Scheduling Woes

Part of the frustration I experience as an officer for my guild is scheduling acitivies for the guild. We've recently stepped up the amount of scheduled runs in an effort to have content for as much of the guild as possible. We have a very diverse mix of levels and it seems that regardless of where we direct our energy, someone is 'left out'. So I've scheduled one lower level instance and an engame instance every night of the week. Of course I can't have them at the same time as I'm sure we wouldn't be able to fill them all. So we have one run at 8:00 PM and one at 10:00 PM. Of course this works for some and not for others. The 8:00 run is a bit early for us MST and earlier folk while the 10:00 run can get late for the EST folk (though luckily our GM is a night owl, while in EST, he habitually stays up later than I).

Other things we will be incorporating are Raids, PvP, and Fellowship.

We had an awesome all guild game of Hide and Go Seek in Stormwind last night. No prizes, just good fun. Was nice to do something different. Ideally we'll have something like this planned at least once a month.

We have a couple of people in the guild who really enjoy PvP, so I'm going to attempt to schedule an Alterac Valley night, though I'm not sure how successful that will be. I've heard that entereing AV with a group takes a good chuch of time, so we'll see. I'm tenatively thinking of Saturday/Sunday nights that don't have raids associated with them. Perhaps AV one night and AB/WSG the other.

A fellow officer is taking care of scheduling and leading the raids. I believe we'll be looking at one per week on a Friday-Sunday night. As we don't have enough 60's in guild anymore to fill a 20 man, we will be relying on our alliance with the Knights of Valor to fill our runs.

So yeah, at lot to keep track of...

L2Tank

Okay, so we ran Stockades a couple nights ago and I ended up bringing Daroul, my level 24 (at the time) Warrior. I don't think I've played him in several months and I've never used him to tank in a group. It was certainly a learning experience. I don't think I did bad job either. I was able to keep mobs on me 90% of the time and the only deaths we had came from unmanagable adds. We had one wipe from an accidental Psychic Scream, but we recovered well. Anoth thing that added to the general stress of the run was most people in the party were playing classes they were unfamiliar with in groups. A couple of mages who weren't sheeping adds (corrected halfway through, CC FTW), the priest was attempting to DPS rather than focus on healing (again corrected quickly), and just general carlessness. Both Dextren and Bazil were prox aggroed by someone other than me and I quite a few times I was unable to get Aggro on mobs before the mass DPS started. Not anything that was unusual, but certainly an educational experience. More later...

Horde Ho!

So, I've been at a conference this week. Thankfully the hotel has wireless internet connection so I haven't been suffering too much. Weird part of out of town conferences is that they run from 8:00 to ~4:30. Like we're supposed to find something to do in the middle of nowhere. Luckily Warcraft kept me company. So, getting to the point of the post, Wifey and I created new Undead toons to level together. We've tried that before, but I'm always ended up leveling them without here and then the level discrepency is too high to group. However I think this will work better. All my other Horde toons are Orc or Tauren, so the starting areas will fresh/new. Anyway Wifey rolled a Priest and I'm on the Warrior. So a good combination.

I've got to say that starting over was nice. Don't get me wrong, I love my guild, but it was nice just having my Wife and I. I'd say that every other time I log on I wind up helping someone with something, which isn't a problem, but when you just want to unwind and play it gets in the way. So, while we have a guild on Dunemaul I'm not sure I'll be adding these toons to it. I think it might be nice to just have an unknown toon to play when I don't to deal with people (aside from my wife).

Necklace debate

Now, Saturday Night in LBRS Talisman of Evasion dropped and as I have Abyssal War Beads, I passed. The other rogue already had it so I figured it would go for DE. To my surprise the group leader insisted I loot it and most of the raid (yeah, 10 60's on LBRS, went quick :P) thought it was an improvment for me. I guess I really don't see that as an improvement. In fact I used to use Talisman of Evasion and replaced it with Abyssal War Beads. Here's the stats for the link lazy out there:

Abyssal War Beads
+15 Stamina
+20 AP
vs.
Talisman of Evasion
+13 Agility
+1% Dodge

Normally I prefer to Agility to AP, but in this case I see the Abyssal War Beads as clearly superior due to the Stamina bonus. As most of what I do with Sakuran is instances, I see 150 extra HP as worth more than 1% dodge by a significant margin. If I end up with Aggro, I want to make sure I survive it and I see alot more added security from 150 HP than +1% dodge, well 1.5% with the AGI. Oh, and for those of you who reference AEP, Abyssal War Beads = 25 and Talisman of Evasion = 13.

Abyssal Leather Leggins of Overexposure

Well, got some new stuff for Sakuran over the weekend. I picked up the Abyssal Leather Leggings of Striking, which are 1) very nice and 2) a little too revealing. They basically look like two leather ovals stapped to the front of the thighs and nothing else. I'm just glad that Sak is a NE female and not, say, a Dwarven male. Still, feel kinda odd running around as a half naked girly. A step up from the ugliness (in appearence, not stats) that was the Devilsaur set.

Now, the Devilsaur set is a very nice set, and has served me well. In fact, I was hesitant to replace it at all. However, I've had my Darkmantle Gloves sitting in my bag for a bit and was simply looking for some better pants. Yes, the +2% hit (15 AEP) is nice, and going to be missed. Now this is not a AEP based decision, as losing the set bonus points outweigh the gains on the indivual items. Worth noting is that my talent build includes +5% to hit already, so that 2% hit is white damage only, I'll still not miss with specials.

I don't see all +hit as the same. After the first 5% I see it's value as significantly lower, perhaps 1/3 as important as that first 5%. With that logic (faulty as it may be), the set bonus only translates to 5 AEP.

For completeness sake:
Abyssal Leather Leggings of Striking = 51 AEP
152 Armor
+15 Strength
+15 Agility
+15 Stamina
+1% Crit
vs.
Devilsaur Pants = 48 AEP
148 Armor
+12 Stamina
+46 AP
+1% Crit

and

Darkmantle Gloves = 39 AEP
108 Armor
+12 Strength
+22 Agility
+9 Stamina
vs.
Devilsaur Gauntlents = 35 AEP
103 Armor
+9 Stamina
+28 AP
+1% Crit