All Stories

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

Happy Thanksgiving Canadian Readers, and various minor updates

by

As you may have noticed, I’ve changed the look of the page substantially. World of Matticus is almost two months old and the viewership has increased dramatically. I’ve recognized that fact and decided to overhaul the entire layout to become more aesthetically pleasing. A lot of bloggers like going for the dark look. I wanted to stand out a bit more since as a Priest, it doesn’t make much sense to have a dark and foreboding page (unless you’re shadow or something). At the same time, I wanted to throw my support behind my home team (Vancouver Canucks). I believe in blue. The team is now 1-1-0 (Because Luongo freakin’ robbed Iginla, buahaha).

If you notice any bugs or if you just want to comment in general, please leave a note at the end of this post so I can take a look at it. My viewing space is different from yours and I want to maximize compatability as much as possible.

Changes and Additions
Added a Flickr stream to the right. All of my screenshots and photos will be tagged worldofmatticus. The plug I’m using is Flickrss, but to my knowledge there is no way to force refresh the image feed. So images added there may take a while before they appear here.
The Main page now displays the latest post only. With this change made, it means I can do away with the “Show More” link expanding the column. Recent posts can be viewed on the left pane.
New tagline for World of Matticus on the upper right.
Facvicon added (Influenced by Kestrel)
Link mouse overs now say alternate text.
Images also gain new mouse overs.
Expansion from three column to four column look (left, content, middle, right)
Added additional posts to the Best of My World section.
Added Recent Comments to the left pane.
Removed link to my hockey blog.

Future Updates

I’m at the point now where as a Priest, I don’t know what else to write about that hasn’t already been discussed at length by other colleagues. I’m going to begin expanding to raid boss encounters and tricky pulls. They won’t cover the entire kill strategy, as I’m not the one in charge of that department. But what I can cover is healing priorities, techniques, and other things that you absolutely need to know as a healer.

Noted Bugs

Comment produces SQL garbage…
… but your comments will still appear

Fix0r’d

New Computer!

by

As you know, my birthday was last week. I decided to get myself a new computer as a present. It freakin’ rocks! Pictures below!
Thanks to Paul and the guys at Frontier PC for helping me out with the selection!

Here’s the specs:

Gigabyte Intel P35
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.33 Processor (1333mhz)
OCZ Gold 2GB (2x1GB)
EVGA GeForce 8800 GTS 320 MB
Western Digital 160 GB
BenQ 22″ 5MS 700:1

I added my old 320 GB hard drive in as well, so I’m sporting a little under 500 GB of drive space.

My monitor

My desk

by

Me and a raid leader were comparing desk spaces the other day. He’s got a three monitor set up while I only use two: one for gaming, one for everything else while gaming.

I’m beginning to not enjoy these Maulgar-esque fights with multiple tanking targets. Tonight was Fathomlord day. We had the toughest time with four tanks and nine healers simply because the pet and hunter were being tanked by the same player who was getting knocked around all over the place. A tank being knocked all over the place is bad because 9 times out of 10 he will end up out of range. I’m busy slamming my Oh $&*% macro trying to keep the guy alive while moving around the damn pillar AND making sure I’m alive. Starting in SSC, I’m beginning to notice a trend where some of these pulls need to be accomplished with a tank, a healer on the tank, and another healer on THAT healer. Blizzard sure does seem to have endless gimmicky ideas for trash and raids.

My Interface

by

There has been a flurry of Raiding interface posts (courtesy of Kirk and Galadria). I’m going to show a screen shot of mine in a moment and label all the present addons in the screen. But first, I want to show you an addon that will blow your mind away as a healer and make you drool. Check out the following shots:

Edit: Forgot to enable comments

Now that I’ve caught your attention, you will most likely be asking yourself “OMG WTF IS THAT?”. This, my friends, is a raid user interface called Pitbull. You can find a copy from Curse Gaming.

As you’ve seen from the shots above, it has a special feature which functions like bullet tracers. It graphically generates a line from you and your raidmates to the players they are healing so you can visually see on your screen who is healing who, with what heal, and when it hits in real time. Is that not mindblowingly awesome? It’s like little lasers! Now healers can really pew pew. I believe the numbers you see on their names are the estimated heal amount.

But there is a problem.

With all the graphic generation, heal calculation, and so on and so forth, you will need a nuclear reactor to power your computer. As much as I want to run this, I know my computer would buckle especially in a raiding environment. So to you healers who have kickass machines, give this a shot. It’s got a ton of more features as well, but that part caught my eye the most.

Here’s the interface that I use. Make a note of the numbers that I photoshopped in there:

1: This is singlehandedly the most important addon you will ever use in your WoW Raiding career. You can skimp out on the heal addons, and the threat addons, and the pretty addons. But get Deadly Boss Mods. It highlights important knowledge and phases during your encounters. It is an absolute must.

2: X-Perl Unit Frames is my primary UI of choice when interacting with my party and my raid. It boasts a whole slew of options and is compatible with CT Raid, oRA2 and a few others. It’s able to show me the target of my target’s target (four windows). It can show all MT targets. It shows who’s targeting you. It shows who’s also assisting you. It also shows players with buffs that you can provide. It’s an easy way to spot if a player is missing Fortitude or DS. It’s also got a built in range finder, spell cooldown (you can see how long before you need to refresh renew), if the raid is down it shows who has soulstones or Shaman’s self res active, and most importantly, your screen flashes if you pull aggro.

3: I use Bongos 2 to manage my extensive array of options and choices for my bars. If you look really carefully, you can even see the way I bind my keys. It allows me to flexibly move my map, my bars, my FPS and castbars all around. Note that I don’t have my menu’s or my bags on screen (I rely on Esc. and Shift + B for that respectively).

4: I like my map square so I can see more surface area. Thank you Squeenix.

5: I didn’t like the way Blizzard organized my buffs, so I turned to CT_Buffmod. I do believe you need to download the core, however…

6: KLH Threatmeter (or KTM). It’s a way to graphically view your own aggro and threat generation. Normally I disable the view but keep the transmission enabled to free up more real estate on the screen.

7: Finally the last one I use is Natur EnemyCastBar so that I can see at a glance what is being cast by my target. It’s an excellent tactical addon to download to help you prepare for any incoming spells or attacks. Allows you to deliver an appropriate and timely response.

There ya go! That’s how my setup is at currently and it’s served me well. It delivers a lot of information that I need so I can calculate my next move.

Gearing Your Fresh 70 Resto Shaman: My Recommendations

by

Due to the overwhelming popularity of my pre-raid Priest gear checklist, I’ve decided to compile one for my resto Shaman. Bear in mind, this list only contains the best possible healing gear you can obtain before Kara that is mail. If you wanted just the best possible healing set, refer to my Priest check list. It’s bad enough my Priest is a squishy. I wanted my Shaman to hold his own (for a few seconds longer anyway). Your ideal professions here would be skinning and leatherworking. Similar to my Priest, I place a huge emphasis on MP5 even more here alongside Healing. Remember, these pieces may not be the best overall, but they’re the quickest to acquire the moment you hit 70.

If you have any pieces you can think of that aren’t on this list, please add a comment or email me and I’ll make the addition. When I was building my Shaman’s Resto gear, I built him with PvP in mind therefore my gear consisted mostly of Arena or BG pieces.

Head

Living Dragonscale Helm (+81 Heaing, 14 Mana Per 5): It’s a craftable item made by Leatherworkers with a 365 skill which is bind on equip. It’s quite costly but you’ll be using this head piece for a while. The required materials to create it are:

The pattern is also a random world drop.

Headdress of the Tides (73 Heaing, 9 Mana Per 5): If you’re unwilling to acquire all the materials to create the above Helm, you can try your hand at running Heroic Underbog repeatedly until you get this. You’re looking at Ghaz’ran, the hydra boss in the middle so set aside a good portion of your time for it.

Neck (Recycled from Priest Page)

Necklace of Eternal Hope (+48 Healing, 8 Mana Per 5): This one will set you back about 25 heroic badges. If you don’t think you’re geared properly enough for heroics yet, then try the next one which is a little longer to get.

Natasha’s Guardian Cord (+55 Healing, 6 Mana Per 5): You can get this neckpiece from Blade’s Edge Mountains. It’s at the end of a ridiculously long chain quest which starts when you find a Mask on the Ground that you hear voices from. The 9th step in the quest will reward you with this decent neck.

Shoulder

Pauldrons of Surging Mana (No Healing, 13 Mana Per 5): Check the Auction House as you are levelling up. You might be able to snag these discount shoulders for a good price before you work your way up to something better. I picked up my Shoulders for about 17 Gold. They’re not very popular, so expect a slightly lower price. But that will depend on your server population.

Various PvP Shoulders: Just bite the bullet and either do some Arena’s or general BG PvP. The next decent upgrade you can acquire will be in Karazhan. Otherwise, your option is…

Mantle of the Sea Wolf (+51 Healing, 8 Mana Per 5): Ugh. Heroic Mana Tombs. Kill Tavarok.

Back

White Remedy Cape (59 Healing, 7 Mana Per 5): Easiest cape you can possibly get. It’s a tailoring BoE blue. The pattern itself is a world drop. If you put a tell in trade chat, hopefully you’ll be able to find someone who can create it on your server. It’s Level 69 so you can start shopping for it a little earlier. If you’re on Ner’Zhul, look up Mallet and I can craft it for you. Here’s the mats requirement:

Chest

Void Slayer’s Tunic (+88 Healing, 8 Mana Per 5): This one requires a group quest to complete. You need to complete a fairly long quest chain which involves killing Dimensius the All-Devouring way out in Netherstorm.

Earthpeace Breastplate (+92 Healing, 16 Mana Per 5): A slight edge in healing and twice the mana per 5 as the Void Slayer’s Tunic gives the one the slight edge. Unfortunately, this chest piece has no stats on it. I highly recommend using this one in environments where you know you won’t take a lot of damage, or if you do minimal at best.

Bracer

Primal Surge Bracers (+37 Healing, 6 Mana Per 5): You can get these from the last boss in Black Morass, Aeonus himself. Expect multiple runs. But it might be better off…

Veteran Ringmail Bracers (+42 Healing, No Mana Per 5): …For you to spend a day or two grinding out Alterac Valley or some other Battleground and pick up these instead.

Gloves

Fathomheart Gauntlets (+55 Healing, 7 Mana Per 5): The last boss in normal Steamvaults, Kalithresh drops these gloves. Again, these ones may take a while to pick up just because he’s a pain to get to.

Belt

Stillwater Girdle (+53 Healing, 8 Mana Per 5): Ugh, Resto Shamans really don’t have it easy when it comes to gear do they? This one comes from of Heroic Mana Tombs of all places. Furthermore, you have to clear all the way to the end and kill Nexus-Prince Shaffar to pick it up.

Pants

Oceansong Kilt (+84 Healing, No Mana Per 5): The Reinforced Chest you get after dropping Vazruden and Nazan will have a chance to reveal these pair of pants.

Feet

Wavefury Boots (+55 Healing, 8 Mana Per 5): The last thing you need from a heroic instance will be the easiest to get out of all the ones listed. Chances are, it will be super easy for you to find groups to go into Heroic Slave Pens and kill Rockmar.
Rings

Keeper’s Ring of Piety (+42 Healing, 7 Mana Per 5): This one’s easy to get. If you’ve been following your Karazhan attunements, then you will have this one by now. The Quest is given by Sa’at in the Caverns of time after you’ve completed Hero of the Brood.

Ring of Convalescence (+57 Heaing, 4 Mana Per 5): Requires you to be Revered with Honor Hold (Or Thrallmar). Will cut into your gold pouch with a price of about 18G. Pick it up from the Quartermaster.

Trinkets

Lower City Prayerbook (+70 Healing): Yeah the on use effect sucks. But just look at the passive ability! Besides, -22 mana isn’t that bad. Any mana saved is mana that can be used later. Think of endurance fights. Think of how often you you will use it and think of what that mana can be used for later. Requires a Revered Reputation with Lower City (Shadow Labs loves you). Remember that this item isn’t unique so you can pick up two of them.

Scarab of the Infinite Cycle (+70 Healing): Spell haste rating is cool. It makes your spells go faster. Too bad it requires running Black Morass a couple of times.

Weapons (1 Hand))

The Essence Focuser (+227 Heaing, 11 Mana Per 5): Scout your local auction house as it is a world drop. Unfortunautely, no stats.

Gavel of Pure Light (+299 Healing, 8 Mana Per 5): Do lots of Mechanar runs to increase your rep. You need Exalted to be able to buy this from the Quartermaster. This will really make your wallet hurt with a near 192G cost. If you’re lucky, you might be able to get Hammer of the Penitent to drop off of the Mechano-Lord in Mech. Either way, you’ll get a good mace to use.

Shield (Off hand)

Crystal Pulse Shield (+35 Healing, 6 Mana Per 5): Check your Auction House for this other great BoE drop. It’s a great early shield and will last you before you upgrade to the one from Chess.

Totems

Totem of the Plains (+79 Healing): Note that the increase in healing is only applied when you cast Lesser Healing Wave. Once you kill Tusker and turn in the quest, it should be a no brainer to pick up this reward.

Totem of Spontaneous Regrowth (+88 Healing): The increase in healing is applied after you cast Healing Wave. To get it, you’ll be wanting to visit Mennu the Betrayer in Heroic Slave Pens.

Enchants & Other Augments

Glyph of Renewal (+35 Heaing, 7 Mana Per 5): This goes on your head. Requires Honor Hold/Thrallmar repuatation of revered. Costs 100G.

Greater Inscription of Faith or Greater Inscription of the Oracle: Depends on which faction you chose (Aldor or Scryer). Aldor for the win!

Enchant Cloak – Subtlety: Wait for Patch 2.2 and Enchanters will be able to get this beauty. It’s updated for BC materials. It reduces the threat you cause by 2%. That means 2% more healing! Whee!

Enchant Chest – Restore Mana Prime (6 Mana Per 5): Easy to get. You’ll want this.

Enchant Bracer – Superior Healing (+30 Healing): Same thing. 4 Primal Life’s and 4 Greater Planar Essences and your bracer got a whole lot better.

Enchant Gloves – Major Healing (+35 Healing): Ouch. In addition to 6 Greater Planars and 6 Primal Lifes, now you need 6 Large Prismatic Shards. Put it on the best possible gloves you have knowing that you won’t be replacing it for a while.

Enchant Weapon – Spellsurge: This unique enchant has a 3% chance on cast to restore 100 mana (not 100% mana) to all party members over 10 seconds. This is most useful in a raid environment, but there is a lot of debate between this and +81 Healing. Hopefully one of my other fellow Priest bloggers will dwelve on this topic (Ego? Kurt? Anyone? Eh, guess not. I’ll get around to it eventually).

Enchant Weapon – Major Healing (+81 Healing): Stick to this for now. It’s cheaper.

Enchant Boots – Vitality (4 Mana Per 5): Restores Health and Mana every 5 seconds. The enchant is a world drop.

Enchant Ring – Healing Power (+20 Healing): Remember when I told you to take up Tailoring and Enchanting? Here’s the other half of the reason why. Enchanters are able to enchant their own rings (Must be Soulbound).
Golden Spellthread (+66 Healing): Here’s a big hint: Put this on your Whitemend Pants. You’ll need 10 Primal Life’s and an Aldor Exalted Tailor with a Primal Nether. If you’re on Ner’Zuhl as Alliance, send Mallet a tell and I’ll do it for you.

Gems

Royal Nightseye (+9 Heaing, 2 Mana Per 5): This is your best friend. Most of the time, you’ll want to get a yellow gem for the socket bonus. Personally I say it’s hogwash. Most of your red and blue’s should be Nightseyes. There’s not a lot of gear where the socket bonus is good enough to warrant not using a Nightseye.

Teardrop Living Ruby (+18 Healing): I don’t use this at all personally. I heavily favor Mana Per 5 over miniscule amounts of +healing. It’s only 9 more than the Nightseye. I do not foresee it making a huge impact.

Luminous Noble Topaz (+9 Healing): For the rare pieces that do have a kickass bonus when you slot in a yellow gem, use one of these babies.

Conclusions and the Math

I’ve factored in my top choices in gear and included the best enchants, augments, and recommended gems. Here’s the final numbers:

Head: 116 Healing, 14 Mana Per 5 (Living Dragonscale Helm, Glyph of Renewal)

Neck: 48 Healing, 4 Mana Per 5 (Necklace of Eternal Hope)

Shoulders: 24 Healing, 19 Mana Per 5 (Pauldrons of Surging Mana, Greater Inscription of Faith)

Back: 59 Healing, 7 Mana Per 5 (White Remedy Cape)

Chest: 92 Healing, 22 Mana Per 5 (Earthpeace Breastplate, Enchant Chest – Restore Mana Prime)

Bracer: 72 Healing (Veteran Ringmail Bracers, Enchant Bracer – Superior Healing)

Gloves: 90 Healing, 7 Mana Per 5 (Fathomheart Gauntlets, Enchant Gloves – Major Healing)

Waist: 53 Healing, 8 Mana Per 5 (Stillwater Girdle)

Legs: 144 Healing, (Oceansong Kilt, Golden Spellthread)

Feet: 55 Healing, 12 Mana Per 5 (Jeweled Boots of Sanctification, Enchant Boots – Vitality)

Ring: 57 Healing, 4 Mana Per 5 (Ring of Convalescence)

Ring: 42 Healing, 7 Mana Per 5 (Keeper’s Ring of Piety)

Trinket: 70 Healing (Lower City Prayberook)

Trinket: 70 Healing (Scarab of the Infinite Cycle)

Weapon 1H: 380 Healing (Gavel of Pure Light, Enchant Weapon – Major Healing)

Shield OH: 35 Healing, 6 Mana Per 5 (Crystal Pulse Shield)

GRAND TOTAL:

1407 Healing

110 Mana Per 5

Naturally, those numbers don’t look good as the Priest who is fully geared with non-raid epics. But as this is a Shaman, exceptions must be made. Again, if there’s a piece of loot which is easier to obtain and is better then what I have listed, please drop me a line.

And there you have it! Matticus’ recommended pre-raiding checklist for the Restoration Shaman.