Wish List: A Training Ground for Tanks

I'm learning how to tank on my druid (one raid needs a tank or they can't raid), and I so want the following...

Basic Tank Training: this would be a series of quests you'd be required to do before you queue as tank. You'd get teleported to a series of rooms. First off you'd either be able to talk to an NPC about the basics of tanking as your class (aka, a warrior uses a sword and shield. They use the following abilities to keep the mobs on them (thundershock, whatever else they use), and are in defensive stance. They like mail/plate gear with defense and whatever else warriors like) or skip the intro and jump into the first trial. All basic trials would have a NPC healer to keep you up, and who can pull healing aggro.
First trial: hold a boss mob's attention. You don't have to move. You would have a threat meter and you'd need to get it above a certain point in a certain amount of time.
Second trial: hold a boss's attention while periodically needing to move out of bad stuff.
Third trial: get and hold a trash pack of mobs. First group is all melee, second has a ranged/caster.
Just a very quick intro to tanking. You could always go back and redo any trial, even if you passed. The idea would be that experienced tanks could breeze through these in a few minutes, but that novice tanks would learn stuff.

Intermediate Tank Training:
Similar setup, but now we include NPC DPS. You'd repeat trial 2, then do trial 3 twice, once with suggested crowd control and once where you chose the NPC DPS group and tell them what to cc. Again, all trials can be repeated, so you can really experiment with different group makeups and crowd control options.

My guess would be that Advanced Tank Training would involve trigger-happy dps, tanking cooldowns, and switching tanks. Doing all three questlines would get you something, like a shield vanity pet or the title Tank.

I would kill to have this stuff in game, especially the ability to practice! DPS get target dummies, why can't tanks have practice scenarios?

Ooh, another way to gain rep!

For those of you thinking about getting the Ambassador title, working towards the Exalted, or simply wanting to ride around on another race's mounts, I have news!

We all know the factions have tabards, and you can gain rep by running dungeons with them on. But did you know that you can wear the city tabards at 85 and go run Stockades and still get rep?

See!

Best part about this, it should work no matter what your level. It's not a ton of rep per kill at 85, but if you're in the dungeon anyway, whether to get the achievement, farm enchanting mats, or just to see if you can solo it, you might as well get rep from it.

I checked the tooltip wording of the tabards, and the city ones (SW, Ironforge, Gnomer, ect.) are the only ones I could find without a level requirement, so I believe these are the only ones that will work. That's probably a good thing, as really the only incentive I have to run heroics on Lyl is to grind rep (or to help guildies). Yeah, I still have a gear upgrade available from jp (hat) and I could use new shoes, but that's about it except for purple rep rewards.

I just figured this trick out tonight and decided to share while I was thinking about it. Now go forth and get rep!

So there was this patch thing...and I made some gold

I've waited to comment on the patch because I wanted to give it a good trial, especially the priest changes.

I LOVE MY BUFFS!

Yes, the shadowpriest rotation has gone back to it's old complicated self, aka....
Dot. dot, dot, mind blast when available, mind sear as filler, which is a bit of a pain. For new shadow priests (and those that tend to raid tired, like me), I would recommend an addon called Spell Flash and then Spell Flash: Priest. It's basically a prompter, flashing the spell it suggests you use next. I don't believe it's been completely updated for 4.06, but I use it to prompt dot refreshes, and weave my blast and sear by hand.

Plus, mastery no longer stinks. My dps (with no changes in gear) has gone up by 2-4k because all that mastery on my shared gear is no longer a wasted stat in shadow. This is good, as I'm likely to be raiding as shadow for a bit. Our raid team's beloved main tank is taking a sanity break (much-deserved) so our shadow priest of awesome has stepped up a bear alt and we still have 4 healers, so I go shadow or the druid goes boomkin and the default seems to be me as shadow. Works for me.

The TB changes seem to be working. I'm seeing it change hands much more frequently. As an example, tonight I went in defending just before raid start and we lost it. Then while we were in raid squashing worm dude and working on the conclave, we got it back. Of course, once people adjust to the flag changes it may not switch so easily, but we'll see.

Oh, and in other news...
Remember the saronite shuffle? I've been experimenting with the elementium/obsidium shuffle. Basically you buy the ore, prospect it, then...
Green quality gems->
save blue, green, and purple for jcing dailies. Throw 3 on the AH early in the day and they'll sell for 25-30g apiece.
Use the other colors for crafting rings, the fist weapons, and necklaces. Sell the blue quality ones on the AH (200-400g apiece) and DE the green stuff, then sell the mats or turn them into enchant scrolls. Me, I've been selling the mats.
Blue quality gems-> cut and sell on AH

I invested 1k gold (elementium was at slightly under 4g apiece), and with a few gems left to sell I've made 6k. Now, there's some big ifs in this scheme, so check the Undermine Journal for your markets and make sure you understand what ore needs to be at for you to break even. Auction House Junkies is a good podcast for this sort of idea. I've been paying more attention to elementium, because the price is the same and the gems are better. More info available here at Cold's Gold Factory and here at WarcraftEcon.

Not much else going on, really. I'm gradually grinding rep on Lyl, got the rogue to 51 (I love heirlooms), and finally pinpointed the "WTF let me interact with my spells and bags" bug that's been showing up occasionally. That one was having Adobe Reader running, go figure. Monera's sadly neglected, mostly because going through the entire gearing process, yeah. Unless a guildie needs a healer for a normal, she's not running anything. Given the time investment for a heroic and the fact that Lyl still has rep and gear upgrades available from heroics, it doesn't make sense to bring in an alt.

Raiding-wise, we've got worm dude mostly on farm, and we're making really good progress on Conclave. I'm hoping that this Sunday we squish Conclave and then hit Halfus. I may even heal on Halfus, since disc is really good for that fight. We shall see what the raid needs.

Women in game: Source of drama or easy scapegoats?

I was wandering through the new Raid and Guild Leadership forums when I came across How to Deal with a Girl in my Guild. Obviously I started reading it, and thus started pondering where this idea of women as drama-makers comes from and is it Truth?

First off, no, I don't think it's Truth. I think some women, like some men, cause drama. There is a certain subset of the human population that causes and enjoys causing drama, and both men and women are part of this subset.  Most women I know, both in and out of game, do not like drama. I personally hate any conflict in groups I am a part of, and want everyone to get along and be happy. Obviously I cannot make the assumption that the majority of women in game are like me, BUT neither can I assume that I am abnormal in my desire for no drama. My best guesstimate is that I have some level of familiarity with about 100 players in game, of which a substantial minority are female. With 11 million players, 100 is nowhere near a decent sample size. In fact, I very much doubt that any player could manage to interact with enough people in game to form a decent sample, not to mention the fact that different servers have different norms and personalities (for lack of a better word).  So, please bear in mind that there is no Truth here, only individual truths. 

Now, where does this women cause drama idea come from? I'm not sure, but here's my guess...

In the early days of the Internet, it was male-dominated, and dominated by a particular type of male. We all know the stereotype. The geek/nerd who doesn't interact much with women, and whose higher brain functions tend to shut down in their presence. From what I have seen, these men tend to think of women as a weird and strange species and treat us differently.  Some women (and some men) took and still take advantage of this tendency. If you like drama, and you can use your sex to cause drama, well then you're probably going to do that. If you don't like drama, and don't like being treated differently because of your sex, then you're likely to just keep your mouth shut so no one finds out which sex you are. Can you see where this is going? Those most likely to be open about being female are also the most likely to use that fact to cause drama, thus creating the perception that all females cause drama.

Now, there is some female drama that the woman herself has nothing to do with. If player A finds out player B is female, and treats her differently from then on, then the fault lies with player A, not with player B. Any drama caused by this different (and likely preferential) treatment is player A's fault. But sadly, many will look at a scenario like this and say "See, girls in game cause drama!" and place blame on B instead of A. This is rather like introducing a minority person into a group and having drama because a member of the group reacted in a racially-insensitive fashion. Would you really blame the minority person? I doubt so.

If you look at the original post in the thread I linked, the scenario is not so cut and dried. You have a loot council member who is spending most of his time socializing with a female guildie, and his loot council decisions show favoritism towards this guildie. We have no way of knowing if the guildie has asked him to give her preference, or if she expects him to socialize almost exclusively with her. It is a fairly well-known phenomenon that people tend to want to spend time with the people they're dating, and many do take that to an extreme. Also, people tend to favor giving loot to people they like, a known problem with loot councils in general. So, if you remove the female guildie, would there still be drama? I'd say yes, sooner or later. The loot council member has shown that he has trouble removing his personal prejudices from his decisions. A woman may have brought that tendency to the forefront, but it's probably been there all along.

In closing, I would like to point something out that most of us forget in these kinds of discussions. When you generalize about women, or men, you are generalizing about 3 BILLION people. Even if you're saying something like "women get tetchy once a month", which may or may not be true for any woman who menstruates monthly. Assuming that statement is true for all women still means you're ignoring a substantial population of women who have passed menopause, are currently pregnant, or due to medical abnormalities do not menstruate or do not do so monthly.  It's a natural tendency of humans to generalize, it makes the world easier for us to deal with if we can put people in neat little boxes, but in real life, people don't always fit into those boxes and trying to force them to fit is harmful both to them and to you. Sometimes women cause drama, just like sometimes men cause drama. If you're not comfortable making the blanket statement "men cause drama", then why are you comfortable saying that women cause drama?

Yay I get to BUBBLE AGAIN!

Things are going well, all in all. RL's been very stressful and busy, so blogging was not a priority. Yup, I am a bit fail.

Murderotica's downed Magmar, and we're working on him again this week. We've made it to lvl 13 as a guild, yay perks (mmm, heirloom cloaks of awesome and rep gains). Baradin Hold guy is on farm, and best of all, I get to be disc again!!

I've never really been comfortable as holy, and well, last night my raid leader asked if I wouldn't mind switching back. Of course she asked in the middle of the raid, so I did my best to set a time record for respecing, reglyphing, redoing my bars, and redoing my vuhdo.  We got much further once I went back to disc, and my comfort level was higher.

I do think this experiment with holy was good for me. I'm now much more familiar with my group-healing tools, and I've gotten a new understanding of why I hate Chakra. The number of times I've yelled FUCK! as Chakra falls off just as I'm casting Holy Word:Sanctuary, well, it's in the hundreds. I will miss my Lightwell, and the lovely massive group heals, but I have my bubbles back!

Plus, I can go into TB or bgs as disc without feeling useless, and I get to smite. Yup, I went for an Atonement/Smite build, though I don't really have a good sense of how I feel about it yet. Hopefully I can talk some guildies into a heroic or two so I can practice and get a feel for how much healing Atonement does.

In other news, feral kitties are way OP. My lvl 84.6 kitty should not be within a couple k of Lyllea in dps. It just shouldn't happen. Feral dps has grown on me, and I plan to keep the kitty spec, and maybe do resto as well. The tank need's diminished, so I figure I'll do something I know I like, and if we need another bear down the line, heck, bears and kitties have a lot of gear overlap.

I'm still trying to figure out which alt gets leveled after the druid. Garetia's a blast to level, but her alchemy's maxed and there's nothing for her to learn in Twilight Highlands. The pally is not as fun, but I know there's blacksmithing and engineering patterns to unlock there. And then there's the dark horse DK, since there's enchanting patterns in Twilight too.

And some fun stuff. First, Monera got a title (she's the kitty in the center)..

And Lyllea finally got that rare spawn killed and thus a new pet...

If you're wondering, that's Jadefang, the only green shale spider, and she drops the Tiny Shale Spider pet, who looks just like her, but tiny.

Raiding. Easier than heroics? Also, 3 of my favorite addons.

The Baradin Hold boss certainly is. Whee, stacking, running in circles, then loots!
On the other hand this guy...

Well, he's a bit tricker. Not quite Deadmines with a drunk tank level, but pretty hard.

In other stuff, I've been profession-leveling, toon-leveling, and heroic-running. And no, I have not forgotten about the UI series. I just got distracted by...

a confused dog in way too much snow. So much snow that it basically shut down my city for 4 days. Not that I'm shocked, mind you. We have about 1 dumptruck with a plow attachment per million people. Yup, gotta love Hothlanta.

But I do have some addon stuff for you. Three great addons that really have nothing to do with each other, but I love all 3.
First-> Archy. You can see it in the below shot. It lists the artifacts I'm working on, the dig sites I have (and identifies which type they are), prompts me when I have enough pieces to finish one, and gives me a little distance indicator. Best of all, I can make it vanish with just a click.

Second->MarketWatcher This is an AH addon. You tell it stuff to scan for, scan occasionally, and it keeps track of prices for you. You can even mouse over the items and it'll show you a nifty graph. I use it to keep track of gem, ore, and herb prices, so I can find deals and get a sense of when it makes sense to post cut gems and when I should just wait. It's also keeping track of Shadow Dust for me, mostly because otherwise I forget to look for it.

Third-> Buttonfacade. This is a UI addon that allows you to skin your buttons. See, here's default...

Here's another skin (dream)

And here's Zoomed (what Lyllea's currently using)

I tend towards subtle skins, but there's a ton out there. Just hit Curse and look. Caith's quite popular, I know, so is Gears.

ButtonFacade also works with many other addons. For example, Satrina Buff Frames, so your buffs can match your action buttons. It's a nice way to keep a consistent feeling, plus I think the skins look nicer than the default.

There you have it, 3 of my favorite addons.  Now back to farming for the shale pet. IT MUST BE MINE!

How I Make A UI Part 1: A Starting With Bartender 4

This is just a walkthrough of how I get some of the addons I use to look the way they do. We'll be working with bartender 4, shadowed unit frames, vuhdo, align, sunn viewport art, sexymap, and DS Graphics Sunn Viewport Skins.  This section starts with bartender, since it's the first addon I configure in a new UI. Originally  I was going to do them all in one big post, but well, that would have been a REALLY big post, so I split them up. Next time will be Sunn Viewport Art and Shadowed Unit Frames. Here's a nice picture with the addons all labeled so you can see what is what. It's also a good example of what you'll see when you first log in with all these installed.

Now to configure!
First off, we start with our action bars. So type in /bt and hit enter. You see...

We're going to go to the Blizzard Art Bar option and disable it. I don't particularly like that art. That gives you...

Now, enable bar 2 if you want. I like to have bars 1-4 enabled, but it does depend on how many bars you want.

Then type in /align in chat. That'll put a grid on your screen so you can line stuff up. Then you want to uncheck the Lock box in the bartender window, then close the window. Don't worry, you can get it back any time by using /bt, and this way we have space to move bars around. Move the bars where you want. I go for bars 1 and 2 centered at the bottom of my screen, but that's me.

Now, not only does bartender let you move bars where you want, you can also change the scale of a bar (I shrink my bag bar and micro menu, since I don't need them as big as the default has them), change the number of rows (allowing you to make an action rectangle instead of a bar), and even change the number of buttons per bar.  You can also do cool things like having bars faded out.

Once you're done moving things around, lock the bars. I ended up with...

That's bars 1 and 2 in the middle, and 3 and 4 on either side. 3 and 4 have been scaled down a bit and also made into 3by4 rectangles. The micromenu, stances bar, and my bag bar hang out neatly on top.

Now, I know you're thinking..."But I don't want to configure bars for all my alts. That's such a hassle!"  And with Bartender, you don't have to.  All you need to do is...

Log in on the alt.
/bt
Go to Profiles
Select Copy from
And copy from the toon you just set up.  See...

Here I'm copying my previously setup hunter's bars to my warlock. And it looks like....

And there you go, you now have customized action bars and you know how to use bartender 4.  And remember, you can always reset the profile if you hate what you've done. Oh, and set your keybindings if you need to.