Well, today is patch day. 2.3 is coming in, and we're all looking forward to it.
This time, I plan to do as much review of macro changes as I can. There has been alot of changes to the spellcast system, including changes that make /stopcasting obsolete when it comes to stacking spells like Nature's Swiftness followed by Healing Touch.
...should be interesting :)
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Friday, November 9, 2007
Feral to Resto - an almost complete UI tear-down and rebuild
Last week (before I left for Atlanta), I respec'd my druid to resto.
My druid has been Feral since he was born. I've collected much feral gear, with a focus on tanking. I did almost every single quest in outlands, during which I collected much feral, balance, and healing gear.
The quest rewards for druids in outlands is very well designed. As I was questing, it was VERY rare that I had too decide between a piece of feral gear or a piece of healing gear. Most of the quests had rewards that made it very easy to decide what to choose - i.e. there was usually 1 cloth item, one leather item, one mail item, and one plate item. When it was a weapon, it was usually something like 1 staff, 1 sword, 1 wand, and 1 dagger. Bottom line - I gathered plenty of healing gear, even though I was leveling feral.
Once I reached 70, however, I stopped questing and started running instances seeking specific stuff, which meant my collecting of healing gear all but stopped. The other day I was messing around in my bank, trying on my healing set when I realized - my healing set SUCKS for level 70. So, I decided I'd respec to Resto and try to run some instances with PUGs specifically to try to get some better healing gear.
Anyway, My druid is Resto now, so I thought I would take some time to talk about some of the changes I had to make to my UI in order to play as Resto instead of Feral. The differences were so vast that it was practically a complete tear-down and rebuild.
First, I had to go in and revamp all of my attack macros. I had to remove Mangle from both bear and cat form attack macros, replacing Mangle with Claw for cat, and just removing Mangle from bear altogether, since bear doesn't have another ability that works similar to mangle.
Next, I had to adjust my bear form macro because it also included feral charge. I also lost feral faerie fire from both forms, so I ended up with less buttons to mess with while in feral forms.
I also had to rebuild my travel/aquatic/flight form macros, only because flight form changed from stance 5 to stance 6.
I had to build a whole new shapeshift macro for Tree Form, which was easy...
#showtooltip
/cast [nostance] Tree of Life
/cancelform [nostance:5]
What was complex was having to re-work all of my healing macros to be castable in EITHER cast form OR tree form, but not in any other form. Here is an example of my Rejuv macro
#showtooltip
/cast [target=mouseover, exists, stance:0/5] [exists, stance:0/5] [target=player,stance:0/5] Rejuvenation
/cancelform [nostance:0/5]
Here's the breakdown of how that macro works:
1) #showtooltip makes sure that I can see the tooltip for Rejuv (I like to be able to check how much mana a spell costs now and then, so I ALWAYS add tooltips to my macros)
2) The next line has lots of conditionals in it, all of which end in casting Rejuv. First, it checks if my mouse pointer is over a valid (exists) target, AND that I'm in EITHER caster form (stance:0) or Tree of Life form (stance:5). If all of that is true, then it casts Rejuv on the target under my mouse pointer.
3) If any of that is not true, then next it checks to see if I have a valid (exists) target, AND that I'm in EITHER caster or tree form. If that's true, then it casts Rejuv on my current target.
4) if any of that is not true, then next it checks to see if I'm in EITHER caster or tree form. If that's true, then it casts Rejuv on myself (player). (note that 'player' is always a valid friendly target)
5) Next, and because it's on a separate line from the /cast - this part is always checked, it checks if I'm in any stance OTHER than caster or tree, and if so it executes a /cancelform. This way, if I hit the macro while in bear form, it entirely skips the /cast line and goes straight to shifting me out of bear form. The next keypress of this same macro will cast Rejuv depending on my target.
So, I had to edit ALL of my healing macros this way since they are all castable in either caster form, or tree of life form, except for Healing Touch, which still can only be cast in caster form, and abolish poison and remove curse (which, I understand will be tree castable after 2.3)
Another thing I had to do was to build a whole new actionbar, since Tree Form has it's own bar after shapeshifting. Also, adding a new actionbar means linking the actionbar back to caster form. What I mean by this is that I like to keep certain actions in the same place on each bar. For example, I like to keep my button to cast Healing Touch on myself on button 1. So, since my macro for that handles both shifting me to caster form, and then casting healing touch, I put a copy of the macro on both button 1 of my tree form bar, and button 1 of my caster form bar.
Next, I had to redo Clique. Clique, if you're unfamiliar with it, adds click-casting to unit frames. Click-casting is casting spells by clicking on unit frames using various combinations of right or left mousebutton along with shift, alt, and ctrl modifier buttons.
Being a druid, I have Clique configured using almost all custom macros instead of direct spells. This allows me to embed shapeshift checks into every action it does. For example, I use shift-left-click universally as "decurse" on all my characters (priest=dispel, paladin=cleanse, druid=remove curse). On my druid, however, I use Clique's internal macro editor to shapeshift first if I try to click-cast on someone while in the wrong form.
/cast [target=mouseover,exists,nostance] Remove Curse
/cancelform [stance]
I use this instead of simply Remove Curse to make sure it shifts first.
Part of restructuring Clique was changing my slow and fast casted heals. On my priest, I have alt-left-click set to a fast heal (flash heal) and alt-right-click set to a slow efficient heal (normal "Heal"). Since I can't use Healing touch as a tree, I moved regrowth from being my fast heal(alt-left-click) to being my slow heal(alt-right-click) and set my fast heal as a Nature's Swiftness - Regrowth macro. Granted, I can only use that one once every 3 minutes, it's still where I expect to find it when I need to save someone's ass FAST.
Another thing I added to my interface is a new macro that pops both of my healing trinkets. Combined, they add an additional +300 healing. I use these just before starting a Lifebloom stack on the main tank, since Lifebloom carries bonus healing effects for as long as you can keep the stack running. At the moment, I don't remember the actual macro, but it was basically /use trink1, /stopcasting, /use trink2.
Another new macro is as follows:
/cast [target=focus] Lifebloom
I didn't include a stance check, since this macro only occurs on my tree form bar. What I do in a group is to set the main tank as my focus. This way I can maintain a lifebloom stack on the MT by just tapping that macro, regardless of where I am or who/what I have targeted. When I solo (as a tree?!? wtf) I keep focus set to myself so that my MT macros hit me instead.
I also updated the settings of Quartz to enable timer bars for the buffs on my focus. This makes it SUPER easy to keep an eye on the remaining time on the Lifebloom stack of the main tank. With practice, and a keen eye on that 7 second bar, I can keep the Lifebloom stack on the MT running, along with lifebloom stacks on 2 other group members, and STILL be able to time innervating myself without dropping ANY of the 3 stacks.
I think the hardest part of playing a tree druid in a group is simply trying to decide between using a lifebloom stack or a single rejuv to heal a party member. Using Rejuv means Swiftmend is available when an ass-saving is needed, but using Lifebloom means the high-speed hot can be bumped up twice to full potency and carried on if needed.
There are other changes I've had to make, but off the top of my head, I can't remember any of them right now. I'll either come back and update this post if I remember more, or just add a new post if it's important enough.
My druid has been Feral since he was born. I've collected much feral gear, with a focus on tanking. I did almost every single quest in outlands, during which I collected much feral, balance, and healing gear.
The quest rewards for druids in outlands is very well designed. As I was questing, it was VERY rare that I had too decide between a piece of feral gear or a piece of healing gear. Most of the quests had rewards that made it very easy to decide what to choose - i.e. there was usually 1 cloth item, one leather item, one mail item, and one plate item. When it was a weapon, it was usually something like 1 staff, 1 sword, 1 wand, and 1 dagger. Bottom line - I gathered plenty of healing gear, even though I was leveling feral.
Once I reached 70, however, I stopped questing and started running instances seeking specific stuff, which meant my collecting of healing gear all but stopped. The other day I was messing around in my bank, trying on my healing set when I realized - my healing set SUCKS for level 70. So, I decided I'd respec to Resto and try to run some instances with PUGs specifically to try to get some better healing gear.
Anyway, My druid is Resto now, so I thought I would take some time to talk about some of the changes I had to make to my UI in order to play as Resto instead of Feral. The differences were so vast that it was practically a complete tear-down and rebuild.
First, I had to go in and revamp all of my attack macros. I had to remove Mangle from both bear and cat form attack macros, replacing Mangle with Claw for cat, and just removing Mangle from bear altogether, since bear doesn't have another ability that works similar to mangle.
Next, I had to adjust my bear form macro because it also included feral charge. I also lost feral faerie fire from both forms, so I ended up with less buttons to mess with while in feral forms.
I also had to rebuild my travel/aquatic/flight form macros, only because flight form changed from stance 5 to stance 6.
I had to build a whole new shapeshift macro for Tree Form, which was easy...
#showtooltip
/cast [nostance] Tree of Life
/cancelform [nostance:5]
What was complex was having to re-work all of my healing macros to be castable in EITHER cast form OR tree form, but not in any other form. Here is an example of my Rejuv macro
#showtooltip
/cast [target=mouseover, exists, stance:0/5] [exists, stance:0/5] [target=player,stance:0/5] Rejuvenation
/cancelform [nostance:0/5]
Here's the breakdown of how that macro works:
1) #showtooltip makes sure that I can see the tooltip for Rejuv (I like to be able to check how much mana a spell costs now and then, so I ALWAYS add tooltips to my macros)
2) The next line has lots of conditionals in it, all of which end in casting Rejuv. First, it checks if my mouse pointer is over a valid (exists) target, AND that I'm in EITHER caster form (stance:0) or Tree of Life form (stance:5). If all of that is true, then it casts Rejuv on the target under my mouse pointer.
3) If any of that is not true, then next it checks to see if I have a valid (exists) target, AND that I'm in EITHER caster or tree form. If that's true, then it casts Rejuv on my current target.
4) if any of that is not true, then next it checks to see if I'm in EITHER caster or tree form. If that's true, then it casts Rejuv on myself (player). (note that 'player' is always a valid friendly target)
5) Next, and because it's on a separate line from the /cast - this part is always checked, it checks if I'm in any stance OTHER than caster or tree, and if so it executes a /cancelform. This way, if I hit the macro while in bear form, it entirely skips the /cast line and goes straight to shifting me out of bear form. The next keypress of this same macro will cast Rejuv depending on my target.
So, I had to edit ALL of my healing macros this way since they are all castable in either caster form, or tree of life form, except for Healing Touch, which still can only be cast in caster form, and abolish poison and remove curse (which, I understand will be tree castable after 2.3)
Another thing I had to do was to build a whole new actionbar, since Tree Form has it's own bar after shapeshifting. Also, adding a new actionbar means linking the actionbar back to caster form. What I mean by this is that I like to keep certain actions in the same place on each bar. For example, I like to keep my button to cast Healing Touch on myself on button 1. So, since my macro for that handles both shifting me to caster form, and then casting healing touch, I put a copy of the macro on both button 1 of my tree form bar, and button 1 of my caster form bar.
Next, I had to redo Clique. Clique, if you're unfamiliar with it, adds click-casting to unit frames. Click-casting is casting spells by clicking on unit frames using various combinations of right or left mousebutton along with shift, alt, and ctrl modifier buttons.
Being a druid, I have Clique configured using almost all custom macros instead of direct spells. This allows me to embed shapeshift checks into every action it does. For example, I use shift-left-click universally as "decurse" on all my characters (priest=dispel, paladin=cleanse, druid=remove curse). On my druid, however, I use Clique's internal macro editor to shapeshift first if I try to click-cast on someone while in the wrong form.
/cast [target=mouseover,exists,nostance] Remove Curse
/cancelform [stance]
I use this instead of simply Remove Curse to make sure it shifts first.
Part of restructuring Clique was changing my slow and fast casted heals. On my priest, I have alt-left-click set to a fast heal (flash heal) and alt-right-click set to a slow efficient heal (normal "Heal"). Since I can't use Healing touch as a tree, I moved regrowth from being my fast heal(alt-left-click) to being my slow heal(alt-right-click) and set my fast heal as a Nature's Swiftness - Regrowth macro. Granted, I can only use that one once every 3 minutes, it's still where I expect to find it when I need to save someone's ass FAST.
Another thing I added to my interface is a new macro that pops both of my healing trinkets. Combined, they add an additional +300 healing. I use these just before starting a Lifebloom stack on the main tank, since Lifebloom carries bonus healing effects for as long as you can keep the stack running. At the moment, I don't remember the actual macro, but it was basically /use trink1, /stopcasting, /use trink2.
Another new macro is as follows:
/cast [target=focus] Lifebloom
I didn't include a stance check, since this macro only occurs on my tree form bar. What I do in a group is to set the main tank as my focus. This way I can maintain a lifebloom stack on the MT by just tapping that macro, regardless of where I am or who/what I have targeted. When I solo (as a tree?!? wtf) I keep focus set to myself so that my MT macros hit me instead.
I also updated the settings of Quartz to enable timer bars for the buffs on my focus. This makes it SUPER easy to keep an eye on the remaining time on the Lifebloom stack of the main tank. With practice, and a keen eye on that 7 second bar, I can keep the Lifebloom stack on the MT running, along with lifebloom stacks on 2 other group members, and STILL be able to time innervating myself without dropping ANY of the 3 stacks.
I think the hardest part of playing a tree druid in a group is simply trying to decide between using a lifebloom stack or a single rejuv to heal a party member. Using Rejuv means Swiftmend is available when an ass-saving is needed, but using Lifebloom means the high-speed hot can be bumped up twice to full potency and carried on if needed.
There are other changes I've had to make, but off the top of my head, I can't remember any of them right now. I'll either come back and update this post if I remember more, or just add a new post if it's important enough.
Withdrawl ensues.
I've been away from game for over a week. I still have access to the web, so I can still read about the game, listen to my podcasts (of which I intend to post soon hehehe), etc. I just can't play. Withdrawl ensues.
I'm in Atlanta staying with my brother-in-law because my wife agreed to help babysit their daughter. Unfortunately, I failed to pack my WoW rig because she wanted some "time away from that game" for us to nurture our relationship. I hope it's working hehehe. I Love my wife :) She's awesome.
Let me tell you about her. She plays WoW. That, all by itself, makes her the sexiest kind of woman a geek could ever hope to marry. But, it get's better! She's GOOD at it. She isn't an uber detail geek like myself, but she does know how to bash heads in. She and I love to run our level 29 BG toons together. I heal, and she smashes heads in. She plays the legengary purple haired female troll warrior 'Smashnbash', who always leaves a trail of bodies in her wake. I play Plagueflesh, the undead shadowpriest and his cockroach.
One of her favorite things to do is to go into WSG, pick up the enemy flag, then camp the enemy graveyard. She knows that when she has the flag, the enemies will, for the most part, ignore the priest and the paladin who are keeping her healed, and try to smash her. She just smashes people into the ground, they keep ressing, and she smashes 'em again. I just let her keep going until I, as her healer, run out of mana. I can pretty much keep her and myself up indefinately, so long as I have mana. (I go through ALOT of stranglekelp and kingsblood hehehe)
She's great, and I love her. She's also pretty :) (/hides from the impending smack)
I'm in Atlanta staying with my brother-in-law because my wife agreed to help babysit their daughter. Unfortunately, I failed to pack my WoW rig because she wanted some "time away from that game" for us to nurture our relationship. I hope it's working hehehe. I Love my wife :) She's awesome.
Let me tell you about her. She plays WoW. That, all by itself, makes her the sexiest kind of woman a geek could ever hope to marry. But, it get's better! She's GOOD at it. She isn't an uber detail geek like myself, but she does know how to bash heads in. She and I love to run our level 29 BG toons together. I heal, and she smashes heads in. She plays the legengary purple haired female troll warrior 'Smashnbash', who always leaves a trail of bodies in her wake. I play Plagueflesh, the undead shadowpriest and his cockroach.
One of her favorite things to do is to go into WSG, pick up the enemy flag, then camp the enemy graveyard. She knows that when she has the flag, the enemies will, for the most part, ignore the priest and the paladin who are keeping her healed, and try to smash her. She just smashes people into the ground, they keep ressing, and she smashes 'em again. I just let her keep going until I, as her healer, run out of mana. I can pretty much keep her and myself up indefinately, so long as I have mana. (I go through ALOT of stranglekelp and kingsblood hehehe)
She's great, and I love her. She's also pretty :) (/hides from the impending smack)
I'm sorry. I suck. I'll try to write more.
Damn I suck...
When I started this blog, it honestly was my goal to write something in it every day. Unfortunately, real life and other issues cause me to be pulled away from writing. I know that's not a good excuse, so I'm going to be brutally honest. I just have a hard time dealing with the drive to write.
You see, I have a tendancy to want to write long detailed explainations about how things work and how I'm thinking... My wife hates it when I do that, so I tend to just not write if I can't do that. I feel I'll bore people too much If I write that way, so I tend to just not do it.
The sad part is that I ingest SO MUCH WOW-BASED content each and every day, that I could probably write tons and tons if I just buckle down and do it. So, I'm going to try again to commit to writing every day. It may not always be about Macros. I also like to PvP and other stuff, I'll try to write about whatever I'm thinking about.
What saddens me is that - to date, noone has ever left me a comment. So, I just don't feel like I'm talking to anyone. Perhaps if I felt like someone was listening, I'd feel compelled to write more. /sigh.
Anyway, I'm planning to write more today to get myself going again.
When I started this blog, it honestly was my goal to write something in it every day. Unfortunately, real life and other issues cause me to be pulled away from writing. I know that's not a good excuse, so I'm going to be brutally honest. I just have a hard time dealing with the drive to write.
You see, I have a tendancy to want to write long detailed explainations about how things work and how I'm thinking... My wife hates it when I do that, so I tend to just not write if I can't do that. I feel I'll bore people too much If I write that way, so I tend to just not do it.
The sad part is that I ingest SO MUCH WOW-BASED content each and every day, that I could probably write tons and tons if I just buckle down and do it. So, I'm going to try again to commit to writing every day. It may not always be about Macros. I also like to PvP and other stuff, I'll try to write about whatever I'm thinking about.
What saddens me is that - to date, noone has ever left me a comment. So, I just don't feel like I'm talking to anyone. Perhaps if I felt like someone was listening, I'd feel compelled to write more. /sigh.
Anyway, I'm planning to write more today to get myself going again.
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