Matticus, Author at World of Matticus

Matticus Joins the Wrath Club

August 5, 2008 by Matticus

I scored a beta key from a friend and guildie today! I’m so incredibly happy! I’ve scoured the Internet and various WoW blogs as much as I could but I could not find much beta stuff from the perspective of a Priest.

Today that will change.

I’ll post a beta journal every few days or so chronicling what I’ve been up to, what I’ve found to work, what doesn’t and such. Master Lume informs me that the name Matticus has been taken. In case my other alternative names are taken, then I’m at a loss as to what I should name my Priest.

In any case, don’t expect too much just yet. I still have exams to write at the end of the week. But after that, that’s when the real fun begins. With luck, I hope I can continue to be a tried and true source of information for all of us Holy Priests as we gradually shift towards the expansion.

Of course, I need to download the client first.

And it takes 5 years.

Canada just got cable TV and running water last week.

Two cans and a string is what consists of our Internet connection.

7 Pointers for a Stress Free Raid

September 3, 2012August 5, 2008 by Matticus

Image courtesy of _AcE_

Your back is straight and rigid. Your eyes are glued to the screen. You’re screaming and yelling so loud your parents are wondering what’s going on. Your heart’s pumping blood at an insane rate.

But are they happening for the right reasons?

The above symptoms could either represent the elation of an imminent boss death or an incoming raid wipe.

Raiding can induce an unhealthy amount of stress. There are many potential sources of anxiety and frustration. There could be a variety of reasons for the pressure you’re feeling. Maybe it’s a bad night overall. Maybe there’s some internal business that needs to be sorted out in your life or in the guild that’s functioning as a dark cloud over everyone. Not everyone’s immune to it but there are ways to deal with it.

Inhale and breathe: Those breathing exercises you read about near the health section of your newspaper next to the horoscope and Sudoku pages actually work. When boss loot is being distributed, take a moment and close your eyes. Block out the raid mentally or turn them down if necessary. Inhale slowly, count to 5 then exhale. Repeat the exercise 3 more times before retuning your mind back to the raid. Of course, you might have to pass on this if loot drops that you need.

Reduce wiping on farm content: This is a separate blog post on it’s own. Wiping on farm content and farm trash is the biggest source of headaches for raiding guilds. Encounters that should be easy end up being catastrophes for raid groups. Stay focused and do your part. Play to your highest potential and respect the boss that you’re working on.

Don’t skimp on raid buffs: When we were killing Archimonde the other day, I had a Priest in my raid who dropped 30 minute forts on everyone. I cursed out loud in vent and applied my 60 minute Ferrari buffs. I had a feeling people were going to complain about the 30 minute buffs anyway. Instead of berating the other Priest about it, I bit my tongue and overwrote his buffs with my own. Even though the odds were good we’d wipe repeatedly on Archie, it was the principle of the matter. In the long run, you end up using more mana and spending more time individually forting people than you would with group buffs. Over a prolonged period, this time spent on individual buffs could have gone towards working on Archie.

Listen to music: I set my iTunes volume to 25%. Whether I’m mentally dancing to Chris Brown (Forever!) or swaying my Dwarf hips to Gloria Estefan’s Everlasting Love, music is an enormous form of stress mitigation. Just don’t play your songs intentionally over vent. Not everyone has the same tastes.

Prepare yourself the night before: I like to lay out my pants and shirts before major stress inducing days where I have to deliver presentations or crapshoot my way through exams. I do it to reduce the mental load I know I would get the next day. It’s bad enough I’m trying to remember certain points or formulas. I don’t need to add extra stress to myself by wondering what I need to wear and what color socks have to match with my shirt and stuff. Likewise, the night before the raid, check that you have enough potions, candles, mana oils, and other consumables in your bag so you can go through the next day without having to frantically scour the auction house last minute before your raid.

Grab a cold one: Nothing is wrong with a little alcohol during raids. Certain Resto Trees might prefer wines whereas certain Dwarves prefer the strength of beer or ale. Regardless of you preferred beverage of choice (be it alcoholic or non), it does help relax and ease the tensions accumulated during the day.

Take a day off: No, I don’t mean from raiding. I know some of you hold specialist positions in your raid. See if there’s a volunteer willing to do the job of healing assignments or marking sheep targets or even leading the raid. There’s a practical argument for this suggestions. What if you were running late or if an emergency prevents you from raiding? It’s nice to know you have a number 2 around to take over and cover for you.

SK Gaming and Nihilium: The Greatest Conspiracy Plot to Ever Unfold

August 4, 2008 by Matticus

Many gamers (not just WoW players) are aware of two of the most dominant names in professional E-Sports today: SK-Gaming and Nihilum. Let me say that I’ve known about SK for many years when they were the top Counterstrike teams in the world. Likewise, I also know about Nihilum’s illustrious history along with mousesports. As such, I have nothing but the highest respect any gamer can have like a son to a father.

Although after reading the following post, my faith has wavered slightly.

An interview is conducted on World of Ming with a former professional Warcraft 3 player named Bey (not going to try to use the funky B in case it screws up a few things). His earnings are reported to be over 35000$ after playing more than 700 games in over a year.

In any case, the first part of the interview is mostly background information. Bey, the player in question, is establishing the fact top tier players establish and cultivate relationships not unlike how top tier raiding guilds on servers have their own alliances and relationships.

It gets a lot more interesting towards the second half of the interview when Bey begins talking about SK Gaming’s and Nihilum’s practices.

He states that Schroet Kommando is an extreme right organization. Here’s a few select quotes:

?ey: My sources told me that after the recruitment, they start to slowly modify the person’s way of thinking with all sort of tricks and manipulative discussions evolved around the gaming training sessions. There are also some weird occult rituals and gatherings with occult implications, but that’s where my sources stopped sharing with me, so I couldn’t find out more about it.

I suppose that this did not include normal team building exercises like mountain climbing or playing street hockey together. Since it’s in Europe, they might bond better playing soccer.

Let’s hit the nail harder on the head, shall we?

?ey: The information I have is 100% secure and bulletproof, beyond any level of doubt. So, basically what we know about SK is that their leaders are Nazi extremists, and that they don’t want us to know this, and that their logo had is based on a modified version of the swastika.

Oh, so that’s what extreme right means. I get it now. Hold on a sec, it turns out SK’s not alone anymore.

?ey: Mousesports is another German gaming organisation that shares the NAZI viewpoints of SK. Somehow even more, considering that their crown jewel is Nihilum, a guild that is made only from German, Swedish, Danish and Norwegian people, and especially because of NAZI aryan beliefs. I personally know lots of insanely good players that’s knocked at Nihilum’s door and were turned down because of racial reasons, even if they were perfectly geared and capable of filling the spot required. This was not made public of course, but that was the true reason behind it.

At least it’s nice to know that if I had applied to Nihilum I would not have been turned down because I sucked. On a more serious note, these are some really serious allegations. Bey’s just accused two of the top gaming organizations in the world that they are Nazis.

How would they have enforced their e-dominance?

?ey: The plan was simple and extremely effective, and was needed because both SK and MS wanted to control what was happening in other Bgs – they were scared to death that an outsider EU team may sweep them at Blizzcon or other tourneys (which ended up actually happening)…

…These things were backed up with whispers like “words are that SK and MS pay weekly big money to anybody that is on the 1st page of the Cyclone BG in 2v2 and 3v3.” As well as stuff like “I heard that that team was 16th last week and got paid 200 Euros to each member”.

To bottom line it:

?ey: The truth is that SK and MS payed all the first 20 teams (the ones that were on Cyclone BEFORE the hype), to queue dodge the new powerful wave of teams and to share information to all teams about the new players and their comps.

All I can say is just wow. I’m utterly amazed. I don’t even know if something like this can be made up. I don’t but it, however. There’s no empirical evidence for such an accusation and it’s still really hard to prove. How do you prove something like this anyway? You almost can’t! It’s hard!

Remember, here’s the link to the full text interview for you to read in full.

This just about rivals the DnT drama story several months ago. Anyway, I wanted to share that little story for you. What a way to open up the week, eh?

So what are your thoughts?

Load of crap or a potential eyebrow raiser and jaw dropper?

Conspiracy drama stories are simply the best!

Assigning Healing Strategy – Part 2: Double Shifting Healers

September 3, 2012August 2, 2008 by Matticus

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Image courtesy of hkarl

Welcome to the second in a 5 part series here on World of Matticus. For the next several weeks, IÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ll be covering the rare topic of assigning raid heals. No one really wants to do it but itÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s the most important job in the raid and IÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ll provide a basic overview of the process and some advanced tips!

Double shifting the Healer

There are going to be times where you can get away with not having a full healer’s attention on a tank. The reason for that is because there are other healer’s on said tank. I often feel uneasy having only two Paladins on a main tank. I know I would feel more at ease if there was at least one more. However, I also know that due my personnel, I can’t spare another player on them full time.

What I can do is split a healer’s attention between two tanks. If I don’t have a Druid, I’ll put a Priest on it. Generally speaking, a Druid would be my top choice due to the nature of the class. Barring that, I’d take care of it myself personally. If I’m not able to, I’ll flip a coin and pick a Paladin or a Shaman.

The principle here remains the same. What we’re doing is taking a healing class and assigning them two different players to keep alive. In the end, we’ll have something that looks like this:

Alpha Tank
– Pete the Paladin
– Paula the Priest
– Darren the Druid

Bravo Tank
– Pierce the Paladin
– Pavol the Priest
– Darren the Druid

Understand that in most boss encounters, only one tank is necessary. But also understand that there are some fights where the boss encounter requires more than 1 tank to eat damage or to tank a different NPC. Here’s a few player examples of when double shifting is a good idea:

Covering a player 2nd on threat
Highest person with health gets a Hateful Strike
Multiple tanks on multiple mobs

Hopefully you’ll be able to understand the message I’m trying to convey here. Fights will become more complicated for you as you progress through the game and double shifting healers is one way of answering the challenge. Sometime early next week, I’ll illustrate in further detail how a Priest can double shift in terms of spells and things to watch out for (might use that for a WoW Insider post actually).

How about some concrete examples of which bosses to double shift on? Pulled from WoWWiki we have:

Supremus: Hateful strike – ~7 – 10k melee damage to the target with the highest current health inside melee range.
Gruul: Hurtful Strike – Always hits the second highest aggro target within his melee range; therefore essential that any melee DPS classes maintain their aggro level not only below that of the MT, but also below that of the OT.
Magtheridon: Phase 1 – It is theoretically possible for a moderately geared healer to cover the first two tanks on the Warlocks especially now that the encounter has been considerably nerfed.

Next week, we look at the pivot healer! See ya then!

5 Signs of the Vigilante Raider

August 1, 2008 by Matticus

dark-knght

Bruce Wayne: I’m doing the best I can, with what I know.

***POTENTIAL DARK KNIGHT SPOILERS BELOW***

After my raid wrapped up on Thursday night, I was due to catch up with a dear lady friend of mine. She had free movie passes and being the gentleman that I am, I offered to help her use them! She agreed and we both watched The Dark Knight at 11 PM. Like everyone else who watched it before me, I thought it was one of the top movies this summer if not the entire year.

Whether you’ll openly admit it or not, there’s a little bit of Batman in each and everyone of us when we play WoW. Don’t believe me? Here’s my list:

Adapting roles – For certain classes, they have to adapt to the needs of the Guild. Thankfully as Priests, we don’t have this problem. Classes like Paladins have to change their specs to fill a need that the Guild has. A spectacular Resto Druid I know made the decision to go Feral after we lost a tank just to maintain the Guild. Towards the end of the movie, Batman had to turn into whatever Gotham needed him to be. In this case, he became their villain to preserve the image of Harvey Dent.

Constantly improving – Whatever challenges the game throws our way, all players need to improve themselves to face them and beat them. Batman gets chased down by dogs and has difficulty moving his head. He gets his buddy Fox to modify his suit to minimize the problems they cause. Us WoW players will always be tinkering with our gear. Sometimes we want to increase our healing throughput. Other times we like to increase our endurance and we switch our gear as necessary.

Friendly support – Where would we be without our Guildmates? Not raiding is the first answer that comes to mind. In addition, I like to cultivate and maintain a vast network of friends willing to exchange services that I may need. Batman would never have been able to fight crime without the assistance of Lucius Fox and Alfred by his side.

Sacrifice – Are you willing to swallow your pride and bench yourself for the good of the Guild? Batman made jaw dropping decision to reveal his identity to turn himself in only for Harvey Dent to cover up and sacrifice himself instead. As a raider, there are times when you’ll be called upon to do things you don’t want to do. When you accept it, you’ll find it really isn’t all that bad. Sometimes you just have to walk away.

Making tough choices – Healers face bad choices every raiding night. Who do we heal first? Both are equally important. We can’t heal one without losing the other. Batman could only save 1 of the 2 hostages and he chose incorrectly based on information that was switcheroo’d. Sometimes you can’t make calculated decisions. Not all of the information necessary to make the right choice is there. Everything needs to get pieced together but the pieces don’t fit. As a result, a hard choice needs to be made on what action is taken next.

See what I mean? There’s always a bit of a vigilante in everyone. Some of us are adept at hiding it well. Others aren’t so lucky.