Matticus

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

20 Answers From Matt

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But for those of you that do, head over to Brigwyn’s blog. If I time it correctly, the interview should be posted (he told me 3 AM PST). I managed to sneak some time in to answer a few questions he had about myself and my work.

This link should work.

Here’s a preview:

There are many who feel that the Official Forums are basically a vile pit of nastiness that may put out an occasional golden nugget.  Do you ever visit and post? If not, is there a way for Blizzard to improve upon this?

No and I attribute that to a lack of time. I’m either busy reading, writing, or raiding. The times I do visit the forums is when a blue post is made that I need to take a look at. Blizzard provides the facilities where people can discuss and present ideas. It’s up to the people to not abuse that right. You can’t realistically expect Blizzard to reach out at players from the monitor and slap them around whenever players write something moronic. It is difficult for people to change. You put a 15 year old behind a screen and give them a keyboard, and they’ll say the rudest and destructive stuff without caring what people will think of them. You put a 15 year old in front of a linebacker, and he won’t say anything short of "hello Mister". Until Blizzard hires 11 million goons to moderate the activities of players, there’s not much Blizzard can improve.

I’m supposed to be guest appearing on a podcast sometime at the end of the week, too. I think. The host, she hasn’t gotten back to me yet. Who knows?

Speaking of podcasts, have you listened to the Rawrcast? They’re a relatively new podcast. Just yesterday they released their 5th episode.

On a side note, podcasting powerhouse Medros is about to hit his 100th podcast. I think that’s tomorrow.

Recruiting Healers is Like Picking Up Women (and a WoW Blogger’s challenge)

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I don’t get as much time to check out my feedreader as much as I like. But every once in a while, when I have time, I’ll pop open Google Reader. Sometimes I’ll see a post title that catches my eye which makes me zero in on it.

Ess wrote an eyebrow raising post about how not to recruit healers.

Here’s one of the points Ess offers:

2. Whisper them every time they log in.

So, this person that has been whispering me the second that I log in has been doing this for the past several days. Really… is it necessary to whisper me every single day? I have gotten the picture — I know they want me to join their guild. I’m always polite about the recruiting part, and tell them I appreciate it, but remind them that I plan to stay with my guild. (Are they hoping to wear me down?)

Also, they’re usually asking me to heal something at that moment for them. Because they ask me every day, I find myself much less inclined to run with them. I don’t want to do anything to encourage this behavior. If you were hoping to build a relationship with someone, would you really call them every single night and ask them to do something? Hopefully not. It sends bad signals, suggesting that you are high maintenance. This is a definite turn off. It makes me wish there were some sort of invisibility setting so they couldn’t see me when I logged in.

I can’t say I’ve ever experienced this stalking behavior. I’d get a lot of additions onto friends lists and I do get my share of messages when I do log on. But it hasn’t happened as much since the debut of expansion. Maybe the tanks or DPS just got tired of waiting for me to say yes and moved onto other healers instead. That’s okay. I prefer to test the waters anyway.

I gotta say, I really like Ess’s style and post here.

In the spirit of single’s awareness Valentine’s day coming up in a little under a week, I’m issuing a challenge to WoW bloggers to write a valentine’s themed post. Here’s a few post ideas and themes that you’re welcome to use. By all means, feel free to come up with your own! I’ll feature a few pieces that caught my eye next week (if I have any takers). I think I found my sweet spot. I should come out to Waves more often. London Fog seems to be the fuel for my blogging engine.

The GM’s just not that into you: Recognizing the Signs
Azeroth’s romantic getaways (Booty Bay takes on a whole new meaning)
Getting noticed by the guild of your dreams
Telling your ex-spec that you’ve moved on

Video: Conquest’s OS3D Kill

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Conquest- Three Drake – Funny bloopers R us

A big round of applause to cameraman Dannamoth for capturing our first OS3D kill two weeks ago and getting it on tape. This is the first time I’ve watched this fight from a different perspective. As the Disc Priest, I usually keep my eye toward Sartharion and healing the tank on him.

(You can sort of see the various Penance bolts that fly out on the bottom right corner of the screen from time to time. That’s me.)

Dannamoth is proof that Mages have more to bring to raids then food, drinks, and intellect.

Any comments, improvements, ideas and suggestions will be forwarded to him.

Blizzard Reads Kestrel’s Aerie (Priest Changes for 3.1)

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I don’t have much time. I’m rushing a quick post before I head to school (Delivering a 10 minute presentation on Forensic sciences). I’ll publish a post later with my thoughts on it. I am absolutely creaming my pants right now. When I alerted Wyn, she was virtually speechless as well. In case you haven’t seen them, here they are on WoW Insider. I wanted to point your attention to something though. Last year, I had the opportunity to do an interview with Kestrel (of his self titled Aerie). In it, he asked me what I thought the 51 point talent would be.

 

kestrel-int

Turns out I was wrong. It would end up being Penance. But look at the recent blue posts for Priests!

blizz-pwbarrier

Well, well, well. Will you look at that! A talent named Power Word: Barrier that’s a shield effect! I’m predicting it’s going to be replacing the spot where Diving Spirit is. But Kestrel my man, this is proof that Blizzard reads your blog, eh?

Malygos Phase 3 Made Simple

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malygos-p3

“Anyone have any tips for Malygos Phase 3?”

This is a common question I’ve seen on my Twitter that I’ve decided to address.

The phase 3 of Malygos is difficult for players the first time they run into it. It generally takes a number of wipes before players figure out what to actually do and how to do it.

When I explain this fight to pickup groups or other guilds, I try to keep things as simple as possible.

Setting up

As phase 2 ends, the entire instance is going to fill with bright, seizure inducing colors.

To make sure everyone’s in sync and starting in the right area, I get everyone to snap and move down to the southern side of the platform. Look on your minimap for this if you have to. I ensure everyone stays together as much as possible.

Note the red dot in the diagram above.

As the platform breaks apart and your raid falls, see to it that no one touches their flight controls. Let Malygos settle down and park himself. Once he does that, the raid leader cues the raid to climb.

Climb directly up until you’re at head level with Malygos. For the remainder of the fight, this is where you’ll be on the Z axis of things. You don’t have to worry about climbing or diving. You and your raid are only going to focus on strafing.

Movement

Note the four dark blue (navy) circles on the map above. Those are going to be the 4 points everyone will navigate to.

Now that the raid is head level and starting at the south position, you’re going to move towards the east, north, west, before heading back to the south.

In other words, fly counter-clockwise in 90 degree increments. You don’t have to do this constantly. Only move when the raid gets hit with a static field (30 yard AoE damage spell). See a static field? Move east. Another static field? Head north.

For the DPS

Even though I’ll have anywhere from 6 to 7 healers for phases 1 and 2 on Malygos, I’ll specifically jump into the play on phase 3 to help DPS. I like to get another healer to do it with me. This drops healing drakes down to 4 but increases attacking drakes by 2 (or having a net result of 20 firebreathing drakes).

Flame spike: Damaging fire attack that awards a combo point at the cost of 10 energy

Engulf in flames: Finisher that adds a DoT effect. The more combo points, the longer the duration of the DoT. Can stack.

As you can see, the more Flame Spikes you cast, the more DoTs you can add and the longer they last. It takes a while to build up momentum.

For the sake of simplicity and those doing it the first time, I suggest going for a 1-1-1-2 rotation.

On a side note, I think the guild best is currently at 22 stacks. Can’t remember if it was one of my Warlocks, a Hunter, or Kimbo (Ret Pally) who pulled it off.

For the healers

First thing’s first. What you may realize is that your raid frames are going to be useless! They don’t show the health of the drakes! There are a few addons that combat this, but I’m going to assume that you completely forgot to get them.

Press Shift V. This brings up healthbars on to the screen. At this point, you’re going to be relying on heads up healing. In other words, you’ll have to filter out the players with low health bars, target them, and heal them.

Revivify: 10 second HoT. Each application adds 1 combo point. This can stack up to 5 times.

Life Burst: This is an AoE healing finisher which increases your healing done by 50% (and lasts longer per combo point). If you have maxed out combo points (5 of them), the spell will heal around 15000 across all friendly targets within 60 yards.

This is like extreme whack-a-mole.

You may not have combo point indicators so you’ll have to keep track of it mentally in your head. And since Life Burst is a large AoE, you don’t always have to target the weakest drake. Just pick one and slam the key and it should engulf everyone.

For the DPS and healers

Lastly is the Flame Shield mechanic. Any spell that registers combo points will work (Revivify or Flame Spike). The more combo points, the longer the shield.

You’ll want to use this when he targets you with a Surge of Power. Having Deadly Boss Mods installed will cue a large warning on your screen that Malygos is looking at you.

Even though he looks at you, you still have time to build up points to survive. A lot of players will panic when this happens and feel helpless.

Get a grip on yourself and calm down.

When he looks at you, there are 3 seconds before he fires his laser beams. The beams will last 5 seconds. You just need to have the shield up for a portion of it to survive. With luck, your AoE healers can still catch you while the beam is going off to help mitigate some of the damage.

Let me reiterate, you don’t have to have your shield up the entire 5 seconds to survive. So if you’re caught with your pants down without any combo points and he’s looking at you, fire off 2 or 3 combo point spells and hit your shield. You should be able to survive it with slight scale damage.

Reminders

  • Run south going into phase 3
  • When Malygos levels up, climb up to him and reach head level
  • Strafe in 90 degree increments going counter clockwise
  • DPS: 1-1-1-2
  • Healers: 3-3-3-3-3-4 and press Shift V to toggle health bars
  • Don’t panic when he catches you with no combo points since you still have time

Good luck and good hunting!