World of Matticus

What an eventful week. In the past, I discussed the value of having a raider orientation for the veterans and new trials joining your raid. We held ours this past weekend on Saturday. Anyway, here’s a small roundup of my thoughts before we jump into Delves and Mythic zero dungeons.

• Orientation Day: The energy in the room felt good. Even being on Discord, I could tell there were hints of quiet anticipation and eagerness in the air. This might be the most prepared we’ve been in a while. We covered the usual expectations and went through some early film of all the raid bosses, plus how we intend to handle specific boss mechanics.
• Roster: We’re standing pat at 27 players confirmed with an additional player as 1 day trials (walk-on trials) to see what they’re made of. Both of those players were referred and recommended to us but the raid experience isn’t at the level we’re expecting so this is a way for us to gauge what their ceiling would be and what their raid fundamentals are. I have a future post planned to address how to handle applicants who are referred to us by players on the team. We’re still looking for some more DPS players, though! This has been a great team though as I’m fortunate enough to raid with players where I’m okay playing with everyone. In some previous raid groups, there were people I would just flat-out avoid socializing with, but I don’t have that impression here.
• Nerub-ar Palace: Went through normal and the first five bosses on heroic on day 1. Day 2 saw us knock out the next 2 bosses (Broodtwister and Silken Court). On Queen, we were able to get to first intermission with most of the raid up before we succumbed. Some of these later bosses do instill FPS issues for me but that’s also because I have a 6 year old PC.
  • Broodtwister: Great healing encounter. So much to do. Might be in the running for the Rashok of the tier.
  • Silken Court: Similar feeling, and there’s definitely a lot going on here. Communication is important here and we had a few players with audio issues that didn’t realize it (Spikes, or poison). Had a heartbreaking 0.55% wipe early on and our newly minted Blood Death Knight could not solo it at the end.
  • Queen Ansurek: Great end boss encounter on normal. Much more accessible then previous tiers, I thought. The tuning and balance team knocked it out of the part here. On heroic, it’s quite a big step up. The first phase is the hardest part of the encounter for sure. Much of our efforts was trying to balance the knockups. We opted for overlapping venn diagrams for the two green circles and having the raid stand in between them. Harder intial learning curve, but we believe it’ll help us out more on the long run.
• Dungeons: With the Mythic season opening up soon, this was a great week to get a feel of all the different dungeons. There’s no real dungeon that I’m dreading.
  • Grim Batol: I like the changes to it. Wish the bombing run part was longer, but I understand why it was shortened. Last boss is a doozy and took us a bit to figure out. I wish the safe zone was a few yards wider. It’s a tight fit for a panda.
  • Mists: I miss this place. It’s like comfort food.
  • Siege of Boralus: Mixed feelings about it, but overall not too annoyed at it yet. First boss is a bit of a challenge for players who’ve never played during this time and aren’t familiar with how it works with the explosives.
• Priest play: I need to get my Prayer of Mending numbers up. I used to have a Sonar ping when it was off cooldown but it was disabled and I forgot to re-enable it. I’ve gotten a little better on Fade usage, and I also need to be more liberal with my Desperate Prayer usage. Pretty satisfied with week 1 healing though on the Holy Priest. Lightweaver spec is the way to go right now and I never thought I’d say this, but I do miss Lightwell. I had grown accustomed to it from last tier.
• Delves: Bit of a yo-yo experience here where the Delves were buffed to an extreme high where groups couldn’t proceed as easily as they could earlier in the week when Tier 8 Delves opened. Then Blizzard rebalanced it back. I’d like to see an extra life per player per checkpoint added though. The damage and health pools of the mobs are fine at this point but extra learning chances would make them more forgiving at the +8 level.
• Exploit bans: This one regarding the renown ban seemed a bit too heavy-handed. Our community was affected as we had players who were issued temporary bans because they had linked accounts amongst different family members. None of them were overturned so they lost out on some playing time. I don’t agree with that ban, but I would’ve gone for delayed rewards and had them not activate for another week or two if the players had over some arbitrary number of Renown (like over 17).

Thanks for taking the time to read and I hope you have great Mythic+ week! If you’re still looking for a team to raid with, you can learn more about us on our Raider IO page and apply using the form link in the profile.

I’m still alive!

My first question after early access weekend was: What year is it?

As usual, I was the first raider on the team to hit max level once early access opened up. It took me 7 hours on the dot, and I cleaned out all of the primary Campaign quests. Levelling as the shadow was great despite everything quick before my dot spells could even kick in. I felt partially useless even running dungeons at level 80 because everything died fast.

After the Priest, I levelled another 5 more characters to 80. There wasn’t much else to do during that period since heroic dungeons weren’t open then. That stacking experience from having alts is great for this.

Real quick impressions (Alts)

• Frost Mage: Frostfire feels fun and visually satisfying but seems to be lacking in firepower. Spellslinger feels a bit clunky. It almost feels like it’s conflicting against itself, and I can’t seem to articulate why.
• Retribution Paladin: Templar is great. Packs a big punch and is also fun. I feel like a justice-dispensing freight train.
• Ele Shaman: Far Seer is the choice for levelling. Shifted to Stormbringer for dungeons, it is a fiesta of Chain Lightning and Earthquakes.
• Dev Evoker: Challenging. Wasn’t the most responsive or fun. I flew off the ledge with a Deep Breath, trying to steer. Can’t seem to corner worth a damn.
• Fur Warrior: Surprisingly enjoyable. Needs a better bind setup on my side. Hurts my fingers after prolonged play.

After I levelled my arsenal of alts, I still had another day of early access and cleaned the map of all side quests. Finished my loremaster achievements (Sojourner).

All in all, it was a great levelling experience. I was pleasantly surprised that there were no server issues during the leveling and questing process. Stormrage did happen to go down for a bit during general release (and somehow, I dodged that by being in a dungeon or something). Unfortunately, the auction house was under immense load and strain during the first week so that made it harder to get professions going or to make gold. Thankfully, it looks like much of that has been resolved and the throttling that was put in place has been lifted.

But aside from that, maybe… just maybe, Blizzard’s starting to get their fastball back.

The Warband feature has been stellar. Alts can farm on quests that offer gear and I can still get the Renown rep from them.

I’ll devote a separate post to the Profession Patron system since it warrants its own discussion.

On the guild side of things, we’ve had a few departures and we thank all the players who have contributed to our squad’s success over the course of Dragonflight. Our roster currently stands at 25 players, and here are our current needs:

• Elemental Shaman
• Shadow Priest
• Warrior DPS
• Havoc Demon Hunter
• Aug Evoker

As always, Mythic and CE experience is greatly valued. If you’re interested, you can learn more about us and apply from our Raider IO page (Look for the recruiting form link).

I don’t know where it went, but my excitement for The War Within has been virtually non-existent.

We’re hours away from the new expansion (early access). I’ve got my shopping all done for levelling (heavy protein build), my routes figured out, and I even hit the gym and did some yoga this morning to start the day.

For reasons I can’t seem to explain, though, I am just not feeling that excited or hyped for it. I’m not sure if that’s a product of having played such a long time or if there aren’t many aspects of the game I’m looking forward to besides the raids. For me, hype levels were often influenced by two factors: Story or Stuff (like systems).

In Wrath, it was Arthas.
In Cataclysm, it was Deathwing.
In Warlords, it was Garrisons (that might’ve been a miss).
In Legion, it was Artifacts and Order Halls.
In Battle for Azeroth, it was Kul’Tiras.
In Shadowlands, it was legendaries and Torghast (Yeah…)

The hype meter was most off the charts heading into Legion. The artifact weapons and the order halls were aspects I anticipated greatly. Battle for Azeroth had all these borrowed power systems (which wasn’t as fun), but we finally got to visit Kul’Tiras, which had been missing forever. As a Warcraft 2 gamer, Kul’Tiras was always a place in the back of my mind that I’d always wanted to visit if I ever got the opportunity to do it. I didn’t feel much hypeness heading into Dragonflight largely because I thought their story concluded nicely at the end of Cataclysm. I feel a similar notion heading into The War Within. Maybe the agency isn’t quite there yet and it might take time for all of it to build up and crescendo into a payoff.

Come to think of it, we’ve visited and pulled upon every story and character beat since Warcraft 2 and Warcraft 3. That might be where my malaise is coming from because we’re entering a new phase in the Warcraft-verse where the lore is now all new since there aren’t many ties remaining to the Warcraft 3 era any longer.

I guess I don’t feel as invested in the story right now. Clearly the solution is to get a Warcraft 4 RTS going now.

In any case, with Xal’atath taking over as the Big Bad Evil Blade for the next arc.

I’m intrigued! As a Priest, she’s always held a special place in my (dark) heart. We’ve had many good conversations over the years. She was always my Jarvis when I was questing and killing bosses.

But hey, the day is finally here, and we’re hours away from early access. My plan is to level my primary Priest first, then Shaman, Paladin, Mage, and Evoker. After that, maybe the rest of my Priests (for cloth cooldowns). Two weeks to get the arsenal of alts up to a readiness level will be plenty of time.

Enjoy the journey!

I missed out on the last few rounds of voting unfortunately, but it was a fun branding exercise. After all the meme names and inside jokes, the team settled on Eclipse as being the new raid going forward. I’m a fan of it. It’s a two-syllable word, and it rolls off the tongue quite well. Besides, some of the world’s top guilds have two-syllable names so they’re in quite good company (like Liquid, Echo, Method, Skyline)!

Apparently, the votes were pretty close. The final round was between Last Pull and Eclipse as the new name going forward.

Naming a guild is actually one of the harder things to do. You don’t want it to be serious, but just the right amount of serious so that your players can be proud of wearing that guild tag. If it’s too much meme (or cringe, as the kids say), you might not be able to attract quality talent and personality. That’s why congratulations to this group of gamers because Eclipse is a great name (and it inspires a pretty simple, straightforward logo design to boot).

As some of you may be aware, I am currently a part of a large Warcraft community called DJ’s and Zeroes to Heroes. We have multiple raid teams at varying degrees of progression. The raid team formerly known as Team Salt is undergoing a rebrand. The team had the opportunity to make suggestions and then – get this – it will be voted upon in a single elimination, best-of-1 bracket. This may well be the most important democratic race this year!

Round 1 has finished, and now let’s see who has survived and advanced to the second round! We’ll start with the top half of the bracket.

Team Benched squares off against round 1 challenger, Team Last Pull. This one’s going to be a tight race, as both names are pretty indicative of the squad in general. I’m a big fan of Team Last Pull in this situation. It really is only fitting that Last Pull would win out by a vote or something. I hope they take that one and move into the Semi’s!

Prediction: Team Last Pull

Team Dumpster Fire would be waiting in the wings for it’s next challenger, and it’s Team Pepper. This one’s not going to be a significant contest. Team Dumpster Fire will easily overtake Team Pepper here just by virtue of what it symbolically represents: An actual dumpster fire. Has this team been a dumpster fire at times? Oh definitely it has felt that way at some points. Will it shake off that reputation? Probably not.

Prediction: Team Dumpster Fire

Now let’s check out the bottom half of the bracket.

Now we have the safe pick of Eclipse against Guild Level Zeroes. Will Eclipse take it? I hope so. It just sounds cooler in comparison. I’m giving Guild Level Zeroes a zero chance of advancing forward.

Prediction: Eclipse

Our final matchup involves… Mankrik’s Wives? Hmm, they might have a chance against Ouroboros. This one could go either way as well. How many wives does Mankrik even have? Will there be enough to overcome and overwhelm Ouroboros?

Prediction: Ouroboros

Only two more rounds left!