When to blow tranquility (Do you?)

Tranquility – At rank 7. “Heals all nearby group members for 3035 every 2 seconds for 8 sec. Channeled.”

Mana cost – 70% of base mana (approx 2440)

Cooldown – 10 minutes. Can be reduced by up to 60%, using talents in the restoration tree.

Do you use tranquility?

Healing 10 man raids, I would find I would burn it every 2nd boss. Usually I would pop myself in the tank/melee party at the start of the raid, so I would have them covered (going on the assumption that they take more dmg then ranged classes, and allowed the priest to use his aoe heal on the castors, if/when needed). It was a great skill if you had a little lapse in hodir, when the crazy cat lady threw a void zone at you (We were too lazy to move the cat away in 10 man, and didn't mind moving from the puddles.) or perhaps In mimiron, during the ::cringe:: 2nd or 4th phase. But it's not something you could rely on. channeling it means you're not hotting up the other half of the raid, and the cooldown meant you could only do it once per fight.

I have recently joined a 25 man raid guild (on trial so wish me luck!) and while my mainspec is now Boomkin, I got asked to heal the keepers in a raid recently. With 25 people to care for, I didn't dare to hit my tranquility button out of fear I would lose the other 20. Do you tree's out there use it at all? I guess situations where you're healing assignment is your party, it could help, but, can I really afford to be waving my arms around for 8 seconds, healing 1/5 of the raid? erm..

I always found tranquility powerful last resort skill (providing I had a good chuck of mana on myself) But it doesn't seem built for 25 man raiding, which is a shame cause I like to use every spell I have on me during fights.

Anyone use it on a regular basis? I would love to be able crank it out sometime!

Spex <3

Easy Not as Fun

So I did 25 flame lev with 2 towers, and got given the task to be launched onto flame lev to tackle his turrets. Now. In 10 man the only time my guild had tried this, the drivers missed, the victims went splat and spent the fight kissing the floor. So, naturally, when I found out what I was gonna be doing, I was freaked out and prepared to grab a coffee while waiting for the raid to finish the fight and resurrect me.

It turns out the fight is much more fun when riding on flame's back then a demo's. I was one of the first people to get launched, My driver was fantastic (Thankyou <3)) and I made in onto Flame lev alive! After giving myself and the 2 others hots (Where did the dmg come from?), I got on with the job of DOTing and Wrathing the crap out of the turrets. After they were all down I found myself paracuting to the ground, where a guildie in his cute chopper found me, ready to take me to a gunner-empty demo. I spent the rest of the fight amazed that I was still alive, and pew pewing Flame, since my demo's pyrite was fine and flame lev was nearly dead.

Now, Flame Lev had become a bore for me and suddenly it was fun, which lead me to ask, Why do things the easy way, when it's not as fun?

Heigan, there used to be a exploit where you could stand on a certain spot in the room and not have to "dance", And the popular way to do Sarth+3 now, is to just burn him at the start, and deal with the drakes after. I am not saying there are "correct" and "incorrect" strategy's but, I mean, if the point of the heigan fight is to dance, where is the fun in standing there?

I'm looking forward to doing Flame Lev again, and I encourage any guilds that do it the lazy way to give Member Launching a whirl. You're gonna be doing ulduar ALOT so jazz things up abit and play the game how blizz wants you to! you might get that excitement back into your weary raid.

Oh a side note, Phoenix, an Alliance guild, was the first to down Algalon on my server, so Congratulations to you guys!

Spex <3

Blizz went Blarg

But this is not a rant!

Most WoW players will be aware of the Authenticating, Connecting, Crashing issues. A lot more then 2 cents has been posted on the official forums about it (Found here!) And the trend seems to be that Battle.net accounts -Seem- to have no issues logging in.

It also came up that in time, Blizzard will require us all to have battle.net accounts, due to their new account system whatever-it-is. More information (however vague) Can be found here!

Is this a round-about fashion for Blizz to get us to convert to battle.net accounts early? Get the ball rolling? Hmm.

So I decided to be a Test subject and see what happen If I did it.

The website is battle.net. I created an account (Don’t worry, it was free. Payment would have made me hesitate!) And promptly received my verification email.

After that, I headed to my new “Shiny?” Battle.net account management page, where I could then merge with my wow account. Another verification email, verified and It was done!

As a sidestep, a friend gave me a website link for a free ingame Battlebot! No signups, Just advertising on the page. (I could really do with some mountain dew..) And It told me that my pet was waiting ingame for me!

Soooo Now it was time to check out what damage I had done to my account. I try and log in and..

“Connection Successful!!!”

So, In a nutshell, I signed up for a battlenet account, I really want some soda, all my characters have received a free, interactive pet, and I am chilling in Dalaran. Normality has returned.

I guess I am a conformist /sigh. But anyways. Catch you ingame!

Spex <3

Playing with Addons - OPie

OPie! A cute little addon created to help reduce clutter in your ui.

So lately I have caught the Addon train and gone bonkers with downloading heaps of useless and useful addons. My theory is that your UI is like your Bedroom, Desk or you personal computer Wallpaper. you are going to be putting up with it for a LONG time, so may as well personalise it, moulding it into something you enjoy staring at. ^.^

So with that said, the first addon for show & tell is OPie

"OPie is a radial action-binding addon, enabling you to bind groups of infrequently used actions to a ring that appears when you trigger it using a hot key / mouse binding."

I originally found this when I was on my mage, and thorougly annoyed at staring at 14 portal/teleport buttons, all those silly shields and dmg absorbtions that I never used anyways. I wanted to hide them during raids, along with my hearthstone, mounts, professions etc. OPie was perfect. My mage now has 8 buttons showing in her raid setup, everything else is tucked away, but with easy access. So do you like the little wheel up the top there? that's OPie! and how I assign raid icons

More information and download can be found at Curse.

Annnddd let me show you how you set it up! Do you have your buttons that you want hidden?

Ok, typing in /opie in your chat will open up your addons menu. Click "Create new Ring" and give it a name!


Grab and drop any items, skills or macros you want on your ring. Assign it a key or mousebutton and Save.

And you are done! When you want to access the hidden buttons, hold down the assigned key, which will open up the ring wherever your mouse curser is. Hover over your choice, and release the assigned key for it to take effect!
Enjoy!

Spex <3