Quick Thoughts About Val’Anyr

by

There’s been a few updates about Val’nyr since the last time I wrote about it. Now we have some more information regarding the retrieval and construction of the legendary mace. Here are the Coles’ notes version:

  • 30 fragments
  • Step 1: Bring shattered fragments to the Archivum Console
  • Step 2: Throw the shattered fragments into Yogg-Saron’s maw while he is casting Deafening Roar
  • Kill Yogg-Saron and loot
  • Condition 1: Can only be completed in Ulduar Heroic mode
  • Condition 2: If at least one Ulduar Watcher is not assisting you

This leads me to conclude a few things.

First is that it appears the person who is collecting all the fragments does not have to be the same person who ends up with the constructed mace. After all, the fragments must be thrown into Yogg-Saron who must then be killed. The loot master should then find the completed mace on the loot table of the old god.

This means the fragments can be looted to any one person as a keeper until the guild collects the necessary amount of fragments.

Second is that the construction of this weapon is going to be out of the reach of many of the casual oriented raiding guilds due to the conditions needed.

Some more questions remain

What happens if the raid group fails at killing Yogg-Saron during that attempt? Or even during that week? Are the fragments lost?

Lastly, it seems that PTR build 9767 (the most recent) was pushed through mostly for bug fixes. Since the latest build was meant to fix stuff, we can assume then the patch is very close to completion. I do believe 3.1 will be here sometime this April. Two weeks.

A good indicator that the patch will be coming out soon is when PTR servers shut down.

31 DBBB: Post Promotions and Another Matticus Interview

by

Yesterday’s task via Problogger was on list writing. Readers who have followed me know that I have a personal affinity for list writing. I’m currently fighting off an end of semester flu. It’s a constant occurrence. It always seems to happen during exam periods. As a result, I decided to skip out on that particular task since I love writing lists anyway.

Today’s task is on blog post promotion! It’s a topic I’m also extremely familiar with. In the Blog Azeroth chatroom, something I frequently advise to bloggers new to the scene is to not necessarily link to their blog. Assuming I’m a first time reader of their blog, I wouldn’t know where to start. I wouldn’t know where to begin. Instead, what I tell them to do is to link a blog post or two that they’ve written that they’re really proud of.

Of course, a common response I get back is:

“But I’ve never written a blog post I’ve been proud of!”

Even now I still don’t quite know what to say to that except:

“Then write one that you are proud of!”

List Posts I’ve Liked

Here’s a few that have appeared on the blog recently.

But I can’t hog the entire spotlight. Here’s some other posts from off the blog.

Another Interview

There’s a new blog that’s stirring that’s targeting players with a more casual mindset or those that are actively seeking balance between their lives in the virtual world and the real world. They are here to offer a sense of WoW Relief.

A sudden rash of interviews have been requested recently. I’m quite flattered. I just hope that the questions aren’t too repetitive.

Some of the questions asked:

Referencing your site and posts on Wow Insider, you sound like a natural leader, does that leadership in game also come out in real life?

Every once in a while it does, I play a lot of hockey and volleyball now, being the goalie I don’t really direct people but I will tell them what I’m going to do when they are by my side of the rink. It helps a lot when you tell other players what you’re doing so they can adjust and react to your actions. I notice a lot of skills are transferable since I’m always the one organizing events and get togethers with friends.

Lastly, for anyone who is looking to start a blog about WoW or their toons, what is the best advice you can give them?

There is so much I could say to help but pretty much the best advice I could give is just go ahead and do it already! You don’t have to be a nut like me and grind out posts day in and day out, but start a schedule of setting time aside for writing and stick with it. Otherwise you will lose the habit and it’ll just disappear.

Here’s the link to the full interview on WoW Relief.

I do believe I’ll have another shorter interview tomorrow that I will link to.

On Twitter

I like to link to various websites or posts that I find onto my Twitter. One of the built in services of TweetDeck (a Twitter client I prefer) is that it can compress URLs. The service I like to use is from http://www.is.gd/. Another popular URL shortener used is TinyURL.

Does it matter which service you use?

In a sense, it does. Twitter has a character limit of 140. Every space and character counts.

https://worldofmatticus.com/2009/04/08/my-newfound-respect-for-melee/ – That is today’s post by Syd. It takes up many characters.

http://tinyurl.com/cggf77 – The same post shortened again. 25 characters.

http://is.gd/rtNf – The same post shortened. 17 characters.

That’s another 8 more characters I can use in a Tweet. Some people won’t really care too much about that sort of thing. But 8 characters is the difference between having one tweet vs having two tweets in order to clarify a URL. Do keep that in mind especially when promoting your own or other blog posts.

My Newfound Respect for Melee

by

melee_is_hard

Remember how I told you all, on April Fool’s Day, no less, that I was going to run off and play Ret Paladin? Well, it wasn’t entirely a joke. Yes, I’m still raiding on Syd, and still healing, but I’ve been playing my paladin this weekend as both Ret and Holy. I have a lot more confidence when I’m healing, and I have a few amusing stories about that stemming from a Naxx-10 PuG that I healed last night, but today I’m mostly here to talk to you about the special challenge of melee.

Not many healers have a melee class as their alt, and now I can see why. I’ve done ranged DPS before in group settings. I’d say it’s more of a challenge to me than healing at this point, but I can see how it could be done well. However, I was determined to take my Ret Paladin to some heroics. As I’m in a confessional mood, here’s a list of the Melee Failures I’ve indulged in over the last five days.

Failure #1

Accidentally taunting off the tank. Sorry, Brio. I’m still not sure how I managed to hit Shift 1 with the back of my hand, but I certainly did it.

Failure #2

Pulling mobs by accident . . . with my butt. You know, when you’re a melee class, you have to get behind the mobs. I think that my time as a healer has made me scared of them, and I tend to stay at max range, which can be rather dangerous with patrols around.

Failure #3

Hanging out in the green stuff. I was so happy when we defeated the first boss of Heroic Gundrak. So happy, in fact, that I stood there doing the Macarena as the poison slowly killed me. As always, I was suprised when Marfi hit the floor.

Failure #4

Staying in for whirlwind. I realized belatedly that the last boss of Heroic Gundrak was doing his little spinny thing. By the time I strafed out, I was low on health, and a ghost rhino charge made me go splat.

Failure #5

Standing in front of the boss. Now, I know I’m not supposed to stand next to Brio. I’ve made many jokes in my life about melee humping the hind legs of bosses. I’m not sure why I ended up in front of Heroic Anub’arak, but I do know what happened to me when he cast pound. Pound equals splat, for something like 10,000 overkill.

Failure #6

Getting ahead of the tank. In Utgarde Keep, I was getting antsy. Guess what happened when I edged in front of Brio? More pulling mobs. I’m glad Brio and I have a stable relationship, because I know exactly what he would have said if any other melee did that. Oh well, at least I can bubble and save myself.

Failure #7

Getting too far behind. Also Utgarde Keep. I have no excuse this time, only that I had to pee, and that turned into rather poor dps for a minute there. It turns out that you have to keep up, all the time, as a melee player.

Failure #8

Ignoring the kill order. Skull is for decoration, right? I’m issuing an apology to Amava, who was tanking Violet Hold on his cleverly-named druid Moodyswinger.

Failure #9

Panicking about my own health instead of trusting the healer. No, I didn’t say, heal me please, but I definitely used my Art of War procs whenever they were up, mostly on the tank, but also on myself. I have also bubbled a record number of times during the weekend.

Failure #10

Incomplete gear switch. I’m sure both Ret Paladins and Feral Druids face this one all the time. I don’t use any inventory manager addons, because my laptop’s poor performance means that I can only run necessary addons–nothing extra. This Sunday I DPS’d about seven heroics wearing my Holy libram. . . from Karazhan.

That’s my list of spectacular melee failures. The only one I didn’t check off this week was Die in a Fire. In my defense, Sartharion was the first instance I did with Marfi as DPS. I didn’t realize at that point I was making a checklist. I did die in that fight, not to a void zone or lava wave, but to a stray add. I also did about 1000 dps in my full suit of greens, but hey, I’d just dinged 80 10 minutes before. My dps has improved a bit now, but the failures keep mounting.

The Value of Failure

I’ve always told my students that failure is instructive. Errors are acceptable–even a good thing–while you’re learning a language, and they’re acceptable when you’re learning a new class role as well. If you never allow yourself to make mistakes, you’ll never learn. You’ll just continue doing what is comfortable and never branch out. However, I know my limits. I’m practicing in Heroics because they’re the minor leagues. The next time I see the green stuff, I’ll be running away.

There’s a very good reason that I haven’t let myself DPS in Naxx yet. Even though the paladin is different from my resto druid, it’s the same raid role, and I have a wealth of experience healing on both toons from Classic to current. In a raid, I owe more to my group members, so I have to know what I’m doing to some degree. Sure, I messed up my Holy spec last night and forgot to even get Bacon of Light, but it didn’t matter. I still beat the other healer, a better-geared Holy priest, on the meters. It is true that I only pulled ahead because she died on the first pass of the Heigan dance, which then continued for 10 more minutes with about five players alive, but I was proud of myself nonetheless. It’s absolutely amazing how much energy playing a new character can give me on this very, very stale content. However, the Flash of Light spam nearly killed me. Syd uses such a variety of spells, which I have mapped for both hands (left hand for direct heals, mouse for hots), that I never feel stress in my wrists. This morning my left wrist is killing me from repeatedly hitting the C key. I don’t know how full-time paladins do it.

31 Day Challenge: The Elevator Pitch

by

On Saturday, I made a quick note that I would be participating in this year’s 31 days to building a better blog.

Earlier readers will remember the previous tagline I use was Knowledge through Logic and Reason. That wasn’t the best of taglines to use on a healing related blog.

Anna suggested World of Matticus – Where Leadership and Healing Collide (without the train wreck). I know if I the blog had a business card of some sort it would read something like: "Problems with healing? Guild issues got you down? Matt can help!”

For most WoW bloggers, I suspect their elevator pitch would be something related to their character (The adventures of ____ or the musings of a <race> <class>). I have yet to think of the perfect pitch. This blog isn’t just mine anymore. It’s Wyns, Syds, Lodurs and everyone that’s ever contributed via comments or guest posts or emails.

When people discover that I’m a blogger, they always ask “Oh, what do you write about?”. I admit that it’s a bit frustrating to come up with an answer. I usually have different ones on standby depending on the what I know about the person. If they’re my age, they’ve heard of World of Warcraft. If they’re of a different generation or not as fluent with video games, I’ll tell them I write about gaming strategy and advice.

So here’s the short form of what I would use across the network.

World of Matticus: Improving Today’s Healers and Tomorrow’s Leaders
PlusHeal: The Universal Healing Community for all Specs and Skills
No Stock UI: A Different Playing Experience

The elevator pitch is a great way for you to really buckle down and figure out who you are and what you want to do.

Apping for Guilds

This works the same way. When you’re applying for a guild and you’re speaking to an officer or a GM, most of them get a good handle on the type of player they’re dealing with in a few minutes. So you should take the time to develop a small pitch for yourself if you’re in between guilds.

Example – I’m a progression raiding oriented Discipline Priest

I’m about to head out and do some progression oriented studying and then some more volleyball!

For the bloggers out there, what would your tagline be and what is your blog about?