Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Informational Goodies and Random Asshatery


So it is 3am in the morning and wow.com has not yet reported that there will be maintenance this morning. I am excited and pissed off at the same time...

My main playing time is in the morning, so when they do maintenance I know that I will not be able to log in and play. This gives me time to catch up on other things or get a few extra hours of sleep. I am usually ok with maintenance for this reason, it forces me not to play.

When they don't have maintenance I am initially excited. I can log in and mess around for an hour before I go to bed. However, I am really bad at just playing for an hour. I have lots of friends on my server that are online in the mornings and I can screw around in Org for 2 hours and not even realize it. Damn the WoW addiction! Damn you!!!!

You see, WoW is like nicotine. You crave it, but when you know that you won't be able to smoke for multiple hours...overall you are ok with it. Think of work as a perfect example...you know that when you clock in for work, you don't get your first break for "X" number of hours. So you know that you won't be able to smoke, feed your nicotine addiction, for those "X" number of hours.

However, when you are hanging out on your own time, you'll find yourself smoking just because you haven't in the pass hour. Same thing applies to WoW...If it is available for you to play, you are more then likely going to play.

That was pretty random...

I will try to get more on point and talk more about WoW.

There are a few things that I want to talk about in this article, I might as well list them now so if your not interested you can just move on lol.

  • Random picture of a Walrus
  • Addons that will make you better
  • Altoholism - Elemental Shaman and Arcane Mage ownage stories of the weekend
  • Guild Assplodes
  • Weekly Dumb
  • Quote of the Week
  • Nazi Cat


Addons that will make you better...

I am going to go out on a limp and say that more then 75% of WoW players use some sort of addons. I know that number is MUCH higher for raiders and I feel like its my blogging duty to share some addons that will make you a better healer / dps / tank.

Power Auras Classic

This addon is flipping amazing. I knew of this addon for awhile, but I just recently started using it. In a raid environment, there is alot of stuff going on and it is very easy to miss a proc or a special ability.

This is were Power Auras comes in. It allows you to put up an image on your screen to notify you of whatever you set it up to do.

For help configuring this mod there are a few very helpful tutorital videos on youtube...fyi

Example A - On my Elemental Shaman, my lava burst ability is on a cooldown. I want to use this ability every time it is up and like I stated before, sometimes in a raid environment I can miss it...which hurts my dps. I setup power auras to pop a large flashing image on my screen right above my character's head when it is off cool down. This way I know that my next spell should be lava burst.

Example B - On my Arcane Mage, sometimes I don't notice when I get my Missile Barrage proc. I also want to use this proc when I have 4 Arcane Blast debuffs. In a 25 man raid, this is easily overlooked sometimes, so I setup Power Auras. I have one image pop on my screen to notify me that my special proc, Missile Barrage is ready and I have proc come up to remind me when I am at 4 Arcane Blast debuffs. It works wonders and my dps has shot way up after using this addon.

Example C - Lets say that you want to be notified when you get under 15% health or mana? You can setup power auras for that. This works great in a pve raid or a pvp environment. I know sometimes I forget to heal myself because I am so worried about healing everyone else. Power auras helps me remember and that will make you a better all around player.

Clique

Clique is mostly used by healers, but I still use it on my mage for decursing and other abilities. All you have to do is put your cursor over a raid plate and click a particular button that you setup for a spell.

For my shaman...

"shift + right click" = chain heal
"mouse button 4" = cure poison / decurse / cure disease
"middle mouse button" = earth shield
"mouse button 5" = macro for instant heal and trinket usage.

For my mage...

"mouse button 4" = decurse
"mouse button 5" = spellsteal

I am telling you that once you get use to this addon...there is no going back. I really do not think I can heal up to my standard in a raid setting with it. It cuts down on so much time and makes things so much more smooth...its reDONKEYOUS!

Altoholism

Elemental Goodness

I consider my off spec for my shaman as one of my alts because I put alot of time, gold, and effort into his set this past weekend. I was rocking full T7.5 with a few odds pieces from Ulduar 10 and badge gear. Over the weekend I spent 85 triumph badges on the spec and got him two pieces item level 245 gear. I also got 2 pieces of the regular T9 gear and upgraded his main hand weapon. I spent about 1100 gold on enchants and gems and I must say...he is f'n sexy!!

I have yet to try out my dps in a raid, but over a period of 5 minutes self buffed I was rocking 4k dps on the heroic dummy. With my old gear over the same amount of time I was rocking 3k dps. There was moments when I was reaching well over 5k dps and all I can say is that it made me a happy cow. I can't wait to get into a raid and unleash the elemental fury to see what the overall result will be.

I am telling you, the power aura classic mod really, really, helps out with my dps on my elemental. I did the same duration, five minutes, without the power aura mod on and my dps was about 500-600 less...that was with me really paying attention too!

A.D.I.D.A.ARCANE

Mostly due to her rocking face, I usually read clearcasting's blog daily before I go home from work. She is an arcane mage and she always makes me jealous with all of her stories of ownage. So I made it a goal to get on my mage and try to get some purple pixels.

I did the heroic dailies for a few days and I got into a pretty good Ony 10 man. I got no loot, but 3x triumph badges is worth going in my opinion. I also got in a 10 man ToC run with my mage! It is ALOT different dpsing then it is healing that place.

I found out that the second boss, Lord Jarraxus or w/e, that I had no idea what to do as dps lol. I caught on quickly and we after some wiping pains, we finally cleared that place out. A super sexy belt dropped with a TON of delicious haste but I rolled a 4. I tried to buy it from the destro lock that already had a level 232 belt, but he said it was too good of an upgrade for him. The belt he was rocking had alot of crit and the belt that drop had 0 crit, but alot of haste. Everything else was pretty much identical besides the haste belt had 5 less spell power.

Did something change with destro locks? I thought they were all about crit...

I didn't feel like arguing with the guy and he already turned down my off of 500g, so F him.

So again, no purple pixels on the ToC run, but I got a ton of triumph badges and I only need 5 more to get the item level 245 shoulders. I am still rocking the T7 shoulders from 10 man Naxx...so yeah....HUGE UPGRADE

On a side note, my mage was doing around 3.5 dps during the 10 man raids. My gear completey sucks besides the T8.5 head and legs that I got...I can only imagine the type of dmg I can do with Arioch's gear. /jealous

Lucky biatch <3

Guild ASSplodes!

ahahahahahahhhh!!!

You know, I finally get into a guild that is ok with me raiding 2 nights a week and actually has a raid spot for me 100% of the time due to being the only elemental shaman in the guild. The first week I was in the guild we killed everything besides General and Yogg in 25 man Uld and we 1 shotted everything else, 10 and 25 man...Ony, ToC, VoA.

There was no difference in the second week, we still pwned faced just like the previous week. We were about 5-6 members short on the raid, but we still 1 shotted everything 25 man wise. The this past week came and we didn't run any 25 man raids because we only had like 16 people sign up. A few raiders went on vacation and a few had midterms to study for...no big deal, we still ran 2 groups of 10 mans.

Fast forward to Sunday...

I log in and notice one of our officers in Dalaran....and he isn't in the guild! WTFmate! I look at the guild log and notice that the 2 raid leaders and about 12 core members left the GUILD!

...

I still don't know what really happened, but it had to do with people not showing up to raids....you know...that one week. With Icecrown around the corner I was pretty excited that I would get to see the new content with a high end guild and that dream was shot down.

They are in a rebuilding phase now and in all seriousness...we still have some pretty fantasic people in the guild. As for 25 man raids? No chance in those happening...but our 10 man raid roster is still pretty solid.

Just sucks that it ASSploded over one bad attendence week. Its not like we weren't getting applications and we were only seriously 5-6 people away from a full 25 man raid and bench spots. It fucking silly that they decided to leave for that reason and as you can read from my rant....I'm not too excited about it.

I am not sure what to do guild wise now. Since I got expose to 25 man raiding and the pure ownage that we did...I want it back lol. 10 mans are fun, but I want the 25 mans.

I will keep you guys informed as my guild journey unfortuntely continues...../sigh

Dumb of the Week!

Thats right, back by popular demand its WTFspaghetti's Dumb of the Week! Man...this dude has the biggest balls ever. I wont ruin the story for you but seriously...you have to read this article. It is work safe.

Quote of the Week!

Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to hide the bodies of those I had to kill because they pissed me off.

-unknown

Thats all from me people! I'm WTFout of here!

3 comments:

Fish said...

As a jew, that cat frightens me lol

I have never used clique, but I LOVE healbot, same general deal.

I always wondered about the DPS range for elemental Shammy. I know my ret pally does about 2500, and we have an arcane mage in our guild who does 5-6k, I figured shammy would be in between but its good to have some backup on that.

Speaking of arcane, if I ever get my mage to 80, totally going arcane, looks cool, massive damage!

Arioch said...

Arcane is the only way to go, I luvs it.

You know, we could always use some good DPS with off spec heals...

lol at stories of my ownage. Most of my posts are rants about me screwing up.

bouncy gnome said...

Did you ever tried Scorchio2 for the proxes and track of AB4x on your mage?
I have a dual spec on my mage, fire and arcane and it is an amazing addon to use for both specs. For the fire spec it records if any mage in the raid has done 5xscorch and what the timer is on that, also tracks Living Bomb, free Pyro prox, sheep and more of those things. For arcane mages you can track your AB with the timer so you know when to refresh, also tracks your 2 min CD abilities and AM prox. I find it a very usefull mage addon, how ever it only works for mages and not for other classes.

/cheer

Bouncy