Too Many Annas

You have entered… The Twilight Zone…

4 Written by Anna on March 28, 2008 – 7:22 am

So, Feathermoon has had some, er, stability issues since 2.4. Major stability issues. And not just the “omg combat log lag” that everyone is dealing with, or the Shattered Sun lag.

We gear up, gather up, enter SSC and head towards Hydross. Some oddities go on, but nothing particularly abnormal for 2 days post patch. And then we fight Hydross. I died early in the fight when a transition went wonky. So I hit reincarnation, which is when the weirdness began…

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Group 2… no, Group 4! … no, Group 1!

3 Written by Anna on March 27, 2008 – 8:29 am

One of the things that frustrates me in a raid group is having a /readycheck, and after you push OK and configure your totems, groups change around again.

Now, I know, this sounds silly – but hear me out on this one. As a Shaman, I have two jobs. My raid role, and walking buffbot. No other class (that I know of) has to recast 4 group buffs every 2 minutes (if not sooner). Now I know shadow priests are doing their rotation, but that’s built into their damage. Shaman have to actually stop what they’re doing (damage or healing) to recast totems.

To facilitate this, I run a totem addon called YATA (yay Ace2) that gives me an easy row of 4 buttons that sit central on my screen. I can mouseover the buttons and get a little drop down menu of all the totems of that element as well, or I can just run right down those buttons… if I have a chance to set up the “primary” totems of the set before the fight. Now, it takes me all of about 30 seconds to set those up. No biggie right?

Not really. But if groups get switched, and then switched, and then switched again, it’s hard for me to keep tabs on just which totems I need to be dropping, especially on an imminent pull. A group with a pallytank, two hunters, and a feral druid gets VERY different totems than a group with a mage and two priests and a warlock. And if groups get switched after I’ve set up the totem bar, and I either don’t notice (because I didn’t get moved), or someone pulls before I have a chance to set up, I’m stuck with the 4 main totems on my bars for quick casting.

Can I mouseover and look and find the one I want if I need to use a different one? Yes. But that turns 5 seconds into 7-8 seconds (at least). And as a healer… frankly, I don’t usually have the time to spare.

So raid leaders, be kind to your shamans. If you’re moving them from group to group for different fights, that’s fine, just make sure that you give them a second to reset after the move, and that you don’t keep shuffling after the final readycheck. (Also, staying in one consistent group for trash pulls is also nice, but definitely not as big a deal).

((And those of you from TRI, just a disclaimer that I know last week was weird with different leadership and nublet aggro and such – so no worries! You guys that ran things did a great job; this is just one of those things that makes me twitchy! ))

WoW as an agent of Counterterrorism?

1 Written by Anna on March 26, 2008 – 8:54 am

So, the study of Warcraft as a miniature reality has happened before, when the Corrupted Blood bug caused what was essentially a controlled virtual epidemic. Scientists used the reactions of players and servers as a way to study how disease spreads – obviously taken with a grain of salt – and garnered some usable data based on what the players’ responses to a virtual Black Death had been.

In this case, though, I think you need more than a grain of salt. Maybe a shaker? Or a wheelbarrow?

Why? Because this time, rather than studying the effects of a disease on the players affected by it, they’re attempting to link such things as Corrupted Blood and the Baron Geddon “Bomb” effect to the players who are doing the exploding/infecting.

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2.4 (Resto) Shaman Changes

2 Written by Anna on March 25, 2008 – 9:53 am

A look at some of the changes that I find particularly nummy as a Resto shaman. Read the rest of this entry »