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Git along, li'l dogies
Time for a little WoW blog roundup, cowpokes! Whoopie-ti-yi-yo!Making gold with second account | Full Time WoW AddictWith Blizzard's new refer-a-friend incentive, you might be thinking about opening a second account to get those XP benefits. Even better, Examino at Full Time WoW Addict shows you how to earn your raiding gold with some light multiboxing. No Wrath spoilers!Spellpower and You: Gearing in WotLK | Banana ShouldersSiha at Banana Shoulders (best blog name ever!) compares theories to practice in Wrath's current Paladin spellpower changes.Achievements and why they suck | Yet Another Warlock NerfSome people think the achievements system coming in Wrath is awesome sauce. Horns at Yet Another Warlock Nerf vigorously disagrees.Three more blog dogies after the break...
Addon Spotlight: DrDamage
You all know a World of Warcraft number cruncher. You may, in fact, be that person, the one who can spout of stats about your class or game mechanics. Although, in the beginning, I rolled my eyes at people who pondered the math of the game, today finds me holding a deep respect for you number junkies. You've all helped many of us become uncrushable, uncrittable and even understand how +spell damage and +healing work. If you don't have someone around to crunch numbers, try recruiting DrDamage. Some World of Warcraft stats-fiends may not like this addon, as there are people who disagree with the numbers it produces. I would have to say that its done well for me thus far. (I rarely have the inclination to work the numbers myself.)Enough rambling, let's talk about what DrDamage does. This addon does all of your in-game theorycrafting for you. It will work the actual values for your damage, +spell damage and +healing based on your gear and talents. It will display the average damage or healing done by a spell on the actionbar. Come on back and we'll look at little more closely at what DrDamage does.
Some remarks on drop rates
I'm going to keep this relatively short, because a full discussion of probability could fill several college semesters. However, there is one misconception that some WoW players have that has been bugging me lately. Let's say you read that Shattered Sun Supplies have a 10% chance to contain a Badge of Justice, and, excited, you go out and do enough dailies get 10 Shattered Sun Supplies. You open them all and find not a single Badge, or you find five badges. Do either of these outcomes mean the 10% drop rate is wrong? No! They do not! All a 10% drop rate means is that for each Supplies, there is a 10% chance that it contains a Badge. Random events have no memory, so no matter how many badges you get in the first nine Supplies, your chance to get a Badge in the tenth Supplies is still 10%. The traditional analogy is that if you flip a coin nine times and get heads each time, the chance of getting heads on the next flip is still 50%. Now it is true that you will probably get a Badge in ten Supplies if the drop rate is 10%. If you're interested in how likely it is, here's the calculation to do. The chance of not getting a Badge in one Supplies is (100% - 10%) = 90%, or 0.9. Raise that to the tenth power, for your ten independent Supplies-opening events, and you get the chance of, ten times out of ten, not getting a Badge: 0.9^10 = 0.349, about 35%. So in fact, out of ten Supplies, you will get a badge (100% - 35%) = 65% of the time, about two thirds. TL;DR version: A drop rate is a probability, not a guarantee.
PTR Notes: How much extra quest XP?
One of the features of patch 2.3 that I'm very much anticipating is the hastened leveling curve for characters between level 20 and 60. In addition to the XP required per level being reduced by 20%, loot from leveling dungeons improving, and "many" outdoor elites being made non-elite (not including Hogger, thankfully), the patch notes list that "the amount of experience granted by quests has been increased between levels 30 and 60". Which is nice, but the math lover in me wants (nay, demands) to know precisely how much the increase is.Fortunately, Tekkub is on it. He's compiling a spreadsheet with quest XP changes over at Google Docs, and he needs your help to collect more data. If you want to help, you'll need a character on the PTR in the affected level range (30–60), and you'll need to go do some quests and note down how much XP you get from them. Then just email Tekkub (his email address is on the spreadsheet) with your data, and the collective information base of the WoW population will be increased! Ah, science. Personally I'm not seeing much of a pattern on the spreadsheet yet, but I'm sure there is one, and we will figure it eventually.
Spiritual Guidance: The spirit debate
Every Sunday, Eliah or Elizabeth will bring you their thoughts on the Priest class with Spiritual Guidance. Whether it's keeping your fellow players alive or melting their faces, you can read about it here!This week, we've got a special episode co-authored by your two Spiritual Guidance writers, Eliah Hecht and Elizabeth Harper. In the course of emails around the WoW Insider bullpen, we noticed that there were some differing perspectives on the utility of Blizzard's favorite Priest stat, Spirit. So we decided to sit down and hash it out the old-fashioned way: an IM debate. Both of our mains are priests in a similar situation. We're Holy-specced and raiding somewhere around the middle of Karazhan. So considering how similar are gameplay niches are, it's interesting to note the differences in our opinions. On with the show, and do let us know what your take is.Eliah Hecht: So. It's going to be a complicated issue, because you've got a lot of different kinds of priests to worry about...Holy vs Shadow, leveling vs raiding vs PvP...My take on it is that Spirit is paramount for all leveling specs, and for raiding holy priests, and not so much for the other spots on the grid.Elizabeth Harper: See, I'm of a couple of minds on it for leveling. On one hand, you get more benefit from less spirit at lower levels, so leveling, I think you get more out of it. But it's still an issue of practicality -- leveling up, i'll grab spirit if it happens to be on something I otherwise want. But the size of mana and health pools is still more important. (And if you have spirit tap, a little bit of spirit can go a long way)
One Boss Leaves: Jin'do vs. Moam wrap-up
The battle between Jin'do and Moam was our most closely contested battle to date -- with Moam emerging victorious by only a slim margin. You decided Moam would come out on top in this fight by a mere 26 votes! Your comments suggested that Jin'do's totems would be a challenge -- but that Moam's mana drains would overcome them in the end. So one fight is over -- but stay tuned, because our next fight is coming soon! (And for those of you keeping score at home, here are our current standings: though be warned, they can still be shuffled around.)
One Boss Leaves: Rajaxx vs. Mandokir wrap-up
Last week we considered a fight between General Rajaxx and Bloodlord Mandokir, and the results of the vote were quite clear: Bloodlord Mandokir emerged vitorious, and by a wide margin. As you can see by the vote results, it wasn't even a close fight: Of the people who commented on the battle, all seemed to think that Mandokir's ability to level up off of kills would render him completely unstoppable after he eliminated Rajaxx's army of minions. Those voting for Rajaxx felt that his Thunder Clap ability, which halves the health of anyone nearby, would manage to take Mandokir down anyway.So another battle is finished, leaving the overall standings as follows. And our next fight starts tonight -- so stay tuned!
Two Bosses Enter: Rajaxx vs. Mandokir
Two bosses enter... but only one gets to leave! We've made a list of 32 of the most interesting raid bosses in World of Warcraft and are going to pit them against each other, one at a time, until there's one ultimate victor remaining. And who gets to decide who wins? You, of course! Each of our winners will be decided by your votes.Interested yet? For this week's fight we're matching up Ahn'Qiraj's General Rajaxx (not to mention the General's many soldiers!) and Zul'Gurub's Bloodlord Mandokir. To find out a bit more about these two -- and for a chance to voice your own opinion -- keep reading!
Two Bosses Enter: Onyxia vs. Sapphiron
Two bosses enter... but only one gets to leave! In this feature of pure speculation and theorycrafting, we're going to talk about the major bosses found in the World of Warcraft and pit them against one another -- until at the end we have a single winner. From the hundreds of bosses in the game, we've picked 32 of the most interesting to match up in a series of fights -- where you get to decide the winner.And we're going to start out with a dragon battle for the ages: the black flight vs. the blue flight, the living vs. the undead, Onyxia vs. Sapphiron. For more information on these two bosses, speculation on what might happen if they ever met up in Azeroth, and a chance to vote for the winner, read on!
Attack tables and you
Hello! Math time again. Some of you may know how attack tables work, but many of you, I'm sure, don't. This post in the European official forums contains the clearest explanation of attack tables I've seen, and I'd advise anybody interested in the mathier side of the game to go check it out. Some parts of it are copied into this post, because they are excellent and not everyone can access the official forums. I am also indebted to the ever-excellent WoWWiki."What is an attack table," you ask? Why, it's the method by which WoW decides what's going to happen when a mob or player attacks another mob or player. Is the attack going to miss, be parried, crit, or what? As it turns out, there are seven possible outcomes of a melee attack (six if there are no mobs involved). They are:Miss Dodge Parry Glancing Blow (players against mobs only)Block Critical Hit Crushing Blow (mobs only) Regular Hit
Improved Divine Spirit by the numbers
Having just hit 70 on my priest this morning, my mind is on heal specs. I'll probably stay with my holy DPS spec for a little while for attunements and rep grinding and whatnot, but sooner or later I'm going to go healbot. I just know it. For my money, the big debate as far as healbot specs go right now is Improved Divine Spirit (IDS) -- that is, whether you'll be better off with 21/40/0 or 23/38/0 (builds are for illustration only; I haven't been able to figure out whether Holy Concentration is worth it or not). These builds differ by only two points: the first has no points in IDS and 5/5 Empowered Healing (EH), the second has 2/2 IDS and 3/5 EH. Anyway, I was researching the issue, and eventually made my way over to the worldofwar.net Priest forums, where theorycraft superstar Trepidation (aka Trep) crunched the numbers and came up with a very nice chart of how much more you'd get from EH vs. IDS for various heals and various values of +heal and spirit. EH always helps your Greater Heal and Flash Heal more than IDS does; the question is whether the boost IDS gives the rest of your group, as well as your other heals, gives it the edge. The charts are too long to repost here, but I encourage you to go check them out. However, for commonly-quoted early endgame values of +1000 heal and 500 spirit, here's the breakdown: Rank 1 Gheal: 1.74% Rank 7 Gheal: 1.10% Rank 7 Flash: 1.17% That is, EH will give you somewhere between 1–2% more than IDS will, for your Gheal and Flash. These numbers will go up as you get more +heal, and go down as you get more spirit. So does IDS help other casters in your group, and your other heals, by 2% or so? If so, it might make sense to get IDS. Otherwise, it seems that EH is a stronger choice.What has your experience been? Have any of you had a chance to test some pure healing priest builds yet? Another question I've been wondering about, as I alluded to above, is Holy Concentration. I like it in theory, but I'm having trouble freeing up three points for it. How has it been working out for you, if anyone has it?
AddOn Spotlight: RatingBuster
This one is nice and simple. You know those combat ratings that Blizz introduced in 2.0.1? Crit rating, hit rating, etc.? What RatingBuster does is translate those into percentages. This is harder than you may think, because the relationship between rating and percentage varies according to your level as well as the type of rating. RatingBuster does the math for you and makes your tooltips look like what you see in the screenshot. Specifically, it inserts the little percentages in parentheses by the spellcrit and spellhit ratings.
Warlock DPS calculator
Ybrith, of Rajaxx (Eu), has put together a lovely piece of theorycrafting apparatus. This warlock DPS calculator takes your stats and talent information, the length of the fights you're interested in, and a few strategy parameters, and comes up with your DPS over the length of the fight, as well as how fast you would be losing life. It seems to be geared towards the end-game, as it's based on level 70 spells and also not suited for calculating things like mana efficiency, which is important in leveling.Still, for a number-head like me this thing is amazing. I've learned that with the default stats (since I have no clue what a warlock's gear is like at 70), my current leveling build (41/20/0) would do 1035 DPS, whereas sample Destro builds I threw together get 1190 (0/21/40) or 1174 (21/0/40) DPS. It's interesting to me that Aff and Destro are so close; I don't think this would have been the case pre-BC.So, Warlocks in the crowd: what do you think? Does this thing look relatively accurate? And how do you stack up?
+Damage and healing: what do you mean "up to"?
+Damage is one of every offensive caster's favorite stats, and +healing likewise for healers. Items possessing +damage say something like "Equip: increases damage done by X spells and effects by up to N", where N is a number and X is one of the schools of magic: Fire, Frost, Nature, Shadow, Arcane, and Holy; +healing items say "...healing done by spells and effects..."; and +damage/healing items say "...damage and healing done by magical spells and effects..." (I'm not sure why only +damage/healing specifies that the spells have to be magical).Let me address one common misconception right of the bat: there is no such thing as simply +damage to all schools. The only items that affect all schools of magic are +damage/healing. This comes into play when people argue that a DPS healing class shouldn't get such an item, as they're not getting full use out of it since they can't heal (this argument is also commonly used to say a healing class shouldn't get the item, since they don't DPS much).
AddOn Spotlight: TheoryCraft
I'm always a fan of more data. The default interface only provides very basic information about your spells and abilities, and as the base abilities are modified more heavily by gear, it becomes impossible to determine what exactly your abilities are doing for you without the help of a calculator and several pages of notes. This is why I like the TheoryCraft mod that I ran across on Curse Gaming, which gives at-a-glance info on what all of my spells hit for right on my toolbar, as well as providing more detailed tooltip information. And, while I'm looking at it as a caster, it provides equal amounts of information for physical damage-dealers, giving an average damage per attack (and other statistics) based on equipped gear. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go back to switching out gear and staring at numbers...
