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Arcane Brilliance: Mistakes mages make
Welcome to another edition of Arcane Brilliance, the weekly mage column that would like to say to warlocks: Look... even when we're alone, we outnumber you. We belong to the best class in World of Warcraft. I know this because I have a checklist. Do you want to see it? Too bad, you're going to see it anyway: Access to enormous balls of flame: check Can solo ICC trash: check Can pull off wearing a dress and make it look sexy: check (see pic above) Has a wand (though two would be even pimper): check Can make a mean slushy: check Can create own strudel: check Can rock a pointy hat: chizzeck Can create more of self: check, check, and check. Oh, and one more check (also see pic above) Is not a warlock: check You see? Mages meet every criteria on the checklist. The fact that I just made the checklist up is unimportant; the important thing to take away from this is that mages are, indisputably, the best class in this game. But we aren't perfect. We make mistakes. Five of them, to be precise.
Center your tanking
While I'm pushing through Black Temple and Mount Hyjal nicely as my guild's tank, I am still trying to improve my style and playing elements. There's not much more I can do to build threat – the Devastates, Shield Slams, Revenges, Heroic Strikes, etc., are all going off at the right time. Gear is fine, I can pretty much tank anything in the game at this point and succeed. So why am I still dying? Why am I missing that critical moment when I could put up my Spell Reflect and live a second longer?I think I've found it.It's all about eye movement. Try this: focus your sight to the upper left hand corner of the screen, and now move your sight down to the bottom of the screen. If you have a large enough monitor, you completely lose focus of the text and items near the upper left corner. This is problematic for tanking in that the unit frames (those things that tell you who's in your group and who you're attacking) are by default located in the upper left corner, and the action bars are located at the bottom. So if you want to make sure you're going to hit something – or even look at your keyboard for a moment – you're moving your eyes quite a bit.
Shifting Perspectives: Your first steps as a Druid
Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week John Patricelli, sometimes known as the Big Bear Butt Blogger, starts his series on leveling a new Druid from 1st level all the way to 70th. Before I begin my series on leveling your new Druid from 1st through 70th levels, I'm going to start with some of the things you can do to prepare. Why not just leap right on into level 1? My reasoning is simple, just like me. When you have been watching Druids claw face as bears or cats, or as a new player you read about the description of the class and the shapechanging capabilities Druids enjoy, you might just expect to walk in and start doing the same yourself right from the start. The promise of the class is the fun of shifting from one form to another, depending on your playstyle. Well, when you start your new Druid at level 1, you won't be clawing faces. Instead, you will be leveling as a caster... a ranged DPS caster for levels 1 - 10, and likely on towards 20. Just as Hunters don't get the ability to tame a pet until level 10, Druids do not get the chance to learn their first form until the Bear quest chain becomes available at level 10. If, as you were sitting at the character creation screen, you were thinking you were going to be a kitty, all up in the face of the bad guys right from the start, it can be a bit of a let down. Especially if you don't care for playing a caster class in the first place. Hopefully, however, by knowing how to set yourself up in advance with the in-game Options, useful User interfaces and Addons, you'll find yourself leveling up as a caster painlessly, and may even come to enjoy the versatility of some of the Druid's powerful casting abilities. While the focus of this series of articles will be to help guide a brand new player into the fun of playing a Druid, hopefully there will also be some suggestions that an experienced player trying the Druid for the first time will find useful.
Addon Spotlight: SharedMedia (and other addon updates)
In the last few weeks we've covered some very useful and beautiful addons that work with the Ace2 framework to provide customizable flexibility to otherwise static elements in the game, such as unit frames and nameplates. This week's addon integrates with PitBull and Aloft as well as many other Ace addons, to give you more choices for the graphical bars and fonts that appear. Simply install SharedMedia and the additional choices will become available to you when you select textures and fonts in the other Ace2 addons. Some of my own are pictured here, with PitBull and Aloft. SharedMedia is not essential obviously, and it doesn't win the game for you, but it immensely enhances the inherent beauty that I love about the World of Warcraft visual experience. I couldn't find an actual download page for Shared Media, but it is available from files.wowace.com in two parts, which you can download directly here: SharedMedia, and SharedMediaLib. Click on the link below to read about other addon updates related to inspecting and unit frames:
Addon Spotlight: PitBull
I've been putting off writing about this addon, mainly because it's one of the greatest addons out there, so it's hard to do it justice -- what doesn't PitBull do? Well it won't win the game for you by itself, and its name doesn't really describe anything about it, but other than that it does pretty much anything and everything you could expect from a unit-frames replacement and then some. You can, of course, personalize your unit frames to your heart's content, more than any other unit frames mod I've seen, and that in itself is worth the download. On top of that, though, you get a ton of other features, all of which can be enabled for functionality or disabled for performance, whichever you like. Here are a few of my favorites:
