Segment 46: PlayerScore

The single biggest complaint heard in World of Warcraft is about pick-up groups, usually called “pugs.” Why? Because players join pugs without the proper gear or experience to make a successful run. In the past, group leaders (now called “dungeon guides”) had two add-ons to help them determine the level of readiness a player might bring to his pug, GearScore and SkillScore. Individual players could use them to determine their own state of readiness, and decide how to improve it. Both of those became outdated with Cataclysm.

Now, TenTonHammer has released an add-on that combines the best features of GearScore and SkillScore, called PlayerScore.

I chose to download the add-on only, but there is an option to download the add-on with an updater. Since I already have three updaters, I didn’t see the need; plus, I will be forever paranoid about EXE files in add-ons that don’t come from Blizzard. However, the updater also allows you to download new PlayerScore data from TenTonHammer, and to upload ratings you’ve given to other players, much like the Wowhead Looter. So again, it’s up to you. TenTonHammer makes it easy to choose.

Confusingly, the folder name for PlayerScore is GearScore. If you already have GearScore (or SkillScore) installed, you should remove it (or them) before installing PlayerScore.

Once installed, you may find, as I did, that PlayerScore is disabled. Enable it for the toons you want to use it on.

After you log in on one of those toons, you’ll find a new icon in the center of your screen, a warhammer. Drag it to where you want it. Then click on a toon you’d like to inspect (you can click yourself, which is a good idea for your first look), and either type “/gs” or right-click the hammer icon and choose from the menu.

You will be presented with a largish frame containing quite an array of data, including the old GearScore information and a lot of new data. Dungeon Guides will want to look at the toon’s capability in 5 man, 10 man, and 25 man dungeons.

Rather than go into any more depth here, I recommend you check out the PlayerScore site at TenTonHammer. Look yourself up and see how you’re rated. Decide for yourself if this is an add-on you need. I know I want it.

Music for this segment is from Ska4U.com and is entitled “Explosive” by The Planet Smashers.

Download the MP3

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This week we’re going to look at leveling guides; specificly, Zygor’s Leveling Guide, and an alternative.

Let me start off by saying that I emphatically do NOT recommend Zygor’s Leveling Guide, and I’m not going to give you a link to the official Zygor site. If you still want it after listening to this segment, you can find it easily enough.

Zygor’s Leveling Guide is an in-game guide; that means it’s an add-on. It also is sold, not supported by voluntary donations. That means it’s in blatant violation of Blizzard’s terms of service for add-on developers.

I quote:

1) Add-ons must be free of charge.
All add-ons must be distributed free of charge. Developers may not create “premium” versions of add-ons with additional for-pay features, charge money to download an add-on, charge for services related to the add-on, or otherwise require some form of monetary compensation to download or access an add-on.

“Zygor” wants $80 (currently discounted to $60) for this add-on package. Frankly, that’s just too much even if it didn’t violate the TOS.

Zygor’s guide is technically beautiful; it has cute little animations to show that it’s doing something, it gives you waypoint arrows, and it does help you find the necessary quests for leveling. That said, however, it takes up as much add-on memory as the free alternatives which I will outline here, and tends to get in the way when you really don’t need it.

Enough said about that; here’s how you can get all the same functions without spending any money (although I do encourage you to donate to the add-on authors who accept donations):

1. Download and install Carbonite from the Carbonite add-on home page.
2. Download and install Lightheaded (see my previous review, Segment 25, for details) from WoWinterface or other sources.
3. Open your favorite Web browser (which I sincerely hope is not Internet Explorer) and go to Jame’s Leveling Guides.

Another option is to go to WoW-pro.com and get the WoW-pro leveling add-on.
You will still need Lightheaded and TomTom also.

In order for any leveling guide to be effective, you really need to start using it as soon as you create a new toon; but the Jame’s guides make it somewhat easier to start in the middle (after making a few levels) than Zygor does (another plus for freeware/donationware add-ons).

In conclusion: You can spend money to violate Blizzard’s terms of service, or you can go with free/donation-supported add-ons to do the same thing. It’s up to you. I know which I choose.

Music for this segment is from Freeplaymusic.com and is entitled “Yarn of the Buccaneer,” by Pierre Langer and Scott P. Schreer.

Download the MP3

General leveling tips:

• Obtain bags as soon as you can. There are many quests that have you gathering items, and you need someplace to carry those items.
• …Members of The Gathering can get bags out of the Guild Vault, or whisper Valkillmoar or Leftbank. The rest of you are on your own.
• If you aren’t using a guide, pick up as many quests as possible when you get to a new zone
• … and complete as many as possible before running back to turn them in.
• Avoid dungeon quests unless you have a regular group with whom you’re leveling together.
• Avoid Sven in Duskwood unless you like traveling a lot and getting very little reward for the effort.
• Make a “bank toon” who will stand around in a capital city and handle auctions and banking for you. The mail system works well and your bank toon can make boatloads of gold from gathering profession items.

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I’m sure a lot of you use Power Auras since it has gotten a lot of press from names a lot more reputable than mine. In this post I’ll go over my set up and how to recreate them, hopefully these will inspire you to play around a lot with your own auras and make some cool stuff (and then show them to me of course) =]

So Power Auras is a highly configurable addon that can track pretty much anything that can happen to or be caused by your character (trinket procs, buffs/debuffs, low health, missing buffs, cooldowns, etc) the downside is that you’ll need to do a lot of work on your end to make this addon work to its full potential (out of the box it really doesn’t do much of anything). I won’t go into the simple stuff, instead I’ll talk specifically about the Power Auras I use and why I use them. Here are a few awesome guides to familiarize you with the basics or just get a nice refresher:

Ghadamon’s Guide (MMO-Champion) – A good introduction, as well as how to use some of the more complex functions.
Food Before Flowers (NoStock UI) – Slightly more general, but covers a lot of ground.
Aliena’s Tutorial (Tankspot) – Yet another take, good tips on setting up several basic auras.
Nibuca’s Power Aura Posts (Mystic Chicanery) (part 2) (part 3) – Several posts highlighting the diversity of Power Auras, as well as basics.
Rilgon’s Hunter Auras (Stabilized Effort Scope) – No basics here, awesome hunter specific auras showing off how deep you can really go with the configuration utility.

NOTE: There’s also a bunch of video guides on youtube, so just do a search for “Power Auras” or “Power Auras guide” and you’ll get a bunch of results to comb through.

Alright lets get down to business (to defeat the huns? O_O) here’s a few screenshots showcasing all the auras I use, I couldn’t put them all on one since they are practically never all up at the same time and they end up overlapping each other and making a big mess.

These are some very simplistic auras that show me real basic information. The little red triangles pop up if my target does NOT have a Hunter’s Mark on it (mine or anyone elses). The yellow parentheses tell me if I have the Improved Steady Shot buff. When the green arc at the bottom appears that means my target doesn’t have a Serpent Sting cast by me on it (another hunter may have a sting up, but I don’t care about that in this case). The little red circle in the middle pops up to let me know when my Kill Shot is usable (target under 20%, shot not on cooldown, etc). There isn’t much to say about these auras, they tell me basics so I don’t fuck up on something simple, like forgetting to use my Kill Shots as often as possible or whatever.

Since being in Viper for too long really sucks I have these 2 auras that are a little more complex and combine settings from several auras into one. The smaller set of blue squiggles show up when my mana is at 20% or less and I am NOT in Aspect of the Viper, this lets me know to either use my Mana Injector or to flip into Viper to regain mana. The large squiggles only show when my mana is at like 98% or greater and I AM in Aspect of the Viper, this means to get the fuck out of Viper and back into Dragonhawk so my DPS can stop sucking.

These 2 are long duration buffs that help  me remember that while I’m under the effects of these buffs I should try my best to stand still and pump out as many shots as I can as quickly as possible. The large light blue circle appears to track the duration of my Rapid Fire. The little red mask thing tracks the duration of Bloodlust (both of these are generally never up at the same time, since stacking these isn’t recommended). These are as easy to make as the basic auras, just with the timer function enabled and the duration of the buff plugged in.

This group of auras shows my short duration procs that really change the way I do my DPS. The inner symbol pops up whenever a certain aspect of my Deathbringer’s Will procs (blue = 600 crit, yellow = 600 agi, silver = 12000 AP). The purple symbols appear when my Needle-Encrusted Scorpion procs (temporarily capping my ArPen), this lets me know that I should stop moving, pop Rapid Fire (if its stacked with a DBW proc even more so) if possible, and squeeze out as many Auto/Steady Shots as I can. The big orange circle appears when my 2 piece tier 10 bonus activates, I tried to make this aura big and obvious because its super important that I refresh my Serpent Sting while I’m under the effects of this buff (so my Chimera Shot can continually refresh the 15% damage bonus). The best case scenario would be proccing both the 600 crit rating proc from DBW as well as my 2-piece bonus at the same time so I could constantly refresh a Serpent Sting that deals an extra 15% damage as well as a much higher chance to crit (this is where keeping 2-piece tier 9 is a big deal).

Anyway thats all the auras I use, I hope this was worth reading and helped you guys get into Power Auras if you haven’t before or think of a few new ideas for your already existing auras. If you want it I’ll post up the text files to import my settings into your Power Auras (once I figure out how O_o). I’d love to see any comments about how you use Power Auras, since I definitely wouldn’t pass up a chance to leech ideas off of someone else >:]

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Looking through the search terms that bring people to my blog, I like to keep track of trends to find out what kind of information people are looking for. During the last two months most of the searches have revolved around 1) Paladin Leveling (always my highest search), 2) New Druid Skins 3) New BoA Chest pieces and whether or not they stack with the shoulders, 4) what items drop from a particular instance (usually SM and Ulda), and then there’s an ongoing list of various other topics.

I have already covered Paladin Leveling quite a bit, I have two or three posts discussing the new druid skins and how to change them, and I have at least three posts mentioning that the new BoA chests do stack with the shoulders for a total of +20% experience. That leaves me then with the task of covering what items drop from which instances.

But, I don’t want to just jump right over to Scarlet Monastery, so instead I am going to start a series that covers each of the various instances from the lowest up to the highest. I do not plan on covering any raids with this list due to the massive amount of items that can be found in them, but I will cover the regular 5-man instances. If I notice a lot of people showing interest in them then I will keep it up, if not then I will probably go ahead and stop wherever I happen to be at the time.

Scope
The scope of this series of posts is to cover what rare (Blue) and epic (Purple) loot drops from the bosses and rare spawns. There are rare and epic world drops that can be found in most instances, but for the most part I’m not going to bother covering those in this series either. In some instances I will list this sort of information, or I might list rare spawns that are located very close to the instance like I do here with Wailing Caverns. For the most part though, I will be sticking strictly to the blue items that are dropped by the bosses.

Ragefire Chasm

Generally the loot in RFC is not going to be all that great. Some of the boss drops are pretty good for early levels, but most of the items you find will be trash, white, or low quality greens. There’s a reasonable amount of Linen Cloth to be found there, as well as a few Tigerseye and Malachite from time to time, but this is not the place to farm them.

The green items that you find here will all disenchant into either Strange Dust or Lesser Magic Essence, while the Blue items dropped by the bosses will give you Small Glowing Shards. Small Glowing Shards are only used for about four to six total enchantments, and all of those are low level. So farming them to some extent is good for selling on the Auction House to help new enchanters “power level” their enchanting early on, but I wouldn’t particularly suggest doing it.

There are technically five bosses in RFC, but one of them is for a paladin-only quest (and drops nothing of value), and two others are called bosses but do not drop binding gear nor are they much harder than the trash mobs to take down. So, while technically there are 5 bosses, I’m only going to bother listing the two that actually drop blue, binding gear. RFC is one of the few old world instances in the game that does not have a Rare Spawn.

Jargosh the Invoker
Cavedweller Bracers
[Mail Wrist, 78 Armor, +3 Str, +4 stam]
A nice set of starting bracers for any Paladin or Warrior. Pretty commonly used by level 19 twinks as well.

Chanting Blade
[1H Dagger, 1.5 Speed, 12.0 DPS, +3 Agi, +2 Stam]
A pretty strong dagger given it’s minimum level, also has great stats for Rogues and Hunters in this level range.

Robe of Evocation
[Cloth Chest, 35 Armor, +4 Stam, +5 Int, +5 Crit]
One of the best low level robes you can get without having to have the help of higher level characters. There are certainly better robes available prior to level 20, but this is a great start especially for a Mage, Priest, or Shaman who will see more benefit from crit than other casters at this level.

Taragaman the Hungerer [Instance Boss]
Crystalline Cuffs
[Cloth Wrist, 15 Armor, +2 Int, +2 Spirit, +4 Spell Power]
Easily the best caster bracers you can get for early on in the game. Any class and spec that is going to be using spells can pick this up and use it for a good while. Most caster twinks use this for their wrist slot.

Cursed Felblade
[1H Sword, 2.6 Speed, 12.3 DPS, Chance on Hit: Reduce target's Attack Power by 25 for 30 seconds]
A pretty decent sword used for flushing your opponent’s attack power down the drain for a time. Low level tanks tend to pick this up more than anyone else though Rogues frequently use it as well to make up for their lack of armor.

Subteranean Cloak
[Back, 17 Armor, +4 Str, +4 Agi]
This cloak is one of the best you can get for low level melee characters. Depending on what mix of stats you prefer it can rank anywhere in the top 4 cloaks obtained from bosses and rare spawns within instances.

Wailing Caverns

Much of the regular loot drops here will be the same as RFC, only in much larger quantity. You will find Linen Cloth here as well as a small amount of Wool Cloth. There are tons of trash items, white items, and food in WC, and there is a rather large supply of green items as well. You can add Shadowgems to the list of “gems” that you find in WC, and some of the mobs drop herbs in here as well. This is also the first instance you come across that allows you to gather mats for your professions as you can use Skinning, Mining, and Herbalism all in here as their are nodes for each and the instance is overrun with beasts that can be skinned.

WC has a total of eight bosses, one of which is triggered only by an event, and one Rare Spawn as well. One of the eight bosses, Kresh, is not technically a boss but instead is neutral to everyone so he is entirely optional and is not any harder to kill than most of the other elite trash mobs in the instance. Even so, he does drop rare bind on pickup items like other bosses so he makes it onto the list.

Lady Anacondra
Belt of the Fang
[Waist, Leather, 49 Armor, +5 Agility, +6 Stamina]
This is one of the better belts you can get for this level if you happen to wear leather. It is also a part of the Fang Set, so you will receive extra bonuses for each item you are able to find and equip at once.

Snakeskin Bag
[12 slot bag]
Not a bad little bag for this low level, especially if you do not already have a higher level character providing you with bags. Out of all of the many runs I have made in WC though I have only seen this drop three times.

Serpent’s Shoulders
[Shoulder, Leather, 68 Armor, +9 Agility]
These are one of the best leather shoulder items you can get before level 20, especially if you are a Rogue, Hunter, or Feral Druid. With the exception of the BoA shoulders that you purchase with a level 80 character, these are the best shoulders you will find for a leather melee dps class prior to level 20.

Lord Serpentis
Footpads of the Fang
[Feet, Leather, 62 Armor, +6 Agility, +6 Stamina]
The best set of low level leather boots for a melee dps class. Twinks will use it until they can be replaced by Arathi Basin PvP boots.

Venomstrike
[Ranged, Bow, Speed 2.40, 15.8 dps, Equip: Chance to strike your ranged target with a Venom Shot for 31 to 45 Nature damage.]
Considered to be the best bow for the level range and the preferred ranged weapon of every bow-wielding class in the level 19 twink bracket.

Savage Trodders
[Feet, Mail, 134 Armor, +9 Stamina]
A strong set of mail boots with a high boost to stamina. Great for tanks or any mail wearing class.

Serpent Gloves
[Hands, Cloth, 25 Armor, +6 Intellect, Increases spell power by 7.]
Very strong caster gloves, one of the favorites among twinks. There are three sets of gloves in the game that have these exact stats now that earlier patches have changed +Healing and +Damage into the same stat. These are the second best caster gloves you can find for a twink, beaten only by a very rare world drop.

Lord Pythas
Stinging Viper
[One-Hand, Mace, Speed 2.80, 15.5 dps, Chance on hit: Poisons target for 7 Nature damage every 3 sec for 15 sec.]
A decent mace weapon. Often used in PvP battles to keep rogues from using their stealth abilities.

Armor of the Fang
[Chest, Leather, 91 Armor, +8 Strength, +8 Stamina]
The third best leather chest armor for the level, second best for Horde. The Tunic of Westfall (Alliance only) is the best piece, followed by the Blackened Defias Armor found in Deadmines (which will be covered in the Deadmines post in this series). Twinks (leather dps classes) who cannot manage to obtain either of the other pieces mentioned go for this one instead.

Lord Cobrahn
Cobrahn’s Grasp
[Waist, Mail, 111 Armor, +8 Strength, +3 Agility]
A great mail belt for any class that can wear it. It’s not the best but it’s certainly far from the worst.

Leggings of the Fang
[Legs, Leather, 79 Armor, +5 Strength, +9 Agility, +4 Stamina]
The best leather pants for any melee dps class below level 20 and favored by twinks.

Robe of the Moccasin
[Chest, Cloth, 40 Armor,+6 Stamina, +6 Spirit, Increases spell power by 7.]
One of the better cloth chest pieces for low level casters. Priests and Warlocks tend to want it more than other casters as the stats are more aligned to their classes, but it is a great piece for any low level caster.

Verdan the Everliving [Instance Boss]
Living Root
[Two-Hand, Staff, Speed 2.90, 21.2 dps, , +2 Stamina, +12 Spirit, Increases spell power by 6.]
A decent staff used primarily to help with mana regen between battles if you have access to something better. If not, the staff still serves as a solid choice for casters with its spell power bonus. Enhancement shamans can make good use of this weapon during low levels as well with good stats and a high dps for its level as well.

Seedcloud Buckler
[Off Hand, Shield, 566 Armor, 11 Block, +6 Intellect, +3 Spirit]
One of the best shields for low level shamans due to the bonus Intellect, and a decent shield for any other class that can use it as well. Low level shields that are better than this come only in the form of rare world drops.

Skum
Glowing Lizardscale Cloak
[Back, 20 Armor, +6 Agility, +2 Stamina]
A great low level cloak for rogues and hunters due to the high agility bonus. It’s not the best cloak you can find at this level, but it has a good drop rate and will serve you well until you can get your hands on a better one.

Tailspike
[One-Hand, Dagger, Speed 1.80, 14.4 dps, +4 Strength, +3 Agility]
A decent dagger with a great stats, rogues and hunters may both go for this one. Rogues will find better blades overall in Deadmines, but the Tailspike can certainly serve you well until you manage to get a hold of those.

Special Note: This boss can be skinned, and he drops an exceptional amount of leather, usual 1-6 each of up to three different types of leather. Leather types include Light Leather, Medium Leather, Light Hides, and Medium hides.

Kresh [Neutral Boss, Optional]
Kresh’s Back
[Off Hand, Shield, 471 Armor, 9 Block, Equip: Increases defense rating by 6 (8 @ L15).]
One of the best tanking shields you can get for low level, despite it having a lower Armor rating than both of the other shields found inside Wailing caverns. The bonus to defense rating is almost unheard of on low level gear.

Worn Turtle Shell Shield
Worn Turtle Shell Shield
[Off Hand, Shield, 513 Armor, 9 Block]
A strong armor rating and a decent block rate, it’s a decent shield for those that can use it.

Special Note: This boss can be skinned, for Light Leather, Medium Leather, Light Hides, and Medium Hides

Deviate Faerie Dragon [Rare Spawn]
Firebelcher
[Wand, Speed 1.70, 20.3 dps]
A strong choice of a wand for its level. The lack of bonus stats makes it worth a bit less than other wand options at your level.

Feyscale Cloak
[Back, 19 Armor, +4 Stamina, Equip: Increases spell power by 5]
A great low level caster cloak that can be found pretty easy if you ever manage to find the rare spawn itself. Cloaks such as the Spidersilk Drape made from the Tailoring profession can outshine it, but it’s a good cloak regardless.

Special Note: When I say “Rare” spawn, I mean to say RARE!!! spawn. After literally hundreds of runs through this instance I have only ever seen this spawn twice. Other people claim to have found it several times but that’s certainly not my experience.

Noteworthy Trash Mob Drops
All of the druids inside WC have a chance to drop the Gloves of the Fang, which are easy to sell and good to equip as well if you are a leather wearing dps class. They are also the only piece of the “Fang Set” that are not BoP and can be sold on the AH. Many people run this instance so they are sometimes in large supply on the AH, but they do usually sell for 25-60g depending on the server. The most I have ever found in a single run through the instance is three Gloves of the Fang in one run through.

There are also two rare spawns located right outside of the entrance to the instance, both of which can drop blue items, though they aren’t guarenteed drops.

Trigor the Lasher (wowhead listing)
Runescale Girdle
[Waist, Mail, 104 Armor, +8 Strength]
A decent choice for a mail belt with a large strength bonus.

Serpent’s Kiss
[One-Hand, Axe, Speed 2.50, 13.4 dps, Chance on hit: Poisons target for 7 Nature damage every 3 sec for 15 sec.]
A decent axe that is used much like the Stinging Viper up above. It’s a good weapon for PvE and used occasionally in PvP for the sake of keeping rogues from using their stealth.

Boahn (wowhead listing)
Boahn’s Fang
[Two-Hand, Axe, Speed 2.50, 17.6 dps, +9 Strength, Improves critical strike rating by 4 (2.12% @ L15).]
This axe usually sells for anywhere from 25-150g on the auction house because it is BoE, and it is one of the strongest weapons you can get at low level for any class that can wield it. At low level the extra crit from this item shows through far more frequently than it does at higher levels.

Posted in World of Warcraft Tagged: Instance, Loot, Ragefire Chasm, RFC, Wailing Caverns, WC

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Not too long ago I gave a my Review on Dual Specs. My mind has somewhat been altered by that since then after seeing my wife do it on multiple characters, but not a whole lot (mostly due to the fact that I’ve still only done it on the one and am not impressed).

What I want to talk about today though, is a problem I see with other people who are doing it and a question that has been asked of me: When should I dual spec? the answer to that question will follow. However, I’m going to cover all of the W’s concerning dual specs: Who, What, When, Where, and Why?

This is my opinion, and I share it with you now:

Who Should(n’t) Dual Spec?
Basically, anybody who wants to dual spec, and can afford to do so, should do it. There’s no reason not to dual spec if you want to try it out and don’t mind spending the money to do it. My wife loves being able to switch between her specs and has a blast being able to step into different roles on the same character. I enjoyed it a couple of times here and there, though in the end it just never became necessary.

The people who shouldn’t dual spec are the ones who:

• 1) Don’t want to
• 2) Are not willing to get gear for both specs via question, PvP, or grinding
• 3) Can’t afford it themselves and are not good at making/managing their gold

Dual Specs are not a requirement to play this game. Some guilds I have seen do require it, but if you’re in that type of guild then you probably already know this stuff and don’t need to bother reading. If you don’t want to do it, then don’t bother. Save your gold and spend it on something a little more useful, like Epic/Cold Weather Flying.

If you aren’t willing to get the gear for both of your specs then you should probably avoid DS. The reason I say that is because if you have the wrong gear (tank gear on your healing spec, for instance) then you’re not going to perform very well. If you can’t perform in your second spec, then you’re never going to use it either. In cases like these you’re basically just throwing away your gold for no reason.

If you can’t afford something that you want, you simply shouldn’t buy it. Making gold in this game is not hard. Holding onto that gold once you get it is for some people (/raise hand), but it’s not hard to make it. Please don’t ever make the mistake of trying to borrow gold from friends or guild members if you aren’t positive that you can pay it back quickly. I’ve borrowed gold from a guild member one time, and I only did it because there was an item on the AH that I had been searching for for months that was about to sell and I didn’t have the gold yet. I had enough auctions that I would have the gold the next day, but I wouldn’t have it before the auction expired and someone else won it. I got the gold, bought my item, and repaid the loan with 10% interest 3 hours later. If you can’t manage something like that, don’t ask to borrow gold. (/end mini-rant)

What Should Your Dual Spec Be?
For some reason, people ask this a lot. I really don’t think this is a question that needs to be asked to anyone but yourself. What should my dual spec be? Well, probably whatever I want it to be..? For this question, ask yourself what you want to do with your character. If you want to heal, and your class is able to heal, then make one of them a healing spec. If you want to tank, and are able to do so, then make one of them a tanking spec. If you want to dps, then spec for it. If you want to PvP, then spec for that.

The answer to this question is really one that only you can answer. Spec for whatever you want to do with the character. If you are doing it for your guild because you need to fill an open role, then you probably already know the answer to this question yourself. If you are doing it because you want to try a different build to see how it works, then again you probably already know the answer to the question. If you want to do it, but you don’t have a specific reason driving you towards it, then that’s when the question needs to be asked. But, it’s a question you have to ask yourself; what am I doing right now? (tank, heal, melee/ranged dps, single/AoE dps), what would I like to try instead or perhaps in addition to?

When Should(n’t) You Dual Spec?
If you are going to dual spec, then I suggest you do it as early as you can so that you can get practiced at using both of them. Whatever the specs are for, use them for that purpose. So if you have a healing spec, then use it when you are in a group like when running through instances or doing battlegrounds. If you have a PvP spec, then use it in BG’s and Arenas while you level. Whatever the role of the spec is going to be, use it when in that situation. If you happen to have two specs that fill the same role, but with different talents, then trade off on a fairly regular basis so that you get practiced with them.

Generally speaking, and in my own opinion here, you should not wait to dual spec at high level unless you need to. If you do wait that long then make sure that you gather the gear you need for it before hand, and try to do some research on your spells and talent points. Waiting until higher level to try out a dual spec is a good way to find out that you suck at what you want to do. Unless you have played the class at that level before then you aren’t going to know what to do or how to use the class. You might have a good idea and be able to scrape by, but if you haven’t spent any time during your leveling to learn how to play the class then you aren’t going to be very good at it and probably won’t bother using it very often.

What I’m trying to say here is, don’t put it off expecting to just step into the role at higher levels and be good at it because it’s probably not going to happen. Get it early and start practicing using it so that you have at least some idea of what it is that you’re going to be doing. You can’t expect to be a good tank when you’ve never had to bother with generating threat or using your taunts. You aren’t going to be a good healer if you’re constantly spamming a single heal that doesn’t even begin to compare to your other options even though it looks like a great spell to you.

Where Do You Dual Spec?
Any of your class trainers around the world can open up your dual spec talent tree for you. The cost is 1,000g and there is currently no way of lowering that price. Most of your trainers will be in the major cities though some of the smaller towns throughout the game have trainers as well.

Why Should(n’t) You Dual Spec?
There are plenty of reasons why you should dual spec, as well as why you shouldn’t dual spec. If you want to try out two different talent trees, then dual specs might be for you. If you want to be able to heal when you’re in a group but also love to solo your own dailies and such, then dual specs are probably great for you. If you like to grind mobs with an AoE Frost build but love to instant cast people to death in battlegrounds, then dual specs are a good idea for you.

If you have a fairly small raiding guild that likes to mix things up now and then with which people fill which roles, then dual specs might be for you. If you have a guild that does not have members on a consistent schedule and may need to cover a role that is usually filled, then dual specs might be for you. If you just want to have fun and enjoy the game from multiple perspectives then dual specs might be for you.

You shouldn’t dual spec simply because someone else wants you to or because you feel pressured by a guild, unless you were already aware that they would require it and knew ahead of time. You shouldn’t dual spec because some loser thinks it’s required for you to be recognized as a good player. You shouldn’t dual spec simply because you have an extra thousand gold sitting around burning holes in your pouch. Instead, send that gold over to me.

If you want to dual spec because it’s interesting, opens up more opportunities for enjoying the game, or because you just want to have fun with it, then by all means jump right in and do it. Just don’t do it because some guy tells you that you have too or that you’ll never be able to raid or get invited to a good guild if you don’t.

Posted in World of Warcraft Tagged: Dual Spec

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There is going to be a wealth of information spread out all over the internet soon enough on the many, many changes coming out in the new expansion and since I’m not at Blizzcon myself I can only get you the information that I can find myself or hear via twitter.

The official release date has not been given (yet), but it will be in 2010 from what they have told us so far. My guess is that it will be around November, but only time will tell.

New Race/Class Combinations
The first thing I want to cover is the new race/class combinations because this is something that I have wanted since I started playing. I have hated racial restrictions on classes since it first appeared way back in the days of early Dungeons and Dragons. I like all options to be open and restrictions, while good for the Lore freaks, annoy me to no end.

So, here is your chart for the new race/class combinations:

In case you aren’t able to see those changes, here’s a list for you:

Orc: Mage
Undead: Hunter
Tauren: Paladin, Priest
Troll: Druid
Blood Elf: Warrior
Goblin: Death Knight, Hunter, Mage, Priest, Rogue, Shaman, Warlock, Warrior

Human: Hunter
Dwarf: Mage, Shaman
Night Elf: Mage
Gnome: Priest
Draenei: (nothing new here…)
Worgen: Death Knight, Druid, Hunter, Mage, Priest, Rogue, Warlock, Warrior

Starting Zones Remade
All of Azeroth has been royally screwed by the escape of a dragon known as Deathwing. The whole world map has been remade, and starting zones are changed to take you from level 1-15.

I love this because I love to level. This chance is going to open the doors wide open to leveling and I wouldn’t be surprised if I reroll a character of every race, and likely more than one of both the goblins and worgen.

Flying Mounts in Azeroth
This is something that Blizzard said they would never do. Of course, this isn’t the first time they’ve done something they said they wouldn’t. Regardless, it’s here. I said before that I did not see this ever happening because Blizzard would have to remake the whole world map to make it possible. Well, that’s exactly what they did and so we will now be able to use flying mounts in Azeroth.

New Profession: Archeology
This is a nice surprise, and one that has absolutely no details – yet.

We know that it will allow you to find ancient artifacts and special rewards, but that’s all they’ve told us so far. What does it actually do? Who knows?

Whenever we receive more information I’m sure I will post it here for you to see.

But Wait! That’s Not All!
There is a lot more that has been revealed, but I have even fewer details on that than everything else I have already posted here. As more information becomes available I will post it.

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Alright, there is a lot of buzz going on right now about BoA Chest pieces coming out in 3.2. As such, I went and did a little research to find the information for you.

I see no reason to waste time with further chatter, so on with the details!

Does Bonus Exp From BoA Chests Stack With BoA Shoulders?
Yes.

It has been confirmed that the 10% experience bonuses offered by the new BoA Chests do stack with the BoA Shoulders.

There you have it, +20% experience when wearing these two pieces together. If you use the Recruit A Friend bonus, then you get 320% experience total. If you do not use RAF, but you do have Rested Experience saved up, then you get +120% experience.

But no, RAF and Rested do not stack themselves, so as of 3.2 you can either do 320% bonus exp with RAF plus both Heirloom pieces, or 120% if you have both pieces and are rested but are not using RAF.

[Update: Apparently the cost plan fell through or something got changed. The cost of all BoA Chests is currently 40 Emblems of Heroism. No information released yet on whether this was an error, intentional, plans to be changed, etc.]

Show Me The Goods!
Without further delay, here are the new Heirloom Chest pieces:

cs*: Champion’s Seal



All of the new chest pieces will be found in Icecrown, and all of them will cost 60 Champion’s Seals. The link above will give you information on the seals themselves. [Update: People on the PTR say the cost is currently 40 rather than 60, and that the cost is in existing emblems rather than Champion Seals. Right now who knows what's right? I will keep this updated as more information is presented to me.]

All of these chest pieces have Equip: Experience gained from killing monsters and completing quests increased by 10%. (Just thought I would throw that in there before the question was asked.)

Item Level Calculations
You can follow this link to find a calculator to help you find the stats at various levels. I do not know how accurate it is, but this is the best I could find.

The site gives you two drop down boxes and two buttons to click. The first drop down and its associated button will look at whatever item you have selected and tell you what type of item it is at various levels. For instance, if there is a Leather Chest that becomes Mail at level 40, then it will tell you at which levels those changes are made.

The second drop down and it’s associated button will look for all heirloom items for whatever level you selected from the drop down list.

The one issue I have with the site is that it will not let you look for a single item of a single level to get all of the stats from just that item. You either see only what type of armor it is and at which levels it changes its type, or you will see every heirloom item in the game for the level that you picked. It’s not a bad site, and it does work fairly well, it just has not been optimized at this time.

Sources
All of the information you see here was gathered from either WoWWiki or WoWHead.

Posted in World of Warcraft Tagged: 3.2, BoA, Heriloom

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Over the last week I have seen a lot of searches coming to my blog relating to macros used to advertise your profession, so I’m going to give it to you.

Now, while it may not make a whole lot of difference as far as what you have to do to make it work and so forth, you cannot actually do this with a macro. What you can do it with, is a Script. So, while you still go to the /macro screen to set it up and access it and so forth, it is technically different.

Macros are used to simulate existing keystrokes, functions, or actions. Basically they are shortcuts.

Scripts actually use code within the gaming system to make something happen.

Not a huge difference, and I’m not going to go into full details or anything, just know that there are differences between the two and that you may find better results when searching for certain things if you use the proper terminology.

Now, on to the whole reason why this post is being made in the first place: advertising your professions.

Step 1: Open Your Macro Window
This can be done either by simply entering /macro in the chat window, or by hitting Escape and then clicking on Macros in the options that pop up.

Step 2: Name and Icon Selection
Every time you make a macro/script you have to pick an icon for it and you have to give it a name. Any time I make a macro for something other than casting spells, I pick a cool looking icon that my character wouldn’t normally have available to them and name it something appropriate.

Since I am a programmer by profession I also use what we call Naming Conventions. So if I make a macro for a certain class then I start its name with the class name, and then add to the name based on it’s functionality. If I make a macro that I know will not be modified often, then I start its name with a ‘z’ so that it appears at the bottom of my list since the macro interface sorts them all alphabetically, and likewise I start the name for a macro that is frequently changed with an ‘a’ so it appears at the top of the list.

Example Naming Conventions:

• Portal to Org: magePortOrg
• Target Specific NPC/Player: aTarget
• LFG Broadcast: aLFG

Step 3: Write the “code” for the Macro/Script
This is where you write the actual code to do whatever it is you want to accomplish. This post is about advertising your professions, so that’s what we’ll do.

The part that is Red is where you put the name of whatever profession you want to show up, in the example we use Enchanting, but it can be whatever profession you have (Engineering, Leatherworking, Tailoring, etc). And yes, it does have to be in double-quotes.

The part that is Green is where you type in whatever message you want to appear along with the link. In this example I note that I have “Mongoose, Crusader, Surefooted and more” because those are enchants frequently asked for in trade chat on my server. So I try to draw a little extra attention to the link by noting those enchants. And that message also needs to be in the double-quotes.

/script CastSpellByName(”Enchanting“);SendChatMessage(”Mongoose, Crusader, Surefooted and more “..GetTradeSkillListLink(),”CHANNEL”,nil,GetChannelName(”Trade – City”));CloseTradeSkill();

You can copy/paste that right into your own macro, change the Profession (if needed) and the message to whatever you want and start spamming it right away. When you use this particular macro, the result will be something like this:

“Mongoose, Crusader, Surefooded and more [Enchanting]“

Step 4: Drag the Icon to your Action Bar
Place the icon wherever you want. I personally have action bars set up all over my screen, and keep all of my profession-related icons on the right side of my screen. I also frequently have them on the bottom of my screen since I use the Dominos addon and go a bit overboard with action bars.

But, just make sure it’s somewhere convenient to access and out of the way since you will not be using it frequently in any setting other than cities.

Step 5: Click Away!
Now all you have to do is click it when you want to use it. This particular macro is set up to broadcast only into the Trade chat, and that’s really the only place it belongs. If someone is asking in General chat out in the middle of a zone for someone to link their profession, it’s not too hard to just do a quick click over there to do it manually.

Note: If you try to use this macro anywhere where you are not in Trade chat, it will give you an error. You will also receive errors if you already have your profession book open. So if you are browsing through your profession to see what items you can make and then activate the script it will not work. So just make sure you have the window closed when you activate it and that you do so when you are actually in Trade chat and you will be fine.

These errors will not cause any damage or freeze you up or anything, they just won’t work and will give you error messages.

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I’m usually up there, but sometimes an ambitious mage or rogue will lead the way.

While it’s nice to know that I’ve now died 11 times in this Ulduar run, that’s not really important.

However, by left clicking on my toons name in the Recount frame I can bring up the Death Report. This will show me the last 10 seconds or so of my toons life. Heals received and damage taken, and help a Tank answer the most important question of any raid, ‘why did we die?’

The first thing I look for it mistakes on my part. It’s fairly easy to see a 10k+ Biting Cold and know that I let my stack get too high.

I can also check for mistakes on my teammates fault.

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As stated last week, here’s the post outlining how to determine weights to plug into lootrank to figure out your best in slot.  It’s a general list written by (alas) a DPS-type, so it’s not aimed at healers specifically, but I hope you all can still find it useful.  Yuki’s been my guildie, my buddy, and enabler of my anime addiction for several years now.  He’s also the first person who told me that such a thing as mathcraft exists.  Be warned, there’s numbers ahead.

Step 5:  Final Complications

There are basically two things left that haven’t been modeled.  The first is mana regen, which creates some difficulties, and the second is trinkets and the like with activated or proc effects, which presents others.

5a:  Mana Regen

The main thing about mana regen is that it only matters if you run out of mana.  This can make it hard  to model, since it’s not something that easily converts directly into spellpower or attack power.

Probably the most common way of modeling mana regen is in terms of how many extra spells it lets you cast if you WERE to cast until you ran out.  Basically, you figure out how long you can cast without running out of mana, and how much effective healing or damage you’d do on average. Then you see how much 1mp5 would let you cast.  You compare how much a point of spell damage would have added vs. the amount the mp5 added to determine the effective spellpower value of a point of mp5.  This is a popular method because it’s pretty straightforward, and you can modify it a little to include out of 5 second rule regen if you’d like.

Another method is to work backwards:  essentially, you take a length of time longer than the amount of time it would take you to run out of mana chain casting and then calculate how much less time you have to spend on 5-second-rule regen to determine how many more spells you could cast, and use that to derive the relative value.

As you can probably guess, there really isn’t a great way to graft mp5 onto spellpower. Still, these two methods at least produce something, which can be modestly useful for modeling gear.

5b:  Procs

So, we’ve basically covered how to model static stats; what about ones that aren’t so static?  Generally these are in the form of either active abilities (clicky trinkets, for instance) or passive procs (chance-on-hit/crit trinkets).  How to model these?

Actives are actually pretty easy.  You can basically model them as “permanent” power by dividing their effect by the amount of time it spends on cooldown.  So, for instance, a trinket that provides 200 spellpower for 15 seconds on a 1 minute cooldown is effectively the same as one that grants 50 spellpower all the time.  This isn’t wholly accurate (since you can stack some cooldowns to get more out of them, like an unholy DK blowing Gargoyle while her trinket buffs are up), but it’s good enough for government work.

Passives are trickier.  You need to know the proc rate and internal cooldown, which are almost never listed; you’ll need to get them from datamining or testing.  Use these to calculate the average uptime % (which is the proc duration divided by average time to proc + internal cooldown), then multiply the value of the proc by that.  Since this requires you to use the average time to proc, which can vary wildly for low-chance trinkets, and it shares the flaw of not modeling stacked-burst very well with the active version, it’s not wholly accurate, but it gets the job done well enough to compare trinkets.

Step 6:  Putting it all together

At this stage, you have enough information to generate final stat weights:  for each overall stat, add up the weights you calculated for each of their effective ratings you calculated above to determine the final overall weight of that stat.  So, for instance, the value of a point of int is:

Int ESP = Any Value From Talents + (Effective Crit Rating) * (Crit Rating ESP) + (Effective mp5 Rating) * (mp5 ESP)

I used Int on purpose, because an observant reader will note that it provides a benefit we haven’t modeled:  an increase to your base mana pool.  You’ll have to determine what weight (if any) you give to that similarly to how you chose to calculate mp5; I didn’t mention it there mostly so that I could point out that at this stage you should be on the look out for stat effects that you hadn’t considered yet!

Once you’ve done this for everything, you’ll have your final weights for stats as calculated against your baseline!  Now you can use them to help consider gear . . . until you move too far away from your baseline and have to recalculate them.

Closing Thoughts

I’ve always been fairly skeptical of stat weights as anything other than very general comparisons of how “strong” a given stat is.  Having seen this demonstration of what hot dogs are made up, you can probably see why:  there’s a lot of assumptions in the process, and the end result loses value considerably as you move away from your baseline. I tend to agree with Ghostcrawler’s assessment that if you’re just pulling “best” gear from somewhere based on this stuff, you’re not necessarily doing yourself a service as it won’t necessarily actually be “best” for you if your gear is different than the assumptions.

One thing this process will teach you, though, is the underlying mechanics of your class, including what scales with what and how things interact, which is probably the most important thing to learn for any form of theorycraft.  The numbers generated may be of limited value, but the process of generating them has some fairly valuable lessons to be learned along the way.

Aaand done!  You’ve made it!  Special huge thanks to Yuki for putting this together and trying to learn us some math.  Did it work for you?

Also, there’s not gonna be a Tuesday post for me next week.  I’m currently in California visiting my family with the Tarsus; and my mom doesn’t really live in this century as far as internet goes.  But I’ll catch you all the next week!

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As stated last week, here’s the post outlining how to determine weights to plug into lootrank to figure out your best in slot.  It’s a general list written by (alas) a DPS-type, so it’s not aimed at healers specifically, but I hope you all can still find it useful.  Yuki’s been my guildie, my buddy, and enabler of my anime addiction for several years now.  He’s also the first person who told me that such a thing as mathcraft exists.  Be warned, there’s numbers ahead.

Step 4:  Methodological Chaos

At this point, there are basically three potential methodologies for settling on the final values to be used:  The Quick and Dirty method, the Numerical Model method, and the Simulation method.

Whichever method you choose, at this point you’ll need to know a few things: the average non-crit heal/damage/threat/whatever for each ability you use, whether and how each ability scales with your baseline stat (so, for instance, if an ability gains extra potency per spellpower due to a talent), and whether the ability scales with any other stats (can it crit?  affected in any way by haste?  etc), and how frequently you use each ability.  For the quick method, you can get the last one from a WWS report, but in general you’ll get better results if you determine it from your ideal usage or rotation.

4a:  Quick and Dirty

The fastest way to generate values is to just do them based on a parse.  First you’ll need to know how much a point of spell power adds to each ability’s net effectiveness.  Look up its scaling coefficient and figure out how much 1 spellpower would actually increase that average use of the ability.  You’ll be using this as a point of comparison to determine how much each ability actually scales per point of other things; I’ll henceforth be referring to it as “the baseline scaling value” of for that ability.

Second, you pull out all your averages for all your abilities, and your % usage for each.  Next, figure out how much each would scale with 1% effectiveness of each rating you’re trying to calculate a weight for.  Divide this value by your baseline scaling value, then multiply it by the % of usage your WWS report shows; sum these values up to get your effective spell/attack power value for 1% of each rating, from which you derive the final ESP/EAP per rating point by dividing by its conversion factor for you level.

Advantages/Disadvantages: The advantages of this method should be clear, as well as its drawbacks:  it’s pretty easy, doesn’t take too long, and requires relatively little mathematical modeling, but it’s also really, really bad at things like haste on abilities with cooldowns. But if you’re just looking for a quick approximation and you don’t plan to redo your weights ever, its numbers aren’t too horribly off unless you’re very dependent on those kinds of things.

4b:  Numerical Modeling

This is the “purest” methodology, and also the one that’ll be your best bet if you’re planning to really do a lot of your own stat weighting, since it’s the easiest to revise.

Essentially, you model what your ideal rotation would look like in practice.  I’m going to use an offensive spell as my example, because it’ll give me a chance to show how to model hit and similar stats.

Start with the average base damage of the spell. Because you’ve already determined how your rotation works, you’ll know how many times you can cast it during that time.  Therefore its total contribution of damage during your rotation is:

Damage = (Times cast) * (Average Base damage)

Now, we add in spell damage scaling:

Damage = (Times cast) * (Average Base Damage + [Baseline Scaling Value * Spellpower] )

To add crit, we’ll start with the value of a crit, which is (1 + Crit Bonus Damage Value).  Now we multiply that by your chance of actually getting a crit, which is Base Crit + Crit Rating/Crit Conversion.  Add all that to one and multiply it by the original  value and you’ll have modeled what your damage from that ability would be with crit!

Damage = (Times cast) * (Average Base Damage + [Baseline Scaling Value * Spellpower]) * (1 + (1 + Crit Bonus Damage Value) * (Base Crit + Crit Rating/Crit Conversion)

Hit works as basically a “penalty” on damage until it’s capped.  Whatever damage you could have been doing would be a miss, so it’s 1 – Miss Rate + Hit Rating/Hit Conversion in a ceiling function that can never be above one.  For notational simplicity I’ll just assume we’re below the hit cap.  Note that  “Miss Rate” above includes everything other than hit rating that increases your chance to hit (like misery or a draenei aura), because we’re only comparing the gear stats, so those should be included in the baseline of the model.

Damage = (Times cast) * (Average Base Damage + [Baseline Scaling Value * Spellpower]) * (1 + (1 + Crit Bonus Damage Value) * (Base Crit + Crit Rating/Crit Conversion) * (1 – Miss Rate + Hit Rating/Hit Conversion)

Haste is where things get interesting.  If the ability in question is not cooldown limited, you can effectively cast it “more times”, so our Times Cast actually scales with haste.

Damage = (Times cast * (1 + Haste Rating/Haste Conversion) * (Average Base Damage + [Baseline Scaling Value * Spellpower]) * (1 + (1 + Crit Bonus Damage Value) * (Base Crit + Crit Rating/Crit Conversion) * (1 – Miss Rate + Hit Rating/Hit Conversion)

What if it IS cooldown limited?  Well, in this case, it basically doesn’t scale with haste even if its casting time would be reduced; you can never cast any more of them than the cooldown allows.  But because you’re casting it faster, you have more room for casting other things in your rotation, so those can actually generally be modeled as scaling normally with haste unless you’re trying for complete precision, because they can fill in the extra time left open even though you’re squeezing them between cooldown casts.

This example should show you basically how to handle all the various ways to scale when modeling.  Your final equation will be the sum of all these terms. Run through it first for only the baseline stats you selected earlier, then once for spell damage; the difference between these two becomes your baseline scaling value for the whole rotation.  Now just add a point to a rating and solve through and divide by the baseline scaling value for the ESP/EAP value of that stat.

Advantages/Disadvantages: If your eyes glazed over reading this section you will probably hate this method. It’s very math intensive, and requires you to think like a numerical modeler, which can be hard if you’re not a numbers person.  Also, an error in the model can lead to grossly inaccurate results; this can occur as a math error, or just in terms of how you model your ideal rotation, so there’s a lot of points of potential fail.

On the other hand, if you get it right, you have a comparatively easy way to change your baseline (just change the values), and you’re ahead of the game if your rotation changes (since you can just fiddle with the numbers a bit).  If done well it also produces the best numbers theoretically possible.

4c:  Simulation

This method is both similar to and very different from the previous.  Basically you build (or download) a simulator for your class that effectively “runs” a combat action-by-action for an arbitrarily large amount of time and reports back its results.  You basically just tweak a base value, run the simulation, and compare it to a baseline simulation to determine the comparative value of each stat.

Advantages/Disadvantages: Building your own sim would, of course, require programming knowledge and a slightly less rigorous form of numerical modeling.  Downloading someone else’s requires neither of these, but also requires that you trust THEIR programming knowledge and numerical modeling.  You could also run in issues of RNG-fail, but a sufficiently arbitrarily large number of actions should statistically smooth those out.

The biggest advantage that this method has is that it’s the best option for procs and other random mechanics.  Trying to do a numerical model for something like Windfury (a 20% proc with a 3 second internal cooldown) will quickly make you want to throw yourself under a bus.  I’ll talk about trying to model procs in the following section, but suffice to say this method produces more accurate results than that one.

Part two is done!  You’ve almost made it.  Stay tuned for the final bit tomorrow!

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