Yep, I’m in a progressed raid guild, although this druid won’t be doing any progression raiding. She might see the inside of ICC as a casual alt run in a couple of months when I get her to 80, but seeing as how she’d be my 4th-priority alt, the likelihood of her doing much more than heroics and the occasional ToC10 or lolICC run is pretty low. So probably the best spec for her would be something that would let her heal heroics and not embarrass herself if she gets invited to casual raids. 
Woo, congratulations! Blood Princes are a pain in the neck on Heroic the first few times. Blood Queen almost seems like a consolation prize afterward, she’s so comparatively easy.
Our guild got its very first Shadowmourne last night! So now all we have to do is kill LK this week and we’ll all get shots at the cool loot from the quest. Seems like the shards are dropping fast and furious–I think our next SM candidate already has 5 shards toward his from just the bosses we downed last night.
Conversely, if you do assign left-click to be a spell, then you can’t pick someone as a target (for direct healing or to summon them or whatever) via left-clicking on their frame! I assigned left-click to my priest’s Renew and now, after healing like that for a long time, I’m trying to puzzle out how to move spells around so that they make sense to me and I’m not constantly selecting people when I’d meant to put a Renew on them. Edit: You can target someone in the raid in that situation doing a /target (name), but that’s slow, and too many of the ADD Teen Boy Contingent in my guild decide that they wanted to use special characters in their char names, especially early on in the name.
SFG, those macros sound interesting. Do they find their next target if the main target is already full health, or OOR, or what? Got a link?
Nice! Our guild got our first Shadowmourne two weeks ago, and our second one is around 7-8 shards in. As for the vanity loot, it’s all done via quest turn-ins, so not sure how your guild is distributing that (there’s nothing to roll on). I know that someone sold the tabard for 80k gold (insane!). Our guild did it by ranking people by their EP (we use EP/GP) and letting the top 5 people pick what they would like (I got Sylvanas’ Music Box, which is actually way cooler than I thought it would be as everyone around can hear the song, though the hour long cooldown is kind of a drag). Good luck on getting something; they’re all cool items.
By the way, here’s that blog entry I followed on setting up Grid for my Druid. The very first link in the entry is also highly valuable. I’ve basically taken the information provided there and adjusted it for different classes, and it’s served me very well. (Caution: the blog was written a year ago, so the screens of the Grid setup are outdated, but the same parameters still mostly apply.) The only thing I might change this weekend is inverting the health bar colors, so that damage shows up bright and people at full health are blacked out. I think that might be an easier way to read the same information.
For the hell of it, these are the keybinds I use in Clique. Left-click always selects target.
Druid:
Right-click: Rejuvenation
Wheel-click: Wild Growth
Shift+left-click: Regrowth
Shift+right: Swiftmend
Ctrl+left: Abolish Poison
Ctrl+right: Remove Curse
Mouse 4: Mark of the Wild
Shift+Mouse 4: Thorns
Mouse 5: Rebirth
Shift+Mouse 5: Revive
1 on the keyboard is bound to Nature’s Swiftness+HT. 2 is bound to Nourish. When I’m in need of either I target the player and mash the button. Okay for Nourish, but I think I need to change the NS+HT macro to a mouseover; targeting then hitting the button is too slow when I need it.
Paladin:
Right: Cleanse
Wheel-click: Holy Shock
Shift+left: Flash of Light
Shift+right: Holy Light
Ctrl+left: Sacred Shield
Ctrl+right: Beacon of Light
Mouse 4: Lay on Hands
Pally Power handles buffs, so I don’t have them bound like MotW and Thorns on the Druid. Cooldowns and Judgments are on the action bar; since they target enemies or myself instead of teammates, it’s not worth binding them to Clique.
I don’t believe that macros can be that smart anymore (they used to back in vanilla, but Blizzard nerfed them), though I could be wrong and perhaps someone wrote a script that can do that. I think what SFG is talking about is the fall through logic that happens with conditionals. For example
/cast [target=mouseover,help][target=targettarget,help][target=target,help][target=player] —helpful spell
That will initially try to cast the spell on the unit your cursor is over. If your cursor is not over any unit or is not over a friendly unit, it will move on to your target’s target. If your target’s target is not friendly, then it will try to cast it on your current target. If you have no target, or your target is unfriendly, then it will cast it on yourself. Ending any set of conditionals with “” will have the spell behave as normal if none of the conditionals are met, though with that many conditionals, the “” is redundant.
I think that is what SFG meant, but forgive me if I’m mistaken.
I use Grid for casting and Shadowed Unit Frames to select a target though thinking about it this macro:
/target mouseover
would work with Grid and Clique.
I had a couple of problems in Oculus relevant to this, firstly I lost my focus (used in my judgement casting macro) when the tank mounted the drake and secondly I couldn’t seem to target any players clicking on SUF when they were on drakes.
Well, the items are all BoE, so what’s going to happen is the guy with SM is going to turn in the quest and then we’re all going to roll for the items–each person picks the thing they want most and rolls for that, so everybody gets a shot at the one item they want most. Originally they were going to do a GDKP thing (with all proceeds divided among everybody who didn’t get an item) but there was too much outcry about that so they changed it. We purposely didn’t go with EP (we used EPGP too) because (a) we didn’t want to encourage people to hoard their EP instead of spending it on upgrades that would help them in the raid, and (b) our apps tend to have the most EP because they can’t usually win items, so if getting SM corresponded with an app making raider very recently, the app would walk off with the best loot. Nobody liked that idea.
We’ll see. I’d kind of like the tabard or the music box (I have a Spectral Tiger, so if I won the mount I’d never ride it, I’m a mage so the port necklace is kind of silly, and I’m a proud BE supremacist so why would I want to look like a dwarf? :D) but I’m not going to be too upset if I don’t get anything. None of them light me up enough to worry about them.
Yeah, I know all the items are BoE (they can sell for thousands of gold). I’m a bit confused by your definition of EPGP, though. If someone gets an item their EP is reduced? Our EP/GP system has EP being rewarded every raid and then when someone takes an item, their GP (gear points) go up. Hence, the ratio of EP:GP becomes lower, and their priority ranking (PR) is reduced. We ignored PR for the vanity items and just used EP as the standard. EP, for us, is a clear measure of your attendance and other things that award EP (we award EP for donations to the gbank and whatnot). So, that seemed like a good idea to us. How does your system work? I’m interested because I find the ways that guilds do loot to be weirdly interesting.
And yeah, the items are complete vanity items and don’t do anything special, but I’m glad that I got my music box. It’s always fun busting out Sylvanas’ Lament when rolling BGs with a guild pre-made (I don’t PvP much, but I do find the irony to be amusing). I have my Amani War Bear, so I’m fine with not having the deathcharger (though it is cool).
One thing is that Blizzard have added the ‘@’ variable for ‘target=’ so now that can be cut down to:
/cast [@mouseover,help][@targettarget,help][@target,help][@player] — helpful spell
Ah, good point. I misread what you said–yeah, that way could work too. Our EP don’t get reduced–it works the same way you described it. Although using straight EP would heavily favor people who’ve been in the guild forever over newer folks (even newer folks who’ve been around awhile) so it wouldn’t really be fair either.
I think the way they’re doing it is probably the fairest way. Everybody who wants something (and is eligible–I don’t think they’re letting apps roll) will get a fair shot at it, and the less popular items will have less competition since each person can only roll for one item.
If you looked up who it was, (or shift-clicked on the name in the chat window), you’d most likely find it was a level 1 rogue sitting in Ironforge or Stormwind (or, I guess, Org or UC if you were playing Horde). I’m guessing it’s one particular gold-seller using this particular technique, because I’ve gotten innumerable whispers from strangers that all start with,
[Soandso] whispers: Hey.
and it’s always a level 1 rogue. I suspect the 1-word salutation is because they’re spamming everybody they see on their /who list and waiting to see who responds. If you don’t realize who they are at first they’ll engage you in seemingly innocent conversation to get your guard down, and then once it’s clear you’re willing to talk to them they’ll spring the “buy some gold” offer on you. They’re also clever enough to give the toon a proper name instead of a string of gibberish, so you’re not instantly tipped off.
Erg. Running heroics on my mage … I had one really good run, one so-so run, and one really bad run.
The good one was HoL; I didn’t think I would ever have to stop and drink because one of the DPS was a warrior with a GS of 6000+ who was annihilating things so quickly that I rarely had time to cast more than one spell per pack of mobs.
The so-so run was AN. The fights were no trouble (and the Krik’thir fight went off without a hitch - no Skirmishers charging me this time), but I got one of those speed-running tanks who would haul ass as soon as each fight was over, and failed to notice when I was nearly out of mana. The Hadronox fight nearly drained me, so when it was over I sat down to drink, while the tank and everybody else took off. Finished drinking* and headed out, and ended up with the tank yelling, “Mage! Where are you?!” I finally caught up to the group, who were all waiting for me at Anub’Arak.
- I prefer to save my Evocation and my mana gem for replenishing during boss fights, where I can’t sit down and drink.
The really bad run was Oculus. When I queued, it was getting late and I figured, “Eh, one more random before I go to bed.” I shouldn’t have. But I did. I wasn’t too extremely concerned when I saw the tank was a somewhat ungeared gnome warrior - hey, heroics are there for getting geared and he wasn’t any more poorly geared than my mage was when she started running heroics. However, I should have been concerned when, instead of starting the run, this gnome tank just stood there … chugging shrinking potions and Noggenfogger Elixirs, turning himself into a skeleton that was maybe 1/4-inch tall on my screen. “Oh for the love of … I can’t even see him!” Sigh. I slapped a yellow diamond raid target icon on his ass so I could keep track of him, though he was so tiny that the icon was floating barely off the ground.
Once we got our drakes, it became clear that the tank had little to no idea where he was going - instead of following the Dungeon Guide (who clearly did know) he led us on the most bizarre route I’ve ever seen while we moved from one group of those Constructs to the next. The healer and one of the DPS kept getting lost, apparently not sure who to follow, and so kept aggroing blue drakes all over the place. One of the DPS died at least twice, due to getting lost and aggroing things, and the rest of us not being able to find him to help him or else we were already engaged with something the healer had aggroed. Then on the fights, the tank was having trouble establishing threat, and the boomkin was not giving him enough time to do so before starting casting, so every group we engaged had mobs running all over the place, leaving me standing there not casting, trying to avoid making the problem worse.
Somehow we made it all the way to Eregos. Before that fight even started I ended up with a whelp attacking me, and then the tank started the Eregos fight. I couldn’t immediately join the fight because I was busy trying to take out the damned whelp, and now everybody else was busy with Eregos. Then the healer apparently wasn’t healing anybody but the tank, so I found myself at around 50% health before I even got into the Eregos fight, and then got no healing at all once I was in the fight. So my drake died first, and I landed on one of the floating rocks, where I was quickly killed by, I suppose, more whelps. After that it was just a matter of watching everybody else drop like flies. Though I did see something I’d never seen before - apparently somebody tried to flee by flying down, and Eregos followed them all the way down until he was out of my line of sight. I sighed and quit.
Oh hey, I’ve been meaning to ask: every now and then in dungeon groups I see players with “(*)” after their names. Anybody know what that means?
Is this with the RDF? I think that designates that that toon is on another server in the battlegroup (or whatever they’re calling it now).
I think that’s right. Usually, all of the other people in my randoms are marked with *. It’s extremely rare to see someone from my own server.
Yup, 25. The guild had killed it quite some time ago–this was just the first time I was in on the fights.
This is why I’m so hesitant to pick up a bar mod. When IceHUD broke last patch, I almost went nuts.
It’s based on whether or not they exist. So if the macro is:
/cast [@mouseover,help][@targettarget,help][@target,help][@player] Flash Heal
It will first try to cast at my mouseover, and then if there isn’t one of those, it will try to cast on my target’s friendly target, and if there isn’t one of those, it will try to cast on my friendly target, and if none of those exist, it will cast the spell on me.
Bingo.
If you’re geared up at all through Triumph badges, in-combat mana should be pretty much a non-issue for Heroics. I was the same way–I like to save Evocation and my gems for emergencies–but then I realized that I never went OOM during a bossfight in a Heroic, so it was fine to pop Evo to get myself back up between pulls.
This indicates someone who’s on another server (in the same battlegroup, or you woudn’t be grouped together).
True.
Our guild is really new, so the whole “been around forever” issue didn’t matter to us (the guild was formed in October, I joined in February). Also, we set ours to do a huge EP/GP decay when a new tier of raiding starts, so that no one is leagues above everyone else for gear. Regardless, your system seems fair enough overall. The tabard does look pretty neat when it’s activated; our GM with Shadowmourne chose that (he’s obsessed with tabards in a very peculiar way) and he looks pretty cool when Berserking procs with the purple swirly souls around him. Like I said, the music box is what I got, and I think it’s pretty great. The portal is neat for non-mages (and anyone without a ring of Kirin Tor, I imagine), and the frost dwarf thing is meh. The deathcharger is neat, but I already have a DK. 
Good luck on the rolls. Oh, and how is Heroic Sindragosa going (I think that’s who you were on)?
Oh yeah, I forgot about the ‘@’ usage. I’ve been around this game for so long, all of my macros still use ‘target=’ instead, and whenever I write new ones, I write them the same way. I suppose I would change it if I hit the character limit, but that has yet to happen. I also don’t use /script at all, and have no real idea how to make meaningful/useful macros with /script. So, there’s a lot of things that can be done with that (you can even use /click to have macros exceed the character limit if you want) that I just have yet to explore (or found need to explore, I suppose).
Indeed. I always find it vaguely paradoxical that it’s easier to run out of mana on trash than against bosses. Single-target spells are usually much, much cheaper than AOE, so blasting away with Hurricane or Blizzard or whatever drains you much faster than going through a planned single-target rotation against a boss. At least in Heroics, anyway.
Yep. Going well–we’ve improved a lot. Probably going to be working on her tonight, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we get her now that the 20% buff is in effect. We were close before.
Last night we rolled through the first four bosses, Blood Wing, Rotface, Festergut, and Valithria, all on Heroic with little or no effort (I think we took two or three shots to get LDW) but then stalled out on Putricide. I think we were just having a bad night, since we one-shotted him last week.
I just hope I don’t end up having to sit for Lich King–I want to see whatever RP happens when the Shadowmourne person is in on the kill. Is there any? I’m assuming there is.