If you get this in your email, don’t follow through on it. These fakes are getting better and better.
Note: You can usually tell by the “To” field. This one wasn’t sent to my registered WoW email address.
Matticus
Help Simone: Heroic Northrend Beasts
Meet Simone.
She’s the new healing lead and she needs your help. None of the other healers wanted the job of organizing and assigning healing. The raid leader doesn’t understand enough about healing to confidently handle it himself. Simone has decided to take initiative and do it.
But she needs your help!
Scenario: Heroic Northrend Beasts 25
Tanks: Warrior, Paladin, Death Knight
Healers: 2 Resto Shamans, 1 Holy Paladin, 1 Discipline Priest, 2 Resto Druid (1 optimized for tank healing, 1 optimized for raid healing)
What you know
Terrence has given Simone the tank assignments. On Gormok, the Paladin starts first, followed by the Warrior and then the Death Knight. It’s been timed in such a way that the Warrior will end up tanking Gormok until he falls over. With the twin snakes alive, the Paladin will be getting Dreadscale while the Death Knight is picking up Acidmaw. After Acidmaw is taken down, the tanks are in free for all mode on Dreadscale as it largely depends on who has the fire debuff and who doesn’t. It’s safe to assume that the Warrior will be the one tanking Icehowl when he comes out and will do so for the rest of the fight.
We can assume that her raid group is reasonably competent and are able to get out of fires fast enough. We also know that they all have excellent awareness skills and can dodge Icehowl’s trample. In fact, the raiders are so good that they spread out so well and are able to minimize Acidmaw’s poison debuff so that only one player will get it at any time. The healers are smart players and they won’t need Simone to micromanage their big cooldowns for them this time. That might change in the future when new players are brought in, however.
What would you do?
This is where Simone turns to you for help. You’re the only person she knows that’s handled healing assignments before. This is what she wants you to do:
- She needs 3 healers on the tanks on phase 1. Which ones should she choose?
- She needs 2 healers on each snake-tank on phase 2. How should they be distributed?
- She has 2 Shamans and 3 tanks. How should she assign the Earth Shields throughout the fight?
- On the Icehowl phase, Simone is worried that all the healers could get nailed by Icehowl’s Arctic breath. What solution would you give to her to calm her fears?
Remember, there is no wrong answer. This is just an exercise to see how you would handle it and what you would do.
Reader Survey – How Can we Improve Our Blog?
Most of the time, when I ask for feedback, I usually have a chat with my fellow blog contributors on the staff. Occasionally, I’ll get some thoughts and opinions via the contact form.
But here’s where I made the fatal mistake. There’s one important person that I failed to consult.
You.
You’re the readers. You’re the ones that subscribe. You’re the ones that re-tweet posts. You’re the ones that come back here everyday. So in an effort to continue making this blog useful and valuable, I’m opening up the post for your ideas on how we can improve.
Some questions to think about
- What topics would you like to read more about? (Class discussion, strategy, guild management, raid management)
- More posts or less? We’re publishing at a nice post-a-day rate.
- Would you be interested in seeing healing videos from our perspective and how we handle certain fights?
- What type of posts do you like? More questions answered from the mail? Case studies?
- What frustrates you about the blog?
- What keeps you reading World of Matticus?
Some ground rules
Don’t expect a direct response. I can’t promise that I’ll be able to touch base with everything that comes this way. However, I can guarantee that what you write will be read. Please be truthful, civil, and constructive.
With your support, it’s my hope that WoM continues to be a leading blog for healers and leaders to turn to.
Feel free to comment on the post publically or use the contact form privately.
The Case for Limited Attempts
We’ve seen the mechanic in Trial of the Grand Crusader and it seems like it’s going to be implemented in Icecrown as well. When I was on the PTR, I saw the countdown at 3000. We were down to 2994 when the raid group was called.
Again, this is why I’m in favour of being on the PTR often so I can waste my learning attempts there where it doesn’t matter. But that’s the tactician in me anyway.
There’s been objection to using limited attempts as a means to make raids more difficult for players. It means every attempt means something and they cannot just be squandered away. A ceiling has been imposed on the amount of times a guild can throw themselves at bosses.
This means that a guild who raids for 24 hours a week has no advantage over a guild that raids for 12 hours. They both have the same amount of chances to get the job done. The playing field has been leveled in such a way that guilds can’t simply just “brute force” their way through a raids and rely on a sheer number of attempts to do so. You can’t have players doing the same stupid things that cause them to die. The overall skills have to go up.
Granted, I’ll admit it is a cheap way of slowing down raids and making stuff harder. But I like this approach instead of throwing in more trash mobs. While ToC was one blend of the spectrum, I don’t think I’d be particularly happy if most boss chambers and corridors had quantities that rivalled Freya or General Vezax trash. I’d rather spend that time focusing on boss attempts. Some of the areas in ICC had trashed turned on. From what I’ve seen, it’s difficult enough to keep players entertained on the route to trash and there’s just enough where you’re not going to get bored of it and want to gouge your eyes out.
Will there be a reward system?
I’m not sure. It could be modelled after ToGC where the attempts remaining has an influence on the type of loot received. In fact, I think that is something they’ll implement.
Did you like the way limited attempts were set up in ToGC? What would you change for Icecrown?
One Year of Conquest
Conquest celebrated its one year birthday several days ago. It’s hard to believe that it’s been a year since the guild’s inception. We’ve had our share of high points and low points. Some days it was difficult to get through a raid. Tempers were flaring, players would be upset. Other days, we worked as a relaxed but cohesive unit where we exhibited an aura of unstoppability.
It wasn’t without it’s lessons.
Things I learned
You can’t keep everyone happy: If a player’s happiness depends on a course of action not in line with guild goals, then they should just be released. They won’t be satisfied anyway and there’s no sense in keeping them chained by doing things your guild isn’t doing. Whether it’s super hard modes or PvP or so forth, they’re better off finding an organization that aligns with their desires.
Recruiting is a constant: Real life will intrude on the lives of people and it could keep them sidelined indefinitely. Don’t believe for a moment that your roster is ever going to be complete. The ideal roster is one where all 25 players show up every raid without being affected by anything going on in their life. Unfortunately, that isn’t reality.
People will come and go: Not everyone is going to be in for the long haul. The team I took down Kel’Thuzad with is different than the one which eliminated Yogg-Saron. Anub’Arak was knocked out with a different crew as were the hard mode variants within Trial of the Crusader. Nothing permanent is set in stone. I think there’s about 7 players who entered Naxxramas with me who are still actively raiding to this day.
Follow through: Always make an effort to follow through on everything you say or else it will come back later. It’s fine if you fail, but at least you tried. Believe me when I say there’s nothing better for progress than a GM or raid leader who has the resolve to replace underperforming players and has players to replace them with.
Things I should have done differently
Care more about 10s: Having three groups of 10s that were capable of clearing out ToC 10 and 2 groups clearing out ToGC 10 added a lot of firepower to our raid. For whatever reason, it was something that never occurred to me. The groundwork is already being laid down for multiple Icecrown 10 groups.
More time: Sometimes it just seems as if we didn’t have enough time to set out to do the things we wanted to do. With 9 hours, you can only do so much.
Achievements: This one’s a bit difficult to go for as not many others share the sentiment about achievements. I supposed if we had more time, it’s another route we could’ve taken to help keep ourselves busy. But with 9 hours, the focus was placed moreso on boss kills than anything else (which is understandable).
As long as I continue to blog, I’m certain the guild will still remain for another year. To hell with the naysayers who said when I first started that I’d crash and burn and wouldn’t last a year.