Matticus

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

Secret’s Out – Matticus a Part of WoW Insider

by


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

by

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.

6 Ways to Stay Inspired in Your Guild by Dr Randy Pausch

by

I watched the most touching presentation the other day on Presentation Zen. It was delivered by Dr. Randy Pausch. You see, the professor was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. His doctors informed him that he would only have a few months left before his condition would deteriorate. At Carnegie Mellon University, he gave a presentation that generated an impact worldwide on how he has approached his life.

Here’s the ABC promo on the special of the "Last Lecture".

 

The professor offers a lot of insight into how a person should live their life. But that doesn’t mean that his lessons can’t be translated into World of Warcraft. The actual presentation can be found at the bottom of the post.

Inspiration

We cannot change the cards we are dealt; only how we play the hand

Item drops in the game are completely random. There is nothing you or I or anyone can do to influence what item drops. If your weapon drops and you want it really badly but it ends up going to someone else, are you going to be thrilled for them or brood in a corner? I know that when Archimonde dropped his staff, the first thing that came to my mind was sweet! Why? Because I’d have less competition for it! When it dropped again, I was ecstatic. But then my feral tank just HAD to go and set the bar for 30 DKP effectively forcing me to spend almost double to ensure that I received it.

When you’re screwing up and nobody says anything to you anymore, that means they gave up

Whether or not you have just started your raiding career or consider yourself a veteran, criticism will come in many shapes and in many forms. I’m notorious for occasionally lapsing in attention during raids every so often (because there is generally a game going on) and I’ve heard about it several times. I can also deliver words of my own. But I don’t do it for the sake of putting them down. I do it because I want them to get better. Like Dr Pausch says, your critics are the ones who still love you and care.

Brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls aren’t there to stop you. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. The brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough

Do you remember when WoW had attunements? They were usually there for a reason. Blizzard has slowly but surely lowered the barriers. Experienced raiders know that a free ride is not expected. Loot is earned not given. You can’t show up to a raid and go AFK. Raiders have to actively contribute. The same thing applies with DKP. If you really want an item badly enough, then start spending those points. All too often, I’ve seen items drop and have seen people complain when they were unable to get it. A quick look verified that they had more than enough DKP to bid.

Wait long enough and people will surprise and impress you

This goes for any new players that I pick up for the guild. I have no say over who goes to the raid, but I do a majority of the filtering and the handling of potential recruits. I ran a pickup Kara group with a few of my friends many months ago and looked for a healer. A certain Resto Druid whispered me and asked to come. After the successful run, we parted ways but kept in contact. Fast forward a few months later, and he is now an active healing contributor in our raids. You never know when you’re going to find good people. Sometimes it will take days, other times it will take weeks.

Guys that was pretty good, but you can do better

These are words every raid leader should say after they kill a boss. There will always be room for improvement. Never set a bar because in doing so, your raid will only do that much and nothing more. That’s when they get complacent. It’s better off if the raid has no idea where the bar is so they can still keep pushing themselves to become better.

Don’t bail; the best gold is at the bottom of the crap

Truer words have never been spoken. This applies to anything from new players, new guilds, or new instances. There’s a lot of coal to filter through if you hope to find diamonds.

The Last Lecture

If you have time, I highly recommend watching the clip. It’s about 60 minutes long but I found it to be an inspiration for me.

 

Matt’s Mailbag: Aldor or Scryer? Hunter for Priest?

by

love reading you blog, thank you very much for such insight into the World of Priests. I’m an Alliance 63 Shadow Priest and leveling as quickly as possible. At 70 I want to go the Holy route though. I don’t want to take a mass of your time, but should I go Aldor or Scryer?

Many thanks for you time,
Anonymous

Thanks or the kind words. I won’t tell you which faction to go but I will tell you what faction I chose and my thought process behind it. Check out WoW Wiki’s Aldor or Scryer Comparison page. Its a detailed list of the rewards and items each side offers.

Let’s examine the items first. You get a great healing staff that you can go into dungeons with if you choose Scryer. But if you end up Exalted with the Aldor and you’re not packing anything but a blue neck piece, take a good hard look at the neck offered by the indigo skinned ones.

Shoulder enchants will continue to go a long way. You have a choice between 33 healing and 4 mp5 or 22 healing and 6 mp5. I took the extra 11 healing. I didn’t think the 2 mp5 was going to make that big of an impact. I’d like my heals to have a bit more “oomph” to them, so to speak.

Lastly, I am also a tailor. Scryer tailors can create spell damage leg patches and Aldor tailors can make healing leg patches. By picking out Aldor, I did not have to shell out copious amounts of gold for a Golden Spellthread. I can simply grab the mats and create them myself at my leisure.

I tend to be a “big picture” thinker. I like to think about where my character will be 3 months for now and how much replacement my gear and such will need. In the long run, Aldor was the route to go for me.

I was wondering if I should trade my main, 70 Nelf Hunt, for a 70 full merc shadow priest. I have just really gotten bored with my hunter as it turns into the same tactics with raiding and PvP so I would like to try something new. If I did do this would it be fair I would be trading my WHOLE account which is a 64 pally 70 Nelf hunter and various alts 20-. My hunter is decently geared has 2 peices of glad, 3 vindicators, and veng war axe, rest misc. blues from instances and T4 gloves. I am just really confused about this and did not know anyone else to ask but a priest. I will not get jipped off or anything since I know this person in IRL. I would just like to know your opinion on this matter and if it will be worth it in the long run.

P.S. I am only 14 so my grammer and writing sucks really bad I know.

– Anonymous

First off, I want to point out that your grammar and writing are a lot better than many people I know my age.

Second, you should know that I am a holy priest not a shadow priest. I have never played my priest as shadow so I cannot offer any thing close to advice about this.

Third, I believe you are asking the wrong question. You have just told me the reason why you feel like trading your account. You are bored of playing your hunter. I think the real question you need to ask yourself is why you are bored of playing your hunter. I’ve played WoW for almost 3 years and a majority of my time is spent healing. But it’s what I do that keeps me busy and interested. If you pick up the shadow priest, I suspect you will get bored of that eventually because you’re acting as a mana battery for the other casters (VE, VT, mind flay, etc). If you think trading accounts will help ignite your interest in the game again, then by all means go for it. But it sounds to be like a short term solution to a potentially long term problem. A lot of players I know have a case of altitis. Perhaps you should see them and get infected?

Readers, feel free to chime in on either of the questions. Have I forgotten to mention something? Am I clearly deluded?

Guild Link Love

by

Wanted to highlight a few of the blogs that my fellow guildmates have started.

  • Bladed Requiem: This blog belongs to one of our close quarters combat specialists. Deidrich (I coined the name "Dirty D" just for him) is a Rogue who started blogging a few weeks ago. Dirty D has been an incredible asset to the Guild and I hope he continues this way.
  • Light’s Grace: An Enhancement Shaman that has converted from the Light, she signed a deal with Carnage to provide Windfury Totems and Brain Heals as needed. She was once known as Kulrayk but is now known as Aylii. This promising recruit will work her way up to the top line in no time.