Matticus

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

2023 Year in Review!

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Hey everybody! Can you believe another year has passed us by? I wanted to thank all of you for still sticking with me all these years later. Your being part of this journey means the world here! In DJs, we knocked out two CE clears with Raszageth defeated and Sarkareth crushed we’re well on our way to the third one before we close out this expansion.

Let’s take a look back at some of the posts from this past year, shall we?

We started off the year discussing the Dragonflight Launch Experience, which was a bit rough. A portal had to be spawned in the Stormwind docks just to get us over to the new continent and everything. The initial season 1 mythic dungeon experience wasn’t the greatest either.

On the guild leadership side of things:

  1. How to be an Effective 21st Raider: You won’t be like Max right away but at least you can help orient your raid and head in the right direction.
  2. How to Advance from an AotC Guild to a CE Guild: If your guild wants to start pushing to that next step, here’s what they need to know.
  3. How to Advance from an AotC Player to a CE Player: If you want to progress and be a better player, here’s what you need to know.
  4. What Separates CE Players from Mythic Players: The little nuances between Mythic versus CE players.
  5. How to Manage Loot Council in Dragonflight: Admittedly, it’s challenging to figure out how to sort out the headache of loot.
  6. Traits of an Effective Healing Officer: Stuck with setting up cooldowns for your raid? I understand the feeling.
  7. Recruiting the Right Players at the Right Time: Your raid needs different types of players at different points of progression.
  8. How to Run Raid Orientation: What you need to do before you begin a new tier with a new roster.

I’m thrilled to see what’s going to happen in 2024. The first expansion in a trilogy is expected to come out later in the year. We’ll have fated raids and dungeons for season 4 which signals the start of the off-season which means players can take time to catch up on other games (like Baldur’s Gate 3, in my case). I snatched it up on the recent Steam sale (although I did end up with a complete party wipe barely 5 minutes into Act 1).

My writing plan for 2024 is to continue to be more consistent. I did get a new job, and it’s severely cut down on my writing time. I have to remain more disciplined here, and that means more days set aside for planning and actually bulk-writing some stuff in advance and then scheduling them. I’ll have more videos coming and various clips with different raiding lessons and laughs, especially from this tier. You can always find me on Blue Sky and Twitter, and let me know what kind of content or advice you’re looking for. You’re better off searching elsewhere for actual healing advice (the class Discords or various guides will make a good start).

Anyway, thanks for being around! Here’s to making the next year even more amazing!

6/9 Mythic Amirdrassil Recap

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It’s been over a month since my last update and we’re about to enter the end of the year! In terms of guild news, we’re right up against Smolderon after we’ve cleared out both wings on Amirdrassil. It’s certainly been a fun month. Although we started the tier with 29 players in the roster, it’s shrunk to around 22 since opening day (although we’ve recently picked up a few more trials). We ended up pushing towards Nymue first to try to clear that one out before turning backwards and going into Larodar.

The Nymue Experience

It certainly had its ups and downs. The most unenjoyable part for me is staring at spreadsheet assignments and figuring out which players go to which ads while trying to minimize the run distance. Anytime a raider is out at the last minute, it’s another 10 minutes just staring at it until a combination that clicks can be found. The kill we had this past weekend had an error because although we normally ran one Aug Evoker, we instead ran two, and it slipped my mind that both Evokers were assigned to one side, which caused a DPS imbalance. Thankfully, we did end up killing in towards the end of the night. In terms of encounter complexity, I felt this was much more straightforward. There was much more emphasis on individual play, especially when it comes to soaking flowers and dodging lines. If players could do it, the rest of the encounter would fall into place.

The Larodar Journey

From a planning perspective, it is actually much easier compared to Nymue. It’s all about the movement and the synchronized dropping of fire puddles. We ended up having the required damage where we could go with a 2 group fire fighting team strategy instead of 3 groups. This led to a complete restructuring of cooldowns. Even using Salvation on the very first charge meant it would not be up during the transition into phase 2. After that, it was having CC’s established on the incoming treants and just unloading damage while surviving as long as possible. It did get a bit messy towards the end.

As always, we are recruiting as we enter the final stretch of Amirdrassil! Come check us out if you’re interested.

  • Augmentation and Preservation Evoker
  • Disc and Shadow Priest
  • Rogue

 

Death Jesters is 2/9 Mythic Gamers!

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It’s been quite the productive week for us. We’ve jumped up something like 20 item levels from the previous week when we first entered Amirdrassil. On the first night this week, we cleared normal and defeated Smolderon. This was where we ended up in week one so it was nice to get all that progress in right away. On the second night, we secured AotC after defeating Tindral and Fyrakk and we still had about two hours left to put in some shots on Mythic. Luckily, I had a good feeling we were going to get in there, so I ended up preparing defensives for Mythic Gnarls and Igira.

Going into this tier I was a little apprehensive about our roster and our performance. We’ve already had some early attrition and dropped from 30 players to about 25, so to get to and defeat Igira certainly exceeded my expectations. More on this later.

Gnarlroot

This guy felt easier compared to Fyrakk on Heroic. Way more damage is involved but it’s manageable. This is a good communication check for players. Players with the big circle of fire need to signal which way they’re going to try to activate the plants and the treants. It’s useless for two players to run in the same direction. Assigning priorities for players during phase 2 when you’re lighting roots on fire is beneficial since so many of them exist. In our cases, we had our melee players light up roots closer to the tree and ranged get the roots closer to the ends, away from Gnarlroot.

Igira

I sat out this one and rotated with our other priest. I ended up being the 21st raider for it. It was my first time assuming that role, and I had to figure out quickly what to call. I did start with calling everything but slowly stopped calling things like Blades. I still felt it was beneficial to alert the raid of incoming Spears.

One of the issues we ran into was the healing absorbs. I set aside Divine Hymns and Revivals for them, but maybe we popped the orbs too early (or simultaneously). We might need to use something aside from those to help clear them or just have our healers single target them quickly to clear the absorb.

Roster Updates

We picked up a Mistweaver Monk which has been amazing! I underestimated how strong they would be going into this tier. Our GM decided to go from Holy Paladin to Ret for easier raid calls. Our other Priest decided to switch to Holy for now because they were having challenges with Discipline. We also promoted some of our trials that joined our team back when we were winding down progression in Season 2 (Aberrus). We did have a few DPS players who decided they couldn’t sustain our raid commitments, and we said farewell to them. For now, here’s our immediate needs:

  • DPS Warrior
  • Disc/Shadow Priest
  • Enhancement Shaman
  • Balance/Resto Druid

How to Run Raid Orientation

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Welcome to the new tier, everybody! We’re starting to kick off our raid this week. This is a great time to run raid orientation for the raid group, especially if you have many new players or if the raid team was on a break leading up to this point. For us it was mandatory because over half the team was new stemming from some major turnover. In this case, boss GM set up a preliminary officer meeting to go over the agenda for orientation and what to cover. I’ll dive into that one in a bit. Ultimately, he made some adjustments to an existing slidedeck that was created by one of the other raid teams in our community and co-opted some of those elements. I don’t really agree with some of the design choices, but I bit my tongue on that one.

If you want to watch DJ’s raid orientation, our GM did stream it, and you can find it here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1975224736?t=00h16m06s

What is Raid Orientation?

It’s exactly what it sounds like. You can liken it to your experiences when attending school for the first time.

Raid orientation is a crucial process where members of a guild come together to discuss, plan, and prepare for the challenges that lie ahead in a new raid tier. It’s the foundation upon which a successful raiding experience is built. This is where new members get to know each other, understand the guild’s strategies, and set their expectations with the goals.

This can be hosted in Discord and having your GM share their screen. They could also stream it and have it saved for anyone that missed out on it.

Benefits of Raid Orientation

But why?

  • Enhances Team Cohesion: It brings players together, fostering a sense of community and teamwork. For a bonus, you can add some icebreaker games at the end.
  • Aligns Goals: This helps to ensure that everyone is on the same page regarding the guild’s objectives.
  • Preparation: Provides an opportunity to discuss strategies and requirements, reducing confusion during actual raids. We’d rather get this done now or during the week before we set foot into the instance.
  • Resource Management: This helps in efficiently setting aside resources like consumables and loot. It also covers where players can find resources like assignments and strategy on Discord. In our case, we hold tier tokens until the end of the night to see what we have before distributing it all.

What Does Orientation Typically Include?

Player Expectations

This segment focuses on what the guild expects from each player. It includes commitment levels, understanding of class roles, our community code of conduct, and basic raiding etiquette. We expect our players to complete 4 keys weekly. They don’t need to be 20s, but if they can eventually strive to hit 16s to 18s consistently within the first few weeks, it’ll set our team up for success. This also means how to handle attendance issues and who their raid mentors are. Basically, the GM is covering policy.

Raid Expectations

Here, we delve into the specifics of the raid content. This covers some strategies, boss mechanics, and the roles and responsibilities of each raid member. This means showing up on time. This means having the required WeakAuras installed and addons updated. It also means knowing their role and how to respond to mechanics in encounters while surviving. This could be its own night, though as we plan to have a film review on a different day before our raid night where we go over every encounter.

Consumables Expectations

Raiders need to come prepared with the necessary consumables. This part of the orientation covers the types of consumables required and how they contribute to the raid’s success, especially with the new health potions and other augments. Speaking of augments, there’s also the new reusable rune. Depending on your guild’s focus, that might be worth mentioning.

Loot Council

A key part of raiding is the distribution of loot. This section explains how the loot council operates and guides members on setting up their loot wish lists to make the process effective. We’ve also taken the liberty of requesting volunteers for the loot council. This is a call for members who wish to contribute more directly to the guild’s decision-making process with the resources and sims we have in place.

Goals and Pacing for the Tier from a Progression Standpoint

Setting realistic and achievable goals for the raid tier is critical. This includes discussing the pacing of the raid progression and what the guild aims to achieve each week. Even though we finished US 300 in Aberrus, we’re aiming for the US 400 mark this time at a slower pace. Think of this piece like setting the road map for the tier, including when raid extensions would begin.

Icebreakers

Think of some fun games you can play especially to help get newer members accustomed to the team. Sometimes we’d ask icebreaker questions but tell our players to type their answers in chat, but only press enter after a countdown hits 0.

Definitely consider running orientation at the start of a new raid tier! It’s a fun way to reconnect with your team if there’s been some time off between raids or a bunch of new players coming in. It helps set the tone for the rest of the tier and gets everyone primed as to what expectations will be like.

Lastly, I don’t know how I feel about the slides and how they were designed. I sure wish we had more Warcraft related looking assets in them though!

BlizzCon 2023 Reactions

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Sadly, I wasn’t able to attend BlizzCon this year, but a large group of the DJ’s contingent was there to represent. I fully intend to make a comeback next year. Everyone was expecting one expansion announcement and we were all blown away by the fact Blizzard took the time to announce three. I guess the leak and fantasy expansion idea communities will be taking a break for the next few years until this upcoming story arc concludes. It feels nice to see Anduin again as he enters his Chris Pine phase.

Let’s talk about some of the announcements, shall we?

  • Warbands: Good! This might be the system I look forward to the most, especially with the way alts are handled. I’ve got something like 7 competitive alts and it’s time consuming to keep them all rep relevant when all I really want to do is jump into dungeons and raids with them. Shared bank and shared reputation are much needed, and it will ultimately free up time for us players to do other things that we enjoy more.
  • Delves: Okay! I’m going to hold off on weighing in decisively until I see it in action. It’s a neat concept and it brings back all th e scenario and island (BFA) type content we’ve had before in the past. No role specific queues? That’s okay too. It does seem like it’s building upon the escape room type content we’ve had this expansion with the Sniffen digs.
  • World content vault: Good! Sorry PvP bros. This one’s a good change ut at least you get extra currency to buy armor pieces now.
  • Hero talents: Good! Another way to help further distinguish classes from each other. I do wonder if there’s intent to mess around with existing talent trees or if the dev team is satisfied with it’s overall look.
  • Transmog cross armor: Good! I love going on transmog farm runs on my Priest, but our groups bring one of each type so we can freely trade, but with this change I don’t have to feel sad about vendoring armor items my class can’t use anymore that no one wants.
  • Cross-realm guilds: Good! This is going to impact our guild philosophy going forward since we normally expect trials to transfer over, but this is a barrier that’s lifted where there is no financial burden to players right away and if they enjoy our atmosphere, they can pop over.
  • Dynamic flight: Okay! More cosmetic than anything else and it’s neat that we can enjoy the new Dragonflying mechanics while zipping around on other flying mounts.

Of all the BlizzCons to miss, maybe this was the one that was worth missing out on. I heard there were so many problems with the seating issues and lack of activations (or activities) inside the con. I wonder how much of that was due to time. Normally, Blizzard starts planning BlizzCon in January but since there were still some partial health restrictions in place. Maybe that affected the work of their event team and shortened that time line. Still, I hope they learn from their lessons here. Ultimately, I don’t really go to BlizzCon for the stuff to do there and I continue to maintain that your BlizzCon experience is what you make of it. For me, it was always about meeting up with my friends and enjoying their company.

It’s like a family reunion you actually want to go to, and that’s where that appeal was for me.

State of the Jesters

Roster is currently sitting at 26 players. Our immediate needs continue to be a Rogue and a Warrior. We’re standing pat on range, but would accept another Shadow Priest. We have raid orientation coming up this weekend (future post) which will set expectations and foundations for our team heading into the tier. Pretty soon, I’ll be able to rest because I’ve been on a recruiting blitz for the past 8 weeks. I’ve held as many as 8 interviews in a week.

Next thing for me is setting up our defensive usages before our raid week begins. I get a chance to jump into the raid early with my third Priest to get an early look at some of the bosses and how to handle them.