There is no complex formula to memorize or fiddly process to follow.  It’s all a matter of good old common sense and old-timey business practices.

Without trying to force my precise methods on anyone, let me put down what the general principles are. You can follow through in whatever fashion you want.

First Principle: I am a shopkeeper

When a buyer approaches the auction house, it is often with trepidation that the item they wish to find won’t be there. My job is to ensure that when someone comes to buy a glyph, one of mine is there to be bought. I may have been undercut, but with 430ish glyph types out there, the odds are pretty good that I’ll have something they want at the price they’re willing to pay.

This is all about opportunity. A customer provides an opportunity to fulfill a need. Your job as a shopkeeper is to ensure that you can fulfill that need.

Practically every specialty shop I have been in sticks to a specific type of product and/or service, but within that narrow confine, covers all the bases.  Big*Mart may carry camping tents, but only Camping Equipment World carries tents in fifteen different sizes, from fifty makers, all the time.  My job is to be the Camping Equipment World of glyphs.

This means inventory

A shopkeeper doesn’t generally have five items in the front window and make everything else to spec. They maintain an inventory of items to sell¹.

This means a couple of things to me and you.  First it means that you need to know what the possibilities are – what kind of glyphs exist in the first place? And secondly – and more importantly – it means you need to keep track of what you have on hand at any given time.

The main reason for the latter is that you don’t want to tie up assets in stuff that won’t sell – but you also want to make sure that stuff that DOES sell is always available to your customer.

I’m afraid some effort is required at this point.

How you go about this is up to you.  I have a spreadsheet on Google Docs that I use to track average sale price, inventory levels, item status (available, stocked, warehoused), and so forth. There are many other tools available for this, but this was the weapon I chose.  There may even be in-game tools for this.  Or you might choose an old fashioned bound ledger².  Up to the individual.

At any rate, when an item sells, you decrease inventory. As you create replacements, they get noted, too. All you need to do now is figure out what the right levels are.

This is a difficult subject. Different servers have different demands, and things tend to move in cycles.  I’ve seen glyphs that didn’t sell for months suddenly fly off the shelves, then cool off just as quickly.

My own personal practice is to keep two of every glyph in stock at all times. For items that sell faster, three may be more appropriate, but you have GOT to know the market before you run the risk of overstocking, and since I check things once a day there is very little down time even if I sell out on an item.

Getting stocked up

Developing an inventory in the first place will more than likely be a drain on the coffers, if you buy your materials.  Most dealers will need to take time to develop inventory slowly.  But choosing the wrong items will likely result in bankruptcy.  So, choosing your initial stock is important.

There are many tools out there to help out with this – such as The Undermine Journal – but be aware of what they represent. Most, if not all, of these tools use the WoW Armory Auction House feed to access AH information periodically. That feed, however, does not offer real sales data, last I looked. It offers data on what was posted, and what was no longer posted, but it does not indicate if an item disappeared because it was bought, because it expired, or because it was cancelled. Without that information, the best these tools can offer is a guess, which some of them do attempt.

A fair approximation can be gained from the average post price of an item over two weeks’ period. Such an item with a lot of activity and a fairly flat price curve is probably a reliable seller.  An item with a steep sawtooth sales curve (starts out high, drops off rapidly) is probably moving nowhere and all the activity is due to constant undercutting. Items that sell quickly rarely see a lot of undercutting.

You can use tools like this to glean, say, the top 20 items and then work your way down. This way you get some income to fund your subsequent stocking operation.

Yes, there is risk here in that a price is inflated due to artificial manipulation, but since you’re going to make at least one of everything anyway, just view that as an advance copy and move on.

The Supply Chain

Where you get your glyphs is largely up to you.  In my case, I actually make the glyphs, but I purchase my raw materials.  But, if you have the time, gathering your own mats and milling them is a lot more profitable, by many orders of magnitude.

However, a lively glyph market will support a vendor that buys supplies off the auction house. You just have to know what to buy and when.  On my server, for example, Whiptail is generally as cheap as Cinderbloom and Stormvine, with a significantly higher yield per stack.

A really lively market will pretty much require you to at least supplement your supply chain with bought materials. On my server, I generally go through twelve to twenty-four stacks of Whiptail per day, usually in excess of twenty. Unless you give up a significant amount of your time to gathering, there’s no way you can keep up with that sort of demand on your own.

If you choose to buy your glyphs straight up for resale, then your margins are going to be even thinner, and you will need to account for supply costs in a lot more detail. That will also require a LOT more of your time.

Keep the good stuff up front

With over 430 types of glyph to sell, just moving and posting them can eat a significant chunk of time. This is why I have a three-tier inventory.  Tier 1 is the stuff that sells. Tier 2 is the stuff that usually sells but isn’t right now. And Tier 3 is for the stuff that rarely, if ever, sells.

Tier 1 I always keep in stock, two items at a time.

Tier 2 generally gets rotated out of stock for a week, then gets brought back in. The price levels have probably reset³ so it’ll probably move back into Tier 1.

Tier 3 items go into a virtual warehouse, where they sit for a few weeks before being popped into circulation again. I almost always break these out during special events, such as holidays or content patches when a lot of people show up needing a lot of things that normally don’t move.

Now, what you call "selling" is up for debate. Currently, I determine that any glyph that doesn’t sell for at least 25g needs to go to Tier 2 for a week, and if it doesn’t sell for ten weeks in a row, it goes into a warehouse.

Due to undercutting, the "average" price an item brings in is highly questionable, since it varies depending on which part of the sawtooth you’re on. Therefore it is better to establish a minimum, below which you aren’t going to waste time on it.

Don’t sweat the goblins

I read, every week, posts by people that appear almost fixated on undercutting.  Gotta be the lowest price for an item or it’s the end of the world, or something to that effect.

There’s always a "goblin" – real or wannabee, doesn’t matter – out there undercutting something. Can’t get away from it.  You can either engage in a long, wasteful, elaborate "war" with this individual (or – horrors! – a bot), or you can ignore him or her and work to alleviate the impact of such activities.

With 430ish glyphs on the market, you buy assurance through quantity. You will get undercut somewhere, but you won’t get undercut EVERYWHERE at ALL THE TIMES.

The proof is in the pudding. On a well-populated server with an active AH ecosystem, products sell every day, easily. Maybe I miss a few opportunities by not obsessing over The Other Guy, but then, he’s not my customer. My customer pays the bills, not that goblin dude.

Tools for the times

I will be first to say it: without tools, this process would be impossible. I’d be doing nothing but getting glyphs made and posting them, every day. Call that a game if you want, but I call it a job. A boring, soul-destroying job.

So, having the right tools for the job is important!

I am going to take off my hipster glasses and gladly join the throng of people that recommend Trade Skill Master (TSM). I use two of its modules primarily to get things done, and a third for non-related activities⁴.  The Posting tool moves items from your bag to the AH quickly; the destroy tool takes a lot of pain out of milling herbs.

Advanced Trade Skill Window or Skillet can be used to set up queues for making glyphs (the former has a better feature set but the latter seems more reliable).  This, also, is a massive time saver.

Gathering tools like Gathermate 2 and Routes help organize your foraging expeditions.

Postal will help you process mail en masse, moving glyphs to your bags and cash to your bank. There’s also a TSM module for the mailbox, but I haven’t used it.

Google Docs will provide you with free tools to organize your data and find holes to fill and bumps to sand off.

Do be cautious of the more automated tools, though. Understand your market and train the tool to work properly within it.  For example, I posted all my auctions by hand for weeks before letting TSM take over the job, by which time I was aware of the peculiarities of my market and either didn’t care, or developed a process to deal with it.

The most important tool is between your ears

And that brings me to the point that, regardless of what process you develop, what tools you use, or how you deal with adverse situations, the most important things you bring to the table are your heart and mind. If you engage in practices that are a little seedy, expect others to follow suit. If you play the game honestly and fairly, however – you’ll get by just fine.

Above all, keep your eyes open.  For opportunities, trends, potential issues.  Gather what data you need to make it possible.  Don’t rely on tools to drive the whole thing. Keep your hand on the wheel at all times.

Room for improvement

The whole "working as a storefront" process is not without failings. Some are inherent, some can be improved.

I’m bothered by having to put items in warehouse, for example. That makes it impossible to make all things available at all times.  Unfortunately, the AH doesn’t facilitate the customer doing the equivalent of walking up to the counter and inquiring about a rare glyph that isn’t out front.  And NOT warehousing things just eats up too much time and bag space.

The other thing that doesn’t get captured well is sales frequency per item, in my current process.  I don’t record when I sold an item; I don’t even have a database, and that’s what you’d need.  I wanted to do this earlier in the process but eventually arrived at the conclusion that if I have everything up at all times, who cares about when it sells the best?  I’ll be there anyway.  But that does run the risk that the item is currently warehoused.

My current process is also very dependent on me personally catching all the details for sales, etc. Sometimes I forget to record a sale and my inventory gets skewed badly because of it. I live in fear of NOT documenting a sale twice in a row, meaning I’d have no items for sale, and no reason to make more when I looked at my inventory. My next step in that regard is to make a tool that will record each for me into a text file or something, but that’s for another time.

Glyph-Related Accessories

A while back I read on WoW Insider the advice of their goblin advisor regarding the selling of Darkmoon card decks. and the like. At the time it was very good advice, as many of the Darkmoon cards were BiS for several classes. But a week or so later, a new content patch dropped, and they were immediately trumped by the next tier’s trinkets, for the most part.

The upshot is this: Darkmoon cards – and the entry-level relics we can make – really aren’t as profitable as they used to be, not with so many good endgame items available through LFD and LFR.  So, don’t build your business around them. It won’t work out all that well.

While there is still a very minute market for the very patient, don’t expect to see them flying off the shelves.

In fact, after close analysis, you may find that selling Embers or Ink will be more profitable than selling the cards they create.

And that’s pretty much all I’m going to say on this part of the market.

Does this work for other markets?

In a few weeks we’re going to move into the Enchanting market once again. Jas was doing that for a while, and it was tedious and dreary.  Now that I’ve got a new system, though, She’ll be trying her hand at that and see how it works out.

The BIG question mark in all this is Mists of Panderia. With an overhaul to both abilities and talents, how will glyphs be handled? You can bet that I’m watching that like a hawk!

1. The Internet does change those rules a bit, but let’s pretend it doesn’t exist on Azeroth and see where that takes us.
2. This does have a certain romantic appeal, I confess. Especially if I get to use a fountain pen.
3. I mentioned earlier how posting prices have a sawtooth pattern to them as they get undercut from a high price to a low price. This happens to Tier 1 items as well as Tier 2.  Eventually the price bottoms out, at which point everyone withdraws. The next posting will be again at a high price, and we start all over again.
4. Basically, the AH buying tool is handy for finding bargains to resell, but I use it minimally because the glyph market is just too busy!

This post originally appeared on Grimmtooth's Troops on January 25, 2012.

Anyhoo, the upshot is some people weren’t being honest about this sort of thing, making up excuses about why they weren’t showing up to raid, so they would should they deign to return, still be assured a spot on the raid. They weren’t really able to commit, either way.

Thinking of this, I noticed another, similar, trend.

A lot of people are going out of their way to not have a strong opinion, one way or the other, on the whole STWOR-WoW¹ thing.  Time and time again I see people griping about either a STWOR or WoW feature or lack thereof, followed by more disclaimers than you can shake a stick at.  In some cases the disclaimers are longer than the actual opinion.

Consider the lack of LFD in STWOR, for an example. That topic’s been popping up a lot recently, in posts that more or less almost approach thinking about almost committing to a possible opinion that STWOR might possibly under some conditions slightly benefit from such a thing, but NOT SAYING IT’S BAD WE DON’T HAVE IT Y’ALL and OF COURSE THE WOW ONE STILL MOSTLY ALMOST SUCKS EXCEPT IT PRETTY MUCH DOESN’T EITHER. SORTA.

Ahem …

Okay, the point I’m dancing around² is that a lot of gamers are playing both sides of the street today, are happy with that, and want to blog about that new thing, but there appears to be a problem with doing that.

Being part of a large blogging community in WoW, we have all made many friends. Many of those friends³ have no interest in the new shiny, but still read the blog because, hey, still friends!

On the other side of the coin, they are also painfully aware of many of their peers (let’s assume STWOR peers for the moment) have far less "give" in their opinions, and are likely to have little to no tolerance of pro-WoW attitudes – or in some cases, apparently, tolerance.

What seems to be happening as a result is a lot of beating around the bush instead of getting right to the point of things one likes, dislikes, for fear of offending either camp.  One wishes to remain in good stead with the New Order, but feels like being too positive for STWOR or negative on WoW might burn bridges one does not wish to burn.

It’s a shame this is happening, because it tends to marginalize all three camps.  The STWOR partisans become more extreme in aggregate, as do the WoW partisans, and those in between end up tying their own hands and miss many great opportunities to discuss the merits – and pitfalls – of both games in an honest and frank manner.

Hopefully, as things settle out over the next few months, and we can manage to have honest opinions on the things that really matter, such as Pandas versus Ewoks.⁴

1. Or WoW-STWOR for those wavering the other way.
2. C wut I did thar?
3. Hello!
4. I’m a purist. If it doesn’t have Ewoks and Gungans, it’s obviously not canon.

This post originally appeared on Grimmtooth's Troops on January 24, 2012.

On January 18, 2012, a lot of sites are going dark (more or less) to protest a pair of bills¹ that are trying real hard to become a law in the United States that will give the US government unparalleled power over the content that appears on the internet. In a show of solidarity, I should be taking this site down in the same way. Unfortunately, I’m a bit busy and haven’t had a chance to set that up or get whatever plugin I need to do it, etc.

This does not mean that I am not sympathetic to the cause. I am.  So, tomorrow, if you are inconvenienced in the process of doing whatever it is that you are doing, please have a little patience and respect for whatever website it is. They are trying to make a point, and your frustration is part of that point. If SOPA / PIPA passes and becomes the law of the land, sites could go down by Federal mandate, diddled at the DNS level.

How long do you think WikiLeaks would last before they were taken down due to "piracy" charges, for example?  What about Wikipedia? WoWPedia? Ars Technica? BoingBoing? Slashdot?  All of them have, at some point, probably published something that could, without hearing or possibility of rebuttal, have them blacklisted in the DNS tables that are used in the US.

And if you feel that a temporary inconvenience is worthwhile to ensure content providers get paid, might I mention that the US government does not thus far have a stellar record of clearing people from its own "No-Fly list".  Pretty much, once you get on it, you’re toast. I don’t trust these people to floss their own teeth, much less admit to a mistake and clear things up. This is the US government! Justice is not relevant!

Here are some links that may be helpful and/or educational.

• Stop American Censorship hooks you up with your congresscritter so that you may express your displeasure at the concept of SOPA/PIPA. You get a canned message to send, or you may craft your own. Maintain level tones!
• The EFF, as you would expect, provides you with the information you crave.
• Hey, WikiMedia has a few words to say, such as "this totally impacts our ability to do our thing." Love Wikipedia or loathe it, one thing is certain: it represents something that most people consider a good thing. Imagine if it were gone. Oh, wait – tomorrow², you won’t have to imagine.

Okay, it probably took longer to write this than to find and install the plugin to blackout my own site, but I never have been one of few words when many words would suffice. But now I’m really tired, and suffering from a head cold virus that we have dubbed "Murglesnout", because, brothers and sisters, that is exactly how it feels.

1. House bill HR 3261 and Senate bill S.968.
2. 19 January 2012.

This post originally appeared on Grimmtooth's Troops on January 18, 2012.

I don’t often blog about the world outside of WoW, since this is, yah, a WoW blog.  But I do watch other games closely. And yes, that includes STWOR. I guess it’s assumed that the main reason I don’t want to play it is because I have never heard of George Lucas and his progeny. That’s a negative, Ghost Rider.

Anyhoo.

In an interview on Eurogamer (as pointed to by Massively), the Game Director for STWOR, James Ohlen, had this to say.

Star Wars: The Old Republic Game Director James Ohlen isn’t surprised that the game’s received the flak it has from a segment of reviews and fans. In a candid interview with Eurogamer, Ohlen addresses both the issues of being a "big target" for critics and the claims that SWTOR’s lacking innovation.

For the most part, players and critics have praised the game, Ohlen shares, and BioWare is seeing an "exceptionally high" desire among its playerbase for continued subscriptions. But was BioWare prepared for the backlash as well? Ohlen says it was: "We knew that there was going to be people who wanted us to fail. But that’s just the nature of the game. If you’re going to build a huge game and try to go out to a lot of people, you’re going to have people who just react poorly."

Basically, he seems to say, if you have something bad to say about the game, you’re a hater. 

In one fell swoop, he attempts to reduce any criticism – legit or not – to just plain "haters gonna hate, bro" and thus, in his mind at least, can move forward about talking about how wonderful the embroidery is on the next tier of armor or whatever.

I’m not going to address the concerns expressed elsewhere either collectively or individually. Not my concern. But when I see a video game company handle legitimate criticisms in such a cavalier fashion, it really annoys me. It’s a sleazeball move and it just paints the whole development team in a bad light – and usally they don’t deserve that.

Well, sure, he works at EA, and we all lower our expectations whenever we talk, shake hands with, or generally share space with someone at EA these days¹. But that does not excuse the practice, any more than if it were someone at Blizzard².

If I ever have a critique of a game, it will be based on the game and not on nature of the players within or the nature of the content.  The fact is that the "franchise" does not interest me, but that is not a critique of the game itself.  What I’ve heard of the game itself has been largely positive. I’ve heard more negative about the community around the game than the game itself. That doesn’t make the game a bad game, any more than LFR makes puggers into bad people.  They are mechanisms only, and should be judged on that basis.

When you try to insinuate bias without proof, you come across as a sleaze, plain and simple, and when you do that, you inch closer to losing a sale from those that care about that sort of thing.

Now, do I actually believe this guy meant things that way?  At the moment, I’m on the fence. As usual, reading the full article embellishes things a bit. But this is the bit getting the widest exposure, and it so far hasn’t been walked back too briskly, so I don’t know what to think about this guy.

What I DO know is that this is a practice I have seen over and over again, from game makers at all levels (including Zynga, ew). So if it’s gonna quack and walk like a duck, I’m going to lay down the duck-like attributes on it.

The practice itself is just not cool, it shouldn’t be pandered to, and "reporters" on the scene should call it out when it happens instead of nodding and smiling and holding on to that free pass for one more quarter.

1. More’s the pity, I remember when EA was a known mark of quality and excellence.
2. Has that happened? I’m sure it has, and there’s still no excuse for it.

This post originally appeared on Grimmtooth's Troops on January 13, 2012.

Go boldly amidst the noise and haste of LFD, and enjoy what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without grinding, be on good terms with all factions. Speak your strats quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the l33tsauce and the preeners; they too can serve as examples.

Avoid loud and spammy persons, they are vexations to /Y. If you compare yourself with others players, you may become vain or bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser gearscore than yours.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your gear plans. Keep interested in your main, however boring dailies may be; this is a real asset in the changing endgame raid tier.

Exercise caution in on the AH; for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what deals there are; many persons strive for undercuts; and everywhere life is full of profit.

Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about your guild; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as constant as the stars.

Take kindly the counsel of experience, gracefully surrendering the gear of youth. Nurture PvP gear to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many wipes are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the Titans, no less than the Gnomes and the Dwarves; you have a right to be here.

And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt lore is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with Metzen, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your Transmog set. With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful virtual world. Be cheerful.

Strive to cap your VP.

(With apologies)

This post originally appeared on Grimmtooth's Troops on January 10, 2012.

The end of the year has come and gone and Eff the Ineffable is (a) still around and (b) still kicking and © still recruiting. This comes as a surprise to some since things were looking dark at the end of the year. The fact that the Holidays always wreaks havoc on raiding schedules is still an endless source of surprise to many, and when you’re feeling a little bit vulnerable, as we have been, it ceases to be an academic issue.

Still, you have to admit that losing a GM and over half the core raiding team is a pretty difficult obstacle. Throw in the fact that the new GM has some stuff keeping her away from the game for a few weeks, and conditions are ripe for the typical collapse cycle.

Fortunately, there are many things that mitigated these factors. First of all, the new GM was quick to let people know what was going on, so the usual ennui on the part of the rank and file did not occur.  Secondly, we have some individuals that are willing and able to take up leadership roles – interim or not -  and maintain a sense of order that a guild needs to survive.  And, thirdly, efforts to recruit are bearing fruit – whether to get new members, or to build a guild alliance, remains to be seen, but progress has been made and thus far the new faces have been met with amity and approval.

The net effect this weekend was that we actually had to sit some people out for our weekend raiding. Oh, sure, the new faces were a factor, but that’s the point of bringing them in, or getting together, or however you want to put it.

The ultimate result is that we’ve managed to move on to 4/8 Normal. I realize we’re not talking world or even server firsts here, but it is achievement, it is progression, and I don’t think anyone walked out muttering bad things about anything.

As usual, I am not satisfied with my damage output.  There were one or two fights where I did exceedingly well, but for the majority I’m close to tail-end Charlie by the numbers. On the second day, I realized that I had some gemming and reforging issues, which I’m not sure how happened, but even that didn’t improve things much. I have some time this week, so I’m going to investigate a Survival build.  I hear that’s the hawtness these days. Always in motion, the future is¹.

So, anyway, the future of EtI is far less full of woe than it once was, and I consider that to be a good thing.

1. Obligatory required Star Wars reference. Wouldn’t be a WoW blog without it.

This post originally appeared on Grimmtooth's Troops on January 9, 2012.

There is a scene in one of my favorite sci-fi series of all time in which one of the main characters is expressing his frustration with the daily flow of little deaths that define the life of a bureaucrat. It is of course a take-off of our Earthly expression "Being pecked to death by ducks", an expression of how thousands of little pinpricks can add up to some serious damage over time.  Each may be a mere annoyance, but taken together, they can topple empires.

In this case, cats did not topple the Centauri Republic. That required B5′s version of an Old God. But that’s another show.

Where we do find parallels, however, is in how we as citizens of Azeroth deal with little annoyances that have no seeming impact in the immediate sense. You see things every day that you decide aren’t worth getting excited about, until that day comes that everybody’s doing it because nobody raised voice to object.

It is good to know in our little universe that some people recognize this and work actively against it. While some will see a tiny injustice and shrug, "that’s the way the world works", there are others that step forward and state flatly, "that was wrong, and I’m calling you on it."

The former like to portray themselves as laid-back realists and the opposition as strident nitpickers. This is how it’s always been. "Don’t rock the boat" wasn’t invented by hipsters in 2007. Establishment types will hold the line as viciously as any attacker, all the while working hard to make it seem like a chilled-out real-world response.

So we hopeless idealists often find ourselves somewhat overwhelmed by an army of trolls at the anonymous beck and call of kindly patriarchs (or matriarchs, it’s happened). There’s not much you can do about it besides stick to your convictions in the knowledge that you are right to call people on their bullshit.   You may take damage in the process, but a core group of good people will think better of you for it.

The world IS out to get you if you aren’t just going along for the ride. If you challenge convention and the old world order, you will be savaged and drug through the mud. Your worldview will be challenged by an endless stream of "trivial" things that mean practically nothing by themselves, but in aggregate represent a larger evil that has to end.

If your cause is just and your reasoning sound, however, you will have company in your travels. A herd of nibbling cats, spread out over a wider sample, can be withstood.

Just watch out for those zebras.

This post originally appeared on Grimmtooth's Troops on January 6, 2012.

It is all the rage these days to disavow any regard whatsoever for damage meters. One is expected to denounce their use, purge them from one’s system, deny them access to your chat window, and make fun of those using them.

Well, I say, nuts to that!

If you are DPS, this is your instrument

Neil Armstrong did not land on the moon by looking out the window¹, he used instruments – and Buzz Aldrin calling out other instrument readings.  Lindbergh didn’t even have a front window, he flew across the Atlantic on instruments. There are automobile races where the participants don’t even depart at the same time – they completely use instruments to determine who won.

In short, a reliable instrument is worth any number of other observations.

And a damage meter is the DPS role’s instrument of measurement.

You need to know if you are performing properly

The DPS role is dependent on its numbers, whether you take them subjectively or absolutely is irrelevant.  But of the two, an absolute reference is much better than a relative one. Numbers are absolute. You can feed them into spreadsheets, save them off, compare them to each other. You can make multiple passes and chart your progress or lack thereof. Your damage meter is your friend. If you were doing 20K last week on a particular boss, and only 18K this week, you have something to look in to before you’re the cause of an enrage-timer wipe in the future.

Target dummies are liars

"Well, fine", you say, "turn it on for your target dummies, I got no problem with that, but using them in a live encounter is bad!"  To which I say, pfah!  Target dummies give you a baseline, but they don’t take anything into account that you get from a live boss. You won’t see all the group buffs, or group procs, or even be able to use your execute abilities such as Kill Shot or Decimate. You might as well just sit there with autoshot, the approximation will have the same level of accuracy (and much less variability!).

No, a live boss (or live trash, if that is your interest) is the only way to truly gauge your performance in a raid setting. And since things vary depending on raid make-up, procs, and the like, you will need multiple samples.

Well, you don’t need to run it for everyone

Yes, you do.

You are not a single unit. You are part of a team. And how you perform relative to the rest of the team is important, if for no other reason than that of self-preservation.  For if you’re performing in line with the guys at Elitist Jerks, but behind that of your guild (what, you think that EJ is infallible? Lol.). You may be in danger of being sat without realizing it.  Because if you’re part of a serious raiding guild, I guarantee that your Raid Leader is watching your performance.

The more you know …

But that’s what World of Logs is for!

It is indeed, and in my opinion it is a far more accurate instrument than Omen or Skada, provided all members contribute logs (if it’s just you, then it’s on par with the other two, not better). But you probably won’t have WoL for all of your Heroics, trash runs, and so forth. You need all the things. Else your dataset is incomplete.

A damage meter is always there.

People use them badly!

They do indeed. Jerks spam chat with them all the time. But not you, right?

And the damage meters don’t do that automatically, so if yours does, it’s totally your fault. You are misusing the instrument. Stop it.

What idiots do with damage meters is not my concern, and it is not the fault of the damage meter. Get over it.

I don’t need a damage meter to know how well I’m doing

Yes you do. You will always do better with solid statistics than you will with a "gut feeling".

But if you just want to use the Force, have I got a game for you.

It might also be that you’re a PvPer and see no need. I contend that you don’t even belong in this conversation. Fire up All Healers Must Die and go do that honorable thing you do.

There are valid performance issues.

Yes, there are. But not for me, and not for most people that I know of. If, however, you are one of those people, and cannot afford a computer made after 2001, then by all means don’t run with one, because for certain it does suck CPU cycles.

You already have problems and damage meters are the least of them, but, whatever.²

Don’t shoot yourself in the foot.

In general, however, a damage meter is a valuable and useful tool for DPS self-improvement.  Feel free to sneer at the idiots spamming party chat, and feel free to kick people that get hung up over somebody else’s DPS in a PUG³.  But don’t blame the instrument for these things.

After all, both Tommy Dorsey and myself play the same musical instrument. But nobody has ever proposed that the Trombone be banned because of me.⁴

Your damage meter is your friend

If you’re serious about self-improvement in a raiding environment, you need to use your damage meter to its fullest to provide nice, juicy data from which you can draw useful conclusions, and then apply those conclusions in such a way as to improve your performance (or detect bad decisions of that sort).

This is my damage meter. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

My damage meter is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life.

My damage meter, without me, is useless. Without my damage meter, I am ineffectual. I must use my damage meter wisely. I must DPS better than the boss that is trying to kill me. I must kill him before he kills me. I shall.

My damage meter and myself know that what counts in this raid is not the DPS we do, our meter dumps to raid chat, or the noise we make. We know that it is the overall damage that counts. We will do massive damage.

My damage meter is human, even as I, because it is our life. Thus, I will learn it as a brother. I will learn its weaknesses, its strength, its range, its triggers, its filters and its scope. I will keep my damage meter prepped and ready, even as I am prepped and ready. We will become part of each other. We will.

Before the Light, I swear this creed. My damage meter and myself are the defenders of my world. We are the masters of our enemy. We are the saviors of my life.

So be it, until victory is ours and there is no enemy, but peace!

1. He looked AT the window, which had guide markers on it!
2. I also recommend 800×600 resolution.
3. We did that last night, and when asked why, the reason given was "Insufficient Beardiness." The fact that the mage in question was so quickly votekicked speaks for itself, however. He was an insufferable bore.
4. Well, my neighbors. And maybe my mom.

This post originally appeared on Grimmtooth's Troops on January 5, 2012.

What a ride 2011 was for the clan! It was an unusual year to say the least!  In many ways, the story of 2011 is the story of WoW 4.0, a.k.a. Cataclysm.

The Jasra Project truly came to a close just before Cata came out when there was a (according to some) giant blow-up between myself and a guildy and I just stopped wanting to raid or anything else around him. The Vorpal Bunnies’ final charge on Icecrown came to a sullen halt; Jasra took up hanging out in bars in Ironforge and Dalaran, mostly in Shadowform.

To get her out of her funk, she was given the responsibility of maintaining the clan’s money laundering Glyph emporium. That’s worked out pretty well, about which will be written at another time.

Not willing to give up raiding completely, we cast about for a place to raid that did NOT include said unliked guildy.  At this point some really neat people were getting together a raiding guild called Eff the Ineffable. Long story short, Grimm transferred over to raid with some blogging friends and it was good. I’ve never been entirely happy with my performance in that group, but I was never really out of challenges to overcome.  It was fun.

Unfortunately, that lightsaber game (and panda angst, let it be said) pretty much drew off our core raiders. Zel and ATT, Rhii, Morehai, and even our (former) GM, Alas, left to entertain midichlorians or whatever.  A new GM  has stepped up, and we’re trying to get together five or six more raiders of like mind in order to hopefully take down Deathwing.  Time will tell. But, hey – Eff the Ineffable is recruiting, if that sort of thing interests you.

At any rate, Grimm’s now at a crossroads.  Our core raiders just happened to be the friends that drew me in in the first place. Yes, I came for the raiding, but I also came for the camaraderie. This does kinda take the wind out of one’s sails when one’s friends bail out like that. Sure, I’ve been invited to come along and sure, I want my friends to be happy.  Nevertheless, there is woe.  I kind of FRPG-based case of Empty Nest Syndrome. The big personal challenge then is not the raiding itself, but forming new connections within my changed guild, or, if that doesn’t work out, deciding what’s next for the hapless huntard.

After close to a year of not really doing anything with OCV, I did get back into raiding there, first with Illume, then Flora. Having seen all the T11 and T12 encounters at this point, I got to play tour guide.  With a new attitude (namely, I will put said unlikable guildy on mute if he so much as tweaks my blood pressure), I’ve found a new dimension in the game to explore. I’ve seen how it goes if I just walk into a room and start babbling things about the boss. It ain’t pretty. So I’m learning to organize myself better so as to put a better presentation forward when explaining a fight.  It’s almost like being a raid leader, without the responsibility.

We got up to Chim in Blackwing Descent before moving on to some more lucrative T12 raiding in Firelands. We’ve gotten up to Shannox but haven’t downed him yet.  We’re close, though.  Makes me feel pretty proud of our ragtag bunch.  We’ve never been first, but we’ve always been persistent.

Looking forward to 2012, the future’s pretty muddy. Grimm may or may not continue to raid, Jasra may get back into healing, Flora may have returned to Destro.  Every time renewal comes up, I now pause and consider my options because at times, dear readers, I consider other games I have not been playing.  Hell, reading the manual for Hearts of Iron 2 is likely to freeze up my cortex all on its own.

Oh, I’ll most likely not end up in SWTOR; that game’s made for people that watched all the TV shows and read all the graphic novels. The only SW novel I ever read was "Splinter of the Mind’s Eye" by Alan Dean Foster, and I view all the new animated characters in the same way I view Ewoks and Jar Jar.   No, definitely not, but I might give Eve another try, or STO, if I’m inclined towards an SF-themed game.

If I do wander off, this blog will not record the annals of any exploits in other universes.  I’ve had to weed too many newly SWTOR-centric blogs from my blogroll lately to contribute to that problem myself. I will have a nice and tidy good-bye here, probably migrate it all over to Blogspot or WP-free, and if I blog again it’ll be on a new blog.

But enough of that. Right now, today, I’m looking at a renewal notice and getting ready to commit to another three months. And there’s an expansion in the works; I predict delivery this year, last quarter, but I’m probably wrong. Still – monks!

Here comes 2012. I hope it’s friendly.

This post originally appeared on Grimmtooth's Troops on January 1, 2012.

This past evening I achieved level 85, on the very last quest of the very last quest line in Uldum. Well, barring the questlines that go into the instances there.  That was pretty spiffy, actually, one of those precision landings you usually hear about over a cup of mulled wine in the tavern.  So, the next time I start questing, I’ll be jumping straight in to Twilight Highlands, rather than dealing with loose ends.

Hey, by the way – Flora informs that there are Deepsea Sagefish pools up there now. Casters rejoice!

Speaking of questing; Meta observes that after hitting 85 in a Hunter, Warlock, and Mage, that questing with a priest just seems lonely. Aside from my mana beastie and my evil clones, ’tis true, I don’t keep much in the way of company out there. I wonder if this is true of other multi-classed altaholics out there?  Is this a common feeling, that something missing when out and about as a pet-less toon?  I personally don’t get it; the fuss and mess seems like it would be a pain.

I’ve availed myself of the Transmorgrification services now being offered. While it is true that this is the same robe that The Dark Father was wearing when we caught him swinging for the other team, it has also long been the regalia of followers of the Light for decades. I wear them proudly.¹

The great thing about this service is that you have it if you want it, and if you don’t, then you can ignore it. Oh, some people couldn’t manage to keep quiet if anyone was enjoying themselves, but we have the word troll for a reason. As Flora says, haters gonna hate. I dig it, so do a few of us. Grimm’s not so thrilled, but at least he can replace that horrible helm with some stylish engineering goggles. He says it’s Engineering Pride. Best to just nod, smile, and call for another pint.

Side note: I have a theory that if the game artists would spend more time wearing the ghastly things they foist on us as "tier gear", we’d see a lot more realistic patterns emerge. The elegant simplicity of the Black Ash Robe or the Robe of Power stands out as a far better pattern than anything I’ve seen on the tier vendors’ racks for years. 

And don’t get me started on head pieces. You know what? Guys, don’t eliminate the ranged slot. Eliminate the head slot. Because you guys just can’t do it. Again, try wearing the T8 Turtleneck of Doom. Just for a day. My private theory?  All helms are designed to scare the bejeezus out of other players in PvP.  Only that joke got old real fast and now they’re stuck trying to service the same tired ideas that never worked in the first place.

Incidentally, I’d like to thank the interface designers for the "hide helm" flag. You have no idea.

Anyway.

I’ve been working on and off on a long post about how to succeed at the Glyph business without being one of those annoying "gobbo" types, but it keeps meandering off into a step by step how-to.  Got to go back to formula on that one. Soon, I promise.

So, we’re a bit content-free at the moment, apologies for that.  Grimm’s full of gloom and woe, Flora’s all excited about Firelands, and I’m just now making 85. Until I get my big project finished, I don’t have much to talk about.

Looking forward, I might heal if I can get some guinea pigs lined up for instances.  It’s been over a year since I last healed, and last night marks the first time I even logged out as Disco.

Time may not heal all wounds, but it at least makes you forget where they came from some times.

1. And, yes, the signature image is now horribly out of date.

This post originally appeared on Grimmtooth's Troops on December 19, 2011.