Non-WoW Guild Activities

Hi folks, yes I know it's been a while.

Before I get into today's article, I want to brag again that another of my guides is up on the WoW official site, this time my favorite - the tree healing guide. Of course, it's company on the site include several guides that have not been updated since before BC came out... but what can ya do.

Today I want to mention some fun stuff that my guild likes to do that is NOT involving WoW. I know I talk a lot about my guides on here, but I want this blog to cover a wide range of things related to WoW - the nearest and dearest to my heart being guide writing, raiding, tree healing, and guild management.

With that in mind, today I'm going to talk about incorporating non-WoW-related activities into your guild.

An Example

As my long-term readers probably remember, I help to manage a very small, dedicated raiding guild called Fianna. The guild is very close - I consider these people to be some of my best friends. But most of us just can't handle raiding for more than two or three nights a week. Still, we want to hang out and spend time together over the internet.

Luckily, most of us also love tabletop RPGs, such as Dungeons and Dragons. So I decided to start up a weekly D&D group, using vent and an online map program called MapTool. This was immediately taken up by many others in the guild, and we now have weekly gaming sessions, trading off DMs each week so no one gets too sick of it and so they have time to prepare. So far it's been a big hit, and its a great way for us to "spend time together" outside of WoW, but without having to drive hundreds of miles across state and country lines.

Choosing an Activity


First, you need to find out a common interest that many of your guild mates share, and it needs to be something that can be done online with multiple people. Do they all like Diablo or Starcraft? Perhaps a different but much more casual MMO (for a while a bunch of my guild mates got into the silly MMO Maple Story)? Even simply online games such as online card games or the kind of thing offered from Yahoo or Aim could be fun. Think of things you might play at a party, such as scrabble or pictionary - there are online versions of these as well. Perhaps your guild is intellectually inclined - you could have a guild book club or debate. Maybe your guild includes card players, either of the normal variety or of specialty card games like magic.

Setting up Your Event

Whatever the case, you will most likely be able to find one or two things that a lot of people enjoy. Once you have that, it's simple. Find a time that won't conflict with your guild's other activities and set up your out of WoW activity. I use the in-game calendar for mine, or you can use your guild website if you have one. If you aren't an officer, make sure you clear your activity with the guild management before setting it up.

One note - be careful to be fair in your invitations, but also be cautious of the number of people you invite. If you have a large guild, inviting everyone may not be the best idea. You don't want to end up with a huge crowd of people and not enough spots in whatever activity you have planned.

Running Your Event

If your event requires preparation (such as a D&D game does), make sure this is done as much as possible ahead of time. There's nothing worse than sitting around waiting for something to start. Your guildies will become cranky and everything will just be a little less fun. During the event, try to be fair to everyone and give everyone a shot at the fun. How to do this varies greatly depending on what type of activity you are doing, so I won't go into details.

Planning for the Future

After the event, talk to your guildies. Find out if people enjoyed the event and ask for advice on how to improve it. If it sounds like people had fun, put another one on the calendar. Be honest with yourself - if people didn't seem to have fun, try something different next time!



Well that's all I have for today. Have fun with your guilds!

I'm Official!

So, my good buddy eric over at WoW-Pro.com just pointed out that my leatherworking guide is on the official WoW website! While it's not my best guide, it's pretty cool to see it up there. I'll have to update it more often now!

Tree Changes in 3.3

I'm going to take a moment to talk about some upcoming changes for tree healing. So for you readers who don't play trees, just bear with me for a bit.

Blizzard is really keeping trees guessing about the next patch. There are several very big changes in store for us.


Gift of the Earthmother Nerfed

First, Gift of the Earthmother will be changing. The current PTR build reads thusly: "Increases your total spell haste by 10%." This is a huge nerf from the effective 30% haste that Gift of the Earthmother is currently worth for instant cast spells. Now, this is the PTR and things are subject to change. A recent update to the PTR shows Blizzard is toying with the possibility of an additional 10% GCD reduction for only Lifebloom. This would still be a pretty bad nerf considering the heaviest used spell in PvE these days is Rejuvenation, but it would be a bit better and may encourage more Lifebloom use. All in all, this change seems to indicate that we will need to stack more haste after 3.3.


Rejuvenation Nerf Reversed

In a recent post post, Ghostcrawler indicated that Rejuvenation will be returning to it's 15 second duration. The spell scheduled to be nerfed, but Blizzard felt like hitting druids with two hard nerfs back to back was too much, so they are reversing this decision in favor of the Gift of the Earthmother nerf. What does this mean for druids? Well, it means that the new glyph may be a more viable option. Which brings me to...


New Tree Glyph: Rapid Rejuvenation

Patch 3.3 will introduce a new tree glyph: [Glyph of Rapid Rejuvenation]. This glyph will cause our haste to make our Rejuvenation tick faster. This means more HPS, but it also means we will have to refresh our Rejuvenation more often. I think the choice of whether to pick this up or not depends largely on the individual druid. I mainly heal 10-mans, and I'm usually raid healing, which means blanketing the entire raid with Rejuvenation. Usually it's fairly easy to keep HoTs up on everyone, especially if I don't have to worry about the tanks. With the return to an 18 second duration, I am definitely going to pick up this glyph and try it out.



Tell me trees - what are your thoughts on these changes? Will you be picking up the new glyph?

A Return to Blogging

Hello blog readers!

I have been away from my blog for a while now. This has been due to starting my graduate program. Now that things have settled down and I have classwork under control, I am returning to my blog.

I'll kick off my return by announcing an update that should be done this weekend to my Tree Healing Guide. I'll be completely changing the gearing section - instead of a big, unwieldly, and often out of date list, we'll have several links to useful tools such as Rawr, MaxDPS, and WoWhead. I will explain how to use these tools to choose the best gear for your tree, based on your current gear and your personal healing style. This is *much* more useful than a static list, because a static list does not reflect the various differences in healing style and the current stats on your gear.

Additionally, this weekend I will be getting together (online) with Jame from to set up a new release of his leveling addon. This will fix the issue of the addon reading as "out of date" and generally clean up the addon work in progress page over on WoW-Pro.

I'm hoping to start work on a guide for the next major holiday (the WoW equivalent of Thanksgiving) soon.

I'm going to try to post at least a "food for thought" post every few days over here. Hope you all enjoy!

WoW-Pro Collaborative Projects

I've recently begun a push to create some collaborative projects on WoW-Pro. There are some guides that are really too big for one person to write, but which would benefit from a matching style and quality.

A WoW-Pro Collaborative Project is one in which many authors come together to contribute to a guide. They may not all be contributing equally - some may only be editing, others writing, others doing formatting. The idea is that it allows massive and extremely useful guides to be written that would otherwise be too much work for a single person.

So far the guides proposed are:

• Instance Healing Guide - This would cover all level 80 heroics and possibly raids as well, with specific advice for healers. It would also have advice specific to different types of healers.
• Glory of the Hero - Rather than full instance guides for each instance, this guide would cover only the specific boss fights, and the methods for getting achievements in those boss fights. Class-specific advice or group make-up advice may also be included.
• Glory of the Raider, etc. - Similar to the above, but for raid instances.
• Instance/Raid Boss Macros - A guide containing short fight explanation macros for all bosses, useful for raid leaders.

For each of these projects, there will be a team working in various roles. There may be multiple people in one role, or likewise one person may perform multiple roles.

• Project Head: The person "responsible" for the project, helping find more people to work on it, figuring out what needs to be done, making sure it all comes together. Not the "boss", but the coordinator.
• Editor: In charge of making sure formatting matches across project pages, also checks spelling/grammar/word choice, etc. In charge of the overall image and presentation of the guide.
• Writer: Writes content for the guide. It's best if they have some knowledge of formatting, but not necessary if the project has an editor.
• Contributor: May do some writing, mostly pitches in with helpful comments or quick edits.

There may be even more specialized roles for some projects. For example the healing guide might have a writer of each healing class to write sections for each encounter. Or, a guide which needs a lot of pictures might have someone specifically responsible for that.

More people are needed for most of the guides, so if you want to help, go to the project's link above and sign up!

The Care and Training of Venomhide Ravasaurs

I know this one is out of the blue, but I just came out with a quick little guide about how to get the [Whistle of the Venomhide Ravasaur]. It's over at WoW-Pro.com, check it out when you have the time!

August Update - Current Projects

Hi folks! It's that time again, and I'm bringing you my monthly update. You may have noticed that I've been a little sparse with my posts this month. I've been working hard on my D&D Campaign World, which I will be running for some other geeky people in my WoW guild, and it's been taking up a fair amount of time.

Here's a link to last month's update, if you'd like a refresher.

Completed Last Month

• Major Addon Update - Thanks to Jame, I now have the ability to release updates for the addon. I compiled all the revisions completed by the WoW-Pro community, including my revamp of the Horde 31-41 guide, and released them.
• GIMP Guide - Yes, it was finally released. It's a simple guide, but it is in wiki format so if anyone has tips to add they can! I even got a complement from a friend of mine who has nothing to do with WoW-Pro, who found it useful. So that's good I suppose!

Look Forward This Month To...

• Tree Guide Update - It's that time again. I'll be adding the new items from patch 3.2 and updating the healing strategies accordingly.
• Retro Raids, Part 1 - I have been working hard on this, but it's quite a lot of work. I'm over halfway done with the first section, and I do think I will release it this month.
• Addon Work: Horde 31-41 Speed Testing - So, I'm considering transfering Mokrana to my home server. I will still be using a strict no-interference policy with her, but I have no reason to stay on the server she is on and I want to get away from PvP ganking. Anyway, we will quickly be approaching the shaman kick-ass region of leveling, where she will start catching up with those darn paladins.

Ongoing Projects

• Achievements with Honani - Honani's been racking in the achievements. Currently I'm working on acquiring recipes and being horribly frustrated by the disparaty between Alliance-only and Horde-only recipes. I think I might wait until the new Harvest Festival in September, rather than scrambling around for quested Alliance recipes. I'm also working on Outland heroics and various other general achievements.
• Retro Raiding Guide - I'll be working on this guide for quite some time, and releasing it in parts. It will cover all non-WotLK content. If better guides for specific sections have been written, I'll probably just summarize and link to those guides. Currently I'm completing Outland heroics as research for this guide (and for those yummy yummy achievements)
• Addon Work - I plan to continue my revamp and speed testing of the Horde addon guides.

Possible Future Projects

• Fishing and Cooking Leveling Guide (Horde)
• Fishing Achievement Guide
• Cooking Achievement Guide
• What a Long Strange Trip It's Been guide
• Various Instance Guides
• Continued work on the Loot System Guide
• General Healing Guide (for beginners)
• Advanced Healing Guide (using addons or macros effectively)
• Specific Healing Guides (for each instance/raid)

There you have it! I'm hoping to be more active this month, even if it's just a few extra little updates. I plan to post at least once a week, but I hope to increase my post frequency to once every few days if possible.

GIMP Guide Released!

My GIMP guide has finally been released!

For those who don't know, GIMP is an image editing program similar to Photoshop. It is, however, free. Many writers on WoW-Pro want to create nifty graphics and maps, but GIMP is not the most user-friendly of programs. I made this guide with the intention of helping those users improve their guides. In the process I got a lot better at using the features myself.

The guide is still very basic, which was the intention. I am certainly no expert at using GIMP. I am hoping it will grow as more experienced people add tips of their own, but for now it is useful to new guide writers.

Check it out and I hope you enjoy it!

Look forward to the first installement of my retro raiding guide by the end of the month!

New Addon Version!

After a lot of hard work over the past few months by several diligent WoW-Pro contributers (myself included), a new version of the addon is being released!

Here's the lowdown:

Alliance

• NEW: Jame's Alliance Death Knight Leveling Guide
• REVAMP: Maw's Human Leveling Guide (1-12)
• REVAMP: Snowflake's Draenei Leveling Guide (1-12)
• REVAMP: Boston's Gnome/Dwarf Leveling Guide (1-12)
• REVAMP: Sven's Bloodmyst Leveling Guide (12-20)
• REVAMP: Jame's Alliance Leveling Guide - Hellfire Peninsula
• REVAMP: Jame's Alliance Leveling Guide - Zangarmarsh
• REVAMP: Jame's Alliance Leveling Guide - Howling Fjord
• REVAMP: Jame's Alliance Leveling Guide - Grizzly Hills

Horde

• REVAMP: Snowflake's Bloodelf Leveling Guide (1-12)
• REVAMP: Hosho's Barrens Leveling Guide (12-20)
• REVAMP: Jame's Horde Leveling Guide (31-41)
• REVAMP: Jame's Horde Leveling Guide - Borean Tundra
• REVAMP: Jame's Horde Leveling Guide - Dragonblight
• FIX: Fixed the Aldor/Scryer mistake in the Terokkar guide

If you have trouble downloading the new version, be sure to clear your browser cache (I had that problem for a while).

Here's the link to the main info page for the addon, which is also where you can download it!

My UI, Part 1

Hi folks!

Have a bit of a content dry spell, so I thought I'd go over some of the addons I use. Most of these are useful for all classes and roles, but some are specific to healers or to classes I play. I'll note when this is the case.

Arkinventory
Download from: Curse.com, WoWInterface.com

This is one of the most valuable addons I have. Arkinventory is a bag addon which displays all of your bags in one big inventory screen. But it does a heck of a lot more than that too. Other features include:

• Automatic and completely customizable sorting to keep your inventory neat and organized
• Can be applied to bank and guild bank if you choose.
• Memory of bank and guild bank while away from them
• Memory of alternate characters' bags, banks, and guild bank

I can't recommend this addon enough, it's one of the few that I just don't think I could play without.

Auctioneer
Download from: Curse.com, WoWInterface.com

Auctioneer is pretty well known, so I'm not going to go into details here. This addon is essential if you want to make money using the auction house, even if it's just to sell stuff you find. A quick 2 minute scan once a week keep your database updated so you know the market price for any item you might find, and know how much to sell it for. For those who want the more advanced functionality, this suite of addons allows you to be a predator on the auction house, finding deals and selling them for awesome profit.

AutoProfit
Download from: WoWInterface.com

AutoProfit is a very small, lightweight, unobtrusive addon that just makes your life easier. It allows you to sell all the gray items in your inventory with the click of one button, or better yet, automatically when you talk to a vendor. It also allows for exception rules, for the jungle hats and pimp canes you want to save!

BigWigs
Download from: Curse.com, WoWInterface.com
Alternatives: Deadly Boss Mods

BigWigs is one of two mainstream "boss mods" - mods that warn you about important events in boss fights or time enemy abilities. These mods are vital for any raid leader, and even for the raiders themselves. I prefer Bigwigs to DBM, simply because it's been overall more accurate and less buggy for me, but there isn't a big difference. A note from a healer's perspective though: Sometimes all those bars on the screen conflict with my HoT timers. I usually take BigWigs to task and only keep the most vital timers up.

Cartographer
Download from: Curse.com, WoWInterface.com
Alternatives: Atlas

Cartographer is a very heavy, large, map addon. It has maps for all zones and instances in the game, even those which Blizzard does not provide maps for. It supports sharing of guild member positions if those members also have Cartographer, and is pretty customizable.

Chinchilla
Download from: Curse.com, WoWInterface.com
Alternatives: Sexymap, SimpleMinimap

Chinchilla is a mini map addon that allows the mini map to be moved and customized. I used to use Simplminimap, but as far as I know it is no longer being updated. I tried Sexymap, but it was too extravagant for me. So far I have been very satisfied with Chinchilla - it does what it needs to do, and does it simply and well.

ClassTimer
Download from: Curse.com, WoWInterface.com

It took me a long time to find an addon that did exactly this, and not more or less. ClassTimer is exactly what I was looking for as a tree healer. It provides big bars showing how much longer your buffs have on them, is pretty customizable, and has the ability to track buffs on you, your target, your focus, or even all of them on one bar.

Unfortunately there are some serious problems with this addon at the moment that have me searching for an alternative. First, the all in one bar is very glitchy and often the buffs just don't show up. Second, as of patch 3.1, the buffs that other people put on the target ALSO show up. So I see the Lifebloom of every tree in the raid, not just my own, and no distinction between them. This really kills the usefulness of the addon. If anyone knows of a good replacement, please let me know!



That's it for addons for now. I'll do more posts like this in the future, if it seems people like them!

Tree Guide Update Again!

Hey trees!

Well, I was reading through my tree guide and I realized that while I had updated the new gear and items, the strategies were sadly out of date. I have revised the entire guide and it should be much more accurate now. Enjoy!

June/July Update - Current Projects

I think I'm going to do a monthly update to keep you folks informed on what I'm working on at any given time. You may remember my update from May. I've gotten some of that done, but still have a lot to do. I'll recap the stuff that was on last month's list, even if I have completed it, and also add anything new that I'm working on. Here goes!

Completed Last Month

• Tree Guide Update - Finally the tree healing guide is updated for 3.1! Just in time for them to announce 3.2.... *sigh*
• Midsummer Fire Festival Addon (Horde) - I made a short Tour Guide version of a guide that was posted to WoWhead, with the addition of the Northrend fires made by yours truly. Hope you folks find it useful!
• Speed Testing: Jame's Horde 21-31 (A.K.A. The Adventured of Mokrana, Part 3) - Better speed than before, but still not matching up with Jame's Alliance speed test. Stupid shaman.
• Horde Dragonblight Addon Revision - I haven't made a post on here about it yet, but I have completed the Dragonblight section of the addon revisions. Look for a post about this in the next few days!
• Deedlet hits 80! - This was a personal goal of mine, and it has been completed! Deedlet is now level 80 and has already tanked a run of Naxx 10. Yay!

Look Forward This Month To...

• GIMP Guide - Yeah. Really this time, I swear.
• Retro Raids, Part 1 - Hope to release the first section of my planned Retro Raiding Guide this month.
• Minor WoW-Pro Site Changes - I'm going to start flexing my moderator muscles and see what I can improve around the site, mostly in categorization and the FAQ page that I've been whining about.
• Addon Work: Horde 31-41 Revamp - Hoping to complete my initial revamp of the Horde 31-41 section this month. Speed testing may also come this month, but I may not have time.

Ongoing Projects

• Achievements with Honani - Another personal project of mine, which I may turn into various guides eventually. I'll probably post here and brag if I get any particularly awesome achievements.
• Retro Raiding Guide - I'll be working on this guide for quite some time, and releasing it in parts. It will cover all non-WotLK content. If better guides for specific sections have been written, I'll probably just summarize and link to those guides.
• Addon Work - I plan to continue my revamp and speed testing of the Horde addon guides.

Possible Future Projects

• Fishing and Cooking Leveling Guide (Horde)
• Fishing Achievement Guide
• Cooking Achievement Guide
• What a Long Strange Trip It's Been guide
• Various Instance Guides
• Continued work on the Loot System Guide

So that's what I'm working on! I probably won't make an update for July, since it's almost the end of the month already. But of course we'll have lots of more detailed posts between now and the next project update, in August!

Tree Guide Update!

Hey trees! My tree guide has FINALLY been updated, with a complete revamp of the gear section and the addition of 3.1 gear. The gear section is now laid out in nice, easy-to-read tables that should greatly improve it's usefulness.

Hope you folks enjoy it!

That's one project down and about a million to go. Next up is the very very late GIMP guide...

Midsummer Fire Festival Guide

Wow, it's been a while since my last post. But I'm all moved and settled in, so you should hear more from me soon! Now, on to the important business...

I've just completed a Tour-Guide only guide for the Midsummer Festival, for Horde characters. This guide will get you every blossom possible, and all the achievements for the festival. It's the most efficient path that I could find. The guide itself is based on one Xicon posted to WoWhead, which I have permission to use. I used most of his work, though I modified and added a few things. Unfortunately, most of the steps do not auto-complete - the fire quests don't touch the quest log, so you can't program that into Tour Guide :(

This holiday was both easy and difficult to complete. There wasn't anything complicated, but a few of the capitol city fires (Stormwind in particular) were a pain. I can't even imagine what it would be like without stealth, or on a PvP server.

Overall it was still pretty fun, and the quests are worth a ton of money or XP.

Click here for the download!
*Note that you need to have Tour Guide and TomTom installed for it to work.*

NOW INCLUDES NORTHREND FIRES!

A "paper" version of the Midsummer guide may be forthcoming, if it seems useful.

The Adventures of Mokrana - Chapter 3

Mokrana levels yet again! This time, I used the first chapter of Jame's Leveling Guide (level 21-31). It took me from the Barrens, to the mountains of Stonetalon, the forests of Ashenvale, to Thousand Needles, and even across the sea to Hillsbrad.

Jame's Leveling Guide 21-31: 14h 49min
= 1.48 hr/level

Previous Chapters:

• Zerinj's Durotar Guide 1-12: 4h 14min - 21 min/level
• Hosho's Barrens Guide 12-20: 9h 43min - 69 min/level
  

Total /played at level 30.5: 1d 4h 45min

Again, this is pretty significantly behind Jame's rate, who at this same point is at 19 hours /played and averaged 1 hr/level during this section. Again, he is playing a paladin, who level a lot faster.

On that same note, I want to let you all know that I went ahead and bought Mokrana some gear. It was all purchased with her own money (though she's been making serious buck with her herbing skills). She now has several blues, including a [Cobalt Crusher] that I found for relatively cheap. I've definitely noticed a serious improvement of both her speed and survivability, and am enjoying playing her about a million times more. My advice for anyone leveling a shaman - find a way to get some decent gear, it really matters for these melee classes.

Mokrana and her new mount and new gear, ready to take on the world!

Now, on to the analysis!

My only complaint is that I got a bit behind the guide in several places and was forced to grind. This was especially bad for the first half of the guide when I have bad gear and wasn't too fast at killing things. In particular, I was behind during the Hillsbrad Foothills section, and had to grind on humanoids there for a long time to catch up. I also ended the guide half a level behind, but chose to move on rather than trying to grind my way to catch up.

I have heard several complaints about folks getting behind specifically in this section of Jame's guide. I think this may be due to changes in quest drop rate causing less built-in grinding. I know Jame plans to add new quest circuits as he goes through the addon, so I hope this is one section that gets some new runs added to it.

Towards the end of the guide, my inner engineer started showing through, and I made a little spreedsheet to track each quest circuit and it's average hr/level time. I think this will be really useful info for Jame if he decides to tweak or optimize these guides. Here's the results:

• Stonetalon Mountains (27-28) - Harpies Threaten circuit - 1.41 hr/lvl
• Stonetalon Mountains (27-28) - Bloodfury Ripper optional circuit - 1.26 hr/lvl
• Hillsbrad (28) - 1.88 hr/lvl
• 1K Needles (28-30) - Pacify Centaur circuit - 1.55 hr/lvl
• 1K Needles (28-30) - Highperch/Grimtotem circuit - 1.35 hr/lvl
• Ashenvale (30-31) - Felfire Hill circuit - 1.93 hr/lvl
  
• Ashenvale (30-31) - Never Again circuit - 1.97 hr/lvl

Next up, I'll be revamping and revising the 31-41 section on my warlock Tirrigeth, in preparation for Mokrana's next journey!

Upcoming Projects

Hey all!

So, I'm *sort of* back. I still have finals and moving, but I've worked through a lot of my pile of homework so I may be more active again. Expect me back to full steam around June 15th.

I thought I'd start off with yet another list of what I'm working on, in roughly the order of importance/urgency. This includes both my WoW-Pro goals and my in-game personal goals, which are sometimes intertwined.

1. Tree guide update - this is actually almost done, and is definitely my highest priority.
2. GIMP guide release - I know, I know, take forever. It will be a wiki page editable by all.
3. Retro Raids - In roughly this order: Kalimdor Instances, Eastern Kindoms Instances, Old World Raids, Outland Instances, and Outland Raids. This will probably be a long-term, ongoing project released in parts while I work on other things simultaneously. Currently the first section is in progress.
4. Revamp of WoW-Pro's "FAQ" Page - Currently it's more of an "about this site" page. I want to make it a real FAQ, for all of the "Jame when u coming out wif new guidezz lol hurry up!" (and the like) posts. We won't have to dignify those with a response anymore, just a link to the FAQ. Yay!
5. Get Deedlet to level 80 - This is a big one for me. I've just had such a blast with this paladin, and I really want to start doing end-game content with her.
6. Achievements with Honani - As you can probably guess, this is ongoing. Honani is officially an achievement whore. She's currently focusing on fishing achievements, but is also working towards rep, pet, and mount achievements, with questing achievements also in the works.
7. Addon Work - I have lots going on in the addon testing project on WoW-Pro. Here are some of the things I'm working on, or plan to work on if no one else gets to it first:

   • Horde Dragonblight Revamp
   • Horde Grizzly Hills Revamp
   • Horde 21-31 Speed Testing
   • Horde 31-41 Revamp and Speed Testing
   • Horde 41-51 Revamp and Speed Testing
   • Speed Testing 51-80 (should be pretty high quality already)
   • Blade's Edge Mountains Coding
   • Netherstorm Coding
   • Shadowmoon Valley Coding
   • Daily Quest Guide Coding

8. Future Guides - I have lots of ideas for future guides, once I finish what I'm currently working on. These all depend on whether someone else has already made a quality guide, of course:

   • Fishing and cooking leveling guide
   • Fishing achievement guide
   • Cooking achievement guide
   • What a Long Strange Trip It's Been guide
   • Instance guides
   • Continue work on Loot System guide

Borean Tundra plus Pictures

Hey folks, I'm still going to be pretty inactive for a few more weeks, but I have an update for you!

Deedlet has finished her tour of Borean Tundra and there is an updated leveling addon file. It's not perfect because I got lazy with coords towards the end, but it's definitely usable. Download it here.

I also have been taking a fair amount of screenshots lately, and I wanted to share them with you. Enjoy!

Deedlet surveys the land after completing her questing in Borean Tundra
Honani and her new pet, a Sprite Darter.

A victorious "retro raid" poses for a shot with Kael'thas' remains

Honani the Critter Gitter!

Fishing in Howling Fjord. I'm seldom online around sunset, and I thought this was especially pretty.

AFK!

Hey folks, expect a bit of inactivity from me for the next couple weeks. I've been a bad student this term and I need to catch up, and I have a girl's weekend planned for this coming weekend, so my WoW/writing time is going to be pretty much zero.

Sorry, I'll be back in a few weeks!

Mr. Pinchy!

I just needed to stop and brag about this.


I was leveling my fishing and also going for the [Outland Gourmet] achievement, fishing in Highland Mix schools in Terokkar forest. What I was actually trying to catch was a [Huge Spotted Feltail] (incidentally this took 2 freaking hours). Imagine my surprise (and delight!) when 30 minutes in I fish up: [Mr. Pinchy]

Now, I have been wanting the crawdad pet ever since I heard about it during BC. But I never really went for it. Getting Mr. Pinchy by accident was just awesome. On the first "wish", all I got was a buff, so I was a little worried that I wouldn't get the pet out of it. The 2 day cooldown really sucks by the way.

But I logged in yesterday and what does Mr. Pinchy award me with? A [Magical Crawdad Box]! Turns out there is also an achievement associated with Mr. Pinchy, [Mr. Pinchy's Magical Crawdad Box], and it's part of the criteria for [Accompliched Angler] and the title "Salty".

Needless to say, my guildies are very jealous of my good fortune!

...Next up, the turtle mount! ;)

Small Guilds and Raiding

Hey folks!

Today I want to share some thoughts I've had recently regarding small guilds and raiding. As you probably know if you follow this blog, I'm a member of a very small family-style guild. I'm talking less than 10 active level 80s, and only a few others who are still leveling. That said, the 80s in the guild absolutely love raiding. But the whole reason we left our last big raiding guild was to get away from all the drama and stupidness that comes with big guilds.

How do we reconcile these two issues? Here are some ideas that Fianna uses to remain a successful raiding guild despite our small size:

• Organize 10 mans. Even though we can't field a full 10 man group, we can field most of it. We organize 10 man raid runs every week and simply PuG the missing people, hopefully from friends lists but sometimes from Trade or LFG. We don't try to organize our own 25-mans, since this would be more like putting together a general PuG than a guild "guest" run.
• Recruit selectively. We're small because we only want people we really like in our guild, not just because we want to be small. The 10-man raids described above are an excellent way to scope out potential members. If a group member does really well, after the raid we let them know that they have an invitation to the guild.
• Maintain extensive friends lists. This is easier than ever with Blizzard's note feature. If someone was a great PuG, add them to your friends and note their specialty so you can invite them again. Also note any particularly bad players so you can avoid them in the future.
• PuG into 25 mans. With big friends lists and by getting to know people when they are guests at your raids, you can also often find out when other guilds need guests in their 25 man raids. This is a great time to get some upgraded gear that you don't normally have access to in a small guild environment.
• Form guild alliances. Get to know other guilds who might be too small to field full raid teams and ally with them. Fianna currently has two alliances, and are now officially teaming up with another guild for 25 mans.
• Host other events. Our guild has started doing weekly "retro raids" (yes I've talked about this before on here). We advertise in Trade and get as many people as we can for these old school raids. This kind of fun event lets people know who you are as a guild and is just one more way to meet people.

That's all I've got, hope these ideas are helpful to any of you out there who are part of small guilds!

Ulduar - Thoughts from a Tree

Fianna had it's first real success in Ulduar this week. The previous weeks since the new raid has been out, we were only able to down Flame Leviathan. This week we brought down XT-002, Razorscale, and Ignis. We probably would have gotten Kologarn had we a little more time, but as always our guild has a strict end time and we called it before we beat him.

My overall impression of Ulduar is somewhat mixed. At first I felt like the place was just too hard, but I'm actually leaning toward the oposite now. This content is supposed to keep us occupied until the next major content patch, but our guild burned through three new bosses this week, and actually one shot or two shot all three. Kologarn was the only one that really gave us trouble, and mostly that was because we were just doing it wrong to start out. I hope the rest of the content is interesting enough to last. Then again, there are lots of hard modes to try if we get bored with the normal content.

Flame LeviathanFor this fight, I usually pair with our elemental shaman, Mirna, and drive a demolisher. This is pretty fun, though I would like to try each of the other vehicles eventually. Overall the Flame Leviathan encounter is pretty fun - but I have a feeling the trash clear is going to get really old really fast. Because of the trash, this first encounter takes quite a lot longer than the next few we tried. Still, I think it is an interesting break from typical boss fights and I applaud Blizard for trying something new.

Needless to say, I have no healer-specific thoughts for this fight.

Drops:

• [Ironsoul] - Congrats to our main tank Nodonn!
• [Lifespark Visage] - Congrats to our boomkin, Shapa!
• [Energy Siphon] - So, this really dropped last week, but I wanted to say how excited I am that I got it, because mana is a bitch in Ulduar!

XT-002 Deconstructor

XT is the next one we went after, and I'm sorry to say I spent almost the entire fight with my face in the dirt. I got myself killed by a light bomb pretty much right off the bat. However, we were running with three healers. We learned due to this mishap that we indeed can (and therefor should) run that fight with only two healers. With the wonderful new convenience of duel spec, it's easy to do this. Not only will that make the fight shorter, it will actually make healing easier anyway because more DPS means more chances to skip "Tantrums" - because it's possible to DPS XT fast enough that he goes back into his open heart phase before doing a tantrum.

Note: We forgot to take a picture of XT :(

Drops:

• [Gloves of Taut Grip] - Congrats to our honorary member, Kanomira!
• [Conductive Cord] - Congrats to Violetress, who was a great first time pug!

Razorscale
This boss was a lot of fun, and went really smoothly. In fact, I think we one-shot her tonight, though we did wipe on her about 15 times last night. Tonight it just clicked with the group make-up we had, and everything went right. I think three healers and 5 DPS works on this one, but if you can manage it you should probably go with 6 DPS since she does have an enrage timer that can be a problem if your DPS is not good enough. But if you can down XT, you can probably down her without too much trouble.

Tree healing for Razorscale was great. This fight, like many others in Ulduar, requires a lot of mobility, which made my healing buddy Celyanna, a holy paladin, very unhappy. There really isn't anything too challenging in this encounter as far as healing goes, as long as people follow one of the basic rules of raiding: Stay out of the fire!

Drops:

• [Breastplate of the Afterlife] - Congrats to Celynna on this excellent holy paladin piece!
• I don't recall what the second piece of gear was, but I think it went to our rogue PuG. His name was also really crazy and I'd have to check my friends list to find it, but he put out good DPS and was overall a valuable edition to the team, especially due to his previous experience in the dungeon.

Ignis the Furnace Master

I had so freaking much fun on this fight. Usually our guild runs with two boomkins in addition to me, and I think normally I won't have quite as much fun as I did tonight because of that. Tonight I was the only druid, and as such it was up to me to root the adds as our (awesome) pally tank kited them around. I stayed out of tree form and healed the pally tank and also spot healed the raid while the other two healers concentrated on the main tank. We didnt have a mage to break the adds, but our two elemental shamans did a great job with it. Really, I can't say enough how flawlessly this went. We one-shot this boss with most of us never having done the encounter before. And I got to feel really important :)

Drops:

• [Gloves of the Smoldering Touch] - These went to our rogue PuG again, whose name is hard to type.
• [Drape of Fuming Anger] - This actually went to off spec, and was picked up by Celynna. Yay for gearing up his ret set!

Kologarn

This fight really sucks. It sucks more when the tanks don't know they need to be swapping the boss back and forth and are eating 20k+ damage spikes. We cycled through three main tanks before we figured that out. Our last attempt was really good, and I'm convinced we could have downed this bad boy if we had more time.

Overall this was a great run and I had a blast. We got really lucky with PuGs, and our usual PuGs upped their game to make tonight a great success. I especially wanna give a shout out to Evilboo, a long time friend of a few folks in the guild who met up again for the first time in quite a while. We need to run together more often!

Tomorrow I'll share some thoughts for people in small guilds who are trying to organize raids, and some idea on how to make that work. But that's it for tonight folks, hope you all have as much fun raiding Ulduar as I have!

Best. Guild. Ever.

Honani takes to the skies!

So, Saturday was my birthday. I went home to my family for the weekend and was off WoW. When I returned Sunday night, I discovered my guildmates had conspired to purchase for me an absolutely AWESOME birthday present: My epic flight training!

I just wanted to post this as a shout out and thank you to my awesome guild. You guys are so much fun, I love the small family atmosphere we have and wouldn't trade it for any kind of epic raiding team. I'd much rather pug a few spots and run 10 mans than loose the awesomeness that is Fianna. Thanks again for a great birthday!

Making Money as a Lowbie

I'm once again working on speed testing one of Jame's guides, and as such I have handicapped myself by starting on a brand new server with a brand new character. I wanted to share some thoughts about how I've already made over 100 gold without doing a damn thing, and Mokrana is only level 21.

How? Well, first off I picked up skinning as a profession. This gets gold from nothing, basically. It takes pretty much zero extra time, and generates leather which can be sold. I also picked up herbalism, but I'm allowing it to fall behind and not going out of my way to pick up herbs. But I still got a bit of a boost from it.

I also am NOT doing first aid, because frankly as a class with a heal I see no point. Some people still level it, but never will on classes that can heal themselves. But this does mean I have a bit more cloth lying around.

Most importantly, I have an auctioneer alt. Some of you might think, well that's cheating, she spends time on that toon that isn't showing up on her main toon. But the reallity is that while my auctioneer may have a significant time clocked on her /played, I actually waste very little time on her. Here is how it usually goes:

1. Mokrana mails all her crap that could possibly make money to the auctioneer, including: Cloth, leather, herbs, other trade goods, food materials, and greens or other BoE gear. It helps if you have an idea of what makes good money (such as [Spider Silk])
2. I log into the auctioneer something like once a week, check the mail. My addon "Postal" opens everything automatically and puts it in my inventory.
3. I go to the auction house and hit my addon "Auctioneer"'s scan button, and leave the computer to go do something else for the 10-20 minutes the scan takes.
4. I come back and use the very very simple "Simple Auction" function of Auctioneer to quickly post any sellable items I may have. I check as I go briefly to make sure I'm not selling something for less than the vendor price. I could probably make more money if I spent some more time fiddling with prices, but honestly the point is to make the most money in the least possible time spent - we want to spend time on leveling, not making money!
5. I log out, then come back on in a few days and open the auctioneer's mailbox. Postal automatically transfers around 50 gold to my bags. If there are any unsold auctions, I either repost them (if I think they will sell) or just vendor the crap.

It's simple, fast, and most importantly, easy! With this, Mokrana already has 16 slot bags and enough money to get her mount at level 30. Remember, if you want to use this strategy, you'll need the addons Auctioneer and Postal. Both can be found at Curse.com.

Howling Fjord and Other News

Well, Deedlet has completed yet another chapter of her leveling journey. As you can tell by the title, I decided to skip the rest of Outland and travel to Northrend. I will go back and complete Outland sometime, and will write the addon version of those guides if need be, but right now I am very excited about Deedlet's progress and learning to tank, so I decided to head to Northrend for better gear.

In other news, I've been exploring Ulduar on my main character, Honani the tree druid. It looks to be a very fun raid, but so far it's really hard! Flame Leviathan is a joke, but our guild couldn't down XT-002 when we tried on Sunday. Granted we only did around 5 attempts before calling it, and only that one night, and we had some rather stupid PuGs with us. Darrgoe, I know you read this, you better not make us PuG a crappy tank next time! ;)

I've also purchased dual specs for both Deedlet and Honani. Deedlet has ret and prot, and Honani has tree and boomkin. So far I really like both of Deedlet's specs, but Honani is a kind of crappy lazer chicken. Hopefully my good friend Shapa can help her get better, he kicks butt!

Last but not least, I thought I'd make a little list of my goals and projects, like Jame did in his most recent blog post:

• Complete the gear update for my Tree guide (short term)
• Complete that GIMP guide - I know I'm taking forever at it! (short term)
• Speed test Jame's Horde Leveling Guide Chapter 1 (short term)
• Write my "retro raiding guide" (medium term)
• Get Deedlet to level 80, while testing the current guides (medium term)
• Write a fishing/cooking leveling guide (long term, if no one else does it!)
• Speed test the rest of Jame's Horde leveling guides (long term)
• Save for epic flyers for both Honani and Deedlet!

Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of Deedlet in Howling Fjord, so you folks don't get one for this blog post. I'll make it up to you and include pictures of my Ulduar exploits next time!

Horde Leveling Addon - Nagrand

Hey folks! Deedlet just cleared out Nagrand, and all the major group quests to boot, including Durn and Ring of Blood. She needed groups for those two, but solo'd all the other group quests in the guide. Yay for prot pallies!

She also got two new awesome experiences tanking. One was for Sethekk Halls, and went pretty well... she even got a [Libram of the Eternal Rest] which buffs her consecrate a little. She did well there, but got her face eaten off in Utgarde Keep. We couldn't finish :( but it was still a really good experience, and she's got some better gear now and hopes to go back soon!

This section of the addon went very smoothly, as most of what Black Cat coded has. I'm going to award it it's first star of quality on the WoW-Pro website. Next up is Blade's Edge Mountains - unfortunately I am going to have to write that section from scratch! So it may be a bit longer between updates.

*Link to Updated Nagrand Addon File*

Deedlet rains death on the ogres of Nagrand!

Horde Leveling Addon - Terokkar

Not much to report today, but Terokkar is down, and Nagrand is next! Haven't got a lot of chances to practice tanking. I am very excited that duel spec is coming out this week along with the patch. This means I will be back on my main, a tree druid named Honani, exploring the new content with my guild. It also means that Honani will be able to become a lazer chicken at will to DPS, and Deedlet can level as ret again if I want her to (though I'm getting used to prot!).

*Link to updated Terokkar Horde Leveling Addon*

I also hope to speed test the next section of Jame's guide with Mokrana soon, so stay tuned!

Horde Leveling Addon - Zangarmarsh

Deedlet has conqured the marsh, thanks to the addon version of Jame's Horde leveling guide, Zangarmarsh! I also made a few minor corrections to the guide as I went, adding a few more coordinates when it would be useful, but it was already at a very high quality.

I also got to tank my first instance! My good friend came along on his level 80 enhancement Shaman, Bloodcrowe, and healed. My other friend came as the only DPS, with his 80 death knight Nodonn, naked! It was the only way I would hold aggro from him :P Tanking is hard, but fun, and I'm glad I have guild-mates who will help me learn!

Moving on to Terokkar forest, and Deedlet is already level 67!

The Adventures of Mokrana - Chapter 2

Mokrana goes to the Barrens! I used Hosho's Barrens Guide (level 12-20) to navigate the savanna of Kalimdor.

Hosho's Barrens Guide 12-20: 9h 43min
= 69 min/level

Previous Chapters:

• Zerinj's Durotar Guide 1-12: 4h 14min - 21 min/level
  

Total /played at level 20.5: 13h 56min

Overall, I am am pretty disappointed in these results. It's crap ton slower than Jame completed the same level range (his total /played was 9 hours compared to my almost 14 hours!). I'm going to give a few reasons why I think this is so:

• The Guide: Hosho's guide needs some reworking. There are places where the mobs are just too tough to deal with. He knows this and is working to fix it. As soon as he releases a revamped guide, I'll give that one a speed test and update here.
• The Class: Shamans are, from what I have head and experienced, a bit difficult to level during the early levels. I ran out of mana constantly, I had a lot of trouble with multiple mobs, and I just didn't kill things very quickly. However, I think part of this also had to do with me being unfamiliar with the class. As I played, I began to die less and deal with things faster. Still, another class would probably have been faster. I also finished up a totem quest during this time. The good news: later on, enhancement shamans are OP!
• Time Wasting: I must have spent almost an hour leveling cooking and herbalism and fixing mistakes in the guide as I went. I've decided from now on I'm not going to take any major time out for professions, so most probably my cooking and herbalism will languish, but my skinning will continue.
• Dying: Not really a cause in itself but a result of number 1 and number 2 on this list. I must have died 3 or more times every level for the first half of the guide. It got better as I went, but it was probably the most frustrated I have ever been while playing WoW, mostly because I couldn't relax since I was trying to test for speed!

Some good things about all this:

• Money: I mailed all the semi-useful stuff Mokrana found to an alt, who auctioned it. So far she's made 30 gold, which funded two netherweave bags with some left over as a cushion for skills. Hopefully she'll be able to fund her mount this way by level 30.
• Flight Paths: Mokrana picked up flight paths in Ashenvale (that run alone probably takes over 15 minutes) and Stonetalon. This will help out during Jame's guide, where you would have to get those if you didn't already have them
• No Grinding: I didn't have to grind any extra than what was done while questing, so I got to skip the periodic grinding sessions Hosho allows for in his guide. Yay!

While the XP rates for this part of the guide were not great, I am confident that they will improve as I go. Mokrana will be heading off to test the first Horde chapter of Jame's leveling guide next!

Here's the story in image form:

Level 12 - Mokrana heads into the Barrens, looking for adventure...


What a nice loincloth I found! Smexy!
.... The funny thing is I got wtfpwned by a patrolling centaur and his little doggies right after I took this picture.

Level 17 - Prowling the Oasis in my new loincloth

Level 19 - Almost to the end!

Escorting this completely idiotic NPC back to Ratchet. Worst. Escort. Ever.

Level 20 - Yay, almost there!

Ended the guide at 20.5. And I got some pants, finally!

Hope you all tune in for the next chapter!

Horde Leveling Addon - Hellfire Peninsula

Deedlet has officially completed the Hellfire Peninsula portion of Jame's leveling guide! As I went, I made a few revisions to the guide, but all were superficial - adding more arrows (to flight paths, for instance), breaking large steps into smaller ones to make things smoother.

Next stop, Zangarmarsh!

Also, I'm about half-way through the Barrens Guide with Mokrana, so an update on the speed testing will come soon. Unfortunately I'm not to happy with the results so far, but you'll have to wait for the details on that.

Horde Leveling Addon 51-60

I have officially completed the first draft of the addon version for Horde level 51-60 of Jame's guide. You can download it here. I feel pretty good about it overall, though there were some unexplained hiccups in the guide as I went (some things auto-completing when they shouldn't, mostly) so it needs more testing.

I also created optional guides for the Searing Gorge and the Burning Steppes, which the user can select if he or she chooses (it's also explained in the main guide at the points where those guides would branch off. Additionally, I made a separate two-part version of the Hellfire Peninsula guide to help folks who want to go there at 58, then come back to Azeroth to finish up the rest of Jame's guide after getting a few upgrades and training professions.

Feel free to post here or on the Addon Works-in-Progress page with questions or comments!

Spring Break at Last!

Woooooo freedom!

Thought I'd let you all know that I'm finally done with winter term and it's time to get some hard-core WoW-ing done! Here are my goals for spring break:

• Get Deedlet to level 80! (Ambitious I know, stay tuned to see if I make it!)
• Speed test the next section of the Horde leveling guide: The Adventure of Mokrana, Chapter 2!
• Revise the next section of the leveling guide with another character, so it's ready for speed testing later on.
• Complete my maps and images with GIMP guide (yes it's long overdue I know!)

This is a hefty list, so we'll see if it all gets done, but it should be a fun week! I'll post here when I complete sections on this list.

In the meantime.... For the Horde!

Addon - How to Contribute

I just finished my revamp for the "How to Contribute" page for Jame's leveling addon. Hopefully this will help people edit the addon and improve it. I also included Jame's standards for the addon, so this can guide those who are revising it.

Horde Addon - Level 41-51

Hey folks! I just finished updating the Horde 41-51 section of Jame's Leveling Guide, addon version. It's not perfect, but there were a LOT of mistakes that have now been fixed. You can download it here, from my google site. I'll be working on the Horde 51-60 section next, and plan to make it perfect before I'm through!

Big Update - Tree Guide

At long last, I've made a big update for my tree healing guide incorporating all the wonderful and useful comments the WoW-Pro users have given me over the past month or so. You can find the updated guide here.

In this update:

• Added more enchanting options, with the goal of easier access and cheaper alternatives in mind.
• Added a few pieces of gear that were suggested.
• Revised "Leveling as a Tree" section to describe the barkskin/hurricane strategy.
• Revised Nourish usage notes, the spell is actually pretty nice for quick spot healing or emergency heals - Regrowth should still be used when you have more time though.
• Added macros!
• Added innervate as a spell and usage notes
• Changed description for the Subtlety talent, to indicate it's use in PvP.
• Added Celestial Focus talent description
• Updated haste information for new data on GotEM.
• Added notes about HoTing before or after a pull.
• Updated one build to include Celestial Focus.
• Added note to Replenish - slated to effect Wild Growth as well in 3.1.0

Things not included:

• A bunch of extra shoulder enchants. Really, this would be like including all the low level other enchants. I threw the easier Sons of Hodir one up there, but I'm not going to include the others.

I'll be pretty busy in the next few weeks finishing up this term of college, so I may not be as active as I have been. Don't worry, I'll be back after finals!

Horde Leveling Addon Speed - Chapter 1

After consulting with Jame, I have decided to do my own series on leveling speed with the new addon, but for the Horde side.

Today I tested Zerinj's Durotar guide on an orc shaman, who happens to be named Mokrana (Mokra, my usual shaman name, was taken >.< ). While leveling, I'm also following Trollvink's Shaman Leveling tips. The end result:

Zerinj's Durotar Guide 1-12: 4h 14min
= 21min/level

I was actually within a few XP of dinging 12 at this point, but so close that someone could easily have made it to 12 had they killed a couple more mobs. I tend to avoid non-quest mobs like the plague, so I figure it's okay to assume level 12 at that point.

After seeing Jame's results, I was actually very dissapointed with this - it took over an hour longer than the human starting area. There are several possible reasons for this:

• The human starting area may be simply a better place to level. I know there are some pretty irritating quests in Durotar, such as the Echo Isles, Dark Storms, and the Skull Rock quests.
• A Paladin may be easier to level from 1-10 than a Shaman. I did take about 15-20 minutes to do some shaman quests, but the paladin probably had paladin quests to do too.
  
• Jame may just be a better player than me!

Like Jame, I tried to make this character as realistic to what someone would actually be playing as possible, but also a "worst case" sort of character. To this end:

• I started on a fresh server, with zero twinking of any kind.
• I purposefully logged out outside of an inn, so I had zero rested XP.
• I played like a reckless noob! I actually died several times, mostly during the Dark Storms and Skull rock quests.
• I leveled two gathering professions as I went, and also cooking. I actually want to use this character someday and I don't want her professions gimped! This seems reallistic enough as well, and probably added a decent chunk of time to my leveling.

Here are some screen shots of Mokrana in her journey to level 12:

Level 6 - Valley of Trials Complete
38min

Level 10 - Achievement
2hr 32min

Level 12 - Durotar Guide Complete
4h 14min

All in all, this isn't bad, but it isn't really as good as I had hoped. I disliked the bit of grinding that was required by the guide at certain points, and I know there is a little of that in the Barrens guide as well. We'll have to see how that goes.

I hope to do a speed test of the Barrens guide next, but that won't be for another couple weeks.