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

Guide to 4.2

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Just in case you missed it, the Matticast crew talked about the imminent patch 4.2 drop. Things like the valor cap, the new Encounter Journal, class changes and the Legendary quest.

Healing changes

You can find more detailed information in the latest patch notes. But here’s what they are at a glance.

All healing critical strikes now heal for 2 times a normal heal (+100%), up from 1.5 times a normal heal (+50%).

Priests

As a result of the critical strike change, Crit appears to have become attractive. It’s possible to see some 50k absorbs. Otherwise, no additional changes have been made to Priest healing at this time.

That’s not a bad thing.

Druids

Symbiosis (Mastery) has been removed and replaced with Harmony. Harmony increases direct healing by an additional 10%, and casting direct healing spells grants an additional 10% bonus to periodic healing for 10 seconds. Each point of mastery increases each bonus by an additional 1.25%. Healing Touch, Nourish, Swiftmend, and the initial heal from Regrowth are considered direct healing spells for the purposes of this Mastery. All other healing from druid spells is considered periodic.

Paladins

Many healing spells have had their mana costs adjusted.

Illuminated Healing (Mastery) has been adjusted slightly so that if a paladin refreshes an existing copy of his or her own Illuminated Healing on a target, the new absorption amount will be added into the old absorption amount and the duration will be reset. The total absorption created can never exceed 1/3 of the casting paladin’s health. Paladins are now Val’anyr!

Shamans

Improved Water Shield has been redesigned and renamed Resurgence. When Water Shield is active, Resurgence causes critical direct heals to restore mana (Resurgence rank 2 is roughly equal to 150% of the old Improved Water Shield value when a Healing Wave or Greater Healing Wave critically hits, and scaled down accordingly for faster or multi-target spells).

Mana Tide now grants 200% of the caster’s Spirit, down from 400%.

Glyph of Unleashed Lightning (new Prime glyph) allows Lightning Bolt to be cast while moving. Handy in tandem with Telluric Currents.

Legendary Thoughts

Start the quest if you like to check it out and such. But don’t force your guild to give it to you. It’s for the casters this time around.

Lack of Spirit Cloth Gear

Yeah, I’ve seen a whole ton of discussion about this around. There aren’t a whole lot of drops and it seems that most of the stuff is going to either come from faction vendors or Valor vendors.

Look, they didn’t forget anything. This was done for a reason. We can still rely on reforging to get the additional spirit if necessary. Prioritize Spirit trinkets to help offset the loss. The Jar of Ancient Remedies is something you’ll want to keep handy (as in, don’t sell it or get rid of it otherwise).

It was my fault.

I used and abused spirit mechanics too much and they the nerfed drops because of me :(.

Firelands raid bosses

It seems that reputation for Avengers of Hyjal are only obtainable from the Firelands raid instance. You can get up to Honored with taking down trash (I just got up to Friendly after about 2 hours and chain dropping battle standards).

You can find the Firelands raid instance out in Mount Hyjal. Just head to the big, flaming castle in the southern part of the zone. No attunements are needed. Feel free to zone right in. Recommended boss order is to start with Shannox, Beth’tilac, Lord Rhyolith and Alysrazor before finishing out the last three.

Need to know where to get started for healing?

  • Beth’tilac
  • Lord Rhyolith
  • Alysrazor
  • Shannox
  • Baleroc
  • Majordomo Staghelm
  • Ragnaros

Plus Heal’s New Look

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plus-heal

Just in case you haven’t been there in a while, I just wanted to let everyone know that Plus Heal’s been completely redesigned and has moved over to Enjin’s systems. The move lets me add additional information and resources on the page without any programming or software headaches. We’ll be in a better position to offer additional support and resources for healers who are new to the game or who are veterans wanting to sharpen their skills further through individual class forums. The forum has a guilds and leadership section where players can go to ask questions about policy making, decisions or who are just looking for a place to ask for advice.

In the future, what I hope to add is class specific strategy for each boss and what needs to be coordinated by healers in advance. Nothing overtly complex, but just enough so that you don’t go into encounters completely blind either.

If you created an account over a month ago, you’ll need to recreate it again as past user information has been nuked (but post information was successfully imported).

Hope to see you there!

They Are Making a Comeback!

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As I’m patrolling the WoW recruiting forums for additional DPS players, one of the common themes I’ve noticed is that players are looking for core raiding positions within guilds. Not only that, but their progression isn’t generally high enough to make that type of demand. It looks like the 4.2 patch might just be the massive rejuvenation the raiding player base has been hoping for. Players who were thought to have permanently retired from the game look to be dusting off their WoW accounts. Combine the new encounters in 4.2 with summer being here and players having additional time to do stuff, this might be looking good for everyone in general.

Ner’zhul itself is down to something like 5 competitive 25 man raiding guilds on Alliance side (if that). Undoubtedly, there are way more 10 mans. I wonder what this means though for players who are looking to get back into the game. I presume that 10 man raiding rosters tend to be more stable and have way less turnover compared to the 25 man guild raiding counterparts.

I don’t know. What do you think, 10 man guilds? Are your rosters rock solid?

Raiding in 25s might offer easier access. But the scarcity of them might mean that its harder to find one that fits times and playstyles. It looks like its going to be a buyers market for guilds looking to augment their raiding force going into Firelands because of all the new free agent players coming back.

Speaking of recruiting tools, more on this later.

Battle.net Authenticator Changes, Don’t Panic!

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So in-case you missed it, there was a recent change to how our accounts are authenticated, here it is again for you again if you didn’t see it.

If you use an authenticator – and we hope you do – you may soon notice that an authenticator prompt may not appear with every login. We’ve recently updated our authentication system to intelligently track your login locations, and if you’re logging in consistently from the same place, you may not be asked for an authenticator code. This change is being made to make the authenticator process less intrusive when we’re sure the person logging in to your account is you.

We hope to continue improving the authenticator system to ensure the same or greater security, while improving and adding features to make having one a more user friendly experience. If you don’t already have a Battle.net Authenticator attached to your account, don’t wait until it’s too late – http://us.battle.net/en/security/checklist

Well, this statement has raised quite a few questions. Many of us in the gaming community work in Information Technology / Information Security, and we are quite honestly interested in having more information on this.

Now before I get started I want to have a note here that the information after this point will represent a more general view of internet protocol. This is not intended to be a tech manual, just the musings of an internet worker who is also a gamer.

There are a couple ways that you might authenticate a computer at a physical location. One is by authenticating the public IP address that is reaching out to the login server. If you see multiple requests from the same IP in a short period of time, you can assume this is the same person to a certain degree. This works in part because IPs are purchased by ISP’s and assigned to a specific region. After that, you as the user rent the IP with a lease sort of like renting an apartment. If you have a static IP, you have a “permanent” lease on that particular IP. If you use a DHCP service, like cable internet, it may change based on what’s available. Every time you get a new IP, it’s from your local region and the local pool. It could also authenticate by not only your public IP address, but also your computers MAC address. A MAC address is a unique identifier that all networking devices have. Think of it like a social security number for your computer. Each one is unique per device. There is however a couple potential problems; IP’s / MAC addresses can be spoofed. Not that it’s something you should be worried about all the time, but it is a fact that it can happen. Also if you have a Dynamic IP and it solely authenticates by the address, every time your IP changes it could cause issues.

Another manner is the creation of software tokens that are placed on client end at the point of logging in. Essentially you log in to your account and a software token, or marker of a successful login, is created on your machine to further authenticate you. By doing this it can validate the token on your machine instead of requiring you to to punch in your authenticator code every time.  The potential problem with software tokens is that if your system is compromised due to trojans or other methods, it could result in a compromising of the security token. Again, while this isn’t something to worry about all the time, but it does happen.

There are several other methods you could use, but those are probably the easiest.

So what method is Blizzard using? Well I decided to perform a little experiment last night to see what I could gleam as far as information goes. Since I work for an ISP in my daily Clark Kent style life I have access to a few things that I can do easily (and legally) to perform a simple test.

Step one was to pick a new IP. I changed my IP to one available from a local pool in the lovely state of Wisconsin. I logged into my Bnet account, it asked for my authenticator normally. I logged out for a period of time, roughly 15 minutes, logged back in and it did not ask me for my Authenticator.

Step two was to change back to a local IP address from back in good old NY state. I logged into my bnet account, and it asks me for my authenticator code. I logged out for another 15 minutes and then logged back in and it did not ask me for my authenticator.

Step three was to repeat step one, but this time after it did not ask me for my authenticator I logged out and completely shut down and restarted the computer. Logging back in required me to use my authenticator. I repeated the steps with a local IP with the same results. Continuing this process multiple times confirmed the same results, each time with different IPs.

From this incredibly simple experiment it would seem that the new authentication process is using a combination of validating your IP either for location, consistency, or potentially both as well as potentially a software token on your machine validating it after a successful login. Every time you cold boot your computer it will remove temporary data, including any software tokens created. Whether or not this is actually how Blizzard is doing it, we won’t know unless they say something.

There are a couple things that confuse me slightly. First is that there was no prior announcement to the change going live rather than it just appearing. I’m wondering if this is a knee-jerk reaction to the recent string of hacker invasions going on across the blog-o-sphere. Second the lack of explanation of the process is concerning, not the exact process per say, but knowledge that this was carefully thought out and not hastily implemented would be comforting, as well as hearing the reasons for the change. Lastly is that there is no option to opt out of it, it just happens. If nothing else I am a creature of habit, and I like typing in my authenticator code every single time. It’s a preference, but it’s something that I would like to have the option to continue doing.

So in the end, while my first reaction to the change was not a positive one, I feel much better about it after my simple experiment. At the very least we know that they are checking for multiple factors before just allowing you to log in. While on a professional level I would love to know more about the process they are using, I don’t think it’s anything we should be too overly worried about. Now if only we could get that pesky opt in/out toggle…

Occuthar Strategy, the new Baradin Hold Boss

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This mutt has been available on the PTR for some time. He had way too much health on 10 man during my initial times with him. He’s much more manageable now. You’ll find that this fight is a slight DPS check and skill check.

When you first engage the encounter, the tanks will need to pull him back to a corner and point him away from the raid. The rest of the group will need to stand and spread out around him. Naturally, there is a tank switch involved. When your first tank eats the shadow debuff, your second tank needs to taunt right away until that debuff wears off. The second tank needs to stay off near the side so as to not get hit by Searing Shadows.

Watch out for large, glowing circles around the room. Stay out of those. The DPS check kicks in when he does his Gaze of Occu’thar ability. He launches those little eyeballs of his from the top of his head and sends them towards every player. They’ll hit for around 5000+ damage a second. Have everyone gather up in one central location and light up your AoE. If you don’t kill the eyes quick enough, they’ll explode and dish out 25000 damage to everyone nearby. Spread back out as soon as that’s done!

Enjoy the ridiculous amount of PvP gear that’s bound to drop!

Here’s a kill video from Memento  Mori and Method on 25 man in the PTR