Quasi I hope you’re Ok after your fall.
I am in the process of buying a new laptop so I can play WOTLK content is there a quick way of getting WoW onto my new machine without installing from CD and downloading all those patches? Copying the folders maybe with an added bit of registry manipulation potentially? I’d also like to keep my Gatherer data.
Barring real life complications (which I do not expect) Rumpole should be in.
My husband and I have already decided on our “new” characters for the expansion. He’s a big fan of trolls so he’s going with a troll druid. I’m making a goblin shaman! 
Ill log into my character on alextrascia and mail a note to Wolkie to let him know, though he reads this thread religiously … I have tended to catch him in game in the evening.
Never done BT, but I have a 58 gimp DK that I can play =) [sonnenstrahl]
Well, I have found that if you install the base on your machine, they have update files on file planet. Im a member but I think anybody can download them…
Last time I had to set up my new laptop with all my games, I just left it turned on all night and let it churn away…but I was downloading and patching EVE, WOW, Runes of Magic and getting Call of Chuthlu and civ 4.
The gatherer data and add ons can just be copied over as it is a stand alone file.
Ok thanks I’ll check out fileplanet.
I’m not sure what happens if you throw Vista into the mix, but with Xp you can just copy the entire wow folder and it should work, no need to mess around in the registry either.
I’m going for a Tauren paladin, Forsaken hunter, and Goblin priest.
Vista likes to have WoW in a different location than \Program Files\World of Warcraft like it would be on an XP machine.
On my Vista machine, it’s stuffed into C:\Users\Public\Games\World of Warcraft, but don’t quote me on the exact location. But yeah, you can copy the whole WoW folder over to other machines.
I’ve been furiously scratching my UI mod itch recently (AAH, the relief), but one thing I’ve run into is trying to make Grid do what I want it to do on my priest. I already used the big hammer on her (deleting WTF and all) but no joy there. I suspect I’ll have to reinstall the bloody add-on.
Does anyone have a pointer to a tutorial for configuring Grid that has written out instructions as youtube tutorials don’t come with captions for the most part?
I’m torn between a Goblin warlock or deathknight, since I have neither. I’m leaning toward warlock though, so I can experience the new low-level content. Plus, I wanna see who is taller, me or my imp
Hmm… my friend who does a lot of endgame raiding tells me not to even look into playing a CC Hunter. Is this true? Is it all about the AoE damage? In that case, too, wouldn’t everybody just have one Druid, one 'Lock, one 'Hunter etc for buffs and stuff everything else into Mage?
I’m not sure exactly what you mean by a “CC” hunter, but I play a Survival Hunter and do plenty of end-game raiding (although not at the hardcore cutting edge I guess - no Ulduar hard-modes for example). The raw single-target DPS is generally on par with the best pure DPS classes (a bit behind Rogues and Feral Druids in Ulduar, but back near the top now). While trash pulls require a lot of AoE these days, and very little CC, boss DPS is what drives progression.
Hunters also have a few benefits that can be missing (especially in a 10-man raid) - replenishment (raid mana regen), purge (tranq. shot), and a great pulling mechanism (misdirect). They also have the best aggro management of the high-DPS classes (feign death) and some very useful methods for handling adds (frost trap, freezing trap).
So yeah, the idea that you can’t do end-game raiding with a hunter is just not true. The aren’t in as high demand as Shaman (Bloodlust ftw) but I’ve never been turned down because I’m a hunter.
Also, since alot of the “huntards” re-rolled as death knights (or gave up when you couldn’t just macro the shot rotation) the number of hunters (and bad hunters) has gone down nicely.
Ah good. Perhaps he was oversimplifying based on his experience as a Priest healer. I was drawn to Hunter as a Ranged DPS class early on, and might want to roll a Worgen Hunter later on. Either that or Rogue or Druid. Haven’t decided: I’ve always felt Rogue was a bit one-sided and Druid intimidated me a lot. (So complex and so many options just overwhelmed me.)
By CC is meant Crowd Control, where it seemed like Hunters could potentially nail down as many as 4 mobs at once, and control 1 or 2 indefinitely. It at least used to be a common job for Survival Hunters like you.
CC is pretty much not used any more, but the DPS of Survival hunters is now top o’ the line. And my hunter used to CC just fine as MM (she just needed a tank with a brain to be able to re-trap easily).
My survival hunter has no problem getting invites to raids, and she keeps passing on gear which is theoretically an upgrade because it simply isn’t better than she has (some would be better for MM, some for BM, but not for her).
Sonnenstrahl, huh? 
Well aren’t you just the cutest thaaaaaang?
Me and Wolkie are kinda “gimpy” right now too, so I can’t do a lot of gaming (see I'm On The "Disabled List" ;) - Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share - Straight Dope Message Board), but I’ll post here when I’m able to sit up for long enough to join y’all on Cairn.
Thanks,
Quasi/Wolkie (missing our Silka:()
Whoever said this was linked to non-merged accounts was incorrect. This issue is affecting **both **merged **and **non-merged accounts. (Of course, it’s probably still a good idea to merge your account ASAP anyway, since you’ll have to sooner or later, and there have been recent authentication issues that only affect non-merged accounts.)
IIRC, the suggested steps to try to resolve the issue were to (1) reboot your computer, (2) flush your DNS cache, and (3) power cycle your modem and/or router.
Hope the broken ankle heals quickly. 
If you don’t have the capacity to transfer over the gigs and gigs of data that comprise the entire game, you can move just the folders that hold your game data. I don’t have it in front of me, but you should be able to find it–it will have a bunch of .lua files with names similar to your addons. (Don’t forget to move the addons to the new computer, too.)
One caveat: your data will not be directly transferrable between your two computers. At best, you could do a data dump to another person, then log in on the other computer and have that person do a data dump back to you.
Survival Hunters do good DPS and are useful for the Replenishment effect (restores mana to the raid during combat), but CC is pretty rarely used anymore–mostly it’s just about burning everything down all at once. There are some Ulduar trash packs where it’s useful to have CC, though. For instance, on the trash pulls just after you teleport to the Antechamber, we usually Banish one mob and sheep or ice trap one or two others, depending on if it’s 10 or 25-man.
I’m having a heck of a time figuring out the importance of Hit/Expertise for druid tanking. I’ve only dealt with Hit so far on my warlock, and know it’s important for DPS but I haven’t really tanked in a while until recently. I checked out the Elitist Jerks forums as is my usual default in cases like this and found my head swimming when I tried to dig through all of that and figure this out. Either goes all but unmentioned in the feral equipment thread. The Imba website doesn’t mention either when I run my character through it, and only complains that I’m slightly overcapped on defense. We don’t really have any other druid tanks in my guild (and mine is only a third-ranking character for me), but a usually-wise member who has a now-resto druid says both are really important (expertise for avoiding being parried). Anyone know of any well-regarded, relatively up-to-date statements on this?
I asked about expertise back in post #2001. There were a few useful answers about recommended expertise levels for dps and tanks.
Hit and expertise are mostly threat stats for tanks. It’s great to have but I wouldn’t trade much effective heath (EH) for either one. Mostly because I haven’t found many DPS classes coming close to overcoming my threat this expansion but I have been 2 shot by bosses due to too low EH. The only exceptions are in the first few seconds of a fight where missed attacks can cause problems. I do sometimes trade avoidance for expertise/hit.
As a rule of thumb expertise is rating for rating about 2 times as valuable as hit, up to the -dodge cap (26 expertise, 214 rating assuming no talents). You are very unlikely to cap both hit and expertise in current gear (without doing something horribly wrong from a stamina/armor/avoidance point of view).
Hit is primarily important for DPS, which as a tank you don’t really need, although it does help with aggro generation. Focus on Expertise, since it cuts down on parries which is important for keeping you alive (apparently Parries partially reset the attack timer, meaning every time the enemy parries your attack they attack faster, which kills you faster). According to WoWWiki, you want to get as close to 56 Expertise as possible, which requires 460 expertise rating. Since you’re a Druid, you have the Primal Precision talent, which gets you 10 Expertise, meaning you really only need to collect at most 378 expertise rating. (This crap is why they’re simplifying the stats in Cataclysm, thank Elune.)
Other than that, my understanding is that a Druid tank’s primary form of defense is a massive honking HP pool. They don’t get avoidance skills like parry and dodge, other than what talents provide, so you need lots and freaking lots of HP.