You wouldn't believe the pain involved in sorting out site content to be google friendly ! 

In an attempt to promote the combat log parsing system I'm creating for Star Wars : The Old Replublic I've been trying to improve my search engine rankings. Anyone who has been folowing recent blogs posts, will realise that I'm aiming to provide collected combat log data via in-game combat meters (think recount in WoW) and also provide a real-time and historic analysis of the parsed data via a web site (hosted at www.swtorcombatlogs.com). 

Simple I here you all cry. Well no it isn't........

for examle "swtor combat logs" puts me no where to be seen but "swtor real time combat logs" puts me on the first page (at the bottom admitidly but at least on the first page)

I'm still far from understanding all that I need to do to make google recognise my site for the specific search phrases that are important to being able to find the site. Thankfully I have a friend who has been through this pain barrier in a previous employment and right now I'm picking his brain on the best way to go about this. I'm learning about correct document structure, the correct usage of <H1>,<H2>,<H3> links, <A> tags "title" and "alt" attributes etc, correct and sensible phrase and word inclusion in the meta tags. I have this thing called "deep linking" to worry about also - whatever that is... 

I've set my self up a couple of "social network" presences also to encourage people fo find me, like me, follow me and comment on me, so despite my scepticisum regarding social nerworks I'm now on facebook, twittering on twitter and even got a dedicated development blog. So, if any of you regular or returning readers or feeling in a nice mood please feel free to like me, folow me and comment on my blogs and link to my sites at every opertunity to help boost my rankings.

I haven't died - honest. But where have I been for over 12 months ? I somtimes wonder my self what I have been upto for that period as it seems to have flown by on all fronts. Currently I'm in a Galaxy Far Far Away swinging light sabres and shooting big guns at droids, and yes these are the droids I want. But how did i get there ? Well, on WoW we continued to raid and have great fun through Cataclysm through Firelands and into the final encounter with Deathwing - though sadly I never made it to Deathwing himself as packed up my space ship and left for different environs.

I was always planning to give Star Wars : The Old Republic a try and see how things went, and i was hoping for much better that the last Sci-Fi MMO spin off i tried; Star Trek : Online, which frankjly I found a huge disappointement being a Trek fan and an MMO player neither of those interestes/passions was fulfilled by STO in any shape or form, and while I'm told that they have improved the gaming experience of Star Trak Online I have not been, not plan to go back for another disappointing visit. So with that experience in mind i was hoping tht SWToR would not lead to the same disappointments and I signed up for beta testing. 

I was accepted into beta testing for a 30 day slot and June 2011 became the descision point for my near future MMO gaming. From the start I loved SWToR and still do. Yes it has it's drawback, bugs and defficiences, and no it isn't as polished or popular as WoW but right now it's offering my immense entertainment. A few of my WoW guild transfered across to SWToR and we are progressing nicely through current end game content while still enjoying leveling new characters and experiencing new story lines. And I sincerely hope that it remains this way, with the other guild members retaining the enjoyment and pleasure i get from the game. Sadly we have already seen several of our "Guild Founders" fall by the way-side and leave the game, I miss these players but wich them well where ever they have gone, be it back to WoW or on to different games. But to offset this we have also picked up a few brande new faces to help swell our numbers, though we do need to grow a little more yet to maintain the lively chat and banter of /g that can be lacking on the quiet days.

But play-time is not all this game has brought this time round. SWToR as a game is currently not mod-able in any way, unlike the massive way the WoW was, appart from grumbling form parts of the community this has also lead to a lack of anyform of the dreaded "dps" meters. In patch 1.2 (the last content patch) Bio Ware introduced a feature to the game where the combat data could be written out to file for parsing by other programs and subsequent analysis. This sounded like fun, and as an excercise in programing and web site building I thought I'd give it a go to try and create a system to read and analyse the Bio Ware provided combat log data and provide a form of in-game damage meter and healing meter and group meter and various combinations og combat data meters, I also decided it would be fun to play with one of the HTML5 technologis, Web Sockets, and build a website to view these "live feeds" as well as hitroicaly analyse and view previously stored combat log data. So in-between gaming and hitting things with light sabres (glowing sticks to the un-initiated) I have been spending vast amounts of my waking hours (and those I should have been asleep) creating my Combat Log Parser system.

I'm not going to bore readers of this blog with all the minor details - suffice to say here is a couple of screen shots of the in-game meters I have created and the web site showing a live feed, both shots showing damage and dps meters and ability breakdown meters. 

My progress specificaly with the combat log parsing and analysis systems can be followed on twitter @ swtorlogs, also I have created a page on the dreaded facebook to keep people updated of happenings in the swtorlogs.eu world, this face bookpage is the place to look, Also there is a blog specific to the development of swtorcombatlogs.com which will follow my adventures and frustrations of combat loig data pparsing. Please like me on facebook, follow me on twitter and check out the swtrocombatlogs.com blog.

And of course the official website can be found at www.swtorcobatlogs.com (or.eu) (or if you want to type a few less characters www.swtorlogs.eu), and ginally I'll try and be a little more diligent with updates so do come back......

All our hard work payed off last night, after 53 brutal wipes we fianally got it all together and downded our first real raid boss. Magmaw in Blackwing descent is now dead. Congratulations to all the KLF that helped achieve this cataclysm milestone. We even managed it with the achievement Parasite Evening. Waramataig also manged to pick up a new chest, Breastplate of Avenging Flame which will keep her going untill I can get multiple teir items and have to worry about set bonuses, I was sooooo close to crafting the healing chest on my BS and sending it across, I'm so glad I didn't squander 3 Chaos Orb and I can now craft the more usefull tanking chest (Hardened Elementium Hauberk) for Skarge.

Fifty Three wipes on one raid boss, now that sounds like a lot of wipes, and it felt like it too, but putting it in perspective, it was only our 3rd raid evening so we downed him in less than 3 vists which is a great improvement on the number of times and hours we spent on that damn dragon in ICC (I still have nightmares about that). So this combined with the fact that the Cataclysm raids are not supposed to be walks in the park and are meant to be challenging and very different in style to the WotLK raids I think that killing the boss on our 3rd visit was a very commendable event for the KLF. If nothing it is teaching us that more thought has to go into the raid encounters, we have to be more carfull about how the helaers heal, how the DPS dps and how the raid generally positions itself and behaves to maximize our chances of succedding.

So with Magmaw dead off we went to try our hand at the Omnitorn Defence System, but this was no success and we have posponed his death until our Sunday raid, lets just say "Teabaging and Worms", shudder - thats a story best left for the dark resecces of TS..........

I am A Raider!

On the Thirteenth Day of Christmas The KLF sent to me, A boss still alive at 13%......

The guild have now officialy started Cataclysm raiding, and last night marked our first sojourn into Blackwing Descent to face the brave new world of harder raids and fight mechanincs with a very different emphasis on how tanks,healers and dps interact. While our first evening in BD was not a total success as we failed to down any bosses and spent the evening wiping on Magmaw. 23 wipes and our best shot was 13%.

This is a very very unforgiving fight for healers and positioning, the AoE healing that has to be done to keep people alive during the Lava Spew is a killer. That coupled with the huge damage the tank takes during the mangle, and after the slump phase (we ran with 1 tank so he had the armor debuff) means that the raid healing is effectively up to our 2 other healers once we enter the mangle, which puts a huge load on them. That coupled with some issues with video settings (Projected textures and particle density) and our "timer/warning" addons not telling people about the Flame Pillar resulting in many mishaps with people getting hit by this and the spawning parasites just made the AoE healing task harder. This was a wakeup fight for us healers, both interms of healing output and mana regen, while the fight does allow for a "regen" phase for healers to replenish some mana this phase is sufficently short to mean we still have to be carefull with our mana expenditure, and wild use of our bir mana draining AoE heals will see us oom way before the end of the fight, or even before the next slump phase for a chance to regen again.

So Magmaw still lives, we did take a quick break to go marmalise Argaloth in Baradin hold (got my first Maelstrom Crystal from a drop DE towards the "guild enchant" pool), this break failing to refresh us meant we finished the evening still with no kill and 13% being our best attempt.

All in all it was fun to be back raiding, and raiding in non-trivial content, there are enough raids and raid bosses to keep us going for several months, and as the team matures, learns to work together again and us helaers adjust to the new raid healing model properly we will down the bosses. I'm confident Magmaw will die soon, hopefully on Sunday.

I Am A Raider

Merry Christmass to all you readers and browsers hope Santa brought all you good girls and boys the things you wanted, and all you naughty boys what you deserve (now who was it got the lump of coal.....)

So here we are post the manic running about of the 23rd/24th and post the christmas lull, all feeling a few pounds heavier and dreading when the Turkey Curry will appear on our tables, and nearly 2 weeks since my last post. Things in the holly paladin world of Waramataig have calmed down nicely, and I'm now getting the hang of managing myself in heroics and also coping with those idiots that still try to treat normals as if it were WotLK, I can now keep badly geard level 84s and 85s allive through most stupid pulls they insist on nmaking, though I do continue my crusade to be sensible and use CC when available, and arrogant tanks still find themselves in the middle of a new multi pack pull with no healer .

My heroic grinding is limited to guild only at the moment, and this suits me fine as we are getting some good runs together and as a guild have now got all HCs on farm status (with perhaps only the 2nd boss in The Vortex Pinnacle still causing us any grief). As a result of regular guild runs into HCs and the generosity of our GM waramataig is now sporting a few nice iLevel 359 epic pieces Sun King's Girdle, Lightning Flash Pendant, World Keeper's Gauntlets and Elementium Stormshield with the remaing slots all i346 geared, but I still can;t get my prefered healing cape Solar Wind Cloak which has the haste I want, but to be honest with Gale of Shadows I'm finding my big cast times down to 1.9 seconds (or less with lock haste buffs) which I'm managing fine with, though the second "equip" on this is far from ideal, and with the Solar cloak I could probably remove it, we will continue to grind HoO in the hope it drops.

After my less than smooth start into Cataclysm and HC healing, I'm settling in and analysing a little more my play style and the healing tools available to me, and while still not an expert and with many things to still learn and perfect I'm pretty sure I'm probably geared sufficiently and skilled sufficiently to be able to raid, so here's hoping I get a spot on the guild raid team. But I have noticed a few things about my healing, and also I've been browsing the Holy Paladin forums, and to be honest I'm strugling to work out what alll the Paladin QQing is about after the HoPo "nerf" from a week or two ago, I'm also not convinced that the "stack haste untill your nose bleeds" is the right way to go either.

My style of healing has never been HL spam, even in WotLK I was not a HL Paladin, using primarily shock, flash and beacon to keep my tank alive and still have available heals to toss into the raid occasionaly, so moving into Cataclysm I have no problems with constant Holy Shock and having it never off CD, this in conjunction with Divine Light on my beacon target (currently always the tank) seems to be pretty good at keeping me with 3 stacks of HoPo for when I need it or to toss a mana free heal at someone, and if i'm really desperate I'll go and Crusader Strike the boss (I'm still experimemting with Blessed Life). Stacking haste is also another mute point with me, I'm not yet convinced that for my healing style stacking much beyond where I currently am is a great benefit, with lock bufs and illumination procs I'm not tending to find myself in that "oh my god finsh casting now or the tank dies" state, though I'm still experimenting with more haste. On an AoE healing note, I personaly find LoD at total waist of HoPo and currently the only time I use it is when I'm bored and want to see a pretty animation on the screen or on the first boss in SFK heroic where I make everyone stand infront of me and pop LoD and HR after the strangulate (I'll admit I was very excited about LoD at first but never got the opertunity to use it in anger in cataclysm HCs as they nerfed it just after I made it into HC content, so what I never had I don't miss).

Another stat I'm currently in debate about is Mastery, again the forums seem to be slating it as a stat, but in my limited observations with mastery (i'm not stacking it in anyway at the moment and any I have is luck rather than gear choice). However I did notice that at one point my gear itemisation gave me a mastery of just over 12.8, at this level the healing meters were reporting my absorbs running at 5% of my healing most of the time, and on some specific fights running as high as 10%, currently my mastery is back under 11.0 and my absords seem to be running at about 1 maybe 2% from limited observation of the healing meters, so at first look these figures suggest mastery is currently underrated. I intend to experiment with mastery once i have proved/dis-proved my reliance on haste as a "stack it" stat.

My biggest issue at the moment is still mana conservation, but I am getting better at that, and when grouping with the guild communication between the tank and myself works wonders in managing cooldowns and procs, e.g. when I need to pop Divine Plea communicating this to the tank means he can mitigate damage with CDs while my healing is reduced by 50%, equaly the tank communicating his use od CDs stops me waisting heals when I dont have to eg. "Enraged Regen poped" means I don't waist the Divine Light, Lay on Hands or 3 stacks of HoPo when I dont have to. This communication and me learing more and more about how to paldin heal, combining this with the biggest culture shock of all to me, which is not panicing when my group is below 50% health and going into overdrive healing spam and burning mana like jos sticks at a 1960s festival, have all helped me to manage my mana better and survive as a viable healer for longer.

All in all I currently think all the forum QQ is exactly that, people QQing because things have changed and got a little harder, right now I think paladins are in a very strong position as healers, and the nerf bat will hit us soon and maybe then is the time to QQ but certainly not now. Paladin healing is different now to WotLK, more so for all those Paladins (and I'm talking about 99.9% of them - including the ones in our guild) that stacked int and haste and spamed HL (not me guv, I stacked spellpower/crit and used HS/FoL - a controversial choice at the time but now I'm glad I did as I have less to relearn), and while it may be different we are still power houses of healing, we can still tank heal and we can still raid heal, but we can now raid heal better than before thanks to our new tools and talents.

Even with my aversion to PuGs in Cataclysm I joined up (with much trepidation I will add) with Ven and Dzon for a PuG run into Baradin Hold (BH), ok only 1 boss and relatively easy at that (which is a shame as it will become a loot pinyana puged by every twit out there who will then expect to raid the proper content). The group makeup of the PuG was 3 healers; myself, a priest and a shaman, and for the first two attempts the priest was doing 70% of the dispells (according to recount), with me next on the dispell list. During these 2 attempts my healing/absorbs output was more than double the output of either the priest or the shaman, and in the final attempt where the priest was replaced with another shaman and all the dispeling was down to me my healing was still 1/3 as much again as the 2 shamans. This is not me bragging, this is me re-enforcing the fact that Paladins are in very very strong position, and that if a mediocre healer like myself can output healing numbers like that while still learning how to play the class properly then it is only a matter of time before Blizzard make some changes. In the meantime I'm quite contented as a Paladin healer and will enjoy it while I can, and when it changes I'll adapt (hopefuilly without any QQing)

Healing is now about many things, not just spaming a spell or two. It's about the group, it's about avoiding damage when you can, it's about mitigation, it's about the irght spell at the right time, it's about resource managment (mana, CDs trinkets etc), and most importantly for onward raid progression it's about communicatiuon and team work....

I AM a Healer ..... and.....

I Am A Raider (I hope)

Random is defined as :-

Having no particular pattern, purpose, organization, or structure: chance, desultory, haphazard, hit-or-miss, indiscriminate, spot, unplanned

Lets put a few of those next to the "LFG" tool in Cataclysm Instances : no organisation, haphazard, hit-or-miss, unplanned, chance, indiscriminate.

Everyone of those fits, And I'm now seeing it more and more as we progress into Cataclysm. I refuse to PuG heroics and have done for several days now, I just don't want the agrovation of it being "the healers fault", Cataclysm is very very different and should be treated as such, this is no longer WotLK where we can face roll everything.

The laughable thing is I'm talking about these stupid behaviours in normal dungeons not heroics, as I've taken to grinding normal dungeons for reputation for and enchanting materials. As it happens this is a much faster way to gain rep and materials when I can complete a random normal in significantly less time than coping with a random HC where you spend 3 hours wiping on a boss to gain zero rep and zero loot. I'm frequently finding myself in a level 85 normal random with a tank that's got less than 90k health and tries to tank it without any form of CC and no consideration that after I've just saved us from a wipe on a 5 mob pull in HoO that I do not have enough mana to do the same again on the next pack that he charges off for, and don;t even get me started on the DPS that stand in land mine radius or close to a Shadow Lancer that the tank has failed to have CCd, or in a damge dealing ring round a boss in the shadow world, and for gods sake the puddles are big and blue/purple can't you see them....

Frankly this mentality has to stop, and after last night I'm now starting my own little campaign to try and promote proper instancing and remove the WotLK mentality, though I also think it is far more ingrained than simply "we can face roll this like Wrath", I'm also coming to the conclusion that the arrogance and elitist attitude of players in today's WoW is partly to blame, but that's another post. So what am I doing myself to stop this, well in summary I ran 3 normal randoms last night around our guild heropic runs (which is the only way I will currently run heroics - yay for the guild), and it went like this.....

Act 1 : Scene 1 : Grim Batol.

(After the first few trash packs and first boss, no wipes, but me burning mana like mad and using every mana regen trick I know)

Me : (to Druid tank) It might be an idea if we used some CC in here, it would be great practice for you when you get to heroic mode.

Tank: Yeah, good idea.

Scene 2 : (20 mins later) : Remaing 3 bosses downed no wipes and no stressed healer and a happy tank and dps.

Act 2 : Scene 1 : HoO.

(Standing looking at first pack of mobs in HoO, and as we all know even on normal this particular pack is no cake walk, especialy when my tank has 89KHP and is in half greens)

Me  : (to warrior tank, we also had hunter and mage) You going to use any CC here ?

(Tank charges in, I heal like mad nearly go oom but keep us all alive)

(Tank then condescends to answer me)

Tank : I'm a warrior I don't have CC

(I leave the group......)

Act 3: Scene 1 : HoO (Again)

(Tank charges in like a nutter before I even have chance to type anything)

(I heal like mad and burn 85% of my mana keeping us alive)

Me :  (to tank after the fight, bearing in mind he is already running up the ramp) Could we please use some CC in here we have 2 CC classes

(Tank pauses, turns to look at me, turns back to group on ramp and charges at them).

( I wait for him to be solidly engaged and with agro on all the mobs, and leave......)

I shall continue this crusade against the idiots, one paladin may not change Azeroth but I'll chuckle trying 

I am a healer in re-training on a mission.

As promised I was "Back Saturday" the 4th, this was the pre-cataclysm launch Saturday and It was intended for me to get my character talents trained, all my addons sorted out and basic prep for the big launch of the expansion. I must admit I was a little anxious about my return to Azeroth as I'd been gone a while and many things change quickly in Azeroth and the Khadgar Liberation Front. I wondered if I'd be a stranger or a returning long lost friend. Needless to say any worries I had about being a stranger or feeling uncomertable in a newer KLF were totaly unfounded and it was like settling back into the warm embrace of a well loved arm chair and I was feeling right at home very quickly feeling happy to be back amongst my fellow KLF members. Thanks all for the welcome back.

So about the launch : firstly I'll apologise for not posting until today (one week after launch) but I have spent the odd moment or two in Azeroth since last week and somehow it just magicaly turned into the 13th, can't think where the time went :P.

As a late entrant to Cataclysm (Tuesday lunchtime as opposed to launch time due to works xmas party and a sore head, though I did make a quick drunken appearance shortly after midnight) I thankfully missed the manic first hour or so rush and the logon grief and was eased gently into Vash as my starting zone, and from that moment I was engrossed, the quest lines were interesting and fun, and made sense most of the time, the scenary was pretty, the graphics were nice and I had all my new 4.0 talents to play with. From those very early moments I decided I wanted to complete all the zones and quests in the new level 80+ areas of Azeroth, which is something I didn't do in WotLK as most of my toons dinged 80 in Grizzely hills (though I did go back with my ret paladin and finish up all the zones but not untill nearly the end of the WotLK expansion). Over the next 3 days I proceeded thru Vash, Hijal, Deepholme (my least favorite), Uldum (my favorite) and Twighlight highlands (some excellent quest chains and cut scenes here) along the way (sometime on thursday morning) I dinged 85 but didn't want to stop the questing experience. I dropped in a few dungeons with randoms, and more enjoyably with guild groups as we all progressed thru our various areas and then I hit it Loremaster of Cataclysm.

And I now have an empty quest log , but this is no worry to me, idle I will not be, rep grinds, more toons to level, the future is promising.

I have seen the new world and I like it........