Guide to Healing, Leading, and Progressing in WoW Raids
Every story, article, column, piece, and so forth on World of Matticus ever published.
Talk about being uber late this week. I blame it on the technical difficulties! In any case, it’s up now.
EDIT: Oh yes, you’ll probably have noticed that I’ve made a grammatical error. It’s intentional. Because at the end of the year, if you add up all the extraneous words you’ll find a secret message.
Or I’m yanking your chain. Up to you guys to decide which is which.
This is one of the fastest progression kills we’ve had in a while. It only took 3 hours before we were able to take him down.
A frequent commenter produced a useful list of tips for trash and the boss that I’m going to duplicate here:
Trash:
Put your MT on follow, shield yourself, and spam CoH. There is a niche close to the last pull – your raid can stand there for a second, get out of combat, let all the mana users drink, and then have only one or two little pulls before engaging the boss. Pot as you run in, so you’re at full mana.
Phase 1:
PW:Shield anyone and everyone taking a fixate. Early, and often. Don’t be afraid to take a fixate yourself (as long as it’s not an enrage, obviously). SW:P the boss. Every little bit helps.
Phase 2:
CoH. Nothing but CoH. 400 mana for 2k heals on 5 people. Tell your shadow priests that SW:D is off-limits. No matter how much you want to, do not pot during this phase. Pop your earring, pop your fiend, but do not pot. You’ll need your cooldown. Save your Inner Focus ’til the end, and your Vial of the Sunwell. You may go oom, and need the heals. I have been told that you can Mass Dispel the last shield using your Inner Focus, so I save mine for that, but we’ve never needed it. Pray that your rogues are smart.
Phase 3:
Bosskillers said (when we were reading) to take a cauldron of Nature’s protection pots. Not sure why, the nature damage is minimal. Our guild uses Shadow Protection pots. Take them at 80%. (This is why you couldn’t mana pot in phase two.) Make sure everyone has one before you start the trash.
Pally’s on the tank, priests CoH everyone. Druids saving Tranq for this phase is not a bad idea.
Things I’ve found helpful:
Golden fish sticks if you have 10k health. Stam/regen food if you don’t. Don’t be afraid to take a fixate – no one has any armor anyway, so unless it’s an enrage, you’re not going to take more damage than a tank would. Rogues can also evade-tank enrages. Don’t flask for this. Wait until you’re ON PHASE THREE, then take draenic wisdom and healing power.
The more balanced stats are really, insanely helpful compared to Raw mp5. But you’re going to die a lot on the first couple of phases ’til you learn it, so don’t go broke wasting elixirs until people learn how to take fixates from one another.
Frequent Issues:
Trash: Mages like to AoE and kill themselves. Shield and renew them.
Phase 1: People being nervous to get in there and take a fixate, or not being smooth with the transitions = dead people. Watch those who are exceptionally low on health, and dispel them first.
Phase 2: S.priests, warlocks, Mages critting themselves to death. Rogues & interrupters interrupting badly or not at all.
Phase 3: Don’t. Let. The. Tank. Die. Everyone else is expendable. Especially you, if you have Spirit of Redemption. In fact, if you go Oom, just let yourself die, so you can keep healing.
The phases are very short, with full mana regen afterwards. Don’t be stingy with your mana.
Naturewarden’s Treads
Boneweave Girdle
Not sure what’s going to happen this week. The Guild will need to bust out the Shadow Resist stuff and all that. I’ve got the SR Neck, Cape, Boots, Belt, and Bracers crafted. I hope that’s enough.
This post is more catered towards my fellow WoW blogging colleagues who suffer from "Lack-of-Idea" syndrome. Spice up your blogging! Be interesting!
Everyone wants to know what kind of gear to strive for. But people are too inherently lazy to do the research themselves. Be a good Samaritan and create a list! More often then not, you already have a general idea of what to go for so you may as well share it. When you’re creating your list, try to apply it for something (IE, what is this list going to help me do?). I wrote my Holy Priest gearlist in mind as the easiest and cost effective (in terms of time) gear to acquire to punt you into Karazhan as soon as possible.
Examples:
Part Time Druid – Fresh 70 Resto Druid: Gear Cheat Sheet
World of Matticus – Gearing Your 70 Holy Priest: My Recommendations
It’s no secret that blogs are an excellent platform in getting stuff off their chest. Used correctly, it can. The trick is to do it without swearing or insulting (much). A calmly thought out and delivered rant will have a much more powerful effect then a rant that’s literally full of air and no substance. If you’re going to rant about something, drive the point home. Be obvious about why it sucks. Feed your anger and unleash it!
Examples:
Resto4Life – Bornakk: Druids Not to be "Big Green Blogs"
Lady Jess – No Desire to Play… Why?
For every blog that goes down, new blogs spring up. It’s impossible to keep track of them all. In fact, I daresay there are more blogs out there then grains of sand in the Sahara desert. Most of my blog fishing comes from a critical examination of comments, inbound links, and other blogs. A big thank you to you, the curious and exploratory blogger, for finding new blogs! The typical link love post involves a (surprise surprise) link to said new blog as well as a post that they like. In case you’ve stumbled upon a plethora of kick-ass blogs, you can go for the list approach.
Bonus points if you can do it in a sonnet.
Examples:
Kestrel’s Aerie – Blogroll Addition: Warcraft and Other Hooha (Batgrl)
Resto4life – Community Spotlight: April 24
Guide posts are excellent bread and butter references. The guide can be anything from killing a boss, completing a certain quest, or levelling a profession. Do a quick look around to see what’s covered. If your idea is already taken, try to improve upon the one that you read or approach it from a different perspective.
Examples:
Too Many Annas – Resto Shaman vs. Tidewalker – A Healing Guide
Banana Shoulders – A Guide to Daily Quests V: Shattered Sun
Different UI’s suit different people. Not everyone has the time or the energy to sift through entire addon databases to find out what’s cool and what’s not. The popularity of addons spread via word of mouth. Why not contribute to it?
Examples:
Girl Meets WoW – 6 Mods and Macros to Help You Win in Battlegrounds
Healer LFG – Essential Addons
Every now and then, bloggers receive an email asking for help or for their opinion on a topic. Go ahead and feature a reader email of the week or two, then open it up for your readers to chime in.
Examples:
Blessing of Kings – Ask Coriel: Pursuit of Justice for a Tank?
Lists are fun to do and they can be used for any topic. A majority of my posts are lists because I have fun writing them. Topics could be anything from 35 Ways to Skin a Tauren to 47 Really Shiny Epics or 14 Up and Coming Bloggers to Watch.
Examples:
Healer LFG – 10 Ways to Speed Up Your Raid
Part Time Druid – Resto Druid: 5 Things You Should Know
This is the most common type of post which details what the blogger has done recently on WoW. Ranges anywhere from guild affairs to the orgasmic "We Killed This Boss" post.
Examples:
Honor’s Code – Finish Up the Week
Mama Druid – Selenyx Has Been Busy
These posts are designed to help walk people through the process of doing something. They’re often fairly detailed and have cool step-by-step screenshots of the different stages of your goal.
Examples:
Petaholics Anonymous – Syncing Your WoW Stuff Across Multiple Computers
Pugnacious Priest – How to Make a Quick and Dirty Guild website Banner
Obviously, this is by no means an exhaustive list. Feel free to add your own!
Bloodboil got taken down last night with relative ease on the second shot.
Staff of Immaculate Recovery – I passed the staff off to a different Priest. I only wish that he were able to play more often. But I’m sure the staff will drop again. When Archimonde dropped his, I got mine the week after we killed him again.
Shroud of Forgiveness – Nice cape for me.
Sunday’s going to be progression night. 6 hours of wiping on Reliquary of Souls. I’m going to see how we do and take some notes.
As a blogger, there are going to be days when you hit a rut. No matter how hard you try, you can’t seem to get any ideas going and you sit there staring at a blank screen (or notepad in my case).
Luckily for you wonderful readers, I don’t succumb to such a dry spell very often. In fact, I suffer from having too many ideas. I’ve been looking around for a virtual whiteboard for a long time. Thanks to Jon, the master of the Bronze Kettle, I’ve found one!
I’m always open to ideas and thinking outside the box. The only way to thrive in the world of blogging is to continue to innovate and be creative. I don’t believe in a lack of good ideas. I believe in a lack of motivation.
But if you’re curious as to what I have planned, take a gander at my whiteboard. I usually start with a title first and expand from there. I often don’t write diary posts because I think it’s boring and I would not want to subject anyone to that. My goal is to write something where after you read every post there is something you can take away from it. Maybe it’s a lesson, or a tip, or an idea, I don’t know. If I’m giving something away for free, it may as well be of use to someone.
To all the people that have said nice things about me and my blog, remember that I’m not a saint. I’m just an ordinary priest with more ideas then time.
But you can thank me with repeat visits and spreading my blog ;).