All Stories

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

Talk About a New Look Healing Corps

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Our healing corps looks a lot different than it did in 2007. It’s become a lot more balanced (well, kind of).

-BEFORE-

4 Paladins
1 Resto Shaman
2 Holy Priests

These were all the possible raid healers we had. More often then not, they were all we brought into the raid. We had 7 strong capable healers. Now that we’ve entered the new year, we’ve lost one of our Holy Priests to personal issues that he needs to sort out in life. Best wishes to him. One of our Paladins accepted a position in a higher progressed Guild (another post for another day). During the 3 week holiday break, we had a lot of interest. A lot of people applied and we filtered out several that didn’t make the cut. But since we weren’t raiding then, there was no real way for us to evaluate them in situations that matter the most. We’re throwing these guys out of the frying pan and into the fire (literally). Tomorrow, some of the recruits will be brought into Tempest Keep.

-AFTER-
3 Paladins
1 Holy Priest
2 Resto Shamans
2 Resto Druids

You guys all know what that means! I’m going to have a FIELD DAY on cloth healing drops. Unless a Holy Priest manages to apply. Or a Disc priest. But hey, I can live with being the only Holy Priest in the raid. I’ll have to enjoy it while I can. I know sooner or later I’m going to have some competition at some point. But what a difference several weeks can make on a Guild.

Now I can Heal in Style

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Cowl of the Avatar

Does it not reek of complete and utter awesomeness? I finally got my Cowl of the Avatar! What good timing too since Carnage will no longer be running SSC as much anymore. We’re going all in on Kael.

The T5 helm now brings me up to having 3/5 T5. I also picked up another item to replace my Ribbon of Sacrifice. From Lurker, I managed to collect Earring of Soulful Meditation (it’s the class trinket at the T5 level). I lose a slight drop in healing (a whopping 7) but if I manage to remember to activate the Earring, I’ll gain 300 spirit for several seconds to further increase my longevity in combat. Combine the earring with Pendant of the Violet Eye and I will be able to sustain myself for a long time.

Before and after effects of Earring of Soulful Meditation

Yikes that’s a substantial increase!

Just For the Sake of Evidence

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Wager with Hankwilliams

Also as a reminder in case I forget. I wonder if that breaches the TOS. I suspect that there will be a lot of gold changing hands tomorrow (maybe). The Superbowl isn’t even here yet!

My Recount piece is almost done. Hopefully it’ll be up sometime around 1 AM.

The Problem With Enchanting: Part 2 (Supply)

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I recently wrote a piece several days back on the problems with enchanting your items from the demand side. There’s also some issues from the supply side. We’re the only profession that’s not able to put any finished products on the auction house. Blacksmithers can put up their crafted items. Alchemists can put up potions and flasks. Leatherworkers and tailors have their own BoE blues. Even Jewelcrafters can put up gem cuts.

But enchanters? We need to pay house calls to players who want our services individually. Only face to face can we earn any gold.

Rumor has it that this will be changed some time in the future. I’m not sure of any details at the moment, but I’m thinking what they’ll allow us to do is create Enchanting “scrolls” that can be applied to items. It would be similar to a silver spellthread or those other leg patches. This way, we’ve got something tangible that we can then put on the auction house. If they want to prevent twinking on certain levels, it would be easy to do by adding a level requirement for the item or the user of the enchant.

We can only hope.

How Terribly Clumsy of me…

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Sometimes it just goes to show that no matter how much time, effort, and preparation you undertake in a task there is always something wrong that happens. I spent the past month and a half working on a new design and a layout. It’s what I do when I’m not raiding or farming.

I just finished transferring the files from my beta subdomain and it is now officially live. But I’m a little disappointed because some things don’t seem to work the way I want it to. Instead of the new layout being polished, it’s a little rough around the edges.

Changes

So what have I done to my blog exactly? I’ve made it look simpler and complicated at the same time. The design and look has a lot more white space. There isn’t as much clutter or noise. It’s also more complicated in the fact that I’ve stepped up some functionality.

Front Page

Hey! Where did the blog on the front page go? It went here. The front page is now static instead of having new posts dynamically changing. The front page now contains my favourite articles on the right and a listing of recent posts or pages on the left. Those of you with RSS readers (Google reader, even) will be unaffected.

Blogroll and links

I have way too many links on my blogroll. The stupid Google Reader export plugin doesn’t want to cooperate. My plan B? I installed an addon that harvested every link on my blog and displays it neatly on a new links page. I’m going to start getting in the habit of posting new blogs that I run into or posts that drill a point.

Article Selection

For the moment, I’ve put my favourite Priest and Raid Officer columns up as links on the front page. You can click on the tabs to choose between the two topics. I plan on adding more later. The articles there are what I consider the best I have to offer on those subjects.

Advertising

They aren’t really ads per se. Those are just affiliate banners of companies that I’m presently using. I wouldn’t recommend them if I didn’t like them. If you want a more detailed explanation on why I’m running affiliate banners and information on the companies themselves, please read more about my recommendations.

Categories

I’ve cut my categories in half. I’m going to axe some more tomorrow. Right now as it stands, there’s a lot of categories that had 1 or 2 posts in them. My intention is to combine them all in to broader categories. This is one of the fatal errors that I’ve made in my blog. I didn’t give proper thought to the kind of topics that I would cover. Now I’m stuck with having to go through all my old posts and editing what category they belong under.

Archives

I think I’m going to do away with chronological archives altogether. I don’t know if anyones ever used them. I suspect that you, as a reader, would be more inclined to browse through my older topics via topic or category instead of month.

About Page

Updated the about page with a better picture of myself, a description of me, and what this blog is about.

Contact Matticus

Created a new contact page which offers multiple methods for you to contact me including a spiffy email form (because Outlook takes forever to load, right?). I don’t mind emails. In fact, I encourage them! Sometimes I’ll even post up a few on the blog here to help answer some questions.

I’m just getting warmed up. This is my new look for the new year. Let me know if something breaks or is non-existent or gets pointed in the wrong direction.

It’s 3 AM. I’m going to bed. I have this feeling when I wake up I’m going to get a dozen or so comments either a) liking the new look b) hating it c) finding some error. I look forward to it (after precious sleep).