Matticus

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

2.4 Quick Hits

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Here’s a few of my initial thoughts and impressions:

  • Omen: I like the way it looks, but I can’t seem to get it to function for me. Maybe it’s because I’m a healer. But I don’t get any bars of any sort.
  • WoWAce Updater makes my life easier for dealing with addons
  • Sunwell Island is an absolute mess. It’s amazing that my server’s hit 50%. Wait, is that part timed or is it just the unlocking of the last 3 raid bosses?
  • The quickest way to Mt Hyjal is to go to the World’s End Tavern in Lower City and talk to Zephyr who teleports you there directly. Although I do believe a certain amount of rep is required.
  • The badge vendor is available during phase 3, from what I heard.
  • Chat window appears to be buggy. No matter how many times I try, Guild Chat does not stay in one window. It appears in two. So does /say, /party and all the others. I tried disabling Prat but that seems to do nothing.
  • Need help with the new daily quests? Look no further than Siha’s guides.
  • Having an extra tier token drop is really nice.
  • 10 gold per boss kill is nice.
  • As are the 2 badges per boss. All of a sudden, getting 150 badges doesn’t seem so difficult anymore.
  • Primal Nether is going at a rate between 60 – 90 gold and there are no vortexes on the auction house as of yet.
  • There are always people who don’t read patch notes and resort to asking in trade, general, or guild chat incessantly about things that are blatantly stated in patch notes. I want to shoot these people.
  • Magister’s Terrace appears to be the first anti-Paladin tank instance.
  • My Ret Paladin got some decent upgrades without having to do anything.
  • Going to set up a Pickup Group for Mag’s Lair on Saturday consisting of mostly Guildies and their alts. Hopefully we can one shot "Bagtheridon".
  • Recount keeps asking me if I want to reset data every time I enter a new area.
  • Came quite close to lashing out at a Guild mate. A friend said in Guild Chat that "raiding on patch days are a pain". Somehow, that earlier Guildie took it as a sign that there wasn’t going to be a raid today and decides to AFK AV. He comes back and is dismayed to find that there is a raid and no one told him about it and proceeds to lash out at said friend because he seems to think it was their fault. I never had respect for the guy in the first place. His rank is that of a Backup Raider, not a starter. So he has no right to complain even if he doesn’t get.
  • I seem to have installed a new UI addon which has my name in yellow on the bottom left with yellow bars on a black background, and a black bar on the bottom right with an icon of a white sleepy alien-like thing. In the middle, I have another similarly striped black bar which has my name and functions as a targetting bracket. I don’t know what this addon is and it’s impeding my chat boxes. I can’t seem to right click or find the icon for it anywhere near the minimap and I have no idea what it’s called. Does anyone have an idea?

Now There’s a Real LFM Message

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Matt’s note: Not WoW Related. Can mark as read.

I had just finished class and was on my way home. I’m waiting at one of the university bus loops and I see an ad taped to the glass pane on the bus shelter. I told a friend of mine to take a picture of it and send it to me later. You can’t say he hasn’t attracted interest though. It looks like he’s got at least 3 takers. I wonder if this method actually works.

5 Things Jack Bauer Taught Me About Raiding

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Jack Bauer 
Photo courtesy of Kiefer-Rocks

I’m into the whole action hero counter-terrorism deal. I read a lot of Tom Clancy  (Rainbow Six) when I was younger. I like to play special forces oriented shooters when I’m not playing Warcraft. I check out 24 every so often when it’s showing on TV. Jack Bauer is one of my favourite fictional characters. Hell, if I could have the guy as my Guild leader, I’d be all over it. I mean sure he’s a little intimidating, but if you can look beyond his torturing and his willingness to kill, he seems like a nice guy that gets things done.

He’d roll a Warrior, I bet.

There’s a lot of important lessons you can find from his quotes throughout the years and I feel that raiders would benefit from it. Potential new raiders would also benefit from the wisdom of Jack Bauer. So what is he trying to tell you? What is he trying to say? I will do my utmost to translate his words into something you can understand and interpret.

[to Audrey, who was held by the Chinese for a few months]
Jack Bauer: I know what it’s like to feel like it’s never going to end.

Welcome to raiding. It’s a huge time investment. You almost never know when it’s going to end. After a while, you’re going to wish that it will end especially on marathon nights when Guild leaders are in their "just one more attempt" mood. There will be nights where you will wipe repeatedly for a long time and it really is going to feel like it’s never going to end.

But hey, Jack Bauer was in a Chinese prison for 20 months. You’ve only had to wipe on Kael for 6 hours. Suck it up and move on, soldier.

[from Season 5 preview]
Jack Bauer: If you don’t tell me what I want to know, then it’ll just be a question of how much you want it to hurt.

At the top of my blog, there is a banner with five glowing words that encompass the overall principle that I hold dear not just in Warcraft but in life: Power Through Knowledge and Reason. Only with knowledge can one understand power. But only with reason can that power be used wisely. There are some things that players must know when raiding. There are gimmicks, traps, toys, and other random garbage being thrown our way. We have to know what they are. If we don’t know it, then we can’t prepare ourselves for it. If we don’t have a clear understanding of what we need to know, then it will hurt us big time.

Jack Bauer knows just about everything. If there’s something Jack Bauer doesn’t know, he’ll torture someone until he finds out. You just have to get off the couch and do a bit of reading and watch some videos.

Nina Myers: You’re lying.
Jack Bauer: Yes I am. But you’re still going to have to trust me.

Trust is a hard thing to do in a raid. No one likes to trust their fate on the ability of other players. If you’re like me, you’re a control freak and you want to be the only factor that affects your own fate. We don’t have that luxury in raids. I don’t deliver my promises all the time, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t trust my ability as a healer. Could you imagine what raiding would be like if no one trusted each other? Tanks would constantly break CC targets because they didn’t trust hunters to control them. Priests would bust fears on nearby mobs. Mages would blow ice block and blink cooldowns because they wouldn’t trust healers to keep them up. Nothing would get done! Sometimes you have to place your e-life in the hands of others to get what you want: phat lewt.

Of course, Jack Bauer doesn’t trust anybody. He doesn’t trust his friends, coworkers or his own government. Unfortunately, none of us are skilled as Jack Bauer when it comes to getting things done.

Jack Bauer: That’s the problem with people like you, George. You want results, but you never want to get your hands dirty. I’d start rolling up your sleeves.

Raiding has some seriously enticing rewards especially to those that want to be the best. But you can’t just waltz in there and expect to get things handed to you. You have get down there and do the work on your own. Skill and talent or hard work and effort? I’d rather take the latter, personally. You can’t expect to stand there and spam one button to do the job, unless you’re a Resto Shaman. Going AFK isn’t going to cut it either. Raiding means that you have to seriously raid and work hard. Often times, it isn’t the most glorious of roles but someone has to do it.

From this, we learn that Jack Bauer is like most people. He rolls his sleeves up. Except when he rolls his sleeves up, it’s because he doesn’t want to get blood on his shirt.

Jack Bauer: I like working with you, Chase; you’re a nice kid. But don’t you ever come into my office and talk to me like that again, do you understand me?

There’s a certain kind of unspoken rule that needs to be followed when raiding. You should never openly question your raid leader. If he asks for help or suggestions, that’s okay. But never, ever override or tell others to do something else that the raid leader has already committed the raiders to do. That is a big giant no-no. You don’t talk to him in a condescending or disrespectful manner either. Because at the end of the day, he’s still your superior. If you want to continue raiding with the Guild you’re in, you better be able to follow those rules or else you won’t be in that Guild much longer.

Jack Bauer doesn’t take crap from anybody.

Addon: Don’t Be a Friend, be a Shaman Friend!

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At first glance, most players might not recognize what that is. As Shamans, we have a huge variety of tools at our disposal to deal with buffs and spellcasts. Jin was sporting a spiffy addon throughout WSG weekend and I had to ask him about it. It’s called Shaman Friend. Basically, it outputs selection actions into party chat, raid chat, say chat, or raid warning.

Totally handy for PvP action. I wonder if there’s something like that for Priests.

Features

I pulled this list right from the Curse description.

– Alert if no Elemental Shield is present in combat
– Alert if no Weapon Enchant is present in combat
– Show total Windfury damage on screen with crits/misses
– Show buffs removed by Purge and/or broadcast the buffs to the chat window
– Show spell interrupted by Earth Shock and/or broadcast it to the chat window
– Show a message when Lightning Overload procs
– Show how the duration of Frost Shock on your target are affected by Dimnishing Return and showing when Diminishing Return goes off.
– Show when your Grounding Totem absorbs a spell
– Show when one of your T5 bonuses procs
– Option to select which sound to use when notified (or turn it off completely)
– Can print messages in MSBT, SCT, Parrot and a few others.
– Show a message whenever you cast Bloodlust/Heroism or Mana Tide
– Separate frame allowing for easy Earth Shield tracking and recast

So what’re you waiting for? Go grab it now!