When patch 4.2 releases, raid groups like ours will get a unique opportunity.  Previously, all legendary items were relegated to either low drop rates or quests that could only be completed in 25-man groups.  For the first time, a legendary questchain will be completable by 10-man raids.

This will be a fun and exciting thing for us as long as we can handle the responsibility of choosing someone to wield this item.

I’ll be perfectly honest…the first person that comes to my mind is Jasprock.  The legendary will be a DPS caster staff this time around and I can think of no one who fits that role who has been as consistent in attending raids as Jasprock.

Now, I could be making some glaring oversight, of course, which is why I’m posting this so far in advance.  I’d like to see what the consensus is on this topic.  Do most of you feel that this would be the right choice, or is there someone else I’m completely overlooking?

My main hope is that this quest chain will be more like the Shadowmourne chain, as opposed to, say, Val’anyr.  Val’anyr was simply, “Collect 30 fragments, then kill Yogg Saron.”  Boooooring.  Shadowmourne had the collection segment, but went on to require specific criteria while fighting various ICC bosses.  These criteria required the raid to think of some different tactics in order to complete them.  I think it would be very fun for us to all band together for the common goal of completing this item.

Bonus for the rest of us non-Jasprock-types?  The developers announced in their most recent Q&A session that guilds who complete the staff will get a guild reward.  We have no idea what this reward could be, but don’t you want it?

I thought so…

So, feel free to comment here with thoughts on this whole Legendary business, so we can be prepared for Firelands (which I’m officially calling as having a June 7th release, by the way…you heard it here first).

1 comment

Tags: Achievements, Firelands, Legendary, Patch 4.2, Raiding

The raid last night left some people feeling a little disappointed.  We ended up working on the Conclave of Wind, but Blackwing Descent had initially been on the schedule.  I take responsibility for the lack of communication on my part and for not thinking about some of the reasons this was a bad idea.

After the raid, we held a little open meeting in Mumble to discuss how we’ll handle raid schedules in the future.  I brought up a couple other things, too, while I had everyone there.

• From now on, we won’t deviate from raids that are scheduled on any given night.  This means that on Bastion of Twilight night, we won’t head over to kill Magmaw like we did this week.  This allows people who might need gear off a certain boss to know that they’ll get a chance at killing said boss if they sign up for its raid — no more zoning in to BWD to find your favorite loot piñata already dead.  It also allows people to be prepared for the content they’ll be tackling.  A great point was made by Cullendunn in that we likely would have done better on Conclave last night if people had known beforehand that we were going to be doing it.  Videos might have been watched, etc…
• We’re running into issues on some raid nights where more people are signing up for certain roles than we actually have slots for.  Going forward we’ll use earliest signups to determine who’s going to make it in when we have a surplus of attendants.  To avoid people simply signing up for everything that’s on the calendar, we’ll be unable to signup for guild events until a week before they are scheduled.  In other words, once this Saturday’s raid time arrives, the following Saturday’s event will be opened for signups.
• Finally…to be fair to people who are on the east coast or simply have limited time for raiding, we’ll start replacing guildies who haven’t shown up 10 minutes after the scheduled raid time.  We’ll replace first with backup guildies, followed by puggies.

On that last point, we initially started coming up with far more complex and in depth “rules” as far as punctuality, replacing, etc.  Fortunately, Rashmahal gave us a verbal kick in the ass to remind us of the more casual, social nature of our guild, so I thank him for that.

Thanks to everyone who was a part of the conversation.  I know it went on far too long and got way too businesslike, but I appreciate your help in bouncing all those thoughts around.  <4

1 comment

Tags: Guild Relations

Normally, this would be the day where our nominees would start campaigning.  The only problem with that is that we only received 3 nominations for Author and 1 nomination for Book Club, so…nobody can really lose.  I’d like to thank everyone for making this election season as easy and math-free as possible for me.  May apathy be with you always.  Here are your uncontested winners, who will take their positions on February 1st:

Authors:

1. Circolare
2. Galnadir
3. Mineta

Book Club:

1. Valyentena

3 comments

Tags: Authors, Book Club, Election Season, Grats!, Guild Relations

The R&P have undergone a revision. Spelling has been cleaned up and some wording has changed to reflect the newest expansion.  In addition to these changes, a few more interesting updates exist:

• The “Library Clerk” rank is being removed.  This rank was originally intended to be for class leaders who could be relied on for assistance with their respective classes.  Since the guild is so helpful to each other anyway, this seems redundant and unnecessary.
• To replace this rank, there will be a new starting rank called “Probationary.”  All members who undergo the standard application process will still enter the guild at the current “Illiterate” rank.  However, “Well Read” members are also intended to have the ability to invite people they feel would make a good addition to the guild.  Since these recruits bypass traditional recruiting methods, they will be placed at the new “Probationary” rank so that we will know to give them a more intense period of scrutiny before promoting any further.
• Minimum WoW-Heroes gear score for entering tier 11 raids has been tentatively set at 4000.

The latest R&P can always be found here, and revision histories will be archived here.

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Tags: Guild Relations, Progression, Raiding, RP

It’s that time once again.  Every three months guild elections are held*.  The first 10 days of the month are designated for the nomination period.  Members can nominate themselves or others (although those nominees will have to accept the nominations).  Seconds are not required.

We are currently looking to fill three Author positions and two Book Club positions.  Our current officials will need to nominate themselves if they seek re-election.

Job descriptions from the R&P:

Authors – These are the officers of the guild. They are voted in during guild elections. They are responsible for all the duties of Head Librarians when needed. In addition to this, they assist the Master Linguist in the daily management of the guild and are trusted to properly handle problems if they arise. They serve as a council to Master Linguist when it comes to important decisions, have the ability to promote or demote members and will have sole access to Tab 7** of the guild bank. Benefits are increased for these members. Authenticators are required for members of this rank.

Our current Authors are:  Auttylynn, Galnadir and Mineta.

Book Club – This is a special rank which members may be voted into during guild elections. The Book Club is responsible for planning guild events outside of the standard raiding variety (i.e. events focused on pure fun factor). They are able to set events on the guild calendar, change the message of the day and have the ability to post entries on the guild blog. Benefits are slightly increased to compensate for time provided.

Our current Book Club members are:  Tarobi and Valyentena.

Nominations can be made in these comments, on the forum, or directly to Cutaia in guild chat.

*Every three months seems a bit too quick for an election cycle.  I’d like to change this to every four months.  Please post your thoughts in the comments below.  I will make adjustments according to the reaction this receives.
** Technically the R&P currently lists this as “Tab 6.”  I’ll be working on updating these very shortly.

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Tags: Election Season

Since people are hitting 85 and starting to gear their characters up, I figured it would be a good time to start looking at this tier’s progression raids and what we’ll have to do in order to start downing bosses.

Lots of numbers appear in the post to follow.  If you have any questions about anything in here, feel free to ask in-game.

~Gearing~

Essentially, raids are designed for people wearing gear that is around 13 item levels below what drops therein.  For example, the heroic versions of the new raids are dropping level 372 epics, while the normal versions of these raids contain 359s.  So, following that, the ideal gearset for beginning the normal versions is going to be topping out at an average level of 346.

It’s difficult to know for sure exactly what gear score this translates to right now, but in keeping with our standard philosophy of not expecting overgeared players in raids, I’m thinking that 3,900 is likely a good number for everyone to try to reach (WoW-Heroes, of course).  We’ll adjust this number if we determine that it needs to be higher or could be lower, but for now, I believe this will be a good starting point for success.

This should translate to a good mix of level 333 and 346 blues.  The 346s are going to be the gear that comes from bosses in heroic dungeons and reputation vendors.  The more of these, the better.

~Gemming and Enchanting~

I don’t want anyone breaking the bank here.  All gem slots should certainly be filled with something before raiding, but for now, you can get away with the uncommon versions of gems that have a stat budget of 30*.  If you happen to have extra gold burning a hole in your pocket, you can certainly go the extra mile by upgrading to “perfect” cuts or rare gems which have stat budgets of 35 and 40 respectively.  Of course, I really wouldn’t bother with this on any pieces lower than 346.

*Gems with Stamina are always the exception to this rule because you get 1.5 Stamina for each point allocated in the budget.  So a full Stamina uncommon gem actually has 45 Stamina…not 30.

Enchanting is another case where you don’t necessarily have to go all out.  In fact, for anything under item level 346 I would be very wary of spending too much on enchants.  You could reasonably leave many of these pieces alone, even.  For 346s and up, though, you’ll want to at least get some decent enchants.  If you can afford to get the best enchants, go nuts.

Remember to check with guildies first before paying too much elsewhere on both of these.  And enchanters and jewelcrafters in the guild…be sure to help your fellow guildies.

~Progression Path~

I’m going to set a loose plan for us here.  I’m not really going to include Pit Lord Argaloth here, because after we do a couple early guild runs of this boss, he’ll likely become puggable to the point where scheduling it will be pointless.

As far as the three main starter raids of this expansion…since they are all of similar difficulty, it’s going to be easier for us to kill the various starter bosses than it will be to kill the later bosses.  In fact, here’s a chart of how many guilds have currently killed each boss, which gives us an idea of their relative difficulty.  Ignore the gear scores listed, as they are GuildOx calculated and don’t correspond with WoW-Heroes.

So, we’ll start by talking out the horrendously named Omnotron Defense System in Blackwing Descent, before skipping over to the Bastion of Twilight for Halfus Wyrmbreaker, then back to Magmaw.  We’ll re-evaluate our next step at that point.

I will be getting rough drafts of Linguist’s Guides up this week.

~Attitude~

Be positive and excited.  We’ve got this shit, y’all.  We had a very, very late start in Wrath raiding and still managed to down the Lich King and Halion before Cataclysm and I’m confident that given just a few more weeks of attempts, we would have wiped the floor with a few heroic mode bosses and even been in line for Bane of the Fallen King titles.  Since we’re here from the start this time, we should see even more impressive progress in the future.

So, let’s just do what we always do, have some fun learning, and kill some giant monsters for the Gipper.

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Tags: Cataclysm, Patch 4.0.3, Progression, Raiding, Strategy, Upcoming

It has been said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.  I apologize profusely for assaulting you with one of the most cliché things I’ve ever written, but the point still stands.  Through the weeks of raiding, a couple things have become quite clear:

1. ICC is a two-night raid.
2. As a guild, we’ve had considerable trouble with the later bosses recently.

With the release of patch 4.0.1, Icecrown Citadel has been placed under Cataclysm’s Flexible Raid Lock system.  As it turns out, this is a great opportunity for us to change things up so that we can start taking steps towards actually killing The Lich King.

Here’s the new and improved plan:

TUESDAY IS NOW ICC-10, PART ONE:

This event will be placed on the calendar and will be designed for downing the first 6 bosses each week (The Lower Spire + Festergut/Rotface).  The effect here is two-fold:

On one hand, newer raiders or people with less raiding experience can show up for this event in order to start gearing up and learning, without fearing that they’ll cause problems on the later fights which require a bit more group coordination.  I’d like to see us advertising this as kind of an entry level newbie ICC so that we can fill our extra slots with puggies of the same mindset, as well.

On the other hand, raiders who have been through The Lower Spire 20 times, don’t need any gear in there and are sick to death of it can feel free to skip it!

The real beauty of this plan is that, due to the new Flexible Raid Lock system, anyone who misses the Tuesday raid but wants to kill those bosses, can still feel free to pug them — even in a 25-man raid — and it won’t affect their ability to rejoin the guildies on Saturday!

SATURDAY BECOMES ICC-10, PART TWO:

The Saturday raid will now essentially be designed for those of us who are dying to get some progression kills in and down The Lich King.  We will use the 6/12 lockouts created on Tuesday and throughout the week in order to have a good head start on the raid.  With the nature of the Flexible Raid Lock system, anyone can join as long as they haven’t killed any bosses besides those 6.  This means people who are starting fresh, people who have killed 5 bosses, or even people who have inexplicably gotten stuck on the Gunship Battle.

This should alleviate the problem we’ve encountered of spending our entire raid night clearing the first six bosses and then struggling on Professor Putricide once everyone’s tired and ready to log off.  Finally, we’ll actually start to get some weekly kills going in The Crimson and Frostwing Halls.  Soon enough, The Lich King himself will be dead at our feet.

WEDNESDAY RAIDS REMAIN THE SAME:

Wednesday will still be reserved for the weekly raid quest and various achievement runs of older Wrath content.

---

Ideally, this will offer newer raiders the opportunity to start getting into ICC, while also allowing the more experienced among us to progress a little more…all with the same lockout (as much as you can call it a “lockout” these days).  In my mind, it’s a win/win, but I’d like to hear everyone’s thoughts on this new plan and schedule, so please comment below.

4 comments

Tags: Guild Relations, Patch 4.0.1, Progression, Raiding, Schedule

Once again, I’d like to put out a call for guild bloggers.  It is not necessary to be an Author or Book Club member to help contribute to the site.  It’s not even important that you spend all that much time in-game with us.  All that is required is a desire to contribute interesting, well-written pieces to assist and entertain our readers.  Writers can focus on guild activities and relations, or simply the game itself.  If it’s WoW-related and of interest to your friends here at The Linguists, we want to showcase it.

While having folks write some one-off pieces occasionally would be great, we’re specifically looking for columnists…so if you have a wonderful idea for a regular column, we’d love to hear it.  Just send your clever ideas and a sample blog entry to cutaia@thecunninglinguists.net for review.

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Tags: Guild Relations, LFM, Site News

It’s time to punch your ballots and elect some folks to office!  Once again, here are your nominees…

Running for Author are:

1. Auttylynn
2. Erung ( has withdrawn from the race)
3. Galnadir
4. Mineta
5. Tarobi

Running for Book Club:

1. Mineta
2. Superior (for some reason, even though he sold his account, cough cough)
3. Valyentena

There are 3 Author slots open and 2 Book Club positions available.  The process of voting is going to be a less than convenient one, but unfortunately, I cannot think of any better way at the moment.  It goes as follows:

In order to place your votes, please send an in-game mail to Cutaia with your 3 choices for Author and your 2 choices for Book Club listed.  These ballots will be accepted until October 31st, at which point the winners will be announced and paraded about town in a grand ceremony promoted with the click of a button.

Good luck to everyone and may the best man, woman or night elf win.

2 comments

Tags: Election Season

Nominations are in and the ballots have been set!  As always, candidates are listed in alphabetical order.

Running for Author are:

1. Auttylynn
2. Erung
3. Galnadir
4. Mineta
5. Tarobi

Running for Book Club:

1. Mineta
2. Superior (for some reason, even though he sold his account, cough cough)
3. Valyentena

There are 3 Author slots open and 2 Book Club positions available.  Unlike last election, we actually have enough nominees to necessitate a vote — which, in turn, means that I’m actually going to have to figure out the best way to do the voting process.  But I’ve got 10 days to figure that out, so for now, just sit back, relax and enjoy watching as mud gets slung.  10 days of campaigning begins now!

No comments

Tags: Election Season