Dualspecc & Gear management UI (PTR)

Ok, I finally got my Character transfered to the PTR. And first thing I did was to tjeck out how the UI stuff around Dualspecc and Gear system looked like. And it actually seems to work pretty smooth. Here will follow the info I gathered on the PTR and pictures of most of it.

Dualspecc
Lets start of with dualspecc. You learn it at your class trainer, so I ventured to IF to have a talk with Brandur Ironhammer. He is a nice guy, but he aint cheap. After finding the option is his list its just to click away and say yes, I really want it. And then pay the fee. 1000g.




Bingo, you even get a nice little 10 point achivement for it... hehe. And you are now able to make to builds.



This is how it all looks. As you can see up in the right corner, you now have the option between two tabs. Specc1 and specc2. And you can now start to put in some points. As you can see in the bottom, there is now a little more info. Unspent Talents count as well. Nice little addon. And you have gotten a new tab all in the bottom Glyphs. Nice they have moved it, always feelt it was misplaced in the spell book section. Belongs along side the talents. And the tab ofc changes depending on which talent build you use. Changing from one build to another is simple as hell when you are in a city atleast. You just press the second build, and say you wanna change. 5 second cast, and bingo you have it changed. I have yet to figure out how it works outside of the city. Will try to dig into that and get back with that info.



Would have liked to talk about the new prot tree, as that is rather interesting, what we get instead of Kings. But as of now, as you can see. Its rather minimal.. :) They actually just removed Kings.

Gear Management
After looking at it all, I decided to look a bit more on the new gear management system. How it looked and worked. Looked around on the character screen and Menu and so on. But no sign of it. I just went into the Interface controls, and there it was. You have to enable it to even see it on the normal UI. So tjeck in that and out into the character screen ones more. And bingo.



Here is how it all looks like, its not much. But it seem to do the job very well.



As you can see in the top right corner of you character window, you know have an armour symbol, thats you gear management system. It simply opens the little small window besides it. As you can see on the screen. You press new, and choose a name and ikon, like when you make a macro. And it then makes a set out of what your currently is wearing. Simple, but effectiv. And you can now just press the ikon for your set and bingo, its all equipped. Its so simple implementet, that is strikes me. Why the hell did it take em that long to get it in ???
What is misses may be, that it actually would store the gear, so we would have some more back space. But it dosent, atleast not in V1.0. But we can always hope it does it in maybe a future version of it.

Tier 8, fancy pancy or purple puppy ?

Even though I started my character transfer to the PTR, the day it went up. Im still pending. Have the client installed and all. And was very eager to be able to post about some of the new changes. Especially dualspecc and the new gear system. But that is not the case, as I for some reason cant get my character transfered.
A bloody shame.

So I would use the time to have a look at the New Tier set for paladins. What do we have today, a shiny yellow set. Which in my opinion is pretty cool. Yeah, I like it. I was a big fan of the few people I saw back then in the blue colored one, back in Vanilla wow. And I still like it today. Here is a peciture of me wearing a full set, with matching boots and belt.



I did like it better in the original color though. But its still good looking in my eyes.

What about the new one, another space puppy ? Or maybe a nice purple one as seen before. Nope it dosent seem like it.

Male version, picture from MMO-Champion.


Female version, picture from MMO-Champion.


Or maybe. I must admit I have a very hard time judging if I like this one or not. I like the looks on the shoulders and the set in general. But not the helm. That just looks misplaced in some way. And I tend to think the shoulders are very shaman like. It does alwasy look better ingame than on pictures like these. So I think it will be pretty good looking on me chopping through nummerous packs of foes. What do you think ?

Project : Hardcore

I have launched a project in my guild. Project : Hardcore is the name, What we are trying with this one, is to gather a grp based on skill, gear and composition. And with that try to beat the hardest encounters ingame. In general our guild is about all have a right to a spot. We aint hardcore and very good at giving all a change to raid. In a fun and "feel good" raid and guild.
Our first goal was Sarth3D for the project.
We had our first night of try’s last night. And even though we didn’t get a kill. Im very pleased with what we did accomplish. Lets start with what our approach to it was and what composition we tried with.

Composition
3 tanks
Druid – Sartharion tank
Paladin – Drake tank
Warrior – Add tank
2 Healers
Holy priest
Restoration druid
5 dps’ers
Retribution paladin
Rogue
Boomkin druid
Shadow priest
Elemental shaman

Tactics
The approach I had set for the night was like this.
Burn down Tenebron, then move dps to shadron and burn him down as well. When shadron got down, move into the portal and kill his apostle. When its down, get out of the portal again. Kill Vesperon, move into the portal again, kills his apostles Finish off sartharion.
The tactic in sum up. Is to max the dps time on the drakes, and minimize the time on adds and portals.
We had the add tank to, tank the adds at the tail of the drakes. So our many AE attacks would kill adds as well, when we dps’ed on the drakes.
How did it went. Looking back at the night I think it went really well. We got shadron down 2 times, but both times we had at that point lost to many players or about to wipe.
We had our Sarth tank die numerous times on the breath. We started with the priest as Sarth healer. But seemed like after we switched to the Resto druid instead. We had less deaths on the breath.
Instead it seemed like the raid in general took too much dmg for the healers to heal the raid and tanks. Which caused in either a death of a raid member or one of the tanks.
I think the tactic works. We just need to adjust a few things. Or one major thing. I think we need to have one of the dps’ers to switch to off-healer in the phase where Shadron+Vesperon is on us. As what kill us slowly without we notice is the raid shadow damage.
And maybe a little change in the setup. My initial setup was this, and I think it may be a little bit stronger.

Tanks – Druid, Paladin and warrior. (Same)
Healers – Im not quiet sure here. I think the resto druid is a good choice. But I was thinking maybe a paladin or shaman healer as raid healer. So he aint so squisy, with all the adds and whatnot around him.
Dps – Retribution paladin, SP, Elem. Shaman, Hunter and a DK.

All in all, we had a brilliant night in there, I highly suggest you take up the challenge if you have the people for it. It’s a brilliant fight, very well designed. A fight where skills will matter. And afterall aint it what this game is all about. Doing the best you can, while having a blast with friends.

And we are now more hungry than ever for more.

Tagged

There is a meme started bloggers between, going on atm. Where you should post your 6th screenshot in your screenshot folder and a little note about it. I was tagged by Aureilie from Valor... Paladin... Valordin?.

So here it is :



Its a rather new one, its taken shortly after I got my bike. Im pretty sure its taken in Burning Steppes. A biker in the sunrise, with only him and the road. Thought it was an awesome shot. I had it as my background on my desktop for a while.. :)

Im gonna pass it forward to Firelight from Retribution, Lance from A bit of lance and last by not least Soosdon from a The blog of Baron Soosdon.

Project : Poshspice

Poshspice, ohh my new life is all about poshspice... !!??!!!!



You may wonder if I have gone mad in some way. What happend, have I got a new job as personal coach and trainer for Posh ? Nah. I actually dont really like her. Way to skinny for my kind. Problaly the reason I have a Male tauren Druid named Poshspice. But thats not what this story is about either. Nope, this story is about my new drive to get another character to 80.
Impadin, my Retribution paladin, is close to have no upgrades anymore in this current content. And he already have a pretty good tank dual specc set. As well as a holy set. So its time to get a new toon to 80, and start to work on some gear for that.

And its here Poshspice comes into the picture. Yeap, she is my ShadowPriest. Dranei, pretty and hard hitting.

I have used the last few days of my wow time on her, taken her almost 3 levels up. She is sneaking in on 73 now. Leveled her tailoring to up over 400. So she have a few upgrades in her back to when she raise a level or two. Been taking her through nexus and Uthgaard Keep. She is on a roll.

Im in no way any expert in the priestly ways, far from it. But im learning and hopefully I will become rather strong in that class as well. I will start with a spell rotation I use when grinding to kind of kick, my priest posts on. (Yeap, its my intention to come back to em now and then.)

Spell Rotation (Questing/grinding): VT - SW:P - MF - (MF)* - MB - MF**

* This depends on how close the mob are at me at the current time. If the mob is still at range to me, I normally hit it with one more MF. If the mob is in my face I skip this MF.
** If the previously MB dosent kill it off, I take the last health down with a MF.
Remember that to get VT to kick in, you have to get a MB on the mob before VT runs off. That is what make Vt gief you the lovely, Replenishment buff.

I normally dont use shield in my rotation. As most mobs die rather fast. If my health is at around 50-60%. I normally put up a shield and add a Vampiric embrace to the target just after my VT. That normally make my health go to full again.
If my mana gets low. Dispersion is my friend. I very rarely use Shadow Fiend when solo questing/grinding.

With this rotation and use of abilities I very rarely have to drink, and can go on like a duracell-rabbit nonstop.

Its really a fun class to play, and is to me far more fun that a said mage for example. Lets end this first priest post with a picture of my ingame poshspice.



Whats your alt ?

Pay it forward

Could you make wow a better place ?

We have all meet em ingame, that being in a pug, in Dalaran or in trade channel. People with odd talent selections, gems or items. People that in some way have misunderstood it all, or simply dosent know better. Many of us playing WOW is players that have played games for a long time or people that use a great deal of time on forums, blogs and such. To read up on builds, gear choices etc.

What if we, instead of being annoyed and just turn and walk away. We stop up and use 5-10 minutes of our playtime to help the player out. Ask him/her why he have choosen the gear he have ? Why he have those gems in his gear ? and so on. I will bet that most simply dosent know better. But that most would like to know.

Would 5 to 10 minutes be to much to ask. I bet alot would be gratefull to get a bit of help. And maybe next time you meet him/her he could actually show to become alot more usefull to you. Am I dreaming here ? Do the majority simply dosent care ?

I like to live in the dream, that if I use 5 to 10 minutes once in a while on a player, who in some way could need my knowledge or advice. That could end up with being something I can draw something good out of in the future. Maybe they will pay it forward, to another player in the future. It could all end up in, we being able to play with a better player next time....

Or simply start a vibe that in the end, would make all of WOW a better place to be and play in.

6,3K Retribution DPS

Yesterday, the eyes was on Naxxramas heroic. We have the place comfortly on farm, but wanted to push myself a bit. To see where I was dps wise. Ofc Patchwerk was the big question. But I still like to expand it a bit. As I like a player to be able to substain damage over a whole raid night. And ofc thaddius is always a fun fight, just to see the "fake" dps number you can get there.

Lets see how it all went.

Patchwerk
I have had some troubles with getting cleaved once in a while on this fight. But as we had problaly out strongest 2 tanks on him for the night, I had little to worry about. So I could focus on my dps and go balls out.
Which ended pretty good, if I shall say so myself. 4,6K damage, which ended me 1st on the dps meter. I was quiet pleased with that.

Recount screenshot incoming as soon as I get home

Thaddius
The gimmick fight. My best score here so far is 5,3K, the tricky about this fight is that you are dependent of the other people in the raid to do max dps. It went pretty good, and I broke my own record, by quiet a bit. 6,3K damage.

Recount screenshot incoming as soon as I get home

Overall damage of the night
I had a bit of a fight with one of our other top melee dps'ers. A Death Knight, which actually use to end above me on the meter. But this time I got him. Ended 4th on the meter for the whole night. As the highest melee dps'er. Very close to 4K. Which I guess will be my next goal. Died on Gluth, which ofc wasent very pro. So that can be better. So My next goal is a 4K overall damage during a raiding night in Naxx.

Recount screenshot incoming as soon as I get home

A few Great upgrades
Have been after a few upgrades lately. A new pair of bracers, gloves and the T7.5 Head piece. As that would more or less make my set complete. Only with a few minor upgrades to go then.
So what did I get last night. My first upgrade was a neck, Fool's trial. Replaced my emblem bought neck. Nice upgrade.
Next was on Patchwerk, he made my night. Crude Discolored Battlegrips. Yes, thank you. As those would mean I could replace my hero gloves, as soon as I got my hands on my t7.5 helm. I really like the 4 set bonus, so would like to keep that.
Kel'thuzad was the next in line, near the end of the night. He went down and there it was smiling at me, the T7.5 helm. Actually first time I have seen it, even though I have downed him several times now. I didnt have enormous amounts of dkp left. After getting the neck and gloves. But went all in, all I had left.... waiting for the Loot master to count down... 3..... 2...... 1......
Impadin for 208 dkp..... wohoo.... :)

So I could get my ass to Dalaran to pick up the head, Valorous Redemption Helm. Gem and enchant it, and use the gloves right away. Also got enough valor emblems to buy the bracers there, Wristbands of the Sentinel Huntress. So the night ended really well. With new neck, gloves, helm and bracers.

Working on the Nobles Deck atm. Im only a few cards down now. 8,5 and 2 to go. So should be able to pick up that nice trinket at the next fairy time.

Its Sartharion+3 tonight, im prepared.

Dualspecc good or bad ?

Ok, I have a confession to make. I have a fetish, which I have had for a good deal of time now. Since I first heard of it. Dualspecc. I just cant get my hands down on this one. I love the idea, I love the concept, I just cant wait to get it. There is now a Q&A on the official wow homepage, which get a lot of details out. I will come with my opinion on some of the questions answered. WARNING!!! Most of the opinions is just me saying how good its gonna be.

Nethaera: Why are we allowing players to dual spec after all this time?
Ghostcrawler: We really felt like this was a great way to increase the flexibility available to players and encourage them to take part in more aspects of the game. To use just one example, some players like to participate in both raids and Arenas, which is awesome behavior that we want to promote. But, there are some talents which are more useful in one part of the game than another. Currently, players have to pay respec costs and go through the process of setting up the desired talent spec and action bars whenever they switch.
Impadin: How much win is this ? Its brilliant. One thing that have bugged me for some time, is that my main have loads of good gear for his offspec. But it hardly gets into use, as it has been so complex to change specc and such. And not to mention after the glyphs have arrived. Some of em is so important, that a re-glyph was have to be done as well. I don’t like to be in a specc, where I cant be my full use. No half solutions. This is now made so much smoother. Not to think of when you want a instance run, and missing the last tank or healer. As im a paladin, I can be main dps specc. But dualspecc one of those, to help out. I don’t care to much about pvp, so 2xPVE specc for me is gonna be so good.
Ghostcrawler: The new system makes this a much more logical process, saving on time and cost and allowing players to easily move from one aspect of the game to another.
Impadin: Thats right, so well spoken.

Nethaera: Who will be able to use it?
Ghostcrawler: Players who have reached the maximum level will be able to set up dual specs.
Impadin: I hope they will reconsider this one. As atm the hardest time to get into instances is while levelling. As ofc the amount of people on the 10-78 level is smaller than the 78-80 part. So really hope they will reconsider here.
Nethaera: Why do players need to be max level in order to do this?
Ghostcrawler: We didn’t want to burden lower-level players with extra complexity as they’re working to level up and learn their class. But if the feature proves popular we might consider expanding it.
Impadin: This makes alot of sense, but what about you get dualspecc, when you have your first character on 80. And then its avaible to all your characters, also while levelling. Then its not complex for new people. But you have the edge of knowledge to be able to use it on an alt as well ?

Nethaera: How do you switch between specs?
Ghostcrawler: Players will be able to switch between their talent specs by visiting any Lexicon of Power provided they’ve paid for the ability to have a secondary spec. Lexicons of Power will be available in major cities, and inscribers will also be able to create a new item that summons one. Anyone can purchase this item, but it requires a ritual of several players to summon it for use by the party. It’s similar to a repair bot in that it will exist in the world for a short duration. It’s important to keep in mind that you will not be able to switch specs while in combat or Arenas. While you won’t be able to switch your spec without the Lexicon, you will still be able to look at your secondary spec whenever you want to.
Impadin: Interesting. Will be carrying those around like I have my bots, always minimum a stack of 5. Good thing as well, is that these will be a good money maker for inscriptionists as well. Yes, I have one ofc… J

Nethaera: Will solo players have the ability to switch their specs outside of the cities or will they still need to visit a Lexicon of Power?
Ghostcrawler: Solo players will still need to go into the city to visit the Lexicon of Power to switch their talent spec or will need to get together with other players to summon one in.
Impadin: Cant have it all. I think its fine like this.

Nethaera: Will you be able to switch gear easily to match your spec?
Ghostcrawler: At the same time we implement dual specs, we will also be setting up a gear system. The feature is called “Gear Manager.” It can also be used to just swap weapons or trinkets or put on that tuxedo to strut around town. It will not automatically switch your gear when you change your talent spec, but it will allow for an easy gear change between them. The feature may not be fully functional immediately in the PTR, but we’ll have more information to share about it before too much longer.
Impadin: Built in feature, which should have been into the game long ago. Great news, this feature have been a must have for many classes in a long time. Smooth to finally get that into the game as well.

Nethaera: Will you be able to change your Glyphs as well?
Ghostcrawler: Glyphs will be tied to each talent spec so that if you switch between them, so too will the Glyphs. You’ll notice the UI will have changed a little bit so that the Glyph panes show up alongside the Talent panes now that they are associated.
Impadin: As said higher up, this have been one of the things I have disliked about glyphs. Respeccing have not done all to change from Ret to holy forexample. This is done now. Good work, Blizzard.

Nethaera: What about hotbars? Will players be able to save them for the talent spec they’re running?
Ghostcrawler: Yes, you will be able to save hotbars and use them with your talent specs. It just saves your bars at the same time as it saves the glyphs and talents. If you want to switch to your other action bar, you will need to change specs.
Impadin: a feature which hopefully gonna be bug free. As that will really make or break some of the success imo. As im a big addon user, I just hope the Bartender people is on there toes and get that addon upgraded asap.

Nethaera: Is there a way for players to choose their talents without them being saved? Currently, once you spend your talent point, it’s spent unless you pay the respec cost again.
Ghostcrawler: With the dual spec feature, we are going to allow players who respec to configure all their talents before they get saved. They will be able to allocate the points, then choose if they want to use that as their spec, rather than needing to carefully diagram out their talents ahead of time. This will allow players a little more freedom when deciding on the talents they want to pick and avoid costly mistakes.
Impadin: This is also great news. How many dosent go to wowhead or the official wow page, to set the talents. Then back into game to set em one by one, with the ALT+tab’ing in and out of game. Well, I do. Thats not needed anymore. Another good feature.

Nethaera: Will players be confined to only setting up two specs?
Ghostcrawler: We will be launching the feature with just two specs, but depending on how we feel it works out, we might consider additional specs in the future.
Impadin: Interesting Paladins, with triple-specc. Talk of jack of the box. Im more than happy with dual specc, but ofc triple specc, will be taken with a smile as well. Hybrid classes ftw.

This is not the full article, you can find the full article by following this link. As you can read im very happy about this feature. And really looking forward to it ingame. I really have a hard time being negative over this one. Ofc the implementation is gonna be bug free, or close to. I hope Blizzard have taken the last patch mistakes up to consideration. And when 3.1 is hitting the servers, we are back on good old Blizzard standard. We all know you can do it, lets see you work your magic.

Sigh.....

Im really having some of a down period with wow. Im in that phase where you log on, and actually dont wanna play much. Just logging on because, well thats what I use to do... sigh....

I have tried to work on my tank gear for my paladin, as that is the dualspecc im aiming for, Ret/Prot. I have also tryed to work on getting some more chars up in level. My warrior got another level, so he is now 76. And worked some levels into my priest which is now, 69.

But damn, I have a hard time leveling in Northrend. It seems even more dull to me, the second time around than outland did. Which I cant really figure out why ? Am I getting tired of the game ?

Have a few more post's in the making, and some more as ideas in my head. But cant seem to find the energy to make em, to publish stage. Ohh, well. Hopefully I will get the spark back. Not even making money on the AH, appeals to me atm.

Our nemesis is down !

Just a quick update. Im home from vacation. Been riding some really nice offpiste, forest slopes in norway the past week on my snowboard.
But back home now. My first night home, we ventured once again into The Eye of Eternity. To once again try to defeat our nemesis, Malygos on Heroic. The first 3 try's we got him to 6-8%. So we where all certain we would nail him this time. And 4th time was our lucky time. With 40 seconds left on the enrage timer, and actually a bad phase 1. (Missed the 2 last sparks in the end of phase 1.) He nail the ground, vanished into oblivion.

While I have been away, my guild have downed Satharion with 2 drakes up as well. So its Satharion with 3 drakes up now for us. And then all is cleared in the current content.

Will end with an Congratulation to my guild, Epiphany for great work, lets get the last gear out of the instances. So we are ready for Ulduar.