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Highlight Posts of 2009

September 11, 2012December 30, 2009 by Matticus

2010

You didn’t think I was going to finish out the year without the traditional “Best of 2009” post, did you? Here’s the top posts of 2009 based on your views, comments, and tweets.

On healing

5 Archetypes of the Healer – First time guest poster Lodur takes a look at the different healing archetypes and the signs to watch for.
4 Reasons Healing Meter Sucks – Ulkesshern guest posts with his thoughts on the flaws of healing meters.
The Secret to Being a World Class Healer – You’re 1 click away from discovering what really great healers have in common. What are you waiting for?
Why Play a Healer? – Professor Beej contributed a guest post on why healers play healers.
7 Important Healing Lessons I Learned from 1 Quest – This was written recently and has generated positive reactions.
Healer DPS: The Good, the Bad, the Unfair – Newest contributor Thespius writes about what healers don’t often do: DPS.

On gaming and society

On Exploits: A Philosophical Musing – Remember that whole “Ubershirt” scandal? Syd weighs in on the legitness of exploiting.
Girls Hate Chuck Norris: On Women and Raiding Guilds – Women continue and raiding continue to be a hot topic and Syd doesn’t shy away from this either.
Sympathy for a Griefer – There is this guy who creates a character where all he does is just grief people all day within the confines of the game.
Archetypes of the Female Gamer, revisited – Syd writes another post that strikes a cord with you readers garnering over 200 reactions.

On guild management

Officers: Who Watches the Watchmen? – I detail my thoughts down on officers and who or what keeps them in check from abusing their powers.
Us vs. Them: What can I do When Guild Members Disagree – Syd writes a post on mediation between officers and the rest of the guild when differences occur.
Friends and Raiders: Raider Accountability – Lodur tackles a guild topic on raider discipline and how to make sure the players are putting in 100%.
The No Asshole Rule: Constructing a Civilized Guild – This post title speaks for itself.

On recruiting

What GMs Want to See on Your App – I have seen many applications over the years. Here’s a list of things that you should include.
6 Ways to Reject a Guild App Without Sounding like an Angry Ex – I have also turned down applications. Here’s how to let them down gently.
Is Applying to Multiple Guilds a Sin? – A question was asked on Twitter on whether or not players should take the shotgun approach. I provided my thoughts as well as the thoughts of others.

On raiding

10 vs 25-Person Content Revised – Syd changed her mind on 10 vs 25 player raids. But why?
6 Influential Factors in Loot Council Decisions – Want to know what goes on behind the scenes in officer chat when loot is being discussed? Here is a glimpse.
Raid Flexibility: Preparing for the Inevitable – Players are going to leave for whatever reason. Lodur outlines some preparation steps to keep your raiding machines going.
Pass the Parcel: When Raiders Won’t Roll – One of Mimetir’s first blog posts on loot and explains the motivations that players have to not roll.

On blogging

Syd’s Guide to Blogging: How to Read – Syd wrote a post for early bloggers on the topic of reading. Yes, before you can write, you have to read!
Syd’s Guide to Blogging: Getting Started – Syd followed it up with how to actually get the ideas flowing and to begin writing.
The Purple Kodo: 13 Points of Blogging – There are a ton of blogs out there. But how do you get noticed? How do you get people to link to you? Am I posting too much? What is a successful post? All these and more questions were answered.

To other WoW bloggers, I’d love to see you compile a list of your favourite posts that you have written over the past year and don’t be afraid to post a link in the comments to it below.

Have a safe and happy new year! I would share my New Years party stories, but chances are, this Dwarf would not remember. There was that one year where I woke up half naked with a Tauren beside me and a banana…

[POLL] Do you Clear Out Heroic Dungeons?

December 29, 2009 by Matticus

Lately I’ve noticed an increasing trend when it comes to running heroic dungeons. It usually involves dungeons where bosses can be skipped and the group just collectively decides to skip over it or they decide to take it out. The tank is often the one that decides this. I’ve started asking in the beginning of runs if we can skip optional bosses (like in Halls of Stone) more as a courtesy than anything else.

The geared main

Understandably, the geared main is going to favor an express run over a complete run. When I’m on my Priest, I have no interest in gaining Emblems of Triumph. I’m only in there to to get my Emblems of Frost as fast as possible. If the group wants to take down some optional bosses, I remain indifferent and will do it anyway even though it might take a few minutes of my time.

The undergeared alt

On the other hand, the undergeared alt wants to maximize their “Emblems per hour” ratio. They’ll insist on killing every boss no matter how far out of the way it is specifically for that extra Emblem. They need the armor and the weapons (and other gear). The quickest way to do that is by spending Emblems of Triumph. Perfectly understandable.

Do you make an effort to skip bosses or do you gun for every boss in the instance? Or do you not care and decide to go with the flow of the group?

What Server Should the Guild be Started on?

Other (100%, 8 Votes)
Earthen Ring (75%, 6 Votes)
Nerzhul (50%, 4 Votes)
Feathermoon (50%, 4 Votes)
Zul'jin (38%, 3 Votes)

Total Voters: 18

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7 Important Healing Lessons I Learned from 1 Quest

December 28, 2009December 28, 2009 by Matticus

Blizzard quest developers, please read this. I’m writing a request and I don’t know if it’s in your plans for Cataclysm.

I want to share with you a story when I started out as a wee, young Priest. After farming for hours on end in Darkwhisper Gorge and taking down Majordomo Executus with my guild at the time, I had finally united The Eye of Divinity and The Eye of Shadow. All that remained was to complete the Balance of Light and Shadow and I’d get my Benediction.

That quest singlehandedly taught me how to raid heal. How?

Eris Havenfire, the quest giver was not able to save the peasants that were trying to escape from Stratholme. I was asked to try to do what she could not do: Save as many peasants as possible. If 15 peasants were lost, it was game over.

I remember standing on the hill frantically Renewing everyone that was going by and Flash Healing those who were at critically low health. Even though I had already cleared Molten Core a few times, this was truly a humbling quest. Peasants would spawn at different places. They would have varying degrees of health. Some would move at different rates. Others would be pursued by skeletons. Many were afflicted with a disease.

And it took me a disappointing 14 tries before I finally managed to get through it (Oil of Immolation did the trick).

What I learned

Target priority – Skeleton archers were picking off peasants as they ran by and the diseases weren’t helping either. Priests had to know who was going to die first and heal accordingly. Just because some peasants were below 50% didn’t mean they were going to die. Oftentimes, it was the peasants at full health being drilled by Skeleton Warriors and suffering from diseases that were the ones in danger.
Spell priority – If all you have is a hammer, every problem is going to be viewed as a nail. I had to rethink which spells I wanted to use next. Not every healing problem is best solved by repeated use of Flash Heal. While yes it does bring peasants above the near death zone, it wasn’t the best answer all the time. Abolish Disease or Renew would have been the better choice.
Reading the health bar – With the health bar up, I could deduce how much each weapon swing was hitting the peasant for. Knowing this, I was able to figure out how much time a peasant could go without healing before they fell. It played a big part when I prioritize healing targets.
Value of HoTs – Renew was a spell that I often thought was fairly useless. I could wait out the whole duration for it to work its magic or I could drop a quick Flash Heal on the target and call it a day. With so many targets, I needed to use Renew. The point of Renew was never to top off the peasants. It was to keep them alive long enough for them to get to that white light. I rightly gauged that a Renew on a peasant would be enough to keep them alive from Skeleton Archers as long as they weren’t afflicted with a disease.
Mana management – At the time, I had to rely on downranking spells and using potions to maintain my mana supply. At level 60, I had about 1700 healing power (which translates to a little under 600 spellpower by today’s numbers). My mana regeneration was a paltry 150ish MP5. Holy Nova would clear out skeletal mobs with a few ticks but it would also trash my mana pool. I had to keep a very close eye on the mana bar and use cheap spells when I felt I could get away with it.
Cleansing – Another early mistake I had was not removing diseases and thinking I could simply brute force heal the damage that was done. Now that might be fine with 1 or 2 targets. But when you’re trying to save 50 peasants where most of them have been infected, getting rid of the infection might be considered a smart move.
Shaking out tunnel vision – Unfortunately, there are no raid frames to use. I had to rely on constant toggling of name plates (and all I had were the default ones at the time) in order to look at their health. I’d often be so glued to my raid frames in Molten Core, I’d miss the obvious player who had been targeted with Living Bomb (an ability where the player explodes and deals massive damage to anyone else around them). I was able to see which peasants were likely going to be in danger first simply by watching which ones were being chased by skeletons. Just follow the path since they run in a straight line. This bought me a few extra seconds since I could anticipate their targets easily.

I understand that there it’s against the current WoW philosophy to introduce class quests again.

But I don’t think there’s anything wrong with inserting in role related quests. I’d like to see a Shaman, Paladin, or Druid try their hand at that quest. I imagine that they would take a completely different approach. It would be difficult to balance the four healing classes around such a quest and I wouldn’t dream of suggesting where to start. But at the very least, please consider it. I wouldn’t have become the healer today had I not completed that quest.

The Rhok’delar questline taught hunters how to kite (I think). If there’s any Vanilla hunters, how difficult was that quest when you were 60? What was it like then?

This would be simple Warcraft Mechanics 101 type quests. Tutorials disguised as quests that can help new players L2P! Quests that underscore the basic mechanics of the game would do wonders for new players who don’t understand different concepts. The random dungeon tool exposed me to players who had no idea what threat meant or what CCing was.

For tanks, maybe a quest on how to generate threat. Or how to maintain threat on multiple mobs as they try to juggle them around pylons (like a driver’s test).

For DPS, a quest on the basics of crowd control (if applicable) or on how to kite (possible for some classes but not others).

For healers, maybe a recreation of a similar scenario above. Healing multiple targets as they try to run away.

How could it be worked into Cataclysm?

Perhaps the town of Healshire is about to get overrun by Deathwings minions and the job of the healer is to protect the evacuees as they make a run for a portal. I don’t know but I’m sure it’d be easy to insert that lore.

Please. Recreate that experience. A new generation of players would be all the better for it.

Happy Holidays!

December 25, 2009 by Matticus

happpy-holidays

From all of us here at World of Matticus, we’d like to wish you a safe and joyous holiday season!

I just popped open my gift boxes from Greatfather Winter this morning. Hello Red Rider Air Rifle! Right now I’m in the process of tagging the various Horde faction leaders. Can’t think of a better way to spend part of my Christmas morning than that!

Anyone know what a hot pot is? It’s a thing that Asian families like to do for dinner once in a while. It’s exactly what it sounds like. There’s a big pot with a gas (or electric) heater underneath. The pot’s split in two with boiling hot water on one side and boiling hot water with spices on the other. And we’ll just throw in a variety of raw stuff and wait for it to get cooked before we devour it. Lamb, beef, chicken, oysters, mussels, fish balls, mushrooms, noodles, whatever. It all goes in and mmm, its so yummy. Just make sure the stuff is kicked.

Swag

I love my friends. They have a knack of knowing me. Here’s what I picked up this year:

George Foreman Grill (Steak and eggs anyone?)
Wanted on DvD
The Laws of Simplicity
25$ gift card to Chapters (Some people don’t like gift cards. I’m not one of them. I like being able to choose what I want)

The Hyjal / Sunwell Effect

December 18, 2009December 18, 2009 by Lodur

sunwell

I use PUGs to gauge a lot of player response to content, the new LFG tool has made it that much easier and given me a broader spectrum to poll. A lot of times I’ll bring it up in random banter and ask people what they think of the current content and such. Occasionally I’ll join a PUG raid on my Hunter in an attempt to gear her up outside of the guild’s assistance, but also to see how the pugs are doing on raids and ask questions without “Lodur” around. I’m guessing you’re wondering what this has to do with the “Hyjal / Sunwell” effect, and indeed what is the effect anyways? Well, I’d like to share some recent and past observations with you.

Let me explain to you what the Hyjal / Sunwell effect is.

map_hyjal

Back in BC when end game raiding was all the rage, you had Black Temple, Hyjal and then the culmination of all things raiding for that time Sunwell. Hyjal Summit was an interesting raid instance. You sat in one of two camps and waited for trash waves to come to you. After you were done killing the trash waves a boss would spawn and come for you. The zone had 5 bosses. 4 of those bosses could be broken down into tank and spanks after their various tricks were discovered. Aside from the last boss it was a very easy instance and at the very least on my server, the zone up to the Archimonde fight was easily PUGable and there were many many Hyjal PUGs weekly. I know because I used to go to them on my hunter. So we can assume a level of ease at least for the first 4 bosses, with one boss that was a PITA but still killable.

Then came the Sunwell, and everything changed. People ponied up and the PUGs surged forth expecting to roll over some trash and get some trash drops and maybe even down a boss or two along the way. Then they encountered the first pulls, and it was like watching a charging bull hit a steel wall. Giant arcane powered robot wiped the raid in nothing short of what could be called a spectacular explosion of brightly colored bodies. I heard stories of established raiding guilds having to work hard on some of the trash and in some cases still wiping, let alone hitting the bosses. Trash required solid use of CC and careful maneuvering. The bosses were complex and required coordination in order to succeed. I never saw a PUG get past Kalecgos, and the ones I heard got there, only barely beat trash. That is at least how it was on my server. There were PUG / Farming groups that would go and kill trash, then run out and reset and lather rinse repeat in order to farm gems, gold and trash drops, but those groups required a certain level of gear (and they did check) before they would consider you. And that’s just for trash farming! People pissed and moaned that Sunwell was “soooo hard”, my argument was that Hyjal made people complacent.

WoWScrnShot_092309_232622 Enter Wrath of the Lich King. The raiding scene in wrath mirrors pretty well that of BC but builds upon it. Naxxramas became our new Kara. Ulduar provided us deep lore and some decent challenges. and then came ToC (25). Trial of the Crusader offered an easy loot system (the tier available for badges alone), an instance with NO trash only bosses, and to be honest fight mechanics that weren’t terribly difficult. While it did require some coordination, I have seen more PUG groups successfully complete it then any other raid instance. The 4 bosses leading up to the final boss are gimmick fights like Hyjal was, with the final boss being a tank and spank get out of the way healers just heal fight. I’m not saying they aren’t fun, and as much as I hate to admit it Faction Champs is a blast watching my raiders run around like chickens with heads lopped off, but it just mirrors Hyjal a little too much as far as it’s placement in raid progression, content and general feel of the zone.

Now in Wrath we have Ice Crown Citadel. It mirrors Sunwell almost perfectly as well, especially with Chill of the Throne being so very similar to Sunwell Radiance. The fights are markedly harder and the trash is capable of killing a raid. The trash pulls require use of CC like priest shackles and paladin fears / stuns as well as requiring careful positioning of the raid. Random triggers cause giants to spawn that can interrupt spell casting and saber lash a tank into nothing in no time. The bosses while not overly complex, still require a certain amount of raid awareness and coordination and use of abilities such as CC to win. Lady Deathwhisper is a pain when not done right and it requires a lot of coordination to get all the components down pat. Saurfang is a beast of a fight currently and while people have beaten him I have yet to find one strategy that doesn’t call for at least two people to be sacrificed. That says something right there. What amuses me the most is the people who were pugging ToC (25) went rushing headlong into ICC (25) and in most cases hit the trash on the first landing and splatted. On my server I can’t find a PUG for ICC (25) on my Hunter, as a matter of fact she has an easier time finding ToGC (25) pugs. And while the argument can be made that the 10 mans are puggable, I say that while I’ve seen some pugs do ICC (10) the players almost always out-geared the 10 man tuned version. I also hear it from some of my raiders. We’ve been having fun with Saurfang. Random things like moonkin’s pushback randomly not working, Tanks dcing, starting the fight and immediately having 8 raiders get Mark of the Fallen champion. These are things that make new instances fun for me.

But I WoWScrnShot_092309_232622 hear the murmurs in the crowd. I have some raiders in my group that think ICC is too hard, I’ve been in pugs with my hunter that people have done nothing but complain about the difficulty of the new fights. This is what I call the Hyjal / Sunwell effect. ToC gave us a certain level of apathy. Sure Heroic Faction Champs is a hell of a fight, but once you get the basic concepts down for it is it really that hard? ToC spoiled us with easy loot and fast content, and as such continued the cycle of Hyjal / Sunwell. The effect is in the disparity between two level of content on such a level that it is noticeable among the general population. So now I hear people complain that Marrowgar hits too hard, or Saurfang is tuned too high. Personally I love it. I love content that makes me think and re-evaluate my raider assignments. I love actually having to go through trash to get to that boss and fight mechanics that while they may not be new are interesting in the way they are combined and presented. I love going through cut scenes and NPC conversation and hearing the lore behind the raid zone and feeling like I’m in epic content. The difficulty will only go up as each wing and each new boss and it’s mechanics are unveiled, and personally I can’t wait. I’m also excited that the vast majority of my raiders feel the same way and not everyone is suffering from the Hyjal/Sunwell effect.

What about you guys? Have you noticed people complaining about the difficulty? Raiders or PUGs? How do you feel about the new content so far?

Until next time,

Sig

Images courtesy of Matticus, My own screenshots and mmo-champion