What's in a Name?

Earlier this week I did the implausible, I renamed my druid of 15 years and passed the name onto my demon hunter.  Why?  My enjoyment of the druid class had waned, but not my attachment to the name.  It also helped that the name happened to fit.  It will definitley be a little disorienting at first, having a name everyone associated with orange now being purple, but the roles (tank/melee DPS) associate with the name remain unchanged.  It still looks a little weird to me on the character selection screen, but good weird.  It was the last link in the chain of events that brought my druid from main to alt behind evoker, to second alt behind evoker and demon hunter.

This wasn't the first time I've renamed a character, traded names, or even renamed a main, but the one previous time I renamed a main it was just a second druid with engineering instead of leatherworking because I didn't want to lose my profession progress in leatherworking, but also really wanted to have access to engineering gizmos on the character I played the most.  I also tried out a male character for a while changing my name to a masculine suffix (which in English was interpreted as plural), so I mostly just confused people and ended up flipping back the next expansion.

I've always gone for the hybrid class in RPGs; jack of all trades, master of none.  Druids totally fit the bill when I started, all within a single specialization I could be a bear/tank or a cat/DPS.  Sure I wasn't the best of either, but for a 10-man guild raid groups I was holding my own.  Without even a gear swap I could flip back and forth rather fluidly between roles, and my gear mainly determined if I was prioritizing damage or being crit immune.  Dual specializations in Cataclysm allowed me to add healing into the mix and that was even better, but it also meant that druids weren't much more of a hybrid class than any other class that could perform multiple roles.  There is still catweaving which can be done situationally, and the odd hero bear, but from a tanking perspective where I spend most my group play time there is mostly just bear form.

MoP was probably the beginning of the end when guardian and feral specializations were formally split apart, but it didn't really feel like it at the time.  It was like being licked to death by kittens, no one change all of a sudden made me want to stop playing my druid, but the last change I didn't like before I decided to raid on my demon hunter for season 2 instead of my druid was berserk no longer eliminating the cooldown on thrash/mangle.  I don't think any of the changes were necessarily bad, but it was different than what I had grown comfortable with and over time I was playing a slightly different class than when I'd started all those years ago.  Meanwhile there were brand new classes being added which hadn't factored into my original class choice: death knights, monks, demon hunters, and now evokers.  Three of those 4 new classes I already have at level 70, and I actually leveled up my evoker first in Dragonflight, then my druid, and then my demon hunter.  I actually have a spreadsheet to numerically rank different aspects of different classes to try and prove to myself which classes I enjoy playing the most.  It's pretty subjective since I can change the number to whatever I want, but so is the choice of which class to play.  Just before Dragonflight, after having played evoker on the beta, I had evoker and druid tied for first with demon hunter close behind and that's the order I went with for leveling.  With some reevaluation at the end of season 1 evoker had taken the lead followed by demon hunter and then druid.

There is one more potential step to go I guess, now that I'm playing more on my demon hunter I miss my loot-a-rang and other engineering goodies.  But once again I've got leatherworking and skinning leveled up and don't want to throw those away.  Plus, I love skinning on my demon hunter.  Perhaps with the next expansion there will be another boost included so I can level another demon hunter, or maybe undelete the horde demon hunter I had before faction lines disappeared for alts which already has some engineering progress, but also happens to be on a different realm.  Which would all lead to another name change/swap...

Preservation Evoker

Finally found the time/patience to hang out in a 30+ minute beta dungeon queue to try out healing on an evoker, and it was great.  I doubt I was great it being the first time I'd healed on that class and the first time I was in any Dragonflight dungeon, but we made it and by the end I had a much better feeling for how the class worked.  It definitely wasn't everyone's first dungeon, or experience with an evoker healing; I could tell as soon as I cast my first dream breath and saw all the DPS run into it.

I suspect the long queues and lack of enthusiasm from tanks, and non-evoker DPS, might be directly related by everyone wanting to try out an evoker.  If it is more likely that not going to be one of the healers first attempts at a dungeon I could see how that could be off-putting.  Shame there isn't an evoker tank spec as that would almost certainly decrease queue times, and give me one more reason to main an evoker.

That said I'm definitely going to main an evoker in Dragonflight, confirming I enjoyed the healing spec and running a couple dungeons was all I needed to finally make a decision.  I'm still slightly torn on my second main/primary alt, but leaning toward my demon hunter.  There is a nice symmetry of having "ranged" DPS/healing on one toon and melee DPS/tanking on another, plus I really enjoy demon hunter DPS, much moreso than druid DPS.  I do prefer druid tanking to demon hunter tanking, but enjoy the overall demon hunter experience more; I have tanked a bunch on my demon hunter and the only bad thing I have to say about it is that I don't feel I have as many oh shit buttons as on my druid.  I'll miss travel form and stealth, but with limited playtime some sacrifices for the greater fun are necessary.

Back to the preservation evoker, so my first dungeon (something with gnolls, freeing tortollian and corruption) I managed to completely forget about spiritbloom despite it being exactly in the right spot/hotkey.  I had tried all the healing spells out in town about a week earlier, but it's hard to get a feel for healing without actually healing a real group.  I feel that with DPS and tanking you get a better feel for how to use your abilities just doing world/solo content.  In hindsight I could have tried to find out where to queue for one of those solo instance things for medaling in a certain role, I remember those from Pandaria/Warlords, but I'm not sure if they are still relevant.  Lack of preparation aside it went well, no wipes, I never died nor did the tank, but I did lose a few DPS here and there.  Most if not all those deaths were at least partially my fault, but people just released and ran back without comment.  I didn't end up using a rez until the last trash packs before the last boss.  I didn't know it was the last boss until we'd killed it and stopped as I was focused on other things.

After my first dungeon I tweaked my healing bars a little based on what I'd learned and requeued expecting to heal again, but I was assigned DPS instead.  I suppose it makes sense there would be a lot of healer given the new class to try out.  DPS I was used to by this point and it gave me the opportunity to look around a bit more and try out some of my utility abilities.  It felt really awesome to scoop that lumbering bear up from the back and plop them in the front with the other Dracthyr running between trash mobs.  I also enjoyed helping out the evoker healer by using my own healing abilities when things got hairy.  Mostly it just felt incredibly liberating to not have to constantly hover away from and/or knock back mobs while killing them.  I could just hang out and concentrate on maximizing damage and get a feel for an actual rotation rather than constant improv.  I didn't have any add-ons/meters installed, but it felt like I was doing well.  The dungeon was some sort of blue dragonflight tower with lots of teleporters.

I tried my luck one more time after that and did end up getting into another dungeon as a healer, but the tank went afk right before the first boss and the group dissolved after we couldn't get another tank for more than a half hour.  The only reason I stuck around that long was that I was playing with transmog.

So now I just have to wait until evokers become available in pre-patch so I can level up to 60 and get everything set up for launch.  That will mostly be leveling up engineering in a couple previous expansions to get all the important gizmos like a loot-a-rang, MOLL-E and a Jeeves.  Probably an invisibility tinker to sneak past the odd mob or two and maybe a Reaves as well.  I'll also probably want to gather up some gear from the pre-launch event to catch up my evoker and get some transmog appearances on alts.

Devastation Evoker

Got access to the Dragonflight beta about a week ago and jumped right in creating a new Dracthyr evoker. Luckily I had already played with my character customization in Wowhead's dressing room, so i was able to quickly transcribe those selections and jump right into playing.

Reading other posts about evokers I had a rudimentary knowledge of which abilities were available to me, but there is no substitute for first hand play experience.  Especially when considering if I want to main and evoker in a few weeks or stick with my tried and true druid.

I was hoping with the reduced range that the evoker would feel a little more melee than your normal 40+ yard caster, but I realized no matter the range a caster is a caster, and prefers not to be smacked in the face.  Luckily evokers have a lot of mobility/utility tools to help keep a distance between them and their targets.  Maintaining distance is something melee classes don’t have to worry about, unless things are going poorly and it’s time to run away.

So the added task of social distancing in one downside of maining an evoker over a melee class, and the other is perhaps less of a con and more of an opportunity to better myself.  With all the mobility evokers have it is extremely important to keep tabs on your surroundings.  It’s pretty easy out leveling in the world, or in any PVE content for that matter, to deep breath or hover too close to another mob/group and quickly bite off more than you can chew.

On that note I’m not sure if the tuning is quite right yet for leveling content, but I was getting my tail handed to me by gorloc shamans in the second leveling zone.  Their lightning attack does a ton of damage and I was trying to focus on interrupting their mud shield instead to kill them faster.  So even at ranged evokers can still feel a bit squishy, but having not been there on any other character I’ve nothing to compare it to.

One of the questions I had prior to playing an evoker was, in the context of the current classes, what does playing one feel like?  And the answer was mostly that it didn’t.  I think it sort of feels closest to a demon hunter, but more utility, maybe a little more single target oriented (but that could just be because they are squishier and I’m pretty new at them) and there are a couple (non channeled) spells with cast times.  If I overgeared and/or outleveled content and could just eat melee attacks the evoker would feel much more like a demon hunter, but social distancing is key.

I made one mistake in beta, after leaving my evoker a bit and getting my first dragon riding mount I loaded the account info from my live account which overwrote all my mounts rather than combining them.  So I had to quick run though the first few quests on my druid to relearn that mount so I could complete the dragonriding questline.  All for a yak so I could transmog my gear.  Worth it!

So I have a couple more months to decide between team druid and team dragon.  The evoker is really fun, but so are demon hunters and that wasn’t enough to deter me from my druid.  I currently prefer druid for tanking and do enjoy kitty DPS as well, prefer demon hunter for DPS, and shaman for healing.  I’ve yet to try out healing on the evoker and am planning to try that out next time I play.  I’ve not really been into healing at max level since Cataclysm, just tinkering around in leveling dungeons for the shorter queues.

I’m really excited about my dragon and the new expansion, and am planning to level my evoker first even if I do end up raiding primarily on my druid.  I went that route with my demon hunter in Legion.  It just fun to change things up and get a break from a couple years using the same abilities.  It’s possible my evoker will only be another alt in the end, but that won’t diminish the enjoyment of experiencing the new content as a dragon.

GetRandomArgument Removed or Renamed

 I have a new found respect for those who develop and more specifically maintain add-ons when things can break without warning each patch/expansion. I had a couple macros making use of the GetRandomArgument function to randomize emotes expressed when putting up a pull timer or marking a priority kill target, and only discovered they were broken on raid night. Luckily I was at least prepared class change wise, and more importantly barber shop wise, so I had a bit of time to fiddle while others were figuring out other gameplay changes.

I plan to do a little more looking into the LUA code to see if there is still an equivalent function somewhere, but in the meantime my workaround was just to create an array of values and index into that with a random number (luckily that function still works). Maybe I'll get lucky and someone else will find a more elegant solution while I procrastinate. The array workaround eats up an extra 3-4 characters depending on whether or not you like to keep optional spaces in for readability, so it would be nice to have those characters available for other things given that macros can only be 255 characters total. Now that everyone is thoroughly confused, here is an example:

My original macro:

/run SetRaidTargetIcon("target",SecureCmdOptionParse('[btn:2][mod]7;8'))

/stopmacro [nocombat][btn:2][mod]

/run DoEmote(GetRandomArgument("helpme","attackmytarget","openfire"))

/s Please assist me in killing %t {rt8}!

/rw Please kill %t {rt8}!

My edited macro:

/run SetRaidTargetIcon("target",SecureCmdOptionParse('[btn:2][mod]7;8'))

/stopmacro [nocombat][btn:2][mod]

/run local e={"helpme","attackmytarget","openfire"} DoEmote(e[random(3)])

/s Please assist me in killing %t {rt8}!

/rw Please kill %t {rt8}!

Pretty trivial change, and probably more future proof in the long run. In case anyone is interest this macro just marks the target with an X and stops when the right mouse button is used, otherwise it marks the target with a skull. Additionally when in combat it emotes, asks for help in chat, and pops up a raid warning, because out of combat that would get a little annoying.

Hopefully this get caught by search engines so the next person to search for GetRandomArgument not working gets here instead of a useless bunch of outdated pages.

My First Add-On

I've been playing Warcraft Classic for a few days now when I have time, and I've finally sought out an add-on, a mana bar that shows when my druid is shape-shifted. I'm pretty sure this was also the first add-on I installed when I first started playing Warcraft. If I was asked what my first add-on was prior to Warcraft Classic I don't think I would have been able to answer. Such a silly little thing that eventually got baked into the standard UI and the add-on forgotten, but at the same time such important information to have.

Now I've only gone so far as to find and download the add-on so far, DruidBarClassic. I still need to install it and make sure it works next time I play, but I'm pretty optimistic.

We'll see if this leads to another cascade of ever increasing numbers of add-ons, or if my current minimalist outlook on add-ons will prevail.  A lot of that may be up to add-on developers since the availability of add-ons is pretty limited as compared to when I started playing near the beginning of the Burning Crusade.

Level Scaling Caps are a Mixed Blessing

In the past few months, or I support over the past year is more accurate, I've been working towards loremaster achievements with alts.  Particularly with the new allied races and the "new" level scaling changes.

I've run into a couple of annoyances: group quests for old content than cannot be soloed, and outleveling zone before finishing the content.  Both can be worked around, but both also sort of defeat the purpose of level scaling.  I can wait and come back when I outlevel the content in the case of group quests, and I can just keep completing gray quests and killing green mobs when I want to stick it out and finish a zone.

Ideally the group quests would be nerfed and/or made to be single player, and the level scaling scale to a higher level, just another 1-2 levels would be fine.

If they really wanted to get fancy they should dynamically change the level scaling cap based on what content you've played.  You could level up to the point of the current content (the character boost level) in whatever old content you wanted, but killing mobs or completing quests in the next content tier would snap the scaling for the previous content tier down.  For example you could quest to level 83 in vanilla content, but as soon as you started questing in Outland or Northrend the level camp for vanilla content would snap back to 60.

The whole point of the level scaling is to be able to quest along happily in whatever content you are working on without feeling you need to leave for greener pastures to actually progress, and right now that is broken along the boundaries between content tiers.

Some sort of compromise could be an NPC in Stormwind to toggle level scaling caps on or off.  That seems to be the go to solution for similar things.

Clang!

I really like the paladin sound effects, and the visuals are pretty good too.  I'm not sure when they changed, but it was sometime after I abandoned my paladin in Cataclysm, and before I picked it back up in Legion just to see the class hall.

Maybe I've just been playing a druid so long that the growls and roars don't do it for me anymore.  I noticed they changed, but they don't excite me in the way the paladin sounds do.

I've been devoting pretty much all my unscheduled play time (aka non raid time) to leveling up a new Dark Iron paladin.  Something about the race/class fantasy of cleansing holy fire does it for me.  So far I've made it up to level 80 and I am really excited to get into Warlord of Draenor content to make use of some Blackrock style transmog gear, Blackhand's hammer in particular.

Resto Shaman to the Rescue!

With very limited time to sit down and play I've had a lot more time to think about what alt I might like to play with in addition to my druid than time to actually try it.  I finally settled on a shaman since I really like resto and also enjoy enhancement.  For some reason druid healing never really clicked for me; I suspect it is the proactive nature of healing over time spells, I prefer the direct approach.  Also I really like the shaman cooldowns like moving while casting and pulling out a big earth elemental.  Oh and I also like the resto DPS rotation.

So I started mucking about with my existing 110 Draenei shaman who I hadn't played, other than leveling, since I raided as resto in Cataclysm.  I wasn't feeling the Draenei for some reason so I played around in the character creation screens for quite some time weighing my options and thinking of cool names.  I finally settled on a Pandaren after working through the starting zone just to make sure.  I really like the race, but other than my monk which I never really got into, I hadn't made any others until now.  Finally got to use that 110 character boost I had been saving for a rainy day, and now I won't be tempted to boost my allied race alts and miss out on that racial transmog armor.

Which brings me to what was my next very important decision, what should my transmog set look like?  Sadly my molten offhand doesn't show correctly on the armory.  I wanted to show off that panda belly (I blame it on expecting a baby in the spring), but didn't want to go all chainmail bikini, so the options were limited.  I also really like greens and earth tones, which suits both druids and shamans well.  And lastly there are those golden accents on Pandaren around the tail and feet, so I wanted to incorporate that somehow so that it didn't look out of place.  Luckily I found some gloves and bracers that when combined both match the rest of the ensemble and poke out just enough of a gold band to add a subtle accent.  I had everything except the gloves and legs and had to spend a half hour or so questing in old content to get those.

On to leveling.  For some reason I must really like Stormsong Valley because I chose that as my first leveling zone again.  I was tempted to start in Drustvar since that is the one zone I haven't completed yet, but I really like the green hills over creepy forest.  After hitting 111, which seemed important to distance myself from my old shaman, I was ready to try healing a dungeon.  I set up my bars, added a few macros (mainly to combine some healing and DPS abilities based on target).

Uh oh, where's my healing weapon?  After all that I just realized the level boost had only left me with a pair of agility fist weapons, which was great and all for melee DPS, but not so great for healing.  It would be nice if the level boost process left you with some starter gear for other specs as well.  I wasn't feeling adventurous enough to just dive in and heal with a single fist weapon (since dual wield isn't a resto option), so I ported back to legion content to quick grab the resto artifact weapon figuring it would be a sure thing and have a decent enough item level.  Pretty quick and painless, and less annoying than waiting for a weapon loot reward to come up again and remembering to flip specs to try for an intellect version.

Finally ready to try for a normal random dungeon.  The queue was around 6 minutes so I went to visit the blood trolls while I waited.  Dungeon was ready mid mini-boss so I quick mopped that up accepted and flipped specs.  Pesky that I start with zero mana, but I wasn't mana limited at all so it wasn't a problem.  Lucky that since a couple of DPS in the group had already pulled.  The tank put the brakes on after that pull so I could drink up, which was good since I wasn't sure how fast I'd eat through mana at the time.

All and all things went pretty well, healing wise.  Our tank dropped group shortly after the first boss since the DPS were pulling half the dungeon and I know that can be frustrating for a tank.  Speaking of the first boss (we were in the Stormsong Valley dungeon), I felt like a hero when the tank got punted off the platform and I whipped out my earth elemental to save the day and we downed the boss minus one tank.  I had done the exact same thing the first time I tanked that one and was also saved by the healer, so I sort of passed it on in a sense.

A new tank popped up pretty quick, the DPS had just continued on with trash sans tank.  I didn't really feel the pain until we got to all the trash with ground effects, pulled way too many, and stood in everything.  I did loose a couple DPS here and there, but I don't feel too bad about not being able to heal through stupid.  We did wipe once on the trash leading up to the last boss, we got the whole bridge and I was getting stunned pretty often.  There weren't any complaints or anything and the second round went a lot better.

We wiped once on the last boss since all our DPS ended up mind controlled, and then me too since there weren't enough orbs up to break myself out.  After a quick strategy refresher we got it pretty easily.

It was a nice break from running the treadmill that is gearing and rep grinding the main.

Still Stuck With Item Level 325 Weapon...

I'm sure this isn't as large of an issue for those with more play time (I currently only play 3-8 hours a week and 3 of those hours are spent raiding), but the random number generator has just not been in an agility weapon providing mood.

I've been inundated with item level 340 intellect weapons and off-hands, and even got a 355 strength BOE drop in Uldir, but no agility weapons to be seen.

That isn't to say the RNG gods have not been kind, my average item level is currently at 353; so I am getting plenty of good drops as my gear level is pretty close to those that have gotten better weapons, but a better weapon would be a significant DPS boost.

I've been using my extra roll on Zek'voz every week and have even started running LFR, despite not enjoying it, to try and get the 340 version, but no luck thus far.  Hopefully that weapon will drop for me during tonight's raid...

The most frustrating part of all of this is that the emissary rewards are providing weapon rewards, but they have all been intellect weapons, and I don't have any immediate plans to ditch my teeth and claws for fancy hand waving.

Leveling Using a Tank Spec

After much deliberation on which toons to level to 100 and focus on for WoD I finally narrowed my options down to the four I was most interested in: two druids to cover all four specs (obviously I love druids), a rogue, and a monk.  My main druid is feral/guardian and an engineer, my favorite class, specs and profession.  My second druid is a leather worker which is handy since all my favorite toons wear leather.  My rogue is an enchanter/tailor so I can enchant, make bags, and unlock lock boxes.  Finally, my monk (previously also an engineer) has taken up alchemy to keep me stocked up with flasks for raiding, and just happens to not have a DPS spec.

At the end of the last expansion I was itching for another heirloom off of Garrosh, so I dropped my monk's DPS spec for a tanking spec so I could be guaranteed a drop by bringing a different toon, and be able to fill my normal role.  As it turns out everyone had similar ideas that last raid before the expansion and we never made it to Garrosh, but I got some gear and had fun playing a monk tank for the first time at what was then the max level.  Before that I've only tanked on a monk alt which has only made it to level 55.

So long story short when I wandered over to the dark portal to start leveling up, it slipped my mind that I had dropped my DPS spec.  I was going to hearth back and address that when it was brought to my attention that tanking damage has been changed and I probably didn't need to have a DPS spec.  A combination of curiosity and laziness compelled me to give it a shot, and I am glad I did.

Leveling using a tank spec is actually more efficient than using a DPS spec, at least in case of a monk vs a rogue, but I suspect this is also true for other classes.  I think a large contributing factor is that this is an alt swimming in rested experience, and a large advantage of being a tank is steamrolling large groups of mobs.  On my rogue I have to be much more careful about which mobs I pull and how many I can juggle at a time, but as a tank I just grab everything I can see, pummel it into the ground, and then see which quest objectives I missed.  More times than not for a gather X items or kill X mobs quest I finish it on the first try and then some.  It doesn't really tank any more time to AOE down a few more mobs, and they just add up to more experience.

So there is a caveat, leveling using a tank spec requires a change in tactics to play to your strengths.  AOEing large groups is possible which allows some multitasking completing multiple quests in the same area, but when single target DPS is required, for rare mobs for example, your DPS will be noticeably lower than a DPS spec and killing that rare will cancel out some of those time savings elsewhere.  Despite being a little slower, I've also noticed that I can take out rares and elites of a higher level as a tank; there isn't an enrage timer on them so slow and steady does indeed finish first.

I am enjoying my tank/healer dual spec and how that balances with the rest of my four toons.  I've got two tanks, two healers, two melee DPS and one ranged DPS.  There just isn't time to play every class/spec, but I'm already eying my hunter and death knight.  I'm toying with the idea of putting a little time in on the Horde side this expansion and coincidentally created a Horde hunter and death knight right at the end of Mists.  First things first, have to get geared for raid content.

This Default UI Add-On Is Pretty Cool

One side effect of cutting back my playtime is that the little administrative things that aren't as fun, like updating and maintaining add-ons, fall by the wayside.  The other boring task that I avoid best I can is keeping my inventory organized, but this is easily solved by vendoring stuff.  So when the version 6 patch dropped an ally my add-ons were hopelessly broken, instead of just eeking along through minor patches, I took the opportunity to delete my add-ons folder and take a look at the default UI which I had not looked at in literally years; it's come a long way.

My first revelation came shortly after starting a new hunter, since the best way to start anew is to start with a new character without any preconceptions or bias as to where things should be.  I started questing with the default map and quest log and it was a better, more immersive, experience than with Carbonite, that bloated add-on that had replaced half of my UI for the better part of four years.  I do miss the Googlesque map that I could zoom in and out and click and drag, but the default map is easy to navigate and my character actually pulls out a map when I am looking at it.  I have also been playing SWtoR a bit in the lull before the expansion and was pleased to notice that the map window fades while walking so it is possible to see where you are going while referencing the map.

Next I did a little experimentation with moving the unit frames around, trying to get all the information I needed in combat more centrally located.  At this point I was back on my main, a feral/guardian druid.  I tried moving my unit frames to the bottom center, eventually gave up and it was time to bring in the add-ons.  In combat I like to be aware of my health, whatever resources I need to use my abilities and a few static buff/debuff icons so that I don't have to search through rows of icons all over.  I installed IceHUD, which I had used in the past for a death knight since the rune display was very helpful; that got me my health and resource bars, as well as combo points for my druid which previously required another add-on.  Then I installed TellMeWhen since my add-on of choice, Auracle, hadn't been updated.  After watching a YouTube video on how to set it up I muddle through the UI and had everything I needed to start raiding, except raid frames.

Raid frames were my second revelation; I have been using Pitbull since I learned what an add-on was.  I had not seen the default unit frames, no less the default raid frames, for more than a few seconds updating add-ons after a patch.  I went through the raid frame configuration tab and was impressed by all sorts of things when I started raiding with them.  They show a nice glow for shields/absorbs, they show you who is getting rezzed, when someone sets up main tanks they show up in their own little group.  Best of all, I didn't have to spend hours fretting over lining everything up perfectly and not overlapping anything.

It is still a work in progress, but I have updated the Add-Ons I Use page to where I am currently at, and will continue to update that as I finalize my add-on collection once again.  Right now I am running with a mere 9 add-ons, which hasn't been true for at least 5 years; it is nice to see more of the UI as Blizzard intended.

The biggest shortcoming of the default UI is the lack of a customizable centralized informational display catered to a specific class/role/spec.  I don't want to look at half a dozen places on the edges of the screen to figure out which ability to use next, I want to keep focused on whatever I am chewing on in the center of the screen and leave spatial awareness up to my peripheral vision.  They already sort of started on this path by adding some basic power aura type graphics for procs, now they just need something like IceHUD and NeedToKnow.

Ok, I'm Level 90, Now What?

After hitting level 90, and looking to get geared up to raid, it became painfully obvious that grinding reputation with various factions via daily quests wasn't viable.  Reputation grids take weeks of doing dailies, as the name suggests, every day.  I for one don't have the time or ambition to log in each and every day to kill X of this, and click on Y of that.  I do see myself working toward honored with the Golden Lotus faction for my leather working patterns, but other than that I'm not sure I will ever seriously pursue dailies/reputation on any sort of a regular basis.

So after poo-pooing dailies I took a moment to ponder what my actual goal was, to acquire gear that would support raiding in as short a playtime as possible.  Obviously a spreadsheet was in order; a means to locate and exploit the lowest hanging fruit.

As an aside it is also helpful to have an accounting professor in the guild to point out the best low hanging fruit.  That being the 450 quest reward weapon from the Arena of Annihilation scenario, the epic boots from the Sha of Anger world boss quest and of course holiday rewards from Brewfest and Hallow's End.  The first two I probably wouldn't have noticed right away on my own and boy did they help.

Back to the spreadsheet I made while handing out candy to trick-or-treaters on Halloween.  I first came up with a list of all the possible heroic drops and reputation rewards for honored or lower (revered is just too much of a commitment) and went through for each slot listing the possible upgrades.  I then took the list of upgrades and grouped them based on dungeon and faction instead of slot.

Now I needed a way to prioritize which dungeons/factions were worth hitting first.  Item level was of course the answer.  If I take the item level of the upgrade minus the item level of what I've got equipped I can easily weight which dungeons/factions have the most to offer.  The one problem with that is that item level is weighted differently for different slots.

After a quick Google search I got a rough idea of how item levels compare for different slots.  Head, chest, legs and two handed weapons are all weighted at 100% of their item level, shoulders, gloves, belts and boots are all weighted at 75% of their item level, bracers, necklaces, cloaks and rings are all weighted at 56.25% of their item level, and trinkets seem to be the topic of some debate at 68% of their item level.  Lucky I'm a feral druid and don't have to worry about one-handed weapons or off-hands which also seem to be a bit of a mystery.

So after figuring out what each dungeon/faction had to offer in terms of item level increases I had an ordered list of what I should spend my time doing in game when I got a chance.  It turned out Sholomance offered more opportunity for upgrades than anything else so of course I ran that first chance I got.  After deleting the items that were no longer upgrades the weights changed a little and I ran the next dungeon and so on ans so forth.

As it turns out I'm not gaining valor quickly enough to make faction rewards much of a possibility at all, so reputation grinding is really a non-issue.  Something to work on when I don't feel like queuing as a tank and have time to kill while waiting.  I got Klaxxi to honored pretty easily in the dungeon queue thanks to it not being gated by dailies.  As a result I qualify for a neck upgrade I can't yet afford.  By the time I can afford it I might have already gotten a better drop from a raid.  I'm comforted by the thought that dailies are completely optional and I won't need to grind for hours just to gather raid gear.

I've so far reached an item level of 455 out of the 460 I need to queue for LFR and have access to even better rewards for my time.  With any luck a few more priority selected heroics will get me there more quickly than queuing blindly for random heroics.  Eventually the valor points from random heroics and reputation rewards will be a bigger draw, but I am planning on focusing more on having fun by that point and not trying to maximize playtime at the expense of ignoring my new monk.

Aspect of the Fox

It appears as if my blog is back.  It was seemingly deleted accidentally a while back while transferring ownership to a different account.  I've since moved my attention to a new blog, Aspect of the Fox (http://aspectofthefox.blogspot.com/), with much the same format, but without a pseudonym.  A little more on that in my first post on my new blog.

My main interest in keeping this blog around was originally just to facilitate the transfer of information from one to the other, but now that it is back I am glad to be able to revisit old posts again.  I've been blogging for quite a while now (over three years) and I anticipate extracting a lot of enjoyment out of reading through some old posts.

Seeing as this is likely the last post I will make here I feel I should say something uplifting or memorable; nothing comes to mind.  I am however happy to have the opportunity to extend an invitation to anyone still following this blog to continue to follow me in the future, now that you have the forwarding address and all.

Of Warcraft and Wooing

Yesterday marked a first for me, the first time I got online to play with others while my girlfriend was around.  I suppose this remark warrants a little back story.  We started dating early March and as our relationship progressed I naturally spent more time with her and less time online playing what was 4-5+ month old content at that point.  Signs outs become more frequent on my part and I more or less dropped off the face of Azeroth around the time my raid group downed Deathwing for the first time.

Without getting into the details of what has quickly blossomed into a very serious love filled relationship, I will touch on a recent event which relates to the topic.  At the end of last month my girlfriend moved in with me and over the course of a couple weeks we'd rearranged furniture and integrated all our worldly possessions into what has now become our home.  It was quiet an achievement to get to a point where we could enjoy an evening of leisure rather than plan which of a dozen projects we would tackle before getting to bed and going to work the next morning.  There is still a lot to do, but our living spaces are more or less in order and both cars are in the garage for winter.

The move coincided almost perfectly with the new expansion, and for the first week I hardly even had time to think about logging in.  My girlfriend does spend a fair bit of time traveling and as a result I got a few evenings in last week to start leveling up and preparing to raid.  We've talked quite a bit about my eventually setting aside an evening each week, and she has been very supportive, but it wasn't something I was interested in until the expansion was out.  Just spending time with the woman of my dreams was, and still is, far more appealing than time spent on the computer playing Warcraft.

The difference now is that we live together and have organized our home in such a way that our office, and by extension my computer, is more centrally located, rather than tucked away in an upstairs bedroom.  This confluence of planning and circumstance is what has allowed me to partake in the guilty pleasure that is Warcraft.  I say guilty pleasure because it  is, I can't help but to feel that I've done something wrong when sitting down to play computer games while my girlfriend is doing dishes.  Before anyone agrees too readily to that statement let me mention that it is just as likely to be me doing the dishes while she is otherwise occupied.  We are quite proficient at splitting up the housework.

Despite dropping my girlfriend off at the airport before the butt crack of dawn this morning, and my desire to get 25 more bars of experience before Brewfest ends, I will still be cleaning the bathroom first thing after work in preparation for company next week.  One beautiful thing about love is that even the most menial tasks, when done for love, can be as enjoyable and as fulfilling (if not more so) than any recreational activity.

I'm still tickled that my girlfriend brought me dinner while I was running dungeons with my guildies.  The evening went remarkably well with one notable exception that I wasn't able to pay as much attention to the voice chat over mumble as I would have liked.  It probably came off as a little rude on my part.  Working Warcraft back into my routine is a work in progress and I'm sure it will become easier over time to give my guildies the attention they deserve while at the same time not feeling like I'm ignoring the one I hold dear.

New Digs

After writing The Bear Flank from behind a handful of pseudonyms over the course of the past few years, I decided it was time to just be me; and me I shall be.  I've learned a lot of what a blog means to me and what I liked about what I posted and what I didn't.  I grabbed this name, Aspect of the Fox, on a whim a while back (before there was even such a thing introduced to Warcraft), but I never got around to using it as one blog was more than enough to keep my literary needs in check (I like to write, or type as it were).

So I had planned to grab all the stuff I liked from the old blog and paste it to the new, namely some reference materials and links I had posted, but it got clobbered when I deleted the old admin email I wasn't going to use anymore.  I had added a second admin before I did it of course, but apparently there is a bug somewhere in the blogger back-end foiling my plans.  I posted for help on Google's support group and maybe they can help, but in the meantime I'll plan on there being some busy work in my future reinventing the wheel so to speak.

So as for what to expect content wise, Warcraft stuff mostly.  Probably not much, if any, hunter love despite the name.  Likely some ranting about LFR.  Definitely some druid information as my feral druid remains my main character.  Basically whatever happens to be on my mind.  That and a plethora of reference information pertaining to macros and add-ons.

Stay tuned.

A Disturbing Truth

There are certain bits of information you are happier, and perhaps better off, not knowing. A couple examples from the Basic Instructions webcomic I read (link in my blog list to the right): bugs bunny looked better in drag than any of the female looney toons, or that Beaker from the Muppets spoke perfect English but every word needed to be censored. This another case where ignorance is bliss.

Next time you find yourself in bear form (and play a night elf) take a look at your butt, from the side. Pay close attention to what your cute little tail does during the idle animation. How this even got out to the public amazed me. So far as I know this only affects the night elf bear form, but I've not looked at others.

For those of you without easy access to night elf bear form I'll sum up. Like a finger the tail strokes up the backside bottom to top in a most unseemly manner. I'm no expert in bear anatomy, but so far as I know tails don't do that. They do in Warcraft obviously, but probably shouldn't.

So now having noticed this I can either never let my bear idle, or be sure to sit down or change forms. It's like a train wreck; it's terrible; you feel bad about it, but you just can't look away. Oh my.

Replace 25-mans with 15-man Raids

I was doing some thinking about guild raids recently and how we have more than enough for two, but not quite enough for three. It occurred to me how much simpler organizing raid would be if the two sizes were 10 and 15 (or even 10 and 20) rather than 10 and 25.

10 and 25 man raids already give the same rewards, so the only reason to run one over the other is a matter of how many people you have interested in raiding. Although the consensus nowadays seems to be that 25 mans aren't a convenient size. Anyway looking a normal raiding roster fluctuations, sometimes you have a lot of interest and sometimes you don't. In the times of hardship it is a struggle just to get 10 people from week to week and in the times of plenty rotations are a necessary evil.

But with 10 and 15 man raids a 10 man with a 13-14 person roster could easily pick up a few more interested players and run the 15 man version. If there are a bunch of sign outs for whatever reason, they could drop back down to the 10 man version. If there was so much interest that 15 wasn't even enough the raid could split and do two 10 mans which in turn could expand into 15 mans of their own or recombine back into a 15 man. Basically some combination of 10 and 15 could accommodate smooth roster size transitions of any magnitude.

25 mans would still make sense for LFR with role ratios being what they are.

The more I think about 15 man raid vs 25 man the more I like the idea. It solves the whole issue of 25 mans being harder to organize. It allows raid rosters to be more flexible and not exclude people just because there are only 10 spots. It doesn't introduce issues like moving from 40 mans to 25 mans or 25 mans to 10 mans where many people would be unable to raid with the same people after converting. Serious 25 man raid could splint into a 10 man A team and 15 man B team or vice versa.

15 man raid seems an elegant solution to the problem where 10 mans are too small and 25 mans are too big.

Pandas are Killing my Feral (Hybrid) Druid

A few weeks ago, probably a couple months now actually, I dropped my hybrid feral/resto specs in favor of a "guardian" (tank) spec and a feral (DPS) spec. Just to see how the hybrid spec I was using compared to a dedicated tank/DPS spec and to get used to the idea of some of the changes coming down the pipe. What I also got was some insight into what some of the changes in the new talent calculator will mean and just how lame the talent choices are for ferals.

My first observation is that when just DPSing in a tank spec, happens a lot when there are two tanks and one of them isn't actively tanking, it just doesn't pay to flip to cat form. That is with all the cat abilities they are taking away from tanks in the next expansion: shred, rip, savage roar and tiger's fury to name the biggies.

On the other side of the coin, pulling a hero bear (flipping from cat to bear to tank in an emergency) is also a thing of the past. With my hybrid spec it saved the day countless times and contributed to many first boss kills. But without crit immunity, and many of the other tanking talents to reduce magic damage and such, it just isn't that effective. If a real tank goes down a poor excuse for a tank isn't going to fair much better; not for long anyway.

That was pretty much the point of splitting feral into two specs though. I guess it works. The problem is that is totally shatters any feelings that druids are a hybrid class. There are a point way back when where balance spells were a widely accepted means of grabbing aggro at the start of a pull. Not sure I really miss that particular detail, but I will be a little sad when I look at my cat or bear bars in my opposite spec and find that they are half empty. What is the point of switching forms when my other form doesn't do anything fun? It just becomes a chore; I have to hit this one button so I can use this one ability and then I have to hit this button to go back.

So here we have the hybrid features of the feral class pretty much entirely gutted, to the point where I don't feel there is any benefit from switching forms anymore, and then we have new talents to pretend we are still a hybrid class. X talent forces you into cat form, or Y talent forces you into bear form. Flipping forms going from a fun utility mechanic to an annoyance that you have to press another button to return to your spec's actual form.

Or that talent that increases the damage of your spell/melee attacks when you do the other. It's only purpose would be for feral DPS to toss heals and regain some of the DPS time lost. I guess that isn't terrible, but only one spec out of four has any business taking it. Just give it to feral DPS and come up with a new talent more than one spec might be interested in.

I think the most insulting one has to be the heart of the wild which is designed to allow a druid to temporarily fill a different role. I wonder just how useful a non crit immune bear with limited mitigation cooldowns is going to be to any encounter. The talent is almost better used to help heal before a tank goes down.

I keep waiting for that something special to show up and fill the void left by the not having reason to flip forms. Feral druids don't have any flashy abilities like other classes, their flash ability was always shifting forms. With shifting out of the picture there needs to be some pizazz in the feral druid specs to make them more than poor imitations of rogues and warriors (ability wise, not performance wise).

When Good People Do Nothing

I had the absolute worst luck in LFR last night. I was rotated from my regular raid so I decided to knock out the last half of LFR on the couple toons I wanted a weapon on. The first LFR I ran on my druid went swimmingly, but my polearm of embiggeration did not drop. Sadly I will not become bigger in a vigorous manner for at last another week. That first LFR on my druid the other tank even briefly discussed tanking strategy with me in the form of they let me know what they were doing and I acknowledged I heard them. There really isn't a need for tank communication in LFR, but it's nice when it happens.

My second LFR on my DK I got into a group on the last boss, which I originally thought was good because I only wanted loot off the last boss. There was a small group from Proudmoore in a guild called Hypnotic doing thier best to troll everyone (and they did a pretty good job). The specific players involved were: Riggnaros, Kfchicken, Sylisha, and Porkzqt. Obviously raid geared and knowing what they were doing, but mostly looking to make trouble. They needed on everything; which isn't a surprise, but they even needed on the greens. They bad mouthed everyone, they tried to incite the kicking of people that didn't really deserve it, including myself (it never even went to a vote).

The absolute worst though was when they purposefully wiped us. Three of them went directly to the last platform and DPSed the wing the entire time so that when the rest of the group finally got there we were getting stacks of blistering tentacle debuff before anyone could even kill the big tentacle add. Now anyone else I would assume they just wanted to see what happened, but they blamed just about everyone else and tried to get half the raid kicked. I'm not sure how many attempts they foiled before I got there, but I'd like to think that my calling them out on precisely why we wiped caused them to behave and actually get the boss down the next attempt.

OK I lied, that wasn't the worst part. After I was done with that LFR I was about to log off in disgust when my regular run finished and a bunch of guildies were going to queue for LFR. I decided to go along on my mage who hadn't yet done the first half and I wanted the option to do the second half in the future. Guess what 4 people were in that new group with me? Oh yeah. They were a lot less annoying in that run so far as what they were saying, but they also didn't have as many people feeding the trolls that run. We actually passed a vote to kick one of them, Kfchicken, who made a point of belittling everyone else's contributions each and every fight. That amused me a little.

Still, what I don't understand is why don't people just kick these types of people immediately? Not kicking them just encourages asshat behavior in LFR because they think they can get away with it. Worse than that, other closet asshats might think they can get away with it too and start griefing their next LFR. I think BBB did a much better job elaborating on the evils of encouraging bad behavior by inaction, read his posts here and here on the topic.

Self Modifying Macros: When One Focus isn't Enough

There are three main reasons people use their focus targets in macros: to be able to refresh crowd control without switching targets (self explanatory), to be able to refresh a buff on a friendly target without switching targets (earth shield, misdirection, etc.), and last but not least to track buffs/debuffs and/or spell casts of a specific target (i.e. a healer tracking a boss ability with focus target cast bars). The problem I've run into, and I am sure many others have as well, is that some classes could benefit from using their focus target in more than one way. We need a second focus target, and a third...

After much deliberation, preceded by a fair bit of procrastination, I've come up with a fairly elegant solution for "sharing" a single focus target; let's have the macro remember who to target. Self modifying macros have been a crazy idea in the back of my head for quite a long time, but I wasn't sure if it was possible no less feasible. Then I saw a very promising sentence on wowwiki describing the EditMacro function, "If this function is called from within the macro that is edited, the rest of the macro (from the final character's position of the /run command onward) will run the new version." Not only can you edit a macro while it is running, it will continue to run from the point it left off before being edited! This actually turned out to be a little bit of a bummer too, but more on that later.

So I have to write a macro which does what I want, leave room for an unknown player name up to 12 characters, and also leave room for some lua code to change the name on the fly; with only 255 characters total. It actually wasn't that bad, but a few more characters would have allowed for more thorough targeting conditionals.

Right off the bat there are a couple glaring limitations: you can't edit macros in combat and you can't use GUIDs to select targets (or in layman's terms some trash mobs have the same name, which one will your macro target?). I may eventually find a way around the latter, but I am pretty sure that all the target switching LUA functions are protected. Perhaps it's not really an issue either since how often are there multiple mobs in the same pull with the same name when it isn't an AOE group without CC? Still macros aren't going to be a great way to handle crowd control targets, but they are very good way to remember and retarget players; better than focus targets even if you know how annoying it can be to keep losing your focus between sections of the dragon soul raid.

So here's what I got so far: a misdirection macro for hunters and a tricks of the trade macro for rogues. Fully tested on my hunter and I really liked the way I didn't have to clutter up my UI with a focus frame I wasn't really using.

#showtooltip
/use [btn:2];[@asecondfocus,help][help][@targettarget,help][@pet]Misdirection
/stopmacro [btn:1][noraid,noparty]
/run i=GetRunningMacro()EditMacro(i,nil,1,gsub(GetMacroBody(i),"%b@,","@"..UnitName("target")..",",1)..(" "):rep(24))

#showtooltip
/use [btn:2];[@asecondfocus,help][help][@targettarget,help][]Tricks of the Trade
/stopmacro [btn:1][noraid,noparty]
/run i=GetRunningMacro()EditMacro(i,nil,1,gsub(GetMacroBody(i),"%b@,","@"..UnitName("target")..",",1)..(" "):rep(21))

The first couple lines look like a regular macro you'd find almost anywhere, with a few less checks perhaps (no room for those frills). I first try and target the "focus", then I try the current target and if it is a hostile I try and target it's target (hopefully a tank). For the misdirect macro I also try the pet as a last resort. If all the targeting checks fall through you'll get a hand to pick a target manually (that should almost never happen).

Then comes the LUA code which is run when the macro is right clicked. Could use a modifier instead and make the macro even shorter, but I prefer not to hit it on accident. Not to mention you can only edit macros out of combat so it's not a big deal to have it super accessible. The code is just a little pattern matching to find and replace the name, "asecondfocus" in the macros above, with the name of your current target. I do check to see if your current target is at least in your party/raid before changing it so you can't accidentally target an NPC.

Then comes this interesting block of code at the end that pads out the macro with spaces so that it is always exactly 255 characters long. This is where that "feature" that continues running a macro from where it left off before being edited comes in. If you right click on someone with a longer name that your previous target your macro text would become longer, but your macro continues running from the end of the old macro causing your character to /say those last few characters of the macro; quite annoying. For example if you target someone with a name that was 3 character longer your character would say something like, "s))". The extra spaces are inert so far as the lua code goes and they make sure the macro never changes length.

Enjoy the most advanced aggro redirection macros in existence; short of installing a plugin anyway. I prefer the macros because they are saved on the server so you can flip PCs and they are always there and you never have to update them after a patch.