Finally!

Part of it was a change of spec, some changing rotation, some of it chaging gems to SP (Runed Cardinal Ruby), and a trinket change from Eye of the Broodmother (SP on proc) to Rune of Audacity (111 SP constant). I also changed a minor glyph to Insect Swarm, now that that has been buffed in 3.2. As most of our tanks are warriors (who NEED to be hit to generate rage) the "reduced chance to hit" was a negative rather than positive attribute.

My new rotation is:

• Insect Swarm
• Moonfire
• Wrath until eclipse procs
• Starfire until eclipse procs
• Renewing IS and MF as soon as they run out, even if eclipse has procced

For this I use quartz timers to see the elapse time on IS and MF. Of course my output isn't consistently 4K like mages and 'locks. With having to lob in the occasional heal, and the amount of decursing and depoisoning required in places like Violet Hold, HoL and AN, and because we are carrying a few newly-geared alts or the lesser able (but really nice people), the DPS part varies from boss to boss.

My new build is 58,0,13. Damage output also went up, from under 500K to 1m before my mana ran out. This was on a normal, L80 mob, dummy. I was about to do the tests on the elite when yet another guild call to come healing on my paladin...

DawnSmith has also had a gem change. I replaced the 2 prismatics (previously haste and intellect) with epic runed cardinal ruby (+23 SP) and upgraded the remaining 2 from +19 to +23. With the trinket that dropped from the brewfest boss in BlackRock, she now has over 2K SP - almost better than Tequima! Her retri gear and spec is still in need of some TLC and research as an appalling 1.8K DPS... but with Brewfest, levelling my mage (at long last - she was actually my first character) and job hunting as well as doing up the house, I simply have not got the headspace to do it. So she is stuck with a cookie cutter build from elitist jerks and whatever gear happens to drop.

The rest of the guild think it funny that I like to finish ALL the quests in the zone, so at L63, Teqlima is still in Honor Hold on 33/80 of Hellfire done. She was putting out 586 DPS at L61 - twice the output of a hunter at a similar level LOL. Time to visit the bank to get some more of the netherweave gear out, and check for upgrades to her SP on the AH. Yep, and she has died to the Fel Reaver. (So busy reading and replying to guild chat, I didn't hear him sneak up on me until he roared right next to me ... by which time it was too late!).

DPS: In 963; Sp 588; Dmg 2097; Hit 270; Cri 26.11%, Hst 189; MR 338 (84)

Heal: In 1092; Sp 850 Dmg 2281; Hit 28; Cri 21.11%; Hst 231; MR 544 (154)

In VH, 2900 DPS, in UP 2100

I accidentally left my healing gear on in VH when I didn't realise you now need to click the Equip button in Equipment Manager to activate the gear change. Our party went on to do UP after, and I noticed when I went to link the Battemaster trinket to someone who had lost Hit due to a gear change.

I've been doing a lot of research since I noticed this yesterday evening, and still more to do. You will notice that Hit had little to do with my DPS (though it may have been more in VH, had I had more - the miss rate showing on recount was a phenomenal 60%). I may have to do a run with combat logging on and webstats to do a detailed analysis. Hit cap for druids is 283/6, depending on which site you read and with my talent spec, so I need to go back to my bank and find an old piece of gear with a little more hit ... or maybe not.

It may be that the instance is the difference - druids do much, much better with "stand and nuke" fights rather than ones that require movement. However most of UP, except for the harpoon boss, is pretty static. We didn't have the kiting boss in VH.

Crit also isn't an issue, as I have 5% more in DPS spec. though it certainly has resolved my OOM issues. 10% less dmg also does not make up the 20% difference.

This leaves 40 Int , 220 Spirit and 42 Haste as key stats to be checked.

Now I am still learning about gearing - knowledge is so spread out on the web - and I can't see anything obvious in the talent tree ... unless it changed in 2.3...?

It's not int. Yes, that has helped with the size of my mana pool, but as this post on  Raiding Basics: Moonkin Druid (UPDATED 3.2) shows, it is incidental rather than necessary. This suggests that the best stats for raiding boomkins are:  Hit > Spell Damage > Spell Haste > Spell Crit. Crit is lower on my healing set, and there's not 20% difference in my damage.

Now in 5 mans, and trash mobs in raids, you get lots of short fights that add to the overall fight data on recount, but I tend to chain-cast Hurricane if there are 3 or more NPCs. However, on a 1 minute boss fight, 22% haste is the difference between 5 starfires at 11K average each and 6. The soft cap for haste is 400 and I am nowhere near this on either gear set.

Sooo ... haste is the one I think I need to check out. More later!

After showing miserable performance, given my gear, in the healing recount, I made several changes to my character. My gear gems on my healing set I changed to pure Intellect (for a larger mana pool) or spirit (key healing stat for druids) as well as tweaking my glyphs and enchants, and fixing my talent tree http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-talents.xml?r=Eonar&;n=Tequima&group=2

Reading up on add-ons, for how to improve my use of healbot, I came across several bloggers commenting on how sluggish and latency-impacted healbot is. It also does not talk to other healing add-ons about incoming heals (resulting in overhealing for other healers) unless you have LibHealComm add-on installed...

So I thought I would give Grid another try. After watching a VERY helpful youtube video on how to configure it so that the bars are vertical, the colours change properly etc. I have also added the optional add-ons: GridManaBars, GridStatusHots, and GridUnitMenu. Sadly, Blizz broke the ability to set focus from unit frames, so you have to set your main healing target by clicking on the MT and right click, set focus.

However, in order to use it, instead of using Clique, I did have to learn about Key Binds and Macros.

• PC Gamespy - Improving your play
  
• WoW Wiki - Macros
  

Found these useful videos later on:

• How to Create a macro
• Using items and spells
• Target macros and keybinding

However, I could not get castsequence to work - perhaps I had a typo (e.g. a ; where I should have used a ,). More research required.

Then off to the Battleground to test them, on my newly level 80 Paladin, DawnSmith...

Teq came second place in a Naxx25 run for the bosses I healed on, and within 1% of the top guild healer - not bad for a few changes!

Macros

The basic macro is:

/cast [target=mouseover] Flash of Light

and this is set as icon 2, with a secondary key-bind of Shift W. So, just by pressing the Shift key, Flash of Light is instantly to hand.

However, replacing an icon with this macro removes the tool-tip, and if you are casting something else, it will fail. So I have 2 extra lines:

#showtooltip Flash of Light
/stopcasting
/cast [target=mouseover] Flash of Light

The full version, which will not cast if your target is dead, or your mouse is not over a friendly target, and will cast a harmful spell if over an enemy, is:
#show Flash of Light
/stopcasting
/cast [target=mouseover,help,exists] Flash of Light
/cast [target=mouseover,harm,exists] Holy Light

For druid dispelling, use this instead, drag the icon to your Right 2 action bar, button 4, and bind to Shift C:
#Show tooltip Remove Curse
/stopcasting
/cast [target=mouseover,exists,help] Remove Curse; [target=focus,exists] Remove Curse; Remove Curse
/cast [target=mouseover,exists,harm] Moonfire

However, I still have Decursive, as (a) it is a lot easier to see and select the targets that need de-cursing and (b) using a priority list (MT, OT, healers, aggro-whores) I can spam Shift D to decurse (as I found out today...).

Action bar R2, 7, bound to Shift H, is Cure Poison. For paladins, use Cleanse instead of Remove Curse, and Lay on Hands instead of Cure Poison. For priests, Cure Disease and Dispel Magic etc. If you wanted to spam one key, try (but I have not tested, as this wastes cast time e.g. Noth=curse, Maexx = posion):
/castrandom [target=mouseover] Remove Curse, Cure Poison

For Paladin hands and blessings, (e.g. when caster gets aggro) use this, dragged to Right 2 action bar, key 6, and key bound to shift B:
/cast [help] Blessing of Protection; [target=targettarget] Blessing of Protection

For more on macros and how to use them, see WoWwiki - Most_Used_Macros and the Blizzard UI and Macro Forum

All the Eastern Kingdoms done, and completed on one alt. There does not seem to be a decent list sorted by flight order, so here is mine, based on the achievement list and co-ordinates from WoWwiki.com

With much sadness, I have left Oldies but Goodies, having had a falling out with the GM about criticizing people in public. One of the earliest lessons I learnt as a manager is that if you need to tell someone something critical, it should be done in a private room to avoid embarrassment.

So having been mortified at being called out for something he was perfectly entitled to criticise me for, (though it was due to lack of forethought on my part rather than ill-intentioned), in guild chat, I absented myself for a while. When I am hurt and angry, I tend to withdraw. I went and played my alts instead of my main. When Friday raid time came, I was still angry, and said I did not want to raid with him because I might say something I would regret. I also whispered that if he ever humiliated me in public again I would quit. Well he did. His next post in guild chat was "I am fed up with you threatening to quit, so please leave the guild".

Now I do not recall EVER threatening to leave. When the last two people left, we did talk about reasons for going and staying. I had been happy there though, and even, I think, managed to persuade one or two people who had been thinking of going to stay. I also had been instrumental in bringing two of the five new players into the guild, and through one, indirectly another. In tears, I entered /gquit, stood there as my character died. Yes, the guild was holding back my main as I no longer could get gear upgrades from 10 mans, but it was friendly and no whinging if we died as we learnt the bosses, and I could always PuG the 25 mans if I wanted (and did - now have Naxx, VoA and OS 25 achievements, and 3 bosses on Ulduar). I was content to grow with the guild. All that is now gone.

One by one, I logged onto my alts and gquit. The whispers started "why have you left?" "what happened?". Back onto my L72 pally I get an invite to tank Kara ... I accept to take my mind off it, then the whispers from the co-GM start. *sigh*

Well, it is over. Goodbye my friends. Hello my old-new ones in The Divine Ones.

________________________

Patch Issues

Once again, patch day came around, no patch to download. Resolving to try re-installing the patch from scratch, I noticed a log file that gave me a clue "No server-side background download settings found" it said.

http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=9520942658&;sid=1

At least this time, a blue answered my post - it seems like files left behind after I allowed WoW to automatically move the game to the c:\users\public\games folder. I don't know which ones yet, and am awaiting a further diagnosis as my email to tech support seems to have gone astray. As the XP box used by my sons has virtually died (thanks to a graphics card upgrade that screwed up the BIOS), I didn't have an alternate means of getting the patch file. Luckily a friend was kind enough to email it to me, so back online by Wednesday evening this time.

_______________________________________________

Performance

Whilst scanning the forums I came across a couple of interesting posts that throw light on lag, disconnects and the dire FPS in WinterGrasp, Dalaran and 25-mans.

Firstly I use Virgin Media, which routes to Blizzard through Telia:

• http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=8865020362&;sid=1

Secondly "you mean 5-10fps in a 25-man fight isn't normal" oh my!:

• http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=7701043754&;sid=1

I've downgraded the settings on my Nvidia card to optimise for performance over quality, and next raid I will take recount off (as well as Carbonite and Auctioneer), leaving me with just: ORA2, DBM, healbot, decursive and quartz eclipse. When I work out how to turn off the combat log settings I will do that too.

Time to play...

Having got 3/4 of my items at epic level, I was horrified to see my DPS has actually gone down. I must admit that I haven't changed spec since the enforced changes in 3.1 and had to reset my spec in a hurry on 3.1.1 when I logged on and went straight into my resto spec for a guild run. Then completely forgot to set up my balance spec until I portalled into WinterGrasp.

So my current build was based on what I could remember I had set before.

The final straw was following a cloak upgrade, to find that my DPS was 1.4K compared to 1.6K for a druid still in 200s and blues! Looking at his spec, my hit (not yet capped at 243 compared to a recommended 262) was four times as much, so that was not the issue. Likewise, I exceeded him in spellpower and haste. The main difference was crit, where his at 25% was almost double my 12.5%... Now I have quartz timers, to ensure I follow rotation and keep my DoTs up whilst maximising Eclipse procs:

• FF
• IS > MF > Wrath until Eclipse procs, refreshing IS and MF every 2
• SF until cooldown
• repeat with IS > MF > Wrath

Being so close to hit cap, and having a decent amount of haste for the gear available, this did seem to be one of the problems. In terms of gear, I am still saving my badges for the T7 Valorous, but mulling over whether to use the gloves I won in VoA 25 for my balance or resto sets, as I already have Gloves of the Dancing Bear as a momento of finally learning the Safety Dance.

Basically, it means that I only have a 1 in 8 chance of eclipse proc'ing to give me a 3 in 5 chance of increasing the chance of critting with starfire to 1 in 2. The main reason I didn't stack crit, apart from the unavailability of gear, and having focussed on SP and hit instead, is that this is what our tank (a paladin) stated he preferred. As the tank happens to be our GM, I listened, rather than following my instincts.

Apart from changing gems to stack more crit (if that is possible, given so little of the 213 gear is socketted) my only option seems to be to drop two points off eclipse (as it is not much use to me) and spend them elsewhere that will give me a consistent DPS increase. I am going to try this build instead, and see how I get on. Not too happy about losing 2 points in Intensity, as mana seems to be an issue on long fights, but I'll have to see how it goes.

Elitist Jerks also highlighted another issue. My glyphs are still the ones that were easily (and cheaply) available soon after Inscription went live. I don't have Starfire or Moonfire and these need to replace wrath and roots ASAP. I will keep innervate, as our guild healers on Naxx 10 tend to need it more than me.

As far as add-ons go, I have put decursive back in, as 3 resto druids in a PuG Noth fight caused a wipe by forgetting to decurse anyone... I'm liking the clean look of quartz, though I must take some time out to work out how to move its default position (in the middle of my chat box atm) and font size (I strain to read a 10 point font on a 19 inch screen, the perils of the middle-aged LOL).

Initially I steered clear of add-ons, worried that I might download some virus infected zip file or an add-on that might completely corrupt my installation. However, having spent too long getting to too many instances, I started by downloading Carbonite to help me get from A to B. I have steadily added to the list over the year, and now have about 15 installed. Not all are "live" at a given time, and, being on a high-population, under-powered and laggy server (Eonar) I hate that I have to log out before I go "naked" into WinterGrasp and "minimal" into 25 mans (quartz timers & mirror, ORA2, DBM, FuBar, LibFuBarPlugin and, until it failed on me in Naxx, Decursive).

So adding something like X-perl that changes the GUI is a big step as I don't know what impact it will have on performance. The main benefits I can see already are that: it improves instantly my ability to see the MT and other's targets instantly; I can see which de-buffs and DoTs or HoTs I have on my target as these are shown larger than other people's.

Only had one problem with it so far, an irritation rather than fatal. The new quests in the Tournament give you a mount. When my mount died, I did not get my toolbars back, so was unable to cast flight form and had to walk back to the mount line. Not fatal for me, but might have been were it a PvP server!

Healbot. Having read the comments about it being complicated, I was reluctant to install this. The last thing you want as a healer it to be spending time working out wtf you need to do. However, so far no issues with it. I did try Decursive and grid, but when decursive failed to include a box for the MT (who happens to be my Guild Master too) in Naxx on Wednesday, I almost got saddled with the repair bill for two 10-man wipes on Maexxna ...

I'll let you know how I get on.

Let me start by saying I'm NOT a battleground virgin, unlike some people who are attempting this achievement, (part of the meta achievement to earn a Drake mount). In order to gear up for Kara, I spent many hours earning honour (English spelling, please note) for a full Wyrmhide set.

However, I do find the requirement a pain in the posterior! Two of them were easy enough for a druid, and anyone with access to speed and invisibility potions could probably do the same:

• Alterac Valley - Having tried asking first if I could cap a tower, heading straight to IBT and running up it (both failed) I rode as fast as possible to Frost Wolf village, straight up the East Tower and used cat form and dash to beat 3 others to the flag, remembering to get my orphan out too
• Arathi Baisin - Ran straight to Gold Mines, found horde there already so hit prowl, hit in the haywain, waited for them to get bored and out of sight, capped the flag

However Eye of the Storm (EoTS) and Warsong Gulch (WSG) are driving me slowly nuts.

1. I have spent over 12 hours of play time in battlegrounds so far, when I would far rather be spending time on LoreMaster.
2. I now have a FIFTH set of gear - Balance (mainspec), Resto (secondary), feral agility (off-spec for exploring low level areas) and feral tank (sometimes used for boosts) and now PvP resilience. However I don't have additional bank space to cope with it and permanently run with four bags full (food, potions & utility; herbs; gear; quest items), and a full bank (herbs; potions & transmute mats; PvP; Agility; Strength; trinkets & event items; food)
3. I am annoying proper PvPers by camping the flag in EoTs. I DO spend time helping to secure MT (Mage Tower) and/or DR (Draenai Ruins) first but after the first cap, I then camp as its the ONLY way I can see of getting this achievement. As a druid, I have the advantage that I am actually quite suited to running the flag (as I have travel form) BUT it does require a decent Ally side, not one that is racing around like blue-bottomed flies attempting to secure 3 or 4 towers whilst leaving the first two with less than 2 people in them to protect them or even attempting to capture the flag! So far I have done 5 or 6, and not ONCE have I seen the raid lead attempt to communicate a strategy to the players, some of whom will be BG virgins whilst this event is on.
4. WSG. Never have I come closer to throwing a PC out of a window. All the issues with this one are listed (at length on the forums). The only way to get this one seems to be
   
   1. Run a premade (get two parties of 4 people together and all join the same BG such as Warsong Gulch 3), preferably on both sides, and take turns dropping and capping the flag with orphan out
   2. Hope you find a friendly horde player trying to do the same thing and politely take turns, hoping not to be zerged by the PvPers
   3. Follow the flag, clicking on it like blue blazes in the hope that at some point you will be the one who happens to be lucky enough to get it clicked just before the poor sod dies

I do not support the idea that this requirement should be removed from the meta, but I DO think it needs a slight redesign to make it achievable in a reasonable amount of playtime (say 8 hours) for non-PvPers, particularly casters and healers. Likewise I do not think it would be good to retrospectively remove the requirement. However, perhaps, allowing 3 out 4 to be completed, may be a sufficient compromise?

*sits back and waits for the flack*

________________________________

Update: 5 hours later, I finally have the achievement, as well as a new bright shiny necklace: Deadly Gladiator's Pendant of Ascendancy (http://eu.wowarmory.com/item-info.xml?i=42030) from all those honour points (sorry Blizz, but in English there IS a "u" in honour!). Taking a different tack to normal, I always took BG 3 (or 6 when 3 was not available), rather than first available.

Arathi I came to a battle part way through, having been fishing in WG for the daily. Quickly swapping pole for blade (as there was a fight underway as I appeared!) I was lucky enough to chase the flag carrier out and help someone get their achievement. Next time the flag came under attack, a hunter and I chased a second out and somehow we both got the achievement (or he didn't but I did). Apparently the battle had been underway for over half an hour so I guess the horde were flagging... ;-)

For EoTs I happened to be in an IMBA battleground where allies (more than a few with orphans out) and we had 5 flags capped whilst I was there, travel form comes in very handy, giving me mine.

I am soooo glad its over, BUT, as someone whispered me last night, it would be a shame to let all that gear go to waste ...

Spent 11 hours yesterday (whilst doing other things like baking cherry and vanilla cookies and catching up on housework) fixing WoW on the Vista box. XP downloaded and installed fine, but the patch got corrupted on the (manual) download to vista and I had to roll-back the files to 3.0.1 ...This after an hour updating Windows, office, manual additional virus update, firefox (twice, as later in the day they issued a hot fixed to a re-introduced error) and noscript.

Support website not much use. Could not even find the Basesignature message on search, though I did locate it later through reading the patch issue pages. Even then, their suggestion that it was due to a system restore was not applicable in my case. The WoW Europe forums showed this had also occurred in 2007 and 2008, and that led me to the patch issue page that suggested deleting the patch files in the /data sub-directory and re-installing the patches. Not knowing which one was corrupt, I redownloaded and re-installed every one of the nine patches since November. I finally got online at 10om (the XP box having blown its monitor connection in the meantime, when I had to do a hard re-boot after WoW froze when logging onto my paladin with her Journeyman riding training money). Long enough to report to the guild & some friends that I was having problems before I vanished.

Not a happy owlkin - by the time I completed Dawn's training and finished off the Searing Gorge quest left in my log (ever the completionist) I was ready for bed.

Woke up dreaming of a new 5 man instance with 13 disciples, each of whom teleported a random member of the party to the next disciple, leaving the party to chose whether to fight the boss or wait until the party member worked their way back with some information about the next boss... easy for rogues, druids and those with invisibility potions, otherwise rather nasty! Setting was an upward spiral with pocket, stepped rooms, nice for the larger players but hard on a dwarf's short legs! Too late, time to get up and get the kids off to school (though surprisingly the youngest even had made his own sandwiches this morning!).

Spent 2 hours trimming and shaping the hedges in the front garden, to make up for missing it in the beautiful weather we had yesterday, before heavy rain forced me back inside.

Quite liking the speed from a "naked" WoW with no add-ons, but some like Deadly Boss Mods, Ora2, Squawk and Awe (though I may try out quatz instead), decursive and grid (for my resto and holy specs) are essential for raids and instances. Auction helper with Enchantrix for my bankers - though I'm not going to enable it for the rest of my characters now.

Despite paying a donation, I'm going to see if I can manage without Carbonnite Quest - it's got far too complicated in the latest version and the map transparency is too much for my eyes to cope with. As my latency drops considerably when I relog with it turned off for raids, I suspect its not doing my DPS good on other characters too.

I may try out XPerl unit frames - I could not cope with PitBull and both Bartender and one other I looked at, though they gave a nice clean look to the interface the comments show far too many post-patch errors with each. This is one drawback of coming to rely on amateur add-ons, even the professionals don't have enough times to do thorough testing - yes, Blizzard, I am talking about you - so what chance do people doing this for love have in their limited spare time?