One of my older posts highlighted Power Auras and what it can do but there definitely seems to be enough of a desire for a more specific walk-through. And that’s what this is going to be.

The first thing we are going to do is to create a config to track a debuff on our target. Once you have Power Auras installed type /powa to bring up the configuration window. Then click on the “New” button to create a new configuration.

The first thing you see after clicking the "New" button.

From that point you want to change the drop-down box that currently shows “Buff” to “Debuff.” For this example we are going to track the Explosive Shot debuff so we can be sure when it has finished ticking.

In case you have more than one Hunter in the raid you will want to check the “Cast by me” option box. This is a handy option as I use it to track my Black Arrow and Serpent Sting but by leaving it unchecked I can track to make sure that Hunter’s Mark is on my target regardless of which Hunter cast it.

Go ahead and type Explosive Shot into the long text box that has the 3 questions marks be default. We are going to use the Explosive Shot icon for this example. So go ahead and uncheck the “Glow” option near the top and check the “Use own Texture” option next to the Activation drop-down box.

Power Auras is finicky about loading up ability icons. The best way I found to make sure it shows up is to close the Power Aura windows, fire a few shots and then re-open Power Auras. If it still doesn’t show up just repeat the process. Eventually it will find the right texture.

If we leave all the other options the same you should see a giant Explosive Shot icon in the middle of your screen like in the screenshot below.

Without adjusting the look, this is the icon we should see.

For simplicity sake, we’ll just move this icon over to the left side of our screen. Luckily, after Power Auras has located the right icon we can use the “Test” button at the bottom left of the Power Aura configuration window. That way when we edit our configuration we can keep track of where our icon (or other graphic) will be.

For now go ahead and drag the “Position X” slider over to the left until you like where it is. You can edit this all later or simply delete this configuration when we are done.

Now that we have a handy tracker for the tick effect of Explosive Shot, let’s set up a Power Aura configuration to track how many stacks we have from Fury of the Five Flights and notify us when we reach 20.

Once again go ahead and click on the “New” button to create a new configuration. This time we will leave the Activation drop-down box on “Buff.” Instead of using a default icon or one of the Power Aura textures, let’s check the WoW Textures box near the top of our configuration window and use some of WoW’s textures. I opted to use number 8.

The only difference between the configuration I have in the screenshot is I changed the value in the Stacks window to “=20″ since that’s the cap for Fury.

Setting up a config for Fury of the Five Flights

As you can see, when my stacks reached 20 I had that pretty green . . . .  symbol appear in the middle of the screen.

Once 20 stacks is reached the green icon appears.

Setting up any Power Aura configuration is as simple as combining these steps and mixing and matching what you need it to do. Setting up a timer for anything is as simple as navigating to the timer tab, checking the “Show” box and adjusting the location of the timer similar to how we moved the Explosive Shot icon.

The Animation and Sound tabs are just additional options that are additional “fluff” for the lack of a better term. You can have a sound play when you reach 20 stacks, or when an ability is off of cooldown, you or your pet is low on health, etc. The list goes on.

The Animation tab is for the icons and/or designs that you display with Power Auras. You can have icons pulse, zoom in and out, etc.

I had a request for a Power Aura configuration to track the Singed debuff on Hodir. While I have not had a chance to test this on Hodir yet, if I was to create with just the knowledge I have of Power Auras, I would configure it like this:

A PA Config for Hodir's Singed debuff.

No icon is appearing yet since I haven’t had a chance to apply the Singed debuff yet so Power Auras cannot find it. This is actually a great idea of a PA configuration and look forward to trying it out next week.

In other news Really Good At This Game managed to get 3 Lights in the Darkness this evening after 5 attempts. While I was on vacation they knocked out Hodir’s hard mode although we missed it this week because Hodir was casting Flash Freeze as the timer ticked over. We know have a full raid day on Monday to put some time into Iron Council hard mode.

Questions, comments, or anything I might have missed feel free to leave a comment or head on over to the forums.

Then I see that they are removing the ability to get Gladiator, Gladiator weapons, and Gladiator shoulders from the 2v2 Arena bracket. While I have not been participating in Arena at all this season I am not sure how I like this change. I have mixed emotions about 2v2 as it is my preferred bracket of choice when I do play. I prefer the coordination of you and one other person rather than dealing with 3 or 5 but I also know it is the most prone to class imbalances.

Regardless, I am sure there are at least a few folks not thrilled with the change.

As I am still cleaning up the mess of coming home from vacation I haven’t jumped back into any of the finer points of WoW I want to write about yet. So hopefully you’ll bear with me for this post as I share my vacation with ya. :)

Dro and his wife and Laguna Beach

This first picture is my wife and I down near Laguna Beach where my sister had her wedding. The weather was gorgeous and not too hot which made for a pleasant day.

2 minutes from where we were I discovered that the Laguna Art Museum was where they were hosting the WoW: Emerging Media Exhibit. Had I known that, we would have planned a little more time that day to scope it out.

Me and a couple friends that traveled with us standing next to the 'N' in California

At Universal, it’s needless to say that we all geeked out just a bit when we say this:

We geeked out at the sight of this.

I had to actively refrain from making WoW jokes while at the Wild Animal Park. To go along with some of the WoW comics out on the web, I present you with “loltravelform.”

Travel form joke!

Gorillas. They think they are so big and tough. They ain’t so big!

Gorillas ain't so big!

And this is pretty much the best statue ever.

Best Statue Ever.

I actually took around 500 pictures and a few videos from Universal and the Wild Animal Park but I figured that would be a bit excessive. But I will wrap this up for now and get back to writing some WoW-related posts. Hope your week was great.

As fun as a vacation is, it’s great to be home. :)

Yes, we are just a couple of kids at heart. :)

I will be gone till the 4th of July. I am hoping that on Sunday I can meet up with Mr. Brigwyn for a little meet-n-greet and photo-op.

My original plan was to make a recording of me soloing Ahune tonight. But apparently Feign Death causes him to despawn which was utterly retarded. With my pet still there, there should have been an aggro list still.

See everyone when we get back! Remember if you have any questions or concerns, you can still e-mail me or leave a comment. And of course, feel free to post over on the forums if you need an answer more quickly.

And truth be told, something about the patch notes just doesn’t have me very excited. Usually new content patches reignite my excitement with all the stuff that is to be added but right now it feels lacking.

Just like the community predicted, Blizzard is adding in epic gems to the game. No surprise, we knew it was coming. But the problem I see is Blizzard is so completely and utterly focused on each profession having the exact same available stat points they are afraid to put in anything fun or unique.

I don’t foresee new Blacksmithing weapons or anything like that again because they would be deemed too powerful in the current moment and not in line with what is accessible to other players. So even as they go across the board buffing every profession to compensate for the buff Blacksmithing sockets are getting with the advent of new gems, everything stays the same. Sure, you will squeeze a few more stat points out of it but that’s all.

The Hunter changes were definitely not was I was expecting in terms of Blizzard trying to bring our DPS up to par. Mainly because there is nothing to buff our DPS unless you consider Cat-like Reflexes a PvE talent now with its new reduction on Kill Command.

There were times I loved the RNG where I would see chain Lock and Lock procs during Ignis. Explosive Shot after Explosive Shot. But that’s not going to happen anymore unfortunately. Honestly I am not sure what the reasoning behind this change was since the proc chance was already mathematically pretty low.

At any other point in the game, the separation of traps would have been accepted with open arms. And it’s definitely not a bad thing. However it doesn’t help us outside of being able to trap a player in PvP and still be able to use Black Arrow on another target.

I don’t want to jump the gun and say this all that we will see in terms of changes for our class. 3.2 is a ways off I think and there is plenty of time for Blizzard to address PvE DPS concerns as well as the admittedly low Hunter representation in Arenas.

Roar of Sacrifice might be considered a PvP buff because any use of it in a PvE situation involves you using a non-optimal DPS pet and chances are 20% of the damage your pet absorbs might very well kill it. :)

The changes to pet hit is nice and we’ll see if the Resilience sharing will be enough to make a difference. But ultimately it doesn’t solve our problem of melee classes being able to trounce on us when they get in range. But time will tell.

And it’s not that I am upset at the patch notes or think everything in it is bad, but as a whole it’s not rejuvenating spark for me as some other patches have been. As new information is released about the new instances that all might change though.

As far my goal of 100k gold, I was gone most of the weekend but will managed to put up enough auctions to come home to a full mailbox of money bringing my total to about 22.7k.

Thoughts, comments, etc. Post ‘em here or in the forums!

My Hunter is currently a Jewelcrafter and a Alchemist. Part of the profession choices were based around min/maxing my character and partly because I was tired of farming materials.

Alchemy has proven to be a incredible money-maker on Illidan due to the sheer number of raiders among the population. I can easily list 2o-30 flasks of single type and have them sell within 12 hours. Sometimes a lot faster if we are approaching prime raid times.

The jewelcrafting market has a lot of aspiring crafters but luckily there is just as many buyers as well. With more PUG Naxx and Ulduar runs than you can shake a stick at, there is a lot of gear looking for gems.

I recently powerleveled Inscription on my Priest. His other profession is Tailoring. I quickly learned that the the glyph market is nothing like selling Flasks. I rarely ever have to re-list Flasks. The only time I do is if I am gone for a day and I was severely under-cut during that time.

I probably have more glyphs expire from one listing than I have sell. But I’ve already craft 2 Nobles cards and they definitely padded the blow from the cost I spent leveling it. It’s easy to determine what glyphs are going to sell the best, at least in my limited experience. I have been focusing on the glyphs people are telling are the ideal raid glyphs for their class.

Tailoring, on the other hand, has a simple and efficient way to make money. Netherweave Bags. A stack of Netherweave hardly ever runs me more than 5g and a single stack turns into one bag, which sells for 9-10g. Always. With the sheer number of characters on this server people are ALWAYS buying inexpensive bags. 70g for 11 bag slots for an alt? Probably not. 10g for 11 bag slots? Much more likely.

As it stands, across all characters, I have roughly 19,600 gold. I can make my own flasks, but I figure I need to use 2 or 3 a night (depending if we do 10-mans), pay repairs, and buy Mammoth Cutters. Even factoring on raid costs my money is going up. I just want to increase that rate of gain.

I think I am in a good spot to be able to reach my goal. It’s just a matter of taking all the pieces and capitalizing on them. Thoughts, comments, suggestions. Leave ‘em in the comments!

My first spec is a Survival spec is a 0/15/56 build. This build was chosen after tinkering around with the spreadsheet for a little while. I went to Wowhead and clicked in a basic Survival spec, imported it to the spreadsheet and then modified talents until I found what was going to provide the highest DPS for my gear.

My second spec is straight from the Elitist Jerk’s top theoretical DPS thread for Hunters, and it is a 7/57/7 build.

Most of the time I choose to stick with my Survival spec. It’s a little less mana intensive compared to the MM spec most of the time since our group composition varies a lot and we don’t always have as much mana regeneration as I would like.

But that being said, I do find myself switching specs frequently depending on certain fights for a couple reasons, most of which are not game-breaking as I said.

For example, Auriaya I prefer to be Marksmanship. The reason is I like to be able to drop Explosive Trap during the little cat spawns to speed up their demise. Since Black Arrow shares a cooldown with my traps and provides a significant increase in Survival DPS, I prefer to use the the DPS build that is not reliant on a trap cooldown.

Moving down that hallway we come across Hodir, a fight where I choose Survival over Marksmanship. I have designated myself as the person who is going to be primarily focused on stacking the Singed debuff to help our casters. Explosive Shot goes a long way in keeping that stack as high as possible.

I also opt to use Marksmanship for Yogg-Saron since Silencing Shot can help silence adds during phase 1 in case your raid composition needs it.

Now as I mentioned, not everyone is going to want to keep both specs are raid DPS specs. Some people want Beast Mastery so that they can keep those fun exotic pets around or use it for your 3v3 team or what not. For a while I had my second spec as a janky BM/MM spec designed just to solo Zul’Gurub bosses and other old content.

Provided that you are not completely stuck on one spec and are willing to adjust the best question to ask yourself is what kind of raid composition can you expect in your raid? Do you need to have a silencing effect? Does your raid need Trueshot Aura in lieu of another 10% AP buff effect? Perhaps you need replenishment.

A lot of this will depend if you are focusing on 10 or 25 man content. Perhaps a spec for both? If you are looking at a focused 10-man raid group it will be easy to determine what role you need to fill. I know our other Hunters have picked up Trueshot Aura and are primarily raiding as MM so it’s a talent I don’t need.

So here is the list of my spec of choice for each fight:

• Flame Leviathan: Ummm . . . . yeah. :)
• Ignis: Survival
• Razorscale: Ehh, no preference.
• XT Deconstructor: Marksmanship (since we’re working on hard mode I can back-to-back Rapid Fire so its up the entire heart phase)
• Kologarn: No preference
• Iron Council: MM since we are only doing medium mode and there is the Black Arrow/Trap cooldown conflict
• Auriaya: MM
• Hodir: Survival
• Thorim: MM while working on hard mode and I am in the hallway and I use Rapid Fire on the minibosses
• Freya: No preference but I am usually Survival. Remember to mil Freya by keeping Viper Sting on her during the add phases :)
• Mimiron: Survival, but I haven’t tried it as MM yet and imagine the spec would work just as well
• General Vezax: Survival
• Yogg-Saron: MM

Do you run with two DPS specs? Or have you chosen just one build and stuck with it? Share your thoughts, your reasoning behind the different specs you might be running, or share your thoughts on mine. As always post ‘em in the comment or stop by the forums!

We line up, getting ready to raid Crossroads during closed beta!

Are you ready for another MMO? I’ve been playing WoW a long time. I’ve been lucky enough to be playing since closed beta and been able to experience pretty much everything Blizzard has put into this game.

The screenshot to the left was a raid towards the end of one of the phases of closed beta. We decided to head to Crossroads just for the sake of picking a fight. There were no rewards involved. No honor to be farmed.

I am sure there are a lot of folks that remember the old Tarren Mill/Southshore battles that went on. If you were looking for PvP, that’s were you went. It wasn’t till much later that we had the battlegrounds added.

And back then, raid gear was PvP gear. So when I was running around in my Might and Wrath gear with my Hand of Rag, I was beast cutting through people. Especially with 3 or 4 guild healers in raid gear in tow.

The game has evolved a lot over the years. Some for the better, some for the worse, all depending on who you ask. We won’t see another grind like Grand Marshall or High Warlord because Blizzard knew what was wrong with the system after they saw the true lengths people would go to get it. I feel lucky to have been able to see how Blizzard’s raids have evolved.

We had a server 2nd Ragnaros kill by roughly 30 minutes and proceeded to have every server first in Blackwing Lair. And Blizzard has become a lot better at their raid design in my opinion. As time has gone on, the game as become very homogenized. That’s the term I like to use for it.

If you are out there Nox, this is you and me buddy!

Putting buffs into categories, spreading them across various classes. “Bring the player, not the class.” Gone are the old arguments of Fear Ward being overpowered, the Horde having Windfury totems, the fine art of stance-dancing, and a lot of the other things “old players” would remember.

Ask your guild if they remember 40-man UBRS. Many will laugh and say “UBRS was for 15 people” or “that’s a 10 man instance now.” So few remember wiping on General Drakkisath with 40. :)

I have been lucky enough to have been able to play quite a few MMOs. Some in beta, some for money. I’ve been able to really narrow down what I am going to look for in my next MMO. I know what I like, what I don’t like, and what’s so crucial it’s not even an option.

The one MMO I had hoped would so well was Pirates of the Burning Sea. I’ve talked about this one before and I think it was great that a company did something unique and wasn’t trying to ride on the fantasy coattails of WoW. I am pretty sure there was never a meeting where they said “and this will part will be like WoW.”

The game had such a heavy emphasis on PvP and economy that I would have loved to read about certain a certain goblin’s adventures in this market. And unfortunately, after beta, I can’t say I supported the game as I kept on playing WoW.

Let's plunder some booty!

Their community was awesome too. At least during beta. I posted in a thread once, answering some rudimentary questions that had been answered I am sure dozens of times in other threads. But I answered them, as well did a few other posters.

A dev came in, commented how he loved the attitude, locked the thread, and had us all PM us our address so he could send us t-shirts. To this day I still have an awesome shirt I wear that says “Getting booty since 1720″ with the Pirates of the Burning Sea logo below it. I love that shirt. I just can’t wear it around my wife’s grandma. :)

WoW is such a dominant force that any future MMO will forever be held to it’s standards. I know it wasn’t the first MMO out there. But it was the first one for million of people and it will be forever what MMOs are compared to until a truly better one comes out.

Just think, whenever you start a new MMO you’ll think “Man, I wish I could (x) like I could in WoW.” That ‘x” might be UI customization, dual talents specialization (or the equivalent system for a new game), or who knows what.

One of my real-life friends and I were able to play the Lord of the Rings Online during it’s beta. While the game was pretty, I quit playing the beta because of how WoW spoiled me.

I remember getting a quest to go to Brill. I was suppose to talk to Strider. Woo, main character tie-ins for the win! So I travelled to Brill, and I zoned in to the inn. The innkeeper tells me that Strider isn’t there, but I should go talk to Gandalf. He’s upstairs in his room. So I zone upstairs. And then I zone into Gandalf’s room. I get a quest and read it over for about 10 seconds. I then proceed to zone out of the room, zone downstairs, and then zone back out into Brill.

My L2 Orc looks like he would crush Drotara in a fist fight.

I then logged out and never logged back in. I became spoiled by the seamless world we have in Azeroth. Continents and instances are the extent of WoW’s loading screens and we’ve become so accustomed to it the thought of having to deal with them is almost offensive.

But I have high hopes for new MMOs, and the requirements I have for them are pretty widespread. I want PvP. I enjoy PvP a lot, and right now I am unfortunately not getting my PvP enjoyment in the current WoW scene. I spent a good share of my late high school/early college years playing Counter-Strike. Good ‘ol 1.3 and 1.6. And then came the release of Steam, back when it sucked before it became awesome. It was a PvP game in the purest sense in my opinion.

I also enjoy raiding. I like the challenge. As much fun as defeating a live opponent is, a PvE encounter with a team where no person has to truly lose is a good feeling.

But now I have my wife playing MMOs. And she is most definitely not into PvP. Even with her new Ret Paladin who is quickly tearing through the Loremaster achievements she keeps to herself mostly. She likes selling her gathered goods, keeping almost any character she has with a few thousand gold to blow on fun items.

That is, of course, after she funds her epic flying mount, which she has done on both her level 80 characters without any help from me. We ran instances with her, did group quests, etc. In BC she came to Karazhan. But mostly she does with her characters whatever she wants.

So what do I want in my next MMO? Something like this:

• PvP in some capacity. I prefer open-world where there is a struggle for survival. High hopes for the Old Republic.
• Some type of high-end content that requires great player coordination. I don’t care if it is small numbers like 5 or 6, or large like 25 or 40.
• Player/Guild/Clan housing. I like the idea of you being able to have a permanent presence in the world you occupy in some capacity. Guild Wars had a good idea, as did Galaxies until all the worlds became empty wastelands. Maybe Guild Wars 2 will deliver.
• Robust crafting system. I like how reliant Burning Sea was on player-created items and I also liked how in Galaxies the quality of materials was an option for creating things.
• Out-of-game integration. Blizzard really stepped it up in this department. There is a lot of information available out of game through them as third-party sources. Places like the Armory, Wowhead, WoW-Heroes, Be.imba, etc. It’s large shoes to fill.
• Solo content. The biggest complaint I heard about FFXI was everything was grouped. If you were alone, there was nothing to do. And that’s unacceptable. Sometimes you just want to chill. And for players like my wife, the ability to do your own thing is important.
• A mostly seamless world. Like I said, I have been spoiled by WoW. Having content available with minimal loading. And in that same note…
• Customizable UI. You’ll never know how much you love it till you don’t have it.

Am I looking to quit WoW? Not at all. It’s still the best MMO out there. And to me there is no reason to jump ship until there is a better ship to go to.

So what about you? Are there new MMOs coming out that interest you? And if so, what elements are most important to you? I am curious to know what people find most important. There is one thing I know. When the time comes for me to move to a new MMO, this site will follow me there and hopefully I will be able to provide a new crowd of folks the same kind of information for whatever the new game may be.

Thoughts, comments, opinions, or answers to the above questions, leave ‘em here in the comments.

My guild is working on hard modes and as we get them down I want to make some narrative videos going over what’s going on. Tomorrow is another night on Thorim hard-mode, and after last week I am feeling really confident about our performance and the possibility of killing him. Which opens up a world of “holycrappleasedropthecrossbow.”

So until those videos are ready, are there topics people would like to see covered? It doesn’t matter if it’s about Naxxramas or other older raids, certain game or class mechanics, or anything because as it stands, I am drawing a blank.

Leave your thoughts or suggestions in the comments.

The most important abilities for use to be aware of are as follows:

Aura of Despair: This is the major gimmick of this fight. Mana regeneration is reduced to nothing. Due to the DPS nature of certain classes, like us, Aspect of the Viper and a couple other select skills still work.

Shadow Crash: You’ve seen these in the Old Kingdom right before the last boss. Big swirling purple things that deal damage when they land. Well, they still do that. But as an added bonus it increases haste, reduces mana costs, and decreases healing. This is the reason casters own this fight. But we have our share of magic damage as well so all is not lost on us.

Mark of the Faceless: This is put on a single target and then siphons 5000 health a second from all nearby allies. If you get it, it actually doesn’t do any damage to you, just people around you. It is important to be aware of the raid members near you to get away from them or get yourself away from the raid.

Now in theory you could stand away from the raid, ignore everything going on other than helping kill a Saronite Vapor when called for and live on with your merry life. But you would probably get trounced on meters. And that’s not how we roll.

We want to take advantage of those shadow crashes as much as possible. After all, the huge mana reduction provided through it is reason enough. But when I see Explosive Shot ticking for upwards of 11k, it’s definitely worth my time.

This is one of those fights where you are going to want to have your camera zoomed out a lot. After all, you are not the only raid member wanting that sweet damage buff. And when General Vezax chooses a target for a new Shadow Crash, chances are it will be near you. Given your healers limited resources, the last thing they need is you taking extra damage from Shadow Crash.

When you first move into a Shadow Crash find the outer most edge possible. You don’t need to stand in the middle of it as its effect is ever so slightly larger than the graphic. You are going to have to fit almost 10 people (depending on your raid comp) into that itty bitty living space. And all of them are going to have to move when a new Shadow Crash comes too. Be near the edge so you can quickly and easily side-step out of it.

This also puts you in a great spot to avoid Mark of the Faceless. If you get this debuff you can Disengage out and reduce the amount of Life Siphoned to almost nil. And if it happens to be someone near you, you can sidestep again and hope they do things right and move out of the raid as well.

General Vezax also does a Surge of Darkness which requires your tank to run away putting General Vezax out of range of any previously placed shadow Crashes in most situations. As the fight progresses depending on how good your raid is at positioning they might be in fromt of his kite path. But it is usually during the kiting phase I use Aspect of the Viper to regain some mana if I feel I am going to need it.

After all, General Vezax has 30 million HP in 25-man Ulduar so it’s not exactly a quick fight. Anytime you can’t get into a Shadow Crash is your best time to use Aspect of the Viper in my opinion. In fact, you will find your Mages may not DPS at all if they are not in a Shadow Crash as it is a waste of mana.

In the long run of things, this fight is very easy for Hunters. Healers have to really worry about their mana in order to keep the tank alive, melee has to interrupt Searing Flames. We just have to make sure we pull as much weight as possible and try to reduce how often the healers have to look at us. And on non-hard mode if we do that properly, we should never need a heal.

I’ve tried Marksmship a few times on this fight, including tonight and for some reason I always feel like my mana depletes so much faster than it does as Survival. I know I run the mana intensive build which also includes Silencing Shot in my rotation but I always end up going back to Survival for this fight. Your mileage may vary.

Any thoughts, comments, questions, or would like to correct or add anything, leave a comment. Or stop by the forums.