Matticus

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

Finish this Sentence

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I have one more exam remaining before I am free from the clutches of academia (for two weeks). My posts have been getting sparser and a little irregular and I apologize. The past few weeks have been fairly rough. Carnage lost a Druid, a Mage, and a Shaman to real life. I’m waiting for the word from the boss to see if I should go out headhunting for any of those three classes. Both the Druid and Shamans were resto. If there are any disgruntled resto druids, resto shamans, or mages who want to progress in the game and see the world before wrath hits, we do have openings. Feel free to drop me a line.

Now that my plug has finished, here’s a "finish the sentence" question I want to post to everyone.

Raiding is like…

For me, raiding is like writing a test. There’s an unbelievable amount of pressure to do well in front of your peers.

Random Thoughts for Thursday

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  • Guild bank infiltrated. 80 hearts taken and many epic gems lost
  • Our bank was not the only one
  • Mages need another rank of conjured water
  • 1 healer means the difference between doing Black Temple or Mount Hyjal
  • Warlocks have something which allows them to increase healing done on them by some percentage
  • The feeling of dread is universal be it an exam the next day or a deadline to face
  • My Spiritual Guidance column is almost done and will be ready over the course of the weekend
  • I need to find more free stock photo websites
  • Freedom happens after 6 PM
  • Learning is not about regurgitating what is taught to you, it is about applying what you learn
  • Profs make more sense when you speak to them one on one than in lecture
  • How did Kael’s forces take over Quel’Danas?
  • Raiding on an empty stomach is not fun
  • Running Hyjal with 6.5 healers with the .5 being a Prot Paladin
  • Bocelli helps a lot with stress relief
  • Contemplating writing another RP post on a slightly larger scale
  • Dirty D is liveblogging tonight’s raid. Go check it out!

Clicker or Keyboarder? [New Poll]

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I had a quick conservation about play styles with my friends which got me wondering. They were talking about players who used their mouse more often to click on their buttons instead of having their keys bound and using that to control their actions.

I’ve played my shared of real time strategy games and first person shooters in the past. Using only one the mouse to issue commands on your character on what spells to cast and what items to use is a strange and bizarre concept to me. Many of the players in my guild are prone to using the keyboard when they turn their characters. We call them "keyboard turners". I’ve done this myself so call me a hypocrite. But, urgh, keyboard turning is bad!

So call me curious! What device do you use most often when using your spells and abilities?

Are you a clicker or keyboarder?

  • Keyboarder (55%, 487 Votes)
  • Clicker (40%, 348 Votes)
  • Some other device-er (5%, 43 Votes)

Total Voters: 878

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Secret’s Out – Matticus a Part of WoW Insider

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Image courtesy of musya

I’ve joined ranks with one of the top WoW blogs in the community: WoW Insider. Their Spiritual Guidance section had been inactive for a while. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t the least bit nervous. I think the team also needs more Canadian representation! But you long time readers know me well enough to know that I never give anything less than 110 %. As I write this, I have a lot of ideas written down on my whiteboard. But that doesn’t mean I’m not open to anything else.

I will try to focus my columns around three central concepts:

  • Specific Priest roles in raid encounters
  • Priestly tips and techniques
  • Being the best Priest possible

Who am I?

To all the newcomers who have never heard of me or what I stand for, understand that I am first and foremost a raiding healing Priest. It’s who I am and it’s what I want to do. Therefore, a majority of the columns I intend to write will end up in that subject area. If you look around my blog, you can see I write about a variety of topics such as guild management and raid leading in addition to being a Holy Priest. My current guild is up to Gurtogg Bloodboil in Black Temple and Hyjal is on farm.

Now that you know a little about me, I have to ask you one question. What do you want to read about?

Brooding Over Bloodboil

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For once, I’m at a loss here and I’m hoping to garner some insight or advice from the readers. My Guild had started to work on Gurtogg Bloodboil. We were working on Bloodboil for a few hours on Sunday. I used to think that Najentus was considered a heavy healing fight.

Boy was I wrong.

I won’t go too much into an explanation, but here’s the WoWWiki link for the strategy.

Loadout

  • 4 Holy Paladins
  • 2 Holy Priests
  • 1 Discipline Priest
  • 1 Resto Shaman
  • 1 Resto Druid

Directions

Phase 1

3 Paladins on each tank. We use 3 to rotate aggro on the boss. I, the Holy Priest, heal the tank who is actively being attacked by the boss. The rest of the healers are assigned to the bloodboil groups healing (Resto Shaman, Priest, Paladin) or raid healing.

Phase 2

This is where things get dicey. The 3 Paladins that were on the tanks immediately jump the player with Fel Rage. I heal up the melee before switching to tanks and then raid healing. The Resto Druid covers the 3 tanks. 1 Paladin and 1 Resto Shaman are raid healing. The other Holy Priest and Discipline Priest are also on the player with Fel Rage.

If the player is a clothie, Pain Suppression gets applied.

Problems

A player with Fel Rage has the following effects:

  • increases armour by 15,000
  • increases health by 30,000
  • increases healing done by 100%
  • increases damage done by 300%
  • increases size by 100%

The raid gains a buff called Insignificance where every spell they cast has no threat. One problem is that if a clothie gets hit with Fel Rage and Pain Suppression is applied, the player dies just as Fel Rage is about to wear off. Gurtogg gets progressively stronger during this phase. I can’t help but wonder if it would be a better idea to delay Pain Suppression for about 5 seconds before it becomes applied.

In our case, it’s not just the person with Fel Rage who is dying. Other members of the raid seem to be dying from a lack of heals or other miscellaneous reasons.

I can’t help but wonder if it would be better to stack all four of the Paladins on the Fel Rage’d player immediately along with the Discipline Priest and then have the Holy Priest switch to raid healing instead. This would essentially give us a picture of something like this:

  1. 4 Paladins and a Disc. Priest on Fel Rage
  2. 2 Holy Priests, a Resto Shaman, and a Resto Druid on the raid divided up accordingly

By switching the Holy Priest to the raid, this opens up a lot more options that the healer can use other then Flash of Light spamming.

Another problem that isn’t so urgent is our DPS output. Gurtogg has a 10 minute enrage encounter. I notice that when we hit the ~50% mark, the timer is around 4:45 or less. Granted we did lose 1 or 2 players at this point.

I seriously hope the Recount Death meter gets fixed as soon as possible. With that tool being down, we have no way of ascertaining the cause of death when players die. As a result, healer blame has increased in recent weeks and has gotten me irritated. Most of the time, it’s never justified. It tends to be the result of a fight mechanic that players seem to forget about (some raiders mysteriously forget that Najentus’ spines can be removed). Therefore, the "blame healers" catch all is used. I’m afraid that I might one day lash out if I see another "healers fault for wiping" comment in the raid.