The Bear Flank

When Good People Do Nothing

2012-01-25T08:04:00.000-08:00

I had the absolute worst luck in LFR last night. I was rotated from my regular raid so I decided to knock out the last half of LFR on the couple toons I wanted a weapon on. The first LFR I ran on my druid went swimmingly, but my polearm of embiggeration did not drop. Sadly I will not become bigger in a vigorous manner for at last another week. That first LFR on my druid the other tank even briefly discussed tanking strategy with me in the form of they let me know what they were doing and I acknowledged I heard them. There really isn't a need for tank communication in LFR, but it's nice when it happens.

My second LFR on my DK I got into a group on the last boss, which I originally thought was good because I only wanted loot off the last boss. There was a small group from Proudmoore in a guild called Hypnotic doing thier best to troll everyone (and they did a pretty good job). The specific players involved were: Riggnaros, Kfchicken, Sylisha, and Porkzqt. Obviously raid geared and knowing what they were doing, but mostly looking to make trouble. They needed on everything; which isn't a surprise, but they even needed on the greens. They bad mouthed everyone, they tried to incite the kicking of people that didn't really deserve it, including myself (it never even went to a vote).

The absolute worst though was when they purposefully wiped us. Three of them went directly to the last platform and DPSed the wing the entire time so that when the rest of the group finally got there we were getting stacks of blistering tentacle debuff before anyone could even kill the big tentacle add. Now anyone else I would assume they just wanted to see what happened, but they blamed just about everyone else and tried to get half the raid kicked. I'm not sure how many attempts they foiled before I got there, but I'd like to think that my calling them out on precisely why we wiped caused them to behave and actually get the boss down the next attempt.

OK I lied, that wasn't the worst part. After I was done with that LFR I was about to log off in disgust when my regular run finished and a bunch of guildies were going to queue for LFR. I decided to go along on my mage who hadn't yet done the first half and I wanted the option to do the second half in the future. Guess what 4 people were in that new group with me? Oh yeah. They were a lot less annoying in that run so far as what they were saying, but they also didn't have as many people feeding the trolls that run. We actually passed a vote to kick one of them, Kfchicken, who made a point of belittling everyone else's contributions each and every fight. That amused me a little.

Still, what I don't understand is why don't people just kick these types of people immediately? Not kicking them just encourages asshat behavior in LFR because they think they can get away with it. Worse than that, other closet asshats might think they can get away with it too and start griefing their next LFR. I think BBB did a much better job elaborating on the evils of encouraging bad behavior by inaction, read his posts here and here on the topic.

Self Modifying Macros: When One Focus isn't Enough

2012-01-09T08:01:00.000-08:00

There are three main reasons people use their focus targets in macros: to be able to refresh crowd control without switching targets (self explanatory), to be able to refresh a buff on a friendly target without switching targets (earth shield, misdirection, etc.), and last but not least to track buffs/debuffs and/or spell casts of a specific target (i.e. a healer tracking a boss ability with focus target cast bars). The problem I've run into, and I am sure many others have as well, is that some classes could benefit from using their focus target in more than one way. We need a second focus target, and a third...

After much deliberation, preceded by a fair bit of procrastination, I've come up with a fairly elegant solution for "sharing" a single focus target; let's have the macro remember who to target. Self modifying macros have been a crazy idea in the back of my head for quite a long time, but I wasn't sure if it was possible no less feasible. Then I saw a very promising sentence on wowwiki describing the EditMacro function, "If this function is called from within the macro that is edited, the rest of the macro (from the final character's position of the /run command onward) will run the new version." Not only can you edit a macro while it is running, it will continue to run from the point it left off before being edited! This actually turned out to be a little bit of a bummer too, but more on that later.

So I have to write a macro which does what I want, leave room for an unknown player name up to 12 characters, and also leave room for some lua code to change the name on the fly; with only 255 characters total. It actually wasn't that bad, but a few more characters would have allowed for more thorough targeting conditionals.

Right off the bat there are a couple glaring limitations: you can't edit macros in combat and you can't use GUIDs to select targets (or in layman's terms some trash mobs have the same name, which one will your macro target?). I may eventually find a way around the latter, but I am pretty sure that all the target switching LUA functions are protected. Perhaps it's not really an issue either since how often are there multiple mobs in the same pull with the same name when it isn't an AOE group without CC? Still macros aren't going to be a great way to handle crowd control targets, but they are very good way to remember and retarget players; better than focus targets even if you know how annoying it can be to keep losing your focus between sections of the dragon soul raid.

So here's what I got so far: a misdirection macro for hunters and a tricks of the trade macro for rogues. Fully tested on my hunter and I really liked the way I didn't have to clutter up my UI with a focus frame I wasn't really using.

#showtooltip
/use [btn:2];[@asecondfocus,help][help][@targettarget,help][@pet]Misdirection
/stopmacro [btn:1][noraid,noparty]
/run i=GetRunningMacro()EditMacro(i,nil,1,gsub(GetMacroBody(i),"%b@,","@"..UnitName("target")..",",1)..(" "):rep(24))

#showtooltip
/use [btn:2];[@asecondfocus,help][help][@targettarget,help][]Tricks of the Trade
/stopmacro [btn:1][noraid,noparty]
/run i=GetRunningMacro()EditMacro(i,nil,1,gsub(GetMacroBody(i),"%b@,","@"..UnitName("target")..",",1)..(" "):rep(21))

The first couple lines look like a regular macro you'd find almost anywhere, with a few less checks perhaps (no room for those frills). I first try and target the "focus", then I try the current target and if it is a hostile I try and target it's target (hopefully a tank). For the misdirect macro I also try the pet as a last resort. If all the targeting checks fall through you'll get a hand to pick a target manually (that should almost never happen).

Then comes the LUA code which is run when the macro is right clicked. Could use a modifier instead and make the macro even shorter, but I prefer not to hit it on accident. Not to mention you can only edit macros out of combat so it's not a big deal to have it super accessible. The code is just a little pattern matching to find and replace the name, "asecondfocus" in the macros above, with the name of your current target. I do check to see if your current target is at least in your party/raid before changing it so you can't accidentally target an NPC.

Then comes this interesting block of code at the end that pads out the macro with spaces so that it is always exactly 255 characters long. This is where that "feature" that continues running a macro from where it left off before being edited comes in. If you right click on someone with a longer name that your previous target your macro text would become longer, but your macro continues running from the end of the old macro causing your character to /say those last few characters of the macro; quite annoying. For example if you target someone with a name that was 3 character longer your character would say something like, "s))". The extra spaces are inert so far as the lua code goes and they make sure the macro never changes length.

Enjoy the most advanced aggro redirection macros in existence; short of installing a plugin anyway. I prefer the macros because they are saved on the server so you can flip PCs and they are always there and you never have to update them after a patch.

Mount Macros

2012-01-05T09:40:00.000-08:00

The most recent incarnation of my mount macro includes combining it with another ability that is only used in combat. This serves three purposes: it cleans up my action bars, I can't accidentally hit my combat only ability out of combat, and I get a speedy hotkey to mount.

The ability I've chosen for all of my toons is a crowd control and/or snare removal ability. For druids this would be "power shifting" or shifting out of and back into your current form, expending a global cooldown in the process. Obviously shifting forms isn't something that burns a cooldown out of combat, but I'm just being consistent between toons. I've also got my mount combined with Cloak of Shadows (Rogue), Tremor Totem (Shaman), Lichborne (Death Knight), Fear Ward (Priest), Master's Call (Hunter), Escape Artist (Gnome), and Hand of Freedom (Paladin).

Right now everyone has 3-4 mounts they use on a regular basis: an Abyssal Seahorse, a flying mount, a ground mount, and perhaps an additional RP type mount. I know my Worgen have use an additional ground mount just for fun when they don't want to use Running Wild. So keeping all of these things in mind my mount macros look something like the following:

Worgen Rogue

#showtooltip
/use [combat] Cloak of Shadows; [btn:2] Black Stallion; [swimming,mod] Abyssal Seahorse; [flyable,nomod] Magnificent Flying Carpet; Running Wild

Druid

#showtooltip
/use [nocombat,swimming,mod] Abyssal Seahorse; [nocombat,flyable,nomod] Swift Flight Form; [nocombat] Swift Zulian Panther; [form:1] !Bear Form; [form:2] !Aquatic Form; [form:3] !Cat Form; [form:5] !Moonkin Form; !Travel Form

As you can see out of combat the Abyssal Seahorse will only be used if you are swimming and using a modifier key, otherwise if you can fly it will use your flying mount and otherwise your ground mount. In the case of my Worgen I use a right click to use an alternative ground mount. Using a modifier will also use your ground mount over your flying mount, sometimes it comes in handy. In combat these macros behave just like the ability or abilities you combined it with.

Subtlety Rogues for Felines

2011-12-29T11:30:00.001-08:00

If you've got your kitty DPS rotation down pact now, and as an added bonus did well with the slightly more difficult rotation in wrath, you are in a prime position to pick up a subtlety rogue and play like a pro. They are just that similar.

In fact I have come to enjoy subtlety DPS over kitty DPS after playing my rogue more regularly; cat form comes off as a cheap imitation afterwards. More so now that most all of the tanking utility will be removed from the feral DPS spec. What utility will kitties have left? A lackluster innervate, a battle rez that two other classes provide, and some limited off healing ability which would be time better spent DPSing. Rest in peace hero bear, you will be in our hearts, always.

Back to subtlety DPS; rogues like cats like to start off in stealth, it is even more important for subtlety rogues because we get a buff called 'Master of Subtlety' buffing our damage by 10% for 6 seconds after breaking stealth. Like cats we also like to jump into combat with 'Shadowstep' which bears a striking similarity to a cat's 'Feral Charge'. Then we unleash an opener, 'Ambush', for big damage just like a cat would use 'Ravage'. More on this later, but just like a cat will also use 'Feral Charge' with the 'Stampede' talent to get off additional 'Ravage's off during combat, rogues too will use 'Shadowstep' with 'Shadow Dance' to get off additional 'Ambush'es.

Now is a good time to mention the first difference for playing your rogue. You'll want to macro 'Premeditation' and 'Pickpocket' into all of your openers: 'Cheap Shot' ('Pounce' to cats), 'Garrote' (rogues get one more opener than cats, it's a silence/bleed instead of a stun/bleed) and 'Ambush'. Neither ability triggers the global cooldown so you can have them go off invisibly behind the scenes. Be sure to have auto loot enabled so you don't have loot windows pop up at the start of combat. Optionally you could also not macro 'Pickpocket' into your openers, but I find I don't otherwise remember to 'Pickpocket' in fast paced dungeons or raids.

Once you are out of stealth it is time to start building combo points, oh wait, you already have 5. Did I mention subtlety rogues build combo points a hell of a lot faster than cats (and other rogues for that matter)? So while your cat would be applying 'Mangle', 'Faerie Fire', 'Rake' and 'Shred'ding to get some combo points, your rogue already has to pick out a finisher.

Subtlety rogues use four finishers to maintain 2 buffs ('Slice and Dice' and 'Recuperate') and one debuff ('Rupture'). Cats on the other hand only use three finishers to maintain one buff ('Savage Roar') and one debuff ('Rip'). Cats always prioritize 'Rip' over 'Savage Roar', but rogues are a little more complicated.

If you are fresh out of stealth, and have your 10% damage buff, 'Rupture' is your best choice if you will be maintaining it for a few minutes; think boss fight. Otherwise it is better to start with 'Slice and Dice', this is what you will start with on trash. If 'Slice and Dice' is already up, and your target will stay alive for 20 seconds or so for the bleed to tick a while, then you should apply 'Rupture', otherwise pop 'Recuperate'. When both your 'Slice and Dice' and 'Recuperate' don't need to be refreshed, use 'Eviscerate' to do some damage and dump your combo points. 'Eviscerate' will also refresh your 'Rupture'; much like 'Blood in the Water' cause your 'Ferocious Bite' to refresh 'Rip', but all the time. Unlike cats which will apply 'Rip' even if it will only tick a couple times, rogues will forgo their long term bleed entirely and just use 'Eviscerate' on short fights.

I suppose it is a good time to mention 'Honor Among Thieves'. Subtlety rogues not only generate extra combo points for their own crits like cats do, they also generate extra combo points for everyone else's (including healers, but more on that in a moment). Just like it is beneficial for cats to just auto attack and pool energy at times, to prepare for a 'Berserk' for example; it is doubly important for subtlety rogues to pool energy prior to gaining that 5th combo point. If we use an ability to get that last combo point ourselves we'll have wasted a combo point that would have been gained through 'Honor Among Thieves', but if we sit there a moment at four combo points we get the last combo point free and have enough energy saved up to use a finisher immediately so as to not waste the next free combo point that comes our way. Even outside of a group auto attacks and the bleed from 'Glyph of Hemorrhage' will get us that 5th combo point while pooling energy. It is a little slower, but at higher gear levels you can pull off your usual rotation solo and/or on a combat dummy.

I mentioned gaining combo points from healers earlier. You can use this to your advantage gaining combo points out of combat between or before pulls, so long as you have a mob targetted. This is a great way to get 'Slice and Dice' up before you even start attacking for maximum damage. Healers are usually tossing heals around after/before a pull so be sure to take advantage of thier crits.

Now back to generating combo points yourself, like those workaday cats do. You'll want to apply and maintain 'Hemorrhage' which when glyphed is sort of like a combination of 'Mangle' and 'Rake'. 'Hemorrhage' is also your primary combo point generator when you are forced to attack from the front, just like 'Mangle' for cats. When 'Hemorrhage' is up, and you can get behind your target, you'll use 'Backstab' to generate combo point (just up to four remember).

When if comes to DPS cooldowns subtlety rogues have four: 'Shadowstep' which really just enhances the other three, 'Shadow Dance', 'Vanish' and 'Preparation'. All these cooldown share a common goal, which is to use 'Ambush' as much as possible. 'Shadowstep' buffs the damage of your next 'Ambush' so you want to use it right before you 'Vanish'/'Ambush' or in the case of 'Shadow Dance' you want to use 'Shadowstep' after the first 'Ambush' (I'll get into details in a moment). 'Preparation' resets the cooldown on vanish allowing you to use it more often as a DPS cooldown.

Now as awe inspiring as it might be on a short fight we don't want to blow all these cooldowns in rapid succession on a long fight. Well not within the same ten seconds anyway. 'Ambush', along with our other two openers, provides an armor bypassing buff via the 'Find Weakness' talent that lasts for ten seconds. Bypassing 70% of our targets armor is quite the DPS boost. This is why when we use 'Shadow Dance' we don't buff 'Ambush' with our 'Shadowstep' ability until the second 'Ambush'. That allows us to have our empowered 'Ambush' benefit from 'Find Weakness'. Oh yeah, this is deep stuff; just imagine the possibilities of working these cooldowns into specific boss fights. There is a reason Subtlety has the highest potential damage output of any class/spec.

Let's talk about survivability and utility now. Cats have two cooldowns to reduce incoming damage: 'Survival Instincts' and 'Barkskin'. In addition to that cats have the passive healing provided by 'Leader of the Pack', and if glyphed for it 'Ferocious Bite' also provides a self heal. This is all well and good, but kitties are still gonna get tore up pretty bad.

Rogues large damage reduction cooldown 'Evasion' avoids damage rather than reducing it. We also have 'Cloak of Shadows' to remove any dots and reduce incoming magic damage or 'Combat Readiness' which reduces incoming physical damage and shares a cooldown with 'Cloak of Shadows'. These abilities only work for direct damage though. What to we rogues do about AOE damage? Laugh it off for the most part. Rogues have an ability called 'Feint' which like 'Cower' reduced aggro, but it also reduces AOE damage by 50% (this can be talented for up to 80%). So rogues have some serious staying power in AOE situations. That doesn't even include the healing provided by 'Recuperate' that keeps us pretty close to topped off while everyone else's health bars are dropping like rocks.

Speaking of AOE, subtlety rogues don't. It's not that we can't, the 'Fan of Knives' button is there; our single target rotation just does more damage. Hopefully that will change in the future, but right now subtlety does the lowest AOE damage of any class/spec. It is more laughable than shaman AOE at its worst. So as a cat coming from a 'Swipe' spamming AOE utopia, be prepared to be disappointed. Of course if there are a bazillion little mobs that dies quickly in a group it is better to AOE, but it won't happen often. Keep 'Wound Poison' on your thrown weapon just in case, it works out to more damage than 'Instant Poison' for subtlety AOE.

I suppose poisons are a new mechanic for cats. You go to the poison vendor and buy a bunch of each, but more 'Instant Poison' and 'Deadly Poison' as these will go on your mainhand and offhand daggers respectively. See how I snuck that in there, subtlety should be using daggers.

For completeness sake I will mention the last few remaining rogue abilities you should be aware of. 'Gouge' is a frontal attack which will incapacitate your target until it takes damage, bleed effects don't count if you are talented correctly into 'Sanguinary Vein'. You can probably stick this in the same spot you have 'Rake' on your cat.

A quick note on where to stick abilities, most subtlety abilities have abilities almost exactly the same as cat abilities so you should stick them in the same spots to ease your transition. I mention sticking 'Gouge' where you had 'Rake', but a couple other dissimilar abilities I stuck in the same spots are: 'Slice and Dice'/'Savage Roar' and 'Recuperate'/'Tiger's Fury.

I already mentioned 'Pounce' and 'Cheap Shot' being equivalent opening stuns; 'Kidney Shot' is the equivalent finishing stun to 'Maim'. Rogues don't have a bash like cats do flipping to bear, but 'Gouge' fills that role rather well.

Cats can remove enrage/frenzy effects with 'Soothe' which rogues can do with 'Shiv'. Cats can also use 'Remove Corruption' to remove curses which rogues would use 'Cloak of Shadows' for. These are good abilities to keep in similar places between classes.

So far as crowd control goes rogues have 'Sap' which can only be used on mobs out of combat, but when glyphed lasts for 3 minutes. If that isn't long enough rogues also have 'Blind' which will cause a mob to wander around for another full minute.

That brings us to the last couple rogue only utility abilities: 'Smoke Bomb' and 'Tricks of the Trade'. Smoke bomb isn't useful in many places, it just stops direct damage spells from hitting people inside it. Sometime it is useful, but not too often.

‘Tricks of the Trade’ on the other hand is an awesome ability, and should be used often. It behaves a lot like misdirect, but in addition to redirecting your aggro to someone else, it also provides a damage buff to whomever you "tricks" to. As you can imagine this leads to pairs of rogues "tricksing" one another throughout a fight to increase each other’s damage. Since they are just redirecting their threat to each other that portion of the ability cancels itself out. Usually you'll just "tricks" the tank to avoid pulling aggro early in the fight, but you can also use it on a DPS to boost their damage so long as the tank can maintain aggro (not so much an issue anymore).

So concludes this massive wall of text giving anyone familiar with kitty DPS a massive head start into subtlety DPS.

Fear and Vengeance

2011-12-29T08:18:00.000-08:00

The first incarnation of what could become a pair of legendary rogue daggers is pretty easy to obtain. The two parts of the quest line that are potentially the most difficult are: finding a dragon soul raid group that has killed the first 3 bosses and will let you pickpocket the fourth after the trash is cleared, and getting together and subsequently parting with the non-negotiable 10k gold required to complete the second quest.

The pickpocketing itself is very easy and rumors of a 15 minute wait between rogues is greatly exaggerated. A rogue can pull the boss, vanish, and proceed to pickpocket a freshly respawned quest item with no waiting (unless your vanish was on cooldown for some reason).

Many groups have been charging rogues admission to come in and pickpocket. Certainly a good option for anyone who isn't part of a sufficiently progressed dragon soul raid group, and also doesn't know anyone that is. It's really no trouble at all to bring in a rogue with a mass summon while the group takes a short break they would have likely taken anyway.

Oh, and most importantly, remember to turn in your pickpocket quest before you leave the instance and pick up the next quest. If you don't you'll have to find another raid instance to enter just to turn it in.

So now you're no longer at the mercy of a raid group, you've spent your 10k, it's time for the fun part. These quests are a lot of fun, almost worth the 10k just to play the rogue minigames. The first "warmup" quest is to infiltrate Ravenholdt Manor without being detected.

I won't spoil any of the fun, but there is a new stealth mechanic for these quests where you have to evade mobs with heightened senses. There will be a large red circle around your feet showing how close you can get before being detected. There isn't any wrong way to sneak around the mobs so long as you get past them, and if you screw up a few times you get ported back to the beginning to try again, no penalty.

You'll be using pretty much every ability in your rogue bag of tricks to complete these stealth quests: you can sap a mob so you can walk through it, you can distract mobs so you can walk behind them, vanish or cloak of shadows will both remove your red circle temporarily so that you can sneak around as if the mobs didn't have heightened senses, and if you are specced into subtlety you can shadowstep behind mobs and continue undetected.

The manor is easy to sneak into, I got it first try without any prior knowledge. The real fun is on the next quest where you need to sneak deep into Gilneas. It is pretty much a trial and error process of finding a path through that works best for you. There are a lot of pats walking all over the place and there are very narrow corridors through which to sneak between mobs. A lot of time is spent sitting in a safe spot and watching for where to make your next move.

You'll be happy to know that when you make it to Creed you don't have to sneak through all the mobs again if you fail to kill him. You get to run right back to your corpse and try again. Rumor has it that even if you leave the area to do something else you can fly back to Creed directly on your mount.

Both of my rogues specs are subtlety; I have a leveling/survivability spec and a raiding/damage spec. I of course did all these quests in my sneakier survivability spec with shorter utility cooldowns and more self healing. Since my damage was pretty low as a result I had to go the route of using blind (preferably glyphed to remove dots) to reset his enrage timer between damage bursts. Assassination and especially combat rogues will have an easier time of beating the two minute enrage timer, but they can only use blind once during the fight to reset the timer.

The fight is mostly move out of circles and avoid his frontal cone breath attack while beating the crap out of him and interrupting his one other spell which hurts a lot and drains energy. You'll also be using damage reduction cooldowns and stuns as often as possible to reduce your damage taken and get in some more powerful attacks from behind (unless you are combat and face roll him from the front).

If there is someone else attacking Creed when you get there, rumor has it you will get credit for the kill just for being there and get ported back to the NPC to complete the quest. So you have the choice of helping to kill Creed and perhaps annoy the rogue wanting to solo him, sit back and watch potentially never getting a chance to try Creed yourself, or fly away and come back later to do it yourself. I'd say if you get put in that position, you should just help kill him and get your daggers.

Bye Bye Resto, Hello Pandas?

2011-12-16T08:04:00.001-08:00

I finally did it, I can no longer queue in the dungeon/raid finder with all the checkboxes checked anymore. I dropped my resto spec and teased my hybrid feral spec into a dedicated tanking spec and a dedicated DPS spec.

I never really cared for druid healing once I had tasted shaman healing, but I kept it around anyway because sometimes you just need a healer. I have a couple hundred achievement points on my druid just because I tagged along with group looking for a healer. I can also attribute a large chunk of justice/valor points to my resto spec since I find healing 5-mans to be more fun than tanking or DPSing. Something about the deciding who lives and who dies...

So for the first time since I started playing I actually have a proper DPS spec and a few more quality of life talents in my tanking spec. Well my tanking spec mainly just got the one talent that extends my pulverize buff, and I splurged and stuck a point in stampede. I'm still getting used to the longer pulverize, but it certainly seems to make my tanking rotation less of a lacerate frenzy. Other than that not too exciting on the tanking front; I only moved 3 points.

I moved 9 points to create my feral DPS/PVP spec of doom. Yeah that doesn't sound too exciting either when you think about classes that actually have different trees. I've not really had a chance to DPS yet, but blood in the water is quite nice and I can't wait to get the two piece bonus to enhance it further; I'll be like a subtlety rogue or something. I also really like pouncing and ravaging in combat. Strangely enough what I am most looking forward to is using tranquility to save the day now that I have 50% of my agility as intellect. Hmm... I might even be able to rez more than one person without drinking.

That should be a whole different topic... why are rez's stupid expensive? Classes with a rez still use mass rez on 1-2 people just because it is more efficient.

Transmogrification Woes

2011-12-14T13:18:00.000-08:00

Finding the perfect combination of items for your toon isn't easy. You have to use wowhead, the model viewer, or some other tool to browse through hundreds of possibilities, determine if you can actually get the items and where they can be found.

Best case scenario you can craft the item you want, buy it outright from a vendor, solo some old dungeon boss a few times till it drops, or do a few quests to earn it as a reward.

Of course not all items are that easy to get, you'll undoubtedly find some items that drop in raids. Even if you can solo the raid you have to wait a week between attempts. More than likely you'll need to find other people interested in running the raid with you, and that isn't always easy.

Then the absolute worst case scenario are items that are just world or trash drops. Those greens that have a one in a hundred chance of dropping off of mobs of a certain level. I want three of those for my shaman right now and I must say AOE clearing an old vanilla dungeon repeatedly is quite boring.

Of course there is always the auction house, but these hard to find greens are just as rare on the auction house and it certainly isn't worth buying an item on a different realm and spending 25$ to realm transfer it to yourself. I did start to consider it until I realized I had all 10 slots filled.

So I check the auction house every time I am nearby now, and I farm for a while when I can stomach it. It seems the most efficient way to go about transmogrification is to come up with the items you want on as many toons as possible in hopes that some of the farming can be done in parallel. Still I've been doing one at a time, it takes a couple hours to come up with a good looking set.

Paid Profession Change

2011-12-06T12:08:00.001-08:00

I've got a realm full of alts with maxed professions, as I am sure many others do. This gets to be a source of some anxiety when a new expansion rolls around. I really like this class and this one, but I'd really need to level this profession. What can you do when your favorite alts don't correspond to your favorite professions?

Retraining a profession from scratch is pretty much the only option, but with all the rare pattern drops and whatnot, it really isn't an option. Plus it is much more enjoyable, and perhaps faster as well, to just keep you professions as is and spend the time to level an alt through new content than it is to grind old content and/or pay dearly for all the mats to relearn a profession.

So I had this brilliant idea that there should be a bind on account tome that you can purchase for gold (or possibly even real money in the blizzard store) that would allow you to record all of your patterns and skill points for a given profession (dropping the profession in the process) and relearning the profession on another toon by using the tome (in the process destroying it).

This would make it possible to move professions around your account quite easily (or at least one realm as BoA items currently work). Spend a decent sum of gold or a few bucks and you'll have your professions exactly as you'd like. I'd certainly shell out the gold/cash for that.

5 Most Annoying Warcraft "Bugs"

2011-12-01T13:48:00.000-08:00

Repairing With Guild Bank

You can only use guild funds to repair if your repair bill is less than or equal to the guild funds available. If your repair bill is higher you either need to pay for it all yourself, or manually repair items one by one to bring your total repair cost down below your available guild funds. Obviously you should be hit the repair with guild funds button and use all of your available funds and have the rest come out of your own pocket if needed.

Switching Enemy Targets Quickly

Often times there is need to flip quickly to a second target and interrupt, crowd control, or even just changing targets because you've just killed your current one. With the introduction of the spells/abilities on your action bars being cast/used on mouse down hitting a hotkey for your interrupt and clicking an enemy at the same time (the click on the enemy slightly before the hotkey) you end up wasting the interrupt on your previous target. Why? Your target doesn't change until you let go of the mouse button.

Spell/Ability Highlighting With Macros

Update: Turns out the highlighting issue was addressed in 4.3 and now works, but I still get to complain about macros not working for special proc'ed abilities.

With Cataclysm came the action bar enhancement that highlights proc enhanced abilities by putting a shiny golden yellow border around them. This feature doesn't work for spells or abilities in macros. Pretty annoying to miss out on a really helpful UI feature just because you can't efficiently play your class without macros. To add insult to injury Some of the procs that enhance abilities also change the name of the ability making macroing the ability exceedingly difficult. For example, hunters can't macro throwing a trap without doing research on the new name of the trap ability when being thrown. Similarly for cats, they cannot macro feral charge with ravage without using the modified spell name "Ravage!".

Can't Use Alt-F4 as a Hotkey

The function keys, specifically F1-F5 are so handy to bind to spells/abilities due to their proximity to WASD, the default movement keys. Of course with the best of intentions I stick only abilities that I would never use my self targeting alt modifier on the F4 key, but once in a while I slip up and boom I have to log back in mid dungeon. Alt-F4 may be a windows shortcut, but the warcraft client can choose to ignore that event and remain running if it were programmed to do so, and it should be.

Can't Transmogrify Directly From Void Storage

This was actually addressed in a blue post recently and said to be a "feature", but it's still damn annoying. The whole point of void storage is to save old gear for sentimental reasons, this is also most likely the gear you are going to use for transmogrification. So every time I get a gear upgrade I have to take the item I want to copy out of void storage, do my transmogrification and put it back. If the additional gold cost is important, then just charge more for the transmogrification when using an item in void storage as a template, but don't make the process annoying.

Symbiosis: Not Just a Failed Mastery Bonus

2011-11-23T12:41:00.001-08:00

I read this proposed 5.0 ability and I got hair in my mouth I grinned so wide. Feast your eyes upon this if you've not seen it yet.

Symbiosis - Required Level 87
30 yd range - 4% of base mana - Instant cast

Creates a symbiotic link which grants the Druid one ability belonging to the target's class, varying by the Druid's specialization.

In exchange, grants the target one Druid ability based on their class and combat role.

Lasts 1 hour and persists through death.

Holy crap indeed. No druid in their right mind can resist being excited about this news. Well maybe some of those "caster" druids. Us ferals have a long history of begging, borrowing and stealing abilities from other classes (warriors and rogues come first to mind). What ability screams druid louder than the ability to mimic another class at will.

Of course the first question I asked is what abilities will we get to mimic and what abilities will be we sharing. Well there was also the question of are these the real abilities or a neutered version on a long cooldown. Perhaps we will only get to mimic some of the longer cooldowns of other classes or only some utility abilities. I'm leaning toward utility abilities because utility and druids are like this [crosses fingers]. I'm thinking it will be abilties somewhere between a 20 second and 3 minute cooldown to avoid screwing up druid rotations too badly.

The one preexisting game mechanic that comes to mind when talking about mimicking class abilities is Hex Lord Malacrass's siphon soul ability in Zul'Aman. What works for a boss doesn't necessarily work for a player so I'm not so sure we can glean much from this boss encounter besides some neat things to think about.

I know what I would like to borrow from other classes though. I'd love to nab death grip from death knights for tanking. Antimagic shield could be cool, or some blood worms to follow me around. All of the DK utility I can think of centers around survivability so I'm really not sure if they will pick one ability that all specs will share or provide different ones.

Of course I want to borrow misdirect from hunters. I don't want anything else from them. Maybe a trap, but not really. Most of their utility abilities are ranged weapon or ranged DPS specific. Maybe casters would have more interest in leeching off their resident hunter.

I'll want to borrow avenging wrath from paladins, pink bar gives you wings. Again that is like the only ability I can think of that would interest me. Hammer/fist of justice perhaps. Blizzard sure has their work cut out for them on flushing out this new druid ability.

Mages are full of cool utility. I'd be happy with blink, ice block, frost nova, polymorph, invisibility, spellsteal, mirrored kitties! So many choices.

Stealing leap of faith from priests would be totally awesome. Think of the trouble I could cause combining that ability with feral charge. Although a fear or a mind control would also be pretty cool.

I'm not sure what if anything a druid, feral in particular, can hope to gain from a rogue. We have a rogue, it's called cat form. I guess we could nab cloak of shadows or vanish. Ok I changed my mind I also want evasion. I almost want this new druid ability to give me a random class ability so I can grab one and try again if I get one I don't want right then.

Shaman are a toughie, most of their utility is in the form of totems. I guess it isn't out of the question for a druid channeling a shaman to drop a totem. A tremor totem would be really nice. Perhaps some of their shields or weapon enhancements.

Hmm... warlock. A teleport could be neat. Fear, a curse perhaps. I don't really associate my warlock with utility. Warlocks mostly just hurt stuff.

I'm going to steal directly from the Hex Lord for warriors, I want: heroic leap, mortal strike or spell reflection. It will be very interesting to see what Blizzard comes up with for the actual list.

Of course those ideas are all very selfish, everyone else will want to know what ability druids will be sharing with them in return. I'd imagine barkskin, or innervate, perhaps a HoT. Hard to say as so much of druid utility is forms that other classes won't have. I wonder if it will be of any use for a druid to share abilities with another druid.

Druids, Paladins, Priests and Warriors are Main Material

2011-11-22T11:20:00.001-08:00

Neat graph today over at MMO-Champion showing the ratio of different classes at different levels of valor points. Basically what classes are raiding and how often compared to others.

What is interesting is that you can infer which classes people generally use as alts and which classes people generally use as their "mains". Druids, paladins, priests and warriors all trend upwards and have a larger representation at higher valor point levels. Death knights, hunters, mages and rogues all trend downwards although mages stay more constant.

Warlocks and shaman are oddballs in that their representation fluctuates rather than trending up or down. I found shaman particularly interesting because they peak in the mid range of valor points. That is interesting because my shaman is my second raiding toon, but I don't put as much effort in valor point wise as I do on my main. The shaman representation peaking in the mid range indicates to me than many other use their shaman as a secondary raiding toon that they don't play as much as their mains.

My theory on warlocks that peak at 25k valor is that they are also secondary raiding toons for people, but there are also more warlock alts hanging around.

The only other interesting data points I gleaned were that hunters drop off fast, like falling off a cliff fast, and that mages fall off, but not very much at all. My take on this is that hunters are the most popular alt class and mages are appealing to casuals. I earned some warlock points there calling mages casuals. I didn't exactly say that, but what I am getting at is that mages appeal to people playing alts, playing casually as mains, secondary raiding toons and hardcore raiding mains almost equally as much. Not sure what that means, but it is interesting.

What we can take away from all this is that if you are starting a new toon, pick one of the big four: druid, paladin, priest and/or warrior.

New Druid Talents

2011-10-31T11:35:00.000-07:00

I thought it would be fun to go through and pick my favorites as they are currently described and "think out loud" at the same time. I'll likely have a strong feral bias as that is the spec I feel most at home playing, but I am bound to have the healer in me speak up at times as well. At least one this is for sure, I won't be mentioning boomkins. Woops, moving on...

Tier One

The first tier of talents are aimed at improving mobility. As a feral druid at heart I can't pull myself away from Feline Swiftness and the base 30% speed increase in cat form. As an added bonus this grants a 10% speed boost when not in cat form, so it's also a good talent for bears as well as healers.

The other two talents in the first tier force you into cat form. This is not generally a good thing when tanking in bear. That and they have cooldowns, moderately long 3 minute cooldowns right now which probably won't change too much.

The first of these is displacer beast which teleports you somewhere random within 20 yards and puts you into stealth for 10 seconds. As a night elf druid I think to myself, I'll just run into the corner, flip to cat and shadowmeld. That only has a two minute cooldown. Shadowmeld is hit or miss already when you manually pick a safe spot, I don't see a random teleport working out too well. All I see in this talent is a way for non-night elf druids to occasionally avoid a repair bill.

The last mobility talent is Tireless Pursuit which is basically dash that breaks roots and snares. Snares we already clear by "power shifting" which I assume will not change and I am guessing we will keep dash as a standard ability as well. So all that is left is the breaking out of roots which a PVP trinket can do and then some on a shorter 2 minute cooldown. Now compared to feral swiftness which is 10/30% speed all the time this grants on average less than a 6% speed boost on an extended run. During a boss fight you'd get to use it two or maybe three times on average, and what is the chance of it being available every time you want it. So even if you never shift into cat feral swiftness is probably better mobility in the long run.

Tier Two

These talents seem targeted at survival. I'm at a bit of a loss for which one is actually the better choice for me without having some numbers to base my decision off of. All three talents provide some healing, but one in particular, Nature's Swiftness, stands out from the pack. Every 3 minutes it allows you to cast a spell usually restricted to caster form from any form and increase the healing/duration of the spell by 50%. This is the bear form battle rez we druids have been dreaming about forever. I also think that this will be replacing the predatory strikes talent which allows cats to do almost the same thing after a 5 combo point finisher. Most of the time I see this being used as a defensive cooldown with healing touch. Just how much that healing touch heals for compared to the other two talents will make or break this one. Lets face it, bears have been battle rezzing for as long as they wished they could do it in bear form and crowd controlling as a tank isn't going to happen aside from the beginning of a pull. This is a straight up 3 minute heal cooldown in a pretty disguise.

The next healing talent doesn't have a disguise, renewal is a 30% heal every two minutes. I'm guessing this will be the winner for tanks, but it all depends on how much healing a healing touch can do as a feral and probably whether or not the 7th tier talent heart of the wild affect the healing done. I can't see this not being better for a feral, especially considering it has a shorter cooldown that nature's swiftness. Nature's swiftness is probably going to be better for healers.

The last healing talent, Cenarion Ward, is a shield that puts a HoT on the target when they next take damage. If the healing from this ability is on par with the other talents of this tier then it is just a button you have to hit 4-6 times as often which seems tedious. So I am thinking renewal for feral druids and nature's swiftness for caster druids.

Tier Three

This tier is pretty boring for ferals. The theme for the tier is creating or maintaining distance between you and your enemies. The first talent is our familiar friend faerie fire with the addition of a 50% slowing effect (think faerie fire applying the infected wounds debuff). I think this is pretty much a non-choice for ferals. Bears rely on faerie fire as a ranged pull and threat generator and cats rely on it for the damage boost from the armor reduction. Not the mention the anti-stealth utility in PVP. I expect this tier to change drastically sometime before the expansion comes out.

Oh, the other two talents. First we have mass entanglement, or as I like to think of it, hungering cold: the druid edition. The one big difference is that it is a targeted AOE crowd control instead of being centered on the caster. The one minute cooldown we already know isn't reliable for add control on boss fights and the two minute cast time in PVP is just asking for an interrupt. All that trouble for an 8 second root. I have decided this talent sucks, you can't even use it in forms.

The last talent makes me smile. Typhoon which you can cast in forms. Bears and cats blasting their targets over cliffs and whatnot. Sadly other than being amusing and potentially useful on a couple gimmicky fights, this isn't all that helpful for ferals. We are a melee spec, why would we want to purposefully blast our targets out of our range? Obviously this is the go to talent for caster druids.

Tier Four

Not sure what the theme of this tier is, unless making you better at your role is a theme. The first talent is wild charge, basically feral charge with a new name to ferals, but now it works for caster druids as well. The odd exception is that it works as a disengage for boomkins, but they are already odd to the point that odd is normal for them. So far this is my favorite talent this tier, but the other two just haven't been flushed out yet enough to actually consider them. Wild charge almost seems like it belongs in tier three.

The second talent, incarnation, appears to make you better at whatever form you happen to be in. More DPS in cat, more healing in tree and theoretically more mitigation in bear and more DPS in moonkin form. This tier has got to be the most interesting choice so far, at least for tanks. Do you choose mobility in the form of a charge, or do you favor additional mitigation? That choice right there makes me think that the talents in this tier won't provide additional mitigation for tanks because what raid tank in their right mind would favor a charge they usually use once over increased survivability once they are in front of the boss.

The third talent, force of nature, much like incarnation, is a boost to your performance, but by summoning adds to help instead of just making yourself better. No details on what the treats will actually do, but I imagine the balance ones will remain unchanged and will probably be shared by cats. The resto treats will probably heal and the bear treants might end up being something similar to army of the dead.

Nothing really to decide for tier four right now, we'll have to wait for more information.

Tier Five

This tier is another one that obviously needs to be reworked, more so than tier three and the whole faerie fire imbalance. The theme of this tier is cool things to do in bear form. Although I suspect that at the very least the flipping to bear will be disassociated with the first talent, demoralizing roar so that caster druids have something to use. Speaking of the first talent, demoralizing roar disorients enemies within 10 yards for 4 seconds, sort of like an AOE bash. This could be handy for non-tanks, but is currently annoying because they would have to return to their non-bear form afterwards wasting a GCD worth of their 4 second CC in the process. This just doesn't seem that exciting for anyone that isn't a bear tank.

The second talent, ursol's vortex, is like super death grip for bears or cats for that matter since it doesn't seem to have a taunt built into it. There is absolutely no reason why a caster druid would want to suck enemies to them, so again this is mainly a bear talent. The interesting part of this talent though is that if a bear gave up charge in tier four for some yet unknown mitigation talent they would still have a gap closer. This talent would even make faerie fire less important if you can suck ranged casters right into the melee puddle.

The last talent, and quite possibly my favorite talent in the entire tree, is bear hug. Grabs an enemy into a strange combination of a channeled crowd control and damage over time. Basically you hop in bear form and squish the life (or unlife) out of your target. The vortex does sound neat, but I don't think I could pass up giving my enemies a big ol' bear hug.

Tier Six

The theme of the last tier seems to be something along the lines of, be all the hybrid you can be. The first talent, heart of the wild, makes it possible for all druids to go "hero bear" and save the day. Every six minutes for 45 seconds you can flip to bear and gain 95% more armor and have your hit also count as expertise. It also converts 50% int to agility for casters so they could in theory go kitty fo some silly reason, or more interestingly it converts 50% agility to int so cats, or bears in theory, can do some healing in a pinch. Very interesting talent.

The next talent, master shapeshifter, doesn't seem as cool as heart of the wild, in fact it seems pretty stupid, but it doesn't have a cooldown. Non-instant spells give you an attack power buff and melee abilities give you a spell damage buff. The only spec interested in spell damage are boomkins, who would never melee. And the only non-instant spells a feral would cast are maybe crowd control abilities. The buff stack up to three times and is consumed when an ability makes use of the buff. Really the only purpose I can think for it is skull bash for balance druids and crowd control for ferals. In either case the buff makes up for the damage loss from flipping forms for utility. Obviously healers and tanks need not apply.

The final talent called disentanglement causes shapeshifting to remove roots in addition to healing 20% of your maximum health on a 30 second internal cooldown. All I can think is how much I am going to kill frost mages with this talent in PVP. This also seems to be the preferred healer on this tier.

All in all I see at least three talents I am going to want to flip between regularly depending on what I am doing (raid, dungeon or PVP). Good thing they promised talent switching would be as easy as glyph switching.

Pandas!

2011-10-26T10:49:00.000-07:00

You know what excites me most about the next expansion. It's not pandas, it's not monks, and yet both are contributing factors. It's the hope of breaking that 10 character limit on any given realm.

I've tried making alts on other realms, meeting new people, trying to keep up with another community, and then losing touch after playing on my main realm exclusively for a few weeks. It just doesn't work for me, and as a result those other toons collect dust since the community is an important part of the game for me. Past the starting area anyway.

I always found the starting areas to be the most immersive and exciting parts of the game. I create a brand new character, spend a good hour languishing at the character creation screen to get that perfect look, and a name to match. All my hopes and dreams for that toon seem like they could happen tomorrow. Any rudimentary backstory and character personality is also fresh in my mind. All these things make those first 10 or so levels a lot of fun.

Then after neglecting my new toon for a while in favor of max level ones I lose that clarity. I still get excited about a lot of my character names; pretty much all of them thanks to some paid name changes, but any inkling of a personality gets muddled with my own and my character becomes me rather than me becoming my character. Paid race/faction/name changes also have a similar effect on a toon for me.

Let's steer back to the next expansion. The other thing I am really excited about has nothing to do with warcraft aside from being connected to the annual pass (nifty deal awarding a beta invite, mount and diablo 3 for promising to keep your subscription going for another year). I am excited by the prospect of the real money auction house in diablo 3. I have this neat idea that rare items will drop for me once in a while dabbling in diablo and I'll be able to sell them for a buck here and five bucks there that I will be able to spend on warcraft stuff like pets and mounts or perhaps just supplement my subscription.

It is an intriguing thought to think that the time I spend amusing myself with warcraft alts could be replaced by enjoying diablo alts and making money along the way to support my warcraft subscription. In reality I think I'd only get 1-2 months of playtime a year which I would probably spend on pets on mounts instead.

The rest of the new expansion stuff, nothing I wasn't expecting. New areas, new dungeons, new raids. I'll certainly take advantage of all that stuff, but as features go I've got the most interest in the additional character slots. That one tiny feature will have more impact on my long term attachment to the game than any other.

Four Specs!? Say it ain't so.

2011-10-24T12:33:00.001-07:00

As a casual raider it was always quite a perk to have my druid ready for anything. Need a tank, fine, need a healer, I can do that, need a DPS, oh I can do that too. I was a little worried when Cataclysm promised further division of bears and cats, but thankfully it never really came to pass. Perhaps the same will happen this time as well.

My current druid speccing algorithm creates two specs, one focused on tanking while also maximizing DPS effectiveness when possible and a second focused entirely on healing. Now worst case scenario MoP will leave some critical cat ability out of the bear spec like shred or mangle. Best case scenario is that they just leave out some of the quality of life cat talents like king of the jungle from the bear spec. I do have one point in king of the jungle right now, and it certainly helps my DPS, but I wouldn't be crippled without it. Other cat friendly talents like stampede or blood in the water I already do without.

Now a blue response explicitly stated when the topic of off-tank DPS was brought up that no other tanks could do it and that druid would no longer be special little snowflakes. I take that to mean that they will be doing something to completely gimp cat DPS in the new bear spec, but I can't imagine what. Maybe it will just be equivalent to DPSing in a "bear spec" now and blues think that is enough. That's certainly not going to dissuade bearcats from speccing bear and keeping a DPS set on hand.

If you look at the talent trees right now there is a ton of overlap between cat and bear talents where the talent does something that is good for a cat and something that is good for a bear or something that is good for both. A truly sadistic developer could tease those all apart and work all the bear stuff into the bear spec while omitting the cat stuff.

I'm not sure that is likely since it was mentioned they were rolling the talents into the baseline abilities. So long as the bearspec retains all the crucial cat baseline abilities then there is nothing to worry about. Can a bear spec live without shred? Probably. It's not really all that important for soloing when you can't be behind your target anyway. Could they award the cat version of mangle to cats and the bear version to bears? That would hinder the bear spec's ability to solo.

So many possibilities, but when does it come to the point where being gimped x% dps isn't worth the ability to heal. I honestly don't heal often on my druid. I did heal a random heroic last night since healers were eligible for the bonus sack, but I can't remember the last time I healed before that. In the past healing has got me into many an informal raid for achievements, gear and amusement. Opportunities that wouldn't have been available if I just stuck to my strengths of dpsing and tanking. Not to say that I'm not proficient at druid healing, I'm actually quite good at it. I just like healing on my shaman more.

One thing is for sure, a cat spec won't be able to seriously tank without the crit immunity and extra mitigation that will undoubtedly be thrown into the bear spec. So the bearcat lifestyle rests squarely on the bear spec. Trispec anyone?

Right Hand, Left Hand, Cooperate!

2011-10-07T09:12:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time there were add-ons created to cast spells and use abilities when a hotkey was pressed rather than released. This was largely PVP driven where those few (hundred) milliseconds matter. Of course this was also useful for PVE and I think healers were the first to catch on. Now your mouseover healers (which most healers are) enjoyed the benefits of this right away, but those healers that click on their targets had a slight glitch.

Clicking on a raid/party/unit frame, or any friendly/hostile unit directly, sets your target when the mouse button is released, not when the mouse button is pressed. So as you can imagine, or perhaps as you have experienced first hand, it was very easy to begin casting a spell prior to your new target being selected, negating the benefits of those faster, more responsive, hotkeys.

So the next part of the arms race, largely for the benefit of healers, raid/party/unit frame add-ons added the ability to change your target when you pressed your mouse button instead of when you let go. Life is good again.

Fast forward to the present day; Blizzard finally saw the benefits of having hotkeys work when pressed rather than released, and added the option into the game by default. Sadly they did not see the big picture and the default frames still switch targets when the mouse button is released.

I have recently exposed a new and annoying wrinkle in this arms race between ability usage and target selection when tanking. Often times I will flip targets quickly to taunt, interrupt, or use a ranged ability like faerie fire, but since my target is changed when I release my mouse button I often end up taunting my current target and wasting the cooldown.

Interrupting worshipers on Cho'gall and taunting down spinners on Beth'tilac are just a couple examples of situations where it would really help to flip targets on mouse down rather than mouse up. Unfortunately I'm not sure there is an add-on to do this, or at least I don't know of one yet after searching for a while.

One day target selection and ability usage will consistently use either the key/button pressed event rather than the key/button released event, but in the meantime the left hand will never quite know what the right hand is doing, and vice versa.

Pet Stances No Longer Sufficient

2011-07-05T12:24:00.000-07:00

Before 4.2, and after whatever patch last messed with my pet controls, I kept all my pets on defensive 99% of the time. As soon as I started attacking my pet would go in and attack that target and if I told my pet to go after a different target it would do so and then return to its original target. Perfect for PVE where you spend most of your time concentrating on a single target and occasionally focus on burning a secondary target/add down quickly. Most notably 4.2 took away the automatically attack my target when entering combat feature of the old defensive mode. Not a huge deal as I can just macro that feature back into all my shots with something like the following.

/petattack [@pettarget,noexists,@target][@pettarget,dead,@target]

I've yet to try it as I've only done the Thrall chain and one ZG run on my hunter since the patch. One perk of wiping repeatedly on the last boss in ZG was that I got a lot of practice playing with the new pet stances with all those adds. Assist mode was pretty much useless and I felt my pet spent more time running around than actually hitting anything. Not to mention that when assisting it was near to impossible to get my pet back to pull a new add off of me. Defensive mode was best, but I had to pay a lot more attention to managing my pet's target.

I used to use aggressive for waves of mobs and/or PVP when I really didn't care what my pet hit so long as it did it quickly. I haven't PVPed on my hunter for the longest time, but I fondly remember standing back to back with my pet on aggressive to provide 360 degrees of stealth detection. In other words I won't miss it too much, but still assist mode is certainly no replacement for what aggressive stance provided.

One thing I like about assist mode is that it feels a little more like a pet command than the other stances. What I would like to see replace/augment the pet stances are three commands: assist, defend and heel. Assist would behave much like assist does today with the exception that if I specifically command my pet to attack something else it will do that instead and then go back to assisting. Defend would focus on defending me and turn my pet into a pseudo tank focusing on and switching to targets that are attacking me first (to pull them off). Finally the heel command would call your pet back to your side where it would remain until instructed otherwise (basically a rename of what passive does already).

To extend that one step further the assist and defend commands could be used on another friendly target! How cool would it be to ask your pet to go defend your healer, or in a raid/dungeon setting have your pet assist one of the melee DPS or tank. It would totally turn what is still a little bit of a kludgy interface and make it feel like our pets are actually listening to our commands and working alongside us. The immersion factor alone would be enough to make me squeal in delight.

I can only hope that the developers working on the pet changes are thinking something along those lines for a long term plan. Short term the new pet changes are pretty disappointing. Assist mode has your pet actually fighting against your commands at times and defensive mode requires more attention that it did before. New players are going to have a harder time controlling their pets than they did in the past, although they don't have the aggressive mistake to make anymore. I just picture new hunters trying to use the assist mode, getting an add on them while killing another and getting totally frustrated trying to tell their pet to help them get it off.

Oh and while I am listing totally awesome pet enhancements I'd also like to suggest a new commands similar to "go to" called "patrol". Your pet would walk back and forth patrolling between their current location and the location you selected. Basically a carbon copy of a feature that existed in the first three warcraft RTS games. I'm not sure how useful it would be in practice, but it would be fun.

__ can do it, how hard can it be?

2011-06-02T09:43:00.000-07:00

Heal and interrupt, sure no problem. Wait a second, raid healing and interrupting!? Wipe.

Being a shaman means people look your way whenever the word interrupt comes up. We do it at range, we do it often (more often when talented), we do it off the GCD and we don't have resource constraints slowing us down. Again, who thought it was a good idea to have interrupts that cost rage or energy?

So when it came time to do interrupts last night for Halfus my resto Shaman came up the obvious choice given that all other options required two people. That or require me to usurp a DPS spot and stay on Halfus for interrupts causing the adds to go down slower, but that's a better plan B than taking two DPS off adds and putting them on Halfus.

As I mentioned the first attempt at raid healing interruptus was a pretty triumphant failure. I was paying attention to about three too many things when I should have been focusing more on actually interrupting. The result was I missed half the interrupts and also did half the healing I should have been. So yeah, obviously I should be reassigned to a tank.

Tank healing works out much better while interrupting, only two targets to track and I can still splash the raid once in a while for good measure. I was able to focus much more on interrupting and rely on the other healers to watch the raid more closely than, "ooh a clump of people, healing rain". I found my rhythm and interrupts went much more smoothly. I'd compare it to tanking the beam boss in heroic Blackrock Caverns, while interrupting and beam dancing. It is actually a pretty good recipe for success in a casual group, get a few reliable people to do any and all tasks that require additional thought. The only downside is things go to hell rather quickly when those people aren't available.

Our next conquest was Onmitron, Omnomnomtron, Oomatron or whatever other creative nicknames you can come up with. Someone has to interrupt Arcanotron, and 9 pairs of eyes zero in on my location. Makes sense, shamans are again the only class than can interrupt all of Arcanotron's spells single handedly. I did have to switch to DPS however since I don't have the talent points to lower my interrupt cooldown in my healing spec. Not a problem this time as it might have been on Halfus, all four trons share a health pool so it doesn't matter who hits what. We totally one shotted it, and it was our first kill no less in that group.

On to Magmaw. No interrupts here, but resto shaman still get a chance to shine with telluric currents. We can heal the crap out of the raid during the worm phases and regen with lightning bolts during the head phase. Amplified damage means faster mana return and we can pretty much fill up our whole mana bar and be ready to rock those heals for the next worm phase. First time I got to try this out, before last night it was only something I thought sounded really cool. It was everything I hoped it would be and despite losing our tank twice in one fight we downed him in that very same attempt before we left the head phase. Messy, but effective.

I kind of like mechanics like that where the tank becomes irrelevant for a portion of the fight. It's often boring/annoying for tanks, but it gives DPS a chance to save the day which is always fun for everyone when it works out. Magmaw head phases and Halfus stunned phases are the two situations that come to mind. I've seen Halfus taken out by DPS after the enrage timer no less just because he got stunned and DPS took full advantage.

I'm Sorry You're Superfluous

2011-05-25T09:34:00.000-07:00

I've been leveling my new worgen priest as disc/holy since I am most interested in healing and don't like the idea of being a shadow priest. Perhaps I'm weird, but shadow just seems evil; it took me rolling a blood elf to justify making a warlock. I guess I'm ok with overcoming an inherent evil taint in my toons so long as they didn't actively choose it and try to overcome it by doing good. My blood elf warlock was forced to fel magics to survive, my death knight had no say in being resurrected as an abomination, and I suppose worgen to some extent also didn't have a choice in what they were to become or what they did before being "cured". So going shadow just doesn't work for me. That said I decided early on to make my disc spec my "DPS" spec and focus entirely on healing for my holy spec.

Turns out disc does pretty decent damage at lower levels, even at 48 I am still competitive with other DPS in pugs. When I flush out the disc tree and get to take a few points in shadow I'll be able to use spirit for hit and with any luck be able to hold my own in normal dungeons. Apparently I'm also ok with tossing the occasional shadow spell in the heat of battle; chalk it up to the worgen curse, but embracing shadow fully is where I draw the line.

So given that I know I can put out more that my fair share of damage I don't feel the least bit guilty about checking that DPS checkbox when queuing for a random dungeon. I always have healer checked as well, but apparently once in a while the DPS queue is shorter and I get into a dungeon as DPS. So I focus on maximizing damage instead of healing when that happens which pretty much means I use my penance for damage and apply dots instead of tossing a heal to accompany my smite and holy fire spam. In either case atonement does a ton of healing and under normal circumstances covers all the healing. Only during a particularly bad pull is any direct healing required; therein lies the one problem, what does the healer do when I DPS?

One of three things from my experience: roll with it and take a nap, do some DPS in the downtime or throw a fit and drop group. The latter is usually quite hilarious, but I can't help but to feel a teeny bit sorry for them; while I am laughing of course. Honestly there is nothing funnier than a healer just blowing up after a few pulls and typing something profane along the lines of, "screw this, you guys don't even need me", and dropping group. That's like the DPS dropping group because the tank is doing all the damage, which I have seen happen. Although the tank and healer above all the DPS is pretty amusing to look at, but I've never seen a DPS drop because the healer is beating them.

Disc priests just got stuck in a really awkward position, When we heal it's like there are 4 DPS and when we DPS the healer becomes a 5th wheel unless they also go DPS. Really a disc healer is like having 5 DPS at lower levels because tanks usually beat out most the DPS for damage. It all balances out for the end game from what I've heard/read, but while leveling it's pretty overpowered. Really any group without a disc healer is at a disadvantage and for purposes of min/maxing disc is hands down the best spec for regular dungeons.

I guess I am a little greedy for checking DPS to occasionally shave that little bit of time off my dungeon queue, but if I can do my job as good or better than the rest of my group and on top of that indirectly keep everyone healed up, how is that my problem? When I first got atonement I thought how crazy overpowered it was as I smite healed my way through dungeon after dungeon while topping the DPS meters by a fairly large margin. I told myself this can't possibly last as I continued to level only having to actually heal when I got into a dungeon slightly over my level and even then only a few times total. Then they buffed atonement to work with holy fire as well and I got even better. My relative damage has tapered off a bit, but I can still generally get first or second for damage on boss fights. We'll see what happens once I hit outlands, but the way things are going it looks as if DiscPS will remain not only viable, but flourish.

In fact when I was leveling up my warlock I had a disc priest not only heal and DPS, upper blackrock spire, they tanked it as well. They had obviously queued with the tank and the pally tank hung back and healed while that disc priest tanked everything and held decent aggro as well all things considered. I'd seen tanking classes tank worse. I get all giddy with excitement thinking that I will still have that much power in 10 more levels. I may step on healers toes without hesitation, but I still usually let the tank do their job for the most part. I've always been known to pull as a healer when my tank is going slower than I would like and being a disc priest has certainly only encouraged that behavior. I remember I did cause a tank to drop for doing that in Uldaman. I just continued to tank/heal/DPS until we got another tank from the queue (that next tank did a much better job).

There certainly is a lot of leeway in a regular dungeon for what a good player can get away with. On one hand it is kind of stupid that tanks and healers can be made obsolete without any real consequences, but on the other that is the price we pay for having content tuned toward learning how to play instead of tuned to be challenging like heroic or raid content. I remember fondly running dungeons in outlands with 5 death knights before the dungeon finder.

Obviously the point of all this is that you shouldn't be discouraged or upset by someone doing better than you, or even outright carrying you, in a learning environment such as regular dungeons are. If you are the tank and people are tanking for you without any ill effects then just use the time to practice. It's a no pressure environment, you can try pretty much anything you want and it won't matter. If you are the healer and no healing is needed then work on seeing how much damage you can do or perhaps even flip specs and heal from a DPS spec as needed. Healers are given the opportunity to DPS more often than you'd think so getting some practice with it isn't a bad thing. Regular dungeons are just as much learning to deal with the strengths and weaknesses of other players in your group as they are about how well you can perform at your role individually.

I just get so excited thinking about my disc priest, they are like the caster healer/DPS equivalent of the melee tank/DPS hybrid role that feral druids fill. Not quite as flushed out on the DPS side, but it's as close as any other class/spec comes to filling two roles.

Secondary Specs Opening Doors

2011-05-24T07:16:00.000-07:00

It's when you have absolutely nothing planned that some of the most interesting things can happen playing warcraft. Yesterday was a wonderfully boring Monday; I stayed at work a little later, followed the lawn mower around the yard (self-propelled), had some dinner and finally logged on to use up some of the rested XP I've been accumulating. After getting from 45 to 48 on my priest last week from just two random dungeons I was curious how far the rested xp would get me on other toons, not as far as I thought, but it was fun anyway.

As an aside, is it just me or is the horde side in general ruder, cruder and all in all less refined than the 13 year olds on the alliance side? I'm used to people being total asshats in random dungeons, but when I play my two horde toons people seem to go that extra mile. On the alliance side your tank goes offline and you see a comment like "offline" when someone goes to kick them, horde side I saw not only once but twice, "offline and a fag". Perhaps it's a horde inside joke, but this was two entirely different groups from entirely different realms; I checked because it was just too weird to be coincidence.

Back on topic, after I was done playing around horde side for a while I hopped over to the alliance side, where I actually have a guild with more than three people logged in, and was working on leveling my paladin that one last level to 85. For some reason I was enjoying it too, must be something similar to Stockholm syndrome. Really I just had to appreciate the sturdiness of a ret pally doing the chain to unlock the twilight highlands for the 7th time. Then on my way back to turn in the last couple quests to open the portal back to Stormwind I saw a request for a healer for the last two bosses in Ulduar in guild chat.

Hot diggity, I was actually working on Uldaur achievements for a while back in wrath, but never got to finish since the group I was running with wasn't able to run on the days I was available. Better yet it was just the last two bosses so it was practically handed to me on a silver platter. All made possible because I have retained a healing spec I hardly ever use. I can honestly count the number of times I've healed on my druid in Cataclysm on one hand, and yet I maintain the spec and a set of gear just for those unexpected moments when being a healer can open a door that would otherwise be closed. The feral hybrid/resto spec combo is like a casual dream come true. I give up a little bit of damage to focus on being all the bear I can be and as a result I am able to tank, heal and/or DPS at the drop of a hat.

Back in Ulduar healing for the first time in quite literally months (I like to jump right into things) I wasn't all that rusty. The healing throughput requirements were also half of what they are now so that helped quite a bit. I had some pretty serious mana issues on Vezax (who I wanted to call Venoxis), serious being I ran out and died. Luckily the rest of the group finished without me and got the achievement.

Then we ran in and tried to 8 man Yogg, which didn't work out so hot so we actually gave everyone the opportunity to get into the room the next attempt and got it down on the second try (third if you count the accidental pull). That fight is ridiculously busy. I think I could down it 15 more times and still find new things.

Then after that we headed to down Alganon which I had always wanted to see and as it turned out I was the only one in the group with the key, so it was good for everyone that I tagged along. That fight was everything I hoped it to be and more. I hadn't been so impressed with a boss since Mimiron and before that I can't even think of a boss that impressed me other than when I first started raiding in BC and was impressed by almost everything. So I got my starcaller title because of random chance and that I still remember how to heal. How's that for a random evening? Now I feel the need to find a group and go back and knock off disarmed for my mount seeing as it is the only achievement I have left to do for it.

What Do You Look For in a Class?

2011-05-20T14:29:00.000-07:00

Oh my, I asked a question. It's like I actually care about what all three of my readers think! It's no surprise that I write more for my own amusement than anyone else's. You know when the guild forums are slow and you just really need to have a good wordgasm before your head explodes? No? Good, me neither; moving on.

Working with the increasingly more accurate assumption that all classes are as good at filling their potential roles as any other, it becomes clear that the most important choice after deciding whether you want to tank, heal or DPS is how you want to do it. DPS is most obviously grouped into ranged and melee both with wildly different feels, but after that it's just the little things that make the difference.

Lets take my favorite class as an example, druid obviously. You can do whatever you want right off the bat, that's a great start. I originally chose to make a druid for that reason along and also because changing forms looked really fun. Little did I know that it would take me a year and a day to actually get any of those forms when first starting out. I actually made a hunter and got that to max level first just because druids are such late bloomers. Had I known that at the time I probably would have stuck with my druid.

It wasn't until I got cat form that I really started to enjoy my druid at that used to be at level 20. I like instants, cast times make me sleepy, so most all casters don't really hold my attention long. So 20 levels of casting spells that I wasn't even taking talents for was pretty lame. Glad they fixed that in cataclysm. Sadly cataclysm also took away my druid's ability to heal nearly exclusively with instants. I just had a wild idea of all druid healing spells being instant with different mana costs and cooldowns. That'd be sweet.

What I didn't know about druids when I started, but really appreciate now is that lack of (self)buffs to maintain. Paladins have an aura and a seal and a buff, rogues have three different weapons to poison, shaman have weapon enhancements and the list goes on. Who want's to keep track of all that crap? It's not like you get to do perform any better than classes that don't. Druids have their one buff which lasts an hour and if you are lucky you can even pawn it off on a pally or another druid (there always seems to be a plethora of them in some combination). Having a buff to watch/maintain as part of a rotation makes things interesting. Having a buff that you never think about because it's on for an hour or more without any action on your part is just stupid.

At the other extreme there is the abilities that aren't annoying because they are easy to forget about, but because they are like a blinking idiot light on your dashboard. Ooh, ooh, hit this button, now this button, now this other one again. It's probably mostly my personal preference, but I don't enjoy playing whack-a-mole with my action bars. I like a sense of priority between abilities and cooldowns or dots, basically something that you can see coming and anticipate. Obviously I abhor paladins right now because thier action bars light up like a Christmas tree to some pagan RNG holiday. There is enough of that in boss encounters, don't need to add to it. Again, why deal with more hassle when it doesn't make you any better than any other class? I used to refer to these types of abilities as things that needed babysitting as you had to continually watch them to see if they would need your attention. Nowadays of course they light up quite obviously so there is less attention needed, but I still find it equally annoying.

Last but now least I look for flexibility, not to be confused with the versatility of being able to fill a number of different roles, but being able to fill one role well in different situations. We all know the distinction between ranged friendly and melee friendly fights. I love to be able to cross that barrier and perform well on both sides of the fence. Feral druids do that in a couple ways when we can't always be in melee range: we can make sure to keep bleeds refreshed to last while we are away and we have an energy resource that allows us to buffer attacks for a few seconds without losing anything but a few auto attacks.

So I look for versatility, instants, lack of busy work, lack of babysitting, a lot of utility and last but not least flexibility.

The thing that got me thinking of all this to begin with was AOE though. Specifically my shaman and other classes compared to my druid. Shaman have to put up flame shock and hit fire nova, plus totems and if your elemental earthquake, that's a lot of crap to do to compared to a feral druid who hits one button and does better than you with a totally minimal effort. Even balance druids have those stupid mushrooms on top of their previously equally trivial hurricane so not even all druids have it easy. Aside from a channeled blanket AOE or spammable button everyone else is just doing more work than everyone else for absolutely no gain. Class homogenization is often looked upon as a really bad thing, but I think I just found his evil twin brother. There has to be some sort of happy medium where the effort required remains constant while preserving the uniqueness of each class, channeled vs instant burst vs AOE damage over time abilities pretty much do that now.

Target On Mouse Down

2011-05-06T14:49:00.000-07:00

I'm sure most non-mouse-over healers have noticed this even if they didn't know why. You click on a raid frame to switch targets and cast a spell, but your spell ends up going to your previous target. You know I came across this very same issue back when I started using the SnowFallKeyPress add-on which caused my hot keys to cast on button down instead of button up. I just figured the change made it faster than the target switching and got used to it over time. Then SnowFallKeyPress broke and I never bothered to fix it and eventually Blizzard made it's functionality part of the game and I was back to the same issue.

Turns out the root of the problem is that clicking a raid frame doesn't actually change targets till you let go of the mouse button. So when your spell cast happened when you released the key and the target flipped when you released you mouse button the two events always happened in the right order. Change the ability to cast as soon as the button is pressed and the targeting is going to lag behind.

Once I realized what the problem was I started looking for solutions. The healing specific add-ons like Healbot and Vuhdo had apparently figured this out way before me and already had the ability to target on mouse down. Pitbull however did not much to my surprise and I spent a little bit of time looking through the LUA code to rectify that without getting anywhere. Then I remembered another add on I'd used before, Clique. I downloaded it and installed it to find that the very first checkbox in the options did exactly what I wanted.

I suspect that Blizzard will notice the benefits of targeting on mouse down in time, but in the meantime I've got a solution in hand before I got used to hitting my action buttons later to compensate again. I can't believe I didn't catch this the first time I went through this, but I suppose I wasn't healing as much at the time and was mostly impressed by the faster reaction time when DPSing, interrupting in particular.

4.soon

2011-04-15T12:27:00.001-07:00

When the announcement was made that the firelands and the next raiding tier that will accompany them was bumped to 4.2 I figured that meant that 4.1 was almost ready and they just dropped the not quite finished content to get it out. Oddly enough that didn't happen and it is now six weeks later. I want my fixes now! /stomps feet

I haven't actually looked forward to a patch in quite a while. Normally it is just new content that I'm not quite ready for and I'll get to it when I get to it. I suspect this first tier of raiding will keep me busy for at least another three months, probably longer. I sort of miss the raiding paradigm where once the core players of your run get something down they could drag everyone else along to some extent. With the current content, especially in 10-mans, there is a lot more responsibility on everyone to be performing well.

So what are those fixes I am waiting for? Well for starters they are making it so I can rez people who released via their raid/party frame. I am also hoping that as a side effect someone releasing mid rez won't interrupt the cast and also that macros announcing rezzes can be simplified and no longer blurt out things like, "rezzing Unknown". Even even half of that turns out to be true I will be quite pleased.

Then probably my favorite change, enrage will no longer cause me to take extra damage in bear form. It is quite annoying to try and time an enrage to coincide with a pull when depending on other people to be ready. Ready checks can help, but there is always that one yahoo that clicks ready and then says, no wait, over vent a second after you've popped enrage. Then in 5 mans there is always the whole crowd control timing thing, but that is somewhat less important since a little more damage in a 5 man won't kill me. Grabbing Halfus and getting reduced healing right off the bat certainly encourages me to make sure I'm not taking more damage in those first few seconds.

I'm also really excited about being able to run 2 or more of my "daily" heroics in the same day. I don't log on every day, but do enjoy running multiple heroics when I do have the time so this will easily more than double my valor point income. The new dungeons will also help keep things interesting as I know all the current heroics like the back of my hand these days.

Death knights getting a battle rez! Since my second main is a DK this is exciting for me, but considering I also run with a dk a lot of the time this will also be beneficial for my druid. It's not always easy/possible to pop off a battle rez while tanking as a bear. Will be trivial for DKs to do it though. I think I am a little jealous.

Prowl has a new... yeah that is stupid.

Savage defense changes for bears should bring us a little closer to other tanks when it comes to mitigating lots of little hits (i.e. trash). Still scales pretty poorly compared to a shield, but it's a step in the right direction.

I'll also admit I am a little excited about the stampeding roar buff. I've actually been making use of this ability more and more since I decided it was worth a hotkey. More speed and a longer duration will make it even more useful.

Cat swipe damage doubled? I have my doubts that this will make it live simply because it sounds so good. Looking at my current performance on AOE groups in cat compared to others I can hold my own and often top the meters. If this change does go through then that would put me head, shoulders and torso above the general population and slightly above those that can give me a run for my money currently.

Looking forward to the healing changes for druids as well. I doubt they will be enough to sway me from my shaman loving ways, but having a couple more things to do besides spam healing touch in a tight spot will be nice. Tranquility will actually be on a short enough cooldown where I'll use it rather than always trying to save it for later.

Righteous Fury won't drop off when pally tanks die! This is always quite inconvenient for me when DPSing with a pally tank.

So I guess not all of those were fixes per say, but they all help smooth over some rough edge or another. In any case the sooner the better. I read over some of these patch notes like prioritizing damage classes with different armor types in random pugs and I start to get the idea the change is already in place.

Tank Shortage Solution

2011-04-08T10:05:00.000-07:00

Make more tanks, ba dum ching. Even better make less DPS. I'm half serious about that one, but more on that later. Right now we've got two planned changes coming to the dungeon finder in 4.1: first we can snatch up all our "daily" dungeon rewards for the week whenever we want and second goodies bags will be provided to tanks (and possibly healers) for queuing alone. Call me crazy, but don't these conflict somewhat in randoms?

The one big perk of being able to get as many of your "daily" dungeon" rewards as you want on any given day is that if you really liked your group, or can at least stand to tolerate them a little longer, then you have the option to queue again with the same group. If tanks and healers are incentivized to drop and requeue alone that is perhaps a little less likely to happen? I know I value a good group over any goodie bag they are currently teasing me with, but I'd probably leave an ok group after a dungeon for a chance at better rewards.

That got me thinking that random groups that requeue and complete a second dungeon together are in general better at working in a group. Moving players that do just that more often higher in the queue would have some interesting effects. Trick would be finding a way to prioritize those players without penalizing those that just didn't have the opportunity or availability to requeue with a random group to run a second dungeon. Could just add successfully ran a dungeon with a random group to the math and have that weighted slightly lower than ran a second dungeon with the same random group successfully. After all completing a dungeon in a random group shows a moderate level of cooperation, but requeuing for a second and completing it shows that the group actually enjoyed eachother's company to some extent. Divide those values by the total number of random dungeons run and we've got ourselves a number to compare with other players.

So we start prioritizing these better players in the dungeon finder queue and they will have shorter queue times. Which in turn means these better players get into more groups. The end result is that the random dungeon finder experience improves then more tanks and healers will want to participate which improves the dungeon finder experience for all. Even if these better players don't get bumped up in the queue, they could instead be grouped together with similar results. The end result should be a more balanced number of DPS in that priority group and a higher quality of team player (i.e. more enjoyable group).

The second thing that would be nice to include when determining position in the queue is time elapsed since a players last successful random dungeon. I say successful since there is nothing more annoying that waiting 45 minutes for a group only to have it fall apart on the first pull. Players that have gone longer without a dungeon should get in first and this further incentivizes players in a random group to keep it for another rather than face a longer queue time.

The current bribe isn't quite enough to get me to queue alone as a tank, but with any luck healers will also apply for the goodies since I find queuing as a healer is a good compromise between wait time and random pug annoyance. Still I think it is better to try and improve the tank/healer experience in pugs using something along the lines I mentioned rather than try to coax people into something they don't enjoy.

OMG, Put Your Tank on Passive

2011-04-07T09:55:00.000-07:00

Once in a while in a PUG something happens that is both unexpectedly ridiculous and terrifyingly horrible at the same time. You can't help but to share and chuckle after the fact, but the initial reaction is always something along the lines of, did that really just happen? Did that warlock pet really just follow Millhouse Manastorm? Yes, yes that little Imp did.

What? You thought that was it? Silly goose! Pets running off and getting into mischief is hardly unexpected, quite the opposite. It might of met the other three criterion though. The place was Stonecore, the time was... who cares. I zoned into to meet the rest of my dungeon finder group comprised of an 85 death knight (it was regular so an 82 instance), a hunter that had queued with them, some crazy rogue and of course, a warlock.

The warlock didn't do much more than a cameo though, tank pulls, no cc marked so I did my best to keep the earthshaper from AOEing us as the healer. Preventing damage it healing too, sort of. Millhouse Manastorm was skulled as is customary to get him out of the way quick. Millhouse runs off spouting something about dropping the soap (as if that applies to a gnome) and the warlock's imp is in hot pursuit first grabbing the pair of flayers on the wall and then the next pull in it's entirety.

I like to toon my own horn (see what I did there), but we might have stood a chance had the tank grabbed everything as it came in. They were obviously new to the tanking gig and using a regular dungeon to practice. Well I didn't come to that conclusion right then, but it became apparent as the instance progressed. So after a few seconds of heal tanking the tank went down and we wiped. On the way back the warlock apologized and said he would understand if we kicked him, ironically he then left the group as no one initiated a kick.

So we got another something in his place; I believe it was a priest, but that particular detail isn't really important. We regroup, kill the rest of the first pull and move on to the next group where Millhouse is patiently waiting for us. Same strategy, same result, very different reason. Apparently the new tank put two and two together and got 3; as soon as Millhouse ran off the tank was right on his heels frantically trying to keep him from reaching the next group again. Ridiculous, check, Unexpected, check, terrifying, well maybe not, but it was pretty horrible.

After a quick clarification from the dungeon guide (me), and no I wasn't mean; I just pointed out that Millhouse does run off and can't be stopped and assured the tank that he would not pull the next group on his own. Playing as both melee DPS and a tank enlightens me to what a melee DPS might be missing when they go to tank and a lot of it is timing. DPS often take for granted those tank pauses that keep things moving smoothly, case in point the two pats that pass by the group of three flayers right before the 2nd boss.

An experienced tank can take them in pretty much any order and make it look trivial. A new tank will try and replicate what they have observed which in the case of a melee DPS is kill order and not the timing. Melee DPS are notoriously bad at looking around for pats and it usually falls to the tank to move for them. Sadly the same usually applies for standing in stuff. Enough picking on melee it was the ranged that got the first extra pat, poor timing got the second and the Chinese fire-drill that followed got who knows what else. The run back all I could think about was how horrible the room after the next boss would be.

It was a piece of cake actually. On top of that I actually learned something myself in that next room I had dreaded moments earlier. That one sentry that pats perpendicularly in the middle of the room can be death gripped right over the group in the middle without pulling anything. Pretty cool looking to boot. Any I picked on melee standing in stuff before, but this tank did pretty well on Ozruk. Minimal standing in stuff opposed to most tanks on regular that eat every single boss ability. I suppose Ozruk is a special case considering that anyone that has melee DPSed on heroic would know that standing in stuff equals certain death.

Rest of the instance went pretty smoothly aside from some add control issues, but again that is something tanks get better at over time. Certainly an amusing time healing, I barely got any time to DPS. I definitely look forward to healing more on my shaman, druid healing just hasn't clicked for me since the cataclysm. Although I've always preferred the feel of shaman healing to druid healing.

To Loot or Autoloot

2011-04-04T13:24:00.000-07:00

Way back when I started playing WoW I had somehow decided that auto loot was bad. Maybe it was the limited bag space or perhaps it was the previous game I played required clicking and dragging each piece of loot individually to my bags (including coins). Whatever my reasoning I never really looked back.

Then quite a few months ago I discovered/rediscovered the auto loot modifier key and start using that pretty much ever single time I looted. For some reason I still didn't enable auto loot at that point. The most annoying shortcoming of this method was that when I was mining, skinning, herbing, etc, and hit the auto loot modifier mid "cast" that it wouldn't apply unless I had it pressed at the start of the cast. I suppose that is an auto loot modifier bug.

So a couple weeks ago I took the plunge and decided that holding a modifier key every time I loot and/or gather was stupid; I enabled auto loot on all my toons (apparently it isn't a global setting). It took a couple days to get used to not hitting the shift key with auto loot on since the modifier I had used for so long to auto loot now had the opposite effect. I can't believe I didn't just auto loot from the beginning.

I think the one add-on that made auto looting a possibility for me was one that could throw away my cheapest vendor item as well as show vendor items by their value in ascending order. Before that I had to look through all my bags (which always seem to be full) and see if what I was picking up was better or worse than what I had. I don't really make the effort to visit a vendor to sell stuff until I have to start chucking those grey items worth a gold or more.

People might think the hybrid tax is measured in performance vs pure classes, but it's really paid in bag space. My druid carries around 4 sets of gear (DPS, tanking, healing and PVP) plus various potions, scrolls, food and whatnot. I think I have 7 bag slots free right now with four 22 slot bags. I really need to burn through some consumables rather than try and ration them. Meanwhile my pure DPS toons are walking around with 47+ free slots.

When is a Blog not a Blog?

2011-03-10T14:32:00.000-08:00

I most often just post whatever is on my mind at the time, but I also keep a few links to past post on the side. These posts are things I update from time to time and generally try and keep up to date. Things like links to the add-ons I use or copies of macros I made. Stuff that is as much a resource for me as it is for anyone else if not more so.

So in case your wondering where a post about rogue macros came from it's just reference information which I will link to from my macros post and update as time goes on. I actually have a ton of macro updates to get up as I haven't updated them since forever. I also have some mage macros to put up which I was just one click away from posting before my browser died. Oh well I'll get to it another time.

As for some druidy content, here's one on my newest druid macros which combines stampeding roar and dash into once easy to use button.

#showtooltip [form:1] Stampeding Roar; [mod,nogroup][mod,nocombat][nomod,group,combat] Stampeding Roar(Cat Form); Dash
/use [form:1]Stampeding Roar; [noform:3] Cat Form; [mod,nogroup][mod,nocombat][nomod,group,combat] Stampeding Roar(Cat Form); Dash

It's a beast! Nearing the 255 character cap for something pretty simple. I blame the obnoxiously long spell names. If I couldn't omit (Bear Form) from stampeding roar in bear form it couldn't possibly fit.

Basically if you are in combat and in a group it will use savage roar, otherwise it will use dash. It will use the opposite when a modifier key is used. Savage roar is always used in bear form as there is no other choice (unless you are an engineer or worgen, I am neither). If you aren't in a form you will be placed in cat form so hitting the button twice from caster form will put you in cat and then make you go fast. So its handy for ferals and casters.

I actually spent a fair bit of time squishing all my druid macros into just the space allotted for my druid. Good times. I should have that information available either tomorrow or early next week.

Rogue Macros

2011-03-10T11:27:00.001-08:00

Eviscerate/Stealth

To save space on my action bars and because I was already used to combining prowl and ferocious bite on my druid this macro came rather naturally.

#showtooltip
/use [combat] Eviscerate; Stealth

Trick of the Trade

Every rogue loves to redirect some threat off themselves whenever they can. This macro will set a focus target when right clicked and when used with a key-bind or left click will cast Tricks of the Trade on your focus target. If a focus target does not exist it will cast tricks on whichever party member you have selected. If you are targeting a hostile then it will cast tricks on whomever that hostile is targeting (sucks for them if it isn't a tank). Finally if none of those targets were valid you will get a hand cursor to click on a target manually (right click to cancel without choosing a target).

#showtooltip
/focus [btn:2][raid,@focus,noexists]
/stopmacro [btn:2]
/use [@focus,help,nodead,raid][help,nodead,raid][harm,@targettarget,help,nodead,raid][] Tricks of the Trade

Cloak of Shadows/Shiv

I use the same button for cleansing and removing enrage effects on all my toons which share the same hot key of course. So for classes that can do both (just my rogue and druid I believe) I just base which I do on what I have targeted. If I have a hostile targeted I will shiv it and hopefully remove an enrage effect and if I have don't or am holding down a modifier I will cast cloak of shadows on myself.

#showtooltip
/use [nomod,harm] Shiv; [@player] Cloak of Shadows;

Applying Poisons

Use without modifier to apply instant poison to your main hand or with modifier to apply deadly poison to your offhand. Right click to apply instant poison to your thrown weapon. Last line automatically accepts replacing an existing poison on your weapon when the pop-up would normally appear.

#showtooltip
/use [mod] Deadly Poison; Instant Poison
/use [btn:2] 18; [mod] 17; 16
/click StaticPopup1Button1

The next three are all pretty much the same. Click to apply the specified poison to your offhand or right click to apply it to your thrown weapon.

#showtooltip
/use Crippling Poison
/use [btn:2] 18; 17
/click StaticPopup1Button1
#showtooltip
/use Mind-numbing Poison
/use [btn:2] 18; 17
/click StaticPopup1Button1

#showtooltip
/use Wound Poison
/use [btn:2] 18; 17
/click StaticPopup1Button1

Macros Not the Answer, What Was the Question?

2011-02-25T15:55:00.000-08:00

Maul. Yeah, don't macro that; it's bad. Not as bad as remapping half your keybinds and learning to tank again, but worse than the week after when your fingers know where to go again. Which is exactly what I did a couple weeks ago.

Way back when I was posted all about this epiphany I had to avoid adding another key to press in bear form. I didn't have enough rage to always use maul, but I could narrow down on a percentage on how often I could use it and use castsequence macro lines to randomize my mauling accordingly. That actually worked quite well during combat, but the drawback was the RNG of mauling immediately when pulling with limited rage. It made grabbing snap aggro just a little harder. That got to be a little much over time and I decided to make a change.

At the same time I was actually leveling my new goblin warrior and had just gotten heroic strike. Of course I hadn't macroed it immediately after getting it seeing as I had a ton of space on my bars. So I was getting used to the idea of using a rage dump. So between those two influences I ended up combining growl and challenging roar into a single keybind and using a modifier key to access my sparingly used "AOE taunt". I actually used that a lot more in wrath. Anyway, that freed up the spot I needed to toss maul out on it's own.

The initial transition was painful... like really painful. I was pretty frustrated the first couple instances I tanked that way. Of course I had decided while I was moving buttons around that I should start using my 'Z' key as well and move the weapon sheathing/toggling button to '\' which I remember using for some FPS once upon a time. That let me move my interrupt from 'T' to 'Z' and whatever I had on '6' to 'T'. I'm using one of those natural keyboards so '6' is just just out of reach without a handgasm (the strange sensation of trying to spread the tips of your middle and index fingers as far apart as possible). On the bright side I am now using every possible key within reach of my left hand. Was tempted to use 'X' too, but I like to swim/fly down sometimes for fun.

So for those with a puzzled look I should explain what my keybinds look like. I use WASD for movement. 'A' and 'D' still turn left and right rather than strafe. I tried the strafing, but sometimes I want to take my hand off the mouse and still be somewhat mobile. Holding the right mouse button and 'turning' achieves the same effect as strafing anyway so no great loss.

'3' and '4' are my bread and butter abilities that get spammed a lot. They are easily reached while holding 'W' or 'S' to move forward or backward while steering with the mouse. Remaining mobile while attacking is pretty important for melee and also pretty handy for casters at times. '1' and 'Q' are next with the next most frequently use abilities followed by '2' which slightly impairs my ability to move forward so I stick something I use once in a while (I can still move forward by hitting both mouse buttons).

'5' I use for a taunt or another less frequently used ability. I've always had my taunt on '5' for my death knight since there were a lot more abilities in my tanking rotation than my bear. I always took that as a bit of a disadvantage seeing as taunt should in theory be more readily accessible. In practice I've found the opposite to be true; now that my taunt key is not immediately accessible I am hitting it much less in error so that when I do need it I'm more likely to have it off cooldown. After all I had it on '4' previously and '4' is one of the two buttons I hit the most for every other spec. Can't fight muscle memory.

Then my new addition 'Z' is where I stick my interrupts, they used to be over on 'T' and that wasn't nearly as convenient while moving. 'E' I use for AOE, 'R' for charging, death gripping, jumping back, blinking, basically anything that gets me to where I want to be or brings the where to me. 'T', 'F' and 'G' are reserved for cooldowns along with 'F1' and 'F2'. 'F3' I use for crowd control, 'F4' to break out of crowd control and 'F5' to reduce damage taken. Exceptions exist for classes without such abilities.

'C' I use for cleansing, 'V' for sprinting, dashing, moving faster by some means and 'B' I use for buffing. I actually have been macroing my 'B' to buff out of combat or with a modifier and than use some sort of cooldown I don't want to accidentally hit out of combat only while in combat. Mark of the Wild and Barkskin in the case of my druid. I used to use 'V' for mana regen, but decided to just leave that over with my mana potions and utility crap and click it as needed. A keybound speed boost has proven much more valuable in practice.

And finally that poor '6' key is still looking for a use. It is actually further of a reach for me than 'F5' so I've been experimenting with long cooldowns there, but really I've been clicking it more with the mouse than actually hitting '6'. Previously I used '6' for my start of a fight prep type key, hunter's mark, stealth, etc. So in reality I didn't add a key to my repertoire so much as add one, remove one and move two. Right now I'm still leaving '6' empty on my druid since it is so close to 'T' and I still slip once in a while trying to stealth. Once I grow out of that I'm sure I'll find a use for it. Moral of the story is get your binding right the first time and hopefully this long winded explanation helps someone.

Interrupts Using a Fleeting Resource

2011-02-15T12:53:00.000-08:00

Among my two complaints about feral right now; yes I only have two, well maybe three. Anyway the one that bugs me most is using rage, and worse, energy to fuel a timely interrupt. Here I am happily smacking away and boom I need to interrupt in the next second an a half. If I don't have the rage or energy already available it ain't happening.

While tanking something where I know I will have to interrupt I can make the additional effort to keep a little rage in reserve for a timely interrupt. It actually isn't that big of a deal, just a matter of not hitting maul that one more time. Bear rotation remains relatively constant when it comes to rage usage per unit time.

Cat form is a whole other story, energy levels are constantly doing a roller coaster from near full back to nothing and that fluctuation more often than not will never line up for a convenient interrupt. Best case scenario you have the energy and it doesn't muck up your dots/roar, worse case scenario you just threw off a ferocious bite or something. I don't really like to consciously think about the numbers, but when you get into the cat groove you get used to having a certain amount of energy to work with, setting some aside really isn't a consideration. Saving some short term for a known interrupt is probably the best of both worlds, but that isn't always possible. Oh that reminds me, there are four things I don't like about feral.

Taking a look at other classes we have interrupts again on cooldowns, but using a more static resources like mana, focus or runic power. Even rogues don't seem to use their energy in quite the same way as cats do, so the occasional kick isn't as much an inconvenience; could just be that it is cheaper too. Many of these interrupts aren't even on the global cooldown. This is how I like my interrupts, yes I hit the button quickly, give me a cookie. Ideally an interrupt should have no impact on other abilities and having it on it's own cooldown is sufficient in my book.

Corporal Punishment for Dungeon Finder

2011-02-01T10:48:00.000-08:00

After coming up with the title I'm not sure if it means I would like it implemented or that it is already the case, but either way there are a few rather serious issues sucking the fun out of the dungeon finder. Particularly when it comes to heroics. The greatest of which is waiting 40 minutes only to have your group fall apart through no fault of your own.

In heroics I see a large portion of groups fall apart after a tank or healer, often with a DPS that queued with them, roll need on a piece of loot they wanted and then drop group immediately. It is obvious that they got a friend to up their chances of getting the item, came just for that and thought nothing of everyone else's time. Aside from that seemingly frequent special case most groups fall apart on any wipe, for any reason. Sometimes a bad pull that only a couple people die on is enough to have someone drop.

It would be nice to see the punishment for dropping a group be severe enough to give such players pause. My favorite idea so far is to have the deserter debuff longer (proportional to the frequency of dropped groups) and with stat penalties much like resurrection sickness. Including, of course, the loss of durability on every item the player is carrying. If dropping group is more costly than wiping a couple times then I'm sure people will try and make things work.

Of course we don't want to punish groups that really are failing. Each boss/dungeon should have a par associated with it. Something like this boss usually takes 3 wipes average for a group to learn it. If after those three attempts the boss isn't down then players can drop without penalty. Could even be something hardcoded, like 5 wipes over the course of a dungeon. Pretty lenient, but the goal is to get people to try rather than give up, not to force anyone to wipe on the same boss for an hour.

I'm pretty sure most players are in agreement that something needs to change and I think whatever solution is implemented should basically force people to put in a minimal amount of effort before giving up. Blizzard is collecting all that kick/drop information already so I can only imagine they will begin to use it for something more eventually. Right now it is just being used to throttle the number of people kicked, but not the number of people dropping as far as I know.

Farmcraft

2011-01-24T10:25:00.000-08:00

I try to avoid repetitive tasks whenever I can, either by automating them or putting them off for obscene periods of time. Automation isn't even an option being forbidden by the rules of the game so mostly I just put stuff off for like ever. Until I want/need something that is.

I haven't farmed so much leather in a short period of time since I was making my druid a tanking set in burning crusade. I still have unpleasant memories of skinning clefthoof for hours. I managed to make it though the 505-510 leatherworking bottleneck over the course of the weekend though. Basically there is one green pattern which uses lots of leather and one yellow recipe which uses volatiles and less leather. So a half hour per attempt with no guarantee of getting a skill up. Lets just say I have a lot of cloaks of the beast now.

It is funny how farming one thing drives me to farm for others though. My main goal is leather, but for some patterns I need volatiles so I go after those. Volatile water farming makes my fishing go up and leaves me with quite a collection of cooking mats. Same for killing critters to skin, lots of meat. So before my bank explodes I've gone and started leveling my cooking to use up some of this extra meat. Other volatiles point me toward mining on a different toon which in turn led me to level engineering to the point where I could make an electrostatic condenser for more volitile airs. After all it would really suck to spend time farming and be missing out on some free mats.

My latest whim is to level my blacksmithing which I left at around 365 I believe. Ironically I dropped mining on that toon and took up engineering just because I didn't want to grind up my mining skill on a third toon. So that means flying around northrend for hours just to get to using cataclysm mats which I will again need to farm for. All this to make myself belt buckles which are a ridiculous 300 gold in the auction house right now. It takes a special occasion for me to go over 100g on a single item enhancement. That means leveling blacksmithing all the way to 525 just to get the pattern. That will be a while.

I'm pretty sure I have my farming planned out for the next 18 months. I plan to level every profession with the exception of jewelcrafting and inscription. If anyone has taken those professions I laugh in your general direction, ha. It's actually a good thing that some people take those professions or else I wouldn't have anything to buy in the auction house. Inscription is more or less a one time thing now with permanently learned glyphs and jewelcrafting has a daily on top of the already annoying grind. My jewelcrafter learned exactly one epic cut last expansion after maxing out, unless you count dragon's eyes, I did take advantage of my profession bonuses at least. My scribe is still floundering in wrath herbs. Neither toon is likely to see much action this expansion, apparently I'm a professionist.

There really should be a mechanism to switch professions without starting from scratch. Something along the lines of switching profession specializations, once you've done the work you pay your gold and switch to whatever you want. Even if every recipe you learned got permanently clobbered it wouldn't be so bad. Probably have to limit it such that gathering professions and crafting professions weren't interchangeable as they represent very different levels of commitment. Lots of professions sound great in the starting zone, but after a significant commitment don't seem so great later on.

The other thing that I would really love to see would be the ability to have another profession. Mostly I would like skinning to be part of leatherworking, but the result would be the same. To be able to have all the professions I enjoy on the toons I play most often would be a pretty sweet deal. I think this is a definite possibility as characters get more powerful and professions become more balanced to the point where adding another wouldn't be too powerful or throw the balance off terribly. We're already at the point where gathering professions are pretty much a joke reserved for alts for anyone lucky enough to be planning that far ahead or sadistic enough to start the grid over. The only solutions would be to let everyone have another crafting profession or buff the crap out of gathering professions.

Wrath was a bit of an experiment for me, I dabbled in pretty much everything to see what I really liked and what I really didn't. My first expansion BC, I only really had time to learn the game, learn my couple toons/specs and work on the professions I chose on a whim at like level 12. In Cataclsym I got to choose my favorite combination of classes and professions to work on first, but it was kind of frustrating to compromise between classes and professions. In the end I am rather happy with what are to become my "mains" this expansion, but there is a lingering feeling of regret which will likely last the duration of the expansion. Of course I want one toon to do everything so I'm likely never going to be completely satisfied, but my druid gets me damn close.

Just How Stupid Can People Be?

2011-01-11T09:53:00.000-08:00

Pretty darn stupid obviously, but especially so when it comes to the dungeon finder tool. Imagine for a moment you are a brain dead DPS who has just waited 20-45 minutes in a dungeon queue, your tank and or healer drop group or disconnect on the first pull, you immediately drop group because you love waiting in queues. This seems to be the reaction I see nine times out of ten.

Tanks and healers I can see dropping at the drop of a hat, they can get right back into another dungeon almost immediately, but DPS have a prohibitively long wait at times and yet still screw themselves and the other DPS in their party nearly every chance they get.

Once you are in a group and zoned in you are at the very top of the queue should you need to replace someone. Even if you need to replace a tank or healer the wait time is going to be tiny in comparison to leaving the group and requeuing as DPS. Even the most impatient person still has the option to use the button on the minimap to zone out of the dungeon, continue whatever you were doing and zone back in when the rest of the group appears.

I'd say about 50% of the groups I join as DPS don't finish the dungeon because the tank and/or healer drop for one reason or the other. It usually doesn't have anything to do with the success of the group either. Anyone can put the group into the queue to fill a hole. Anyone can vote to kick someone that has disconnected or gone afk for an extended period of time. The wait time for grabbing a tank, healer or DPS for a group in progress are all about the same. Yet for some reason the majority of the population seems to prefer to give up on a group despite increasing their total wait time by 15-40 minutes assuming it takes 5 minutes for the dungeon finder to find replacements. It usually happens nearly instantly, but often times people will again drop as soon as they zone in with a group in progress; morons.

So the moral of the rant is that DPS should be trying harder to keep groups going as they have the most time invested. DPS are expendable in the eyes of tanks and healers, but when it comes to a dungeon in progress everyone is nearly equally expendable and DPS should take advantage of that fact when it suits them.

It is kind of ironic that the only people I've seen take advantage of the shorter queue times for dungeons in progress are DPS who exploit it by queuing together as a tank and/or healer and then causing a group to fall apart. They then requeue together as DPS and start at the top of the queue for their dungeon in progress blowing by the rest of the DPS waiting their turn.

It is rather sad to be left in a group of one unable to continue when all it would have taken was one other person to stay in the group and requeue to resume almost immediately with a brand new party.

My UI, Where Minimalist Means Minimal Change

2010-11-10T11:55:00.000-08:00

Disable all your add-ons, take a screen shot. That's about what I am aiming for. No really, one of the goals of my UI is to not do anything which would cause a learning curve should I be without some or even all of my add-ons. In fact this just recently happened to me on my laptop which I updated to 4.x on the road and just wanted to play my warlock a little without messing with add-ons. I also had an ulterior motive to see how the default UI looked, I've not used it in an age.

So my first test was to see just how awesome the new quest tracking system was. I've been using Carbonite since pretty much forever and much to my surprise the default UI is actually quite good. Carbonite has only two perks: more flexible placement of the quest tracking map and more automated quest tracking by proximity. I can almost function with the small map up there in the upper left where blizzard stick all thier informational frames, but I really like the translucent map Carbonite provides shoved off in a more discrete corner. The other thing is that Cabonite automagically tracks quests based on your proximity to them, with the default UI you have the option to track every quest you pick up, or do it all manually. The tracking selection isn't a big deal; if the small map frame was more flexible in placement that would be enough to get me to drop Carbonite.

Once I got into questing after a brief self tutorial I noticed the one place the default UI really fails, inventory management. I think this has more to do with the play style I've become accustomed to than blizzard's shortcomings. I use ArkInventory to show my entire inventory in one frame sorted by item type. I know exactly where my quest items are going to be, I know exactly where my BoE greens and enchanting mats are when it comes to send they to my enchanter, etc. Locating quest items used to be a big to do before the items were available right on the quest tracker, but occasionally they are missing and you have to quick open your bag and use them, often in a bit of a hurry since if you are like me you didn't look for the item before you had to use it right before a mob dies. I don't want to organize my bag and I certainly don't want to hunt through it. The only time I look in my bag for the most part is to empty it or sometimes equip a new item. Even then I have an add on to throw away the cheapest junk item I am carrying to make room without ever opening my bag. Pretty sure inventory management add-ons are here to stay, there is no way blizzard will add the level of tracking most people come to expect, including item counts on alts and guild banks, searches, etc. It is just too far beyond the scope of the default UI.

The next biggie for me is equipment sets, pretty much all my toons have at least a PVE and a PVP set. My hybrid toons have more. Right now my druid walks around with 4 complete sets and a few pieces of frost resist gear for special occasions. Without an equipment manager I would be totally lost putting on a specific set manually. Luckily not too long ago this feature was included in the default UI and better yet the add-on I used previously, Outfitter, makes use of the server side equipment sets so with or without the add-on I am good to go. The reason I still keep the add-on around is for partial equipment sets, enhanced tootips to let me know which sets and item is in, and the oh so convenient list of BoP items not currently in a set; that is such a great way to sell/equip stuff quickly.

So far I've not touched the default UI at all. In fact most of my addons are hidden behind the scenes unless activated. The most notable element of my UI is my DataBroker bar across the top of my screen. Here I have access to a lot of otherwise hidden add-ons as well as useful information at a glance. How much gold I have, what equipment set I am using, my equipment durability and anything else I want to know without clicking somewhere. I actually don't use most of the space so I am considering moving to a DataBroker add-on that lets me put things all over instead of on a bar.

Given my large widescreen monitor and my UI scale set as low as possible, I have a lot of room at the bottom of my screen to the left and right of my action bars/utility buttons. On the left I have my chat frame which you can't drag all the way to the bottom by default so I am thinking underneath is the perfect place to hide that DataBroker stuff I mentioned. On the right I have Omen and Recount just below my tooltip frame and additional action bars on the right side. I always have all the action bars enabled and share a common organizational system between toons.

The only other noticeable difference between my UI and the default (out of combat) then are my Pitbull unit frames. I am currently reevaluating whether or not the default unit frames are sufficient for me. With the new enhancements I think they might be. All I really use the unit/raid frames for are highlighting debuffs, aggro and the incoming heals display. I have some minor concerns about the numbers displayed, but that alone wouldn't be enough reason for me to keep an entire add-on.

In combat I have a few additional things pop up in the middle of my screen. I track combo points and rotation specific buffs and debuffs front and center with NugComboBars and Auracle. I was actually half thinking about power aura, but then blizzard added a simple version which works quite well for me. Along the same lines I replaced the default cast bars with Quartz. The main reason is basically just for the latency display which is invaluable when chain casting. I can start casting the next spell before I actually see the first go off.

I suppose WIM (WoW Instant Messenger) is also worth a mention. I don't know how often people have the need to keep multiple whisper conversations straight, but I do so with some regularity. Having a little window for each conversion is quite handy and I would be a lot less chatty without them.

So there you have a basic idea of what my UI looks like and have a point of reference should you ever find your UI or add-ons the target of my mockery. For example a bar mod screwing up a boss encounter will probably feel my ire for a good six months. Lets face it, Warcraft is buggy enough without introducing more potential points of failure, especially around major patches such as these. I like non intrusive add-ons which improve my gameplay, but don't take over. A little extra tooltip text, another button or informational display in a relevant location, those are all nice things to have. Like knowing who is responsible for a buff by mousing over it. A minor detail, but I seem to be the only one in raids that knows. :)

Why Choose a Bear?

2010-11-09T14:01:00.000-08:00

Bears share a lot in common with warriors so far as tanking goes. You can do a side by side comparison of abilities and come up with a one to one relationship with nearly all the abilities. There are minor differences here and there; bears have fewer abilities that in general do more to make up for it, but the overall feel is about the same. Both bears and warriors are highly mobile tanks reliant on rage. Put plainly, we charge around a lot and have anger management issues.

This is in direct contrast with paladins and death knights that have a more stationary approach to tanking, they prefer their targets to come to them. The price they pay for the tools to do that is neither can charge. Both camps can get the job done so the decision is more about what type of player you are. If you prefer melee over ranged you are going to like warriors and druids, if you prefer ranged you are going to lean toward paladin and death knight. What, all tanks are melee?

It all comes down to how you are used to thinking; druids, warriors and melee in general are thinking at the end of a pull, "Where am I going next?". Paladins, death knights and ranged folks are going to be looking around at the end of a pull asking themselves, "What can I hit next?" The difference is subtle and at times non existent, there is nothing stopping a druid or warrior from pulling something at range in the same sense that there is nothing stopping a paladin or death knight from running in, but the class mechanics do favor one tactic over the other. So the first step toward becoming a bear is wanting to eat, drink and breath melee.

If melee isn't your thing then go play with death knight or paladin, probably paladin as you can heal rather than melee as a second spec. Having tanked on both I'd say the paladin was slightly easier to manage, but it is so close you should just pick the class you like the flavor of better. They are pretty much opposites when it comes to undead disease carrying monster vs light wielding holy warrior.

Back to bears; now the only choice left is between a druid and a warrior. This choice is defined mostly by whether or not you are a good fit for a druid. Druids are hybrids in the truest sense of the word. If you are only interesting in tanking and want to specialize to be just a tank then warrior is the way to go. If you want to mix some DPS in with your tanking and perhaps even moonlight as a healer then druid is where it is at. Basically people who can't or don't want to make up their minds prefer druids so they don't ever have too.

What really sets bears apart from other tanks isn't how well they tank or how they do it compared to others, it is what they are doing when they aren't tanking. Many fights only require one tank, some fights only require one tank for one part and two for the rest. Feral druids fill these needs fluidly by having the ability to go cat and for all intensive purposes become a DPS. Even without the benefit of DPS gear or a hybrid bear/cat spec a bear tank can bring it in cat form. No other tanks can come close without changing specs.

The opposite is also true and quite helpful in 5 and 10 mans. A feral druid doing DPS can tank quite effectively in an emergency if specced for it. I cannot count the number of times I have tipped the balance from wipe to win just because I was able to tank for a few crucial seconds. I also can't count the number of wipes I've caused, but that has more to do with my reckless nature and less to do with ability. Lets just say I consider tanking talents to be DPS utility talents. ;)

So the second reason to consider being a bear tank is if you favor flexibility over functionality. Warriors have a few really neat tricks up their sleeves, but can't flip roles mid fight. At the end of the day warriors get as much amusement from their bag of tricks as druids do from their shifting so it comes down to which appeals more to the person making the decision.

That Organ Taunts Me So!

2010-11-05T13:31:00.000-07:00

There are few things that can get me more riled up at the end of an expansion like that one last piece of loot that will become obsolete before the next month is out, but I still want. Especially when it slips through my fingers for what appears to be the very last time.

I would consider myself lucky in loot for the most part, I don't make lists, I take it as it comes and try to share with others and I get pretty much everything I want eventually. I generally focus on one item after regular upgrades stop trickling in. For my druid that is the unidentifiable organ and for my shaman that is now the shield off of Sindragosa.

Both my raids are going to push for a Lich King kill for the rest of the expansion which turns thoughts of, "I'll get it eventually.", to, "I'm going to side with boss next time and loot you." Such is the case with loot being my primary motivator after seeing new content and amusing conversations.

Shame I watched that movie of the Lich King dying, it totally took my new content motivation away from that fight. I already had limited interest in any of his loot, there aren't any huge upgrades if there are any at all. All I've got left is amusing conversation and after a while wiping on one boss that dwindles.

Perhaps I'll go scrounge up a group for Algalon, never did see him. :)

Wicked Cool Idea, /castrandom Maul, ...

2010-10-28T09:58:00.001-07:00

UPDATE:

Turns out this works like a charm with a couple changes. First off the !'s break it so I removed those, and second auto attack isn't 'Attack' it's 'Auto Attack'.

#showtooltip
/cast Mangle(Bear Form)
/castrandom [nomod] Maul, Auto Attack, Auto Attack, Auto Attack, Auto Attack

Upon further testing I think it may be beneficial to tweak the chance of maul based on the attack, for example a higher chance on pulverize and mangle and lower on lacerate, just due to the frequency of those keys being pressed. You'll also still need to watch rage a little bit and just hold a modifier key to hold off on mauls for a bit when needed. Also when performing a berserk mangle spam it would be a good idea to use a modifier to skip maul during that time.

I'm sure tweaks will be needed to increase or decrease mauling as gear and level progresses as well. All in all I think this is a big step forward for we bears who felt our old "rotation" was too simple and our new one was just a little too much.

ORIGINAL THEORY:

Not sure if this will work the way I expect or as well, but I will definitely test it tonight. Using castrandom to use maul 50%, 33% or perhaps even 25% or 20% rather than every keypress. Brief recap, maul when from trivially annoying to just plain annoying in the 4.0.1 patch due to threat normalization. Previously it was possible to use maul constantly and never have to worry about rage, so it was macroed into every ability. Now we have to watch it, or do we?

My idea for a macro would look something like this...

#showtooltip
/cast Mangle(Bear Form)
/castrandom Maul, !Attack, !Attack, !Attack

I'm not sure of the syntax for auto attack, but the idea is to use something that won't matter and won't do anything. It might even work to use a non existent spell/ability like 'nil' and still have it work properly. For all I know all the choices have to be unique.

So using this macro would cast Mangle and then have a one in four, 25%, chance of casting Maul afterwards. We bears might not have enough rage to cast it every cooldown, but one in four, perhaps. I am leaning toward 20% or 25% theoretically.

There may still be times with the glyph of maul or low rage that you don't want to cast maul and that can be done with a modifier key as before...

#showtooltip
/cast Mangle(Bear Form)
/castrandom [nomod] Maul, !Attack, !Attack, !Attack

Hell, you could go absolutely nuts and use a different frequency with or without a modifier...

#showtooltip
/cast Mangle(Bear Form)
/castrandom [nomod] Maul, !Attack, !Attack, !Attack, !Attack; Maul, !Attack

This would cast maul 20% of the time without a modifier and 50% of the time with.

I got to thinking about maul again after tanking last night after a brief break from my druid. I totally forgot to use maul for like the first two thirds of the raid. It isn't something I want to think about. The only time I want to look at my rage bar is when I pull. Sometimes I don't mind looking, but for the most part I've got more pressing matters (read as things that provide more amusement) to attend to.

I did a little searching on castrandom macros and didn't find anyone trying to do anything similar to this.

I Really Despise Warcraft This Week

2010-10-20T14:56:00.001-07:00

First off I'm on an epic RNG quest to loot a Sinister Squashling and a Hallowed Helm so I can get 310% flying this year. I've finished every other holiday meta in one or two days of fairly intense gaming. This holiday I am stuck on one last achievement which I could get tonight or I might not get at all. An entire year of work rests squarely on two rare loot rolls.

As if the RNG achievement wasn't enough the entire games freezes randomly when mousing over certain things. Most notably the pumpkin to summon the headless horseman, but also guild banks, portals and rumor has it mage tables. Seems tied to the holiday event somehow, but the workaround is to completely disable tooltips.

Finally the straw that broke the camels back I just realized that blessing of kings and gift of the wild are the same now. So my first inclination after learning that was to look at the drums I carry on most my toons to see if they were also the same.

Turns out the drums of the wild were changed to restore health and mana, yay!

Reading closer you see that the drum effect doesn't work if you are level 80 or higher, boo!

Next I think to myself, this could be really awesome for alts, yay!

Then I read again and see the level requirement to use them is still 80, boo!

So if you are a level 80 that can't normally heal then you can help out lower level friends or something. Another set of drums to add to the list of leatherworking items made obsolete.

Oculus Dragons are the new Qiraji?

2010-10-15T08:28:00.000-07:00

Ooh, ooh, I got a red one!

Back in the day if you pulled a dragon while you weren't mounted you'd probably die. If your group wasn't mounted you'd probably wipe. Not so much anymore... a decently geared group can kill dragons pretty efficiently without the help of vehicles.

I've tanked, dpsed and/or healed though many a blue drake add over the course of my many random Oculus runs, but last night was a first for me. I healed the last boss from the ground without the help of my trusty green drake.

I'm a cocky one. Someone actually commented at the start of our random run that they felt we were going to die a lot. My reply to that as a healer was if anyone died it meant that I had killed them. I could see where they were coming from though, it was me tanking and one other guildie tanking. A green tank, new to Oculus, less health than me and needing a bit of instruction here and there. For example getting on a mount for the first time when that comment was made.

Make no mistake though we're talking about a tanking savant. No aggro was pulled and the run was as smooth as a baby's bottom once our tank learned how to fly.

So we get to the last boss, kill a few whelps that followed us, and I notice a couple people's drakes have taken a bit of damage. I was going to suggest they dismount and remount, but decided that would be too much work and just funneled some of my health into them. I figured I'd just remount to get my own heath back then. Shortly before that happened I was in combat.

The obvious course of action was start dotting up the boss and get some of that health back. Well I didn't ever explain the fight to the new guy. I pulled aggro pretty quick and my dragon was dead before I could take off from the platform. I was a little surprised, but the cocky took over and I quickly whispered to the party to stay close to the platform I was on. I was going to heal this the hard way!

Well it wasn't all that hard, 5.1k average heals is all. I could have done more I am sure which leads me to wonder just how much healage I can pump out when I need too. Of course everyone lived, despite some of those cheeky wee monkeys flying out of healing range. There was some congratulating on the healing job, some collection of loot and thus ended one of the more interesting Oculus runs I've had.

My new theory is that as a healer I should just land on the center platform and just heal conventionally, but I kinda like the green drake. It is what actually inspired me to try an affliction warlock which I also really enjoy. I'm pretty sure a group of 5 could just take that dragon out without mounts in ICC gear, but I doubt it would be fast or easy.

Feelines, Talkin' 'bout Feelines

2010-10-15T07:59:00.000-07:00

So I finally found a group last night that didn't need me to tank or heal, although I have to admit I was a naughty kitty and did some of the former anyway. I'd have to say without fear of death pulling aggro is not really a concern. I am for all intensive purposes still a tank when I DPS, just in slightly suboptimal gear. I was all excited about cower actually doing something and in the end I never used it. I'm sure it will come in handy on bosses like Festergut though.

My first impressions were that Blizzard may have over-tweaked us a wee bit on their damage hotfix. I was missing 3 glyphs and wasn't running any add-ons to keep on top of my bleeds and was still putting a fairly ridiculous amount of damage for a heroic. I have yet to fine tune my gear also, I ended up with a bit of extra hit and a lot of extra crit after the stat conversion.

I really like the more flexible bleed refreshes. I mentioned that I wasn't using any add-ons to track them, but I'm not sure it made a really huge difference since I am pretty used to the cat rhythm at this point and clipping bleeds is no longer an issue. The cat DPS feel hasn't changed a bit. In fact the only change I'm still thinking about is the priority of savage roar vs rip. One was nerfed and the other buffed. I think the rip is more important to keep up now and should be applied first.

The other neat thing is using combo points off dead targets. No longer am I trying to use up 2-3 combo points at the end of a kill, I just keep them for a moment running to the next mob and reapply savage roar which would have normally fallen off by the next pull.

Oh, and don't forget the interrupt! I can't wait for dreamwalker. All in all cats got a couple improvements and stayed more or less untouched compared to other classes/specs. My original fear was that the subtle changes would make those who aren't skilled at playing a feral druid better and at the same time nerf those players who'd mastered the spec. I'm pretty confident that isn't the case now that I've seen it in action.

One last thing, an update on the bear bars situation actually. Using a modifier key to fire off Maul turned out to be a pretty lame idea. While not using maul generally implies tanking only one or two targets, using maul implies many targets which I cycle through often using the tab key. Funny thing, when you use tab with the alt modifier, you leave the game and have to go back in hoping you didn't miss anything exciting. Not sure what I'm going to do about that one, still in a too many abilities with not enough reachable keys to bind them too funk. I swear the new bear abilities were implemented by a keyboard turner. Curse you clickers! Or perhaps they are trying to market their new bazillion button mouse with scare tactics; whatever the case I ain't digging it.

Random Heroic Testing

2010-10-14T11:16:00.000-07:00

So I took the opportunity my first evening playing after the patch to try out as many toons/specs as I could, just to get a basic idea in my head so I could give it some thought offline. I tried druid healing and tanking, then hunter and shaman DPS.

The highlight of my evening was by far the druid healing. The basic mechanics of resto druids didn't change all that much. Pretty much the only thing I found myself keeping in mind was that lifebloom was for a single target. I've been thinking of macroing that to cast on a focus target since I do tend to accidentally flip it to other people and end up having to put it back. I haven't even tried yet because I don't think they've fixed the issue with these situationally different abilities with the same name and how they behave, or more accurately don't behave, in macros.

The first thing I noticed healing was there is about twice as much damage to heal. A little less than twice, but pretty close. Before the patch I amused myself as a healer by seeing how much damage I could do while still keeping up with the heals. In ICC gear that pretty much meant I was DPSing just ever so slightly more than I was healing. I did not have the opportunity to DPS more than twice in the heroic I healed. Kind of ironic considering the DPS talent I took to do a little DPS while healing. I'm still going to keep that a while and hope that changes.

I think they hit tree form dead on as a cooldown. I used it a couple times when the damage was a little heavier and it felt very smooth. Although I think the new tree models that were leaked look like butt, and not the cute furry bear kind.
Efflorescence was better than I expected after watching it get nerfed to the ground on the PTR then buffed back up again. I had forgotten it had switched to swiftmend though so I was spamming regrowth trying to see it till I gave up and reread the talent.

All in all my playstyle of favoring instant over anything with a cast time still works just as well as it ever did if not better. I did find myself using nourish a few times that I wouldn't have previously, but I never did find a niche for regrowth or healing touch.

Nature's swiftness has definitely outlived its usefulness, I didn't spec for it and I doubt I'll ever miss it. I used it very rarely before and now that heals are smaller and the cooldown remains unchanged it just isn't worth it when there are other talents I prefer.

Next thing I tried was tanking and it was painful. I figured like healing before it there wouldn't be that big of a change, I was so wrong. Of course I knew that our AOE was on a 6 second cooldown and rage had been normalized, but oh my god it was... pain! I had doubts of my desire to tank in the first time, well ever. It got better as I went along, and never was I doing a poor job, it just wasn't very fun. I think I pressed maul maybe twice the whole instance. Not because I was rage starved, but because I was too busy playing musical targets compensating for the lack of swipe that I really didn't have the opportunity to watch my rage bar and tank. I never had to look at my rage bar before except a passing glance just before a pull.

In general I found myself with just way too much to look for. Heaven forbid someone not talent for faerie fire applying 3 stacks at once. Having tanked on everything but a warrior before the patch I'd say the druid just got harder than a pre-patch DK. Death knights also suffered from too much to watch syndrome, but it was easy to fall into a pattern with some practice, I am hoping the same will be true for the new bear changes. I'll definitely have to try out tanking on my other alts as well once I get my druid down. One thing I learned playing with 4 specs in one night is stick with one or two before branching out.

I'd have to say my second favorite after healing on my druid was DPSing on my hunter. I'm still a ways away from getting the pattern down, but for the most part the marksman hunter feel was there. Really nothing of note to report, I was performing about the same as I was before the patch. A little lower, but I really wasn't using my cooldowns as much while I was getting the feel of the new focus system. Probably more importantly I wasn't using anything near an optimal rotation.

Then I logged off for the night on a rather sour note after DPSing one last heroic on my shaman. For the first 4 pulls I was simultaneously updating my bars and speccing as I was expecting to heal. Once I had all that taken care of I noticed that I was doing really low damage, half what I would have expected. Taking into account that I didn't get a chance to train first I was missing out on 20% nature damage and 5% agility from masteries, but that wouldn't explain such a radical drop.

The other thing that I was playing with was when to use the single target vs multi target fire totem and a single lightning bolt vs chain lightening. Before the patch it was a no brainer and the multi target spells were better even on single targets. Being more conscientious of which abilities I was using got me probably 500 more DPS, but I was still 2-3k off from where I'd of expected. I'll definitely give it another shot once I have a better handle on my primary specs for my raiding toons.

Cataclysmic Druid Impressions

2010-10-14T10:26:00.000-07:00

How could they do this to me... I swear I'm going to spend the next month perfecting my bars only to learn a few new abilities getting to 85 and be screwed all over again. Ok probably not that bad.

The problem is that cat form and bear form only get 12 action bar slots, but there are a few more than 12 abilities unique to each of those forms. This has been true forever, but with creative use of macros it was possible to get everything to fit. Combining stealth only cat abilities into other abilities with macros solved the problem for cats and bears really didn't have a problem although sticking maul into macros was convenient.

My cat bar was perfectly filled and I mean perfectly, in comes skull bash which destroys the order of my feline universe. Cat DPS is pretty high paced you really do need everything at your fingertips, especially when considering PVP. Skull bash is likely going to knock dash off the bar, not the end of the world as dash is on a relatively long cooldown and clicking the ability wouldn't kill me. Having a real live honest to goodness interrupt goes a long way towards appeasing me.

Still I really don't like having abilities on my bars that don't apply to my current form. I already have a sprint/nitro boost slot tucked away on my action bars I use for my rogue and engineers, but those are always active. My plan is to macro it to enter cat form if not already in it and otherwise cast dash.

#showtooltip Dash
/use [noform:3] Cat Form; Dash

I'll show the tooltip and icon for dash all the time since it would be confusing to see another cat form icon somewhere and have it change all the time.

The bear bar is a whole different story. I want 2 more slots than currently available. Worse than that I want both of those slots highly accessible. I want to shove faerie fire, maul, mangle, lacerate, pulverize and growl in the space of 4 keys. No I don't like modifiers. It is a little ridiculous really that bear form has more buttons to push than is required for cat DPS. I've already compromised and took the duplicate faerie fire off my bear bar since I have it hanging out in F1 which I use in cat form. It's a little reach, but doable. That leaves 5 abilities and four buttons. The only choice really is to macro maul into my abilities again, but this time rather than not maul when a modifier is pressed I will only mail when a modifier is pressed.

I'm not sure what the reasoning behind giving bears 7 buttons to hit more or less every 6 seconds (I included swipe in addition to the 6 I mentioned earlier). Even mid fight after all the growling and faerie firing is finished there are still 4 or 5 abilities being spammed out the wazoo depending on whether it's single target or AOE. Pretty much all other classes and specs have 3 or 4 tops. I think the bear rotation is more complicated than the cat rotation now and you also have to tank on top of that. I'm sure with some practice it will become seconds nature, but at first glance it seems a bit much. Oh and don't forget at 81 we get yet another AOE ability, thrash, to add into the mix for a total of 8 buttons to spam, 4-6 mid fight. That one is pretty self explanatory and just gets castsequence macroed with swipe, but how stupid is that to have two abilities to do pretty much the same thing.

To add insult to injury for bears, thorns can't be cast in forms despite the new short duration. It is good for the start of a pull maybe, but totally useless most the time unless you want to get smushed caught tanking in caster form. Pretty stupid that the only form that was meant to get hit is the one that can't use thorns. Casters who shouldn't ever get hit can use it just fine though, go figure. They should have just removed it for what it was worth.

I heard a rumor that bear tanking now more closely resembles warrior tanking my next step is to check out how warriors are handling their abilities. Do they even have as many?

Crappy Release Cycle and Human Nature

2010-09-07T10:47:00.000-07:00

We had 6 months to play around in Naxx before Ulduar came out, a lot of that was time spent leveling and gearing for raiding. My guild run cleared Naxx a couple weeks after Ulduar came out running 3 hours a week without any extensions.

Ulduar was out for less than four months before ToC was introduced. Looking back on this the timing could not have been worse. Here we had a dungeon that rivaled and even exceeding the quality of ICC in many respects given less time as the current raid tier than ToC was. My 3 hour a week guild run got as far as Hodir and was starting to discuss raid extensions when ToC came out.

I feel my raid could have gotten a lot more enjoyment out of Ulduar had blizzard held off on TOC another month at least, preferably 2 or 3. Once something new came out with better drops for the same effort the old content was all but abandoned. Between badges and the new ToC 5-man there wasn't any reason to enter Naxx or Uluar anymore.

ToC was excellent for a 3 hour run though, all four months of it until ICC came out. Once ICC came out we were clearing ToC so fast we had time left to try out the first couple bosses in ICC. Eventually moving to ICC full time. That was the first transition since Naxx to Ulduar that felt right.

Now we've had over 9 months in ICC, more than twice that of any other raid content. It's getting old fast and I've still not even seen the Lich King fight yet. I think that little movie spoiler in Dalaran removed like 70% of my desire to kill him. It would have been nice if a large chunk of that time in ICC could have been spent in Ulduar.

Then of course we had our 1 boss dragon instances to fill extra time, do something different and such. Those are still a really great way to fill some time after extending an ICC instance to a second week. I'm hoping that Cataclysm dungeons will be about 1.5-2 hours long on farm so that the transition from one tier to the next can be a gradual one.

It is a sad thought that there are many people who have been raiding since forever and have a Lich King kill, but not a Yogg kill. I think in addition to Blizzard waiting until it is ready to release they should also wait until we are ready. There are always going to be those who want more right away, but I think I represent the middle ground when I say we got too much too soon and then nothing.

Infrequently Used Abilities

2010-08-13T10:07:00.000-07:00

Last night I rediscovered my love of Nature's Grasp on my druid. Every minute you can root the next 3 things to hit you in place within 45 seconds of each other. Can keep it up almost all the time and the only cost is a global cooldown. Personally I haven't used it since tanking the adds for Ignis in Ulduar, it was quite handy to have them rooted in the flames so I didn't take unnecessary damage standing there with them. It was only one charge back then and now it has 3.

So last night I found another use which takes full advantage of the 3 charges. Locking down zombies on Dreamwalker. It was rather amusing to see a pair of them rooted together while ranged blew them up. I could totally see a situation where 3 were running around and could be rooted quickly, it was only 10 man though so 2 is about as many as are up at a time. The other thing that is handy about Nature's Grasp is that is can proc Omen of Clarity for a rage/energy/mana free next ability. Cats have lots of global cooldowns to waste while waiting on energy, so popping Nature's Grasp in your spare time can potentially provide a free shred. Other specs wouldn't benefit enough to even think about it.

Another easily forgotten ability druids have is power shifting, which is a misnomer these days unless you are a bear really low on rage. Back in the good old days a feral druid could shift into the form they are already in specifically cat form and use the Furor talent in the resto tree to trade some mana for energy. For bear it still works to grab some rage if you have none, but it isn't terribly useful except for maybe right before a pull. Anyway the second benefit of power-shifting which is still quite relevant today is shifting breaks any slow or snare effects. It's basically the gnome racial without a cooldown.

Any druid worth their salt will have a macro to "shift" into whatever for they are currently in and use it to break snares. It is invaluable in many boss encounters like the freezing in place on Hodir and more recently the slowing effect of ice bolts on Dreamwalker.

#showtooltip
/cast [stance:1] !Dire Bear Form; [stance:2] !Aquatic Form; [stance:3] !Cat Form; [stance:4] !Travel Form; [stance:5] !Tree of Life; [nocombat,flyable] !Swift Flight Form; !Travel Form

There is the macro in case anyone needs it. If you are a boomkin change 'Tree of Life' to 'Moonkin Form', they both share a stance number. If you are dual specced Tree/Chicken then you can do something like this...

#showtooltip
/cast [stance:1] !Dire Bear Form; [stance:2] !Aquatic Form; [stance:3] !Cat Form; [stance:4] !Travel Form; [stance:5,spec:1] !Tree of Life; [stance:5,spec:2] !Moonkin Form; [nocombat,flyable] !Swift Flight Form; !Travel Form

Flip the spec numbers if your primary and secondary specs are reversed.

Basically this macro flips you into whatever for you are already in, but if you are in caster form for some reason it will flip you into either flight form or travel form depending on if flying is available. If you don't like the caster form behavior you can change it to whatever you like, perhaps to just shift into your preferred form...

#showtooltip
/cast [stance:1] !Dire Bear Form; [stance:2] !Aquatic Form; [stance:3] !Cat Form; [stance:4] !Travel Form; [stance:5,spec:1] !Tree of Life; [stance:5,spec:2] !Moonkin Form; !Tree of Life

or

#showtooltip
/cast [stance:1] !Dire Bear Form; [stance:2] !Aquatic Form; [stance:3] !Cat Form; [stance:4] !Travel Form; [stance:5,spec:1] !Tree of Life; [stance:5,spec:2] !Moonkin Form; !Cat Form

Nothing slows down a druid! Except maybe stuns or incapacitates.

Things should get interesting in Cataclysm since healers will be the only druids not in a form 100% of the time and hence can be affected by polymorph (unless they do end up removing a druid's immunity to polymorph in forms altogether in which case it won't matter). The other weakness of not being in a form though, which I haven't seen discussed, is losing the ability to power shift out of snares or slowing effects. The new tree form is a slowing effect in itself right now to add insult to injury. So resto druids would have to flip to one of their feral forms and back to remove a snare which is pretty lame.

Some Tanks Wear Cloth

2010-08-12T10:57:00.000-07:00

So I've been leveling a couple caster alts lately, a mage and a warlock to be precise. My mage turned out to be a lot like my hunter, I need to stay back but can use some tricks close up to get me back to range. I must say I like my mage tricks a little more, but that could just be because they are newer to me. My warlock on the other hand doesn't need to stay at range and if I don't like something by me I make *it* run away.

I've got enough talent points and practice now that drain tanking is completely awesome. I was in a scarlet monastery run, the library I think, last night and I ended up doing 30% of the healing. 30% on self healing, 5 people, carry the... yeah I was tanking. Our tank was kinda bad, plus our healer was kinda bad. I got to watch the mage die a lot, I am learning to love that in a way only a warlock can. The other DPS was a hunter who also did a fair amount of tanking with his pet.

When it came down to the final boss it was me drain tanking it and the hunter DPSing, everyone else had died. I was bleeding more health than I could regain, but luckily the boss was bleeding health faster so I ended up with like 20% health when he died. It was a proud moment, plus I got a new robe.

Had I known warlocks could be so much fun I'd of played one long before. They remind me of the green drakes in oculus, which are by far my favorites. You'd never know that about a warlock though until you get into the 20's and more importantly the 30's and specced affliction otherwise warlocks are like hunters with really bad mana efficiency.

I can only imagine how powerful drain tanking can become given soul link and a few other talents from the demonology tree, plus the rest of the affliction tree flushed out. I've already reached the point where I have zero downtime and just yesterday took out 5 mobs 3-4 levels above me in the same fight, 2 or 3 at a time on me as more adds wandered in, all without breaking a sweat and that was without any kiting. With kiting an affliction warlocks only limit is how far they want to go back for loot otherwise dotting and running can kill an infinite number of mobs without ever needing to stop for mana. I can't think of any other class/spec that can rival that except perhaps a blood death knight.

Battle Rez from the Tank!

2010-08-02T11:41:00.000-07:00

We've all been there, a key player (usually a second tank or healer) goes down and it's either get them up or pack it in. Back in the day Shadowmeld provided bears with the ability to drop threat onto one or more of the expendable DPS to allow the opportunity to get a rez off, if that DPS was worth their salt they "tanked" that boss until it was taunted back a moment later. If not losing one DPS to avoid a wipe was a very good trade. I remember doing this a couple times on the first boss in heroic Halls of Lightning back when it was "new" healers always managed to die there by someone getting charged and running laps around them or something. Anyway that doesn't work anymore.

The new trick is to keep an eye on when the boss takes a moment to stop beating on you to cast something. Most bosses do something like this and if timed properly you can get a rez off and be back in bear form before you get whacked again and possibly one shotted in caster form. This is somewhat of a risky maneuver and should not be attempted if there isn't the threat of imminent failure and there aren't any other druids available to do the job. When your butts against the wall and there isn't any other choice the results can be awe inspiring.

For example I was recently tanking Rotface while the second tank herded slimes. All was going well until the second tank got run over by a large slime and chaos ensued. Luckily there was a naughty poo poo less than a second later which provided more than enough time to get a rez off and finish the fight. I've also snuck a rez off while Rotface turned to spray the group which is much more twitchy and time sensitive, but it is doable. Probably my greatest battle rez while tanking was on Saurfang. The second tank went down, we were already short a healer from a mark and had just a little more to go. I got a rez off while he turned to cast blood boil on someone in the raid. It was pretty awesome, but its probably a 50/50 shot between saving the day and getting one shotted.

A battle rez is a very powerful tool in the right situation, so powerful in fact that it is the one and only ability a bear would ever consider leaving the safety of bear form to use. That is a subtle hint to other druids that they should be paying attention to when their battle rez can be useful and not wait for someone else to make the call. The choice often needs to be made in the span of a global cooldown to be effective. I can recall a few incidents where a battle rez that never came could have prevented a wipe. Usually it is a boomkin oblivious to anything besides their next eclipse proc, but that could just be a coincidence.

Warlocks vs Healers

2010-07-28T09:58:00.000-07:00

I've got two healers at 80 and have only just starting doing randoms on my now level 29 warlock so until recently I have been a little biased toward healers having the short end of the stick. I've come to realize that this isn't the case after just one Gnomeregan pug. It was the first time I got called out for my self-inflicted damage.

"Thank the warlock for that.", as the healer needs to stop for mana. Of course I am doing everything I can to heal myself and I wasn't really being a drain on the healer's mana so far as I could tell so I simply replied, "you're welcome". A little later the healer stopped to drink again and I thought it would be amusing to poke fun myself and said, "Give the healer a moment, he's drinking for two." Finally, near the last boss someone asked, "Why is the warlock taking so much damage?" I couldn't help myself and blurted, "I hurt myself...", "I get off on it. I know it's wrong, but I can't help myself." The RP realm guy was heartily amused as was the rest of the group and from that point on there wasn't another word on the topic. I've never really gotten into the whole role play aspect of my toons, but it has been something I've had a growing interest in. In this case it was an easy way to diffuse an otherwise awkward PUG situation without going into debating class mechanics. This little taste of role play has wet my appetite for more.

Unlike the middle of a PUG, now it is a good time to talk class mechanics. Fact: Warlocks life tap to regain mana. There really is no other way around it in a group environment, but warlocks also have the ability to heal themselves and take that burden off the healer. I'm speaking from an affliction perspective since that is what I play, but I am pretty sure that is the case for all warlocks. The main problem is that those two things don't happen at the same time, warlocks lose health to regain mana and then start regenerating health with life drain or using a healthstone. By that point the healer in me would see the missing health and fill it up much faster than the warlock can themselves and any healing the warlock would do would be overhealing. So the warlock continues to DPS and life tap while the healer shakes their head in disapproval.

The take away for healers is to give warlocks the opportunity to take care of themselves, or more specifically don't top them off if you are having mana issues. It is a good indication to the warlock that if their healer isn't topping them off that they should focus more on taking care of themselves. There are going to be bad players on both sides of the fence, healers that don't heal warlocks and warlocks that life tap to the point of death and expect heals. I actually felt bad life tapping as a warlock until fairly recently since I've only just started to get the tools to heal myself to make up for it. Now I realize that as a warlock you have to learn to strike a balance between life tapping, DPS and health regeneration depending on how much extra healing is coming your way. Some healers say go nuts and others will outright refuse to heal you if you life tap. Most, including myself when I am healing, are somewhere in the middle.

It is mostly a matter of common sense on the warlock's part, don't life tap unless you know how you are going to get that lost health back; when in doubt drink. If I am low on mana and see a promising life drain target I will dot it up, life tap and then start sucking that life back. One of the first things I learned in Gnomeregan was I can't get health back from mechanical targets, bummer. In between pulls I will life tap all that a healthstone will afford me and make a new one for next time. When I see a target with low health that few other people are attacking I will soul drain it and attempt to proc a mana boost. That is how I get most my mana back soloing, but it requires me or my pet to get the killing blow. Another thing to be aware of are hots ticking on you, if you are at/near full health then use those hots to life tap rather than let them get wasted as overhealing. One thing is for sure it is never the healer's responsibility to manage a warlocks mana, but a little help goes a long way.

Big Pulls vs. Chain Pulling

2010-07-26T13:33:00.001-07:00

I was in a random group with three people who were obviously together, one DPS of appropriate level, a higher level healer and max level ICC entry geared tank. Neither the healer or tank even spoke, but it was apparent they were talking amongst themselves through some other medium, probably vent.

So the DPS calls out at the beginning of the instance that they will be making "big pulls". This is after a fairly long pause waiting for the healer to zone in. We are doing Utgarde Keep and the tank proceeds to pull the first two, and that is all.

The tank then runs in and grabs half the room where most tanks grab the whole thing. Pats come by and pull the rest of the room, mobs go straight for the healer and I'm starting to pull aggro on my level 70 pally from a 5k+ gearscore tank. Big pulls, yeah right.

So the next pull the tank whacks the single then runs off to grab more without any warning. The other DPS and I who weren’t in communication with the tank both pulled aggro, I stunned the mob and the tank came back to "tank" it while it was stunned. Next couple pulls were single groups again; then came the room with the drakes.

The tank pulls a single drake, stays there a second then takes off to grab the next group, again without any warning. I had aggro on that single drake pretty quick and being on a pally managed to bubble and stay alive. Obviously big pulls means randomly choosing to tank and not tank certain mobs.

The rest of the instance was much of the same with some oddly long pauses where the tank and healer would sit around the recently dead mobs and say a prayer or something. It was a very slow moving PUG even compared to the usual level 68-70 groups.

This was just another example of how pulling big is not something that should be executed by an inexperienced tank. Pulling additional mobs is something tanks learn to do over time by anticipating what their group can handle and more importantly what they can maintain control of. Big pulls are a pretty stupid idea in general as they are hard for DPS to anticipate without some communication from the tank and more often than not are less efficient than timely single pulls.

The more appropriate tactic for speeding up an instance is called chain pulling. Once you have adequate threat on one group of mobs you go ahead and grab the next, moving along at a constant steady pace. The DPS never stop which makes things go considerably faster opposed to waiting for a tank to gather a large group while the DPS does nothing in that time. It takes a very large AOE group to make up for a long wait time of zero DPS when it comes to average DPS.

The main thing to gauge your chain pulling speed by is your healer's mana, DPS mana is unimportant (even if they do complain about it). If your healer is doing OK mana wise then your DPS should be too, otherwise they are doing something wrong (most likely going all out on trash instead of doing slightly lower sustainable damage). In any case your affected DPS can hang back and drink while you move forward. The exception to the DPS mana rule is that it is often a good idea to let everyone start a boss at full mana, but that is only until you outlevel or overgear the content.

DPS Leaving Randoms After Tank/Healer

2010-07-26T12:44:00.000-07:00

Last night I was questing on my paladin while queued to DPS a random. I rarely queue to tank as I wouldn't have any time to quest. The average wait times were between 30 and 45 minutes so I only got into 3 groups over the course of the evening, one of which didn't make it to the first boss. Why, because everyone dropped group except me.

You know how when you queue for a random as a DPS and one of the DPS doesn't accept and times out, you get another group pretty quick. This is because you are at the top of the queue. Even higher yet in the queue are groups already in an instance. Obviously this is a foreign concept to many players because no one in their right mind can possibly want to wait longer for a random. Perhaps many DPS aren’t in their right mind and 45 minutes sounds better than 5.

Another thing to keep in mind while you are waiting for the rest of your group is that you don't have to wait in the instance and do nothing, you can click the teleport out of dungeon option on your minimap and continue questing or whatever you were doing before you accepted the random dungeon. Then when the group is ready you just teleport back to the dungeon the same way.

It made even less sense last night as the group was struggling a little due to an inexperienced tank. The tank left shortly after running back after a bad pull which wasn't even their fault. Someone requeued and we'd of gotten another hopefully more competent tank if not for the healer dropping group rather than accepting a role. Both the other DPS drop right after that. Even if just one of the DPS stayed I wouldn’t of had to requeue at the bottom.

I often wish that groups were like raids in the sense that they don't automatically disband when only one player remains, just so I could stay at the top of the queue for randoms even if everyone else left to requeue at the bottom. Although you'd think those queuing as DPS would be more adept at working the system in their favor given the drastically longer queue times.

New Druid Talent Trees

2010-07-23T14:39:00.000-07:00

I have three goals in my druid's talent build(s): tank to the best of my ability, dps to the best of my ability and heal to the best of my ability, prioritized in that order. In reality my dps and healing goals end up flipped since tanking and dps share a talent tree and cannot be improved individually without dropping healing as an option entirely. The ability to heal opens doors that would not otherwise be open to a strict tank/dps, so long as that is of more value than the small DPS loss of a bear focused hybrid feral build then resto will remain my secondary spec of choice. Right now the DPS difference between my hybrid build and a pure cat build in equivalent gear is almost negligible and I find myself doing competitive damage with other classes.

Well, the latest feral tree still hasn't deterred me from a cat/bear hybrid build. I actually had a couple of points left to dabble after grabbing all the talents I really wanted. Those couple extra points really aren't extra when you consider that at level 80 we'll probably only have 39/41 points available.

Then I took another look at the resto tree; better, but pretty boring. There is so little choice in the first two tiers that the former trees of Azeroth are forced to waste 4 points in talents that don't help in any way to improve healing (3 if you go out on a limb and consider that taking 2% less magic damage helps your healing).

The rest of the restoration specialization is basically one large choice, "Do you want to sneak some DPS in?", and one small choice, "Do you want to PVP?". I was hoping for more give and take, "I can buff this healing spell or this other one...", but nope; you can take all the healing talents you want so long as you didn't want any damage focused talents or the one PVP talent.

Which leads me to my biggest disappointment, I can't reach moonkin form from the resto tree. The points are available, but the 31 point requirement in the first tree makes it impossible. I was totally willing to toss the new tree form aside in favor of having a bit of fun as a chubby owl. So far I definitely plan on sticking one point in Balance of Power though to get 2% hit, plus 50% of my spirit as hit. That one point will make a huge difference in whatever meager DPS I can muster.

One thing I notice in the new trees is that I find myself sticking 1 point in a lot of talents that take 2 or 3 points to max out. I think it kind of cool and never found myself considering it except for the last few points in the currently live talent trees. The main reason for this I see is the wider variety of "interesting" talents opposed to pure stat increases. Pure stat increase talents are boring and usually easy to prioritize. Talents that situationaly alter or enhance an ability however are great places to mix and match. The talents that best illustrate this are the ones that have both a constant utility portion and a scaling numeric portion, so if you take one point you get the same utility as if you took 3, but if you take more it procs more often or causes more damage.

One real example would be Empowered Touch in the resto tree which gives a chance to refresh a lifebloom stack with nourish, 50% chance for each of the two points. I think that is a cool idea so I'll put a point in, but I don't feel like I need to put a second point in since I bet in the times when I care I will cast at least two or three nourishes on my lifebloom target during the duration of the hot. One point means sometimes I won't have to refresh my lifebloom stack instead of I'd always have to. A little RNG, but I think it is interesting.

A somewhat less controversial example would be the feral Improved Charge talent for a cat, one point lets you ravage out of stealth for 3 seconds, a second point allows it for 6. One talent point gets ravage into your rotation. Two would let you use it perhaps twice after a pounce instead of once. I can't see myself not taking the one point here.

Dual Specs and Downranked Spells

2010-07-22T10:09:00.000-07:00

It is a known bug that when learning new spells at your class trainer only your currently active spec is updated to use the new spell ranks. In fact there is an add-on, RankWatch, just to check for this. (Note: If you do use RankWatch use the '/rankwatch 80' command to have it only whisper people at max level. If you haven't fixed your spells by then you deserve a reminder.)

Anywho, the add-on lets you know there is a problem, but doesn't fix it for you. Worst case scenario you go through each action bar slot one at a time and check your spellbook for any updates. More than likely you just keep using the old ranks till your RankWatch add-on, or someone else's, tells you to update them. There is a better way, and it all fits in a handy macro you can use after training.

/run if not InCombatLockdown() then for i=1,120 do t,x,x,s=GetActionInfo(i)if t=="spell"then PickupSpell((GetSpellInfo(s)))PlaceAction(i)end end end

Obviously RankWatch should be updated to do this for you automatically when it sees you used a downranked spell the next time you are out of combat, but in the meantime this works nicely. :)

Stupid Pet Tricks

2010-07-22T09:52:00.001-07:00

Once upon a time pets did exactly what you told them to, run up to whatever you told them to and hit it, predictable. At this point the stupid rested squarely on the shoulders of the hunter or warlock not to manuever their pets behind their targets. Then things change and pets automatically put themselves behind their targets and with that the stupid shifts to Blizzard's implementation.

A fix for a minor end game pet management inconvenience manifested itself in a very unfortunate way for solo hunters and warlocks. You send in your pet and it might choose to run off with the mob and try to pull as many others as it can. There are many theories as to why this happens, but the one sure thing is that it is related to the pet positioning changes. Obviously the change wasn't "ready", but was released anyway and hasn't been resolved for months.

The result is that the very first impressions any new hunter or warlock has of their new class/pet is of a bug, total immersion killer. I have a hunter at 80 that pretty much exclusively groups and no longer solos so I had all but forgotten about this bug, but I've recently started leveling my warlock again and now it is fresh in my mind once again. Hopefully this will get some attention for Cataclysm, if not sooner, since there is so much emphasis being placed on improving the leveling experience for new characters.

There is a workaround to avoid an untimely death, tell your pet to follow then shortly after that send it to attack again. You learn to catch the bug early after several repetitions so your pet ends up more or less where you want it. On the bright side this bug does teach new hunters and warlocks to be more mindful of their pets.

31pt Stealth Nerf?

2010-07-19T12:54:00.001-07:00

Originally the plan was 5 more talent points and trees similar to the ones we currently have. Yay, 5 more points to flush out a couple more talents you wanted in your build. Boo, there is less of a compromise between level 85 builds if you are 5 points closer to everything you want. Plans changed and talent trees have been pruned to 31 points deep and the maximum talent points are cut in half. We only earn two or three new talent points from 80 to 85 depending on how our 1.875 levels per talent point are distributed.

Talent trees aren't finalized yet, but When working through them I can't help but to fear that today's builds at 80 will become tomorrow's builds at 85. Meaning that when the new trees go live level 80's would essentially lose 4-5 talent points which would be earned back leveling to 85. The only way to keep that from happening is for talents to get cheaper, which they are, and for there to be more of them on each tier, which also appears to be happening to some extent. Making some of the mandatory talents baseline also helps by providing more talent points to spend.

Ideally we'll be able to replicate our level 80 builds more or less in the new talent trees and then by 85 be able to pick up a couple new talents. We'll see how it balances out once the new trees are further along.

Got Ta Be Kiddin' Mon

2010-07-01T08:46:00.001-07:00

I had two conflicting interests up until 5 minutes ago, have one toon of each class and have two druids if the troll or worgen forms were totally awesome. Druid is my favorite class after all and I can only play 2 specs at a time.

Well it turns out the new forms don't do anything for me at all. The troll forms look like they belong in a circus and the worgen forms are tauren with the horns cut off and perhaps a little more hair. These are probably completely desirable traits for troll and worgen druids though.

So now I know that my worgen priest and goblin warrior will be my two new alts for the expansion and fill out those last couple classes I've been neglecting. No more worrying in the back of my head of how I will enjoy all the alts I want with the limited character slots provided. A small weight has been lifted off my pinky toe.

Edit: Added images for those who couldn't access them elsewhere.

Maximum System Requirements

2010-06-24T14:14:00.000-07:00

So after doing a little searching around after having wow crash on me in Dalaran repeatedly since the patch I found that Blizzard is aware of the issue and working toward a fix. I also found out that the issue has been reported for at least a year and a half and 3.3.5 was just the straw that broke the camels back.

Apparently support for 64 bit operating systems hasn't been a priority for testing and users who have reported issues have been getting the update your video driver and disable your add-ons run-around for months. Since it was such a small percentage of the player base it makes sense that it didn't get much attention, but it still looks bad for Blizzard now that 64 bit systems have become more or less the norm for new computers.

So we have a slow memory leak affecting some systems which causes intermittent crashes. I noticed this myself when I upgraded my machine, but I disregarded it as being related to my choice of running with two video cards in an SLI configuration. I ran with shaders off for quite a while as they caused outdoor areas to flash like someone was turning the light on and off, but that was fixed with the release of wrath.

Out comes 3.3.5 which exacerbates this preexisting issue by turning a small memory leak into a large one. Now pretty much everyone running wow at max settings on newer hardware is experiencing regular crashes at least in computationally expensive places like Dalaran.

Blizzard's solution while they work on returning the problem to its 3.3.3 state is to reduce graphics settings. Note they did not say they would fix it, only make it work as well as it did previously. That's good enough for me I suppose, a little annoying, but good to know I wasn't doing something horribly wrong.

My guess is that stable support for todays newer hardware won't be flushed out until Cataclysm at the earliest and by that point there will be even newer stuff out there. Warcraft is rather unique in that is runs on such a wide range of systems and can be played on fairly ancient computers by todays standards with minimal impact on playability.

The take away from all of this is something most people who buy, upgrade or even build computers for themselves have known and kept in mind for years, don't overspend. The 100 rule comes to mind, you should never spend more than 100 dollars on any one computer component, including those fancy graphics cards despite how manufacturers would have you believe otherwise. I know I've broken this rule when I built my own machine, but only just barely and I still think SLI is cool. :)

Software companies aren't developing for or catering to excessive hardware as Blizzard has demonstrated, they might not even be considering it or even testing for it. Not to mention a piece of fancy hardware that costs two or three times as much will not last you two or three times as long. In the long run it is more cost-effective to buy older cheaper technology and then replace it when needed. That could be a very long time so far as warcraft is concerned seeing as system requirements have only gone up a little for wrath in six years.

Even then consider that I was up until shortly before the release of Wrath running wow on a dell manufactured in 93' a whole 7 years before warcraft. I did have to replace the video card and even then I was having issues in 25 man raids when AOEs started flying around, but everything else was completely playable at a decent frame rate and quality. Hardware has far surpassed current software needs and left us all spoiled.

4pT10 Enrage is Liberating

2010-06-24T08:41:00.001-07:00

I finally got the rest of the frost badges together for my fourth tier 10 piece thanks in part to the holiday boss rewarding two each day. I ran around to gem and enchant it right before going to tank for my guild's weekly raid.

It was better than I had even imagined. No more did I have to worry about timing my enrage with the readiness of the raid for maximum rage at the time of the pull. Enrage was always a little weird in the sense that you want it for the start of a pull, but you don't want to take additional damage, especially at the start of a pull when healers are getting into place and hots haven't been stacked up yet.

With the set bonus enrage is actually another defensive cooldown with a 12% damage reduction instead of an armor reduction. So you can enrage as you pull, have plenty of rage to get some decent snap aggro and at the same time take less damage while healers get situated. As an added bonus I have a talent point in King of the Jungle since I run with a hybrid tanking/DPS spec. That provides me with an extra 5% damage while enrage is active and helps even more with getting a good lead on aggro from the start.

In the middle of the fight the rage or aggro aren't usually an issue so it becomes a lesser barkskin cooldown to reduce incoming damage. There are fights where it helps more though like Bronjahm in Forge of Souls. In phase 2 he doesn't hit very much and rage goes to near zero pretty quick, popping enrage allowed me to put out a lot more damage than I would otherwise been able too without taking additional damage.

Speaking of Forge of Souls I ran that after my raid as you might have guessed, and guess what dropped off the last boss! The Needle-Encrusted Scorpion, of course. I can't even remember how long I've been trying, but I've lost the roll at least 5 times and some days I even got lucky and ran it twice, once queued specifically for it and again after as a random heroic.

I must say I earned it that time, healer went down in the beam (which happens quite often) and I took the opportunity to battle rez. I don't think they expected it as they didn't accept right away and I had to resume tanking before I could top them off with an innervate. Blew a couple cooldowns to mitigate the Phantom Blasts in the meantime, if only I could lower the cooldown of bash further or convince PUG DPS to interrupt. Boss went down and I won the trinket, yay. The 22 slot bag dropped that same run, but I didn't win it, I'll just equip the crafted 22 slot bag I made on my rogue as a contingency plan since as I suspected I don't want to run through that instance again for quite a while.

Stupid DPS Tricks

2010-05-27T11:45:00.000-07:00

Something I noticed repeatedly tanking Forge of Souls for my 22 slot bag and DPS trinket, DPS like to hit stuff the tank isn't. What are they thinking?

Being a bear I don't have the fancy silence abilities the other tanks do so if there is a caster its is staying where it is unless someone else takes pity on my running around and silences it for me. So this means that on a lot of the pulls in Forge of Souls I make a skull beat it in the head, run around to get a little threat on everything else (mainly to make sure the healer doesn't aggro them) then settle back down with skull and whatever other mobs cared to join me.

I then have my feral faerie fire cooldown to use to keep moderate threat on anything not in my swipe range. More than enough to keep the healer safe and surprisingly often enough to keep aggro from brain-dead DPS. All I have to say to those DPS is hit the gorram skull and try to pick a target the tank is actively tanking otherwise.

I've got a much bigger beef with healers though, for example a aggro whore mage who took over 34% of the heals in a heroic and yet somehow the healer sought fit to keep healing them. Perhaps I've grown a bit bitter over time, or perhaps I am just more pragmatic, after all the less I get hit as a tank the lower my repair bill. In any case if there is a DPS that sees fit to pull before I do, or constantly pulls aggro on unmarked mobs despite having a skull marked for just that reason, then I am going to let them die. Scratch that, I am going to go out of my way to get them killed so long as it doesn't hurt anyone else. It actually makes tanking more interesting/fun.

The number of healers that would go along with my evil plan are few and far between and in fact the only healers I know that would let someone die for those reasons are also tanks. Coincidence? I think not. For the most part healers will heal everyone equally without bias. How boring.

Reduce Your Lag Time 100ms

2010-05-27T11:13:00.000-07:00

Perhaps even more depending on how slow your fingers are. ;)

I was recently made aware after over a year of pressing buttons that your spells aren't actually cast until you let the key go. This means that when you go to cast a spell quick to interrupt something or stop someone from dying with a heal there is an extra delay in the time it takes for your finger to not only hit the button, but to lift back up as well.

I only found out about this after I stumbled across an add-on to fix it, SnowfallKeyPress. Of course I didn't believe it as first, but I tried it and sure enough my spells were cast when I let go so I installed the add-on and sure enough they cast right away.

After trying the add-on out in a few instances and raids it was immediately apparent to me that my timing was a little off from what I was used to. Most noticeably was when I was healing I was often healing the wrong person because my heal went off before I had switched targets. I had never noticed how good I had gotten at synchronizing my target switching with my heals. That passed pretty quickly once I got used to the new rhythm.

The second thing I noticed, which is actually beneficial this time, is that I find myself able to interrupt much more reliably. Short cast times or catching an interrupt just as it comes off of cooldown, much easier now. This is why I will be keeping this add-on around.

When I started looking into this it appears many popular add-ons provide similar functionality of their own; so if you use an action bar replacement add-on or something like clique then this add-on might not do anything that isn't already being done.

True Evil

2010-05-21T14:02:00.000-07:00

There are plenty of times where people can be inconsiderate, selfish or mean, but once in a while you come across someone purely evil. The type of person that should be locked away from society or squished under a large rock.

I've just started leveling my mage with a friend in outlands starting with hellfire peninsula. We both grabbed the one PVP quest to cap the three bases in the middle and figured we'd do it when we happened to go by.

Well we tried one night and a level 80 priest was there waiting to kill us low-level types. We go down in one or two hits. Corpse run back and my friend gets away, I don't. I can totally understand and forgive someone attacking a flagged player in a PVP location without looking at their level, once. If you go out of your way to kill them a second time knowing you won't get anything out of it then you are just a jerk. It was late and we gave up for the evening.

The next time we go and cap the first one only to be steamrolled seconds later by a hunter and paladin who then proceed to camp our corpses. I was about to give up when I decided to flip to my main, get some help and trounce the punks. We did.

Capped the other two without any competition and headed back to honor hold to turn in our quest. This is when asshattery turns to evil and the paladin, Renderence of Perenolde, swoops in on a flying mount and decided to one shot our low-level alts in town.

Funny how he didn't want to attack our mains of his own level, but had no problem attacking characters over 15 levels lower.

It is one thing to attack someone in a PVP area who is flagged, no matter the level or reason, since if they are in the area and flagged they are sort of consenting to be killed. Even still it isn't nice to gank lower level toons.

A line gets crossed though when you follow someone obviously no longer interested in PVP and ambush them. In a grossly unfair fight no less where you have no chance of losing.

These types of people go to a special hell with toy trains and mohawk grenades.

Another Dream

2010-05-21T12:08:00.000-07:00

It started out going to work, but I got to pull into the loading dock which appeared as a garage rather than the parking lot. It was Thanksgiving and I was offered three platters of goodies to take home.

I was also asked to watch a coworker's mice for a day sometime in the future. This surprised me even in the dream, but I still agreed.

When I go to leave I open the garage door to find that just outside there is a lot of junk piled up, old bicycles and stuff. It had obviously been there for a while and somehow I had gotten into the garage anyway.

It didn't seem to matter because I got out again in whatever mysterious way I got in and found myself next in my parent's back yard in a red canoe with my mother and grandfather after I had unloaded my goodies.

I took out a small packet of tiny Oreos (like quarter inch diameter tiny) and opened them. They were vanilla on one side and chocolate on the other with white frosting in between. I offered then to my mom then had some myself.

Looking around I notice the terrain is quite different from reality and about half the backyard is flooded. The water was perfectly calm where we were which would usually be a hill.

It was probably no coincidence that things started to move soon after I noticed that. From the treeline on the back edge of the yard a tall grey dead tree floated upright towards us narrowly missing the boat. The tree was missing all but the very stubs of its branches.

A second dead tree floated out and that one bumps the end of the canoe sending us speeding down the hill where we stop in calm water again at the bottom.

At this point I am made aware that we are trying not to get wet for some reason and the canoe, now made of raw rough wood, has a hole in it. My mother and I climb out to shore without getting wet to try to find something to patch the hole inside.

After getting back up the hill we turn around to find my grandfather sitting on the patio at the bottom of the hill in front of a slider door out from the basement, he was all wet and told us he was going to sit there to dry out.

Next we go through the house and down to the basement to go out to the patio. A pterodactyl swoops down and grabs something off the patio and flys off. I then notice a pair of babies which are covered in bright red fluffy down with white spots. We go out to bring my grandfather inside and they come at us nipping and pushing. They seem rather strong for their size. The dog get out in the process and goes after one. I get the dog back in and go back out to help trying to keep one that followed me from getting in.

Then I wake up to my alarm clock.

Something to Remember Me By

2010-05-05T09:06:00.000-07:00

PVP is all about the dying and everyone and anyone will die at some point. In an ideal PVP world all things being equal everyone would lose half the time and win the other half.

Once you come to terms with your own fleeting mortality you can come to appreciate sharing a little something with whomever got that killing blow.

For starters I like to share a faerie fire with rogues and other druids. Rogues have to burn a cooldown if they want to stealth, but druids are out of luck until it wears off. Nothing annoys a stealthy player more than not being able too.

The next step up, once you have the resilience to survive long enough to pull it off, is to leave your enemy with a 5 combo point rip. Which brings me to a story about why druids and paladins should avoid each other in 1 on 1 combat.

I was nearing the end of an Arathi Basin and things were not looking good. I stealthed up to the lumber mill and found a single paladin guarding the flag, but standing just inside the building pacing and jumping.

I still needed to assault a flag with my orphan so I took a chance hoping they would not attack and would of been more than happy to retake the flag right after I was done. They attacked instead.

It was quite the fight, each of us burning pretty much every cooldown we had over the course of the fight, some of them more than once if they had cooldowns under 3 minutes. Each of us had killed each other three times over when we both ran out of tricks.

I went down in a last stitch effort to heal myself before getting a hammer of wrath to the head (which was followed by one of those nasty instant exorcisms), but I still still had a full power rip ticking away which took that paladin out seconds later while spamming flash of light. It was a laugh out loud moment.

Alliance lost that battleground before I even got the chance to rez and I requeued for another random battleground and got Isle of Conquest. Usually I run up and fight at the workshop then fall back and defend the keep, but this time I listened to some yahoo that told a couple groups to take the hangar. It sounded like a nice change of pace so I went with it.

I met that same paladin up at the top as they ran in to attack, I pounced on them like white on rice and they just bubbled and jumped off the edge. :(

School of Hard Knocks

2010-05-04T08:00:00.000-07:00

I thought this achievement would be much worse than it was, but it turns out horde hate it just as much as the alliance and vice versa. What this means is that it is more than likely that some sort of mutually beneficial if only temporary truce will be present at the start of 3 of the 4 battlegrounds.

Eye of the Storm is a free for all against not only the opposing faction, but your own as well so everyone is on their own there if they didn't bring their own help.

So in the spirit of cooperation here are the rules of engagement I discovered doing this achievement yesterday evening. First for returning a flag in Warsong Gulch, let the opposing team take your flag unopposed as they may be trying to help and drop it right away, if they leave the room with the flag (or try) then they should be eliminated. Also if the opposing faction comes in too great of numbers all bets are off and assume the worst. Once the flag is dropped everyone should be nice about taking turns returning it and if you have already done it run over to the other side and extend the same courtesy to the other side. Keep in mind that not everyone knows to right click the flag buff to drop it and some players will be using an ability such as stealth or feign death to drop a flag, so don't beat on them if they don't drop it immediately.

Once everyone has returned a flag that needed to, or enough people get restless the truce ends and the battleground proceeds "normally". I noticed even though we were still competing for a win that there was still a cease fire when players weren't fighting over a flag. You could still walk around freely in the opposing faction base without being attacked so long as you minded your manners.

Next up is capping a tower in Alterac Valley. There is going to be a race among your own faction to run to a tower and cap it before everyone else. This is a little annoying as it is very easy to fall off a spiral staircase when you are in a hurry. No worries here though, the opposing faction will likely come and help you out. Like Warsong Gulch allow the opposing faction to retake the tower freely so long as your faction overwhelms the horde force so that if a fight did break out you would surely win (even those with good intentions can change their mind when odds are in their favor). Once the flag reappears again everyone takes turns capping it until everyone is done. This is going to happen at towers closer to the middle and those who have already done it or aren't interested will head to the ends to down the bosses. Once you are finished it would be nice to head back to your own towers and help the opposing faction in the same way.

This truce really only applies to the central towers and also somewhat to the roads (again in the central portion of the map) as single runners could be going to help. The far south and north are business as usual and by usual I mean a partial turtle as both sides should probably have a few defending their bosses to make sure they don't lose while all this good will is taking place in the middle of the map.

The last "easy" one is assaulting a flag in Arathi Basin. The battle starts off with your own faction racing to assault the flags first, then for a time the battle is the same as any other Arathi Basin until the flags are captured. At this point the truce begins, allow the opposing faction to approach and assault your flag so long as they do not come in a large number to overwhelm the group you are guarding the flag with. The opposing faction gets credit for assaulting your flag and it is immediately defended by someone clicking on it again. At the same time if you need to assault a flag you walk up to an enemy controlled flag and assault it without attacking anyone. If you are attacked then try another flag. There will be some players that will just try to be mean, but it's really no skin off their nose since the flag is only lost for a second or two and hardly effects the outcome of the battleground.

This truce will likely last the entire duration of the battleground, so long as you walk up to an enemy flag in a non-threatening manner you probably won't be attacked.

The last one is capturing a flag in Eye of the Storm and this is totally going to be a grind. Both your faction and the opposing faction, 30 players in all likely want to grab that flag and return it to their base. The center of the map around the flag spawn is going to be brutal and maybe half a dozen people will actually get to do it any given battleground if they are lucky. It is possible that a battleground could end without anyone capturing a flag.

In this case I left it up to Karma, I tried my best to grab the flag and when the opposing faction was trying to grab the flag I fought them off rather than try to grab the flag myself. I got lucky and the third flag spawn in my second Eye of the Storm I got it and capped it.

My next step would of been to recruit some help to fend off the opposing faction (and possibly my own in the form of a pally bubble canceling the flag pick-up cast).

Good luck out there! When it feels hopeless keep in mind that the other side is just as frustrated and possibly annoyed as you are and will probably try and help you out for a favor in return if given the chance.

1 in 33333 Raid!

2010-04-30T08:36:00.000-07:00

Last night in ICC10 not one, not two, but three iLevel 264 BOE epics dropped...

Ring of Rotting Sinew from a Deathspeaker High Priest, 2% chance.

Leggings of Dubious Charms from a Val'kyr Herald, 3% chance.

Rowan's Rifle of Silver Bullets from Stinky, 5% chance.

For a combined chance of .00003% or 1 in 33333 according to wowhead's drop rates. Should be pretty accurate given the few thousand data points for each mob/item.

33333 raids is 641 years of weekly raids!

Considering we run three and a half hours a week that would be over 13 years of solid raiding if it were possible to repeat the instance back to back.

And after all that can you believe that the shirt from Precious didn't drop once yet with a 30% drop rate? Come on. :)

Not likely to see that happen again in any case.

2010-04-29T10:53:00.000-07:00

I recently updated a couple old posts:

Whats in a Name? describes how I came up with my character names and

Add-Ons I Use lists all the add-ons I currently use.

Raiding Pro Choice

2010-04-28T10:38:00.000-07:00

Wrath made 10 mans an option where as before there was really only one or two raids and they didn't have the same sense of progression that the 25 man content had. Still popular opinion places 25-man content higher in the pecking order and those who choose 10 man content over 25 man content are not taken as seriously and probably openly mocked in a PUG environment.

The idea of 25 man content providing better rewards never really made sense to me. For the most part 25 man content is as easy if not easier than 10 man content. I attribute that mainly to the diminished effects of a single raiders performance effecting the outcome compared to a ten man where people are not only more responsible for their chosen role, but may also be asked to fill a second role at times often on the fly.

The main argument of why 25 mans should provide better rewards is one of logistics, it is harder to get 25 people together. That added investment of time and effort is only made by a few people out of the 25 involved though, most players in a 25 man have less responsibility that they would of had in a 10 man. So if it were feasible it should be the organizers of the raid getting the extra rewards, not everyone.

So the recently announced changes for Cataclysm are much closer to how I think things should be, but if it were me I would provide proportional rewards in 25 man, but not any more per person than 10-man content. So more item and more gold, but not more badges since they are given to everyone and don't get shared.

If 25 mans become less popular as a result that only means that people were running for the rewards and not because they preferred them over 10 mans. Most of them weren't the ones actually organizing the runs anyway and I bet that those who organized runs in the past will continue to do so whether it be a 10 man or a 25 man run.

I think the next step for Blizzard will be to further equalize the two and perhaps scale content to a variable number of players even if it is only done for each 5 players. Having the ability to run with 10, 15, 20 or 25 for the same amount of reward per person would further emphasize the bring the player idea by allowing people to bring everyone they wanted without having to bench someone or search for fill-ins. That is two more levels of content to balance around, but it would be just an interpolation of the 10 and 25 man versions.

I'm pretty sure I will be running 10 mans pretty much exclusively in the next expansion and only run 25 man content for things like raid quests (assuming they continue them) where there are a lot of people interested in one boss/raid that wouldn't normally be. The best part of that being that I can play with the small group I prefer and not feel held back in the sense that I can't get the better rewards.

I'm Obviously an Egg Ninja

2010-04-06T10:48:00.001-07:00

I did all the Noblegarden achievements yesterday since my new thing is to get the long strange trip meta for the 310% flying speed in flight form. That meant a lot of egg gathering which in turn meant lots of competition for a limited resource. Luckily for me few can compete with a feral druid when it comes to hunting, no matter what the quarry. We are fast, we are sneaky and we have a 30 yard range omnidirectional instant to tag stuff.

I chose the night elf starting area since I figured it would be less popular than most any I like the scenery there. Pop on the Buffy musical soundtrack (hadn't heard it in forever) and it is go time.

First I flipped to my PVP gear for the 4 piece 15% outdoor speed boost which when combined with travel form puts me at 61% faster than everyone else without any speed enhancement. When anyone uses their 60% speed boosting egg basket I am still just a little faster. Next, as if that weren't advantage enough, I enabled auto loot for one click egg grabbing.

Only cat dash and rogue sprint were faster and are on such long cooldowns that it wasn't a concern. Mounting also provides a speed advantage but with the frequent stops remounting becomes more of a burden than the benefit of additional speed (you may beat me to one egg, but I will get the next two).

So after a few laps I am getting really good at it as I learn all the spawn locations. I'm raking in eggs faster than I can loot the chocolate out of them. Around this time I get a whisper, "u ass". Certainly not a very nice greeting so I replied, "If you move faster, you'd see less of it." Then they responded something along the lines of, "whatever you rude something or other".

Sure I beat them to an egg, sure they clicked on the same one I did and sure I clicked on the second one there before they did as well, but is that wrong? I certainly didn't insult anyone when they beat me to an egg, I just moved on, after all I can't be everywhere at once and neither can anyone else.

By far my favorite eggs to grab were from pseudo AFK players camping one spawn and obviously doing something else to keep them occupied. Usually I avoid an egg with someone next to it, but after a few rotations it was easy to pick out the folks that were just sitting there and there was much less competition for those eggs as most would assume those eggs would be gone by the time they got to them.

Usually even I would consider it in bad form to grab something that someone is obviously waiting for, but in this case there are two groups of people: those that are content to watch a single spawn or small cluster and watch a movie and those that put all their attention toward egg gathering and just want to get it over with. I fall into the latter category obviously. If you don't want to put in the effort to notice you have an egg in front of you before I run over and grab it then I have no sympathy.

I feel a little bad for the folks that are trying and just don't have the speed and/or reflexes of a hasted melee veteran (caster types don't usually have that skill set as developed), but there are plenty of eggs in the sea; go the other direction, don't pick on me for using every advantage I have available to me. My absolute favorite egg snatch was a cat charge through the air onto a rabbit critter right next to an egg.

Still I got pretty bored of egg gathering by the end and am happy that I will not have to do it again (queuing for a random in the middle was a nice diversion). I'm sure many others are happy I won't be snatching eggs out from under them as well, but there are other druids out there and druids are a pretty savvy bunch when it comes to making the best use of their class. I can say one thing though, it wasn't nearly as bad as the Turkinator.

Something New!

2010-03-12T16:11:00.001-08:00

After reading a few web comics I have new found confidence in my skills as an artist. Well not so much that as I have realized that comics can be funny even if the drawing is simplistic. Anyway enjoy!

More Interesting Gear Coming in Cataclysm?

2010-03-03T14:09:00.000-08:00

Well for starters the cataclysm changes that were revealed in a blue post not too long ago came as a bit of a let down to me. I think a lot of it is that they just aren't telling us everything yet and in those hairy details are where my concerns lie.

First off, one thing that bothers me currently about a lot of stats is there isn't a good way for your average player to figure out how much of a certain stat they need without going to a third party source. It is fairly easy to discern which stats we want, like agility is really nice for feral druids, but when it comes to things like expertise and hit there comes a point where intuition has diminishing returns.

The mouse overs do a good job of explaining what the stat does and hitting more and getting dodged or parried less sounds wonderful, but shouldn't there be some indication that your chance of missing or of being dodged or parried is reaching zero? It is a good thing there are people that have nothing better to do that play dress up and whack things for hours to find out something blizzard already knows. Doesn't sound much fun to me, but then again I'm not much of a theorycrafter. Metagaming kills immersion and all that jazz.

The main problem with showing some concrete percentages is that those values are a moving target depending on what you are hitting. But it just so happens that Blizzard made monster avoidance based entirely off of level, targets of lower level are easier to hit and targets of higher level are harder to hit. So unless some oddball creature out there breaks with tradition displaying meaningful data to players is sort of trivial.

Show the lowest chance to miss, be dodged or be parried along with the level that percentage is based on. This way you know that anything of a lower level you are guaranteed to hit, not be dodged or not be parried and anything with a higher level would have a larger chance. It's not really important to know an exact number for every level so long as there is enough information there to know if you've hit a cap or not and about where you are. Along with that % in the tool tip keep the arbitrary stat values more or less (more on that next) as they are convenient for quick comparisons with known values once those known values are derived.

This type of information would be especially handy on the fly while leveling where there isn't a whole lot of information available since all the thoerycrafting is done at max level. Sure there are a few formulas derived that can be applied to lower levels, but who is going to do that?

The second issue I have with the current system of stats aside from all the values given being completely arbitrary is that there is not one, but sometimes two and often three arbitrary values for the same thing. Hit rating, melee hit and spell hit for example. If you count arbitrary percentages that is four arbitrary values.

I can accept that casters require more hit rating even though I am not sure why that needs to be the case, but what I don't understand is why there needs to be a second value to represent hit rating in another form. What this leads to is one stat on my gear which I have to convert to figure out what the end result will be on the final stat. This is easy enough with gear when you just try it on, but when you are trying to figure out which gems or enchants to place on your gear it quickly becomes overly tedious. In addition to a simple addition/subtraction there is an extra multiplication/division by some arbitrary conversion factor which once again must be derived or obtained by a third party.

With any luck Blizzard thought of all that and just didn't tell us, but I doubt it. Lets get back to what they did think of though.

I like the removal of armor penetration, attack power and spell power. Trying to remember for each class which stats had a 1 or a two conversion factor from base stats was never easy, especially when it changed. It is also nice to compare apples to apples rather than weigh the pros and cons of two stats that basically do the same thing in a different way. Those changes are really nice. Spirit and MP5 fall into the same category. Now if only hit rating, melee hit and spell hit all became simply hit.

Removing defense was nice for bears, but I'm not sure it really mattered for anyone else. Bears lost defense because they were tired of making defense leather for one half of a talent tree of one class. I'm surprise they haven't found a way for holy paladins to heal with strength and regen with stamina. Anyway, as a result of not needing defense there is a lot of gear with defense on it like necks and rings that we bears would rather see with straight up dodge. So if all the defense on ring and necks or at least on more items is turned into dodge, bears win! If they convert it into a mix of dodge, parry and block then it is a wash. I would imagine a lot more bear friendly gear comes out of this change though.

The other main part of the changes was there is a whole lot less choice as to what gear people should be wearing and with that lessened choice there is a lot less work for Blizzard to do in coming up with loot. My guess is that nothing much will come of that besides less gear to chose from considering the emphasis that has been placed recently on how many different pieces of gear were created. I am hoping though that that effort usually required to appease a few specific classes/specs will be put toward making more interesting procs and effects for everyone. I've seen a few blue posts promoting weapon and trinket procs as something they enjoy playing with, maybe procs on armor could be next, who knows.

It could just be that the reduced workload on gear will be redirected towards other things like the world being blown apart. The world only blows up once though so those content patches have the opportunity to have some really neat stuff.

Where is the Paladin Buff Overhaul?

2010-02-15T14:51:00.000-08:00

Shamans got their totem groups implemented recently which took the tedious process of manually putting down the same sets of totems over and over and turned it into a think about it, set it up once, and reuse what you've already decided type mechanic. Something add-ons like TotemTimers had been doing for players before that. Shamans always had it easier than paladins though since totems are not nearly as heavily scrutinized as blessings. People can be downright snippy when you let a blessing lapse or not give them the one they wanted regardless if you can even cast it or not.

Paladins without add-ons are still back where shamans were, having to make the same decisions every few minutes. It isn't an interesting decision either like certain totems are more useful for different fights. The same classes/specs always want the same blessings fight after fight. Add-ons like pally power mask the problem, but that doesn't make it go away.

Paladins need some mechanic to make a choice with each group they are with and reuse that decision repeatedly throughout the raid. Something like a prayer ability that refreshes all of the paladin's active blessings would be a start, but blessings do fall off when people die at the very least. The next step would be to have the prayer not only refresh, but restore the previous blessing the paladin used last on each person. A unique buff or debuff could be used to indicate that a blessing was used and is no longer active on affected players so it wouldn't seem so out of place compared to existing game mechanics.

Once it is easy to refresh blessings on an entire raid the next logical step is to remove the longer class wide versions of blessings and make all blessings last a half hour, or even leave them at 10 minutes. Longer is better, but it really doesn't matter; look at warriors and death knights with their 2-3 minutes buffs to refresh. Rebalance reagent and mana cost around whatever duration is decided.

The blessing refreshing ability should be made available right around the time the paladin is starting to group with others in instances, somewhere around level 20 at the latest. Too soon and it is added complexity, too late and grouping is frustrating.

That would be a nice way to get paladins more in line with everyone else in terms of clicks to buff as well as simplifying an overly complicated set of abilities with a clunky by class mechanic and at the same time keep that unique paladin feel.

I should not be required to use an add-on to play one specific class effectively.

Drop of a Hat

2010-02-08T12:42:00.000-08:00

It's amazing what people will drop a 5-man pug over and even more what they won't. The run that best illustrates this was one I had recently in the Pit of Sauron. I lost 4 people that run which is quite a lot for any run and the odd part was this was a well geared fast group.

I queued for the instance since I needed to grab some quest items for my battered hilt chain and reforge a sword there. So first thing I did when I zoned in was buff everyone and then run around for ~20 seconds tops grabbing a couple infused saronite bars right at the entrance area. Then I headed over to the first pull skipping along on the right like most PUGs do, made sure everyone was with me and pulled. A DPS immediately dropped and the healer followed.

I guess they were insulted that I would take 20 seconds of their time to grab a quest item, the very reason I was there in the first place. In any case they caused the rest of the group to die which was pretty lame. So I zoned back in and whoever happened to be the leader requeued. I mentioned that the last healer left the group at the start of the first pull so there wasn't any confusion as to why everyone was running back. Maybe I should of mentioned I was grabbing quest items before that, who knows.

We're trucking along just fine, first boss goes down and we are headed towards Krick and Ick when hilarious disaster strikes. I charge an ambushing geist and it jumps at me at the same time. We meet in the middle which just happened to be just over the side of the cliff. The hunter in the group jumped down after me, he must of been crazy, and the rest of the group stayed up top while the other three tanked a loose geist that jumped on the party in my absence.

After the initial oh crap I remembered the poison slinging add that I tend to miss walking up the ramp out of the pit and decided to head over that way and see if I could get out there as well. Turns out I could and I brought that poison slinging add with me. Rounded the corner I had to grab that poison guys cousin and closer to the group I had to grab the rest of the geists and grab that one that was hitting people while I was away.

Took a couple of cooldowns to keep myself up going around the long way without a healer, but I made it and no one died surprisingly. No one left the group either.

I keep pulling the rest of the nasty poison mobs before the next boss when a DPS asks for a short break, which I responded that it was just a couple trash mobs and he could take a moment as we continued. Then the healer asked for a break as well, turns out he got a nosebleed and needed to take care of that.

I can only imagine it was a direct result of falling out of his chair laughing at the tank that flew off the cliff. I quipped that if anyone should of gotten a nosebleed it should of been me; that got a few lols. Healer is back and ready to go pretty much right away and we take out the boss. Couple people die standing in stuff, we rez, no big.

Since everyone is standing around still rezzing and waiting to loot I made the mistake of mentioning that we could skip the next two trash pulls (the two most annoying in the whole place) if we mounted and ran past them as they walked down the ramp. Everyone agreed that would be a pretty cool thing to do. I'd only heard about it in rumors from other PUGs and never gotten to try it since someone always runs ahead and starts the event.

So four of us are mounted and the last dude to rez was still drinking and eating. I head toward the ramp and turn around to wait for the last guy as he was just mounting. The other three kept going right to the top and it was just me and the other guy stuck at the bottom as it was too late to run up.

That didn't stop him from trying though, he ran right into those mobs at the bottom and died. I wasn't in combat so I just flipped to kitty and stealthed thinking I'd sneak up to the other three and clear the way back down backwards. The group on top had other plans and ran back down pulling everything on thier way and died. So there I am, all alone waiting for everyone to come back, two people leave the group. The guy I waited for stayed and the healer stayed.

We got two more right away of course and finished the instance without further incident. So those two that left ran ahead without making sure everyone was with them and killed themselves then quit what was an otherwise smooth run up to that point. Yes I jumped off a cliff, but that was a mighty smooth recovery. Who does that?

Three badges and potential 232 upgrades in less than 10 minutes opposed to a 15 minute deserter debuff and 15 minutes in the queue as DPS on top of that. Both from different servers so it's not like they had something else come up right at that moment.

For the best though I suppose, not the type of person I'd probably want to run with anyway and wipes are a fairly convenient time for people to drop since new people just joining are running in at the same time as everyone else.

Just When I'd Given Up Hope

2010-02-08T11:42:00.000-08:00

Yes ICC heroic runners, there is a battered hilt. I managed to run Forge of Souls the day it came out and have run it pretty much every day since along with Pit of Sauron and occasionally Halls of Reflection. Until this weekend I had not seen a single hilt drop. Actually I didn't see a single hilt drop this weekend either technically, I saw two drop.

The first I saw drop I actually won and that was on my hunter who is my least geared 80 and queuing for the ICC heroics while I mine ore to level up blacksmithing on my death knight. Ironically it dropped off a mob I body pulled since I wasn't looking behind me.

It was Pit of Sauron and we has skipped the first few mobs by skirting along the right side. We even skipped the caster pat with its skeleton minions and just went straight into the boney worker types. As you've probably guessed we didn't kill the skeletons before that pat came back and guess who the hunter in the back was.

By the time I pulled it the tank had already jumped down and couldn't get back up to me so I was left to my huntery devices to feign, and proceed to misdirect everything onto the tank before I or the healer went splat. It all worked out and much to my surprise I looted to find a completely foreign graphic, it was a battered hilt! Everyone rolled need, I won, we moved on to complete a very uneventful instance. Bet that tank that left right after zoning in felt a little bummed and didn't know why.

After that I immediately sent that quest item to my druid and began the quest chain for my Lightborn Spire. That quest chain is easily one of the best in the game, it's a shame so few will get to experience it.

Jump! Jump!

2010-01-28T12:18:00.000-08:00

I had an Oculus group turn into a tween hip hop duo last night when one of the drakes was pulled from behind as we were killing a group of trash on the inner ring.

The one ranged DPS we had was the one that pulled it and died early on, another melee we had was just starting heroics and died shorty after due to AOE from the trash.

So it's a warrior tank and my enhancement shammy along with the healer that finished off the trash mobs and started in on the blue drake. The tank successfully brought it onto the platform using line of sight, but it was still a meter or so too high to hit.

The tank and I spent the next few minutes jumping up and down to swack at the dragon as best we could eventually getting it down.

I've had drakes pulled while no one was mounted before, but the drakes were always more or less at ground level. So keep in mind if you can't reach as melee, don't just stand there, jump!

Boomkins are Naughty, Some are Naughtier

2010-01-25T09:07:00.000-08:00

I came across a balance druid yesterday in Halls of Stone that rubbed me the wrong way. The first minor transgression was an add-on which announced in party chat whenever he innervated or barskinned himself. That information is never useful except perhaps if you are innervating someone else that needed it and wanted to let other druids know you were doing so to avoid wasting it. Other than that anyone being innervated will know by the sudden jump in mana.

The second was frequent use of Typhoon which wasn't glyphed to avoid knock back. Obviously a raiding druid and well geared, probably dropped the glyph recently to exploit Saurfang in ICC by blowing the adds off the edge. Still no one likes that in a heroic, least of all the tank.

The third and final strike was frequent use of Starfall to pull additional mobs and I let him get away with it twice. Third and fourth times not so much.

Now there is one and only boomkin that I like enough to let that slide and often encourage. Anyone else that pulls before me when I am tanking takes their life into their own hands. Usually even if I let them tank a single mob they never die since my healer won't allow it; I'll turn her to the dark side yet. I end up tanking most of what anyone aggros though just to keep stuff off the healer since 99.9% of the time someone who pulls just hits one mob and the rest are essentially body pulled.

Starfall provides a unique opportunity though for someone to pull a lot of stuff and over aggro the healer on all of it! This allows for a naughty tank such as myself to raise the repair bills of anyone who would do it since I don't have to worry about my healer getting beat on. They fall down since no healer alive could keep them up and all I have to do is ensure I am second for threat so no one else gets hurt.

Isn't that just terribly naughty! I'm pretty sure I got a dirty look from my healer when she found out I had done it on purpose after the second time, she asked and I was quite forthcoming. I don't think the boomkin ever figured it out though (or didn't care) as they did it again even after their second death, but I just picked them up that time. I had my fun by that point.

I've become increasingly more open to allowing DPS to tank when they go out of their way to do so. I had a rogue the other day in Utgarde Pinnacle that tanked pretty much every boss and even some of the trash. They had the best gear I think I've ever seen on one person and it was obvious they were going out of their way to pull aggro. At first I was doing my best to hold aggro, but eventually I was ok with just being second for aggro and saving some durability damage to my armor. I was on my death knight so rune strike made up most my aggro and since I wasn't being hit to proc that there was no way I could catch that rogue without taunting. I'm so not using my taunt every cooldown for one rogue not even using tricks (of if they were they were using it on themselves).

Ironically later that day I came across another well geared rogue that was actually carrying a tank who could not hold AOE threat just by using tricks of the trade and fan of knives. I knew that to be the case when that rogue left halfway though Violet Hold, just before the last boss, and chaos ensued. We made it, and it wasn't as bad as I made it out to be, but the difference one good player can make sure is obvious. I was on my hunter and just had to misdirect more as did the other hunter in the party.

Behold the Power of Mockery

2010-01-25T09:05:00.000-08:00

So I ran like a bazillion heroics Sunday evening and had the usual mish mosh of players and experiences, but one stands out as particularly amusing. We we're making our way to the last boss in Utgarde Pinnacle and three pulls before the boss all hell broke loose, I think the tank had a cat on his keyboard or something, and we wiped.

Coincidentally our feral druid who was DPSing announces in all caps, yes really, that his wife had just asked for sex and he added that sex was better than badges. I quipped back with something sarcastic implying that his wiping must turn her on.

Hilarity ensues when he changes his story again in all caps and said it was his girlfriend that asked him to raid with her. Yeah, he was full of the Angus of manure. To which I simply responded...

"Just finish the instance you punkerdoodle."

After a few moments to contemplate that, I bet it was the first time he'd ever been called such a thing, he agreed to finish, but asked us to speed things along. Not like we were going all that slow to begin with non stop chain pulling. We finished the instance of course and parted ways.

If I leave a group, which is rarely, it is because I don't see things progressing and I just go without explanation because by that point it should be obvious and preceded by numerous wipes. You don't just bail at your earliest inconvenience.

One time I did leave a group on the second trash pull since I was waiting to see if I could get into a raid and 5 minutes after their start time I figured it was a safe bet I wasn't needed. I queued for a 5 man, got in, buffed and we started pulling. I was healing and got the whisper that I was indeed needed on the second pull in the Forge of Souls. I let the group know, but by that point that tank had rocketed off to the next trash group. I rushed ahead and kept everyone alive and healed everyone up before leaving.

As a rule of thumb I allow an hour for a heroic when I know I have something else coming up and don't like feeling rushed. Ironically there are few tanks that can, and more importantly make good on that ability and actually do, pull an instance faster.

Death Knight Tanking Stall

2010-01-21T09:53:00.000-08:00

If you think of a death knight tank as a plane, I find it helps to picture this tank as a gnome who are often punted, perhaps in that aerodynamic tier 9 gear with little wings. Where was I... oh yes, flying tank.

Imagine the tank's health to be their speed and their threat to be their altitude. Now anyone with a basic working knowledge of planes know that if you pull up to gain altitude while at too slow a speed the plane will stall and being to free fall toward the ground. The only way to avoid a crash is to level out and build speed. In the death knight's case, stop building threat to regain health.

The analogy takes a comic turn when you picture a healer as a rocket strapped to the flying gnome, providing an extra boost of speed when needed. An afterburner of sorts. Yeah, healers just got cooler.

Death knights are unique in comparison to other tanks due to the fact they use the same resources to mitigate and heal through damage as they do to cause damage and threat. This is most true of a tank specced into the blood tree. There is a ton of survivability there, but it comes at a higher price in runes than other talent trees.

So here we have our little squadron of plaople (plane people?) with the tank in the lead and the healer strapped on for the ride. The tank loses speed and the DPS fly right on above their tank above the poorly engineered downward facing radar jamming transmitter on the tank. They enemy spots them and proceeds to shoot them down. Up until that point the enemy was only aware of the tank.

So something DPS should be more aware of when working with a death knight tank are more abrupt fluctuations in threat generation and in turn should give the tank a slightly larger lead on threat and/or keep a closer eye on it. This is especially true of AOE encounters where the first thing to get axed are the more expensive AOE threat generation abilities.

The healer also needs to keep in mind as they have just somehow magically become attached to all the planes whenever they chose is to not boost any DPS past the tank. In other words in order to keep your tank making threat don't let their health play second fiddle to that of a DPS. This is really only an issue when healing someone who has pulled off the tank.

When someone pulls off a death knight tank and that death knight is forced to use runes to protect themselves they are less capable of regaining aggro aside from a taunt. Luckily we have one and a half of those, I count death grip as a half since it doesn't match threat like a traditional taunt. The death knight still need to expend resources in addition to a death grip to retake aggro permanently. So if the DPS doesn't stop damaging while that process is taking place they will be stuck with that mob and compound the problem as they require more heals and the tank must concentrate more on themselves.

Compare that to a similar situation on my bear tank where all I sacrifice are a couple global cooldowns and it is a night and day difference. Both have their own strengths and weaknesses.

* No gnomes were punted in the writing of this post.

You Tear It, You Bear It!

2010-01-21T09:13:00.000-08:00

Words to live by as a feral druid since we are uniquely capable of becoming a tank at the push of a button when things get hairy (which they usually are).

In an ideal world pulling threat is something we strive to avoid, but it does happen even to the best of us. Our problems lie mainly in initial burst damage, but our sustained output can rival that of all but the most seasoned tanks even with our 30% threat reduction.

What limits our damage is our energy pool and at the start of a fight that is full. Combine that with our often being positioned right behind our prey stealthed ready to pounce at a moments notice there is no delay of running up like other melee. There is a lot of burst damage all at once right as the tank is building threat.

Our opener of choice, pounce, stuns the target for that initial onslaught giving the tank to overtake us in threat even if we got a little too excited to let the tank actually hit it more than once.

Another cause of up front burst damage is berserk which we blow close to the start of a fight so it is more likely to become available again before the end of the fight. Hopefully by that point the tank has a serious lead on threat and this just fills the gap.

Oh yeah, you better believe we are going to pull threat on occasion. Our aggro dump, cower, is not very useful and removes about as much threat as a single white attack. Handy to compensate at the start of a fight if you jumped the gun, or it is a fun button to press rather than do nothing waiting for the tank to get more threat. More of a preemptive ability than anything.

When you do have threat you want to stop attacking and be all the tank you can be. All feral druids are going to be talented crit immune already so that is an advantage. We also have barkskin to reduce damage 20%, survival instincts if you took to one talent point to get some temporary hit points, bear form and frenzied regen to increase health, mitigate damage and heal yourself. Be especially careful in bear form to avoid hitting stuff, you generate a ton more threat.

If things are looking particularly bleak you can always pop a tranquility and heal yourself and those in your party around you which helps the healer out. Aside from that feral healing isn't all that helpful and you're better off as a bear to avoid damage than try and heal through it in caster form. The exception being an instant healing touch after a finishing move if you are in kitty form and talented for predatory strikes which of course you are.

While you are doing all this you are probably already near the tank and behind the mob so the tank should get threat back from AOE threat generation and/or notice the mob is facing you and taunt it. You just have to live until that happens and if you don't it was so your fault, remember that. :)

I mentioned the tank taunting as well as the first thing you should do upon getting threat is to stop attacking. There is a reason for that. A taunt matches the tanks threat level to your own and grabs aggro, if you keep attacking and over-threat the tank by 10% again then you get that mob back plus that taunt will be on cooldown. Tanks will generally taunt 2-3 times before giving up on you. :P

Now different tanks work in slightly different way which leads to some considerations for when to be more cautious. For example paladin and death knight tanks generate a lot of threat by getting hit and blocking or parrying to activate threat generating abilities. This is a larger concern for death knights single target as it is the majority of their threat. If you have a warrior or a druid tank on the other hand, give them hell, but don't push your luck.

Kitty Spec

2010-01-06T09:31:00.000-08:00

Well since I just updated my kitty "rotation" thread to reflect current times and a little more information I thought rel event I think it is time to review where you should stick those talent points for maximum DPS.

Lets start with the absolute must haves. In the feral combat tree you need...

5/5 in Ferocity to reduce ability costs and in turn increase damage done.

3/3 in Feral Instinct for more AOE swipe damage and the improved stealth which lets you sneak places others can't even with stealth.

2/2 in Savage Fury which increases your mangle and rake damage. Not really an awesome talent, but we need 5 points to get to the next tier and this is the most bang for your buck.

2/2 in Feral Swiftness to increase your movement speed and your chance to dodge. Mostly it is the speed boost that is helpful to increase damage. If you aren't in melee range you aren't doing damage so the faster you can get there the better. A little dodge is always nice too if you happen to pull aggro.

3/3 in Sharpened Claws for more crit, more combo points and more damage.

2/2 in Shedding Attacks for decreased cost of shred which is you primary combo point builder when you can be behind your target (that is usually always unless you are alone).

3/3 in Predatory Strikes for more attack power; plus it is a requirement for Heart of the Wild. As an added bonus this talent will give you an instant cast nature spell after a finishing move, 100% chance with 5 combo points. More of a PVP thing, but it can certainly come in handy to toss a healing touch in a pinch.

2/2 in Primal Fury for extra combo points when you crit.

At this point we need three more points to get to the next tier and have some options:

You could take 1/1 in Feral Charge to be able to instantly jump behind an enemy. I love this for starting fights, knockback effects and such so I can keep hitting more or less uninterrupted. More time smacking stuff is more damage.

If you aren't expertise capped then one or two points in Primal Precision is an excellent choice to get 5/10 of the 26 expertise desired (213 expertise rating). This talent will also refund energy if your finishing moves if you miss which is really nice if you aren't yet hit capped (163 hit rating).

If you don't like either of those then Feral Aggression is probably the only other damage related talent and will make your ferocious bites (which you won't use all that often) more ferocious.

So now we have our 3 points and are back to required talents.

5/5 in Heart of the Wild for increased attack power. As an added bonus you get more intellect and in turn more mana from this as well so if you have to shift/cast for any reason you will have more mana to do that.

3/3 in Survival of the Fittest for a 6% increase in every stat not to mention you are now crit immune.

1/1 in Leader of the Pack for increased chance to crit, for you as well as everyone in your party/raid.

Now we have a lot of choices to get through the next couple tiers and need to spend 4 extra points to make it to the end of the tree. If you are only interested in damage and would like to max out Feral Aggression now would be the time, you'll still have at least a couple points to blow.

You could take 1/1 in Survival Instincts to provide an emergency ability to give you some temporary hit points and provide healers with an opportunity to keep you up. This is handy if you ever hop in to tank in an emergency as well, you are already crit immune after all.

You could take one or two points in Brutal Impact to increase the duration of your pounce stun. Great for soloing and will also give your tank a little more time to build threat on your stunned target as you rip its spine out through its neck without waiting.

You could take one or two points in Improved Leader of the Pack to heal you when you crit as well as healing anyone else in your party/raid that crits with a melee/ranged (aka not a spell) attack. You also regain mana when you crit.

If you skip ahead to the next requirements and come back you will have access to some additional options to spend points in to get to the end of the tree such as Improved Mangle which I mention later.

Now that that filler is out of the way here are the rest of the feral combat requirements.

3/3 in Predatory Instincts for extra crit damage and the added bonus of taking less damage from AOE which is quite handy in melee range.

3/3 in King of the Jungle for more energy returned by Tiger's Fury. This makes shifting forms cheaper as well, yay.

1/1 in Mangle because if you don't I will hunt you down and show you why or at the very least you will be mocked.

5/5 in Rend and Tear for more damage on bleeding targets and your target should always be bleeding. Also increases the chance of your ferocious bite to crit if your target is bleeding (as if there was a chance it wasn't).

1/1 in Primal Gore to make your Rip ticks able to crit. This is quite possibly the best talent in the tree.

1/1 in Berserk to pump out dish out a lot of hurt in a little bit of time. This is also a fear breaker/immunity so you can continue to DPS while everyone else is running around filling their underpants (cats don't wear underpants so even if you are feared no worries).

So now you have 19 points left... what? you don't? You greedy little kitty! You haven't even seen what the resto tree has to offer. Well lets keep going and hope you still have enough to get all the required resto talents. A working knowledge of healing gains insight into reversing the process. ;)

2/2 in Improved Mark of the Wild to increase all your stats by 2%. This also makes your buff better like the resto druids of old when we didn't take the talent. We still make them buff, but we get more damage out of it.

3/5 in Furor to keep some energy when flipping back into cat form rather than losing it all.

5/5 in Naturalist to do 10% more damage. See the healing tree isn't too bad now is it?

3/3 in Natural Shapeshifter to decrease the cost of shifting, but more importantly to get to Master Shapeshifter.

1/1 in Omen of Clarity for free attacks. Damage without any energy cost is quite nice.

2/2 in Master Shapeshifter for more chance to crit.

Ok that is enough in the resto tree, you have 3 more points (unless you already spent them) to go back and fill in something you like in the feral tree. You can go back and fill in any of the options already mentioned or go for the following.

You could take 3/3 in Improved Mangle to reduce your energy cost and in turn do more damage. If you want to put on the hurt this is pretty much the only option. Mangle is only used as a debuff for the most part, but when you can't be behind your target it is also your primary combo point builder.

Anything else won't do anything for your damage, but would come in handy for tanking or PVP or just because it sounds cool. It is up to you and since you already have all the important talents no one will think any less of you so long as you stay in the feral tree.

So now you need glyphs. For major glyphs you should take Glyph of Savage Roar first and foremost since the buff will be up pretty much all the time and give you more damage. Glyph of Mangle is another good one to give you more time and energy to concentrate on more damaging attacks. Finally take Glyph of Shred. Glyph of Shred provides potentially 6 seconds more of Rip (2 seconds per shred) while Glyph of Rip provides only four seconds all the time. Chances are you will always get at least two shreds in during your rip and probably three making Glyph of Shred as good or better than Glyph of Rip.

For minor glyphs take Glyph of Dash under the assumption that moving faster more often means more damage. You probably want Glyph of Unburdened Rebirth as well so you don't have to remember reagents for you battle rez. Last one is up to you, Glyph of Aquatic Form perhaps on the off chance that you need to hit something on the other side of a body of water and want to get there faster.

Be sure to read up on how to use your new spec to its full potential. :)

Pay Attention When You Queue!

2010-01-05T10:36:00.001-08:00

When I don't feel like tanking or healing or am on an alt that can't I'll queue for a random dungeon as DPS. The wait is a lot longer, but I'm generally doing something else to pass the time in game like dailies or leveling.

Two times out of three though one of the DPS times out and I am stuck back in the queue for another 20 minutes. Why? The group already had a tank and a healer how hard is it for the system to find us a dime a dozen DPS?

My old theory was we all go back to the bottom of the queue and start over unlike if we had actually zoned it and been in a group together we'd of had first pick. After mentioning that theory many dismissed it immediately saying they didn't notice that happening and insisted that you stay at the top of the queue.

Another theory I have and am leaning toward is that tanks and to a lesser extent healers and dropping and rejoining the queue as soon as a DPS doesn't accept immediately. Then they requeue and get stuck in a group of DPS that was paying attention higher up in the queue leaving my group to wait longer. No skin off a tanks' nose; they get a group immediately, even the terrible ones.

In either case it is DPS hurting other DPS. DPS has the longest queue times of anyone and are actually making their fellow DPS wait longer by going afk in the queue. Obviously if you are afk you won't get a group and will have to queue again so why waste your time and the time of others?

Blizzard should add a mechanic where if you time out on a dungeon ready check you get the 15 minute debuff to discourage such behavior.

Clickers Anonymous

2010-01-04T13:26:00.000-08:00

Posted the following comment in response to a self proclaimed clicker and thought it warranted its own post. The clicker, dare I say keyboard turner (ooh harsh, we've all been called worse), was a bear even! Hard to imagine anyone could click anything with the ample posterior of a bear obscuring the screen, but practice makes perfect.

"From one reformed clicker to another. Bind as much around WASD as you can reach to action bar slots (even if you still continue to click it you will see the key binding on the icon and it will sink in eventually). Populate your action bars so that your most use abilities are on the easiest to reach keys. Infrequently used abilities go on the harder to reach ones.

Over time (a few minutes really to start seeing results) the benefits are high mobility with little to no sacrifice of access to abilities and much faster response times on using the ability you want when you want. Another perk is you aren't screwed when you lose the mouse cursor in the heat of battle. Longer term you start developing a muscle memory which enforces the aforementioned benefits and in turn helps with additional classes/specs. For example you'd probably stick your druid's Bash in the same spot as your paladin's hammer of justice. So if anything I noticed that it has improved my cross class/spec play style rather than confuse me.

Some abilities have a very tight correlation with abilities in other classes, other are more open to personal interpretation. Basically, you just match abilities based on what you think when you use them. Things like I want to keep that guy from chasing me, I don't want to die or I am out of mana and need more. Some are just oddballs and you sneak them in where you like.

Core abilities in your "rotation" (we use the word but does anyone still have one?), charges and interrupts will be the first things that become second nature. I've only recently begun getting better at some secondary abilities. For example I have B and V bound to a couple slots on my right side bars and on my hunter those are aspect of the dragonhawk and aspect of the viper. Getting away from clicking those was so very liberating and I found I wasn't forgetting I was in viper as much.

In the end I am still a clicker I just click with keyboard buttons instead of the mouse. There isn't much difference though since I still see the ability I want to use on the screen and then "click" it, it is a very visual process unlike someone who would hide the default UI and memorize key bindings."

Oh Shit Button, Worst Macros Ever

2010-01-04T10:25:00.000-08:00

I see so many macros out there combining as many defensive cooldowns as possible into a single button. The benefit being when something goes wrong you probably know right where that button is and hit it without thinking, but the benefit ends there. These are the constructs of leveling/inexperienced players. I think I just insulted a few people, but I can explain.

When you are leveling you don't have anyone to heal you (aside from yourself) so if something goes wrong chances are you aren't in a tanking spec or tanking gear and don't have the luxury of time to decide how many cooldowns you really need and if they could of been used better.

On the other hand you have inexperienced players, tanks for the most part that use these types of macros as a crutch. On one hand it it one less thing to worry about (managing defensive cooldowns), but on the other hand you are glossing over a fairly important part of tanking which will only hurt you in the long run. Especially you death knights out there, your class is built around defensive cooldowns.

So if you are a squishy DPS/Healer type then an oh shit button might be a good tool, but not great. Tanks however should avoid such things like the plague and here is why. If you blow all your cooldowns at once and take near zero damage for 20 seconds then you better hope whatever is hitting you falls over in those 20 seconds or else you go down in that 21st second followed by everyone else in seconds 22 and 23.

If you have a healer and/or a health pool large enough to draw on for a while then the best course of action is to blow one cooldown, look how things are going, and blow another if necessary. Spread them out so instead of 20 seconds of god mode you have 40 or even 60 seconds of decreased damage that will hurt, but won't kill you outright. Healers have cooldowns too and will probably be looking at your health bar to determine when to use them. If you drop down and blow all your cooldowns chances are your healer used one or more as well.

There we have a second benefit to spreading out cooldowns, if you keep taking damage, but a decreased amount, your healer may just be able to keep up without a cooldown so when you run out they might still have a trick or two up their sleeves to keep you alive for another minute and before you know it you have more cooldowns ready to use again.

Also healers like consistency with their tanks, we don't like to see tanks go from taking no damage to taking a ton of damage. Non tanks tend to require immediate attention when their health starts to drop while tanks can generally wait a second or two for you to get a heal off on someone else. As I healer I generally get a feel for what my tank can handle and decide what I can get away with based on that. If something horrible happens and the tank blows everything the healers might use their cooldowns on someone else and not be prepared if the tank starts to plummet soon after or blow all their cooldowns on the tank. The end result being that no one has any cooldowns left.

Another way to be consistent is to use cooldowns preemptively. You certainly don't want to use them all at once in this case and some are better suited to certain situations. For example something enrages for a few seconds and you know it is going to happen before hand, you can have a damage reduction cooldown ready to cancel out the increased damage so it appears to the healer than nothing changed. Then if your healer does notice a change, most likely because you ran out of tricks, they will know that they should bring out the big guns. It will ideally be a small change that tips off the healer.

So bears, we've got Survival Instincts, Frenzied Regeneration, Barkskin, Trinkets, and your consumables (potions and healthstones). Also a couple other things like Bash and backpedaling can be used defensively. Bash doesn't work on bosses aside from an interrupt, but it will stun any trash or adds some of which can do a bit of damage if left alone. Never underestimate running away either; chances are with all the debuffs players put up these days that whatever you are hitting isn't all that fast and you can stay ahead of it while running backwards (infected wounds does the job if you took the talent, but I didn't).

Just a reminder never point your butt at something that wants to kill you as you cannot dodge from the back. There are exceptions of course if you know you will stay ahead and not be hit or that whatever is behind you won't be there long. For example I do a lot of gauntlets back asswards for a couple reasons. I move slowly and consistently along so everyone can keep up and I have an excellent viewpoint to confirm everyone is caught up and make sure they don't have any friends. In a gauntlet you get a few mobs coming at you at a time and while you might be showing them your tushie chances are they will be more interested in your healer. Swiping them just as they are passing has little chance of having one hit you in the back, but even if one or two do you are moving backwards and they won't stay there.

Back to the real bear defensive cooldowns. Barkskin is your first line of defense, if something bad is happening don't hesitate to use it. It has a minute cooldown, even shorter with a T9 set bonus, and is available pretty much every time you want to use it.

After that are trinkets. They vary in effect, some absorb damage, some increase avoidance or mitigation and others increase or replenish health. Most all are on two minute cooldowns. Most of them you can use as a backup or a compliment to barkskin, but if you are taking a lot of spell damage, more armor isn't going to help. I'll mention trinkets that affect your health more below.

When really horrible things happen we have the combination of Survival Instincts and Frenzied Regeneration to fall back on. I generally start with Survival Instincts and if I still see I need more I will go ahead and use Frenzied Regeneration. Frenzied Regeneration heals based on your maximum health so Survival Instincts and any trinkets that increase your maximum health compliment it wonderfully. A lot of times Survival Instincts on its own will be enough to get out of a sticky situation and your healer can use the extra large health pool to catch up. That frees up frenzies regeneration for another time since it is a waste to use it if it would be only over healing anyway and would be better used even without the bonus.

When I have a maximum health pool increasing trinket I will either use it at the same time as Survival Instincts and Frenzied Regeneration or save it for a Frenzied Regeneration without Survival Instincts.

The absolute last line of defense for a tank is health potions, healthstones and any trinkets that provide health. Healing potions don't heal for very much, compared to what a healer can do they are a drop in a bucket for a tank, but you only need a drop to not be dead. I use these types of things when I am really low and one or two hits could kill me. It is basically a little something to give the healer just a little more time to get a cast off. A few thousand more health is not going to save you all on it's own unless you are really close to killing whatever it is that is hitting you. A health potion without fear of imminent death is just a waste.

There you have it, leave your cooldowns on separate buttons and learn to use them to their full potential. You will be a better player for it.

I Bailed!

2009-12-22T09:02:00.000-08:00

I bailed on a my first 5-man PUG of 3.3 last night. I had just finished tanking a guild Ulduar run and was itching for a little DPS before bed. I queued with another healer from the Ulduar run, she brought her hunter.

Two DPS takes a while to find a group. I queued for the first two new 5 mans since I am hoping for the hilt as well as some drops there. In the meantime I went to grab my underspore frond quick, I had never done that quest on my death knight. Probably with good reason as it is completely useless for a DK, but I wasn't thinking that hard at the time.

Just as I got to the tree for the quest the group was ready so I grabbed my quest item and zoned in. So deleting that item next time I see it.

Anywho we come in, say hi and the tank says it is his first time. Was also sporting a few regular instance blues, but no big he was sporting over 24k health (27k, 30k buffed to be exact). Seemed quite competent with the trash pulls if a little random in choice of direction.

Oh and we lost a healer right away before we even started. Another one joined in right away though and was crazy enough to stick it out. Tank and healer die on the first single trash mob.

It goes down though, I taunted it and tanked it in my DPS spec and gear. Then the other DK (I was on my DK as well) runs over and starts attacking the 2nd single trash mob we hadn't pulled yet. Dies pretty much immediately, what a tool.

So it is Semper Vi to the rescue; we don't run out, that would be cowardly or at the very least could be misconstrued as intelligent. I jump on that mob and tank it like DPS was mean to tank! With my natural blood healing abilities, a healing potion injector and Gift of the Naaru I live long enough for the two of us to get it down. Hmm we should go back and farm for that hilt, obviously healers and tanks are optional.

We continue around the left wall clearing trash to ick and eck or whatever their names are, which has always been the second boss for me, but we did it first. I died standing in things twice... the second time I called foul, but I probably wasn't paying attention close enough. Boss went down though.

We went on to the boulder hurling giant, find out our tank doesn't do adds and wiped. The overzealous death knight left at this point and we got a druid who stealthed in the usual way. They were a bit surprised when we didn't stop at ick and eck as we had already done it. Guess no one reads that 1 of 3 bosses down message when accepting a group.

We wiped twice more on that boss and then on the way in I asked if the tank had a DPS spec. He said, "No, but I have this other sword." That was it, he didn't even link a sword. I flipped to my tank spec and gear, no more add trouble. It had been over an hour and I wanted to get done more than I wanted to DPS.

We wiped... well the group did. I died to getting too much of the debuff and took the boss down another 20% before succumbing to the cold. The boss actually doesn't hit very hard at all and I could heal myself through it no problem. Which makes me wonder how bad a healer has to suck to not be able to keep themselves up, even if they let everyone else die.

I've had a pally healer there before though and I gave the same advice I'd given in the past, ignore the debuff and just heal. Worry about the debuff when the boss runs off to a forge. Must be good advice, we got it no problem.

The next few packs of trash up to the ice cave went relatively smooth, a little hiccup and two deaths on the first 5 pull, but after than no casualties. Was using a hunter freezing trap on one of the fire AOE guys and tanking the rest, killing the other fire guy first followed by the tall blue chick.

On to the undead, we froze on caster and killed the other first. I popped my antimagic shield and icebound fort at the start of each to eat that large burst on those pulls. That totally rapes my bear. Those pulls were almost as easy as that time I had two priest to shackle stuff.

On to the cave! The druid (who would rather die that heal themselves) asked if we were running straight to the middle. I said no we'd take it in steps since we had a pally healer. So I did, grabbed the first couple and waited for the pally to catch up. Went in a little more and let the pally catch up. Once more and stopped just shy of the middle, waited for the pally to finish a cast and move up and grabbed the big guy in the middle. I was just a little slow on blowing a cooldown and dropped.

In retrospect I should of dodged ice a while and waited for more stuff to die to reduce the amount of incoming damage, but geesh that was so healable. It was an hour and a half in and I let everyone know I was headed to bed. That last boss was not worth my time and I was one death away from actually loosing money that day. I take comfort in knowing I made money even if it is only a couple gold.

That would happen the day after I have a really great PUG. Hoping for better luck tonight; no plans, just PUGs!

Counter-intuitive: Queue What You Want To Do

2009-12-21T13:02:00.000-08:00

I finished heroic Halls of Reflection for the first time yesterday night and it all started with a couple guildies an myself looking to run the Forge of Souls and Pit of Sauron.

I was on my druid and expecting to tank, but it turned out our healer was saved and forgot so he flipped to his tank and I was going to heal. We usually try to keep the healing and tanking roles withing the guild so we are guaranteed some base level of competency.

Of course our tank who usually prefers to queue as DPS didn't have tank checked when I queued and lucky us we had a group like two seconds later with a pally tank and a rogue that LFG picked out for us.

We plowed through the Forge of Souls my only complaint being that the one time I hung back to loot the tank ran off ahead to pull. I was having some bag issues and deciding what to pitch. Anywho a little cat dash and I was there to heal none the wiser.

Things went so well that we all agreed to go right on to the Pit of Sauron and again we charged through the place. Another loot related cat dash was my only concern, but it turned out fine. So obviously we unanimously decided to proceed to Halls of Reflection.

This is where I thought to myself, if we had gone with our original plan of keeping the tanking in the guild rather than PUG a tank by chance we probably would never of attempted Halls of Reflection.

Notably because our tank would of been saved and potentially flipped to heals instead of flipping from DPS to DPS. Keeping our tank tanking and me healing preserved that momentum we had from the previous two instances. We knew what to expect from each other and it all clicked.

It was a good thing I was healing two instances prior because I needed that warm up. I am a feral druid first and foremost and do pretty much all my healing on my shaman. Had I started cold turkey I doubt I would of done as well. Plus I had practice before that even healing Arathi Basin as a gnome for the holiday achievement (Blizzard hates feral druids by forcing them to heal for that particular achievement). Nothing gets you smacking healing buttons like a good bout of PVP.

So the end of Phase 5 and the first "mini" boss I get feared twice in a row, my hots fall off and boom the rogue and I die, but the boss goes down as he was at like 2%. Couple rezzes and we get through the first half of the instance without further incident.

We wiped once running away from Arthas due to melee placement, cleaves and abomination juices. Second time through was much smoother aside from the last group at the very end of the run. It was hairy (mostly due to casters in the back pelting me as I had healing aggro), but no one died. It was better I have a little healing aggro to heal through than for melee to get two shotted getting stuck in the wrong position. I can respect being a tank most the time that keeping aggro on casters who hang back while keeping ahead of Arthas is not an easy task.

We won and it was time for bed. Ironic that I had to heal though, I was looking forward to trying out my recently acquired four piece tier 9 bonus on my tanking set. The irony being that I unchecked tank earlier to run the heroic random. That PUGed tank turned out to be quite alright as well.

So the moral of the story is that it might be better to queue for the role you want to play rather than queue for the role that you think would be best for the group.

Jousting 3.3

2009-12-21T09:00:00.000-08:00

It would appear the same mob AI change that has tanks running around like chickens with their heads cut off also affects tournament dailies. It is so annoying that I've sworn off jousting and just do the other dailies now.

For anyone who has not heard of the new behavior plaguing tanks, mobs will now run behind tanks if they move a teeny bit where as before they would stay in front of the tank (for the most part). I can think of a few mobs that would randomly move around side to side and occasionally make thier way behind the tank if the tank didn't compensate. The golems in HoL and HoS come to mind.

I have a theory on why that is after jousting a few times. You know how if you have a non-combat pet out it can sometimes seem to be running ahead of you and actually turn with you while still ahead. Seems like they are psychic or something.

Well I think the same thing is happening with mobs. Whatever coefficient that was making them just a bit slower than us has been decreased so that mob AI is just a little faster when it comes to keeping on our heels. Not to non-combat ESP levels yet, but certainly closer than before.

So how does this affect jousting? My old strategy was to circle my target staying just about shield breaker range so I could sneak out and toss a shield breaker and get back in before the enemy could do the same. Then when the mob backed off to charge I'd charge first and with any luck I'd have all the enemy's shields down already and take them down in a couple charges.

Now the enemy jouster follows so closely that getting off a shield breaker is more or less impossible. This leaves my primary attack to be melee attacks which don't remove shields and my charges do much less damage. To make matters worse I have to be charging as soon as I can where as before I'd have time to toss an extra shield breaker when needed. This faster enemy will charge faster and drop my shields before I even see them coming.

At first I thought I was just a little laggier than usual, but this is all happening at my usual ~150ms latency. It is just too similar to the tanking issue to be a coincidence anyway.

So what was once a mechanic based on a bit of skill and using abilities wisely has turned into a war of attrition of basic melee attacks with neither NPC or player often having fewer than three shields up.

The time needed to crank out the jousting dailies has gone up ten fold to the point where it just isn't worth my time. I've only really gotten into the tournament recently to make a little gold on the side. Jousting dailies are repetitive enough without the added frustration of not being able to use shield break.

So that leaves a few kill something dailies that I just take out in bear form in large groups. Repetitive, but quick. Kind of stupid that I can solo threat from above easier than the "easy" jousting daily, but that is the way it is. I am betting that jousting will become a group quest if this change remains in place while the group quest becomes more a solo quest with better gear.

Rise of the PUG

2009-12-11T08:54:00.000-08:00

The new dungeon system is pretty awesome. You queue up get ported right in, no more waiting a few minutes for the first two to fly from Dalaran to some dungeon in the middle of nowhere to summon. Should things go south or you forgot something you can port in and out of the instance to repair/resupply all by yourself on a whim.

I really wish I had figured that out before I ran out of Pit of Sauron, found myself back in Dalaran and then flew back. I knew I read about the easy in/out feature, but I didn't know how it worked and no one else did either. Didn't help that I had an add-on covering the button on the minimap.

As expected it is hard to find a tank and to a lesser extent a healer if you queue up with 3-4 people without one of those. My guess is like me tanks and healers queue with a friend or two and are just looking for one or two more. There are stag tanks and healers out there, you just might have to wait a while.

I know there are more tanks and healers in the queue, but like me I bet a lot of them uncheck those options to just go in and DPS. It's fun to have a change of pace after a tanking or healing for a while.

The quality of PUGs seems to be OK from what I have seen so far. For the most part the largest problem I see is knucklehead DPS that can't watch threat worth a damn. I keep telling healers to let them die if they make a habit of tanking. The second issue is people without a clue, especially in Oculus. Three of us got it as the random heroic and basically 3 manned it despite making an effort to explain the dragon mechanics.

Although the new system is faster, you can't "interview" your fill-ins ahead of time. In the old system I judged characters by their names as well as their responses when I asked if they would like to run any particular instance. You can weed out a lot of stupid that way.

I was never one to look at gear, but the new system does that for me supposedly. Seems to work in that I seem to get grouped with similarly geared people. That offsets the stupid filter a little, but still there are those decently geared folks that just don't have a clue.

The worst part of the new system is that it takes away from guild runs. People will run in groups of two and three with PUGs rather than take the time to organize 5 guildies, myself included. It isn't all bad since we run more and get to meet new people. Even if we don't like the new people it gives us something to talk about in the guild vent.

I had originally foreseen that the random heroic being repeatable would mean that when you asked in guild chat if anyone would want to run it that no one would be saved. The reality though is that they say they are in one right now and could do it after. So you end up PUGing and thus completes the vicious cycle.

Looking forward to trying the system out on some lower level alts in the next few days. Those groups have been historically really hard to get together.

Improvised Awesome

2009-12-10T09:24:00.000-08:00

It has been a long time since I actually got to try new content with absolutely no background information or previous experience. It is by far what I enjoy most in the game. Testing my mettle against the unknown and coming up with tactics on the fly.

I was once told after someone had the opportunity of helping me out on a low level alt on their low level alt that they understood why I react so well when things go to hell, because that is how I usually play. I actually tone it down in groups for the benefit of others (not enough for some/most).

So right on patch day I grab my sister and her girlfriend and start looking for a couple more for the first of the three new 5-mans. We find a couple more guildies without much trouble and after ten minutes or so of bouncing off the instance entrance we get in.

We grab the quest, spread the buffs and start pulling. Immediately we notice that the big boney things spell reflect on occasion. Speaking of which there are few things more amusing than a mage two shotting themselves with lucky crits. Perhaps not to the mage, but everyone else gets a good chuckle.

Exploding skulls, healing adepts, shadows that hop around like etheral rabbits, oh a boss. I made the unusual suggestion to clear the extra bit of trash before the boss just in case since we had no clue what would happen or where we might have to move.

We start in on the boss and things are going well, a little spike damage to heal, but pretty intermittent. Then souls start getting ripped out of people and head for the boss. What does a tank do when there is something new floating around in the group, I tanked it! Boss heals to full after absorbing the soul. Hmm, that didn't work, another soul comes out, kill it! It didn't seem to be a threat so I didn't feel the need to tank it, but I did run over to help DPS it down faster thinking there was a time aspect. Nope, boss heals to full. Another soul, I run around in circles keeping the boss ahead of the trailing soul while everyone kills the soul, success! Few more repetitions and things change, we're in phase 2.

Seems DBM was already updated from the pointer and announced to run in (I hadn't updated any add-ons for 3.3). Made sense considering everyone in the swirling cloud away from the boss takes damage. There DBM goes ruining my fun, that is why I didn't even use it until WotLK. We burned down the boss and moved along.

Last boss was just a tank and spank, don't stand in stuff piece of cake. Turns out after trying that same boss the next day with a different group it isn't as always as easy as we were led to believe.

By this time we were into prime-time and after bouncing off the next instance for quite a while we called it for the evening and went off to do other things.

20 inches of snow overnight and the next day was declared a snow day! Got a time to do the other couple new 5-mans and try the new random heroic feature. Great stuff, the only drawback is the death of guild 5 mans as they were and the rebirth of the pug.

Edit: Oh and when we go for something new, we go all out. This was all on heroic, normal is for sissies. Turns out I am a sissy when it came to the last heroic, Halls of Reflection. Few tries with the waves on heroic we got to the 4th wave and then decided to flip to regular just to see it before our Wednesday raid.

Action Bar Unification

2009-11-25T11:11:00.000-08:00

If I had 5 copper for every time I tried to use a class specific ability while playing another class I'd have epic flying on all five of my flight capable toons instead of just the one (and I only got that one through a guild fundraiser).

It was quite obvious to me that I'd never stop trying to blink on other toons after playing my mage for a while. I'd still fall back to a feral DPS rotation when I wasn't paying attention on my rogue. It is just how I am and there isn't any fighting it.

So the next best thing is to make it so it won't matter! Put similar abilities in the same places and suddenly an altaholics weakness becomes an advantage. Easier said than done, but over the past few weeks I have gotten pretty close.

This unification process also played a beneficial role in getting away from clicking and moving toward more key bindings. What better time to remap some muscle memory than when it will apply to all toons.

I started the move to key bindings in small steps weeks before I thought of unifying across toons. I can't reach 7-9,0,-,= so I remapped those action bar slots to Q, E, 7-9,0. I do all my turning and strafing with the mouse anyway so it was two more free buttons that are really easy to reach from WASD. I rearranged my bars on a couple toons to compensate for the new hot keys. Next I took a liking to F1-F5 and bound those to my lower left additional bar.

I was a notorious clicker so of course I had all four additional toolbars up all the time. :)

Some time later I still couldn't reach 7-9,0 so I bound those to some more nearby letters: R, F, T and G. I hadn't used any of these keys for their original functions for over a year so I wouldn't miss them. I've used /r to reply since forever because I just associate / with the chat frames. I've always done all my focus setting through macros and assisting someone blindly just doesn't work for me. I use pitbull for my unit frames which also display target frames which I grab targets off of when I need too. In any case it didn't impact my play style, but it might be more of an issue for some.

I had a vague sense of similarity between toons at this point which just kind of happened. The only key that really had a defined purpose was E which I used for AOE type abilities. Other than that it was whatever worked best.

In comes the unification movement! I started up a spreadsheet with a template outlining all my 6 standard action bars and started defining slots to certain generic abilities. I didn't get very many filled in so I just made a few copies and started plugging in actual abilities for a few characters I played most.

Through an interactive back and forth process the template started to take shape and today it is in a pretty good place. Still a work in progress though and probably will be until I play a max level toon of every class/spec and even then I'll end up tweaking something.

What keys do I have bound?

So right now I have F1 through F12 bound to my lower left additional action bar right above the default action bar. I can't reach F6-F12, but I wasn't using them for anything else and I figured I might take my hand off the mouse once in a blue moon and learn to use them.

On my default action bar I have 1-6, Q, E, R, F, T and G. I use ~ for push to talk over vent and the rest of the keys are still bound to their default actions with the exception of V and B. I have those two keys bound to action bars on the far right. They were the first two keys bound as a direct result of my template, I am thinking of using C as well if I find a reason.

What do I have bound where?

I use F1 through F3 somewhat flexibly as short term buffs and debuffs. Per encounter type abilities in DND terms. For my druid this is feral faerie fire, berserk, entangling roots/nature's grasp (with alt modifier). For my hunter: rapid fire, readiness and misdirection. DK: plague strike (I have a macro to put up diseases and use this as a backup in case the castsequence fails for some reason), horn of winter and hysteria. Resto shaman: water shield, earth shield and earthbind totem. Enh shaman: lightning shield, feral spirit and earthbind totem.

A bit verbose, but I think that gives a pretty good idea of the types of differences between classes when the template is somewhat vague. The next couple keys are more static in their function.

F4 is used to break snares, crowd control and/or movement impairing effects. A power shift macro for my druid to flip back into whatever form I am in, every man for himself for my humans, tremor totem for my shaman, escape artist on my gnome, etc. A common key to hit when I want to get out of something.

F5 is my emergency damage mitigation type ability. Barkskin for my druid, evasion for my rogue, deterrence on my hunter, stoneclaw totem on my shaman, etc. Yes stoneclaw totem isn't exactly the same like the others are, but the idea is that if I pull something I shouldn't it will buy me some time.

1-4 and Q make up my primary abilities for whatever class/spec I am using. These are the abilities you use multiple times every single fight. If you have a rotation (priority based or not), this is it. 3 and 4 are easiest for me to hit while moving around simultaneously so that is where I stick highly used abilities and/or abilities with an orientation requirement like having to be behind your target. Still I can only strafe left at the same time leading to lots of dizzying clockwise maneuvers when called for. 1 and Q come in second for ease of access and 2 takes my finger off the forward button so I usually stick something I don't use often or requires me to stand still there. I don't like standing still. :)

5 is another ability used pretty much every fight, but not as often. This would be a finishing move or something with a longer cooldown. For my druid this is rip, my hunter uses kill shot and my rogue uses rupture. For some healer love I use this for swiftmend on my druid and earth shock on my shaman (yes I do DPS when I can as a healer).

For tanks I use 4 and/or 5 as taunts.

One of my favorite keys is E! It's my spamming AOE key of doom. Arcane explosion on my mage, swipe on my druid, fan of knives one day on my rogue. Some classes have boring AOE (read not spammable), multi-shot for my hunter and chain lightning for my shaman.

Speaking of AOE you might be asking what about blizzard, volley, hurricane, etc. These abilities require you to target an area on the ground, generally near the middle of your screen. I stick these abilities on the right side of my lower left additional action bar (bound to F12, F11, etc). Since I have to move my mouse over there to target the ground anyway I just keep these abilities close and click twice to use them.

6 is also hard to reach, harder than any of my other keys I use on my keyboard. I use this for start of fight type abilities: stealth, hunter's mark, death grip, frostbolt (mage is leveling), etc. Pretty much a reflex when I am going to start trouble to hit 6.

R bring goes back to a more single purposed key mapping scheme. I use R to charge, blink, shadowstep and to blow the crap out of corpses on my DK. Some classes don't have a charge or blink like ability so R becomes just another relatively easy key to bind a frequently used ability to. In this case since R is very close to E I use it as a secondary AOE ability on my death knight.

Keeping similar abilities together on a class to class basis is just as important if not more so than keeping things the same between classes.

F is a stun, slow, snare ability. Bash for bears, maim for cats, kidney shot for rogues, frost shock for shamans, concussive shot for hunters, hammer of justice for pallies etc.

T is a spell interrupt. Kick, mind freeze, counterspell, silencing shot, etc. This and F are pretty important and beneficial to keep constant across all classes and specs. Having a reflexive stun and interrupt speeds reaction times for abilities where time matters.

The last slot on the default action bar I use for an aggro drop. Feign, feint, cower, etc. Classes that don't have such an ability like my death knight I have a second spell interrupt here. My shaman's spell interrupt is also an agrro reduction ability so I stuck a dispel ability here.

My last two key binds are V and B. I use V for a mana regen ability: aspect of the viper for my hunter, mana tide totem for my shaman, innervate for my druid, shamanistic rage for my shaman's DPS spec. For classes that don't use mana I wing it. For my dk this summons my ghoul and then sacrifices it for health (blood dks use ghouls for health pots). I was planning on using this for an energy drink on my rogue.

B I use for my most often cast long term buff. Mark/Gift of the wild on my druid, aspect of the dragonhawk on my hunter, weapon enchants and poisons for my shaman and rogue.

Just as an added note of awesomeness, I just started using B and V on my hunter last night and boy was that slick for flipping between dragonhawk and viper when getting mana. I hardly had to click anything at all and that was proof to myself right there that keybindings were improving my game play.

The rest of my unification is all clicking and rarely/intermittently used abilities. I stick things I use more towards the ends of bars where they are easier to find. I stick all my buffs at the top of my two additional action bars on the right side. This includes the new drums my leatherworker can make. In the middle I have engineering stuff on my engineers, quest items, and more or less random stuff. I keep most the class unique/specific utility abilities on the lower right additional action bar nice and spread out if I can. That leaves a big hole in the middle of the right side action bars on most toons.

At the bottom right side I have a nice big block of stuff that stays pretty constant between all toons: mount, hearth, rez, health regen/bandage, drink, eat, mana regen, healthstone, mana potion, health potions and my two trinkets.

For professions and some abilities that are rarely if ever used I use the second action bar accessible by hitting the up/down buttons on the right side of the defaults action bar. The only class I am using this for abilities is my hunter. Tame beast and beast lore are used like never, but I don't want to look through my spell book when I want them.

Thoughts action bar complexity by class?

From the worst (hardest to set up) action bar experience to the best (easiest to set up).

Hunters suck! Especially if you are an engineer. You will fill every single action bar slot and still want more. That is with a very high comfort level with macros. If you don't use macros you cannot play a hunter correctly, sad but true. That must be the root cause of the huntard phenomenon.

Warlocks are the caster versions of hunters. Well maybe not that bad, but they certainly have a lot of abilities. A moderate use of macros goes a long way in keeping thing clean. I've only recently hit 20 and and am little overwhelmed, hopefully it doesn't get worse.

Rogues are pretty clean, but a lot of utility stuff that you almost want to bind, but just don't have the room. They are worse than hunters in that respect, but overall there is lots of room to go around to click stuff.

I don't play a priest, but I am guessing they fall somewhere around here.

Shamans suffer from the same problems as hunters with just too much if you stick it all on you bars, but not quite as bad. Using a totem managing add-on like totem timers or even the default totem manager blizzard stuck in cleaned things up considerably. You don't need to keep all your buff totems on your bars, just a few situational ones.

Druids with all their abilities and complexities are very surprisingly simple when it comes to action bars. Hiding a lot of abilities inside different forms really cleans things up for what you see at any given time. Going to have to use some macros if you plan on going feral DPS since the cat form has more abilities than can fit on a bar. Other specs are fine without, but better with macros.

Death knights with proper macros clean up real nice. Without macros they still aren't terrible. Abilities like rune strike which when not macroed must be constantly monitored and are just annoying.

I don't play a warrior, but I am guessing they fall around here.

Mages have a lot of stuff, but a lot of it isn't useful depending on spec, once you figure out what is what things get a lot simpler. Not much need for macros here. All those teleports/portals to different cities will tank their toll with time.

Paladins have so few abilities and so many keys to bind them too. Well actually they have about as many as other classes (most of which are buffs), but a very small subset is used at any given time.

Hunter Macros (Marksman Engineer)

2009-11-13T13:08:00.000-08:00

Aimed/Multi-Shot

They share a cooldown so why not a button, why not indeed. Hit this button to fire an aimed shot or right click it to fire a Multi-Shot. Since I am already clicking when there is AOE involved for Volley it makes sense for me to click for Multi-Shot as well. There is also a bunch of other stuff here, we'll talk about that next.

#showtooltip
/cast [button:2] Multi-Shot; Aimed Shot
/cast [target=pettarget, exists] !Kill Command
/use 10
/cast [nomodifier] Silencing Shot
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

Kill Command/Rocket Launcher/Silencing Shot

All nice abilities off the global cooldown which do more damage. Kill command is another one of those abilities that requires babysitting when not used in conjunction with a macro. There isn't any thought behind it other than, "Oh it is active, I should use that." So I added it to all my core abilities with macros.

Engineers such as myself have the option of a hand mounted pyro rocket launcher on their gloves. It is on a forty-five second cooldown and not too much fun to watch so I added that to my core abilities as well.

Finally I have Silencing Shot added in there. Most of the time you never need it and it goes wasted, but for a little more mana it does do damage and is off the global cooldown. More damage! Hold down alt/shift/ctrl to save it for fights where you actually want it, then just let go of the modifier key and it will fire off with your next shot.

#showtooltip
/cast Serpent Sting
/cast [target=pettarget, exists] !Kill Command
/use 10
/cast [nomodifier] Silencing Shot
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

#showtooltip
/cast Arcane Shot
/cast [target=pettarget, exists] !Kill Command
/use 10
/cast [nomodifier] Silencing Shot
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

#showtooltip
/cast Chimera Shot
/cast [target=pettarget, exists] !Kill Command
/use 10
/cast Silencing Shot
/script [nomodifier] UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

#showtooltip
/cast Steady Shot
/cast [target=pettarget, exists] !Kill Command
/use 10
/cast [nomodifier] Silencing Shot
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

Melee Hunter!

Hunter's have three melee abilities, only two of which require a spot on your action bars: Wing Clip and Mongoose Bite. At the same time these will both queue a Raptor Strike for your next melee swing as well as issue your pet a kill command if available.

#showtooltip
/cast Wing Clip
/cast [target=pettarget, exists] !Kill Command
/cast Raptor Strike
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

#showtooltip
/cast Mongoose Bite
/cast [target=pettarget, exists] !Kill Command
/cast Raptor Strike
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

All In One Pet Button

Revives your pet if it is dead, calls your pet if isn't with you and mends your pet when your pet is with you. Sometimes your pet is both dead and not with you (corpse disappeared) in which case right click to revive your pet. Right clicking when your pet is with you will dismiss it.

#showtooltip
/cast [btn:2,nopet] Revive Pet; [btn:2] Dismiss Pet; [target=pet,dead] Revive Pet; [nopet] Call Pet; Mend Pet

Aspect of the Cheetah/Pack

Combines the two aspects into a single button. When in a group pack is used and when alone cheetah is used. Right clicking will use cheetah in a group (catch up without getting anyone stunned) or pack outside a group (not sure why, but why not).

#showtooltip
/cast [group, btn:2] Aspect of the Cheetah; [group, btn:1] Aspect of the Pack; [btn:1] Aspect of the Cheetah; Aspect of the Pack

Aspect of the Beast/Dragonhawk

Combines Aspect of the Beast used to have your pet produce more threat while soloing with Aspect of the Dragonhawk used to increase damage done while grouping. Right clicking will activate the other aspect in case you want to use Aspect of the Pack in a battleground to avoid track humanoids or something.

#showtooltip
/cast [group, btn:2] Aspect of the Beast; [group, btn:1] Aspect of the Dragonhawk; [btn:1] Aspect of the Beast; Aspect of the Dragonhawk

Fire Traps

Left click for a single target immolation trap, right click for an area of effect explosive trap.

#showtooltip
/cast [button:2] Explosive Trap; Immolation Trap

Ice Traps

Left click for a single target freezing trap, right click for an area of effect frost trap. Will also stop any casts in progress to get the trap down right away.

#showtooltip
/stopcasting
/cast [button:2] Frost Trap; Freezing Trap

Hunter's Mark

Put your Hunter's Mark on your target and send your pet to attack it at the same time. If you are in a group then your pet won't attack unless you hold a modifier key (alt, shift or ctrl). When not in a group you can keep your pet from attacking by holding down a modifier key.

#showtooltip
/cast Hunter's Mark
/petattack [group, modifier][nogroup, nomodifier]

Misdirect

Will misdirect onto your focus target if they are in your party/raid, friendly and alive, if not then whoever you have targeted if they meet those same requirements, and finally your pet if it is with you and alive. If none of those three targets are available then you will just get a hand icon to click on someone to misdirect to. Right clicking will set your focus target.

#showtooltip Misdirection
/focus [button:2]
/stopmacro [button:2]
/cast [target=focus,nodead,help,raid][nodead,help,raid][target=pet,exists,nodead][] Misdirection

Hearthstone/Teleporters

Left click activates hearthstone, left click will teleport to Gadgetzan and alt/shift/ctrl right click will teleport to Toshley's Station in Blade's Edge. Eventually when I can make the wormhole generator I will integrate that into the macro as alt/shift/ctrl and a left click.

#showtooltip
/cast [modifier,btn:2] Ultrasafe Transporter: Toshley's Station; [btn:2] Ultrasafe Transporter: Gadgetzan; Hearthstone

Choosing Professions

2009-11-12T14:20:00.000-08:00

I've put some thought into this lately figuring out what professions to pick for my alts and then leveling up those professions.

Since WotLK there is much less pressure to get the "right" professions on your toons. Most crafted items are bind on equip so you can send them to whichever alt needs them. Give or take the rewards from each crafting profession are pretty balanced as well. So when you get to 80 it won't really matter.

There is a little more pressure if you are leveling up without the support of a bunch of alts. Blacksmithing on a cloth wearer for example would be perfectly acceptable when it came to the end game to craft gear for your plate wearer, but leveling alone with it would be pretty lame.

So lets take a look at each of the professions and see what it can do for us, who can most benefit from it and how much work is involved in skilling up.

Herbalism - Lifeblood is pretty awesome for leveling once you get your skill high enough to use it. Particularly true for classes that can't heal themselves. That's you mages, rogues, hunters, warriors and warlocks, this could save your life. End game this is less useful than other profession perks, but if you need herbs this is not an option.

The downside is you have to go out of your way to pick up herbs, adding a bit of time to your leveling. With the accelerated leveling through lower level content you spend even more time skilling up instead of leveling since it is easy to move to a new questing area where you find you aren't skilled enough to pick the herbs. Then you have to go back to a lower level area and farm herbs to catch up. This is true of most gathering professions, but herbalism is a little worse due to the fact that skill levels required are much more graduated than say mining. There are many situations where you need to pass up an herb until you get 10 or 15 more skill levels.

Alchemy - You'll have lots of health and mana potions leveling up as well as other utility and buff potions which are fun. Things like water breathing, water walking, invisibility, etc. come in handy in certain situations if your class isn't already capable of such things. There is something for everyone here regardless of class or spec. End game introduces a number of potions with infinite uses (health, mana and a SP/AP flask) which save money and potentially bag space. Other than that you find more herbs (hopefully you or an alt have herbalism trained to a comparable level) and make consumables, endless farming, ew.

Inscription - I've not really got into this yet, but it seems more or less useless for leveling. Basically you make glyphs which you can buy in the auction house for less than the cost of the mats since many of the popular glyphs are made just to train up the skill. You can also make vellum which enchanters love, but again auction house is usually easier. There is a hearth scroll you can make which puts you on par with shamans in how many times you can hearth an hour, but they are consumables. End game there are a number of shoulder inscriptions comparable to the Sons of Hodir reputation rewards, but just a wee bit better to justify the profession. Again you need herbalism to support it, lots of herbing. I'm doing this last basically since I didn't have it on any toon.

Enchanting - Magically disintegrate items into base components and use them to enhance other items. This is another one of those auction house is easier and sometimes better professions, but it has perks. You get the end game bonuses of any other crafting profession in the form of ring enchants. You can disenchant quest rewards and magic items you find to save bag space and level up your profession; no need to go out of your way to farm mats. While leveling you'll probably be enchanting your own gear which you normally wouldn't be if you had to buy those enchants. That is a lot of stats you have leveling you wouldn't normally. Good for any class/spec, you don't have to be a magic savy class to be an enchanter strange as it might be. Downside would be having the extra job of handling shard distribution in groups and any profit from selling disenchantable items goes to your profession instead of your purse while leveling.

I have disenchanting on my rogue and basically leveled her high enough to be able to disenchant any greens I got to make mats to have other enchanters enchant my gear for me. I since took a fancy to my rogue and leveled her high enough to have access to end game enchants herself and can enchant my other toons by using vellum. I paired it up with tailoring (more on that next) which also doesn't require a gathering profession to support it and produced many green items skilling up which I then disenchanted. Any crafting profession is handy for this reason, but all the others need a gathering profession to generate mats.

Tailoring - Useful for cloth wearers leveling up, or to supply cloth wearing alts, or in my case just to make bags (I like to be self sufficient). The main benefit is that you don't need to gather mats aside from just killing stuff normally and looting cloth. That also comes with a disadvantage if you wanted to level up your first aid at the same time as they compete for materials. If I had to do it all over I probably would not of chosen this for a rogue, but end game tailoring has perks that benefit rogues as well so no harm done.

Skinning - Another gathering profession good for anyone interested in taking up leatherworking or making a little money. It would most benefit a melee class or hunter, but only because those are the classes that will need leatherworking mats (arctic furs) for leg enchants later. All classes can benefit from the critical hit chance bonus provided, but casters leg enhancements are made by tailors. Of all the gathering skills skinning doesn't require you to go out of your way, you just skin stuff you kill. Similarly to other gathering professions, due to accelerated leveling you might need to grind your skill up a little from time to time to keep up.

Leatherworking - Useful for leather and mail wearers, or to supply leather or mail wearing alts. That would be hunters, druids, rogues and shamen. Again there is no wrong profession as there are end game perks useful to all classes and specs. End game also has drums to emulate blessing of kings and gift of the wild so non-paladins/druids can share those buffs with their party.

Mining - My least favorite gathering profession, least favorite profession even. I love engineering though so it is a necessarily evil. I wouldn't really recommend it to anyone aside from supporting engineering or blacksmithing. The perk is a stamina buff, which while nice isn't compelling except for perhaps tanks and even then a minor buff (pun very much intended).

Blacksmithing - Useful for mail/plate wearers, or to supply mail/plate wearing alts. That's death knights, paladins and warriors. The main end game perk is additional sockets to put on your gear. Those require gems to be useful though and that costs more money than other profession perks do.

Engineering - My favorite profession because it is fun! There are a lot of toys to play with, some of which are even useful at times. Anyone can benefit from it, hunters especially right now due to ammo alone. The best ammo right now can only be made by engineers, but that could change tomorrow and hunters go back to buying from NPCs. The only downside is the amount to mining you will do to level it up. Another lesser downside is that the engineering enchants aren't perfect for every class/spec. For example the parachute cloak enchant is agility or spellpower and there are classes like death knights that don't really like agility, but it's better than spellpower. Still a small price to pay for a little fun, you can always forgo an engineering enchancement in favor of a more acceptable enchant. Lots of awsome utility type things like portable mailboxes, auction house in dalaran, repair bots, remote bank access, teleporters. No profession comes close to the variety of engineering.

Jewelcrafting - This ranks down there with inscription for me since the auction house is a competitive alternative to this profession. You can make some nicer gems for yourself to gain benefits similar to other professions, but at what cost? There are items to benefit any class/spec though which are handy while leveling if you keep your skill up as you level. End game patterns are bought via jewelcrafting dailies rather than from mats or vendors like other professions.

That's nice, but what professions should I choose?

For new players or new toons without other toons supporting it I'd suggest picking something specific to your armor type. For any cloth wearers that'd be enchanting/tailoring, for leather/mail wearers skinning/leatherworking and for plate wearers mining/blacksmithing.

In general I'd suggest herbalism/alchemy or mining/engineering for everyone and anyone. Those are my two favorites and enchanting/tailoring comes in close behind those two even if you can't make use of cloth items.

Death Knight Macros (Blood)

2009-11-11T13:17:00.000-08:00

Icy Touch/Plague Strike

Your two openers combined into a single button. I also suggest keeping Plague Strike somewhere handy on your bar in case it misses for whatever reason or you need to refresh one but not the other. I keep this macro on my 1 key and Plaque Strike alone on my F1 key. I don't have to hit it often, but I find it convenient. Right clicking or holding a modifier will always cast Icy Touch for situations where you need to stay ranged, but still want to hit something. My death knight is also an engineer so I use my glove enchant every chance I get in macros rather than actually remembering to use it, but only in my DPS spec; I use my mitigation glove enchant when tanking more carefully.

#showtooltip
/use [btn:2][mod] Icy Touch
/castsequence [btn:1,nomod] reset=5 Icy Touch, Plague Strike
/use [spec:2] 10
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

Pestilence/Outbreak

Death knights have a ton of abilities, many of which are pretty situational, like outbreak. It's not something that you use all the time, but is really handy in a pinch. I ended up hiding it behind pestilence because it made the most sense to me. I often hit my pestilence key with a modifier to apply diseases and then let go of the modifier and hit it again to spread them. It's great for getting aggro quickly on an AOE group.

#showtooltip
/use [btn:2][mod] Outbreak; Pestilence

Chains of Ice/Festering Strike

Festering strike is another ability which is highly situational. In fact I doubt anyone not PVPing would even miss it if it disappeared tomorrow. It is accessible by using a modifier with or right clicking chains of ice by using this macro. Makes sense considering that it extends chains of ice among other things.

#showtooltip
/use [btn:2][mod] Festering Strike; Chains of Ice

Resurrection Announcement

Communication is important when it comes to resurrecting, especially during battle. Also helps to announce when mass resurrection is being used so people don't try to run back. The following macro uses raise ally in combat and out of combat it uses the gnomish army knife or mass resurrection with a right click. In addition a customize message for each thanks to some LUA magic.

#showtooltip
/use [combat] Raise Ally;[btn:2] Mass Resurrection; Gnomish Army Knife
/run p=SecureCmdOptionParse SendChatMessage('I am '..p("[btn:1,nocombat]defibrillating;raising")..' '..p("[btn:2,nocombat]everyone!;[noexists][nodead]someone nearby.;%t!"))

For non-engineers this would be:

#showtooltip
/use [combat] Raise Ally; Mass Resurrection
/run SendChatMessage('I am raising '..SecureCmdOptionParse("[nocombat]everyone!;[noexists][nodead]someone nearby.;%t!"))

Darkflight/Path of Frost

This is sort of worgen specific and sort of not, you can replace darkflight with the utility ability of your choosing. When mounted or swimming path of frost is use otherwise darkflight. Using a modifier will cause the opposite ability to be used.

#showtooltip
/use [mounted,nomod][swimming,nomod][nomounted,noswimming,mod] Path of Frost; Darkflight

Frost Strike/Death Coil

For frost death coil isn't ever use except on the off chance you need to hit something from ranged. This macro does just that by casting death coil when using frost strike while holding a modifier key down.

#showtooltip
/use [mod] Death Coil; Frost Strike
/use 10
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

Obliterate/Death Strike

Similarly for frost death strike isn't really used aside from self healing as needed. So this macro allows you to death strike using your obliterate key with a modifier.

#showtooltip
/cast [mod] Death Strike; Obliterate
/use 10
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

Bone Shield/Icebound Fortitude

Now for a tanking one. This macro only allows icebound fortitude to be use in combat so it isn't possible to accidentally burn a mitigation cooldown when it won't be used. This is also where I use my engineering mitigation glove enchant, but again only in combat.

#showtooltip
/use [nocombat][btn:2][mod] Bone Shield; Icebound Fortitude
/use [combat] 10
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

Lichborne

When under the effects of the lichborne buff you become undead and can therefore heal yourself with your own Death Coils should you choose. This macro allows you to spam death coils onto yourself after hitting lichborne all with the same button. That's a lot of death coils! I added one for each second of the lichborne buff in case by some freak of nature you manage to get that many off and besides it's not like it hurts to have them there.

#showtooltip
/castsequence [@player] reset=12 Lichborne, Death Coil, Death Coil, Death Coil, Death Coil, Death Coil, Death Coil, Death Coil, Death Coil, Death Coil, Death Coil

Ghoul Health Pot

Some death knights keep ghouls around for pets, I don't much care for ghouls and prefer to use them as two minute health potions. Hit it once to summon a ghoul and a second time to sacrifice your ghoul for a health boost. There is a two minute timer on your ghoul without talents so if you don't sacrifice it in that time then the button resets to summon a ghoul again.

#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=120 Raise Dead, Death Pact

Hearth/Death Gate/Have Group, Will Travel/Dimensional Ripper/Wormhole Generator

Click to use hearthstone or right click to open a death gate. When in a group right clicking will summon your group/raid unless you hold a modifier key to open a death gate as if you weren't in a group. As added bonus holding down one of the three modifier keys will use a different engineering teleportation device.

#showtooltip
/use [btn:2,group,nomod] Have Group, Will Travel; [btn:2] Death Gate; [mod:alt] Wormhole Generator: Northrend; [mod:ctrl] Dimensional Ripper - Everlook; [mod:shift] Dimensional Ripper - Area 52; Hearthstone

For you non-engineers this would be:

#showtooltip
/use [btn:2,group,nomod] Have Group, Will Travel; [btn:2] Death Gate; Hearthstone

Mounts/Running Wild

I'll include my mount macro here since my worgen death knight varies from all my other toons in that I have two ground mount possibilities I like to use. Using a modifier while swimming with use the seahorse, otherwise the deathcharger. Aside from that clicking will summon a flying mount when possible and revert to a ground mount. Right clicking will use a ground mount no matter what.

#showtooltip
/cast [mod,swimming] Abyssal Seahorse; [mod] Acherus Deathcharger; [flyable,btn:1] Winged Steed of the Ebon Blade; Running Wild

Shaman Macros (Restoration/Enhancement)

2009-11-11T12:42:00.000-08:00

Healing Wave/Lightning Bolt

Cast lightning on unfriendly targets or heals on friendly ones.

#showtooltip
/cast [mod:alt,@player][noharm] Healing Wave; Lightning Bolt

Chain Lightning/Heal

Cast lightning on unfriendly targets or heals on friendly ones.

#showtooltip
/cast [mod:alt,@player][noharm] Chain Heal; Chain Lightning

Resurrection with Announcement

Let everyone know you are resurrecting someone at the start of your cast.

#showtooltip
/run R=R or CreateFrame("Frame")R:RegisterEvent("UNIT_SPELLCAST_SENT")R:SetScript("OnEvent",function(R,E,T,T,T,T)SendChatMessage("I am resurrecting "..(T or UnitName("mouseover")),"SAY")R:UnregisterEvent(E)end)
/cast Ancestral Spirit

Fire Totems

Left click for a single target Searing Totem and right click for an area of effect Magma Totem.

#showtooltip
/cast [btn:2] Magma Totem; Searing Totem

Windfury/Flametongue Weapon

(Re)Buff enhancement shaman weapons. Places windfury on your main hand and flametongue on your offhand weapon.

#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=5 Windfury Weapon, Flametongue Weapon
/click StaticPopup1Button1

Hearth/Astral Recall

Use Astral Recall to return to hearthstone location or use hearthstone with a right click.

#showtooltip Astral Recall
/cast [button:2] Hearthstone; Astral Recall

My Macros

2009-11-06T10:25:00.000-08:00

A compilation of all the macros I currently use, I split out the class specific macros to the following posts:

Druid Specific Macros
Shaman Specific Macros
Death Knight Specific Macros
Hunter Specific Macros
Rogue Specific Macros

Here is a listing of all my generic macros that aren't specific to any class in particular.

Mage Food/Healthstone

I get a chuckle out of combining the items supplied to me by two adversarial classes into a single macro. That and it makes sense, mage food is only useful out of combat and healthstones are only really useful in combat. I included the pre-85 mage food as well for leveling alts with mages that don't quite have the best food yet. You could also add some vendor food/drink to fall back on the same way. I have a separate action bar slots for my vendor food and drink currently, but I may make macros for them eventually.

#showtooltip
/use [combat] Healthstone, Conjured Mana Cake
/use [nocombat] Conjured Mana Strudel
/run UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

Show/Hide Helmet or Cloak

I like to play around with my helmet or cloak sometimes and occasionally pull one of these macros up onto my action bars. Just toggles your helmet/cloak from showing to not showing or vice versa.

/run ShowHelm(not ShowingHelm())

/run ShowCloak(not ShowingCloak())

Marking

Sometimes I just can't help myself and mark even when I'm not tanking. I have a small macro to stick a skull on my current target when I left click and a cross when I right click or use a modifier.

/run SetRaidTargetIcon("target",SecureCmdOptionParse([btn:1,nomod]8;7))

Alternatively you could use modifiers to make every raid mark available in a single button, but I'm still trying to decide if such a thing is useful.

/run SetRaidTargetIcon("target",SecureCmdOptionParse([btn:1,nomod]8;[btn:1,mod:alt]5;[btn:1,mod:ctrl]4;[btn:1,mod:shift]1;[nomod]7;[mod:alt]6;[mod:ctrl]3;[mod:shift]2))

Trinkets

Few toons, duals specs on some, and multiple sets of gear on all leads to a lot of different trinkets. I have a couple macros to use my trinkets and show their cooldowns right on my action bars. Also serves as a nice sanity check to make sure you have the right gear equipped.

#showtooltip
/use 13

#showtooltip
/use 14

Mounting

The most recent incarnation of my mount macro includes combining it with another ability that is only used in combat. This serves three purposes: it cleans up my action bars, I can't accidentally hit my combat only ability out of combat, and I get a speedy hotkey to mount.

The ability I've chosen for all of my toons is a crowd control and/or snare removal ability. For druids this would be "power shifting" or shifting out of and back into your current form, expending a global cooldown in the process. Obviously shifting forms isn't something that burns a cooldown out of combat, but I'm just being consistent between toons. I've also got my mount combined with Cloak of Shadows (Rogue), Tremor Totem (Shaman), Lichborne (Death Knight), Fear Ward (Priest), Master's Call (Hunter), Escape Artist (Gnome), and Hand of Freedom (Paladin).

Right now everyone has 3-4 mounts they use on a regular basis: an Abyssal Seahorse, a flying mount, a ground mount, and perhaps an additional RP type mount. I know my Worgen have use an additional ground mount just for fun when they don't want to use Running Wild. So keeping all of these things in mind my mount macros look something like the following:

Worgen Rogue

#showtooltip
/use [combat] Cloak of Shadows; [btn:2] Black Stallion; [swimming,mod] Abyssal Seahorse; [flyable,nomod] Magnificent Flying Carpet; Running Wild

Druid

#showtooltip
/use [nocombat,swimming,mod] Abyssal Seahorse; [nocombat,flyable,nomod] Swift Flight Form; [nocombat] Swift Zulian Panther; [form:1] !Bear Form; [form:2] !Aquatic Form; [form:3] !Cat Form; [form:5] !Moonkin Form; !Travel Form

As you can see out of combat the Abyssal Seahorse will only be used if you are swimming and using a modifier key, otherwise if you can fly it will use your flying mount and otherwise your ground mount. In the case of my Worgen I use a right click to use an alternative ground mount. Using a modifier will also use your ground mount over your flying mount, sometimes it comes in handy. In combat these macros behave just like the ability or abilities you combined it with.

Druid Macros

2009-11-06T10:22:00.000-08:00

Hearth/Teleport to Moonglade/Have Group, Will Travel

Combines your hearthstone, Moonglade teleport and group summon guild perk into a single button. Left click will always hearth. When not in a group and right clicking will teleport to Moonglade. When in a group right clicking will summon your group and hold down a modifier and right clicking will teleport to Moonglade.

#showtooltip
/cast [btn:2,group,nomod] Have Group, Will Travel; [btn:2] Teleport: Moonglade; Hearthstone

Barkskin/Mark of the Wild

I wanted to make my druid buff more accessible, but not take up another precious hot key so I combined it with barkskin which I never use out of combat (and this macro ensure that I never will on accident either). So in combat barkskin will be used, unless a modifier is pressed for buffing in the middle of combat. Out of combat mark of the wild will be used.

#showtooltip
/use [nomod,combat] Barkskin; Mark of the Wild

Resurrect with Announcement

With multiple people able to resurrect it is helpful to let everyone around you know that you are doing it. This macro also combines Rebirth and Revive so you never accidentally use your battle rez out of combat in addition to putting them both on a single button. Now with mass resurrection!

#showtooltip
/use [combat] Rebirth; [btn:2] Mass Resurrection; Revive
/run SendChatMessage("I am reviving "..SecureCmdOptionParse("[btn:2,nocombat]everybody!;[noexists][nodead]somebody nearby.;%t!"))

Power Shift

Kind of a misnomer at this point seeing as this won't give you more energy in cat form anymore, but it still provides a way to generate a little rage in a pinch when talented for it. Mostly it is a means to shift out of your current form and back into the same form with one button and remove any movement impairing effects. Since cataclysm removed the ambiguity for form:5 this macro now works for all druid specs without modification.

#showtooltip
/cast [form:1] !Bear Form; [form:2] !Aquatic Form; [form:3] !Cat Form; [form:4] !Travel Form; [form:5] !Moonkin Form; [nocombat,flyable] !Swift Flight Form; !Travel Form

Healing Spell/Damage Spell

There are a lot of healing spells and a lot of damage spells, neither of which are particularly useful to a feral druid, and only half of them are useful for a balance or restoration druid. So I combined the majority of healing/damage spells into single buttons which change depending on target to save a bit of space. When a hostile target is selected the button will use a damage spell and when a friendly target or no target is selected a heal will be cast. Using the alt modifier will do a self heal.

#showtooltip
/cast [mod,@player][noharm] Regrowth; Starfire

#showtooltip
/cast [mod,@player][noharm] Nourish; Wrath

#showtooltip
/cast [mod,@player][noharm] Rejuvenation; Moonfire

#showtooltip
/cast [mod,@player][noharm] Lifebloom; Insect Swarm

Cleanse/Soothe

Cleanses a friendly target of a poison, curse or possibly a magic effect if resto or if a hostile target is selected it will cast soothe to remove an enrage effect. Using the alt modifier will self cleanse.

#showtooltip
/use [mod,@player][noharm] Remove Corruption; Soothe

Cat "Stealth Bar" and Feral Consolidation

There are a few more cat abilities that can actually fit on your cat bar (ditto for bears). The cat overcrowding stems from the fact that cats don't benefit from a separate stealth bar like rogues do, but you can use macros to emulate one.

Bears on the other hand just have too many abilities to fit on your bear form bar, period. One option would be to put some abilities up onto other bars which are accessible all the time, but then you have to look at unusable abilities when you aren't in bear form. My solution was to combine a few related abilities to make it all fit.

Once you start making macros for all these different druid abilities you actually start to run out of slots to create macros. In fact using all of the macros on this page will fill every slot (assuming one macro spot reserved for mounts). To keep my number of macros down I've combined each of my cat macros with a bear macro and just added the additional check to see what form I am in. The following few macros employ all three of these ideas.

Cat: Ravage/Shred, Bear: Challenging Roar/Growl

When in cat form use ravage while stealthed, otherwise use shred. When in bear form use growl and if a modifier is pressed use challenging roar.

#showtooltip
/use [stealth] Ravage; [form:1,mod] Challenging Roar; [form:1] Growl; Shred

Cat: Pounce/Shred, Caster: Nature's Swiftness/Healing Touch

This one is a little different, instead of sneaking in a bear ability I included a caster ability. Since caster form and moonkin form are both mutually exclusive as are cat and bear form it is possible to combine a macro that does something different in up to all four cases. Something to keep in mind should you choose to customize some of this.

When in cat form use pounce while stealthed, otherwise use rake. When not in cat form (i.e. caster/tree form) use nature's swiftness and healing touch. I have an extra check to make sure I am in my secondary spec before casting nature's swiftness since my other spec is feral. You can replace [spec:2] with [spec:1] if your primary spec is restoration or remove it completely since you don't have to have it on your bar in specs that don't make sense.

#showtooltip
/use [noform:3,spec:2] Nature's Swiftness
/use [noform:3] Healing Touch
/stopmacro [noform:3]
/use [stealth] Pounce; Rake

Cat: Prowl/Ferocious Bite, Bear: Swipe/Thrash

When in cat form use ferocious bite while in combat or not stealthed, otherwise use prowl. Since you can't stealth in combat, and also will never use a finisher while stealthed over an opener, it is convenient to combine prowl and a finishing move.

When in bear form use a castsequence that alternates swipe and thrash. Since swipe is cheaper I stuck it first in the sequence since at the start of a pull it is more likely to be available. Added another swipe at the end since swipe's cooldown was lowered to 3 seconds from 6.

#showtooltip
/castsequence [form:1] reset=6 Swipe(Bear), Thrash, Swipe(Bear)
/use [combat,nostealth] Ferocious Bite; Prowl

Universal Faerie Fire plus Marking

When in cat or bear forms Feral Faerie Fire will be used and regular Faerie Fire otherwise. Since I use this ability to pull while tanking I also incorporated a way to quickly mark a target with a skull and let people know to attack it.

#showtooltip
/cast [form:1/3] Faerie Fire (Feral)(); Faerie Fire
/stopmacro [btn:1]
/run SetRaidTarget("target",8)
/s Please assist me in killing %t {Skull}!

Crowd Control a Focus Target

Druids have quite a few crowd control options available and there are times when you'd like to focus on keeping a particular target locked down. The following macros will crowd control your focus target if your focus target is alive and hostile, otherwise the ability will behave as usual and cast on your current target or switch to a hand cursor to select a target if you didn't have anything targeted.

If you don't currently have a focus target or your focus target is dead using one of these macros will set your focus to be your current target. Right clicking won't cast anything, but will force your focus to your current target no matter what. I often use these macros to set a focus target for whatever reason.

Finally sometimes druids will crowd control more than one target, but we only have one focus to work with. Holding down a modifier will crowd control you current target and ignore your focus if you have one and set it if you didn't.

#showtooltip
/focus [btn:2][@focus,noexists][@focus,dead]
/stopmacro [btn:2]
/use [mod][@focus,exists,nodead,harm][] Entangling Roots

#showtooltip
/focus [btn:2][@focus,noexists][@focus,dead]
/stopmacro [btn:2]
/use [mod][@focus,exists,nodead,harm][] Hibernate

#showtooltip
/focus [btn:2][@focus,noexists][@focus,dead]
/stopmacro [btn:2]
/use [mod][@focus,exists,nodead,harm][] Cyclone

LogSplitter

2009-11-05T13:24:00.000-08:00

I've been sitting on this for a while, but I finally cleaned up the simple utility I was using to split apart my combat log files after a week or so of raiding to the point where I feel comfortable sharing it.

Once upon a time I used to wait a few seconds loading log files into wordpad (the only text editor handy that can handle it) and search by date for where the break the file. Then since the log from a raid is still too large for the clipboard I had to delete the parts I didn't want and save to a different file (careful not to overwrite the original combat log file). Then repeat over and over for as many logs as I needed to split out.

I did that for a few weeks before deciding it would be easier to write a program to do that and some of the other repetitive tasks I was doing like naming the files by raid name and date. So I wrote a quick program to parse the file, find the breaks and write out smaller logs. A little speed tweaking later and there is sat for a few more weeks. Usable, but not quite there.

So now I've got the finishing touches on it where you can set up how long to wait before splitting to a new log file (minimum time between raids), name output files automatically by raid name if one was configured, directory to look for combat logs, directory to save into, etc.

Without further ado, download it here and try it out for yourself. I repurposed a website I had made a couple years ago and just ripped out the old content so it's pretty sparse, but it works. If you have any feedback feel free to comment. I draw the line at automatically uploading stats to various website (there are too many and they change too often), but anything short of that is fair game.

My UI

2009-11-05T09:01:00.000-08:00

Pretty isn't it? I never much cared for screen shots as they leave nothing up to the imagination. With an "artistic rendition" from paintbrush you can imagine your own favorite add-ons and whatnot instead of wondering why I was targeting some guy named Napkins who was recently defeated in a duel by Coolguy (true story, kind of an inside joke now for stupid names).

Anyway I use a lot of the default UI and placement, since it is easier to transition as old mods die and new ones are born from release to release and sometimes playing on a computer without mods (gasp).

I also use the same UI for all my toons which is why I prefer mods that are more generic and customizable to something out of the box that only works for one class and/or spec. I've recently begun trying to standardize my action bars across toons as well so that similar abilities are in more or less the same places to have muscle memory work with me instead of against me when I switch to an alt. It was a little hairy for a while, but well worth it.

If you're at all interested in what mods I am using specifically I have a link to the right listing them all with links to go and download them.

A Disturbing Trend

2009-11-04T13:44:00.000-08:00

10$ for a pet. Sure that's way cheaper than those noisy murlocs "sold" in the past, but it somehow doesn't sit right with me. Sure there was some cost in paying the artist who made the pet, but surely not anywhere near the potential profit. It's like stealing, but with permission.

I was a little unsettled by realm transfers, then character recustomizations, then faction changes, now race changes. I did actually transfer my death knight from horde to alliance to get more play time out of it. I justified that by taking into account the amount of time it would take to delete the character and level it up again.

I'll might even take advantage of the race change option as well for a similar reason, but the difference will be my race doesn't affect how much I can play my character. That makes it less of a split second, this is the right thing for me to do, type decision. I'll mull it over for a good long while. Last time I thought about it I was all for it, today not so much.

I pay a monthly fee to play the game and I feel I get my money's worth in entertainment value. I don't however relish the idea of Blizzard deciding which new features are worth even more money on top of that and which are included. I can say without a doubt in my mind that WoW could run forever on subscription fees alone and turn a profit. The fact that I have to shell out another 40 bucks for an expansion seems greedy on Blizzard's part. Hell I wont even get a discount for having paid my subscription for the entire previous expansion.

Oh and the spectral tiger mount scam they fixed by making the item boe, they totally reintroduced it with these new pets. The pets will have to be bind on account to avoid people from making new level 1's just to get a new copy of the pet and auction it. So there will be people selling codes and tricking people as before. Told ya so?

It is nice that they give away half of their pure profit on the one pet to charity though. I'm sure it was done for tax reasons more so than as an act of good will.

When does it come to a point where you pay for certain instances to be available outside of an expansion purchase? Or pay for the ability to learn new dances? Oh crap, I planted the seed.

I am blissfully unaware of my monthly subscription fee since I don't have to be reminded of it constantly. Start flashing more and more price tags at me and I am quite likely to say enough is enough even if I don't buy anything. It certainly detracts from the game experience.

Looking Forward to the Patch

2009-10-29T09:42:00.000-07:00

Doing a random heroic dungeon instead of a daily heroic quest sounds awesome. Plus an extra 5-man to run. Given the fact that it is possible to run a 5-man a second time with the random instance feature even if you already ran the instance that day; no more, "Sorry, I am saved.", in guild chat. Better yet no more quests to forget picking up or turning in, aside from the new raid weeklies.

Just yesterday I went to run culling of stratholme which was both the daily regular and heroic and noticed I was missing the quests just before we started killing the regular daily quest mobs. After we downed the timed boss I took the log run of shame back out to get the quest shared and then back in again to the last boss. What a patient PUG. :)

More accessibility to triumph badges will be nice as well since there are only a couple things I want with conquest badges and quite a few I want to get with triumph badges. Will make me feel better about buying heirlooms with conquest badges. Not that I felt too bad about it anyway, an heirloom item for an alt is a huge upgrade in comparison to a handful of stats on an 80 and I do enjoy my alts.

One thing I was looking forward too, but turned out to get implemented differently was the disenchant roll option. For guild runs I was hoping that disenchant rolls would be trumped by greed rolls, so people who can use the item would roll need/greed and the disenchanter and/or people who couldn't use the item could roll the disenchant option. A third level of roll was not to be though; disenchant rolls and greed rolls are competing against each other. This means that disenchanters in the guild are still going to have to pass and hang back and wait for everyone to roll or roll greed with the rest and make sure no one else rolled before disenchanting. I'm not even an enchanter in any of my raids and I was a little bummed.