Mattivation: The Origin of Many Whelps!

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httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtvIYRrgZ04

Language is slightly NSFW.

We’re about to enter our 4th expansion. There’s enough new players that haven’t seen this video yet but it’s something I wanted to share. If you think your raid leader was brutal, wait until you watch this classic Onyxia wipe raid video. If you ever wondered where Many Whelps! Handle It came from, this is it!

A large number of players today would most likely wilt under that kind of pressure and environment. Me? I don’t know. I’ve played under leaders like that before and it was a different experience. I felt like I thrived and played at near my peak. I wasn’t really motivated by fear or anything. There’s just something appealing I find when I get (quite literally) get yelled at for screwing up. My officers know this and won’t hesitate to get in my face because they know the right buttons to press (They don’t care that I’m the GM :\).

Anyway, it’s a quick video I wanted to share this morning. For the older veterans, I’m sure it’ll bring a slight grin to your face. For the newer guys, that’s what you missed out on during vanilla.

Remind me to show you guys that Sebudai poster next week.

Help! Need Your Resources and Links!

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I’ve been asked by my overlords to compile a large list of resources and links for WoW players. The internet is just too damn large. There’s new blogs starting everyday and sites being abandoned or taken down almost weekly. It’s a little bit much even for me.

So I’m requesting reinforcements!

Blogs.  These are typically sorted by class. But I know there’s a few that write about more than one class. For example, although Restokin closely identifies with druids of the resto and balance variety, there’s some advice on other classes. The stipulation though is that the blog must continue to be active and predominantly about WoW. Last updated 2011 doesn’t count. I won’t care if there’s stuff about the occasional League of Legends frustrations but it’s meant to be list of WoW resources. Even non-class specific stuff for gold and transmog would be welcome as I don’t know much about those either.

Strategy sites. Sites like Learn 2 Raid, Icy Veins, and Tankspot would fit nicely here. I’m sure there’s others out there.

Podcasts. I don’t listen to any podcasts at all. I’ve never gotten used to that medium. I like being able to read, scan, and skim. Can’t really do that with podcasts and I find that I have to listen to a bunch of stuff I have no interest in (such as hunter changes) before we get to the good stuff (raid and healing). However, if you have any favourites, please send them my way.

General news. This one’s more or less locked down. MMO Champion, WoWHead news, and Curse are the big ones.

Others. Character development tools are cool (WoW Reforge, Ask Mr Robot). General recruiting sites or forums. Guild tools. Basically anything that’s WoW related that might not fit other sections. I can create a second category for them.

Anyway, I’d greatly appreciate any resources you can provide. Feel free to comment below or email me as well.

Beta LFR – A Little Harder Than Expected

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I have returned from PAX Prime! It was a blast meeting some of my old (and new) guild mates again, especially since Blizzcon isn’t being held this year (but with Blizzcon 2013, you bet we’ll be making plans for that again).

Highlights?

Marvel Heroes is a blast. If you like the gameplay of Diablo and Torchlight, you’re going to like Marvel Heroes (Actually, I believe it’s made by the creator of the Diablo series).

Meeting my previous editor-in-chief for the World of Warcraft magazine, Dan Amrich, in person. Sat in on a panel by him on How to Review Video Games. He really does look like Mal Reynolds.

“There’s an inverse relationship between doing what you love and getting the big bucks.”

– Dan Amrich

I tracked down and met up with some of the Blizzard CMs and we had a nice discussion about the game and the upcoming expansion. After that, a CM who will remain nameless and I attempted to Gangnam Style at the booth. We were able to get the “Horseback ride” and the “Lasso” part of the routine. However, the “sideways shuffle” continued to elude us.

What’s that? Video footage of Gangnam Style attempts? I believe it may have been seized at the Canadian border. Oh well.

Heart of Fear

Over the weekend, I caught wind that the raid finder options of Heart of Fear opened up and Mogu’shan Vaults had been disabled. New instance, new bosses, right? Decided to queue in and give it a go.

The first boss that stood in front of us was Wind Lord Mel’jerak. He’s quite the royal pain actually. Your group will be squaring off against an encounter with multiple adds that absolutely must be controlled. In the raid finder, there’s about 9 of those things. If more than 4 gets crowd controlled, the Wind Lord just removes all the debuffs. There’s a finite amount of bugs that need to be active or else things can snowball to NOPE mode in a few scant seconds.

windlord

But that’s not the main issue. The big thing I’ve found is that tanks are just going through our group like a revolving door. We’d get a pull in, but then we wipe because someone broke CC due to AoE or the tank mistakenly pulls the boss near a cc’d mob. Mob breaks, we wipe, and then the tank gets a  vote kick which automatically passes because hive mentality.

Poor tanks only get one shot on LFR. Their skills and performance are based on one boss. They don’t even get to really learn stuff. Personally, I don’t think that’s fair.

Now my take on it is that there’s a big difference between queuing for LFR on beta realms against bosses meant for testing versus queuing in the raid finder against bosses where their heroic versions have been on farm for half a year (Dragon Soul, for instance).

I mean if you’re tanking raid finder for Dragon Soul and you’re wiping to basic simple stuff that’s fault months after the place is already open, I can understand the reasoning.

But a new boss that’s still being tuned where the mechanics and encounter notes aren’t widely known yet?

What the hell. Can we have a little more patience patience in there?

Ideal raid linear progression would be wiping at 90%, then 60%, then 20%, then death (or just one shotting it, but that means it’s probably too easy).

Anyway, the fact that we cycled through 7 different tanks is a good indicator that either some mechanics need to be changed or the raid finder version of this boss needs another pass. Something kept resetting the encounter. Didn’t get a good look as I was occupied at my frames, but it looks like that happens when the boss crosses a certain line.

Maybe I’ll try queueing for the second half instead.

5.0.x and Mists of Pandaria: Holy and Discipline Priest Info

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Welcome to patch 5.0.x! You’ll have a few weeks to get yourself acclimated for the great levelling push in under a month. Whether you plan to dungeon grind or quest your way to 85, it doesn’t hurt to refresh your skills.

Priest changes and additions

  • Fixed mana pools! We’re now down to 100k mana at level 85. For reference, Circle of Healing costs 3200 mana, Flash Heal costs 5900 mana, and Renew costs 2600 mana. Some reforging may be needed for regen purposes. We’ll have 300000 at level 90.
  • Our ranged slot is gone! But, we can now use Wands in our main hand. So if you happen to have a heroic Wand but haven’t been able to get a heroic main hand or staff, congratulations! Wand stats have been buffed to account for this.
  • Divine  Hymn is no longer available to Shadow Priests or Discipline Priests.
  • Dispel has an 8 second cooldown. Mass Dispel has a 15 second cooldown. Fights like Spine of Deathwing have been compensated accordingly.
  • Chakra spells can be used directly. You don’t have to follow it up with a trigger. Remember to bind both Chakra: Sanctuary and Chakra: Serenity.
  • New Discipline spell: Spirit Shell
  • Inner Fire increases spell power by 10% instead of a static value.
  • Power Word: Fortitude increases Stamina by 10% instead of a static value.
  • Evangelism built in to both Discipline and Holy. However, only Discipline can activate Archangel.

Playing styles

Holy

Holy users, you’ll just need to get accustomed to Chakra and stance switching. Nothing else has really changed dramatically. If you’ve been a Holy player before, congratulations! There isn’t much to learn. Lightwell now has the option to be made more “user friendly” via Glyph of Lightspring.

I do have one request though.

Blizzard, is it possible to add a visual distinction between Lightwells that can be clicked versus Lightwells that can’t? Maybe make Lightspring blueish instead.

lightwell-spring

Discipline

With Archangel and Evangelism available all the time (as in, not needing a talent), those of you who are familiar with keeping Archangel stacks active during heated moments will be in good shape. Sadly, Glyph of Power Word: Barrier is gone. Spirit Shell is a new ability which turns Heal, Greater Heal, and Prayer of Healing into absorption shield generators.

About Spirit Shell

  • Will scale with your crit chance
  • Scales with Mastery: Shield Discipline
  • Scales with Grace
  • Unaffected by Archangel
  • Unaffected by Inner Focus
  • Maximum ceiling of ~60% of target health (Tried with different gear combinations, but needs additional verification)

General changes

  • AoE looting. By far the best change of the patch.
  • Battletags. No more having to hand out email addresses anymore. Why couldn’t they have just started with this in the first place?

But wait, there’s more!

Recommended glyphs

For raiding

Prime glyphs have been taken out. But there’s lots of glyph selections now. Take your pick!

Talent notes

Tier 1: Level 15 (Crowd control)

Tier 2: Level 30 (Movement)

  • Body and Soul: If you’re one of the few Priests in raid, great! Suggest using this for pickup raids like the raid finder.
  • Angelic Feather: Anyone who runs over this will gain the speed benefit. If you need additional precision when it comes to targeting, opt for Body and Soul instead. In practice, I’ve seen cases where the wrong person makes up a feather or someone just strolls near it without realizing it.
  • Phantasm: Probably best for PvP. Though there are a few raid encounters which have slowing effects.

Tier 3: Level 45 (Mana)

Tier 4: Level 60 (Defensive)

  • Desperate Prayer: This spell has served me perfectly in previous expansions and it’ll continue to do the same. When you get access to Void Shift at level 87, what I like to do is Void Shift a tank who has low health and then immediately use Desperate Prayer to restore health from the inherited pool I took from the tank.
  • Spectral Guise: Best for PvP.
  • Angelic Bulwark: Neat for not having to worry about your own survivability as much. Think of it as a safety net.

Tier 5: Level 75 (Extra power)

  • Twist of Fate: Don’t underestimate this. An additional 15% healing for 10 seconds if you heal someone below 20%? In a raid environment, it’s possible to keep this buff up for long stretches at a time. Heck, Circle of Healing alone should help maintain it on most bosses.
  • Power Infusion: Available only to the casting Priest.
  • Divine Insight

Tier 6: Level 90 (AoE)

  • Cascade: Loving Cascade for raid play.
  • Divine Star: Best used if the majority of the raid group is stacked together.
  • Halo: Do not use this in dungeons. The potential to unintentionally pull mobs is high (personal experience).

Less than a month to go before panda-monium hits! You’ll be ready and supporting your guild in no time!

[VIDEO] Mists Beta: Videos from the Vault of Mysteries

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Managed to queue into the second half of Mogu’shan Vaults on beta this week really late at night. I figured while these attempts were still fresh on my mine, I could at least get some pointers and notes down along with the recorded video. Apologies for the 720p. I found out that my bottleneck’s my video card (GTX 460, looking to get a 670 later on).

Didn’t actually take down Will of the Emperor. Got to within 2% left before the raid buckled. It’s fairly repetitive and you get the idea of what’s going on. I’ll keep making notes and additions with any changes or insights I get later on as we get into the expansion itself.

My favourite encounter by far is the Spirit Kings. Just so much going on with both covering the raid and making sure you don’t get screwed by specific player abilities. Elegon’s a visual beauty, too.

I’ll get the first half of Mogu’shan Vaults up in a few days. If you can’t wait, you can see them on my Youtube channel.