Tag Archives: discipline priest

How to break things like a boss

27 Thursday Nov 2014

Posted by in Raids, World of Warcraft

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I work in QA. Yes, I’ve done video games – 4 years for Sony/Playstation, 1 year for Microsoft Game Studio, but I do android/iOS/website now. In any case (haha that’s a pun), I do testing every day, so I figured I’d write up a quick and dirty guide for useful tips and tactics for testing. Every company is different, obviously, so some of this stuff won’t be relevant elsewhere.

Types of testing
There are many types of testing, all with specific goals. I’m going to outline a few, core types here to help make it easier to figure out what you should be doing at a specific stage in a test cycle.

1. Exploratory
This type of testing is basically the run-around-and-try-everything testing. This is when you go through all the commands, trying out weird as heck stuff to break whatever you can. Start with the “good path” (ie, basic user functionality) and then radiate outwards. Advance to common mistakes (typos, inverted command syntax, being in the wrong state) and then finally push the boundaries. Pretend you are drunk, or a 5 year old, or a total newb, and do unexpected stuff.

2. Test casing/Regression testing
This type of testing follows a template of expected results. You are basically ensuring things work when the necessary steps are executed. For example, a test case might include a test to verify that using x command produces y result. You would then verify that passes or fails or is blocked by some other issue.

“Smoke tests” are a sub-genre of this, where you do a quick once-over for core components to make sure stuff is a-ok.

3. Halo/Directed exploratory
This type of testing is a melding of the two above. Using a test case or design specs as a basic template for features to test, you explore around those features and poke at stuff, starting first with the core functionality and then advancing into outlying conditions and circumstances. For example, there might be a skeleton design doc saying that the LEARN command has changed. You would first play with LEARN in a variety of ways, and then try associated stuff, like TEACH or STUDY.

4. Balance testing
This type of testing is an analysis of the content itself, gauging its impact on the game. This is a much more subjective type of testing, with the focus on analyzing the game system and how new changes will integrate into it. Testing in this category should focus on core gameplay and functionality first, and then expand out to consider outlying situations, with a keen eye directed towards things like exploits and overpowered/underpowered balance. Remember that this sort of testing is NOT just about finding OP/UP scenarios, but also about finding core functionality and balance.

Bug Finding

If you find a bug while testing, try to globalize and generalize it. This means don’t just go x thing is broken and step away – instead, consider what facets of the game x thing relates to and analyze those as well. If a pair of lime green boots breaks the game when you probe them, try probing purple boots, try probing lime green pants and try equipping lime green boots. The bug might not be based in the specific circumstances that you found it in, so check related conditions.

Note time stamps. Some bugs are weird and can be tied to time tables, especially if they have to do with things like resetting items/quests.

As mentioned earlier, if you are exploratory testing, don’t just play like a normal player. Play like someone new, or derpy. Try out stuff that YOU know won’t work. Ensure it fails. It doesn’t always.

Don’t pigeonhole – don’t just test on one account, or one platform. Make a newb, play an alt, run another client. Something that works for one character or one client or one device may not work for another. With playstation, I once found a pretty fatal error for Killzone, where the ENTIRE game wouldn’t work with non 6-axis controllers – it’s imperative you test all scenarios that ANY player might encounter, so try stuff out in a variety of situations.

If you have access to code, use echoes to spit out values of variables, tables, etc to help you conceptualize where things are breaking. If I have a script that’s being a bitch, I’ll code in an echo to shout out WORKING #1, 2, 3 etc for each step to help pinpoint where stuff is going bad.

Test limits – outliers are where tons of bugs occur. Min/max, check scaling, investigate weird and cusp situations/numbers. Good numbers to test around: 255; 65,535; 4,294,967,295 and multiples/divisions of those (integer overflow). Iosyne’s order just saw a bug from this in action kill all our shrines when we hit overflow.

Be efficient – you don’t need to test every single condition ever. Analyze what could make bugs, and then test representative samples within each potential condition. Eg, don’t test 1-100 if 1 and 99 are the things that are going to bring the bug up. Just test those boundaries.

Identify patterns. If you see a common element between unrelated bugs, start investigating more. Odds are, there’s something in common – you just haven’t found it yet.

No bug is random. The conditions that make it happen just aren’t known yet.

Testing Tools

Most testing likes bug reports. In these include, if possible, steps to reproduce or an excerpt of your log/screenshot/video illustrating the issue.

Many games now have in-game bug reporting. These often have crash dumps automatically linked to them (crash dumps are a spit-out of all the code that was executing right before the crash) so it can be really helpful to write up a report asap.

When testing, some sort of recording of your methods is highly advised. Automatic logging upon session login, echo commands turned on, and/or fraps are all useful tools. When I exploratory test at work, I write up charters – this is a document that declares what I am doing to test, and then journals each step I’ve taken. You’d be surprised how hard it can be, sometimes, to remember the precise steps you’ve taken, so ensure you are documenting what you do for easier reproduction.

Google doc spreadsheets are great for collaborative, on-the-fly test casing software.

Have fun – testing is all about enjoying problem solving! You’re a code detective and enjoying the investigation is paramount to doing it well!

Disc Priesting for Tier 15 (part 2)

05 Thursday Sep 2013

Posted by in Gaming, Raids, World of Warcraft

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So I’ve turned into a bit of a raidlogger these past few months. I’ve been busy diving back into Aetolia lately, and the type of immersion and engagement you get in a roleplay-focused game with a much more intimate community…is heady. The new patch looming has drawn me back, and I feel like I should finish this post just for completeness! Enjoy a beautifully moody song that’s only tangentially related!

 

 

So, here’s the last third of Throne of Thunder’s fights from a disc priest perspective.

10. Iron Qon

Man, what is it with Blizz and their love for tornadoes this expansion? I get that the tech to throw people around is new, but….ugh, I hate this as someone who runs a pretty low-end computer. The tornado effects in general are very unforgiving for those with latency, and this fight features a double whammy of invisible ground effects on low settings (I won’t get into a rant about graphics settings). Anyways!

If you have decent DPS, you can push a lot (or all) of the first phase with only a single group stacking in melee. This goes for heroic as well (although the damage is going to be a LOT higher). The basic mechanic here is somewhat similar to the Majordomo from Firelands, with increased amounts of damage being taken by the stacked group in periodic bursts, so open with a spirit-shell fairly quickly (I usually do a holy fire and a smite or two to get an archangel charge or three) to get the CD rolling on that – it’ll be back up off CD when the damage is getting nasty again. Directly bubble the individual members of the stacking group and if you are running power infusion, feel free to use it as needed during this phase. Feel free to go WILD with your mana – there is a lot of upcoming downtime and you can completely regen to full. I tend to pop a shadowfiend at the transition on Iron Qon himself then slip in a hymn of hope – if you hymn while shadowfiend is out, it raises your max mana pool, remember, and shadowfiend is still coded to regenerate based on a % of your mana, so you get like an extra 2 or 3k mana a tick.

I belieeeeve we can fly....it only toooook fifty wiiiipes.... (totally unrelated, I know, but it's preeeetty)

I belieeeeve we can fly….it only toooook fifty wiiiipes…. (totally unrelated, I know, but it’s preeeetty)

Spirit shell should be back by the early part of phase 2 (be careful in heroic with timing, as the dogs vanish at 25% health! I kept forgetting this and was using CDs thinking I had until they got to 0 for a phase transition). Tossing a shell out on your team right before the wind storm is a great way to help mitigate that damage everyone is going to be eating, as heals do essentially nothing while inside the radius of the storm. Sidenote – a fun trick you can do if you have a warlock: drop a warlock portal at the stack point for windstorm and one outside of the storm’s area. Hop through the portal and lifegrip the tank to you for basically zero downtime on boss control (having the tank go through the portal makes him unable to taunt for 6 seconds, so you gripping him makes him instantly ready to tank the dogs).

Basically sit and do your nails and atone until the last phase. Very little going on here if people do mechanics right. On heroic, the damage is high, but not insanely so. Get a feel for who’s taking damage and shell as appropriate or just use FDCL procs to shell the tank.

Final phase – shell in the first or second fist smash so it’ll be off CD for the later smashes, which increase in pain the longer the final phase goes for. Gauge your DPS’s potential here to asses how long this phase will go for to help you with the timing.

11. Twin Consorts

This fight is insanely boring as a healer. It’s really a facile fight in general (unless you kill blue before red comes out. Don’t kill blue before red comes out, oh god). I pretty mindlessly atone for the majority of it, using spirit shell before tidal force. If you wanna heal snipe, use bubbles/shells on ranged before cosmic barrage. One thing to actually pay attention to – use bubbles on your tanks! Direct heals give a debuff which sometimes kills inattentive healers, but absorbs don’t give you that debuff!

 

Let the bodies hit the floor. So....so many bodies.... :(

Let the bodies hit the floor. So….so many bodies…. 😦

 

12. Lei Shen

This fight is actually fairly low on healing demands if your team pulls off the mechanics right – that’s a big if, though, so be prepared for lots of heavy and random spot healing. Atonement + FDCL shines here, as smart healing and flash heal procs give you a nice coverage and instant casting as needed.

This isn’t really a big glaring spiritshell! fight, so just kinda weave it in where you want. If you want to game numbers, toss it out at the very start to absorb the first thunderstruck and stagger use from there, or use it before each transition to a new platform to absorb the raid damage. After the first intermission, shell can be good if you preblanket the raid before ball lightnings are formed. For phase 3, you can pretty much use it whenever as the raid takes fairly constant damage, but I like to save it as a tank CD option if things are getting hairy.

Disc Priesting for Tier 15 (part 1)

23 Tuesday Apr 2013

Posted by in Gaming, Raids, World of Warcraft

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2025 update, the OG post of this series: link

First, hey! You only need 50 lesser charms to get your 3 weekly Mogu Runes of Fate. Seems Blizzard realizes that the dailies are…not being done daily. I may actually get mine each week. My raid team will be happy (shh, don’t tell them, I’ve just been feigning horrid luck).

So, a post. Since I’ve been lazy.

1. Jin’rokh the Breaker: This fight is actually a fairly simple one. It took my team 2 pulls to down him, and that was the first week with Tier 14 gear. The trick is just managing where you drop the ball lightning (hint: the grates at the edge of the area are all outside of the puddles) and healing through lighting storm.

This fight is GREAT for a disc priest. First, when your tank gets slammed across the room, a pool forms underneath him. Standing in that increases your healing AND your DPS. Hello – atonement! Lightning storm is a great time to use barrier and it happens every 2ish minutes, which means that you can preblanket the group with spirit shells every time (and the spirit shells benefit from your increased healing from the pool!).

1.5 Bridge Trash: The banshees here put a debuff on everyone, reducing healing done, so once you get 5 stacks for archangel, when she is at 75%, spirit shell for a few prayer of healings to eat up the damage before it gets to your team (and is subsequently harder to handle since the healing gets eaten by the debuff).

2. Horridon: This fight is more about properly dispelling and add management and is fairly relaxed as a healer. Atonement works well as a low-mana spot heal. If your team is having issues getting all the dispells off, switch to the glyph of mass dispell to help there – remember MD and purify are on their own CDs so, glyph or not, you still have 2 dispells to work with. Just be wary of overextending yourself mana wise – MD completely eats it up. Spirit shell is best used here as a tank CD (I like to pop it when I have 2 from darkness comes light procs) and it can also be helpful during the venom phase, when the second priest comes out, as you should see an increase in AoE damage there. At the 4th gate, when people have the reflective damage curse, it’s also useful to mitigate the damage they are doing to themselves, since DPS are lazy and bad. >_> Switch to atonement once Wargod Jalak is dead, as the raid gets a DPS boost at that point.

3. Council of Elders: Disc can be helpful on this fight if your team is having trouble burning Suul before his phase. Our DPS, although low, can definitely contribute. Aside from that, both holy and disc work quite well for this fight. For disc, use barrier at the very first empowerment from Malak to eat the damage from his empowered frost dot; follow that with spirit shell and/or bubbles on the 3 people splitting that. Make sure to put bubbles on the people with the dot when he is not empowered, and spirit shell if desired. I tend to leave spirit shell for a tank heal, with FDCL procs, especially when the tank gets stunned and can’t mitigate.

4. Tortos: Great fight for disc, as every time you kick a turtle shell at Tortos, you get a 30% temporary DPS increase! Keep bubbles up on the tanks and (at least) on yourself before quake stomp. The few seconds before that can be good for spirit shelling the team up, but the hectic nature of that fight makes that hard in actuality, especially once more than one wave of turtles has gone out. FDCL procs + bat tank sprit shells are a good alternate use which is much easier to do while remaining mobile.

Ignore the skeletons...

Ignore the skeletons…

5. Megaera: I think this fight is DESIGNED for disc. Spirit shell can (and should) be used every rampage. What I do is power infusion for the 1st ramage, barrier for the 2nd, power infusion again on 3rd, and the 4th (THE ONLY RAMPAGE I CAN’T COVER OMG HOW AWESOME IS THAT COVERAGE!) is handled by our Shaman. Then barrier again! This fight works so so so nice with our CDs.

6. Ji’Kun: I pretty much exclusively heal up top during this phase, but atonement is great for helping kill the hatchlings/healing quickly. Spirit shell is great for quills. The fight itself is pretty basic, as a healer. I use barrier as needed (usually when we get a downdraft into pools because WHY DIDN’T YOU INTERCEPT THEM DPS ARRGGHHH).

7. Durumu the FORGET IT: I have a crappy computer, so I hate this guy SO. FREAKING. MUCH. Can barely see the maze. Anyways, disc is very useful for this fight – pop spirit shell during the beam phase to eat up damage your team will take from red. If I have any FDCL procs, I’ll convert those into shell as well before disintegration beam just to give me a bit more wiggle room with running the maze.

8. Primordius: We really only pulled this guy once so far, and he died, so. But, from a theory standpoint, I like holy better for this fight. I think disc can potentially be potent if you snag all the empowerments, but until that point, you’re going to be switching targets a ton while also being mobile (Primordius himself takes reduced damage unless you get buffs). Bubbles and spirit shell are good for caustic gas to mitigate damage, as well as for the single dot that gets slapped periodically on people.

9. Dark Animus: This fight is fairly easy from a healing standpoint, with the only heavy lifting coming in at the end. Use bubbles on the matter swap people and dispel them as soon as the bubble is there (it’ll be about 7-8 seconds on the debuff) – this will ensure that the person with the debuff is taking the majority of the damage, which your bubble then mitigates! Use spirit shell before interrupting jolt (make sure to stop casting before it hits), both to mitigate AoE damage and in case your fellow healers (but never you!) get interrupted and can’t heal for a bit.

And! This is as far as my team has gotten. Hope this is helpful!

Spirit shelling your way through tier 14

25 Monday Feb 2013

Posted by in Gaming, Raids, World of Warcraft

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So I’ve been sucked back into MUDs and have only been playing WoW a bit every now and then between raids – my guild is now up to 3/6H MSV, 6/6 HoF and 4/4 ToES! Huzzah! I intended to post this ages ago, but it might still be helpful for other teams given how 5.0 raid content will still remain semi-viable for gearing in 5.2.

Spirit shell is, in my opinion, the best trick up discipline priest’s sleeves right now. I loved the spell since the moment we got it, even with all of the initial wonkiness and awkward feeling it first had for use. It rewards intelligent foresight, which I think is a core aspect of discipline priest play – we don’t just heal reactively, but we also use our knowledge of the fight and our raiders to blanket the raid before the damage hits.

So, here’s my quick breakdown of the best spots to pop spirit shell in each fight this tier:

Mogu’shan Vaults

  • Stone Guards – Excellent to use before an overload if your tanks identify that they are going to be unable to execute a juggle with the dogs. This can and does prevent a wipe. I ran holy for this fight due to the better mobility until I got better gear (plus disc was bad off back then), but spirit shell can have moderate use here.
    For heroic, the mines do enough damage that using it whenever you have a free CD can mitigate raid damage – however I saved mine for when I had From Darkness Comes Light procs and used it on tanks due to the immense amount of damage they take.
  • Feng – Perfect for every phase of the fight. If your tank missed grabbing an interrupt, use it for epicenters where nullification barrier is off CD. Use it at the start of draw flame that nullification barrier isn’t eating (draw flame damage ramps up, so starting the shell at the start of draw flames is good timing). For phase 3, use it for the arcane velocities that are not mitigated by nullification barrier.
  • For heroic, you can use it for a general damage blanket during throw shield (though the damage is a bit spotty, so atonement covered that quite nicely).
  • Gara’jal – Spirit shell is stupid awesome in this fight. Voodoo doll damage almost always starts at the tank, so use bubble and spirit shell to absorb that damage off the bat with spirit shell and flash heal (even better with From Darkness Comes Light procs, but remember to save 2 for when you go in totems). The other voodoo dolls will take minimal damage.
  • Spirit Kings – Great right off the bat to absorb Qiang’s massive attacks. Spot heal until Meng is active and use spirit shell before maddening shout.
  • Elegon – Use early on to mitigate damage from Total Annihilation. A good timer for this is to start blanketing right after the celestial protector spawns. Atonement is amazing in this fight because of the dps and hps boost, so smite and offensive penance are your prime heals for most of this fight (especially since THOSE heals can reach the other side of the platform during draw power, whereas your direct heals can’t reach). I usually toss in another shell (or do a hymn of hope) while pillars are being taken down, just to absorb any splash damage from adds. Finally, in the last phase, spirit shell is obviously useful against the constant damage – try to get it out during that moment your team is grouped up at the console, so everyone goes in blanketed in absorbs.
  • Will of the Emperor – Use right before titan gas, obviously. However, there is time for 2 shells between titan gas phases, so I pop shell when I get FDCL procs to give the tanks extra absorbs.
Spirit (binder) shell (s)

Spirit (binder) shell(s)

Heart of Fear

  • Vizier – AMAZING before force and verve. For timing, I do instant holy and 4 smites to get full Archangel and then shell and prayer of healing. Timing is perfect to eat most of the force and verve – follow with a cascade or halo during the active F&V.
  • Bladelord – If you can get the timing down, this is great to use before unseen strikes. It makes a huge difference and can prevent wipes if people are slow to stack. Also, start shelling around 25-23% of the bosses’ health to give your team a nice blanket that absorbs nearly all of the damage from storm unleashed (during which you can’t heal!)
  • Garalon – Start shelling when your pherome carrier is around 15 stacks, assuming you switch in the early 20s. Or just shell whenever it’s off CD, since the constant raid damage is just that nuts. The trickiest part of this fight is being able to heal people in range, since there is a lot of movement from the melee DPS. Bonus points – stand in the blue ring and smite/penance the legs. 200k heals for each penance tick? Yes, please!
  • Windlord – Shell before rain of blades, especially in the later parts of the fight. The trick to this is that the DBM timer shows you the ability’s CD, not actually when the ability is about to happen (the actual ability is several seconds after that) so shell once that CD is at 0, instead of anticipating having a shell up at 0 on the timer.
  • Amber Shaper – Use bubble and shell, especially with FDCL procs, on people afflicted with parasitic growth (and tell your other healers to stop freaking healing the people). In the later stages of the fight, this can and does save lives! Also be very wary of atonement if parasitic growth is up during phase 3, due to the smart-heal nature – a quick shell, however, can ensure that the person with growth remains with higher health than others, allowing you to smite away!
  • Empress – Shell is excellent to blanket the raid before a dissonance field pops. You can also use shell to absorb damage from cry of terror when targets are inside the dissonance field. For phase 3, damage is fairly constant, so you can just use it on CD.

Terrace of Endless Spring

  • Protectors of the Endless – The best use of this (especially if you are going for elite, which you should! It’s especially doable with a disc priest!) is to eat the increasing raid damage from corruption. Use it more heavily as the fight goes on and the damage builds up.
  • Tsulong – Simply use on CD during night phase to mitigate constant raid damage. Bonus points – during day, save your inner focus and 1-2 FDCL procs for sun breath. Start casting greater heal shortly after he begins casting sun breath (so your greater heal casts RIGHT when he starts breathing). You can get several million healing each breath this way.
  • Lei Shi – I use my FDCL procs with spirit shell to give tanks extra absorbs, especially during the spawn elementals phase. Ideally I’d use this for get away, but it’s really impossible to predict when that’s coming. 😦
  • The Sha of Fear – UGGGHHHH. Hate this fight. I use spirit shell when I’m on the main platform to give extra absorbs in case people get hit by the adds’ bolts.

I’ll write up a version of this for the next tier, once we start raiding. Happy priesting!