Matticus

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

High Warlord Naj’entus and Azgalor Taken Down

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Gloves of the Forgotten Vanquisher x 2
Don Rodrigo’s Poncho

First T6 gloves go to Deidrich (Rogue) and the next pair went to Sassette (Mage). The Poncho went to our only resto druid in the raid, kilmster! Yay! Azgalor was taken down within the first 30 minutes of the raid tonight without any wipes.

Ring of Captured Storms
Fists of Mukoa

Hankwilliams with the gloves and Ravenx with the bling ring. This boss marked the first time since March of last year that I decided to change my healing spec for a boss encounter. I switched it up from my Imp. DS build to a CoH build. I think the extra instant heals helped a lot. Each application of CoH hits for about 1000+. It was a messy take down, however. I figure about 10 people got floored throughout the entire fight.

Someone had the stupid spear and the only 2 players close by was an elemental shaman and a holy paladin. Both were asked to get the spear. But there’s no way the Paladin can do it if he’s on the main tank.

I might have to do a blog post in the future about situational awareness.

Oh and yes, we are recruiting another holy priest or some other kind of healer. Why did you ask?

Step by step: Dishing out Pain as a Priest

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Last week I plugged dwarfpriest.com in my weekly digest. Yesterday, she published an excellent flowchart detailing actions for both shadow priests and holy priests concerned with dealing damage.

Players who play with me know I’m utterly hopeless in dealing damage in any kind of environment PvP or PvE. I just might actually have a prayer of a chance in levelling once WotLK is released.

“Playing as a shadow priest in a raid or group environment largely depends on keeping your damage over time (DoT) spells up on mobs while minding the cooldowns of some of your direct damage spells. This is called spell juggling.”

If you’re a shadow priest who wants to perfect your game a little bit or a holy priest who wants to at least deliver a bloody nose to that player that’s ganking you, give this lengthy piece a read. It goes to show that you learn something new everyday.

Which Raiding Aspect of 2.4 are you Looking Forward To? [NEW POLL]

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Image courtesy of thanx from SXC

The PTRs are chugging along. Every day there are new builds and new changes that are matched by restored abilities (such as the warlock buff). Most of the heckling now revolves around class balancing and the like. The changes to the 25 man raids are aimed at helping every guild at any level to progress in the game as much as possible before the next expansion arrives.

What are you looking forward to in raids?

So, this is a really large patch! There’s no way I can squeeze every change onto my side poll. Therefore, I’m condensing it to raid related changes only.

Increase in gold drops from 25 man bosses

This is a huge boon for players like me who don’t have the time or the energy to farm on a regular basis. It will help offset repair bills somewhat. I was told 25 man bosses would drop 500g resulting in 25 per player. On the other hand, there’s a screenshot out there in existence with Brutalis dropping 250g (10 per player).

Additional set token drops from 25 man bosses

I wonder now if they’ll end up increasing the amount of loot that drops from non-set token dropping bosses to equalize the amount of loot they provide. The extra token drops will help in terms of progression, that’s for sure.

Removal of attunements in Mount Hyjal and Black Temple

There’s been a ton of reactions to the removal of attunements. I killed Kael several weeks ago and all I’m about to get is some lousy title. I can kind of understand where players are coming from about their wasted time and such. To be honest, I’m looking forward to this change the most. Why? Because then I won’t ever have to step back into SSC and TK to attune ONE more player EVERY week. A lot of blogs I’ve read haven’t even mentioned that. I guess they’re too focused on the individual to think of the whole. Just think about all that time that is now freed up without having to go back into the T5 areas.

New raid instance and challenges

The last real world event we had was Naxx, wasn’t it? Even then, I never really participated that much. It’s nice to have another world event to participate in again as well as a new raiding instance.

Shiny new purples

Don’t kid yourself. There’s a small loot whore in every single one of us. We all want the best gear in the game. There’s a ton of new badge loot, faction rewards, and raid drops.

Honourable Mention

Druid nerfs

I was going to list druid nerfs as a possible 6th option. Somehow, I don’t think that would go over very well with several of my esteemed blogging colleagues. I might wake up one morning and find one of my wings on my shoulders shredded or something. Who knows what druids do for pranks anyway?

If what you’re looking forward to isn’t listed on the poll, then by all means leave a comment stating what you can’t wait to see!

Which Raiding Aspect of 2.4 are you Looking Forward to the Most?

  • All those new shiny purples! (30%, 136 Votes)
  • Additional set tokens from 25 man bosses! (27%, 122 Votes)
  • New raid instance and challenge! (25%, 110 Votes)
  • Removal of attunements into Mount Hyjal and Black Temple! (11%, 49 Votes)
  • Increase in Gold drops from 25 man bosses! (7%, 29 Votes)

Total Voters: 446

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No More WordPress for Me

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Well, at least I won’t be using it to write my posts and pages anymore. I’ve used a combination of ScribeFire and the WordPress dashboard to craft my posts. At the moment, I’m compiling my post via Windows Live Writer! I should have made the switch sooner. But man, this program rocks! It handles like any other Office program which is great because the feeling of familiarity is there (I’ve had to work with Word a lot throughout school).

Features

Free: I like free. Do you like free? I think I’m getting the bang for the buck here.

Scheduled Posting: Yes, you can do that on WordPress as well. But you’d have to be logged in to your WordPress account. With WLW, I don’t even have to have my browser open anymore.

Inserts: My current WordPress is setup in such a way where I could not use the WYSIWYG editor on WordPress itself or else it would break my blog. As a result, I’ve had to hand code everything in HTML. Now there’s a big time pain. I can insert links, pictures, tables, videos, and Wikipedia links with relative ease.

Adaptable: WLW works with many different blog services. Among the most notable includes WordPress, Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, and so on. Oh, if you have more than one blog, it can handle multiple accounts simultaneously.

Spell check: I still have to proofread my post. But at least it’s quicker now and I don’t have to guess how to spell a word properly. A simple right click and a list of suggestions can fix that.

Previews: What this does is it allows you to download your style. Therefore when you preview it, you can see how it looks formatted as if it were on your own blog.

Plugins: You can expand and customize WLW with different features based on your tastes. Right now, I’m using Insert Video, Text Template, and Insert Wikipedia Link.

Mac Users

For my MacBook, I’m going to give ecto a spin. This one came highly recommended to me courtesy of Siha.

On a side note to feral tanks

When you’re about to tank Azgalor, please don’t shift to Cat form when he’s under 5 yards away from you.

Our Main Tank did just that yesterday and he exploded. I had iTunes open with the Benny Hill theme queued. Talk about timing.

Healers Spill: White Lies we Tell Tanks All the Time

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Wiping sucks. It’s going to happen to any Guild of any size at any point. But there are good wipes and then there are bad wipes. I’ve caused my share of bad wipes (but not in my current Guild, obviously, because I know some of them read my blog). Tanks are delicate creatures and have to be treated in a certain way. Even though some tanks might be shall we say aggro challenged, it is better if we merely nod and admit fault even though it isn’t really ours so that the run can be finished. I’ve seen tanks get emo when their ability is questioned and leave the group hanging. Then the group spends a good hour in LFG trying to find a tank to finish out Heroic Slave Pens. Sheesh!

Anyways, I know I’m safe because I don’t think a lot of tanks read my blog (I think).

“Sorry, lag”

It happens sometimes. Our connections do hiccup and we go offline. As healers, we often blame our ISP. Every so often, it isn’t the ISPs fault. You see, there’s this new file sharing technology called bittorrent that we as healers might have forgotten to turn off…

“It’s not you, it’s me”

The tank happens to take about 18000 damage within a space of 2 seconds. There’s nothing we can do about it. 2 seconds is enough time for 1 spell. Sometimes we just can’t keep up with the damage with 1 healer. You just absorb so much punishment that you NEED 2 extra bodies to keep you alive and going. There’s no way around it. On the other hand, maybe I forgot to use my max rank heals.

“It happens to a lot of tanks”

Tanks are used to dying you say? Well, yeah. All tanks are used to it. They’ve died many times and they’ve got the durability loss to prove it. So what if you died? It’s no big deal. Nos Staminitus is a common affliction that affects many tanks. But don’t worry, there’s a special cure. There’s tons of consumables in the markets designed to help get you up. Er, your health that that is.

“Oh your gear is fine”

You look great! Honest! Even though you can’t seem to withstand several crits or crushings in a row, at least your armor is all shiny and stuff! I guess I’ll have to actually work up a sweat to keep you alive.

“You’re the best tank ever!”

I’ve had to say this on more then one occasion. I swear, some tanks seem to have the largest egos in the world. I guess it’s because they’re needed so often. There are some players in the world who have top end gear and top end weapons. But holy cow they just can’t seem to deliver! And I’m not talking about Taurens, either!

Have you ever lied to your tank? Or even your raid/party? Why and what was the situation?

Special thanks to Trackhoof and others who requested to remain anonymous for their input