Project Lore

Late yesterday afternoon the Player Test Realms were finally closed, marking the end of testing for patch 3.0.2.  At the same time, players were met with the typical “Breaking News” window at the login screen.  The latest in “Breaking News” was a message telling everyone that maintenance would be longer than normal.  Gee, what could possibly make maintenance longer than normal.  Oh, I know, Blizzard Entertainment is finally putting the Echoes of Doom patch live!

Just because we can't play World of Warcraft right now doesn't mean we should put it out of our minds.  There is plenty to worry about and do while waiting for Blizzard's techies to finish their job.  Hopefully most of you managed to empty out your inventories and cash out while you could.  If not, be sure to do so right away.  I expect that once the servers go live, the market will start its steady decline on those soon-to-be-replaced items.  The patch may make many items relatively worthless, but it will also allow many players to get some epic quality gems on the cheap.

Thanks to the removal of BoP and unique-equipped tags on PvP gems, those epic stones can soon be purchased by your PvP-dominating main and socketed into your whimpy alt's gear.  The change in PvP items – initially added because Blizzard was going to wipe Honor points and Battleground marks – is just one of the cavalcade of changes coming with Echoes of Doom.  There is another thing you can do, put on your reading glasses and hit up the latest official PTR patch notes for 3.0.2.

Done reading that ridiculous amount of class changes?  Well, then it is time to go lay out your new spec for your main and handful of alts.  I am actually still working on that myself, although I am kind of stuck with dagger builds for the moment.

Last but not least, and this one is often torture, it is time to start collecting 3.0.2 ready addons.  Many addons will be broken with the launch of 3.0.2, so updates will surely be needed for a handful of your mods.  The most popular mods have already been updated for the beta of Wrath of the Lich King itself, and therefore work fine in 3.0.2.  WoWWiki has a comprehensive list, complete with funny little icons, to keep us informed.  Most of my favorite addons are ready such as the Auctioneer suite, FuBar and tons of its plugins, Bejeweled, Itemrack, Rating Buster.  Some of my other favorites are in limbo right now, including the popular BankItems, AutoBar and Omen Threat Meter.  To make matters a little less time consuming, you may want to install the BLASC Client, which will keep your mods up-to-date via WoWAce's database.

Oh, and how could we forget the Achievements.  Which ones are you shooting for on day one?

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I have been on a bit of a financial kick lately. Although all the advisors out there say someone my age (less than 35) shouldn't worry too much about their portfolio, it is hard to break a daily routine. This daily routine actually extends into my digital life as well, as I am constantly monitoring fluctuations in the Azerothian market as well.

Being a self-proclaimed financial analyst, I figured I could give you guys a few pointers on how to cash in before the launch of Wrath. You see, as with any content patch, let alone an expansion, many things will change. It is pretty safe to say that no item from The Burning Crusade will remain at its current level of value once Wrath launches in mid-November. Although this may sound like a doomsday statement, there is still plenty of money to be made in the market.

Run On The Banks

The first thing you guys should do is take a hard look at your banks on all of your characters. Grab one of my favorite UI addons to make things easier. BankItems will allow you to look at all inventory - bank, mailbox and bags - on any character. Now that you can browse things easily, grab any items that will be worthless in Wrath and get the money for them while you can. Things like Primals, some enchanting mats and potions will all be replaced by better versions once Wrath launches.  Dump 'em like an abusive boyfriend.

Players should be able to pocket a sizable amount of gold by clearing out their banks of useless junk that they have been saving “for a rainy day.” Not only that, but your bank, and bags will be nice and tidy for the level grind to 80.

To The Market

Ore, leather, and cloth are a different story though. The market for these items will be different than the higher end gear, mainly because they are profession based. As mentioned in the comments section of my other economic post, things like low to mid-range cloth are actually selling at inflated prices. The reasoning behind this is due to many people leveling up alts for Wrath. Why stop and eat something when you can transmute some bandages and just keep on grinding?

This sets the old supply-and-demand graph on its head, with almost no supply but a high demand. Time is money friends and that jacks up the price on many trade profession goods.  If you have time, go farm some of these mid-range items on your main, and reap the benefits.

While running on your bank is making you money, it's more about cashing in while the items are worth something. In the trade profession market, you could make a good amount of gold by resale alone. If you are going to give this a run, be sure to pick up the Auctioneer Addon suite. It is a must have for any Auction House monitor, recording, scanning and adding functionality to the standard AH layout.

I should mention that each realm is different. What is selling like hotcakes for me may not be worth looting on yours. As an example, the ore market on Magetheridon-A has bottomed out recently, with high-end ore being at its lowest point since I reformatted some time ago. In contrast to that, mid-range ore, like Thorium, is through the roof. The evidence – that the bars are selling for much less than the ore – points to miners just buying it to smelt for skill points.

Be Careful - It Isn't Fool Proof

Be careful and do your research before you dump your stuff. Selling on the weekend and buying on weekdays (or bidding right before the servers go down) are also handy tricks to pulling in extra cash. Everything counts but it is still a risky market out there. Use my tips at your own risk but please, treat your financial advisor right. The last time I gave our readers some tips I couldn't use the ideas myself for a few weeks. I have no problem with players on my server making a buck, but send me (Solidsamm of the Alliance) 5% of the profit! Kthxbye.

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In this week's episode, I had the chance to play my warlock alt, Xenophontos. I've been doing quite a lot of experimenting on him, and I've been switching between specs to check out each one. I enjoyed affliction at low levels due to the nearly nonexistent downtime, so I checked it out the other day (maybe you'll see that in a future episode). My DPS as affliction is highly dependent on keeping as many DoTs on enemies as much as possible. Something that really helped my DoT upkeep was a neat little addon called Chronometer. Chronometer puts up a timer bar for each debuff you cast on your enemies. It is highly configurable, and can show debuffs on mobs other than the current target, or just those on the current target. The bar is a small bar, similar to a cast bar, in that it fills up or empties over the duration of each spell. The icon of the debuff can be shown, along with the name of the target, the name of the spell, and seconds left until the spell fades. This allows me to (theoretically) reapply DoTs immediately after they complete for maximum uptime and minimum wasted mana. As affliction, it can be tricky to juggle all those DoTs, so this makes it much easier to, at a glance, see what I should be ready to cast next. Other than just DoTs, It's great for watching curses on multiple mobs as well as crowd control spells, like fear and banish. If I time things right, I can get a new banish on just moments after it runs out, keeping whatever crazy demon or elemental I have assigned to me from smacking a healer. I've also heard it's useful for keeping an eye on other spells, like HoTs, but I don't have any of those on my shaman, so I don't worry about it much. Now, apparently Chronometer is outdated, so let me know if you guys have something that might be current!

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Welcome back to my UI. I've got a number of addons I love to use, but since this week's episode has me in healing mode, I thought I would go over another one of the addons I use to make myself awesome. Whenever someone asks me which addons I would recommend for a healer, I say, "Grid and Clique." I went over Grid last week, so this week let's talk about clique. Clique will allow you to cast a spell, run a macro, use an item, or perform other actions on a target by clicking on its frame. When would you want to use this? Whenever you have multiple targets you need to quickly switch between, using different abilities on each. A great example of this is healing! Not convinced? Let's take a look at how I utilize the functionality as a shaman. While acting as a healer, the spells I use most are ranks 8 and 12 of Healing Wave, ranks 4 and 5 of Chain Heal, and rank 7 of Lesser Healing Wave. I also use Cure Poison and Cure Disease even while I'm just kicking ass in my enhancement spec. So, instead of wasting precious moments by pressing multiple keys to target and then cast (or vice versa), it's nice to combine them. Using Grid's range check, missing health, incoming heal, and debuff indicators, I can immediately know which spell to cast. After installing Clique into your interface folder, you will see an additional tab on the right side your spellbook. Clicking it will open up the setup menu, and you can then click on any non-passive ability in your spellbook with the desired modifiers and mouse button My settings are as follows: right click is rank 8 Healing wave, shift+right click is rank 12. Button 4 is rank 4 Chain Heal, shift+button 4 is rank 5, shift+left click is Lesser Healing Wave, alt+left click is Cure Poison, and alt+right click is Cure Disease. I keep left click as target, but that's just my personal preference. These settings keep everything at my fingertips, accessible quickly and accurately. The main project page on WoWInterface has some great notes about additional features, such as conditional function changes for harmful vs friendly targets, out of combat keybinds for buffing, or editing what frames are affected.

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This is the first of many features about addons I use in order to make Juggy the best shaman ever and Xenophontos a halfway decent warlock. Grid is an addon I used much more while I was resto and main healing, but it is still pretty useful even while I'm enhancement. An Ace addon, grid displays party and raid health bars in a compact form, and it gives loads of information using very little screen real estate. This means that at a glance, you can see how your raid is doing. By default, it displays each party member as a small square within a grid. I think that is where the name came from, but can we ever be sure? One of the great included features of grid are the inverted health bars, meaning it fills up a dim box with color as the player loses health, making it easier to spot who needs healing in a large raid. There is also a built in range check that can automatically dim all player's boxes who are out of range. This feature is invaluable, since trying to heal players who are out of range can waste a lot of time. It's also a great feature for battlegrounds, allowing you to become top healer and help your side win. Lastly, my favorite feature of Grid is its use of the incoming heal module, which shows a visual estimate of any incoming heals on any target in the raid from anyone using Grid (or any other ace addon that has the incoming heal feature). If all of the healers use this addon, you can avoid a lot of overhealing. There are also border colors, center icon, and other corner icons that are configurable to show tons of different statuses of each player in the raid. I do like to make a couple of tweaks to the defaults, though. I play on a relatively high resolution, and I find the default size of the squares too small. So, I scale it up in the options. As a shaman, I have two dispel options, poison and disease. The standard set up has all types of debuffs appear as a single mark in one corner of the player's box. I go in and change it so that magic debuffs and curses don't show up and poisons are in one corner while diseases are in another. That way I know which button to press or totem to drop in order to cure all of my party members. I also like to be able to see when Dorkins is going to run out of mana, so I've picked up GridManaBars. This takes a slice of the square and turns it into a mana bar. Imagine that! Most of the other options are fine for me on their default settings, but Grid is highly flexible, so play around and look at the documentation to find the settings that work best for you.

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Let's be honest here, I suck at this game. I don't come from the world of warcraft, I come from the world of suckcraft. So in order to make it look like I have some tiny semblance of skill, I use addons. And lots of them. These are my hunter specific addons, enjoy.

Beast Training. This makes the beast training window look like a talent window, get it, love it, bottom line. Cooldown Timers2. Do you want to know when your trap is going to break? How about when Bestial Wrath is up? I though so, definite must have. GFW_FeedOMatic. Having trouble figuring out the nuances of pet feedery. Trouble no more, grab this addon and you are set. Brought to you by Gazmik Fizzwidget. GFW_HuntersHelper. Everything you ever could have dreamed of as a fresh, tender, young hunter is here. Install it, like yesterday. Gazmik Fizzwidget is a smart S.O.B. Kharthus's Hunter Timers. Similar to Cooldown Timers2, KHT has the ability to monitor all of your hunter abilities and skills. I use it mainly to show when mend pet and feed pet are active, so I don't go wasting mana and food. ZHunterMod. Last, but not least, Zhunter is a highly customizable addon that lets you do practically anything with your Petbar, your Trapbar, and your Aspectbar. This frees up a lot of space on your main actionbars giving you room for other things like macros and potions. My favorite part is the movable autoshot casting bar, love that shit.

Because of these beautiful little cyber treats, my suckitude rank in the annals of suckness has gone from General Suckington to a more reasonable Sergeant Suckage. Sucking less is always good, so if you know of any must have addons, let me know.

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First off I want to say "Thanks" to everyone for making the launch of Project Lore a successful one. The feedback has been great and I can't wait to move forward with building this community hand in hand with you all! Now it's time for the first installment of Add-On Corner. I don't know about you but I can't live without my addons. The WoW UI is nice but man can you really tweak this game or what? We've been getting a lot of e-mails asking about my HUD in the show. So I'd like to talk about DHUD or Drathal's Hud. When I first installed this addon it was because I couldn't find a good combo point warning addon for WoW. As a rogue I wanted to have a quick reference for how many combo points I had accrued. Now I know there are little addons that just show balls floating in space but I needed something that was a little more clear. So I found this really interesting HUD that clearly showed the combo points right on the side of the enemy. I was not excited at first... weird tron like rings in the middle of the screen? But man after using it for a day I was hooked! It was amazing how nice it is to see such detailed information about you and your enemy right where you're looking anyway, at the thing you're killing. Now I will give you a few setup tips for this mod, take 'em or leave 'em, this is just how I think it works best. 1) In the "Layouts" tab set the option to have your info on one side and the targets info on the other. By default you have your health and the targets health on one side and your mana/rage/energy as well as the targets on the other. I found this way too confusing right out of the gate. You guys might like it so again take it or leave it. 2) On the "Misc" tab check the box for "Show Player Frame." I found it weird to not have my little icon in the top left corner. Also, when in a group the space is still there where your player frame would be but it's just blank... seems weird. Well I hope you enjoy trying out DHUD. I know it's a radical change but I think you'll enjoy it once you give it a shot. - Dr Dark

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Yes. I am leveling a mage... again. Why you ask. Well I suppose it's a few different reasons. 1. My guild split up and that sucked. 2. 'Old' content is still fun. 3. I can do it better the second time around. This time I'll actually pick a quicker path and use addons to help me. For the first 30 levels or so of my first character, I had no idea about addons. None. Now they are so essential to game play, especially in end-game encounters, that I can't believe I did 30 levels without them. So go get some addons and level up a new toon. You now you want to

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