RAWR!

That’s right. You heard me… Now get to 80 and download this badboy! I am not going to tell you how to use it. Read the manual, but I will cover the basics as I want to rant about is how it helps to show what your upgrades are.

1. Get rawr

2. Download yourself from the armoury

3. Go through the list and add every piece of equipment you have (including PvP gear),even if its not gemmed that way

4. Save it… having to enter this again blows

5. Go to the buffs tab and put your standard group into it (MMO Champion)

6. Don’t forget your self buffs… Rawr will assume you change your Molten to Mage Armour and back.

I have been trying to get my mind around this and it’s hard!

7. Go to filters and turn of the area’s where you can’t get upgrades from. For myself I have turned off ToGC25. Although we are stuck on Anub in ToC25 and are still struggling through ToCG10 including these items stops me from being to narrow in my future planning. Plus, we will get it done, its just when so knowing what is good for me is good for the guild.

If you have been watching the recommended upgrades you should have noticed this list has changed a lot, especially when you added your raid buffs. Later go back and see how different buffs affect you.

8. Now its time to optimise, the first thing to do is choose what your optimising. I have found as a mage optimising for DPS and Overall Rating are very similar but optimising for DPS is would be more appropriate. Last step here is change to maximum thoroughness.

Again if you’re still keen later, run them both and see what happens!

When it finishes load it up and then run it again. And again, because of the computations involved it’s a best estimate. When you have done this a few times, congratulations! This is your equipment optimised for DPS.

9. The most expensive part happens now… Rawr likes to change enchantments and gems- sometimes to combinations that look rubbish. Definitely give it a logic check and say to yourself- with these changes do I need to change how I play? Can I play like this? Will it still be fun!

10. There are now two ways to get your upgrades list, either read what is on the right in the comparisons tab, or go back to optimisation and run an upgrade list.

Rawr unfortunately doesn’t organise them into nice lists of these are available from Naxx10, these from Uld25 etc so you need to do some messing around in this stage to see where your upgrades can be found and evaluate how hard it will be for you to get them.

I am very unlucky with my main hand and still have The Turning Tide as a significant upgrade!

I didn’t really think much about rawr prior to 3.2, I was Arcane and had a good idea of what items would boost me, but when the two other mages (Frostfire & fire respectively) found the change much more difficult. Why because their equipment was all wrong! They spend the first month of so of patch 3.2 will good but unexciting DPS. They where /oom, had no burst, and now wanted my equipment!

BUT I also freely admit that change from T8.5 to T9.0 was hard*. The itemisation was all wrong and you have to change into them two at a time else you are over penalised because of the change in itemisation. I won a 232 Ony10 headpiece that was good so I did Hands & Shoulders as my first set and then Chest & Legs

And guess what? The Chest has the worst itemisation of all of them for Arcane, why because it’s swapping +crit from T8.5 to +hit.

Anyway, I digress… Back to the topic at hand, now you have a list of items that will improve your Arcane DPS. Most of the items will just require time either by farming (Abyssal Rune from ToC5 normal) or collecting badges as unfortunately getting a group that’s able to penetrate deep enough into Ulduar is hard. Remember that the best items are not necessarily the highest item (i.e. Talisman of Volatile Power looks good, but will age very quickly, while Abyssal Rune will likely last well into 3.3).

There are a couple of items that can be purchased though if you’re cashed up, Spellslingers Slippers, Bejewelled Wizards Bracers, and Merlin’s Robe are the first to come to mind. Currently I would estimate them at 3.5k, 4.5k, 8.5k respectively, but each realm is different and everyone has different professions.

I also want to mention something that I thought was very odd in the current tier of equipment and that is how powerful staves are for arcane mages. I have Enlightenment (245) as best in slot followed by Cold Convergence (245), however these are unlikely as they drop in ToGC10. In our current farmable content ToC10/25 the staves are still in the top 5 **, so until I win Barb of the Tarasque I will be annoying my raid leader (and everyone else) by rolling on these too.

I am wondering if staves are an exception to the rule when it comes to arcane mages… I will keep this in mind for next tier of items

* My guild is a core 10 man at heart so no T9.5 for us… but T9.25 is well on the cards… IF I can ever win a damn trophy! haha

** I don’t include PvP items in this list, however again because of the amount of haste on these items they are very much up there if you can get them.

Personal Topic: 10 MAN PUGing and the 10man guild.

First I want to clarify my topic. Is it better to be in an exclusive 10man raiding guild or be in some other type of guild- social, 25man etc and PUG 10?

I say personal topic because these are my opinions… no empirical evidence, no math, just Trade spam and embracing the ‘casual’ idol that is now WoW. Lets start with looking at what I think are some advantages and disadvantages of both

This topic popped into my head last week, when I read in Trade:

LFM 3x Imba DPS, 3x Healers for ToGC10. Will check Armoury, /w ToC10 achievement

Not to be a complainer but the person yelling this would not have been invited to my ToC25, let alone ToCG10! Although I maybe a little elitist! Sorry, but I want to win on current content.

I must admit that was very stunned. Are pugs really beginning to do stuff my guild can’t complete yet? Or is it simply to down the first boss or two for chance at some extra lewt?

SO heres a list straight of the top of my head.

10 man guilds

Advantages

• Gear stays within the group, therefore group gets stronger
• Community
• Do Achievements
• Easy to reform and continue a run another night
• Happy to ‘carry’ lower equipped members to get them lewt = stronger team

Disadvantages

• Very dependant on Tanks & Healers- losing one and finding a replacement can be painful. Especially is they are well equipped
• Some inflexible about raiding times
• Some personalities dominate
• Loot distribution, smaller guilds need to favour tanks & healers else the raid fails... regardless of how it officially is distributed.
• Because of the need for ‘spares’ some people will miss out on raiding spots and will start to be left behind equipment wise as they have to hold off pugging it.
• Need for certain classes can majorly handicap some encounters (Blizzard has addressed this in some ways)

10 man PUG

Advantages

• Can get in to group when it suits
• Group could be as a pug into a larger guilds run!
• No messing around- straight through!
• Some effort has been made to make sure no fail members in party (I.e armoury checks)
• Likely to be some over equipped players coming for badges or a specific drop
• Meet other/new people
• Random equal chance to win loot

Disadvantages

• Sometimes not enough toon’s of the right calibre are available so its either a fail or wastes your time as it can’t get sorted
• A few wipes can destroy moral and end a raid before it even started
• Hard to reform if it needs to be over different multiple nights.
• Lewt Ninja’s!
• A few ‘fails’ manage to sneak into every raid…

I am sure every can think of few that I missed.

So what do I think? To be honest I think both are methods of reaching for different goals. I don’t think I could do a 10 man exclusive guild anymore, but I do think Blizzard has tried to keep things mixed up, especially with upgrading the emblem drops as new tier becomes available.

PUG

Naxx10

OS10

VoA10 <except when new content>

VoA25 <except when new content>

OS25

10 man guild

OS10 + 1/2/3 * <I have done +3 a few times now and as a guild is much easier>

EoE10 *

Uld10 *

ToC10

ToGC10

10 man guild + friends**

EoE25 *

Nax25 *

Uld25

OS25 +1/2/3 *

25 man

Everything else! This area is beyond the scope of this article.

* Could be pugged but without some instant success generally loses moral to fast. Even though we are no in the end game of 3.2, I have seen plenty of Naxx25 fall apart after only a quarter or two.

** Ideally in the + friends format, all tanks & most healers are provided by the guild with DPS being outsourced to friends/alliances etc.

Final Thoughts

I guess these leads to my last thought… I don’t think 10 man guilds are optimal, even in ‘causal’; bring the player not the class WoW. They are holding to much internal risk.

But maybe there are perfect for finishing one tier behind content?

I think guilds should be aiming to run two ten-man teams! Arguable this opens up more content and achievements (hard modes etc) to more players and with a larger pool of equipped players it opens the door way to 25 man content in some form.

Trail of the Crusader is a great example of this its very easy to get two groups running ToC10 and then a progress group on ToCG10. This also means that for ToC25 most of the spots are taken up by guild members who you know are equipped with a very respectable ilevel for the content. Regrettably they will not be running this format again.

I do feel that I am not finished on this topic… To Be Continued!