Matt’s Three Stars: Week Ending October 19

1804: Forgot to add this. I got my T5 gloves yesterday. I am now 2 of 5. Although honestly, there wasn’t that big of an upgrade between T4 and T5 gloves. The 2 piece bonus is really nice though (If your greater heal restores the target to full health, gain 100 mana).

The Three Stars of the week is my way of looking back and honoring columns that were published by my fellow WoW playing colleagues. These articles are pieces that I believe should be read by everyone in the community because they are informative, factual, hard hitting, applicable, and have elements of truthiness. Either that, or it’s just plain cool and you should read them anyway.

How to Enjoy the Game: This week’s first star honors goes to a column by Apathy Inc which centers around people’s enjoyment and frustrations in WoW. It’s also been recommended by my other colleagues in the WoW Blogosphere. Simply put, if you’re not enjoying what you’re playing, then don’t play it. You pay 15 bucks a month to play this game. In the end, you are your own boss. You should be the one deciding how you play your character. Does this mean a Guild has the right to force you to do what they want? No, but they can ask you and you have the right to refuse. By that same token, however, that same Guild also has the right to dismiss you from their organization because to put it bluntly, you don’t have the skills or services they are looking for. Here’s a typical example which goes back to the days of Molten Core and Blackwing Lair. Many Priests had grown fond of Shadow. Several priests were adamant about staying shadow and did not want to go into the Holy Tree at all. It’s important to remember that back then, Shadow Priests did not have the kind of utility that they have today and were looked down upon as misfits of the WoW World. The reasoning behind it is that Shadow Priests would be eligible to roll on DPS cloth gear. It’s bad enough Mages and Warlocks would be competing against one another, but to throw in Shadow Priests would further complicate the looting situation. Shadow Priests did have the option of staying Shadow, but agreements were made in that they would forfeit rights to other classes who could utilize the gear more efficiently (mages and locks). T1 and T2 had nothing for Shadow Priests at the time. The gear selection was biased towards the Holy tree. Like Richard Rahl once said:

It’s your life. Live it.

Safely Breaking Crowd Control: Second star honors goes to Karthis who provides us with an excellent table of threat priority and what form of crowd control pisses off mobs the most. Perhaps now I will think twice before Mind Controlling something as it’s what aggravates them the most. I just wish there was a source for the table, although I’m sure it’s accurate (but when you’re at school, you start to become critical and question the source and reliability of research materials).

Summoning the Headless Horseman: The third star and certainly not the last provides a brief summary of the new seasonal Hallow’s End event: The Headless Horseman. He’s a pushover of a boss to any decently geared team. Assemble your crew, and on the flight from Ironforge to the Western Plaguelands, it would do you wise to read over the strategy from GMW.

WWS has caught the public main stream now. I think it’s better then SW Stats and various damage meters and I’ll present my arguments about that tomorrow. I’ll follow it up with a post on how to interpret the readings for us Holy Priests.