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.

Optimising the Blizzard Default UI

Some people play World of Warcraft using user interface (UI) mods. These AddOns change how unitframes, actionbars, the chat frame, scrolling combat text and screen fonts are displayed on the screen, usually by making them more streamline and compact. They do away with the clunkiness of the ornamentation that is in the default UI.

However, these addons are usually highly intertwined with the WoW program code, and often stop working as intended when the game client is changed with a content patch. Players usually become very accustomed to playing the game using a narrow set of controls, and become very frustrated when they have to do without their UI mods, spoiling their virgin dungeon or raid experience.

Some other people would rather avoid such disappointment and leave their UI mostly unadulterated. Of course, others may find a joy or challenge in playing the game in the way Blizzard intended them to play it, with an elaborate and ornate UI complementing the vibe of the playing field. For whichever reason people play the game through the Blizzard default UI, there are still ways to make handling the character easier under it.

Random Ramblings to 31 January 2010

Acetylcholine
A chemical in the body which transmits messages between a neuron and the nearby cells (a neurotransmitter). Its presence will signal muscles to contract. Nerve agents prevent its breakdown, causing muscles (including those in the heart and lungs) to contract uncontrollably. Atropine, the toxin of deadly nightshade and an antidote of nerve agents, prevents cells from detecting acetylcholine, causing muscles to relax uncontrollably at high doses. Its chemical formula is C₇H₁₆NO₂.

The skeletal formula for acetylcholine.

Resources and Their Sources

Accounting is a practice that allows someone (or something, in the case of an organisation), the accounting entity, to keep track of their economic and financial details. It involves accounting for their economic resources, as well as the sources from which they are obtained.

In early accounting practice, businesses would keep separate lists of their resources and sources. It was soon discovered that both can be linked. Thus came double-entry accounting, where every transaction that is recorded would recognise both and implicitly relate the two together.

All accounting entities strive to accumulate resources, while being careful of how they finance them. Those resources help to satisfy the accounting entity’s economic wants by providing economic benefits.

Components of Latency

Latency (in computer networking) is the amount of time that passes between connected computer's sending an instruction to a server and its receiving of a response from it. In an MMO like World of Warcraft, it greatly affects how much a player enjoys the game. In a raiding scenario, a delay of more than 500ms (half of one second) is usually considered unacceptable.

While network latency is a significant component of the total delay, it is not the only one. In any case where signals need to be sent from one physical place to another, a time delay will exist, no matter how short the link or how fast the signals can travel.

Five reasons to like Moonkin

World of Warcraft's portrayals of things are noticeably cartoony when compared to real life equivalents. Moonkin (also known as owlbears) and druids in Moonkin Form are no different, being any combination of cute, adorable, cuddly, pitiable and likeable.

1. Wide abdomen
Much like the bear, the moonkin has a wide profile. Also, much like the owl, the moonkin is covered with soft, fluffy feathers. These appeals to the hugger's touch.