Tag Archives: heal

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.

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!

Sha of Tedium

05 Tuesday Feb 2013

Posted by in Game Design, Gaming, Raids, World of Warcraft

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So my guild downed the Sha of Fear on Sunday. Yay! Incidentally, you can play the above song 3 times and hit the chorus of a 4th repeat before that stupid boss dies. I know. I counted.

For the final boss in a raiding tier, it’s a completely underwhelming and irritating fight. I mean, feel free to watch it and see:

Ha. Yeah. You totally didn’t watch that whole thing – I wouldn’t have either, and it’s a video of ME.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m happy that we downed him (though irked at myself for doing Karasang and Townlong on my paladin instead of my priest, so now I have to go back and do quests again to kill the Shas of Despair and Junkfood or whatever to get my raid title). I am not, however, looking forward to doing him next week for farm.

Here is my issue with this fight:

– First, if you’ve done it on LFR, you basically have done it on normal. The mechanics are exactly the same; the numbers are just kicked up a notch. So, there isn’t really an extra element, mechanically, to deal with – to me, that’s a let down.

– Second, the few mechanics that the fight has are really easy. Don’t stand in shit on the ground. Stand behind pillars when the panda is at 20%. Kill adds when you have the debuff from killing panda. Stand in cone when debuff is gone. That is it. It is REALLY easy.

– Third, however, is if anyone messes up on those mechanics, you’re wiping. Because of how your group gets split up, you don’t have leeway for anyone to die unless you have INCREDIBLE dps, or you won’t kill the panda quickly enough to get back in time for cackle, and then the boss just starts 1-shotting everyone because there’s nobody in range for him to tank. You can hope for a brez, but half the time your brezzer(s) will be in the other group or in the wrong pagoda.

– Fourth, your team is split up for basically 90% of the fight. This means that if people ARE messing up those mechanics, you won’t even see it half the time. I literally NEVER saw when people were dying – I’d just see them suddenly dead and hear the raid lead sigh and say, “Wipe it.” This kind of design is bad bad bad for team morale, as it’s a lot easier to get irritated and frustrated with people if you aren’t even seeing what they are tripping up on. There’s just also an emotional change, I think, that you feel in a fight when you aren’t really WITH half of your team. I actually felt a bit lonely without the other half of my healing team.

– Fifth, the fight is LONG. Nearly 15 minutes. That’s insane. You dedicate a lot of time to each pull, and that wears on people. We bloodlusted twice. I started fear warding myself as a joke to pass the time. As a side note, priests – shadowfiend shares a perfect cooldown with cackle, so pop it on the panda each time to help your dps team out.

– Sixth, and my biggest issue with the Sha of Fear, is that it is monotonous. You go through one mechanic in the first 3 minutes, and then you repeat that 5 times. There is NOTHING that changes the entire fight. Deathwing used a similar setup but HE GOT HARDER EACH PLATFORM. There is no rampup with the Sha, nor are there any phase transitions or extra elements to juggle as you push him lower. It’s basically 10 superfluous minutes of not fucking up.

Yay! Dead. FINALLY. We didn't fuck up :)

Yay! Dead. FINALLY. We didn’t fuck up 🙂

Not fucking up a static setup is far, far, far less exciting and fun than actively doing things to culminate in a win. Another fight with only one phase, Stone Guards – the very first fight in this tier – was more exciting than the ultimate boss, because Stone Guards gives us a continually increasing number of tasks to handle: the mines keep going off, littering the floor with more and more pitfalls. Chains and puddles mean that players have to dance around these obstacles, while maintaining heavy situational awareness. At some point, the lead will probably make a call to clear chains or clean up mines, and there will be a quick scramble to create breathing room while the tank juggles an overload.

In short, shit gets harder the longer the fight goes on. You feel a mounting sense of pressure and the fight gets more hectic. Small mistakes add up and you push more, hoping you can just hit hard enough, just heal fast enough, just keep going and hang on to down the boss before the slip-ups overwhelm you. There is tense anticipation, true excitement and shouts of palpable relief when you finally manage to succeed. To me, that’s a great fight.

Sha of Fear is not that. You could take away 10 minutes of it, and the fight would be unchanged. There isn’t even any long-term concern over resource management, because of the orbs and their mana return. The fight at 3 minutes in is exactly the same as the fight 10 minutes later.

I have to wonder what exactly Blizzard was aiming for with this fight. It seems to be a complete dud, but perhaps I am missing something essential and vital that I just didn’t experience during our pulls (I only heal right now, so my view is from that side of things). I hear it’s much harder and more exciting on heroic, but I don’t think “It’s way cool on heroic” is a valid excuse for a poor version on normal.

I think a simple change or two could have made this fight a lot more epic. Have the difficulty increase as the fight goes on, even if that just means tweaking damage so it ramps up over the fight’s duration. Maybe increase the number of adds that spawn; by the end, players would have to leave a good handful of them up, and focus on hectic avoidance of their ground effects. Have the cackles come sooner and sooner. Have a second type of cackle (an ominous chortle?) where something else happens in the pavilion (even if it’s just a RP change ala brain room with Yogg-Saron).  Have an ominous giggle where you just swoop around on a baby sha taking damage for a while. Ok, so maybe I really just wanted to fly around on the baby shas more….They really did do something right with the animation for that part. The movement feels awesome (why can’t the rocketway in Azshara feel that fast and swoopy?).

In any case, anyone else out there downed this guy? What did you think about it? Any thoughts to how he could have been spiced up?