Glyphs in 3.1 - sweeeeeeeeet

Reading up on the 3.1 Glyphs and I have to say I felt a little happier in my pants today;

Glyph of Rebirth — Players resurrected by Rebirth are returned to life with 100% health. (Old: Increases the amount of health on a character brought back to life via Rebirth by 100%.)
Glyph of Starfall — Reduces the cooldown of Starfall by 90 sec. (Old: Increases the duration of Starfall by 2 sec.)
Glyph of Berserk *new* — Increases the duration of Berserk by 5 sec.
Glyph of Wild Growth *new* — Wild Growth now affects up to 6 targets.
Glyph of Nourish *new* — Your Nourish heals an additional 6% for each of your heal over time effects present on the target.
Glyph of Savage Roar *new* — Your Savage Roar ability grants an additional 6% bonus damage done.
Glyph of Typhoon *new* — Reduces the cooldown of your Typhoon spell by 3 sec.
Glyph of Barkskin *new* — Reduces the chance you’ll be critically hit by melee attacks by 1 to 0% while Barkskin is active.

Clearly the Wild Growth and Nourish ones look interesting, this may push Regrowth out the door in terms of the Go-To-Heal but time will tell :)

Some of the feral ones look good for my second spec as well :)

Nerf this druid and World of Matticus both have nice breakdowns and some numbers so have a read there (no point rehashing it all)

Im yet to see how well my tree will manage with the mana regen nerf (but like i've said before I dont think it will be a prob as I dont do the oo5sr dance much) but I'm thinking ill be glyphing:
Swiftmend, Wild Growth, Lifebloom

and maybe Swiftmend, Wild Growth, Nourish if I'm tank healing

Have a good day all

Weekend of Wow! 8|

Well my girlfriend is away at the moment so I basically had a weekend of wow, was good actually but I'm bloody tired haha

got to see my first 25 mans with my hunter (VoA and Naxx) and got a couple of upgrades. Did better on DPS than expected (over 2k) and also got some upgrades done.

I was having a lot of connection issues during Naxx though (and so were some of the other guys/gals) which was a pain

I respecced BM because I prefer that type of playing style and I did get some upgrades crafted (although my dps has dropped a bit which is strange) so Ill be looking at my stats this week to see where I'm going wrong (maybe not enough hit)

My New UI

Well I have been playing around with my ui a little and also upgrades/installed some new mods so I thought I would update the blog :)

Modules I have dropped;

• FuBar - decided that I wanted to free up the top space and didnt like that some of the mods I use regularly were not being actively updated

Modules I have added\upgraded;

• PitBull Unit Frames 4.0 -Upgraded from 3 and very happy with the new configuration etc (see my review/guide).
• QBar - used to dynamically display your quest items in a bar (Autobar doesnt do this the best.
• SLDataText - provides game stats and info in text on your screen (used to replace FuBar)
  

Modules from the top down;

• SatrinaBuffFrame - Allows you to move and customise the Buff Frame.
• HotCandy - I think is a real essential for a HoT based class like druids, will track your LB stacks etc
• Grid - I use grid although HealBot is supposed to be good as well. I added a couple of Grid addons to place corner warnings for stacks etc too and invert the colors! Makes it so much easier to see who needs heals I think (see my config guide)
  
• Decursive - great for single click (left or right) decursing/cure poison.
  
• RangeDisplay - displays the range of your target
  
• Dominos with ButtonFacade - Dominos is an action bar addon while ButtonFacade makes them look purty
• Minimalist - does a few things like hiding chat rubbish and buttons etc but also automates a few painful things like repairs and selling grey items.
• Minimap Button Frame - this mod is cool, it grabs all the icons around your map and puts them into a frame that you can move around.
• Autobar - is a great dynamic bar mod that will give you all you need. Very neat!
  
• Omen - Threat Meter, not as important for healers (if you know what your doing) but still good to have.
• Chinchilla - Map movement/customisation
• Recount - Damage/Healing Meters, some guilds ban these because people tend to try to top the list so use this with smarts, fact it's a great tool for breaking down your performance and comparing it to others but nobody cares too much about being up the top of the list as long as your assigns dont die!!
• Skinner - This is what makes it all look nice really and added the black bar across the bottom.
  

Other modules that arent visible but still very useful.

• Deadly Boss Mods - must have for raiding, timers and notices etc
• oRA2 - A CT_RaidAssist alternative, another requirement for raiding in most guilds
  
• QuestHelper - this is great for leveling but I recommend turning this off while raiding, can be resource hungry and cause performance issues.
• Postal - replaces and enhances the wow mail system, much better
• WIM - adds a nice chat interface for whispers similar to MSN
  
• ArkInventory - consolidates bags and also allows viewing all yours toons at the same time.
• Cartographer - world map replacement

500 Lucky Visitors :)

Well according to Google Analytics I now have 500+ visits in 20 days of my blog running.. thats cool i think

Grid: Configuration

This is my configuration for Grid, I have now posted an example of my grid (btw I changed the druid class color to bright yellow to see better).


Modules Include:

• Grid
• Grid_QuickHealth
• GridIndicatorCornerIcons
• GridIndicatorCornerText
• GridoRA2Layouts
• GridManabars
• GridSwiftmend
• GridStatusLifebloom
• GridUnitMenu
  

Frame > Border
Incoming Heals
Low HP Warning
Low Mana Warning
Offline Warning
Unit Health
Unit Name
Your Target

Frame > Healing Bar
Incoming Heals
Low HP Warning

Frame > Center Text
Unit Name

Frame > Center Text 2
Death Warning
Debuff: Ghost
Feign Death Warning
Health Deficit
Incoming Heals
Low HP Warning
Offline Warning

Frame > Center Icon
Ready Check
Swiftmend

Frame > Top Left Corner
Aggro Alert

Frame > Top Right Corner
Debuff Type: Curse
Debuff Type: Posion

Frame > Bottom Left Corner
Buff: My Rejuvination

Frame > Bottom Right Corner
Buff: My Lifebloom

Frame > Bottom Right Corner
Buff: My Lifebloom

Frame > Advanced
Enable Center Text 2 indicator - Yes
Icon Border Size = 1
Icon Size = 7
Corner Size = 8
Font = Bazooka
Font Size = 9
Frame Height = 35
Frame Texture = Gradient
Frame Width = 40
Orientation of Frame = HORIZONTAL
Orientation of Text = VERTICAL

Frame > Advanced > Mana Bar
Side > Bottom
Size > 25

Frame > Advanced > Icon (Corners)
all Icon Size = 10
Size > 25

Pitbull 4: Review & Guide

So I have just installed Pitbull4 and I have to say I'm impressed, the only thing is that I had to start from scratch with the config. One of the things with Pitbull previously was that the configuration was a real pain. Happy to say that no longer applies :) Configuration is logical and easy (well I thought so haha)

The basic way to look at it is that Pitbull now has "Layouts" that are defined seperate to the Unit Frames. You then assign which Layouts are applicable for which Unit Frames.

Sounds Easy Huh!?!

This is my current UnitFrame for myself


Step 1 Create Your Layouts
In the Layout Editor you create the different types of Layouts you want to use. I broke mine up into; mytoon, mytarget, targets&pet, pet. Best bet is to select the item that closest matches what you want and type in the "new layout" to create what you want.

Step 2 Configure Your Layouts
Easy enough stuff, select the layout you want to edit

The go through the tabs and subtabs to define the layout config such as the colors, fonts, text etc.


Step 3 Assigning Layouts to Unit Frames
Now your done with your layout config its time to assign them to your Unit Frames.
Click the Units link to expand, select the Unit Frame desired and select the Layout on the right. You can then (but I didnt) see frame specific scales/multipliers etc.

Zuramat the Obliterator Update

I have updated my post of Zuramat with a tip for DPS
http://upyursh.blogspot.com/2009/02/heroic-violet-hold-zuramat-obliterator.html

EDIT FOR DPS: I did this fight last night on my hunter, quick tip for DPS is to constantly be hitting TAB until you see target change then dps the shit out, they go down damn quick =)

(Player X Gear) % Π

Well I have started doing some Heroics on my huntard just for fun. Last night I grouped with a PuG for H-VH (quick and pretty easy). We had a Lock in the group who commented on my level 70 gear, said it's not good enough and quit the group. I was pretty shocked at the time, I know my gear aint the best at the moment but realistically it's end-game level 70 gear and I havent seen many upgrades yet (havent been looking too much either).

I made a comment about him being 'heterosexually challenged', laughed, got a DK in to replace him and then finished the instance quick smart. The group were impressed with my DPS and even laughed at the idiot for quitting the group and then asked me to continue doind heroics with them, although not the highest I still pumped out nearly 1500 dps. I know I have a lot of improvement to go but it's not too slack for my 2nd heroic.

Gear does make a huge difference but it surprises me that people think it is the be-all-and-end-all. Just because someone doesnt have the best gear doesnt mean they cant be full of win!

So my calculation is as follows:
(Player X Gear) % Π

Bliz Announces Druid & Mana Regen Changes

So some announcements yesterday/tonight for druids

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=14910422662&sid=1

DRUID

• Savage Defense – this is a new passive ability. When a druid in Dire Bear form deals a melee critical strike, the druid gains a damage shield equal to 25% of their attack power. The next hit completely removes the shield regardless of how much damage was done

• Survival of the Fittest has had its bonus armor reduced to compensate for the above increase in damage mitigation.

• Faerie Fire (and similar debuffs) now reduces armor by 5%. See Sunder Armor in the warrior update below for additional details.

• Thorns and Nature’s Grasp can be cast in Tree of Life form.

• Survival Instincts now works in Moonkin form.

• Replenish – to avoid confusion, this talent has been renamed “Revitalize.” It now also works with Wild Growth.

• We are also looking at increasing the sustained (not burst) damage of feral druids in cat form.

Clearly bliz have some 'concerns' with feral druids right now and this patch is focussed on that, althought these are really draft notes and more could be in the mix too.

MANA REGEN CHANGES
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=14910422908&sid=1

• Regeneration while not casting (outside of the “five second rule”) will be decreased. We think that (1) the ability to cast heal over time spells and then sit back and (2) benefitting from a clearcasting proc that also gets you out of the five second rule both provide too much mana regeneration, even over short time periods.
  
  
• To make this change, we are reducing mana regeneration granted by Spirit across the board. However we are also boosting the effects of talents such as Meditation that increase regeneration while casting. The net result should be that your regeneration while casting will stay about the same, but your not-casting regeneration will be reduced. This change will have little impact on dps casters, since they are basically always casting.
  
  
• The specific talents and abilities being boosted are: Arcane Meditation, Improved Spirit Tap, Intensity, Mage Armor, Meditation, Pyromaniac and Spirit Tap. Yes this makes these “mandatory” talents even more mandatory, if such a thing is possible.
  
  
• We are also taking a close look at clearcasting procs themselves. One likely outcome is to change them to an Innervate-like surge of mana so that the net benefit is the same, but healers won’t shift to out-of-casting regeneration so often.
  
  
• We balance around the assumption that even 10-player groups have someone offering Replenishment. To make this even easier on players we are likely to offer this ability to additional classes, as well as make sure that existing sources of Replenishment are more equitable.
  

So myself I think that the Mana Regen Nerf is more important to us Tree's as their is minimal changes currently planned for us.

Thorns and Nature’s Grasp in tree form could be cool but it's clearly not going to add much to the appeal of having a Tree in the group.

With the Mana Regen, I'm not all that happy that they are nerfing spirit - mp5 but I guess we have to suck it in. What it really means is that some of the rediculous overhealing will come to a stop and classes that are spam happy will have to actually learn to heal again, not a bad thing really.

I think overall the changes are fine, I suspect alot of QQ regarding spirit nerf but we'll see :D

Have a Good Day!

Resto Buff Foods: Dont Let The Team Down

I thought I would write up about some of my buff foods of choice, as you get into 25 mans etc you will be asked to ensure you have LK Buff Foods (none of that BC crap) and potentially with 40 stam as a minimum.

Now I'm a lazy bastard when it comes to fishing (i like RL fishing) and have only gotten to 260 or so (really should finish this off at some point) so I have picked 2 foods that are easily achieved by farming RED MEAT!

It is essential that you do your Cooking Dailies to get your Dalaran Cooking Tokens and Northrend Spices but they build up real quick and once you have bought the recipies that you and your guildies need you can buy 10 spices for a token.

On a side note I have been selling my spices too for 35g+ per 10 stack so can be a good gold maker as well.

Mighty Rhino Dogs
great as you a upgrading your gear as it gives that mp5 that may be an issue.
Farm Them Rhinos: Borean Tunda

Tender Shoveltusk Steak
this is my food of choice the SP is a nice boost
Farm Them Shoveltucks: Howling Ford

Cuttlesteak
This is probably a good choice once I level fishing as well
Havent farmed these yet so look up at wowhead

Cool Mod: SLDataText

http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info8539-SLDataText.html

I found this module last night and have to say i'm impressed. Basically this provides text elements for commonly used stats.

Current plugins include:
- Clock (Local & Server time display options)
- Calendar (displays date, tooltip invite info)
- Memory (with "Top 10 Addons" memory usage tooltip)
- Framerate
- Latency
- Experience Points
- Bag Space
- Gold (with server accounting tooltip)
- Guild List (with interactive list tooltip)
- Friend List (with interactive list tooltip)
- Tracking (with Text or Icon display)
- Durability
- Mail (with "From" info tooltip)
- Statline (3 stat display selection) New!
- ZoneText
- Coords

I have now ditched Fubar as this does everything that I need it to do.

Heroic Violet Hold: Zuramat the Obliterator

Well I tried to PuG this last night and failed hard, mainly due to people not knowing the fight, so I thought I would summarise here.

Firstly if you dont have DBM get it! makes life easier!

This guy has three main abilities

Shroud of Darkness
This Heals him but main problem is when a player attacks him while Shroud of Darkness is up, the player will receive a debuff that decreases healing received by 20% and stacks 5 times (i.e. 5 x 20% = 100%) which means you arent going to receive any heals!

DPS STOP ATTACKING, DISPELL IF YOU CAN (or assign someone to do this if your lucky to have a dispeller in the group [magic debuff])

Void Spawns (ads)
Void Spawns will appear that throw all sorts of shadow damage around, these need to be nuked down by the person who has the DoT from the Third ability

Void Shift
A small DoT but it also allows them to attack the spawns.

I'm sure that with the right group (high dps and a dispeller) you should be able to heal through and get the achievement but it's safer to take the ads out.

In Summary this really isnt a DPS race, follow the strat and win win win

EDIT FOR DPS: I did this fight last night on my hunter, quick tip for DPS is to constantly be hitting TAB until you see target change then dps the shit out, they go down damn quick =)

Gems of Choice

These are the Gems that I use in game at this stage, I have found these to be cost effective yet useful!

Red
Runed Scarlet Ruby +19 Spell Power

Blue
Sparkling Sky Sapphire +16 Spirit

Yellow
Brilliant Autumn's Glow +16 Intellect

Meta
Ember Skyflare Diamond - +25 Spell Power & 2% Intellect

Food For Thought

Blizzard have a reported 8.5 million subscriptions. So lets do some maths...

8,500,000 * $20USD\month (approx) = $170,000,000 USD\month
Times that by 12 months = $2,040,000,000 per year

Makes me a little depressed actually

Key Bindings

It is important to have all of your "go-to" spells close so you dont need to look at your keyboard frequently (or at all hopefully)

I have other bindings but these are my main ones, however before I go into that I also recommend that you do the following:

1. Bind the Left/Right Strafe to your A/D keys respectively (this means you no longer have a turn left/right button)
2. Learn to use your mouse for quicker turning. I think I read somewhere that you can turn 3 times using your mouse in the time it takes to turn with the keyboard!

This now opens up Q and E for important spells.

My Bindings are as follows:

• 1: Nourish
• 2: Emergency Heal Macro (NS + HT see below)
• 3: Regrowth Macro
• 4: Tranquility
• Mouse Wheel Up: LB/Rejuv Macro
• Mouse Wheel Down: Swiftmend Macro (emergency heal)
• Q: Lifebloom Topup
• E: Wild Growth
• Z: Abolish Poision Macro
• X: Remove Curse
• ALT+Z: Innervate (for someone else, I also have F12 mapped to Innervate myself quickly)
• ALT+X: Cyclone

I also have the following keys bound

• F1: Health Pot
• F2: Mana Pot
• F3: Bandage (self by default)
• F4: Health Stone

I have found that I havent needed much more than that although I do use "7" through to "=" for offensive spells (some fights mean we need to do this too but mainly for dailies etc)

My Useful Macros

These are some of the useful macros that I use to make life nice and easy (that's the place anyways)

Lifebloom Stack and Rejuvination (bound to mouse wheel up)

#showtooltip Lifebloom
/castsequence [modifier:alt,target=player][target=mouseover, exists][] reset=7 Lifebloom, Rejuvenation, Lifebloom

Macro can be cast on mouseover target, target, or alt-self. This macro functions as a way to have one button for the heal rotation of Lifebloom/Rejuvenation. If you click it:

• 1st time: casts Lifebloom1
• 2nd time: casts Rejuvenation
• 3rd time: casts Lifebloom2
• (cast sequence resets)
• 4th time: casts Lifebloom3

Mouseover Lifebloom

#showtooltip
/cast [modifier:alt,target=player][target=mouseover, exists][] Lifebloom; Lifebloom

Idea being while you have your mouse over your grid frame you can click to top up your stack
This can be used for all of your spells such as regrowth etc and Innervate too!

Basically the macro will;

1. Check if your hold ALT down, if so cast on yourself
2. Check if your mouseover target exists (this could be mousing over on screen or in the unit frame (like grid))
3. If neither of these give you the normal option to click on the player you want.
   

Dont be so lazy, type them out yourself!!

Mouseover Emergency Heals

#showtooltip Nature's Swiftness
/stopcasting
/cast [nomod] Nature's Swiftness
/cast [modifier:alt,target=player][target=mouseover, exists][] Healing Touch
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

Healing Touch wont be used all that much because it is expensive and slow however this will cast Nature's Swiftness (making next spell autocast) and then Healing Touch. I did also add in a [nomod] variable for if you wanted to cast Healing Touch without blowing NS cooldown.

Announce and Res by Scenario

#showtooltip
/say I am resurrecting %t
/cast [combat][modifier:alt] Rebirth ; Revive

This will annouce who you are trying *1 to heal and then cast either Rebirth or Revive based on your combat type. I also added a modifier option but this was more to quickly see how long left on cooldown.

*1 I say trying because this macro isnt going to be smart enough to know if the spell was cast successfully. You could potentially change /say to a healing channel for your raid if wanted.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh Help Me

/rw Upyursh is under attack!
/helpme

This one should be obvious enough, if you pull aggro it will send a Raid Warning and an emote to help. This SHOULD get your tanks attention.

Other Useful Macros for Druids
Can be found here at wowwiki

Current User Interface & Modules

This is my old User Interface, see my new one here

Modules from the top down;

• FuBar - Gives the bar up the top with various details, some of the addons I have for this include XP, Money, Friends, Guild etc etc
• SatrinaBuffFrame - Allows you to move and customise the Buff Frame.
• HotCandy - I think is a real essential for a HoT based class like druids, will track your LB stacks etc
• Grid - I use grid although HealBot is supposed to be good as well. I added a couple of Grid addons to place corner warnings for stacks etc too and invert the colors! Makes it so much easier to see who needs heals I think
• Decursive - great for single click (left or right) decursing/cure poison.
  
• PitBull Unit Frames - allows you to customise the Unit Frames etc
• RangeDisplay - displays the range of your target
  
• Dominos with ButtonFacade - Dominos is an action bar addon while ButtonFacade makes them look purty
• Minimalist - does a few things like hiding chat rubbish and buttons etc but also automates a few painful things like repairs and selling grey items.
• Minimap Button Frame - this mod is cool, it grabs all the icons around your map and puts them into a frame that you can move around.
• Autobar - is a great dynamic bar mod that will give you all you need. Very neat!
  
• Omen - Threat Meter, not as important for healers (if you know what your doing) but still good to have.
• Chinchilla - Map movement/customisation
• Recount - Damage/Healing Meters, some guilds ban these because people tend to try to top the list so use this with smarts, fact it's a great tool for breaking down your performance and comparing it to others but nobody cares too much about being up the top of the list as long as your assigns dont die!!
• Skinner - This is what makes it all look nice really and added the black bar across the bottom.
  

Other modules that arent visible but still very useful.

• Deadly Boss Mods - must have for raiding, timers and notices etc
• oRA2 - A CT_RaidAssist alternative, another requirements for raiding in most guilds
  
• QuestHelper - this is great for leveling but I recommend turning this off while raiding, can be resource hungry and cause performance issues.
• Postal - replaces and enhances the wow mail system, much better
• WIM - adds a nice chat interface for whispers similar to MSN
  
• ArkInventory - consolidates bags and also allows viewing all yours toons at the same time.
• Cartographer - world map replacement

The Gear Grind

While you are leveling your Druid you will probably be DPS spec, I went for Feral, and while grinding I picked up any Healing Gear that was an upgrade for me, this probably meant that leveling was a bit slow but it meant that I could potentially heal some normal 5 mans along the way.

Once I hit 80 I used the following page on wowhead to assist me in planning my gear.
http://www.wowhead.com/?items&filter=ub=11;gm=4;gb=1;wt=61:123:24:23:96:103;wtv=100:53:48:28:14:12

I went one step further and converted all of this into a excel spreadsheet so that while doing an instance I could quickly view what potential gear I should be rolling on or using my DKP for, but the site is a great start.

I worked my way up from doing a series of normal 5 mans and getting the odd 10 man invite if I was lucky, to running regular heroics and now 10/25 mans when I can :)

What Is Upyursh You Ask??

Upyursh is a toon that I play on World of Warcraft. Upyursh is a Resto Druid (healer) that I have been leveling\gearing up for a few months now along with a couple of other toons that I play.

Why A Druid?
I chose a druid because they are a flexible class, for example I can play a Tank, DPS or Healer

Why Resto?
I decided to go Resto because of a need in my guild (Bizarro) and also I hadnt levelled a healer.

So over the next few weeks I will give you a few different posts around grinding gear upgrades, posting useful druid macros, modules, user interfaces etc etc

Stay Tuned!