up to 7:30ST. Of course, you're always welcome to show up early and do some heroics with me. I'm sending out invites this morning to our Heroic and Devastator ranked guildies.

Quick question for Wada or Morty or anyone that knows...does OS reset like heroics where, if you are in the middle of a run, you are screwed?

Saturday Morning Raid

The time has come for us to try out our Saturday morning idea. We will be starting at around 7am ST. We'll see how many we have and may have to pug a few extras. If you have not raided before, please read up on the Spider Wing of Naxx. I've heard that is the easiest so we will probably start off with that one. Hope to see you then.

Change in Weekly 10-man Naxx Schedule

As of next week, with a new guild comes a new 25-man raiding schedule. Wrath raids from wednesday-Friday with the chance of weekends.

Are people available on any days (prefer 3) from Saturday to Tuesday? I'd still like to keep it to the 5pm server to whatever we decide to go to.

Can anyone not make this?
Might be nice to have Naxx be on sunday/monday and have WG/OS on Tuesday so more ppl can do it and we stand more of a chance of being able to do the 25-man WG.

Please, post you're thoughts.