Matticus

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

Raid Flexibility: A Healthy Obsession

by

worried

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”
– Antoine De Saint-Exupery

The show must go on. It’s a common rallying cry among drama and theatre productions. It means that no matter what, the audience expects a show and the performers have to deliver. I have the same mentality when it comes to my blog. I do my best to ensure that there is something daily here for you readers to consume!

Keep that drama catchphrase in the back of your mind for a moment. We’ll revisit it.

A story

First, a story. Team Conquest finished off Naxx, Malygos, and Obsidian Sanctum. We had a reduced raiding roster. As were slowly working our way throughout OS, I received an urgent message. It’s not very often that I miss raids. It becomes even rarer when an unexpected event comes up where I have to sit myself out during the middle of a pull.

The usual trash clearing chatter was going on. I explained to the raid that something came up which required my immediate attention. One of our Resto Druids were on standby. I quickly explained to him my situation and he agreed to come in. I immediately passed off raid lead and master looter to one of my officers and said “He’s in charge.”

I returned home 40 minutes later. A quick glance on vent showed players were slowly disconnecting and breaking off into their own channels.

This meant either the mission was accomplished or that the raid had been called prematurely due to lack of resources.

I popped in.

“Is it done?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

I was relieved. I think I felt a slight twinge of pride in there somewhere. On second thought, it might have been that sore throat of mine acting up.

The Parts

Raid leader. No, not Red Leader. We’re not talking about Star Wars here. How many players are capable (and willing) to lead your raid? I have four players who are able to sit in the captain’s chair and direct everything. If your answer is one, then you may wish to re-examine your options. Not everyone is able to fulfill this role. Make sure your candidate has the will to do so and the undying respect of the guild or else it won’t work. You can’t make people respect leaders. They have to do so on their own.

Tanks. Brio does an excellent job flipping and rotating tanks around. It helps to keep the tanks fresh and interested in what they’re doing. I have about six players who have the ability and the gear to switch into tanking roles if it is necessary. We haven’t had that happen yet. But it’s comforting to know that the option is available.

Healing leads. Currently Syd directs the healers. I do step in if she needs a day off every so often or if she’s not as familiar with an encounter. That makes two who are capable of handling assignments. Handy in case one of them manages to inadvertently stab themselves in the eye. That hasn’t happened yet, thankfully.

Healers. This should go without saying. Either recruit extra healers or have players willing to switch from their main role to a healing role if the fight requires it. There are 7 of us on the starting lineup with another 3 on reserve.

Replenishments. Ret Paladins, Survival Hunters, and Shadow Priests. I believe this is getting further expanded in 3.1. Have alternative sources for Replenishment. The mana regen is going to be a must going into the next raiding tier. I’ve got a Shadow Priest, a Ret Paladin, and several Hunters who can supply it if necessary.

Heroism/Bloodlust. I refer to this as the raid leader’s personal shotgun. While not always a requirement in an encounter, it helps to have the extra damage available to push through a certain phase as quickly as possible.

Why?

We are all expendable. This stems from a core philosophy of this guild. We are all united in our desire to raid and clear content. I have a duty to minimize whatever obstacles or obstructions that could get in the way of that mandate. Not having players or not having the experienced is not an acceptable reason for me. The expendability thought is that no one person should be so important or required that the entire raid has to stop its operations in case a certain player is absent.

When Conquest was first conceived, I knew I wanted the flexibility there. I knew that I could not be there all the time. I knew Brio would not be there all the time. I knew certain key players would not be available. I recruited players into the guild who I felt had the potential to take over certain functions should the need arise.

Whatever happens, the raid must go on.

10 mans

This is where it gets tricky. I don’t know if that same philosophy above would apply here as the individual efforts of players becomes even more amplified. Several of roles above wouldn’t even apply here. You don’t necessarily need a healing lead among 3 healers. It wouldn’t be that difficult to divvy up the responsibilities.

I’m not as experienced when it comes to pure 10 man guilds.

Quick Thoughts About Val’Anyr

by

There’s been a few updates about Val’nyr since the last time I wrote about it. Now we have some more information regarding the retrieval and construction of the legendary mace. Here are the Coles’ notes version:

  • 30 fragments
  • Step 1: Bring shattered fragments to the Archivum Console
  • Step 2: Throw the shattered fragments into Yogg-Saron’s maw while he is casting Deafening Roar
  • Kill Yogg-Saron and loot
  • Condition 1: Can only be completed in Ulduar Heroic mode
  • Condition 2: If at least one Ulduar Watcher is not assisting you

This leads me to conclude a few things.

First is that it appears the person who is collecting all the fragments does not have to be the same person who ends up with the constructed mace. After all, the fragments must be thrown into Yogg-Saron who must then be killed. The loot master should then find the completed mace on the loot table of the old god.

This means the fragments can be looted to any one person as a keeper until the guild collects the necessary amount of fragments.

Second is that the construction of this weapon is going to be out of the reach of many of the casual oriented raiding guilds due to the conditions needed.

Some more questions remain

What happens if the raid group fails at killing Yogg-Saron during that attempt? Or even during that week? Are the fragments lost?

Lastly, it seems that PTR build 9767 (the most recent) was pushed through mostly for bug fixes. Since the latest build was meant to fix stuff, we can assume then the patch is very close to completion. I do believe 3.1 will be here sometime this April. Two weeks.

A good indicator that the patch will be coming out soon is when PTR servers shut down.

31 DBBB: Post Promotions and Another Matticus Interview

by

Yesterday’s task via Problogger was on list writing. Readers who have followed me know that I have a personal affinity for list writing. I’m currently fighting off an end of semester flu. It’s a constant occurrence. It always seems to happen during exam periods. As a result, I decided to skip out on that particular task since I love writing lists anyway.

Today’s task is on blog post promotion! It’s a topic I’m also extremely familiar with. In the Blog Azeroth chatroom, something I frequently advise to bloggers new to the scene is to not necessarily link to their blog. Assuming I’m a first time reader of their blog, I wouldn’t know where to start. I wouldn’t know where to begin. Instead, what I tell them to do is to link a blog post or two that they’ve written that they’re really proud of.

Of course, a common response I get back is:

“But I’ve never written a blog post I’ve been proud of!”

Even now I still don’t quite know what to say to that except:

“Then write one that you are proud of!”

List Posts I’ve Liked

Here’s a few that have appeared on the blog recently.

But I can’t hog the entire spotlight. Here’s some other posts from off the blog.

Another Interview

There’s a new blog that’s stirring that’s targeting players with a more casual mindset or those that are actively seeking balance between their lives in the virtual world and the real world. They are here to offer a sense of WoW Relief.

A sudden rash of interviews have been requested recently. I’m quite flattered. I just hope that the questions aren’t too repetitive.

Some of the questions asked:

Referencing your site and posts on Wow Insider, you sound like a natural leader, does that leadership in game also come out in real life?

Every once in a while it does, I play a lot of hockey and volleyball now, being the goalie I don’t really direct people but I will tell them what I’m going to do when they are by my side of the rink. It helps a lot when you tell other players what you’re doing so they can adjust and react to your actions. I notice a lot of skills are transferable since I’m always the one organizing events and get togethers with friends.

Lastly, for anyone who is looking to start a blog about WoW or their toons, what is the best advice you can give them?

There is so much I could say to help but pretty much the best advice I could give is just go ahead and do it already! You don’t have to be a nut like me and grind out posts day in and day out, but start a schedule of setting time aside for writing and stick with it. Otherwise you will lose the habit and it’ll just disappear.

Here’s the link to the full interview on WoW Relief.

I do believe I’ll have another shorter interview tomorrow that I will link to.

On Twitter

I like to link to various websites or posts that I find onto my Twitter. One of the built in services of TweetDeck (a Twitter client I prefer) is that it can compress URLs. The service I like to use is from http://www.is.gd/. Another popular URL shortener used is TinyURL.

Does it matter which service you use?

In a sense, it does. Twitter has a character limit of 140. Every space and character counts.

https://worldofmatticus.com/2009/04/08/my-newfound-respect-for-melee/ – That is today’s post by Syd. It takes up many characters.

http://tinyurl.com/cggf77 – The same post shortened again. 25 characters.

http://is.gd/rtNf – The same post shortened. 17 characters.

That’s another 8 more characters I can use in a Tweet. Some people won’t really care too much about that sort of thing. But 8 characters is the difference between having one tweet vs having two tweets in order to clarify a URL. Do keep that in mind especially when promoting your own or other blog posts.

31 Day Challenge: The Elevator Pitch

by

On Saturday, I made a quick note that I would be participating in this year’s 31 days to building a better blog.

Earlier readers will remember the previous tagline I use was Knowledge through Logic and Reason. That wasn’t the best of taglines to use on a healing related blog.

Anna suggested World of Matticus – Where Leadership and Healing Collide (without the train wreck). I know if I the blog had a business card of some sort it would read something like: "Problems with healing? Guild issues got you down? Matt can help!”

For most WoW bloggers, I suspect their elevator pitch would be something related to their character (The adventures of ____ or the musings of a <race> <class>). I have yet to think of the perfect pitch. This blog isn’t just mine anymore. It’s Wyns, Syds, Lodurs and everyone that’s ever contributed via comments or guest posts or emails.

When people discover that I’m a blogger, they always ask “Oh, what do you write about?”. I admit that it’s a bit frustrating to come up with an answer. I usually have different ones on standby depending on the what I know about the person. If they’re my age, they’ve heard of World of Warcraft. If they’re of a different generation or not as fluent with video games, I’ll tell them I write about gaming strategy and advice.

So here’s the short form of what I would use across the network.

World of Matticus: Improving Today’s Healers and Tomorrow’s Leaders
PlusHeal: The Universal Healing Community for all Specs and Skills
No Stock UI: A Different Playing Experience

The elevator pitch is a great way for you to really buckle down and figure out who you are and what you want to do.

Apping for Guilds

This works the same way. When you’re applying for a guild and you’re speaking to an officer or a GM, most of them get a good handle on the type of player they’re dealing with in a few minutes. So you should take the time to develop a small pitch for yourself if you’re in between guilds.

Example – I’m a progression raiding oriented Discipline Priest

I’m about to head out and do some progression oriented studying and then some more volleyball!

For the bloggers out there, what would your tagline be and what is your blog about?

Your Saturday Thoughts and Links

by

In case you’ve missed it, here’s a few blue posts you may wish to check out regarding us Priests. Check out the some of the comments below here and I’ll post my thoughts.

We do want a lot of Power Word: Shields to be getting tossed out. You can use it on multiple people throughout the raid for additional regeneration if needed. We are still a little weary of where mana regeneration is at, we aren’t sure it is really going to be hit that bad with the changes in patch 3.1.

That definitely explains the set bonuses on the healing Priest class. The emphasis is shifting slightly towards damage prevention – no matter what spec you are.

The talents requested are relatively far down in the holy tree with the goal of improving overall healing, the thing is that we don’t feel discipline healing will really need these buffs as it could be fairly competitive as it stands. We feel the issue is the need to track the effectiveness of shields, since these don’t show up on healing meters it looks like the disc healing is low, but overall it should work out well if you add in the data from the shields.

Well said. That is what we need. I know there is a modified version of Recount that has tried to do this.

We agree that how grace works feels a little awkward, we are looking into this and may change it in the future, no guarantees though.

Personally I think they should increase the amount of targets Grace can be applied on. Maybe to 2 or 3. It would just be nothing more than a constant 9% healing increase (when fully stacked) on multiple targets.

We are still okay with how the weakened soul debuff works in a raid setting. If raids only allow 1 disc priest and it becomes a plaguing problem, we’ll look into it, but at the same time we don’t really want to see raids running around with only disc priests (this applies to any class).

This is true. Many raids still do not have any Discipline Priests at all.

Like I mentioned above, we feel the overall effectiveness of disc should be pretty good in 3.1 if you consider not just the healing but the shielding aspect of it as well. We will see how it plays out. (Source)

I didn’t feel severely handicapped during my time healing as Disc in the PTRs. But this was just on the normal setting. I haven’t been able to get into any 25s.

Discipline Priest in Ulduar
Will raids want Disc priests? We are honestly not too worried about that. We’d estimate about half of the healing priests we’ve watched in Ulduar are Disc, at least for the guilds that are making boss kills. Consider, that when you have a tank with 45,000 health and a boss is hitting for 25,000 health (which is not the kind of thing we did in Naxx, but is in Ulduar), none of the healing you can do will let that tank survive two hits in a row. But Power Word: Shield will. (Source)

Very true. So if you’re a Priest that is against using PW: Shield and relying more on healing instead, think hard about this comment.

Blogging

I’m always on the lookout for blogs about blogging or writing. Problogger is starting another 31 Days to a Better Blog project. It’s been delayed by a few days. If you do have your own WoW blog and want to get better and to learn, I’d suggest participating. I know I’m not the only one as I’ll be joined by Anna as well.

The idea behind this is simply to have a group of bloggers setting aside a month of their time to work at improving their blogs. While we all want to have better blogs sometimes it becomes one of those things that we’re going to do…. one day.

If you’ve got the time and the will, I’d give it a shot and see what you can learn.

The challenge starts Monday.

Saturday Links

  • Canadianaconnection interview with me: @cletch sent me an interview request. Most of the questions revolve around my life and the balance I have between WoW and school. Don’t expect to read a whole lot about healing. The interview here is a little more personal then that. It offers you a bit of a behind the scenes look at World of Matticus.
  • Which of these 5 Bag Addons is Right for You?: A great post by my co-blogger Lilth over on No Stock UI. If you’re looking for ways to sort and handle your inventory, check out some of the addons she’s listed.
  • 6 Useful Addons for Forgetful People: Another one from NSUI. My memory is terrible. I suspect some of you have experienced episodes where you’ve forgotten to do something like take a screenshot when a certain achievement happens. Little did I know there was an addon that managed to do this. Check out the rest!
  • Fine art of Decision-Making – 7 Tips for Getting Decisions Made Easier: Post from Zen Habits. A great read for any officer or GM who has to make choices.
  • Emotional Intelligence – How to Get It: Courtesy of Leadership Now. This is something that will benefit from every player.
  • Is Any comment a good comment?: This is a question for the bloggers and the readers. It’s inspired by TyphoonAndrew. For me, I’ll try to comment if I think I have something to add. Even something simple as encouragement can go a long way. I know when I started blogging, it felt good to me when I read little comments like “nice post” or “good read”. If it’s something I enjoy, I’ll respond as well. If it’s a question that hasn’t been answered, I’ll do my best to provide one.
  • Wordy Warrior: Managed to catch my eye on Twitter that someone was starting a new blog. Say hi to @cristyen!

I’ve respecced tanking for the weekend. It’s been a long time.

In fact, it’s street hockey time. The Weekend Warriors are returning!