Want to crush your enemies, see them driven before you and hear the lamentation of their women? Blood Sport investigates the entirety of all things arena for gladiators and challengers alike. C. Christian Moore, multiple rank 1 gladiator, examines the latest arena strategy, trends, compositions and more in WoW.com’s arena column.

Listening Music: Stevie Wonder. I listen to this stuff when I play arena — teammates think I’m ridiculous. I think they’re ridiculous for not appreciating Stevie. Although, I guess it is a bit weird to hear kill targets shouted while You Are the Sunshine of my Life … is blaring in the background.

Understanding the big picture

Gladiators look at arena battles very differently than most. This isn’t because they’re naturally gifted at solving complex riddles or puzzles — they just have enough arena experience to understand things that others might not. Well, get ready, because this is the start of your crash course in seeing what we see, how we see it.

So sit back, relax and crack open a cold one.

Momentum

You already know what momentum is, even if you think you don’t.

When everything seems to be going right and the enemy is exactly where you want them — that’s momentum in your favor. Whether you know it or not, you play differently when you have momentum in your favor: “good momentum.” You aren’t looking to protect your teammates — you’re going for a kill. You’re screaming to your teammates on Vent, “He’s running behind the pillar, follow him, you’re closer!” You’re not worried about that mage casting Frostbolt — you’re actually happy he’s still trying to do damage rather than Polymorph you. He clearly doesn’t understand the danger his team is in.

This is even more evident to you if you’re a healer. Your team is at full, your teammates have the enemy healer very low — why not help out on damage? So you sling a Mind Blast > Shadow Word: Death combo, just because you can.

These are your first steps to understanding the big picture and arena at large. They aren’t small steps; they’re giant leaps.

Using good momentum to your advantage

You’ll be able to tell when you have good momentum by a lot of different signals. The important thing to realize is that there is always a reaction for every action.

• Action An enemy (or enemies) is low on health because your team is putting out effective damage.
• Reaction A healer is spamming cast-time heals to get his team back to full.

The reaction will always be true. Always. As soon as you get an enemy low on health, don’t wait to use that Strangulate or Counterspell! Use it immediately and punish them. In the time you wait to get that blanket silence off, the enemy team might realize that you’re about to use a blanket silence and in turn silence you instead!

• Action An enemy is low on health but has not used a short-term immunity cooldown.
• Reaction He’s going to use it. Plan on his using it. Seriously. Really. Not kidding.

I see lots of arena players, even very experienced ones, throw Mortal Strikes into Ice Blocks and then sit around not knowing what to do. Why? I have no idea. I guess they underestimate the ability of the enemy player and assume that they’ll forget about their Ice Block and get an easy kill.

While it’s a good idea to get opposing classes to use immunity cooldowns, be prepared to do something else the second that Ice Block comes up. If you’re a warrior, get ready to use your Shattering Throw. If you want to impress people, start charging it up before the mage even uses Ice Block! If you have another teammate who is continuing to do damage on the mage, chances are he’s still going to use it anyway. If you can predict the time when he will use Ice Block, your Shattering Throw will hit him and he’ll be dead meat.

Priests have a particular knack for this kind of handywork with the ability to Mass Dispel short-term immunity cooldowns away. Perhaps you’ve played against a priest who removes your Hand of Protection or Ice Block instantly. While it seems like he’s a mind-reader, he’s probably just a very good guesser at when you’ll use your cooldown because he’s aware of your health bar. You can do this too; it just takes time and practice. Try it out in battlegrounds; you’ll be amazed how well battleground skill (in this regard) translates to arena skill.

If you don’t have a Shattering Throw or Mass Dispel, don’t worry about it. Just be prepared to switch to another target instantly. A warlock-druid-shaman team has no way to remove Ice Block from a mage on a rogue-mage-priest team. Instead, they’ll get the mage low, force him to Ice Block and immediately switch to the priest so the mage has to remain in Ice Block for a longer period of time.

If they switched to the rogue, the priest would be able to heal the mage and he would become active again. They’d rather play 3v2 for the full 10 seconds then return to blowing up the mage.

The same thing holds true for 5v5, except you have more viable targets. Just be prepared to switch.

• Action An enemy is low on health near an area with line of sight.
• Reaction He will often run behind it to try to avoid your incoming damage.

I’ve tutored a lot of people for gold, and I’ve noticed there is a very funny learning curve when it comes to LOS (no pun intended).

1. At a beginner skill level (just hitting 80 with a first character), enemies won’t even attempt to use LOS to avoid damage.
2. At an intermediate skill level (1,500+), players will use LOS every chance they can because it’s exceptionally effective. Enemies will continue casting nukes, only to be LOSed easily. Or, enemies will just chase them around the pillar, creating a wonderful display of tunnel vision.
3. At an expert skill level (2,000+), players stop using LOS because it’s become less effective. Enemies just stop attacking them and go on their teammate when they try to LOS, which is usually much worse because now they are far away from the battle. By this point, if a player is wounded, he will usually run toward his healer.
4. At a gladiator skill level (2,400+), players start to use LOS again, but many times only offensively. Players by this point have learned how to “trap” opponents. By having the enemy chase you around the pillar, you can separate him from his team and your team can nuke him. By this point, if a player is wounded, he will usually run toward the center.

When an enemy runs behind a pillar for cover, analyze the situation. Where is his healer? Is he on the other side of the map? If so, go ahead and block off his escape route while damaging something else. Is his healer behind the pillar with him? Don’t follow him! They’re baiting a trap for you!

I default to attacking another opponent when enemies successfully elude me. It keeps DPS time up and allows me to remain in combat. Moreover, that enemy has just removed himself from combat — he’s no help to his team. Think of it as a power play! A 5v4 in hockey is pretty good; it’s just as awesome in arena! Better yet a 3v2, or a 2v1!

Mario, we know and love you best as our favorite plumber — but don’t think we haven’t figured out that you’re sneaking around out there as a druid, too. So what would happen if you tucked the beloved characters of Mario into the World of Warcraft? The result is David Stonecipher’s “WoW Meets the Mushroom Kingdom” art series. Stonecipher’s drawn up his own vision of how the Mario universe’s most famous characters would look inside Azeroth.

Mario as a druid? Bowser as a warrior? Try all 10 classes on for size. “I did something a little different with these pieces this time,” Stonecipher wrote us. “I’ve created a video that shows each artwork be created from blank canvas to finished completion. This allows people to get a look at how the art is created in various stages.”

See more of Stonecipher’s video game character mashups at GameArtOnline.com, or click past the break to see the other five WoW classes in Part 2 of the WoW/Mushroom Kingdom series.

You can only enter Camouflage while out of combat. It lasts a minute and has a 1-minute cooldown. When you’re standing still, it is stealth. When you’re moving, it’s sweet-looking awesomeness. You can target someone moving in Camouflage, but you cannot cast any spell at him. Camouflage makes you immune to … just about everything. You can’t be tracked, your nameplate doesn’t show up, you aren’t affected by AoE, fears, mass dispels. If you attack, you leave Camouflage. If you take damage — say, from a DoT ticking — you leave Camouflage. Everything else you’re are safe from, as long as you aren’t fighting.

The video gives a pretty good preview both of how Camouflage looks, and how the mechanics of it work. Enjoy!

[Update: Question: would a rogue be willing to give up Stealth -- and all its associated combos and benefits -- for Camouflage? If they answer is yes, then I'll agree that this is OP, otherwise nerf the rogue first.]

Scattered Shots is dedicated to helping you learn everything it takes to be a hunter. See the Scattered Shots Resource Guide for a full listing of vital and entertaining hunter guides, including how to improve your heroic DPS, understand the impact of skill vs. gear, and getting started with Beast Mastery 101 and Marksman 101.

When you play WoW on a beta server, you accept that there’s going to be a lot of bugs. There’s the stacking modifier that doesn’t actually stop stacking, and you’re left with retribution and protection paladins swinging for 5-digits with every attack. I’ll admit that I felt a bit guilty when I one-shot someone with a thirty-thousand damage Avenger’s Shield. There’s also the programmer who accidentally misplaced the decimal in another spell, letting Crusader Aura grant us 600% mounted movement speed. Even with some of these glaring issues present, it’s our job to ignore the urge to exploit and to continue working on testing balance and content. Well, it’s our job to only gank a few people at the teleport NPCs and to then get moving to test balancing. Well, maybe more than a few. Well, maybe all of them.

Anyway, Blizzard unveiled its most comprehensive patch to the beta last week. It contained a ton of changes to paladins, and specifically there were a lot of holy paladin talent changes. While some of these edits are positive, like the new Denounce and Exorcism changes which FINALLY give us a spammable ranged attack, others are fairly grim. I’m talking about the complete removal of Illumination and the ruination of Divine Plea. They’re both toast.

Illumination is just gone

It looks like T.S. Eliot was right; it ends with a whimper. The latest beta patch removed Illumination from the game completely, without any fanfare. The mana regeneration talent that’s carried us from the very beginning, the talent that shaped our gearing choices for years, the talent which single-handedly allowed paladins to heal at all before Wrath, and it’s gone. Critical strike chance was already floating towards the bottom of our preferred stats due to the massive amount of crit from talents for many of our healing spells. I don’t expect for any holy paladin to choose crit gear now.

Maybe the developers didn’t want there to be a dual-purpose stat, providing both throughput and regeneration. That could make sense, except they actually buffed Improved Water Shield for restoration shamans to continue doing just that. Priests get Evangelism and Archangel to help their blue bar stay full when they cast Smite, which is almost a direct mirror to Exorcism now. Illumination was replaced by talents that will have us casting Exorcism for bonus DPS, but will end up taxing our mana pool even more without any mana-return mechanic.

While nearly every sign points to Illumination being removed in the latest build of the Cataclysm beta, a fellow paladin blogger, Kurn, has found some evidence that it may still be around. While talents often stick around as “ghosts” when players have put points into them and then the talents disappear in a later build, it’s also plausible that Illumination could be the missing 3rd mastery bonus for the holy tree. The only way we’ll know for sure is if Blizzard clearly specifies what their intentions for Illumination are in the long-term.

Divine Plea gets wrecked

Holy paladins don’t really need Illumination, do they? Illumination was only a crutch, a relic of the past. We’re Wrath paladins, and we’re more sophisticated than that. Our healing ancestors may have thought that Soul of the Dead was the best thing since sliced bread, but not us. We’ve got the answer to every mana problem that comes our way. We’ve got Divine Plea. Right? Nope.

Let’s look at what happened to Divine Plea. Start by doubling the cooldown, effectively halving the availability and flexibility of Divine Plea. That’s a pretty significant blow to Divine Plea, and a 50-percent cut would usually be enough to kill a spell. Blizzard wasn’t done yet, though. On top of that, they nerfed the mana returned by 60-percent. That’s right, using Divine Plea on cooldown now yields a meager 20-percent of what it would today. I can’t even get my head around that. I’m trying to imagine needing to push Divine Plea five times for every time I push it today, and yet not even being able to.

Divine Plea also still has the ancient healing-reduction effect as well, which needs to go immediately. Let’s not make a bad spell worse by penalizing us when we use it. Innervate restores more mana-per-minute than Divine Plea, and is usable on other players. Mana Tide Totem restores about the same mana-per-minute as Divine Plea, except that it restores it for five different people. Divine Plea went from the mana regeneration ability that everyone wishes they had, to the absolute worst mana tool in the game.

Hope is not lost

Blizzard can still turn this around. Imagine that Divine Plea’s healing-reduction effect was removed, and so it was just a 15-second buff that restored mana, like Innervate. There could be a holy talent that added the old Divine Illumination effect to Divine Plea, cutting the cost of our spells while under its effects. When we need mana the most, we get an extra bit of relief. That’s synergy, and that’s what Divine Plea needs right now. We could time our Divine Plea windows to recast Beacon of Light, allowing good holy paladins to distinguish themselves by properly timing their abilities. Plus, considering that both Illumination and Divine Illumination were removed in Cataclysm, the name is newly available.

For our mana regeneration as a whole, we’re going to be leaning on spirit and Seal of Insight to help us maintain our healing output. Ghostcrawler, Lead Systems Designer, confirmed that Seal of Insight is intended to help holy paladins with their mana issues. The fact that SoI is our strongest mana return just further cements the idea of our place as melee healers. Instead of complaining about our weaknesses, we have to focus on our strengths. With our new variety of instant heals in Cataclysm, we should have plenty of time to get a few melee swings in to restore mana. It seems like every expansion requires holy paladins to forget everything they ever knew about healing. Luckily for us, we’re quick learners.

In the beginning there were priests. Then Blizzard said “Let there be other classes!” Thing have been a lot more complicated ever since. Fortunately, there is Spiritual Guidance, WoW.com’s bi-weekly guide for priests. On Sundays you can enjoy discussion on discipline, holy, and healing in the company of Dawn Moore. We don’t have cookies here, but only because we call them biscuits, and serve them with tea, sandwiches, and scones. Did you want one lump, or two?

A couple of months ago I found myself talking to a non-priest about the gems I had slotted on my character. He was of the understanding that disc priests wanted nothing but crit, and thought it was strange that I had gemmed straight spellpower on all my gear. Figuring he was behind on the times, I happily explained to him that I was using the standard gem set up for shield spamming disc priests, which works around the premise that if the majority of what we do is cast shields, then we should stack as much spellpower as possible in order to make our most used spell (Power Word: Shield) absorb more. This is the standard practice advised to shield spammers throughout the priest community, and I’ve advised it here on Spiritual Guidance before as well.

The non-priest still didn’t understand though. He kept insisting “but crit …” which inclined me to gently stroke back his hair and say “there there, poor little confused non-priest, it’s all right.” I allowed him his dignity though, and instead went on with my explanation. I told him that alternative stats like crit and haste didn’t do much for shield spamming since Power Word: Shield can’t crit, and Borrowed Time removes the necessity for haste since the talent carries us down to the 1 second GCD soft cap whenever we cast Power Word: Shield. The non-priest still didn’t understand, so I explained to him that a disc priest’s primary interest in crit was Divine Aegis, a talent which applies a second shield whenever one of your spells crits. “But shields don’t crit,” I reiterated. “The heal from the Glyph of Power Word: Shield can, but that would only add say … 500 extra absorption from Divine Aegis. The spellpower is still better.”

As I typed out those last words, they boomeranged back and hit me square in the face. Startled, I peeled the sans serif off my nose and and reexamined the limp letters in my hands. Suddenly I wondered, “is that really true?”

The question

After I pulled the last of the ink from my eyebrows, I quickly set to work at trying to figure out the math for my question. My stream of thinking went like this: The Glyph of Power Word: Shield causes each Power Word: Shield you cast to heal your target for 20 percent of the amount of the shield. If we say the the average absorb amount for Power Word: Shield is 10,000, then the glyph will heal our target for around 2,000 health. If the heal effect crits, then we’ll heal our target for 150 percent of your heal, which is 3,000 health. But that critical heal from the glyph will also apply a Divine Aegis. The Divine Aegis will absorb damage equal to 30 percent of the critical heal, even if it overheals. So, if the crit heal from the glyph is 3,000, that means the Divine Aegis would absorb around. 900 points of damage.

I sat back and looked at my numbers. The numbers were inflated but still, I had never really considered just how much extra absorption Divine Aegis could do through Power Word: Shield. I never questioned the validity of spellpower stacking before. After all, I had come to the bubble spam scene late, pursuing a career in tank healing well into early Icecrown Citadel. When I did submit to the good of the raid, I just accepted the methods and shrugged off any benefit from crit as negligible. But now I started to wonder if crit and Divine Aegis had been accounted for in shield spammer throughput. How beneficial might it be to increase my Divine Aegis output as a shield spammer?

My thoughts wandered to the extra spellpower I had on my gear from gems and wondered what they did for me. I had 17 Runed Cardinal Rubies equipped, adding up to almost 400 spellpower. If I swapped those out for spellpower and crit gems, I could get an extra 3.7 percent chance to crit in exchange for about 200 spellpower. If I wanted to drop the spellpower completely and go with straight crit gems, I would be giving up that 400 spellpower for an extra 7.4 percent.

I immediately recoiled at the amount of spellpower I would have to drop to gain a sizable amount of crit. Plus, the gains seemed too small to make a big difference. What could 3 percent really do? Plus, I was still trading off spellpower for a chance to apply extra absorption, not a guarantee. The extra spellpower, on the other hand, would affect every shield I cast. Things seemed doubtful for crit, but I was determined to give it a fair shot.

I jotted down more scenarios and considered trading out my haste gear for crit gear, since it didn’t require losing any spellpower. I wondered about diminishing returns, raid buffs, and crit from intellect. The more I thought, the more the variables started to pile up around me and it wasn’t long before I realized I should get some more qualified help. So, I gathered up my notes and went off to see Zusterke.

The wizard

If you don’t know who Zusterke is, no worries. I’ve mentioned him on Spiritual Guidance before only in passing. Zusterke is a theorycrafter in the priest community, most commonly found working his math magic at PlusHeal.com or even occasionally here at WoW.com, in the comments of Spiritual Guidance. He’s also got his own little site, Zusterke’s Corner, where you can find lots of useful calculators for priests. He has even been a guest blogger on the legendary World of Snarkcraft, a since retired priest blog run by by Joveta and Serianna, the queens of priest blogging in early Wrath of the Lich King. (This is where I first learned of him.) Zusterke also happens to be one of my better friends in the WoW community, and I frequently bounce terrible article ideas off him before going further with them. So technically, you guys already owe him for sparing you a lot of rambling from me. He couldn’t spare you this one, however.

Anyway, on a late July morning, I suggested the idea to Zusterke that crit could be better than spellpower, and asked him for his opinion. Immediately he seemed quite doubtful, and moments later provided me with some preliminary math.

Zusterke: Well … I made a raw throughput comparison. Much like the spirit and int technique I make the formula and derive for both sp and crit. Then compare both.

HPS = (Base + coeff * SP) * (1+Bonus) * (1 + 20% * (1+ crit/4591 * 95%))
d(SP) = coeff * (1+Bonus) * (1 + 20% * (1+ crit/4591 * 95%))
d(Crit) = (Base + coeff * SP) * (1+Bonus) * 20% * 95% * 1/4591

Then we check d(Crit) > d(SP) to know when crit rating is more valuable. (Not being entirely fair since we compare 1 crit to 1 SP and you can get more SP per point of crit) It works out to be: SP > 27146 + crit rating. Which means your SP should be over 27K before crit rating becomes stronger. But I might want to double check this.

Immediately the question flat-lined. My non-priest friend’s idea wasn’t going to hold up. I watch poor crit scurry off to a corner and whimper like an abused Shadowfiend; my heart swelled sympathetically for it.

For whatever reason, I got it in my head to try advocating for crit from another angle and wondered if there was some sort of compromise I could make on its behalf. I suggested to Zusterke that the rigidness of disc gearing and gemming was a cause for concern to a disc priest who also wanted to tank heal. What would happen if we started to apply the 15 second Weakened Soul debuff to the picture? Zusterke revealed his calculations were strictly for bubble-spamming.

A week after this conversation, Zusterke contacted me again.

Zusterke: I’ve been thinking about your crit theory a bit. I thought I’d try something… Investigate whether crit or SP would deliver the biggest contribution to Divine Aegis.
Dawn: What’s that?
Zusterke: It seems this can depend on the spell, but things are looking a bit brighter for crit. Of course, this is restricted purely to Divine Aegis and not the whole throughput of the spell.
Dawn: What your process?
Zusterke: Well, I worked out a big nasty formula. But it can be brought down to this:

SP = factor * critrating – Base/Coeff

Factor is the difference in stat cost between spellpower and crit rating. (For the stat cost I decided to base myself on WowWiki.)That would be 1.1667. Anyways, this equation shows the balance between both stats in terms of throughput. It is 6/7 in terms of cost. However I need to inverse that (7/6) because for one point of crit rating I can get 7/6 spellpower.

Dawn: What spells have you looked at?
Zusterke: I don’t have to see many spells. Check this:
Imagine we about 40% crit on a target, based on talents, buffs, gear etc… This is the equivalent of 1836.4 crit rating. Our formula becomes:

SP = 2142.5 – Base/Coeff.

As such, for any reasonable amount of SP, crit is likely still to be the most valuable stat. The base heal and coefficient will combine to a negative number, in benefit for crit. So… Even if the base heal would be 0, any amount of SP above 2142 would imply crit is better than SP.

So, when Divine Aegis was isolated, crit won out as a stat. I stared stupidly at Zusterke’s formulas. He had told me many times that people often misinterpreted his theorycrafting by coming to incorrect conclusions, then trying to use those conclusions to support their own theories. This was the first time I realized for myself, just how easy it was to misunderstand this stuff. (To help me understand, Zusterke later gave me a tour through his daunting spreadsheet, and let me play with some of the crit values to see how the numbers worked with each other. We even worked in a variable for overhealing, which gave further credit to crit in this isolation experiment.) Zusterke’s math had been conducted out of pure curiosity, and in honesty, had no practical value. It sure did look impressive though.

The conclusion

So ultimately my non-priest friend was wrong. The theory I proposed on his behalf didn’t hold up, and the spellpower stacking that the community and myself, however blindly, have advocated was the correct choice. I felt satiated with the understanding that I’ve explored different routes and come out back where I started.

That said, between my talking with Zusterke and my own simplified math, I realized something else. I realized that the trade off for taking that 3 percent crit over 200 spellpower is pretty minor. 2-3 percent, meaning over 100 Power Word: Shield casts, you lose a little from each shield, equaling to about 2 or 3 shields. A min-maxer will of course recoil at the thought of losing any throughput, but I think that to the average disc priest the loss of 2-3 shields for the ability to gem more balanced is a fair trade off. An average disc priest, to me, is one who isn’t stuck in a rigid raid role, and may switch between raid and tank heals, or at the very least, cross heal more frequently than I do in my little progression guild assembly line raids. I really like to advocate min-maxing as a way of getting the most out of what you do, but min-maxing must be considered on a fight per fight basis. You can’t necessarily min-max for an entire dungeon. Thus, if you do switch roles a lot, a balance of stats is going to be a big advantage for you as a priest, to remain flexible. So in that sense, my non-priest friend wasn’t wrong that crit is what disc priests want. We do want it, just so long as we do more than push Power Word: Shield.

Want to find more great tips for carrying out your priestly duties? Spiritual Guidance has you covered with all there is to know. Check out Holy 101 or Disc 101 for an introduction to healing as a priest; for the party-minded healer, check out a priest’s guide to tanks.

Comic News:

Last, but certainly not least, Kelly Aaron’s, and WoW.com’s, Byron, the Tauren Rogue, has debuted its finale.

• Fourth Wall: Mojo.
• Slash AFK: The Rogue. Also: Get in Mah Bellie.
• Tales from the Crossroads: Fanning the Flame.
• NPC: Appreciation Decimation. Also: Ego Maniac.
• Complex Actions: Rogue in Training.
• Teh Gladiators: The Whi… Wailing Caverns. (1/2 – hit next!).
• Check out the latest from Out of World. Ever so slightly, possibly, a little bit, NSFW.
• Beyond the Tree: Shield Shocked. Also: Woe to the Conquered.
• Away From Reality: Prickly.
• WoW, eh?: All Comes Tumbling Down.
• Torment of the Week: The Next Step.
• The Warcraft Hero in: No Contest.
• Dark Legacy Comics: Undercover.
• LFG #387 and #388.
• Daily Quests: One More for the Road. P.S. I will totally take care of that mount for you.
• Coffin Comics Minis: Decision 2010.
• Coffin Comics: Goblin Motorrad.
• Guilded Age has a somewhat NSFW one-year anniversary issue up!

Last week’s featured comment: Tokkar said…

Good morning everyone! Thanks for the feature, Amanda! W00t!

Hey, guess what? Disgraph T. Dwarf will be coming back soon! He got himself a new computer and has been diligently working on some new stuff (if Twitter is to be believed, that is…hehehe) – hopefully we can see HIM featured next week!

Well, it isn’t up yet, but I can barely wait until it is!

Tips: Have tips? Post them in the comments section, or send them to the tipline, with Sunday Morning Funnies in the subject line. Whether you’ve heard about a (or are starting your own) new WoW-related comic, or you’ve read about relevant news and announcements, I’m always happy to hear about it.

It’s time again for Arcane Brilliance, the weekly mage column known for its special five-alarm chili recipe. It’s a delicate blend of three different conjured beans, spiced up with Fireballs, Scorches, and slow-cooked over a smoldering Flamestrike, loaded with lamb, bacon, and the occasional roasted monkey, glazed with a dusting of Frostfire, then lit aflame with a Pyroblast. And the secret ingredient? Warlock tears.

If there’s one thing mages have been known for during the course of this fine game we all play, it’s mass murder. We have at our disposal a wide array of spells that wreak havoc over a large area, perhaps more so than any other class. When it comes to killing things in large numbers, mages are remarkably adept. It’s a role we embrace wholeheartedly.

AoE has evolved quite since the inception of the game. In vanilla WoW, AoE was a great way to get yourself killed in an instance, a method of attack that was mostly limited to solo farming and certain trash pulls. These days, with the ability tanks have to hold multiple mobs with relative ease, AoE has morphed into the go-to way to deal with multiple-mob pulls of all shapes and sizes. Crowd control has gone the way of Wand Specialization; it simply isn’t required in most situations in Wrath.

Cataclysm is bringing with it some fairly sweeping changes to the way we utilize our AoE repertoire. The developers have stated their intention to return us to a time when we actually had to worry about things like crowd control and pull-sizes, and though we’re not reverting completely, pulls on the beta certainly feel more like vanilla or Burning Crusade pulls than anything we saw in Wrath. Join me after the break and we’ll go over how our AoE spells will work in this coming era.

We’ll begin with some general changes, then move on to the arcane and frost trees. The fire tree demands its own column, really, and here at Arcane Brilliance, we always do what the fire tree demands. We’ll hit fire AoE next week.

Damage reduction

The first change was also the most sweeping. Blizzard cut the base damage of all AoE spells in the beta by 50-60% for every class, pretty much across the board. The effect is pretty jarring. Seriously, if you’re a newer player who has cut his teeth on the “go, go, go,” rapid-fire, pull–everything, gib-fests that are standard in Wrath’s random dungeon-finder, the first 5-mans in Cataclysm are going to dramatically alter your world-view pretty much from pull-one.

The mobs have more health, they hit harder, the encounters last longer, and the mass-group pulls of Wrath will absolutely get you all killed. Crowd control isn’t an absolute necessity, but it does help. You won’t see a repeat performance of BC, when the trade channel was filled with groups looking not for DPS but for CC, but you won’t see groups turning down your ability to sheep things, either. Simply burning everything down at once, every time, just isn’t the go-to option anymore.

Damage increase

That initial AoE nerf may have been a bit too drastic for the developer’s tastes, and so the most recent beta build has rectified things somewhat. The base damage for AoE spells has been increased substantially, in most cases by 33 percent. The numbers aren’t back to where they were, but our AoE spells don’t feel gimped anymore. With the increased health of mobs, simply burning everything down still isn’t really a good option, but using your AoE spells no longer feels like a penalty, which is nice.

Mastery

Another massive change affecting AoE is the implementation of Mastery bonuses. The problem lies in the 20% bonus you get for your chosen school’s spells, and the 20% bonus you don’t get for everything else. Arcane mage who wants to cast Blizzard? Good luck with that. The damage your spells do is balanced around that 20% increase, meaning that casting anything from an alternate school feels horribly throttled.

This wouldn’t be a huge problem, except that …

Arcane AoE

… arcane AoE is just awful now. Arcane’s best AoE spell has long been Blizzard, but casting it without the Mastery bonus feels like punishment. Arcane has no ranged or targetable AoE, which is a problem.

Arcane Explosion is arcane’s sole AoE spell, and while it’s a useful little spell, it is severely limited in its raid viability. It isn’t ranged, and it’s centered on the mage, meaning it can’t be cast on a target or a specific area. Arcane desperately needs a way to damage multiple targets at range, and currently that simply isn’t a real option.

Frost AoE

Blizzard is still what the frost tree ’s all about. It’s still our best and most reliable AoE spell, it still does excellent damage, it can still crit, and it still looks pretty. It’s the AoE spell every other mage will now wish he could use properly, and the spell every warlock will cry about in his room while he listens to AFI and cuts himself.

Ice Shards has adopted the functionality of Improved Blizzard, adding a 40% snare to Blizzard and making the spell an excellent mass crowd-control option. More importantly, the talent also includes a range-increasing component for Ice Lance, tying the snare utility to an almost mandatory raid talent. This means almost every frost mage will have a slowing effect for their best AoE spell, which is just splendid.

Cone of Cold is still an excellent instant short-range option, doing respectable damage to mobs in front of the mage and slowing them by 50%. It’ll still get most of its use in PvP, but it’s also a great kiting tool in any situation. The utility of this ability goes through the roof with Improved Cone of Cold, a new talent that adds a 2/4 second freeze to the spell. This adds control and additional Shatter opportunities. The talent will mostly feature in PvP builds, I suspect, but there will undoubtedly be some raiders who find room in their builds for the added utility this would provide.

Piercing Chill should probably also be mentioned. It’s a second tier frost talent that spreads Frostbolt’s chill effect to up to two nearby targets. It can be awesome for multiple-target pulls, but can sometimes become dangerous, in that it’s difficult to control which targets are affected.

Curtain of Frost is frost’s new hotness coldness. We haven’t really talked about this yet, so let me tell you how the spell works:

You train it at level 83, and it’s available to any spec. It’s targeted, and casting it will bring up a standard circular reticule, which you can then place anywhere on the ground within 20 yards of yourself. Once you place it, it conjures a white line of frost on the ground in that spot that stretches for ten yards perpendicular to the direction you’re facing. That white frost line persists for 15 seconds and does two things to any and every mob that crosses it:

• It does a rather substantial amount of damage (at level 83, I’m getting pretty frequent 6-7k crits with it)
• It applies a powerful (70% movement speed reduction) but short (4 seconds) snare

It operates on a two minute cooldown and costs a relatively meager 7% of your base mana. It’s absolutely fantastic for kiting, especially when multiple mobs are involved. Sadly, it only works on each mob once; you can’t run a mob back and forth over it multiple times. Apparently, that would just be too awesome.

At two minutes, the cooldown is probably too long for the spell to be a real game-changer in PvP, but I could see some pretty effective uses of this spell with Cold Snap. That snare is just so freaking powerful. In PvE, this gives frost mages one more kiting tool in a box already brimming with them, and provides a very effective way for them to keep mobs in other ground AoE for longer. Pull a group with Piercing Chill, strategically place a Curtain of Frost in their path, then fall back and Blizzard away. If the mobs get too close, Improved Cone of Cold is the reset button. Given enough room to work with, a skilled frost mage could keep a fairly large group occupied all by his lonesome, pretty much indefinitely.

So that’s about it for frost and arcane. Arcane needs some work, and frost is pretty solid. The real star of mage AoE, though, is the fire tree. Targeted Blast Wave with no more annoying knockback? Flame Orb? Flamestrike that’s actually useful? Come back next week for as much hyperbole as I can fit into 1,000 words.

Blizzard’s been hard at work adjusting a lot of WoW’s game systems for Cataclysm, and one of the biggest changes in the pipeline is the overhaul of the inscription profession. You may remember the Path of the Titans alternate advancement system was axed in favor of making inscription, well, better. On top of other changes and a new UI, part of this task is adding a new tier of glyphs — called prime glyphs — on top of the already-existing tiers of major and minor.

Ghostcrawler recently had this to say about the new glyph system:

Ghostcrawler

Prime glyphs aren’t going to be exciting in a “change up your rotation” style. We want primes to be unambiguous dps (etc.) increases so we figured they might as well be easy to understand rather than something so convoluted that everyone would just go to a fansite to see which 3 to pick.

The majors are more interesting, because they are either not dps increases at all, or dps increases in ways that are tricky to math out. We think players will debate and geek out more about which majors to use, and with the new glyph design, swapping them out once in awhile isn’t very painful.

Minors are basically convenience or fun.

source

Prime

• Adrenaline Rush – Increases duration by 5s
• Backstab – Crits grant 5 energy
• Eviscerate – +10% crit chance
• Hemorrhage – Hemo hits cause the target to bleed for 40% of the damage over 24s
• Killing Spree – Increases damage bonus by 10%
• Mutilate – Reduces energy cost by 5
• Revealing Strike – Increases bonus to finishers by 10%
• Rupture – Increases duration by 4s
• Shadow Dance – Increases duration by 2s
• Sinister Strike – 20% chance for an additional combo point
• Slice and Dice – Increases duration by 3s
• Vendetta – Increases duration by 20%

Major

• Ambush – Increases range by 5 yards
• Blade Flurry – Reduces the energy regen penalty by 50%
• Cloak of Shadows – 40% reduced physical damage while active
• Crippling Poison – Increases apply chance by 20%
• Deadly Throw – Increases slowing effect by 20%
• Evasion – Increases duration by 5s
• Expose Armor – Increases duration by 12s
• Fan of Knives – Increases radius by 50%
• Feint – Reduces energy cost by 20
• Garrote – Increases duration of Silence effect by 2s
• Gouge – No longer requires target be facing you
• Preparation – Also resets cooldown on Kick, Dismantle, and Smoke Bomb
• Sap – Increases NPC duration by 80s
• Sprint – Increases movement speed bonus by 30%
• Tricks of the Trade – Removes energy cost
• Vanish – Increases duration by 2s

Minor

• Blurred Speed – Sprint lets you run on water
• Distract – Range increased by 5 yards
• Pick Lock – Cast time reduced 100%
• Pick Pocket – Range increased by 5 yards
• Poisoning – You apply poisons 50% faster
• Safe Fall – Increases the distance you can fall without damage

Shaman Glyphs

Prime

• Earth Shield – Increases amount healed by 20%
• Earthliving Weapon – Increases periodic heal effect by 20%
• Feral Spirit – Gains an additional 30% of attack power
• Fire Elemental – Reduces cooldown by 5m
• Flame Shock – Increases duration by 50%
• Flametongue Weapon – Increases spell crit chance by 2%
• Lava Burst – 10% more damage
• Lava Lash – 20% more damage
• Lightning Bolt – 4% more damage
• Riptide – Increases duration by 40%
• Stormstrike – Increases bonus Nature damage by 8%
• Water Shield – Increases passive mana regen by 50%
• Windfury Weapon – Increases proc chance per swing by 2%

Major

• Chain Heal – Increases healing on secondary targets by 15%, reduces healing on main target by 10%
• Chain Lightning – Strikes 2 additional targets, deals 10% less initial damage
• Elemental Mastery – While active, take 20% less damage
• Fire Nova – Increases radius by 5 yards
• Frost Shock – Increases duration by 2s
• Ghost Wolf – Additional 10% movement speed
• Grounding Totem – Reflects instead of absorbs spells, but cooldown increased by 45s
• Healing Stream Totem – Increases Fire, Frost, Nature resistance
• Healing Wave – When healing someone else, you also receive 20% of the healing done
• Hex – Reduces cooldown by 15s
• Lightning Shield – Can no longer lose charges to attackers when at 3 or less
• Shamanistic Rage – Activating cleanses you of all Magic debuffs
• Shocking – GCD of Shock spells reduced to 1s
• Stoneclaw Totem – Grants an absorb shield equal to 4x the totem shield
• Thunder – Reduces Thunderstorm cooldown by 10s
• Totemic Recall – Refunds an additional 50% of the mana cost of recalled totems (Totemic Recall baseline refunds 25% of the cost)

Minor

• Arctic Wolf – Your Ghost Wolf form looks like an arctic wolf
• Astral Recall – Reduces cooldown by 7.5m
• Renewed Life – Reincarnation no longer needs a reagent
• Thunderstorm – Additional 2% mana gained, no knockback
• Water Breathing – No longer requires a reagent
• Water Walking – No longer requires a reagent

Special thanks to Nibble for the full list of changes and new glyphs!

Every Friday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting balance druids and those who group with them. This week, we are exploring two of the four wings in Heroic ICC. Be prepared to face some of the most challenging content the game has to offer, folks — it only gets real from here on out.

I know, I know: No one cares about ICC any more … Everything is all about Cataclysm … So why bother talking about it? That’s far from the truth, though. ICC still matters to many people. However, if you happen to be of the more pragmatic sort, then hear me out for a little bit. Most of the server-first and world-first kills may have already been claimed, but there is always loot to be had, gear that can be helpful for either soloing things now or leveling in the expansion. Beyond simple gear, heroic ICC is simply fun. People have argued that hard modes aren’t quite the same as a truly difficult raid encounter because they are the same as the standard encounters — perhaps true to a point, but heroic modes are really fun when they are done correctly. Heroic Putricide feels like a completely different encounter when done on heroic mode and is extremely fun.

Perhaps this issue is a little bit late in coming, and for that I apologize — but it’s better late than never, aye? To start with, the first order of business is to ensure that your guild is prepared to go against heroic encounters. The ICC buff can be very intoxicating to some players, and it may make you feel more prepared than you really are for these encounters. Perhaps, in some cases, you are, and perhaps in others, you are not. Not all heroic encounters are created equal; some are far more difficult than others. Since this issue will deal with the opening Lower Spire and the Blood wing, the three encounters you’d want to start with would be Marrowgar, Gunship and Blood Princes; Deathwhisper, Saurfang and Blood Queen Lana’thel would be the three more difficult encounters in these two sectors.

Lord Marrowgar

Heroic Marrowgar isn’t all that difficult of an encounter, nor is it all that different from the standard encounter. There is actually only one difference between the standard encounter and the hard-mode encounter — that being that Marrowgar will now use Bone Spike Graveyard during Bonestorm. Other than that (and increased damage and health), the encounter is exactly the same as what you’ve been doing all along.

General tactics

• The entire raid, barring hunters and obviously tanks, should group up directly behind Marrowgar, right inside of the hitbox. This will prevent Marrowgar from using Coldflame on the raid. Marrowgar will still use it on the hunters, who cannot stand inside the hitbox due to their minimum range, and the tanks.
• The raid should spread out a few seconds before Bonestorm starts in order to mitigate the initial damage. Marrowgar’s Bonestorm will then follow one of the farthest people from his current location. Having the raid spread out will assist with mitigating damage against the raid.
• Predominantly, ranged DPS will be best choice to deal with Bone Spikes during Bonestorm, due to Coldflame’s being spread during this time, which will either cut off melee players from the victims or put them on the spikes themselves.

What you can do

• Even though Starfall is a great single-target damage boost, you should try and save it for Bone Spikes whenever possible, particularly during phases when the raid is clustered behind Marrowgar. Two stars per second and splash damage will significantly assist in bringing them down.
• At times, it is best to use Wrath as opposed to Starfire when dealing with Bone Spikes, even at the cost of Eclipse. Although this does result in lower overall DPS, Starfire still has a prohibitive cast time and, particularly during Bonestorm, you will have little time to stand and nuke straight out.
• If you find yourself cut off from the raid and taking damage, which can occur during Bonestorm, it is often best to throw a couple of HoTs on yourself as you run back into range of the rest of the group. This will help keep you alive in instances where your healers often cannot.

Lady Deathwhisper

Deathwhisper is one of the hardest heroic encounters within this sector and one of the harder ones within ICC in general. The key differences between standard and heroic is merely a matter of numbers, as she doesn’t gain any new abilities. Instead of Mind Controlling a single target, Deathwhisper will choose three victims each time; more ghosts will spawn during phase 2; and three adds will spawn on the standard time frame from either the left or right side during phase 2, as well. The difficulty of this encounter comes more from the chaos that can occur during phase 2; thus, defeating the encounter is more a matter of keeping everything under control.

General tactics

• During phase 1, the raid should be split evenly on either side of Deathwhisper, with the adds being allowed to run up onto the stage. All of the melee adds should be tanked right next to Deathwhisper, with ranged players killing them off while the caster adds are taken down by the melee players and generally not tanked at all.
• During phase 2, ranged DPS will be the primary source of damage against Deathwhisper. The only melee DPS that should be attacking her should be those responsible for interrupts; all other melee need to be dealing with the additional adds that spawn.
• You only need to use a single tank on Deathwhisper during phase 2, as she is untauntable, making tank-swapping difficult. All Misdirects and Tricks of the Trade should be focused on this tank, since their threat generation is going to be diminished. If ranged DPS gets close to pulling threat, they can peel off and assist with adds to allow time for the tank to get a larger threat lead.

What you can do

• Crowd-controlling the mind-controlled characters is extremely important, and as a balance druid, you have the best method of doing so. Cyclone lasts just about as long as the effect does, and it prevents cleave or other AoE effects from hitting the players or breaking the CC. Personally, I use VuhDo and have it set up to where I can simply right click the MCed player’s name in order to cast Cyclone on them; this allows for a fast response.
• Starfall is very tricky to use at any period during phase 1, and usually, it’s best to just forgo the ability completely. Although its damage is high, since the adds take time to travel to the tanks and there are MCed players running around, it can be fairly risky to use. During phase 2, it’s easier to use; just watch for the MC timer.
• Threat on Deathwhisper should never be an issue for a balance druid, provided you have enough hunters and rogues. If you do have threat issues, your only option is to assist with adds for a while.

Gunship Battle

There is no difference between the standard and heroic version of this encounter beyond additional health for the other gunship. This is the easiest encounter in the entire instance and frankly is something of a joke in terms of difficulty. The encounter itself is fairly enjoyable as a relaxing break from the harder encounters of the instances, so really, just sit back, enjoy the ride and do everything that you would for the normal encounter.

Deathbringer Saurfang

Saurfang isn’t that difficult of an encounter in normal mode, and the heroic version doesn’t introduce anything particularly new to the encounter. Saurfang deals vastly increased damage; he has additional health; he gains Blood Power faster; and the Blood Beasts now have an aura that cripple run speed, preventing players from running from them. All in all, Saurfang would probably rank as the third in the difficulty level of the four token bosses.

General tactics

• As with the standard encounter, the ranged DPS should spread out around Saurfang to avoid splash damage and help limit Blood Power gain.
• There are five Blood Beasts spawned each time, four of which should be killed by ranged DPS and one of which should be killed by melee DPS. Of the four that ranged needs to kill, there should be at least two ranged members per beast. Hunters should also be dropping Frost Traps around Saurfang in order to slow them down as much as possible; enhancement shaman should also be using Earthbind Totems.
• The one Blood Beast that melee are killing should be chain-stunned until it is dead. It should never be allowed to attack one of the melee players and needs to die very quickly; given the number of players on it, that should not be an issue.
• Mages who get Boiling Blood should use Ice Block when available in order to mitigate the damage; for any other ranged DPS who get hit, paladins can use Blessing of Protection to remove the debuff. Also, any mage who gets hit with Mark of the Fallen Champion should switch to Ice Armor in order to mitigate as much damage as possible.

What you can do

• This may start to sound like a broken record, but saving Starfall for when Blood Beasts are about to become active can be a major asset for getting them down rapidly. In this case, you don’t absolutely have to do so; it is merely something to consider. Starfall will not be available for every Blood Beast spawn, so relying upon it isn’t a good idea.
• Typhoon is an extremely powerful and useful ability for Blood Beasts. It should be used a second after the Blood Beasts are spawned both to create additional travel time for the beasts and to initially slow them. For this, you should always be standing directly in front of Saurfang, as close to the tanks as you can, while still maintaining a safe distance from the beasts.
• During Heroism/Bloodlust, it is best to stick exclusively with Starfire when killing Blood Beasts. Wrath clipping can cause staggering issues in the damage and allow them enough time to catch you. Starfire is more than enough to deal with them.

Blood Prince Council

The Blood Princes is another fairly straightforward fight to transition to from standard to heroic, where the differences are fairly minor. The only real difference is that movement now places a stacking debuff that inflicts shadow damage every second that you move, with the damage ramping up the more that steps that you take. This is primarily of concern in terms of avoiding additional damage from Empowered Shock Vortex. Due to this, you really cannot move for prolonged periods of time, which can make getting into targeting range of each boss difficult. Still, the encounter isn’t all that difficult, as far as heroics go.

General tactics

• As per normal, everyone in the raid must remain spread out while Valanar is empowered, to avoid additional damage from Shock Vortex. This is more imperative in heroic because not only is the damage from Shock Vortex higher, but getting thrown about will cause you to get stacks and take additional damage as you move into range again.
• The ranged tank for Keleseth doesn’t have to worry too much about the movement debuff until Keleseth is empowered. This is because the debuff is shadow damage, and the orbs will reduce it significantly.
• Flame Orbs do not reduce in power via distance in heroic; they must pass over other people to disperse them. This makes positioning more important for Empowered Flame Orbs, given that the person kiting cannot run for very long due to the debuff.

What you can do

• Always remember that Starfall will not target the Dark Nuclei, and it is safe to use it at any time. In fact, it’s suggested that you do use it, as Starfall can target Kinetic Bombs and hit them up into the air, away from the ground.
• Barkskin is an awesome ability that you should use liberally during this encounter. Use it for extended periods of movement, to mitigate Flame Orbs, to mitigate Shock Vortex — pretty much any time you can use it to reduce your damage taken, you should.
• If you have to move a long distance, combine Barkskin with Cat Dash to get there faster and reduce the damage that you take as much as possible.
• Remember to watch Force of Nature carefully. Ideally, you should use it only on Keleseth or Taldaram and right after a target swap, but they still may choose to wander off and attack one of the other targets upon being spawned. Using the pet attack command to force them onto your current target.
• Should you ever need to, you can shift out of the debuff from Glittering Sparks (or our priests are just that awesome and I only think you can). Normally, there isn’t much of a need to, given that the damage is minimal, but if you do find yourself in a position where you need to move quickly, this tactic can help you out.

Blood Queen Lana’thel

Out of all the encounters, this is perhaps the least changed — barring Gunship. The only difference between BQL on normal and heroic is that players will take additional aura damage the more vampires that there are — essentially, to counteract the self-healing powers that said vampires gain. Beyond there, nothing else really changes. Unfortunately for balance druids in this encounter, I’ve tended to notice that we usually aren’t that highly ranked on the bite priority of most guilds. Your guild could be different, but it’s a trend I’ve noticed. All in all, it’s a rather simplistic encounter in terms of mechanics and has pretty limited movement.

General tactics

• It should go without saying, but players need to be spread out in order to avoid taking splash damage. This is especially true during the air phase, when the damage of Bloodbolt Whirl can be pretty devastating.
• Due to the limited time available for spreading out during the air phase, it’s usually a good idea to have predetermined locations where players will stand during this time. While this can take a long bit of set-up time, after several weeks, it becomes second nature, with people taking the same position every week.

What you can do

• To be honest, there are no real DPS tricks for this encounter, as for the most part, it is purely a stand-still DPS race. The best advice is to simply perfect your rotation as best you can.
• Always use Barkskin during the air phase to reduce your incoming damage as much as possible. Taking less damage is always a good thing — always.

In many cases, heroic modes aren’t all that different DPS-wise in comparison to normal encounters. Any tips or tricks that you have picked up for a standard encounter will usually apply to the heroic mode as well. There are a few cases in which there are slight differences due to changes in certain mechanics, but overall, this is going to be true for just about every encounter out there. Anyway, hope you learned something this week; tune in next week when we go into Plague and Frost!

Drama Mamas Lisa Poisso and Robin Torres are experienced gamers and real-life mamas — and just as we don’t want our precious babies to be the ones kicking and wailing on the floor of the checkout lane next to the candy, neither do we want you to become known as That Guy on your realm.

Friends are going to fight or at least disagree every once in a while. This really should be a private issue and not one that should spill over into a shared guild … in a perfect world. What actually happens is drama — awkward drama that affects the innocent bystanders and fellow guildies. At least that’s what happened in this week’s email.

Dear Drama Mamas,

I’d been playing in a guild with a couple of RL friends of mine and their friends/relatives. It was a nice, relaxed, casual environment to do some dungeons and 10-mans, and I very much enjoyed it. However, there had always been some sort of drama happening — the worst of which was last month when, just before a raid, I whispered one of those RL friends of mine with some advice for the fights we were about to do. He was playing a new 80 and he hadn’t done a raid in that role before. He immediately logs off, then logs back on a second later and says in raid chat, “DOES ANYONE HAVE A PROBLEM WITH ME!!! OTHER THAN [my name]!!!” We managed to get it sorted out, with appropriate apologies made from both sides, and continued with the raid.

Things seemed OK again until yesterday, when I asked this same guildie a question over guild chat. He and his wife had been doing some renovations around their house, so I asked, “How are the renovations going?” He immediately /gquit on the character he was on and then removed me as a RealID friend. I whispered him to see why he’s so angry at me, and he said that I was taunting him, since I knew he hadn’t started the renovations yet today. We got into an argument. As he put it: “You have a gift for pissing me off.” Figuring that these kinds of outbursts/issues would keep happening as long as I am in the guild with him, and not wanting to put his wife in a position where she has to choose between her husband and her guild, I decided it would be best if I just removed myself from the guild, and proceeded to do so on all of my characters.

I’m sure I could have handled it better both times, though. Did I make the right decision in taking my characters out of the guild? I still feel like I would be uncomfortable in the guild after that, being afraid to say anything to that particular guild member out of fear of him becoming extremely offended/angry. On the other hand, I really liked playing with that guild and I feel like I am sort of letting everyone else down by bailing out. I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place, Mamas. What should I do?

– Lonely And Afraid

Drama Mama Robin: Lonely, I think you should return to the guild and continue to have fun with everyone else, but — and this is the important part — don’t ever talk to AngryGuy in game again. I am not at all saying that you should never speak to him outside of the game, nor am I saying AngryGuy is a bad guy. But right or wrong, text communication between the two of you seems to only result in miscommunication. That doesn’t mean you can’t get along in a group atmosphere. Just don’t send him tells, don’t offer him advice, don’t talk to him directly via any in-game method. And cool it in the physical world for a while, too. Be polite, but don’t initiate any communication with him until he indicates he’s ready to talk — hopefully in person.

I like to try to think about why someone is behaving a certain way, rather than assume someone like AngryGuy just hates me and wants nothing to do with me ever again. So I’m going to pretend to put myself in your situation and ask myself a few questions about AngryGuy:

• Is he going through a lot of stress right now and just not handling it very well? I don’t always handle stress very well either.
• He could be feeling very insecure. If he didn’t feel quite ready for the raid, my advice may have made him feel less confident. And if he is feeling bad about the renovations being put off, he may find the subject too touchy to handle.
• He may think I am a very judgmental person. I don’t judge him, but he may think that my advice is actually criticism and my innocent question is actually calling him a slacker. Am I doing something to come off as judgmental?
• Am I wording some of my messages to him poorly? Without proper vocal inflections and tone, some of my sentences may not “sound” as friendly as I intend them.
• Does he just not like me, in game or out?

I don’t know the whole situation. It could be a combination of the above or something completely different. Regardless, giving the friendship a rest — particularly in game — is the best thing for you to do right now. But that doesn’t mean you need to ostracize yourself from the rest of the guild. And let AngryGuy choose how to reboot the friendship, if at all. Even if you become best buds eventually, however, I still wouldn’t use in-game communication to chat with him ever again.

Drama Mama Lisa: Since you specifically asked, Lonely and Afraid, I’m going to give it to you straight up: Yes, I think removing yourself from the guild — especially right then and there, when emotions were at their peak — was the wrong thing to do. Quitting a guild (especially “publicly,” when other guild members were online and watching in shock and horror) is less like discreetly slipping out of the room than it is leaping to your feet, storming out and slamming the door so hard it rattles all the pictures on the walls. Whatever disagreement you were having with your friend got turned into a drama-drenched mess for all to see.

If you haven’t already burned the bridges, yes, get yourself retagged and get back into guild chat and guild life. Your issue is not with the guild; it’s with your friend. He’s obviously stressed to the teeth — in game about raid readiness, and out of game about his home renovations. As Robin advises, simply lay off the communications. Don’t be so gun shy that you’re afraid to chime in with “Hi, X!” or “Grats!” in guild chat when it’s appropriate, but you should probably leave the raid strats and personal questions alone for a while. You may have to moderate your chat with his wife, as well; you don’t want to lose your connection with her, but you also don’t want to tick off your friend by appearing to ignore him while buttering her up.

Finally, you might recognize a few aspects of your situation in some of our past Drama Mamas advice. Take a look at these posts about gaming with friends to see if any of these situations feel dismayingly familiar:

• When friends who are chill in real life turn out to be drama queens in game
• Going too far: Overfamiliarity and taking spats online
• A time and a season: When it’s time to go separate ways
• Why the best-laid game plans don’t always last
• When real-life friends have different in-game goals