Daily Quests

Reposted for truth.

Mists of Pandaria Release Date

Tuesday, September 25, 2012. That is all.

Halo and Cascade Mechanics

Zarhym has put out an open call for theorycraft regarding talent and spec balance, (Source) based on the latest beta build. While I intend to submit my own analysis regarding Shadow, I think the following information may be of use to anyone else planning on doing the same.

"Cascade does a % of its max damage/healing based on linear distance between the source and target of the bounce. It does 40% of its maximum damage at 0yd, and 100% at 30+yd, scaling linearly between those two points (anywhere between 30yd and 40yd will give 100%). It prefers farther away targets when it bounces.

Halo’s damage scaling is… a bit more complex. Sometimes the formulae that are under the hood are extremely complex looking, because we build in several knobs that we turn to get the tuning where we want it. Halo is one of those cases. The easy to understand way to think of it is that the multiplier on the max damage/healing is 10% at 0yd, up to 40% at 17yd, spikes up to 90% at 22yd, 100% at 27yd, then down to 60% at 35yd. The intent is that it is weak on targets near you, but there’s a sweet spot in a ring from 20yd to 30yd from you, and that the edges of that ‘sweet spot’ are smooth. The actual formula (warning, may seem scary!) is… 0.5 * (1.01)^(-1 * (((Distance-25)/2)^4)) + 0.1 + 0.015*Distance. I’m sure someone can post a graph of that pretty quickly. One thing to note is that the max range is 30yd, but that it includes creature’s hit boxes, so the distance between the caster and a valid target may be slightly larger than 30yd, which is why the formula makes sense out to 35yd. Again, you absolutely do not need to understand any of that to benefit from the heal!"

In an attempt to simplify the above, here's that graph he mentioned.

Note that the distance used is from the source,
and the source isn't always you.

It has a "soft" 30 yard range limit; it accounts for the targets' hit boxes.
It has a "hard" 35 yard limit. Nothing centered 35+ yards away will be hit.

H Madness of Deathwing - Defeated!

Me, enjoying the spoils of war.

Well, we're finally done. What did we do differently? We brought one rogue. That's all it needed to fix everything. The first time we made it to phase 5 (took a few tries to get there, several people had never been to Madness before) we killed it. We went from routinely letting 1-2 bloods be absorbed per set, with the rest barely dying, to killing every last one of them effortlessly before they even made it half way in. Having a reliable, spammable, AoE 70% slow is mandatory for this fight. Do not attempt without one.

Also, we developed a complicated maneuver to permit a Shadow priest to soak an Impale, as we had some issues with our usual method. As per usual, all players other than myself vacated the melee radius just prior to the Impale. I used Fade as they were leaving to shunt any melee swings onto warlock pets (they died) and Dispersion as soon as the Impale cast began. It worked splendidly. The warlocks disagreed.

Trouble actually putting together a full raid team aside, I'm pretty happy with how we did this raiding tier. Pic related. Both of the mounts dropped (rare and heroic), and I got the heroic one. I also got [Rathrak, the Poisonous Mind (Heroic)]. [Not Caster Gear] dropped too. I'm not sure who took it, but I'm guessing it wasn't a caster.

On a related note, I will be entering a period of reduced posting until Mists of Pandaria. I will be updating once every two weeks until then. Good luck in Dragon Soul to everyone who's still progressing, and I hope to see you all in Pandaria! May all of your Elementium Fragments spawn in a nice, little, easily-cleavable pile!

How to: Connect to a Mumble Server

Update: I've added a section on pre-potting to Advanced Shadow Priest DPS.

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As most raiders know, quick voice communication mid-fight can turn wipes into kills. As such, a reliable voice-chat program is a must for most raids. While WoW does include a voice-chat feature built into the game, it has several major flaws, such as poor sound quality, and high latency in groups of more than 5. Ventrilo is the most popular voice-chat program, followed by TeamSpeak, and my personal favorite, Mumble.

Mumble has two main features that make it better than Ventrilo: lower network usage, and automatic volume adjustment. The main thing holding it back is Ventrilo itself; since Ventrilo is so popular, very few people know how to use Mumble, and so, Mumble is harder to use because you need to walk people through using it. In this post, I'll present a simple guide to connecting to a Mumble server.

Reducing Startup Time in Windows

Hey, everyone, it's been a while since my last post. Today I'm writing about something a little bit different. Today, I'm going to explain how to use msconfig to make your computer start up faster.

Caveats: This guide is written based on Windows 7 Home Edition; while I can personally vouch for the process being very similar in Windows 7 Starter, I can't say the same for all versions of Windows 7, let alone older versions. Also, it is likely that you will disable something you'll want turned back on again. Keep note of what you turn off so that you can undo the changes if you need to.

Step 1: Open the start menu, type "run" into the search box, and hit enter.

Step 2: Type "msconfig" into the box and hit enter (or click OK.)

Step 3: In the 'General' tab, (it should start out with this tab open, but it might not, so switch to it if needed,) choose 'Selective startup'. Don't change anything else in this tab; it will update itself automatically to match what we're going to do in the other tabs.

Step 4: Switch to the 'Services' tab. This will have a big list of program components that get started when your computer boots up. Most of them are parts of Windows. You can hide the Windows components by checking the 'Hide all Microsoft services' checkbox. You'll be left with a short list of programs that you or a family member installed. Leave antivirus software enabled, but other than that, uncheck anything you don't use absolutely every single time you use your computer. This will not prevent you from opening those programs later; it just won't pre-load them during the boot. If you don't know what it is, leave it checked.

Step 5: Switch to the 'Startup' tab. You'll have another, smaller list of programs. This one is exclusively non-critical stuff that you or a family member installed. Uncheck everything except for antivirus software and things you use every single time you turn on your PC. If you don't know what it is, uncheck it. Once you're finished, click OK.

Step 6: The system will request to restart. Unless you have some reason not to, go ahead and restart it. It should start up much more quickly than you're used to. After the restart, if you notice something doesn't work that you want back, you can re-enable it the same way.

So, what does this all have to do with raiding in WoW? Not a lot, I guess. Have you ever had a computer crash mid-raid though? This might help you get back into the game faster, and more importantly, less frustrating waiting as you start your computer up every day!

Next post, I'll be talking about Shadow Priest DPS, with in-depth rotational advice, and mechanical tips.

The tank is not a tank.

"Did I mention the tank is a tank?"

"Sold!"

But seriously, for those who may have been chain running Heroics to gear up their alts, nothing is more annoying than the 5-10% or so of "tanks" that are not tanks. I'm not talking about bad or new tanks, I'm talking about the really crappy DPS that queue as Tank for a shorter wait and then hope someone either: drops group so they can requeue as DPS, but be in a group of 3-4 and so get in sooner anyway, or takes over tanking with their offspec. Do not do this. Wait until you can kick them, and do so. Taking over for them and not kicking them is exactly what they want, and dropping out of the group (if you're not the healer) is a really close second. Don't give them what they want and they'll stop doing it.

How it Works:

This.

(P.S. You may notice the previous post, a crappily formatted list of some of the raid buffs. It's mostly for my own use, but I'll clean it up... eventually.)

This can only lead to WIN

Taken from the new tutorials on the 3.3 PTR for great justice.

/bow to the Hypnotoad

How dare you? You turned me, a priest into a toad? I shall have my revenge... a revenge of Mind Controlling goodness! /bow before the Hypnotoad! Muahahaha!