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

Zone Healing

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Ever play Ultimate (or Ultimate Frisbee)?

The rules are quite simple. You have two teams starting at opposite end zones who attempt to advance the disc to the other team’s end zone. Once the pull (like a kickoff in football) is initiated the teams can start jockeying for possession. A team that advances the disc to an end zone secures the point.

Kicker: The person with the disc can’t move. They can pivot on one foot but they can’t move. The opposing team gains possession whenever any pass is incomplete, intercepted, or received out of bounds .

Teams will employ different strategies to prevent the other team from scoring. One of the common defensive strategies is zone defense. Players are pre-assigned to sections of the field as they attempt to intercept and stop opposing players from advancing towards their end zone. It’s used to stop the offensive team from making really long passes. There’s usually one or two players that will close in on the disc handler. There’s different variations of it, but the key concept is that the defenders have their own sections to work with (not to mention that covering a small area instead of advancing up and down the field all the time is great at minimizing fatigue — I would know).

Gosh, I can’t wait for summer to get here.

Zone healing

Now the concept of zone healing works the same way and is used in situations where not every player is within range of the healer or where players are constantly shifting in and out of range. Sometimes there are raid mechanism place preventing you from moving or that keep you constantly away from each other. Zone healing is an approach that directs the healers to only heal the people that are within range of them. They must trust the other healers to cover the players near themselves in other areas. If you’re assigned to the blue beam of Durumu’s platform, then you can heal anyone that comes in range as the other beams are being moved around. Most raid frames have a function where the individual frames turn transparent if a player isn’t in range. As the healer, this makes your job easier. Any frames that are opaque (or solid) are the players that depend on you to live.

I understand, I have trust issues too. For the officers, zone healing is a great way to isolate which healers are true rock stars and which ones are struggling.

It’s a simple and effective healing strategy to use if the encounter demands everyone to be spread out. Let me give you some examples:

Ji-Kun

Ji-Kun has an ability called Caw. It’s a common raid mechanic where she’ll send sound waves at a player and damages anyone nearby within 8 yards. This calls for people to be spaced out around her main platform. Depending on which Ji-Kun strategy you use, you’ll have groups clearing out nests and may not have the same, consistent number of players on the main platform at all times. Be flexible.

Dark Animus

Healers will have to generate threat on the little anima golems at the start of the fight to hold them in place. If the golems are brought together, their attack speed greatly increases and will quickly snowball into a wipe. This requires everyone to stand in place. As the little golems are gradually killed near the Massive Anima, players will be freed up and can move around the room consistently. In addition, Matter Swap will switch players with their most distant ally forcing healers to react accordingly and dispel or heal any teleported players.

As a healer, you’re not going to be able to hit everybody. DPS and tanks will come and go through your area of the map. It won’t always be a set group of players all the time. Keep the players in your zone healthy!

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Turtle Hate

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I thought the turtles in Firelands were bad. Nope! The Tortos ones are even worse. It took us forever the first time we got there to get him. Between the stalactites, the spinning turtles, and the earthquakes, it was a huge chaotic mess.

Biggest pressure point?

Me.

My effectiveness on this fight is practically zero. The majority of my time is spent marking turtles and assigning kickers at the right times. Leading and coordinating Tortos is a big nightmare and I start panicking whenever we get to him because I end up second guessing stuff throughout the fight. Thank goodness we 2 shot it the other night (our first wipe was due to an errant Hunter Barrage that went off when we were clearing bat trash, so it didn’t count as a one shot). It’s not always smooth sailing.

We’re now at week 4 and I’ve gotten a little more comfortable with it. The DPS has gone up leading to additional breathing room with turtles. The punters already know when to expect calls before I even make them and have started calling their turtles. But out of the encounters here so far, this is by far the most draining. I suppose it’s possible that I can eventually wean myself from marking turtles. Not quite there yet though because I’m concerned that two sets of turtle shells will go flying in and we miss out on a breath interrupt.

I hate turtles.

Hearthstone: Why the Disappointment?

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Because people got their expectations too high.

I’ll admit, I was one of them. I already knew it wasn’t going to be a game. I knew it wasn’t going to be an expansion or a new IP or anything like that. Blizzard would only save important news their own BlizzCon (or maybe E3). I’m a little amazed at some of the hate for it. They already said was going to be something small.

We can’t get hyped up for stuff like this because then we set ourselves up for a huge let down when it’s not an epic cinematic announcement or a title of sorts. In the announcement video, Blizzard mentioned they had a small team working on it. It’s meant to help you kill time. Add Hearthstone to another list of things you can do during Tuesday patch mornings.

And it’s free!

Granted, I thought it was going to be an announcement related to Blizzard All Stars, so I’m just as guilty of that. Once I heard about the announcement, everything clicked and actually made sense.

I was a huge Magic player back in the day. You can classify me as the Spike player, always looking for the power cards and investing amazing resources into it.

There are two problems that I foresee in my ability to enjoy Hearthstone:

  1. It’s a free 2 play game. League of Legends is also a free 2 play game. I’ve invested somewhere to the tune of $1200 in League of Legends in the form of boosts, champions, skins, and gifts. If there’s any cash options, I’m so screwed Sad smile.
  2. My dad has my iPad 3. Like all the time. I haven’t seen it since January. Actually, come to think of it he probably knows how to use it more than I do. When’s the last time any father knew more about current technology than their son? I am slacking.

Depending on guild interest, perhaps a Friday Night Hearthstone is in order. I remember playing FNM and having a blast. Despite playing the overpowered Jace-Eldrazi Bant deck, I only won a handful of FNMs (I hated Jund).

It looks like it’ll be a great entry level card game for those who want to try their hand at CCGs. No word on whether cards can be traded/sold, however.

The Heart of the Swarm

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Patch 5.2 last week.

Heart of the Swarm this week.

It’s a wonder that I got any sleep at all. Actually, I managed to beat the single player campaign on hard (I’ll give brutal a run later on). Blizzard’s story team made me feel absolutely depressed halfway through the campaign but by the end of the game I was eager to see what they had planned for the next expansion. Speaking of other games, last week Sim City came out and there was all sorts of issues with the game. Certain features were removed. Amazon had to pull the title from the store for some time due to server issues.

Blizzard learned much from it’s Diablo 3 launch last year. They staggered the launch times around the world to ensure that they wouldn’t get overwhelmed. I’m sure their networking teams learned much.

But they’re not quite off the hook.

I have to replay certain missions again. Why? Because the achievement servers were offline robbing me of precious achievements!

In the Warcraft front, we’re up to Magaera this week. Got to the 7th head. A kill should be coming in fairly soon. I’m a little anxious on Ji-Kun though because I’m still not 100% sure what to really expect when I get there. I want to get my thoughts together on Tortos though. Warmed up to the fight the first few times I did it on the beta, but after two kills on him so far, I’ve already grown weary.

Here’s My Nerdy Guild Trying to be Funny

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My guild has a peculiar sense of humour. After we killed Jin’Rokh last night, we move up to the bridge of doom. There’s all these ghostly adds floating on the sides and the wind just blows people off in different directions off the bridge. It’s a complete gong show but eventually we figured out how to do it. The trick is to grab each ghostly add from each side and tank them at the beginning. A raider noticed something about the wind textures.

One of my players remarks, “ Doesn’t that wind pattern look like the sine symbol?”

An officer responds, “Or the cosine symbol.”

Another player shoots back, “It’s certainly integral to what we’re doing.”

Not to be outdone, a different player pipes up, “I don’t think it’s a major factor.”

At this point, I rolled my eyes and flatly stated, “You’re all being irrational.”

Sigh.

Apparently, that’s my guild on a patch night. We were able to take down Horridon and put in some shots on the Council fight before we called it a night. I don’t know about you, but I’m already getting tired of the trash.

How was your patch day and what do you think of the new raid?