Five WoW accounts, one keyboard broadcaster and me.

Monday, December 21, 2009

[Emblem of Frost] and [Emblem of Triumph] Shopping List

Badges have been reset. I updated my badge shopping overview with the new stuff.

Badge-Type
Heroism
Valor
Conquest
Triumph
Triumph
Frost
Frost
Slot
ilvl 200
ilvl 213
ilvl 226
ilvl 232
ilvl 245
ilvl 251
ilvl 264
Head
crafted
n/a
58 T8.25
50 T9.10
75
95 T10.10
n/a
Shoulders
n/a
60 T7.25
n/a
30 T9.10
45
60 T10.10
n/a
Chest
80
n/a
58 T8.25
50 T9.10
crafted
95 T10.10
95
Legs
n/a
75 T7.25
39
50 T9.10
n/a
95 T10.10
crafted
Gloves
60
n/a
28
30 T9.10
n/a
60 T10.10
60
Belt
n/a
n/a
28/crafted
n/a
n/a
n/a
60
Bracers
n/a
60
n/a
n/a
crafted
n/a
n/a
Boots
crafted
40
crafted
n/a
n/a
n/a
crafted
Back
n/a
25
n/a
n/a
n/a
n/a
50
Neck
25
n/a
19
n/a
n/a
n/a
n/a
Ring(s)
n/a
25
n/a
n/a
35
n/a
n/a
Trinket(s)
40
n/a
n/a
n/a
50
n/a
60
Gun/Whatever
15
25
19
n/a
25
n/a
30
Weapon
50/crafted
n/a
n/a
n/a
n/a
n/a
n/a
off-hand/Shield
25/35
n/a
n/a
n/a
n/a
n/a
n/a

See also:
See also:
T10: Craftables using Primordial Saronite(ilvl 264), BineOnEquip raid drops ilvl 264
T9: Craftables using Crusader Orbs (ilvl 245), BindOnEquip drops ilvl 245
T8: Craftables using Runed Orbs (ilvl 226), BindOnEquip raid drops ilvl 213, 219 and 226

Friday, November 20, 2009

Which Gems should I use as a tank?

I'll try to be short and precise here, but let me say something clearly first: equipping a tank is always about a balance of stats. It is never about all this or all that. For specific encounters one may swap a bunch of pieces or even prepare a full kit maxed out for one aspect, but for your bread and butter tanking, you do want a good balance.

I'll list the gems by socket colour and include the non-epic choice for budget gemming.

Please note:
  1. You don't _have_ to match socket color, you'll only loose the socket bonus. However, the socket bonus can be qutie nice. You should definitely get each +sta socket bonus.
  2. Don't forget to get an [Eternal Belt Buckle] for that extra gem slot.

Blue Sockets are the easiest to fill. All tanks need stamina to build up their effective health.
[Solid Majestic Zircon] (30 sta) or [Solid Sky Sapphire] (24 sta).

Red Sockets are our second choice. Dodge (or Parry) plus Stamina improves Avoidance and Effective health at the same time without wasting any budget. Druid's benefit more from straight agility and can not parry, so avoid the Regal and Defender's cuts if your tank on all fours.
[Regal Dreadstone] (10 dodge+15 sta) or [Regal Twilight Opal] (8 dodge+8 sta).
[Defender's Dreadstone] (10 parry+15 sta) or [Defender's Twilight Opal] (8 parry + 12 sta).
[Shifting Dreadstone] (10 agi+15 sta) is the druid's choice.
[Delicate Cardinal Ruby] (20 agi) is a good alternative, especially for shared cat/bear gear pieces.

Yellow Sockets are a bit of a bother. Tanks usually do not need to gem for hit, expertise or crit, so we need to find a good use for those.
[Enduring Eye of Zul] (10 def+15 sta). Great for all plate tanks.
[Stalwart Monarch Topaz] As the plate tank budget alternative.
[Nightmare Tear] +10 all stats or [Enchanted Tear] +6 all stats are the bear's first choice for yellow sockets. I'll still need to see what to take next if needed.

Meta Gems are very easy:
[Austere Earthsiege Diamond] (32 sta + 2% armor) is the smart choice for effective health.
[Eternal Earthsiege Diamond] (21 def + 5% SBV) is a great choice for shield tanks running heroics or T7 content, or of course for use in a block set.

Of course the list above won't make it into the next expansion, but I hope it will be of some use until then.

Thursday, November 19, 2009

What should I spent my badges on?

As this matrix below shows, you can get a 2xT8.25+2xT9.10 set without ever setting foot into a raid. Considering that not all equipment slots have an equal amount of item budget and that the item budget for head and chest is high, I'd recommend the following shopping list:

[Emblem of Conquest] (you can get about 50 per day)
  • 58x T8.25 head token
  • 58x T8.25 chest token
  • 39x non-set legs
  • 28x belt
  • 19 neck
  • anything else

[Emblem of Triumph]  (You can get 53 per week: Daily heroic 2/day, ToC10+25 30/week, VoA10+25 4/week, Ony10+25 5/week)
  • 30x T9.10 shoulders
  • 30x T9.10 gloves
  • anything else

Tips:
  1. Shift-click the lower level badge and type the number you want to downgrade.
  2. Triumph badges can be downgraded next to the vault in the Dalaran Sewer Inn.
See also:


Badge-Type
Heroism
Valor
Conquest
Triumph
Triumph
Slot
ilvl 200
ilvl 213
ilvl 226
ilvl 232
ilvl 245
Head
crafted
n/a
58 (T8.25)
50 (T9.10)
75
Shoulders
n/a
60 (T7.25)
n/a
30 (T9.10)
45
Chest
80
n/a
58 (T8.25)
50 (T9.10)
crafted
Legs
n/a
75 (T7.25)
39
50 (T9.10)
n/a
Gloves
60
n/a
28
30 (T9.10)
n/a
Belt
n/a
n/a
28/crafted
n/a
n/a
Bracers
n/a
60
n/a
n/a
crafted
Boots
crafted
40
crafted
n/a
n/a
Back
n/a
25
n/a
n/a
n/a
Neck
25
n/a
19
n/a
n/a
Ring(s)
n/a
25
n/a
n/a
35
Trinket(s)
40
n/a
n/a
n/a
50
Relic/Idol/
Sigil/Libram/etc
15
25
19
n/a
25
Weapon
50/crafted
n/a
n/a
n/a
n/a
off-hand/Shield
25/35
n/a
n/a
n/a
n/a

/inspect

Quite frequently I see someone ask for an Enchanter, Blacksmith or Jewelcrafter and am happy to help them out. As a tank, I am of course qutie partial to help out other tanks. Several times now I have had a look at a tank's gear, gems, enchants, talents via /inspect (and at their glyphs via the Armory) and asked them if they'd like a bit of advice. Since I play all four tank classes, I have pretty good visibility on what there is to know. =]

The overall response has been quite positive, and I am sure to have pointed a number of tanks into the right direction. I do note however that what I do actually tell each of these tanks happens to be virtually the same each time. For that reason I'll go and write down some of these things here. I'll make a deliberate effort to not write 'the mother of all guides' because there are lots of places already with those. I'll focus on a particular aspect and go for it.

As a first topic, I'll take this very generic one: What should I spent my badges on?

Monday, November 16, 2009

[The Culling of Time]

I've been trying for a while now to do the Culling of Stratholme heroic as a timed, multiboxing. My last post already described what changes I made, but neglected to mention one that may not be obvious - I stopped looting any trash a while ago. Yes, there may be good stuff in there, but I don't want to waste the time. It may be a reflex and may not seem to take any time, but it does. The real difference however was using the druid's swipe to counter the zombie-daze threat to /follow and doing the PvE changes as detailed before. This morning I managed to get to the end of the gauntlet with 4 minutes remaining on the timer.

My short dash to the sides street with the timed mob was interrupted by some frantic untangling of my shamans from some of the flavour scenery, but the I got what I wanted to archive - CoS heroic timed while multiboxing! That puts me at one of four drakes for the PvE shaman group. I'll try my luck again to complete the set.

Friday, November 13, 2009

Heroics take 2

In the last few days I have used my fresh bear tank rather than my imba-geared tankadin together with four shamans in heroics. To my absolute surprise, this works better, even though there is a serious difference in gear.

Having the ability to hit everything around you with swipe on the move makes things like Culling of Stratholme much safer. Nothing is more annoying than missing one shaman being hit by a zombie and then drop out of /follow range due to being stunned. Spamming swipe does away with that problem.

The paladin works fine, but requires more attention than the druid. Having three buttons for boss tanking (mangle+maul, fairy fire and lacerate) and one button for aoe-trash tanking (swipe+maul) allows me to focus a bit more on what I am doing with the shamans. As a result their damage output improved to around 2k each. Not that much, granted, but enough to get solidly into the comfort zone in a heroic.

Today I missed doing CoS timed as narrow as it gets, less than a minute too slow. I had to drink a lot to keep the shaman's mana up. Taking a hint from this, I bought dual-spec for the last three and gave them a PvE dps spec rather than the vanilla PvP setup. Next to that, I set up a different gear set for PvE. Currently that changes just a couple of pieces: rings, one trinket, neck and the odd item here or there.

However - the difference in setup is clearly noticeable. I'll go and save up some badges now to get some more PvE gear and see how it goes.

Sunday, October 18, 2009

The Headless Horseman Redux

Last year, I made a serious effort to get the horseman's mount. When Hallow's End was done, I had spent well over hundred tries by myself and a number with guild mates trying to get the mount. No Joy.

This year, I was determined to not waste any chances. I parked my level 80 boxing chars, the shamans and also the unused druids at the Scarlet Monastery. I bought my old level 70 cloth boxing team there to have summons. I was prepared to level my hunter's a bit further to 75 today if that had meant that they could summon.

But, all that setup was a waste of time.

Taking four of my shamans and my tankadin into the graveyard wing, I set my cap for the first daily farming session. But... the first shaman's summon already gave me what I wanted! =]

I used the other three summons and got a spellpower ring each time, as well as this year's horseman's blade. Then I took off to Dalaran. I found that when you mount up in the city proper, you are locked to landmount mode, but if you mount up on the landing pad or on the Violet Parlour's balcony, the mount goes into flying mode. Outside no-fly zones, the mount swaps modes as you land or take off.

One difference between a normal land mount and the horseman's mount is that it doesn't stay vertical like normal mounts. Instead it will take a 90 degree angle relative to the ground, which can look a bit silly depending on where you stop.

Excuse me now while I dance around the room celebrating. Time to cook!

Friday, October 2, 2009

Ehm, Lol?

[02/10/2009]
23:21 [Shabruno]: get a life >.> that mount + [Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker]? bullshit
23:21 [Takano]: jealous? =]
23:21 [Shabruno]: Just a lil
23:21 [Shabruno]: But still, [Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker] is no life luck 'O.o
23:22 [Takano]: actually, I have that from level 60 raiding
23:22 [Shabruno]: Sure, and my name is napoleon
23:22 [Shabruno]: what ever, cya (:
23:22 [Shabruno]: gonna play on a not noob sever (:

And the guild news link from back in the day. I recustomized the char when that became available, but hey. =]

Some people...

Sunday, August 16, 2009

Game Performance

For a good while now I was not really satisfied with the performance of WoW on my gaming computer. I have now made a few small changes that have significantly improved the performance of WoW on my machine to my great delight! I made three changes, two are setup and one is hardware.

First off, hardware. I spent 145 Euro on an OCZ Vertex Turbo 30GB. What? It is a Solid State Drive, in a nutshell flash memory - like the card you put into your digital camera - working like a hard drive. The key selling point for those things is that unlike normal hard disks, they have no seek time. A normal hard disk needs to rotate the disk(s) and move the read/write head to the right place to access certain data. That can be very bad, if scattered, small amounts of data need to be read. Unfortunately, that happens very often in WoW where we all notice machine lag - in cities, where every players visible gear pieces need to be loaded.

SSD technologo is nothing new, but used to be quite expensive: 500-600 Euro for an affordable consumer model. There are still SSDs offered in retail for non-server use in this price range, and there are a bunch of things you don't really want to buy that are around 100 Euro. And then there is the OCZ Vertex and it's successor the Vertex Turbo. Unlike some of the budget SSDs - some also made by OCZ - it has a great controller and gives very respectable performance compared to the expensive options.

In lieu of any proper mounting kit for the 2.5" HDD form factor of the SDD I used cable ties to fix the small SDD to the chassis of my gaming rig as you can see in the picture above. When I originally bought the ThermalTake Armor case I was miffed that I had to either take one with a window or wait. Now I am quite happy to look at my little silent but effective new toy when I want. =]

WoW can be copied to and run from nearly any storage device - such as a USB stick or an iPod - I didn't just copy the entire client to the SSD. Instead I copied only the /data directory from the WoW directory to the SSD. That directory holds the by now about 13GB of game data files of WoW and that is where all the reading happens. All the other folders are for addons, settings, screenshots or whatnot, in essence things that change frequently and I left those on the raid hard disks.

Then I used Symlink to instruct Vista to redirect read and write access to the WoW-data directories for both WoW installations on my computer from the hard disk to the SSD. That's it.
Using Symlink is also a good idea when using regular hard disks if one is using move than one WoiW installation - for example for easier setting and/or addon management.

The third change I made was to disable Vista's Superfetch service. Superfetch is supposed to proactively load data from the hard disk to memory before a program actually asks for it. To do that it tries to predict what the running software will request. A nice idea, but not very useful for something kinda intricate like WoW's data files. WoW itself is also loading data proactively. It does load the next zone while you are approaching the zone boundary. I am no expert in either Superfetch or WoW's methods, but clearly disabling Superfetch significantly improved the performance of my system. I can only guess that having the hard disks of my raid array jump left and right to follow the predictions of Superfetch and WoW itself is the reason for this. To disable Superfetch, follow these instructions (enabling works the same way, just backwards).

Before these changes, I would often loose characters on /follow while flying at 280% speed in Northrend. In particular in busy areas or at zone borders. Thinking about the data reading that is going at the time, that makes sense. Today I flew all over Northrend and instead of having a fit I had a smooth flight with only one or two times that I had to renew follow due to phasing.

Likewise, before the changes I was suffering from massive machine lag when hearthing to Dalaran. There are just too many people with too many textures too load, damning me to sitting idle for two minutes or so before I can move smoothly - if at all since people come and go. Now, after waiting only a polite 2 seconds, I could move as if I was alone on the server. I chained up my shamans in a konga line, each following another and rode a couple of times all around Dalaran just after hearthing there and none of the /follow strains broke! Happy joy joy! =]

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

New status: Arena Fodder


After having a lot of fun in Alterac Valley and Wintergrasp my shamans now have all the PvP gear that does not require arena rating. I also collected enough emblems to purchase the [Totem of Hex] for all characters.

One thing that I totally missed was the awesomeness that is the [Glyph of Stoneclaw Totem]. Essentially, it allows a shaman to pop a 4k damage shield that lasts 15s with a 30s cooldown. When looking at incoming burst damage on a 20k health bar even with 800+ resilience, this is an immense help.

To celebrate the promotion from 'Hateful Farming Noob' to 'Arena Fodder', I took the girls to the hairdresser and told them to go wild. This monochrome look is the result. =]

My druid Ægis and the hunter group are slowly making their way up the level ladder. The Worgen were morphed from wolf-family to ornamental pets that can pretend to fight, but hey, there are many other pets out there.

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Friday, July 3, 2009

Hateful Farming Noob

That's me in the last few days. I am splitting my solo play time between WG/AV on my five shamans to collect a starter set of ilvl 200/213 pvp epics and leveling my druid Ægis and the four hunters.

I do surprisingly ok in level 80 PVP, even though the level 70 resilience doesn't really cut it and things are a lot more bouncy now. Various knock backs and death grip have joined fear as multiboxer hazzard, not to mention retri-pallies who make their pretty lights while encased in their bubble.

I love that level 80 honor gear does not require badges from various battlegrounds, as I always disliked my negative impact with too many chars concentrated in one spot in the smaller battlegrounds. In AV, I go where needed and can play in a strategic fashion. WG is more hectic in this aspect, but being able to take out vehicles extremely fast is a big plus.

Tomorrow I will get the hateful pants. I worked around the ilvl 213 WG chestpiece for the hateful set. Bracers, belt and boots are next.

Friday, May 29, 2009

Boxing Update

What has happened since my last post?

Aquired 4x Titanium Spellshock Ring.
Bought 5x Tattered Dreadmist Mantle for 40 badges each.
Levelled 1x Shaman and 4x Druid from 60->75.5
Dual-speeced 1x Shaman resto and replaced Flame Shock with Earth Shield and Chain Lightning with Riptide, leaving the other elemental spells in place and sequence.
Bought 4x Protective Barricade of the Light for 35 badges each.
Bought 4x Hateful Gladiator's Mail Spaulders for 31600 honor each.

My short range goals are to get the 5th shaman to 80 and start WG/AV with the five shamans grinding for level 80 PvP gear. I plan to do 5v5 arena as before with four shamans and one other person sorting the healing.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

80


After enjoying flying around in Northrend I set to the Sons of Hodir quest chain in Storm Peaks. After also doing the Frosthold and Earthen quests in western Storm Peaks, I started my work for the Argent Dawn. Then the Shadow Vault, the Fleshworks and the Death's Rise quests and....DING!

A bit of shoring up materials and then my first level 80 shaman weapons were sorted: [Titansteel Guardian]. Time for bed! =]

Friday, February 20, 2009

Finally!


After some questing in Sholazar and Zul'Drak my shaman group hit level 77. The first thing I did was jump back to Dalaran, and test /follow with epic flight speec in Northrend with one character. I was a bit worried that it might break and make epic flight for the group near-useless. It worked out fine! Yay! YEEEEHAAA!

So I dug into the purses of my various characters to shore up the next money for the other three shaman's flying pleasure. Fortunately enough, I am a compulsive miner and had been a busy bee. Yet, I still could only buy the epic flying skill and cold-weather flying for three of the four shaman. So I took all my fungible assets and chucked them at the auction house. At the end of the day I had enough liquidity to sort out the last shaman.

I spent 24800g on this yesterday, but flying around fast in Northrend with five characters at once is well worth it. Time to take the four shaman to Storm Peaks and do the Sons of Hodir quest chain! =]

Sunday, February 15, 2009

Back to boxing!


Being basically done with everything not on a weekly lockout that I could possibly do on my tankadin, prot warrior and unholy tank death knight, it's time again to look at my boxing!

This weekend, I did the Violet Hold on normal three times and Drak-Theron Keep once. My level 75 shaman did have quests for both places. While the yield of quest xp for Drak-Theron is much higher, Violet Hold is much quicker.

I wasn't very lucky on my first go at Violet Hold. My first random boss was the water elemental, called 'water boy' through clenched teeth. Fighting him at the door, I got through it. Then, the next one my personal least favorite random boss - the ethereal who summons his AoEing orbs. I got through both of those without any deaths. Then I fumbled on the final boss moving my shamans in the wrong direction after the threat-wipe and teleport - straight into the breath! =]

The second and third go saw me mowing down the voidwalker, beholder, doggie and the ethereal again - plus drop the dragon both times. That brought me up from 75.5 to 76! I took the shamans to the basin for some relaxed questing to 77 now.

Thursday, February 5, 2009

How the desktop changes!


Looking over some old stuff, I noticed how much my setup has changed since I started boxing two years ago. Originally, I used three additional Sony VAIO notebooks that I borrowed from work to to bring up the number of computers to five. Not knowing where to put them, I originally just put them left and right, which was very simple, but not ergonomic at all.

Being fed up with this, I build a shelf above my computer desk to hold the additional notebooks, which looked much more tidy and formed a rough three by two matrix. This was much much better and was my setup for the remainder of the time that I used one computer per WoW session.

Finally then, last summer, I made the step to one computer running all five sessions and using KeyClone to broadcast my keyboard input. I had added one 22" screen between the two 19" displays I already had. I continue to use Multiplicity by Stardock to control both desktops that I use with the master keyboard and mouse. The additional notebooks went back to the sample stock at work and their space is now occupied with all the stuff that usually accumulates around computers.

Thursday, January 8, 2009

Four Flavours of Tanking

The Wrath of the Lich King has thrown a big spanner into the works of my multiboxing! Now, after the expansion has been out for two months, the highest level of boxing I have done in Wrath is the Ring of Blood 2.0 in Zul'Drak with me using my Shamans to nuke and heal while I tank. On the other hand I have three level 80 chars that I played in normal single-char play. So what's up?

Firstly, Wrath is so much more fun and there are so many more things to do that for me there is subjectively much less need for boxing to entertain myself.
Secondly, Wrath introduces two features that are not a multiboxer's friend: phasing and vehicles. Some zones have your chars act along and do not phase the group into the same instance. While in a vehicle, /follow is not effective and while for some quests one can work around that and accomplish the objectives with one char and have the others positioned to get the credit, for others this is impossible. Both features are great in my opinion and enhance gameplay for non-boxers, but they are a pain for a boxer.
Thirdly, I have a different sort of pet project going!

My heart in WoW has been in tanking since just after starting to raid back in Molten Core. From then to T5 content I played my warrior tank as my main. For T6 and the Mount Hyjal waves I changed my main raid char to my paladin tank. Now, with wrath introducing Death Knights as fourth tanking class, I got it into my head to sample them all!

First, I pushed my paladin Stephanius to 80 and through heroics and raids. The paladin was and is my main for guild raids. Yet, I then pushed my death knight Tacitus to 80 and got him kitted out in heroics as tank. This week Monday I hit 80 on my warrior tank Ivl and did a bunch of heroics since then. My druid Ægis is still level 70 and I am working his herbalism up. As soon as that is on the level, I will push him through Northrend. This will then give me first hand experience in all tanking flavors!

I expect to take up boxing again once things in Wrath have settled down a bit, but at the moment I am too busy having single player fun! =]

Cheers, Steph.