Random Ramblings to 24 April 2010

Cascading failure
A failure of a system where one component's failure causes a chain-reaction failure of other components. A system bearing a load is susceptible to this type of failure, where an overloaded component shifts its load to other components upon its individual failure. In an electrical grid, a cascading failure occurs when a transformer's failure requires the other transformers to bear the electrical load, increasing the chance that one of those transformers will also fail due to overloading.

Where the components are fully interconnected and handle a fixed load, the per-component load trend is a rectangular hyperbola. This signifies that the per-component load increases at an increasing rate as components fail. As a result, the chance of any individual component's failing also increases at an increasing rate.

A graph illustrating a cascading failure in a World of Warcraft boss encounter. The trend is a rectangular hyperbola.

WoW Mathematics: Sharing the (DPS) load

In any (conventional) boss encounter, a certain number of damage dealers (dps) need to whittle down the boss' health to zero over a certain time period. Barring any extraordinary tinkering by Blizzard, the health level remains constant between attempts.

This fixed DPS burden needs to be shared between all dps. I will examine the DPS burden per dps and how it changes with the number of dps that happen to die during the encounter.

Summary:

• Given a total DPS burden (total raid DPS) of D and a total number of dps of d, the average DPS burden per dps B, where x players are dead, is B = ^D/_{d - x}.
  

Insanity: The Yogg-Saron Soundtrack

I am surprised as to the number of songs written and sung about the mental state, and how diverse in musical style that collection is. This inspired me to compile a selection of those songs into an alternative soundtrack for the Yogg-Saron encounter in Ulduar.

Since actually mixing a full track would require me to pay royalties (and my disk jockey (DJ) skills are rudimentary), I will simply describe it. I will first present the entire list, then attach some commentary after it for those interested in the reasons for my choices.

The playlist

• Phase 1: Flo Rida, Ke$ha 2009, 'Right Round', R.O.O.T.S., Atlantic Recording Corporation, track 5.
• Start of Phase 2: Lady Gaga 2008, 'LoveGame', The Fame, Interscope Records, track 2.

My Computer and I: Fumbling in the Dark

My desktop is a 3-year-old Dell Dimension 8400. It was high-end at the time it was bought, but regardless is starting to show its age. I have upgraded some of its parts since then to keep playing World of Warcraft bearable, but of course it will need to be replaced eventually.

I have had my share of computer problems with my current computer (not suggesting that Dell is necessarily a poor computer assembler, mind you). Other than high school computing studies, I have had no formal training in maintaining a computer, so I usually need to end up experimenting when something goes wrong. Without further ado...

The Problem:
My LCD display suddenly stopped working. The screen went blank, even though the tower still seemed to be running.

Reused Boss Mechanics

All boss encounters as respective wholes are unique, although there are several cases of encounters sharing mechanics. From a computer programming perspective, it is good practice when mechanics that work are adopted again and incorporated in a future encounter.

A veteran player might notice this over the time they have been playing. In fact, while they have progressed through World of Warcraft's many raids, they may have noticed the following commonalities...

The Healer's Skills Record

In my adolescence, I went to swimming lessons. I would learn various swimming skills and the instructor would keep track of my progress. At the end of the program, I received a certificate, overleaf a checklist of the skills being assessed. Ticked were the skills I managed to master, and unticked were the ones I still need to work on.

The listed skills were also sorted according to difficulty. In the above example, from easiest to hardest, the categories are Red, Yellow, Green and Blue. There was also a note that continual practice was needed to maintain mastery of the skills learnt.

Like swimming, the responsibility of providing healing to a group requires the mastery of several skills. Like swimming, some skills are more difficult than others. And like swimming, being a good healer requires continuous practice, not only to maintain current proficiency, but also improve on it. In the spirit of the above example, I have prepared a checklist of the many skills a healer needs in order to heal well. It assesses the following general criteria:

WoW Mathematics: Destructive Shadow interference

During the Blood Prince Council encounter in Icecrown Citadel, players may find a number of Dark Nuclei floating around. These are vital for the tank tanking Prince Keleseth, for they each offer a stacking Shadow damage reduction. Against conventional wisdom, this damage reduction stacks multiplicatively, so full immunity cannot be achieved from a stack of three (as is the case with additive stacking).

Aim: To calculate the damage taken from Empowered Shadow Lance at a particular level of Shadow Resonance.

Summary:

• With Shadow Resonance of an order of a stack of n, the Keleseth tank will take 80,000(0.65)ⁿ damage from an Empowered Shadow Lance.