Whimsical.nu

Welcome to “Curious gamer”

I've reconnected to my gamer psyche recently: for a good many years it was limited to casual games, but now we're looking at an almost-regular dose of World of Warcraft, where a lot of my gamer attention is spent.

The beginning of the end: also known as WoW patch 4.0

I know I promised a Power Auras entry, but because Patch 4.0 went out last Tuesday, a number of my current auras understandably don’t make a whole lot of sense. For “tutorial” perspective, they’re fine; but for an actual usage example, they won’t be as relevant. So I’m taking a bit of time to tweak my auras a bit and change my auras post to make sure it’s half useful for someone else.

So, in replacement of that–and because I do want to talk about it a little–Cataclysm rambling inc!

The day everyone became noobs

When I came home, ready to jump right into the game, I was devastated (alright, just annoyed and sad) to find out that Blizzard couldn’t apply the patch because I had no hard drive space left. Uber fail. So I had to restart things and fiddle a bit, and then came the uber long installation. I felt like I was going to go crazy from the wait.

I logged in to find the guild in Naxxramas and QQing discussing the changes to their respective trees, how the DPS is looking, what rotations have changed, etc. I went straight to my mage to try and get some semblance of order going. Everything was out from my action bar (even Mana Strudels!) and my key bindings disappeared (on Bar 1 no less), so I spent a good amount of time last night putting everything back, tweaking macros and auras, and finding the right rotation.

I never got around to trying it out in a raid tonight, but I did try both Frost and Arcane specs. Unfortunately my priest will have to wait for the next day.

Twitchy Arcane without the missiles

New arcane treeVery twitchy, but all is not lost. I liked the older Arcane better (the “go crazy to empty-your-mana-gauge spec”) in terms of the feel of the playstyle, but I’m willing to give this a couple runs.

Current theorycrafting points to the switch to Mage Armor for the regen, and optimally you should be staying at 85% mana and above when not in your burn phase. So my target dummy fight looked like this:

  1. Stack up Arcane Blast to 4.
  2. Hit shiny cooldown macro: Mana Gem (to bring me back to 100% mana, as well as Improved Mana Gem effect), clicky trinkets, Arcane Power, and Mirror Image. I have MI glyphed to make sure it doesn’t affect GCDs. Speed pot (or likely Wild Magic pot, going forward) is there somewhere with a modifier.
  3. Burn phase: AB spam regardless of whatever procs, right down to a bit over 40%.
  4. By this time you should have an Arcane Missiles proc. Hit it, gain the T10 haste bonus, and then hit Evocation to get mana back to as close to 100% as possible. If you don’t have an AM proc, well, you don’t really have a choice: just hit Evo directly.
  5. Conserve phase: use whatever “rotation” to keep above 85% mana. The idea is once you hit your cooldown macro, you get your mana back up to 100% at the start of your burn phase.

Rinse, and repeat. When to hit the burn phases depend largely on fight length and burn requirements on fight strategies. How you do the conserve phase also depends largely on your gear level. With Mage Armor on, and not-bad luck with AM procs, this can be fairly straightforward, but somewhat annoyingly twitchy for me. This may be due to lack of replenishment, so when raid-buffed it should be easier to stay in that range.

A friend of mine pointed out that the MI cooldown is at 3 minutes, and AP cooldown is at 1.5minutes–these sync up very nicely. However, your mana cooldowns aren’t synced up. Mana Gem is at 2 minutes, and don’t forget you’ve hit Evo separately from all your other cooldowns. Mana gem should preferably be up when you start your burn cycle. Evo should be up by the time you end your burn cycle (unless the boss is dying). So usually, by the time Evo will be up, just a couple more and MI will also be up…and so I end up waiting instead to make sure I get Quad Core in. Unless there are damage buffs for MI at level 85 raiding, you can probably hit MI separately then.

Also…only two arcane prime glyphs. Groan.

Shattering frosty things again and again and again

New frost treeAh, frost, the underdog of mage PvE specs. It doesn’t seem very promising for 80s raiding, although a number of factors may be coming into play, like my lack of familiarity with the play style (it’s very reactive) and latency (it has a lot of instants, and I feel my 200-400ms latency is horrible for such a spec). On both nights (pre-nerf and after) my Frost sustained DPS testing were both 2k below Arcane (pre-nerf: Arcane was 10k sustained, Frost 8k sustained; post-nerf: Arcane was 8k sustained, Frost 6k sustained).

My dummy test looked like this:

  1. Start out with the Frostbolt+Waterbolt macro to get the Water Elemental going, and then hit the cooldown macro. Frost doesn’t really have a burn phase like Arcane, but well, you have trinkets and Icy Veins (QQ, I miss it for Arcane).
  2. Hit the Water Elemental’s Freeze to force a Fingers of Frost proc, then hit Deep Freeze (unless FoF has already procced; it seems to proc with nice regularity).
  3. Then normal cycle starts: frostbolt normally, but if you get Fingers of Frost, you can either Deep Freeze, Frostfire Bolt if you have a Brain Freeze proc, or Ice Lance. All those three spells are instants, so it feels very twitchy. It’s possible to end up chaining FoF. Any time both Deep Freeze and Freeze cooldown is up and you don’t have an FoF charge, hit Freeze+Deep Freeze.

There are a couple challenges with this. The Water Elemental’s Freeze spell brings up a targeting circle, which means you need to be always ready to put that circle down where the boss is. PvP regulars probably have this down pat, but since I only use my mouse to move, in a boss fight it’s usually…not in the right position.

Frosty auras

Shiny frosty auras!

It’s also a little tricky making sure you’re hitting the correct buttons in your priority queue, especially when you have FoF up. A lot of times, I’d have FoF up, and would start hitting Ice Lance, when Brain Freeze would suddenly proc at my last cast. This isn’t such a big deal, but is a bigger concern when Deep Freeze comes back up suddenly.

Something to note: currently on live, Brain Freeze consumes the two charges of Fingers of Frost. Apparently this is a bug that has been fixed on Patch 4.0.3, so we’ll likely see the fix soon-ish.

Which is which?

I feel it’s a bit early to tell which spec I’ll mostly play in. Leveling would likely be Frost, as it seems likely that even with slows applied automatically, I’ll have a lot of downtime by playing Arcane (well, duh). It depends on how smooth out of combat mana regeneration is, and how fast our mage food tops us off.

Level 85 endgame raiding experience may still change, since mages get a number of new spells and there’s a lot of stat inflation going on with Level 80. For frost, the inclusion of Frostfire Orb in our rotation (we get Flame Orb at level 81, which turns into Frostfire Orb with the aforementioned talent) may give that little extra, and for Arcane, not having as much mana as we have now may certainly make burn phases considerably shorter and conserve phases more challenging.

As for Level 80 endgame raiding, either will work unless your guild requires you to be in the top DPS spec: and frost is not that.

In terms of playstyle, Arcane requires a lot more control than Frost–a different kind of control. Where Frost goes crazy with shattering things–and therefore “quicker payback” in terms of pew pew feel–Arcane is carefully managing mana so it can go freak out on its burn phase. Frost feels more frantic. (Again, I have no experience with PVP, so I can’t comment on how that feels.)

You might say Arcane doesn’t eat the marshmallow, and Frost does. A lot.

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Power Auras Classic: an introduction

I'm talking about: Power Auras Classic addon

This is one World of Warcraft addon that I AM IN LOVE WITH. As the name suggests, Power Auras Classic (POWA) is a powerful aura addon that allows you to program different visual cues depending on buffs, debuffs, and other things, and place them pretty much anywhere on the screen for immediate visual consumption.

(Honestly, how cool is an addon shortcut that cries, POWAH!! …? ;))

I don’t think nearly enough people are utilizing it though, so I thought I’d highlight it sometime with an introduction. I got so engrossed talking about it, that I’ve ended up making a mini-series of posts on it! The next two weeks will bring a series of actual usage settings for POWA.

As a quick teaser, here is my mage, Eilonwyn, with all auras enabled:

Power Auras Classic - All enabled

All systems go!

Let’s get on with the introduction!

Setting up for the first time

Once you have installed POWA and gone into the game, nothing will be different. There are no shiny bells and whistles, because the power of POWA (ahem) is in its uber-flexible configuration. Download POWA, unzip it, and put the PowerAuras directory in your World of Warcraft/Interfact/AddOns/ directory.

Once logged in, type in /powa and you should see a window similar to the one below, but with no settings/entries inside it:

Power Auras Classic - settings screenFrom here, you can see Character effects and Global effects. The former are auras which show up specific to a single character, while the latter will be available for all your WoW characters. In general, I keep raid boss debuffs that I want to keep track of in the Global effects tabs, as well as more generic auras like low health or mana. If you habitually play multiple similar-class toons, you may want to put your auras in Global effects. Even so, you can import and export each set/page of auras in order to reuse it on other characters, or share your auras with other people.

(I will be sharing my toons’ auras soon!)

In the screenshot, I am highlighting the first aura I have, which is for Icy Veins. Each aura you create in a set will show up here. Clicking on a selected aura will display that aura on the screen, as a preview; right-clicking on the aura will bring up its settings window.

Creating one is easy. The New button will also bring you to the settings window for a new aura, placed in the next available slot in the current page you are on.

Power Auras Classic - aura settingsClick on the image on the left to see the aura settings window in its entirety (it’s quite big!). This is a typical setting for an aura. On the top portion, you have a preview of your aura, and you can cycle through a series of available textures and change the texture color. All auras are centered in the screen (and around your character), but you can change its position relative to the center by moving the X/Y position slider accordingly. Texture sizes and opacity are also changeable, as well as X/Y distortion/skewing for almost unlimited aura visual style possibilities.

The tabs on the lower half of the window will be the meat of your auras. The most important tab is, understandably, the Activation tab. You can ignore all other tabs except this one.

Activation Tab

The Activation By dropdown contains a number of possible activation triggers, including:

  • Buff
  • Debuff
  • Action Usable
  • Aggro
  • Health, Mana, Combo Points, Rage/Energy/Power, Stance, etc.
  • Equipment Slots
  • My Spell Cooldown
  • Stealable Spell
  • Tracking

…and more besides. Just from that list, you can probably gauge just how flexible Power Auras is ;) The most basic, of course, would be tracking buffs and debuffs, which is the example at the top and below: that particular aura is activated by the presence of a buff named Icy Veins.

Power Auras Classic - activation tabThe Stacks field only comes into play if the buff/debuff stacks–otherwise you can keep it at zero. This is useful for limiting the visual indicator depending on how many stacks are available. (I use this for my Arcane Blast stacks.)

Use own Texture means that the aura will use the spell’s icon instead of the texture you set at the upper part of the screen. This may be useful in some cases, but not in others: you don’t really want a huge icon in the middle of your screen when you need to move out of the fire, but you’d want it shown right in your face if you’re in a raid or a party and you have Crusader Aura on.

The rest of the checkboxes are pretty self-explanatory: clicking on the boxes will toggle the selection between ignored, only when enabled, or only when disabled. In the above setting, a cross in the Resting, Mounted, and In Vehicle checkboxes means this aura won’t be enabled at any time while I am resting, on a mount, or in a vehicle. A check in the Alive checkbox means show this only when I’m alive. (Yes, yes, I know, “duh?!” but I’m sure there are things that some people will want to track when dead…)

On the lower left of the tab, a couple checkboxes say Enemy target, Focus, Partymember, and the like. This allows you to show auras depending on what readable auras are on your target, such as what debuffs are on him.

You will notice there are two text boxes in the middle of the window. These can largely be ignored unless you are tinkering quite heavily with POWA now, but for completeness’ sake: the first text box is for other aura IDs that need to be checked for this particular aura–a cascading aura rule, somewhat (I will be showing an example of this in use later on!). The second text box is for also checking the tooltip text of the buff/etc in question (obviously not available in all Activation By types).

Animation Tab

Power Auras Classic - animation tabIn truth, I’ve never used this tab, because anything else moving on my screen will just serve as distraction. There is a default animation: a sort of glowy end animation, which you can remove if you like (I tend to leave it as it is).

You can also select animations to play when the aura comes on, as well as an animation that loops throughout the duration of the aura, such as pulsing, flashing, orbit, spinning, etc.

Sound Tab

Yet another tab I don’t use so much. I tend to keep to whatever sounds have been pre-configured for me in WoW and with boss mods, as I usually turn the in-game sound down a bit to make sure I hear vent clearly (but still hear raid warning sounds). You can select starting sounds and ending sounds from a list of various sound files and in-game sounds using this tab.

Timer Tab

Power Auras Classic - timer tabFor everyone who likes countdowns and numbers, this is the tab for them. For me, I usually just go by the “width” of the numbers–the thinner, the closer to the end it is. ;)

By default, though, the timers aren’t shown on the screen.

The timer, in addition to allowing you to position the timer and set a couple visual effects as well as placement on your screen, also allows you to invert the aura depending on a set time.

Stacks Tab

The stacks tab is very similar to the timer tab, allowing you to display a number on the screen on how many stacks of the buff/debuff is up. As with the timer, you can set various effects as well as its position.

Importing POWA settings

Power Auras Classic - buttonsOne of the good things about POWA is the ability to import and export POWA strings/settings. A number of people have shared their strings online, and you may want to use their settings, or at least use it as a springboard for your own personalized settings.

At the bottom of the settings window, you’ll see a collection of buttons. There are Import and Export, as well as Import Set and Export Set.

As you can probably guess, plain importing and exporting will import or export a single aura. A set is a whole page of auras, which might be a little easier.

Power Auras Classic - importTo import, click on Import/Import Set, making sure that you are on the page you’d like to use for the new aura(s). A small window will come up, allowing you to copy+paste the aura string.

Exporting is pretty much the same way, only backwards ;)

A couple of gotchas

There are two things that come out to me whenever I’m working with POWA, and are likely to come up for you as well once you start.

The biggest one would probably be that the auras don’t show up when you expect them to. This may be due to any number of things, but for me the usual culprit is that I’m testing an aura while I’m in the cities, but the Resting checkbox is marked with an X. Or I have marked it with an In Combat marker, but I’m not in combat.

Also, if you’re using the spell’s own texture, initial creation won’t actually show the texture. Once you’re done with your activation settings, close the aura settings window, and then test the aura. Sometimes it will need an actual application of the buff/debuff before the aura shows up in tests.

Sometimes, though, the POWA settings do get choked up a bit, and when that happens the best thing to do is reload your UI (/reload ui). That usually fixes it for me (assuming all my settings are correct.

The second thing would be if you are working with the Action Usable activation type, the action/spell in question needs to be on an action bar somewhere. A macro with the spell won’t work; the spell or the item to use needs to be on an actual action bar. The way I do this is to dump whatever I need into an action bar, and then hide the offending action bar (I use Bartender).

This is so confusing!

Highly-customizable addons can tend to do that, sadly. However, in the next two weeks I will be going through my settings for my toons, which should hopefully help you visualize how to go about using POWA for your own toons.

Before you know it, you might have your very own smexy UI!

If you’re looking into some more examples, introductions, and tutorials on Power Auras, here are a couple articles you might want to check out:

But but but that’s a lot of work!

That’s true, setting up POWA can take some time, so if you’re of the “download a prepackaged UI” sort of person, there are only two things you can do:

  1. Look for a POWA setup you like and import it – there are quite a number of people sharing their POWA strings online for importing, so you just might find a setup you like.
  2. Don’t use POWA.

(Gigglefit.)

I do think that POWA is worth it. I love it for its flexibility: I like UIs that can grow with me, according to my gameplay needs. This one just fits the bill perfectly.

Stay tuned next week, when I’ll be sharing Talá’s Power Auras setup!

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A Razer Naga setup

I'm talking about: Razer Naga setup

I’ve had my Razer Naga for a good while now. I came from using a Razer Deathadder, as it was one of the few Razer mice that had support for Macs. When the Naga came out with Mac support, and I actually saw it in-store, I was sold.

Me holding the Razer Naga

Sized just right

I have relatively small hands (being a girl), and the Naga is about a centimeter smaller (shorter) than the Deathadder: it was definitely a better fit for my hands, but still weighty and solid enough for gameplay. The number of buttons as well as the need to use another addon to map them for WoW kind of turned me off initially, but the buttons grew on me, and I discovered I didn’t really need to use another addon.

And this is my setup.

Addons in use

Just one: Bartender. I’ve been using Bartender even before I had my Naga, so being able to use it for Naga programming is just nice. I should probably also say that I use Clique, but for the purposes of Naga programming, it’s not really relevant: Clique programs mouse buttons, but the additional 12 buttons on the Naga are numeric keys (either the numeric keypad, or the numbers on top of the keyboard).

Theoretically, you should be able to use any action bar mod, as well–or even none: you just need to be able to keybind your numeric keypad. Bartender is just really nice for me here.

I put my Naga bindings on a separate Bartender bar, and have it all lined up at the right side of my screen. This way, I can easily swap things around if and when I need: according to which skills/macros I find I’m using more, and which ones need to be more accessible.

Naga setup

I have the Naga’s numeric buttons set to use the numeric keypad (this is changeable using a switch at the bottom of the Naga), partly to make the learning curve smaller and also because more easily available buttons = win. And it’s difficult to spam buttons while moving the mouse–my thumb isn’t that good.

That means I have the number keypad within easy reach (in varying degrees) of my thumb. I have around six keys (inclusing the tilde key) easily accessible with my left, and 12 with my thumb.

In general terms:

Naga 12-button setup

Naga 12-button setup

Key 1 is my vent button. I’ve never found it easy to have the vent push-to-talk button on my keyboard, because I’d be busy spamming spells. Admittedly, that’s because my main is a DPS; my priest (who is a through-and-through healer) relies heavily on the mouse for healing (through Clique and mouseover macros, which I’ll get to in a sec). I usually need a lot more focus when I’m healing in a raid, though, with hardly any time for venting.

Keys 2-3 are my “oh sh*t” buttons. I sometimes swap them out when I have a special need for a particular encounter, like if I’m on Counterspell or sheeping duty.

Keys 4-6 as well as 8 are the most accessible keys for most ordinary uses. This may be due to the specific size/shape of my hand, though. For 8, it lies just below the joint on my thumb, so I can easily press it by putting pressure on the middle of my thumb instead of the tip.

The other keys usually end up being stuff like rocket packs, strudels, vanity pets, and the like.

The Naga Bar usage sample

Naga BarAs DPS, the most important thing for me is to deal damage. So my 4-6 keys are AOE spells, easily clicked if on the move or to quickly position a targeting circle where my mouse pointer is. Melee-range AOE is at Key 4 (Arcane Explosion) because it’s easier to move when my hold on the mouse is firmer/more stable.

For my priest, Keys 4-6 become cleansing/cooldown buttons–specifically, mouseover macros for these cleansing/cooldown buttons. This is great in conjunction with my Clique usage–it feels quite seamless, treating the numeric keypad buttons on the mouse just like any other mouse button.

(My baby Paladin is a tank, but I’ve yet to really come into using the Naga for her. I’m still confused with all the possible Hands the Paladin has, and I’ve not really looked into utilizing them. So, no tank sample for Naga!)

On the image on the left you can see the settings I have for Eilonwyn and Talá, who I both raid with. From bottom to top:

Talá (left): Fade, Psychic Scream, mouseover Dispel Magic, mouseover Abolish Disease, mouseover Pain Suppression, mouseover Fear Ward, Holy Nova (for quick damage-dealing+healing in CoS, for example), Levitate, mouseover Power Infusion, Shackle Undead, drinks, and my Flask of the North.

Eilonwyn (right): Ice Block macro, Invisibility macro, Arcane Explosion, Blizzard, Flamestrike, Core Hound Pup (lol), Mirror Image macro, blank, lock candy for swapping in case the lock has a lower healthstone, lootship rocket pack, Fish Feast, and focus Counterspell macro (for swapping).

The honest opinion

I’d have to say the Naga was one of the best things I purchased for my gaming. That isn’t exactly saying much: the only equipment I have that is specifically a gaming device would be the Naga and my headset. But it’s certainly been worth its purchase price.

If there’s anything that I don’t like 100% about the Naga, it’s the position of buttons 4 and 5 on the mouse. They’re on the top of the mouse, near my pointer finger. That means that to press these buttons, my finger would need to move to the left. Which means my whole hand shifts/contracts in order to reach those buttons, which, in addition to being a bit far away from any finger, is on the edge/corner of the mouse. You over-estimate the finger move, and your finger slides right into empty space. You under-estimate, and you end up clicking both the button you were aiming for and the left mouse button.

Which means these buttons don’t get used anymore.

They’re a shame, really. I loved those two extra buttons on the Deathadder, but then one could argue that those two buttons were replaced by twelve, and so then there is no reason to complain. Of course, I also used buttons 4 and 5 for other things outside WoW, like shortcuts for various Mac OSX-related things like Spaces and Expose…but not anymore.

But is that any reason to dis the Naga? Nope. I’d still heartily recommend it to anyone–anyone who doesn’t have big hands, that is.

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World of Warcraft on a resume

I'm talking about: World of Warcraft and your career

A recent article on WoW.com caught my eye: would you list [World of Warcraft] experience on your resume? Previous musings on the subject and the recent hullabaloo on RealID have pushed some introspection on the subject in my head, and the article reminded me of it.

Silmarien after learning she got the job

Silmarien after learning she got the job

Playing in a social capacity in World of Warcraft entails talking to people, managing people, and organizing people. Oh, you can play without ever talking to other people, but a good number of people also employ quite a number of interesting skills while in-game:

  1. The ability to manage people’s expectations–and, well, people–in a raid group
  2. The ability to analyze a fight to pick out what went wrong and how to improve on execution
  3. The ability to successfully mediate between people regarding all kinds of issues
  4. The ability to “sell” a guild’s reputation and “brand”

Those are only a few of the things that people pick up as they progress into the game. You have people developing and practicing everything from leadership skills, marketing and brand management, team buildup, analysis, financial acumen…you name it, somewhere in the world (…of Warcraft) a player will probably be enhancing his skills on a certain work-related (or work-enhancing) skill.

The ongoing stigma

In a lot of industries and communities, being a gamer has a lot of negative connotations: this is one of the reasons why there was strong resistance to Blizzard’s initial RealID designs that required you to reveal your real full name on forum posts.

WoW players are seen as losers and no-lifers; people who sit in front of the computer and eat chips scattered all over the keyboard; people who scream, swear and throw tantrums at every little thing (link NSFW due to language); people who stay up all night and show up half-asleep and zombied out at work. With a lot of people, it won’t matter if you look very dapper in a coat and tie, that you graduated top of your class: you just get crossed out because you’re a wildcard. “Ha ha, he plays WoW, must be a loser.” *toss*

And that’s a shame. Oh, there must be “losers” in WoW, there are plenty of those in my humble reckoning. But there are losers everywhere. Some guy might play tennis but he parties all night and subsequently always shows up half-asleep and zombied out. Some guy might be your average joe, but he sits on the couch five hours a night and fifteen hours on weekends and eat chips all day. You don’t scoop out the crud by ignoring WoW players: you just might be passing up on someone who applies himself really well to the job.

Not all hope is lost

I remember this one time (no, not at band camp) when a colleague and I had to interview a couple people for an opening at our company. We went through the short stack of resumes as we went along, and came across this one resume which boldly announced “World of Warcraft Guild Master” in his extra-curricular activities, along with guild size, responsibilities taken, and improvements done (like, “raised guild recruitment levels up 15%”, how cool is that?).

My friend and I both play WoW and, of course, mentioned it in the interview. Cue ten-minute animated discussion about his guild and how being a guild master was like (and possibly, uh, other things too).

You know what? We were able to shortlist only two from over a dozen resumes given to us. He was part of that short list. He was conversant, alert, he knew his languages, and his experience was solid. We could see he didn’t take himself too seriously, that he knew how to work hard and stick to his guns while not turning into a monster in the process.

So, would I?

I’ve already mentioned World of Warcraft in my resume, but honestly have not thought of expanding that to include actual activities within WoW: space is at a premium and I already have it relatively full. Maybe if I ever am foolish enough to start my own guild and stubborn enough to stick with it ;)

Its inclusion was a very deliberate action on my part, however: I don’t want to be in a company that would look down on me because I choose to kill Internet dragons with friends.

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Raiding as frost in WotLK 3.3.3

So a while ago I’ve gone and respecced Eilonwyn’s secondary, never-used spec to a frost PvE raiding spec. I’ve always been arcane since level 78, when I changed specs from a frost leveling spec to an arcane end-game raiding spec in order to learn the arcane mechanics before I hit the big 8-0 and started dungeons (when Naxxramas was the highest raiding content available). I love the arcane mechanics even before everyone started going arcane because omg buff!, and I daresay I will continue to raid as arcane even if Fire pushes ahead. (They’re currently neck and neck now, with Fire ahead in heroic best-in-slot equipment.)

Sadly, frost has never seen this sort of attention. I know frost is really good for PvP, which is the reason behind why Blizzard can’t really buff frost too much because it would be too overpowered then. However, I do miss my Water Elemental, who I’ve been with for a good many weeks while I died and ran and rode my way to end-game. And frost PvE has been buffed recently, with a permanent Water Elemental and Deep Freeze damage on bosses (those permanently immune to stuns). So I decided I’d give it a whirl for fun purposes.

So I took the cookie-cutter frost PvE build and tested it out on a boss training dummy. Since stat weights are similar for frost as with arcane, I didn’t change anything; I’d forgotten about arcane having 6% hit and frost having only 3%. Meter sample incoming:

Meter 1 - Missing 3% hit

Missing 3% hit: 5254.7 dps over 1,006,856 damage

Not too shabby. Note that I am basically missing 3% hit as well as slows on the target dummy (to proc Torment the Weak); the actual DPS value of TTW is anywhere below 12%, since I have my mirror images with their frostbolt and the occasional Brain Freeze-d frostfire bolt occasionally slowing the dummy.

Next, I went and queued up with a tank friend for a random dungeon to try out my frost spec on a boss. We got Culling of Stratholme, but sadly I wasn’t able to get a screenshot of my meters then. Meathook meters were 5,152 dps over 237,440 damage. (I went arcane for the rest of the dungeon, to get the fights over with, and because I felt I needed to redeem myself, lol.)

During the dungeon run however, I kept pulling from Vhinz, which I felt was completely crazy given that, um, I was doing less damage as frost. The culprit? Only 10% threat reduction (although the Water Elemental accounts for some of the damage, hence less 10% threat as well?), and no threat reduction for fire talents (i.e. frostfire bolt). Pretty significant coming from an arcane mainspec, with its 40% threat reduction. (Thanks to the people over at Elitist Jerks’ Frost PvE thread.)

After all of this, I realized I was under hit. -_- So I just went and tried myself again, against a training dummy. Much better numbers, my tests kept running at around the following meter:

Frost PvE: Hit capped meters

Hit capped: 5550.7 dps over 1,204,615 damage

Not too bad, although to give it a little perspective, as arcane I was anywhere between 6500-6900 dps in the same fight duration (3 minutes) and identical buffs. Applying Torment the Weak modifier at only 9% (to account for mirror images and frostfire bolt slows — obviously a number just pulled from the air though), dps rises to 6050.3, while arcane would likely be around 7200 up. But it wasn’t very dismal; as frost I can still go into 25-man Vault of Archavon and not shame myself silly. Raid buffed I would likely reach above 6200.

I don’t think I’ll ever see me in raid with a frost spec, however; especially seeing as how I’ve gotten a fair amount of ribbing from the guild that it’s escalated into something being very annoying. Additionally, as one of the usual hard-hitters in the guild, it’s unlikely the guild will be able to afford 15% lesser dps; it makes me a little envious of some raiders whose guilds allow them that flexibility, though I believe these are usually either theorycrafters or those not too serious with progression raiding. Neither of which I am, or my guild is.

But, as my guild master said: “At least it’s not like the 2,000 dps like I thought it would be.”

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On the new LFG and Icecrown Citadel raid

I’m possibly one of a minority of players who has finished the new World of Warcraft raid but hasn’t stepped foot inside any of the new 5-man dungeons. /facepalm As my guild raids on Wednesday and maintenance is usually done Tuesday night, the only time I’d have to do non-progression stuff is right after maintenance (Wednesday dawn) onwards, up to before scheduled runs. Looks like I really can’t be arsed to wake up at 5am after maintenance even when a new patch is out. ;)

(All my recent posts are WoW-related -_- I do have other things ongoing but none I can talk about yet!)

On the new Looking For Group mechanism

But before the scheduled progression run I did get to try out the new LFG and random dungeon option (not gonna pass up my emblem of frost, y0). After the raid, I also went a second time. Both times were… quite different. It feels like I went the full pickup group experience spectrum, actually; which is to be expected, I suppose.

For the first group, we got Nexus and it was quite a fast run; one pull after another, finished flawlessly plus some chatting about the new LFG. It was a nice, friendly bunch of people, with some jokes and laughter all in. If I could add them to friends list, I would have. (Much love to the new disenchant option. I’ve grown to hate doing it, it’s such a chore to look through rolls manually and whatnot.)

For the second group, it couldn’t be any more different; once I got zoned into Drak’Tharon Keep, the tank already had aggroed the first few trash mobs. And he kept going through the whole hallway. Straight to business, eh? By the time the last trash pack in that hallway was down, I was almost out of mana, and wasn’t able to pick up any of the loot from the earlier mobs. Without waiting for the healer or myself to regen, he pulled two of the abominations and goodness knows what else in the room before Trollgore. No communication whatsoever, mind. Naturally, we wiped. On DTK trash.

We went in again, got Trollgore down. Pulled all the spiders. Started Novos right when running in (no regen), didn’t finish off adds coming down. No regen, went directly to the room with the bats. Straight on to the dinosaurs and riders. (Still no talking at this point.) Once we got to Dred, tank said, don’t heal, I’m pulling all. He went directly to the end of Dred’s area, and didn’t come back. We wiped. He asked why he didn’t get any heals, and the healer said LOS (line of sight [issues]). Why where you LOS? he asked.

Healer quit.

I don’t blame the healer in the least, man. Tank has the gall to say, why did he quit? What the hell. The kitty with us commented that he shouldn’t have pulled all; I asked, are we in a hurry? Kitty said no, tank remained silent. Seriously, if you’re going for a quick run, make sure the rest of the party is in the same boat as you. It’s not like old LFG where you can whisper prospective party members and say “fast run only” or whatever. You should have woken up and smelled the coffee when we wiped on trash mobs, slow down a bit, y0.

We did finally get to have a healer stay for a half-finished dungeon, and finished the rest of the dungeon without much more fanfare (and no more stupid too-fast chain pulling). And I’m ashamed to say that the tank apparently is a Filipino player (based on his name anyway). I was going to get chatty and say I was too, but given that kind of player? Hell no.

I forgot to put that tank on my ignore list. I’ll have to check out how later.

On the new Icecrown Citadel raid

We went for 10-man last night, we had three groups running concurrently. I finished the whole raid, but on different toons. :D For the first group we ran into a problem when our warlock disconnected on the gunship battle and didn’t come back online, and we couldn’t get a replacement; after a couple more tries 9-manning it, another guildie needed to go, so we called it and continuing later tonight.

After going back to Dalaran, my guild master (who was raid leading the second group) asked if my priest was 80, etc. So I came in a subbed on the gunship battle as well. We got both the gunship and Deathbringer Saurfang down! So essentially I did get to complete the whole raid within a night, just on different toons. Heheh.

The fights were prety interesting; I should think gear is important but they felt more like mechanic-driven fights than anything else. There are plenty more qualified sites that talk about strategy, so I’ll just add a couple of my own notes on the fights:

Lord Marrowgar

Interesting movement fight, can be rather challenging to find a place to run to when he whirlwinds and there’s cold fire all around. A target Bone Spike macro should come in handy here for casters–I couldn’t tab to it half the time and had difficulties clicking on it to target and dps down.

Lady Deathwhisper

Add fight, basically. It looks like getting most DPS on the adds and getting them down quickly and then switching to the boss’ mana shield is the way to go. It was a little messy and crazy, and should probably bear with some reading up on the fight to smooth out the fight next time. Good thing 10-man didn’t have the crowd controlling part–really need to work that in somehow (buff and debuff notifications are a little off when using Pitbull for raid frames and nothing else).

And, elevator! Do you get squished if you stand underneath?

Gunship Battle

Absolutely fun fight! You equip a rocket pack on your shirt slot and using the rocket pack allows you to target somewhere and, well, fly to that area. Some fall damage is imminent if you fly too high/far. What I did was, I bound it to my fourth mouse button for easy usage/targeting. Win!

Very simple fight over all, just rinse and repeat (and don’t 9-man while doing progression).

Deathbringer Saurfang

After wiping a couple times, what we ended up doing was running with two heals for higher DPS. The damage is manageable (considering that we had a geared resto shammy and my, er, not-so-geared disc priest) as long as you know who to focus on and keep alive (tanks, and whoever has the Mark of the Fallen Champion). I’ll be trying this as DPS later tonight, so should be an interesting fight as DPS as well.

The take so far

All in all, rather pleased with the patch so far, if a bit pressed for time–too many errands and things I need to do as Christmas vacation is looming closer and closer. Looking forward to finish off the available raid wing tonight, and actually get to see the 5-man dungeons. XD

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WoW UI Screenshot

I’ve been meaning to do a post on my World of Warcraft UI for a while now, mostly because I love tweaking my UI and seeing other people’s game UI as well. Unfortunately it’s always been delayed because I keep discovering addons, better ways of using addons, and not being satisfied with screenshots I take.

So I’ve decided I’ll just post two screenshots — one which is fairly recent but in solo dummy combat, and another slightly dated screenshot in a ten-man raid. Both shots are of my mage UI, although my priest UI is very similar (only a couple settings like aura changes are different).

WoW UI screenshot in solo mode
WOW UI Screenshot (click to enlarge)

WOW UI Screenshot (click to enlarge)

The addon differences are minimal; the only change visible is the switch from using FuBar to LibDataBroker/DockingStation (as well as general cleanup of some actions on the action bar). I’ll list all the endgame addons I use later, but wanted to point out a few notable addons, most of them visible in the screenshot:

Pitbull 4
Used to customize unit frames (target, raid, etc). On a 25-man raid, there are 5 columns down the lower portion, extending to the left of the currently-shown raid members.
Satrina Buff Frames
A really great buff organizer, I use this to show only buffs in the top right corner, my debuffs below my unit frame, target buffs and debuffs I care about below the target frame, debuffs I need to track/refresh on my target (not shown in screenshot), and short-term buffs I get (upper left of my toon).
Power Auras Classic
Power Auras combat procs on mage

I use it for immediate, visual representations of stuff I need to react to. Now it’s just mostly buffs, procs and cooldown availabilities, but earlier I’ve also used POWA to show important debuffs like a Grobbulus injection and Thaddius charges. The screenshot shows my combat auras when I’m at, er, full power: Missing Barrage, Arcane Blast stacked to 4, Arcane Power, Icy Veins, a shield is on me and Incanter’s Absorption has procced, plus another random spellpower proc (like Lightweave for example).

Deadly Boss Mods
The must-have of raiding. I also use it for timers like when I can click my pew pew button again, when I can use the last ticks of Icy Veins to Evocate if I needed to, or when to pop Invisibility when my Mirror Images are about to expire.
Bartender
I like having buttons in easy reach, and rearranging them around my screen.
LunarSphere
WoW LunarSphere addon extendedA relatively unknown addon, but really fabulous. It’s also an action bar replacement addon but I like using it and bartender together especially for my mage. It’s collapsed in my screenshots as I’m in combat (you can choose not to collapse them automatically, naturally) but in the smaller screenshot on the right you can see that buttons around the sphere can be expanded into submenus. I use it to house my portals, professions, food, buffs, and whatnot. There are a LOT more utility features in the addon, as well.
Sunn Viewport Art
I like the cinematic feel of the viewport set up the way it is. It also shows me a lot more than how it is normally.

Here’s an annotated screenshot of the raid screenshot above. I’ve since replaced FuBar as previously mentioned, as well as LiveStats with LDB plugins as well.

WOW UI Screenshot, annotated (click to enlarge)

WOW UI Screenshot, annotated (click to enlarge)

And my list of endgame addons (endgame addons mean stuff like QuestHelper, Auctioneer, etc aren’t included):

I’m always on the lookout for useful addons and ideas on UI improvement, so probably this time next month my UI will be slightly different again. XD Would love to hear about any addons others are using, so comment if you have a suggestion or question!

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Disc priest all grown up

Talá at 80

Talá at 80

I never got around to announcing it beforehand, but my priest dinged 80 around two or so weeks ago! /cheer

Hence I’ve been focusing on getting Talá geared over the last week. She can now heal Onyxia’s Lair (both 10- and 25-man versions) and Trial of the Crusader 10, possibly also the 25-man version (but have not tried yet). She’s discipline/shadow-specced at the moment. She’s a bit of a spoiled brat really, getting mats and stuff for crafted BOEs from her older sister Eilonwyn. :P

Healing is quite enjoyable, in a different way as opposed to being a damage dealer. I find that a lot of times, it hits extremes of pretty much any experience in a dungeon or raid; at easy heroics with a geared tank I get sleepy, but in raids where my gear is just right for it, it can be quite nerve-wracking. You also get to be really happy (“my heal target lived!”) or really sad (“omg I’m so sorry lag spike QQ”). I feel that DPS is a lot more linear in this regard; even if you’re overgeared for the dungeon, you’re still doing something pretty much all the time, as opposed to the healer throwing a bubble on everyone and then waiting.

I’m also finding that gearing up healing is slightly hit and miss. From the perspective of someone who’s been a damage dealer for the longest time, with tools like Rawr that tells you equipping this item or using the gem gives you +x amount of damage per second, it’s not as straightforward for healing.  There are stat weights, but even juggling between throughput and longevity depends on a lot of factors–factors which you’ll only really know through experience. For example, I thought my intellect was more than enough, until I ran dangerously OOM on Koralon.

Even healing styles are varied, and from the discussions I’ve seen there is no hands-down right way, unlike when you DPS it’s usually pretty linear when you have your rotations down pat. It’s possibly easier for other healing classes, like trees (uhm, bind everything to rejuv and roll face on keyboard) but I’m constantly feeling that I’m not using my priest abilities to its full potential. I don’t use a lot of them enough: binding heal and prayer of healing to name a few (but I love divine hymn; it’s like my lazy button).

Being disc, though, I’ve already come across people who complain about my performance on the “healing done” meters. I’m usually last; while gear probably plays a small part here, the biggest reason by far why disc priests would be lowest on the healing meters is that discipline’s strength is in damage mitigation, such as through Power Word: Shield and Renewed Hope. Sadly most people just love looking at nice big numbers. :( Yes, you’re a pally, you have heavy, huge-ass heals. I’m not, kthx.

Maybe once I’ve got disc down pat I’ll change over to disc/holy and see how raid healing goes. I like the focus-target style of disc, but can’t hurt to try other heal styles, too. Now, just need to find out how to change the clickbindings in Clique automatically based on what spec is active. Hmm. *goes to hunt*

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Baby disc heals

So a while back I’ve braved the horrors of LFG and pugged a couple of normal Utgarde Keep and Nexus runs for my then-early-70 draenei priest, Talá. My first ever try at healing in 70+ instances was UK at 69, which was somewhat traumatizing, even with a kind group (read: a group who didn’t kick me out for the number of times we wiped, or I died, or the shadow priest had to backup heals; the whole group actually either had healer mains or alts, lol).

Talá, the priest

Talá, the priest

Prior to Northrend, I’d been healing holy-specced with Healbot. As I did lowbie instances though, I realized that I was doing a lot of shielding; so it made sense to me to respec to discipline. I’d also felt that in addition to having too many raid frames (on Eilonwyn I was running with Pitbull and Decursive; on my priest I was running with Pitbull, Decursive and Healbot!), Healbot was sometimes being a bit too smart for me. It’s possible I just hadn’t configured it correctly, but knowing plenty healers went with Grid and Clique for healing, I decided I’d go with Pitbull and Clique (and get rid of Decursive).

So, a spec change and a UI change was probably not the best way to go about trying a “new” dungeon as heals. It put me off even playing with Talá for a while, as I wasn’t too keen on leveling her if I was just going to go DPS in endgame again.

After a while, I finally did join LFG, with a comment about being a newbie disc heals. Almost surprisingly, I did get people to invite me along (woo!) and was able to practice, and I seem to be doing relatively well as the parties I’ve been to have told me. The last one I’ve tried (after a long break of not playing her) was Old Kingdom; sadly we kept wiping :(

I can certainly use more practice, especially with the “rotation” (and my click-bindings!), but it’s not so bad. I basically keep shields up on the tank, drop a Prayer of Mending on a melee DPS everytime it’s up (ranged sometimes too), and shield people up if there’s raid damange going around. I can have a good bit of trouble with too much raid damage though, as I haven’t exactly found the best way to deal with it other than Circle of Healing which positively consumes mana like arcane mages (nom nom nom!).

The gameplay is certainly quite different from a DPS point of view, and something I feel keen enough to continue playing with. The pressure can be worse, and the rewards not-as-evident. With DPS there is a sense of satisfying finality when the boss dies; with Arcane there are even “exciting” phases when you pop all your cooldowns and burn mana for some extreme pew pew. With heals it’s either you failed to keep people alive, or you didn’t. It’s certainly a good thing to experience though; healing has opened my eyes to a couple things in fights I’ve done countless times as DPS, like how annoying it really is for the healer if the DPS is being stupid, or even small things like “oh, there is raid damage in this encounter?”

I haven’t really decided on getting parties and raids will be easier on a healer. I know there is a general shortage of healers/tanks sometimes but I’ve seen a lot of instances where you end up being on standby if you have a particular “role”, i.e., a tank or a healer; one raid can only bring so many tanks and healers into an encounter after all.

But, cheers for all end-game healers! This is one (squishy) DPS who certainly appreciates you. <3

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Arcane mage love

Mages’ arcane tree is fabulous with the last few changes done during patch 3.2.2 on World of Warcraft. /cheer

I’ve waited a while before posting my thoughts about the changes as I wanted to give them a couple of raids before making conclusions; during the first week, I was only able to raid Trial of the Crusader (both 10- and 25-man) with the guild, and pugged Onyxia; I saw a significant increase in damage done and DPS for all raids, but as PUGs are obviously wildcards, I didn’t want to take that into consideration.

Missile Barrage proc on Ulduar trash

Missile Barrage proc on Ulduar trash

The succeeding raids, however, saw the same general result: higher overall sustained DPS, and naturally arcane burst was still top-notch; fabulous enough to suddenly be called OP on the Lord Jaraxxus fight, apparently <_< I wish I had thought to take a screenshot of Recount data, though, for posterity’s sake; we didn’t have logging on that night. Heroism + Nether Power + cooldowns + procs = absolutely yummy! I’ve never been one to look at how much and how high I crit, but I had a 48k crit that night (care of my other guildies who actually looked into Recount, haha).

The way I see it, it’s a given that mana is less of a constraint for arcane with the changes done. With generally lower mana costs, and free Arcane Missiles on proc (seemingly only when Arcane Power is not in effect), mana is certainly less of an issue than previously. It’s not just the mana savings though; since the patch came out I’ve been spamming my Arcane Blast key a lot more as I felt it was “safer” to spam it. That probably counts for significant increases in damage done, too. So actual and psychological changes = win!

So what’s with the rotation?

What rotation to use when you’re arcane specced can depend on your latency in-game, although not by much. Personally, I do:

ABSpam04MBAM

That’s spamming Arcane Blast up to four stacks, consuming the Missile Barrage proc with Arcane Missiles if you either have zero stacks or 4 stacks. That means fishing for a Missile Barrage proc by spamming Arcane Blast; once mana dips too low because of AB spammage, I do a no-proc Arcane Missiles to consume the Arcane Blast debuff and start all over again. I’d have to say that these occurrences aren’t that many, since the likelihood of getting Missile Barrage on Arcane Blast has been raised significantly.

The high DPS rotation is basically the same, except that the Missile Barrage proc can be consumed at any time. Admittedly, this is something I’m still getting used to, but owing to the very real danger of me running out of mana when I blow all my cooldowns, I should really get used to hitting Arcane Missiles on proc. It has to be noted though, that there have been a couple of posts pointing out that Missile Barrage when combined with Arcane Power is not free; but definitely almost-free. 20% of the original cost, from the looks of it.

Obviously, it doesn’t mean that there is no more danger of running out of mana. There is, especially when you burn your cooldowns and you get a 1-second Arcane Blast/MBAM. The spec is more forgiving, but it doesn’t mean you don’t need to deal with the consequences. I’m also seeing a lot more occurrences of getting aggro from the tanks; never really used to be a problem before, but now Invisibility is becoming one of my best friends.

Moar arcane plz kthx

There’s more arcane love incoming! From the WoW 3.3.0 patch notes on PTR:

Arcane Empowerment: This talent now also grants 1/2/3% increased damage done by the mage’s party or raid for 10 seconds after the mage gets a critical strike with Arcane Explosion, Arcane Missiles, Arcane Barrage, or Arcane Blast. This effect is exclusive with Ferocious Inspiration and Sanctified Retribution.

Woo! Arcane raid utility! Hot damn, I’m excited. Now I’m not just the raid vending machine/mini-fridge and Focus Magic giver, but I actually give all DPS a boost! I would say that +haste to the raid instead of +damage sounds like it would fit the spec more (as we eat haste! om nom nom!)–I’ve heard of a couple suggestions like adding an aura to Netherwind Presence which fits nicely with arcane flavor. But the +damage isn’t shabby at all, and makes sense in a “enemy becomes susceptible to more damage because of arcane damage from a mage” point of view.

We’ll see how this raid utility modification pans out. \o/

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