Everyone Needs More Wyn in Their Life

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Surely by now you’ll have realized that the world has expanded. I made an offer to Wynthea weeks ago that she literally could not refuse. World of Matticus will now officially have two Priest bloggers for your consumption. I didn’t introduce her at first because I figured it’d be better if she did it. I’ve enjoyed the posts she’s written thus far and I hope you guys have as well.

Why is she here?

I’ve updated the About page and included her illustrious history there, but I’ll post a brief excerpt here on what the story is and how (she thinks) we met:

Matticus and I met via this very blog, and began collaborating almost immediately. Matt pointed out that with so many ideas and a passion for the class, I may as well have my own blog. I countered that between editing his posts and raiding, I didn’t have time for all the set-up and nurturing a new blog requires. Once he realized that he could trick me into giving him a day off without taking a break from providing content, he invited me to begin my career as Deputy-Matticus.

(What really happened is that she kept bugging me on GTalk about all the errors in spelling and grammar I was making to the point where I just handed her the keys to my blog and told her to run wild. Yes, I’m that easy.)

If you’ve followed me from the beginning, you’ll know that I have never done any sort of post regarding formulas, spreadsheets, mathematics, graphs, or any of that stuff. Reason?

I don’t do math stuff. I’m not very good at it. I’ve read math stuff from other bloggers and I lose them after the second sentence. But I know there are a lot of players that are interested in the hard evidence and the logic to support certain priest theories and I firmly believe that she can provide the information better than anyone else (after consultations at least).

In other words, she does the actual math and theorycrafting. I translate it and “sell” it so that the rest of the us can understand it.

What else do I get out of all this?

A precious day off.
Someone that can proofread all this stuff.
Cookies.

What’s Different

We’re different on so many levels that I believe we’d actually complement each other effectively on the perspectives that we’d bring.


 

What’s Similar

On the other hand, we’re not so different to the point where I think we’d alienate each other.

We’re both CoH (pronounced coe) Priests
We’re at similar levels of progression
We both like pandas
We are both committed to improving our gameplay

Who is the better Priest?

I’m sure this is a question that people are dying to know. Unfortunately, there is no possible way to prove who is better than the other. We play on different servers in different factions. We both claim that we’re better than the other so I guess we’ll never know who the better Priest really is.

Edit: I forgot to mention. All emails sent on the contact page utilizing the form will be sent to her in addition to myself.

Breaking the 2000 Heals Per Second Barrier

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2000hps

The time: 2230
The place: Tempest Keep
The objective: Infiltrate, search and destroy the Voidreaver prototype
The crew: Fallen Heroes lead joint operation

I had finished an excursion into Botanic in the hopes of procuring me a Bangle. Boy did that not work out. Shortly after I finished, I received a tell from a mission commander in Fallen Heroes.

Apparently, one of their heroes had… fallen.

Since I happened to be in the area, I agreed to lend what assistance I could. I entered the area and the entire complex was picked clean. All the Elven guards were dead or no where to be seen. Halfway in and a glance upwards showed that the team inside had a giant roast turkey for dinner at some point.

In any case, we’ve cleared out the room in Voidreaver and a new strategy was devised. I didn’t know what was up but when I heard ranged won’t have to move I straightened my back and listened.

The idea

A group of hunters would run laps around Voidreaver while the rest of the group stayed directly underneath him.

All that’s necessary for me to do is spam CoH (pronounced Coe, like toe. None of this See Oh Aech business) and PRoH (pronounced Prow). Yes, I’m setting a precedent.

The execution

Oh it was glorious! That’s all I did the entire fight! I sat directly beneath him and did nothing but spam those two AoE spells the entire night. If the pounding timers are on the mark, I can time my prayer down to the split millisecond that it begins and it’s as if no one loses any health at all.

And after the dust settled and the smoke cleared, there were only 5 or so casualties. I got nothing but a Fel Reaver’s Piston for my effort. No one rolled on it and I wasn’t about to just leave empty handed. At least I have a void crystal now.

Obviously in order to sustain that kind of healing output, you’re going to need gas and lots of it. If you ain’t outta gas, you ain’t tryin’! Resto Shamans have good mileage there’s no doubt about that. I guess you could call them hybrids. But what does Tim Taylor need? More power! Therefore, I take pride in being the suburban SUV of healers everywhere with Druids as my mobile gas stations.

…

*ducks*

The World is Not Ready

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Do not let the others mislead you. This is not the case. The first rule of BA chat is whatever is said in BA chat stays in BA chat. And this is for good reason, I assure you.

Why?

Because the world isn’t ready. The public isn’t ready. What about the kids? They’re not ready! The discussion, the drama, the stories, the tales, the classified information, the pictures are shared in an isolated and contained environment. Should it be publicized, the chaos and damage that would ensue would reach proportions of an epic scale rivaled only by the Sundering itself! I have always considered BA Chat “Off the record” where anything could be said at any time for any reason. Now I’ll have to self censor what I say under fear that it could be used against me at any time without notice.

How many casualties have we suffered? How many eyes have been gouged? Oh the humanity!

How to Successfully Pick up a GM

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Image courtesy of dbking

Making the first move and first impression counts when you’re looking to join a Guild. Excellent Guildmasters (I prefer General Managers) have a way of cutting through the random crap that applicants throw at them. They’re able to translate what applicants say and interpret them in a more precise way. As my Guild’s first line of defense against “R-Tards”, I’ve seen my share of bad opening introductions from players that were interested. Here’s 10:

  1. You say: “I can maintain 100% attendance.” GM thinks: “Even if he does make 100% of the raids, he’ll probably afk for a good portion of them.”
  2. You say: “I am willing to listen and pay attention all the time.” GM thinks: “Good, because my guild is full of players who do whatever the heck it is that they want at will.”
  3. You say: “I’m not quite sure what level your Guild is at in terms of progression, but… ” GM thinks: “No homework or research done and you’re applying for our Guild blindly? If you can’t research Guilds then we can’t expect you to research boss strategies.”
  4. You say: “I can lead PvP battlegrounds and form a top notch arena team within the Guild.” GM thinks: “We’re a frackin’ progression guild, not a PvP guild! Besides, this Guild can’t handle more than 1 emo BG leader.”
  5. You say: “I’d like to see end game raiding and experience it.” GM thinks: “You willing to die for it?”
  6. You say: “I don’t think my gear is good enough, however…” GM thinks: “Nope, probably not.”
  7. You say: “There’s not much time left before the expansion comes out, so…” GM thinks: “We’re not a sightseeing operation.”
  8. You say: “I’m willing to sit on the bench for a while and stay as a trial if you’re full.” GM thinks: “Great, someone whose not even going to try and compete for a raid spot.”
  9. You say: “You’ve made these mods mandatory for use in the Guild, but I don’t think I need them because…” GM thinks: “You can’t even pass a simple test of just downloading and installing mods. How will I know you will do as I instruct during a raid?”
  10. You say: “The only way for me to get better as a player is to get better gear.” GM thinks: “A million dollars to anyone who invents a device that allows for strangulation across the internet

The best opening lines to make to a GM or their representative is to say something similar to:

Hi, my name is __________, I would like to raid as a __________ spec and I have experience up to this encounter in the game.

For a much better insight into the application and mental thought processes of GMs, I strongly advise you read Chick GM’s post about the very same subject in more detail.

Post inspired by Guy Kawasaki

Addon: Instant Health is Pants Crappingly Awesome

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During this weeks Twisted Nether blogcast, one of the questions posed by Fimlys was what addons I currently favor the most. I said to him that I favoured Pitbull the most but there was another addon called Instant Health that was beginning to grow on me. I touched about it in some details on the blogcast and promised a blog post specifically on the addon and here it is.

The problem

WoW servers don’t update health bars instantaneously. The information is sent from a player to the server, then from the server to your UI. There are two interaction points where lag due to hardware or ISP issues can cause problems, and although this typically happens in regular intervals, it can take as long as 3 seconds to complete.

All healers have been in situations where their heals have gone off, yet the target still died. Cooldowns and trinkets were blown at the last possible moment to add more “oomph” to their heals. Our efforts were futile because even though it showed that we did cast our instants, it did not appear to have been tracked or anything.

The solution

I acted on a tip from Aylii and Lang, my main tank. They both advised me to take a hard look at an addon called Instant Health. The beta was released a little over a week ago. So what’s it about?

This addon updates the health of player/party/raid members and pets much faster than normal by using your local combat log data rather than waiting for the server to send updated health information to you.

It works with Blizzard’s default UI as well as ANY custom addon you might have installed. All you need to do is put it in your addons folder and enable it!
Notice, this addon only speeds up health updates for player/party/raid members and pets. (People that are recorded in your combat log.) Players/mobs that are not in your group will have their health updated normally.

The trial

Intrigued, I had to get a copy of the addon quickly and stress-test the sucker. I forwarded a copy to Wynthea as well, so we could compare notes afterward. So how did Instant Health stack up to our combined play?

In a word, scary. This mod updates health lightning fast. You’ll get a better idea by observing a protection Paladin tanking waves of trash in Mount Hyjal. By updating health on a much faster scale, I’ve found that I’ve been able to make decisions even quicker. Information is life for healers and the faster we get it the faster we can make choices. It’s an awesome addon for us twitch healers that rely on quick reactions. Non healers might think that it’s redundant for an addon that updates heath only a fraction of a second sooner than server updates but they wouldn’t understand. 9 out of 10 Matts agree that this addon is an absolute must have for any raiding healer (the other Matt passed out in shock and stress of watching health bars drop too fast).

-Matticus

I’m very impressed with the potential of this add-on. Personally, I heal less Whack-a-mole style, and more proactively – paying attention primarily to those with aggro – so the benefit to my reaction time on MT healing is negligible. Where this mod really shines is with tough decision-making: you can see which player’s health is dropping fastest and react with better information. The biggest drawback to Instant Health is that when it acesses the information, it somehow changes what is reported to any other combat log parser you may use. Recount, SWstats, WWS, and Recap will all be so dramatically skewed that they become unusable. If you feel like rolling up your sleeves, you CAN fix it yourself – rename the addon’s directory, LUA file, and TOC to ZZZ_Instant_Health, so that the order-of-access is properly aligned. (If you don’t feel completely comfortable doing this, DON’T!) There is also a minor issue affecting default UI Target-of-Target frames that cannot be corrected. Other raid-frames do not have this problem. These relatively minor issues aside, I think this is a great tool. Spell Haste is becoming more and more important as a stat, and anything else that can decrease the time it takes to get a heal on someone that needs it is huge.

-Wyn