Segment 52: Deadly Boss Mods

So now you’re raiding, or at least running instances. It doesn’t matter if you’re raiding old “vanilla WoW” dungeons or Baradin Hold, or anywhere in between; you want to do the best you can, whether you are the tank, a healer, or DPS. That means you need situational awareness, because while a mage doing the safety dance in Naxxramas may be low on the DPS charts, a dead mage…

This morning, as is my usual habit, I tried to log into WoW from the computer in our library at home. Instead of the normal “Authentication Successful” message, a larger splash screen popped up, telling me that my account had been locked due to a detected “change in play pattern.” Now, my pattern is highly predictable. I normally play on the computer in my home library mornings and evenings, on my office work computer…

Segment 51: Old Friends Revisited

Let’s look at the pre-Cata add-ons covered in the Emporium once more, quickly, and see what’s still useful. Any dates referenced here will be 2011 unless otherwise stated.

From the top: Omen3 – Outdated. I’ve personally moved to Skada. Carbonite – Updated January 25th. Decursive – Updated March 4th. Grid – Use Healbot. Mage Fever – Updated February 14th. Use Curse to get the latest version. Lorack’s DK Optimizer…

“I Need To Do a Dance”

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Weekly News We discuss the lack Blizzard developer chat.

What in the WoW is going on? Modem discusses the current state of the player base in WoW

Icesnake’s Addon Emporium This week Icesnake brings a collection of familiar addons

The Community Speaks We mention some…

Segment 50: Add-ons for Shaman

I have been informed that, during the per-class segments, I somehow contrived to miss the shaman. Let’s correct that right now.

The shaman is a hybrid support class, providing DPS via spellcasting or melee, or healing. In addition, the shaman can place totems to provide additional benefits to the party or deal additional damage to enemies.

To help your shaman in his chosen role, I’ve put together a…

Segment 49: AutoBar

AutoBar is a multi-bar add-on that automatically adds potions, water, food, quest items, and other usable things into buttons for quick access.

By default, it creates three new bars: Basic, with such things as your hearthstone, mounts, bandages, potions, trade skills, quest items and trinkets; a Class bar, with primarily non-combat spells and abilities; and Extras, with companion pets, fishing items, and miscellaneous other items on it.

You can move the…

“We Turn 60″

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Weekly News We discuss the lack of a new raid in Patch 4.1, the possibility of a legendary staff coming soon, Old Ironforge opening up and more.

Sign of the Failocolypse A listener shares his most failed LFD group.

It Came From the Forums A fun topic this…

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Weekly Blues We discuss the news coming out regarding World of Warcraft Cataclysm Patch 4.1.

Why You Got Kicked We discuss some of the most popular reasons people vote to kick someone from a dungeon group.

It Came From the Forums We talk about one post where someone…

“Don’t Nerf My Bandwidth”

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Weekly Blues We talk about Bashiok’s lost notebook, Wow bandwidth requirements, Shaman healing changes, Dungeon finder and vote to kick.

Favorite Boss Fights We talk about our favorite and most memorable boss fights over the years.

It Came From the Forums Gold should be pointless and the…

No related posts.

No related posts.

Cataclysm has brought many new challenges for everyone in the game. The most talked about changes have come from the difficulty of heroics and raiding as the expansion begins. You can’t visit a WoW related site without running across endless chatter over the difficulty of the new endgame. Today, I’m going to give you a simple way to improve your play in every aspect of the game; especially when it comes to being effective…

You’re running 5-mans, trying to gear up so you can level even faster, or run heroics, or raid. You see other people clicking “need” on gear that you think you might want, but you’re not sure if it’s really an “up” for you, and you don’t want to be “that guy.” What do you do? Pawn.

Pawn is an add-on that uses values from Wowhead to quickly compare…

“Big Email Episode”

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Weekly Blues We talk about Patch 4.0.6 changes, stealth raid nerfs, is cataclysm questing too linear.

Too Much Trash We talk about how people get frustrated when they spend so much time on trash before even getting to bosses.

Icesnake’s Addon Emporium Icesnake is back this week to…

Segment 47: Dungeon Tactics Add-ons

Cataclysm brought us an entirely new world, with entirely new ways to wipe in PuGs. But the most effective way to wipe is still the same – have someone who doesn’t know the boss tactics in your group. Fortunately, there are some add-ons that will allow you to quickly go over boss encounter tactics without needing Vent or TeamSpeak (here we link the infamous No related posts.]]> http://wowphiles.com/2011/02/icesnakes-add-on-emporium-47-dungeon-tactics/

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…

“Word Ta Ya Goblin”

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Weekly Blues Not much this week but we talk about the removal of the requirement of entering a dungeon before it becomes available in the LFD tool.

Tol Barad We talk about the story of Tol Barad and some of the lore regarding it.

Does usability trump…

Segment 45: Custom sounds

Some players play with all of the World of Warcraft sounds turned off; others turn on everything; and some prefer to replace or augment the in-game sounds with custom sound files. This week we’ll look beyond music players, at a couple of add-ons that help you with customizing the sounds in WoW. This segment was inspired by John Trahan. Thanks for your suggestion, John!

Since all of these add-ons use…

Segment 44: Music Players

This week we’ll look at a few music players that run from within World of Warcraft. If you’ve ever died while tabbed out to change your music, or missed an important message on Ventrilo or TeamSpeak because the music was too loud and you couldn’t change the volume on WinAmp, you may find one (or more) of these to be a godsend. However, for those that require playlist makers, let…

“Don’t Kick Me Bro”

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Weekly Blues We discuss topics that Blizzard responded to this week such as the guild perk system and Blizzard forcing people to have too much social interaction.

Introduction to PvP modem gives you a guide to getting started with PvP battlegrounds and arenas. He gives you the…

In the Wowphiles podcast #54, Modem mentioned three add-ons to help us archeologists, but they didn’t get linked in the show notes,  so here’s where you can get them:

Archy (pronounced like the perennial comic book teenager, “Archie”) is an assistant for Archaeologists that want information at their finger tips.

GatherMate2 and GatherMate2 Data collects Herbs, Mines, Gas Clouds, Artifacts, Fossils and Fishing locations and adds them to the worldmap…

Segment 43: Add-ons for Warlocks

First, let me apologize for being alphabetically-challenged last week, and getting Warrior ahead of Warlock in the add-on rotation.

Warlocks are generally called upon to provide DPS, along with some ancillary tasks like summoning soulwells, creating soulstones, and making coffee. No, wait, that’s mages who make the snacks and beverages. Well, whatever.

As a consequence, one very popular talent spec is Destruction. If you are a Destruction warlock, you’ll…

Tol Barad has been a hot topic since Cataclysm released in early December. Since the start we’ve seen countless articles written over it’s imbalance and players sharing their discontent for the new zone. I’d like to tell you why Tol Barad doesn’t suck, and quite frankly, why I think it’s a fantastic zone for exciting PvP.

I spend a lot of my time in the game participating in PvP, whether through battlegrounds, arenas, Tol…

“I’m DPS, That’s What I Do”

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Weekly Blues We discuss Patch 4.0.6 notes and some of the things that caught our attention.

Ghostcrawler’s Post about Heroics We read excerpts from Ghostcrawler’s blog post about the difficulty of Heroic dungeons and give our thoughts on it.

It Came From the Forums What…

“DK’s Can Hit Level 86″

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Weekly Blues We discuss Blizzard’s stance on the state of heroics and our thoughts on their difficulty level. Then we discuss the dungeon finder and gear detection.

Icesnake’s Addon Emporium Icesnake is back this week to bring you addons for Rogues.

Healing Tips Modem provides…

The advice I’m about to give for Paladin tanking is from my own recent experience and the techniques that I feel are working for me. If you are looking for Paladin Tank Gear please visit my blog post on that.

I’m starting off talking about Divine Plea because I believe effectively using it is an important skill to add to your toolbox for threat generation…

Segment 42: Add-ons for Warriors

Warriors fall into that World of Warcraft category that can either tank or DPS; with that in mind, we’ll look at a few add-ons that lend themselves to these roles.

First up is TidyThreat, which is a plug-in for TidyPlates. TidyPlates modifies the nameplates you see over the heads of mobs, and TidyThreat makes it instantly clear, using color bars, which mobs are…

Segment 41: Add-ons for Rogues

This week we’ll talk about some add-ons for the most versatile of melee DPS classes, the Rogue. In addition to simple DPS, Rogues are often called upon to provide crowd control, scout, open locks, and find traps.

Quick Rogue Info is a customizable set of information frames for rogues. Included are buff and debuff bars, combo points, poison stacks, threat, DPS, player health, target health, energy, and…

Segment 40: Add-ons for Priests

I’m going to focus primarily on healing priests here, because you guys are the ones that stand back and make sure the rest of us can work. And, of course, sometimes you have to pick us up, dust us off, and send us back into the fight. That’s what Moms, Dads, coaches, and Priests do.

So, without further slobbering…

Healbot Continued is *the* quintessential add-on for healers. If you’re…

In my last post I talked about how I didn’t think that Heroics in Cataclysm were necessarily too difficult, but we as players needed more awareness and experience and gear.

Since then I’ve been making attempts at various Heroics, all with similar outcomes: we seldom finish the entire dungeon and it involves a lot of wiping along the way.

Have I decided to change my tune and say that yes they are in fact…

My goal for this blog post is to create a list of things that players can do in heroics to not only be better players, but also better people. If you have a tip to share, even a small one, please leave it in the comments section of this post.

There are obvious things we can do to be better players like–don’t stand in fire. But there are also some intangible things we can…

The discussions, conversations, and flat out raging over Cataclysm heroics continues on forums, twitter accounts and all across the internet. This is a topic that I’m going to touch on some more in the next episode of the podcast, but since it is on my mind, I thought I’d write a little about it.

The majority of what I’ve been seeing are players who are upset because dungeons and heroics are so hard right…

This week I was informed about a website that helps players find the best Cataclysm pre-raid gear for their class and spec. The website is Ask Mr. Robot.

Ask Mr. Robot is a simple and easy to use tool for finding gear. You select the icon for your class, followed by the icon for your spec. Then Mr. Robot does some calculations and brings up a list of gear that it…

“Are You Feeling Shortchanged?”

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Weekly Blues Cataclysm sales record, Dalaran is never getting portals back so stop asking, Healing in Cataclysm, Hot Fixes, Winter Veil

PvP Wargames We discuss the new wargame skirmishes for PvP

It Came From the Forums The question came up on the official WoW Forums: Are you…

I’m continuing my series of posts where I compile resources for players looking for the best gear to have in order to start raiding in Cataclysm.

See Also: Cataclysm Pre-Raid Healer Gear Cataclysm Pre-Raid Tank Gear

Below are some of the better gear lists I have found so far. I’ll keep updating this list as new resources become available.

Death Knight Pre-Raid Gear Guide

Death Knight Cataclysm Pre-Raid…

Cataclysm has only been out for a week and I’ve come to the conclusion that the level cap should have been set at 90 instead of 85.

Let’s ignore the Paladin named Forscience who went from 80 to 85 in just over five hours. He doesn’t count because inevitably someone always gets the first level capped character with help from friends and mob tagging.

We will also ignore the people who played endlessly…

To add to my series of compilation posts for Cataclysm Pre-Raid gear guides and shopping lists, I’ve found a couple resources for tanks. I lumped the plate wearing tanks together. Death Knights: the first link has some information on 2-Handed weapons for you.

See Also: Cataclysm Pre-Raid DPS Gear Cataclysm Pre-Raid Healer Gear

Below are some great resources for tanks. I’ll update this list as more become available.

…

This week we’ll look at a few add-ons for Paladins. Keep in mind that in many cases, add-ons are multi-class, so even if you don’t play a pally, it’s worth your time to check out the links in the segment notes to see if there’s anything for your favorite class.

SpellFlash: Paladin is a module for SpellFlash which will flash your action bar when procs happen, to remind you…

“The First Week of Cataclysm”

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Weekly Blues Cataclysm was released and we discuss, Guild XP was changed, Free server transfers available for select realms

Cataclysm Impressions We discuss our thoughts on what we’ve experienced so far in Cataclysm.

Icesnake’s Cataclysm Experience Icesnake comes on the show to discuss what he has…

Since there was a request for the words to my little poem at the beginning of WoWphiles Podcast #50, I decided to post them here for everyone.

Enjoy! Twas the night before Cataclysm when all through the land, Not a creature was stirring, not even the Cult of the Damned. In the shadows the Burning Legion prepared, In hopes that a great dragon soon would be there.

Varian Wrynn had just gotten…

“Twas The Night Before Cataclysm”

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Weekly Blues The Shattering has happened, dungeon quest xp nerf, new battlegrounds brackets

Cataclysm Factions We talk about the new Cataclysm factions and some of the rewards you get from each

It Came From the Forusm We answer the question: In which zone should I start…

One of my favorite things to do at the beginning of an expansion is search item databases and find out what is the best gear for my character to have in order to successfully start raiding. Yes, I truly am a nerd like that.

I’m sure I will do the same this expansion for my characters, but in addition I’m compiling resources for all classes and specs to help you all get prepared for…

It seems that Blizzard is giving us the patch again because there were some problems with people receiving it the first time. I must say, I love that Blizzard gives us content patches, but as someone who has a slow internet connection I can’t help but QQ a…

Daetur on the MMO-Champion Forums created an entry titled “What Wrath players need to know to not suck at Cata!” I found some good information in what he said, though I think it is less about sucking and more about getting back to the fundamentals of group play.

I’ve pulled out some of the key points from what Daetur said and I’ve added my own opinions here as well. Since I have been running…

Thanks to Frostnut for putting this together for us. He’s giving the Alliance some love.

Yellow Star: Auction House Purple Diamond: Bank Orange Square: Flight Masters and Trainers Red Triangle: Cooking/Fishing Dailies White Triangle: Valor and Justice Point Gear Vendors Red Star: Battle Masters Blue Hexagon: Guild…

This week we’re going to take a look at a few of the add-ons meant for mages, the glass cannons of the World of Warcraft. As always, be sure to get the latest version if you’re going to try these out; out-of-date add-ons may not work at all, or worse, they may do something completely different to what you want. Check out the links in the segment notes for…

Since I searched and searched but couldn’t find any maps online that told me where to find the NPC’s in Orgrimmar that I was looking for, I’ve created a labeled starter map to help you find some of these key NPC’s in Orgrimmar…

We’ve known that this day would come. The day when Deathwing would rise from the earth, shattering it, causing cracks and tidal waves that will change the landscape of Azeroth forever.

How do you feel now that this day is about to arrive? For the most part I’ve been excited about the shattering and the changes that World of Warcraft is about to go through. It’s going to almost feel like a new game…