Matticus

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

Blizzcon Predictions from Bloggers and the WoW Twitterati!

by

Whelps, Blizzcon’s just about here! I decided to activate the crystal ball that is the WoW community in an effort to predict the news, events, activities, and happenings that would unveiled at this years Blizzard convention! You’ll hear it from from the 3 of us along with other bloggers and the chemical catalyst that is the WoW Twitterati!

Dying for the return of Starcraft: Ghost. With the merger with Activision, wouldn’t it just rock to see Ghost on the CoD 4 engine? We know that dual talent specs will be explained more. I think we’ll hear a lot more from the class designers regarding design choices and intents for the various classes. I’m hoping for first shots of Arthas in Ice Crown but I believe that’s unlikely to happen. Will definitely be paying a lot more attention to the raids and dungeons aspect of the convention. And it won’t be Blizzcon without Starcraft and Diablo related news! I’ll have multiple split screens set up so I can keep track of everything.

Here are Sydera’s guesses at the announcements that might be made at the druid class discussion.

“Many people are concerned about the size of the big bear butt. We are as well, because we play druids, and we can’t tank half as comfortably as we’d like with big fuzzy in our faces. So, we’re instituting a new, improved, Slim Bear Butt form. Just apply a minor glyph, and your bear will morph into a lean, mean, streamlined-rear machine. The graphic comes with black and yellow bicycle shorts to further hold in bear cellulite. And remember, you can only eat [Raw Carrots] and [Celery Stalks] in Slim Butt Form. Side effects of this form include nausea, dizziness, and increased irritability. Those mobs had better watch out! They look tasty.”

“Now that we’ve removed the 20% snare from Tree of Life, many of you Restos will never see caster form again–at least not while you raid. So, to respond to your aesthetic concerns, Tree of Life will shift colors every season. Shifting days will be tied to the closest Tuesday to the equinoxes and solstices. We are removing the Rotten Broccoli coloration entirely. Spring Form will have yellow-green leaves with blooming pink flowers, while Summer Form will be deep green with [Shiny Red Apples], Autumnal Form will have brilliant orange-red leaves that drift, one at a time, to the ground, and Winter Form will have no leaves at all, just a dusting of sparkling snow. We would like to thank Sydera for repeatedly posting this idea for us on the suggestion forums. We really could not have thought of it ourselves.”

“We have recently heard that druids are quite proficient at 2v2 and 3v3 arenas. In fact, many in the gaming community consider druids’ mobility to be overpowered for arena. So, just for druid arena players, we have decided to implement Potted Plant Form, a new shapeshift form that all druids will gain at level 80. Druids will no longer be able to heal in caster form or Tree of Life form in the arenas. Instead, they must use their new healing-specific arena form. In Potted Plant Form, which looks just like a window-box full of geraniums, druids’ mobility is reduced by 100%, but their healing is also increased by 100%. Their resilience is buffed by 400%, but they cannot cast Lifebloom at all while shifted into Potted Plant Form. We think that the introduction of this new form will be exciting for players, particularly the forum trolls that haunt the druid class forms, making whiny emo posts every time some Druid-Warrior combo beats them in 2v2. Just especially for the arena druid, we will also be introducing the [Glyph of Potted Plant Form], which will attract cute little butterflies and chipmunks to your pretty red flowers. The butterflies and chipmunks apply a stacking spell haste buff of 10 spell haste per critter, which can stack up to 10 times.”

Possibly another expansion after Wrath (unlikely to hear about it). Definitely hear more about Starcraft. The healing trees of all classes besides Priests will be removed and Priests will get a tanking tree :). Murlocs will be a playable race. Alliance and Horde will, for the first time ever, be able to talk to each other. Full slots of legendary grade items (On a side note, why aren’t there any legendary items aside from weapons?).

Other Bloggers

Joveta: I predict a big announcement that’s non-Wrath related.  Maybe a date for the new Starcraft or Diablo (or both!).  (It is Blizzcon, not WoWcon, after all)

Veneretio: My prediction is that the new spec system will include a sandbox area where you can pre-build specs and save them. This in conjunction with a single click respec feature would allow for easier, safer, faster respecs for maximum level characters.

Seri: Lots of wrath promo. New pvp info. Dual spec ui teaser for post-wrath. New Diablo info. Maybe a demo. Class panels with lots of QQ. Photos of drunken fanboys with devs and CMs. Pin the tail on the Tauren.Felicia Day sighting.

Lassirra: Naked Gnome races and Murloc rodeos!

The Twitterati

@Medros wow 4.0, updates on dual spec and dance studios, and general fanboi craziness

@shinmeko Blizzcon predictions: Alex and I get drunk, Felicia Day stuns nerds far and wide, and Starcraft never gets released.

@isheepthings from the blue feeds it looks like they will hash out a bit more about duel-spec mechanics. rest will be d3 news.

@Laikia i have a sneaking suspicion we’ll all be a tad disappointed. But maybe a release date for Starcraft II

@honorshammer Tigole or Kalgan will make an offhand comment in one of the class Q&As that will get disected for days and days on the forums

@roflwolf  I predict there’s a potential for getting felicia day’s autograph… assuming I can rely on my friends… so, probably not. lol! Otherwise, it’s going to be E3 w/o the competition… whatever that means.

@eliah No big announcements. Overpriced collectible crap. I will stay up late posting.

@IcE_IcE_Luwin Jessica Alba will reveal she is a hardcore WoW player (plays a female dwarf priest)

@justanna  someone, somewhere, will murder a murloc horribly. I predict chalk outlines, as this becomes a new Blizzcon trend.

Image credits: mmagallan

Plan Your Raid with RaidComp!

by

raidcomp

MMO Champion’s released a great new tool for Guild and Raid Leaders alike! It’s called RaidComp!

The basic premise of the tool is that it allows your leaders to plan raids and optimize them by literally dragging and dropping different class specs. The right side of the screen shows buffs and debuff abilities that the spec can bring.

With buffs now being applied raid wide, it would be time consuming to manually figure out what spec your players were and what abilities they had on your own. Using RaidComp, you don’t have to do that anymore.

raidcomp-2

Right: Here you can it showing the debuffs that the raid composition I picked will be able to apply. Below the debuffs, you can see the total count of the number of tanks (based on talents), healers, Ranged DPS, Melee DPS, Mana Batteries (Replenishment), as well as Heroisms.

There are certain classes and specs that will overlap with each other. You’ll notice that Spell Damage Taken debuff is in yellow. I have a Warlock in there with Curse of Elements which increases the Spell Damage taken. There is a talent that increases the potency of Curse of Elements to 13% (Spell damage taken increase).

Alternatively, if I didn’t want the Warlock to pick up that spec or if they didn’t want to get the talents for whatever reason, I can mouse over that and it will show me the other classes and spells that can do the same thing I want. You can see what it looks like below.

raidcomp-4

Below: And just for fun, here’s a test raid that I threw together just for kicks to ensure that I could get every possible buff and debuff so you can see what it looks like. It offers full support for a 40 man raid. Not only that, you can even export builds as links and share them with other players.

raidcomp-3

A great big thanks to the tech monkeys at MMO-Champion for coming up with this nifty script!

Healing Naxxramas – Grobbulus (10 man)

by

grob-1

Welcome to Grobbulus! You’’ll run into him right after Patchwerk in the Abomination wing. Once the room’s been cleared out, get ready to grab Grobby!

Abilities

He puts a disease on players at random called Mutating Injection. It’s very important that it does not get dispelled! There’s a boss in Blood Furnace (the big floating Eye) that drops poison clouds all around the room. This boss also drops poison clouds. If the disease on you gets dispelled or if it wears off, then you drop a poison cloud.

Slime Spray is another ability of his which hits for a decent sized amount. Any players who are affected will spawn slimes. DPS needs to kill slimes when they spawn!

  • Poison Cloud: Deals a moderate amount of damage

So how do you handle it?

grob-path

The Process

Tell your tank to pull Grobby in a clockwise direction. Don’t move him too fast. You don’t want to rush him around because it takes time for poison clouds to wear off.

Your DPS and healers will be standing in the middle and shooting outwards. Melee players will be standing behind Grobby as he is being tanked. Don’t forget to kill Slimes as they spawn!

If you get hit with a Mutating Injection, run and stay behind Grobbulus until it wears off. The main idea here is to keep the poison clouds on the exterior of the room thereby leaving the middle area relatively clean. Once diseased players are in a safe position, then all you need to do is Cleanse or Dispel them. The debuff will wear off and a poison cloud will expand where they were standing. Make sure they run back after the debuff wears off.

grob-3

Healing

I suggest using a 2 healer on tank, 1 on raid setup. Grobbulus does not hit really hard and the damage should be manageable. The concern here is the amount of players absorbing AoE damage from Poison clouds. As long as they are alert and aware of where they are relative to the clouds, they should have no major issues.

Other Notes

Grobbulus’ abilities are Nature based. Consider using Aspect of the Wild or other Nature Resistance abilities (Totems?). I do not know how effective using the resist is but it could help the raid stay alive longer than normal and buy more time. I haven’t had a chance to test Nature Resist. But it isn’t a necessity.

Matt’s Outlook for the Future

by

I was leafing through the Psychology Today publication (a great non WoW blog, mind you) and I ran into an article about George Carlin’s outlook on life. It was an interview he did for PT. There’s a few lessons I want to impart. I liked the post format a lot that I wanted to try!

Except in my case, I won’t be looking back. I’ll be looking forward.

On Wrath. Lots of fun. I can’t wait for it. It’ll be out in a little over a month with new zones, new things to do and I’ve eased off the beta for a while. I only leveled to 73 on my Character copy Priest. I guess I just got tired. I was more interested in raiding anyway.

On blogging neighbors. Blogging’s changed since I first started. A lot of old time faces I knew have retired from the game and have moved on. There’s a lot more new faces and strong bloggers out there. Once Wrath arrives, I suspect we’ll see a surge of quality stuff as new posts get written by people who want to get their thoughts down.

On marketing and promotion. I’ve seen bloggers who state their adamant position that they’re writing for themselves and that’s it. Later on I come back finding these same bloggers concerned about their lack of traffic. Sorry guys! Can’t have one without the other! If you want to see an increase in traffic, you have to write for yourself and for your audience! There’s a lot of excellent writers out there who are bright people. But here’s the trick: You have to learn about marketing and promotion. Draw attention to yourself. Link outwards. EMail other bloggers asking for a link (you can do it subtly, too. Just don’t play this card every post, only on the epic ones). I miss good posts all the time and by the time I think about linking to it, its out of date. Use Twitter. Use Facebook. Use Curse.com. Email WoW Insider. We’re always looking for stories and if its well written and newsworthy, we’ll put it up. Put the URL in your forum signature. Ask for subscriptions. I could go on and give a lecture about this.

On reading. Will Smith said it best. There isn’t a problem on Earth that someone hasn’t already solved and hasn’t already written about. Don’t stop learning, don’t stop absorbing information, and always ask questions. Because to put it bluntly, if you don’t ask, you won’t get an answer. But reading is very important. Try to catch 15 minutes a day with a magazine or a blog. Try reading a Non-WoW blog.

On creativity. The thing I miss the most about being a kid was being foolish and having an imagination. I just can’t seem to do it anymore. I know as I grow older its only going to get worse. There’s no such thing as a bad idea. What may not work for one person could work for you. Be creative! Try something new! Do something no one’s done before. I really want to try Slidecasting and I do have an idea in place to see if I can pull it off. Yeah it’ll take a lot of work, but I view it as a different way to express myself.

On special occasions. Happy birthday Aylii! They should be recognized. Even a gentle reminder would be nice. Guys are just bad at remembering dates (actually, it might just be me).

On modus operandi. It’s a term in law known as mode of operation. It describes characteristic patterns and their style of action. I’m a Priest at heart who loves the job of healing and who loves the job of writing. My style has always been straight and to the point (most of the time). But I’ll express posts in different formats and I won’t hesitate to borrow other formats and apply it to WoW.

On Blizzcon. I wish I could go. I’d love to attend but school keeps me away. I won’t be able to go next year if it falls at the same time again. It ends up usually around Mid term time for me. Have fun, all of you that are going! I look forward to reading about your stories and seeing photos!

On the joy of writing and being read. Its a tremendous feeling and it offers a heck of a high to wake up to in the morning after checking stats and reading other reactions. Its nice to be recognized for the effort that’s being put into the work I do. A lot of people don’t understand that blogging at a high level is hard work. So why do I do it? Because I love writing! If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be here and its always been that simple. I rest easier knowing that I’ve helped a player out there improve themselves or teaching someone how to do something. Its not a feeling that can be placed into words. Some people like to entertain, some like to rant or rage, but I just like teaching.

On laughter. We need more of it in this world.

What about you? Not necessarily on the above topics I chose, but pick 10 random topics or lessons and write down how you feel or what you think about them.

Space Goat Live (Shadow and Light): Another healer blog

by

Don’t have the time for a real coherent post right now since I’m in school (learning about the Youth Criminal Justice System). Got an email from Naelum shamlessly plugging a series of posts. Its an overview of all 4 healing classes at the end of Burning Crusade displaying their individual strengths and weaknesses.

Check it here.

Note: I don’t mind it when people send me links to read via EMail or otherwise. I’ve got so much stuff on my plate that I don’t have time to search things out or clean out my reader. With that being said, if someone goes through the trouble of EMailing or PMing or Morse Coding me a page or blogpost they thing is awesome, I’ll read it. Yes, that is right, I’ve started to outsource my blog reading :(.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ll read everything eventually. If the title’s boring, I’ll mark as read. If the intro paragraph doesn’t hook me, I’ll pass. But the ones that catch my attention usually jump to the top of the line because a simple EMail makes all the difference. And if I like what I read, I’ll try to share it here. I know I don’t do a good enough job shining the spotlight on other starter blogs or even to the more established ones. Thats a failure and a mistake in my own right and I apologize for not recognizing the work and effort of my blogging colleagues.