7 Pointers for a Stress Free Raid

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Image courtesy of _AcE_

Your back is straight and rigid. Your eyes are glued to the screen. You’re screaming and yelling so loud your parents are wondering what’s going on. Your heart’s pumping blood at an insane rate.

But are they happening for the right reasons?

The above symptoms could either represent the elation of an imminent boss death or an incoming raid wipe.

Raiding can induce an unhealthy amount of stress. There are many potential sources of anxiety and frustration. There could be a variety of reasons for the pressure you’re feeling. Maybe it’s a bad night overall. Maybe there’s some internal business that needs to be sorted out in your life or in the guild that’s functioning as a dark cloud over everyone. Not everyone’s immune to it but there are ways to deal with it.

Inhale and breathe: Those breathing exercises you read about near the health section of your newspaper next to the horoscope and Sudoku pages actually work. When boss loot is being distributed, take a moment and close your eyes. Block out the raid mentally or turn them down if necessary. Inhale slowly, count to 5 then exhale. Repeat the exercise 3 more times before retuning your mind back to the raid. Of course, you might have to pass on this if loot drops that you need.

Reduce wiping on farm content: This is a separate blog post on it’s own. Wiping on farm content and farm trash is the biggest source of headaches for raiding guilds. Encounters that should be easy end up being catastrophes for raid groups. Stay focused and do your part. Play to your highest potential and respect the boss that you’re working on.

Don’t skimp on raid buffs: When we were killing Archimonde the other day, I had a Priest in my raid who dropped 30 minute forts on everyone. I cursed out loud in vent and applied my 60 minute Ferrari buffs. I had a feeling people were going to complain about the 30 minute buffs anyway. Instead of berating the other Priest about it, I bit my tongue and overwrote his buffs with my own. Even though the odds were good we’d wipe repeatedly on Archie, it was the principle of the matter. In the long run, you end up using more mana and spending more time individually forting people than you would with group buffs. Over a prolonged period, this time spent on individual buffs could have gone towards working on Archie.

Listen to music: I set my iTunes volume to 25%. Whether I’m mentally dancing to Chris Brown (Forever!) or swaying my Dwarf hips to Gloria Estefan’s Everlasting Love, music is an enormous form of stress mitigation. Just don’t play your songs intentionally over vent. Not everyone has the same tastes.

Prepare yourself the night before: I like to lay out my pants and shirts before major stress inducing days where I have to deliver presentations or crapshoot my way through exams. I do it to reduce the mental load I know I would get the next day. It’s bad enough I’m trying to remember certain points or formulas. I don’t need to add extra stress to myself by wondering what I need to wear and what color socks have to match with my shirt and stuff. Likewise, the night before the raid, check that you have enough potions, candles, mana oils, and other consumables in your bag so you can go through the next day without having to frantically scour the auction house last minute before your raid.

Grab a cold one: Nothing is wrong with a little alcohol during raids. Certain Resto Trees might prefer wines whereas certain Dwarves prefer the strength of beer or ale. Regardless of you preferred beverage of choice (be it alcoholic or non), it does help relax and ease the tensions accumulated during the day.

Take a day off: No, I don’t mean from raiding. I know some of you hold specialist positions in your raid. See if there’s a volunteer willing to do the job of healing assignments or marking sheep targets or even leading the raid. There’s a practical argument for this suggestions. What if you were running late or if an emergency prevents you from raiding? It’s nice to know you have a number 2 around to take over and cover for you.

Spell Haste: Why You Don’t Need It

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slowdown
Image courtesy of andrewatla

A few words on Spell Haste: I can tell that Spell Haste is going to be the next big epeen-measurement stat. There are a couple of reasons behind this, the biggest one being that Sunwell fights are so demanding that Spell Haste is indispensable to heal all the incoming damage. The thought process runs something like this: If it’s good enough for Sunwell, it’s good enough for everyone, right? In fact, the more you have, the better you must be, right? Nope. Of course not – if that were true, I wouldn’t have a reason to post.

Sorry, I missed a left turn at Albaquerque. What is Spell Haste? Simply put, Spell Haste allows you to cast the same spells – faster. 15.67 of Spell Haste is a 1% casting-time reduction. Haste can also decrease your global cooldown to a minimum of one second. (That’s at something like 475 – effectively haste-capped. At this point, I’m not entirely sure it’s even possible to stack up that much spell haste. It certainly isn’t possible without running your other stats into the ground.)

As cool (and useful in Sunwell) as Spell Haste is, there are a lot of reasons it just doesn’t live up to the hype:

Sloppy Healers

Once in a while, some misguided soul will compare healing a raid to playing whack-a-mole. Maybe it’s accurate for your first few raids – before you figure out much about game mechanics and set up your UI properly you might have no idea who was going to take damage next. This is probably why you see so many entry-level wws reports showing an abundance of Flash Heals; the healers just aren’t experienced enough to not play a reactive game. But good healers know their fights, know their raid-mates, and know their raid frames well enough to start a cast before damage happens. Giving those same, inexperienced healers spell haste before developing their other, more relevant stats first, simply reinforces that gut reaction o-m-g-he’s-gonna-die-i-gotta-toss-healz-nao mentality. Spell haste won’t make inexperienced (or bad, for that matter) healers better, but it will train them to think faster is better – when really, planning ahead and paying attention is better.

Opportunity Cost

Flash back to Economics class with me: Opportunity cost is the cost of resources that must be given up in order to obtain other resources. You’ll notice a pattern with pre-Sunwell Spell Haste items – to get the haste, you have to give up mana regen.

Exception: Brooch of Nature’s Mercy, which is worth farming Eagle Boss in ZA for its Spirit alone.

As you’re working your way through content, you have a lot to think about in terms of stat-balancing. Your +healing must be high enough to handle the incoming damage, you have to have enough regen to last the entire fight, and you have to have enough Stamina so that you can actually do some healing. If you’re not to the point where most of your slots have few upgrades, you probably don’t have stats to spare. If you think you do, you probably don’t have enough regen. These other stats are so important for T4, T5, and BT/Hyjal content that giving them up for a stat that is not required is foolish. Wait to stack Spell Haste until you really can afford the cost to your other metrics.

Running Out of Mana

One thing that I notice most often with premature Spell Haste stacking is that casters run out of mana.

Quickly.

Why?

Bear with me. (Warning: I like easy math, so I’m using VERY rounded numbers and assuming no Quartz, Lag or other fun stuff)

Say I have a 10k mana pool, and that each Greater Heal costs 500 mana. This means I can throw out 20 of them before I go out of mana. But, I also have 250 Mp5. Each of those 20 casts took 2.5 seconds – a total of 50 seconds.

So I accrued 10 full ticks of my Mp5 – an extra 2500 mana.

An extra 5 Heals. An extra 12.5 seconds of casting.

Which, thanks to the magic of Mp5, bought me ANOTHER 1094 mana.

ANOTHER 2 casts, ANOTHER 5 seconds – and I’m done. (Because that only bought me 250 mana, which added to the 94 I had left over isn’t enough to cast another heal for this experiment.)

So TOTAL, my 10k mana pool and 250 Mp5 bought me 27 heals over 67.5 seconds. (There is a FABULOUS mod called Dr. Damage that will show you all of this in a tool tip.)

If my G.Heal hits for 6k, I just healed for 162,000. But what if we trade regen for S.Haste? Okay, now I have a 10k mana pool, each heal costs 500 mana, so I still get to throw 20 of them before I go oom. But NOW, each of those 20 casts took TWO seconds. So NOW, it only took 40 seconds. Which means I only got 8 ticks of my Mp5, which is now 200. So I only got back 1600 mana. An extra 3 heals. An extra 6 seconds of casting. Only 300 mana back. Suddenly, I’m done. (Sure, I could wait 1 second, and buy a 24th heal but then i’m REALLY done – and it takes me longer to get back in the game, because my regen is less.) Total: 23 heals over 46 seconds. 138,000 healing. Down 24,000. Down by more than my Main Tank’s pool.

For what? To get that 138k out fast enough so that it’s overheals? Because in 95% of the raiding-game, you don’t need to throw ’em out that fast to keep up with the damage, so they would be wasted. But you’re not chain-casting? You’d have more time to regen mana? Great. Then you really don’t need the Spell Haste.

Lack of Available Gear

Another reason not to fuss over Spell Haste too much is how little gear there really is out there with Spell Haste on it. WoWhead lists 29 Priest-friendly healing items with Spell Haste GAME WIDE. Of these, 16 drop in SW, 1 in Hyjal, 2 in BT, and two require Hearts of Darkness. So unless you’re very wealthy or your guild is working through advanced End-game, you have 8 options total – and a few of those are for the same slots!

Not Fully Developed as A Talentable Stat

As Priests, we have a couple of talents that reduce the casting time of certain spells. Could be divine fury, could be shortening up our Mass Dispel or Mana Burns. But, there is no far-reaching talent option to truly take advantage of this stat wholesale. Yet. I anticipate that WotLK will bring a lot more viability to this stat as a whole, with the introduction of talents like Improved Holy Concentration. The new content will probably require a decent amount of Spell Haste, but, as currently implemented, the fact that Spell Haste gains no help from any available builds further decreases the value of gaining it as compared to other stats – spirit or +heal – that DO gain multipliers from our available talent trees.

Sunwell fights are a holy-crap-did-you-see-that-by-the-skin-of-our-teeth kind of experience. I know a guy who, before the 2.4.3 nerfs, was spending nearly 1,000g on Mu’ru attempts PER NIGHT. (Scrolls, haste pots, elixirs, repairs, etc. He’s actually leveling an herbalist just to take the pressure off.) The best comparison is to old-school Naxxramus. You just don’t do Sunwell unless you’re really dedicated to the game, and long after WotLK comes out, veteran raiders will be swapping stories about how hardcore the fights were, and what a mind-bender it was.

Luv,
Wyn

SK Gaming and Nihilium: The Greatest Conspiracy Plot to Ever Unfold

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Many gamers (not just WoW players) are aware of two of the most dominant names in professional E-Sports today: SK-Gaming and Nihilum. Let me say that I’ve known about SK for many years when they were the top Counterstrike teams in the world. Likewise, I also know about Nihilum’s illustrious history along with mousesports. As such, I have nothing but the highest respect any gamer can have like a son to a father.

Although after reading the following post, my faith has wavered slightly.

An interview is conducted on World of Ming with a former professional Warcraft 3 player named Bey (not going to try to use the funky B in case it screws up a few things). His earnings are reported to be over 35000$ after playing more than 700 games in over a year.

In any case, the first part of the interview is mostly background information. Bey, the player in question, is establishing the fact top tier players establish and cultivate relationships not unlike how top tier raiding guilds on servers have their own alliances and relationships.

It gets a lot more interesting towards the second half of the interview when Bey begins talking about SK Gaming’s and Nihilum’s practices.

He states that Schroet Kommando is an extreme right organization. Here’s a few select quotes:

?ey: My sources told me that after the recruitment, they start to slowly modify the person’s way of thinking with all sort of tricks and manipulative discussions evolved around the gaming training sessions. There are also some weird occult rituals and gatherings with occult implications, but that’s where my sources stopped sharing with me, so I couldn’t find out more about it.

I suppose that this did not include normal team building exercises like mountain climbing or playing street hockey together. Since it’s in Europe, they might bond better playing soccer.

Let’s hit the nail harder on the head, shall we?

?ey: The information I have is 100% secure and bulletproof, beyond any level of doubt. So, basically what we know about SK is that their leaders are Nazi extremists, and that they don’t want us to know this, and that their logo had is based on a modified version of the swastika.

Oh, so that’s what extreme right means. I get it now. Hold on a sec, it turns out SK’s not alone anymore.

?ey: Mousesports is another German gaming organisation that shares the NAZI viewpoints of SK. Somehow even more, considering that their crown jewel is Nihilum, a guild that is made only from German, Swedish, Danish and Norwegian people, and especially because of NAZI aryan beliefs. I personally know lots of insanely good players that’s knocked at Nihilum’s door and were turned down because of racial reasons, even if they were perfectly geared and capable of filling the spot required. This was not made public of course, but that was the true reason behind it.

At least it’s nice to know that if I had applied to Nihilum I would not have been turned down because I sucked. On a more serious note, these are some really serious allegations. Bey’s just accused two of the top gaming organizations in the world that they are Nazis.

How would they have enforced their e-dominance?

?ey: The plan was simple and extremely effective, and was needed because both SK and MS wanted to control what was happening in other Bgs – they were scared to death that an outsider EU team may sweep them at Blizzcon or other tourneys (which ended up actually happening)…

…These things were backed up with whispers like “words are that SK and MS pay weekly big money to anybody that is on the 1st page of the Cyclone BG in 2v2 and 3v3.” As well as stuff like “I heard that that team was 16th last week and got paid 200 Euros to each member”.

To bottom line it:

?ey: The truth is that SK and MS payed all the first 20 teams (the ones that were on Cyclone BEFORE the hype), to queue dodge the new powerful wave of teams and to share information to all teams about the new players and their comps.

All I can say is just wow. I’m utterly amazed. I don’t even know if something like this can be made up. I don’t but it, however. There’s no empirical evidence for such an accusation and it’s still really hard to prove. How do you prove something like this anyway? You almost can’t! It’s hard!

Remember, here’s the link to the full text interview for you to read in full.

This just about rivals the DnT drama story several months ago. Anyway, I wanted to share that little story for you. What a way to open up the week, eh?

So what are your thoughts?

Load of crap or a potential eyebrow raiser and jaw dropper?

Conspiracy drama stories are simply the best! 

Deep Thoughts, by Wynthea

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I am truly blessed in that I have always managed to have consistent friends to group with in the game. My Human Priest leveled with a darling Paladin, and a Warrior has always had my back on my Troll. In fact, if I ever need to run an instance or three, all I have to do is find a willing Druid, Pally, or Warrior, and announce that the two of us will be running _____. I don’t think it’s ever taken more than 5 minutes for us to get our DPSers and go. This has lead me to a startling revelation about our class: Priests do have pets. They are called Tanks. I believe this should be added to our official class description.

Luv,
Wyn

Assigning Healing Strategy – Part 2: Double Shifting Healers

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Image courtesy of hkarl

Welcome to the second in a 5 part series here on World of Matticus. For the next several weeks, I’ll be covering the rare topic of assigning raid heals. No one really wants to do it but it’s the most important job in the raid and I’ll provide a basic overview of the process and some advanced tips!

In case you missed it:

  1. Week 1: Recognizing Class Strengths

Throughout your raiding career as a healer, you will find that the measure of being a good healer is underscored by one question:

Do you keep your target up?

When you start approaching T6 content in Hyjal and Black Temple, keeping a player alive indefinitely (or at least, 5 minutes) is not just a good skill, it is a virtual requirement. Your healing boss should be able to put any healer on any tank for any trash pulls and not have to second guess their decision. This is the personal standard by which I base my healers on.

So what’s the next step?

Find out if your healer can keep up two targets.

As the healing stratician, I get the pleasure of doing all the assignments for all the bosses. Sometimes it has to be done on short notice and it’s nice to know I’m not the only one in the game that has to to pull off a hail Mary. Unfortunately, I don’t get much say in who stays or who goes. I can’t pick my lineup because I never know what crew I have to work with on any given week! This is a challenge unto itself because certain classes are optimized for different roles and I have to be really creative in order for our group to find success. We raided all of SSC and nearly all of TK without a Resto Druid. It’s doable but it’s tough.

Double shifting the Healer

There are going to be times where you can get away with not having a full healer’s attention on a tank. The reason for that is because there are other healer’s on said tank. I often feel uneasy having only two Paladins on a main tank. I know I would feel more at ease if there was at least one more. However, I also know that due my personnel, I can’t spare another player on them full time.

What I can do is split a healer’s attention between two tanks. If I don’t have a Druid, I’ll put a Priest on it. Generally speaking, a Druid would be my top choice due to the nature of the class. Barring that, I’d take care of it myself personally. If I’m not able to, I’ll flip a coin and pick a Paladin or a Shaman.

The principle here remains the same. What we’re doing is taking a healing class and assigning them two different players to keep alive. In the end, we’ll have something that looks like this:

Alpha Tank
– Pete the Paladin
– Paula the Priest
– Darren the Druid		 Bravo Tank
– Pierce the Paladin
– Pavol the Priest
– Darren the Druid

Understand that in most boss encounters, only one tank is necessary. But also understand that there are some fights where the boss encounter requires more than 1 tank to eat damage or to tank a different NPC. Here’s a few player examples of when double shifting is a good idea:

  • Covering a player 2nd on threat
  • Highest person with health gets a Hateful Strike
  • Multiple tanks on multiple mobs

Hopefully you’ll be able to understand the message I’m trying to convey here. Fights will become more complicated for you as you progress through the game and double shifting healers is one way of answering the challenge. Sometime early next week, I’ll illustrate in further detail how a Priest can double shift in terms of spells and things to watch out for (might use that for a WoW Insider post actually).

How about some concrete examples of which bosses to double shift on? Pulled from WoWWiki we have:

  • Supremus: Hateful strike – ~7 – 10k melee damage to the target with the highest current health inside melee range.
  • Gruul: Hurtful Strike – Always hits the second highest aggro target within his melee range; therefore essential that any melee DPS classes maintain their aggro level not only below that of the MT, but also below that of the OT.
  • Magtheridon: Phase 1 – It is theoretically possible for a moderately geared healer to cover the first two tanks on the Warlocks especially now that the encounter has been considerably nerfed.

Next week, we look at the pivot healer! See ya then!