Thursday, July 3, 2008

Lift your game!


Are you performing at your peak?

Ok so im a couple of weeks late with this, but I just caught up with this one today.

Jezrael at DPS: We Deliver asks an interesting question in this post on the 20th June.
If a player experiences their own progression via farm raiding does this lead to a tendency towards laziness in terms of gear itemisation and etc?
Typhoon Andrew over at Eye of the Storm believes there is no excuse for being slack, as the time and effort required to perform at a higher level by using item enhancements and consumables is not really that much. Check out his gearing attitude post from the same day.

A few days later WoW Insider chimed in with this post, suggesting that if you are likely to upgrade an item in Kara, it's not worth enchanting / gemming.

To which I say BOLLOX!

Get a cheap enchant, or a green gem if you must. The cost isn't significant, and is within everyone's reach.

Personally I think it's down to the individual, and how they see their role in the group and their goals in the game. As such I believe that a slack player will not make the same kind of effort as a committed player, regardless of the context.

An example to illustrate this point, and something I'm sure a lot of us have seen. A raid is wiping on a progression boss. Some people in the raid are using consumables, some aren't. Some players are making an effort to perform at their absolute peak, while others aren't prepared to spend extra money to get extra performance. They are waiting for others to do this, and then they can get free upgrades in the form of new gear.

As Andrew says, enchantments and gems just aren't that expensive. Gold is stupid easy to come by in outland, and nobody has an excuse for not spending that 20g on pots for the raid. I cannot emphasise enough that this was not always the case. The economy pre-bc was such that raiders would simply have to farm a LOT to perform at their "peak" by using consumables as we have been discussing.

The result of this in our guild was simple. People farmed as much as they had to. They knew the non-core raiders were lining up to take their spot, and they had better earn their keep, we had no room for slackers and I am proud to look up Alter Electus on Wowjutsu, see a lot of the same names there and note that they are continuing to make great progress and are among the most progressed guilds down under, having cleared every single boss outside of Sunwell.

I know I am always spending money on elixirs, oils, food and enchantments. You can safely say that any item I use in the game will have its potential maximised unless it is clearly about to be swapped out for an upgrade. I have even put some spellthread in my blue PvP pants, because I know I will be wearing them for at least a couple more weeks.

You wont catch me in an instance without a superior wizard oil applied to my weapon at the very least. You wont catch me in a raid without an elixir, food and oil in use together. My measley 999 frost spell damage will typically be in excess of 1100 whenever it counts in PvE.
  • superior wizard oil - 42dmg
  • brilliant wizard oil - 14 crit and 36dmg (the theory-craft-o-matic actually tells me this oil is slightly better for dps, however the difference is minscule.)
  • elixir of frost power - 50dmg
  • adept's elixir - 24 dmg and 24 crit (or something)
  • spell dmg food - 23dmg and some spirit.

I will always use some combination of the above. I will spend an hour before the raid killing crocolisks for spell damage food or farming netherweb spider silk to keep the bag factory rolling. I buy stacks of elixirs and make the oils myself.

Now, if I didn't do all these things, would the raid be sucessful? Yes. At least almost all the time, definitely yes, and that I feel is the reason others won't bother.

So why would I do all this? To be better, to live longer, fight harder, and make the biggest possible contribution to the raid.

And why do that? Its certainly not to be noticed, as that doesn't really happen. It's because it's FUN!

I wanna do the most damage, I wanna be the last man standing, I want to set new crit records for myself! I want to be the most powerful mage I can be!

It's just how I play, and I think it's just how I am. I can't imagine convincing a near-enough-is-good-enough style player to come around to my way of thinking, nor can I imagine playing the game on cruise control the way a lot of people do in raids.

So if you are frustrated that people are letting your raid down, perhaps you can inspire and enthuse your co-raiders to go the extra distance, or perhaps it's time you moved up in the world, because at the top, I guarantee, nobody is taking it easy, and if you want to progress, you need to Lift Your Game!

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's those 105% wipes that make you look around the room and wonder why people didn't throw on the enchants, gems or other buffs. A couple of hundred damage from each and it would have been a (dirty admittedly) kill. I ahve been in a few too many wipes where 7/10 are up, then all down.. the killing blow should already have been struck.
I think the slackers forget that other people do observe who is buffed etc. and do come to resent it.. maybe not tonight, but there is plenty of time between wipes to discuss who did, or more importantly didn't do what,

Anonymous said...

damn can't edit comment... make that 1-5% wipes

LarĂ­sa said...

I've made it a habit myself. In raids I always use flasks, oil, buff food and what ever I can think of to maximize my damage. And of course I enchant and gem everything.

Doing regular heroics I may not always use food and oil, but I certainly have double elixirs. I would feel... naked without it.

Some people have told me I overuse it, it's a vaste of money. I especially remember a pug, where we wiped a lot in MgT. Finally the healer went so frustrated with my consuming that he sad he would refuse to rez or heal me if he caught me inhaling any more elixirs or posts... He felt like it was his fault that I ruined my echonomy...

I guess it's good I'm an alchemist and selfsufficient...

Darkhorse said...

If I think theres a chance of a wipefest, I stick to buffs that persist through death only!

Once a group has proven itself, then I will use elixers and food. Usually before the first boss fight, but only if I'm confident that someone isn't going to wipe us by being stupid.

Anonymous said...

Heya Zupa,

Glad you found some useful stuff in my blog; and really stoked that you agree. We need more players to take "power-ups" seriously, and spreading the word like this will hopefully have an impact.

Further to this I have found that it makes a huge difference even in the leveling process; as my 55 Druid has gained significant improvements by adding some power-ups. Even green gear should be enhanced if a 70 is picking up the bill.

Cheap potions and food are all through the AH, so get scanning and get buffed!

Anonymous said...

Competition breeds that kind of effort; if you're in the precarious position of losing your slot, then you're willing to put in that extra effort that others might call minimal effort. Unfortunately, sometimes that extra incentive isn't apparent and raids do end up with people who put forth only the most minimal effort while expecting the pretty purple epics to fall into their laps.

I had that exact same issue with my old guild, when we started doing Karazhan well over a year ago. I left my Serpentshrine and Tempest Keep raids to come back to their content and help them. I'm a dedicated raider who felt that putting for the best effort is always, always, always required. However, I was shocked to see fellow guildies run around with quest greens and refused to put forth the effort to snag even simple blues when they'd rather level alts and "have fun". It was always a large point of contention and I ultimately lost/won when it was one of my reasons for stepping down as guild leader and leaving the guild.