The Plaguechill blog has existed for quite some time, with varying degrees of blog update frequency. As we move into ICC I wanted to do something to make the site worth visiting as well as get my hands dirty up in this here blog.

My solution? The Plaguechill Diaries.

The first two categories will be Game Spotlight and WoW Hightlights.

Game Spotlight this will be a semi-weekly topic discussing games you may not have heard of already. This weeks topic will be LostWinds: Winter of the Melodias, a Wiiware game that surpasses it’s predecessor. This topic will only cover games I’ve personally played so most games will be for the PC, while some are for the Wii or older systems, frankly you already know how awesome Modern Warfare 2 is, I don’t need to talk about it anyway.

WoW Highlights will be weekly, possibly more frequently depending on options. In this segment I’ll be discussing interesting things from guildchat, Khadgar or WoW in general. This will beyound “Patch 3.x came out today” and should include something you can’t find elsewhere. If you have any interesting personal adventures you’d like to share and have show up on the blog, you can always email me at hymn@plaguechill.com

Expect the first Game Spotlight later today, as well as WoW Highlights throughout this week!

Fire is bad. It hurts a lot and more often than not will kill you. Worse than that, if you fail at it, it pisses off your healers, your raid leader, and your raid members and frankly it can make you pretty mad at yourself.

When I talk about fire, do I really mean literally fire? No. I’m talking about the targeted Area of Effect (AoE) damage which dictates movement in a great deal of boss encounters, raid or otherwise. When a Shadow Fissure erupts and kills you, you should have been able to get out of it and claiming “Lag” will only get you so far.

So now that we know what I’m talking about, what’s the first step to living through these awful nuisances and continuing on your path to success? Seeing them.

The easiest way to know you’re in danger is to be able to watch the ground you’re standing on. Anything completely lethal will give you a heads up before it hits you, and for anything that deals heavy damage while you stand in it, the sooner you see it the sooner you’re out of it. Learning your rotation and training yourself to pry your eyes from your UI so that you can be aware of the world around you is a difficult skill but it can be honed with practice. If you’re wholly concerned with your DPS or your Healing or your Threat, you’re probably at risk of death, and in reality you’re going to do a lot more of any of those if you stay alive.

Of course tricks exist to improve on this scenario to give you a leg up on concentration.

1.) User Interface Add-ons

There’s a couple of tips concerning these, the most obvious to start with is Deadly Boss Mods, there’s a few others like them, I’d put my money on DBM most days of the week however. Often when you are in danger DBM will have a preset sound to warn you verbally.

Another is a tip, not a mod. Don’t clutter your screen, make sure your character’s feet are visible and don’t have a bunch of junk drawing your eyes to the corners of your screen. It’s difficult finding a balance and spending a few hours on this can reward you exponentially.

Having a Raid UI like Grid is another great idea, it will show you who’s near you, if you’re out of range of your healers, who’s alive, about to die and dead and with a little configuration it will tell you who has important debuffs.

The final tip for this section is FOCUS, and while you should be focused, I’m talking about the UI command /focus. Often a boss will target the person it’s about to spit fire at, and this can give you the time needed to completely avoid damage and that earns brownie points with your healers and your raid leader.

2.) Communication

You can’t be everywhere, you can’t know everything. This might come as a shock to some, but it’s true. Organized, successful communication over your Voice over IP (VoIP) software can increase your entire raids survivability. Designating a few people to do the talking is a good idea, because too much chatter and no one’s hearing anything useful. I can attest, however, to the usefulness of the words “Flame Tsunami Left Side.”

Okay so let’s say you’ve put in the effort to improve your concentration and awareness, you’ve got a great dedicated raid team helping on vent and you’re UI is clutter free and streamlined for raiding. You’re almost positive you’ll see that fissure now, but do you have an exit strategy?

How you escape the area where doom awaits is as important as noticing it in the first place.

I’m sure it will come as no surprise that the first thing on my list is don’t back out of it. I’m going to repeat that. Do not back out. Everyone knows you move slower backing up and it’s never the best way out. Now what may come as a bigger surprise is that this is only one of the poor choices of how to escape the fire.

Because your character moves on your screen and then communicates with Blizzards server to move for everyone else and in reference to the game environment there is indefinitely some measure of lag for the server to actually update that you moved. There is a way of increasing the duration between updates to the server and there is a way to cut down on it.

When your character jumps, you move through the air and it is generally slightly more interesting than running. Unfortunately World of Warcraft is not Die Hard, and that fancy jump maneuver is not very effective. It turns out the server will not update your position until you’ve landed, which means if you’re cutting it close as it is, it will be your corpse landing at your destination instead of you. In contrast; when you strafe (sidestep) the server will update much more quickly than even normal walking. This is by far the safest way to exit any AoE.

This brings me to my last point and that is a very simple one. Never rotate using your keyboard and then run. Ideally you want to turn using your mouse’s right-click function; this will give you split second turn speed and allow for easy strafing without much finger dancing. If you’re against binding your spells to your keyboard and use your mouse to click them, practice staffing effectively with a turning button, rather than wasting precious moments turning on the spot.

Many of us have officially entered the slump between content, I myself am raiding two nights a week getting people odd achievements and spend the rest of my week talking on vent with friends, leveling a Mage alt, and playing Gunbound. This few week stint of stir-crazy boredom-filled lameness has got everyone chomping at the bit. There’s more drama than usual all around the World (of Warcraft) and I can’t help but wonder if more people need to take a step back from the game, wait the two or three weeks till new content and take up bike-riding.

And while I don’t have much more interesting to say, I am going to stream me leveling my mage for awhile if you’re actually THAT bored.

Watch It!

Update: I’ve stopped broadcasting