Monday, April 27, 2009

Noblegarden

I will do this stupid chocolate collecting holiday. And I will not even eat any of the gods-be-dammed chocolates. At least, not until I have gotten Tome of Polymorph: Rabbit. I will push over small children who are between me and chocolate. I will ninja mercilessly from the annoying people camping egg spawn points. All for yet another polymorph variation.

And Mages don't even need to sheep in dungeons or raids anymore...

Saturday, April 25, 2009

Mornara's talents and glyphs

I tossed a quick spec together for Mornara. Mostly I did this for the glyphs, so any suggestions on spec and glyph would be halpful.
Unholy

Oh, my plan with Mornara is to tank with unholy. Unholy Blight just makes her all, well not warm and fuzzy because she is a Death Knight and therefore frozen and heartless. But it does give her happy feelings to see things dying just because they are near her. :D

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Kuan macro follow up

Just from playing with heroic dummies, having the macro on Lava Burst is worth 300 dps and between that an watching Event Horizon Kuan easily broke 3000 dps, self-buffed.

I then took him into Heroic Drak'Theron and did 1800 dps over all. My eyes were all over the screen and Event Horizon was not where they need to be for a real fight. bleh. Now I'm starting to experiment with a layout that puts Event Horizon up next to player and target unit frames, now.

Resto-wise, Kuan and Viljo went into Icecrown to kill some of those lvl 81 Elite giants partrolling on the parapets in the southwest part of the zone. I got very confused by every thing proc'ing! I'm not used to the healy stuff proc'ing on Kuan. Anyhow it was a bad test as Clara was also testing a "pvp" spec with high stam and so really the giant didn't hurt Viljo much at all. TopScore went nuts with the heal values though. Kuan has a pretty decent set of healy gear - it's not a lot of Tier pieces but he needs 7.5+ to upgrade it, he's over 2000 heals, self-buffed.

Saturday, April 18, 2009

OMG troll shaman macros

So shaman talents are all about the 3 minute cooldown of the "buff this tree". Using these effectively is augmentedcomplicated by playing a Troll with the Berserking racial, which is right on up there with "combat regen" as the best racial in the original game.

Elemental.
Blizzard has chosen, again, to rework Elemental Mastery. Pre 3.1, it gave a 30-second or so buff to Critical Spell chance with a 3 minute cooldown. As such I macro'd it along with Berserking (which is also a 3-minute cooldown) in to Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning:
#showtooltip Lightning Bolt
/script UIErrorsFrame:UnregisterEvent("UI_ERROR_MESSAGE");
/cast Elemental Mastery
/cast Berserking
/script UIErrorsFrame:RegisterEvent("UI_ERROR_MESSAGE");
/cast Lightning Bolt

But now in 3.1, Ele Mastery has been changed to a pure Elemental perversion of Nature's Swiftness (NS), a spell for restoration Druids and Shaman to insta-cast the next Nature spell. The new Ele Mastery does that for Shaman damage spells, with a 15-second crit buff. So first of all, it needs to go in front of Lava Burst. Or does it? Back to that in a minute.

Just because the spell is now insta-cast doesn't mean it's off the 1.5 second GCD. And Berserking is only a 10-second haste buff. I for one am really not feeling like sitting here watching the spell button spinners count down the GCD for 15% of the time Berserking is up. So that macro up there, which is guaranteed to waste 15% of the Berserking buff, has got to go.

So. Thinking about it, one way to make sure I'm not doing that, is to use a cast sequence:
#showtooltip Lightning Bolt
/script UIErrorsFrame:UnregisterEvent("UI_ERROR_MESSAGE");
/castsequence Elemental Mastery, Berserking
/script UIErrorsFrame:RegisterEvent("UI_ERROR_MESSAGE");
/cast Lightning Bolt

Even if I do this with multiple macros, like Lava Burst and Lightning Bolt, this is what will happen (not counting any haste, lag, or spell travel time):
Ele Mastery (0) -> LvB (0) -> LB (2.0) -> Berserk (2.0) -> LB (4.0) -> LB (6.0) -> LvB
(ok, lag will mean I can't get more than 3 LBs in there although IN theory more can fit.)

Let's go back to the question of adding the Ele Mastery in front of Lava Burst. What will this do? It will mean the damage is dealt at the beginning of the GCD for the spell, instead of at the end, which will make a difference once every 3 minutes under two possible conditions:
  • Flame Shock almost expiring
  • boss is about to die in 2 seconds and I want an extra 10K damage in my WWS!!!
Other than that, it means I've possibly used 10% of the crit chance buff time (the GCD, again) casting a spell that's going to crit anyhow. ("Possibly?" well during the 15 seconds of the Ele Mastery buff there will be one Lava Burst and maybe two. If Ele Master procs off a Lava Burst macro, I will always have two.) OTOH if all the macros don't have a castsequence I could get into some sort of mess.

Hmm, "some sort of mess" isn't very quantitative. My thought is that such a "mess" is possible anyhow since they are cast sequences across multiple macros. Anyhow here they are, and I can either mull over whether to use the Lava Burst macro, or try it against a target dummy, or get four tolerant friends to hit some dungeons with me. Kuan has been mostly hanging out in the target dummy area all week.
#showtooltip Lava Burst
/stopmacro [nocombat,noharm]
/script UIErrorsFrame:UnregisterEvent("UI_ERROR_MESSAGE");
/castsequence reset=15 Elemental Mastery, Berserking
/script UIErrorsFrame:RegisterEvent("UI_ERROR_MESSAGE");
/cast Lava Burst

#showtooltip Lightning Bolt
/stopmacro [nocombat,noharm]
/script UIErrorsFrame:UnregisterEvent("UI_ERROR_MESSAGE");
/castsequence reset=15 Elemental Mastery, Berserking
/script UIErrorsFrame:RegisterEvent("UI_ERROR_MESSAGE");
/cast Lightning Bolt

#showtooltip Chain Lightning
/stopmacro [nocombat,noharm]
/castsequence reset=15 Elemental Mastery, Berserking
/castsequence reset=4 Chain Lightning, Lightning Bolt, Lightning Bolt

I am sad that I lose nuking the error message spam off this last one. But it's too long otherwise, and getting this to do the right thing is more important than nuking all the red spam I don't read until I'm trying to figure out why the spells stopped coming and glance at it to see a stun/silence/oom message.

Restoration.
Since I haven't played with a lot of points in the Restoration tree in many many months, and never enough to Main Heal Heroics at level, I needed to evaluate everything for the macros. Actually I went resto first, when messing with them.

The macros follow a lot of this same reasoning above, but here in healer-land the considerations are slightly different, since the effects of Ele Mastery from a Resto perspective are split between NS and Tidal Force (TF). However TF is a 20 second buff, and I want it to proc whenever it can. The problem to solve is that I still don't want Berserking wasted, waiting for an NS 1.5 second GCD.

Anyhow here they are.
#showtooltip Healing Wave
/stopmacro [nocombat]
/script UIErrorsFrame:UnregisterEvent("UI_ERROR_MESSAGE");
/cast Tidal Force
/castsequence Nature's Swiftness, Berserking
/script UIErrorsFrame:RegisterEvent("UI_ERROR_MESSAGE");
/cast Healing Wave

#showtooltip Chain Heal
/stopmacro [nocombat]
/script UIErrorsFrame:UnregisterEvent("UI_ERROR_MESSAGE");
/cast Tidal Force
/castsequence Nature's Swiftness, Berserking
/script UIErrorsFrame:RegisterEvent("UI_ERROR_MESSAGE");
/cast Chain Heal

#showtooltip Lesser Healing Wave
/stopmacro [nocombat]
/script UIErrorsFrame:UnregisterEvent("UI_ERROR_MESSAGE");
/cast Tidal Force
/script UIErrorsFrame:RegisterEvent("UI_ERROR_MESSAGE");
/cast Lesser Healing Wave

I'll be popping these into Kuan's macros when I log in next, and moving buttons around. These will only be testable by running instances, as there isn't much damage the training dummies do back.

try try again...

Kuan Resto

and as usual
Eeyan combat maces

Kuan Resto

awww screw it. I'll put the undebatable points in there and sleep on the rest

Friday, April 17, 2009

Someone loves Dwarves...

And it's Tanthalas:

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

dual spec talents

(since I'm still working, I thought I'd play with this stuff)


Kuan ele
Kuan resto

Ikoli disc
Ikoli shadow

[Edits]
Tylara prot

Monday, April 13, 2009

Also this weekend Mornara and Ikoli did a few instances. It was good experience for both of us to run Under Bog and Slave Pens. It was especially good experience as a clearly crazed mage was determined to pull the aggro. Or if he couldn't do that he was going to knock everyone back so I couldn't effectively get aggro. Yes, Mornara has the glyph for more range on pestilence but my target still has to be in my range.

Anyway crazed aggro hungry mages aside it was pretty good run all told. Ikoli leveled to 64 and got a couple of upgrades. Mornara got some much needed experience.

Here is a screenshot from earlier. Sadly Mornara has swapped out a bunch of her gear and doesn't look nearly so spiffy. :( Much more goofy in the Outland style.

Flying Carpet!!

Yesterday Evallen was kind enough to commission a frostweave bag from Teltanara. This pushed Telt to 425 skill in Tailoring. Then Telt could learn the recipe for Magnificent Flying Carpet. However, while I'd been proactive in assembling the mats needed for the carpet I didn't yet have enough cloth for all the imbued frostweave. But again Evallen to the rescue!!

Thursday, April 9, 2009

So far, so good.

I took some relaxing time off work! Among my other activities was quite a bit of Wow.

Eeyan and Teltanara are now 77! They can fly in Northrend! And, they can use the blue crafted Saronite maces Eeyan can make. So upon hitting 77, Eeyan spent some quality time in Sholazar mining teh Saronite (and getting the Explore achievement). Now they are ready to hit Storm Peaks and embark on the life of Tedium farming rep for big fat blue Santa Claus.

Meanwhile Ikoli really needs to be 65 to go much further with the Inscription. Grand master requires level 65! She's 63 right now so I think we will be focussing on that as I expect Glyphs to sell pretty well in the window when the 3.1 patch drops. So she needs to Get On It.

Kuanchichi, meanwhile, finally has Argent Champion. He has now put all faction tabards aside so he can farm Horde Expedition rep. It's kind of sad actually that the only reason to go into the heroics at all right now is rep. The gear, the badges, the gear from the badges, enh.

Friday, April 3, 2009

Career-driven leveling plans

After some talk, we pulled Eeyan and Telt into Twisted Minds. Since then they have suddenly had a burst of activity, since we are no longer worried about missing raid calls, and are now well into level 76!!!

After clearing Grizzly Hills and careful examination of professions, we took them to Sholazar Basin for questing and Mining. Eeyan is now 436 Mining or so, and is starting to get the Saronite he needs to skill up his Blacksmithing. But that won't last.

When I was leveling Eeyan to 70, I realized that if there is one thing worse feeling than a reputation grind, it was a pure reputation grind, and I spent a lot of his time mid-60s farming Firewing Signets. So, what we will do once they hit 77 is pick up Cold Weather Flying and head to Storm Peaks to get big fat blue santa claus rep going while all those quests can still provide XP. They'll stay parked there for the duration (until Exalted, or 80) while we work on Mornara and Ikoli. Hopefully there will be mining, or at least Eeyan but if not that's OK; Telt is behind on Tailoring and the SoH dailies and runups will definitely drop some cloth.

Why not Tylara and Kairon? Well that's also profession-driven: Ikoli is now 360+ Inscription, but needs to be level 65 to get Grand Master. She's 62, and has Silithus + 3 Outland zones available for questing, we just need to take some time to get that done. Meanwhile Tylara is still 281 or so Blacksmithing, and needs a metric ton of Thorium for that, so stays parked in Silithus til that is done.

Last but not least, professions aren't actually what the game is all about, and I need to remember how to heal with a priest, and Clara needs to learn to tank, and for that we need to play these guys more than a half-hour here and there.