Big Crits - Blog

Big Crits Weekly Update - H Zon’ozz and H Yor’sahj Down

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 16:23:18 GMT

Since our last weekly update (three weeks ago), Big Crits’ progression team has continued knocking down the heroic bosses in Dragon Soul. On December 16th, we downed Heroic Zon’ozz, but it took another couple of weeks to get Heroic Yor’sahj down, on December 29th. The attendance boss reared his ugly head due to the holidays, which may have hampered the progression a bit, but the progression team pulled through late on Thursday moving to 4/8 hard mode.

This week the Raiders will be working on Heroic Ultraxion. According to Raid Leader Basek, “Ultraxion is going to be extremely tough, a lot of our raiders are worried we will not have the DPS to match the enrage because of its extremely hard requirements. But we’ll handle it like we did Ragnaros.”

The progression team stands at U.S. 56th and world 189 with 4/8 Heroic Dragon Soul as of Monday January 2, 2012.

Da Crew News

The holiday attendance boss was beating on Da Crew a bit as well. The fledgling 25 man run turned into a 10 man, and that 10 man did quite well. The week before Christmas, they killed Ultraxion after they had struggled with that fight for a while on 25 man, and then went on to down Warmaster Blackhorn and the Spine of Deathwing.

The following week the 25 man had enough people to split into two 10 mans, one of those groups two-healed all the way through Spine of Deathwing. Great job by healers Saltycracker and Oenomel (see video of that kill here). Now that the holiday attendance issues are over, it looks like the Da Crew might be shuffling some people around to either flesh out the 25 man or perhaps end up with four 10 mans.

Comings and Goings

Big Crits has a few transplants from former Alliance guild on Sen’jin, Precedence. There has actually been quite a bit of unholy intermingling between the two guilds, ever since one incredibly fun and impromptu night in Tol Barad early in the expansion. So, when Precedence kind of closed up shop in 4.3, several of them ended up in Big Crits. Two of those transplants have risen from Initiate status to Raiders on the progression team, the awesome Mesmerize and Tskae, Mage and Rogue. Druid Fidlesticks was also promoted to Raider in December.

Mesmerize comes along just in time to fill a giant hole left by Heartshine, a Mage who has been with Big Crits for over a year. Unfortunately, her work schedule changed, rendering her unable to raid with Big Crits. She has returned to her home server, Tanaris, and joined the awesomely named guild, iPutOnMyRobeAndWizardHat. We will certainly miss her and her stellar deeps, and hope she can return to us someday.

What did a heroic Ragnaros kill cost us?

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 14:00:00 GMT

Every now and then a boss fight comes along that is known as "the guild breaker." 25-man Heroic Ragnaros justifiably earned this title. The last time this moniker was used as extensively was in Sunwell for M'uru. Sure there were tough fights in Wrath, but nothing like Sunwell, and certainly nothing like Heroic Ragnaros.

The difficult issue many guilds faced, and the very one that we did, was a choice between returning the commitment of dedication versus the very real prospect of stagnation. For us, it came down to clearly defining a starting roster, one which left many raiders on the sideline feeling marginalized by the guild.

Why should this be a problem for a progression guild? Big Crits has always been able to strike a balance between progression and fun. We raid on a very limited schedule, we keep a healthy roster that allows for depth without too much bench time, and it used to be that we did our best to rotate people around to maximize the fun for everyone.

Every raiding roster has top players and bottom players. Some guilds look to replace these bottom players immediately, while others will keep them around because they are good, reliable people who will be present 100% of the time, even if they underperform. This was the balance I sought to strike in Big Crits: to keep around good, reliable people, even if they underperform, and rotate them in when I could. This was an unwritten, but well-understood guild philosophy here as well.

And then came Ragnaros

Heroic Ragnaros changed this. Or rather, we knew we had to change in order to defeat this boss. After a few weeks of pulling the boss and seeing just how tightly tuned the fight was, we started keeping track of unnecessary deaths. It became immediately apparent who were our most raid-aware players, and who was lacking. By combining the deaths with the DPS output (I'll address tanks and healers below) the officers were able to create a priority list for raid spots.

Any hardcore progression guild does this, even a progression-minded guild such as Big Crits does this to an extent, and in other tiers it wasn't a problem to balance play time for everyone. For example, in ICC, a full clear took a good chunk of time, because you had 11 bosses to go through before getting to the Lich King. Tier 11 was similar, with three instances and 13 hard-mode bosses, so we could rotate people around, spread out the play time, and then pull a select group of raiders for the progression boss du jour.

Not so in Firelands. With a 6/7 HM clear taking three--maybe four--hours pre-nerf, and then taking less than two hours post-nerf, if a raider was on the bottom of the priority list for Heroic Ragnaros, their time in the raid became extremely limited. Thus, the opportunity to reward a raider's dedication by getting them in was limited to one of two scenarios: in for one boss where they needed loot, or in for heroic Rags only if we had no other replacements. In other words, it became crystal clear that they were backup players.

Raiders want to raid. You wouldn't be on a progression team if you didn't want to fight for your spot on every single pull. I respect this. In fact, I demand it to some extent from our raiders. Any raider worth their salt, who is sitting on the sidelines for the majority of raid time, will quickly become frustrated.

We chose to kill heroic Ragnaros and by doing so we chose to sideline people that we like--people that I care about—and as a direct result of these choices those people were left feeling marginalized.

Specifically

We started the tier with four tanks, and after many weeks of observation, discussions, and analysis, three of those tanks took a back seat and we moved a healer into a main tank role. Only two tanks are required for heroic Rags, and ideally you want them to be the same tanks for the sake of consistency. Our two new main tanks had the best combination of consistency, attendance, awareness, leadership initiative, and synergy. That was awesome for the guild as a whole to have these two at the front, but what about the others? Three people marginalized for the sake of progression.

These are three people who I like. Two of whom I partied with at Blizzcon (we had 29 Big Critters at the 'con), and all of whom have shown their dedication to the guild, in fact one of them was one in the very first round of invites that went out to start Big Crits in March 2010; a founding member marginalized for the sake of progress.

Healers were another unique situation. We went into the tier with eight healers. Post-nerf we were running four healers except for Beth'tilac and Baleroc. The majority of our 289 heroic Ragnaros pulls were with only four healers, though we eventually killed it with just three. The three healer comp required a very specific setup, which meant that our Resto Shaman was sat for a majority of the time, as were a few others. In fact, the only way we got our Resto Shaman the Firelord title was by bringing him in as Elemental. Again, more raiders marginalized for the sake of progression.

As for DPS, we refined the fight so well that for the last few weeks, only two things mattered for DPS: survivability, and your output in Phase 3. If you couldn't avoid unnecessary deaths or if you couldn't pump out at least 29k (the bar was variable, based on class) for the first 100 seconds of phase three, then we didn't want you in the raid. (The 100 seconds was the amount of time you had to push phase four before a second meteor came down.) We took our analysis of DPS even deeper, looking at cooldown usage and DoT uptime in order to find out who merely knew their class, and who was really truly maximizing at an intensely hardcore progression level.

This process left a few dedicated raiders in a lurch. They became backups, and being of the right progression mindset, didn't like being a backup. Again, more people who I like as people, and who are dedicated to the guild to the utmost, got pushed aside.

Philosophical change

It's not like I haven't faced difficult conversations with underperforming players before. In fact, Big Crits has grown from being a brand new guild that took a month to get a normal-mode Lich King kill, to a US top 100 guild. Along the way, I've pulled dozens and dozens of people aside to discuss their underperformance, and replaced just as many people as we sought to continually better ourselves.

What made it difficult this time was because it was so many people, all at once. All of this came down to one, big philosophical change for Big Crits: from a raider-rotation to a strict starter-and-backup designation.

We set a goal, and in order to accomplish that goal we had to change as a guild. The result of this change left some people behind. For many guilds, and many GM's, this wouldn't even require a second thought. But for me, and for my officers, we struggled with this choice. We all look at Big Crits as an extended family. We have a huge guild filled with truly awesome people who respect one another, have fun together, and play hard. It's a guild to be proud of as a leader or a member.

To take that atmosphere and also accomplish something as awesome as a US #97 kill of Heroic Ragnaros is great. It's great, until you look at the cost: to deliberately leave multiple behind for the sake of your collective goal.

I imagine this is a growing pain that any organization goes through. At a certain point you stop being a family-run business and you start being a business. Someone you like, who's been with you, and to whom you promised to match their dedication with your own, suddenly finds themselves shut out because the organization out grew them.

This is no one's fault, and don't take this as a "blame the game designers" post. The fight was incredible and highly tuned and we loved it. It required Big Crits, as a guild, to adjust, just as every tier requires some adjustments. The decision to bench some players and cut some others was our choice as leaders, and ultimately, as the GM, the responsibility of these decisions lies with me.

I had a choice between my commitment to lead the guild to achieve a goal, and my commitment to half a dozen individual players. I chose the guild and the goal. I don't regret the decision because achieving a goal is such an absolutely fantastic thing. It would have been sweeter if we were able to do it with everyone, but between achieving it with some versus not achieving it at all: we made the right choice.

May all your hits be crits!

Forum Free-for-All - The Stoney Meme Thread

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 14:00:00 GMT

We have a lot of fun on the Big Crits message board, and the recent Stoney Meme thread is a perfect example. Stoney recently changed his profile picture on his social media sites, and it was just too perfect to leave alone. Within hours, Raid Leader Basek had started this thread and pretty soon the whole guild was joining in the fun. There were even posts of pictures of other guildies. Here are some of the funniest pictures from the thread.

That last one is funny because it's true!

Internet Mimis by Clairdeloop

Some other funny Big Crits Memes -- Basek:

Saltycracker:

Beslley:

Sunkisttuna:

Raiding. Leading. Again.

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 16:25:40 GMT

Saltycracker, Big Crits' former Raid Leader, has returned to Big Crits after a brief hiatus. The following is a blog post from Salty about his new role in Big Crits. You can read his blog at http://randthotgen.blogspot.com/

About a month ago, I got that itch again to start raiding. I missed it. More importantly, I missed the people that enjoy raiding. The people that make new friends constantly, tell geeky jokes, make bad sexual innuendos and double entendres. You know, fun people. Not like all those stuck-up people you meet everyday in real life.

Ishraaq, our fearless Da Crew chief, approached me about leading another Firelands run. Something simple, something 10man, something for mains/alts/those not raiding enough. I agreed to lead it. This has now morphed into a 25man Dragon Soul run with expectations attached to it. Yikes.

Let's talk about Da Crew for a second quick. Da Crew is our "casual" raiding rank for people just not up to snuff with the standards of the main progression team, but still wanting to raid with good people. The problem is that casual is a very grey word. Back when Big Crits was formed and the guild was starting to pick up steam, there were a lot of people wanting to be a part of the guild, who did not have the time/desire to raid in a progression environment. Couple this with the fact that pugging raids on Sen'jin Horde was AWFUL, Da Crew started joining up and became a casual group of people with whom the alts of the main raiders and the casual folk could play and have a good time getting some phat purps.

Now, in my opinion, looking from my ivory tower of progression raid leader, Da Crew never really found it's place in the guild. Was it a place for just the raider rejects? Was it a place where more social raiders could have a place to be? Was it a place where raider alts could come and snatch gear from mains? Are Da Crew raiders just in fact second class guild members and second class raiders? At one point or another, all the above could be true. This has always been a struggle for the people who wear the "Da Crew" label.

I am interested in having more nights free than more nights raiding, because I will be unemployed shortly, and I would like to have some time to establish myself wherever I end up next year (Spoiler, I am moving out of Colorado). I am also single, which means I need time to date and meet new people when the time comes.

So, in coming back to raiding, I am not immediately interested in a progression schedule with progression commitments. Am I any less skilled at the game? I doubt it, maybe a little out of practice, but I'm not worried. I want to take Da Crew under my wing and make them into the best raiders they can be, on a shorter time schedule. In comparison, the typical Da Crew person raids less than half the hours of the progression team in a week, and that's even not a lot of hours given most progression guilds raid 20+ hours every week.

I'm interested in where this will take me, since I have always pushed myself to be a US or even world class player. Will Da Crew be able to find it's voice and it's place in the guild, or even the WOW community as a whole? I am very optimistic.

L2Raid and Big Crits: LIVE on the PTR

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 21:57:09 GMT

Friday, November 18, Big Crits & Learn to Raid will be LIVE on the PTR at 7pm EST!

We've rescheduled the event twice, first due to PTR hard mode testing, and then the second time due to live realm raid scheduling conflicts. Barring any more last-minute hard mode testing, Big Crits will be hanging with Kinaesthesia and Killars. We'll run some dungeons, and then if the LFR is up, we'll pull in some more people from both guilds and go have fun in WoW's PuG playground.

Tune in on Killars' channel: http://twitch.tv/learntoraid at 7pm EST for the fun

May all your hits be crits!

Heroic Ragnaros - Analyzing Phase 3 DPS

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 15:56:02 GMT

If you are working on Heroic Ragnaros then you know one of the key components of this fight is to get out of phase three with as few meteors as possible. In Big Crits we were focused on getting out with only one meteor. For our kill last week, we switched to three healers in order to ensure we pushed Rags down before the second meteor came out.

However, during our process of learning this fight, and then focusing almost exclusively on phase 3 DPS, one of our warlocks, Democles, began breaking down the World of Logs reports to show our performance during that phase only. This analysis was a key element in not only selecting players for the fight, but more importantly, in working with our current raiders to optimize their DPS.

Because we relied so heavily on Democles to provide us this breakdown from World of Logs, he was kind enough to make a screencast video. What follows is excellent tutorial about how to get the most out of WoL.

Big Crits World of Logs page

Full logs from our first H-Rags kill (the one used in the video)

May all your hits be crits!

Ten Man Raiding - A Postmortem

Wed, 10 Aug 2011 16:30:00 GMT

After raid leading 25mans during Wrath, I decided to see how the 10man side of progression raiding would measure up to what I thought was the more stressful and chaotic 25man side of things. While it lived up to my expectations in some areas, 10man progression raiding underperformed drastically in others. Would I call it a win or a loss? I’d call it a wash. Both models have their warts, but as long as the Internet exists there will be people from both camps lobbing grenades at each other. Let’s dive in.

The Good:

Easier to assemble.
So you decided you want to raid, or want to put together a raiding team. Depending on how many friends you have (who play wow, know what raiding is, and aren’t that bad at the game and/or how many people you can pull from trade chat or the realm forums) odds are pulling 9 other people together is always easier to manage than 24. I still applaud this decision made back in Wrath.

Less Loot
Less loot is a good thing? Whaaaaa? Loot drama all but disappears when there are only 1-2 people in the raid that can use a given item. Trinkets are still a wild card, as are tier tokens, but generally everyone stays pretty happy. Less loot = less complex loot systems, and all the crazy DKP variants are sort of redundant.

Geometry
Need to spread out? There is an ENORMOUS space for you to do so. Generally spread out mechanics are trivialized by 10man raiding, but to be fair 25man raids pull someone back from the brink if “that guy” messes up a spread out mechanic. I’m still giving this one to the 10mans.

Less downtime
From my experience there is far less time spend on raid chatter, and wipe recovery is a lot quicker when there are less people to manage. I think everyone does a lot more self-policing when the anonymity factor goes away. You are more accountable to the people around you because you have a much bigger effect on the success of the raid.

Everyone’s voice gets heard.
Since the sea of voices is diminished, you might hear from people who don’t normally speak up and offer useful advice. As a raid leader, you will probably get a good perspective from other points of view during an encounter, and parsing the useful advice gets a little easier.

The Bad:

Everyone’s voice gets heard…
As long as there are more than two people in close proximity, someone is going to have an opinion about something else. Raiding is no exception. There is less inertia for people to have their voices heard, and people are also going to take advantage of that and speak to an audience.

Less Loot
Another double edged sword. While the boss does drop loot that is pretty much tailored for 1-2 specs, the boss loot tables are so big, that getting 2-3 pieces from a 15 item table can create a lot of problems and if you are really unlucky, you may never end up getting that piece that you want. 25mans get to sample the loot table more times, so there is a greater chance that something you want will drop even though the loot/raider ratio is the same.

Fighting the raid buff boss
It becomes very difficult to balance a raid group and making sure that you have all the raid buffs possible, which will help your chances of success dramatically. Given the ridiculous amount of buffs/debuffs/auras there are available, all I can say is that I hope you have a hunter and a shaman to fill in the gaps. We ran for the longest time without the 3% damage buff in the raid, and while I am sure it didn’t make that much difference, it would have been a huge help. I even know some teams that ran without druids before warlocks and death knights were given battle resses. That is huge for an encounter and recovering from and RNG death.

Don’t even talk to me about raid cooldowns. 25man wins it flat out in that situation.

One death usually means wipe.
Having one person die to an encounter means very different things when you compare the two sizes of raid. Losing 10% of your raid vs 4% of your raid is a big deal. I have raided a little bit with the Big Crits 25man team, Da Crew, as well as pugging 25man raids and you can usually limp through an encounter after losing 3-5 people. If you have a person die on 10man, the encounter is generally considered over.

Thinner social fabric
This one I think is the most important thing. As it is much easier to form a 10man raiding team, it is equally easier to dissolve one. A 25man raiding team carries with it much more inertia with it in terms of people wanting to play together, and friendships forged. There is more team spirit and camaraderie in a 25man raid that stays together than a 10man. Another raider and I decided to quit at about the same time on our 10man team and it pretty much meant lights out for the team.

Lessons Learned:

The major drawing point for me to start 10man progression raiding was that smaller tight knit groups required less cats to herd, communication from raid leader to raider was more clear, and that the raiders would have a bigger interest in having the raid succeed. The density of raiders would be able to gel and everyone would be able to play off the other raiders’ strengths and weaknesses. Ultimately this was true, but the flaw in my plan was that turnover happens, and when it does, filling that hole becomes incredibly difficult. Tier 11 was really hard to recruit raiders for, especially given the careful class/buff/gear balance that 10mans have to take into consideration.

Ten mans also suffer from the daydream that you can have 10 and only 10 raiders, given all the other balances that need to be kept in check. Raiders want to raid, and sitting on the bench for a 10man seems like such a foreign concept. It’s not uncommon for a 25man to have a raiding roster of 35 people given people’s availability and boss encounter compositions. In retrospect, having a bigger bench would have helped tremendously. Real life happens, and when it does, it can cripple an entire raid night.

I suppose it doesn’t matter whether you are raiding 10s or 25s, but one bad apple spoils the bunch. Every raiding team has their “that guy” whether they can’t find his interrupt button, they can’t manage their sound on Atramedes, or they lack a functioning mic to warn that they just did something bad. I guess it is all relative, based on the perceptions of the rest of your raiding team; I have definitely been that guy before.

As far as the fun factor, I had a lot of fun in both environments, but I think that depends more on the people that you raid with rather than the size of the raid. To each his/her own in that regard. I hope to get back into progression raiding eventually, either with Big Crits or some yet to be found guild full of cool people. As for the moment, life is calling me in other directions.

Progression vs. Gear

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 23:53:54 GMT

On Monday I made this post on the Big Crits guild forums and it was met with a bit of controversy along with some vitriolic responses -- to use Adam Savage's favorite term. I am partly to blame because my main point got drowned out in my supporting points. My main point was that as a guild we have goals, and achieving those goals may require some sacrifice.

Here's the original post:

It used to be that I didn't care about ranking. I didn't want to look around and pit Big Crits up against anyone but ourselves. But after coming together the way we did at the end of the last tier, I've seen the potential in this guild for greatness.

I believe also that we as a guild have struggled without a tangible goal. I've done the same in my real life and understand how a person (or a guild) can just flail around without any direction. A guild without a goal is just a group of people trying to get gear for their characters. A guild with a goal works together toward a common purpose that is greater than any one person. This is why I've set clear goals for us, which I'll reiterate:
1) Main goal : finish tier 12 in the top 500 in the world
2) Stretch goal : finish tier 12 in the top 250 in the world
3) Fun goal: get all raiders every title and mount from T11 & T12, once we've accomplished #1 and/or #2

As of right now Monday July 18th, 11:20 am EST, only 308 (25-man only) guilds in the world are 2/7. We are 637 in the world for 25-man guilds with our 1/7 kill this week. But of course the raid week isn't done yet and our place will fall as undoubtedly more guilds get 2nd heroic kills tonight. This means we are behind schedule.

This week it took us 1.5 hours to kill Domo and Rags, including trash & wipes. That is exactly how much time we will leave next week for these two bosses & trash. Yes, I will grant you one more week of clearing out Firelands. After that, Rags may or may not be on the table each week.

Note that I didn't say "once we stop killing Rags, we're never going back to him until hard mode." What I said was, "Rags may or may not be on the table each week." We will make that decision each week depending on the circumstances.

Right now you're getting ready to post "but my tier piece" and "guilds are hitting the enrage timer without the right gear" and some other shit I really don't care about. All I hear is Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD).

You fear you can't keep up with heal/dps/threat without that 2pc bonus. You're uncertain that we'll be able to kill anything without comfortably farming it for months or weeks. You doubt yours and your guild's ability to get kills without a few weeks of taking it easy. It's all fucking F.U.D. Other guilds (636 to be exact) get this shit done, so will we.

The purpose of a goal is set a benchmark in order to push yourself to achieve something you wouldn't be able to otherwise. If your goal is to get out of bed in the morning, you're doing it wrong. If your goal is to lose 25lbs in 2 weeks then you're on to something. If your goal is take a guild from top 1000 to top 500 in the world, then it's going to take work, it's going to be frustrating at times, and it may even be hard. But when that boss falls and our ranking shoots up then it will all be worth it.

This is not a sprint, we're not vying for world firsts or even realm firsts, this is a long distance run. But in any race you can't fall too far behind or no amount of last-minute pushing will get you to your goal. We will have to push every week and play hard on ever pull and even make sacrifices in-game in order to achieve our goal.

I'll see you at the finish line.

The Magmaw precedence

Some of the guild's reaction can definitely be attributed to a time when we spent an entire week working and wiping on heroic Magmaw (S3Ep08) and getting nowhere. That week we sacrificed all farming in order to push for progression, and ended up with neither. This was certianly in forefront in the minds of my raiders when they read my post.

However, I think the biggest difference between then and now is simply the number of bosses to clear on a weekly basis. Tier 11 had 13 hard mode bosses, killing them all every single week, or even killing some on heroic and others on regular, barely left any time for progression. Tier 12 has only seven. That means it will be far easier to strike a balance between farming and progression.

As for Big Crits, we have our goals laid out before us, we've learned from our experiences, and we're ready to tackle the biggest boss of all: ranking.

How is your guild handling the progression vs. gear trade-off in Firelands?

May all your hits be crits!

Enhancment Tips and Tricks for BWD, Part 1

Sat, 07 May 2011 22:00:00 GMT

At this point Big Crits is 6/6 heroic Blackwing Descent, with heroic Nefarian falling to our blades on Thursday night. Throughout our journey in BWD I've created my own mental check list on how to get the most of enhancement in each fight.

I lead the 25-man raid team so these quick tips are focused on those strategies; if a tip is heroic-mode only, I'll make a note of it, but I can't speak for the strats on 10-man raids. I imagine things are different in 10s, requiring perhaps a more precise use of abilities or specific movement or placement. But no matter what version you're running many of these tips still apply.

In this article I'll cover Magmaw, Omnitron Defense System, and Chimaeron. The next article will cover the half of BWD.

I talk about "defensive cooldowns" in many encounters. By this I mean Shamanistic Rage and a glyphed Stoneclaw Totem. Shammy rage is awesome for mitigating damage, and Stoneclaw is only a slight damage saver, but when used often over the long haul of a fight will save your healers some headache.

Magmaw

Our strategy is to stack everyone in melee except the parasite kiter, hunters and one healer. We focus on Blazing Skeletons and completely ignore Lava Parasites.

Put down a new Searing Totem for every new target. Any time you change targets I recommend putting down a new Searing Totem because often times the old one will just keep shooting at your previous target, and you want those ticks of Searing Flames for your Lava Lash.
Heroic: Single target priority. With the new changes to Flame Shock it may be tempting to spread your Flame Shocks and work a Fire Nova into your priority when there are multiple blazing skellies up, but I don't recommended it. At best there will be three targets in range for novas, but usually there will only be two at any given time and single target is usually a greater priority. Just stay focused on what you're killing. We're not trying to meter-whore, we're trying to take down our assigned targets.
Use wolves on cooldown. Our spirit wolves don't coincide with the exposed head phase, so use them at will. However, if you pop your wolves 5 seconds before the pull, they'll be up just in time for the first head phase.
Defensive cooldowns for Lava Spew and Magmaw Spit. It's too late to use them once the damage is out, so look for the cooldowns and definitely get a Stoneclaw Totem down beforehand.

Omnitron Defense System

What a cluster#$@& this fight is on heroic! But now that we're over the first-kill hump, I'm looking forward to tackling it again.

Make a /target Arcanotron macro. DPS shaman should be assigned to interrupts for Arcanotron because we can hit it from range. I put myself in the first interrupt group for that very reason. To facilitate fast switching, make a targeting macro.
Aggressively Purge Arcano. If there is more than one stack of his buff then I don't wait for the mages to Spellsteal; get out ahead of the purging and get that buff off him. If those buffs are stacking up too fast on him then alert your raid leader that someone is still hitting Arcano while his shield is up.
Keep Earthbind Totem handy for runaway Poison Bombs. Your hunters should be putting down frost traps and you may even have a warrior with Piercing Howl, but you should still keep Earthbind close at hand for the occasional loose bomb—espeically if it's charging straight for you. I usually look for the bombs cutting loose from the trap and put my totem in their path.
Constantly use Stoneclaw Totem. This fight is not about pure DPS, it's about dealing with mechanics and surviving the damage. If you have a DK keeping up Horn of Winter then you don't need a Strength of Earth Totem. If your raid doesn't have a DK then you'll have to swap out the two, but definitely keep using that Stoneclaw Totem to mitigate both bursty and incidental damage.
Save Shamanistic Rage for major events. I keep shammy rage available for a few special circumstances. When you are the target of Acquiring Target you should use everything you have to keep yourself alive, especially SR. Heroic mode: If there is a Shadow Conductor and Incineration Security Measure, use SR to help your healers. Likewise, if you're out of range for Shadow Conductor, pop SR as you Ghostwolf back to the pile.

Chimaeron

Use Healing Rain for the feud stack-up phase. Every heal helps, even our weak AoE heal. Healing Rain is affected by Maelstrom Weapon, so your cast time on it will rarely be the full 2 seconds. Get to the stack point and make it rain.
Time Shammy Rage for the Caustic Slime in feud phase. Caustic Slimes start 15 second after feud and they last for 15 seconds. Shamanistic Rage lasts for 15 seconds. You have boss timers, do the math.
Use Stoneclaw Totem for Caustic Slimes in feud phase, too.
Heroic: Save your last SR for phase two, though. Since there is a healing debuff, you'll want to save a defensive cooldown such as SR to mitigate the shadow DoT good ol' Neffypoo puts out.
Wind Shear all fight long to lower yourself on the aggro table. I forget to do this more often than I remember. But if you want to be pro—unlike me—you'll mash your Wind Shear every six seconds to lower your aggro. Granted, Wind Shear barely offsets the aggro from one Stormstrike, but when you do it all fight long it adds up, pushing you way down on the threat meter. All the better when Chimaeron goes after that rogue before you!

In the next article I'll cover Maloriak, Atramedes, and Nefarian. Then we'll move on to Bastion of Twilight, and Throne of the Four Winds.

May all your hits be crits!

Optimizing your Enhancement gear - the easy way

Mon, 02 May 2011 19:01:57 GMT

I love to tinker with my gear, run sims using EnhSim, and test for the utmost optimal combination for my shaman. Unfortunately things are increasingly complex these days with reforging and so many loot options in a progression guild with half the heroic bosses on farm.

It used to be that one piece of gear was a clear upgrade over another because it either did or didn't have your best stats. Now, we can take a piece with suboptimal stats and reforge it. Is that item with hit and haste better or worse than the item with mastery and crit? Should you gem for hit and reforge for mastery, or enchant for mastery, gem for agility and reforge for hit? So many questions.

Today I'll give you the cliff notes version version to optimizing your gear. The key is in one simple fact: you can refoge your way to hit and expertise caps—and you should.

Agi when you can

Agility is the single greatest stat for enhancement, but we can't reforge into it, so we have to get it wherever we can. For starters, always go with enchants that give you agility, and when you can't get agi from enchanting then look for mastery.

Gem sockets should be:

Red: Delicate Inferno Ruby (agility)
Yellow: Adept Ember Topaz (agility and mastery)
Blue: Glinting Demonseye (agility and hit)
Meta: Agile Shadowspirit Diamond

With the current socket bonuses and gem qualities, it's only a sliver of a difference between pure Delicate Inferno Rubies, and optimizing for socket bonuses. The BiS setup for enhancement shaman in this tier does, in fact, gem for socket bonuses.

The one caveat here is expertise. If you are far short of expertise then you will want to use some Precise Inferno Rubies to bring your expertise up. This will most likely be the case for pre-heroic dungeon geared enhancement shamans. If you don't have any expertise on your gear then you'll need to use an enchant and a few gems to get close to that full 26 Expertise.

Wowreforge

There are quite a few web-based optimization sites out there. Most people know Ask Mr. Robot, and I go there for my feral druid (currently my only other level 85 character), but for enhancement shamans it's suboptimal because it never hits my caps properly. For enhance optimizations head to Wowreforge. It does one thing and and it does it better than any other site: it optimizes just reforging while taking two caps into consideration.

Once you get some decent gear and are able to come close to the hit and expertise caps, you should gem and enchant as I recommended above—agility and mastery—then reforge to hit the caps.

Load your character from the armory using the boxes on the front page. Use the interface to adjust any gems or enchants, then scroll to the bottom and enter in your stat weights. Currently I'm using the following stat weights -- aka EP values -- with the ones in bold used in Wowreforge:

Agility - 2.50
Strength - 1.06
Intellect - 0.81
AP - 1.00
Crit - 0.80
Hit (uncapped) - 2.46
Expertise (uncapped) - 3.00
Haste - 0.60
Mastery - 1.23
Spell Power - 0.78

Next enter your appropriate caps. If you're unsure of what the caps are your race refer back to this article. As for stat weights after cap, I always keep expertise as zero, but I'll put 0.25 in for hit. A little extra hit is OK, but any extra expertise is mostly wasted. After you've entered in all the stats, hit Optimize and let it run.

In a few short seconds it returns up to five scenarios for optimized reforging. Click through them to see what you think is the best. Nine times out of ten Wowreforge will hit the caps right on the head, or only have one or two extra points in hit. It may seem strange to reforge out of hit on one item, then back into it on the next, but when you nail the caps on the head, that end result is all that matters.

TL;DR

This is supposed to be the "easy" guide, right? Let me summarize:

Enchant for agil or mastery
Gem with Delicate, Adept, and Glinting
Then hit Wowreforge for everything else

And you're done working that new piece of gear into your rotation.

May all your hits be crits!

Getting the most out of EJ

Sat, 09 Apr 2011 21:30:50 GMT

Today's Windfury Crits article is quick and easy, but still something important to staying on top of changes for enhancement, or any class/spec for that matter.

For the past four years it seems a canned response on guild applications is “I read Elitist Jerks.” As if that evidenced an ability to play the game. I've found that statement usually means, “I opened the site and skimmed some stuff, and I think you'll be impressed that I know what EJ is, but I didn't read all 15 pages of posts about my class/spec because I was overwhelmed. Because I suck.” The truth is that for any one spec there is enough information on maximizing performance that you'd think the optimal gear/gem/reforge/spell combination would put a man on Mars. Being an avid EJ reader, today I'll disseminate my tips to getting the most out of the site everyone loves to say they read.

401 not 101

The first thing to remember with EJ is that the site exists to help you maximize your spec for end-game raiding. It is not how to start a class, it's not how to level, and it's not even quite about how to start raiding with your fresh 85 decked out in questing greens.

The threads dive into the most minute details, drilling down into whether another 100 haste would help, or should you clip at the 2^nd or the 3^rd DoT tick. Manage your expectations and come to EJ for the 400-level class, not the 100-level “intro to” class. If you are looking for intros, check out WoW Insider or head over to the Twisted Nether wiki to look for bloggers with current information.

New Guide Format

Now that I've spent the last two paragraphs telling you that EJ is not the place to go for an introduction to your spec, I'm going to completely contradict myself. Because I can. And I did. Or did I?

Since Patch 4.0.6, EJ has revamped its main threads to include an incredibly detailed, and highly organized introduction to each spec. Each mechanics thread leads off with an outline about the class including standardized abbreviations, ability explanations, optimal specs, gems, professions, and rotations. The Marksmanship Hunter thread is one such example with amazing detail in a cleaned-up and outlined format.

Even with this, I still recommend only coming here once you have basic mechanics and some experimentation under your belt.

BiS vs. Mechanics

Some classes separate gear discussions from mechanics. For example, the enhancement community is blessed with an amazing enhancement-only dps simulation tool, EnhSim. As a result, an entire meta-game of finding the absolute, singular, and wholly-indisputable most optimal theoretical Enhancement Shaman possibility has developed, and turned into its own thread.

Explore your class section on the forums and find the most relevant threads.

Now that you've found the best threads, you must subscribe. Just like how you already subscribe to Big Crits on YouTube, Like us on Facebook, and Subscribe to our RSS feeds – you do that, right? Good, you are the superfan I thought you were – you should subscribe to the threads on EJ that mean the most to your class. Be sure you're logged in, then go to the Thread Tools and choose Subscribe to this thread.

You'll be taken to a screen with choice about notification frequency and folder for organization. I highly recommend the Daily updates by email option.

Even if I'm days behind in my EJ emails, eventually I'll get to them and absorb the whole conversation in one sitting. If an applicant to Big Crits wrote that they subscribe to EJ threads, then I'd know they actually mean business, because it is the number one way to stay on top of the theorycrafting for your class.

Enhancement, specifically

We're fortunate to have a large theorycrafting community for the world of enhancement, so the threads are updated regularly and there's always a lot of discussion about our crazy spec. I recommend subscribing to the following threads:

Unleashing Elements, a Cataclysmic discussion – required subscription if enhance if your main spec
BiS gear and set-up discussion – Fun thread about the meta-game of BiS using EnhSim
EnhSim for Cataclysm – only if you're really into how the mechanics of the game are implemented in EnhSim.

It's important to check back to your class' main section with each new patch. In the past, new threads were created with each patch, or thereabout, and so to get the most up-to-date information you'd have to subscribe to the latest thread.

I thought this would be an enhancement-specific article, but it turns out to be much more broad-based. I hope you found some useful information, regardless of your class. What did I miss when it comes to staying on top of the latest theorycrafting on EJ? What do you recommend?

May all your hits be crits!

Windfury Crits & Enhance Shaman 101

Sat, 02 Apr 2011 22:00:00 GMT

Back in April 2008 I started blogging about the life and times of an enhancement shaman on my personal website. The blog was called Windfury Crits, and at the time it was the only active Enhancement blog out there. In February 2009 I moved WF Crits over to Big Hit Box, a collaborative blog focused on all things melee. After getting hired at WoW Insider for the enhancement shaman position I let BHB slide into oblivion, eventually cancelling the whole thing. Then in November 2010 I left WoW Insider because I did not have enough time to dedicate to full weekly articles. And thus I went dark on blogging about enhance for nearly 6 months, my longest break since starting in writing three years ago. Admittedly, I was a bit busy with this show you may have heard of about WoW raiders...

Here we are now in April 2011, I'm bringing it back to Bacon: the return of Windfury Crits. I'll address everything enhancement-related, even if it's just in short bursts. You can subscribe to the Windfury Crits-only thread here, but of course I recommend subscribing to the full RSS feed for everything: blog posts and videos alike.

For the inaugural post I'm going to summarize what you need (and probably already know) to get started as an enhancement shaman

Get capped

Every raiding enhancement shaman should be both spell hit capped and expertise capped. No matter what your race, the final numbers remain the same, however the raw numbers to get there are different depending on your race. Here are the final numbers you should see in your character screen in-game or on the armory:

17% spell hit
26 expertise

Here is the breakdown by race:

Dwarf

Mace Specialization cuts down on expertise required, but obviously only when using maces. Given the current mace itemization in 4.0.6, if you're not PvPing then you're going to end up needing the full expertise.

Spell hit: 1742
Expertise rating with maces only: 451
Expertise rating with axes or fist weapons: 541

Draenei

Heroic Presence makes up for some spell hit, making Draenei an excellent choice alliance theorycrafting. Some days I definitely miss Stoney being a female Draenei... oh that accent!

Spell hit: 1639
Expertise rating: 541

Orc

With Axe Specialization, Orcs are usually the best choice for Horde shaman from a pure theorycrafting standpoint, given current tier itemization of course.

Spell hit: 1742
Expertise with axes or fist weapons: 451
Expertise with maces: 541

Goblin, Tauren and Troll

Goblins have enough damn racials, they don't need any more. Trolls are the true underdog of the perpetually under-dogged Horde. As for Tauren, they're just kinda there picking flowers.

Spell hit: 1742
Expertise rating: 541

The best method to hit these caps is to reforge first, then go for the gems and enchants to hit the number on the head.

Speaking of reforging

Reforge out of the following:

Haste
Crit

Reforge into the following in this order:

Hit
Expertise
Mastery

Haste is our worst stat. If you have a choice between two pieces of gear, one with haste and one with anything else (hit, crit, exp, mastery) go for the non-haste piece every time. Of course that doesn't mean you should pass on a 346 to 359 upgrade, even if it means taking on some haste. Take the upgrade and go reforge.

With patch 4.0.3 we went back to slow weapons in both hands (2.60 speed) with Windfury imbued on the main hand and Flametongue on the off-hand. Of course some of us never bothered with the caster main hand and FT/FT setup that was working in early 4.0.1. As a GM of a progression guild that was a bit hypocritical of me—to sacrifice anywhere from 200 to 1000 DPS because I didn't like having a caster main hand. Actually, in retrospect, it was pretty frigging dumb. Thankfully the developers came around with a nice patch for us and back to the life and times of Windfury.

After all, what's the point of a blog called Windfury Crits if you're not even using Windfury?

Spec

I use 10/31/0 for raiding. The points in Improved Shields can be moved around to Improved Fire Nova for fights like heroic Maloriak. Come patch 4.1 we'll end up using Fire Nova a lot more, but for now, those points can be moved around as you see fit.

Glyphs

Prime: the Glyph of Lava Lash is our top pick, followed by Stormstrike, Windfury Weapon, and Feral Spirit. Currently, I'm using SS & WF as they simmed out better for me than any combination.

Major: Glyph of Healing Stream Totem is excellent for raiding, especially if you're in a 10-man raiding group because it effectively combines two totems into one. Lightning Shield is just one less thing you have to worry about. For the third spot I recommend Ghost Wolf for the extra speed, or Stoneclaw Totem for progression fights. I can't take credit for putting Glyph of Stoneclaw Totem into my PvE spec -- credit goes to Hogman from Premonition who told me he uses it on every cooldown on high damage fights. Good idea! I've been using it a lot on heroic Omnitron Defense System.

Minor: I just use same three in both of my specs so I don't have to worry about reagents: Water Walking, Water Breathing, and Renewed Life. In over four years of playing enhancement I can only think of one time that both Astral Recall and my Hearthstone were on cooldown resulting in getting stranded or, god forbid, using the flight path.

Rotation

This deserves a post of its own, but I'll do my best to keep this short and simple. The idea behind the enhancement shaman "rotation" is that it's actually a priority system. We don't start at spell #1 and work our way straight down to the last one. Instead, we use the first available spell, then start over from the top. Sometimes, the last spell on your priority list might not get used for a long time, but that's OK. Just stick with the system and you'll maximize your DPS

ST_0 – If you do not have a Searing Totem down, or if it's down but not attacking, then put one down first
LL – Lava Lash
FS_UEF – Flame Shock with the Unleash Elements buff
MW5_LB – Lightning Bolt with 5 stacks of Maelstrom Weapon
UE – Unleash Elements
SS – Stormstrike
ES – Earth Shock
SW – Spirit Wolves

That's enough to get you started playing your level 85 enhancement shaman.

May all your hits be crits!

Hordrapp Guide

Fri, 01 Apr 2011 20:14:56 GMT

File this under, "time that could have been better spent."

Want to find all the combinations for Blizzard's April Fool's prank iPhone app, Hordrapp? Below is the complete list of combinations that I found, and how to get to them. Granted, it didn't take me long to do this, but still, who really needs a guide to a four-piece puzzle? What's done is done and you might as well reap the rewards.

Thanks Blizzard for the great April Fool's pranks this year. I'm really looking forward to Patch 4.1.11!

First the complete list:

(unnamed imp)
Agro Town
Angry Fruit
Angry Goats
Angry Imps
Angrytown
B'gemmed
Catch dotcom
Chat Gem
Chatter
Cheaply
ChirpStack
Curse Village
Cut the Hope
Double Hell
Fallenville
Fetish!
Fruitbook
Full Rejuvenation Potion
Goatspace
Hellpe
Hooks-up
Imp Finder
Imps vs Goatmen
Imps vs Tomes
Imps vs Visages
Impville
Jade Ring
Khalim's Will
Kindling
Kitchen Sink
Kitchen Sink v2.0
MeSpout
OK…
Plenty of Imps
Prismatic Tome
Quiver of Arrows
Scarytown
Secret Cow Level
Soulmatch
Tome of Town Portal
Visagebook
Wirt's Leg
Yawp

And now the solve table:

Visagebook	Kitchen Sink
Catch dotcom
Angry Imps
Agro Town

Visagebook	B'gemmed	Chat Gem
Catch dotcom
Angry Imps
	Agro Town

Visagebook	Goatspace	Angry Goats
Catch dotcom
Agro Town
	Angry Imps

Catch dotcom	Imps vs Goatmen	Hooks-up
Angry Imps
Agro Town
	Visagebook

Visagebook	(unnamed imp)	(unnamed imp)
Angry Imps
Agro Town
	Catch dotcom

Visagebook	Soulmatch	Full Rejuvenation Potion
Catch dotcom
Angry Imps	Angrytown
Agro Town

Visagebook	Soulmatch	Kitchen Sink v2.0
Catch dotcom	Soulmatch
	Agro Town
	Angry Imps

Visagebook	Soulmatch	Plenty of Imps	Prismatic Tome
Catch dotcom
	Angry Imps
		Agro Town

Visagebook	Soulmatch	Fruitbook	Yawp
Catch dotcom
	Agro Town
		Angry Imps

Visagebook	Wirt's Leg	Secret Cow Level
Angry Imps
Catch dotcom	Tome of Town Portal
Agro Town

Visagebook	Wirt's Leg	Quiver of Arrows
Angry Imps	Wirt's Leg
	Catch dotcom
	Agro Town

Visagebook	Wirt's Leg	Plenty of Imps	Curse Village
Angry Imps
	Catch dotcom
		Agro Town

Visagebook	Wirt's Leg	Tome of Town Portal	(unnamed imp)
Angry Imps
	Agro Town
		Catch dotcom

Catch dotcom	Imp Finder	Jade Ring
Angry Imps
Visagebook	Fallenville
Agro Town

Catch dotcom	Imp Finder	Kitchen Sink v2.0
Angry Imps	Imp Finder
	Visagebook
	Agro Town

Catch dotcom	Imp Finder	ChirpStack	Impville
Angry Imps
	Visagebook
		Agro Town

Catch dotcom	Imp Finder	Fetish!	Cheaply
Angry Imps
	Agro Town
		Visagebook

Angry Imps	Angrytown	Hellpe
Agro Town	Angrytown
	Visagebook
	Catch dotcom

Angry Imps	Angrytown	Cut the Hope	OK…
Agro Town
	Visagebook
		Catch dotcom

Angry Imps	Angrytown	Double Hell	Scarytown
Agro Town
	Catch dotcom
		Visagebook

Visagebook	Fallenville	Kitchen Sink v2.0
Agro Town	Fallenville
	Catch dotcom
	Angry Imps

Visagebook	Fallenville	Fruitbook	Angry Fruit
Agro Town
	Catch dotcom
		Angry Imps

Visagebook	Fallenville	MeSpout	Chatter
Agro Town
	Angry Imps
		Catch dotcom

Catch dotcom	Tome of Town Portal	Secret Cow Level
Agro Town	Tome of Town Portal
	Visagebook
	Angry Imps

Catch dotcom	Tome of Town Portal	Khalim's Will	Kindling
Agro Town
	Visagebook
		Angry Imps

Catch dotcom	Tome of Town Portal	Imps vs Tomes	Imps vs Visages
Agro Town
	Angry Imps
		Visagebook

Here is the complete image set from Blizzard's website. From looking at this I'm missing the last one in the last row. Were you able to get to it?

May all your hits be crits!

Big Crits Quiz Winners and Answers

Tue, 29 Mar 2011 14:00:00 GMT

Two weeks ago I posted a 15-question quiz about Big Crits. All of the questions were from quotes from our episodes over the last year. Like many things in my life recently I get started on a project and am not able to complete it on time--I'm working on turning that around--but it's high time I posted the results of the quiz.

First, our winners! Congratulations to Dave, Andrew, Therec, Andrew, and Michell! Five people with perfect scores.

In total, 112 people completed the quiz. Here's the breakdown of the scores. (That sixth 100% in there was me, I forgot to take my score out of the chart.)

For everyone that participated, I'll email your answers and your score in case you forgot or you wanted to know what you missed. The full answers are after the break.

1)The first death in a Big Crits raid was from which class?
Answer: Rogue. In S1 Week 1, fan-favorite Langiy was the first raider to die on our very first night of raiding.

2) Pants are...?
Answer: Optional. Also from S1 Week 1, covered in the very first minutes of our first episode I think we appropriately set expectations for what raiding with Big Crits was going to be like for everyone.

3)Suzushiiro’s pro-strat consists of the following three steps:
Answer: 1) Take out your dick; 2) Slap your dick against the keyboard; 3) If Stoneybaby dies, teabag his corpse. This was from S1 Week 6 when Suzu unveiled his pro strat, and the full version released later as a special feature.

4) On Blood Prince Council, Cancerboss threatened to stab a player in the...?
Answer: Asshole. This odd threat was made to Sevrek in S1 Week 10. Sevrek's class? What else but a rogue.

5) Who/What knocked over Burb's camera?
Answer: Cats. Burb has cats. In fact they even knocked over his camera.

6) According to Salty, the Unbound Plague on heroic Professor Putricide is a/an:
Answer: geometric series. Salty, ever the engineer, wanted to impress upon the raid why it's so important to pass off the debuff at the right time, thought the mathematical approach was best in S1 Week 13.

7) Pick the player that was NOT one of the original featured players:
Answer: Whatislove. He came on to be a featured player starting mid-way through season two. He wasn't featured in season one because he wasn't in the guild at the time.

8) Stoney wants to you to:
Answer: have a fucking plan. An iconic Stoney-rage quote in S1 Week 13 as we were working on heroic Sindragosa.

9) Who saved the raid and soloed Blood Queen Lana'thel?
Answer: Saltycracker. An amazing finish to the raid during S1 Week 8, Salty solo'ed BQL as everyone else was falling down and got the weekly ICC quest.

10) Whatislove's "code" for killing Stoney on ICC trash is:
Answer: "I'll tricks them to a tank" was the secret code for putting Tricks of the Trade on Stoney, which was explained in S2 Ep 03.

11) Suzu says, "In conclusion, fuck...
Answer: Mages. As he tried to pass off the Unbound Plague to a mage, he ended up standing on a Mirror Image of one of our mages.

12) Big Crits killed heroic Halion:
Answer: the night before the patch. In classic Big Crits fashion, we killed heroic Halion on 25-man literally just hours before the patch dropped in S2 Ep 06.

13) At Blizzcon Stoney was recruiting:
Answer: Warlocks. Talking to the always lovely Mia Rose in S2 Ep 07, I shamelessly tried to recruit her to come join us in Big Crits.

14) Suzu asked a _______ to raid heal and subsequently his ______
Answer: Paladin; head exploded. In S2 Ep 09 and post patch 4.0.1 we were working on heroic Lich King 25 and Suzu realized just how much the game has changed since the patch.

15) Stoney threatened to shove ______ right up his main tank's (--censored--)
Answer: Rocket Boots. In S3 Ep 03 main tank Foogasi confesses he lost threat on Nefarian because his rocket boost failed, and me failing at WoW was still thinking the spell was rocket boots.

One year of Big Crits raids and all the fun quotes that got us through the year.

May all your hits be crits!

The Big Crits Quiz

Sat, 12 Mar 2011 15:00:00 GMT

If you're a fan of the show, take this quiz to test your knowledge of Big Crits trivia from the past year. Whether you've watched every episode and know the show inside and out, or you just stumbled upon us today, fill out the quiz and take a shot at prizes from Big Crits.

Complete the quiz by Wednesday 3/16/11 for your chance to win! Answers and winners will be revealed on Friday 3/18/11.

Click here to take the quiz and test your Big Crits knowledge now!

May all your hits be crits!

Kicking off a week of give-aways

Fri, 11 Mar 2011 00:00:00 GMT

One year ago I put it all out there. Quit my guild, moved my characters to a new realm where I knew no one, and started a guild with only me the nine other people I paid to sign my guild charter—who I subsequently kicked from the guild! Waiting in the wings I had a recruitment video about soul crushing 1% wipes, and a post on WoW Insider’s main page to launch my recruitment effort. The post went live on March 9, 2010 the video hit nearly 20,000 views on the first day, and I had over 100 applications within 48 hours. By the 16th of March we had a full guild of nearly 40 people, hand selected from 125 applications, and our very first raid—pants optional.

It’s been one heck of a year with ups and downs: heartbreaks, drama, laughs, and awesome last-minute victories over the hardest content in the game. To celebrate our one year anniversary we’re going to give away some goodies all week. We’ll be giving away prizes on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and of course here on the website.

There are a number of ways to access Big Crits in all of its glory and greatness, but it seems the two most popular are via on YouTube and Facebook. We’ve also got some great content on the main site, so we’re going to give away prizes on all three sites.

If you haven’t already, go subscribe to us on YouTube and Like us on Facebook. At the end of this week we’ll pick one subscriber at random from YouTube and one fan at random from Facebook and each will receive a loot card from WootLoots. Sign up for both, go now! Stay tuned for more fun from Big Crits this week

May all your hits be crits!

Kill Video: Heroic Chimaeron 25

Sat, 12 Feb 2011 04:00:00 GMT

I wasn't online for this kill, but thankfully one of our healing priests, Sarc, was online and FRAPSing. This kill takes Big Crits to 2/12 hard modes, with Halfus being our first kill from a two weeks ago.

We started the week working on heroic Atramedes, but our strat was shit (blame me) and a few people were playing like shit within that shitty strat, thus proving that you can't throw shit at shit and get a boss kill. Or something like that.

Enjoy the kill vid; we'll post kill vids for all progression kills going forward.

May all your hits be crits!

Cataclysm LFD and You: How to Max Your JP Without Losing Your Sanity

Mon, 24 Jan 2011 17:00:00 GMT

Hello! I am Beslley, your friendly neighborhood warlock, and I pug heroics through LFD.
Now, if you've used LFD recently, you might think that I am crazy or masochistic. The answer would be both, since I rolled a warlock, but that is not pertinent to the discussion at hand.
And the discussion at hand, as the title so implies, is how to survive LFD and get your sweet, sweet justice points for pre-raid gear.

I've had a lot of time (40 minute DPS wait queues) to think about what makes a Cata LFD pug good or bad, and what the average player can do to improve the quality of the average pug. And I am passing all of this valuable knowledge on to you for the low, low price of your firstborn child.

...Just kidding! All this knowledge is free. I'm your friendly neighborhood warlock, not your steal your firstborn and use them in terrible rituals warlock.

So get time to put on your serious face, because it's...

Beslley's List of Things You Should Do to Make Heroics Less Painful

1. DO make sure you are geared for heroics
If you don't have the gear or skill to do heroics, regardless of your role, then don't queue for them. Do regulars, get geared up and learn basic Cataclysm boss mechanics, and THEN queue up. It will save you a lot of time and headaches.

2. DO know how to crowd control!
I like to call Cataclysm "Burning Crusade 2: Electric Boogaloo". Crowd Control has made its glorious return, and you don't even have to be a mage anymore to have viable CC.
If your class has a crowd control spell, learn how to use it. I die a little inside every time I am in an instance with a warlock that doesn't have Glyph of Fear. I die a little inside every time I see a shaman without Bind Elemental.
Know your CC, know what it does or doesn't work on, know when or when not to use it.
Furthermore, don't worry about how CCing targets will lower your dps. Not wiping horribly is much more important than any trash dps you might pull. One way you can lower your DPS loss is with macros. Make your CC target your focus and use something like this:

/cast [target=focus] Fear

That way, you don't have to switch off of your current DPS target. Just hit your CC button and refresh when needed. I die even more inside when someone refuses to CC because they're too focused on whose bar is biggest on recount.
If your tank isn't marking targets for CC, politely ask him to do so. If he's not, check his gear. Is he overgeared for this? Is the healer overgeared for this? If you're running with 3 or 4 people who are all guildmates, they may be comfortable enough with each other to not want CC. Otherwise, CC is a necessity in LFD.

3. DO know the boss fights before you set foot in the instance!
These are not WOTLK-style heroics. You can't expect to waltz into an instance with a LFD pug, AoE down all trash, and zerg the boss.
Each boss has different mechanics, and many of them have a gimmick or something special that you will have do deal with. If you've never done heroics before, do yourself a favor and LOOK UP THE FIGHTS! Asking your pugmates what the boss does slows things down, and they may not be able to explain it as well as wowwiki, wowhead, or tankspot can.
Know the mechanics, know what you have to do, and your pug will thank you for it.

4. DO know how to use your cooldowns!
When the shit hits the fan, do you know what to do? I guarantee you that shit will hit the fan during your LFD adventures. You are going to get a bad tank/healer/dps, CC is going to break, people are going to die. Know how to use your cooldowns, and you may be able to save a wipe.
Hell, you don't even need to always save them for a wipe. Healers don't have infinite mana anymore, and anything you can do to mitigate damage during a fight will save them mana.

5. DON'T expect your stupidity to be healed!
Healers can't heal stupidity anymore. Don't stand in bad things. I know this is a common sense thing, but if I had a dollar for every time I watched a dps stand in fire because he cared too much about his recount numbers, I'd be pretty rich.
Protip: Your DPS is not more important than staying alive. You can't do any damage when you're dead.

6. DON'T be afraid to kick someone who deserves it.
"Deserves" is the key word here. Don't kick someone because they screwed up once. If someone is causing you to wipe over and over due to the same mistakes, however, kick them! There is no reason to suffer a repair bill due to badness when there are other dps/healers/tanks in queues.
DO NOT, however, initiate a kick because you're afraid someone might roll on loot you want, that's rude and brings me to my next point...

7. DO be courteous!
I personally struggle with this. I pugged a LOT of ICC on my alts in WOTLK, and I pug a lot of heroics now. I hate hate hate it when people do completely idiotic things that go against simple common sense. But unless you're ready to ragequit the group, try not to chew anyone out. If you're downing bosses and progessing through the instance, don't ruin it by causing unnecessary tension within the pug.
When people fail because they are standing in fire or failing to interrupt a boss mechanic or whatever they failed to do, tell them but do try to at least be courteous.
"Please avoid taking unnecessary damage" will go over a lot better than "JESUS CHRIST YOU BADDIE, LERN2AVOID FIRE".

8. DO be patient!
Not everyone can be a leet badass. We were all noobs once. You are not going to blow through a Cataclysm heroic in ten minutes in a LFD pug. If you can only be on for 15-20 minutes, you might want to do dailies or a regular instead.
Ensure you have the time to commit to finishing a Cata heroic, and be patient to your fellow players. We are all playing to (hopefully) have fun! These heroics aren't a race and if you want to blow through content you should consider soloing old instances instead.

9. DO know when it's time to give up.
Some pugs are irredeemable. You can play 110% of your capability and they can still fail. You are not going to be able to carry a pug through a heroic by yourself.
I've pugged enough to tell when a group is doomed. There is no reason to stay in a pug that can't finish. It's unfun and there are many different ways you could be spending your time instead.

So there you are. Those are my tips for making your justice point grind less cringe-worthy.
Remember, there will always be assholes, ninjas, and idiots in LFD pugs. The good, friendly players are what makes the experience bearable, and dare I say, rewarding.
Happy Pugging!

Beslley is a Big Crits raider and minor-league nerdrager. You can find her being angry and/or belligerent and sometimes happy on Twitter as @distractseasily .

How to Be a Bad Healer (Or How to Maintain Sanity in Cataclysm Heroics)

Thu, 06 Jan 2011 20:00:00 GMT

Every now and then, we all slip up from being our usual nice happy selves, and we pull a dick move that ends up getting someone killed. Then we laugh. Here are a few tips to keep you on the saner side of Cataclysm Heroic Dungeons.

Don't let your group lie to you. They may do the killing, but you're the one keeping their asses alive. If they aren't doing what needs to be done, let them face-tank a few mobs, then let them enjoy the relaxing corpse walk back to their body.
If your tank seems to be going too slow, feel free to take an AFK without telling anyone. They'll figure it out soon enough.
If your tank is pulling too quickly, make sure you start the fight with the lowest possible mana pool. Spam heal yourself to ensure you drain it that much quicker.
If you talented into some form of DPS ability to return mana, never stop using it even when you're at full mana, and the group actually needs heals. Inform the group that you mistakenly queued as heals, and you're doing such an amazing job at DPS that you thought one of them could cover the healing for you. (Ideal in groups with no hybrid classes)
Make a macro with your res spell thoroughly insulting anyone who has died, preferably using "Your Mom" jokes.
Drink lots of Dark Label Rum, and start typing out the lyrics to Ke$ha songs in party chat. Bonus points if you sing along on Mumble while doing so.
Complain constantly about how broken your class is. Take frequent AFK breaks, claiming to check if Blizzard has started a paid class change service yet.
Refuse to buff your group on the basis of mana cost, especially if you provide a unique buff that cannot be duplicated by another member of the party.
If you're a shaman, cast Bloodlust on the last trash pull before a boss, or during the explanation before the fight.
If you're a paladin, be sure to taunt a mob to yourself, and complain about the tank's inability to hold aggro.
If you're a priest, do your best job at "repositioning" your DPS with Leap of Faith into lava/void zones/bad shit on the ground. Inform them that you thought it provided a damage buff for them, and you were just trying to help. Bonus points if you can drop someone off a ledge or into a boss's charge.

And that's how you maintain a healthy level of sanity in PUG heroics with the Random Dungeon Finder as a healer.

As always, happy healing!

If you have any topics you'd like me to cover, be they discipline priest related or not, please feel free to shoot me an email @: malice.senjin@gmail.com. Comments always appreciated!

Your Cataclysm Tank(adin)

Thu, 16 Dec 2010 19:00:00 GMT

Are you level 85 yet? Have you had your world rocked yet? If not just wait a few minutes, let it sink in.

I went back to tanking for this expansion, and things got really interesting. First of all, your health pool and everyone else’s is really big. While taking damage is still not a good idea, you have a little breathing room in terms of how much damage you can take before you die. Heck, I have seen a clothie take a couple hits from a boss and survive.

Tanks are in a strange new world in comparison to WotLK. We have enough health and armor where a boss can hit you many many times before you are actually in danger of dying. When I call for a wipe, I have to actually wait a long time to die. I have gotten in the habit of spamming the sit button so that I can get crit and die faster.

In terms of theorycrafting, it seems like stacking stamina has lot a lot of the oomph it once was for tanks. While it is very important to have a big heath pool, right now it seems like a little overkill to have as much health as possible. For example, I was tanking Atramedes last night with a buffed health pool of ~165k HP. He hits me for about 35k HP. Given no blocks and no avoided attacks, I can stand there and soak 5-6 hits before he actually kills me. That is 10 seconds of life without any heals or any cooldowns. Compared to what we are used to, that is an eternity.

This is a pretty large shift in terms of effective health theory, and makes the tanking game more about taking the least amount of damage than surviving as long as possible; as long as you are accomplishing the former, the latter will occur as a result. This makes avoidance stats and mastery important stats to pick up in addition to more stamina.

I am fairly certain that bosses will hit harder and be more punishing as patches progress and higher raiding tiers emerge, but for the moment tanks have some breathing room. For the moment tanks can focus on more stats than just stam stam stam.

Paladins are in a very new world, and a fun one at that. Not only do we have a toolkit of cooldowns for every type of damage:

Divine Protection - 20% Damage Reduction, 10 Sec, 1 Min CD
Ardent Defender - 20% Damage Reduction, 10 Sec, A killing blow heals you for 15% instead of you dying, 3 Min CD
Guardian of Ancient Kings - 50% damage reduction, 12 sec, 3 min CD

But we can use our Holy Power (HoPo) for different purposes:

Shield of the Righteous - Snap threat, and coupled with Vengeance it can crit for huge amounts (I would even call them Big Crits)
Word of Glory - Self healing coupled with an absorb shield buff, Raid healing (WHAT?!?!)
Inquisition -10% Holy Damage damage buff. Useful with Holy Wrath/Consecration for AoE Packs

Talk about flexibility. I am having a lot of fun with Word of Glory, keeping myself alive, and throwing out heals to help out the healers with free heals. As long as I have a good threat lead on a boss, I rarely need to hit it with a SotR unless we are in a burn phase. In addition, WoG gives you threat as long as you are not overhealing, so it’s not a bad tool for picking up fresh adds a la Tidewalker and H-Halion. I think I am usually alternating between WoG and ShotR depending on if I have an auto crit active, and how the healing situation looks.

Therorycrafting is still in the able hands of Theck at Maintankadin, and we are still working out the mathematics behind the stats, so there really isn't a good guide on what stats to gear for. I’m still waiting patiently for Rawr to get updated again. For the moment, my advice is go for Item Level, and reforge/gem your gear to keep your dodge and parry % as close as possible, and convert that extra avoidance into mastery. In this tier of raiding, we are unlikely to be able to avoid/block every attack, but the closer you can get to that level, the more your healers will thank you.