I think everyone who's run an instance and a raid has been in this situation -- you wait all night for a Karazhan run, it fills, so you decide to go run a heroic or some other five man, and then a few minutes in, you get a whisper: "Someone left, and we need a healer! Are you still in?"
Sigh. An embarrassment of riches. So now what do you do: ditch your newfound 5man group for the raid you originally wanted, or stick with the group you signed on with, passing up the original raid? Neither way is very smooth -- either you disappoint the folks you're with, and look like an elitist raider, or you tell the raiders that you're already in a group and run the risk that they won't ask you again. So awkward -- it's like choosing a social circle in high school all over again.
Usually, the best course of action I've found is to cover yourself before you leave either group -- jump into LFG or ping the guild for a replacement before you leave anybody behind. Short of finding someone to fill in for your fill in, the next best option is probably to explain yourself well and promise help next time -- hopefully the group you're with will understand that raiding is fun and/or the raiders will understand that you couldn't wait and keep you on the list for next time. Any other ideas for getting out of an instance pinch like this?
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.
It shouldn't come as a shock to anyone, especially after the Wrath of the Lich Kingbeta went live last week. In many cases, hardcore raiding guilds just aren't making the Big Push anymore. Many have simply disbanded. Prior to the expansion, there really isn't much reason for raiders to keep going at the same pace, unless there's still content they haven't seen. So what are all these raiders doing in the meantime? Some, much like salmon, are instinctively returning to the ancestral casual guilds where they first spawned. But should those guilds take them back? This week's e-mail asks exactly that. Hello Scott:
I am a high ranking officer in a casual raiding guild on Khadgar.
Recently several top raiding guilds on my server are dissolving. Our guild is a casual raiding guild that are slowly progressing in SSC. We received several requests from former guild member that express interest in coming back into the guild. Most of them said they miss the friendly and fun environment our guild provides while still doing decent raiding.
Welcome back to Totem Talk. Last week I said we're talk about pre-Kara cloth and leather gear for shamans. So of course, being my usual distracted, scatterbrained self, I've spent the entire week poondering and fretting about completely unrelated issues like shaman stacking for 25 man raids, the future of the shaman class when totems go raid-wide in Wrath, shamans in PvP and other such issues facing the class.
The cloth and leather discussion is still important (the comment thread from last week was very active, which I always take as a sign that you guys want to talk about it) and so I want to give it the detail it deserves. I think at this point it should go beyond Karazhan and into drops in ZA, SSC, TK with an eye towards gearing your shaman for Hyjal Summit and Black Temple. Which means I should also expand on a basic gear guide for what drops you'd want to get BT/Hyjal ready for all shaman specs, and that's going to take a few columns to do properly. I'm aiming to start that next week, unless you guys leave a lot of comments telling me you're totally uninterested.
So first let's talk about PvP, or at least my recent experiences with it, and then we'll talk about Shaman Stacking..
We'll be straight with you, Guildwatch readers. Your intrepid blogger has been at E3 all day, writing like mad, and not only that, but is now surviving on his third day of sleep deprivation. So this week's Guildwatch is a little shorter than usual -- we still stayed up to get it out, and there's still the drama, downed, and recruiting news that you'd expect, but we realize that there may not be as much of it.
Worry not, though -- next week, after your intrepid blogger has returned home and refilled his sleep meter, we'll have an extra long edition of Guildwatch, and all of the tips sent in (to wowguildwatch@gmail.com, if you want to send us one) that we didn't get to will be published. Thanks for putting up with us, enjoy this week's GW right after the break.
Adam asked how much a guild should charge for a spot in a ZA raid, but Lane on WoW LJ comes at the issue from the other side: how much should you offer? Personally, like a lot of comments on Adam's post, I'd offer nothing -- I'd much rather earn everything I wear rather than just paying out gold to be in someone else's raid run.
But certainly there are quite a few folks out there, who, for whatever reason, are either at their wits' end and ready to spend money, or just too lazy or busy to join a guild themselves. So what's the going rate for a boss? Adam's post landed pretty low -- 500g to 2500g definitely got the most votes, and I'm guessing that was mostly because there was no free option. So, depending on how well you know the guild you'll be running with, seems like a good idea would be to start at around 500g, and then head upwards from there.
Of course, especially on a relatively early dungeon like ZA, it's not really that hard to get 10 people together and run it every week -- even if you're not a hardcore raider, running just one raid instance a week is enough to get you learning how it works and building up your gear.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors returns at last to its guide to DPS gear to get your fury or arms warriors ready for Karazhan. Matthew Rossi, seen above on one of his many warriors taking a wine and fish break in Kara itself (hey, the food's pretty good considering that it's served by the walking dead) realizes that he took a lot longer than he expected to write this column, but in his defense, Titan's Grip. You understand.
And so we return to DPS gear for Karazhan in the form of boots, bracers and belts. If we get past that, we may shoot for rings, necks and trinkets, but let us see how far we get first. The problem with the slots in question... the belt, bracer and boots you need for your DPS kit... is that there are often not all that many options outside of PvP or crafted epics to meet or exceed your needs, and worse, there's really not much you'll get in Karazhan in terms of DPS plate either. As a result, expect me to be extremely flexible in terms of what I recommend here, and if you can think of a suitable offering I've missed for some reason, feel absolutely free to mention it in the comments. I'll probably be forced to mention the most readily available PvP options: there's really no way around it with the paucity of gear inside Karazhan to meet your DPS needs.
Ready Check is a weekly column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, ZA or Sunwell Plateau, everyone can get in on the action and get mad purpz. Today, we look at what happens when a raider moves guilds.
In a previous Ready Check, I posted about some of the problems many Sunwell raid guilds have been experiencing, ranging from member attrition and an unsatisfactory recruitment pool to divided aims and skill levels within the guild itself. This column will look at the aftermath of some of these issues, nearly a month later.
A suggestion from commenters that was overlooked both by myself in said column, and by those of us discussing future options within the guild, was simply to break for the summer if summer was taking such a hard toll on us. However, in a guild where a core of members are very active and want to kill Kil'Jaeden whatever it takes, an enforced summer break would likely have caused more key players to leave for other guilds. This might work if you aren't so close to 'beating the game' or if other alternatives aren't viable, however, so I wanted to quickly touch on it as an option that I'd omitted previously.
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.
Last week I talked about the problem of filling raids, as TBC winds down and summer heats up. But some people are lucky enough to have the opposite problem: Too many people want to go, and there just isn't enough room for everyone. That's what the author of this week's e-mail is facing.
Scott:
I'm in a guild that's been progressing quite steadily in T6 content now that no one needs attunement for them. We got 4/5 Hyjal and 3/9 BT quickly, and while we've been a bit stymied on Archie we're getting to the point where we'll have him down soon enough.
The problem is, well, not much of a problem really for, oh, 25 of us.
You see, we're one of the two real raiding guilds on our server, Alliance side at least. The rest of Alliance is fighting their way through T4 content and just starting their way on the T5 stuff. But the serious raiders love to join up with our guild, a lovely thing for the most part.
Of course, this means that we've usually got 35 people on a raid night wanting to run. A few too many.
Welcome to today's edition of Ask WoW Insider, in which we publish your questions for dissection by the peanut gallery -- now with extra snark and commentary by one of our writers. This week Nickiter writes in: Hi WoW Insider -
Until tonight, I was the GL of a raiding guild - a new guild, to be sure, and not terribly accomplished. But, after a night of listlessly wiping on The Lurker Below, I gave up.
Maybe I don't have guild leadership in me, maybe I do, but that's immaterial.
What I'm asking of WI and your sometimes kind, sometimes harsh, but always vocal readership, is what do I do now?
I'm a Protection Warrior in T5-level gear, aka the least in-demand class in the game for guild recruitment. I also have a Hunter... which I'm not even going to bring up.
I love raiding... PvP is a diversion, at best... What have those of you who've been in this situation done?
Reroll a Resto Shammy and find a guild to Brain Heal for? Quit 'til Wrath? Something else entirely?
Thanks in advance for your input.
- Nickiter, Smolderthorn (H)
I'm pretty much going to throw this out to the audience -- you're having problems I couldn't even dream of having, but I'm sure you're not alone in. Plus, I thought it was a good question even if I couldn't throw some snark in.
So, bring it, boys (and girls).
Got questions? Don't wait! Send them to us at ask AT wowinsider DOT com and your query could be up in lights here next week.
Or, how to celebrate the birth of a nation via an ugly series of Horde losses in Arathi Basin:
1. Every single Alliance character in the game has a Black War Tiger.
2. Every single Horde character in the game has a Black War Raptor (yes, myself included).
3. I could be wrong, but I don't think "Lich King" is pronounced "Lick King," as I keep hearing it pronounced on my server.
4. However, it might be because the word looks somewhat Germanic, and I will be unable to keep a straight face for the duration of the next expansion.
5. To the point of losing it completely if I hear "World of Warcraft: WRAAAAAAATH OF THE LICK KING" intoned by the Deep-Voiced Serious Trailer Guy.
6. How male human characters run. There's a lot of great animation in the game. This is not one of them.
7. Practically every main-tank of every Hordeside raiding guild is a male Tauren.
8. An egotistical male Tauren. Look, Spanky, just because Bulwark of Azzinoth is bigger on you than anybody else does not mean that the same is true of appendages elsewhere.
One of the complaints I see from time to time on the WoW forums and even here on WoW Insider is, to paraphrase is, "there are all these level 70 warriors and yet I can't find a tank." I have a variety of responses to this statement as a protection warrior at level 70. It might be how you ask, for one thing: a polite tell from someone asking me if I'll tank heroic Ramparts once saw me taking an entire group of relatively new 70's through both heroic Hellfire instances. It's also possible that, while I am a tank, I don't feel like tanking for you with an hour to go before raid time, since I'll be tanking that entire time. But I'm curious about this mindset that assumes that with all these level 70 warriors, you should be able to find a tank.
I don't see "all these level 70 paladins and druids and I can't find a tank" nearly as often. Now, I understand that paladins and druids can heal, and the general populace finds that to be just as valuable. But I know there are a host of DPS druids and paladins out there. While they're derided to some degree (and unfairly so, but this column isn't named Matthew Rossi defends every one of the tanking classes if they choose to DPS - we know it's unfair, we'll let it go at that) there doesn't seem to be this absolute assumption that the first and best role of any class that can tank is to tank the way it seems to be there for warriors.
Now, I love tanking. I'm good at it, I enjoy the challenge, I stay up all night working on threat sets, avoidance/mitigation sets, stamina sets, I go to sites like Wowhead and look at shields all day. Tanking is my idea of a good time. So I'm certainly not arguing that warriors cannot, or should not, tank.
I'm arguing that they should not tank just because you want them to.
Totem Talk, the column for shamans, was hit right between the eyes with news from the Worldwide this weekend. Matthew Rossi, our intrepid columnist, tries to make sense of it all this week.
Okay, I know we're behind on the Kara gear articles, but this weekend's news from the Worldwide Invitational was too much for me to ignore. Both for all the awesome news for shamans and for what it all doesn't mean. (And yes, I had to steal Mike's image from the roundup post... I even went out and bought that statue I like it so much.) Since we know the Beta Opt-In is live and the Wrath beta can't be far away, I thought we should spend some time discussing what we just found out.
I admit that part of the reason for wanting to discuss this in detail is that I am stoked about it. Some of you readers are, in fact, very good for providing a bucket of cold water in the form of reality checking, and I expect you to do me that service now. But maybe we're all excited, which would be awesome, for shamans to once all be excited.
I know Hex is the greatness, but what it isn't is real CC for five man instances. It's a panic button, like so many other shaman abilities can be, not a long-term solution. To use hex as CC in an instance in the manner of Polymorph, you'd have to renew it every ten seconds. You're taking yourself out of DPSing entirely if you intend to use it that way, basically. Make no mistake, it's a great ability and great utility for the class, but it's more akin to Cyclone than Sap or Poly.
What, you may well be turning to me to ask, is it good for then if it's not going to be good for CCing in instances?
There comes a point where you move past content. There's no reason to go back to it other than nostalgia, or for the off chance on a slow night that the one really awesome drop that particular boss has might finally drop. It's a fact of the endgame... you work, you put in the wipes, you stock up on food, buff pots, elixirs, flasks, and other consumables, you go in over and over again and struggle and finally get the boss down... and then in a month or two it's trivial and you're sick to death of the sight of him or her. Another month and you're saying "Does anyone really need any Vashj drops anymore?" and a month after that, you're done with the instance.
This is fine, and it's part of the moving on process with content: if you're regularly farming M'uru you probably don't need anything off of Mother Shahraz anymore except for maybe bad luck on shoulders. Some guilds were fortunate (or unfortunate) enough to be completely done with Black Temple and Hyjal well in advance of Sunwell Plateau. Others are just now finishing up with Gruul and Magtheridon and preparing to move into SSC and Tempest Keep, while still others are just now done with those.
Karazhan is getting beat into the ground nightly by almost everyone on the realms -- isn't it about time, asks Heavymetal from Sargeras, that Blizzard lowered the timer? It certainly seems like the time has almost come -- by the time the last expansion released, UBRS, which was basically the precursor to Karazhan, had no timer and was getting raided like crazy. All of the gear is going to be replaced anyway, and the attunement's been lifted -- why not let players go nuts on Medivh's old stomping grounds?
Bornakk closes the thread due to caps, but we'll play devil's advocate and try to answer for him: Badges. With Karazhan basically a knockover for even beginner guilds, the only way Blizzard has to control the flow of badges from there is to keep the instance on a timer. The Kara gear might get replaced, but some of the Badge gear has to last for a while, and while Heroics do grant Badges (they're on a timer as well), Kara hands out more of them for free than those old ladies with meat on toothpicks at the grocery store.
Still, in Wrath we're probably looking at an all new Badge system, so you'd think Blizzard might as well open the floodgates at some point. Whether it'll be before or after the next expansion, though, we have no idea.
Recently the guild hit Supremus again -- or, I should say, Supremus hit us. You'd think this would be a fairly easy fight to master. Supremus has two phases: the first is a lot like Gruul except with no cave-ins, knockback, or Shatter, and during the second phase, he aggros random people and tries to reach them while moving at the approximate pace of a snail. Oh, and he sprouts volcanoes under other players that you have to avoid. These two phases alternate until he's a giant pile of rubble in Black Temple's scenic courtyard.
Yep. Easy.
We can't do it.
The guild's been farming Black Temple for months and most of the usual roster is rocking at least 3 or 4 pieces of Tier 6 -- yet the vast majority of our Supremus fights end with more than half the raid taking a dirt nap. We've reached the point where even this is still usually a one-shot, but it's more than a little disturbing. How can you one-shot Illidan with 24 people still alive...and somehow fail to steamroll the giant McLootLoot?
To be fair, it's not just raids. I've seen players break out in a cold sweat over Talon King Ikiss on heroic Sethekk (which always confused me; the great secret of the fight consists of tanking him in the doorway). Others cite Grandmaster Vorpil, the event before the second boss in Blood Furnace when you don't have a Paladin tank, or Warbringer O'mrogg on heroic Shattered Halls (actually, all of Shattered Halls can pretty much bite me. I hate tanking that place). My own personal nemesis is Vexallus on heroic Magisters' Terrace. I've even taken a group with two mages and a rogue in T5/T6 here and wiped 3 times. What gives?
I think everyone who's run an instance and a raid has been in this situation -- you wait all night for a Karazhan run, it fills, so you decide to go run a heroic or some other five man, and then a few minutes in, you get a whisper: "Someone left, and we need a healer! Are you still in?"
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes 
Welcome back to 
Adam asked 
One of the complaints I see from time to time on the WoW forums and even here on WoW Insider is, to paraphrase is, "there are all these level 70 warriors and yet I can't find a tank." I have a variety of responses to this statement as a protection warrior at level 70. It might be how you ask, for one thing: a polite tell from someone asking me if I'll tank heroic Ramparts once saw me taking an entire group of relatively new 70's through both heroic Hellfire instances. It's also possible that, while I am a tank, I don't feel like tanking for you with an hour to go before raid time, since I'll be tanking that entire time. But I'm curious about this mindset that assumes that with all these level 70 warriors, you should be able to find a tank.
There comes a point where you move past content. There's no reason to go back to it other than nostalgia, or for the off chance on a slow night that the 
Karazhan is 
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