I tend to use a very soft approach when conversing with strangers, especially if it is clearly demonstrated they are not old seasoned veterans.

I generally say something like “If you find yourself in XXX situation, you may want to look at YYY as it helps me address this problem”.

My wife is just confounded (it’s a mutual thing, no worries) because my employer strongs arm me into a two-day “tact and diplomacy” seminar every year because they do not, on the surface, like my brutal honesty. It does provide some entertainment values because upon my return, I usually write some “nice” emails which are either totally void of meaning or contain alternating opposite views.

OK, this does not make me an angel.

Having said all that, my opionion is your blog is one of the best online resources to understand game mechanics and to improve one’s play and I recommend it to many relatively new players. It is with this profile in mind that I wrote what I wrote.

The cartoons are just a fun bonus and are appreciated!

Personally I only have one technical degree but I can easily see that I put out a lot more heals with Vudo. Some of that depends on the class. A rejuv spamming tree needs to be hitting every GCD to get the most out of its healing. That could be done with two clicks with the default raid interface, or one mouse over keybind macro, or a single click in vudo. I find setting up vudo is easier than managing keybinds and macros. As a technically literate person you realize there is no difference between taking advantage of the built-in macro and binding interfaces and using the equally built in API to do the same thing. There are a lot of ways to do the same thing. Personally preferences vary and many things work. what is faster for one person is overly distracting and confusing to others.

I don’t think that comes across as a jerk. It is just poking a pin in the line of reasoning being used. It is a classic and widely used logical fallacy.
The direct analogy would be if someone said “I studied math in vocational school and I think calculators are for the weak” and you responded “I have a masters in mathematics and I use Matlab (or or Maple or whatever other tool)”. It is a very simple way to debunk the poor reasoning. She was not saying everyone smarter than him uses addons. He was saying the opposite and she was offering a unassailable counter example. His statement was in response to us recommending he get a nice healing addon. His response was confrontational and held implied insult. Her response was simple and effective without counter insult.

I know you were trying to help him but your choice of words may paint you as elitist pricks.

I will combine two sophisms so you can judge for yourself.

I have 7 80′s, 3 Master’s Degrees (Actuarial Sciences, Mathematics, and Information Technolology), and a Ph. D. (Mathematics – category theory) and I do not use healing addons other than Decursive when raiding. Key binding is the way to go!

In the situation which triggered the discussion, I would have set focus to the tanking pet and healed him as I would have any other tank. Not much relevant to the discussion at hand but I find very few people use Focus and Assist when I run the occasional dungeon or raid with random players.

Another true but odd situation; my wife is performing better in raids since she turned off nameplates when DPSing or healing. Don’t ask me why, it just boggles my mind.