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Every story, article, column, piece, and so forth on World of Matticus ever published.

Embracing the Dark Side

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I never thought I would see the day. You know, when I first started this journey on my character, I’ve always envisioned myself as that of a career healer. It was my purpose. I was to heal, to sustain, and to cure players. Restore them back to full health. I have tried the dark arts before but it was beyond my skills and comprehension. And yet, with the guild expanding to a include PvP, I noted we had a fair number of healers already. And so, I activated a dormant side of Matticus that I thought I had suppressed forever. I vowed never to use that side ever again unless I had a significant reason to do so. But the time had come.

I went Shadow.

It was amusing at first. I already had a full set of 264 healing gear and a full set of 264 shadow gear. Within the span of minutes, I turned myself into a potent weapon. For those moments, I was no longer the shield of the guild. I was now the sword. The transferable gaming knowledge I picked up over the past 10 years came flowing back. The art of chain stunning and disabling from playing hundreds of hours of DoTA. The stacking, force firing and position playing from Guild Wars. The willingness to attract the ire of 6 opposing horde players and keeping them busy for that one second at the blue gate graveyard in Strands of the Ancients so that my team mate could capture that graveyard. Everything came rushing back. I was a whirlwind of death. Targets were identified and crushed with ruthless efficiency (unless they were resto druids, then it was just plain ruthlessness).

And you know what I discovered? I can’t get enough of it. Double tapping players with Shadow Word: Death is too much… fun.

Do not worry. You won’t be seeing shadow related posts here anytime soon. I am not quite qualified in that regard just yet. For me, the time has come to learn the dark arts. By doing so, I allow myself to play both roles in our raid as necessary and won’t be quite as restricted when it comes to roster flexibility. I have much to learn.

I will strive to learn everything I can and be the best at it. Yet, I know that it is truly impossible to master something. Here’s the thing I’ve noticed when it comes to trying to master a class. I mean, if I were to graph learning the skills to master a class, I would draw an asymptote. After all, although one can always get closer and closer to mastery, one will never reach it.

Have to admit, it is a welcome pace from healing. Except I have a disgusting 24% hit from all the spirit stuff I’m packing.

Monday Mind Dump: Movember 15

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This post is what I like to call a mind dump. There is too much stuff on my mind, so I figured I’d dump it all here so I can make sense of it later. it will appear jagged, out of the ordinary and it might not even make sense.

– PvP division is coming along nicely. Growth’s a little lower than expected, but it’s getting there. Managed to a dominating number of the battlegrounds we have entered so far. However, Conquest is 0-2 in Isle of Conquest. That statistic will continue to irritate me for sometime. Perhaps a 25 player preform of guild members and pickup players might not have enough muscle to swing victory. But being shut out of our island?! This transgression must be avenged.

– On the one hand, I would love to try my hand and leading some preforms. On the other hand, I don’t know if I have the ability or time to with all the other stuff I need to do.

– Thinking ahead to the opening weeks of the expansion. Who is leveling what professions and what recipes are we going to need to progress into raids? Obviously the main enchanting and jewelcrafting recipes will be a priority. There is also the crafted stuff to consider. Under our loot council system, whoever acquires a crafted epic won’t be rolling on the normal raid gear for that slot until everyone that can use it already has it. So if I make a Belt of the Depths for myself, I’ll end up passing on all cloth belts out of the raids in favor of other clothwearers who still need a belt. We need to think big picture on the gear route to minimize any wasting of gear.

– Speaking of professions, I’m not sure how many gatherers we have. That’s going to put a dent in the ol’ Conquest credit card especially if I need to make purchases of stuff.

– The Movember stache is coming along nicely. Sadly, no SS means it didn’t happen.

– Read a nice piece on playing to win versus playing not to lose. Good subject to explore later on. It compares taking risks for big gains versus staying steady and making safe decisions. Do you push DPS to phase Lich King early so you don’t have to deal with Defiles or Valks (and consequently risk getting them at the same time?) Or do you wait for them to spawn, then deal with them, and then push into the next phase? At what point do you slam the table and push or stay conservative and wait? It’s like playing a an Eye of the Storm. Does your preformm go for the 4 capture or play in a map controlling manner with 2 points and continual flag running?

– Also in the middle of reading a book about being clutch and how people perform in high pressure situations and why other people choke in those types of situations.

– Helped someone move over the weekend. I’m buying a 1 floor place or a place with an elevator. 3 floors is not fun.

– Guild rank restructuring has been complete. We’re pushing 10 slots as it is. Makes me wonder if another one is going to be added in the future. Anyway, here’s a quick breakdown.

  • GM (That’s me)
  • Officers (My awesome team)
  • Loot council (Decider of loot)
  • Raider (Raiders on the starting lineup)
  • Red shirts (Trials and players working on cracking the starting lineup)
  • PvP Commander (Preform leaders)
  • PvP Troopers (Rated BGers on the starting lineup)
  • PvP New Guys (Awaiting evaluation to see if they’re in the top 15)
  • Civilians (Socials, alts, friends, no obligation to raid or PvP, just a place to hang out
  • Normal (One of the few ranks that doesn’t require a radiation suit)

– Eyelids are getting real heavy now.

– Comparing 10 man vs 25 man healing. Not sure if you read my post on WoW Insider yet (you should), but if you’re not into reading, at the very least check out this legen …(wait for it)… dary video. Conclusion? If you’re not great with periphreal vision and standing out of stuff, 10 man raids are the way to go for you. There is more healing that needs to be done and you are triaging (tree-aging) more often. Be comfortable with players not at 100% health. On 25 though, it is much more chaotic. I didn’t know as much raid damage going on because the city was getting cleaned up right quick. But if you can manage those, the kidnapper will be blindfolded again.

10 man vs 25 man healing

– Skyline wasn’t that great.

Special Delivery: Roundup Of This Week’s Best WoW Posts

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The last couple of weeks have seen the blogosphere gently swaying from side to side during the wait for Cataclysm, like a drunken llama on a narrow fence. A couple of weeks ago the blogosphere leaned more towards the healing type topics. Last week it loosely double-focused on healing and guild organisation. And now this week… well, this week we’re wobbling decidedly towards the guild organisation side of things and away from healing, although not entirely, because if we do that we might loose our balance.

Why, you ask?

It’s likely because as Cataclysm draws close we’re looking at restructuring our groups of seasoned (and I’m sure not inebriated) warriors so that we can meet Cataclysm’s challenges. And at the same time there’s not much new to say about healing now that the patch has been and gone, until Cataclysm itself hits and we wake up to find our healers at the top of the DPS charts.

…Oh! You meant why the llama analogy? I don’t know. Someone gave me caffeine. And it’s Saturday. But I bet you kept reading. Anyway, without further ado here’s this week’s MMO Melting Pot-sque roundup ‘specially for WoM readers of the healing, leading and guild related posts from around the blogosphere. Albeit with a distinct shimmy towards the latter.

  • Falling Leaves And Wings: Are 25 Mans Going To Be Worth The Effort In Cata? – Beruthiel is looking ahead to Cataclysm and wondering whether it’ll be worth running 25 mans in the new raid setup, even for a guild that specialises in 25 mans. Her worries are that raids won’t be properly balanced and 10 mans will still be easier for the same gear, added to the possibility that 25 mans won’t drop enough quantities of gear to make them progress at a relative speed to 10 mans. An interesting read for any raider, 10 or 25 man’er.
  • Organizing a 10 man team – Aunna’s got a brief if really quite detailed post on 10 mans. Not just on organizing them, though that does make up the latter chunk of her post. She’s also covering the benefits and disadvantages of raiding as a 10 man group, which is well written, refreshing to read and very grounded. Hear hear!
  • What It Takes To Be a Great Raid Leader – This is a great 5-point list for raid leaders by Saga over at Girls Don’t Play WoW. She says that it’s aimed primarily at newer raid leaders but as an experienced raid leader myself I found her post a very interesting read. Her points might seem obvious but they are all core principles of raid leading, some of which are easy to make mistakes with sometimes. Great post, and well timed for when people are organising for Cata.
  • Daily Thoughts: Raid healing – a short post by Sharden over at 15 Minutes of WoW musing on his recent forray into, yep, you got it – raid healing. He’s used to healing as a paladin and not doing the raid healing so much, so trying out the new role on his shaman sounds like it was a fresh experience. A nice read which I bet a lot of us can relate to or remember similar experiences!
  • Syl and Theanorak: Preparing For Healing Changes As DPS – This one’s not directly aimed at healers, but is from a healer trying to help their guild’s DPSers. Syl from Raging Monkeys has written a guide to her DPS guildies prepare for healing mechanic changes in Cataclysm, so they can brush up on their knowledge of what to stand in and what healing to expect. She invites you to use or adapt it for your own guildies, if you think they might benefit from it too.
  • Rules for Raiding – Analogue from Looking For More has posted her guild’s prospective raid rules and is looking for your thoughts on them. They’re covering things like attendence, strategy, tasks – and how raid members should behave in regards to these things. She’s asking us readers if we think they’re reasonable or whether we’d raid under them; an interesting question…

That’s it for this week. In a moment I’ve got to be heading off to do some organisation work for my own 10 man guild, but just before I go – what do you think, this week? Do you have a bee in your bonnet about any of these topics or are you hoping for more posts on a different subject?

Rise of the Super Guild

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I’m not sure if this is a developing trend or not of what guilds will be evolving into. I stumbled across a recruiting thread. What stood out for me was that this guild wasn’t just a raiding guild. It wasn’t a PvP guild. It wasn’t a leveling guild or a social guild or a casual guild. It’s a guild that houses multiple guilds within it. It boggled my mind at first because some of these smaller or medium sized guilds would be sacrificing their identity along with other privileges. But the more I read about it, the more it made sense.

The main purpose of this organization is to bring as many guilds under one banner as much as possible. The rewards? Accelerating into guild achievements, unlocks and progression rewards. With multiple guilds within this guild, hitting those rewards and achievements would be amazingly quick. Maxing out the guild experience everyday would be a certainty. I think what I’m witnessing isn’t just an organized guild. It’s an actual raiding alliance. The efforts of one guild would spillover and help other guilds. Those other guilds will also be contributing in their own way. After looking at the infrastructure, the sub-guilds would be able to operate under whatever conditions they desired. Each sub guild had their own raid times, standards, and so forth. Players won’t be forced to raid with each other. But it’s basically like guild <A>, guild <B> and guild <C> giving up their individual tags and merging into one giant super guild. Their sites don’t change, they still use their own voice servers and such. It’s all just under one tag. Everything else is logistics when it comes to ranks.

All of a sudden, catching 100000 fish doesn’t sound so bad.

Anyone find any flaws with this? Does it sound like something you would personally go for?

[VIDEO] A Preview of Cataclysm Raid Healing

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Cataclysm raid healing (Watch in a larger resolution if possible)

No post for today but I figured there were a number of healers out there who really wanted to see what raid healing would be like in the expansion. Here’s a video which includes the first two bosses from Bastion of Twilight on 10 man. I narrated the entire video (and if you’re tired of my voice, by all means, feel free to mute the audio) explaining what was going on and what I was doing.

I also learned how to do slow motion action which I’ve put to great effect towards the end. Don’t miss out on Life Grip in action!

Twitter followers get to watch my videos first (along with those who can find the elusive World of Matticus facebook fan page). I usually use them as guinea pigs a litmus test to see whether or not I should publish a video here.

Lastly, the official guild announcement regarding the rated BG team.