All Stories

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

Restoration Shaman – Best in Slot 3.1

by

puzzle-piece_phixr

Once again we find ourselves with new content and as a result new upgrades. Our tier sets await us as well as many more foes that must be conquered. That means it’s time for another best in slot post for my fellow raiding restoration shamans. Before we get started I would like to say just a couple things.

  • First, this is my opinion. Use this as a guide or not at all, but this is based on my value of the stats we use.
  • Second, please feel free to make your own list or suggestions, after all it is your character and you should equip it as you see fit.

Head: [Steamworker’s Goggles] – Flame Leviathan 25: Good MP5 and great stats

Neck: [Charm of Meticulous Timing] – XT-002 25 (hard mode) this is a tough one to get, and so you might not get a chance at it for a while. In the meantime a good alternative is [Frozen Tear of Elune] which will run you 19x Emblem of Conquest.

Shoulders: There are two options here, first is [Conqueror’s Worldbreaker Spaulders] – Yogg Sarron 25. Haste, good mp5 and a red socket. Second runner up is [Amice of the Stoic Watch] – Auriaya 25. Crit instead of haste, decent mp5 and a red socket.

Back: [Shroud of Alteration] – Ulduar Trash 25

Chest: [Conqueror’s Worldbreaker Tunic] Hodir 25 or 58 Emblems of Conquest

Wrist: Again two options here, First is [Binding of Winter Gale] Hodir 25 (hard) or if you aren’t quite there yet, [Armbraces of the Vibrant Flame] from Ignis 10. These are BoE so you might be able to find them on the auction house as well.

Hands: [Conqueror’s Worldbreaker Handguards] Mimron 25

Waist: I’m going to give this to [Windchill Binding] This will cost you 28 Emblems and it’s a great upgrade from the Naxx 25 loot. If you want more crit you can go with [Blue Belt of Chaos] but I’m finding the price rather inflated to have it crafted right now.

Legs: [Conqueror’s Worldbreaker Legguards] Freya 25

Boots: [Boots of the Forgotten Depths] General Vezax 25 Good MP5 and haste.

Rings: There are a lot of options here, I’m going to give my top 4 choices though to [Pyrelight Circle] – Ignis 25. [Sanity’s Bond] – Yogg 25. [Ring of the Faithful Servant] – Auriaya 25 and [Signet of Manifested Pain] – KT 25

Trinket: Again a lot of options my top picks are [Scale of Fates] – Thorim 25. [Living Ice Crystals] – Malygos 25. [Energy Siphon] – Flame Leviathan 10.  [Pandora’s Plea] – Mimron 25,    [Je’Tze’s Bell] – BoE World Drop. I’m normally not a fan of on use trinkets, I prefer ones that give passive buffs most times, but Energy Siphon and Living Ice Crystal’s passive mp5 make them worth picking up alone. The on use effect of each is icing on the cake.

Off Hand: Two solid choices here, First is [Ice Layered Barrier] – Hodir 25 (hard) or [Pulsing Spellshield] – XT-002 10. Both have good stat allocation (and it helps they look cool!)

Relic: [Steamcaller’s Totem] – Flame Leviathan 25 or [Totem of Forest Growth] – 15x badges of heroism.

Main Hand: I saved this for last. First weapon that should be on EVERY healer’s list of wants is [Val’anyr, Hammer of Ancient Kings], Amazing mace with good stats. The proc as we’ve seen from the blue posts is crazy good. This will be at the top of everyone’s list. Second to this mace I vote [Guiding Star] – Razorscale 25, for best in slot runner up.

Looking at this I’m sure you will see it’s got a decent mix of MP5, haste and crit, while maintaining good intellect for replenishment and good spellpower. Some of the choices seem predictable, such as the tier 8.5 set pieces. The four pieces I selected I feel offer the most bang for the buck and allow you to gather the four piece bonus, which is worth it’s weight in gold.

If you’re looking to place value on items and stats, and figure out what weight works for you, you can use Shaman_hep, an addon from Stassart which allows you to calculate a miryiad of information from your combat logs to help lend a hand figuring out what’s best for you.

So now you’ve seen my list, What do you think are the best in slot items for Restoration Shaman?

Until next time, Happy healing

sig

Image courtesy of UToronto.ca

Would You Consider 3 Levels of Spirit Based Mana Regen?

by

This blue post came to me courtesy of Sylly. Her post in particular addresses out of combat regen.

It’s no secret that I’ve felt the pinch myself. I barely end encounters with less than 10% of my mana left.

Mana Injectors? Exhausted.

Pure Mojo Flasks? Consumed to the last drop.

Hymn of Hope? Sang so much Simon Cowell would pay me to stop.

Shadowfiend? Sparky the fiend is tired of being whipped out.

But I’m okay. I’m still hanging on. I still have mana left. There is just enough left to do the job that the encounter asks of me. But oh my is it painful. It’s as bad as House losing access to his precious Vicodin. He can do the job while grinding his teeth and absorbing the pain.

The proposed solution?

A number of WoW forum members made an intriguing proposal. Redesigning spirit regen so that it takes into account three different factors:

  1. While casting
  2. Out of the 5 second rule, in combat
  3. Completely out of combat

Sylly agrees with this and I like the idea myself.

What does Ghostcrawler think?

One way to go would be to just get rid of the FSR and make out of combat regen (legitimately out of combat – not sneaking a sip during an Arena match) provide very fast regen.

Let’s open up the floor. I want to encourage some discussion here especially in the comments. What do you think of this idea? How has your mana held up so far in the current end game?

The Reality of Recruiting Part 2

by

Here’s part 2! The finale will be published sometime over the weekend. How do some guilds handle the actual recruiting portion? What separates the pretender apps from the contender apps? What’s more important to guilds? Likeability or competency? Here’s what other recruiters and officers have said.

How does the recruiting process work for your guild from start to finish?

They first apply.  The officers then receive the application and discuss any issues in a private forum.  We ask guild members and ex-members from that person’s previous guild.  Finally, we will either:

a) Respond to them in-game
b) Decline them. Even if we respond, we can still decline them if something unsavory pops up.

Kitts

We try to use as many means of advertising that our guild is looking for good players while still avoiding the catch-all that is Trade Chat.  Of course, everyone used realm forums, but I’ve also used Guild Watch announcements, posted on PlusHeal forums and consistently post in GuildRecruitment channel while leveling my fishing in Org. Hilariously, for a while our guild website was getting quite a bit of outside traffic as a result of the number of women we have in our guild and the rest of the server population wanting to check out our RL Pics thread.  This got the guild name out there a bit.

Viktorious

The applicant places their application on the guild forums and are then asked to join our guild chat channel and disband any guild they are currently in. The applicant has 3 weeks to get to know us and secure a sponsor before voting begins. They have 3 weeks to get into groups and get to know the guild. In that time, a voting booth is opened up and the applicant must obtain 15 yes votes, if for a raider these yes votes must include a yes vote from both class leads. if the applicant receives 3 well justified no votes, the application is terminated. each no vote extends the probation period one week If thapplicant receives the necessary votes, they begin a probation period of 6 weeks. At the end of the period another vote is taken. 15 yes votes again are required, with fewer then 3 no votes. Again 3 no votes will kill the application and the person will be asked to leave.

Lodur

What is the most common mistake that recruits make when they apply to you?

We’re fairly forgiving, but we don’t like seeing people apply who obviously have no idea how to gear for their class/spec. Not taking the application seriously. We get a lot of applications that are very poorly filled out, featuring little to no capitalization/punctuation, skipped questions and incomplete answers.

Seri

They forget that we’ve been raiding successfully without them up to this point, and that their job with their application is to sell us on the fact that they’d make an excellent contribution to OUR team, not that we’d make an excellent contribution to their playing and loot-gathering experience. "I want to join because I’m tired of wiping with people who don’t know what they’re doing" or "You guys seem like a good way for me to see end-game content" are all red flags. I also hate seeing tanks/healers apply when that role is obviously not their passion and they’d rather be joining in a DPS capacity. As a healer myself, few things irk me more than someone who applies as a healer, but can’t wait until the raid ends to spec DPS or log onto a DPS alt, and is only healing so they can get into a raid guild. They never perform as well as people who love the role.

Cerinne

The most common mistake is the new 80 or 77 who joins expecting us to spend our time babying them to raid status or to help them run every group quest in the questlog.  We have no greedy goblins in our guild so they shouldn’t expect their epic flight to be paid for.  Also, another mistake is to join our guild as someone who isn’t 80 and spam chat to run every old world or BC dungeon.  The only dungeon I ever ran while leveling was ramps when I first got into Outland.  It wasn’t until Northrend that I tried to hit every dungeon possible.  It is much faster to quest to 80 then to run every dungeon.

Finnugen

Unprepared players who don’t know their classes as well as they should or higher level raiding, who use green quality gems or who don’t even now about consumables or what kind of consumables or optimal for them. And then there are the players who think that the less text they type the more we’ll like their application…

Fire

In contrast, what would you describe as the perfect application?

Well thought out answers which show in depth knowledge of the class and the realities of high end raiding. The ability to type properly (not as common as you’d think).

Sylly

Answers of 2-3 sentences.  Show me that you took 5 minutes to fill out our application.  After all, you’ll be spending 9-15 hours a week in the raid, what’s 5 minutes to apply?  Also, something that shows they have an understanding of the game and their class, beyond "uber-deeps".  Extensive vocabulary is always a plus.

Viktorious

The perfect application would be THOROUGH. It would convince me that they know their class, know their raid fights (even if they haven’t experienced them first hand), and know their place as part of a team–meaning willingness to rotate with their classmates, acceptance of criticism, and acknowledgment that top-notch raid performance is a journey, not a destination that they have already reached. If I look them up on Armory, I should see that this character really is their main and their pride and joy–this is especially important for tanks and healers.

Cerinne

What’s more important: Being competent or being likable? Why?

That seems to depend on our current needs. At the moment we’re looking for active raiders, so being competent is more important. However we’d still not invite someone we don’t feel will fit in, even if they are a class A raider.

Eid

I have to say at this point in the game, with Ulduar recently released, both are equally important. Before, it was likability > competence but in order to actually get anything done in Uld, new recruits need to be able to play or there’s just no point to them being in the guild when we’re trying to progress and there’s this new guy who needs help to get to where we are before he can help us succeed. It sounds terribly self-serving but it’s necessary to be a competitive raiding guild on any server.

Raesa

We have competent people who aren’t always very likable, and likable people who aren’t always competent. In the end, the likable ones stay longer. They may not raid with us often… but they stay.

Amber

Being likeable in a slim margin over being competent. I’d rather have someone who didn’t drive me up the wall personality-wise than suffer an asshole who played like a dream. Since I do heroics and raids with a large group of people, being competent in our guild is not as big of a concern.

Aislinana

You’ll notice a few common themes among answers. I’ll leave them open to your interpretation.

State of the Blog: Summer 09

by

Dear friends,

Do not be alarmed. I know some prominent bloggers in the community have decided to call it a blogging career due to time and family concerns. I’m not quite done yet. There’s still a lot of bosses to kill and players to heal. I have always made time for writing, so that’s not the case.

No, the only reason I’d close these doors is if I run out of the financial resources necessary to maintain them.

A lesson for new bloggers out there: Success always comes at a cost. This particular cost happens to run into the 4 digit range. I’m just a university student. I don’t have a full time job. I’ve relied upon freelance writing to help offset the costs. That’s not enough anymore.

So now what?

World of Matticus is going to undergo some slight restructuring to maximize advertising. Plus Heal for the time being will remain ad free as long as possible. I’m not going to say no to advertising but I will have a strong hand in what is and isn’t displayed if I choose to go that route. I’ve stayed away from Google Ad Sense due to the plethora of gold selling and RMT ads that are shown and the short term benefit (money) does not outweigh the long term cost (you guys leaving and/or being pissed). Wouldn’t be surprised if I was called an idiot for walking away from such rather lucrative offers, heh.

For the time being, the blog’s going to undergo some shifting of content and real estate while I figure some things out. Incidentally enough, this means that header at the top is going to get changed up a bit.

The Store

I just opened up a store on Amazon recently. So if you’re an Amazon junkie who’s into action figures or Warcraft novels, check it out. If you also plan on picking up Warcraft III, or some gaming accessories (I recommend Sennheiser for headsets), I do manage to get a small cut. I also list several books on a wide variety of topics from business to writing to blogging that I’ve personally picked up (and recommend) if you’re looking for some reading material. It’s still a work in progress.

World of Matticus… premium?

Had a humorous suggestion from a fellow WoW Twitterati:

“You should launch premium content on World of Matticus. Include healing strats an idea for phase 1 and 2, and phase 3 and 4 be premium only. Or leave out certain key words from phrases (Example, remember to … stand in the fire!)”

While the idea is rather entertaining, that’s not the route I’d consider right now. Perhaps down the road I might toss up a subscription service for videos of dancing Dwarves on the Stormwind fountain. Not sure how well that would work out.

Blizzcon

No guarantees. But… I will try to attend this year. I’m also going to try to apply for this. What holds me back, you ask? Same thing that holds me back from everything else. Fear of failure. Now if I can just figure out who I can get in touch with specifically…

Donations

An overwhelming number of people on Twitter, IM, Plusheal and via EMails have asked me about this. I did run a donate page last year, it didn’t work out so I pulled it in favour of other features. I’m not going to ask for donations. I don’t know. I just don’t like asking for help until I really, desperately need it. I don’t think I’m at that point yet. The way I see it, if someone does a favor for me or gives me something, I’m indebted to them. As a result of that, this leaves me in a perilous position of somehow returning the favor.

This is why I’ve had so much difficulty shopping for birthday presents (especially for women).

So if donating is something you’re volunteering to do, head over to Plus Heal. Scroll down to the footer and use that link. I cannot and will not ask for it. The option is there if you choose.

If you want more details on the situation, I popped a thread open on Plus Heal about with more information (especially for the folks curious as to the actual numbers of cost and site demographics).

This is just another challenge. Just another encounter in the World of Blogcraft. Gotta figure out the right strategy and execution.

Healing Ulduar: Hodir

by

creature_hodir

For other bosses in Ulduar, check the Ulduar Healing Strategy Page

Hodir is a fight that requires a lot of movement. This boss is a big cuddly snowman who likes to spread the love, and the iceblocks. This fight will keep you on your toes.

Notes about the fight:

  • Lots of movement
  • Raid wide damage

Abilities

Biting Cold – This is an aura like affect that pulses through the entire raid. This is much like the ability from Keristrasza in the nexus, you need to keep moving to keep it from stacking up on you. Each stack increases the periodic damage it deals.

Freeze – This deals about 5k frost damage to all players within 10 yards of the target, it also roots the targets in place.

Flash Freeze – This encases the entire raid in blocks of ice. This is prevented by standing on snowdrifts.ÂÂ

Icicle – Occasionally giant blocks of ice will fall from the ceiling. These deal 12,000 damage to anyone hit and have a knock back component. You can see which areas will be hit by a small circular glyph on the ground. If you are having trouble seeing the glyphs, go into your video settings and turn on Projected Textures. Before a flash freeze, a larger glyph will show on the ground before the ice falls and will leave behind Snowdrifts which must be used to avoid flash freeze.

Frozen Blows – Reduces Hodir’s physical damage but adds a frost damage component to his attacks. This also has a raid wide frost damage effect.

Enrage – Hodir has a 9 minute Enrage Timer

Ability Examples:

ice

Icicle

snowdrift

Snowdrift

freeze

Freeze

NPCs

Hodir also comes with a selection of NPC’s that must be broken out of their icy prisons. There will be four on normal and 8 on heroic. The npc’s consists of the following.

2x Druids: The druids are hard to miss, they’re in boomkin form. When you break them out they DPS Hodir but also cast Starlight which increases the attack speed of anyone standing in it by 100%

2x Shaman: The shamans DPS Hodir elemental style and will occasionally cast Storm Cloud on a raid member. This ability lets you buff several raid members with Storm Power which increases their critical strike damage by 135%.

2x Mages: The mages will help try to break fellow NPCs out of ice blocks and will cast a Toasty Fire. The fire is literally a campfire on the ground, but it fights off the effects of biting cold. Falling ice and Flash Freeze will wipe out the fire.

2x Priests: The priests will smite and occasionally throw out a heal, but most importantly they will cast Dispel Magic to free players from the effects of Freeze

Execution

Your raid will head in following the Main Tank. The tank will take Hodir back towards the rear of the room. DPS will begin by breaking out the NPCs. After all the NPCs have been broken out, DPS can start in on Hodir. When DPS first engages Hodir it is a good time to blow Heroism / Bloodlust. Healers should move into position near the Main Tank while everyone else needs to move into position around the raid. DPS continues on Hodir until he is about to cast Flash Freeze. Everyone needs to move to the Snowdrifts to avoid being frozen. After the Flash Freeze any raiders who were frozen should be broken free ASAP. DPS will then begin on the NPCs again until all are free, and then will resume DPS on Hodir. Rinse and repeat until the big guy is done.

Healing Hodir

Healing Hodir has two major components.

Main Tank – Three healers should be assigned to the main tank. They should be in close proximity at all times and moving with the tank as needed. Grace from a Disc Priest helps even out the damage from Hodir.

Raid – The rest of the healers should be spread out along the outside of the raid to cover as many raiders as possible.

All healers will be moving quite a bit during this fight, dodging falling ice and shaking off the effect of biting cold until the NPC’s are broken loose. Shamans will be using a lot of Riptide and Lesser Healing Wave, Druids will be right at home rolling HoTs, Paladins will be using quick Flash Heals, as well as priests utilizing renews and quick heals. It is possible to toss out a longer cast heal such as Greater Heal or Chain Heal and move before biting cold stacks, as long as you can find yourself a rhythm for move and cast. Your main goal as healers should be to find a Toasty Fire close enough to the raid to sit on. If you have the Toasty Fire buff, you can spam heals without the worry of stacking Biting Cold. Since the rest of the raid will be moving around though, be prepared to move to keep people in range. Once you learn to balance the movement and the heals the fight is pretty straightforward.

Until next time, Happy Healing.