power-auras-classic
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Blood Pact: Useful addons for raiding warlocks
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill does actually have 100some addon folder things in her Addon Control Panel profile. Laugh all you want; her UI is spacious and pretty to play on. I've been asked several times from either new warlocks or old warlocks who came back to the game about what addons are out there to help a PvE warlock. Recently, it's been through Twitter, which isn't exactly the best place to explain how to get the most out of your UI. Gear is one important preparation for raiding, and I've set you up with most of those considerations. Knowing your class and spec is another, and I promise, I'll get to that. But a good buff to your spellcasting techniques is a well-done user interface, so let's talk about that.
Totem Talk: UI elements for elemental
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement, and restoration shaman. Josh Myers once only tackled the hard questions about enhancement but has recently expanded his sphere of responsibility to all shaman DPS specs. (And no, two-handed enhancement is still never coming back.) Discussing addons is a tricky business. On the one hand, Mat McCurley does his weekly Reader UI of the Week segment, which is a sure sign that some of WoW Insider's readership are fans of customized UIs. On the other, we're all aware from comments, forum posts, and blogs that there are players who find anything outside of the default Blizzard UI to be sacrilege, and that using addons detracts from the experience of playing the game. This is a post about which addons I feel are most beneficial to playing an elemental shaman. If you're a fan of totally customized UIs, these are the addons I think would help the most in improving your performance on an elemental shaman. If you're not a fan of addons or customizing your UI, that's cool, too. This just might not be the post for you, but I hope you read on and decide for yourself!
Totem Talk: Addons for elemental shaman
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Get some Fulmination with your Lightning Bolts! Sort the shocks from the flames with Totem Talk: Elemental, brought to you by Sarah Nichol, otherwise known as Pewter from The 'mental Shaman, co-host of the Obscurecast, and founding member of TotemSpot. How do I play WoW? With a few addons I've grown very fond of over the past few years. A UI is a highly personal thing, and I'm sure a few folks are going to raise an eyebrow at my choices. Addons and custom UIs are one of the reasons that Warcraft is so successful. For those of us who spend a lot of time interacting with the game, having control over the way information is presented and how we play is paramount. I base my UI around a few simple principles: Redundancy of information Clarity Accessibility Flexibility My machine is fairly old, so my UI is not as elegant and pretty as those of some others, but I do what works for me. I've not included convenience addons or BossMods because I wanted to focus on combat addons. A good elemental UI is all about tracking our fire totems, our buffs, and our various procs and cooldowns. The best method for this, in my opinion, is choosing appropriate addons for each bit of information. This means that various functions should be handled by different addons and even in some cases duplicated.
Totem Talk: How to use addons to perfect enhancement shaman priorities
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement, and restoration shaman. On Saturdays, Josh Myers tackles the hard questions about enhancement. Can we tank? Can we DPS with a two-hander? How does one shoot web? The answer to the first two is "no," and I have no idea about the third. I love priority systems, and that's the naked truth. I identify as an altaholic, having had seven out of 10 classes level capped by the end of Wrath of the Lich King and the other three all at varying stages of Northrend progression. While leveling up these characters, I almost always have the intent of either tanking or healing (provided I'm on a hybrid). I tell myself that this class will be the "one," the hybrid class I get to level cap where I'll resist the lure of playing DPS and finally have a queue time shorter than twice my age. It never works out. I'm addicted to DPS. Just last week, I made the mistake of respeccing my blood death knight tank to unholy DPS. Within a day, he went from 83 to 85 ... and started queuing for heroics as DPS. I have an unhealthy fascination with putting the hurt on bosses, and a lot of my draw to playing any DPS spec is mastering its priority system. Priority systems are awesome. They're the basic building blocks of proper DPS; there is nothing more pivotal or simple for maximizing your DPS as learning to manage your priority correctly. Some classes, like the 3.3.6 marksman hunter, have such mind-numbing priority systems that you wonder how people can bear playing them. Others, like the Wrath of the Lich King feral druid, had such complicated priority systems that good feral druids were as rare as a holographic Charizard card. Enhancement is normally considered to fall under the "hard" section of priority systems. With one proc based attack, a DoT that needs to be buffed before casting, two melee strikes, a pyromaniac stick that hates attacking your target, and a single-target shock spell for use when everything else is on cooldown, we have a lot to monitor. Luckily for us, addons exist. If you're struggling with perfecting your priority, here are some of the mods you should look for.
The Light and How to Swing It: Prot and ret paladin addons
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Please send screenshots as well as any comments to my email at gregg@wow.com. In recent news, yet another Sanctuary talent bug has been hotfixed. I'm really starting to get annoyed at this wonderful talent that keeps us crit-immune. This time, the issue was that it would de-talent itself for players under level 30 when they logged off, zoned, changed continents, etc. This should now be fixed, for those of you who've been leveling new tauren paladins as protection. As far as the column this week goes, we're talking about addons. From holy power tracking to gear swapping to buff reminders (like the one shown above), there are a lot of things that can make our day-to-day dungeon running a lot easier. These aren't the only addons for each solution (and I hope our commenters will point out any good ones I missed), but they're a few of the more popular, and each has its own features and limitations.
Blood Sport: Awesome arena addons and also ample alliteration
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Sport for arena enthusiasts and The Art of War(craft) for fans of battlegrounds and world PvP. Want to crush your enemies, see them driven before you and hear the lamentation of their women? C. Christian Moore, multiple rank 1 gladiator, examines the latest arena strategy, trends, compositions and more. Listening Music: Dead or Alive with "You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)." Long live the '80s. Today's column is about nifty arena addons. Changing up your PvP UI for the better is an awesome way to improve your awareness of what's going on. Having easy access to valuable information can often be the difference between a win and a loss. We'll be discussing the best addons to use for a variety of different aspects within the arena.
Totem Talk: Power Auras for restoration
Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration will show you how, brought to you by Joe Perez, otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and the For The Lore podcast Last week's discussion of Dual Wield restoration was a good follow up to our discussion of the official shaman talent preview. Everyone had lots of great opinions on the topic and there was some good speculation on other things the community would like to see happen as Cataclysm comes closer to being released. This week I would like to revisit a topic we covered briefly in part 2 of the restoration addon discussion, Power Auras Classic. If you remember last month Matthew McCurley did a fantastic write up in Addon Spotlight on this mod and earlier this month Rich Maloy did a great write up on basic power auras for enhancement shaman. So this week I would like to expand a little bit more about the usefulness of this addon in the hands of a healing shaman.
Addon Spotlight: Power Auras
Addon Spotlight focuses on the backbone of the WoW gameplay experience: the user interface. We'll look at everything from bags to bars, buttons to DPS meters and beyond -- your interface folder will never be the same! This week, I give in to demand and talk about Power Auras. The time has come. The granddaddy of notification addons is again at the forefront of Addon Spotlight, and for good reason. Power Auras comes with an ingrained passionate user base of people who swear by the addon. But why? Today, we take a look at the fervor behind Power Auras and some wonderful use cases, and we declare the winners of the TCG loot card raffle for a Tiny! and Slashdance card for two lucky winners. Speaking of the contest, thank you all for responding so positively to the Power Auras submission contest. I received so many amazing emails that ran the gamut of suggestions and use cases for Power Auras that it was incredibly difficult to choose who to feature in this spotlight.
The Light and How to Swing It: The low level tank part 4
With the Light as his strength, Gregg Reece of The Light and How to Swing It faces down the demons of the Burning Legion, the undead of the Scourge, and helps with the puppet shows at the Argent Ren Faire up in Icecrown. Here we are again with the final section on the low level paladin tanking guide. You can go back and read parts one, two, and three if you need to catch up. This final part deals with consumables, macros, and addons. As a dungeon runner, you don't have the high requirements usually associated with raids, but there are a couple things you'll want to keep an eye on. You'll want to keep reasonably buffed, have some useful macros to fall back on, and have some addons to help organize some of the more procedural steps. Let's take a look after the break.
Arcane Brilliance: 6 essential Mage add-ons for PvE
Welcome to another Arcane Brilliance, the weekly Mage column that celebrates everything Mageworthy and thinks Warlocks smell funny. I have a buddy who doesn't use addons. I know, I know. And before you ask: yes, he is a moron. It's a flaw I've learned to overlook during the years we've known each other. His rationale for not using addons seems to be a combination of mistrust for anything that isn't part of the game right out of the box and a misguided belief that addons somehow equate to a form of cheating. Now, I'll never convince him he's wrong--even though he clearly is--but I chalk that up to the fact that he is a moron. We both know and accept the fact of his moronitude, acknowledge that after 20 years of friendship, he probably isn't going to become any less infuriating, and move on to other topics. You see, addons are awesome. I frequently assert to anyone who cares to listen (earning me more than a few strange looks, believe you me) that believing addons are cheats simply because Blizzard didn't program them into the default UI is pretty much the same thing as considering indoor plumbing a cheat because God didn't program it into the Earth when he originally created it. Addons are the community's way of grafting functionality into the game that Blizzard should have included from the start, and that's simply how it is. And yes, I am indirectly rebuking deity for not providing mankind with toilets from the beginning. I mean, how does it make sense that we had to go thousands of years without the option of peeing indoors? That's just poor design. I fully expect to be struck down at any moment as an example to smart-asses everywhere. Disclaimer: I am in no way asserting that not using addons makes you a moron. I'm certain there are a great many of you out there who prefer not to use addons, and I'm sure you're by and large wonderful, fully functioning human beings. All I'm saying is that my buddy isn't one of those people. Also addons are awesome. That's all I'm saying. Ahem. The last time we discussed Mage addons, we focused on the PvP side of things. This week: PvE.
Addon Spotlight: Power Auras Classic
Addon Spotlight takes a look at the little bits of Lua and XML that make our interfaces special. From bar mods to unit frames and beyond, if it goes in your Addons folder, we'll cover it here.Power Auras Classic is, as the name might suggest, a powerful mod. It does something that you may not know you had a need for: displaying visuals on your screen based on various conditions. For instance, on my rogue, I have it set to display a big red blood drop in the left-center of the screen whenever I don't have Hunger for Blood up.It's incredibly flexible, and as is the case with most very flexible mods, it takes some work to get the most out of it. For each aura, you can set the position, size, color, and alpha of the texture you want displayed, what conditions you want it displayed under, how you want it to fade in and out, and probably more options I haven't gotten to playing around with yet.
