Pay Yer Dues

I recently discovered that I’m spending WAY more gold than I’m making, between consumables and constant respeccing. The only solution is to make more gold. However, I despise farming, grinding, and questing. So I figure I’ll just make money by playing the Auction House.

This post isn’t about making money, it’s about paying dues. But it’ll take a minute to get there. Bear with me.

Back in BC I got the Auctioneer addon and played the AH. It was great. I’d spend about five minutes when I logged on and five minutes before logging off doing my AH stuff, and kept careful records of everything I spent and made. I averaged about 150g per day, which kept me in consumables and kept the money growing. Eventually I quit doing it ’cause I had enough gold, and at that point why even waste the 10 minutes.

So recently I reinstalled Auctioneer and have been collecting AH data in preparation for entering the market in a week or so. In the meantime, I figured I read up a bit on the Greedy Goblin blog. This guy essentially plays the game primarily to make money on the AH, and he does it very very well. I was looking for tips, and found many articles fascinating reads. Especially the ones that had nothing to do with making money.

The Goblin Philosophy

It’s fascinating to see Greedy Goblin apply the same money-making business principles to raiding. And interestingly while I agree with all the business philosophies, I disagree completely when applied to raids. Here are some examples:

• Topping the damage meters is bad. If you’re on top of the damage meters, that means you are putting in more work (though time or gear or gems or consumables) than the other dpsers, yet you are getting the identical rewards (in terms of chance to get loot). Why would you pay more for the same reward?
• Getting the best gem/enchant is bad. He argues, and I agree, that the very best gear isn’t needed, if there is enough skill. The gear upgrades buy you a safety margin for if things go wrong. He then calculates the cost of the safety margin (in repair costs) vs. the cost of the gem/enchant/consumable/upgrade. He argues that generally the blue gem isn’t worth the huge cost jump over the green gem. You’re better off wiping a few times. (Personally I think his calculations are wrong here — he doesn’t count enough wipes, nor does he account for the time (15min often) that each wipe costs, in terms of gold).
• You should aim for dps that is good enough - 2k dps on patch 10-man is all you need. After all, if all dpsers do 2k dps, he will go down. So by staying at 2k dps with equal chance at the loot, you are getting the best investment/reward ratio.

The WHU Philosophy: Pay Yer Dues

I think the business way of looking at gear and raids is interesting, but inherently flawed. The WHU philosophy is to pay yer dues. That means you do everything you can to perform your role as best as possible. If you can increase your damage by 1dps, then you do what it takes to increase your damage by 1dps. But let’s take a look at exactly why for a moment.

We go to raids because it’s fun. Otherwise we wouldn’t pay for our WoW subscription. But let’s be honest here, it’s not raids themselves that are fun — it’s beating raids. Killing bosses. Making progress. Maybe you like it for the challenge, and maybe you like it for the loot. Probably you like both.

Once you’ve established your goal is to kill bosses, it’s a short path to maximizing your ability to kill the bosses. To some extent, you may have control over who you bring with you to the raid. But to a greater extent, you’re probably raiding with who you’re raiding with – you’re stuck with them. You can try to educate them, you can try to help them, you can try to beat the stupid out of them. But at the end of the day, the only thing you have complete control over is you.

You can read the strats and learn the fights. You can optimize your talent build. You can learn and practice your shot cycle until it’s intuitive. You can get the best gear, the best enchant, the best ammo, the best food, the best gems and do every damned thing possible to make the raid a success.

Because when it comes down to it, it doesn’t really matter if you’re carrying lazy people. You want to get the boss kill, so you do what’s necessary to get the boss kill. Even if that means hauling more than your share. Even if that means spending more money on gear than the cost of the wipes.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m bitter about dpsers that are 2-3k dps below me on the meters. But it’s not going to make me slack off. Because if I don’t do everything I can to optimize my dps and help the team get the boss kill, then I’d be one of them.

I don’t approve of the notion of “good enough.” If you’re carrying your weight, good enough, and someone else isn’t carrying theirs — then you don’t get the kill either when you wipe. And keep in mind you aren’t just fighting the boss you’re on — you continually improving for the boss that is going to be harder yet.

Just for clarity, I love Greedy Goblin’s site and I find these kinds of posts interesting and thought-provoking. But the desire of a dpser to top the damage meter isn’t just flexing nuts.

For many it’s about maintaining their spot in the raid – if you have 35 ppl wanting to raid, the raid leaders are going to choose the 25 best, even if the other 10 are technically good enough (and I get emails from people in these situations pretty regularly.) It’s about compensating for mistakes (that we all make) and the occasional death that puts that dps burden on other shoulders, it’s about always prepping for a harder boss, and it’s about pride in doing your job as best you can.