I'm going to finish up my addon discussion from yesterday and then throw a couple of tools out there that make addon management easier.
I saved these last two addons for a separate post because I feel they warrant a little special attention. I've mentioned both of them (and talked about one a little in-depth) in a previous post, and my feelings on both of them are mixed. They are both very useful tools that get abused and used for status instead of as tools. I'm speaking of course, of GearScore and Recount.
GearScore - Everyone
Recount - Everyone
There are a few differing methods to measure "gear score." Be Imba and Wow Heroes are two websites that provide you with gear scores, and the GearScore addon is another. These each differ somewhat in the numbers used and the methods to achieve those numbers (for example, I have roughly a 4700 gear score as given to me by the GearScore addon, and Wow Heroes reports me around 2550), but the purpose of them is the same - to give you a singular number that is supposed to indicate how well geared you are.
Recount is just one of many of the class of addons known as damage meters. Damage meters in general provide you with a host of useful statistics about your performance. Recount in particular, for example, tracks damage done, damage per second, healing done, healing per second, damage taken, healing taken, rezzes, cleanses, rage gained, and on and on, for your entire party or raid.
Both of these types of addons are wonderful tools, and if used properly, can help you better evaluate what is best for you or your raid.
The problem is that they are very often NOT used properly. For many they merely provide a status symbol for themselves - they have to have the highest score, top the dps meter, and feel no problem telling everybody that doesn't match them that their gear is inferior or they need to learn to play their class or whatever other childish thing they can throw out there.
You can usually tell the two types of people apart, although not always. Folks that ask for meters to be posted to party/raid after every pull, folks that refuse to take anyone who doesn't meet their minimum gear score on a heroic or low raid, folks that automatically blame the person who is lowest on a dps chart or gear score for a failure in a raid... all of these are *probably* going to be irritating or poor teammates. There are exceptions, but in general I have found this to be the case. On the flip side, there are folks that use these tools properly, to help themselves learn how to gear and play their class, to screen the general gear level of possible raid participants, to judge themselves on their own standards, and not judge others... these players tend to make good raiders and raid leaders.
I encourage the use of these addons for players who are willing to let them be what they should be, and for everyone else... please do the rest of us a favor and ignore them.
Moving on...
You may have noticed that I run more than a couple addons. Truth be told, I could make do without a few of them, but I find them fun and useful. More than a couple of folks I've talked to don't want that many addons for the simple reason that it means a lot of time spent keeping track of addon versions and updates. I was the same way before a friend introduced me to one of my favorite WoW tools:
WoW Matrix.
In a minute I'll explain why, but equally important to me now is the Curse client from Curse Gaming.
Both of these are tools that manage your addons for you. Instead of keeping track of the latest versions of each of your addons, you just start up one of these applications, let them check your addons against the latest versions available and have them download and install the updates for you if they exist.
The reason I use two of them is that I dislike Curse's policies and limitations but I am forced to use their client for certain addons. Early on WoW Matrix was the only player, but once Curse decided to put their own client out there, they stopped allowing WoW Matrix to access addons stored on their servers, and prevented those addons from being hosted elsewhere, thus ensuring that players would have to use their client. Then, they made sure that there were 2 levels of their client available for use - the free version, and the "premium" subscribtion based service. The main drawback (in my mind) to the free version is that you can only download 1 addon at a time. In the latest editions, you can queue up several downloads at a time for install, but you still have to tell it to update each one individually. In WoW Matrix, you can update all your addons (that need it) with a single click, whereas the Curse client requires a subscription to do that.
Either way, though, these two tools make a nightmare of management quite easy. No more downloading individual addons, no more unzipping and making sure things are in the right place.
There are risks to doing this... you're giving an application free reign to write to your hard drive, and even if it's one you trust, that application is getting files from individual users, which is always a risky proposition. There is that to consider, and I won't pretend that the risk isn't there. I use these tools, but then I trust myself to fix my computer if something goes wrong, and I run virus, adware, and malware scanners to be prepared for bad situations.
... and that's all I've got to say about that.
Kaethir out.
Showing posts with label addon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label addon. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Bearly Useful AddOns
I can't stop bad puns. They just happen.
So, everybody probably knows that some addons are really useful in WoW. I'd like to talk about what aspiring bears should check out, a few for trees as well, and a few that are generally useful to all.
Ok, I don't have any bear-specific ones, but some are more necessary for bears than others.
Deadly Boss Mods - All Raiders
The number one must-have addon for raiding is the nearly ubiquitous Deadly Boss Mods. If you have any hope of making it as a raider, pug or guild, you absolutely must have DBM. It's nicely configurable, but even straight "out-of-the-box," as it were, it's exceptionally useful and almost impossible to be successful without it.
Just in case you DON'T know what it is, it provides you with warnings when all the things you need to pay attention to (with respect to the bosses you are fighting) happen. It warns you when you are standing in fire, it warns you when a boss is about to cast something that needs to be interrupted, it warns when you're too close to certain things that will kill you. It's not perfect, but without a doubt it is the mod that has done the most to make me an effective raider. It helps in all dungeons as well, providing similar information when needed.
Omen - All Non-Healers (and maybe even them too!)
Omen, according to it's description, is "a lightweight, multi-target threat meter." Tanks and DPS, especially, need to be able to see who is generating threat on mobs, especially if they are in danger of stealing aggro from the tank. Off-tanks on big mobs should be #2 on the threat table, and everybody else needs a way to tell when they can't push their DPS any harder without causing problems. I'm sure there are other threat meters out there, but Omen is the one I've always used. Easily configurable to show/hide the window for grouping or solo play.
Grid - All Healers/Rezzers/Raid Leaders
As a healer, Grid needs something like Clique (see below) to bring it to it's full potential, and requires some work with it to really show you what it's full usefulness is. Grid is not the only unit frames addon out there, and I would encourage you to choose the one that you like best, but it's very configurable, very powerful, and has several modules coded up for it that you can use to extend its capabilities.
The short version of what Grid does is display an entire group's or raid's status for you in a single box on the screen, rather than having to drag groups/units out of the raid interface. With proper customization, it can also display all sorts of information for you - if a player has a raid target icon on them, if a player has debuffs you can dispel (and which kind!) on them, if a player has certain buffs on them (and how many stacks!), if a player has an incoming heal and how much of their life that heal should refill, how low they are on life/mana/rage/energy/runic power, and on and on.
For healers it lets you quickly assess who needs healing, target and heal them (more powerful with Clique! see below), for raid leaders it lets you more easily assess raid composition and dead/alive status for possible battle rez, etc. etc.
Out-of-the-box, Grid is not very well configured, but with a little work it's one of my favorite addons. Do a search for some advice on customization if you plan to use it.
Clique - All Healers/Cleansers
Clique plays well with Grid and other unit frames addons - it lets you cast spells by clicking the different buttons on your mouse while hovering over the unit frame of the player you want to cast on. As a druid healer, I can leave my target as the tank I'm healing, and still cast rejuvenations, swiftmends, wild growths, etc. at the rest of the raid. Requires a little configuration so as not to be annoying, but a big part of the reason I'm an even semi-useful healer.
Let me rephrase those last two addons together, in case you missed it. With Grid and Clique together, you can cast any spell in your arsenal at any player in your raid without ever actually targeting the player.
There are options to use Clique for offensive actions, but I've not found that particularly useful, myself. Perhaps I'm missing something.
Those are the really, really important ones I use, and I have a bunch of them that I find randomly useful as well...
Outfitter - Druids, lazy people
A lot of the usefulness of Outfitter has been superseded or made obsolete by Blizzard's Equipment Manager, but I still find some use in Outfitter. It provides easy methods to switch between gear sets, and for me, I like the fact that it will automatically switch between gear depending on which druid form I'm in, or if I decide to go fishing it will (theoretically...) put my Nat Pagle's Extreme Angling Fishing Boots on without me having to do it manually. It does integrate with the equipment manager and allows easy updates to sets defined there.
Titan Panel - Everyone
There are other "panel" type addons as well, but what this does is put a bar (or two) at the top (and/or bottom) of your screen which displays information you can configure as you so desire. I like to use things like the gold meter (records the gold each of your characters have, and shows you the grand total in addition to the individual numbers), the performance (shows you frames per second and memory usage), the loot type (shows you if your group/raid is using Group Loot or Master Looter and what level of item is limited by this), and CritLine (tracks your hits and tells you the highest normal and critical hit for each of your attacks/spells/abilities). That's just a small sample of what is available in it, and it's more of a convenience feature than anything, but I like it and think it's useful.
Atlas/AtlasLoot - Everyone/Raiders
Atlas is an addon that shows you maps of just about everything in WoW. It's useful for finding flight paths and dungeon locations and points of interest in the game world, and has annotated maps of every dungeon so you can see where you have to go to finish quests or dungeon requirements. AtlasLoot provides you with lists of loot available from each boss, in each dungeon - useful for picking out where to focus your efforts to get the best upgrades available to you.
ArkInventory - Everyone
ArkInventory is a bag management addon. It shows you all your bags in one window, and all your bank + bank bags in one window, with customizable options for sorting how items are displayed in the window. Makes bag organization a thing of the past. Also records what is in each character's bags and bank, and shows you how much when you hover over items in addition to allowing you to view each character's bags and bank. Also provides search capability on bags and banks. Occasionally buggy, but extremely useful.
Auctioneer Advanced - Everyone
Shows you sell values and projected auction values when you hover over items. Has a lot of functionality on the auction house, most of which I have not explored.
Gatherer - Miners, Herbalists, and Dwarves
Records the location of items you gather from the map, and displays them in the minimap and on your map interface.
DruidStats - Druids
Provides some information about what items actually mean to you stat-wise in your druid form (as opposed to just seeing the base stats). It's a bit rough and not as powerful as I would hope, but I find it useful.
FishingBuddy - Anybody working on Fishing
Get this if you're working on fishing. Ignore it if you don't fish. If you're in between... think about it.
Tomorrow I'll touch on the two naughty addons, and some other useful tools.
So, everybody probably knows that some addons are really useful in WoW. I'd like to talk about what aspiring bears should check out, a few for trees as well, and a few that are generally useful to all.
Ok, I don't have any bear-specific ones, but some are more necessary for bears than others.
Deadly Boss Mods - All Raiders
The number one must-have addon for raiding is the nearly ubiquitous Deadly Boss Mods. If you have any hope of making it as a raider, pug or guild, you absolutely must have DBM. It's nicely configurable, but even straight "out-of-the-box," as it were, it's exceptionally useful and almost impossible to be successful without it.
Just in case you DON'T know what it is, it provides you with warnings when all the things you need to pay attention to (with respect to the bosses you are fighting) happen. It warns you when you are standing in fire, it warns you when a boss is about to cast something that needs to be interrupted, it warns when you're too close to certain things that will kill you. It's not perfect, but without a doubt it is the mod that has done the most to make me an effective raider. It helps in all dungeons as well, providing similar information when needed.
Omen - All Non-Healers (and maybe even them too!)
Omen, according to it's description, is "a lightweight, multi-target threat meter." Tanks and DPS, especially, need to be able to see who is generating threat on mobs, especially if they are in danger of stealing aggro from the tank. Off-tanks on big mobs should be #2 on the threat table, and everybody else needs a way to tell when they can't push their DPS any harder without causing problems. I'm sure there are other threat meters out there, but Omen is the one I've always used. Easily configurable to show/hide the window for grouping or solo play.
Grid - All Healers/Rezzers/Raid Leaders
As a healer, Grid needs something like Clique (see below) to bring it to it's full potential, and requires some work with it to really show you what it's full usefulness is. Grid is not the only unit frames addon out there, and I would encourage you to choose the one that you like best, but it's very configurable, very powerful, and has several modules coded up for it that you can use to extend its capabilities.
The short version of what Grid does is display an entire group's or raid's status for you in a single box on the screen, rather than having to drag groups/units out of the raid interface. With proper customization, it can also display all sorts of information for you - if a player has a raid target icon on them, if a player has debuffs you can dispel (and which kind!) on them, if a player has certain buffs on them (and how many stacks!), if a player has an incoming heal and how much of their life that heal should refill, how low they are on life/mana/rage/energy/runic power, and on and on.
For healers it lets you quickly assess who needs healing, target and heal them (more powerful with Clique! see below), for raid leaders it lets you more easily assess raid composition and dead/alive status for possible battle rez, etc. etc.
Out-of-the-box, Grid is not very well configured, but with a little work it's one of my favorite addons. Do a search for some advice on customization if you plan to use it.
Clique - All Healers/Cleansers
Clique plays well with Grid and other unit frames addons - it lets you cast spells by clicking the different buttons on your mouse while hovering over the unit frame of the player you want to cast on. As a druid healer, I can leave my target as the tank I'm healing, and still cast rejuvenations, swiftmends, wild growths, etc. at the rest of the raid. Requires a little configuration so as not to be annoying, but a big part of the reason I'm an even semi-useful healer.
Let me rephrase those last two addons together, in case you missed it. With Grid and Clique together, you can cast any spell in your arsenal at any player in your raid without ever actually targeting the player.
There are options to use Clique for offensive actions, but I've not found that particularly useful, myself. Perhaps I'm missing something.
Those are the really, really important ones I use, and I have a bunch of them that I find randomly useful as well...
Outfitter - Druids, lazy people
A lot of the usefulness of Outfitter has been superseded or made obsolete by Blizzard's Equipment Manager, but I still find some use in Outfitter. It provides easy methods to switch between gear sets, and for me, I like the fact that it will automatically switch between gear depending on which druid form I'm in, or if I decide to go fishing it will (theoretically...) put my Nat Pagle's Extreme Angling Fishing Boots on without me having to do it manually. It does integrate with the equipment manager and allows easy updates to sets defined there.
Titan Panel - Everyone
There are other "panel" type addons as well, but what this does is put a bar (or two) at the top (and/or bottom) of your screen which displays information you can configure as you so desire. I like to use things like the gold meter (records the gold each of your characters have, and shows you the grand total in addition to the individual numbers), the performance (shows you frames per second and memory usage), the loot type (shows you if your group/raid is using Group Loot or Master Looter and what level of item is limited by this), and CritLine (tracks your hits and tells you the highest normal and critical hit for each of your attacks/spells/abilities). That's just a small sample of what is available in it, and it's more of a convenience feature than anything, but I like it and think it's useful.
Atlas/AtlasLoot - Everyone/Raiders
Atlas is an addon that shows you maps of just about everything in WoW. It's useful for finding flight paths and dungeon locations and points of interest in the game world, and has annotated maps of every dungeon so you can see where you have to go to finish quests or dungeon requirements. AtlasLoot provides you with lists of loot available from each boss, in each dungeon - useful for picking out where to focus your efforts to get the best upgrades available to you.
ArkInventory - Everyone
ArkInventory is a bag management addon. It shows you all your bags in one window, and all your bank + bank bags in one window, with customizable options for sorting how items are displayed in the window. Makes bag organization a thing of the past. Also records what is in each character's bags and bank, and shows you how much when you hover over items in addition to allowing you to view each character's bags and bank. Also provides search capability on bags and banks. Occasionally buggy, but extremely useful.
Auctioneer Advanced - Everyone
Shows you sell values and projected auction values when you hover over items. Has a lot of functionality on the auction house, most of which I have not explored.
Gatherer - Miners, Herbalists, and Dwarves
Records the location of items you gather from the map, and displays them in the minimap and on your map interface.
DruidStats - Druids
Provides some information about what items actually mean to you stat-wise in your druid form (as opposed to just seeing the base stats). It's a bit rough and not as powerful as I would hope, but I find it useful.
FishingBuddy - Anybody working on Fishing
Get this if you're working on fishing. Ignore it if you don't fish. If you're in between... think about it.
Tomorrow I'll touch on the two naughty addons, and some other useful tools.
Friday, November 6, 2009
My love/hate with GearScore
This little rant of mine may share some similarities to Big Bear Butt's rants on hating damage meters. The reasons for that are simple. A lot of the idiots with regards to damage meters are idiots with regards to GearScore too, and for a lot of the same reasons. I suppose it's a little better with GearScore, because you can usually tell the idiots before you get knee deep in a raid, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
I love GearScore. It gives me a bar on which I can judge my own gear and how well I'm doing. It's definitely not perfect, but I don't think anything that simply evaluates your gear and chunks out a single score can be. While it's not something to focus on, a little friendly competition with it is nice, and it's good to see, sometimes, how you are compared to your friends.
I hate GearScore. A player is better measured by how well they play their class than how much item level 245 gear they've managed to sling together, whether they've gotten lucky by whacking the Vault loot pinata or taken the time and effort to put it together through ToC25. Much like with damage meters, a player is not simply how high they can go.
I love GearScore. For the folks that are really trying to push harder content, it can be used as an indicator of who simply is not ready to take it on. You need to be careful with it though - if you're going to judge based on gearscore, you need to tell people in advance that you are trying harder content and require a certain level of gear to come along. I'm personally of the opinion that even if folks don't have that level of gear, you should still let them try, but make sure they understand that their gear doesn't look like it will withstand the test, and if we have issues you'll be watching your damage meters and threat meters and healing meters and if the person with a little lower gear is not able to pull their weight, they'll be the first to look for replacement.
I've had that happen, quite recently, with a TotGC run I was invited to heal on. I'm ok with that, I understand that harder content requires higher gear, the leader told me upfront that he thought I wouldn't be able to push out enough healing, and I told him that was ok, if he thought I wasn't there I would sit out. He had me try anyway, we were a little behind on the healing for a couple of tries and I stepped out gracefully. That's fine.
I hate GearScore. Idiots try to use it as bar for entry into raids for 5-mans where there should be none (or it should be much lower). Let me share a little story with you.
The other night I'm trolling around doing some dailies, and since I'm not running any guild raids this week I've set myself up in LFG for Ony and ToC 25, and ToC 10, and I'm occasionally announcing in channel that I'm looking for any Onyxia or ToC raid. Although my feral spec doesn't fully support DPS (and therefore it's a bit low), my gear is high enough that I can fill any of the three roles on non-heroic versions of any kind for those two raids. Someone whom I haven't yet realized is an idiot advertises that they are looking for healers and DPS (some ranged, some melee) for an Ony 25 run, and "gear will be checked". Seeing as I already heal this raid every other week on my guild runs I happily volunteer to heal and promptly get invited to the raid.
And promptly removed from the raid group, before I've even had a chance to switch from my tanking set and spec to my healing stuff.
A little confused, I ask why and I'm told that my "gs is to low" and he's looking for "44 min gs," by which he means 4400. Aside from grammatical errors that I try my best to ignore when gaming, there's so much wrong with these statments... well I was going to say I won't go into it but that's kinda the point of this part of my little rant.
a) Hey jerkface, I'm still in my tanking set which has 4600 gs. You have no idea at this point how good my healing set is.
b) My healing set actually is at 4340 gs. Even IF I'm going to set a gs requirement for a raid, I'll let that small of a deficit fly.
c) If you're going to set a gs requirement, make sure you're being reasonable. My guild beats down 25 man Ony every week, and only about half of our raiders top 4400gs.
Despite my better instincts and the fact that I already know I'm dealing with an idiot, I'm limited on time and so I offer to fill a melee DPS slot and get to deal with more idiocy. Oh well I troll for a bit longer and get picked up for an Ony 10 as a tank.
I love GearScore. When running Ulduar (which I rarely get to do anymore,) it gives me a quick way to figure out who will get us the most health out of driving a vehicle.
I guess I should say, really, that much like damage meters, I love GearScore as a tool, and hate the idiots that use it improperly. Both are ways for people to wave their electronic private parts around, but really do have solid uses for those of us who know what we're about.
Coming up, the grand finale of the bear primer!
I love GearScore. It gives me a bar on which I can judge my own gear and how well I'm doing. It's definitely not perfect, but I don't think anything that simply evaluates your gear and chunks out a single score can be. While it's not something to focus on, a little friendly competition with it is nice, and it's good to see, sometimes, how you are compared to your friends.
I hate GearScore. A player is better measured by how well they play their class than how much item level 245 gear they've managed to sling together, whether they've gotten lucky by whacking the Vault loot pinata or taken the time and effort to put it together through ToC25. Much like with damage meters, a player is not simply how high they can go.
I love GearScore. For the folks that are really trying to push harder content, it can be used as an indicator of who simply is not ready to take it on. You need to be careful with it though - if you're going to judge based on gearscore, you need to tell people in advance that you are trying harder content and require a certain level of gear to come along. I'm personally of the opinion that even if folks don't have that level of gear, you should still let them try, but make sure they understand that their gear doesn't look like it will withstand the test, and if we have issues you'll be watching your damage meters and threat meters and healing meters and if the person with a little lower gear is not able to pull their weight, they'll be the first to look for replacement.
I've had that happen, quite recently, with a TotGC run I was invited to heal on. I'm ok with that, I understand that harder content requires higher gear, the leader told me upfront that he thought I wouldn't be able to push out enough healing, and I told him that was ok, if he thought I wasn't there I would sit out. He had me try anyway, we were a little behind on the healing for a couple of tries and I stepped out gracefully. That's fine.
I hate GearScore. Idiots try to use it as bar for entry into raids for 5-mans where there should be none (or it should be much lower). Let me share a little story with you.
The other night I'm trolling around doing some dailies, and since I'm not running any guild raids this week I've set myself up in LFG for Ony and ToC 25, and ToC 10, and I'm occasionally announcing in channel that I'm looking for any Onyxia or ToC raid. Although my feral spec doesn't fully support DPS (and therefore it's a bit low), my gear is high enough that I can fill any of the three roles on non-heroic versions of any kind for those two raids. Someone whom I haven't yet realized is an idiot advertises that they are looking for healers and DPS (some ranged, some melee) for an Ony 25 run, and "gear will be checked". Seeing as I already heal this raid every other week on my guild runs I happily volunteer to heal and promptly get invited to the raid.
And promptly removed from the raid group, before I've even had a chance to switch from my tanking set and spec to my healing stuff.
A little confused, I ask why and I'm told that my "gs is to low" and he's looking for "44 min gs," by which he means 4400. Aside from grammatical errors that I try my best to ignore when gaming, there's so much wrong with these statments... well I was going to say I won't go into it but that's kinda the point of this part of my little rant.
a) Hey jerkface, I'm still in my tanking set which has 4600 gs. You have no idea at this point how good my healing set is.
b) My healing set actually is at 4340 gs. Even IF I'm going to set a gs requirement for a raid, I'll let that small of a deficit fly.
c) If you're going to set a gs requirement, make sure you're being reasonable. My guild beats down 25 man Ony every week, and only about half of our raiders top 4400gs.
Despite my better instincts and the fact that I already know I'm dealing with an idiot, I'm limited on time and so I offer to fill a melee DPS slot and get to deal with more idiocy. Oh well I troll for a bit longer and get picked up for an Ony 10 as a tank.
I love GearScore. When running Ulduar (which I rarely get to do anymore,) it gives me a quick way to figure out who will get us the most health out of driving a vehicle.
I guess I should say, really, that much like damage meters, I love GearScore as a tool, and hate the idiots that use it improperly. Both are ways for people to wave their electronic private parts around, but really do have solid uses for those of us who know what we're about.
Coming up, the grand finale of the bear primer!
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