World of Warcraft questions

[Brown_Eyed_Girl]

@JayRx1981

So what Addons do the rest of you experienced dopers use? I find the main interface somewhat limiting, especially when playing the priest I’m trying to level up (is it that hard to make it so my priest bubble automatically targets me?), and I honestly don’t know what addons are the most useful for managing an admittedly shadow priest who will probably later switch to holy or for a druid.

So many addons that major patches nearly put me in tears and I have been known to stop playing altogether until my favorite mods are updated. As a healer, I found that Clique (click-casting mod) is invaluable. I would also recommend a decent UnitFrames mod, such as Grid. I prefer Pitbull but only because it’s the most customizable of all the UF mods and I like to tweak things. There are some class-specific mods that can be extremely useful as well, such as totem timers for shaman and spell timers for, well, any casters.

A lot of people are using QuestHelper right now. It sure does make questing more efficient and it automatically shares info when you’re grouped (progress and status of quests everyone else is working on).

@Omi no Kami

I know it probably won’t be an issue until I’m considerably more experienced, but in reading wowwiki and other sources, people seem to feel that Shamans and Druids are more useful than Priests as high-level healers, since they’re more versatile… is there any truth to that? I don’t want to wake up in 30 levels to find that my friends are the only ones who want to group with me…

Priest healing can be fun if you really use your full breadth of spells, but most don’t. It’s also a bit more challenging to learn effective mana conservation techniques as well as knowing which spell is best for which situation. They are excellent group healers and decent single target healers (although Paladins are best for that (or, at least, have been in BC).

Having healed on a priest and now a shaman, I have more fun with shaman healing. Shaman also have great single target and group healing abilities. Mana conservation can be easier (although mana tide totem needs a serious buff) as you have some resources at your disposal to replenish spent mana. Totems give you something else to do while you’re healing which can relieve the monotony healing can sometimes be.

I haven’t healed as a druid since before tree healing came out, so I can’t comment much other than to say that tree of life healing is a lot different than healing touch healing. From what I’ve seen, mana doesn’t appear to be much of an issue at all (I could be wrong, though) for trees and they are superior group healers with their focus on HoTs. Correction: I’m just reading now that trees can use healing touch as of 3.0.2, so that changes things. Sounds interesting.

The other neat thing about druids are that if you get tired of healing, the other two trees open up considerably different roles and are also a whole lot of fun.

[Quasimodem]

… but I always thought Healers were NPC’s.

Wow! Sorry…** WoW**!

Sorry to have bothered y’all so many times, Docs!

That is so cool though, that y’all are always there!

Can Healers kick ass?

Level 12… You know, a NOOB trying not to be one!

Quasi

[martu]

Quasimodem in a raid you have (basically) three roles

1. Tanks - designed to be beaten up. High Armour, Health and so on required also threat generation so the mobs concentrate on attacking the Tank.
2. DPS Dealers - Damage Per Second dealers, these guys\gals are responsible for taking mobs down hopefully while the mobs are attacking the Tanks. The more pain you can inflict while keeping your threat down the better.
3. Healers - keep everyone alive.

And yes Healers can kick arse, face melting a speciality of priests for example.

[Nava]

@Omi_no_Kami

I know it probably won’t be an issue until I’m considerably more experienced, but in reading wowwiki and other sources, people seem to feel that Shamans and Druids are more useful than Priests as high-level healers, since they’re more versatile… is there any truth to that? I don’t want to wake up in 30 levels to find that my friends are the only ones who want to group with me…

That changes periodically. Right now it’s trees and shammies, right before the patch it was priests and trees.

My mage has always been frost, for more than 3 years. For 60 levels I kept hearing “omg, how can you be frost, frost sucks!”; there’s been periods of “frost is for PvP, it’s no good in groups;” there’s been periods of everybody, his Mom and the Lich King going frost…

I like priest and druids’ “HoTs” (heal over time): lots of instances can be healed doing little more than keep Renew up. Holy priests have HoTs, area heals, spells that heal two people at the same time… they’re not people’s idea of DPS, but if you’re bored while healing, you can break out the Smites

Basically, play what you like. It’s a bit the same as in rl jobs: hunters are the most denigrated class, and with good reason, but my hunter rarely has problems getting invites - because people know my head is above my shoulders, not below my waist in a dark place.

[Ethilrist]

@JayRx1981

So what Addons do the rest of you experienced dopers use? I find the main interface somewhat limiting, especially when playing the priest I’m trying to level up (is it that hard to make it so my priest bubble automatically targets me?), and I honestly don’t know what addons are the most useful for managing an admittedly shadow priest who will probably later switch to holy or for a druid.

Gatherer – places icons for gatherables on your main and mini maps

ArkInventory (or Bagnon) – allows you to search and sort your inventory, your bank, your alt’s banks, and (for Ark) your inventories & banks on other servers. So, you can set up a separate column for all the gray crap you know you’re going to sell so that you don’t have to hunt for it when you want to sell it or dump it, another column for all the soulbound stuff you’re never going to sell or dump, another for your quest items so you don’t have to hunt around for them to right-click on them…

Enhanced Tooltip (not sure of the name) – gives much more detailed info on stuff when you hover over it.

Decursive – gives you highlighted buttons to click/right click/whatever on when somebody in your party gets diseased/poisoned/cursed by something you can fix.

DeadlyBoss Mods – a must if you are raiding.

Omen3 – a must if you’re raiding, or instancing, or have a pet.

QuestHelper – an absolute must until you get to Dalaran, at which point you need to shut it off or bad things will happen.

Auctioneer.

Go to curse.com and read through the highest-rated and most often downloaded addons.

Also, I don’t know what level your shadow priest is, but one trick that took me a long time to figure out is (provided you can take a hit), wait until the mob gets to you before you start your bubble, otherwise you’re wasting immunity time with nobody attacking you. At the higher end, it looks like: Vampiric Embrace, Shadow word Pain, Mind blast, Mind flay (mob gets to you, punches you), bubble, Mind flay, Mindflay, loot. Also, put your Renew and Shadowform icons right next to each other on your button bar so you can top yourself up and hopefully not forget too often to switch back to Shadowform.

[Nava]

Enhanced Tooltip comes with both Gatherer and Auctioneer.

I don’t like QuestHelper much; it has serious pathing problems and has crashed my WoW more than once. YMMV, it does be one of the most popular programs.

Healers normally like either Healbot or a combination of Clique with any “raidframes” interface (I like Grid because it’s tiny and plays well with the normal UI)

[jayjay]

God, I’m having a ball and at the same time feeling guilty. Death knights are SO overpowered! I’m killing same-level elites and barely getting down to quarter-health (I soloed the Drill Sergeant named Orc at the Citadel gates last night)! At the same time that I’m feeling a little guilty, I’m waiting in dread for the nerf-bat to fall.

[wonderlust]

@jayjay

God, I’m having a ball and at the same time feeling guilty. Death knights are SO overpowered! I’m killing same-level elites and barely getting down to quarter-health (I soloed the Drill Sergeant named Orc at the Citadel gates last night)! At the same time that I’m feeling a little guilty, I’m waiting in dread for the nerf-bat to fall.

The nerf-bat hit us hunters hard, way too hard. The good news is that there’s a blue post admitting the mistake, and promising that they’re working on it.

I try to keep my addons light, except for Auctioneer, which is a beast. For quest help I use Lightheaded, which displays quest comments from Wowhead, as well as integrates with Tomtom, a coordinates mod. Click on a coordinate in Lightheaded’s comments, and the point and note appear on your map. Everyone should have some kind of coordinate mod.

I also use Mozzfullworldmap to view unexplored areas on my maps, Itemrack to specify different gear sets for different circumstances, and Equipcompare to see item stats side-by-side with my own gear.

I’ve never tried a Unit Frames Mod. What do they do?

[Bosstone]

@wonderlust

The nerf-bat hit us hunters hard, way too hard. The good news is that there’s a blue post admitting the mistake, and promising that they’re working on it.

Really? What was overkill? My Hunter’s only 27, but I haven’t noticed being all that weak; I took on the Dark Iron Dwarves in the Wetlands (levels 29-30) when I was 26, and managed to kill the level 31 boss. He definitely doesn’t seem underpowered.

[Nava]

In the normal UI, you can see your pic, your pet’s pic, and any people and pets in your party. You can also see your target, the target’s target and the focus.

A Unit Frames mod lets you see the people (and pets) in your raid. Grid just puts up a bunch of little squares (the default value is “big enough for the first four letters of each name, color coded by class”) without touching your normal UI at all; XPerl replaces every part of the regular UI except the buttons bars and the minimap.

[Ethilrist]

@jayjay

God, I’m having a ball and at the same time feeling guilty. Death knights are SO overpowered! I’m killing same-level elites and barely getting down to quarter-health (I soloed the Drill Sergeant named Orc at the Citadel gates last night)! At the same time that I’m feeling a little guilty, I’m waiting in dread for the nerf-bat to fall.

I mentioned this to my son just before WoTLK came out, and he pointed out a couple things I hadn’t figured into my equation on how powerful they were:

1. It wasy my first tanking class. I’m not used to the idea of getting smacked, and it doesn’t hurt so much.

2. It was my first character in Outlands in a full set of solid blue gear. See above re: not hurt so much.

3. They had just lowered the health of all the mobs in Outland by 30%.

[Jolly_Roger]

I use questhelper and cartographer, but my coords stopped showing up on the screen after the last patch.

But I’m open to trying anything that could be better. Does Enhanced tootip show coordinates? If it links with auctioneer it sounds like it could be as helpful as cartographer, which isn’t working for me right now anyway. If it shows where quest objectives are it could fill in for QH too.

[Bosstone]

@Jolly_Roger

I use questhelper and cartographer, but my coords stopped showing up on the screen after the last patch.

But I’m open to trying anything that could be better. Does Enhanced tootip show coordinates? If it links with auctioneer it sounds like it could be as helpful as cartographer, which isn’t working for me right now anyway. If it shows where quest objectives are it could fill in for QH too.

Enhanced Tooltip doesn’t deal with quests, it deals with item information. When you mouse over an item, it tells you how much you can buy the item from a vendor if available, how much it’ll sell to a vendor for, what sort of item it is (if it’s used for Cooking, Leatherworking, a quest, whatever), and if it’s hooked into Auctioneer it’ll tell you the average price the item is going for on the auction house. With Enchantrix, it’ll tell you what the item disenchants into. It’s incredibly useful and highly recommended, but it doesn’t do quests.

[aktep]

@Bosstone

Really? What was overkill? My Hunter’s only 27, but I haven’t noticed being all that weak; I took on the Dark Iron Dwarves in the Wetlands (levels 29-30) when I was 26, and managed to kill the level 31 boss. He definitely doesn’t seem underpowered.

You won’t really notice the difference at level 27. Volley and Steady Shot had their damage reduced by about 20-30%, and some of the high level talents in the Beast Master tree had damage bonuses reduced. A change was made to a proc in the Survival tree that had the unintended result of making Survival hunters more powerful, especially if they use a routine known as “trap-dancing”.

[jayjay]

@Ethilrist

I mentioned this to my son just before WoTLK came out, and he pointed out a couple things I hadn’t figured into my equation on how powerful they were:

1. It wasy my first tanking class. I’m not used to the idea of getting smacked, and it doesn’t hurt so much.

Hmmm…this is true for me, too (not my first tanking class, but my first tanking class at high levels).

2. It was my first character in Outlands in a full set of solid blue gear. See above re: not hurt so much.

Also true for me. I JUST got a better chest piece last night and it’s the first non-starting armor I’ve equipped. The drops and quest rewards I’ve been getting just haven’t been as good as the starter DK armor.

3. They had just lowered the health of all the mobs in Outland by 30%.

I apparently don’t pay enough attention to patch notes because I wasn’t aware of this. I’m still staying the hell away from the Fel Reavers, though…there truly is nothing in this game that scares me as much as hearing that screech nearby.

[Mister_Rik]

@Nava

I don’t like QuestHelper much; it has serious pathing problems and has crashed my WoW more than once. YMMV, it does be one of the most popular programs.

I wish QH would modify its location icons to indicate when an item/mob is underground or in a cave. As it is, it just sticks the icon at the appropriate coordinates. More times than I can count, I’ve gone to the location indicated by QH, and either wasted a bunch of time trying unsuccessfully to find a way up the hill/mountain the icon is sitting on or circling round and round the area wondering if another player beat me to the item/mob and it simply hasn’t respawned yet, only to eventually figure out that the item/mob is actually in a cave. IOW, the x,y coordinates are correct, but it doesn’t take the z coordinate into account. But maybe that information isn’t available to QH.

[Ethilrist]

I used to have an addon that was amazingly handy, but it broke a while back. It would link the quest log to the comments at wowhead, so that I could open my quest log, select the quest I was on, click on an arrow on the right, and a window of scrollable entries from wowhead would be right the in WoW, so I could read peoples’ comments about the quest without having to alt-tab out of the game. So amazingly handy. And, now, broken.

[Bosstone]

@Mister_Rik

IOW, the x,y coordinates are correct, but it doesn’t take the z coordinate into account. But maybe that information isn’t available to QH.

The map is 2D and the coordinates on it are X,Y only, so no.

Another add-on that you may find useful (there’s just hundreds of these things, aren’t there?) is LightHeaded, which allows you to access Wowhead comments in-game. The comments are usually pretty helpful and often give detailed information on where to find the necessary object or NPC and the best way to complete the mission. It’s a great complement to QH.

ETA: LightHeaded does still work as of the latest patch. Are you downloading updates for the addons, Ethilrist?

[wonderlust]

@Bosstone

It’s a great complement to QH.

I never thought of combining the two. What’s the deal with QH and Dalaran? My main is 80 so I can’t use QH anyway? When is the fix expected?

[Ethilrist]

@Bosstone

ETA: LightHeaded does still work as of the latest patch. Are you downloading updates for the addons, Ethilrist?

I will tonight. And, yes, that’s the one I was talking about.