HST takes a hit

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So, if you’ve looked at the Mists of Pandaria talent calculator anytime recently, you may have noticed that restoration shaman finally got an update. While I definitely like most of the changes, there’s a big change looming that I’m not quite sure what to make of it quite yet. Healing Stream Totem, our tried and true companion, is getting re-worked. It’s hard to tell whether it’s a nerf or not, but my gut instinct is that it’s going to be a nerf. So what’s changed?

Well for starters the totem is now raid wide, it is no longer restricted to group only. That’s a bonus, don’t get me wrong, and one that I think we were missing for quite sometime. So, that part I like. Currently the cost remains the same, clocking in at 3% of your base mana. The base healing number has gone up from 28 to 81, plus your spell power modifiers and talents of course. But here’s the kicker, it now only targets one person, and it will always be the lowest health person in range. That’s right folks, it’s a single target totem now. If that wasn’t enough of a kick in the teeth, the duration has also been adjusted. It is no longer 5 minutes, instead it is a 1 minute duration totem. While it still doesn’t have a cooldown, and you can cast it as often as you want, the 3% base mana cost combined with a 1 minute duration means that if you want to use it you’re going to be burning a whole lot more mana in order to keep it down.

It’s a significant change, and one that I’ve been feeling pretty keenly in the beta. Healing dungeons is a lot more active, as you can’t really rely on the passive healing anymore. It is still affected by mastery so you can now use it as a single target spike healing tool. It’s an adjustment. I’m not going to call it a nerf, but it is a noticeable change in healing behavior for us. It’s just no longer the “always keep it down totem”. My personal belief is that it is a result of us having some new tools in the water tree. Besides healing stream totem and Mana Tide Totem we have our brand new Healing Tide Totem, or rather our Tranquility. That’s an interesting tool, and I can see us using quite well. The hardest thing right now is just breaking the mentality that you HAVE to have your totems down. It just simply isn’t the case anymore.

There are a lot of other changes like the glyph’s we’ll have to work with. Some are awesome, some are meh, others are incredibly situational. I’m going to be evaluating them over the next few days, possibly in video form, so be sure to check often. If you have a specific shaman question, please feel free to ask and I’ll see if I can find out how it shakes down in Mists.

Mists: Spirit Shell, Chakra, and Party Healing

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Blizzard issued another 100,000 invites today and I was lucky enough to get in. Derevka from Tales of the Priest also has the Mists beta enabled. I’m sure between the two of us we can help answer any Priest questions you might have (Save all the math and theorycrafting for him).

Biggest grin inducing experience though?

I SMITE FOR OVER 40,000 DAMAGE

On Spirit Shell

On the tanks

Spirit Shell is the new Discipline Priest “heal” (the 2.5 second cast that’s supposed to be mana neutral).

Something feels really off about it. it feels ineffective. I get that it’s used to maintain health of players. It’s the filler spell. But it’s a delayed heal. In a sense, I should feel the same using Heal and using Spirit Shell. But I find that the mobs and bosses just punch through Spirit Shell fairly quick. Since the shield gets broken, the heal aspect never applies (Since 80% of a broken shield is still going to be 0). Tanks aren’t gaining any real health with Spirit Shell.

When using Heal, I can see the physical health bar bounce up and down between heal received and damage taken. Spirit Shell causes the tank health bar to stay around the same or to gradually decrease. I rely heavily on visual bar movement to gauge how much time left before the tank or my party gets smashed. It’s really hard to gauge the buffer I have when using Spirit Shell.

Video of me wiping once on the first boss before taking him out on attempt 2.

 

I’m not sure if that’s a UI thing or just a priest thing (or a Matt thing). 8 seconds seems like an eternity before a heal gets applied. In a way, I feel as if though I get penalized in a heavy damage environment. Holy sees immediate dividends in when those healing spells are used because you can actually seeplayer health bars move. Discipline doesn’t (with the shields) and we’re left wondering if our shields are still active or if they’ve been punched through or not.

Yeah, there’s a spell graphic thats applied on players. But aren’t your eyes glued to your frames?

On the party

I could throw a Renew on players and they’d get enough healing on them or I could also throw a Spirit Shell and wait the 8 seconds for that to expire for the heal component to apply. Renew, I can use on the run. Spirit Shell leaves me vulnerable. I understand that they’re meant for different purposes, but in this sense, Spirit Shell can be used as a fire-and-forget kind of ability on that Mage who took damage but isn’t expected to take damage again for the next 30 seconds or something.

I’m not sure what it is. The spell’s a great idea and all. But in practice, something doesn’t feel right when healing in instances. I think there should be a minimum floor that the heal of Spirit Shell does (Heals for 80% after absorb expires, otherwise it heals for 20% of the initial absorb amount).

Chakra

chakra

Have to free up some more binds somewhere. Chakra: Serenity and Chakra: Sanctuary are separate abilities and need to be key bound separately. No more having to activate Chakra and cast Prayer of Mending to auto switch to Sanctuary.

Party healing

Admirable job with the balancing of regen and throughput. Temple of the Jade Serpent was fairly brisk the first way through after queuing with a group of random players. I’m queuing in with a mix of normal and heroic Dragon Soul gear (395 Item level, give or take). Raid geared players won’t have much of a problem with it all. Just don’t stand in the water and watch out for fires.

For reference, quest rewards in the opening zone are 372 greens.

Explaining Intellect, Mana Pools, and Spell Costs in Mists

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Edit: Fixed comments to allow guests to comment without registering again. Let me know if you run into other bugs.

There’s been some discussion and confusion about mana pools, spell costs, and intellect. I was thrown off when I checked out some of the spell costs. Turns out, I had forgotten about the changes coming up for healers. Here’s a summary of the direction we’re going (all of us healers, not just Priests, mind you).

Even wrote about it in a Raid Rx column a while ago.

  • Every healer gets a static mana pool amount (100k mana).
  • Intellect affects the strength of your spells only. No longer increases mana pool.
  • Spirit still remains a mana regeneration stat. More Spirit, faster regeneration.
  • Many spell costs are being adjusted to account for the change to mana pools.
  • Mana regeneration based on mana pool size is gone.

Here’s a truncated version of the blue post.

With the change we are proposing, Intellect provides bigger heals and Spirit improves longevity. For healers, there should not always be a clear cut answer. Intellect may still be the superior stat, but not by as much as it is today. […] Mana pools can still be large (we are thinking 100,000 mana at level 85) so that it doesn’t feel too bizarre to existing casters and doesn’t feel too much like rage or energy.

What happened to our mana pools?

This is an idea of what the base mana pool of healers will look like. Assume none of these classes have chosen a spec yet.

  • Druid: 20,000 mana
  • Paladin: 20,000 mana
  • Priest: 100,000 mana
  • Monk: 100 Chi (Just a figure I’m using)
  • Shaman: 20,000 mana

Remember, pretend that these are base mana figures.

But there’s more

With the exception of Priests and Monks, each class gains an ability which modifies their mana pool when they select a spec.

Druids, Paladins, and Shaman have their mana pools dramatically increased by 400%. That should then bring everyone’s mana pool up to 100,000. When a Monk switches to Mistweaver, their energy bar will be replaced with mana. As they’re the only monk spec that uses mana, it’s assumed that 100,000 is the base value.

In addition, we think fixed mana pools will help healers scale better with content. Some players seem to be interpreting the 5.0 design as healing 5-player dungeons should be easy but healing raids should be very hard. That is certainly a better situation than dungeons being very hard and raids being easy, but neither is really the goal.

What about the costs?

Let’s use a few of the different healing spells as examples.

Greater Heal ends up costing about 6,000 mana (6% of 100,000). Greater Healing Wave and Divine Light end up being around 8,500 mana (35% of 25,000 mana). Remember that the percentages are centered around base mana which hasn’t been modified by mana boosting talents just yet. This means that their absolute values should be about the same range. Shouldn’t be off by more than a few hundred or a couple thousand. The variance is most likely due to the difference in class mechanics and spells.

So we’re going back to entry-level Cataclysm healing

In a word, yes.

As we were working our way throughout Tier 11, we had to really work on using our mana neutral healing spells (Heal, Healing Wave, etc) as much as possible. As our gear progressively improved, we found ourselves dropping Heal altogether from Firelands and above. Now we’re hitting the big heals and AoE heals more often. You can expect this long term model to stay the same for Mists.

A fight like Phase 2 Beth’tilac on heroic is about as mana-intensive as things get, and that phase doesn’t last very long, so your mana-regen mechanics and cooldowns should be sufficient to keep you going. That won’t change in 5.0.

I still don’t understand

TLDR: Think of mana as energy. It doesn’t scale or increase with gear. Mana regeneration will go up with gear allowing you to cast more spells before running out of mana.

The Day Ultraxion Fell (Heroic)

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Took us about two weeks and around 7 hours of attempts. Managed to crush Ultraxion last night just before the expected nerf that kicks in today. Some of the pointers I can offer you:

  • We used 4 healers
  • Use your 3 minute cooldowns at some point between the first and second hour. You’ll want it up again around the 5 minute mark.
  • Tank 4 piece bonuses are a godsend. Finish those as quick as you can.
  • Respec and glyph specifically for the encounter. Cut out talents you don’t need (like movement speed bonuses).
  • Get in position for the coloured crystals early so you can run back earlier.
  • Use Mana potions instead of Concentration potions if you find you don’t have the 8 seconds to spare.
  • If a healer is using a Hymn of Hope, have another priest counter with Divine Hymn to offset their 8 seconds of inactivity.
  • Put the team on your back and carry them like you’ve never carried before. 🙂

    • Sadly, no VODs of this encounter yet. Largely because I didn’t want to compromise my computer’s performance during the raid. Will try to get one this week though.

    Crappy part of killing a new boss? Having to update every single recruiting thread and forum across all the different sites you have ads up on.

    Oh, and if you’re reading this in an email or an RSS reader, I changed the look of the blog. Keeps many of the same colours but I’m aiming for a simpler approach.

    I also changed my permalink structure. So if you’ve linked to any of the posts on the blog, chances are it’s not going to work. Just modify the URL so that it removes the date from the slug (For example, worldofmatticus.com/03/26/12/post-name is now worldofmatticus.com/post-name).

    Forgot how exhausting this process can be. But, time to raid!

Attracting Gaming Sponsorships

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Update: I wrote this post initially in 2012. Seven years later, I’ve decided to update it to include player sponsorships since I’m partially involved in that space with regards to esports.

If you’re reading this, you have a blog, a podcast, or an event that you’re looking to drum up some kind of resources for. Or maybe you’re an aspiring competitive player or an up and coming streamer.

Maybe you’re an esports organization looking for some help or a guild that’s looking to ease a few financial burdens. I know how costly and expensive it can be.

One of the questions that often get asked is how do I attract and get sponsors for <something>? I can’t offer you a definitive step-by-step guide or formula on how to get sponsorship. But having been on both sides of the sponsorship question (both reviewing sponsorship requests and negotiating with companies for sponsors for events/organizations), there are a few things you really need to keep in mind to make yourself more attractive to them.

Not all sponsorship arrangements have to involve money. Instead, consider things like:

  • Gaming peripherals
  • Hardware
  • Voice servers
  • Guild hosting websites
  • Web hosting services (For your blog or podcast)
  • Discount agreements
  • Other product

Know your audience

If you write a blog, do you know what the demographics of your readers are?

  • How many of them are male vs female?
  • How many of them are between the ages of 16 – 25?
  • How many listeners does your podcast get?
  • What your RSS subscriber count is?
  • How many page views you get per month?
  • What your top 5 most popular articles are?

Having this data is extremely important. The question you need to keep in the back of your mind is how does sponsoring you help them with their brand message?

Provide evidence and data. Interested potential sponsors will ask for data about traffic and page views. If you’re a streamer, be prepared with views and subscribers. If you’re a competitive player, have a history of events you’ve attended, the number of players and viewers that event had, and your resulting finishes.

If you stream, do you know what kind of viewers you’re attracting to watch?

If you compete at live tournaments, do you know the general makeup of those in attendance?

Case Study: World of Matticus

Not many of you may remember this, but years ago I came really close to shutting down WoM. Hosting bills were gradually climbing up. It got to the point where I almost had to pay $300 a month to keep the site going. Luckily, I was able to negotiate a web hosting sponsorship. Having traffic information allowed the two of us to come to an agreement because they were able to allocate the necessary resources needed as the audience (in other words, you guys) continued to scale and grow.

Know your sponsors

What is the goal of the company you want to partner with? Are they trying to raise subscriptions? Are they gunning for increased awareness and exposure? Do you know what kind of players are interested in their products? If you have an idea of what their sales goals are, you can help factor that in with your proposal in how you can help them with their challenges.

Companies have a bottom line they need to adhere to. Hardware companies are looking for conversions from visibility to sales (that’s why you’ll see streamers offer discount codes). Subscription-based companies are looking for people to sign up for long term offers. While it would be great if businesses could sponsor every potential up-and-coming player to help with their growth and development, it simply isn’t going to be financially feasible.

The company I’m involved with sponsors a number of local players that attend major events like Dreamhack and EVO throughout the year. We’re not always in a position where we can fly out every local player who shows promise. At the end of the day, results do matter. One of our measurable goals is eyeballs and exposure. In order to raise the odds of our players appearing on stream, they need to be competitive and they have to consistently perform at a high level.

For Hearthstone, we cover the flights and accommodation of a few of our local players when they made the Americas playoffs or when they attended certain HCT Points earnings events because we believed they had what it took to play at the level expected. If those players hadn’t made high finishes, then we might scale back on the number of events that they get sent out to throughout the year. While we would love to send everyone locally to major events, we can’t afford to. Like it or not, we’re a business, and we don’t have a limitless supply of resources.

What can you offer?

Business is still business. You need to be able to exchange value for value. How can you ensure that your sponsor’s message reaches the desired audience? There are a few ways you can do that.

One of the easiest methods is to place a logo and a link to your sponsors anyone on your site. Graphical banners do the job. Logos can be placed in the site header. Another good spot is to place them on the background image of the site (and it’ll appear prominently to anyone on widescreen monitors).

If you have a podcast, mention here and there (“We’d like to thank our sponsors …”).

If you run a livestream, place their logo on the stream itself somewhere out of the way or change the background image of the page your stream is on to reflect them. You could even run video ads during a break while you step away.

Work with videos? Place their logo at the front or at the end of your productions.

Attending events in person? Have any custom gear? See if you can get their brand embedded on your shirts or jerseys. If you get selected to go on stream, this provides tremendous value.

Does your guild run a ton of pickup raids or organized PvP? If your group gets a ton of pickup or cross realm traffic, create a message of the day in Ventrilo (or Discord) that mentions them. Consider changing the name of the waiting room channel. Think of different methods to help your sponsors with their message.

Case study: Fnatic and Team 3D

A long time ago, Fnatic.RaidCall changed the name of their organization to help draw awareness to Raidcall. Almost a decade ago, when Counterstrike Source was at its height, I believe Team 3D changed their in-game tags from 3D.KSharp to 3D.nVidia :: Ksharp. This was during the finals of one of the CPL events where thousands of players were watching the game live. Can you imagine the exposure nVidia received?

The ability to change gamer tags to incorporate your sponsor is huge.

Image matters

Sponsors will associate with organizations that project a certain image that they are trying to appeal to. Be mindful of the targeted demographic that they are trying to reach. Be mindful of any negative or abusive language. Adjust your tone so that it falls in line with what your ideal sponsors are looking for.

Case study: Capcom and Tekken

There was an incident several years ago when rampant trash talking between two competitors during a match resulted in one of them dropping out. Miranda forfeited due to mental distress from the verbal abuse that Aris was delivering. Penny Arcade had an excellent editorial piece (post since removed) about some of that verbal abuse. I pulled off a double take when that same individual then said that “The sexual harassment is part of the culture [and] if you remove that from the fighting game community, it’s not the fighting game community”. While I don’t know if there was any fallout after those comments were made, I’m pretty sure potential sponsors would be wary of associating with any organizations with that type of mentality.

Measure it

Make sure you have a way to help your sponsors measure any positive benefits. Can’t attract any sponsors unless they can determine how well the exposure is doing them for them. One such example would be a customized link which tracks how many referrals came from your site and how many of those referrals signed up for a product or service.

If you were on stream, take a snapshot of the number of people that happened to watch you live or make a note of the number of views a video that featured you had. You need quantifiable information in order to justify having a productive relationship with your sponsors. When we send a player to attend a tournament, we need to evaluate the event in question and see if it makes sense for us. Sending a player to a tournament with 50 competitors doesn’t make sense, but sending a player to one with 500 players matters because we have the potential to attract more eyeballs for roughly the same amount of investment (the travel costs).

When you work on a contractual agreement with yourself and a sponsor, make sure you list everything measurable that you can do for them. Examples could include:

  • 5 tweets per week
  • 2 shoutouts per stream
  • 3 mentions on Instagram within 4 weeks
  • A video talking about your experience with their product or event

Look out for them

Your job is to ensure that your sponsors are taken care of. Help them out with whatever they need. Make sure you deliver on the terms that you have agreed upon. Cultivate those long term relationships. Get and provide feedback on what worked and what didn’t. If you’re running an event such as a tournament, invite them out again next year while the whole ordeal remains in the front of their minds.

Most importantly, remember to thank them!

Good luck in your efforts!