Straight from the Cow's Lip.

Wowhead: A Tutorial

impressivelyordinary — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 03:52:09 +0000

I don’t update for a while and WordPress gets super-weird on me. I guess it’s just another thing to get used to. On to the post. I’ll update about Dru later.

Wowhead is unbelievably helpful. If you don’t think so, you’re doing it wrong. I’m here to help, though. When we’re through, you’ll be a pro. You’ll never have to go into an instance clueless about whether or not there are drops for you. You’ll also have the know-how to find out what dungeons you need to be running to get rid of those Kara drops and move on to the big-boy section of Northrend gear. You can also use wowhead to find out what rep you need to be grinding, and what rep to not bother wasting time with. Trust me. This will save you time. Make smart choices, don’t run dungeons that don’t have drops for you more than once, unless someone else needs to go and you’re feeling generous. And for heaven’s sake, if you’re doing that, wear your rep-appropriate tabard so you can be getting rep while helping people out.

I can’t teach you everything though, so for starters, you’ll need to know a thing or two about your class and spec. You’ll need to know your favorite stats. DPS, it’s probably not dodge or parry rating. Tanks, it’s probably not spirit. Healers, it probably isn’t strength. I like to pick 2, but for a lot of people, what stats are your favorite depends a lot on what you already have, especially when it comes to things like getting hit capped, etc. Talk to other people who are really good at your class or to people who are good at figuring stuff out and knowing whether or not something is good.

On to the good stuff…
http://www.wowhead.com/ – your new best friend. I know, I know, you have other friends that you really like hanging out with. Ditch ‘em.

Under database, click on items. Just items, not any of that other fancy stuff just yet.
You should now be overwhelmed with over 31,000 items. On the right, click “Create a filter”

Now you’ve got some real options. Let’s find out what sort of rep you’ll need first. So, under the race option, there’s a blank pull-down menu. Click on that, and choose “Added in Wrath of the Lich King” and “Yes,” then click on “Add another filter” and click “Requires reputation with…” and “any.” Now, add yet another filter and add your favorite stat. My personal favorite is Spell Power, and leave it at >0. Now, let’s search. Click “Apply filter” and we’ll be off. Now I’ve narrowed it down to a mere 47 items! However, these aren’t really all things I can use. For example, some of them are plate. To fix this, I can do a couple things. I can either go to the leather armor section, and loose all the trinkets, weapons, and enchants, or I can create a weight scale. I don’t like the weight scale that much, since it tends to give me a lot of items with crit and hit, and cloth stuff. So I go through and use the box to the right to just show me the trinkets and then rings, etc. then I go over to the leather armor section and filter through that. But if you want to use the weight scale, just click on “Create a weight scale” and click your class and spec, and then “Apply filter” once more. So when I create a weight scale, I’m down to 23 items, and I’ve still got my weapons and other goodies, as well as only the armor that I can wear. Now I’m looking over my list and some of this stuff looks pretty boomkin-y, even though I said I was resto, so I’m going to go back up and add another filter. But not before I check all the trinkets and rings and stuff, since those don’t usually have my second favorite stat on ‘em. Next I’m adding Spirit, you add your second favorite stat here. Bam! Here’s all your rep gear.

Don’t forget to go check your profession rep stuff though!
If you want to do that, just roll over “Database” and go to “Items” then to “Recipes” and then click whatever profession you’re working on. Create a new filter “Requires reputation with…” and that’ll tell you what rep you need to get a move on with your crafting.

Really, that’s basically how you use wowhead. Just figure out what you need to find (recipes, cloaks, etc.), and then add filters. Toward the bottom of the filter list is “sources” where you’ll find “Drops in…(normal)” and “Drops in…(heroic)” and “Rewarded by a quest.” So you can know exactly what quests will give you upgrades (hopefully blue ones), and what dungeons you need to be running to get geared up for heroics, Naxx, and beyond.

If something is unclear, feel free to ask!

Of course, finding it is only the first step. WRITE DOWN what gear you need and where it comes from. If it’s crafted, write down what mats you need to be working on and find out who can make it for you. Especially if it’s a recipe that comes from rep. So when people ask “who wants to run something” You can say, “I’d love to run X. I need Y off of Z.” And you can stay in LFG while you’re out questing or farming in case someone comes along who’s running what you need and you aren’t afraid of pugs.

Alternatively you could just depend on other bloggers/forum posters to tell you where gear drops for your class/spec, but where’s the fun in that?

Being a Better Player

impressivelyordinary — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 05:48:35 +0000

Howdy, everyone. I’ve been on a bit of a hiatus with finals and papers and getting married, etc. I’m finished all that now, though, so here’s to enjoying the rest of my summer and hopefully posting a little more regularly. At least until school starts again.

I’ll get back to posts I started before my hiatus later, today I’m more interested in what it means to become a better player, and why it’s important to know that you have areas in which you can improve. More importantly, why it’s important that you pursue strengthening your weaknesses, despite possible frustrations, and ask for help from more experienced or knowledgeable guildies or friends.

My husband just started playing again a few weeks ago, and having been gone for some time, a lot of people don’t really know him that well, and he doesn’t know how the people who were newer 70s when he stopped playing have progressed. This being the case, he’s returned to being as vocal on the guild forums as he was before he stopped playing, and he’s been looking at the armory and checking out gear, gems, enchants, and talents of guildies. His first 70 is a hunter, his second 70 is a druid, and he just graduated with a degree in Mechanical Engineering from one of the best (if not the best) schools in the nation (and consequently, the world, of course). What I’m trying to say is that he has a pretty good understanding of how things work and how to make them work better. He likes understands numbers, and quickly sees when specs, gear, etc. don’t make sense. Of course, when you’re talking to guildies, and fellow class members, you can’t necessarily come out and say, “Your spec is totally wrong” unless you know that they haphazardly chose their talents and have never respec’d. Even then, there are many people who refuse to acknowledge, much less accept, criticism from others. One might argue, however, that these sorts of people are not the sort that are desirable in a raiding guild.

This post isn’t really about how to approach guildies about not meeting expectations, or choosing weird (if not flat-out wrong) talents. It’s about figuring out what you’re bad at (or could improve on), and pursuing it. Of course, if you wanted to point a guildie or friend over here to give a subtle hint that they can improve, feel free.

No one is perfect. Cliche, but true. I, personally, am less mathematically inclined. I love that Phae posts about theorycrafting and mana efficiency, but most of it is difficult for me to not gloss over. I pick up the conclusion and trust that she knows her stuff. I also know that I could set up way more macros than I have, so I could free up an action bar for my Cheesy Cow Pun arena team, but I haven’t taken the time to learn how to write my own macros without relying heavily on a pre-existing macro. I know to keep the lifebloom stacks rolling, and rarely use Healing Touch, but I don’t really know why. Well, I know it’s more efficient and effective, but I don’t know how much more and I don’t know if I’m really maximizing my potential. My goals are to find out, and to write some freaking macros.

A lot of people, like myself, aren’t mathematically inclined. However, many WoW players, like the lovely Phae, are and they are even kind enough to provide us folks in the humanities some explanation of how and why things work without bogging us down with numbers. It is your responsibility as a player, especially in a raiding guild, casual or not, to understand how your class works, even if you don’t know precisely how or why. There are a number of things involved in understanding how your class works.

Perhaps the most important of all – Talents. Choose carefully, do research, find out what works for other people before you go picking talents all willy-nilly. Ask class officers, if you’ve got ‘em, what they think of your particular spec. Ask about specific talents. Figure out if it’s important to fill up a particular talent, or to split the points between two talents. Find out what talents you need if you’re under hit cap, and which ones you can lose if you’re over hit cap.
Stats – What do you need? Of the Boar? Probably not. Take a look at the gear of your class mates, check out what stats they have. Even if they’re at a much higher gear level than you, the basic stats won’t be wildly different. Hunters will always need Agility, and Mages will always need Intellect.
Enchants – This is largely just a subset of stats, but make sure you’re getting things that are helping you do what you enjoy doing. It is generally recommended that you have different gear for PvE and PvP, since you need different performance from your gear in each of these situations.
Gems – Another subset of stats, where you have more important PvE vs PvP choices to make. Stun resist isn’t going to help you in a raid. Bosses cheat. Enchants and Gems are also easier to switch out than gear if you’re just under or just over hit cap.
Macros – Not everyone needs them, but sometimes they help. Ask some of your more technical guildies to help with macros, or to offer suggestions on ways that macros can make your WoW life easier.
Shot Rotation, what? – If you’re a DPS class, find out how to maximize your DPS! Your job is to hit stuff in the face, as hard as you can, as quickly as you can. If you’re picking spells willy-nilly, you probably aren’t hitting as hard and as fast as you can be (can you tell I really like the phrase, “Willy-nilly?”). Again, ask the more technical players about shot rotation, or look around the internet. There are a TON of fabulous resources out there, you just have to know how to look for them.
Add-Ons – Omen and Big Wigs or Deadly Boss Mods are pretty much a must in most raiding guilds. These however, aren’t necessarily the only add-ons that can help you. There are a lot of add-ons available, but choose wisely, as some can slow down your computer more than they’re worth. I trust Curse more than other sites, but it’s mostly superstition. I think. Find out what other top raiders are using, or just browse Curse for something that looks like it might help. If you haven’t downloaded add-ons before, it might seem a little daunting, but once you get the hang of it you’ll probably find that they’re immensely helpful. There are add-ons for pretty much anything. They exist to make the layout prettier, to tell you when to cast your next spell to compensate for lag, and where to find that node of Golden Darters. Go! Explore! Tell me what you find! For those of us who are directionally/spatially challenged, I believe I’ve seen a Tom-Tom add-on but I haven’t tried it out yet.

You might be thinking, yeah, I’ve got all that down. Are you helping guildies? Are you offering up your abundant knowledge to your class mates? Sharing your information, and being available for others to ask you questions is not only a great way to help other people, but it’s also a very good way of really, really getting to know your class. When you’re giving advice, make sure to also offer resources for those listening to take a look at, so they get a chance to explore a little (and so they know that you aren’t just full of it).

As always, I hope this helped. Comments are appreciated very much (though I still haven’t gotten around to integrating wowhead links… I will!)

Come Back Soon

Education in Azeroth

impressivelyordinary — Mon, 12 May 2008 00:05:33 +0000

I love when I get to write about whatever I feel like. Last week, I wrote a paper for a philosophy class about the tremendous benefits of playing WoW. Here it is. Don’t Plagiarize. Do show it to naysayers.

With over ten million active accounts, Blizzard’s World of Warcraft is the most played massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG). An MMORPG is a game in which each character can interact with each other character in the online universe. A person, the player, may have many characters; each character is a player’s virtual game-piece with specific abilities and talents based on race, class, and profession. However, World of Warcraft is not simply a mindless video game. World of Warcraft provides a free-market economy which offers a hands-on tool for understanding economic concepts such as the invisible hand, supply and demand, and saving money.

The World of Warcraft economy is based largely on the Auction House. There are also Non-Player Characters (NPCs) who are vendors, which characters may buy from and sell to. The Auction House, like eBay or any other traditional auction house, is a place where characters may sell their goods and buy goods from other characters. Characters make a deposit to place an item up for auction, and at the end of a successful auction, the auction house takes a cut of the final value. Through the Auction House, players can obtain hands-on experience with the economic concepts of the invisible hand, and supply and demand. The invisible hand concept is that the market controls itself so individuals cannot outrageously raise prices. The concept of supply and demand is that as supply increases, prices decrease and vice versa. The application of these concepts is especially seen when characters are selling profession crafted or gathered goods. Each character may only have two professions and may choose from a variety of crafting or gathering professions. This limitation requires players to depend on others for goods and services, such as herbs for alchemists’ potions, or crafted armor or weapons for characters who have chosen two gathering professions. When there are more gatherers than crafters auctioning items, goods are cheaper, but when fewer gatherers are auctioning raw materials, goods are more expensive. However, even when fewer gatherers are auctioning items, the invisible hand prevents a gross inflation of prices. Savvy players take advantage of this knowledge, and wait until there are fewer raw materials to list their own, and make purchases when there is an abundance of raw materials up on the auction house.

Another important economic lesson to be learned in World of Warcraft is the importance of saving money. Many people have what are called “bank alts” which are alternate characters that are not played, but are stationed in a major city to act as an additional bank account. People send these characters money to save and items to sell to make saving money easier and reduce the temptation to spend money on things they do not need at that time. World of Warcraft has a built-in bank system, but it is more of a safety deposit box than a true bank as each character’s gold is available to that character at all times. The game itself also has mechanisms that require players to save money that they earn by doing quests or selling goods and services.

World of Warcraft requires players to spend money incrementally while saving for larger things. The smaller spending, like groceries, are things like ammunition, food, and potions. The large things are mounts and epic mounts, which increase the movement speed relative to the standard run speed. At level forty, each character becomes eligible to purchase the apprentice riding skill, which allows them to ride a land mount and travel around the world with a 60% movement speed increase. This skill costs 90 gold, which for a level 40 character is comparable to a sixteen-year-old working to buy their first used car. At level 60, each character becomes eligible to purchase the journeyman riding skill, which allows them to ride an epic land mount and travel around the world with a 100% movement speed increase. This skill costs 600 gold, which at level 60 is comparable to someone working to purchase their first new car. At level 70, each character becomes eligible to purchase the expert and artisan riding skills. These skills allow the character to ride a flying mount and epic flying mount, respectively. The expert skill allows a character to fly a mount with a 60% movement speed increase, and the artisan riding skill allows a character to fly a mount with a 100% movement speed increase on the ground and a 280% movement speed increase while in the air. The expert skill costs 800 gold, which for a new level 70 is similar to purchasing a luxury car. The artisan skill costs 5000 gold, and is comparable to purchasing a large house without financing. In addition to purchasing the skills, each character must also purchase the mount to ride. The mounts range from 10 gold for the initial land mount to 200 gold for the epic flying mount.

World of Warcraft requires players to earn gold, save it, and spend it wisely. Players who do not save their gold and spend it wisely will be significantly less efficient players, and less likely to be successful. The game also encourages players to be students of economics, because by doing so, they will be more successful at the auction house which will allow them to spend more money on better equipment. World of Warcraft players are not sitting in front of their computers mindlessly slaughtering people and animals, they are exercising their knowledge of the invisible hand, supply and demand, and the value of saving money, which can be applied to life outside of the World of Warcraft universe.

Dare I say it?

impressivelyordinary — Sun, 11 May 2008 07:45:49 +0000

I had an even better night in Kara than I did last week. It’s costing me a lot in gems and enchants, but it is absolutely worth it. Once again- best guildies ever. We’ve got some people coming up who are fabulous. They’re dedicated players and they pay attention and catch on quick. Our new warrior (who has 5 level 70s and hadn’t really been in a guild before I ran Shadow Lab with him in a PUG and encouraged him to talk to our gm about joining us) got himself both Kara t4 pieces tonight. I rolled against him for the helm, but I’m glad he got it. Our new shammy healer is also pretty great, and very helpful. It was also nice to run again with one of our older members who’s been on less often for a while with RL stuff.

After being wipe-free (aside from a bad trash pull) on Thursday night, and one-shotting every boss until Shade tonight, we had terrible, terrible infernal drops during Prince- which we never have. It was worth it though. Our humble and amusing hunter got Sunfury, our new Shammy got the Jade Ring of the Everliving, and our new warrior got his t4 helm.

I also scrounged together enough badges to get the Gnarled Ironwood Pauldrons, which look wicked cool.

What I’m most excited about is my new Be Imba status. Last week, it was telling me I could handle the end of Kara, and I still had some upgrades mid-kara. Today, I’m ready for the beginning of TK and SSC, and I’ve got upgrades in Mag and Gruul’s. I’m certainly not actually ready for TK and SSC, and I’m not even certain that I’m really ready for Mag and Gruul’s, but it’s nice to know that I’ve got the gear to perform well, as long as I’ve got the talent.

Also, Blog question: How can I get thott/wowhead links to show the item specs when you roll over it? I know nothing about CSS and very little about coding and formatting in general. I dabbled in HTML years ago, but have forgotten much of what I had learned.

Horde’s Fist First – Nightbane

impressivelyordinary — Sun, 04 May 2008 07:33:23 +0000

We’ve been running Kara since January (though not for progression for a while now), and after two and a half hours, we got Nightbane. I had unbelievable luck, and I’ll leave it at that.

Life is unbelievably crazy right now, so I haven’t had as much time to blog as I’d like. Unfortunately it doesn’t look like things will slow down much anytime soon. So meaningful, helpful blog posts will be fewer and farther between.

Adieu, Debricashi/Olstumpy

impressivelyordinary — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 09:15:21 +0000

Well, after a third hack my fiance is quitting World of Warcraft. At very least until he gets a new computer, but probably indefinitely. It’s going to be really weird for me, since Olstumpy was my reliable tank and enchanter. I always sent him my crummy green drops to disenchant. I’m going to miss Debricashi and his PoliceCatHQ in kara.

This brings up another important point: Gold Sellers and Gold buyers are appalling. If you buy gold, you are just as bad as the gold sellers who hack into other player’s accounts. If there were not people buying as much gold as they are, gold sellers would not be hacking into other players’ accounts. Gold sellers are not out there farming gold like anyone seriously working toward their epic flying mount. Gold sellers are making and distributing keyloggers to exploit honest players, stealing all their gold, vendoring all their items, and leaving them naked in the bank. The third time this happened to my fiance, Olstumpy was even moved to another server.

It’s also worth noting that neither Norton 360, AdAware, nor Spybot S&D shows anything suspicious at all.

Hackers & Keyloggers are the scum of the earth. Seriously.

impressivelyordinary — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 09:05:27 +0000

My poor fiance has had nothing but trouble with WoW since the patch came out. First his game couldn’t be verified after he downloaded the patch and nothing worked (including reformatting both hard drives) until he created a new admin account on windows. Yeah, seriously. It was ridiculous.

Then, last week his account was hacked and his weapons on his 70s were vendored, as well as all his consumables and various other items. Most of his gold was taken, but it looks like they rounded to the nearest ten and left him with around 5-7g on each character. His anti-virus software had stopped functioning, apparently (this may have had something to do with reformatting the hard drive and connecting to the internet before reinstalling the anti-virus software). We uninstalled it (btw, uninstalling Symantec Antivirus manually is extremely time-consuming and tedious.), for some reason remove program didn’t function properly either. In any case, I gave him my shiny Norton 360 and all seemed to be well. The first anti-virus scan we ran seemed to go well, got some stuff out that looked bad and whatnot. After we ran the scan, he changed his password. His preliminary restore gave him all his stuff back, just not his gold. No big deal, gold is not that hard to come by; especially since the new dailies came out. Everything seemed to be going hunky-dory.

I come home today and ask if he got his last Steamvaults run in today (he only has one more before exalted with Cenarion Expedition and can get his Earthwarden). He tells me that he got an e-mail saying that his password was changed. He had not changed his password today. He e-mailed Blizzard about it, saying that this was not an action he had taken. I did a bit of investigating myself, and realized that he can reset his password himself since he created a security question when the account was created. While he’s doing that, I check his armory profiles to see what kind of damage has been done this time and I check our guild bank to make sure it didn’t get ninja’d. His second 70, the druid tank, is naked; wearing only the Argent Dawn trinket. His first 70, the troll hunter, is missing a ring and both trinkets and weapons again. Our guild bank had a bunch of food crap taken out of it, but nothing of much substantial value. We had another officer demote his characters for the time being. When he got back in, he found that this time they left less than a gold on each character and sold all of his bank bags. The GMs have been great with their responses and pretty quick with restoring things. It still really stinks though. So today during dinner I installed Spybot and Ad-Aware on both of our computers and scanned them. Looks like we got the keylogger this time. After both those scans, he changed his password again. Hopefully we’ll not have any more WoW problems for a long, long time.

This time though, there was mail in his mailbox (probably COD) from a character that was clearly in some way related to the hacker.

In conclusion: scan often, change your password often, but change it after scans.

Midterms are next week, so I really don’t have any time for WoW research and dissemination of information. More of that during/after Spring Break (which is naturally later than everyone else’s).

“warlock im not touching can’t get mad” … ?

impressivelyordinary — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 01:12:40 +0000

Searches to find blogs are always interesting. I’m wondering what this person was looking for.

More real content is a-brewin’, promise.

Adventures in Karazhan, Night 2

impressivelyordinary — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 07:42:49 +0000

Another good night for me in Karazhan. I’m not sure how I feel about getting squishier, but I do like my +healing going up. We went from start through Chess tonight in about four hours, one-shotting every boss. Our opera event was Romulo & Julianne. I went in looking like this:

and transformed into this:

I’m definitely pleased with my new, color-coordinating gear, but I’m sad that I had to replace epics and not my greens and blues. I’m really excited about having replaced my Lifewarden’s breastplate.

The rundown:

Hood of Primal Life -> Headdress of the High Potentate

Gloves of the Living Touch -> Mitts of the Treemender

Lifewarden’s Breastplate -> Masquerade Gown

That Masquerade Gown procs with pretty impressive frequency.

My Hybrid, Plate-wearing Friend: Part 1, The Healadin

impressivelyordinary — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 21:28:20 +0000

This is much later than I’d hoped. I’ve been working on layers of procrastination. I impress myself sometimes.

Due to their incredible versatility, Paladins are one of the most complex classes and there’s a lot to learn about them. As such, I’m going to split my discussion of Paladins into 2 or 3 parts. I may be cruel to Retadins and discuss them with Tankadins.

Healing paladins are great. Can I come out and say that? Well, I did. They aren’t squishy, they’re great at doing their job, and they have the most impressive arsenal of buffs.

Blessings

Paladins have 10-minute “regular” blessings, and 30-minute Greater Blessings. Not all of their blessings have a greater version, but most of the raid blessings do. The greater blessings are cast on all members of the same class in a raid, which means that if your feral tank needs Light and you, the Resto druid, need Salvation you’re probably going to end up with 10-minute buffs.

Light- Increases the effect of Holy Light spells; this is good for whoever is going to be getting a lot of Paladin heals
Salvation- My personal favorite. Decreases threat by 30%. Some DPS classes are prone to whining that they don’t need Salvation and would rather have Might or Wisdom to increase their DPS. You may find it beneficial to point out that the less they pull aggro off the tank, the more DPS they get to do before getting smashed in the face by the big, scary boss.
Might- Increases attack power. This is good for melee attackers and hunters who can watch their aggro.
Kings-Increases all base stats by 10%. It does require your pally to go 10 points into the Protection tree. However, I don’t think I’ve met a Paladin without it. Generally if you have 2 Paladins, the buffs go something like, “everyone gets Kings and also something else.”
Wisdom- Increases mana regeneration (41 mp5 without talents). This is mana per 5, so it isn’t going to help your Innervate at all. Which is not to say that it isn’t nice to have. It’s definitely great, but think about whether you’re running out of mana or topping the aggro list first to help the Pally choose which blessing you should have.
Sacrifice- I’ve only really ever seen this be useful in the Maiden fight in Karazhan, but it’s definitely worth knowing about, especially if your Paladin isn’t aware of it’s utility in Kara. It transfers 105 damage taken by the recipient per hit to the Paladin for thirty seconds. Using Blessing of Sacrifice in the Maiden fight allows the Paladin to be woken up from Repentance so they can get back to healing the tank.

Auras

Paladin Auras are buffs that the Paladin has on that affect all party members within 30 yards. They are free, instant casts which trigger the global cooldown. However, each paladin can only have one aura up at a time.

Devotion- Armor bonus
Retribution- Causes holy damage to any creature that hits a party member
Concentration- Gives a chance (base 35%) to ignore spell casting delays caused by damage
Shadow Resistance- Increases Shadow Resistance
Frost Resistance- Increases Frost Resistance
Fire Resistance- Increases Fire Resistance

Healing & Related Spells

Paladins have 2 main healing spells. These are Holy Light, a huge 2.5 second cast, and Flash of Light, a 1.5 second heal that is significantly smaller than Holy Light, but incredibly mana efficient. Almost all Holy Paladins will also have Holy Shock, which is an instant cast heal for about the same amount as Flash of Light but less mana efficient. Lay on Hands is another little gem that Paladins have. It heals for their entire mana pool, also costing their entire mana pool. An important thing to remember here is that if they use Lay on Hands and ask for an innervate, it probably isn’t going to help them much since most Paladins have very little Spirit on their gear.

Paladins can also dispel poison, disease, and magic debuffs.

References:

The Light and How to Swing it: Bless You

The Light and How to Swing it: Heal Me! For Dummies

WoW Wiki: Paladin Aura