3.3 drops

as many have u noticed I am sure 3.3 is going live on the servers as of tormorrow. I am looking forward to this as our guild actually has a chance of taking on Arthas but we will have to wait and see. We did manage to get ToC down a number of times though I personally didn't get much from it. Now the real fun part is going to be getting my addons updated.

/crossfingers.

Interesting Addon

Something I came across that I thought I would share with my readers. It came from the writer of Healing Way and is written specifically for Resto Shaman. GridStatusChainWho gives you a way of marking grid to see who you cast chain heal on and who it jumped to as well as if it critted or not. Ran with it in a number of heroics last nite and I am a little disturbed at how many times I cast it without it jumping even once. I find it has made me examine my healing and made me more aware of what is happening around me. Play around with it if you run Grid and see what you thing.

How To: New Shaman Button Bar

New button bar for shamans is sweet and actually pretty easy to use. Can't wait to have my bartender play around with it a bit more, but back to the how to.

Step 1- go to your shaman trainer, whether they be in Exodar, Stormwind, or where ever the Horde go to train their shaman
Step 2- train for each of the calls Earth, Ancestors, Spirit
Step 3-click on new button that shows up next to your shaman button bar and look for the arrow that shows up just above it. Choose one of the calls and then assign totems to this call by choosing them from the buttons next to it.
Step 4-rinse and repeat for each of the other calls.
Step 5-If you wish you can go into the keybinding interface in wow menu and assign a keybind to each of your calls.

And now you can successfully call up 4 totems at one time. If you wish to change your totem you can use the button bar to do so. Personally I am keeping my totemtimer addon for the shield monitoring and to be able to change totems on the fly. it is a little less cumbersome to use, that and I hope the author gets it updated so I don't have to use the in game interface for this.

New Addon Policy. Will it break our addons?

Wowinsider brought to my attention that Blizzard has changed their policy on addons. And while I would like to compliment them in a way on this I can also understand why authors would have a problem with it. I hate the idea of having to pay for addons and there are a few of them out there that have enhanced versions of their addon like Carbonite and Wowecon. I personally would never bother with getting the enhanced version but if they take the time to come up with these and then go to the trouble to market it, it is in a sense a sign of free enterprise. After all if we really weren't interested in it we wouldn't pay for it and they wouldn't be able to afford to offer it, so there must be some people willing to pay for these enhanced versions.

So now Blizzard has a problem with it and I can't help but wonder why? Is it that they are worried about peoples accounts being compromised by it? Are they worried that people will have a greater advantage than others with these addons? Or are they just worried that they aren't getting a cut of the action? And how do they plan to enforce this?

The main reason I bring this up is that I have run across a few authors out there that are fighting this move by pulling their addons altogether from circulation. That is their free will to do it, it is their work and they should have the right to do this. It is just that I find it frustrating on my part that they are doing it. There are quite a few addons that I don't need and yet love there are some that I as a GM don't want to have to live without. The main one for this is GroupCalendar, we have been using this addon from day one to setup runs in our guild and while I am sure we can come up with a new way to handle the runs it will take some work and development.

So here is to you authors, we have come to rely on you for alot of our game interaction and we hope that you will understand that we appreciate you. And I hope we can get this "strike" thing figured out.

Edit: Tobold thru up an interesting post on this exact case. 

Addons.

 

Here is a Screenshot of my healing setup. mods are:

1. Bartender4: This is my main bar with my healing on my 2nd page that I get to by hitting shift 4
2. Bartender4: An extra bar for my incidentals like cooking, mounts, rezzing
3. Bartender4: My macros for my totems. I have 5 sets up totems written up as macros to use in different types of groups. One for melee, one for spell casters, melee protection, pvp that kinda thing. Will list each one here when I get back online.
4. Bartender4: My consumables bar, buff food, bandages, pots and my trinkets. I used to use bartender but it was a major memory hog so I switched to this way.
5. Carbonite: Switched to this from Questhelper, I find it much easier to work with and I minimize when in combat so it is out of the way when I don't need it.
6. Minimap button frame: Gets most of minimap buttons off the ring so that I don't see em when I don't need em.
7. Recount: Always need the stats to see how people are doing in raids and instances
8: Omen: Can't see it because it only comes up when in combat. aggro management, nuff said.
9. Totemtimers: Easy to cast my totems when flipping through in case of changes for what I am running. need a poison cleansing totem hit it. need a mana spring totem and then healing stream totem np.
10. SmartDebuff: use it to cleanse, remove curses whatever is needed to keep the tank and group up.
11. Grid: Main interface for healing, most of my macros are mouseover for targetting and I keep this close to my center of attention. Can keep track of who has riptide, earthshield and when I have tidal waves. Also track who has incoming heals on that.

Keybindings on 1:

1. Nature's swiftness
2. Macro for Chain Heal
3. Macro for Lesser Healing Wave
4. Macro for Riptide
5. Totemic Recall
6. Macro for Healing Wave
7. Wind Shock
8. Tidal Force
9. Riptide
0. Heroism
=. Purge

In the background I run:
Visual Heal: so that the tank knows when they have an incoming heal and how far out it is.
ratingsbuster: to compare how good my equipment is to what I am picking to see if it is worthwhile having.
Deadly Boss Mods: Tell me when to get out of the way of a problem
CTmod: To move my tooltips from default.
FreeRefills: Refill my Anhks when they get low along with water and food if I need it.
OmniCC: to see cool downs on my buttons
Quartz: To see latency issues to know when I can cast again.
Smoothdurability: To see how my armor is and automatically repair it.
TekJunkSeller: Sell all my greys
Talented: For when I switch specs. Easy to manage

When raiding time comes:
Headcount: Be able to post here who gets what armor
Healorganizer: Easy to transmit healling assignments
ORA2: For watching tanks and main dps
SRaidFrames: easier interface to work with, thinking about making this a raid requirement so leaders can see who has combat rez available or Reincarnation, soulStone.

Chain Heal Macro:
#showtooltip
/stopcasting
/cast [target=mouseover, help][help][target=targettarget, help][target=focus, help][target=player] Chain Heal

Lesser Healing Wave Macro:
#showtooltip
/stopcasting
/cast [target=mouseover, help][help][target=targettarget, help][target=focus, help][target=player]Lesser Healing Wave

Riptide Macro:
#showtooltip
/stopcasting
/cast [target=mouseover, help][help][target=targettarget, help][target=focus, help][target=player] riptide

Healing Wave Macro:
#showtooltip
/stopcasting
/cast [target=mouseover, help][help][target=targettarget, help][target=focus, help][target=player]Healing Wave

NEWS UPDATE!!!! WARNING!!!

Rumors are abound that curse client and possibly wowmatrix have a possible keylogger problem. Not sure what addons are causing it but it has been advised at a number of the sites I have been to that we should all manually update addons if you need to.

Personally I would advise not updating for a while unless the addon is absolutely needed and is broken. For me I use wowmatrix because it only downloads updates to my computer, curse client has a profiler that it uploads to their server to update their databases.

THE MAIN THING TO REMEMBER, DON'T USE THE SAME PASSWORD FOR YOUR WOW ACCOUNT AS FOR YOUR ADDON FAVORITES OR DOWNLOADS.

We now return you to your regularly schedule play time.

Fishing and Cooking

Hit level 55 with my Shaman last nite and ran Sunken Temple a few times, once to help people get some quests done and then after I got my quest from Western Plague Lands we went again with my wife and a few others. It was and interesting run and pretty quick since we had a 70 each time to help out. Interesting enough both times were Shamans one an Elemental and other was Enhanced. The Enhanced I think had an easier time with it since most of the dragon mobs were immune to Nature damage and Chain Lightning just didn't do the trick.

Side note decided to work on my fishing and cooking for once. I have never actually taken the time to level these up and surprisingly enough I don't mind doing it this time. Granted I am doing my cooking off the fish that I pick up but that is besides the point. Have found El's Extreme Anglin' - WoW Fishing Guide to be very helpful. If you are looking to level up your fishing check this out.

Also I am working with an addon called Talented and Talented Loader and would advise this for anyone who is running 2 or more different specs. Makes it less likely for you to make mistakes when speccing, also you can use it to experiment with specs without having to leave game and use a talent calculator. It hasn't been updated yet for Wrath but hope it will be.

Macro= Woot

Tried out the macro on Thurs and lovin it. Still use Clique to do Purge on mobs and friends but I think I will use it along with Grid. Also came across this addon Quickhealth that I will add when I get back from vacation. Looks like it is better than Instant Health in that it won't cause problems with the WoW target of target, at least that is what the author claims.