Maul. Yeah, don't macro that; it's bad. Not as bad as remapping half your keybinds and learning to tank again, but worse than the week after when your fingers know where to go again. Which is exactly what I did a couple weeks ago.
Way back when I was posted all about this epiphany I had to avoid adding another key to press in bear form. I didn't have enough rage to always use maul, but I could narrow down on a percentage on how often I could use it and use castsequence macro lines to randomize my mauling accordingly. That actually worked quite well during combat, but the drawback was the RNG of mauling immediately when pulling with limited rage. It made grabbing snap aggro just a little harder. That got to be a little much over time and I decided to make a change.
At the same time I was actually leveling my new goblin warrior and had just gotten heroic strike. Of course I hadn't macroed it immediately after getting it seeing as I had a ton of space on my bars. So I was getting used to the idea of using a rage dump. So between those two influences I ended up combining growl and challenging roar into a single keybind and using a modifier key to access my sparingly used "AOE taunt". I actually used that a lot more in wrath. Anyway, that freed up the spot I needed to toss maul out on it's own.
The initial transition was painful... like really painful. I was pretty frustrated the first couple instances I tanked that way. Of course I had decided while I was moving buttons around that I should start using my 'Z' key as well and move the weapon sheathing/toggling button to '\' which I remember using for some FPS once upon a time. That let me move my interrupt from 'T' to 'Z' and whatever I had on '6' to 'T'. I'm using one of those natural keyboards so '6' is just just out of reach without a handgasm (the strange sensation of trying to spread the tips of your middle and index fingers as far apart as possible). On the bright side I am now using every possible key within reach of my left hand. Was tempted to use 'X' too, but I like to swim/fly down sometimes for fun.
So for those with a puzzled look I should explain what my keybinds look like. I use WASD for movement. 'A' and 'D' still turn left and right rather than strafe. I tried the strafing, but sometimes I want to take my hand off the mouse and still be somewhat mobile. Holding the right mouse button and 'turning' achieves the same effect as strafing anyway so no great loss.
'3' and '4' are my bread and butter abilities that get spammed a lot. They are easily reached while holding 'W' or 'S' to move forward or backward while steering with the mouse. Remaining mobile while attacking is pretty important for melee and also pretty handy for casters at times. '1' and 'Q' are next with the next most frequently use abilities followed by '2' which slightly impairs my ability to move forward so I stick something I use once in a while (I can still move forward by hitting both mouse buttons).
'5' I use for a taunt or another less frequently used ability. I've always had my taunt on '5' for my death knight since there were a lot more abilities in my tanking rotation than my bear. I always took that as a bit of a disadvantage seeing as taunt should in theory be more readily accessible. In practice I've found the opposite to be true; now that my taunt key is not immediately accessible I am hitting it much less in error so that when I do need it I'm more likely to have it off cooldown. After all I had it on '4' previously and '4' is one of the two buttons I hit the most for every other spec. Can't fight muscle memory.
Then my new addition 'Z' is where I stick my interrupts, they used to be over on 'T' and that wasn't nearly as convenient while moving. 'E' I use for AOE, 'R' for charging, death gripping, jumping back, blinking, basically anything that gets me to where I want to be or brings the where to me. 'T', 'F' and 'G' are reserved for cooldowns along with 'F1' and 'F2'. 'F3' I use for crowd control, 'F4' to break out of crowd control and 'F5' to reduce damage taken. Exceptions exist for classes without such abilities.
'C' I use for cleansing, 'V' for sprinting, dashing, moving faster by some means and 'B' I use for buffing. I actually have been macroing my 'B' to buff out of combat or with a modifier and than use some sort of cooldown I don't want to accidentally hit out of combat only while in combat. Mark of the Wild and Barkskin in the case of my druid. I used to use 'V' for mana regen, but decided to just leave that over with my mana potions and utility crap and click it as needed. A keybound speed boost has proven much more valuable in practice.
And finally that poor '6' key is still looking for a use. It is actually further of a reach for me than 'F5' so I've been experimenting with long cooldowns there, but really I've been clicking it more with the mouse than actually hitting '6'. Previously I used '6' for my start of a fight prep type key, hunter's mark, stealth, etc. So in reality I didn't add a key to my repertoire so much as add one, remove one and move two. Right now I'm still leaving '6' empty on my druid since it is so close to 'T' and I still slip once in a while trying to stealth. Once I grow out of that I'm sure I'll find a use for it. Moral of the story is get your binding right the first time and hopefully this long winded explanation helps someone.
Friday, February 25, 2011
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Interrupts Using a Fleeting Resource
Among my two complaints about feral right now; yes I only have two, well maybe three. Anyway the one that bugs me most is using rage, and worse, energy to fuel a timely interrupt. Here I am happily smacking away and boom I need to interrupt in the next second an a half. If I don't have the rage or energy already available it ain't happening.
While tanking something where I know I will have to interrupt I can make the additional effort to keep a little rage in reserve for a timely interrupt. It actually isn't that big of a deal, just a matter of not hitting maul that one more time. Bear rotation remains relatively constant when it comes to rage usage per unit time.
Cat form is a whole other story, energy levels are constantly doing a roller coaster from near full back to nothing and that fluctuation more often than not will never line up for a convenient interrupt. Best case scenario you have the energy and it doesn't muck up your dots/roar, worse case scenario you just threw off a ferocious bite or something. I don't really like to consciously think about the numbers, but when you get into the cat groove you get used to having a certain amount of energy to work with, setting some aside really isn't a consideration. Saving some short term for a known interrupt is probably the best of both worlds, but that isn't always possible. Oh that reminds me, there are four things I don't like about feral.
Taking a look at other classes we have interrupts again on cooldowns, but using a more static resources like mana, focus or runic power. Even rogues don't seem to use their energy in quite the same way as cats do, so the occasional kick isn't as much an inconvenience; could just be that it is cheaper too. Many of these interrupts aren't even on the global cooldown. This is how I like my interrupts, yes I hit the button quickly, give me a cookie. Ideally an interrupt should have no impact on other abilities and having it on it's own cooldown is sufficient in my book.
While tanking something where I know I will have to interrupt I can make the additional effort to keep a little rage in reserve for a timely interrupt. It actually isn't that big of a deal, just a matter of not hitting maul that one more time. Bear rotation remains relatively constant when it comes to rage usage per unit time.
Cat form is a whole other story, energy levels are constantly doing a roller coaster from near full back to nothing and that fluctuation more often than not will never line up for a convenient interrupt. Best case scenario you have the energy and it doesn't muck up your dots/roar, worse case scenario you just threw off a ferocious bite or something. I don't really like to consciously think about the numbers, but when you get into the cat groove you get used to having a certain amount of energy to work with, setting some aside really isn't a consideration. Saving some short term for a known interrupt is probably the best of both worlds, but that isn't always possible. Oh that reminds me, there are four things I don't like about feral.
Taking a look at other classes we have interrupts again on cooldowns, but using a more static resources like mana, focus or runic power. Even rogues don't seem to use their energy in quite the same way as cats do, so the occasional kick isn't as much an inconvenience; could just be that it is cheaper too. Many of these interrupts aren't even on the global cooldown. This is how I like my interrupts, yes I hit the button quickly, give me a cookie. Ideally an interrupt should have no impact on other abilities and having it on it's own cooldown is sufficient in my book.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Corporal Punishment for Dungeon Finder
After coming up with the title I'm not sure if it means I would like it implemented or that it is already the case, but either way there are a few rather serious issues sucking the fun out of the dungeon finder. Particularly when it comes to heroics. The greatest of which is waiting 40 minutes only to have your group fall apart through no fault of your own.
In heroics I see a large portion of groups fall apart after a tank or healer, often with a DPS that queued with them, roll need on a piece of loot they wanted and then drop group immediately. It is obvious that they got a friend to up their chances of getting the item, came just for that and thought nothing of everyone else's time. Aside from that seemingly frequent special case most groups fall apart on any wipe, for any reason. Sometimes a bad pull that only a couple people die on is enough to have someone drop.
It would be nice to see the punishment for dropping a group be severe enough to give such players pause. My favorite idea so far is to have the deserter debuff longer (proportional to the frequency of dropped groups) and with stat penalties much like resurrection sickness. Including, of course, the loss of durability on every item the player is carrying. If dropping group is more costly than wiping a couple times then I'm sure people will try and make things work.
Of course we don't want to punish groups that really are failing. Each boss/dungeon should have a par associated with it. Something like this boss usually takes 3 wipes average for a group to learn it. If after those three attempts the boss isn't down then players can drop without penalty. Could even be something hardcoded, like 5 wipes over the course of a dungeon. Pretty lenient, but the goal is to get people to try rather than give up, not to force anyone to wipe on the same boss for an hour.
I'm pretty sure most players are in agreement that something needs to change and I think whatever solution is implemented should basically force people to put in a minimal amount of effort before giving up. Blizzard is collecting all that kick/drop information already so I can only imagine they will begin to use it for something more eventually. Right now it is just being used to throttle the number of people kicked, but not the number of people dropping as far as I know.
In heroics I see a large portion of groups fall apart after a tank or healer, often with a DPS that queued with them, roll need on a piece of loot they wanted and then drop group immediately. It is obvious that they got a friend to up their chances of getting the item, came just for that and thought nothing of everyone else's time. Aside from that seemingly frequent special case most groups fall apart on any wipe, for any reason. Sometimes a bad pull that only a couple people die on is enough to have someone drop.
It would be nice to see the punishment for dropping a group be severe enough to give such players pause. My favorite idea so far is to have the deserter debuff longer (proportional to the frequency of dropped groups) and with stat penalties much like resurrection sickness. Including, of course, the loss of durability on every item the player is carrying. If dropping group is more costly than wiping a couple times then I'm sure people will try and make things work.
Of course we don't want to punish groups that really are failing. Each boss/dungeon should have a par associated with it. Something like this boss usually takes 3 wipes average for a group to learn it. If after those three attempts the boss isn't down then players can drop without penalty. Could even be something hardcoded, like 5 wipes over the course of a dungeon. Pretty lenient, but the goal is to get people to try rather than give up, not to force anyone to wipe on the same boss for an hour.
I'm pretty sure most players are in agreement that something needs to change and I think whatever solution is implemented should basically force people to put in a minimal amount of effort before giving up. Blizzard is collecting all that kick/drop information already so I can only imagine they will begin to use it for something more eventually. Right now it is just being used to throttle the number of people kicked, but not the number of people dropping as far as I know.
Monday, January 24, 2011
Farmcraft
I try to avoid repetitive tasks whenever I can, either by automating them or putting them off for obscene periods of time. Automation isn't even an option being forbidden by the rules of the game so mostly I just put stuff off for like ever. Until I want/need something that is.
I haven't farmed so much leather in a short period of time since I was making my druid a tanking set in burning crusade. I still have unpleasant memories of skinning clefthoof for hours. I managed to make it though the 505-510 leatherworking bottleneck over the course of the weekend though. Basically there is one green pattern which uses lots of leather and one yellow recipe which uses volatiles and less leather. So a half hour per attempt with no guarantee of getting a skill up. Lets just say I have a lot of cloaks of the beast now.
It is funny how farming one thing drives me to farm for others though. My main goal is leather, but for some patterns I need volatiles so I go after those. Volatile water farming makes my fishing go up and leaves me with quite a collection of cooking mats. Same for killing critters to skin, lots of meat. So before my bank explodes I've gone and started leveling my cooking to use up some of this extra meat. Other volatiles point me toward mining on a different toon which in turn led me to level engineering to the point where I could make an electrostatic condenser for more volitile airs. After all it would really suck to spend time farming and be missing out on some free mats.
My latest whim is to level my blacksmithing which I left at around 365 I believe. Ironically I dropped mining on that toon and took up engineering just because I didn't want to grind up my mining skill on a third toon. So that means flying around northrend for hours just to get to using cataclysm mats which I will again need to farm for. All this to make myself belt buckles which are a ridiculous 300 gold in the auction house right now. It takes a special occasion for me to go over 100g on a single item enhancement. That means leveling blacksmithing all the way to 525 just to get the pattern. That will be a while.
I'm pretty sure I have my farming planned out for the next 18 months. I plan to level every profession with the exception of jewelcrafting and inscription. If anyone has taken those professions I laugh in your general direction, ha. It's actually a good thing that some people take those professions or else I wouldn't have anything to buy in the auction house. Inscription is more or less a one time thing now with permanently learned glyphs and jewelcrafting has a daily on top of the already annoying grind. My jewelcrafter learned exactly one epic cut last expansion after maxing out, unless you count dragon's eyes, I did take advantage of my profession bonuses at least. My scribe is still floundering in wrath herbs. Neither toon is likely to see much action this expansion, apparently I'm a professionist.
There really should be a mechanism to switch professions without starting from scratch. Something along the lines of switching profession specializations, once you've done the work you pay your gold and switch to whatever you want. Even if every recipe you learned got permanently clobbered it wouldn't be so bad. Probably have to limit it such that gathering professions and crafting professions weren't interchangeable as they represent very different levels of commitment. Lots of professions sound great in the starting zone, but after a significant commitment don't seem so great later on.
The other thing that I would really love to see would be the ability to have another profession. Mostly I would like skinning to be part of leatherworking, but the result would be the same. To be able to have all the professions I enjoy on the toons I play most often would be a pretty sweet deal. I think this is a definite possibility as characters get more powerful and professions become more balanced to the point where adding another wouldn't be too powerful or throw the balance off terribly. We're already at the point where gathering professions are pretty much a joke reserved for alts for anyone lucky enough to be planning that far ahead or sadistic enough to start the grid over. The only solutions would be to let everyone have another crafting profession or buff the crap out of gathering professions.
Wrath was a bit of an experiment for me, I dabbled in pretty much everything to see what I really liked and what I really didn't. My first expansion BC, I only really had time to learn the game, learn my couple toons/specs and work on the professions I chose on a whim at like level 12. In Cataclsym I got to choose my favorite combination of classes and professions to work on first, but it was kind of frustrating to compromise between classes and professions. In the end I am rather happy with what are to become my "mains" this expansion, but there is a lingering feeling of regret which will likely last the duration of the expansion. Of course I want one toon to do everything so I'm likely never going to be completely satisfied, but my druid gets me damn close.
I haven't farmed so much leather in a short period of time since I was making my druid a tanking set in burning crusade. I still have unpleasant memories of skinning clefthoof for hours. I managed to make it though the 505-510 leatherworking bottleneck over the course of the weekend though. Basically there is one green pattern which uses lots of leather and one yellow recipe which uses volatiles and less leather. So a half hour per attempt with no guarantee of getting a skill up. Lets just say I have a lot of cloaks of the beast now.
It is funny how farming one thing drives me to farm for others though. My main goal is leather, but for some patterns I need volatiles so I go after those. Volatile water farming makes my fishing go up and leaves me with quite a collection of cooking mats. Same for killing critters to skin, lots of meat. So before my bank explodes I've gone and started leveling my cooking to use up some of this extra meat. Other volatiles point me toward mining on a different toon which in turn led me to level engineering to the point where I could make an electrostatic condenser for more volitile airs. After all it would really suck to spend time farming and be missing out on some free mats.
My latest whim is to level my blacksmithing which I left at around 365 I believe. Ironically I dropped mining on that toon and took up engineering just because I didn't want to grind up my mining skill on a third toon. So that means flying around northrend for hours just to get to using cataclysm mats which I will again need to farm for. All this to make myself belt buckles which are a ridiculous 300 gold in the auction house right now. It takes a special occasion for me to go over 100g on a single item enhancement. That means leveling blacksmithing all the way to 525 just to get the pattern. That will be a while.
I'm pretty sure I have my farming planned out for the next 18 months. I plan to level every profession with the exception of jewelcrafting and inscription. If anyone has taken those professions I laugh in your general direction, ha. It's actually a good thing that some people take those professions or else I wouldn't have anything to buy in the auction house. Inscription is more or less a one time thing now with permanently learned glyphs and jewelcrafting has a daily on top of the already annoying grind. My jewelcrafter learned exactly one epic cut last expansion after maxing out, unless you count dragon's eyes, I did take advantage of my profession bonuses at least. My scribe is still floundering in wrath herbs. Neither toon is likely to see much action this expansion, apparently I'm a professionist.
There really should be a mechanism to switch professions without starting from scratch. Something along the lines of switching profession specializations, once you've done the work you pay your gold and switch to whatever you want. Even if every recipe you learned got permanently clobbered it wouldn't be so bad. Probably have to limit it such that gathering professions and crafting professions weren't interchangeable as they represent very different levels of commitment. Lots of professions sound great in the starting zone, but after a significant commitment don't seem so great later on.
The other thing that I would really love to see would be the ability to have another profession. Mostly I would like skinning to be part of leatherworking, but the result would be the same. To be able to have all the professions I enjoy on the toons I play most often would be a pretty sweet deal. I think this is a definite possibility as characters get more powerful and professions become more balanced to the point where adding another wouldn't be too powerful or throw the balance off terribly. We're already at the point where gathering professions are pretty much a joke reserved for alts for anyone lucky enough to be planning that far ahead or sadistic enough to start the grid over. The only solutions would be to let everyone have another crafting profession or buff the crap out of gathering professions.
Wrath was a bit of an experiment for me, I dabbled in pretty much everything to see what I really liked and what I really didn't. My first expansion BC, I only really had time to learn the game, learn my couple toons/specs and work on the professions I chose on a whim at like level 12. In Cataclsym I got to choose my favorite combination of classes and professions to work on first, but it was kind of frustrating to compromise between classes and professions. In the end I am rather happy with what are to become my "mains" this expansion, but there is a lingering feeling of regret which will likely last the duration of the expansion. Of course I want one toon to do everything so I'm likely never going to be completely satisfied, but my druid gets me damn close.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Just How Stupid Can People Be?
Pretty darn stupid obviously, but especially so when it comes to the dungeon finder tool. Imagine for a moment you are a brain dead DPS who has just waited 20-45 minutes in a dungeon queue, your tank and or healer drop group or disconnect on the first pull, you immediately drop group because you love waiting in queues. This seems to be the reaction I see nine times out of ten.
Tanks and healers I can see dropping at the drop of a hat, they can get right back into another dungeon almost immediately, but DPS have a prohibitively long wait at times and yet still screw themselves and the other DPS in their party nearly every chance they get.
Once you are in a group and zoned in you are at the very top of the queue should you need to replace someone. Even if you need to replace a tank or healer the wait time is going to be tiny in comparison to leaving the group and requeuing as DPS. Even the most impatient person still has the option to use the button on the minimap to zone out of the dungeon, continue whatever you were doing and zone back in when the rest of the group appears.
I'd say about 50% of the groups I join as DPS don't finish the dungeon because the tank and/or healer drop for one reason or the other. It usually doesn't have anything to do with the success of the group either. Anyone can put the group into the queue to fill a hole. Anyone can vote to kick someone that has disconnected or gone afk for an extended period of time. The wait time for grabbing a tank, healer or DPS for a group in progress are all about the same. Yet for some reason the majority of the population seems to prefer to give up on a group despite increasing their total wait time by 15-40 minutes assuming it takes 5 minutes for the dungeon finder to find replacements. It usually happens nearly instantly, but often times people will again drop as soon as they zone in with a group in progress; morons.
So the moral of the rant is that DPS should be trying harder to keep groups going as they have the most time invested. DPS are expendable in the eyes of tanks and healers, but when it comes to a dungeon in progress everyone is nearly equally expendable and DPS should take advantage of that fact when it suits them.
It is kind of ironic that the only people I've seen take advantage of the shorter queue times for dungeons in progress are DPS who exploit it by queuing together as a tank and/or healer and then causing a group to fall apart. They then requeue together as DPS and start at the top of the queue for their dungeon in progress blowing by the rest of the DPS waiting their turn.
It is rather sad to be left in a group of one unable to continue when all it would have taken was one other person to stay in the group and requeue to resume almost immediately with a brand new party.
Tanks and healers I can see dropping at the drop of a hat, they can get right back into another dungeon almost immediately, but DPS have a prohibitively long wait at times and yet still screw themselves and the other DPS in their party nearly every chance they get.
Once you are in a group and zoned in you are at the very top of the queue should you need to replace someone. Even if you need to replace a tank or healer the wait time is going to be tiny in comparison to leaving the group and requeuing as DPS. Even the most impatient person still has the option to use the button on the minimap to zone out of the dungeon, continue whatever you were doing and zone back in when the rest of the group appears.
I'd say about 50% of the groups I join as DPS don't finish the dungeon because the tank and/or healer drop for one reason or the other. It usually doesn't have anything to do with the success of the group either. Anyone can put the group into the queue to fill a hole. Anyone can vote to kick someone that has disconnected or gone afk for an extended period of time. The wait time for grabbing a tank, healer or DPS for a group in progress are all about the same. Yet for some reason the majority of the population seems to prefer to give up on a group despite increasing their total wait time by 15-40 minutes assuming it takes 5 minutes for the dungeon finder to find replacements. It usually happens nearly instantly, but often times people will again drop as soon as they zone in with a group in progress; morons.
So the moral of the rant is that DPS should be trying harder to keep groups going as they have the most time invested. DPS are expendable in the eyes of tanks and healers, but when it comes to a dungeon in progress everyone is nearly equally expendable and DPS should take advantage of that fact when it suits them.
It is kind of ironic that the only people I've seen take advantage of the shorter queue times for dungeons in progress are DPS who exploit it by queuing together as a tank and/or healer and then causing a group to fall apart. They then requeue together as DPS and start at the top of the queue for their dungeon in progress blowing by the rest of the DPS waiting their turn.
It is rather sad to be left in a group of one unable to continue when all it would have taken was one other person to stay in the group and requeue to resume almost immediately with a brand new party.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
My UI, Where Minimalist Means Minimal Change
Disable all your add-ons, take a screen shot. That's about what I am aiming for. No really, one of the goals of my UI is to not do anything which would cause a learning curve should I be without some or even all of my add-ons. In fact this just recently happened to me on my laptop which I updated to 4.x on the road and just wanted to play my warlock a little without messing with add-ons. I also had an ulterior motive to see how the default UI looked, I've not used it in an age.
So my first test was to see just how awesome the new quest tracking system was. I've been using Carbonite since pretty much forever and much to my surprise the default UI is actually quite good. Carbonite has only two perks: more flexible placement of the quest tracking map and more automated quest tracking by proximity. I can almost function with the small map up there in the upper left where blizzard stick all thier informational frames, but I really like the translucent map Carbonite provides shoved off in a more discrete corner. The other thing is that Cabonite automagically tracks quests based on your proximity to them, with the default UI you have the option to track every quest you pick up, or do it all manually. The tracking selection isn't a big deal; if the small map frame was more flexible in placement that would be enough to get me to drop Carbonite.
Once I got into questing after a brief self tutorial I noticed the one place the default UI really fails, inventory management. I think this has more to do with the play style I've become accustomed to than blizzard's shortcomings. I use ArkInventory to show my entire inventory in one frame sorted by item type. I know exactly where my quest items are going to be, I know exactly where my BoE greens and enchanting mats are when it comes to send they to my enchanter, etc. Locating quest items used to be a big to do before the items were available right on the quest tracker, but occasionally they are missing and you have to quick open your bag and use them, often in a bit of a hurry since if you are like me you didn't look for the item before you had to use it right before a mob dies. I don't want to organize my bag and I certainly don't want to hunt through it. The only time I look in my bag for the most part is to empty it or sometimes equip a new item. Even then I have an add on to throw away the cheapest junk item I am carrying to make room without ever opening my bag. Pretty sure inventory management add-ons are here to stay, there is no way blizzard will add the level of tracking most people come to expect, including item counts on alts and guild banks, searches, etc. It is just too far beyond the scope of the default UI.
The next biggie for me is equipment sets, pretty much all my toons have at least a PVE and a PVP set. My hybrid toons have more. Right now my druid walks around with 4 complete sets and a few pieces of frost resist gear for special occasions. Without an equipment manager I would be totally lost putting on a specific set manually. Luckily not too long ago this feature was included in the default UI and better yet the add-on I used previously, Outfitter, makes use of the server side equipment sets so with or without the add-on I am good to go. The reason I still keep the add-on around is for partial equipment sets, enhanced tootips to let me know which sets and item is in, and the oh so convenient list of BoP items not currently in a set; that is such a great way to sell/equip stuff quickly.
So far I've not touched the default UI at all. In fact most of my addons are hidden behind the scenes unless activated. The most notable element of my UI is my DataBroker bar across the top of my screen. Here I have access to a lot of otherwise hidden add-ons as well as useful information at a glance. How much gold I have, what equipment set I am using, my equipment durability and anything else I want to know without clicking somewhere. I actually don't use most of the space so I am considering moving to a DataBroker add-on that lets me put things all over instead of on a bar.
Given my large widescreen monitor and my UI scale set as low as possible, I have a lot of room at the bottom of my screen to the left and right of my action bars/utility buttons. On the left I have my chat frame which you can't drag all the way to the bottom by default so I am thinking underneath is the perfect place to hide that DataBroker stuff I mentioned. On the right I have Omen and Recount just below my tooltip frame and additional action bars on the right side. I always have all the action bars enabled and share a common organizational system between toons.
The only other noticeable difference between my UI and the default (out of combat) then are my Pitbull unit frames. I am currently reevaluating whether or not the default unit frames are sufficient for me. With the new enhancements I think they might be. All I really use the unit/raid frames for are highlighting debuffs, aggro and the incoming heals display. I have some minor concerns about the numbers displayed, but that alone wouldn't be enough reason for me to keep an entire add-on.
In combat I have a few additional things pop up in the middle of my screen. I track combo points and rotation specific buffs and debuffs front and center with NugComboBars and Auracle. I was actually half thinking about power aura, but then blizzard added a simple version which works quite well for me. Along the same lines I replaced the default cast bars with Quartz. The main reason is basically just for the latency display which is invaluable when chain casting. I can start casting the next spell before I actually see the first go off.
I suppose WIM (WoW Instant Messenger) is also worth a mention. I don't know how often people have the need to keep multiple whisper conversations straight, but I do so with some regularity. Having a little window for each conversion is quite handy and I would be a lot less chatty without them.
So there you have a basic idea of what my UI looks like and have a point of reference should you ever find your UI or add-ons the target of my mockery. For example a bar mod screwing up a boss encounter will probably feel my ire for a good six months. Lets face it, Warcraft is buggy enough without introducing more potential points of failure, especially around major patches such as these. I like non intrusive add-ons which improve my gameplay, but don't take over. A little extra tooltip text, another button or informational display in a relevant location, those are all nice things to have. Like knowing who is responsible for a buff by mousing over it. A minor detail, but I seem to be the only one in raids that knows. :)
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Why Choose a Bear?
Bears share a lot in common with warriors so far as tanking goes. You can do a side by side comparison of abilities and come up with a one to one relationship with nearly all the abilities. There are minor differences here and there; bears have fewer abilities that in general do more to make up for it, but the overall feel is about the same. Both bears and warriors are highly mobile tanks reliant on rage. Put plainly, we charge around a lot and have anger management issues.
This is in direct contrast with paladins and death knights that have a more stationary approach to tanking, they prefer their targets to come to them. The price they pay for the tools to do that is neither can charge. Both camps can get the job done so the decision is more about what type of player you are. If you prefer melee over ranged you are going to like warriors and druids, if you prefer ranged you are going to lean toward paladin and death knight. What, all tanks are melee?
It all comes down to how you are used to thinking; druids, warriors and melee in general are thinking at the end of a pull, "Where am I going next?". Paladins, death knights and ranged folks are going to be looking around at the end of a pull asking themselves, "What can I hit next?" The difference is subtle and at times non existent, there is nothing stopping a druid or warrior from pulling something at range in the same sense that there is nothing stopping a paladin or death knight from running in, but the class mechanics do favor one tactic over the other. So the first step toward becoming a bear is wanting to eat, drink and breath melee.
If melee isn't your thing then go play with death knight or paladin, probably paladin as you can heal rather than melee as a second spec. Having tanked on both I'd say the paladin was slightly easier to manage, but it is so close you should just pick the class you like the flavor of better. They are pretty much opposites when it comes to undead disease carrying monster vs light wielding holy warrior.
Back to bears; now the only choice left is between a druid and a warrior. This choice is defined mostly by whether or not you are a good fit for a druid. Druids are hybrids in the truest sense of the word. If you are only interesting in tanking and want to specialize to be just a tank then warrior is the way to go. If you want to mix some DPS in with your tanking and perhaps even moonlight as a healer then druid is where it is at. Basically people who can't or don't want to make up their minds prefer druids so they don't ever have too.
What really sets bears apart from other tanks isn't how well they tank or how they do it compared to others, it is what they are doing when they aren't tanking. Many fights only require one tank, some fights only require one tank for one part and two for the rest. Feral druids fill these needs fluidly by having the ability to go cat and for all intensive purposes become a DPS. Even without the benefit of DPS gear or a hybrid bear/cat spec a bear tank can bring it in cat form. No other tanks can come close without changing specs.
The opposite is also true and quite helpful in 5 and 10 mans. A feral druid doing DPS can tank quite effectively in an emergency if specced for it. I cannot count the number of times I have tipped the balance from wipe to win just because I was able to tank for a few crucial seconds. I also can't count the number of wipes I've caused, but that has more to do with my reckless nature and less to do with ability. Lets just say I consider tanking talents to be DPS utility talents. ;)
So the second reason to consider being a bear tank is if you favor flexibility over functionality. Warriors have a few really neat tricks up their sleeves, but can't flip roles mid fight. At the end of the day warriors get as much amusement from their bag of tricks as druids do from their shifting so it comes down to which appeals more to the person making the decision.
This is in direct contrast with paladins and death knights that have a more stationary approach to tanking, they prefer their targets to come to them. The price they pay for the tools to do that is neither can charge. Both camps can get the job done so the decision is more about what type of player you are. If you prefer melee over ranged you are going to like warriors and druids, if you prefer ranged you are going to lean toward paladin and death knight. What, all tanks are melee?
It all comes down to how you are used to thinking; druids, warriors and melee in general are thinking at the end of a pull, "Where am I going next?". Paladins, death knights and ranged folks are going to be looking around at the end of a pull asking themselves, "What can I hit next?" The difference is subtle and at times non existent, there is nothing stopping a druid or warrior from pulling something at range in the same sense that there is nothing stopping a paladin or death knight from running in, but the class mechanics do favor one tactic over the other. So the first step toward becoming a bear is wanting to eat, drink and breath melee.
If melee isn't your thing then go play with death knight or paladin, probably paladin as you can heal rather than melee as a second spec. Having tanked on both I'd say the paladin was slightly easier to manage, but it is so close you should just pick the class you like the flavor of better. They are pretty much opposites when it comes to undead disease carrying monster vs light wielding holy warrior.
Back to bears; now the only choice left is between a druid and a warrior. This choice is defined mostly by whether or not you are a good fit for a druid. Druids are hybrids in the truest sense of the word. If you are only interesting in tanking and want to specialize to be just a tank then warrior is the way to go. If you want to mix some DPS in with your tanking and perhaps even moonlight as a healer then druid is where it is at. Basically people who can't or don't want to make up their minds prefer druids so they don't ever have too.
What really sets bears apart from other tanks isn't how well they tank or how they do it compared to others, it is what they are doing when they aren't tanking. Many fights only require one tank, some fights only require one tank for one part and two for the rest. Feral druids fill these needs fluidly by having the ability to go cat and for all intensive purposes become a DPS. Even without the benefit of DPS gear or a hybrid bear/cat spec a bear tank can bring it in cat form. No other tanks can come close without changing specs.
The opposite is also true and quite helpful in 5 and 10 mans. A feral druid doing DPS can tank quite effectively in an emergency if specced for it. I cannot count the number of times I have tipped the balance from wipe to win just because I was able to tank for a few crucial seconds. I also can't count the number of wipes I've caused, but that has more to do with my reckless nature and less to do with ability. Lets just say I consider tanking talents to be DPS utility talents. ;)
So the second reason to consider being a bear tank is if you favor flexibility over functionality. Warriors have a few really neat tricks up their sleeves, but can't flip roles mid fight. At the end of the day warriors get as much amusement from their bag of tricks as druids do from their shifting so it comes down to which appeals more to the person making the decision.
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