Mimetir

Mimetir is Chief Editor, tea maker and curmudgeon at MMO Melting Pot. She's also known for rambling at length on best practice for raid leading and dragon slaying here at WoM

Special Delivery: Roundup Of The Week’s Best WoW Leading, Healing and Guild Posts

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Now that my shiny new Saturday WoM feature has been going a couple of weeks it’s not the exciting new toy it was when I first unpacked it with you guys. You know how it works. So I’m not going to spend half a day explaining how I’m going to link you to the best leading, healing or guild posts from the blogosphere, or that it’s because that’s what I do over on my own site, MMO Melting Pot. Nope, this week I’m going to jump straight into that list.

If you’re cynical and knew I was out ‘til late last night (all right, who am I kidding – early this morning) you might say that I’m not my usual rambly self because most of Saturday’s vanished after a particularly good, tipsifying and long fireworks party. So I don’t have much time spare today. That’s if you’re cynical, ‘cos it can’t be true at all. We all know what happens when boomkins get tipsy, and we can’t have hedges catching on fire from uncontrolled lazering all the time.

So, without further ado or headache induced madness, here’s the best on topics close to your heart, straight from the WoW blogosphere this week.

  • About Vortex: The Structure of a 10-man – an excellent post by Kae at Dreambound about how her 10 man guild is set up. She goes through everything from structure, to policies, to roster, loot systems and more, explaining the thought behind each and how they work out in practice. If you’re starting a 10 man guild or in one that needs a shake-up I couldn’t recommend Kae’s post more as the place to start getting some ideas.
  • I have three posts titled “what’s a casual raiding guild?” – After some abortive attempts Klepsacovic has posted some of his thoughts on defining casual guilds, over at Troll Racials Are Overpowered. He looks at what casual guilds need, just like any other guild, and why they can fail. The post’s short but sweet and it might give you pause for thought to consider how you view casual guilds.
  • Conducting Guild Meetings – Blacksen talks about why regular guild meetings are so very important to a raiding guild, and how to conduct them. He also lets us know what pitfalls to watch out for and how useful long term timescales are when planning in meetings, before going on to look at the same concepts for officer-specific meetings. His thoughts on “groupthink” relating to officers are particularly interesting.
  • Do You Know I Feel This Way? – Analogue over at Looking For More has let us into her deepest and darkest secrets about being a healer. She says early on that she’s going to make some sweeping generalizations in her post and she does, but look beyond those and it’s a thoughtful read for any healer out there. She’s looking at how she feels about healing in general, and her apprehensions going into Cataclysm – are you feeling the same as Analogue?
  • Beta Healing Counterpoint: Fun and Efficiency – last week I featured Vixsin of LifeinGroup5 talking about the new healing in Cataclysm being a good thing. Well, this week, she’s got a follow up, and she’s looking at just how needing to be more efficient healers will balance with our fun-factor. What is “being efficient” going to mean for us, and how does it apply to something as varied as healing? How does it play out in a team-based environment, when we’re all trying to show just how efficient we can be individually? Vixsin’s got thoughts on all of these things.
  • Dual Resto Specs? – Rank 4 Healing Touch is looking at the possibility of having to go dual specced resto to get the most flexibility out of the tree. He’s worried that some resto talents will underperform in some situations, but there seems to be so many to pick up. He seems to be looking for other opinions on how necessary two resto specs might be come Cataclysm, so drop by and let him know your thoughts – this might be quite a salient point come Cataclysm.
  • Why Every Healer Should Care About And Track Shields – this is just one in a series of brief posts Zelmaru’s done on tracking healing-related information, and how to do so using Grid. You can find the rest of the posts on Murloc Parliament in their own special ‘addons –> grid’ category – she’s covered a lot of angles from HoTs to Prayer of Mending. Might be something useful for you there.

So that’s it for this week. I hope you find something interesting there – certainly a good spread of topics to choose from this week.

What do you think – have any of these in particular caught your eye, or are you hoping to see more of a specific topic?

Special Delivery: Roundup Of The Best WoW Posts Of The Week

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Last week I started a mostly regular Saturday feature whereby I do My Thing for you guys here at WoM. No,that’s not putting on a light display shooting lazers from my eyes. Embarrassingly I’ve generally switched raiding mains as it is and am considering switching again (shh, don’t tell Matt), so lazers are much removed at present. But what I do do is gather the best posts from around the WoW blogosphere and deliver them straight to my readers at my website, MMO Melting Pot. And that’s what I’m doing on a Saturday: rounding up the best posts I’ve read during the week, with a focus on the posts about healing, leading or raiding so that they’re just the right cup of tea for WoM readers.

Things have been a little quieter in the blogosphere this week, particularly on the healer-chatter side of things. Y’see, the end of October hails, well, November. Many bloggers are focusing on preparing themselves – or their guilds – for Cataclysm. Some are blogging less because they’re focusing on the now traditional (inter)National Month of Novel Writing (NaNoWriMo). Some, well… what can I say. It’s Halloween. We’ll just have to send search parties out if they don’t come back after midnight tomorrow.

But all of that doesn’t mean there’s nothing going on in the blogosphere at all. Tumbleweed hasn’t come to town by any means. Some people may be battening down the hatches against the coming storm but a lot of them are still writing. Heck, some of them are even creating a whole new website. What do I mean? Let’s take a look at that – and more – as it’s all fairly exciting.

  • Brangwen: new site for MMO leaders – great news everyone! Brangwen of Non-Elitist Raiding Diary revealed that she and several others from all corners of the blogosphere have started up MMO Leader: a home on the internet for MMO leaders. If you’re in any kind of leadership role – officer, guild master, raid leader, class leader, you’re welcome to go on over there and join in their forums as much as you want to. They also have articles for your leadery-perusal. And yes, you can give writing your own articles for the front page a go, too. It’s fantastic that us leaders finally have a place to rally in.
  • Seeing the Forest for the Trees: Beta Healing – Vixsin at Life in Group 5 says that healing is going to change in Cataclysm: it’s not going to be anything like what we’re used to. She says we’re going to have to adapt, and gives 7 points of what’s going to change for us. That sounds like a taster, mind – from what she says, everything’s changing. But there is hope. Vix rounds off the post with an excellent call to healer-arms (granted that’s more likely to be sparkles of light) and reminds us that we can do this – it’s why we’re healers.
  • Beruthiel: How To Prepare Your Guild For Cataclysm – any expansion’s a shaky time for a guild, and Cataclysm even more so with its guild talents. So Beru’s survival guild is essential advice for any guild. Her guide is lean and gives you exactly what you need to know to get your guild rolling for Cata, from tips on what to say to members to when to do it, and how to keep morale up. If you’re a guild leader, you’ll likely get some ideas from her. if you’re a member of a sleepy guild, maybe wave it at your officers – you might inspire them to get moving!
  • A Priest’s Guide to Chakra Healing – this is for holy priests out there, fresh off the press from Derevka at Tales of a Priest. He’s going through the chakra mechanic, explaining its two different states and what you’ll be using them for. He also looks at how to change chakra states and gives helpful tips about how to track which spells you have available to you, when. A learning curve? Yes, Derevka says, but one that allows holy priesties huge flexibility.
  • Fresh Brew: Addons That Help You Inspect People, Run Guild Raffles And Set Fire To Things – our addon roundup this week might well be useful to you. There are a couple of guild related ones in it, such as one that allows guild officers to use the new in game flares more easily and another that’ll let you set up guild raffles for fun and giggles.

That be it for this week. I hope this lot keeps you entertained over your morning coffee. Or your evening meal, or brunch, wherever you happen to be. ‘Til next week – have fun, and don’t let the midnight horrors bite!

What do you think – have you got more to say about any of these articles, or even another article to contribute to the list?

Owl Returns With Special Delivery For You

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Hi, I’m Mimetir, and I’m a member of the WoM crew. No really, I am. A few months ago I would rant and mutter disconsolately on a weekly basis about the importance of being a care bear or how to slay your latest internet dragon. I haven’t posted for a while. Yes, I know, bad panda, no cookie. And from what I’ve heard of boomkins’ mana at 80, we really need cookies.

But that’s not what I’m here to talk to you about today. See, I haven’t posted on WHoM for a while because I’ve been working on my own site, MMO Melting Pot. I premiered it here at WoM a few months ago and since then have been trekking through the wilderness of the WoW blogosphere to find the most interesting articles. When I find an interesting article I drag it back to my museum website and post bits of it up with a short summary, credit and a link, so you can go read it fully yourself.

Just in case that’s got you running in terror thinking I’m some kind of creepy museum curator with a speciality in dissecting innocent blog posts, let me rephrase it simply. Over on MMO Melting Pot we find the best posts and put them all in one place for you to peruse.

I miss posting on WoM. And things are getting exciting post-patch. So, I (and Matt) thought, why don’t I do a roundup of posts that’ve cropped up recently relating to healing, guild management or raiding articles, here at WoM? That’s win-win for everyone: I get to post here (read: ramble at you), you get interesting things to read and Matt gets a regular Saturday post.

Well, I say it’s win-win for everyone, but I understand holy paladins are chewing the walls in frustration. Sympathies guys. Anyway, here’s your roundup delivery with some paladin halp thrown in. Some of these are posts we’ve linked already at MMO Melting Pot, some of them are posts so far unfeatured and fresh for WoM’s roundup:

  • Guide to Dispels in 4.0.1 – Ecclesiastical Discipline guest posted for MMO Melting Pot last week with a complete list of what us healers (as well as other classes where applicable) can dispel now, as some of it changed in the patch. No more shamanistic poison removal? Noes!
  • Perhaps Healing Isn’t So Bad After All – TwilliK over at Arcane Envoy says that paladin healing’s actually not too bad. She’s recounting her recent experiences healing in Heroics and it looks like it’s felt like being thrown in at the deep-end, but also really rewarding getting it right. Makes me want to revive my own holy pally…
  • Holy Paladins in 4.0.1 – A Beginner’s Guide – are you looking at your holy paladin and cowering in fear? Aunna over at Bandage Spec has a straightforward guide to get holy paladins on their feet. There are loads of guides out there covering everything for the patch but given Holy Paladins seem to have it worst off, I figured linking this might be helpful. Her guide has information on your spells, gear, glyphs, spec, and crucially – what to expect and how to play.
  • Tell Us How Your Spec Is Doing In 4.0.1 – most weeks the editors at MMO Melting Pot throw up an editorial feature. This week, the patch has been about for a while and we want to know how you’re getting on. Healer role changed a lot and it’s great? Terrible? People are dying left right and centre? Tell us your tales!
  • Impressions On Healing So Far – Zinn over at Jinxed Thoughts has written a roundup of how he’s found healing classes work now. He starts off with a general overview of the similarities between class healing spells then goes through the healing classes with what he’s enjoyed or been disappointed by. He’s also got a separate post on quite how much he loves Chakra as a holy priest.
  • Nils and Raven say levelling needs balance, and soon – two bloggers with the same worry: that the levelling game is too easy and doesn’t teach players, including healers, the ins and outs of their class. The quality of play after waves of new characters level to 85? Don’t think about it. Both Nils and Raven say it needs fixing, and have ideas.
  • Thought of the Day – Getting Rid of the DPS role – a brief thought from Spinks over at Welcome to Spinksville. Short but sweet, this one’s interesting for everyone. How do you think getting rid of player DPSers would affect healing, if at all?

Last but not in any way least, some sad news:

  • Lights Out – Lara of Root and Branch has shut up shop. Root and Branch has been a core part of the resto druid blog community for so long that the lights dimming on it is going to leave a big hole in the resto druid community. She’ll be missed, if her commenters are anything to go by – but we all wish her the best, safe travels and epic (real life) loot. /tree cheer

That’s it for this week. I’m planning to do this weekly for WoM, as often as possible.

What do you guys think? That’s the sort of thing we do daily over at MMO Melting Pot, though it’s not always roundup posts. Did you get an interesting read out of it, or has it inspired you to throw your thoughts into someone’s comments arena?

What Did You Want? Future of Healing Assignments – Part 1

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A couple of weeks ago I gave you all a quest – what did you want me to write about. A fair number of you responded to the quest and Jooles completed it by way of winning my RNG ingame /roll. So now here I am, a giant oversized owl ready to hand over the quest reward with a yellow question mark ruffling my ear feathers. Which, let me tell you, does nothing to help the usually-aggrieved furrow of a boomkin’s brow.

Joole’s question was this:

The future of healing assignments. Have they gone the way of crowd control due to smart heals and class pigeon-holing? Is it Paladins heal tanks, Shammy’s heal melee, Priests + Druids heal raid forever or is this going to change in Cataclysm? Which way are Disc priests going to go?

With four healing classes to look at and changes happening all the time in beta it’s taken a brief spell to get going on this. This ‘ere is the first of a two-post answer. I’m not stumping up precisely calculated answers; with things not nailed down in beta I’d have to be a physic owl to do so. Which I’m really not, given I can’t remember what I had for dinner tonight and I’m not playing in the beta.

I am looking at the beta information for healing classes and talking about the picture it gives me of their healing style. I’ll look at two classes a week and include a summary of my predictions for healing assignments at the end of the second post.

So without further ado, let’s have a look at Cataclysmic druids and paladins.

Druids:

Anyone got an axe? Tree druids are going to be split into two camps. Blizzard have said they want the difference between a druid’s direct healing spells and their HoTs to be more noticeable, and boy, are we going to notice it.

Tree druids are losing the permanence of tree form but gaining the ability to tank-heal more seriously. At least that’s what Blizzard want: according to blue posts they want trees to be capable tank healers who can spot heal when the going gets tough. But I foresee it not quite playing out like that in healing assignments.

Sure, druids are going to be able to keep tanks up.

But they’re also going to be your “oh nitwibble” guy when things go wrong. Given that we know there’s going to be more damage flying around affecting everyone in the group and that druids’ tree form is going to be the “it’s all gone wrong and I need to pump out extra healing for a bit” cooldown, you’re going to need someone who waits for those “oh nitwibble we’re all dying” times and reacts the second it hits.

Your tree druid is the guy breaking out the roots for the extra healing when everyone’s taking more damage. He’ll stand there (with the current speed penalty to tree form he’s not going anywhere if things are that bad) madly spamming HoTs, the effectiveness of which now scales the more injured the target is, on the group when things go wrong. Not to mention the new talent “efflorescence” which spawns a patch of healing flowers underneath the recipient of a critical-hit Regrowth. So while your druid’s standing there setting his limbs on fire spamming HoTs, the rest of the group could be running madly to stand in the good stuff on the floor. I can hear it now – raid leaders yelling “things are going to piffle! Go stand in the healing fauna!”

Which is a little worrying to my mind. I have a feeling trees won’t be able to be both your tank healer and your “oh nitwibble guy” given healers are going to have less mana. You’re going to have to choose between the tree who heals your tank and the tree who stems the mass-damage spike. Given that Blizzard are trying to homogenize the healers so we can all handle 10 and 25 man content, I’m a little worried that tree druids are going to be irreplaceable.

Paladins:

I can see the paladin running around. Groans from paladins, eh? Hear me out.

First of all, holy paladins are going to need to accrue globules of this new ‘Holy Power’ combo-point like thing. Holy paladins can do this three ways; their primary is by healing (duh). Specifically, by using Holy Shock or healing their Beacon of Light target if they’re talented into Tower of Radience.

Sure they can stand anywhere to use this, but Holy Shock has a 6 second cooldown and healing their beacon target might not always be the smartest move. Maybe the beacon target doesn’t need healing, or maybe it’s more mana efficient to get Holy Power another way rather than casting a heal right this second. So a a secondary Holy Power gatherer they can also stick Crusader Strike up on something, which requires Mr. Holy to be doing the hokee-kokee into melee range.

Now, Blizzard have said flat out they’re trying to remove the “tank healer” label from paladins, though it’s stuck so well they’ve had to scrape it off with new tools in the holy toolbox. So how to make the paladins less like a tank healer?

They’ve given them AoE capability. What with the new “Healing Hands” and talent-based “Light of Dawn” AoE cone/wave heal, paladins could find themselves on their toes. Popping Healing Hands will allow paladins to act like a sparkly version of Healing Spring totem, giving out a short range aura-like AoE heal and “Light of Dawn” could be useful for both clusters of melee and slightly more spread out ranged, depending on your positioning relative to them.

So holy paladins might be donning the headless chicken suit to run around and AoE/aura heal. They’ll need to be spacially aware at all times of who’s standing where so that if they want to use “Light of Dawn” on a few ranged they have to stand a distance away to catch everyone in the cone. Want to use “Healing hands”? Go near the people who need it. Need more Holy Power but can’t heal to get it? Run into melee and stick up Crusader Strike.

 

To my mind druids and paladins are going to be shaken up. Possibly even mixed up, as if we put on the over-generalization goggles for a moment it looks like they’re swapping some of their current iconic roles of trees running around, paladins being the big healers.

Having recently started playing a paladin I’m somewhere between excitement and terror that they’re getting yet more bells and whistles. Druids might not getting that much, but it looks like they don’t need new spells for their role to be flexible. That’s either quite admirable or a tad worrying.

What do you think? Do you see druids and paladins completely differently, or has this opened up new ideas for what Cataclysm will look like?

This is an article by Mimetir, an owl (and resto shaman) of a raid leader on The Venture Co. (EU) You can find my website MMO Melting Pot here and my twitter feed here.

Article image courtesy of Chris Campbell @ flickr

Introducing A New Site For Your Reading Pleasure…

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Melting Pot

I mentioned yesterday that I’d be posting some happy MMO news. I said it’s all hush hush – you know – toodle pip wot-wot, under your hat old chap. …Yep,I know you’re all looking at me a bit oddly now. Anyway, the news has been a tightly kept secret all right – until now.

A few months ago I put out a call asking you folks to lend me your brains. Thanks to everyone who responded! Since then I’ve been beavering away on designing a website. Originally it was going to be a purely WoW based blog doin’ things my way; then the idea grew. It grew to include a wide range of MMOs, and have a community side too.

A couple of weeks ago it split into two projects and the primary site morphed into something different again. Doh. Flexibility for the win.

The Melting Pot is a manual aggregation site for MMO blogs. We actively look for interesting, witty or intelligent opinion-based articles from around the blogosphere – currently from mostly WoW blogs. We then link what we find to let you guys know they’re there. We also give some thoughts of our own to get the discussion started, ‘cos hey – we’re bloggers too, and find these discussions genuinely interesting.

Now, it’s still a lil’ site and adapting daily but it’s ready for general perusal. So without further ado as its Editor in Chief I’d like to invite you to have a gander at MMO Melting Pot.

Feel free to add its feeds to your RSS filters – we’ll be posting daily, from a ever wider selection of sites and games. Prod the shiny comments system with your own opinions – it won’t eat your children. Tip us off about interesting articles you’ve stumbled upon – we’re open to suggestions. And, when you least expect it, community bits n’ bobs might shuffle onto the menu bar too.

So. Drop in, say hi, grab a cup of coffee from the Pot – you might not know what’s in it, but it’s good stuff, mon.