All Stories

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

A Glimpse in the Mind of a Priest

by

In 10 seconds, anything can go wrong. In upper level raiding, there’s a certain element of micro management that needs to be done. We tried Kael again today and we still could not polish him off. Our best attempt was at 57% in Phase 4. It’s like your trying to get a good solid grip on running water. You can feel it through your fingers but it continues to slip away elusive to your grasp.

Here’s a scenario of a crazy, paranoid, overanalyzing Dwarf Priest in overdrive on a Kael fight during Phase 3:

00:00

Thought process

Tank at full health. Weapon swing coming in half a second. A quick glance at the Heads-up display reveals a Fear happening in 3. Thaladred’s gazing at a Priest adjacent to me and is heading to my direction (Gaze means he’s going to walk towards a player and hit him hard).

Actions

Activate a shield on my healing assignment, and start moving north away from the incoming mob.

00:03

Thought Process

I currently represent half the healing on my tanking assignment as the other Priest is busy evading Thal. Big heals are a must as is the fear ward.

Actions

Fear Ward, Renew, Prayer of Mending.

00:09

Thought Process

Gaze is off my partner and is now on a hunter next to me who just went flying through the air and is sitting at 45%. A quick glance at my assignment with 80% health shows my partner has him targeted with a heal on the way about to land in 0.7 seconds.

Actions

Hunter’s not going to be able to sustain another hit. Target him, Shield, Renew, switch back to healing assignment.

00:14

Thought Process

“FEARED!”

I recognize that voice. It’s my Priest partner. There’s a tremor totem on the ground from the shaman in our group and it pulsed 2 seconds ago. Not enough time. Hunter should be fine and in the clear. I’m going to be on my own for the next several seconds on my assignment.

Actions

Prayer of Mending. Better hope the WoW gods are listening and that it is able to mitigate more damage then the tank is taking. Tank’s health returns up to 60%. Activate Divine Illumination. Additional 25% chance to crit is better than 10%.

00:18

Thought Process

Blue rings shimmer around my assignment. It looks familiar, what the hell does it mean? Too late, I think to myself. It’s a Remote Toy. That equals stun. Stun equals lack of ability to take defensive measures by my healing assignment. Which also means not good. He’s down to 35%. Adrenaline’s already coursing through the system. The coffee I had earlier in the day is all but exhausted. He needs a big time crit heal now.

Actions

Slam max rank Greater Heal now.

00:19

Thought Process

XPerl shows my colleague starting to cast a heal not a moment after I did. Wait a minute…

…He’s casting a Greater Heal, too.
…There’s only 2 of us healing him.
…Which means he has less then 2 seconds to live based on weapon swing timers from the boss…

Action

Do the simplest action to cancel a heal which is move. At the same time, blow a PW: Shield and pray it can withstand a hit. Oh no, Thal’s arm is up, and that means-

00:20

“MAN DOWN”

Thought Process

Oh crap. You failed the team. One simple miscalculation. One wrong heal at the wrong time. Sanguinar is now free and goes forth rampaging the raid.

Game over.

Priests are so easy to play. There are so many options to choose from. It’s easy to scrutinize one’s play in hindsight. But when you’re in the moment, the difference between raid success and failure can hinge on a something so insignificant as using the right heal at the right time.

Over 5 options to choose from and I picked the wrong one. Kael could have died tonight. This is going to haunt me for a long time.

It’s quite possibly one of the worse feelings anyone can experience in the world. It’s not being told what you did wrong by someone else. It’s knowing what you did wrong and knowing that it could have been prevented.

I should have rolled a Hunter.

Weekly Digest: Kael Still a Douche, Hunters Saddened, and Mattcast Going Through

by

What’s Happening in WoW

By the time this post goes out, I will have finished getting the necessary Sporregar rep to transmute Primal Earth to Water on my Paladin. No more spending gold to buy Primals to transmute Skyfire or Earthstorm diamonds!

Kael is still giving us a hard time. I’ve localized the problem down to the transition from Phase 3 to Phase 4 which has been the largest headache. All of us know our jobs and what to do. But there’s a lot of stupid mistakes going around that by themselves are minor. When combined together though, the raid caves.

Thankfully, our GM has publicly called out some of these players to step up their game. Hopefully it will have a desired effect on Sunday.

What’s Happening with the Blog

I’m still hard at work changing up my blogroll. I mentioned it before, but the blogroll will have it’s own page. My intention is to set it in such a way where when it is loaded, there is a different blog spotlighted every time.

Technical problems, but nothing my gnomish engineers can’t fix!

The hard part about blogging is finding interesting topics. It becomes much more difficult when the blogger intends to do a podcast. I am virtually committed to doing a podcast and I have some great ideas to explore. I might even go a step further and turn it into a video cast. We’ll see. I’ve always had a passion for public speaking and giving presentations. I don’t want to reveal too much for now. I don’t like to make empty promises. It’s a fairly monumental project in it’s own right and I don’t even have the technical knowhow on how to pull it off.

Haven’t quite picked a name for it, so I’m going to tentatively refer to it as the Mattcast since saying World of Matticus Offical Podcast repeatedly would get old after a while.

Lots of learning and lots of reading to do in addition to my school work, that’s for sure.

Latest Blog Posts

Trends in the WoWosphere

There’s been a large outcry over Blizzard’s reversal in their stance of the ghost wolf pet (formerly a bug). Others don’t see the big deal.

I don’t have a hunter myself, so I cannot even begin to imagine what it must have been like to lose the ability to tame it. Blizzard’s decision ultimately cost them the subscription of a player-blogger.

Personally, I think it was a combination of things that made him quit.

Past Hits

Past articles that I’ve written that still hold true to this day.

Blog Spotlight

Light’s Grace – It’s a brand spankin’ new WoW Blog! He’s She’s a Blood Elf Paladin (oh great, not another one). Kulrayk, the blogger, followed me on Twitter for some time and we’ve chatted for a little bit. Now he’s she’s decided to create his own blog! Go show him her some support! It’s tough to get a blog going from the start because you often question yourself and wonder if you have the motivation and dedication. All it takes is some readers.

What is Twitter?

by

I had a few questions about this over the past few weeks about what Twitter is.

It’s a web service that allows you to tell other people what you are doing right this instant and it can be a little active. By having a Twitter account, you can follow other people and find out what they are up to.

Do you use Facebook? There’s a part of your account that says Status (IE, Matt is playing WoW). Same idea.

Anyway, I synced Twitter to my blog so that everytime there’s an update, there’s a new “tweet”. You’re welcome to follow me on it if you use it. The front page also displays the last 3 posts I’ve made on Twitter.

House Cleaning, Podcast Possibilities, Ret. Paladin Help

by

Nothing much today. The idea well is running a little dry. Wanted to do a bit of housekeeping and maintenence here.

Blogroll

Besides, I need to work on finishing up this blogroll. I feel guiltier and guiltier with each passing day looking at my inbound links compared to my outbound links. I plan on reorganizing my entire blogroll into an epic sized blog roll. I will finish this thing by Friday after combing through Google Reader and adding and removing links.

Podcast

This has absolutely nothing to do with World of Warcraft.

If you’re into Starcraft custom campaigns and the like, head on over to Campaign Creations. I helped keynote a 20 minute discussion with their admin (Lavarinth) and one of their leading project designers (Iskatumesk). Topics revolved around their custom Starcraft campaign competition (with prizes), upcoming features, and other stuff!

So if you’re into Starcraft, give it a listen since I’m the one hosting it.

I’ve been toying with the idea of a podcast for a long time. The only thing holding me back is mostly technical. It’s the audio conversion and the effects and the like. I might even go as far as creating a monthly or maybe even weekly video explaining boss encounters from a healing perspective such as how to assign your healers, how to handle certain parts of the event and so forth. There’s only so much detail that staring at text can do. Even watching first person videos can’t give you the overall picture because it’s from one person.

What else could I do? I’d love to audio interview certain players or bloggers and find out what makes them tick!

Again, nothing concrete but definitely an idea I’m mulling over.

In the mean time, check out the cast. I need to get better at speaking. But we are our own greatest critic, right?

Expanding the Frontpage Tabs

Right now, the main page tabs have only 2 choices: Priest related and stuff for Raid Officers. I’m going to expand that sometime soon with my personal favourites and most popular. CSS styling is quite annoying, however.

Characters

So Valoray (my Retribution Paladin) now has Thunder. What enchants would you recommend? This whole DPS thing is a little strange to me. I’m not used to seeing 4 digit crits.

It’s strangely satisfying!

Talk About a New Look Healing Corps

by

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.