WoW Update 7/30/07

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I’ve made revered with the Consortium, Ogri’la and the Sha’tari Skyguard, my current reputation projects. Working on the Consortium for the monthly gem bags and because it’s stupid easy, working on the other two because I want my ray mount and the daily quest gold. There are a total of 6 really easy quests that can all be completed in around an hour for 11g 99s each. The extra gold means that I can stock to the teeth with potions and flasks during raids.

Forgot to post: Took Nightbane down for the first time last weekend. It’s a fairly long and healing intensive fight. Other than that, it’s not all that super complex or difficult. I do though, usually end up popping around 3 or 4 Super Mana Potions. Having a paladin AoE tanking the skeletons makes the Air Phase pretty trivial. Picked up a nice shield for my spell damage set (which sits at around 650 spell damage at the moment).

This weekend: The Gods of loot smiled upon us and dropped tanking gear, including the elusive Moroes dodge trinket, breaking the 2 or so month long guild curse. Actually, a good mix of items dropped, including a chant. Picked up the [item]Justicar Faceguard[/item] and the [item]Iron Gauntlets of the Maiden[/item]. Also accidentally master loot nina’d the [item]Boots of Elusion[/item]. Bah…I guess it had to happen at one point or another, I’m the only officer that hasn’t mis-ML’d an epic (though there’s a confirmation check now, I need to pay more attention) :<

Also ran some quests with guildmates, farmed a bit, and had my baby mage twink ran through Gnomer. If I have a spare chunk of expendable gold, I am so going to buy a [item]Staff of Jordan[/item] and chant it with either +40 spell damage, +30 int, or if I am really rolling in the dough (highly doubtful): [item]Formula: Enchant Weapon – Soulfrost[/item] (dropped off of Illhoof this weekend). Uber PvP twink!

Other than WoW: Played some more Oblivion and what not. I really want to start running at least a couple of miles on the weekends again, and lifting for at least a half hour 2 or 3 times a week (that shouldn’t impact my schedule much at all). Since starting a regular job, I have fallen out of a regular gym routine.

Oblivion: Custom Class

I have a Weekly WoW post stored on a text file somewhere that I will post Thursday or Friday. Thought that it would be nice for once to highlight one of the non WoW games that I enjoy playing. Yeah yeah yeah, I picked up Oblivion again and rolled a new character.

I love RPGs of all styles, but the problem is that I just don't have the time to sit and play them straight through to the end anymore without getting distracted or busy with one thing or another. Oblivion is great because it is based off of a quest system, not too incredibly different than WoW (sort of). This means that I can set it down for a month or two, pick it up, and not lose my place since it's not super linear.

The leveling system though feels counter-intuitive because it is very easy to screw your character to the point where the game is unbeatable. This is the way it works: There are a total of 21 skills in the game (blade, stealth, illusion, etc). Upon class creation, you choose 7 major skills, the rest are minor. If any any time you raise any combination of your major skills by 10 points, you level up.

The problem is that the enemies scale with your level. If you were to say, level your character a lot exclusively using non-combative skills (alchemy, security, etc), all enemies that you face will be at your level, but you will have the combat skills of a lower player.

Spellblade Assassin
I'm going to play this class as a stealth character designed around blade assassination and destruction magic kiting (for non-stealth encounters). You can either stealth via leveling illusion spells or through good ol' fashioned sneaking. I left it open for either because I myself haven't decided yet.

The skill choices are strange because I selected them around the philosophy of 100% leveling control. The major skills listed are all ones that are controllable and I will not be forced to use too often.

  • Sign: Thief
  • Specialization: Stealth
  • Attributes: Speed, Intelligence
  • Major Skills: Alchemy (int), Restoration (willpower), Marksman (agi), Acrobatics (speed), Block (endurance), Blunt (str), Speechcraft (personality)
  • Race: Male Dark Elf is ideal since it boosts all necessary stats. I will though, probably stick with Imperial for aesthetic reasons 😛

If you want, Atronach or Mage are both viable sign alternatives. Atronach though is expensive since you will be chugging down pots to make up for the 0 regen disability. It also might not be all that wise since I chose alchemy as a major skill. Mage is fairly safe, magicka bonus and no diability. Thief in my opinion is a good general stealth sign…the luck bonus is nice too.

I thought that I would try playing something different for once, rather than rolling yet another paladin. I actually love games that facilitate stealth based FPS/3rd person play (Thief is a favorite series of mine). But what can I say: I like hybrid classes.

Paladin Macros

There are many macros similar to these that do much much more, but these cater to my individual tastes and needs. If you want additional information, the macro section on WoWWiki has a huge honking list. Also, the World of Warcraft UI/macro forums is a decent resouce. There should be a long ass sticky detailing basic macro creation, It’s a good read.

Raid Shouting

Works in parties and raids; Only promoted/party leaders are able to use the raid warnings. %n will be replaced with whatever or whoever you have targetted
/rw Attack my target: %n!

Inspect
Inspects people 😛
/inspect

Weapon Swap
I’ve had this one since the beginning of time, it’s one of the only complicated macros in my list that didn’t break with 2.0. An bag spot specific weapon swap macro. Weapons to swap must be kept in upper-left corner of your leftmost bag. It will swap 2h <-> 1h + offhand as well.
/script PickupInventoryItem(17);if(CursorHasItem()) then PickupContainerItem(4,2);PickupContainerItem(4,1); PickupInventoryItem(16);else PickupContainerItem(4,1);PickupInventoryItem(16); PickupContainerItem(4,2);PickupInventoryItem(17);end

Toggle Mount
Press once to mount, press again to unmount (the warlock and the paladin specific mounts are considered spells). If I can’t use my flying mount, my Charger will be summoned. If I am on my huntard, his battle charger will be summoned.
/use [nomounted, nocombat] Swift Blue Gryphon
/use [nomounted, nocombat] Stormpike Battle Charger
/cast Summon Charger
/dismount

Random Mount
Similar to the macro above, but will randomly select a mount.
/userandom [nomounted,nocombat] MountName1, MountName2

Cast BoS on a specific player
If for some reason you want to cast a specific spell on a specific player. Example use: I have a guild member who needs BoS during boss fights. I can’t give him a greater blessing because it will overrride GBoK on other people of that class, so I made a macro for my convenience.
/cast [target=PlayerName] Blessing of Salvation

Righteous Defense Target’s Target
Essential macro! Allows Righteous Defense to function like a normal taunt. If an ally is targetted, RD will be cast on them. If a hostile is targetted, it casts RD on the mob’s target.
/cast [target=target,help] Righteous Defense; [target=targettarget,help] Righteous Defense

SoR Spam
Allows you to keyspam SoR/JoR without repeatedly recasting SoR. If you have a seal active, it will judge it and will only allow you to recast SoR after 30 seconds.
/castsequence reset=30/combat Seal of Righteousness, Judgement

SoV Spam
Same as above, buy for SoV
/castsequence reset=30/combat Seal of Vengeance, Judgement

BoP Target’s Target
BoP’s yourself or your target’s target if a hostile is focused.
/cast [target=target,help] Blessing of Protection; [target=targettarget,help] Blessing of Protection

Divine Favor/Holy Light
Divine Favor isn’t affected by the global cooldown. Casts DF then HL for a (use to be free) crit heal.
/cast Divine Favor
/script SpellStopCasting();
/cast Holy Light(Rank 8)
/script SpellTargetUnit(“Player”);

Keiya’s UI

Keiui

I browsed through many of the compilations at various UI sites but couldn’t find a good clean UI designed for widescreen monitors that suited my tastes (I’m unreasonably picky about certain things). So, I made my own and tinkering with it has been the object of my obsession for the past 2 days. I was going to jump on the, “100% Ace2” bandwagon, but ultimately I only really cared if a mod worked and suited my needs, rather than the piece of code it was based on/memory usage.

Other than relocating the targeting frames to the bottom of the screen, most of the layout isn’t all that different from the Blizzard default. Mostly, I just wanted to shrink the buttons down so that I could fit the chat and combat logs on either side. I liked the 2-column action bar layout, so I kept it that way and added a few extra rows of buttons. The logs are relatively tall, because I chat a lot and like them that way.

The stance bars are the circular buttons located on the top-left side of the action bar chunk; The pet bars are located directly above> Also added an additional set of unbound circular buttons docked to the top-right side of the action bars chunk. This is where I keep my potions, consumables, flasks, bandages, etc.

A lot of people like extremely simplistic targeting frames, but I don’t. The class icons, percentages, and numeric shit is useful for my healing purposes. Switched over from CTRaid to oRA2 + Perfect raid (sorted by group along the left side of the screen in one column, don’t have a good raid screenshot at the moment). The party frames are hidden and replaced with the PerfectRaid frames when in a raid group.

I tried both ag_UnitFrames and Pitbull but didn’t like either, so I stuck with Perl Classic. I had Elk’s BuffBar in the other screenshot, but disliked it (too big, among other things) and reverted back to the Blizzard default. It’s all fun and games until patch day arrives.

WoW Update 7/16/07

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So Karazhan is almost on full clear; Just Nightbane is left, who we took down to 20% on Saturday, our first night of real attempts (we poked him on Monday after Prince for good measure). I’m surprised, it’s not nearly as complicated of a fight as I had previously thought (it reminds me of Onyxia a little bit, that’s probably why). It is though, healing intensive…I need to make sure to come stocked with mana potions so I don’t have to mooch off of people mid-raid.

I won the [item]King’s Defender[/item] from The Chess Event this weekend (chanted it with +40 spell damage). In theory this means that I can stop pining about the Sun Eater (and start pining about something different, like a certain trinket from a certain boss). HP broke 12k unbuffed, but I still feel that’s rather low for my gear level. I need to make a gear wish list.

Oh, and I guess the main topic of this weekly post: I finally updated and changed my UI yesterday (designed for 1680×1050, screenshots are shrunk down). The main idea was to condense it so that not so much space is wasted. I like the original default “2 columns of 12-button” layout, but the decorative frames on either side of the main bar is a waste of space. The only big difference is that the targetting frames are now on the bottom in the middle, which feels sort of awkward.

Unfortunately I don’t have a screenshot of the raid UI because I haven’t fully tested it. It’s actually not all that different because I stuck with CT Raid instead of moving to oRA2 and sRaidbars. It’s an old standby, but it works and there really wasn’t any reason why I felt the urge to change it. Plus, it’s already configured perfectly. I was originally going to swap everything over to Ace2 mods but eh, RAM usage isn’t really a problem.

Edit: Might give PerfectRaid a go tonight.

Gavel of Unearthed Secrets

I feel a bit silly: I have had access to [item]Gavel of Unearthed Secrets[/item] for quite some time but have ignored it. It's the Lower City exalted spell damage mace. Recall that Seal of Vengeance favors weapon speeds that approach 3.0; since SoV procs 20 times a minute, a 3.0 speed weapon would guarantee a proc each hit. 2.7 is damn close.

Though a 2.7 speed weapon procs JoW/JoL less, it will proc SoV nearly every single time. SoV is very very streaky with my 1.8 speed sword, which has a fail rate of about 30%. In fact, the DoT drops off of the mob quite frequently…it's a problem. A 2.7 speed sword has a fail rate of about 10%. It's worth some testing.

Also, since the AQ enchants are going to be accessible next content patch, I am wondering whether it would be better to put 2% threat on my gloves over 20 spell damage. Need to work the math out when I have time. Mmm threat.

Edit: I didn't notice all that huge of an increase in my TPS, considering I chanted it with +40 spell damage (never bothered doing that on my other weapons, the pattern dropped for me last week…I am cheap and hate outsourcing chants). BUT it was Friday and I was tired. I should test SoV more.

Oh, and I have a new tanking weapon which will be mentioned in the next "Weekly Update." I am feeling posty lately, might even make an entry over the weekend for once.

Ray’s G15 Mod: HowTo

I mentioned this topic in a previous post: Ray's Mod is one of the best G15 Winamp applets out there and as far as I know, it's the only one that will flash the LED's in beat with the music. My installation of Winamp has fallen into severe disuse since the great Coup d'iTunes well over a year ago. I've actually loaded it a few times soley for the purpose of turning off the lights to watch the LED's flash (hush, I am easily amused :P).

I had trouble finding a download link to the mod, it doesn't seem to be hosted at many places. So here's a working link from a German G15 mod forum. The flashing LED thing is somewhat of an easter egg because it's a hidden option. Here is what you need to do in order to enable it.

  1. Go into the Ray's Mod option menu, it should be the 4th G15 media button.
  2. Hold down both CTRL keys without letting go, while scrolling to the bottom.
  3. There should be 2 additional options on the very bottom of the options list. Enable them with the play/pause key, then let go of the CTRL keys.

Load some tunes and enjoy!

2.2 PTR Patch Musings

Wow, the 2.2 PTRs are up! I honestly was't expecting the next patch to roll around until after BlizzCon, it's nice to see that I was wrong. The current patch notes though, are lacking anything substantial, so I am assuming that this is a very early build. According to blue posts, "voice chat is undergoing some additional polish."

The paladin blessing durations have been increased: Normal blessings to 10 minutes and greater blessigns to 30 minutes. I am looking forward to having my regeant costs being cut down and not having to rebuff as manically. I never realyl understood why they weren't 30 minutes to begin with. I know that the paladin blessings were designed to be highly situational, but like…how often do you change the greater blessings? lol.

I won't complain, I distinctly remember having to literally reapply the 5-minute blessings in 40 people constantly for 6 hours in the Molten core days (approximately every other pull). Or better yet: reapplying the blessings before a boss pull, only to have someone go AFK or delay the pull in such a way where we would have to buff all 40 people all over again. /rant

What's up with the nerfs, a 1-minute cooldown on Blessing of Sacrifice is harsh, no? Was this change PvP or Karazhan inspired? If the former is true, BoS is an easily dispellable buff, not sure why it's getting the nerf bad this hard…especially when it will affect PvE situations. Perhaps a blue post will enlighten us. Wouldn't it be more appropriate to shrink the duration down to 10 to 15 seconds or something?

The SoV buffs are interesting. The 25% duration increase is nice, though I am not convinced that it's going to make keeping SoV up that much easier, since it's not as if they up'd the PPM (which is 20 if I recall correctly). I am very very interested in knowing how much instant damage SoV does now on mobs already stacked with 5 applications, the spell damage coefficient, frequency, etc. I don't think that anyone is copied over yet though so I will have to wait.

Not paladin related, but I am an enchanter so this is worth noting: All of the AQ enchanting recipes are being added as BC faction rewards (mats are being adjusted). This is great because it was silly having some of the best enchants in the game exclusively from an old world dungeon (and a difficult one at that…doubt anyone is up to farming Twin Emps now-a-days). Additionally, Nexus Crystals will be enchantable into Small Prismatic Shards.

WoW Update 7/10/07

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Let’s see, it was a fairly interesting/busy weekend both in terms of WoW and real-life. I was going to only login for around an hour Monday to check my mail and farm, but raided a little bit instead. We wanted to get another crack at Prince before the Tuesday reset. We’re weekend raiders and thus never do Mondays, this was actually a first.

It’s a good thing that we did! First guild Prince Malchezaar kill last night on our first try of the evening. He was at 1% health, 9 people down with a single hunter up. Hunter solos prince! Nearly every single boss in Karazhan dropped some sort of healing gear this week. I think the actual loot percentage is at around 70% healing gear, maybe more. I swear that can’t be a coincidence lol.

Picked up the Breastplate of the Lightbinder to semi-replace the Earthblood Chestguard. The shaman chest has a lot more stamina though, and almost identical healing stats. Also picked up Formula: Enchant Weapon – Major Spellpower last night while questing in Blade’s Edge Mountains. It was off of the second kill too, I was expecting to have to farm for days to get that pattern.

I swear that I am just about to give up on The Sun Eater and settle for the King’s defender, whenever it drops from the Chess Event. The minute that I get and bother chanting another weapon, I bet it will drop. It taunts me…

One of my favorite WoW podcasts, World of Warcast just finished a two part segment on guild management that I thought was well done. It’s definitely worth a listen, especially to those considering starting a casual and/or raiding guild.

On a similar note, I have a fair bit of guild experience myself, having been the guild peon who didn’t know where the entrance to the Molten Core was (in my glorious shitty greens), an inherited guild master (oh God long drama story), a founding guild master, disbander of a guild, witness to guild merger, alliances, implosion(s), casual to raiding transition, etc.

I thought that it might be interesting to share some guild/raid management tips as well as some of the things that I have learned along the way as guild master, since it doesn’t seem to be discussed a whole lot (either that, or I don’t read around enough).

It’s actually a topic that I have been meaning to write about for a month or so, just haven’t gotten around to doing it yet, in between all of the other nonsense that I type. It’s such a large topic, especially in regards to raiding…

Keiya’s WoWSpace

DeskFront

I like reading the “Reader WoWspace of the Week” articles over on WoWInsider. It’s interesting seeing where other people play, in addition to giving me purchasing ideas (naughty naughty, I spend enough on “stupid computer crap” and “personal ergonomic comfort.”) Figured I would do my own:

  • Desk: Beech Veneer Ikea Galant table. My old deks was a large awkward computer cart. I like this one because it’s plain, sturdy, and spacious. I am considering going back over to Ikea and getting the cable organizer that attaches to the underside of the desk, so that I can run the cables through it and hide them a little more.
  • Chair: It was on sale at Office Depot for around $99. It’s cushy and it’s leather.
  • Monitors: 19″ Samsung SyncMaster 914v and 22″ widescreen Samsung SyncMaster 225BW. Both were Black Friday sales, for 2005 and 2006.
  • Speakers: Cheap Creative 5.1 speakers from Best Buy. One day, I’ll replace them with a nicer set of PC surround sound speakers, but these are sufficient for the time being.
  • Nostromo n52 Speedpad: I love this thing, it’s so handy. I have just about every single ability and macro that I could ever want to use bound to the gamepad. It does though, take quite a bit of time to get used to. I don’t think I can play without it now.
  • Logitech G15 Keyboard: Newest toy, posted an article about it lately. My other keyboard drowned in a tragic coffee incident.
  • Razer Diamondback Mouse: It’s a low profile mouse with on-the-fly sensitivity adjustment options. Pretty, glows blue, very responsive.
  • Burning Crusade Collector’s Edition Mousepad on top of an IcMat (bought it from CompUSA and hated it…the noisy scraping noise eventually drove me nuts). The MC mousepad is a bit small though…

Computer:
DeskComputersBuilt it during early August right when the socket 939 chips and boards dropped significantly in price. Had originally purchased a Radeon x1800XT, but it was a bad. Returned it to Newegg and bought a cheaper NVidia card in its stead. Figured that I would eventually replace it with a DX10 card.

  • Case: Antec p180, It’s the mini-fridge case, but it’s large, quiet (sides are insulated), and designed well. It’s also made of steel…and kind of heavy lol.
  • CPU: AMD 64 X2 4600+, CPU Cooler: ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 64 Pro
  • Motherbard: Abit KN8 SLI
  • RAM: 2GB Corsair ValueSelect 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400
  • Graphics Card: BFG Geforce 7600 GT OC with a Zalman VF-900
  • PSU: OCZ Powerstream 520w.
  • Harddrives: HDD 1: 400g SATA Seagate Barracuda, HDD 2: 250g SATA Western Digital Caviar (video and bittorrent drive), HDD 3: 250g IDE Maxtor (junk drive)
  • That’s a 5.25″ in floppy drive installed, in it’s beautiful faded beige glory.
  • Below it is the Creative X-Fi front audio panel with my Ventrillo mic plugged in (I know I know, will chat more with it one day I swear). Probably wasn’t worth an extra $100 just for the remote and panel, but I <3 buttons.
  • Case = dusty. I haven’t cleaned out the front intake filters in several months. Luckily though, the inside of my case stays relatively clean. The filters seem to catch most of the dust.
  • Top of the case: Old ass TI-85 graphing calculator sitting on top of a scientific calculator , and an external HDD enclosure.
  • To the right is my old computer, which actually isn’t functional at the moment because I don’t know where my C drive is. When turned on, the entire case hums and emits a horrid blue glow. It’s irritating.

 

Other Stuff:
DesklolI just cleaned my desk, otherwise there would be food and an assortment of paper work everywhere.

  • My rooster mug <3.
  • 30g iPod video. It’s how I keep sane during the workday.
  • PS2 and Gamecube with Jabba the Hutt perched on top.
  • BC collector’s edition.
  • Miscellaneous games, DVDs, and literature. Typically the games, books, and DVDs that I am currently playing, reading, and watching.
  • X-Fi and TV remote. I usually store these on the floor on the other side of the room 😛
  • $20 tensor lamp from Costco with a loose switch. Been broken for 2-years, keep meaning to fix it.
  • Junk under the lamp: Small pile of old harddrives and a plush frog pencil holder. Both are sitting on 2 old computers, stacked on top of each other to form a table.
  • Ugly black file box under the table is what I use as a foot rest.
  • Right above my mouse is a white dish like thing with a clear blue d20 in it. It’s actually an incense holder that I use as a spoon rest. When the weather is not hot, I love sipping hot cocoa in the evenings.
  • The d20 makes important decisions for me.