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.

Mount Macros

The most recent incarnation of my mount macro includes combining it with another ability that is only used in combat. This serves three purposes: it cleans up my action bars, I can't accidentally hit my combat only ability out of combat, and I get a speedy hotkey to mount.

The ability I've chosen for all of my toons is a crowd control and/or snare removal ability. For druids this would be "power shifting" or shifting out of and back into your current form, expending a global cooldown in the process. Obviously shifting forms isn't something that burns a cooldown out of combat, but I'm just being consistent between toons. I've also got my mount combined with Cloak of Shadows (Rogue), Tremor Totem (Shaman), Lichborne (Death Knight), Fear Ward (Priest), Master's Call (Hunter), Escape Artist (Gnome), and Hand of Freedom (Paladin).

Right now everyone has 3-4 mounts they use on a regular basis: an Abyssal Seahorse, a flying mount, a ground mount, and perhaps an additional RP type mount. I know my Worgen have use an additional ground mount just for fun when they don't want to use Running Wild. So keeping all of these things in mind my mount macros look something like the following:

Worgen Rogue

#showtooltip
/use [combat] Cloak of Shadows; [btn:2] Black Stallion; [swimming,mod] Abyssal Seahorse; [flyable,nomod] Magnificent Flying Carpet; Running Wild

Druid

#showtooltip
/use [nocombat,swimming,mod] Abyssal Seahorse; [nocombat,flyable,nomod] Swift Flight Form; [nocombat] Swift Zulian Panther; [form:1] !Bear Form; [form:2] !Aquatic Form; [form:3] !Cat Form; [form:5] !Moonkin Form; !Travel Form

As you can see out of combat the Abyssal Seahorse will only be used if you are swimming and using a modifier key, otherwise if you can fly it will use your flying mount and otherwise your ground mount. In the case of my Worgen I use a right click to use an alternative ground mount. Using a modifier will also use your ground mount over your flying mount, sometimes it comes in handy. In combat these macros behave just like the ability or abilities you combined it with.

Subtlety Rogues for Felines

If you've got your kitty DPS rotation down pact now, and as an added bonus did well with the slightly more difficult rotation in wrath, you are in a prime position to pick up a subtlety rogue and play like a pro. They are just that similar.

In fact I have come to enjoy subtlety DPS over kitty DPS after playing my rogue more regularly; cat form comes off as a cheap imitation afterwards. More so now that most all of the tanking utility will be removed from the feral DPS spec. What utility will kitties have left? A lackluster innervate, a battle rez that two other classes provide, and some limited off healing ability which would be time better spent DPSing. Rest in peace hero bear, you will be in our hearts, always.

Back to subtlety DPS; rogues like cats like to start off in stealth, it is even more important for subtlety rogues because we get a buff called 'Master of Subtlety' buffing our damage by 10% for 6 seconds after breaking stealth. Like cats we also like to jump into combat with 'Shadowstep' which bears a striking similarity to a cat's 'Feral Charge'. Then we unleash an opener, 'Ambush', for big damage just like a cat would use 'Ravage'. More on this later, but just like a cat will also use 'Feral Charge' with the 'Stampede' talent to get off additional 'Ravage's off during combat, rogues too will use 'Shadowstep' with 'Shadow Dance' to get off additional 'Ambush'es.

Now is a good time to mention the first difference for playing your rogue. You'll want to macro 'Premeditation' and 'Pickpocket' into all of your openers: 'Cheap Shot' ('Pounce' to cats), 'Garrote' (rogues get one more opener than cats, it's a silence/bleed instead of a stun/bleed) and 'Ambush'. Neither ability triggers the global cooldown so you can have them go off invisibly behind the scenes. Be sure to have auto loot enabled so you don't have loot windows pop up at the start of combat. Optionally you could also not macro 'Pickpocket' into your openers, but I find I don't otherwise remember to 'Pickpocket' in fast paced dungeons or raids.

Once you are out of stealth it is time to start building combo points, oh wait, you already have 5. Did I mention subtlety rogues build combo points a hell of a lot faster than cats (and other rogues for that matter)? So while your cat would be applying 'Mangle', 'Faerie Fire', 'Rake' and 'Shred'ding to get some combo points, your rogue already has to pick out a finisher.

Subtlety rogues use four finishers to maintain 2 buffs ('Slice and Dice' and 'Recuperate') and one debuff ('Rupture'). Cats on the other hand only use three finishers to maintain one buff ('Savage Roar') and one debuff ('Rip'). Cats always prioritize 'Rip' over 'Savage Roar', but rogues are a little more complicated.

If you are fresh out of stealth, and have your 10% damage buff, 'Rupture' is your best choice if you will be maintaining it for a few minutes; think boss fight. Otherwise it is better to start with 'Slice and Dice', this is what you will start with on trash. If 'Slice and Dice' is already up, and your target will stay alive for 20 seconds or so for the bleed to tick a while, then you should apply 'Rupture', otherwise pop 'Recuperate'. When both your 'Slice and Dice' and 'Recuperate' don't need to be refreshed, use 'Eviscerate' to do some damage and dump your combo points. 'Eviscerate' will also refresh your 'Rupture'; much like 'Blood in the Water' cause your 'Ferocious Bite' to refresh 'Rip', but all the time. Unlike cats which will apply 'Rip' even if it will only tick a couple times, rogues will forgo their long term bleed entirely and just use 'Eviscerate' on short fights.

I suppose it is a good time to mention 'Honor Among Thieves'. Subtlety rogues not only generate extra combo points for their own crits like cats do, they also generate extra combo points for everyone else's (including healers, but more on that in a moment). Just like it is beneficial for cats to just auto attack and pool energy at times, to prepare for a 'Berserk' for example; it is doubly important for subtlety rogues to pool energy prior to gaining that 5th combo point. If we use an ability to get that last combo point ourselves we'll have wasted a combo point that would have been gained through 'Honor Among Thieves', but if we sit there a moment at four combo points we get the last combo point free and have enough energy saved up to use a finisher immediately so as to not waste the next free combo point that comes our way. Even outside of a group auto attacks and the bleed from 'Glyph of Hemorrhage' will get us that 5th combo point while pooling energy. It is a little slower, but at higher gear levels you can pull off your usual rotation solo and/or on a combat dummy.

I mentioned gaining combo points from healers earlier. You can use this to your advantage gaining combo points out of combat between or before pulls, so long as you have a mob targetted. This is a great way to get 'Slice and Dice' up before you even start attacking for maximum damage. Healers are usually tossing heals around after/before a pull so be sure to take advantage of thier crits.

Now back to generating combo points yourself, like those workaday cats do. You'll want to apply and maintain 'Hemorrhage' which when glyphed is sort of like a combination of 'Mangle' and 'Rake'. 'Hemorrhage' is also your primary combo point generator when you are forced to attack from the front, just like 'Mangle' for cats. When 'Hemorrhage' is up, and you can get behind your target, you'll use 'Backstab' to generate combo point (just up to four remember).

When if comes to DPS cooldowns subtlety rogues have four: 'Shadowstep' which really just enhances the other three, 'Shadow Dance', 'Vanish' and 'Preparation'. All these cooldown share a common goal, which is to use 'Ambush' as much as possible. 'Shadowstep' buffs the damage of your next 'Ambush' so you want to use it right before you 'Vanish'/'Ambush' or in the case of 'Shadow Dance' you want to use 'Shadowstep' after the first 'Ambush' (I'll get into details in a moment). 'Preparation' resets the cooldown on vanish allowing you to use it more often as a DPS cooldown.

Now as awe inspiring as it might be on a short fight we don't want to blow all these cooldowns in rapid succession on a long fight. Well not within the same ten seconds anyway. 'Ambush', along with our other two openers, provides an armor bypassing buff via the 'Find Weakness' talent that lasts for ten seconds. Bypassing 70% of our targets armor is quite the DPS boost. This is why when we use 'Shadow Dance' we don't buff 'Ambush' with our 'Shadowstep' ability until the second 'Ambush'. That allows us to have our empowered 'Ambush' benefit from 'Find Weakness'. Oh yeah, this is deep stuff; just imagine the possibilities of working these cooldowns into specific boss fights. There is a reason Subtlety has the highest potential damage output of any class/spec.

Let's talk about survivability and utility now. Cats have two cooldowns to reduce incoming damage: 'Survival Instincts' and 'Barkskin'. In addition to that cats have the passive healing provided by 'Leader of the Pack', and if glyphed for it 'Ferocious Bite' also provides a self heal. This is all well and good, but kitties are still gonna get tore up pretty bad.

Rogues large damage reduction cooldown 'Evasion' avoids damage rather than reducing it. We also have 'Cloak of Shadows' to remove any dots and reduce incoming magic damage or 'Combat Readiness' which reduces incoming physical damage and shares a cooldown with 'Cloak of Shadows'. These abilities only work for direct damage though. What to we rogues do about AOE damage? Laugh it off for the most part. Rogues have an ability called 'Feint' which like 'Cower' reduced aggro, but it also reduces AOE damage by 50% (this can be talented for up to 80%). So rogues have some serious staying power in AOE situations. That doesn't even include the healing provided by 'Recuperate' that keeps us pretty close to topped off while everyone else's health bars are dropping like rocks.

Speaking of AOE, subtlety rogues don't. It's not that we can't, the 'Fan of Knives' button is there; our single target rotation just does more damage. Hopefully that will change in the future, but right now subtlety does the lowest AOE damage of any class/spec. It is more laughable than shaman AOE at its worst. So as a cat coming from a 'Swipe' spamming AOE utopia, be prepared to be disappointed. Of course if there are a bazillion little mobs that dies quickly in a group it is better to AOE, but it won't happen often. Keep 'Wound Poison' on your thrown weapon just in case, it works out to more damage than 'Instant Poison' for subtlety AOE.

I suppose poisons are a new mechanic for cats. You go to the poison vendor and buy a bunch of each, but more 'Instant Poison' and 'Deadly Poison' as these will go on your mainhand and offhand daggers respectively. See how I snuck that in there, subtlety should be using daggers.

For completeness sake I will mention the last few remaining rogue abilities you should be aware of. 'Gouge' is a frontal attack which will incapacitate your target until it takes damage, bleed effects don't count if you are talented correctly into 'Sanguinary Vein'. You can probably stick this in the same spot you have 'Rake' on your cat.

A quick note on where to stick abilities, most subtlety abilities have abilities almost exactly the same as cat abilities so you should stick them in the same spots to ease your transition. I mention sticking 'Gouge' where you had 'Rake', but a couple other dissimilar abilities I stuck in the same spots are: 'Slice and Dice'/'Savage Roar' and 'Recuperate'/'Tiger's Fury.

I already mentioned 'Pounce' and 'Cheap Shot' being equivalent opening stuns; 'Kidney Shot' is the equivalent finishing stun to 'Maim'. Rogues don't have a bash like cats do flipping to bear, but 'Gouge' fills that role rather well.

Cats can remove enrage/frenzy effects with 'Soothe' which rogues can do with 'Shiv'. Cats can also use 'Remove Corruption' to remove curses which rogues would use 'Cloak of Shadows' for. These are good abilities to keep in similar places between classes.

So far as crowd control goes rogues have 'Sap' which can only be used on mobs out of combat, but when glyphed lasts for 3 minutes. If that isn't long enough rogues also have 'Blind' which will cause a mob to wander around for another full minute.

That brings us to the last couple rogue only utility abilities: 'Smoke Bomb' and 'Tricks of the Trade'. Smoke bomb isn't useful in many places, it just stops direct damage spells from hitting people inside it. Sometime it is useful, but not too often.

‘Tricks of the Trade’ on the other hand is an awesome ability, and should be used often. It behaves a lot like misdirect, but in addition to redirecting your aggro to someone else, it also provides a damage buff to whomever you "tricks" to. As you can imagine this leads to pairs of rogues "tricksing" one another throughout a fight to increase each other’s damage. Since they are just redirecting their threat to each other that portion of the ability cancels itself out. Usually you'll just "tricks" the tank to avoid pulling aggro early in the fight, but you can also use it on a DPS to boost their damage so long as the tank can maintain aggro (not so much an issue anymore).

So concludes this massive wall of text giving anyone familiar with kitty DPS a massive head start into subtlety DPS.