Trying to get back in the flow.

[Tyval]

Hey all,

Have taken about a 6month break from wow, Have gotten the urge to play again but seems lots of changes since I have played last.

I've been reading trying to figure out all the changes with the 4.0.1 patch.

My team was

Tank: Paladin
Healer: Disc priest
DPS: Arcane mage
DPS: elemental Shaman
DPS: elemental Shaman.

Used Inner Space and ISBoxer. (I think that was what it was called, guess I will need to subcribe again ...)

I wasn't great at MBoxing, but had cleared all the old heroics but the Oculus and was working on the newer ones.

It seems Disc priest might require a bit more work (using smite to trigger heals etc.) so curious if I should look into holy spec.

Pali seems changed quite a bit as well , but i had always used a mix of spam one key , but also would often control all the attacks so figure I can adapt with that. Though I guess AoE aggro will be more of an issue..

Haven't checked into the mage/shaman yet, but figure rotation might be different.

My plan is to play each a bit solo to learn the changes and maybe swap macros/keys.

I also read that click macros are no more? Don't think that will impact me too much as I hadn't used many.. as I was just learning how to fine tune things.

Am I missing any other major changes?

Any thing I should look out for, any tips or links of things to read would be much appreciated.

Thanks!

[Ualaa]

You can heal, Disc or Holy.
It is still a preference call.

Everyone has new talents.
Rotations are a tad different, depending on the class.

Glyphs are different, in that once you learn them, you know them forever.
And there is vendor sold dust, to un-scribe a glyph which can then be replaced by any glyph you have learnt.
They are now Prime (3), Major (3) and Minor (3).

[Tyval]

Nice to see you are still around Ualaa!

I'm feeling very old with how much I seem to have forgotten.

Think i got most my addons upgraded, Though I may still have something messed up as I upgraded Jamba but getting errors, not sure what is going on there. so will just disable it for now. Also seems my ISBoxer addon is out of date, but can't remember if I used that with Innerspace or not. I vow to write more down this time around , at least I remembered my account info to log in the game :).

Hopefully it will start to come back as I start playing again hehe.

[Ualaa]

If you export (from the File menu, in the IS Boxer Toolkit), it will update the addon.
The IS Boxer addon, is purely to translate what you do in the toolkit, into a format warcraft can use.

Quite a few addons have broken, and are not being updated.
Or are taking a while to update.
The latest Jamba should be working fine now.

[Tyval]

Thanks!

Ya, it seemed like my Addons were a mess, and I couldn't remember which ones I used, and had all sorts of dependency errors.

So more or less started over.

Can't remember all the must haves, but figure they will come to me.

Starting with
Healbot,
DBM
Atlas

and now i'm in game I realize I miss titan panel.

I had Pitbull installed and I think it was for Multi-boxing, but can't for the life of me remember what part I used. I seem to remember only enabling a small part of the functionality...

[Ualaa]

I was using Pitbull 3.x, but opted for Shadowed Unit Frames as I could not figure out how to display everything I wanted with Pitbull 4.x.

Pretty sure Titanpanel is still around. Was using Fubar, which isn't being maintained, so decided to go with Chocolate Bar, and a bunch of plug ins (LDB, or something similar, which basically plug into any number of bar like addons). Chocolate Bar was the closest to Fubar, of the ones I checked out.

I really like Auction Profit Master, Dot Timer, Grid/GridCustomLayouts/Clique, Mapster, Move Anything, and Postal.
But there are a lot of similar addons.

[Tyval]

Things are starting to come back.

I got my priest all situated and ran a few instances as a healer. I was pretty rusty, but everyone was over-geared so much it didn't really matter.

Tonight I'll get my pali going and respec'd and hopefully be Mboxing by the weekend :).

I think I remember why I was using Pibull. I think I had enabled part so I could casting bars for all party members. Would that be a pitbull thing? Just dawned on em this morning.

I'll definitely write everything down I use and need this time through hehe. I'm hoping the innerspace etc. will be as simple as just resubscribing (maybe updating) and all my old settings will work.

Tyval

[Ualaa]

Any of the unit frame addons should get you the option of Party Member's Targets and Party Cast Bars.
That lets you know what the slaves are targeting.
And that they are casting.

Dungeon Finder is relatively new.
If your group has a class which could spec as a tank, a different toon whose class could spec as a healer, and three other toons, you can queue for level appropriate dungeons as a group.
If you have less then five toons, you can still queue and get a random person/people to join you.
So dungeons are a leveling tool now.

Battlegrounds get you experience, based on objectives completed and winning.
The weekend battleground, is probably the place to be, if you want a change of pace.
You can level entirely in BG's, if you want, although your factions win percentage might make this a good or poor choice.

Not sure if you know about Click to Move and Interact With Target.
The first is under mouse options.
The second is a warcraft keybind.
The combination opens up melee teams, or at least makes them much easier to play or add a melee toon to a mixed team.

[Tyval]

Thanks Ualaa,

Last time I played the Dungeon finder was there, love it.

Curious about a couple of other new things, Reforging, I saw some threads talking about this but wasn't sure if they were talking beta or it was with the 4.0.1 patch.

Also was trying to read up on various changes to classes and which spells, cast orders/ priority and such, but it seems the site I use to go to isn't super active anymore (Allakhazam).

Any site you recommend that has decent class forums?

Thanks!

[Ualaa]

Have not checked out maximumdps in a while, but have used that in the past.
Elitistjerks is always a good site.

This site has a lot of macros for each class/role; it is my primary resource.

As far as glyphs, enchants or talents, I like talentchic.



For the classes I care about, Mastery seems to be the stat to reforge into.

[Tyval]

Thanks,

I'll check those out.

I got my team all re-talented (not perfect i'm sure but good enough), and played each one a bit to remember how I did things.

Tonight, the final few steps,

resub so I can use innerspace
Get my macro's and bars situated.
Get the ISBoxer addon installed (which from what you said should be pretty easy)
Try and run some instances.

I figured I wouldn't worry about optimal rotations right now, but more getting the team going, and can fine tune once I'm back playing.

[Tyval]

Well,

Got innerspace going again, and all my old config stuff was there so that went well.

Was up and going with my team. Trying to remember how things worked.

Main thing I noticed though is game is unplayable it is laggy/hitchy. Never had a problem before so assume something else is different. Check the profile mgr and all the cores (4) are max, and seem to be at about 4gig (which I have ) but don't remember it being so high.

Guess I will check the video settings and see if those are different.

So getting close anyway hehe.

[Tyval]

Seem to be stuck.

I think I have the performance good enough, though not sure why it isn't what it use to be.

Everything seems to be working with the exception of follow.

My priest won't follow anyone, but the other 4 will follow whomever is the leader/master including the priest,.

I haven't changed anything that i can think of, am not sure where to even look.

commands on the action bars are going through to everyone (including the priest)

(This is using the ISBoxer follow command)

Anyone have any thoughts on this?

edit: I played around a bit more and seems there might be an issue with my priest having a target. I tried some another scenario with my pali leading /picking a target.

Hit a key so all would cast a spell, all do but the priest ,and looks like the priest is getting a no-target /invalid target message. Not really sure what is going on, or why the priest would not be working when everyone else is, (and I haven't changed any isboxer settings since starting back up).

Edit again :)

Ok, I'm a dork. on a hunch checked my addons for Tyvus and the ISBoxer addon was disabled. Turned that on , and follow etc. is now working!

[Mooni]

Just gonna share some of my experience on this matter.
SPECS:
HOLY PRIEST: I've got a similar team. I went with holy priest. I haven't tried discipline since 2.0 (and I thought it was awesome then... they've only gotten better) but I went with holy because they seem the more ideally suited for hands-off group healing.
ARCANE MAGE: Arcane mages are funny; they just need to spam Arcane Blast (http://www.wowhead.com/spell=30451) to be effective. This is really conducive to multiboxing since it's pretty boring to play one solo. Yes you can mix arcane missiles (http://www.wowhead.com/spell=5143) and arcane blast (http://www.wowhead.com/spell=30451) in there to save mana, but not really necessary when you're plowing through instances. Also, they have a talent that applies "SLOW" (http://www.wowhead.com/spell=31589) to any enemy that Arcane Blast hits, if that enemy doesn't already have SLOW (http://www.wowhead.com/spell=31589) on them. So in the unlikely event they pull aggro, it's still really easy to fix since the thing they blew threat on is moving at 40% top speed.
PALLY TANK: Still the best hands-off tank there is. Yeah they're capable of far more if you micromanage them but they handle macro just fine.
ELEMENTAL SHAMAN: These have gotten a little needier than they were before, with lava surge procs and such, but between specs and glyphs they still don't require much micro. We just need a way to set up a priority, like the /click system used to. I recommend multiple keys.

MACROS:
Overview: Instead of spamming 1 key for steamrolling, I do 2 or 3 keys. Naturally they're right next to each other and since you only have to hit them once per GCD, you're not really wasting your carpal tunnel allowance. Let's say I use buttons 1, 2 and 3.(after removing Autoattack from button one of course. How DARE blizzard make us think you have to hit a button to attack??!!?!!) Let's also say that '3' is the key I hit the most and I could probably get through an entire instance only using this key. I'll refer to this from now on as "SPAM KEY"

HOLY PRIEST: While I have keys mapped to the numpad 1-6 that heal group members, I've got another that I spam constantly on the tank. That goes like this:
/stopmacro [channeling]
/castsequence [target=TankNameGoesHereLulz] reset=15 Power Word: Shield, Renew, Prayer of Mending, flash heal, heal, prayer of HEALING, heal, prayer of healing, heal, prayer of healing, heal, prayer of mending, heal,

It takes a few minutes to run out of mana on that rotation. On another of the keys I have chakra mapped. I don't care what chakra procs on, just that it procs on something while it's up. Therefore my priest requires 2 keys.

Another cute trick with this one is you could make the target=focustarget, and if your tank is your focus and targets an enemy, you're just gonna magically heal the tank anyway. If you set your focus to an enemy (I do on Lady Deathwhisper and Saurfang and other bosses who insist on being taunted every couple stacks) you are now the 2nd laziest healer in history.

ARCANE MAGE: 3 keys in play. 1 just does arcane blast over and over and over and over (I did have to say that at least 4x) on the tank's target.
#showtooltip arcane blast
/use 13
/use 14
/assist focus
/stopmacro [channeling]
/castsequence reset=8 Arcane Blast, Arcane Blast,

^^^Hm, that one needs work. I guess when I wrote it I had no haste, but Arcane Blast (http://www.wowhead.com/spell=30451) is down to like 2.1 seconds per cast now. No wonder she never runs out of mana even though her DPS is high as anyone else in the group (and she's still level 76)

Macro for key #1 (key #1 is my fight-ender, like HAmmer of Wrath (http://www.wowhead.com/spell=24275)):
#showtooltip
/stopmacro [channeling]
/castsequence reset=5 arcane barrage, fire blast, ice lance

That's pretty useful for prancing around in PvP alone, too.

On another key I've added arcane missiles (http://www.wowhead.com/spell=5143). Since my other macros include the /stopmacro [channeling], they won't go if arcane missiles is going. Since the other macros also have /assist focus, the missiles will already be locked on the enemy I'm fighting anyway. Who cares if they target an enemy with 1% life left? They're free.

ELEMENTAL SHAMAN:
I am far from optimizing this one, but she gets 3-4k DPS in instances and 4-5k in raids with this setup. Yeah I know that's pathetic, but it's good enough for ilvl232 content.
SPAM MACRO:
#showtooltip
/cast Elemental Mastery
/use 13
/use 14
/castsequence [target=focustarget] reset=combat !Flame Shock, Lava Burst,Lightning Bolt, Lightning Bolt,Lightning Bolt,Lightning Bolt, earth shock, lightning bolt

Other macro #1: Chain Lightning (http://www.wowhead.com/spell=421). That's all. I don't have it set to a specific target or mixed into the normal DPS or anything. Why? I guess too many bad memories of EM (http://www.wowhead.com/spell=16166)/LO (http://www.wowhead.com/spell=77222) procs back when I was rollin 4 shamans and a tank, and watched the shamans die one after another before I could hit taunt. So I only personally want it firing off if I consciously hit my "ASS FOCUS" macro or tab target the nearest thingy. You can do whatever you want with it though; I've just added it onto the same key as my paladin's consecration, my hunter's multishot, etc.
Other Macro #2: Earth Shock (http://www.wowhead.com/spell=8042). When Fulmination (http://www.wowhead.com/spell=88766)gets my Lightning Shield (http://www.wowhead.com/spell=324) up to 9 stacks and the macro isn't taking care of them right away, I hit this button. That's like a free 10k damage. It's also linked to the mage's instant rotation and the paladin's Hammer of Wrath and the hunter's Kill Shot, etc.

PALADIN: My pride and joy. I love her so much, I actually let her do achievements.
SPAM MACRO:
#showtooltip
/castsequence [modifier: alt] cleanse; reset=10\combat Hammer of the Righteous, judgement, word of glory, Hammer of the Righteous, avenger's shield,Hammer of the Righteous, Hammer of the Righteous, shield of the righteous, holy wrath

Yes I am healing myself. I'm doing so because Word of Glory (http://www.wowhead.com/spell=85673) adds a lot of threat as it stands now, more than Shield of the Righteous (http://www.wowhead.com/spell=53600). It also adds Holy Shield (http://www.wowhead.com/spell=20925) proc, just like shield of the righteous (http://www.wowhead.com/spell=53600) does. The difference is shield of the righteous requires stacks, but Word of Glory does not increase exponentially; it's just additive. So Word of Glory with 1 stack of holy power vs Word of Glory with 3 stacks of holy power doesn't mean you're losing anything per se.
Also when you hit level 81 you are going to replace one of those Shield of Righteousness or Word of Glory hits with Inquisition (http://www.wowhead.com/spell=84963).
Other keys I hit before the macro:
Key #1: Hammer of Wrath. (http://www.wowhead.com/spell=24275)
Key #2: Consecration. (http://www.wowhead.com/spell=26573)

Incidentally, there's a single-target version of the above too: Just copy the macro but replace all Hammer of the Righteous (http://www.wowhead.com/spell=53595)with Crusader Strike (http://www.wowhead.com/spell=35395). It's more damage against a single target (i.e. Sindragosa)

[Mooni]

Glyphs:
Okay I'm gonna be honest here: I was multiboxing the holy priest and elemental shaman in ICC the other day. They needed a 9th person, my priest is in another guild, and let's just keep that between you and me. But when I got done, I realized I was missing 12 gems in the priest and 9 in the shaman. Also, I saw that my shaman was at 28% chance to hit due to old pre-4.0 gems.

But I can tell you that on my paladin I've got
PRIME GLYPHS: Glyph of Seal of Truth (http://www.wowhead.com/item=43869) 'cuz you're going to be using it anyway and might as well enjoy the expertise. Glyph of Hammer of the Righteous (http://www.wowhead.com/item=45742) since you are an AoE tank. Glyph of Crusader Strike (http://www.wowhead.com/spell=57024)for raid bosses. Then what you do next depends on your spec. If you do that 2nd tree of holy that increases healing by healing when you heal healy-heals (http://www.wowhead.com/spell=20140) then you are going to want to glyph in Word of Glory. Congratulations, you're a WoGger. (that's probably a racial slur in some weird place like London and I apologize if you are offended by the fact that I don't care)

Major glyphs: I went with Consecration, (http://www.wowhead.com/item=41099) Divine Plea (http://www.wowhead.com/item=45745) and Holy Wrath. (http://www.wowhead.com/item=43867) (The last one since the doomsday cult I joined said something about black dragons and elementals tearing the earth asunder and cleaving it in twain. I know it's crazy and nothing like that would ever happen on Azeroth, but I had nothing else to put in there)

Minor glyphs: Blessing of Kings (http://www.wowhead.com/item=43365), Lay on Hands (http://www.wowhead.com/item=43367) and Truth (http://www.wowhead.com/item=43368). The only one that's worth the paper it's printed on is Lay on Hands, because in a raid when the healer desperately needs mana and has already been innervated etc you can drop this on them and be the BEST PALADIN EVER


Let me wrap this up, without fancy schmancy links about glyphs. (glyphs, schmyphs. That's what I always say)
Shaman: Prime, I'd go with Flame Shock, Lava Burst and Lightning Bolt. Mayyyybe Glyph of Shocking (http://www.wowhead.com/item=41526)since I'm so fond of shocks. Major, I'd go with Chain Lightning, Fire Nova and Thunder. We're here to deal damage, not impress people with our survivability. Minor, Astral Recall/Water Walking/Water Breathing. Minors aren't designed to increase DPS for anyone, so I'm going with the swiss army knife concept, instead of the cute ghost wolf.
Mage: Prime, obviously Arcane blast (http://www.wowhead.com/item=44955). ZOMG. Now your 4-stack Arcane Blast is doing 72% bonus damage instead of 60%. 2nd prime is Mage Armor (http://www.wowhead.com/item=42749) because that's such an important part of arcane magery. You'll always have mage armor up and you spend a lot of time casting. There is no 3rd prime option for Arcane MAges right now so I'm going with ice lance, since I sometimes use that in between real spells. Not much by way of Major Glyphs for arcane mages, either. You can do Arcane Barrage (4% more damage from your instant spell), arcane missiles (increased crit), then maybe mirror image (which seems to be cosmetic/aesthetic only) maybe evocation (free heal) maybe polymorph (CC is supposed to be important... in the WORLD of TOMORROW).
Minor: Armors, Conjuring and Slow Fall. The others are 2 polymorph face-slaps and 1 mana cost redux on the buff.
El priesto: As a holy priest, I'd go with primes of Power Word: Shield (http://www.wowhead.com/item=42408), Prayer of Healing (http://www.wowhead.com/item=42409), and Renew (http://www.wowhead.com/item=42411). I don't use lightwell or guardian spirit much, like may have used guardian spirit twice and lightwell never, so there it is). Majors: Circle of Healing, Holy Nova (I spam this as part of the Oh Shit macro I haven't told you about) and Spirit of Redemption (which I'm not specced into right now but will be again soon). Minors: Levitate, Shadow Protection and Shadowfiend or Fortitude. Whichever one you actually use.

Weee that was fun, gotta get back to getting my mage to 80. Good luck.

[Tyval]

Thanks for the tips Mooni,

You have given me some things to try and tweak with my settings.

Made it through a couple heroics tonight, things are starting to come back.

Cleared Gundrak and Drak.

Only major issue I had was with King Dred, Totally splatted my pali 3 times.

One time I was stupid with the fear and didn't get my team reorganized.
Another time I seemed to get a lot of adds, and just was getting the crap beat of me. Looking at the log it seemed the adds were hitting for 5k at times. Might be I had one behind me...
3rd time same thing
4th time finally got it. Though I don't think I got more than an 1 add which helped.

Haven't had that much trouble with that fight since the 1st time I was trying it...

My 2 shaman seem to be a bit low on dps, so I'll tweak things a bit as you have mentioned... Arcane mage seems to be tearing things up.

But on the bright side, things are coming back, and I'm sucking less :)

Thanks all for your help/tips.

James

[Ualaa]

Regarding:

#showtooltip arcane blast
/use 13
/use 14
/assist focus
/stopmacro [channeling]
/castsequence reset=8 Arcane Blast, Arcane Blast,




#Showtooltip Arcane Blast
/use 13
/use 14
/assist Focus
/stopmacro [channneling]
/cast Arcane Blast


How is the first macro different from the second?
Or even /cast [target=FocusTarget] Arcane Blast?

[Mooni]

Tyval- thanks for writing back!
Ualaa- Um.... I don't know. I think what I'm looking at is one of those hastily re-written macros that I forget what it was in the first place. I thought about that after I posted

:confused:. o O (WTF is up with that macro?)

I think it was because originally I was trying to save mana so I had a castsequence reset=8 of arcane blast, arcane blast, arcane barrage, arcane missiles. That way if the missiles procd they would go off, if not the macro would just reset.
Yes the second one makes infinitely more sense. But with hundreds of macros, statistically there's gotta be one that's left behind, neglected, un-needed by anyone and forgotten by everyone.

[Ualaa]

If its under the character limit, they do the same thing.
Just looked a little odd to me.

[Tyval]

Finally starting to get in the flow of things. Been doing the easier heroics (gundrak, Nexus, Drak, Strathholme, violet hold) and figure it is time I give the harder ones a shot.

Right now my Shaman dps seems low. (lower than when I played months ago before the patch). But I'm not really doing anything to take advantage of Lava Burst cool-down resetting. Is there anything else special I should make sure to do post patch?. Right now I make sure flame shock is up, cast sequence is simple lavaburst, lighting bolt x3 or 4 (whatever guarantees that Lavaburst will be up ) I have tried to cast earth shock when I figure my lighting shield charges have gotten up to 9 (but mostly guess work) and not sure it is really doing much.

Also realized I don't understand Macros very well and had a few questions.

I saw this macro posted in another thread


/assist focus
/stopmacro [noharm] [dead]
/console Sound_EnableSFX 0
/use 13
/use 14
/cast hand of reckoning
/castsequence reset=combat hammer of the righteous, judgement, hammer of the righteous, word of glory
/cast avenger's shield
/cast holy wrath
/startattack
/console Sound_EnableSFX 1


I guess I'm confused about how fall through works in macros.

if the /use 13 is executed does control fall to next line or is that it for the macro ?

I am totally confused by the /cast below the cast sequence. I thought a /castsequence would be the last thing executed.

when will the /cast holy wrath be executed?

And as a side point why is he turning off sound?

Thanks much, I figure I better understand macros better than I do if I am to keep improving as a Multi-boxer!

[Ualaa]

The macro changes, as of the 4.0.1 patch...

It seems if you put a /cast beneath a /castsequence, the /cast Whatever will execute at every opportunity.
So a PvE shammy team (that doesn't need burst 4x/5x Lava Burst simultaneously) benefits from:

/castsequence Shock, Lightning, Chain, Lightning, Etc.
/cast Lava Burst

Which will cast Lava Burst at every available opportunity.
IE, as soon as it is available, every time.

[Tyval]

Thanks for the info.

That seems really handy, but doesn't that kind of go against what Blizzard has been trying to do making classes more interactive?

Do you think it will stay this way? or is it a an unintended bug? Hate to get dependent on something that is going away hehe.


Also,

/use 13 etc. Will clicking the macro once execute the use and fall down to the next line in the macro?

Guess it is time for me to go to the macro wikis and review!

[Ualaa]

I'm hoping it is intentional.
But think it is a bug.

Having spells auto cast, whenever they're available...
Kind of defeats the gains from removal of click castsequences.

If they remove this.
We move towards a button we spam most of the time.
And another that is pressed, every "x" clicks, which contains our cast-every-time-its-available type spells.