Small Projects

Is your playtime limited? Are you a parent whose gaming time is precious? Or are you super busy at work and/or raiding and only have snatches of time to play other parts of the game?

My blogging colleague Gameldar used to write a blog called Wow in an Hour, in which he wrote about playing different aspects of the game when play time is limited. I, like Gameldar, have found recently that I've really had to think carefully about how I want to use the snatches of time I have available to play.

At the moment when I sit down to play for a short time, I have a number of small projects that I work on depending on what takes my fancy. There are plenty of things out there to fill up a little time!

Loremasters
The idea of Loremaster sounded so daunting back during Wrath, so I never ended up with one. These days it's a lot easier with addons like QuestHubber that help you to find quests you haven't done. Because I am a sucker for punishment, I decided that I should have both an Alliance and a Horde Loremaster, since the quests are different for many zones. I started a few weeks ago from the top down with Aoifen, starting with the Cataclysm zones since they are likely to take the longest. I finally finished up Vashj'ir yesterday - my goodness that place is beautiful, but it just goes on forever!

It may sound a bit ambitious but if I just do a few quests each time I log on, I'll get there eventually. Off to Northrend I go!

Altitis
Navimie of The Daily Frostwolf wrote the other day about being the trials of levelling alts. The whole idea behind alts is to have a go at a different class to experience a different aspect of the game. There's no rush to maximum level - take your time, do a bit at a time. You'll never really forget how to play your main, it's like riding a bike, you just slip back into the groove!

I have a small stable of alts that I play when they take my fancy. My Horde Shadow Priest, Angelya, is just starting out in Northrend but since I'm planning making her my Horde Loremaster, it's taking a while to do zone achievements as I go. Leveling all the way to 85 then going back seems like cheating somehow, but it took me from level 65 to 70 to do Nagrand and I still don't have all the quests done for it. I really need to take off those heirlooms.

I have been trying to level baby paladins on various servers for a while now, but I'm determined to make headway into learning to tank again after hearing about a new site - Maps For Tanks. Not knowing where to go in some mid-range dungeons (Mauraudon, for example) was a major turn-off for tanking for me. The Maps For Tanks site looks so well-written I think I might just get somewhere with Eléanor.

My third alt on the current list was created for the Ironman challenge - the brainchild of Psynister and Vrykerion back in July. The idea behind the challenge is quite simple: challenge yourself by making the levelling process more difficult, since it's way too easy these days. No guild, no instances, no talents, no professions apart from first aid, no heirlooms or green or blue gear, only grey or white. I'll make a separate post about how I'm going with my Warlock, Emylia, but for now she's level 20 and starting to run into some trickier areas.

Festivals
Hallow's End starts today - my favourite festival of the year! It's a great time to get your alts out and about trick-or-treating for some candy and a nice bit of experience. My candy bucket tour posts from last year (Horde/Alliance) won't be quite right any more, as some locations have changed hands or ceased to exist thanks to a certain ugly dragon, but I'll see if I can update them soon.

Edit: Now that high-level chars are able to fly between locations in the old world, it's pretty easy to get around to all the candy buckets. I recommend Wowhead's comprehensive guide to help you find them all. For low-level alts, my guides will still work, give or take a few locations in Kalimdor that have moved due to the Cataclysm. Happy bucket hunting!

Of course there are so many other things that can be done in a small portion of time - levelling professions, exploration, achievement hunting. Each of these projects can be done in pieces, whenever I find myself with some time to spare. I'm not expecting any of them to be completed very quickly but I'm enjoying each one of them in different ways.

Have you got a small project that you work on when time is limited?

What the...?

Healing Power Auras Update

My Power Auras for Healing post is one of my most visited and it's been long overdue for an update.

I've added a couple, including my version of Beruthiel's Harmony aura. Enjoy!

Lifebloom and Grid

Now that Lifebloom is one of a Druid's main healing spells again, its important that we are able to keep track of it. There was a post on Murloc Parliament the other day detailing a few different ways to do it and today I'd like to share how I've set mine up.

We can only have Lifebloom on one person at a time, and we are trying to keep three stacks rolling using Nourish, Healing Touch or just by refreshing with Lifebloom. For this reason, I needed to know the following things in my Grid:

• Who has Lifebloom?
• How many stacks?
• Duration remaining

Happily, this is fairly straightforward in Grid. You don't even need any extra Grid addons.

Firstly, I set the centre icon to show Lifebloom stacks.

In the Status tab, select Buff: Lifebloom in the menu then make sure that "Show if mine" and "Show duration" are selected.

When I started using this in dungeons, I realised that poison, curse, magic and disease icons also appear in the centre of Grid squares, covering the Lifebloom icon. I use decursive for my debuff removal, so I just went back into the Indicators tab for Grid, switched off the debuffs for the "Center Icon" and stuck them on the "Bottom Side" location as little dots (you need GridSideIndicators to do this). Now they still show up in Grid, but they don't overlap my Lifebloom indicator.

To help me notice when Lifebloom is close to bloom, I'm trying out a Power Aura showing the icon and a timer when the duration is less than four seconds. Once I get a better feel for the timing I'll probably turn it off, and if I'm managing to roll on more than one target it will screw up a bit, but until I'm used to healing again it's helping me out.

If you'd like to use it, you can import this string directly into your Power Auras:

Version:4.9; InvertAuraBelow:4; icon:INV_Misc_Herb_Felblossom; buffname:Lifebloom; owntex:true; isResting:0; mine:true; groupOrSelf:true; size:0.27; y:116; timer.h:1.45; timer.enabled:true; timer.y:114; timer.x:-9

How do you track Lifebloom?  I'm interested in hearing other people's methods!

Further Information

• For great help with setting up Grid, Murloc Parliament has loads of information.
• More Power Auras for Healing

Moonkin Power Auras updated

Just a quickie today to let you know that I've updated my Power Auras for Moonkin page.

I've added a couple of extras and changed the way the Eclipse auras work slightly. I'm still working on the healing auras - watch this space.

State of the UI: Post Patch

Major patches break addons.  It happens every time a major patch is released.

The good thing that comes from complete UI destruction is that it becomes a good opportunity to take a look at your layout and either replace broken or out-of-date addons, or redesign from the ground up.

After patch 4.0.1, I decided not to go for the complete redesign approach because I like the way my UI looks at the moment. Instead, I just took a look at the broken and out-of-development addons to see if there were replacements that could improve things.

Things that just worked
I was happy to discover that by the time I was able to log in a couple of days after the patch, most of the addons I was using had been updated. Among these were Pitbull (raid frames), Mapster, Chinchilla, Clique (shiny new version!), Grid, Opie, Power Auras Classic (although a few needed tweaking), Decursive, Bagnon, Postal, Quartz, Omen, Skada... plus many more. Yeah, I'm an addon junkie.

Things that worked... eventually
GridStatusHots

When I first logged on, I realised that the Grid update was a whole new version and the settings had reset themselves. I updated the indicators as I had previously (I only use GridSideIndicators and GridStatusRaidIcons in addition to the Hots one), but GridStatusHots was not showing my Hots when I cast them. It took me several days of trying many different ways to try to get it to work, including deleting Grid completely and starting over, but it wasn't until a hot tip from the lovely Beru that I found out that the big "Download" at the top of the WowAce window downloads the latest release version, not the Alpha version. The Alphas are listed further down on the right side of the page, with an 'A' next to the build number. After installing the latest Alpha, it worked like a charm! Incidentally, I believe the current release version should now work correctly.

Elkano's Buff Bars

Elkano's has been my buff addon of choice for a few years now, and it did load when I first logged in after the patch, but it was producing errors all the time. I installed Satrina Buff Frames to try out instead, but I did miss Elkano's. I checked WowAce on a whim the other night to find Elkano's had been updated, and now it seems that the errors have been ironed out.

Auctioneer
I went for a week or so not posting any auctions and missing the Big Glyph Runout of 2010 because I couldn't face posting auctions with the default Auction House window. It wasn't until several days later I heard that Auctioneer had been updated and I was able to pick up a small share of the spoils.

Skillet

The tradeskill window of Champions, Skillet allows queuing of different items and can also purchase required materials from vendors for you. Another great feature is that the window is resize-able - something that is sadly lacking in the tiny default tradeskill window. I thought, since this addon was not originally updated for patch 4.0.1, that development had finished and it would have to be replaced. I downloaded GnomeWorks, a new project still in the Alpha stage of development with a lot of the features Skillet has, but I've since discovered that Skillet has been taken over by someone else and updated so I'll save comparing the two addons for a future post.

Things that were broken or out of development
Fubar - replaced with ChocolateBar + Broker plugins
I loved Fubar, but it has been out of development for some time now. With this latest patch several of the Fubar addons weren't fixed and I thought it might be a good opportunity to try to move to Broker again. Broker works the same way as Fubar in that you choose a basic addon for display (I went for ChocolateBar), then the Broker addons plug into that. I was able to replace all of my Fubar addons with their Broker equivalents including Clock, Performance, Friends/Guild, Garbage, Currency and Durability.

CowTip - replaced with TipTac

CowTip expanded the standard tooltips to include all sorts of extra information, and I used Tipsy to move the tooltip location to my mouse. CowTip broke horribly with the patch though, and after asking around on Twitter for suggestions, I've settled on TipTac as a replacement. It gives pretty much the same information (including player talents if you have TipTacTalents enabled). TipTac also allows you to position the tooltip, making Tipsy unnecessary. (Image is TipTac)

GearScoreLite broke with the patch and I really haven't got the heart to replace it with the full version.

Most hilarious new find
GnomeLicker - Records the number of Gnomes you have /licked.  The World (of Warcraft) needs more addons like this.

Setting up a Healing UI

There was a bit of talk around a few weeks back about using addons for healing, and whether they are necesary. I believe Codi began, then Tam and Chas were involved, and also Miss Medicina (I'm sure there were more as well).

Now, I don't really want to join the debate as to whether using addons makes you a bad or lazy healer. I use addons to make the stressful job of healing, easier. Would I still heal if all the addons were broken tomorrow?  Probably - I enjoy healing, and people learn fast, we adapt to new situations. Until that day though, I remain an addon fan.

When I healed on my first Druid, far away and long ago before dual specs were invented, I used Healbot.  It suited my purposes, but I never really got on with it - it was too big, in the wrong place, and there were things I wanted it to do that I couldn't work out how to.

When I started playing Leesah, I decided to try Grid + Clique. I had already used Clique before and knew how versatile it was, and armed with a couple of good guides (there are plenty out there now!) setting Grid up wasn't too much of a hassle and I found it suited my purposes almost out of the box anyway!

Setting Up
The picture at the top of the post is my current healing UI. Yes, it's in Halls of Stone, because I get that place Every. Single. Day.  Random my foot.

The main thing I was aiming for when setting up this UI was to have the most important information visible and as close to the centre of the screen as possible.

The important information includes:

• Unit frames (Grid + Pitbull for self and target)
• Cooldown information (power auras)
• Decursive
• Cast bar (Quartz)

Any other information was moved to the edges of the screen where it wouldn't get in the way.

The Addons

The main healing-related addons visible in the image include the following:

• Grid - In 25 mans this does expand down over the map, but I mostly raid 10-man so it works fine for me.
• GridSideIndicators
• GridStatusHots
• GridStatusRaidIcons
  


• Clique - Sets click-bindings to spells that will cast when you mouse-over a unit frame.


• Pitbull4 - Self, Target and ToT always visible. Party frames are only visible in 5-mans, not in a raid. I should really turn them off in 5-mans, I don't really have any good reason why they're there!


• Quartz cast bar


• Power Auras Classic - You can read all about my power aura settings on my page about Power Auras for Healing.


• GCD - the green circle appears when I cast and helps me to see when the Global CoolDown is up. This can also be used in place of a cast bar.


• Decursive - The little squares to the left of the screen light up when a party member has a removable debuff. I could set the Abolish Poison and Remove Curse up in Grid/Clique, but I prefer them separate.


• Mik's Scrolling Combat Text is only really on because I use it for Balance spec. I should turn the heals off to be honest, I never look at the numbers... /makes note to self.


• Bartender4 for buttons.

If you have any questions about setup or any of these addons, please either comment or email me! You are most welcome to leave feedback as well.

Resources

• Setting up Grid - Murloc Parliament has many posts about the subject!
• Setting up Grid - Keeva shows us how to track HoTs in Grid.
• Power Auras for Healing
• Clique - Spell Ranks in Clique and Using Macros in Clique.

Guest Post: Healing with Vudho

Today's post is a special guest post from Qieth from Qieth's Quips. I've written a guest post for his blog too, so go check it out!

Out of all the druid specs, restoration is probably my least favorite. It is not something that I would willingly spec into. Some people like healing, some people like tanking, some like to DPS. And it is very clear that I don't really like healing.

But alas, there came a time when my guild master causiously approached me. He knew about my reservations towards restoration, of course, for I had made sure everyone did. We had a talk regarding "if I could find a suitable offspec, because we didn't really need any feral offspecs" and I had to agree with the fact that, "Yes, once in a while another resto druid would be useful". So after making him swear on his son, signed on a contract with his own blood, that I would only have to do occasional healing, I took it upon me to learn how to heal.

And here's the thing. DPS'ing can be difficult, my any means. You need to know what to do. Being a moonkin is not the hardest spec to play, but it is certainly not the easiest. It does not compare - at all - to the difficulty of playing any healer class. And I am never one to do something half. I cannot accept being "alright". Good enough is not good enough.

After reading up on restoration, and gathering gear more fitting for the spec, I still felt that there was something missing. My grid, despite its ability to show little marks if my target had a HOT on it, didn't quite seem to cut it. It certainly didn't give me the control and overview that I needed to do my job. So I set out to find an addon that did. That addon is called Vuhdo.

Vuhdo is a raid frame made specifically for healers. Sure, DPS classes can use it as well, and I have grown quite fond of it, but it really shines in the hands of a healer. Vuhdo looks and works like many other raid frames. You have your 10-25 members. You see their health, mana and who has aggro. You can see incoming heals - I guess this is all pretty much standard.

But it is the amount of control that you get with Vuhdo that I really enjoy. Vuhdo lets you easely bind your spells to your mouse buttons, and have them act like a mouseover macro. You could have rejuvination on left click, wild growth on right click, and regrowth, nourish, life bloom, swiftmend and healing touch, as well as any other ability for that matter, on whatever mouse button or keyboard button you want. Now, you could probably get much of the same functionality if you combine Grid with Clique, and there are probably many other addons that can do this as well, but this is a build in functionality of Vuhdo.

I can target someone and heal them normally, or I can use my mouse buttons to throw any sort of spell without ever touching my keyboard, and without ever losing my real target. That is always nice. This is very easy to set up, and it offers a lot of customization. Heck, I can even set it to only do this when I am in my restoration spec, and give a different functionality when I am specced for balance. Maybe - when I am balance - I would rather have that my right clicks on the raid frame threw out an innervate, and left click was for combat resses. All of this can be customized depending on spec, button and your personal preferences.

For restoration druids, it is important that we know the status of our HOTs. Vuhdo is an expert in showing this, as it will give us little indicators for each of our HOTs. A red mark at the side shows my regrowth. A blue mark tells me that the target has a rejuvination on it. A yellow mark at the top shows the status of lifeblooms, and even how many of them that are on the target - it turns green when I have stacked lifebloom to three. And when these HOTs are about to run out, I will get a little timer inside of them, telling me excactly when this HOT will fall off.

Vuhdo has a lot of options, but it generally works "out of the box" with little need to change and correct. But it is when you get down and dirty that you can really have a lot of fun. One of the most awesome features I have found - especially when playing a healer - is the indication of raid buffs and debuff. Any raid buff or debuff. I could, for example, set it to show any PW:Shields on any target in the raid, with the actual buff icon, and also with a little timer. Or I could have it show stacks of Unstable Magic during Sindragosa, or Vile Gas from Rotface. I can see other peoples heals, my innervates, other peoples innervates or maybe use it to coordinate my wild growth with that of other restoration druids.

It is truly an amazingly fun addon to use. It gives me a lot of control, it gives me a great overview, and it does what it has to do - and so much more. Grid might work for you. Or maybe you're using nUI. Pitbull? The standard interface? Whatever your current favorite is, I urge you to try out Vuhdo, give it a spin for a few raids, try out the many functionalities. It is truly the epiphany of raid frames for healing.

Download Vuhdo here!  http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/vuhdo.aspx

Capture your Achievements with Multishot

Yesterday, I was called an UberNerd by my GM. I didn't really deserve the title - I owe it all to Multishot.

A few of us had been chatting the previous night about dinging 80 through exploration - something I managed to do on Leesah.  So, I posted Leesah's exploration ding screenshot, as well as Aefa's (coz I like it), on the guild forum. Having these screenies in the first place was enough to be called a nerd, but when I revealed that I use an addon to automatically take screenshots of achievements, well then the (affectionate) name-calling really started. 

Multishot
Multishot takes automatic screen captures of events in the game.  You can set it to capture your level ups, achievements, reputation level changes, boss kills (5-man or raid bosses) and rare kills.

The options are very simple, and the default timings work just fine in my experience. The captured screenshots can be found with the rest of your screenshots in your ".../World of Warcraft/Screenshots" folder.

The boss kills shots tend to be kind of boring - you have 2 seconds after the boss dies to get your screen in some kind of decent frame for a picture. I was mostly ending up with lots of shots of farmed bosses before I turned this option off - I just don't think it's worth it.

The entry on wowinterface describes Multishot as "...a photo diary of everything you come across in Azeroth, Outland and Northend." That's pretty much the reason I use it. I like to take pictures to remind me of things, and it's nice to have a record of where you got certain achievements.

Not to mention that the achievement captures can make great blogging fodder!

What's in a GearScore?

I had a revelation one night last week.

I had installed GearScoreLite when Leesah first dinged 80. I wasn't in a guild at the time and I wanted to know my GS to see how close I was to being able to get into pug raids. 

The GearScoreLite addon puts the target's GearScore in their tooltip and your own in your character window, that's all.  It doesn't have any of the features that the full GearScore addon has, but all I wanted to know was what my GS was so the Lite version worked just fine for me.

Once I joined a guild it didn't matter so much, but I kept it out of voyeurish curiosity more than anything, to see what other people's gear was like without having to target and inspect them. I'd also kept it to see how Aefa's gear was coming along.

Last Wednesday in ICC, I managed to pick up Boots of the Frozen Seed.  I was so happy becuase it was a major upgrade from the Boots of the Cracking Flame/Boots of Wintry Endurance I was wearing before.  Since I was in Moonkin spec at the time, I realised I'd have to swap my nice cloak out for Kurisu's Indecision to stay hit-capped. With a sigh I said to myself, "Aw, that will make my gearscore lower again."

Then, I realised what I had just said, and gave myself a stern talking to. 

"Now wait one cotton-picking minute there missy!  That is not what you installed the GearScore addon for. You do not need to worry about that sort of thing anymore, only what is the best gear for your task!"

I realised that I had been looking at others and judging them on their GearScore, and that is really not why I wanted it at all.  I had to remind myself of how angry I get when I see people on trade asking for a GS of 5k to do the weekly raid, and about the time when Aefa had been rejected from a VoA 25 for having a GS of 3000.

So I turned GearScoreLite off.

I've kept it on for Aefa for the time being, so I can keep telling pug leaders her score, but I need to train myself not to use it to judge people over their actual skill.

I don't want to open up a full-on GearScore debate here but I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on the use of GearScore as a raid building tool, or as a check on your own progress.

Configuring Rating Buster

Have you ever been in a raid where some loot dropped and you needed to make a quick decision whether it was an upgrade or not? Sometimes it can be difficult to make a snap judgement and you often don't have time to look up a gear list.

Rating Buster has been around for a long time now, but it's still the popular choice to help with gear decisions.  I find it really handy if I don't have time (or can't be arsed) to open and check a gear list. It adds a list of stats to the bottom of the item's tooltip, and compares them with what you currently have equipped.

When first installed, the addon tries to guess what stats you need based on your class. For pure magic or pure melee classes, this is straightforward and no setting-tweaks are required.  For Druids and the other magic-melee hybrid classes however, you will first be met with a huge list of stats in your tooltip as it tries to compare not only spell stats but physical ones as well.

For example, I have a staff, the Engraved Gargoyle Femur in my bags. If I press Shift while mousing over it I can see what I currently have equipped as well as the item tooltip.  Rating Buster will still be visible if I don't hold Shift, but you can set it to only show when you are comparing items like this (click to biggify).

You can see in the stats that it has included Feral Attack Power, as well as physical hit, crit and haste. This is way too much information - I'm a Moonkin/Tree, I don't need to know about physical stuff (treepunches notwithstanding).  All I need to do to remove that information is go into the settings with "/ratingbuster win" (anything with win in the command has to be good, right?) and remove those values from the "Stat - Physical" list in the "Stat Summary" menu.

While I was at it I removed all the tanking stats like Defense, Parry, and so on.

The new stat list is much easier to read and evaluate.

From this stat summary I can see that the Lockjaw+Shriveled Heart combination has a lot more spell power than the staff, but the staff has hit on it which I may need.  In this case, unless I desperately needed the hit, I don't think it would be worth giving up 185 spell power for. Not sure why I still have it in my bags now, to be honest... *disenchants*

One thing to be careful of is to be mindful of comparing items for offspec. Both Resto and Balance have talents that affect our haste, spell power and crit, but Rating Buster only compares based on the spec you are currently in.

If you have a dps or tank offspec, you can create a second profile and set Rating Buster to switch profiles when you switch specs.

You can also set Rating Buster to ignore enchants and gems, or to always use a certain type of gem in comparing ungemmed items. I prefer to leave the gems ignored, as the gem choice often depends on the socket colour. This does mean I have to mentally add in the gem effects but at least I get a choice as to what gem to consider.

Rating Buster really shows its worth when there are two items that are quite close, and you need to see what the differences are. In the image below, these two items aren't that close in stats, but I'll use to demonstrate anyway.  The Scourgelord's Baton (soooo lucky to have picked that one up in a pug!) is better in every way than the Shriveled Heart, but I won't use it for Resto as well as Balance spec because I can't afford to lose the haste on the Heart. If however, I can make up the haste somewhere else on my gear, I'll use it for healing even with the hit on it.

So there you have it.  Rating Buster doesn't completely take the place of a ranked gear list, but it can help you see the differences between items and make quick decisions.

Are there any other addons that you use to help you choose gear?

Public Service Announcement: WTF

My computer was new in December last year, and came with Windows 7.  While it is very fast to start up and most things seem great with it compared with say, my computer at work, it seems kind of unstable. Every few times I start it up, it will start Windows and be okay, then a few minutes I'll be faced with a Blue Screen of Death and a few choice swear words. Usually, once I start WoW up it's fine and I can play for hours with no problems, so it doesn't worry me that much usually.

Until last night.  I finished playing on Thursday night and logged out for the night, but as I was exiting the game, I got a BSOD. I thought nothing of it and just shut the box down, but when I started WoW up on Friday evening, I logged in my Druid and realised something was very, very wrong.  I had lost all of my addon settings.  All. Of. Them.

My macros were gone.  My power auras. My painfully configured pitbull, grid and clique setups.

It took me two and a half hours to put it back together, then I limped through a heroic to make sure everythng was okay.  I thanked whichever deity you like that I had put my macros and power aura setups into blog posts, because I was easily able to import and recreate them again.

I logged onto Aefa to see if her settings were kaput as well - I hadn't exported her power auras and wasn't looking forward to having to set them up again, but it seems that since I was logging off Leesah at the time, it was only her addon variables that were corrupted. Aefa's specific macros and power auras were fine and intact, and it was only the shared settings like pitbull and bartender that were broken.

The moral of the story - Back Up Your WTF Folder! 

This is the folder that contains all the addon settings for each of your characters. If something goes wrong while you're exiting the game, these files could be corrupted and you'll have to go through the annoyance of setting up your UI again.

A Tale of Two Addons

I am forever on the hunt for different addons to improve the feed of information to my brain while playing.

When I reinstalled WoW on a new computer, I decided to try out Mik's Scrolling Battle Text, to see if I liked it.  I did, and all was well.  But recently, I realised that I was missing certain facets of the previous combat text addon I used - Scrolling Combat Text (SCT, and Scrolling Combat Damage Text, SCDT).

Today I have been playing around with each of them, to see if I could make either of them do exactly what I wanted, and here I'll present to you my findings.

What both addons do
These addons are for displaying information on your screen relating to the damage, buffs and healing that your toon deals or receives. They can both be configured so that the information can appear in different locations on your screen and in different fonts, show icons, sounds, and so on. To different extents, you can also limit the spells or types of spell shown. Both addons allow events to be moved between frames.

Scrolling Combat Text (and SCDT)
The image at the top of the post is my original setup of SCT. SCT adds damage events to your screen, and contains all of the animations and event stuff.  The SCDT component is specifically for your own outgoing damage.  I'm not quite sure why there are two seperate addons for it, but without SCDT you can't see your own damage.

SCT is extremely configurable - in fact I'm sure I haven't ever used most of the stuff it can do. I can change the shape the text follows, I can make it appear over nameplates, I can change the size and font and colours, and a whole load of other things. I found the default font in SCT clearer and easier to see, and I really liked the curving and alternating animation because it didn't clutter up the screen too much.

SCT shows an alert when certain spells becomes available. For example, when playing my mage, if the target becomes frozen, I can cast Deep Freeze. With Mik's I had to set up a Power Aura to let me know when it was available, but SCT pops up with "Deep Freeze Available!"

SCT only uses two frames plus a "Message" frame for buff and debuff messages - one frame shows healing and the other shows damage, but you can move any events to either frame.

Mik's Scrolling Battle Text
Mik's uses slightly more memory than SCT, but one of the main drawcards with Mik's is that it has spam-reduction built in. When firing off AOE effects or multiple HoTs, messages from the same spell within a certain time are combined into one message, reducing the amount of text on the screen. In the image below, the 4117 number refers to the total damage done by the 3 hits.

The other thing Mik's does is that it tells you what you have just looted, along with a sum of how many of those items are already in your bag, which is invaluable for quests or general gathering when you only need a certain number of something. For example, as I gathered eggs for Noblegarden I knew exactly how far I had to go to get to 100 eggs without having to open my bags and locate my chocolate stash - Mik's told me how many I had as soon as I looted an egg and received the chocolate. In the image below, I looted a Worg Haunch, and that made a total of 3 in my bags.

To try to make the damage numbers stand out more, I changed the master font to be slightly larger and to have a thin outline. I turned off incoming damage completely because I don't think I really need to see that, although I'll monitor that in the next raid to see if my brain uses it subconciously to tell me I'm standing in something.

Mik's allows you to create new frames for messages to appear in - I made an extra frame for all healing events to go into so I could move them off to the left side.

I can't use my preferred animation of curved and alternating text with Mik's.  I will also miss the spell availability messages, but I can make power auras for those so it's not too much of a problem.


The image below shows my final altered setup of Mik's. If I had been healing, the green numbers would have shown to the lower left side, moving downwards.

I'm still not completely happy with it - I might try moving the messages somewhere else since they are quite spammy in the same area as the damage text at times. If this fight had been using SCT, there would be a mess of numbers all over the place.

In Conclusion,
I've decided to stick with Mik's for now. I should mention that this is mainly for DPS - while healing I don't really have time to look at pretty numbers so Mik's was ahead to start with due to the spam-reduction.

The differences are small and not game-breaking, but I think I've tweaked it now to my liking. Still, I'd like to hear your opinions. Which combat text mod do you use?  One of these or something different? Are you an expert in Mik's or SCT and can help me with the limitations of either?

RIP Cartographer

For those of us who use a custom interface for WoW, our work is never complete. My UI is always changing, and it's still not perfect.

Even though I try to keep my addons pretty much up to date, there's not much we can do when the developer of an addon stops work on it, and a subsequent patch breaks it.

Such a thing has happened with one of my favourite addons, Cartographer 3.  It was a Google-esqe map that was seamless and zoom-able.  I was sad to see that once patch 3.3.3 hit, it no longer worked, and the cartographer inside me cried quietly in the corner.

The problems with both the original Cartographer and version 3 will not be fixed - the addon's page at Curse says that it would need a complete re-write.

Matticus posted on No Stock UI about a few different addons that can replace most of the functionality of Cartographer. I have now installed two of them - Mapster and Cromulent.  I already had Atlas installed for instance maps. I recommend visiting NSUI to check the other addons suggested, including those mentioned by commenters.  A couple of commenters suggested that you can make orginal Cartographer work by disabling the "Look and Feel" module - but Cartographer 3 doesn't have that module and wouldn't work at all for me.

So, I'm trying out Mapster. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles that Cartographer did, but it has the basic functionality and shows coordinates.  One of the really cool things it does have is a minimise function, where it makes a smaller, non-clickable version of the map in the middle of your screen. If you adjust the alpha on this map so that you can see your toon through it, it makes a neat navigational aide that is a little Diablo-ish.  I'm not sure if I will use it much since it does obscure the view a bit, but I can see it being useful while travelling. It looks a little faint in the picture - it's not quite so bad when the background is moving.

You can set the alpha and scale for both the full-size and minimised maps, as well as configure icons for group members and options for fog of war.  Mapster also has an instance map component, so perhaps I can do away with Atlas. More testing required first though.

Mapster also shows quest objectives on the map in a similar way to the default world map - with numbered circles.  You can choose to hide these panels. The green area on the map is the fog of war (ie, unexplored areas).

The other addon I've added is Cromulent. All it does is add information to the map window about the zone you're mousing over, showing the recommended level range, instances that are in that zone, plus the level of fishing required to fish there. The text across the top of the map in the image at the top of the post is Cromulent in action.

TL; DR

Cartographer and Cartographer 3 were broken by 3.3.3. They're not going to be fixed.

Two useful replacement addons are Mapster and Cromulent. I've liked them so far! Read Matticus' post on No Stock UI for more suggestions for Cartographer replacement.

PS. So far we have had 29 blogs sign up to hide an egg for the Great Blog Noblegarden Egg Hunt! Wouldn't you like to join in? :)

Power Auras for Healing

Updated 1/9/2011

Do you have an addon that you would feel lost without?  That you would feel like one of your senses was missing, like you had the sound effects turned off or something?

Power Auras Classic is such an addon for me.  I use it on all my toons.  It feeds me essential information about all sorts of stuff.

A little while ago I posted about my power auras for Moonkin. I thought I'd go through the process I used to create auras for healing.  These auras are for my Resto Druid, but they could be tweaked for any class's spells.

My first post about Power Auras shows some of the basic settings if you would like to make your own rather than importing mine.

At the end of the post I've listed a few links to how other healers are using Power Auras, to share a few more ideas, and make sure you check out the Power Auras Wiki for loads of information and ideas for every class.

Planning your Auras
Think about all the spells you use and which of them you'd like to keep track of. 

• Are there buffs are that you need to keep track of while out of combat?  Eg. Mark of the Wild, Paladin auras, food, flasks...
• Buffs while in combat? Eg. Nature's Grace, Clearcasting
• Debuffs in combat for specific fights?
• Cooldowns to keep track of?  Eg. Swiftmend, Nature's Swiftness, Wild Growth
• Is there a proc that could happen that means you need to fire off another spell to take advantage?
• Do you have a macro that is only available under certain conditions?  
• Notification for when you're low on health and/or mana?

Display
How would you like the aura displayed? 

• When the spell is available or unavailable (for the duration of the cooldown)? 
• A circular aura around your toon, or an icon that shows in an easily-visible location?
• Would you like the aura to have a timer?  Or to be a timer? (there doesn't have to be an icon at all!)

Location
The location of the auras is very important because you need to be able to see them easily in a combat situation, but not have them get in your way.  Make sure once you have made a few that you turn them all on to make sure none are covering others up.

My Healing Auras
Everyone likes their notifications in different ways, but I like to show auras around my toon for when my major spells are on cooldown, so that I can tell at a glace what is available for casting.

I've found colours are very important to me. I will easily forget what an indicator is for, unless it is coloured the same as the spell.  For example, I made my Swiftmend aura blue like the spell icon, to help me recognise that Swiftmend is on cooldown, even though I don't even have Swiftmend on my bars anywhere.  Don't ask me why that works, but it does.

So, here are the auras that I am currently using.  You can import them directly into PowA by opening the menu with /powa, then clicking "Import" and copying and pasting the import string.



Mark of the Wild / Blessing of Kings
The icon shows when I do not have Mark of the Wild or Blessing of Kings on me.

Version:4.22; b:0.8667; g:0.5137; icon:Spell_Nature_Regeneration; buffname:Mark of the Wild/blessing of kings; x:1; texture:29; alpha:0.8; PowerType:0; size:0.32; y:107; texmode:1; inverse:true

Wild Growth
Shows after I cast Wild Growth, and disappears when the 6 sec cooldown finishes.

Version:4.22; b:0.3804; icon:Ability_Druid_Flourish; buffname:Wild Growth; r:0.1608; bufftype:15; texture:17; size:1.51; y:-1; texmode:1; inverse:true

Swiftmend
Shows while Swiftmend is on cooldown.

Version:4.22; g:0.6078; icon:INV_Relics_IdolofRejuvenation; buffname:Swiftmend; r:0.0627; bufftype:15; texture:23; size:0.88; texmode:1; inverse:true

Nature's Swiftness
Shows while Nature's Swiftness is on cooldown.  I use Nature's Swiftness as part of a couple of macros. You can read about them in my Macros page.

Version:4.22; b:0.1725; icon:Spell_Nature_RavenForm; buffname:Nature's Swiftness; r:0.0824; bufftype:15; texture:28; alpha:0.45; inParty:true; size:1.19; texmode:1; inverse:true

Nature's Grace
This aura is shared with Balance spec, and shows when Nature's Grace procs.  It helps me catch up with the rhythm of faster cast times.

Version:4.22; b:0.1412; icon:Spell_Nature_NaturesBlessing; buffname:Nature's Grace; r:0.2431; texture:16; PowerType:0; texmode:1

Clearcasting
Also shared with Balance spec, this aura shows Clearcasting procs so that I can decide to cast Regrowth or a mana-expensive heal.

Version:4.22; icon:Spell_Shadow_ManaBurn; buffname:Clearcasting; texture:4; size:1.09; texmode:1

* New* - Low Mana Indicator
Shows when mana is below 50%.

Version:4.22; g:0.8078; icon:inv_elemental_primal_mana; r:0.0863; bufftype:10; texture:70; PowerType:0; combat:true; size:0.45; y:-111; texmode:1

* New* - Harmony
The Restoration Mastery, Harmony, requires a direct healing spell to be cast every ten seconds. This combination of two auras shows a rotating circle if the buff is not present, then a countdown while the buff is present. The circle will only show while in combat.  I totally stole these two auras from Beruthiel, and made them bigger. Thanks Beru!

No Harmony (circle spins)
Version:4.22; b:0.1686; anim1:11; icon:Spell_Nature_HealingWay; buffname:Harmony; r:0.0667; x:-160; texture:142; alpha:1; mine:true; combat:true; size:0.44; y:-13; texmode:1; inverse:true

Harmony countdown
Version:4.22; b:0.1686; icon:Spell_Nature_HealingWay; buffname:Harmony; r:0.0667; x:-160; texture:142; alpha:1; mine:true; size:0.44; y:-13; texmode:1; timer.h:1.73; timer.enabled:true; timer.cents:false; timer.y:-14; timer.x:-160






More Ideas for Powa

• Jasyla at Cannot be Tamed
• Garnaph at Restokin (all Druid specs)
• Keeva at Tree Bark Jacket
• Kae at Dreambound Druid
• Restodude's Auras
• Beruthiel at Falling Leaves and Wings
• Leveling Holy (paladin + some raid auras)
• Kahiaau at Green Bar Spec (all healing classes)
• Life in Group 5 (shaman)
• Planet of the Hats (shaman)
• Holy Nova Now (disc priest)
• Spot Heal (disc priest)