Circle of Healers

For some reason, I hardly seem to get tagged for these anymore. My friends tell me it’s because I’m supposedly all big and popular.

Hogwash I say. I’m not sure how many of you remember when I was but a young blogger still struggling to make a mark in the WoW community. I was once a small time blogger too, you know. Even though my time has diminished, my interest has not. I’ll do my best to respond to them if I feel they’re fun to do (or if I’m dodging a really important paper that’s due on Tuesday).

  • What is the name, class, and spec of your primary healer? Mallet, Discipline Priest. I’m ambi-spec-trous and will go Holy if the situation calls for it.
  • What is your primary group healing environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans) Primarily raiding environments.
  • What is your favorite healing spell for your class and why? Power Word: Shield. Sometimes I think Protego to myself when I cast it. There’s nothing more satisfying to me than a field of bubbles.
  • What healing spell do you use least for your class and why? Renew. That’s only when I’m Discipline though. I usually have better spells to respond with. If I’m idling, then I’ll use a Renew. But I’m rarely idle.
  • What do you feel is the biggest strength of your healing class and why? The ability to protect and to extend the health buffer of a player is the difference between life and death.
  • What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your healing class and why? Weak raid healing. All we have is Prayer of Healing and Holy Nova. But then again, that’s not supposed to be our jurisdiction. We can raid heal, just not very well.
  • In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best healing assignment for you? Anything that enables me to watch playoffs. Generally, I prefer covering the raid. I’m a twitch healer.
  • What healing class do you enjoy healing with most and why? Priest. It’s the oldest healer I have and I have a diverse array of spells to use.
  • What healing class do you enjoy healing with least and why? Paladins. I once nodded off in the middle of a 5-man. It was a truly boring experience.
  • What is your worst habit as a healer? Not staying on target. I’ll sometimes cheat and heal a different player than my assigned target if I feel I can get away with it. About 1 in 25 of those situations will result in the death of my assigned target. It’s like base stealing. Sometimes it pays off, sometimes it bites you in the rear.
  • What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while healing? Dying to avoidable deaths. Healing is not a cure for stupidity. There’s only so many chances we will offer.
  • Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other healers for PvE healing? Yes I do. Discipline has come a long way.
  • What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a healer? I rely heavily on Recount, Obituary, and World of Logs or WoW Meter Online. I mainly look at the cause of death the most to determine whether or not it was something that I could have prevented.
  • What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your healing class? That Disc sucks for healing in raids (not raid healing, I mean having the spec in raids).
  • What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new healers of your class to learn? How to do things in addition to healing. Many new healers are caught staring at their bars when a fire lights up on their character. Try moving your head back a few inches to get a larger perspective on the entire screen. Move your camera back too. Awareness of bad stuff will get you far in this game.
  • If someone were to try to evaluate your performance as a healer via recount, what sort of patterns would they see (i.e. lots of overhealing, low healing output, etc)? Lack of healing because they don’t have the Recount Absorbs addon installed.
  • Haste or Crit and why? Haste. Speed is life. The faster the spells, the faster you can cycle to different targets and cast them again.
  • What healing class do you feel you understand least? Druids.
  • What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in healing? I rely on Vuhdo for all my healing needs.
  • Do you strive primarily for balance between your healing stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why? On my Priest, I’ll stack a ton of intellect via gems and break socket bonuses if necessary. It’s not uncommon for me to reach over 35000 mana with full raid buffs. This adds to Replenishment, Shadowfiend and Hymn of Hope. The more mana I have, the more options I’ll have at my disposal. That and spellpower are stats that are universal to Disc and Holy Priests. There’s no sense in grabbing Spirit as it’s not going to do much for my Disc side anyway.

Thanks to Sushicookie for reaching out and tagging me (as well as sending me a direct tweet about it since I usually miss these things). Of course, this was the brain child of Miss Medicina. You can find the rest of the responses from other bloggers here too.

Hey Everyone! Look at the new guy!!

Don’t recognize the new name being tossed around the site, do ya?  I hope it doesn’t scare you.  All will be well.  I’m going take a minute to get you acquainted with that sexy bald dwarf you’ll be hearing from more often.

Hopefully, you’ve started to become familiar with some of my guest posts here, here, here, and here. 

Well, Matticus finally decided that he was tired of me sending him post after post after post and actually gave me this little promotion.  Boy, what a mistake that was!  Mwa-ha-ha!  (Just kidding, Matt.)

Why I’m Here

I’m here because I have a profound passion for this game, and I really like to blog about it.  Namely, the community, the escape, and everything the game has to offer.  I try to remain versatile and familiar with all aspects of the game.  I raid, arena, BG, whore myself out for acheivements, and anything else I can do with good people.

I play two 80s right now.  A feral tank and 2nd shaman are in the leveling mix.

My Dwarf Priest, Thespius, is specced Discipline.  I can proudly tout myself as one of the members of Lodur’s elite healing team in Unpossible on the Zul’jin server.  He and I have found an awesome synergy and work really well together when it comes to big green numbers.

My other 80 is a Draenei Shaman I play on the Nazjatar realm.  It’s my casual toon that I play with some RL friends.  My brother plays over there as well.

My Gaming History

I used to always be a console gamer.  NES, SNES, Sega Genesis, Sega CD (yes, I owned it), N64, Playstation, PS2, Xbox, and now Xbox 360.  Some of my favorite games of all time are still Legend of Zelda (all the titles on NES and SNES, but I could never get into the N64 series), NBA Jam (Sega Genesis), and Final Fantasy VII.  I can still play those games for hours on end.

In 2003, some friends roped me into buying Star Wars: Galaxies when it launched that summer.  My first MMO.  For those that remember the game, I did the whole holo-grind, the 32-ish profession grind that lead to unlocking my Jedi.  The most fun I had in game wasn’t necessarily the game itself but the people I was gaming with.  MMO seemed like a fun genre.

My brother tried to get me into WoW just after it launched, but I was so into my Jedi grind in SWG that I couldn’t make the switch.  It wasn’t until the fall of 2006 that I started my warlock, Thespius.  I’ve been hooked ever since.

My History

Without boring you guys TOO much, I’ll just go over the basics. 

I live in Chicago, IL.  I was born and raised in the area.  It’s home and I love it.  My undergraduate degree is in Acting Performance, and I pursued a full-time acting career for the past 6 years.  After a fairly successful run (mix in some odd jobs to make ends meet), I’ve decided the whole “starving artist” archetype wasn’t what I wanted for the rest of my life.  I still perform around the city in my spare time, and I also pursue a small voiceover career on the side.

The goal from here?  I’m in graduate school for Secondary Education in English.  I’m open to the idea of eventually working up to a professorship at a university, but we’ll see.  Other than that, I’m just enjoying life.  I’m excited to see where my love of WoW takes me.

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Twitter: @Thespius       Email: elder.thespius@gmail.com

The One That Got Away

The other day I had the good fortune of talking with our friends over at Wow relief and our conversation got me thinking about something.
Some of us have been around for a long long time in this game. We’ve lived through PTRs and Betas and now two expansion with a third on the way. We’ve seen many things change and many things come and go, and things that were promised to us never come to be. I got to thinking what I would love to see added to the game for my class. The answer actually comes from the Wrath of The Lich King beta.

Back in Beta, restoration shaman had a rather interesting 51 point tallent to play around with. It was unique and new and fresh and odd and I loved it.

Spell_Shaman_SpiritLinkSpirit Link (Rank 1): You link the friendly target with two nearby targets, causing 50% of the damage taken to be distributed to the linked targets. After 2200 damage, the link will sever.

This little baby was awesome in my eyes. The concept behind it and the possible strategic uses of it, especially considering the health pools of both Druid tanks and Death Knights  intrigued me. It wasn’t your normal everyday spell. As a healer we’re used to playing healing triage as well as Cast X spell get Y result + / – a little. This you know the values but you can effectively use this to shift some raid damage around. Alas this was not meant to be and it was replaced by Riptide, which is a very good spell, but doesn’t lend itself to the same sort of mysterious awe that Spirit Link gave me. With cataclysm coming back I’d love to see this come back as a mastery spell or some such. It was a fantastic concept that I’m sad to say got left on the cutting room floor.

So, with that I turn it over to you our readers. Anything you want to see desperately added to the game? Why? Did you find something in a Beta or PTR that you wish would have made it to the live servers?

That’s all for today, until next time Happy Healing!

Sig

With a Little Help From My Friends…

Thank you!

As many of you know this blog has been around for over 2 years now. We could not have done that without you, the readers. With a love for the game we all play, and your continued readership we remain one of the oldest blogs on the subject out there, and we are not showing any signs of slowing down. So I’d like to take a second and thank you, all of you for continuing to come to the site, and our sister sites of PlusHeal and NoStockUI and sharing your thoughts and offering ideas.

Now for a little announcement, as of today I am submitting the papers to be considered for the Official World of Warcraft Fan Site program. My thinking is that Matt has put so much work into not only this site, but many others, that I believe it’s about time to be added to the list. That brings me back to you, our readers. Today I have a question for you.

Since we’ve been around for over 2 years, we’ve quite an archive of posts and conversations. So I ask you the reader, What is your favorite thing about World of Matticus? This can be a post, or a series of comments, or an idea that was discussed. Did WoM help you down a boss or provide any tips or tricks that helped you out? Anything at all really, I just want to know your fond memories of this site.

Feel free to share, I look forward to seeing your comments on this one.

Sig

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