MMO Declines, Being a Brewmaster, and Joining a New Guild

by

This week, the guild scored two progression kills between heroic Zon’ozz and Warlord Blackthorn. Otherwise, not many other events are going on at the moment. Still hard at work laying down the foundations for the guild league. It’s 1:20 in the morning as I write this and I am in the mood for some serious pho.

::

MMO Decline Caused by Moves to Smaller Guilds

Theories about the decline of MMOs? Even though the past investors call from Activision Blizzard showed no significant decline in active subscriptions, there’s no doubt that people are quitting the game. Rohan surmises that it might be a result of shifts in guild sizes from large scale guilds to smaller sized ones.

::

Guide to Being a Brewmaster

Sunnier has been hard at work in the beta creating a guide for Monk tanks! The guide covers basic stuff like your abilities and glyphs to the more advanced stuff like stat allocation and rotations. Give it a read if you’re thinking about tanking.

::

Top 5 Things to do When Joining a New Guild

Lynesta is our newest Holy Paladin. It seems she’s brushed off the dust that had been collecting on her blog. Here, she adds a fresh perspective on different things you should do after being accepted into a new guild.

By the way, if you’re a League of Legends player looking to get started with the game or just a veteran looking to hone their skills, check out my LoL blog over at League of Matticus. Don’t forget to subscribe!

Osu! Blackthorn’d it

by

Well now.

It only took us 8 shots and a little under 90 minutes, but we scored the gunship. Went through phase 1 seven times and saw phase 2 once – The same time we killed it. Ultimately, it cost us 2 tanks at 2%, but we had enough players alive to tip him over. Phase 2 wasn’t as bad as I’d heard from others.

Phase one was just a matter of keeping the players alive as much as possible while dodging Blade Rush (them pesky charges)! We ran four different groups assigned to different areas of the deck to try to contain explosions. Strict cooldown management was used to get us through Onslaughts and Phase 2 Roars.

Monday presents Spine of Deathwing!

Everyone says I should be trembling. That bad, eh?

It’s Osu

On a completely different note, I want to introduce you guys to a game that’ll help you develop your reflexes and your mouse agility. Great for League of Legends and Starcraft 2 players.

if you’re familiar with Elite Beat Agents, then you’ll have an idea of what Osu! is about. It’s a rhythm game where you must time the location and speed of your clicks according to the rhythm of the song.

Watch me play along to Usher.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMznt4ZxpDg

It’s like DDR for my hands!

4 Strategies Later, HM Zon’ozz Down

by

Progression stonewaller Zon’ozz has been taken down at least. Feels like the Sindragosa of this tier.

We tried using individual soakers with no luck.

Having one large group standing on Zon’ozz’s butt didn’t work.

We tried splitting into a ranged and melee group and actively removed debuffs. Nope, no dice.

Then we just rolled down our sleeves and brute force healed phase 1 without worrying about running out or dispelling. Amazingly, that did the trick.

Conquest’s next efforts will be focused on heroic Blackthorn on the gunship. We’ll be taking shots on it tonight and raid boss Logan has the strategies all laid out. Fun part’s going to be ensuring all the players have gone through it.

Any individual tips or pointers are appreciated (if you have any). We do have a few approaches in mind but we’ll be making our first shots today.

Phase 2 healing

When the raid splits into four different groups to handle the tentacles, there tends to be one healer assigned to each group to keep them all alive. DPS players have to do their part in shutting down and interrupting tentacles as best as they can. Your job as a healer is to keep them alive long enough to do it.

As a Holy Priest, I switched from Chakra: Sanctuary to Chakra: Serenity. I valued the instant, single target healing over the raid healing benefits. It felt as if some players were taking more damage than others. With everyone in the raid taking constant damage, I lit off Binding Heals targeting two different players and activating Serendipity for a hasted Prayer of Healing on the group. If one players got too low, I leaned heavily on Serenity to give me the buffer I needed to propel their health back up to manageable levels.

Ran out of steam

After we got Zon’ozz down, I felt this incredible burden just lift off my shoulders. I’m sure everyone in the raid felt the same thing. At this stage, I had to tag out and attend to some personal business. I felt the next few bosses were on farm and that there shouldnt’ve been much difficulty in getting by.

Nope, I was wrong. The crew had a hard time getting by Hagara.

Looked like the raid that night hit it’s peak against Zon’ozz and most of the players just ran out of energy.

I remember reading a study once where the idea of patience and willpower is finite. There were two groups of participants in a room that had chocolate cookies and other type of desserts. Some participants were allowed to snag some cookies. The people who were in the willpower test group were asked to eat radishes instead. After that, both groups were given a skill testing puzzle.

The catch? The puzzle couldn’t be solved. Those in the radish group gave up much quicker and easier than those in the chocolate cookies group.

I wonder if there’s a relationship.

Introducing the Conquest Gaming League (Pet battles!)

by
Conquest Gaming League

With pet battles on the horizon, it’s only fair to create a competitive environment where the best pet breeders and trainers can go to test their skills. I wanted to create something for the guild to participate in and have fun with. One thing I’ve always wanted to do was set up my own online league. It would be complete with full pre-season, regular season, and playoffs.

You can check out the league site here. It’s not completely finished or operational yet. If you mouse over some of the links, you can see what the layouts and such will look like when it’s in full swing.

The vision

Nothing’s set in stone yet, but here’s what I have going in with. Each season begins with 2 weeks of preseason followed by 8 weeks of regular season. At the mid season mark, move ups may be considered. Playoffs will begin shortly after regular season play concludes. The top 8 players with the most points at the end of the season will advance to playoffs. Each week will consist of two matches on different days against different opponents for a total of 16 matches for the regular season.

Each match will be a pet battles duel consisting of a best of 3 series between two opponents. Each playoff match will be a duel consisting of a best of 5.

Currently, there are no level or pet restrictions. That may change though as we move closer to release. You can switch pets as needed in between individual matches.

The league may consist of multiple tiers depending on how much player interest there is (Like an Open and Invite division, for instance). Already, there’s a number of questions going on through my head about to handle things like disconnects and such.  I hope Blizzard includes a way to track match records against players.

Other games?

The guild has a massive interest in both Starcraft 2 and League of Legends. Right now, I’ve got divisions open for those but they’re going to be for the guild and guild friends only for now. I’m hoping to do a full test run of the system by starting with a month long SC2 1v1 league season. Want to make sure I have a handle on everything okay both from the administrative and front ends. Ultimately, players will be able to report their own matches, upload screenshots/replay files for results, and so forth.

(I’ll have to find me some Starcraft 2 guinea pigs though to help supplement the players).

Will it work cross server and faction?

It should.

Pets are eventually going to be account bound. Theoretically, I could create a level 1 character on any server and any faction to duel the host player.

Prizes?

Probably not right away. The league’s going to start off in a closed environment first available to guildies and friends. After that, once things stabilize, I may open up registration.

Although, I did toy with the idea of playing for the Conquest Cup. … Which would be a jock strap, heh.

Anyway, still more work to do. I’m hoping everything all comes together and works out.

So, interested?

Spirit Shell Change: Burst Bubble Spam!

by

Spirit Shell: For the next 15 sec, your Heal, Flash Heal, Greater Heal, and Prayer of Healing no longer heal but instead create absorption shields that last 15 sec.

Cool! Not less than half a day since I posted that we were expecting Spirit Shell changes, they went and changed up the design of it entirely. In terms of absorb values, my guess is that they’re going to be a 1:1 value. So if you heal for 10000, you’ll be creating shields for 10000.

Instead of a spell that directly creates a shield, they’ve given us an ability that turns most of our healing spells into shield spells. Interesting design change. Can’t wait to try it in action. At least we now have a clear toggle between the times when we need to restore health and the times to create shields. Nifty ability though because even if the raid is at near full health, Disc priests can easily toggle Spirit Shell on and blanket the raid with shields and add that extra health buffer to everyone.

I suppose this is one way to shield spam the raid!

And as promised, Rapture removes the cooldown on Power Word: Shield.