Archive for March, 2010
March 29th, 2010
What a night!
We finished last night with a few attempts at Putricide… but we just couldn’t get him down. Tonight we went in and stomped him down with no fuss at all. Goes to show what being fresh can do!
Was quite happy with the heal meter after that fight!
Moved on to Blood Queen Lana’thel and spent 3 or 4 goes learning the mechanics, then another one with an early wipe due to a vampire who didn’t want to bite… then it clicked and we took her down clean and fast.
Again, I was rather happy with my heals this fight.
Downing those two got my two more achievements… and two bosses closer to the ultimate aim of this game.
But first… Sindragosa.
Our best effort there tonight was 28%. I don’t think we quite get the second phase yet. Will hopefully get to work on it more next week.
As much as I liked the trash on the way to Rotface and Festergut (I want that damn ribbon!) I disliked the trash on the way to Sindragosa. Talk about filler.
March 29th, 2010
This article was originally going to be part of a much larger post about many of the addons I use. I never seemed to get it finished, probably because I use so many, and they change so often that its a big moving target. Last week Blixia was talking in gchat about various loot related addons, and that she intended to post a forum article about what was good and what wasn’t. I mentioned my half written effort, and that I would finish it off (for the loot addons at least!) and get it posted.
And here it is!
There are really only a few loot addons you may want to investigate, and really you don’t need any of them to be a successful raider. I personally like my combo as with our loot system if we don’t make a decision about the loot in 30 seconds we get passed over for rolling. this encourages you to know if you want/need the item in advance. The addons I use allows me to keep a list of what upgrades are coming from the bosses we are working on, notify me when one drops, or evaluate an upgrade if it was an unexpected/unplanned drop.
Of all the possible loot related addons, this one is the most useful. It basically has information about every equipable item in the game (well not quite, but almost!) including boss drops, craftables and everything else! Atlasloot will/does/is -
- Information for every piece of loot, from every dungeon or raid, including seasonal/event bosses
- Tell you drop rates for items
- Allow you to see EPGP/DKP costs on items (if you change some settings in the lua)
- Allow you to see the amount of tokens/badges items cost, and also work out the upgrade path for items like T10 armour
- Ingredients list for craftables
- Atlasloot includes a wishlist function, however it leaves a lot to be desired, at least compared to the functionality of Lootplan
LootPlans sole function is to tip you off when you see the item information of an item you want. This tool is best used in conjunction with AtlasLoot – browse the loot in there, tag it and add it to LootPlan. Then when the boss drops that long awaited trinket, staff or other shiney, it will pop up a reminder of what set you want it for (tank, ranged, heal, melee and other- and it will only show those applicable to your class.) Apparently the main feature is you can export your list for use with their on-line presence. I’ve never bothered as it does what I need inside the game. However, if you use RAWR, you can export from there into LootPlan. Even though I use RAWR, I have never found this to be a feature I really want to use…
Installing LibPeriodicTable is not essential, but it will add the boss or other location information to tool tips as well.
Urrghhh… I hate it, but you got to have it if you want to PUG anything these days. This little addon simply calculates a score based on what gear you are wearing. It doesnt take into account whether the items are properly itemised, enchanted, gemmed or whatever… so it is, in many cases, worse than useless.
Like Gear Score, but more than just a number. EG tries to gather a sensible amount of information about a player – what raids they have done, what gear have they got, it is correctly gemmed and enchanted; then presents that in a window so a PUG leader can easily check out those GearScore claims. Only really useful if you want to either lead PUGs, or if you want to rate players so you remember them for the future.
This tool is useful when levelling, and even at max level (though serious players will want to theorycraft more than this will let you.) RatingBuster gives a simplified view of what the stats are on a piece of loot, and allows you to quickly tell whether or not it is an upgrade.
This little gem allows sets of gear to be swapped in and out, put in the bank, or otherwise manipulated. If you have Dual Spec this is essential – it makes the inbuilt tool look terrible (and existed long before that tool came along.) It also has the ability to auto switch in items based on what you are doing or what stance/shape/etc. you shift into. So if you have riding gloves, carrot on a stick and mithril spur equipped boots, it will swap them in automatically for you whenever you jump on your mount.
XLoot replaces the inbuilt Loot frame, giving lots more info about what you are picking up, and all in less space.
(Thanks to Quintis for the suggestion)
This is a smart auto-roller. Always want to greed Frozen Orbs, disenchant ilvl 200 or below items and greed on everything else? Then PassLoot can do it for you.
PassLoot_ConfirmBoP will auto-confirm that disenchanting a BoP is ok, and PassLoot_AtlasLoot allows you to use AtlasLoot for filtering.
Just in case people don’t already, I suggest installing the Curse Client and installing all addons via it. They will be kept up to date (well, it will tell you what needs updating and do it for you when you click)
Also checkout Curseforge which supports a lot of addons in development, and is a great place to help out a developer looking for testers.
March 29th, 2010
Real Life Sucks.
I said it, now I can get on with other things!
7/12 in 25 ICC and 8/12 in 10 ICC this week. Back tonight for more 10 man, hopefully Putricide and Blood Queen or Sindragosa (or both!) will take a dirt nap this week. No loot from 10 man, but a nice new pair of pants from 25.
It seems that I am a healer again, so while I keep getting told I won’t need to heal, I’ll keep turning up to heal when we are short.
I hit 80 with my fourth toon over the weekend as well. I know I don’t have the energy to run another toon through dungeons to grab welfare epics, so I doubt much will ever happen with it. Add to that I actually don’t enjoy death knights much to play, and I am not actually sure why I bothered finishing levelling it. I am up to 55 on my priest, and I think I will finish him next, although I have two others already ~70, so finishing one of them is a shorter path. From a professions point of view, I really should finish my warrior next so that I can finish a blacksmith off. Somehow I doubt it, as playing a warrior leaves me colder than playing a death knight. Not quite as cold as a rogue though…
Last weeks promised guide is coming… when RL stops sucking quite so much.
March 23rd, 2010
As I typed this post, I realised its been a while since I put anything useful up here.
Today shall be no exception!
Friday night was a quick guild-alt run through ICC10 – six bosses down in 1.5 hours. I brought my bank-alt lock, and was happy to hit 5k. And pick up a few nice upgrades. We then proceeded to wipe on Blood Princes until I pulled the pin sometime after midnight.
Saturday Afternoon I PUG’ed ToC25, and quickly remembered why I don’t PUG things. No loot, but finally got the achievement!
Sunday night we plunged into our mains ICC 10 run – again six bosses in about 1.5 hours. Then we wiped on Blood Princes for another hour until raid time finished. I healed this on Soonti, and managed to hold my own, in spite of not having healed anything in months.
Last night we continued our mains run. We were missing Kass and Brone due to Storms in Perth (who’d live there I tells ya!), and firebug due to who knows what. Kenz, Imalime and Tawz stepped in to fill the vacancies, and we started… about 90 minutes late. We wiped Blood Princes until about 10 attempts and people were starting to get antsy to go do another boss instead, and then it clicked and we waltzed it in. Valathera Dreamwalker was the next target, with only time for two attempts. We got her up to 93%, but the HPS needs work. My fault more than the other healers I think… I just don’t know what I am doing yet.
I should be posting my mini-guide to loot addons later this week. I’ve had it half written for a while, and Blixia mentioned she was intending to do one so I figured I would just finish mine and save her the hassle.
March 16th, 2010
Bye Bye Betrayer, Hello Dissent.
I followed Bluethorne over to Dissent last week, and while I’ve had no time to raid (a quick run on Friday night not withstanding) I like this place already. Blixia asked that I re-spec my off to Boomkin, and get any experience I could. Naxx for the weekly was my first outing, and a not so stunning 4k dps on Noth. Considering my gear level I was hoping for higher. I’m too impatient to wait for random dungeons as dps, so I haven’t had much more real practice than that. I have also spent some time reading and practising on the dummies, but Boomkin’s don’t seem to have a rotation so much as priorities. So maybe I’m just not good enough to be able to push good dps. Will really need to go raiding to find out I think!
Discussions are ensuing about whether I will be allowed to start and run my own 10 man group, which would normally be a privilege reserved for longer standing, senior members of the guild. The reason behind this is that I have moved across with four of the members of my old 10 man from Betrayer, and made it clear I wanted to keep together if we could. Carecul has already found a place in the 25 man progression group, but we can continue without him! So the officers are discussing the position, and will get back to me. Things look hopeful though – effectively we will work on 10 man progression three nights, and contribute members to the 25 if they need extras on the other night. Already existing Dissent members are asking about joining the 10 man progression, which is great, although may cause problems with getting approval if the officers don’t like the numbers it could draw away from 25′s – only time will tell!
RL is still pretty cruddy, but I’m trying to use WoW as my escape (better than boozing!) which means I need to ensure I get on for Raid nights. Because I’ve been a bit of an insomniac lately, I’ve been back levelling my Priest (now 51) and working on the ah – over 11k gold, which I’m told is not much, but about 20k of materials in my gbank, which I think is! Only need to level my Warrior now so I can get blacksmithing to 450 – all other professions are done! Well tailoring is 447… nearly done!
March 8th, 2010
As predicted, I got back from holidays to find that my Guild has again died. Not quite so bad as last time, but they were pugging for 10 man ICC… which should say something. An RL mate has suggested I move to his guild. Investigating my options now.
RL is still coniving to get in the way of WoW as much as possible, so updates will be few and far between for a little while yet.
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