mounts, why are they so hard.

Ever since 5.0 came out, I have been trying to mange the mounts properly. In 4.x, what I had done was set up this macro for riding mounts. I mostly wanted Kuan on raptors, with some exceptions (Zulian Tiger, Qiraji Battle tank), and on drakes. To get that in a macro, I just used the order in which they appear in the mount list:

/run if IsMounted() then Dismount() return end local t={5,8,9,16,20,21,31,43,46,47,48,52,52,55,60,61} CallCompanion("MOUNT",t[random(#t)])
/dismount

to save buttons, I wanted flying and Vashj'ir on the same macro:

/run if not IsMounted() then local t={4,13,15,30,37,38,39,42,42,56,61}; local mapid={610, 614, 615}; for z,n in ipairs(mapid) do if (n==GetCurrentMapAreaID() and IsSwimming()) then t={1} end end CallCompanion("MOUNT",t[random(#t)]) end

/dismount

I used the IDs becuase the names popped it way past 255 char limit on macro.  Note the above macros are for Kuan, but only the value of t changes for Eeyan.

However with 5.0, this doesn't work.  Blizzard combined the mounts - shifting the IDs - and moreover, reorders the mounts based on zone, instead of keeping them in a consistent ascii order.  ...I found it pretty distressing to have Kuan tumble off the edge of the top of Orgrimmar, becuase he's really on a Purple Skeletal Warhorse instead of a Rusted Iron Proto-drake.

it turns out there aren't actually, a lot of addons with this kind of functionality: randomly select from a user-selected subset of all mounts based on character!  they are all about auto selecting this and that based on zone and flying and whatnot, which I really just don't need.  I finally found Yay Mounts (creative name, I know), but while it could be keybound, it had no macro - and I've discovered I am seriously used to clicking a button, for mounting - keybindings are for battle, right...

anyhow now Yay Mounts lets you put /click YayMountsButton in a macro, so I'm going to do that.  for ground-only there's a /click YayMountsButton2 - but the '2' button doesn't handle dismounting right, so the macro has to be:


/click [nomounted] YayMountsButton2
/dismount

now I just have to set it up all properly for all my characters.

Post 5.0.4 Thoughts

Patch 5.0.4 has been here since for a week now. I've had time to spec a character or two, update every addon at least twice, and even run a raid.

Mornara's rotation hasn't really changed all that much. I made the happy discovery that using Blood Boil on a single target will refresh that target's diseases, which goes a long way to address the (new for Blood DKs) 60 sec cd on Outbreak. I honestly can't see why you'd ever not take Roiling Blood as a talent. I'm looking forward to getting Soul Reaper, and even have a space saved for it on my bars.

Viljo's new rotation seems pretty nice so far as well. I like having a little more control over the pyro procs and feeling less at the mercy of RNG. I'm not sure I'll like the changes that Alter Time and the last talent bring, but we'll see when I get to level 90.

The raid was mildly successful. Despite addons crapping out all over the place we managed to kill the first 6 heroic bosses before we ran out of time. This task was made a lot more difficult by a bunch of disconnects, and the fact that about half the raid forgot that when they updated DBM they also needed to grab the Cata pack for it. There were general adjustment to new rotations, but it went well for the most part. Not being able to release until a fight is over is actually rather annoying. I can see it driving me batshit when there is that one jackass who doesn't listen when a wipe is called for.

I was amused at all the new achieves and combining of old achieves. It did not surprise me that logging in Morn and V was enough to get me the 100 mount achieve and 100 pet achieve. Combining mounts and pets for your account seems a bit odd, but not terribly game breaking. However, I am not going to substantially alter the mount macros I have for my characters currently. Their mounts reflect their personalities, and it just wouldn't make sense for them to be riding anything else than what they already are.

The once thing I am intensely disappointed about with the pets is that the Dragon Kite is not a fightable pet. I had all these awesome plans about how my dragon kite was going to kick ass whenever we actually get to do pet battles. Those plans are all kaput now :'-(

I did get a chance to try out the new aoe looting. This will make farming old instances slightly more profitable and less time consuming. Which is nice, since Morn still needs rep from a bunch of the BC factions. It'll help with her rampages through IQD and older dungeons.

Oh, I was also disheartened to see that the requirements for the DS meta-achieve changed. You no longer need Spine or Madness of Deathwing. It was a bit sad to log in and see that achieve pop up. I'd been looking forward to getting it when we actually downed those two bosses. Now it feels like we were just handed a consolation prize, even though I know we worked so hard and completely earned the achievements we did get.

old addons

I just found a folder with addons going back to June 2006. I wonder if I should just trash that, throw them in with all the other old addons we hang onto, or just leave it be.

Screenshot or It Didn't Happen

We hopped into a Naxx25 pug tonight even though I'm not supposed to be raiding this week. I figure if work calls/pages me, I can bail on a pug.

Anyhow the raid wanted to do the hard part first and so Patchwerk it was. He dropped [Totem of Hex], yay! That piece of gear was all it took for Kuan to get the Superior achievement. And it drove his DPS up by a lot - he now has +165 on something he casts at least every 2 seconds instead of +110 on something he casts at most every 8.

Not that Kuan needs it anymore. He did roughly 4160dps against Patch.

No really. 4160dps. I credit Event Horizon, which is above the partly list in my UI.



It's unfortunate that the raid did not continue so well. They decided that on Gluth it should be mages kiting, and Kuan putting the Earthbind totem. But Kuan's totem now roots, so it was hard for the mages to gather the Zombie Chow together, and we would wipe. Once they had plate weared with threat talents kiting, all was well.

After that it was several tries per boss, and it dragged on and on and got called after only clearing 3 quarters. Maybe we'll finish it tomorrow.

Fubar

I saw this in the change log.

Tagging as v3.6
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r22 | ckknight | 2009-04-17 16:04:30 +0000 (Fri, 17 Apr 2009) | 1 line
Changed paths:
M /trunk/.pkgmeta
M /trunk/FuBar.toc
D /trunk/LICENSE.txt

Does ckknight really think he can legally un-GPL Fubar?

more on Raid Frames

sRaidFrames did not do what I wanted so I ditched it. I tried xPerl and it does do what I want, and then some.

My test raid to try this out? New Year's Eve AQ40 run with roughly 28 lvl 80s. Since I've never seen the inside of AQ40 before, of course I forgot to take even a single screenshot. I spent a lot of the first part rearranging frames, so I'll leave it to Clara to make a post about our AQ40 run.

So far I like it. The player/target/party frames are very similar to Perl Classic, unsurprisingly.

If I get everything tweaked just right, and I see no reason why I would not, I will have less screenspace for raid frames, party frames, and can ditch both Perl Classic and oRA2, which has made me less than happy since 3.0 dropped.

Of course that means I need to set up Eeyan's raid frames all over again. I have Ikoli and Tylara set up based on Kuan's. I would probably set up Eeyan's and base the other toons on that. Tylara, I'm not sure how hers should be. Does a tank care about sorting raid frames by class? What if the tank is a pally?

Raid Frames

Pre-BC, I used CTRA for my raid frames. They were displayed across the top of my screen, all raid members sorted by class.

Once Burning Crusade dropped I started using the native UI raid frames. They're a little bigger, and with Paladin in there my top got a little squeezed, but I made it work. Thus I was able to ditch CTmod entirely after a while.

But with Lich King, we have ten classes. It just doesn't work. Clara says use Grid for raid frames, and I'm fielding comments from friends to not use xPerl and to try sraidframes. But I don't want to re-memorize where all the tank raid frames are every damn raid. So I guess I'll try sraidframes, although I think they will not solve the real estate problem.

My new favorite addon

Gossipmonger.

"Automatically skipping greeting/gossip text is convenient, but what if you are actually interested in seeing what the NPC has to say first? Or perhaps even better, what if you want greeting text to be shown alongside the vendor window/bank/whatnot? This addon will let you do just that!"

I love it.

TopScore

So I play on both a laptop and a desktop. I'm thinking I want to somehow keep a merged copy of the FuBar_TopScoreFu.lua around...

I know some people have a svn server setup for this sort of thing, but that's a tad overkill. Any lighter weight ideas?

more on Clutter

So I recently posted two screenshots, and they had so much clutter. Here is another source of clutter:

sheep:~ dracon$ cd /Applications/World\ of\ Warcraft/Interface/AddOns/
sheep:AddOns dracon$ ls -F
AuldLangSyne/   DBM_ZulAman/
Blizzard_AuctionUI/  FuBar/
Blizzard_BattlefieldMinimap/ FuBar_AmmoFu/
Blizzard_BindingUI/  FuBar_BagFu/
Blizzard_CombatLog/  FuBar_BongosFu/
Blizzard_CombatText/  FuBar_ClockFu/
Blizzard_CraftUI/  FuBar_DurabilityFu/
Blizzard_GMSurveyUI/  FuBar_ExperienceFu/
Blizzard_GuildBankUI/  FuBar_HonorFu/
Blizzard_InspectUI/  FuBar_LocationFu/
Blizzard_ItemSocketingUI/ FuBar_MicroMenuFu/
Blizzard_MacroUI/  FuBar_MoneyFu/
Blizzard_RaidUI/  FuBar_OutfitterFu/
Blizzard_TalentUI/  FuBar_PerformanceFu/
Blizzard_TradeSkillUI/  FuBar_PetFu/
Blizzard_TrainerUI/  FuBar_PoisonFu/
Bongos2/   FuBar_RecountFu/
Bongos2_ActionBar/  FuBar_RegenFu/
Bongos2_CastBar/  FuBar_SkillsPlusFu/
Bongos2_MapBar/   FuBar_ToFu/
Bongos2_Options/  FuBar_TopScoreFu/
Bongos2_RollBar/  GotWood/
Bongos2_Stats/   GotWood_old/
Bongos2_XP/   Numen/
BuffTimers/   Omen/
CT_Core/   Outfitter/
CensusPlus/   PallyPower/
CharacterProfiler/  Perl_ArcaneBar/
ClassTimer/   Perl_CombatDisplay/
DBM_API/   Perl_Config/
DBM_AQ20/   Perl_Config_Options/
DBM_AQ40/   Perl_Focus/
DBM_Azeroth/   Perl_Party/
DBM_BWL/   Perl_Party_Pet/
DBM_Battlegrounds/  Perl_Party_Target/
DBM_BlackTemple/  Perl_Player/
DBM_GUI/   Perl_Player_Pet/
DBM_Hyjal/   Perl_Target/
DBM_Karazhan/   Perl_Target_Target/
DBM_MC/    Recount/
DBM_NAXX/   SolarianAlarm/
DBM_Outlands/   SpamSentry/
DBM_Serpentshrine/  TheoryCraft2/
DBM_Sunwell/   VoidReaverAlarm/
DBM_TheEye/   oRA2/
DBM_ZG/

Yikes, eh? Since I made my last post on Clutter, though, it occurred to me I should look at the non-Ace addons for updates. And lo and behold, Bongos2 had some bad news: I have written a new action bar addon, called Dominos, and am no longer supporting this one. Please feel free to try it out, along with Trinity Bars, and Bartender 3.

So, I went and looked at the Dominos addon. It seemed OK. Likely to be more sustainable as he makes more use of the Blizz API. I read the forum posts becuase you get a good feel for addons by what people whine about. So I decided to try it. I loaded it on Tylara, becuase she has the least tweaked, and messed with button spacing, etc. I decided I liked it. Bongos2 has a bug, in which it won't let all the TheoryCraft2 info through, and Dominos doesn't have this bug.

I have 8 Horde alts on Hyjal, and 2 computers with different button layouts. Imagine how overjoyed I was to find out that layouts from Bongos2 can't be imported to Dominos. Not. You'd think since the same guy wrote em, he'd thought of that. Anyhow last night, prior to raiding Hyjal Summit, I got the 3 toons in Darkfall straightened out on the laptop and all Hyjal toons on the desktop. That took me about 2.5 hours. While I was at it I slid some buttons and windows around to reduce the clutter (the last few screenshots I've posted shows there is plenty of room for improvement there; I used some of that room). That means 9 folders under Interface/Addons can go away, too. 10 really. I have CT_Core in there, and am really only using it for quest levels. Not worth it, I disabled it.

Overall it doesn't look much different at first glance, but the devil is in the details. It's a lot cleaner, and my raid frames no longer contend with my buff timers.

Meanwhile Hyjal Summit was so fast and furious I missed out rolling on the trash mail caster chest, let alone doing something as mundane as screenshotting the raid UI. Ah, well.

Clutter

I'm almost to the point of reworking my addons a bit. I have too many. And they add to the noise.

Anyhow, I am posting this screenshot of Kuan's Raiding UI mostly so I can link it into Darkfall's forums. It's a highest-quality jpg so even though I shrunk it, I'd rather Google store it than my little server.



The buttons are Bongos2. I'm going to swap to Dominos, I already have for Tylara. It's just a pain to reconfigure and I haven't put myself in that pain with my 70s yet.

No, I'm not trolling for suggestions, but if any are made, I will probably check them out.

Strats, schmats

Tonight Darkfall went into Tempest Keep for the first time in a month. We dropped Solarian... and seems likely will shard one of her items too, the badged gear is so good nobody really wanted [Star-Soul Breeches]. Then, for only the second time that I know of since the 2.4 patch dropped, we tried Void Reaver again. (I've wanted to try him again for a while now. T5 Shaman shoulders are way less goofy-looking on a troll than T4, and it's all about aesthetics, right?)

Here we are clearing the trash. I know the screenshot isn't spectacular but it gives a good feel for why playing a troll caster just rules.



Anyhow let's face it. Darkfall is lazy and had been relying on the VoidReaverAlarm addon, which relies on the combat log noting the target of the Arcane Orbs. Well clearly that doesn't work anymore. So we went and looked at all these strategies. First a warlock was the bait running around, and we clumped up behind the tank and got pwned by Orbs. Then two hunters were bait, and we stood on his feet and stabbed his toes while one of the priests spammed Circle of Heal on us. This caused him to punt the tank, throw an orb on him for good measure, and smash the priest.

After that, the guild leader decided forget all these strats. Stand on the circle, and just look up damn it. Just like the forums say to. Once we made that decision we just dropped him in one try. It was sort of weird, though; I played in first-person mode the entire fight.


Of course the Shaman T5 shoulder token didn't drop.

the geekier side of life.

I've often wanted a Lightning Bolt macro for PvP, but have been far too lazy to figure out the best way to do it. finally, after Monday PvP and Tuesday "take care of the adds with chain so the boss gets some damage," I bothered to make one:

#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=6 Chain Lightning, Lightning Bolt, Lightning Bolt

I will probably put it in Kuan's UI in place of the Chain Lightning button.

I have wanted a totem timer for ages, and the addons all suck. I finally downloaded GotWood from the Ace2 site. it has the lamest large background image... of a piece of wood that for all the world looks like laminated pressboard furniture you'd buy from Target. so, I took that out. it also spawns a nasty modal dialog when dropping a Stoneclaw totem. so last night I ran Wow for a while in windowed mode, with a couple vi sessions open, and fixed that too.

these things are pleasing. wiping for 16g of repairs in Heroic Mech, however, was less so. the good thing: we downed the end boss with a team that had NO fears. the bad thing: I failed to loot the badge off the first miniboss, or notice until the corpse depawned.

but I bet the repairs would have been slightly less costly if I'd fixed my addon first. anyhow, there it is.