Posts with tag drinking

Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook.

Adult raiders are free to enjoy a few adult beverages while they raid. This week, a guild leader wonders what to do when a raider has a few too many and ruins a night of raiding. (He also asks about raid scheduling, which isn't nearly as interesting, but we'll talk about it anyway.)

Hi Scott,

Yes, it's me again, Apocalyptic GM, sorry to be bothering you again, but you did such a good job last time of giving advice, that i felt the need to come to you again, especially now that two further large problems have arisen within my guild.

Firstly, the issue of raiding days. Currently i work shifts of 4 on 4 off at night time, which means i am only available for every 4 out of 8 days. We raided fine with this for the last 6 months ... but recently there has been some descent among the ranks, and complaints that people aren't happy with the current raiding days set up, and this hampering our time raiding. Now I could easily change to a fixed raiding days, but that would leave me frequently absent from raids, which is not something i would prefer. And this leaves me in a pickle as to what to do.

As guild master and raid leader I feel I should be able to set up raids to suit me, but then I also feel I should better accomodate my guild.

Tickets are only going on sale today, but already people are planning the most important part of BlizzCon: the parties. There's a whole crew of people planning to meet up at the Hilton, and if the past few years are any indication, all of the restaurants and bars around the area will be hosting roaming groups of World of Warcraft and Blizzard fans after the show every night. Whether you're meeting up with your guildies or just sitting down with random strangers to talk about whatever Blizzard announced previously in the day, partying at Blizzard's big event is always a good time.

Most plans are still up in the air, though we do have one event for you to mark on your calendar: our regular WoW Insider meetup will be held as usual on Thursday night again this year (that'll be August 20th). We haven't quite figured out a location yet -- unfortunately, I think we've finally outgrown The Lost Bar, as last year it was not only packed to capacity, and not only did my throat wear out from yelling to the crowd, but the bar's lone bartender has soured us on going back there. We're looking around for someplace a little bigger, preferably with a stage and a mic, where the drinks can flow freely.

Wherever we end up, it's sure to be a hoot -- we'll likely have giveaways, WoW Insider editors and staffers aplenty will be in attendance, and, probably the best part, you'll get to meet all of the fellow readers who fill the comment fields next to you. If you're grabbing tickets today (or even if you're just planning to be there anyway), stay tuned as we get closer for more news on where the meetup is going down.

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BlizzCon 2009 is coming up on August 21st and 22nd! We've got all the latest news and information. At BlizzCon you can play the latest games, meet your guildmates, and ask the developers your questions. Plus, there's some great looking costumes.

I am definitely an advocate of the fast instance or raid -- when I played a tank, I pulled pulled pulled (according to the healer's mana, of course), and even now, mostly as a Hunter, I still get impatient. When the healer's mana is full and the tank is not /afk, I sometimes just throw a Misdirect up and go. That's probably why I really liked Naissa's tips for speedy raiding -- she lays out a few really practical things you can do to get your raid moving faster, from only marking skull and X when necessary to only worrying about the healer's mana. It's not the end of the world if the Mage or Hunter has to drink for a second after the pull. While you should always get back to full before a boss pull (and as she says, that's a perfect time to break down the basics, only the basics, of the fight), usually as long as you've got the tank and healer ready, a quick pull will give you time for aggro to settle down as well.

I don't completely agree with her DPS meter remarks -- I do think that beating the raid is much more important than trying to win the DPS meters, but as a DPS player, I like viewing the meters as good feedback on where I should be. If I'm super low in the meters, it's time to look at my gear and rotations and try to figure out why so I can get better, and I think it's valuable for DPS, as long as they can keep their attention on the raid, to do the same thing.

But all of the other tips are great, and in general, "pull pull pull" should be the order of the day. Some groups are better at rolling through content than others, obviously, but as long as you've got a solid tank and healer in play who know the instance and know how to handle what comes, most raids and groups can move through the content pretty quickly.

Apparently that 200 tokens I spent on the Brew of the Month club was well spent -- I got my second Brew in the mail this week, and it's a good one. Autumnal Acorn Ale is not only tasty, but it'll make you smell like Autumn Acorns, too. Drinking it will get you drunk and call Woodland Squirrels up to show you a little critter love (or hate). I sipped it for the first time last night during a Slave Pens run, and at one point I had three cute little squirrels showing their affection. Apparently they'll also throw acorns at you, though I missed that in the chaos of the instance last night.

Plus, it's an unlimited use item after 3.0.2 (14 day duration, though BotM members can buy more in Ironforge), which means you get as much alcohol as you want, and every time you drink one, you get an "empty brew bottle" to throw with a glassbreak bang. Very fun.

If you didn't round up enough tokens to become a BotM member, you're unfortunately out of luck -- I originally thought you could buy the brews in Ironforge even if you weren't subscribed, but no dice, and the brews you get sent are soulbound. You'll have to wait until next Brewfest to sign up for your monthly beer. Can't wait to see what shows up next month!

And way too much to drink.

Just a short this week in honor of Brewfest. Which has ironically fallen on the same week as this school's homecoming, so no matter where I look there are parties and drunken revelry. Anyways, I haven't had the chance to participate in Brewfest too much this year, although I did roll up an alliance not long ago and rode the Tram for the first time.

In closing, have a safe and happy World of Warcraft holiday, and don't drink and ride!

See you next week.

Healing in Arenas is necessary. It's that simple. Outside of the 2v2 bracket, it is virtually impossible to find an Arena team comp without a healer. Of course, in the 2v2 and 3v3 brackets, that usually means a Druid. There's no question, however, that healing is key to every strategy and a good healer can spell the difference between a 2 rating win or a 26 rating loss. And just like in most cases, a healer gets the most of the flak for botching a match because it's easier to spot a missed heal than if your Rogue mistimed a Blind or your Shaman blew Elemental Mastery too soon.

In fact, some team members will nerd rage on their healers for missing heals but the DPS classes have an equally important responsibility to peel enemies off their healers. Healing is a thankless job but someone's got to do it. If you happen to be the healer on your team, or luckily one of two or more, I salute you. You've taken on one of the most important roles in Arena PvP. When you heal in Arenas, you basically have to master three important skills: humping, juking, and drinking. Getting those three down pat should help your team coast to more wins than losses... or at least help you get a lot less nerd rage.

A company called 3 Point Entertainment has apparently been contracted by Blizzard to make some WoW steins -- yes, tired of drinking your ale out of a plain old authentic German stein? Now you can drink it out of a Warcraft-branded, Horde or Alliance themed WoW stein. As much beer as we drink, we can't exactly say we're stein connesseurs, but these look pretty well done to us. Each one features a bas-relief illustration from two artists who've done a lot of work for Blizzard, Glenn Rane and Samwise Didier, and they're made by a company called Ceramarte, apparently a big player in the "beerware" business.

They'll set you back a whopping $79.99, though, which seems pricey (although it's been a long time since we went stein shopping, so maybe that's a bargain). Think we could drink our mead out of something a little cheaper, maybe a Thunderbrew-branded sippy cup?

If you caught the MLG Orlando live stream over at GotFrag TV last weekend, you might have noticed a critical strategic move that many of the world's best players did over and over, particularly in the longer matches -- drink. Because mana-dependent classes don't have a constantly renewable resource such as Rage or Energy, drinking in Arenas is an important skill to master. Watching the tournament was educational because many of those pro Arena players knew how to drink like crazy.

The trickiest part of drinking in an Arena match is getting out of combat. Some classes, such as Druids, have an easier time than most but watching players escape focus fire with or without their teammates peeling opponents off them is really amazing to watch. It's a skill unto itself. Night Elves have a ridiculous advantage with Shadowmeld, allowing them to immediately enter stealth upon finding a safe spot to drink. This makes them harder to find, allowing them to get just a few more ticks from Star's Tears. Despite the nerf to drinking inside Arenas in Patch 2.4, players have managed to get those precious four seconds (and hopefully more) to get just enough mana back during matches. In the heat of combat, the nice cold drink is refreshing, indeed. Tips on how slake your thirst after the jump.

You wouldn't think something as prosaic as the water that restores our precious blue bars would be undergoing a controversy, but that has certainly happened during the time patch 2.4 has been on the PTR. A change was made such that if you sat down to drink, and drank for less than five seconds, you would receive a reduced benefit -- i.e., less mana. The assumption was that this nerf was made to combat people regenning mana too fast in the Arenas, which led to objections to the change being applied to PvE situations as well.

European US CM Bornakk replied that in most cases we'd be drinking more than five seconds in PvE situations, and players responded with many counterexamples (chain pulls, etc.). Bornakk replied to that saying basically that he still thought it wouldn't be hard to drink long enough to avoid the change's effects, and that the change was meant to effect "more than just Arenas" anyway. Well, it looks like they've changed their mind: Kalgan himself just announced that the water nerf will now only affect Arenas. PvE casters rejoice!

Yes, burst damage is an increasingly important factor in class balance, but have you heard of burst drinking? Apparently that's a big problem, too, as the latest update to the patch notes adds a very strange function to drinking: as of patch 2.4, "the benefits of drinking have been delayed," and the real mana regen won't start until five seconds after you've started drinking. Wha?

But it's true-- apparently Blizzard felt that anyone drinking for only five seconds (either in a PvP or PvE situation) was getting too much mana. Drysc confirms that it's a serious change, and that anyone worried about their mana regen only needs to drink for six seconds, at which point they'll have as much mana as before the patch (which suggests that there is a burst of mana given at the 5 second mark, to make up for the delay).

But is this really that much of a problem? Sure, with the changes to spell haste, things are going to get faster in the battlegrounds. But are we at the point already where an extra second of out of combat drinking makes all the difference? Blizzard thinks so.

Matthan of Burning Blade brought up an issue with drinking to recover mana on the public test realm. He found that he was not receiving the normal benefit from imbibing. Hortus indicated that this phenomenon is not a bug but a change in the mechanics that ramps up mana regeneration over time. Players are used to a steady increase in mana with every tick. This change was not included in the patch 2.4 notes.

The general consensus from players is negative. Speculation suggests that the change was geared toward casters drinking Star's Tears or conjured water in the arena. Posters have made many arguments on why this would have negative consequences in the PvE environment. Many casters drink between pulls and do not usually have the opportunity to spend thirty seconds drinking in raids and instances. Incremental increases in drinking over time would inconvenience all members of a party or raid as they would have to wait for casters to fill up on mana. This could change become disastrous in chain pulls and endurance fights, where every second counts.

This is the best bug I've heard about in the game yet so far-- Drysc has confirmed that there is a known bug in the Blade's Edge plateau area which will cause everyone, when someone starts up the Bombing Run quest, to stop eating and drinking and stand up. It's a respect thing, you know? Stand up for the cause!

No, it's just a really, really weird bug, and a fix is on the way in an upcoming patch (I'm a little surprised they don't aim to fix it earlier, but apparently all that will be lost is the food anyone sits down to eat at the wrong time in Blade's Edge). Once again, I am dumbfounded at trying to figure out just how Blizzard's code works-- seems like they have the absolute weirdest bugs happen to them sometimes.

Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.

A big reason I love writing for this Web site is you, the readers. Whenever I write a column and ask you for feedback, you always provide some insightful comments. And whenever I fail to mention an important point, you guys always manage to catch it and comment on it. It's a supportive and intelligent community here, and it certainly makes my job easier!

Last week, I wrote about the "right stuff" to look for in a good officer candidate. I mentioned five traits to value in a candidate: maturity, generosity, good communication skills, emotional intelligence, and game knowledge. Necessarily, that means someone who is immature, greedy, barely literate, emotionally stunted, and a total noob would have the "wrong stuff." But, as several readers pointed out, there are other warning signs that someone will make a bad officer.

Just a reminder that today is the last day to enter a comment (on the other post, not this one) to get a chance at winning this striking Thargas Anvilmar toy... sorry again-- "Action Figure" from WoW Insider and DC Unlimited. Brewfest ends on Tuesday, and this figure doesn't release in stores until October 24th, but we here at WoW Insider are making the best of the drinking festival and hooking one lucky reader up with this baby, a Dwarf Warrior outfitted in Tier 5!

To enter, put a comment on our original post (not this post) by this afternoon at 3pm EST telling us what your favorite drink for Brewfest is. You guys all went with the "in-game" idea, which is fine, but personally, I like drinking out of game a lot better than in-game (in-game drinking just gives me a headache). So for me, Jack and Coke is the drink of choice. For beer, definitely Fat Tire with a meal, or Guinness if it's just a pint at the pub.

But good luck with the contest! Official rules are here (short version: must be in the US and 18 or older, one randomly selected comment will win and you can only enter once). Happy Brewfest!