News and Opinion

General news and opinion about WoW.

Looking Back at Raiding 1.0

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I am not the most “old school” player in existence. The extent of my experience in Vanilla WoW extends to the first boss of AQ 40 after clearing out Ragnaros and Nefarion.

Often times, I run across players in trade or forums who want to try MC or AQ in their old state of glory having never truly “experienced” it themselves. Even now, there are players who are craving a return to the way raiding was. The game is more enjoyable and accessible now than it was years ago and I personally think of that as a good thing.

Let’s take a look back at history.

First we have raiding 1.0. This was the maiden year of World of Warcraft. We saw the appearance of Molten Core, Blackwing Lair and Onyxia. Raids consisted of 10 really good players, 15 okay players and 15 “ugh” players. There was no Recount then. No sense of accountability. I remember a story where a healer received positive comments when all they did was heal themselves at the front entrance of Molten Core while the rest of the raid took down Lucifron.

Entry level raids Mid-level End game
Zul’Gurub Blackwing Lair Naxxramas
Molten Core Ahn’Qiraj 40  
Ahn’Qiraj 20 World bosses  
Onyxia    

Farming and raid preparation

Preparing for raids often took more time than the actual raids themselves. There were so many cooldowns and consumables that players could get. Higher end raiding guilds made farming of said consumables mandatory.

Whipper Root Tuber – Riding around Felwood really late or really early in the day and picking up these roots
Demonic Runes – Leveling Demon areas in Felwood
Dark Runes – Endless Scholomance farming
Blasted Land food buffs – Involved killing a billion Basilisks and Buzzards (Needed eyes and scales to turn in)
Various weapon buffs in the form of sharpening stones and weapon oils.

Sometimes it felt like farming for raids took longer than the raids itself.

Biggest pain in the ass: Blasted Lands buffs by a land slide.

Attunements

In order to enter some of the raid instances, players had to prove they were worthy in the form of attunements. This meant embarking on some long winded quest to get some key or item. My sympathies go out to Horde players. Getting attuned for Onyxia must have really sucked. Had to penetrate the depths of Blackrock Depths to get a core fragment. The entire world had to cooperate to open the gates of Ahn’Qiraj. Naxxramas required gold and other things in order to get in courtesy of the Argent Dawn.

Biggest pain in the ass: Getting Ony attuned for Horde.

Now lets talk about the actual instances themselves.

Pulling setup

I remember players having to assist Priests and Hunters to get targets. We didn’t have lucky charms to mark mobs with at the time. I believe that came later. But the pulls were so specific. Sometimes it took as long as 10 minutes just to set up a pull every single time. Remember Garr? Lots of Mind Vision while tanks assisted to ensure that all targets were accounted for. When organizing kills for Rag, players had specific areas that they had to stand in. The gauntlet leading up to Broodlord was demoralizing in Blackwing Lair. Rogues were a requirement to trip switches. If they weren’t, then players would suffer from a massive slowing debuff.

Garr

Summary

  • Longest fights: Chromaggus (30 minutes)
  • Most treacherous run back: The walk of shame to Nefarian’s room. AQ40 is a close second but at least you had mounts.
  • Guild breakers: Razorgore, Vaelstrasz, Patchwerk
  • Most frustrating fights: Twin Emps, Four Horsemen (Lack of 8 T2 geared tanks)
  • Biggest pain in the ass: Gothik (Way more mobs than what we know now)
  • Most unforgiving: C’Thun (1 or 2 players down spelled a whole wipe. Losing half raid on a BWL boss was still doable)

I don’t miss the farming or the raid preparation. I sort of wish some attunements were still present. Perhaps not in the shape of lengthy quest chains, but like an account wide “Kill these bosses” sort of thing. Guild wide attunements would be interesting to see where guilds accomplish a set of objectives to gain access to some area. I suppose that would see the end of pickup groups.

I will say this. The success of every boss kill felt magnified. Maybe it was because of the number of other people that were involved. But killing bosses felt much more satisfying. Can’t quite seem to place a finger on why.

Anyway, I’ll take a look back at raiding 2.0 sometime in the week.

Images courtesy of WoWWiki

Surviving Blizzcon! : Getting Ready

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So, the first round of tickets has come and gone, and some were lucky enough to get tickets to the grand old event. With the con rapidly approaching, it’s time to get things set to make the most out of the convention.

Clothing

First thing I want to talk about is the area the convention is taking place in. Anaheim California. Anaheim is a wonderful city, lots of fun things do to there and lots of great sites to see. The biggest concern is going to be the weather of the season. August is a hot time in CA. The average temperature in August is about 86ºF / 30ºC. It’s also  a pretty dry time, not a lot of rain. You’re going to want to make sure you pack some lighter clothing. Trust me, nothing says bad like showing up and standing in line to get in while being overheated!

On the topic of clothing, bring some really comfy shoes. I can’t stress this enough. There are a lot of lines, and a lot of the panels become standing room only. There is a decent chance you’ll spend the better part of the day on your feet. A couple of my guildies made that mistake last year, and there were a lot of sore feet and one of my guildies received an ongoing back issue as a result.

If you are planning to attend in costume, you may want to consider when you want to show up in said costume. Last year a few people came to opening ceremony dressed to the nines. The vast majority showed up in normal clothing, went back to the hotel before any good panels opened (usually about an hour after opening ceremony) and came back in garb. This seemed to be the preferred method for the majority of the people I ran into.

Accesories

This is for all the technophiles out there. Blizzard has a list of items that they deem acceptable or not acceptable to bring into the convention. This list is updated yearly and you can find it among the FAQs for blizzcon. You can bring video cameras and phones as well as backpacks into the convention, but there are a few exceptions. You cannot video tape any game play footage or the closing concert on Saturday. iPods, iPhones and MP3 players are premitted but are not allowed to be hooked up to any test machines. Seriously don’t try it. I saw someone get their iPhone taken away last year trying to hook it up to a Diablo 3 test machine. Laptops / computers are NOT allowed. Don’t bring them they will not let you in if you try to bring one in. Bring them if you want but make sure you leave them in your hotel room. If you are coming in costume, do not try to bring any sort of weapon with your costuming, it’s not allowed. Essentially don’t bring anything that may potentially hurt someone else.

I will say it’s a good idea to bring something capable of entertaining yourself with. Nintendo DS, Sony PSP and iPhone or iPods are good ideas. I found myself last year in line thanking the fact I had my guildies around me to talk to while waiting. If you’re not going to have that luxury I suggest bringing something.

Food

Anaheim has a wonderful selection of eateries very close to the convention center. Downtown Disney is also a stones throw away and offers restaurants like House of Blues. My suggestion would be to explore these places rather then buying convention food. Food at the con is good, but it is also very expensive and the lines are pretty long. Last year we waited in line for a sub for close to 45 minutes. In that same amount of time I could have walked to a Subway restaurant, eaten and stopped for an energy drink. I suggest checking sites like Yelp or Urban Spoon. If you have an iPhone there is an app for each. There’s so many places to list that I wont make suggestions on where to go, but I will suggest that in the mornings if you’re looking to do breakfast before the convention, to plan carefully. The places around the convention center filled up really fast last year, and this year with even more tickets being sold, I can only begin to imagine how this year will shape up.

This category should also cover post convention gatherings. Lets face it, you’re going to be amped up and not ready to go to sleep right after the convention, you’re probably going to want to find a place to honker down and meet-up with guildies  or just have a beer. There are several places that will be able to fill that role as meeting place. Again, I refer to Yelp or Urban Spoon or the Internet in general to help find places. Keep your eyes peeled here at World of Matticus, rumor has it we’ll be finding a place to group up with any of your readers who will be in attendance.

Attacking the Convention

Now that you’ve got yourself prepared with trinkets and clothing and a list of places to eat and drink, it’s time to start thinking about what you’re going to do at the convention itself. First on most peoples list are the panels. There are three main intellectual properties that Blizzcon centers around. Lets see what each has this year.

Diablo3

  • Heroes and Monsters – This is a look into the design process of the monsters  and heroes of the game.
  • Lore – Fairly self explanatory here. You get the story so far, and some new bits of the story to come.
  • Art – Basically this is the entire process of creating the look of sanctuary.

Starcraft 2

  • Gameplay – The devs take you on a journey through making and tuning of the game mechanics. This is a great panel to visit if you’re planning on going into game design.
  • Lore – The story up to now and where the story is going to go.
  • Art – From designing the Protoss armor to kerrigan’s luscious (and deadly) curves, it’s all here.

World of Warcraft

  • Class Discussion – This is a great panel, it will explain how each class has evolved over time and how things are balanced and tweaked as time goes on. They reveal their big plans for classes here and how they view things as they stand now. This is a must I feel this year simply because Ghostcrawler has been saying that he wants to change the face of healing. If that announcement comes from anywhere, it’s going to come here!
  • PVP – If you’re big into battleground and arenas, this is your place of happiness. Last year they revealed the two new arenas and how they planed to balance things like ratings and match ups.
  • Art – A wonderful discussion of all that goes into making the World of Warcraft so visually stunning. There is lots of talk about how far we’ve come since the days of painted on armor. Artists on hand will tell you how they conceptualize different things from the landscape down to the tiniest critter running around.
  • Dungeons & Raids – This is the one I’m sure the vast majority of you are waiting for. Last year was the announcement of the Hard Mode encounter. Sarth 3D to be exact. There was much oooo and awwwww ing at this panel and for good reason. The devs explained the balancing of the instances from 40 man encounters of old moving forward to the 10’s and 25’s we have today. They explained last year how variable raid size would work. Needless to say there was little disappointment. This year comes at a time where Ulduar has dropped, by the time the convention comes around we’ll likely be ready for another update and I have a sneaking suspicion we’ll hear a bit about icecrown and then goal beyond. This is a must go to for the inquisitive raider. (pretty sure Matt and I will be fighting for seats on this one)
  • UI & Mods – This is a discussion about the evolving UI and mods that we’ve all come to learn and love for WoW. Last year centered around the creation of the Achievement window and the Rune pane for Death Knights. This year I think things will be a bit more exciting, and this panel may potentially run longer then it did last year. With all the changes to the Mod policy and the changes blizzard has informed us of (item rack built in for example) I’m sure this will be much more lively then it was last year.

Blizard Entertainment

  • Cinematics – Get to know the people who wrote the stories and created the movies we’ve grown to embrace over the years. (as a side note, all the cinematics play on a loop throughout the convention. It’s kinda awesome!)
  • Sound & Music – Interested in audio engineering? How about just composing vast symphonies? This is the panel for you. Learn how the scores and sounds were created and how it helped to shape the games. This will span all three properties. I liked this one a lot last year, hearing how they created things like the Lament of the Highborne and other very moving pieces in the game, gives you a different appreciation. After this panel I turned the game music back on.
  • DVD\Video Production – Much like cinematics you’ll get to see how the videos were created in and out of game. Here though you’ll also get insight into the editing process and how much work truly goes into making a final cut. I’ve heard some of the machinima makers found this useful last year.

That’s it for this installment of Preparing for Blizzcon. Check back often for updates as information is released. In the meantime I charge you with a task. Let us know what you want to know.

Have questions you want the WoM crew to ask at Blizzcon? Have any questions you need answered for getting ready to attend? let us know!

Until next time,

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Abusing General Vezax as Discipline

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The Conquest strike team reached General V on Monday evening. In the final hour remaining in our raid night, we spent most of the time identifying the environmental elements of the fight.

What did the Saronite Vapors look like?

What’s Shadow Crash?

How do we deal with Mark of the Faceless?

More importantly for healers, how do we manage our mana while being truly unable to gain it back unless it’s from said Vapors?

One of the aspects of the fight that I noticed early on is Shadow Crash.

"”Fires a shadow missile at a target. Upon impact, it leaves an energy field that lingers for 20 seconds, increases magical damage dealt by 100%, increasing casting speed by 100%, reducing healing done by 75%, and reducing mana costs by 70%.”

The primary strength of Discipline Priests lie in their powers of mitigation. Shadow Crash affects a healer’s mana cost, cast speed, and actual healing done. You can see where I’m going with this.

Power Word: Shield is instant. The casting speed debuff won’t have an effect there. It’s also not technically a heal. It’s a damage absorption. Finally it does reduce the cost of shields by 70%.

The bottom line: ~200 mana costing shields. Very nice.

Heh, I’m not going to jinx the week by predicting whether or not we’ll obtain a kill. I had an internal progression timeline for Ulduar when it came out and we’re right on schedule.

Would You Consider 3 Levels of Spirit Based Mana Regen?

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This blue post came to me courtesy of Sylly. Her post in particular addresses out of combat regen.

It’s no secret that I’ve felt the pinch myself. I barely end encounters with less than 10% of my mana left.

Mana Injectors? Exhausted.

Pure Mojo Flasks? Consumed to the last drop.

Hymn of Hope? Sang so much Simon Cowell would pay me to stop.

Shadowfiend? Sparky the fiend is tired of being whipped out.

But I’m okay. I’m still hanging on. I still have mana left. There is just enough left to do the job that the encounter asks of me. But oh my is it painful. It’s as bad as House losing access to his precious Vicodin. He can do the job while grinding his teeth and absorbing the pain.

The proposed solution?

A number of WoW forum members made an intriguing proposal. Redesigning spirit regen so that it takes into account three different factors:

  1. While casting
  2. Out of the 5 second rule, in combat
  3. Completely out of combat

Sylly agrees with this and I like the idea myself.

What does Ghostcrawler think?

One way to go would be to just get rid of the FSR and make out of combat regen (legitimately out of combat – not sneaking a sip during an Arena match) provide very fast regen.

Let’s open up the floor. I want to encourage some discussion here especially in the comments. What do you think of this idea? How has your mana held up so far in the current end game?

Friends and Raiders: Becoming a Leader

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Where do all the officers and leaders come from? I mean, they all started somewhere right? As people become leaders the workload shifts and changes for them. The community over at PlusHeal has an entire section devoted to leadership. Tools of the trade, tips and tricks, and most importantly in my opinion how to make the transition from raider to officer or healing lead. Today I’ll talk a bit about making the transition and some of the obstacles you will face as well as share some of my personal experiences with you.

A little background, I spent most of my time in Vanilla WoW and in Burning Crusade as a raider switching from DPS to Healing when Burning Crusade came out. Partway through Burning Crusade our Heal Lead and Raid Officer left the game. In his absence I was asked to take over Heal Lead and shortly thereafter was awarded the rank of officer in his place. It wasn’t expected and I had to make the transition quickly. We finished out Burning Crusade and then headed off to Northrend to go say hi to Arthas. Here’s some things that changed.

Addons

One of the first things most people tackle is the list of addons they run. After being put in charge of healers or a raid you’ll find yourself having to monitor a lot more things. It’s imperative you sit down and decide what information you need readily available to you at all times. Here’s some addons I found useful when I first started out

  • BigBrother – Like Orwell’s 1984, this see’s all and then reports it to you or the raid. This mod lets you check for buffs like flasks and other consumables as well as lets you know when CC like Shackle or sheep has been broken and by who. This is a great tool to make sure you’re raiders are using their consumables.
  • RaidCooldowns – This addon allows for you to track all the abilities with cooldowns in a raid. This will display battle rezes, innervates, Divine Hymn, Lay on Hands etc. For a complete list click the link and visit the site. Some trackable abilities like a Shaman’s Reincarnation require members of the raid to be running oRA2, CTRA, or RaidCooldowns itself  in order to display properly, however if you’re in a raiding guild, chances are your team will already have one of those.
  • CastMonitor – This lets you place a movable list of players that you can then monitor their target, as well what spell they are casting. This is great when you want to double check your healers are on the right targets or doing what they are supposed to.
  • Cellular – In your new position you’re going to be getting a lot of tells, no two ways about it. People will be confirming assigments or just checking to make sure they did ok. Cellular (or any similar mod) lets you keep them like AIM message windows and they stay nice and tidy. Helps make sure you don’t miss any important tells.

My UI is constantly changing. I’m removing and adding items frequently to find a mix that will give me all the information I need in a pretty package. Find what works for you to give you what you need.

Knowledge

I’m going to focus more on the healing aspect of it here, but the ideas stay the same for all of a raid. You are now responsible for the instruction and care of a team.You’re not going to have eight of the same class with the same spec (if you do please let me know I’d be curious at that one). Take time to familiarize yourself with the various healer classes and specs in your raid. Learn the strengths and weaknesses of each of the Specs present in your heal team and take the time to learn the encounters your team will be facing. Learn the mindset of your healers and don’t be afraid to ask them questions., after all they should have a commanding knowledge of their class. You’re in a position where you need to know whats going on and need to tell people to do. Knowing your healers mindset and asking for their input goes a long way. I make it a point to encourage my heal team to offer constructive ideas when things go wrong or are not working as well as they could be.

There are several threads over at PlusHeal that deal with how to assign people, who is better suited for what and more of the ins and outs of the various specs. My suggestion, spend time on forums like PlusHeal and see what you can learn. There is a plethora of information available to help you fill in your knowledge gaps from various strategy sites and different forums all over the internet.

Communication

This is something that I thought was the easiest part of the transition. You are a central point of communication for your raid. If you are Heal Lead, all of those healers report to you and you in turn report to the raid leader. It’s important to have ways to get information to everyone that needs to have it quickly and efficiently. For healers having a dedicated healing chat channel helps. In the same vein, class or role specific chat channels are a good idea. My guild has one channel for every class as well as one dedicated to healers and one for tanks. This allows us to easily hand out information and gives collective spots to have questions asked and answered. As a heal lead you’ll want to sit in the tank channel too. This lets you know who is going to be eating what hits and allows you to quickly and effectively assign healers for maximum effect. You are the communications hub, keep that in mind.

Sometimes raiders need to call in sick so to speak, or they’ll need information that isn’t readily available on the forums and needs an immediate reply. For this reason I have my contact information posted on the guild website. This includes my email address, AIM (msn, icq and yahoo as well),  and phone number. I’ve had several instances where I’ve been thanked by raiders for being so accessible. As another rule of thumb I have an open door policy. Anyone can come to me at anytime for anything and I’ll do what I can to help, and if I can’t I’ll do my best to find what they need or point them in the right direction.

Finding a Balance

This to me is the hardest thing a new heal lead or officer needs to do. You have to keep in mind that this is a social game. You have been dealing with at least two dozen other people for a long time and have more then likely made a few friends. When you get elevated to a position of authority sometimes it’s hard to find the line between what a friend would do and what an officer would do. In the same vein it’s often hard for people to distinguish that when looking at you. They have to understand your dual roles. Keep in mind that you are in a position of authority. You have a responsibility now to keep things moving and working at a good pace. Sometimes you will have to put friendship aside and tell a person no, but at the same time you don’t want to be so much of a jerk that no one likes you. You have two distinct roles, a friend and a leader. Let me give you an example of what I mean by finding a balance.

In BC when we were still clearing Mt. Hyjal, I was new to being a heal lead and officer. I was fairly quiet in vent aside from the friendly jibes and conversation, and I had a little less authority in my assigning of healers. Plainly put I was too nice. This came to a head when we were wiping on Archimonde. I kept seeing the same 4 people standing in the fire. After a night of wipes that had followed a week of wipes, I finally dropped a set so to speak and piped up on vent. I was assertive and authoritative in my tone. I thought I edged past normal limits and into jerk territory when everyone on vent was deathly silent. The statement was something like this

“Really? Seriously? You’re still standing in the fire? Come one people! Turn! Move! Stop whatever you are doing and move. Don’t finish your cast, don’t try to get one more instant off just turn on your heels and run. It’s not rocket science just do it. That’s all this fight is. Move. Out. Of. The. Damn. Fire.”

Next attempt saw a 25% improvement in dps on the boss (from 49% to 24% boss health) then we called it for the night. We came back and stomped him into the ground the following attempts. I received a lot of thank you tells that night. I still thought I stepped out of line. More recently I had a raiding healer whose spec was brought to our attention as not being ideal. It was missing key features we needed from that class. I was real life friends with this person for many years. The guild leader and the Class leader approached him about it before I was out of work, and he was quite upset. He turned to me on AIM and I told him I’d talk to them and see what’s up. After a lengthy discussion I agreed something needed to change. I informed the raider that yes, it would be appreciated if he respeced as the raid needed the particular talents he was missing. As a friend he expected me to back his position fully, but as a healing lead and officer I had to agree with what was better for the raid and for progression. Notice the word “was” I used when referring to my friend? He was unable to see that I had two roles and has decided that speaking to me in a non official capacity isn’t to his liking any longer. He still gets the job done and responds well to assignments, but holds a bit of a grudge. It’s very difficult to find that balance of being someone’s friend while still being an authority, its something we all constantly have to recalibrate.

How about you? Any tips for new leaders you’d like to share? Any stories about your own rise to being a leader?

That’s it for now. Until next time, happy healing!

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Image Courtesy of su.wustl.edu