Matticus

Matticus is the founder of World of Matticus, a World of Warcraft blog.

Recovering From a Bad First Guild Date

by

I issued a Valentine’s day blogging challenge earlier on Twitter. It wouldn’t be fair of me to not participate. Any bloggers are welcome to join in. It’s a fun way for bloggers to throw a Valentine’s spin on their posts. If you do accept the challenge, feel free to e-mail or DM me a link to it and I’ll round them all up at the end of the week. I’m sure you can come up with some ideas if you think hard enough.

1327762_rosesPerformance anxiety.

Nervousness.

Fear.

Intimidation.

Those are just some of the few things any prospective raider will experience on their first “date” with the guild. As much as we love to hear a happy ending to a story, the reality is that it isn’t always the case. Here you are, a  player trying to court your new guild. You want them to love you. You want them to be attracted to you. Why? Because you want to be with them too.

But then you screw up.

You stand in the fire. You eat one too many Shadow Crashes. You accidentally dropped a totem in the wrong place.

For whatever reason, your “date” just wasn’t impressed with you at all. Here you are trying to establish a solid foundation with them but you blew your chances because of some silly mistakes. The question they’re asking themselves: Can you be trusted to not screw up again in the future?

Meanwhile, the question you have running through your head is: Will they give me a second chance?

Probably not. At least, not right away. If you epicly messed up, you won’t have a shot. But you know, maybe that guild likes you just enough for another look. But you have to prove yourself.

Communicate

“Hey, I know I screwed up here, here and here. I’m just a little jittery because it’s my first time here. I’ve watched the movies and I know the abilities, but I guess I was just overwhelmed with anxiety. I know I’ll do a better job next time.”

Sometimes a little reassurance to the guild is all that’s needed. Everyone loves a person who recognizes and owns up to their own mistakes. It’s a sign of a truly mature individual who understands they’re not perfect. Now I can’t speak for everyone, but someone who can see where they screw up without having to be told about it is perfect in my eyes.

Listen

Hear out what the guild has to say. If you’re not sure, ask them what you did wrong so you can try to make amends for it. If you know your DPS rotation is messed up, why are you still following the same bad habits? This is especially true if someone is playing the same class as you. Listen to what they have to say, consider it, and see if its right for you. When they drop little hints about what you can do to be better, listen to it.

If that player isn’t you, then you might just need to take a hard look at yourself in the mirror and make the choice between walking away or dealing with it.

Don’t screw up

You were given a second chance. It’s extremely unlikely you’ll be given a third. Don’t mess it up again by choking. They’ve said yes to you again so you better show up and show them who the real you is. Polish up the armor and maybe shotgun a flask.

When they ask you where the nearest raid is, you can curl your muscular Dwarven arm and go “that way”.

Even though you didn’t make the best of first impressions, you might still have a chance to get into the guild of your dreams.

They want to like you

Last thing I want to impart is this:

No one is out to get you.

The guild that you’re going for, you have to remember that they want you to be the one. They don’t want to go back to the recruitment boards again searching for Mr. or Ms. Right. They’re looking for someone who will stick around for a long time.  You’re here because they think they found a potential match and they’re rooting for you to be with them! They want you to ace it so they can go back to drinks! It’s up to you to either validate or prove wrong that claim.

Speaking of which, we’re looking to shore up our roster with a Holy Paladin, an Elemental/Resto Shaman, Rogue and a Mage. But we’ll look at any other classes though. Come check us out.

Does Your Guild Use Set Interrupt Teams?

by

Have you ever been in a raid with less than stellar interrupts? I’ve seen it happen many times. A small number of players  seem to have that confidence where they feel they can conquer just about any spells or abilities thrown their way. That is, until the encounter decides to throw a wrench in their plans. It usually sounds a little something like this:

“I got next inter—No, I’m trapped! I can’t do anything!”

If you’re lucky, there’s another player with an interrupt who can bail that player out. If not, the group may have just suffered a large setback. Having dependable interrupters on your raid roster is one of those little things that grant peace of mind to everyone. Your raid leader can rest easy knowing that certain abilities will be shut out. There have been times when I cursed because a key melee player had to run out or died due to some random ability.

From what I’ve seen, raid groups usually have a minimal amount of players for interrupts. This allows for maximum DPS time from other players because if don’t need to worry about catching key abilities, they can focus more on their DPS.

But the case I want to make here is for stability. Doubling up on interrupts can help cut down on the number of wipes due to unnecessary boss attacks going off.

Some examples include:

  • Wind Shear: 6 second CD, 2 second lock out
  • Shield Bash: 12 second CD, 6 second lock out
  • Pummel: 10 second CD, 4 second lock out
  • Kick: 10 second CD, 5 second lockout

This is just the start though. There’s a whackload of other classes with interrupt capabilities (Mages, Death Knights, etc).

How should you set teams?

Your interrupt teams will vary by encounter. A typical setup would involve two teams of 2. Preferably, the interrupters would share similar cooldowns and lockout times. Back in Burning Crusade, there was an encounter called Reliquary of Souls. You could find it in Black Temple. That encounter really brought out the necessity for skilled interrupters who could identify which skills to let go and which ones to shut down (like Deaden, Spirit Shock, etc).

A more recent example encounter would be Maloriak where Arcane Storms and Release Abberations need to be controlled.

Every interrupter should use macros to announce their interrupt skills. Actually, if you want to take it one step further, I highly recommend an addon called RSA. It’ll announce whether you were successful or unsuccessful with your interrupts. Or even if your kick got resisted or if the target is immune! Great to have!

If you have a skilled player who can carry interrupts on their own, then you can definitely disregard this post. I’ll raise my coffee cup to you on that. For the rest of us who sometimes struggle with blown interrupts, that safety net will do more in the long run.

Astounded at Discipline

by

Some quick thoughts for Wednesday morning…

My mind is just blown right now at the state of Discipline. Power Word: Shield can easily command the most healing done (for a disc priest, not compared to other healers). From a raid healing standpoint, you’re going to want to use that when you’re Rapture’s ready to rock.

Even if your Rapture isn’t ready, be liberal with it if you’re expecting big hits. You can’t be stingy with it. At the same time, this isn’t Wrath levels where you can simply unload it on 10 players.

Each time I cast the shield, my mana pool drops by about 4%. Follow it up with a hasted Prayer of Healing, and you’ll see your numbers climb.

In single target healing mode, you’re still cycling Inner Focus and then chain casting Greater Heal (with shields and Penance sprinkled in between).

This is a great time to be a priest. I need some more practice. I think Disc might be easier of the two priest specs to pick up if you’ve decided to try out healing at the end game. I can’t say for heroic raids, but any raid leader who says right now that discipline priests aren’t worth their salt needs to get checked out. I’m almost considering switching from holy back to discipline.

Maloriak

disc-406

The Return of the Renew Priest?

by

Morning everyone, hope your Monday’s starting out well.

A few months ago, I wrote a post about an emerging style for Holy Priests who did little more than cast Renew on their raid.

Basically, they functioned like tree Druids (without the leafiness).

After speaking with Dawn and Kinasthesia about it on the Circle of Healing podcast at Learn to Raid, the consensus appeared to be that this style of play might be making a come back.

Why?

Partly due to the upcoming cost reduction of Renew by 24%.

Costs of Renew

  • On live right now: 4020 mana
  • On the PTR: 3150 mana

Note that both of those costs include talents in Mental Agility. When looked at from that perspective, that’s a fairly decent sized reduction. I never did like working with percentages. I prefer looking at the absolute values because you just never truly appreciate the magnitude of a number when it’s in a percentage form.

Now start looking at the other talents and glyphs that influence it.

All of these talents at the new, low mana cost warrant a second and closer look. I don’t think we’ll be blanket healing the whole raid with Renews during on the scale of tier 9 and 10 raids. At the same time, I think we’ll see a shift towards increased Renew usage as a whole on multi-target healing.

There’s better interaction with Chakra: Serenity. Using Holy Word: Serenity and Binding Heal will refresh the duration of Renew on top of the other direct healing spells.

So my question to you guys is, are you going to make a conscious effort to Renew more now that it doesn’t cost as much mana?

7 + 1 Simple Ways to Pull Trash

by

Trash pulling can be a bane to players new to the game or new to the raiding scene. Its a basic coordination skill to learn which is employed from the 5 man level to the 25 man level. The act of pulling bosses are generally easy. There’s typically one boss to worry about.

But trash?

There’s a ton of trash. At this level, they can’t exactly be taken lightly! If your group isn’t properly focused or directed, trash packs can easily overwhelm your group.

Assuming you’re not taking on trash mobs with really specific mechanics, here’s a few general strategies your group can use to handle them.

Crowd Control Pull

This is the standard and textbook method that most groups use when grabbing trash. Let the players with crowd control skills open up. Remaining mobs which are either immune or designated as kill targets will automatically chase the raid allowing the tank to grab them.

Misdirect Pull

Have any Hunters around? Good as this is where they’ll come in handy! While a tank is building threat on one mob, a Hunter can send another mob their way. Just remember that the Misdirect mechanics have changed slightly. Best used against trash pulls with many mobs.

Misdirect
The current party or raid member targeted will receive the threat caused by your next damaging attack and all actions taken for 4 sec afterwards.  Transferred threat is not permanent, and will fade after 30 sec.

Charge Pull

No crowd control. The tank literally charges straight in and generates as much aggro as possible on all targets. Heavy reliance on the healer to keep them alive. DPS players are typically called upon to focus fire targets or to AoE mobs down. The side pulls in the first chamber of Bastion of Twilight are excellent examples of using a charge pull. The tanks jump in and it turns into a race between DPS and healer mana.

Line of Sight Pull

I would imagine Protection Paladins would be used to using this (for historical reasons). The line of sight pull involves the tank aggroing mobs and then running behind a pillar or a rock or some other object. This forces the mobs to chase after that player because they can’t actually see said player. Just make sure the rest of the group doesn’t start opening up on them until the mobs get into position. Use this if you’re worried about patrols.

Use the LOS pull if you’re up against ranged mobs or if you’re worried about patrols.

Distance Pull

Usually executed on trash packs consisting of all casters, your tank will want to run in and then back out as quick as possible. As the casters begin attempting to cast and chase you, they’ll eventually reach a point where they’ll stack up. This is when the tank then re-engages them in order to generate threat on all of the trash allowing group to open up. (Thanks Hi Ya).

Interrupt Pull

Reserved for any trash packs involving casters, this pull involves the use of an interrupt. I had to practice this one a few times on my Elemental Shaman. I’d manually break the Hex on the target with a few Lightning Bolts. Once the mob started casting, I’d hit it with a Wind Shear to get it to start running towards me thereby allowing the tank to snatch it up in place. This is especially useful if there are no immediate landscape features for the group to hide behind but you still need trash to move due to patrols.

Mind Control Pull

If you can’t line of sight pull, this is the next best thing. Naturally it requires a Priest. Your Priest Mind Controls a mob while the rest of the group stays back. The trash should then gang up and utterly destroy the Mind Controlled mob.* Just keep in mind that you may not get reputation or any loot from the death of the Mind Controlled mob.

Exception: If your Priest is named Matt, he will fat finger Mind Blast instead of Mind Control. Do not assign him to any Mind Control duties.

Bonus: The pet pull.

Yeah.

You know what the pet pull is. Everyone’s experienced the pet pull before. If you haven’t, well that can be easily arranged.