Friday, May 29, 2009

Addons. Can't live without them, probably doomed next patch

So I am a huge addon girl. I love them. And so I figured I should talk about a few that I'm not sure I want to ever play without. I'm trying to avoid the big ones (dbm, cartographer, recount, omen, those) in favor of ones that you might not have heard of.

1. Pawn. Since I am in a guild that wants loot decisions NOW NOW NOW, an addon that allows me to very quickly compare gear is great. It's also nice for leveling all those alts, since I tend to forget what stats I should like. That's what Pawn does. You rate your stats (or find a premade scale for your class or use the hunter dps spreadsheet to generate one) and it gives the gear a number value in the tooltip. Once you have it set up, it's great.
Pawn on Curse
The official Pawn forums, where you can find premade scales, among other useful things

2. ViperNotify. All this little addon does is ding (and put a message on your screen) when you're in Viper and full on mana. That's it. Obviously useful only for hunters, but it's a great reminder so that you don't go through 3 shot rotations on Patchwerk before you start to wonder why your dps is abysmal. And nope, I never did that. You can't prove anything. It was all Gariath's fault. Really. And if you want one that automatically changes aspects for you, Gariath recommends AspectChange. Never used it, but he likes it.
ViperNotify on Curse

3. Autotrack. This addon switches your tracking to whatever you currently have targeted so you get the bonus dps from Improved Tracking. Personally, I'm a little too used to always having Track Herbs on (ooh, an herb), so this addon is a nice one for me. Only problem is that it will switch you even if you kill something while farming/mining, so just remember that. Personally, I'm contemplating a Power Auras Classic reminder (if I can figure out how to make one).
Autotrack on Curse

4. Doublewide. This makes the quest window, gasp, doublewide. I cannot remember how I ever lived without it. Seriously. Blizz, please put this in as an option, PLEASE!
Doublewide on Wowinterface. Sadly, no curse for this one, but it's well worth it

5. Lightheaded. This addon pulls the comments from wowhead and displays them next to the quest in the quest window. Again, love this addon. Saves me having to go look. Probably not the best addon if you're worried about your lag, though.
Again, no curse. Wowinterface only

I run with way more addons then that, but I think these are nice ones that don't change things drastically. They're simple and require no setup except for Pawn.

If you're interested in UI addons, I plan to do those next. I'm thinking of calling it... UI for the raider, or um, does anyone remember what the default ui looks like? I probably don't, come to think of it. I'm so doomed next patch/expansion. Oh well.

(Gariath is a fellow guildie and RL friend.)

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

And Life goes on....

Not really much to say lately. Due to life, I haven't gotten to go on many raids, or log in at all, really.

My guild did down Sarth last week, and no one died to the fire walls. No one! With only 2 healers, and the first time many had even seen him, I think that's pretty amazing. Especially since the tank was the only person who got the achievement for avoiding the fire walls.

Stuff to talk about....
Fishing in Wintergrasp. I've gotten the Victory thing twice while just fishing for Terrorfish. The tricks, as I have learned them are....
1. Track humanoids. It's your friend even if you don't have improved tracking. If you have improved tracking, it's really really your friend. Now if I could just remember to use it in fights...
2. Safety in numbers. Stick close to the FP, there's generally a bunch of people fishing there.
3. Get on the ice floes/burgs/bits. Sure, it doesn't stop a mage from making your day miserable, but it will make the pallies think twice and then hopefully go attack an easier target. Like all the people fishing on the shore.
4. Protect your fellow fishers. It makes them more likely to help you, and it's just generally a nice thing to do. Plus, once the horde are done with them, they're probably going to come for you.
5. Pimp your fishing pole. I'm considering enchanting my Walrus people one. If you do get into PVP, you want every advantage you can get.

And should you wish to avoid all of the above, there is a pool above the Alliance FP. I'm not sure how to get there but I have seen people fishing there. My guess would be that they fly in and jump off/parachute off.

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Another day, another patch...

Not much to note in the patch notes this time around. But I did come across something interesting in the Wow Forums...which I am going to rant about.
The developers believe hunter dps is too low, so today we are implementing a change to ranged weapon damage to improve dps across the board.

Bows, crossbows and guns of item level 226 or higher (which means weapons from Kel'Thuzad, Ulduar and the Furious Gladiator pieces) will do around 30 more dps. This should translate to a hunter damage increase of a few percent.

We don't think this will be quite sufficient in boosting hunter dps to where we think it needs to be and we have another buff that we plan to get in sometime over the next couple of weeks. We'll announce that change when it gets closer. (We have some plans for other classes as well, but we ask that you please keep this thread on the topic of hunters and the ranged weapon changes.)

As hunters may recall, we had an ambitious plan to change the way ammo worked for 3.1 that ended up being overly ambitious, causing us to scale back. However as part of that change, we stopped itemizing bullets and arrows. Since hunters could not upgrade from the ammo available at the launch of Lich King, their damage had started and would continue to fall behind as other classes upgraded their gear. This change basically incorporates the ammo damage into the weapons -- as you get better ranged weapons, it's as if you got better ammo to go along with them. This is likely to be a design we continue for the next few tiers of content until we have the opportunity to overhaul ammo completely.


Well, I am S.O.L.. I may have Accursed Bow of the Elite, but as a lvl 200 item, no damage boost for me. And I am unlikely to see 25 man Naxx or 10 man Uldaur any time soon. But what I really want to know is...
What percentage of hunters have these level weapons and thus will get a damage boost? I'd be willing to bet that the vast majority don't, and won't.
I am all for harder raids getting shinier things, and 25 man gear being better than 10 man is okay, and I understand and respect Blizzard's reasons for doing that. But Blizz, you shafted the dedicated 10 man raiders once already with the tokens in Ulduar (25 man Ulduar drops tokens equivalent to the gear that drops and 10 man drops tokens equivalent to Naxx 25 gear which is half a tier lower), so why are you attempting to raise the damage of an entire class by upping the damage on certain high-end gear (and not including any 10 man Naxx gear?)

And then there's the mind-bogglingness of trying to raise the damage of an entire class this way. To give an example, let's say I want to raise SAT scores in a high-school. Do I a) tutor only the kids in honor courses, or b) tutor everyone? Blizzard appears to have gone with a, and I have no idea what they were thinking. Increased dps across the board? WTF? Increased DPS for the dedicated raiders who have enough peeps to run 25 mans, and for the hardcore PVPers does not equal increased dps for all hunters.

I'm just going to be happy that they have realized that this probably (certainly) won't get hunters to where they need to be.

So now that I've ranted (and yes after rereading I did notice that this is meant to be a substitute for the ammo removal but I am still annoyed), I have other stuff to talk about.

I am now in a progression raiding guild (I didn't change guilds, my guild shifted a bit). Granted, we're a bit behind, but yay for progression. I saw Sarth for the first time last week (stupid firewalls) and will be seeing Maly (for the first time ever) and Sarth again this week, plus the normal 10 man Naxx. There's even talk of 25 man Naxx, since our RL doesn't think we can handle 10 man Ulduar in 10 man Naxx gear. I love seeing new content, and getting new shinies, so this is a yay. I just need to find a nice map of Sarth that shows the firewall safe spots (cause I cannot see them to save my life) and um, Sons of Hodir. I've been putting that off because I wanted to finish Dragonblight before I started a new zone, but I need to get the enchants. That's going to be tomorrow's job, I think, attempting to finish DB and hit Storm Peaks.

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Just a few things to say.
1. The heirloom shoulders are great. That 10% xp gain really adds up fast. Eiunn went up 3 levels in 3 hours.
2. The Argent Tournament pets are wonderful. I want them all. Just need to actually remember to run the dailies. On the other hand, the squire's kinda annoying. If I'm fighting for Darn, why don't I get a squire from Darn. I want some NElf kids running around. After all, let's see, you just lost your immortality. Wouldn't you be grabbing for any other kind of psuedoimmortality you could find? Like say, parenthood?
3. Going for Loremaster continues to rake in the big bucks. 1 hour in DB~300 gold. Sweet.

Tonight I see Sarth for the first time. And we're even going to try it with one drake up. This should be exciting!

Sunday, May 10, 2009

Back. Things went well, and I am still recovering. While catching up on my favourite blogs, I noticed this.
A writing contest! Well, two really. So for all of you who've ever wanted to write or twitter a fic, check the rules out and enter I know I will be.

Friday, May 1, 2009

Children's Week

So, a quick children's week update...
The Daily Chores achievement is kinda bugged. You need to have the orphan out for the first daily of the day, and fishing and cooking dailies may not count. But you can get the entire achievement done in just one day. Take orphan out as soon as you log in, run your normal dailies, and you should get all 5. Granted, I ran 9 dailies to get the counter to 5, but it did work in the end. Hopefully that'll work for you guys too.

Personally, I'm mostly in it for the pets, and man, such a hard choice. I want all of them (but I'm leaning towards Egbert and Speedy). And is it me, or did they recycle Peanut (the elekk baby) as the baby mammoth?

Now, I need to go prep for Time Travelers' Ball and the Renn Faire the next day. Must find bodice and corset. Hope you all have a great weekend!

Friday Funnies


THE AMAZING FLYING BUNNY! With wolf companion.


I am so l33t that I can kill a dinosaur with nothing but a bunch of flowers and an egg basket.