BHA Raiding June 28th through July 4th. FIRELANDS!!!!!

Hey look! New stuff!

Worse comes to worse, we can kill nerfed Cho.

Please post availability.

Rantin - heals - every day but Thursday.

Wednesday: 7:30

T- Carg, Cheets
H - Z, Rant, Kila
DPS - Jeynsa, Zero, Finn, Wal, TK

TK and Finn, one of you needs to be frost.

Thursday: 7:30

Tanks: Carg, Wal
Heals: Z, Lawk, Kilanash
DPS: Youko, Finn, TK, Grinds, Jeynsa

TK and Finn, one of you needs to be frost.

I'm in for pretty much whenever. Let's beat some stuff up.

Usual crap for me. Mon-Thurs, Sunday 6+.

Quick EPGP recap for anyone new: EP (effort point) is awarded for time spent raiding, GP (gear point) are charged when you receive an item via EPGP. The ratio between EP and GP (PR - Points Ratio) is used to award certain items. PR = EP/GP.

Currently we award 25 EP for being on time for a raid (at least 5 min before scheduled start) or for filling in when we're short a body. We award 50 EP per hour spent raiding.

We only award Tier tokens, main hand, offhand, ranged weapon, relic, wand and trinkets via EPGP since they're the rarest most contested items.

GP is only charged when an item is won via the EPGP system. The amount of GP depends on the item (1H costs less then 2H). Currently we just use whatever number the EPGP mod recommends for an item. Items get discounted by 50% if it's for an off spec.

As for the 4.2 content, we originally planned to reset EPGP for each new content tier. Outside of the data wipe for the release of Cat, this will be our first tier based wipe.

The idea behind wiping the data is to keep the frequent raiders from getting such a big lead in EP that it discourages new players from joining us. On the flip side, a reset keeps people who've earned a lot of gear (high GP) in the current tier from not having a prayer of winning a new item in the new content vs. a new player w/very low GP.

The data wipe isn't set in stone and I'm happy to discuss alternatives and hear what other people think. It's been a while since we planned to do the EPGP data wipes, so opinions are bound to have changed or evolved.

The officer crew have privately tossed around a couple ideas for changes to the loot system in 4.2 as well. One of the suggestions is to make the "on time" EP award closer to a 1/3rd or 1/2 of the total EP award for the night. In our current system that would bump up the on time award to either 50 or 75 EP from 25 on a 3hr raid.

While I think many of us get frustrated when someone is late or completely misses a raid, I'm not 100% convinced anymore that we want to go from the on-time award being a modest bonus to it being a real penalty. sh*t happens, everyone has things going on in their lives that can screw up your plans.

FWIW, I think we've been pretty good at making sure that people who give notice (via PM/forum post/etc) that they're going to be late still get the on time award.

2nd thing I've been thinking about is increasing the EP amounts by at least an order of magnitude so we stop having people with PR ratios of 0.186344. Add a couple zeros while we're changing tiers and stop having so many fractions.

3rd thing for me is to increase our base GP number. Basically your effective GP number when calculating PR is accrued GP + Base GP. At the moment, base GP is 1. Currently, someone who raids once and earns 175EP will end up with a PR of 175 and basically be able to win anything against anyone who's ever won an item via EPGP since just one item is usually 2000GP. Being around for 10 raids and getting one item will make your PR = 1,750 / 2001 or ~0.87. After winning a single item, you'd have to raid for years and years w/o winning another single item to earn enough EP to win against the new guy.

My suggestion would be to bump Base GP to be equal to at least 1 item worth of loot (2000) or maybe a bit higher. The idea being that just because you've raided with us for a couple months and earned a single EPGP loot item, that you won't be 100% SOL if a new guy shows up and is interested in the same drop you are (think end boss tier tokens + weapons). Of course, based on our history, most of the time when a new guy shows up, if an EPGP item drops, there's usually nobody else interested in the item anymore anyway! The new guy just gets it versus it becoming a shard. Hopefully not a huge penalty for new people and a bit of protection for our frequent fliers.

Finally, on the loot topic, I'd like to hear some thoughts on how to handle loot in 4.1 content once we start into 4.2. I'd suggest we either stop using EPGP for the old tier or at least heavily discount it. I'm not convinced one way or the other about continuing to award EP for 4.1 content.

I'm also interested to hear how people feel about continuing to work on 4.1 content. Is finishing 4.1 higher priority then working on 4.2? Never want to see the inside of BWD again? Heroic modes?

For me it's 4.2 > 4.1 progression > 4.1 heroics.

Lawk
Tank/Heals
Tues/Thurs 7:30+

For me:
4.2 > 4.1 progression

I think that we should reset EPGP

Add some zeros to the base GP. No one like decimals.

4.1 loot goes to regular /roll, main>OS

MikeMac wrote:

4.2 > 4.1 progression > 4.1 heroics.

+1 but with a caveat: we need to put the 4.1 progression stuff on farm for when the leveling group hits 85. My vote is that we do 2 nights a week, one night we work on 4.2 stuff, another night we blow through something (or a number of things) from 4.1.

As for EPGP, w/e. I think we're pretty judicious with gear distribution. If someone needs it, someone gets it and we even save the epic BoE items for people in case they need it.

One idea for that, though (and keep in mind this is completely out of self-interest), we could reset EPGP but give the few of us who still have a positive ratio %10 of their difference in EP. For instance, Let's say I'm 4500/1500 (or something like that), I could start out this tier with %10 of my 3k differential, or 300 EP. An advantage that would disappear the minute I miss a raid. Everyone with a negative would start out the same as a new person, with 0/0 and basically this means Zero gets first dibs on something that drops for him in 4.2 =)

Oh and I'm all for only doing EPGP on whatever the current progression is. If we start farming the 4.1 stuff, everyone should get what they need anyway.

I'm available as filler for every night this week.

Jeynsa - Good at dying (although I managed to vanish and live a few times last night...)

After 7pm (Tue-Sun)

I fully anticipate Tuesday to be a giant charlie foxtrot. I was planning on getting together a raid for Wed at the earliest. Other than a Wed or Thur night, I doubt we'll get anything done this week because of the holiday weekend.

The boss gets back to town today, so let's see what Grinds wants to do when he gets back later.

I want to raid, I will be around for sure. However my internet is really flaking atm and I need to figure out what I need to do and get it stabilized.

I hope to be on, I will post more later though.

I'd love to see the 4.1 content at some point (along with the 4.2 stuff). But the chances of my doing either (or both) depend largely on doctors finding a cure for alt-itis and developing drugs to cure my hot burning lust for achievements.

Also, too, it would help if I didn't have to get so darned early in the morning.

I have no opinion on the EPGPRPSTPSTD issue.

Enix wrote:

I'd love to see the 4.1 content at some point (along with the 4.2 stuff). But the chances of my doing either (or both) depend largely on doctors finding a cure for alt-itis and developing drugs to cure my hot burning lust for achievements.

Just sign up for a single night per week. We'll find a way to get you in, but you have to just make yourself available once in a while.

Finial/Forshay: T-Th. Sunday is unknown at this point.

They're both about equally geared, and at this point I have no idea who is my main. What can I say, I like variety. Maybe I'll flip a coin.

Wal tank, Elcameron DK mDPS, Wed or Thursday for me this week. Tues I will be on but my game may be unplayable with all the addons I run.

back from vacation and willing to rock and roll....

Grinds- of some kind.... Thursday 6-11pm, Maybe sunday evening

Enix wrote:

I'd love to see the 4.1 content at some point (along with the 4.2 stuff). But the chances of my doing either (or both) depend largely on doctors finding a cure for alt-itis and developing drugs to cure my hot burning lust for achievements.

You know, there's achievements for killing the raid bosses, too.

Just sayin'.

1. Don't particularly care about changes to EPGP. It works just fine for my availability.

2. 4.2 > 4.1 Achieve Bosses > 4.1 Heroics

3. Available maybe Saturday / Sunday? Not sure.

Well I was put on it, I am not sure I can do Thursday I can do Tues/Wed FOR SURE. Thursday a friend of mine asked me to go see her co-worker whom is in a band with her. I do not think I will be home that early in the evening to raid

zeroKFE - rDPS, liability
Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday/: 7 - 10 PM I can do ONE of these nights the full time; I could potentially do a second, but I would probably have to leave around 9:30 PM or so.
Sunday: No availability -- friends will be in town for the 4th

The changes to EPGP point numbers that Zee suggested sound excellent to me. The system worked very well for us in tier 11 (not a single loot argument!) but the numbers were a bit funky looking at times, so those changes should work quite well.

I'm fine with an EPGP wipe, but for obvious reasons I wouldn't object if we implemented OP's suggestion of a (very) modest EP bonus after the reset for those who ended T11 with a large PR.

T11 loot should definitely be off EPGP. As T11 bore out for us, /roll is just fine for everything except the most hotly contested progression items. The only caveat I'd say is that if (emphasis on IF) we decide to work on T11 heroics a bit, it might make sense to EPGP the weapons/trinkets/tier tokens there.

Speaking of which my feelings about raiding content are about the same as what has been posted:

T12 normal >> T11 normal >> T11 heroic

I'd like to see us finish off the two bosses we haven't killed in T11, and (as OP pointed out) at times when we have a decent number of new players a farm run or two would probably be a good idea. However, other than that I'm quite bored with it all at this point and would rather not spend much more time on it after we've killed off the remainders.

EDIT: One last thing -- history has taught us that raiding on patch day rarely works out. Either it's too buggy/unstable or people show up late due to patch downloading. Might be good to at the very least to expect raiding on Tuesday to be a bumpy road, if we try at all.

UPDATED with a Thursday raid.

Holler if I made a terrible mistake in team makeup.

Edit: Dangit, Cheeto ;p

Ok, as long as nothing else comes up, we're good to go for Thursday. What do you guys want to do, give the new stuff a shot or settle some old scores?

I'm thinking we won't be able to put something together for Sunday but I've been wrong before and we're damned close to getting something together tomorrow.

Go hassle other people to post availability if you see them online.

4.2 for Thurs.

Youkochan hunter

Thursday and Sunday anytime.

Since i obviously suck on my shammy, i'll spare the pain till i figure out how to play her >.>

If I move Zero to tomorrow and Youko in for Thursday, we're a ranged DPS away from running something tonight.

Any ideas?

oilypenguin wrote:

If I move Zero to tomorrow and Youko in for Thursday, we're a ranged DPS away from running something tonight.

Any ideas?

I think you need to call TK - you know, the ranged DPS guy - and ask him why he hasn't posted any availability for this week yet.

email sent!

I would love to go tonight.

If you get desperate for range but have melee. I can always go shadow on my priest... just sayin i would REALLY love to go tonight

Fine
i will show up tonight...lets roll some noobs and then go get us a new legendary staff

I can roll any spec as well...so let me know what we need and i'll doit.

I can go thursday as well, but i'm heading out of town on Friday so I won't be around for the weekend fun.

Ahahahahahaa, sucker.

WED

T- Carg, Cheets
H - Z, Rant, Kila
DPS - Jeynsa, Zero, Finn, Wal, TK

TK and Finn, one of you needs to be frost.

Thursday got changed as well since I was only coming along because we were a healer short.

Zero, you're just running tonight now and Youko is going Thursday. Thanks.

What are we hitting when? I can go frost--I've been practicing in heroics while getting VP.

Fair enough.

And as I said in my first post, I'll probably be around tomorrow anyway to get dailies done and hopefully a heroic or two, so I can fill in if someone has to drop out, BUT I will have to leave around 9:30 or so should that happen.

That's a damn fine question.

I think I'll leave that up to the officers to get a game plan down. To be honest, I haven't even looked at the new encounters yet though I hope to do that at lunch today.