An Addon for everything!

I gave everything a bit of a shuffle a couple weeks ago, mostly because I needed more help watching my Focus (Lich King) target’s cast bar (Defile) and who is being targeted (Me, or someone else in the raid). I switched to Shadowed Unit Frames. But changing my unit frames led me into making other changes.

Because I don’t PVP much these days and very rarely heal so VuhDo isn’t nearly as prominent in this layout as it has been in the past. I’ve also switched back to the default Combat Text because I just like the positioning of the text over the targets so much for AoE.

I thought it might be worth consolidating everything into a single post.

The Interface – Out of Combat

Out of combat, in raid

Out of combat, in raid, with add ons marked

The Interface – In Combat

In combat, in raid

In combat, in raid, with add ons marked

Add ons

Bloody Font | Combat Text
This tiny little mod will replace the default font for combat text with any TTF font file you want to use. I’m using Dafxter at the moment because the characters in the set are smaller than your average character font set and even double size critical hit numbers render quite well. Most fonts, including the default one, look jagged and pixelated on my screen.

Decursive | Raid/Unit Frames
Click to Dispel Magic and Cure Disease on any raid or party member. VuhDo can do this just as well, but I like this function to be separated out. My post about Decursive is here.

Dominos | Action Bars
Every spell bar or button, including my inventory and bags, are positioned and modified using Dominos. I like to leave a couple big button spaces free so I can move in fight specific spells eg Pyschic Scream for Lady Deathwhisper. My Shadowfiend pet bar appears in the gap right in the middle. My post about Dominos is here.

Deus Vox Encounters | Raid Boss Mod
A lot of people use Deadly Boss Mods for raid encounter timers and announcements. I switched to Deus Vox and stuck with it because it uses so many audio cues for the warnings. You can customize every single boss encounter and turn on only the warnings and bars that you need to know about. Deus Vox also comes with its own Proximity/Range finder (see above my mini map) and its own boss health bar (right of the mini map).

Elkano’s Buff Bars | Buff and Debuffs
I have a 4 column buff/debuff bar layout (you can see three of the four columns in these screen captures). From left to right:

1. Special buffs (not displayed) – includes things like Heroism, Power Infusion and Storm Power (if you remember Hodir), basically anything that will change how I cast temporarily goes here. These are scaled up significantly and coloured green.
2. Debuffs – in the screen capture you can see Chill of the Throne. I make sure my debuffs are very prominent and show both the icon and the name in text. They are coloured by the type of debuff (poison is green). They also work as timers which is really handy for watching important debuff countdowns like Blood Queen’s Essence of the Blood Queen and Sindragosa’s Instability stacks. I don’t know how I’d play with the default debuff icons! This is one of the most important parts of my interface.
3. Self Buffs – the tiny little line of self buffs is my readycheck checklist. Should contain at any given time Shadowform, Inner Fire, Vampiric Embrace, Flask of the Frost Wrym and Well Fed. I rarely look at this list once I enter combat but any trinket or gear procs show up here.
4. Buffs from others – occasionally I will scan this list to make sure I’m in range of a totem but otherwise I ignore it during combat.

Lathere’s post about Elkano’s Buff Bars is here.

ForteXorcist | DoT Monitor/Spell Timer
Another game changing mod. ForteXorcist tracks every single one of my active DoTs, across all mobs, during combat. Makes multi-dotting much easier and lets me track what mob has Devouring Plague even when I’m targeting something else. Unfortunately it doesn’t track DoTs on your Focus target. Or at least I can’t figure how to get ForteXorcist to track that. My post about ForteXorcist is here.

gChat | Chat Pane
A little add on that neatens up the Chat window considerably. All the buttons are hidden as is the input bar until you type “/” or hit Enter.

Omen | Threat Meter
The standard Threat Meter. Mine only shows up when I’m in combat.

Quartz | Cast Bar
Measures latency and displays it as part of the cast bar. An essential for any caster. My post about Quartz is here.

Recount | Damage Meter
The standard Damage Meter. I try not to look at it during combat.

SexyMap | Mini Map
Makes my mini map look good, hides all the buttons and things like the calendar and time until you hover your cursor over the map.

Shadow Green Light | Shadow Priest Mod
A mod that calculates whether it’s worth recasting Shadow Word: Pain based on how many debuffs are on your target and how many debuffs are available with your raid composition.

Shadowed Unit Frames | Raid/Unit Frames
Replaces the player, target and focus frames in my user interface. You can use Shadowed Unit Frames to draw frames for party members and raid members too, but I use VuhDo to do that. Sometimes it will display a boss frame, but not consistently for all bosses. I’m thinking about turning this feature off.

Tidy Plates | Name Plates
Replaces the default name plates with something a little prettier. You can download a few different skins if you don’t like the default design.

VuhDo | Raid/Unit Frames
The best healing raid frame add on out there. Even though I rarely heal VuhDo compacts all the important information about what’s going on around me in the raid – who is dead, who is being resurrected, who has DCed, who is a ghost, who has aggro etc – into a small space. It also shows who has been raid marked which is really handy when you’re running a boss mod like Deadly Boss Mods or Deus Vox Encounters so you can quickly identify the raid members with Spores in Festergut, Unchained Magic in Sindragosa, Mind Controlled in Lady Deathwhisper just to name a few. Lathere has written two posts about VuhDo: here and here.

Fine-tuning

My user interface is definitely a work in progress. I’ll always be tinkering.

Eventually I plan to bring my player, target and focus frames down underneath my cast bar. The other thing I’ve noticed is that the Deus Vox bars and warnings really get in the way – they tend to overlap my damage output numbers or get in the way of my target’s name plate.

ForteXorcist stops tracking DoTs on a target if I set that target to my be my Focus. I find it much harder to track DoTs when they’re listed in two different places and in two formats. I wish I could figure out a way to keep ForteXorcist tracking my Focus target.

And finally, I think I need to set up some kind of tool tip add on. My tool tips usually appear in the very bottom right corner of my screen and overlap my menu bars there. I’m not sure where I want my tooltips displayed, but I know that I need a special spot for them and an add on that can put them where they’re meant to go.

Mistake #1: Using an AoE spell when there's only 1 or 2 mobs left to kill.

Lathere is a healer. I am a damage dealer. But we both have alts at level 80. And we’ve both tried to swap roles, with little success. And watching Lath fail in her new role… is actually pretty satisfying. That’s sisterly love for you.

I do a lot of 5 man healing as my Priest. I’m okay at it. Not great, but okay. I believe that’s because I spend so much time playing the Priest that I’m “comfortable”. I’m not a good healer. I don’t know exactly what the difference between me and a good healer is, other than years of experience, but I know whatever I’m doing wrong, I’m not a great healer.

In the last couple months I’ve also been healing as my newish Resto Shaman. I’m okay at it, just. The only thing I’m good at with the Shaman is totems because I know the dungeons pretty well.

On rare occasions I’ve been given the opportunity to play as Elemental as the Shaman. And not only is it pretty easy, I’ve impressed people with my DPS based on my gear. A friend of mine once advised me: the difference between mediocre and great Elemental Shaman is the ability to factor Chain Lightning (on a cooldown) into a single target fight.

Is that it?

Forgive me, I’m not being very kind to Elemental Shamans. Of course there is some further mastery involved. If I were taking it seriously I’d be looking into whether or not it’s preferable to reapply Flame Shock early so that it doesn’t cause Lava Burst to be on cooldown even 0.5 seconds longer than necessary. It would also be a good idea to find out whether it’s worth sacrificing Totem of Wrath to put down a Fire Elemental in a 5, 10 and 25 man raid setting.

Actually the most interesting part of Elemental DPS, in my opinion, is when you need to AoE. Most classes that I’ve played get incredibly boring when you AoE. But an Ele Shaman’s AoE is on cooldown. And it’s kind of fun to try and spread the DPS all around.

Sorry – how did I get so off topic?! Self evaluation so far:

Shadow Priest: Awesome!
Discipline Priest: Good
Resto Shaman: Crap
Elemental Shaman: Good

And now I’m playing a baby Mage (level 46 as I write this) and receiving quite a lot of compliments. I figure, for every compliment typed in party chat during a cross-server pug there are probably about 5 compliments that never actually “said”. Of course I have a heck of a lot to learn about the Mage and I’m really ignoring a lot of the Arcane and Fire damage spells in my spell book as I’m leveling as Frost. So let’s add:

Mage: Good

Meanwhile Lathere has been swiftly moving up the ranks on her level 80 alt, Alexria: a Discipline Priest. I’d say that my Resto Shaman and her Discipline Priest are pretty evenly geared. There’s one major difference: Lath is actually pretty damn good at the Disc Priest. And I’m still total crap at the Resto Shaman. She can hold her own in a ToC or ICC10… and I highly doubt I could do the same.

But the tables have turned!

Before Alexria was a Discipline Priest, she was a Shadow Priest. That was mid 2009. And she was awful.

Mistake Number 1: AoEing when there are only one or two targets.

I’m pretty confident that it holds true for all damage dealing specs across all classes. Except perhaps Ele Shamans when Chain Lightning hits the initial target so hard it doesn’t really matter if it doesn’t hit much else.

Mind Searing 1 target when it only has 1 other target nearby actually taking damage from Mind Sear? Mistake!

Tip: If you play with enemy nameplates turned on (hit your “v” button when you’re in range to toggle them on) it’s very easy to see just how many mobs there are in a pull. You should mentally count the number in the pull as the tank is pulling them – every pull.

Mistake Number 2: Not knowing the kill order.

I think only a healer could ask repeatedly “so do we kill these adds or not?”. After a while I just got into the habit of actually explaining all fights and situations to Lath as if she was a new player and had never been to Obsidian Sanctum, Naxx or the Nexus before.

If you’re really not sure, watch the melee in the group. If they’re willing to move a few steps over and kill something, you probably should too. Or, if you count more than 3 debuffs applied to your target someone else is probably killing it already.

Tip: In instances either assist the tank (click on the tank and hit “f”) or kill anything with a mana bar first. Anything called a Disciple, Acolyte, Priest or anything that waves its hands around with a golden glow should be your first kill.

Back to the Story

I won’t even go into the other, specific, things Lath did wrong as a Shadow Priest. That would have come good (I hope) with a heck of a lot of practise.

Around the time she was giving up on Shadow damage dealing, she also had the opportunity to switch to Moonkin when we dropped to a 2 healer set up for ToGC Anubarak on 10 man. She’d had the opportunity to DPS a few times during Ulduar, but this 10 man fight was the time we really needed to see some numbers.

Lath had some Tier 9, 25 man, Moonkin gear and, factoring in some inexperience, you’d think she’d come in 500-1k DPS below the rest of us. Oh no. Lath was able to achieve a whopping 2.8k DPS. How is it possible that such a good healer could be so bad at DPSing?

Mistake Number 3: Pausing between casts

One of the things I’ve noticed while Lath and I have been playing DPS together is that she will wait until her cast is finished. Then start cast another one. I first noticed this during AoE packs because the cast/channel time of her AoE was so long, and I could see the 1.5 second gap between the animation ending and the next spell starting.

You need to queue up your next cast (click it) before the current one is finished. There should be no gaps.

Healers are encouraged to think carefully about what spell to cast and when to apply it. They are rewarded (extra mana regen) if they are conservative and take breaks when healing isn’t necessary. That’s not true of damage dealing. Cast all the time. Even if you’re not sure which spell is the right one to cast at any given moment, casting something is better than casting nothing.

Back to the Story

To be fair, I don’t know if chain casting was the missing element that caused Lath’s Moonkin debut to fall so flat. I doubt it was just that one thing. It also didn’t help that she wasn’t sure what targets to DPS when (I think I just told her to follow the Mind Flay beam when in doubt, so she wouldn’t have to fess up over Vent).

I think she was a bit flustered by Eclipses and frankly I know nothing about Moonkin damage dealing, so perhaps it’s a complicated topic. I do know that most main spec damage dealers use Addons to help them track the complicated parts of their rotation. Which leads me to:

Mistake Number 4: Using a healing or the default UI

How hard is it to heal using the default UI when you’ve been spoilt with healing addons like Grid or VuhDo or Healbot? Very hard.

The same holds true for DPS, too. DPS players use DPS addons. If you play a DoT heavy class like an Affliction Warlock or Shadow Priest use a DoT monitoring addon like ForteXorcist.

If you need to react differently when something procs and you gain a buff, (Fire Mages track Hot Streak, right?) consider using Power Auras or Elkano’s Buff Bars and great a custom visual effect, or at the very least, enlarge just that one buff so you’re not staring at a tiny icon in the corner of your screen that keeps moving around.

Back to the story

Now that Lath is quite successful as a Discipline Priest her dreams of pew pew-ing it up have been projected onto her level 80 Mage. According to Lath: “even a monkey could play Arcane” so either she’s finally come across the spec/class combination that she can excel at… or… she’s a monkey. I don’t know, but she’s doing quite well.

There’s just one final thing that she needs to master:

Mistake Number 5: Ignoring your Interupt key!

Spending most of my time on the Priest without an interupt to call my own has definitely made me appreciate having one as the Shaman and Mage.

When your tank pulls a pack of five and several seconds later there’s 1 who hasn’t moved towards the group and is merrily waving their shadowy/icy/firey hands in the air? Interupt the next cast.

Tanks can’t really tank stuff out of their melee range. And if they’re not tanking it, the healer is going to. So by interupting you force the enemy mob to stop casting and instead it will come and try to kill your tank from melee range using physical attacks. You then get one more mob to include in your AoE, so everyone wins.

And if a caster mob starts to cast anything with the word “heal” or “mend” in it? Interupt! Casting “Mind Control”? Interupt that too! Oh, and anything with the word “volley” in it should be interrupted.

Cassandri attempts to recruit and ends up arguing about meta gems instead. 2% Reduced threat?

I think there’s a severe “pures” shortage on my server. Good, raiding Mages and Warlocks are a dying breed. Even Hunters seem to be a bit scarce.

In my guild our Mages have quit the game, quit raiding and/or have just plain quit showing up. We’re getting used to raiding without strudel.

Fortunately we’ve got just enough intellect left to recruit. The problem is, it’s very hard to tell a good Mage from a bad one by reading an application. Or, perhaps if we had a Mage who knew their stuff still active in the guild they would be able to spot a strange glyph/gem/talent/gear choice. We need someone who can evaluate if the applicant’s DPS output is high, low or mediocre for their gear. After all, doesn’t everyone want to recruit players who perform well in relatively poor gear? Gear can be so easily, and quickly, improved.

When did Mages and Warlocks become so rare? If you’re serious about raiding you need to devote all your time and energy into 1 character’s progression. And you’re usually stuck playing that character for the length of an expansion. Has this been a problem for the entire Wrath of the Lich King expansion?

Have dual-specs made hybrids too appealing? It’s certainly much much easier to gear Cassandri’s shadow and healing specs than it would be to progress Cassandri for healing and Chriara (my Rogue) for DPS. So I can definitely see the appeal of progressing 2 for the price of 1.

Or, if not the appeal of hybrids, are the Mages and Warlocks just spending their time somewhere else? Lurking in battlegrounds? Arenas? Are Mages and Warlocks just more fun to play in PVP and boring to play in a raid?

I joked the other night that one of our guild members, who was begging to bring his fresh Paladin to raid, had “pally fever”. I’ve never played a Paladin past level 25 (that was a very long time ago) but there have been a few friends who, once they roll a Paladin, stay faithful to that character. Like, that’s it. No more leveling, no more alts.

I feel a bit like that about my Priest. I find the class endlessly interesting and tricky to master. And I know that one day, if I suddenly can’t stand to play Shadow anymore (the day I can’t out-DPS a tank I’ll probably call it quits – don’t laugh, it could happen), I could take on a different role, or perhaps devote myself to actually keeping a level head in PVP. And there has to be a reason why there are so goddamn many Resto Druid bloggers out there. That’s another class/spec that just seems to command devotion. These players love their class and spec. And they play it for years.

I’ve never come across a fanatic Mage or Warlock. Someone who has been playing that class non-stop since before the first expansion. Someone who would say “I’ll quit this game if I have to play something else”.

Is it something about the Mage and Warlock class that doesn’t inspire devotion? Do these players burn out faster or tire of their character more quickly? It sure seems that way to me.

My brother (in moment of temporary unfaithfulness to his Paladin, another “pally fever” victim) crows about how fun his Mage is to play. You’ll find him, weeks after a new patch is out, trying new talent builds, doing dailies 10 mobs at a time. But eventually, always, he returns to his Paladin.

It’s time for a wake up call everybody. This isn’t the Burning Crusade anymore -
Mages kick ass. Warlocks still kick ass.

I’m tempted to reroll a Mage myself. Warlocks are definitely not for me, I’ve tried and hated the whole minion thing. But who wouldn’t love to be in demand? Conjure snacks and be begged for buffs? Tear up the charts? Live large? Perhaps I’m tired of playing a support class and standing in the background.

However I’m a bit apprehensive. I’m not entirely sure that I’ll like playing a Mage. For a short-time I dabbled at the Elemental Shaman without much success. I imagine that the play style between a Mage and Elemental Shaman, burst and crit heavy with one DoT or two, is a much more similar in style than that of a Shadow Priest.

But a part of me wants to know if it’s as fun as it looks. And there’s no better way to find out than to play it firsthand.

XT-002 Deconstructor

XT-002 Deconstructor is the child of Mimiron (or so he believes) and the objective of his hard mode encounter, Heartbreaker, is to smash this little boy’s heart into pieces as fast as possible.

This is one fight that I’m not happy with my own personal performance. Not even close. Our raid leader is setting the bar at 300k damage done to the heart and I can’t consistently make that mark.

As soon as the Heart of the Deconstructor appears I pop a potion, dot, dot, dot and Shadowfiend then spam Mind Flay.

I’m not the only one having problems. All the ranged DPS arn’t quite cutting it (the melee are all 2k dps above me). We have scaled down to 5 healers, 1 tank and 1 DPS tank, a Death Knight, to look after Life Sparks when they spawn.

Unfortunately we haven’t had a Balance Druid or Elemental Shaman in the raid lately to help buff casters but surely this wouldn’t be a huge DPS gain/loss? Buffs are one part of the game that I can’t seem to get my head around. One day I will learn what benefits me most and who provides it. One day soon, I promise.

Our positioning and strategy seem to be working well. We split the raid into two stacks: ranged and melee and move to a designated spot in between for Light Bombs and to the other side for Gravity Bombs. We only have 1 or 2 people who occasionally run the wrong way, or react slowly when they have been gravity or light bombed.

In regards to the Life Sparks I’m in two minds. I have tried both:

• Vampiric Touch & Shadow Word: Pain then switch back to the boss hoping my Raid Leader doesn’t yell at me for not killing sparks (he flips out if he spots a Mind Flay going to the “wrong” target)
• Mind Flay x 2/3 & Mind Blast (if it comes off cooldown) until the spark is dead

As we got better at the fight (and less DPS died) I found that DoTs didn’t stay on there long enough to help. I wonder if I might be better off trying a SW:P + Mind Flay since MF is boosted by 10% when the target is afflicted with SW:P. Or it could be a waste of a cooldown.

The larger truth is that my DPS is really just not that great. Yes, there are definitely items I have that I would exchange (swapping my boots/gloves for crit equivalents, getting a decent wand and that kind of thing) but I have most of the large upgrades from Ulduar 25.

I usually do quite well in Emalon but tonight I came in #13th and had my pants beaten off by a Resto Druid playing their Feral kitty offspec doing 6k dps to my 3 point something (unflasked).

I don’t think I’m doing anything totally wrong. But I am thinking I might need to shuffle my gear back right back down to 10% Haste even if that means equipping inferior spell power items for some minor crit gains. Alternatively I was thinking of trying for +900 Haste Rating to see if I could slide into a Mind Blast + 3 Mind Flay sequence – crazy, I know.

I’m also experimenting with WoWTunnels in an effort to bring my 250-400 latency down a little.

All said and done we did manage to get Heartbreaker in the end – as you can probably tell from my Achievements list on the side of this site. And we achieved Obit-uary (Flame Leviathan + 4 towers) on Wednesday night so I’m pretty happy with that!

I’m not sure what hard mode is up next. Freya + 1, I think?