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

Matticus: Healing at the 0.33 percentile

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Guys, I have an announcement to make. This is a special day.

For the first time, I am not in the 75th+ healing percentile. I actually fell quite low. Ended up being 4th, in fact.

I’m sorry for letting you all down Sad smile (and I got beat by a Druid, ugh)!

Here’s a snapshot from World of Logs in Mists of Pandaria. As was the case during the tail-end of Cataclysm, I’m getting spanked by holy Paladins. I’m not upset though. There’s a few reasons for this and it’s largely on me. This is against Gara’jal, the third and final boss in the first half of LFR.

The thinking for overhealing, mana management, and efficiency goes out the window at this stage.

It’s about survival.

The first pull or two on an encounter is going to result in low mana reserves because you have no idea how much you have to pace yourself. If you were told to run a marathon without any idea of the terrain, the length, or the conditions, I’d say you’d tired out too because you don’t know when to jog and when to sprint. Not only that, with the Mists class changes, it’s like getting new shoes, outfit, and weights attached to your body.

logs-garajal

Link to spell usages

Thoughts

  • My top spell was Circle of Healing right at the top followed by my holy mastery along with Prayer of Mending behind that.
  • You can also see that I used Heal way more often comprising 10% of my healing done. I did run low a few times and there were periods where only light healing was needed.
  • Not only that, I was unfamiliar with the fight. Didn’t know when the big damage phases were. Didn’t realize there’d be players being spiked. Way to do my homework.
  • Kept forgetting to use my 1 minute Shadowfiend. I should just macro that to something.
  • Suffered from mana problems towards the end when we hit the last phase of Frenzy.
  • Used predominantly PvP gear.
  • Lightwell and Lightspring usage is something I have to deploy earlier. Have to start working that cooldown early instead of waiting for health to get low. In the 3 minute span that Lightwell is active, the probably is high that Lightspring ticks will automatically trigger.
  • Cascade is awesome in a 25 man environment.

I know I can do better next time.

Montgomery Manifesto: Blogging Interview

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I was dropped in for a podcast interview with Mick Montgomery (Known for his work with the Warcraft-related Starting Zone podcast). Our main focus on WoW though. For a nice change of pace, we sat down for a solid hour just talking about blogging and online content creation. Most of you won’t really care, but if you’re interested in the blogging side of things, you’ll learn a little more about me from a different angle. Though we did end up talking a little more about Mists of Pandaria at the end.

Listen here

Obviously, when you do a website that focuses on written articles, you have a great deal of writing to do. Has doing the site forced you to change your writing style in any way?

I’ve learned to compress my writing. I try to be more succinct. I want to get straight to the point. Forget the foreplay. It’s a busy world out there. People have stuff to do. Every time I finish a post, I scan it and I ask myself if I really need that word there. Every word, every sentence must have a purpose. If there’s no reason for it to be there, it’s gone. It’s not as ramble-y as it used to be.

What do you think about the recent reductions over the last two years in subscribers and how does it impact your site or any wow oriented content creators site?

I think we’re going to see a spike in subscriptions again with the expansion. You can’t look at WoW as having a constant or growing number of subscribers all the time. Content is produced in waves and subscriptions counts are going to fluctuate to reflect that. In terms of impact, I think we’ve seen a decrease in the number of viewers and content consumers across the board. People lose interest, they’re not going to read those blogs for that kind of information. At the same time, it also affects bloggers themselves. If they get bored with the game, they’re not going to maintain their blog.

13 Punishing Raid Mechanics Which Made You Go “PICK ME PLEASE!”

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Blizzard’s been crazy inventive with their raid mechanics over the year. Whenever I think they’re running fresh out of ideas, they manage to come up with something new and different. Malygos was one of the first raid bosses where we were not using our own class abilities to bring down a boss — We sat in a vehicle (red dragonflight).

But, encounters aren’t all about the tanking, the DPS, and the healing. There’s these little gimmicks and tricks that need to be executed with perfection or else it’s back to square one. Most guilds have those few players that were liabilities. For whatever reason, they couldn’t get it quick enough.

Learning curves? No, more like a learning line which was parallel to the X axis. The quality of a player’s skill isn’t measured by their HPS, DPS, or SPS (Survival per second). It’s an immeasurable quality of their ability to pick up mechanics quickly enough and master it. Mastery just isn’t a character stat. It’s also a player stat.

Atramedes – Gongs

Ah, the gongs. All you had to do was click a gong which interrupted Atramedes’ casting, reset every player’s sound, and gave Atramedes a case of Vertigo. This was one responsibility that you trusted to a small, select group of people. Too early, and you waste a gong that’s not going to catch an interrupt. Too late, someone in the raid dies and you need to burn a fast combat res or go through the raid short handed. Most raid leaders assumed this duty themselves.

Honorable mention: Players that ran the Sonic Breath right into the raid or into the tank.

Ultraxion – Fading Light and Hour of Twilight

One of the easiest mechanics in the game yet has claimed so many lives. Raid wipes hinged on people both hitting “the button” at the right time and not hitting “the button”. Getting the occasional death? Sure. Getting consistent deaths? What the hell, man. And there was a 5 second grace period which is like an eternity.

Actually, the times I died was either because my macro wasn’t on the bar, or I hit it too early. When you’re used to fighting Ultraxion on hard mode and then downshifting to normal mode, old habits die hard.

Nefarian – Missing an interrupt

Prior to the nerfs, you needed (at minimum) 6 solid, reliable interrupters (or 3 on 10 man). Shaman classes dominated here because Wind Shear was awesome. If even one person blew an interrupt on phase 2, the entire raid wiped after the platform exploded.

I was tempted to switch to my Resto Shaman alt for this one.

Teron Gorefiend – Ghost

Beating Gorefiend was like spinning Roulette. We all prayed that the ball didn’t land on that one player who struggled night after night. They couldn’t reliably kill their ghosts without the instance of the others. I kid you not. One night, there was a conversation that went something like this:

“It’s hard to turn the ghost, target the enemies, and click on the different abilities to kill them!”

Vent turned silent.

Supremus – Running

People that couldn’t run. Goddamnit. How can you not outrun the slowest, largest thing in the instance? Yes, Supremus had a quick dash if you were too far. BUT STILL. You didn’t have to outrun him forever. You had to outrun him long enough so that he switched phases!

Professor Putricide hard mode – Unbound Plague

Putricide on hard mode was one of my favourite fights during Wrath. It was one of the ultimate exercises in teamwork. Players had to coordinate who had the debuff, who didn’t, and who could take the debuff. You had situations where a dirty person mistakenly ran into a clean person too early. Did it too late and you run the risk of dying. Eventually you’d run out of people to use if the Unbound Plague debuff didn’t wear off. Thankfully, the debuff only last for about 60 seconds — But it was 60 seconds of steadily increasing damage.

Archimonde – Air Burst

I observed that people with really bad depth perception struggled like crazy on this fight. Air Burst would knock players up really high and Tyrande gave you feathers to slow your descent. They had a hard time gauging where the ground was and how long it took before they pancaked. I can understand the Fires being a problem because they were often unpredictable. I remember I was kept way out in the back with no way to get within range of my groups because the fire had cut me off. But at least with tears, you have some semblance of control when to hit the button.

Lurker Below – Spout

World’s easiest mechanic which also claimed many lives. Yes jumping into the water meant you’d take some damage, but it was hardly even fatal. I’m quite ashamed to say that I was the worse at this largely because I was healing with 5 FPS. I stood directly behind Lurker (opposite the tank). I compensated for this by facing away from Lurker and looking at the water instead. Backwards healing so that I could smash my forward button and prayed it was enough time to push me into the water. With single digit FPS, you did everything possible to get as much of a lead off as you could.

Shade of Aran – Flame Wreath

Oddly enough, the biggest wiper of this tier was to people moving when they didn’t have to. Flame Wreath incinerated those with itchy fingers. They’d see a huge ring of fire around them and instinctively try to move after being constantly drilled to stand out of the fire.

The Lich King – Defile

The more you stand in it, the bigger it gets. This took us way longer then it should’ve to master. I view Lich King as 1 of my biggest failures for the group I had at the time. If I had been more ruthless, would I have been able to gather players that were capable of getting us through that phase faster? I don’t know.

Thaddius – Plus and Minus

“Is positive side his right or our left?”

Buried my face in my hands.

Magtheridon – Cube clicking

Ol’ Maggy had a channeling ability that would go off and nuke the entire raid. However, there was only one way to stop this — Synchronized cubing. If 5 people clicked the cube at the right time, his channel would be interrupted and he’d get pissed off at the raid and rage out. However, if even one person missed a cube click, the rest of the raid would rage out.

Raid’s sounded something like this:

“HOLD HOLD HOLD HOLD HOLD HOLD HOLD HOLD OKAYCLICKRIGHTTHEHELLNOW”

*wipe*

“… Okay, who missed it this time?”

“Sorry, boss.”

“Damnit Joey.”

Sindragosa – Ice Tombs

We had this one Mage back in the day. We entered the air phase with the Sindragosa Ice Tombs. Targeted players had to array themselves in a specific pattern so as to not nuke their partners. The rest of the raid ran to the top of the stairs and waited until the Tombs hit, then they had to run back within melee range and DPS the players out of the ice block (Hagara’s intermission phase was inspired by this).

Anyway, this one Mage would run to the top of the stairs with the rest of us despite the fact that he had the mark above his head from Frost Bacon. And he kept forgetting to move down to get the frost bombs away from us. It felt like every third raid he’d forget to do this. After about 6 raids of him consistently doing this, we were too tired to yell at him anymore. We pretty much just stopped saying anything and vent was super quiet when it happened. While we were still recruiting a replacement, I’m positive every person in the raid kept praying “Please target me with the Tomb. Please, please, please target me.”

Geeze, I just about aged a few years from this encounter alone.

Just thinking about all that stuff makes my blood boil.

… Actually, don’t even get me started about Blood Boil.

 

Things You Learn About Blizzard by Reading Forums, Comments, and Blogs

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Every class is overpowered and needs a nerf.

Every class is underpowered and needs a buff.

Blizzard caters to the casuals.

Blizzard listens only to the elitists.

They never listen to what anyone says despite the fact that everyone is clearly smarter.

They listen to the 1% and make changes that are only bad for the game.

The game is too hard.

It’s also too easy.

Ghostcrawler’s main is a class that you don’t play. In fact, he always buffs the one that he plays and just happens to nerf the class that you play.

He has a yacht with a specific button labeled “NERF” which he uses on classes depending on his mood.

They’re biased towards the Horde.

Actually, they’re biased towards the Alliance.

They’re leaning towards PvP and battlegrounds.

They’re favouring PvE and raiders.

Everything was better years ago. Quality of life changes suck.

WoW is going to die. Like it was when AoC came out. When City of Heroes came out. When LoTRO came out. When Planetside came out. When SWTOR came out. When TERA came out. And when TSW came out. The next MMO’s going to do it and seal the deal. This time. For sure.

And Han shot first.

Staggered Raiding with Swagger

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Cool, it looks like not every raid is going to be available immediately after the game release. I’m cool with that and I know others are, too. It took me less than half a week to level to from 80 to 85 and I predict it’s going to take me around the same time to go from 85 to 90. That should be enough time to hit cap and hit up scenarios along with dungeons for whatever points and gear needed. There’s still that minimum item level needed to queue for LFR.

My personal goal is to at least hit that mark before raids open.

How Blizzard used to slow content consumption down in the past

  • Really hard raid encounters that were near-mathematically or skillfully impossible without exploits (Vanilla)
  • Attunements (early Burning Crusade)
  • Gradually releasing bosses (Wrath, ICC)
  • Limited attempts (Wrath, ToC)

Now there’s no gimmicks or tricks. It’s just a straight-up “We’re not releasing this completed instance to you yet”.

There’s still a remarkable amount of players that are rather “upset” about the whole staggered and delayed raiding thing (if recent blog feedback’s an accurate indicator).

I’m going to use an analogy.

Let’s use swimming.

What if the race started before swimmers even reached the pool? Phelps and Lochte would have to race each other to change into their speedos, get their goggles attached, and put on their caps before sprinting and diving in the pool and racing their medley.

But now all the swimmers start at the line at the exact same time. Their speed and performance can actually be gauged by their abilities in the pool as opposed to how fast they can get ready.

If you think about it though, there’s going to be two races going on: First to hit level cap and the first to raid kills/clears. One shouldn’t impact the other.