Part I of the series is here. Part II of the series will deal with how to lead the raid during the actual raiding phase.

To begin with, you need to make sure that you have authority over the raid and that you will be listened to. It’s important that your raiders don’t go running around and ignoring your commands. This might sound like an ego-trip on the part of the raid leader – but there is a fine line between ego-tripping and asserting your authority. There’s nothing worse than deciding on a strat on a boss, trying to implement it, then some other guy deciding to follow his own strategy anyway, and that needs to be prevented.

Yes, leading a large PUG is very reminiscent of herding cats, why do you ask?

The easiest way of asserting your authority is commanding respect. Let your raid follow you not out of threat of a raid removal, but because they have respect for you.

To help with this, always speak in correct English, with proper grammar, punctuation, and capitalisation. Stay calm and collected, don’t spew obscenities or use all caps. People are a lot likely to listen to you when you sound like you’re someone worth listening to. Don’t abuse /rw, in fact don’t use it at all if the information you’re conveying is not crucial. Most players start ignoring raid chat altogether if /rw is being overused.

You need your assistants to be listened to, too, since they’ll also be leading when you’re for one reason or another busy. The raid also needs to be respecting them. Don’t contradict them publicly, don’t have a disagreement with one of them in raid chat. If you want to sort something out, sort it out in whispers or a chat channel. Let the leadership present a unified front.

Loot is a very big part of any raid, and there is nothing that puts a damper in a good PUG quite like masterlooting issues. Make your loot rules crystal clear, before the run starts. There needs to be absolutely no mistake on that, make sure everyone has understood them.

A set of loot rules I like to use, that has worked for me so far is:

Every item is open for regular rolls, highest wins. Mainspec before offspec. Armor class priority – as in, if a cloth wearer and leather wearer covet the same cloth item, the clothie has priority on the item. Otherwise, use of common sense is required, otherwise the leadership may interfere. (As in, if a hunter and a rogue both roll on Sinister Revenge, we may well tell the hunter to fuck off.) If someone wins too many items, too many meaning > 5, again, the leadership reserves the right to interfere. BOE items may be won on mainspec rolls, but the winner is required to equip it right away and be inspected. BOE items may not be won on offspec rolls, they will be raidrolled if no one wants them for their mainspec. If no one wants a piece of loot, it goes to a designated disenchanter.

Note that in these set of rules, you have to define what mainspec is. We define it as “the spec you have been in for the majority of the raid”. Letting people define their own mainspecs, especially with the dual spec system, is way too complex. And again, you can’t trust them to not abuse the system.

As for offspec rolling. I try not to permit offspec rolling as it’s not fair to other people – offspec rolling in this context meaning that someone forfeits the right to roll on anything for their mainspec, but gains the right to roll on offspec loot as if it was their mainspec. This can go pretty badly if everyone decides that they want to roll offspec, it’s again open to exploitation, it’s overcomplex, and more often than not leads to drama. If I have to, though, I’ll let one or two people roll offspec, with the agreement of other people who are interested in the same loot.

If someone will be rolling offspec, make sure everyone in the raid is made aware of that fact so as to prevent potential drama.

Reserving loot also tends to lead to drama. I’ll never do it, out of principle, because I feel it’s very unfair. I suggest that all PUG leaders avoid it.

If you’re the raid leader – don’t masterloot. Just don’t. You have more important things to be doing, so resist the temptation and pass it off to an assistant you have confidence in to do it right.

Your assistant will need to know very well who’s rolling on what, for what spec. Make no mistake, people will try to cheat others out of loot, and that needs to be nipped in the bud. There will be people who will try to roll multiple times, hoping their duplicate rolls are hidden among other rolls. There will be people rolling on offspec items, hoping the masterlooter isn’t paying enough attention and will give them the item.

If there is no one else you trust to do it right, do it yourself, but this will quite likely slow down the raid.

From the first pull onwards, the raid leader has a very important role: Assessing your group. I’ve mentioned in part I of my guide that no matter how many achievements and epics someone has, they might make mistakes, or just have areas they are weak at. It’s your responsibility as the raid leader to find those weak spots and patch them up, or otherwise compensate for them.

This endeavor has tiers. First off, you’d like to weed out the people who are clearly underperforming. If someone’s damage done is below the tanks’ on Patchwerk, that person has to go, unless they had a good reason why they did badly.

In fact, as a side note, everytime I start a Naxx PUG, I do Patchwerk first, since it’s a pretty good indication of your DPS, healing, threat, and general survival capability. If  you wipe on Patchwerk, the reason is generally pretty obvious, and the people who caused it can easily be spotted.

This is also part of the mistake compensation that I’ve mentioned. Sometimes, a player is not bad enough to warrant removal from the raid – they are just weak at one thing or the other.

Some people who are otherwise good inexplicably fail at certain fights. You might have a really great DPSer who’s bad at kiting. Your amazing single-target tank might be bad at add pickup. Your holy priest might be great, just don’t ask her to juggle her cooldowns with the tank’s. Until I got a new computer, I was incapable of tanking Heigan because I had about 5 FPS maximum during the entire fight. My amazing co-raidleader’s computer always froze whenever he got a void zone underneath him on KT, which resulted in him eating dirt for the majority of the fight. A good raid leader keeps an eye on these things and moves people around as needed.

Part of mistake compensation is putting people on roles they’re familiar with, unless you’re confident they’re capable of learning quickly. If a tank has never done tunnel on Thorim, off into arena he goes, even if his specific class would have functioned better in the tunnel.

Speaking of learning, as the raid leader, there will inevitably be times where you’ll have to teach people a fight. Handling these times well will make the difference between success and failure. Remember that in a PUG, you cannot afford to fail repeatedly, as you will, more than likely, lose people doing so – as a result, helping people learn the fight quickly with the minimum amount of attempts is important.

Keep the explanation simple. I cannot stress this enough. As simple as you possibly can make it. The less they have to keep in mind, the better.

Don’t use ability names if you can help it – “big spell with 8 second cast time” is easier for a lot of people to remember than “Flash Freeze”. Obviously though if it’s a well known spell, like Blizzard, Rain of Fire, void zone, etc, go for it.

Try to draw parallels between fights that your raid is likely to already know, and the one you’re working on. When I’m introducing a bunch of oldschool raiders to Mimiron, telling them that Spinning Up/Laser Barrage is the same as C’thun’s Dark Glare is a lot simpler than explaining the ability. They’ll know exactly how to avoid it, and feel a lot more confident in their ability to do so.

Don’t explain to people anything they don’t have to know. Your DPSers don’t have to know about Thorim’s tank switch requirement, only your tanks and healers do. To explain it to the DPS is just overcomplicating things.

As an example, here is how I explained the Twin Valkyrs fight to a DPSer who was new to it.

“Okay, we’ll split into two groups. You’ll either be DPSing the light twin, white, or the dark twin, black.

“In the beginning of the fight, touch the portal that is the opposite color to your twin for a debuff. This debuff is called your essence, and it’s a DPS boost.

“There will be little orbs floating around during the fight. Run into the orbs that are the same color as your essence. That’s also a DPS boost and it prevents the bosses from getting stronger.

“If your twin is casting the long Vortex spell, you immediately have to run to a portal and take on the same color essence as the twin. Otherwise you will die.

“Once in a while any of them will shield up and start casting a big spell. It’s the same deal as Kael in  MGT – break down the shield and interrupt the spell, except the end result of the spell is a heal instead of Pyro. If it’s not your twin that is casting it, you should change essences, go to the other twin, and help DPS and interrupt.

“So to sum up: Have the opposite color as your DPS target, absorb the same color orbs as yourself, have the same color as the twin that’s casting Vortex, help burst down shields and interrupt. DPS target = opposite color, orbs = same color, Vortex = same color. ”

You can see how the explanation is getting progressively shorter as I go on. First a rundown of the fight, then a simpler summary, and yet another even simpler one. The repetition also helps reinforce the basic concepts of the fight. Also note how I’ve omitted the damage spike ability on tanks, as it has nothing to do with a DPSer.

Keep up the pace! Efficiency and speed are key to a happy group. Encourage tanks to pull for as long as healer mana looks okay. Don’t waste time on looting – as soon as a boss dies, resses need to immediately go out, rebuffs done, and trash should be pulled. The master looter stays behind to link items and take the rolls. 15 seconds after the roll command goes out, close the rolls, there’s really no reason to wait longer. If someone hasn’t done their homework on loot, that’s their problem, not yours.

Speed up wipe recovery, encourage people to heal and buff on the run. After a wipe, remember that it’s faster if everyone releases and runs. If someone dies, there’s no need for the entire raidgroup to sit and wait around. Go pull the next group (but yeah, don’t put your resser in combat).

Set master looter threshold to Epic, anything less can be individually looted with no penalty.

Ask your raid to cut down on AFK breaks. If anyone needs to go AFK, they should do so between bosses and be back before the next boss, or wait until you announce a break. Here is where that authority and respect comes in handy!

This is it for Part II of the series. Part III will deal with common problems that arise in a PUG, and how to solve them most efficiently.

Moonky and I were just chilling in some  late night AVs and discussing Cataclysm with regard to the casual/hardcore debate in /g. The discussion led itself to a few interesting points.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that as far as the casual debate was concerned, Blizzard had it right in TBC and Wrath was a step in the wrong direction.

To start this, of course we gotta define casual.

There is this common opinion that casual means someone who doesn’t raid, and hardcore is someone who raids. This seems to follow from the train of thought that says: “If you can afford to spend long blocks of time in the game, you naturally start raiding.”

Except, this is not true – there are a lot of people who devote hours to the game without doing any progression raiding. And I simply cannot say that you are playing a game casually if you log on every day for a couple of hours.

The player I could call casual would be someone who logged on for a few hours every week to do whatever they like. They can’t or aren’t willing to spend more than an hour or so in the game at a time. They aren’t willing to spend time outside of the game reading about how to play the game. They took four or five months just getting to the level cap. They purchased the expansion a month after it hit. They just want to log in, have some fun doing whatever they like, log out.

Due to time constraints, the casual player can’t afford to, or just doesn’t like to, engage in extended group play. Raids are definitely out from their POV. 5-mans are occasional. That leaves them with questing or PVP for character progression. And as we all know, there is a very firm ceiling as far as quested gear is concerned.

This leaves a single option for the truly casual player to progress their character: PVP.

In TBC, this was fine and dandy – PVP gear was readily available. Anyone could put in a few hours of work here and there, and still end up with something to show for it. This is why Blizzard got it right for the “casuals” in TBC. They could queue for a battleground, join up, participate, obtain some good gear without needing to rely on other people, or having to devote large chunks of time at once. Every season, the gear was upped in quality, so there was still something new to strive for, something else that would make you remain competitve.

This changed in Wrath.

Wrath caters more to the “hardcore casual”. The people who log in every day. The people who can afford to spend big blocks of time ingame, but somehow don’t want to or cannot be part of an organized PVE effort. What Wrath did was make raiding easier, so that people did not need to be part of anything organized – it didn’t solve the time problem.

However, it did take away the casual’s real route to gear progression. All the PVP gear is either rated, has a prohibitively high cost for its quality, or requires you to be online at a certain time in a certain place much like raiding. The PVP gear obtained can, with a few exceptions, no longer be used in competitive PvE because of the stat changes and the heavy resilience weighting.

Most importantly, the single greatest slot, weapons, are currently rated, forcing people to participate in the arena metagame and be good at it. Again, your casual doesn’t have the time or the inclination to do that.

If Blizzard really wanted to keep the real casuals playing, Wrath was the wrong direction for that. The casual/hardcore debate in Wrath is meaningless from that point of view, because there is very little in this expansion that actually caters to the casuals. It’s all aimed at the hardcore casual, and it’s succeeding.

Going with that train of thought, was there any need for the stat-dumbing-down that was announced in Blizzcon? The hardcore casual is already willing to spend time outside of the game to improve themselves. I doubt that the change will make a lot of difference for the true casual, who doesn’t have access to that level of play to begin with – the level where decisions such as these would matter.

The change(s) won’t motivate the casuals to take part in raiding, because they lack the one thing Blizzard can’t give them, and that’s time. Sure, they can do a few instances a week, and get a piece of T8,5… in six weeks? Eight? Assuming they persist, which a lot of people won’t, because the length of time needed for the gear is discouraging, especially for a casual who had been playing during TBC.

Add to this the fact that the (very player-created) entry threshold is high for most content, both PVE and PVP. Technically, you might be able to clear every heroic in your fresh level 80 quest greens. In reality, unless you are above the actual entry threshold by a healthy margin, you’ll be refused entry by your PUG. PVP is worse – watch yourself get steamrolled for hours while you collect the some 60,000 honor needed for a single piece of gear.

The casual, in theory, can slowly work towards their goals. However, to gain entry into heroics, they must at least turn to craftables. Gathering the materials or gold takes time. After spending a few weeks gathering those, then you’ll be allowed to go into heroics, and maybe get badges for yet another item, that will take yet longer. The prospect of spending so much IRL time leaves people with two choices: Spend more time ingame, or just stop playing altogether because the motivation is lost. For most casuals who are unable or unwilling to dedicate more to the game, the choice is simple.

To actually cater to the casual – improve the quality of PVP, because that is the only group activity in the game where the player needs to pass no player-created threshold to play within a group, and does not require devoting large blocks of time at once. Bring back the TBC PVP system. Remove rating requirements from all arena gear (”Matches that take five minutes each, ten of them a week, progress towards a piece of high quality gear? Sign me up!”). In short, make PVP a truly viable avenue for the casual to pursue for gear progression.

Lately I’ve been reading many accounts and listening to many, well, stories in trade. These sob stories inevitably deal with how some person was not accepted into some PUG or the PUG fell apart because his gear was not deemed adequate, even though the person in question firmly believes that their gear was adequate.

Here’s the thing.

Your gear might well be sufficient for the instance.

That doesn’t mean that the group has to accept you. No really, it doesn’t.

Groups of well-geared people generally seek other well-geared people to steamroll the instance. This might not be the most fun way of doing things, but the really well-geared people in question are usually already tired of running the same instance over and over again. They probably don’t want their agony prolonged by having someone around who will slow them down. They just want their Conquest badges to get whatever item they didn’t get.

You might think they’re being funny, asking for your [Epic] to run a couple of heroics or “loleasy” raids. They’re not. They’re merely saving themselves some time and pain, especially with the new badge system bringing everyone out to PUG these days.

They could of course accept you, and try you, and then decide which wrist to slit first when they wipe, because some guy in the group isn’t keeping up the pace. Or because they’re running a speed makeup and someone is not performing as they should.

Don’t take not being accepted as a personal affront. Most of the time, the guy on the other end of the line doesn’t mean it as an insult. No one is laughing at you for not being clad in epics. And if they are, they’re probably dicks.

If you’re not accepted, you’re not accepted. It was the group leader’s choice, and they opted for a no. If your gear is adequate, surely there are other groups out there that will take you. Do not despair.

(P.S Please note that I rarely decline people with sufficient gear – on the other hand, I completely feel the people who do so for speedruns and odd makeups.)

Ever since I hit level 15 on Kaliah, my first character, and was introduced into the wonderful world of instancing, I’ve loved it. For reasons I myself can’t explain either, I love group play in WoW. However, the boyfriend and friends who introduced me to the game were higher level, and as such, didn’t have much interest in spending time with little Kaliah ingame. This meant that I was doomed to PUG, rather a lot.

I’ve been in countless PUGs into countless places ever since, leading anything from a 5-man to a 25. Let me say that, in my opinion, PUGs aren’t disasters, unbearable, horrible, etc, all the time.

Perhaps half the time.

Although, I can say with certainty that a good leader plays a great part in a successful PUG. So without further ado, to today’s post: How to lead your PUG to success. I will mainly focus on PUG raiding, however, everything I say can easily be applied to a 5-man context.

First things first: If this is anything larger than a 5-man, having an assistant or two, who are knowledgeable and handy, helps tremendously. Don’t randomly give assist to people who you think might invite more people. Make sure that your assistants are people whom you trust to handle things fairly and appropriately.

When I’m out to lead a raid, I’m the person who looks at the raid makeup and decides what classes/specs we want, and keeps track of the people we already have. I do things such as be on top of “Who’s tanking?” “Who’s healing?” “Who’s rolling on offspec gear?” “Do we have too many melee for KT25?” “Do we have kiters for Gluth?” “Are our priests able to MC on Raz?”.

I then tell my assistants who to look for, and they find people who fit the bill. One of us checks Armory, necessary questions are asked and answered, if all of us agree, an invite goes out.

This accomplishes a few things. First, you don’t get burned out from the responsibility of leading, because now there are other people who share it. Second, keeping track of everything, especially in a 25-man, is much easier when you delegate duties. Third, more people to discuss things with lead to easier, and in most cases fairer, solutions to problems.

So you have your raid, and you have your assistants. Time to find more people.

I’ve already written a post about how to write a good trade ad. Put yourself out there, and see what you get. Make sure you reply to everyone. I don’t care how much time it takes, make a “/r No thanks, not what we’re looking for” macro if you need to. Most people consider not getting a reply back very rude, not to mention that unless you reply, they can’t be sure you even received and read their whisper!

This is where assistants also are great, as they will help field many of the whispers themselves.

As for picking people – remember that gear, and achievements, aren’t everything. Try to pick people who have the right attitude (and yes, even a two-line whisper can give away a lot of things about your attitude). A lot of the time, I’ve recruited people with no achievement, and merely decent gear, after they were honest with me and said “Look, I’ve never done this, but I’ve read strats, watched videos, and I’m ready. Just try me.” I’ve rarely been disappointed in such recruits, whereas some people I’ve had a lot of trouble with were people who had the gear and achievement for the fight.

Striking a balance is a good thing. Decent gear, partial or no achievement, but great attitude: Gets in. Good gear, achievement, and bearable attitude: Gets in. But if any of the two lacks strongly, the person stays out. I’m not going to recruit someone who can’t pull their weight, or someone for whom I have to spare ten minutes before every boss fight to explain how it goes. It isn’t fair to the rest of raid if someone is getting carried, and during a raid, the leading team already has enough on their plate without having to deal with explaining tactics from scratch. On the other hand, I’m not going to recruit someone with a terrible attitude either, for obvious reasons.

The discussion of recruiting also brings us to another point about leading a PUG.

A bad PUG leader checks gear, checks achievements, and often has unrealistic expectations for the content that’s being done (”LFM Ulduar10, be in full T8,5″). When he gets his, in his eyes “uber”, group together, he is very sure that the instance will be cleared with no hiccups.

A good PUG leader knows that no matter how geared, skilled, and experienced people are, mistakes will happen. He sets up in his group in such a way that those mistakes will be compensated for.

My point here is that group makeup matters a lot in this compensation. While you can bring ten druids and beat Naxx10, doing that is not the fastest or the most advantageous route. Different classes bring different things to the table – and all of those things, you might need to beat the instance.

As far as classes and specs go, start by looking for diversity, and looking for balance. You know how many tanks, healers and DPS the instance requires. Now you should be picking various types of those.

Let’s say you want to bring three tanks. You can pick three warriors and they can do the job just fine – but remember, you want tanks capable of doing different flavors of jobs, so you can use different ones for different situations. Put in a warrior, a DK, and a paladin instead, and now you have:

1. A jack of all trades tank
2. A tank strong against magic damage, and bosses with occasional hard-hitting damage phases
3. A very strong AoE tank.

They all bring different things to the table, and while they can individually tank everything, they all have encounters they are best at. That little edge X type of tank has on Y boss is your mistake compensation.

Same with your healers. Six shamans? Will do the job. But it won’t be pretty. Seek diversity. Two paladins, a disc priest, a holy priest, a resto druid, and a resto shaman is a much better healing setup. You have your strong single-target healers, raid stabilizers, and massive AoE damage healers.

Last but not least, the DPS. You can’t expect to stack a single type of DPSer to success. Some fights favor melee, and some fights favor ranged. There are fights you can’t do without a healthy mix of both.

Buffs and debuffs are another important point. Anything that causes the boss to die faster, or do less damage, or gives your group more resources to do so, is something that will make up for inevitable mistakes.

In a 25-man, this doesn’t matter much. Because of the number of people involved, crucial buffs and debuffs come naturally. It’s hard to set up a PUG 25man raid that lacks Replenishment, or Bloodlust/Heroism, or basic stat buffs. In a 10-man, this changes drastically.

Blizzard has said that they balance raid encounters assuming that the group will have Replenishment. Assuming your group doesn’t completely overgear the instance, you will need someone that can provide it. Ret paladins, survival hunters, destruction warlocks, frost mages and shadow priests fill that role.

While, to my knowledge, Blizzard hasn’t said that they balance encounters around Bloodlust/Heroism, it is a massive DPS boost and can give you that final push you need. Get a shaman. Considering that shamans also come with a great variety of raidwide buffs, having one in your PUG is pretty much mandatory.

Try to get as many primary stat buffs as you can. Fortitude from a priest helps tremendously in fights that have heavy raid damage (which is pretty much everything in Ulduar). Your healers and casters love their intellect from a mage. Mark of the Wild is a nice overall stat and resist buff.

From there on, fill in the other buffs that you would like to have according to the makeup of your raid, and whether you overgear the instance. For your melee, Sunder or Expose Armor, Leader of the Pack, and a 10% AP buff from a blood DK, enhancement shaman or survival hunter are some of the basic ones you might want to have. Their magic equivalents are Curse of the Elements (warlock), Earth and Moon (moonkin) or Ebon Plague (unholy DK) for increased magic damage taken, a moonkin or elemental shaman for the 5% crit, and a spell damage totem from a shaman or the spellpower buff from a demonology warlock. Mutilate rogues, elemental shamans and ret paladins give the whole raid an extra 3% crit on the relevant mob.

There are more buffs that stack with these and can build on those – pick and choose according to your raid’s makeup. If you’re melee heavy, stacking melee buffs is to your advantage, a caster heavy raid, the other way around. At any rate, try to maximize the number of buffs given to both camps while keeping a balanced raid.

Here is an example Ulduar10 raid I might want to make. Let’s say I started off with myself, dual specced disc/holy priest. Plus my prot paladin and arms warrior friends (happens a lot these days, incidentally).

I’m going to take two tanks. I already have a strong AoE tank, so I want a strong single-target tank now. My primary choice would be a warrior, jack of all trades tank plus provides Sunders and Commanding Shout for the whole raid. However, I’m already bringing a warrior who can Sunder and CS if needed, so I’ll take a feral druid instead for all around 5% crit to all melee classes.

But really, any of the two will do, and I might prefer the prot warrior anyway because both Last Stand and Shield Wall will see some use on various chain-cooldown dependent bosses.

I have myself, healing. I want a resto druid for great raid stabilizing capability plus a combat res. In a real PUG situation, I typically leave the last healing spot open till the end – if I can find an elemental shaman, the last healing spot will be covered by a paladin. If not, I will take a resto shaman. But for now, I will assume I have an elemental shaman, so I am taking a holy paladin.

“But we have two paladins!?!?!” Yes, paladins are one of the rare classes that stack well, because they can provide different blessings. So I will not hesitate to take a second one.

Our healing team is quite well-rounded now, with a holy paladin as the strong single-target healer, a resto druid as the raid stabilizer and the holy priest on the AoE. If I get a resto shaman, I go as disc and cover the single target healing slot.

Ideally, I would take two melee DPS and three ranged ones. I’ll take an elemental shaman for amazing all-around raid buffs. If I do find a destro warlock that can supply Replenishment, I will take a mage for the last ranged spot, otherwise I’ll go for a survival hunter (a ranged Misdirect is quite handy). The reasoning here is as follows: I like having warlocks around because Soulstones and summoning stones are fairly handy to speed a raid up, they have good AoE, 13% more magic damage taken for the entire raid, and high personal DPS. Mages, if fire or FFB specced, supply a 5% spell crit debuff on the target, buffing both the elemental shaman and the warlock, and come with an intellect buff.

If my warlock cannot provide Replenishment, a hunter is the next best thing for it, however, remember that the hunter will benefit from melee buffs rather than the ranged ones.

This brings us to the melee. I’ll go for a blood DK for 10% AP for all my physical DPS plus extra threat for tanks. I already have an arms warrior for the last slot. Raid complete.

Our final lineup is:

*Tanks: Prot paladin, feral druid
*Heals: Holy priest, holy paladin, resto druid
*Melee DPS: Blood DK, arms warrior
*Ranged DPS: Elemental shaman, warlock, mage

I hope the example gave some insight into the line of thinking that goes into forming a balanced PUG. This would be pretty close to the kind of lineup that I want, with a balanced set of buffs and debuffs. I feel that this group will give me quite a high margin for error.

So you have your group, you’re all summoned, and ready to go. Part II of the series will deal with how to lead the raid during the actual raiding phase for maximum success.

Yes, it’s true. I don’t know how I haven’t found this gem of a blog till today, but it made me giggle with every post.

Go visit Tamarind and Chastity over at Righteous Orbs.

So I went off and wrote a massive entry about how to make a good PUG.

And apparently Wordpress does not auto-save entries if they don’t have titles. Or something.

As such, I am heartbroken, and LF motivation to rewrite it, but I leave to you a newfound cool blog, Drama Llamas Unite! I loves me some WoW drama, and the fact that it’s written by EU players and mostly involves EU drama is just a cool bonus. Drama is more fun when it’s closer to home, I say.

/popcorn,
Ely.

After a lot of self-whoring, I’ve finally hit 450, with most of the popular patterns. I’m making a decent amount of money, but the “you have to deal with people” clause is still there. As such, problems with fees still arise.

Yesterday, for the first time since I leveled enchanting, I had someone demand their mats back after learning the fee for an enchant. This happened literally after I did the enchant in the trade window, he pressed Trade, and I mentioned my fee.

My fees change depending on the enchant: 5g for really low cost enchants like 38 AP or Icewalker, 10g for most other enchants, 15g for high end weapon enchants (Massacre, Berserking, 81 sp on staff, 63 sp on one-hand) and 40 stamina on bracers.

The enchant in question was 40 stamina on bracers, and as well as requiring 450 skill to even make, the pattern itself costs 5 Abyss Crystals. The cost of one Abyss Crystal on Grim Batol is on average 50g. This considered, I thought it was a pretty fair fee. With this fee, I’d need to sell the enchant 17 times before I can turn a profit. Apparently, even in this case, 15g was too much for my customer.

I had another customer, who was buying 63 spellpower, find the fee too much for “just clicking two buttons”. I find this argument strange used for enchanting, because every profession consists of two buttons. The difference between my enchanting and my tailoring is that I can make and sell legpatches with a 50-70g profit per patch, without having to deal with unpleasant people. However, I have to put up with peddling my enchants for the amount of money I get doing a daily.

Some days, though, I get really good sales and make 100-150g just sitting in Dalaran. Other days, it’s barely two or three customers.