Deciding Who Gets to Pick IDS

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Candle

Image courtesy of alexkalina

When Priests get to the upper echelon of raiding, they’re going to eventually run into one extremely important question. It’s pointless to have more than one Priest pick up Improved Divine Spirit. Joveta did an excellent feature showcasing the differences between the two specs. I’m not here to regurgitate what she illustrated. I’m here to help you decide which lucky monkey gets to go IDS.

The Supremes is a raiding Guild with 3 Priests, 4 Mages, and a handful of Resto Druids. It also has miscellaneous DPS.

Raid times:

  • Tuesday, 4 hours, farm content
  • Thursday, 4 hours, farm content
  • Sunday, 7 hours, progression content

Let’s assume you’ve got 3 Priests:

  • Steve McQueen: Always shows up, never missed a raid, sports 2350 healing
  • Stevie Wonder: Can only commit to 2 of the 3 raiding days, sports 2100+ healing
  • Steve Harvey: Able to only come on the last raiding day that Wonder isn’t able to attend, sports 2100 healing

Optimizing for Time

When you’re deep into raiding, it’s either CoH or IDS. You don’t need more than one IDS. From this perspective, you want to pick the most stable Priest who is able to come every day. This will ensure that every raid you go into has the IDS buff. This is the best bet since raids will go that much quicker. Just look at Joveta’s post for all the numbers. Go with Steve McQueen for guaranteed IDS.

Optimizing for Performance

On the other hand, one would argue that farm content doesn’t necessarily need IDS at all. By making Steve McQueen pickup IDS, his healing output does get slightly diminished. Another solution is to make Steve Harvey go IDS. This ensures that progression night raids will have the buff. If you really want to pick things up, you can ask Stevie Wonder and Steve Harvey to grab IDS. This way, you don’t handcuff Steve McQueen’s all star performance.

Picking out volunteers for IDS is never easy. I’ve rarely ever encountered an individual who wanted to do IDS. I myself had to respec IDS because our Priest corps is no longer as stable as it once was. One of them took off for college, the other’s having computer issues. I’m the current lynchpin Priest and I swallowed an extremely bitter pill in order to pick up IDS knowing that our floater Priests can stay IDS.

Anyway, there’s many ways to pick out who should get IDS. If you happen to have a Priest who wants the job, by all means let ’em have at it! If not, I highly suggest coin tossing as an alternative. I hear dice rolling is an excellent choice as well. Now dart throwing is a revolutionary way to make decisions as is bottle spinning…

Thank You

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This is going to come across a bit acceptance-speechy I fear (which is weird, since I’m not accepting an award or anything), but I just wanted to toss a post up here and say a few things off-topic before I retire to “guest contributor” status. 😉

1. It was a huge honor to participate in this. From the start, I was doing this explore my own writing and ideas, as well as my nerve to post it for Matt’s large fanbase. I’ve come to several conclusions: the best tree won, new friendships are awesome, I can actually pull this sort of thing off, and I’m definitely going to keep in touch.

2. I AM going to be starting a blog. There’s actually already one in the works, but it’s still in the “wrestle with the blog template” stage, so I’m not tossing it out just yet. However, Matt’s promised (threatened?) to alert you all and WI when it goes live. I might just flee in terror now.

3. I’m going to kinda miss the last-minute panic of trying to get a post up by the deadline. Matt can vouch for my sometimes very last minute turn-ins.  Guest-Judge pointed out that my IDS post is really only half-done, so I’m definitely going to finish that sometime in the (fairly) near future.

4.  I wanted to toss a special thank-you to everyone involved in the process.  First to Matt and Wyn, who both started WoM and held this competition.  Even when I don’t agree with y’all, I had a lot of fun.  To Sydera, you did an awesome job throughout the competition, and your posts regularly blew me away.  I look forward to seeing what you come up with in the future.  To Jen, Vedela, Crutch, Tulani, and Rusco, I didn’t have a lot of interaction with some of you (which I look at as being a bad thing) but I hope that changes in the future.  I’ll catch y’all around PlusHeal and keep poking around for your blogs.  I hope those of you who don’t have blogs already will get up and do something about that 😉  (And Crutch, good luck in the interview 😉  I’m rooting for ya.)

Salutations, well-wishes, and thank-yous

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 Hello everyone! Most of you have probably been following Matticus’s “So You Think You Can Blog” contest. I’ve been lucky enough to have been chosen for the spot, and I’d just like to say how thrilled I am to be joining the staff of this fine publication. Writing is my passion, and I am intrigued by the challenges of learning to write in a new medium.

I look forward to sharing my opinions here and to responding to feedback from YOU, dear readers. The comments have been the most fun part of this whole experience, and it is very cool to be putting down roots, so to speak, in such an interactive medium.

What can you expect from me in the future?

I’ll be writing articles that chronicle my in-game passions–expect to see lots about healing strategy, group and guild management, and of course, healing of the druidic variety! This is a very exciting time to begin blogging. We have an expansion on the horizon, and I’ve got a beta key clutched in my grubby little tree fist. I’ll be giving you my own special perspective (full of puns about foliage, of course) on all the new changes that arise as we get closer to Wrath of the Lich King.

In the meantime, I owe a big thank you to Matt and Wyn for their help and support and also to the other contest entrants, whose posts have all inspired me. I would also like to give a shout out to Briolante, without whom all my tables would look like crap, and to my guildmates at Collateral Damage-Vek’nilash, who have been enthusiastically following along with my progress in the contest.

I’ve Chosen the Third Blogger

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Sydera is the third blogger! She’ll be co-blogging alongside Wyn and myself from here on out. Unlike Wyn and I, she is not a Priest and will be blogging from the perspective of a… tree.

So let’s all extend a welcome branch to Syd (I can hear the groans over the pun already)! I’m sure she’ll come along later and say something.

Joveta, you did really well. It was an extremely tight race between the two of you. I was on the fence at times where I’d go one way then change my mind and go the other. Pleeeeeease don’t be discouraged. If you decide to pursue blogging, I will do what I can to help you set up.

Week 3 – Critiques by Matt and a Special Guest Judge…

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This is it. This is the final week. After this, SYTYCB will end. Despite how brilliant everyone’s been, I only have room at the moment for one additional writer. Who will it be?

In addition to the critiques from Wyn and I, there will be a special guest judge adding their 2 cents. The guest judge is a fairly prominent member of the blogging community but I will be withholding their identity. Think of them as the Simon Cowell of blogging.

PS, Wyn’s remarks will come later (depending on level of busy-ness).

Both bloggers have performed exceptionally well to get into the final week.

In any case, on with the show!

Sydera: Troubleshooting Gurtogg Bloodboil: A Healer’s Perspective and Future Overachievers Anonymous: How Achievements Will Rock the Social World of Wrath of the Lich King

Although blogging can be about virtually anything, I’ve tried to set the standard for my blog to be about virtually anything beneficial. It’s a strong principle of mine that a post should contain value and this one post about Bloodboil certainly does that and it does that really well. While it may not be as specific as Bosskillers or a WoWWiki, that’s not really what I’m looking for. The intent here was to see if you could write a piece about something educational that players could potentially benefit form. With Wrath on the eve of debuting, you’ve done that here even though it’s on a boss that most people are getting to or that most people will not be able to get to. You’ve used tables, block quotes, emphasis, and other formatting techniques flawlessly. Both skimmers and readers will be able to read through it and find out what they need. I love the creative use of images and the way this post has been structured.

Your second post I found quite wall of texty. Again, very glad you included emphasis throughout so I could speed read it (lecture and note taking and all). Outgoing links are a plus. All of us should make more of an effort to link outward. You’ve supplied strong arguments on all 4 of your points.

Biggest weakness: Tree.

– Matt

Troubleshooting Gurtogg…

  • Boss strategy overview presented nothing that couldn’t be found just as easily on Bosskillers or other boss strategy resources
  • By the time I got to reading phase 2, I was already snoring
  • Healing tips present no information that a conscientious healer raiding at that level wouldn’t already know
  • Healers that don’t already know the information presented are probably the type to be too lazy to go looking for it anyway
  • Article should’ve presented NEW information: that’s the entire point of a “teaching” post, to show the reader something they didn’t know or hadn’t thought of
  • Should have covered information like: when to pop certain trinkets, when using innervate/shadow fiend would be most appropriate, etc

Future Overachievers…

  • The second article doesn’t present any new information
  • Article appears to simply be an amalgamation of all the viewpoints expressed elsewhere about the new achievement system
  • No new spin or opinion was presented about the new system, and no fresh insight was added to the discussion
  • Article lacked a “summary” for skimmers to get the gist of the article without reading it in it’s entirety and the headings didn’t provide any insight into what stance the article took on the subjects discussed

– The GJ

The Utility of Utility and Death and the Priest

Your post here was aimed at outlining the differences and the benefits that IDS and COH bring to a raid. Your arguments were sound and perfect. You went out of the way providing an example table with numbers that helped underscore the point that you were making. The rule of thumb you wrote at the bottom of the post about which raid makeup would benefit the most is a real eye opener to some Guilds, I would imagine.

The second post consisted of something that I wish I would see happen more often. You publicly disagreed with a blogger. Not only that, you backed up your disagreement with opinion and sound logical reasoning. As a crim student, how can I possibly not admire that? In both posts, excellent use of bolding to emphasize your main point. You did a great job at the bottom summarizing and adding on more ways for readers to participate. A skill that I’ve noticed a few bloggers not having acquired yet is that of reader participation. Give them some room to chime in. If you intentionally cover all the bases, opinions, viewpoints, what else is there left to say? I even gave a lecture about that to Auzara once (and she listened). The points you made, I think, helped encourage that.

Utility of Utility

  • Biggest complaint: The article focuses partly on talents found in the Disc tree, but makes no actual mention of Disc priests (as if they don’t exist)
  • It should be mentioned within the article that, if your guild/raid group has reliable Disc priests, or at least 1 Disc priest that shows up habitually, then the argument is moot: Holy priests can spec out of IDS if they so choose
  • When discussing the effectiveness/usefulness of IDS, stats were mentioned for Holy priests, Resto druids, etc, but again no mention was made of Disc priests (how much more effective would a Disc priest’s heals be with IDS + Power Infusion, for example?)

Death and the Priest

  • Instant bonus points for totally disagreeing with your “boss” so blatantly
  • Images or screenshots within the body of the article would’ve enhanced the points being made
  • The article takes an interesting stance on a subject many can relate to, and forms an emotional connection with the reader (enticing them to comment)
  • The article encourages longer “visits” by referencing an article already on the site (increasing the likelihood that the user will continue reading other articles and/or subscribe via RSS)
  • The article is “skimmer friendly”
  • The article presents a good opportunity for a follow up that expands on other moments players encounter while raiding

– The GJ