Matticus

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

Get a Bear Mount: 10 Tips on Beating the Zul’Aman Timer

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Image courtesy of Daino_16

The Zul’Aman timer run is one of the most difficult challenges in the game. If executed perfectly, you’ll find yourself with a brand new bear mount along with a host of other extra epic goodies. You have exactly 45 minutes to kill the first four bosses in Zul’Aman if you intend to get that bear mount. I haven’t been able to get a bear mount yet myself, but I’ve learned a few tricks after talking to a couple of guildies and from my own experience.

Be Overgeared

This is a real big no brainer. If you plan on beating the timer, you should be almost out of T5 level gear and into Black Temple/Mount Hyjal gear. That means your Kara/Gruul/Mag gear has got to go. In fact, you shouldn’t even need ZA gear.

Know the fights

Again, also a no brainer but there is no time to explain. You have to know the encounters by heart because it simply takes too long to explain it.

2 Healers

Yes, you read that correctly. Bringing three healers is almost essential just to completing the instance. To bring 2 healers would almost be suicide! But believe me, by bringing only 2 healers, that extra DPS will go a long way in netting a bear mount.

Prot. Paladin, Feral Druid, Fury Warrior

This is the suggested tanking group. Your Prot. Paladin’s going to shoulder most of the load. Your Feral Druid will be switching back and forth from DPS to tanking as necessary. Your Fury Warrior is just going to lay the smackdown on everything. Trust me on this. If you can find an awesome DPS warrior, you’ll be amazed at how fast trash can drop and go down. Furthermore, less down time without having to get mana back.

Group Make Up

Consider running 2 Warlocks and 2 Shadow Priests to increase longevity and overall damage. This was recommended to me by a Guildie who has successfully done it.

Skip the Chests

Yes, seriously, skip the chests. Don’t open them until after you success or your failure. The clock is ticking while you handle the extra loot. Just get everyone to get their badge, and haul ass to the next one. The chests will still remain there untouched and unopened while you’re plowing through the bosses.

Group Loot

While we’re speaking about loot, don’t use master looter. I’m assuming that there is little if any upgrades for you in this instance. Set it to group loot instead of master loot so that you don’t waste precious time handling rolls and timers and such. If a player wants it, hit need. If not, pass it. Get your DE’er to greed it. Except you might want to consider master looting the bear when you get to it

Use your cooldowns to minimize downtime

I’ve mentioned it before but you cannot skimp out on cooldowns. This is especially true as a healer. Remember our Shadowfiends have a 5 minute cooldown between use. Innervate is 6 minutes for Druids. Heroism is 10 minutes. Evocate is 8 minutes. You get the idea. Be very liberal in their use. You can’t spend a lot of time drinking. It’s literally pull, after pull, after pull.

Shortcuts

Check out these screenshots:

Zul'Aman Shortcut Outside Lynx

Zul'Aman shortcut path for Lynx

Recognize the location? This is the area leading up to the Lynx boss. There are a couple of huts on the left side that have no mobs inside them. Those windows might look small, but rest assured you are small enough to jump through them. Anyway, there are 2 such hits. The one shown above is the first. The diagram above is a very crude reconstruction. But hopefully, it will give you a better idea of what you need to do. If executed properly, you will bypass about 2 pulls which should save you between 1 minute to 2 minutes.

There’s another shortcut amongst the trash pulls leading to Dragonhawk. I’ll see if I can nab a few shots of it or even make a quick video about it in a future post.

Stable Core

If you plan on doing this run, you have to find a stable group of people to run with. Start off doing non-timed runs but try to keep the people the same. You don’t want to pug any players at all. Get the team chemistry going. I’ve communicated with my other healers enough to know who is healing who without having to ask. But playing with 9 other people you are familiar with is a good thing to do.

Good luck! I expect screenshots of you on your bear when you pull it off!

Prayers Were Answered

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We prayed long and we prayed hard. Even though it took 9 attempts, I had a feeling the big loot god in the sky smiled upon us (after deciding to slap us around a bit). But then he pulled the rug out from right under us. What a cruel joke. Like honestly. First he picks the same guy like three times in a row. This is a guy who has NEVER seen the fight before and JUST got briefed on it 5 minutes after we got there. Not only that, after kill him we only get one real piece of loot.

Sure enough:

Totem of Ancestral Guidance
Shadowmoon Destroyer’s Drape

 

I look forward to seeing the Twisted Blades of Zarak drop next week.

I’d also like to point out that I did 2860 DPS on that encounter and was 2nd on damage meters. 150 APM (actions per minute) helps a lot. I will definitely have to make a video for this stage. This is like the only encounter in the entire game where I get to DO something aside from healing! *squeal*

Weekly Digest: Gorefiend in the Crosshairs, WPDesigner, and Criticism

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What’s Happening in WoW

Not much in the way of progression so far. Our Tuesday involved getting down 4/5 Hyjal and on Thursday we cleaned up Shade of Akama in under 3 hours. This means Sunday will be a real progression night and a test to see if we have that guy in the raid or not. I sincerely hope not. But I will have the cameras running for the Carnage highlight reel.

And shout outs to that Warlock who messaged me the other day to pick off a White Remedy Cape (I think) off of me as well as to the Druid who I partied with in doing Heroic Slave Pens. I forgot your guys’ names but thanks for reading. You’re like the only two players I know of on Ner’Zuhl who read my blog. Other then my Guildies of course. I’ve somehow attracted the attention of Blori, the worst warrior on the server. I’ll have to watch what I write more carefully.

What’s Happening with the Blog

Interested in getting some new themes for your WordPress blog? I’m running a give away courtesy of WPDesigner. Check out this post for more details and bring your RP skills.

Latest Blog Posts

5 Barriers of a Raid Healer

My 5 part series for this month looks at the problems that new raid healers may come across.

  1. Indecisivity is Bad
  2. Dealing With Criticism

20 Questions by Matticus

I couldn’t find any victims last week. But this week, I found one! Nightravyn, one of the lurkers on the BA chatroom, sat on the hot seat.

Past Hits

Past columns I have written that still hold true to this day.

Blog Spotlight

Too Many Annas – Most of this blogger’s characters start with An. I haven’t come across many blogging Shamans yet. There are some notable ones out there, of course. But a Resto one is rare. Then again, maybe I’m not searching hard enough.

Matt likes: Raiding and the Resto Shaman. What? You mean there’s more to healing as a Resto Shaman then spamming brain heal?

Tobold Interviews a Gold Seller

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MMO Blogging enthusiast Tobold managed get in an interview with a gold selling company that’s not based in China. I don’t support RMT at all in any shape. With that being said, that does not mean I’m not curious as to the motivations and foundations behind them. Im always interested to learn about everything and anything (I have Wikipedia as my home page for crying out loud). Tobold asked some intriguing questions and received some ever interesting answers.

EDIT: RMT stands for Real Money Trading (or the process of exchanging real money for virtual currency and items).

After posing this perspective I’m often asked, “So why do Blizzard ban RMT accounts then?”, and the answer is always the same. To open a WoW account requires both a CD Key and subscription, but as Chinese credit cards are not accepted this become a 60-day pre-paid game card. A Chinese workroom would pay around $35 for both these resources, the majority of which goes right into Blizzard’s pockets. As a rough estimate based on experience within Chinese workrooms, I would say 200,000 workroom accounts were banned in 2007, 99.5% of which would have been replaced by a new account (with a new CD key and pre-paid card) right away. Based on these numbers, the banning of Chinese “Gold Farmer” accounts was worth approximately $7,000,000 last year alone. Now you can better understand why RMT continues to exist and why legal action against RMT is extremely selective.

Obviously a controversial piece like this would garner a few negative comments. Sure enough, a brief look at the comments showed several dissatisfied readers. True, Tobold had to publicize the address of the company in question but I think a link is a fair trade off in order to ask honest questions and get honest answers. The world revolves around a give and take relationship and you can’t expect to get something for nothing.

There’s been documentaries and interviews of serial murderers and rapists and other criminals done before in the past. It doesn’t mean we support what they do. Interviews like this help in expanding our understanding and view of deviant acts like this.

If you’re against buying gold or RMT in general, then it’s highly unlikely that reading an interview like this will change your mind.

In Vancouver, we have a special place in the Downtown East side called a Insite. It’s essentially a safe injection site for drug users to go to in order for them to practice what they do in a safe place. This government funded installation is meant to help drug users in a controlled environment that is fully staffed. Obviously a place like this can send the wrong kind of message; namely that the government supports illegal drug use. On the other hand, if an individual is going to shoot cocaine or do drugs anyway, at least there’s a hygienic place that exists where they can go to in order to do it safely without overdosing themselves.

Applying this to WoW and RMT, I’m more aware of the trades and practices that dealing with Chinese RMTers can do. This organization reports itself as being in America which means it is subject to American laws and business practices. I’d like to say that offers an element of comfort to players who might be desperate enough to turn to RMT in the first place.

Disclaimer: I mentioned it earlier and I’ll say it again. I don’t support RMT at all. But I still like to learn. If you’re going to comment, please do it respectfully with regards to the views of others.

Technorati Tags: , , rmt, , , tobold

5 Barriers of a Raid Healer – Part 2: Criticism

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Image courtesy of frko

Each Saturday for the next five weeks, I will be writing about one barrier of the raid healer. Healers are often overshadowed and looked over since we are expected to simply know what to do. With luck, this five part series will help you to become a better raid healer whether you are a varsity or a freshman. Last week, I talked about indecision.

Barrier 2: Criticism

“Complaining about something without taking any action to correct it is irresponsible. If a condition deserves criticism, it deserves an honest attempt to change it.”
– John Renesch

Remember that you are not the only person in the world that takes criticism. It can come in any shape or form. It can be malicious or delicious (yeah, think about that for a second). Sometimes it will hurt. When you’re playing at a high level in WoW (and I don’t mean just 70), people will be very blunt with you.

The only aspect of being criticized by others that you can change is your reaction.

As a Priest, I’ve taken my share of lumps going from 1 – 70. But you as a player have to understand that these players, be they friend, foe, stranger, guildmate, or Mr Pinchy are trying to make a point to you. They’re trying to make you aware of your own shortcomings.

We’re in a special class of our own because we’re responsible for the well being of the raid. If anyone dies, 90% of the time, we get looked at first as the main cause. Our results are dictated by one factor: Whether or not our assignments are alive.

When you start coming under fire from your Guildies about why you’re doing such a poor job, it can really blast a person’s confidence and make them question their own abilities. I know I’ve had on more than one occasion.

Dealing With It

Handling criticism isn’t the easiest thing to do in the world. We all like to believe that we are alpha players at the top of the food chain. Unfortunately, we’re not. I lot of people I know react to criticism poorly. Thankfully, the raiders I play with take criticism admirably and constructively. The feedback of others serves to make them better players.

During the summer, I worked as a carnie in the local fair. A job like that really stresses you as a person because every day you’re subject to a large torrent of kids and angry parents who pressure you with questions like "Where’s the bathroom?" and "Can my kid stay a few minutes longer?"

Needless to say, that experience tempered me a lot. It taught me how to accept a lot of flak and ignore it. Sometimes, people will say things that are unfounded.

Applying it in WoW

If my play is under question from anyone, I usually ask myself a couple of questions:

  • Is it justified?

    Sometimes what the other person saying isn’t true. It might not have been my fault to begin with. It could’ve been an encounter mechanic.

  • If it is, how can I fix it?

    There is always a solution to every problem. Work with other players to find out what went wrong and what you can do to fix it.

Accept Responsibility

Be honest and be humble. If it’s your fault, ‘fess up to it. It will help defuse any tense situations that might start to heat up. There’s a lot of players I know both in my Guild and not in my Guild that still have trouble doing this. They don’t want to face the shame or the embarrassment. No one likes to admit that they screwed up. But often times, the hardest thing you do ends up being the right thing to do.

Ask for Help

Lastly, don’t shy away from asking for help. Why do you think Pride is considered one of the 7 deadly sins? If you’re coming across a trash pull in a raid and you’re assigned to a tank who’s about to take a beating and you know healing will be rough, ask for help. Know your own abilities and your own limitations.

On the other side, if you’re noticing a healing in your group who is struggling ask them if they need a hand. WoW often reminds me of a lecture hall in that there are very few people who raise their hands to ask questions. Sometimes, you just have to offer help and they’ll be internally grateful because it saves them the "shame" of asking for it.

So to summarize:

  • Accept criticism without retaliating
  • Learn from it
  • Try to come up with a solution
  • Be honest with yourself about your abilities
  • Ask for assistance if you need it