Tukui and Updates

Obviously this poor little blog has been set on the backburner as I work on other projects and pursue new job opportunities, but Tiddlywinks is still going strong. Yesterday, Tukui was featured on both NoStockUI.com and WoW.com and I was intrigued. It was functional, minimalist, and clean. So I backed up my Cache, WTF, and Interface folders and dove right in. After some tweaking, installing some addons of my own, and playing around with all the different features, I think I'm to a point that will work for me. I'm still missing my "DPS Bar" - the bar that held my All-in-One macro for DPS and showed the cooldowns for all my DPS boosters, but I will figure a way around it.

So for now, here's what we've got. It's the standard Tukui, tweaked a bit. I've added shading to the background of the chat box, installed both Recount and Omen and skinned them to integrate with Tukui, and I tweaked the code for Tukui to display my current spell hit % (which was working when I had last tried it, but it is not working now for some reason - hence the 0.00% spell hit under the map).

I also installed Cork, Decursive, MageNuggets (solely for spell steal info), MonkeyQuest, Overachiever, Power Auras (not yet set up), Scorchio2, and Sexy Cooldown. I had never used Sexy Cooldown in the past because I had my DPS bar, but now without it, I think Sexy Cooldown will do the job and allow me to use my cooldowns better. Since I can now time them to coincide with a Black Magic or Lightweave proc, I can hopefully get a little more DPS out of them.

Should you have any questions, just leave a comment.

Everything in One...

You'd think now that I've been playing a lot more, I'd be updating the blog a lot more, but there just hasn't been that much to write about.

Gear: Got four pieces of T10 today. Woot!

Pets: Got the one pet from the new Love is in the Air mini-boss. It was our fifth and final summon of my first day running the boss and I rolled a 100 to beat everyone else out for the pet.

Achievements: Got both Toravon achievements when he was released, finished up the final Love is in the Air achievement (Tough Love), and with Malygos being the weekly raid quest, today I got You Don't Have an Eternity (10) by 4 seconds.

Raids: Our 10 man has made progress on Putricide and have him to the 3rd phase on a regular basis. But we usually run out of time to attempt him more. So this week, we're clearing through Saurfang tonight so we can focus on the next wings on Thursday for our full raid. Our 25 man is also making progress. We have made good progress on the Blood Princes, but still do not have Festergut or Rotface down. But as each week goes by, our DPS and healing output goes up, so we'll get them down when the time is right.

The New-New UI

I haven't done a UI post since March, 2009 and when I run random heroics, I've been asked a couple of times how I track cooldowns and such to maximize my DPS. So here it goes. This is my current UI.

(click image to enlarge, click here for full size (warning: 775kb - 2560x1600))

So, let's start at the top. Across the top of the screen, I use ChocolateBar to display all my broker addons. Since FuBar is no longer the bar of choice as most plugins are using the broker display, it only made sense to switch. From left to right, we have:

• BuffEnough - explained later
• Cork - explained later
• Decursive - to be explained later
• Omen - explained later
• Broker_BlizzEquipmentSet - an easy way to switch between my 3 defined equipment sets - PvP, PvE, and Naked
• Broker_CPU Memory - your standard performance monitor
• Broker_repair - a standard repair status
• Broker_GemGuild - an easy way to see who is on in your guild
• Broker_GemFriends - the easy way to see which friends are on
• Broker_AltGuild - shows you who is on in a second guild of your choosing
• Broker_Money - how much money you and your alts have
• Broker_Portals - a one click stop for all portals, teleports, and other means of transportation (e.g. Dalaran ring, Argent Tourney Tabard, Hearthstone)
• Broker_Wintergrasper - shows you who holds Wintergrasp, how long until the next battle, and best of all, can be configured to announce to yourself, or more (I have it announcing to the guild) when Wintergrasp starts (I announce at 15 and 5 minutes until the next battle)
• HeadCount - I used to use this to track loot during our Gold Team 25 man runs, but I am no longer the loot master, but I still use it to track raids - a great tool
• Prat - your standard chat modifier - I have found that it also handles alt names as well which has been awesome
• Bartender4 - standard bar manager
• Ora2 - raid manager (tanks, cooldowns, ready checks)
• Grid - more on this later
• GatherMate - tracks gathering nodes on your map
• Chocolate Bar - your bar config

So now we can look at the left side of the screen. I keep it generally uncluttered. The less clutter on the screen, the better. Since our guild hasn't made the move to Ora3 yet, I'm still using Ora2 and it serves me well. I have my main tank frames and below that I can track cooldowns such as battle resses and other class-specific cooldowns. To the right of the cooldowns I have my Deadly Boss Mods timers. Towards the middle of the screen, you can see where they go when they are close to occurring, but we'll get to that later.

Over here on the right, we have a couple of important mods. First up is one I've been using for ages - Elkano's BuffBars. These buff bars are amazing and keep everything in an easy to see spot. I absolutely love them and have found nothing comparable. Next, there's this little box that shows my spellpower, cirt, haste and hit rating at that exact moment. This box is courtesy Mage Nuggets. Mage Nuggets has - as the name implies - many nuggets that are useful to a mage. I use this nugget and one other and have turned the rest off. It's pretty cool to be able to just glance over at any given point and see that my current SP, with all buffs from all raid members is 4,228. What's even more fun is watching my haste move up and down. Fully raid buffed, I'm sitting at about 41% haste. With Icy Veins, Pushing the Limit (2 piece T10 bonus), and Wrath of Air Totem, I'm at 99.98% - with Heroism, it's even better (I have another screenshot with heroism, but no Icy Veins which has me at 116.65% haste). And finally, we have Omen - it's THE threat meter to use. However, it seems like I only really need to use it in random heroics these days as the tanks in my guild rock.

(click image to enlarge)

Now, to the guts of the UI - the middle of my screen where all relevant information pops up and which commands my focus 99% of the raid time. At the very top, middle is me. I have everything spread out around me - it makes it easy to keep my situational awareness up since my eyes never have to stray far from the middle of the screen. Around me, I use Power Auras to give me information that I need the exact moment I need it. The ( 10 ) that you see shows how long I have left on my Icy Veins. Below it, in yellow will pop up a similar counter that shows how much time I have left on my Heroism. These two numbers are extremely important because if you are having mana issues and need an Evocate, if you trigger it with 1 second to go on either Icy Veins or Heroism, it benefits from the haste buff for the full duration of the channel. This obviously reduces your cast time and generates mana in the fastest way possible. The skull-like looking thing directly under my feet is my Missile Barrage alert. It tells me that I have Missile Barrage, and I need to use it ASAP. With 2 piece T10 giving that awesome haste bonus when a Missile Barrage is used, the current theorycrafting advises you use your Arcane Missiles with 2, 3, or 4 stacks of Arcane Blast - in essence, just use it as soon as you can to activate the hast bonus which will haste your missiles and two arcane blasts after the missiles.

Continuing down, we have Scorchio 2 to track my Arcane Blast stacks and other good information. It's always helpful to know exactly when your mirror images will fall off so you can start casting an Invisibility if you are above the tank's threat for some reason. Off to the left, I have my Grid setup so I can at a glance quickly determine who is still alive in the raid or who really needs some healing. It's always fun on a decimate to see everyone drop to no HP and then watch as some die while others are healed up. It's not necessary to really use this, but I just like to monitor the raid when I have time. And, if I can see 90% of the raid is dead, I can pop Invis and maybe stay alive rather than wipe. Directly to the right of that is a little green box. It seems to blend into Decursive, but it's not that...it's BuffEnough. It turns green when you have all the buffs you need. Missing a well fed buff? It'll be red. No flask? Red. No Kings? Red. It's great and helps me if I've forgotten something during the buffing. So next to that, I've got Decursive. Just a quick click here and there to decurse when needed or to sheep that mind controlled target and I'm set. It's a great addon and one a mage might not think to have, but it just makes decursing so easy, there's no reason not to have it.

And now that green bar with all the cooldowns in the middle of it - what this is is a couple of things layered on top of each other. Underneath the green bar, we have a simple Bartender4 bar. This has all my most frequently used items. From left to right, we have: Evocation, Mana Gem, Escape Artist, Talisman of Resurgence, Icy Veins, Presence of Mind + Arcane Blast, Mirror Images, Arcane Power, and then the all-in-one button. The far right button is my macro that activates everything but POM+AB (since you can't use it at the same time as Arcane Power). So with just one click I can activate them all, or if two are off cooldown, I can activate those with one click. It allows me selective use of my cooldown abilities or use of them all at the same time. It's great. Overlaid on top of that is my Quartz cast bar. So as I'm casting, the cast bar shows up there, and I can easily see right under my cast bar which abilities are ready to be used. Why spread these items out when you can stack them and save room? The Quartz cast bar is amazing since it allows me to get a good idea of how my latency is affecting my cast timing which allows me to queue casts in a timely manner.

Lastly, at the bottom, we have your standard Pitbull unit frames. I have mine, the target's target, and my target as the ones that are shown all the time. Using my sheep focus macro, I'll have the focus target show up to the left of my target with my focus' target above the focus bar. To the right, my pet (if I'm controlling a pet or machine) shows up with my pet/machine's target above that. It all works out quite nicely.

Along the bottom, it's pretty standard - from left to right I have - my chat windows (all nicely formatted by Prat), my map (the awesome SexyMap), more Bartender buttons, a large blank space (which actually has more buttons that only show up on hover), and finally, Recount damage meters. Just used for my own personal tracking - because I hate nothing more than someone showing off because they just AOE'd the best on a trash pull - read here for a wonderful article on Why I Hate DPS Meters.

So that's pretty much it - however, there's some things missing. Right above my chat box, if I have to buff someone, Cork will alert me to that. It tells me to give Dalaran Intellect to someone (maybe just one person died on the fight), reminds me if my Molten Armor, and (though it doesn't work perfectly), reminds me to put Focus Magic on another mage.. It's a great little addon. I also use the Mage Nugget that pops up only when the target has a spell I can steal. It's lead to some great discoveries - like in Halls of Stone, a nice buff you can steal called Arcane Haste. I use it mostly for the Deathwhisper encounter, but it's fun to see what other spells are out there to steal. Other addons I use but which don't show up on the screen:

• _NPCScan - alerts me when a rare mob is found
• Ackis Recipe List - helps the compulsive collector side of me figure out which recipes I still need to obtain
• Align - helps me get my screen all lined up perfectly
• Auctioneer - if you don't know what it is, I can't help you...
• Mapster - a great replacement for Cartographer which stopped working
• Gather Mate - used with Mapster to track gathered nodes
• Map Notes - as it sounds - notes for the map to be used with Mapster (or any other map addon)
• Gymnast Tooltips - allows me to move the tooltip to the exact position I want it (lower-right just above Recount)
• MonkeyQuest - the best way to track your quests (hidden in the upper-left corner while raiding)
• OneBag and OneBank - all your bags and bank slots in one frame
• Overachiever - THE way to easily browse achievements
• Sunn Viewport Art - gives me the cool artwork around my top and bottom viewports
• XLoot - the best way to track loot when used with XLootGroup, XLootMaster, and XLootMonitor. I love it.

And with that, my UI update is complete. Right now I'm extremely happy with my UI and don't plan on making any major changes in the days to come. Later today, when the maintenance boss is gone, I'll post the macros I use while raiding.

A Tribute To Skill

Last night, with our 25 man canceled (not sure why - lack of people on maybe?), we decided to form up a ToGC 10 man run. Previously I had run ToGC10 and we couldn't get past the faction champions, but last night, we tore through the place, reaching Anub'arak with 50 attempts remaining. We spent about 15 minutes explaining the fight, working out our strategy, making sure everything went as planned, and it all worked - almost. We got Anub to 2.0% when he wiped us. We were so close...yet still so far away. After having random fails on the next few attempts due to bad luck, people trying to kite too long, random spike damage on the tanks, we finally got him down with 41 attempts remaining. So no Tribute to Mad Skill when we were so close to a Tribute to Insanity. But we plan on going back in next week after our regular Monday night raid and take him down with 50 attempts left. It's definitely doable.

Slow Week

It's been a slow week on the side of Tiddlywinks. On the other hand, I just power leveled my rogue Tockett from 71-80 in about 2 days. It's almost too easy when you give him flight at level 71. But back to Tiddly, we went into ICC(10) again last night. We took down the 6 bosses we pretty much have on farm, but instead of going after Putricide, we wanted to see what the Blood Princes were like. That's a pretty crazy fight. I think we've got it down now, but we ran out of time without and they live to fight another day.

On the gear front though, I got some nice upgrades - I of course got my Bloodmage Hood right on time and last night found the Ether-Soaked Bracers. They are just the slightest upgrade over the Bejeweled Wizard Bracers, but they provide hit on them which I lost when I replaced my head piece. I now sit just 3 points below the hit cap, which I would rather have than being 7 points over. The other mages in my raid don't like how the Bloodmage Hood looks, but honestly, I think it's pretty damn imposing. And it looks awesome with the robe. Oh yeah, the two piece bonus is amazing as well.

On the achievement front, not much new. Got a couple in our 25 man run of ICC last week, but finally got Got My Mind on My Money (25,000) (which now has me at 54/54 general achievements). Which is good...since I've been saving up lots of gold to buy Primordial Saronite. I almost was able to purchase 5 yesterday for 10.5k gold, but at the last second, the shifty druid decided to keep the saronite for his own boots...oh well. The prices were down to about 2,250 on the auction house earlier this week, but there are none on auction right now, so I expect prices to go back up. I only need 7 more to craft the most awesome leggings...

I've also been meaning to do an update to my UI posts since a lot has chanced since last march. I just keep forgetting to take screenshots while raiding, but I will try my hardest to remember this weekend when we do our 25 man raid. My UI is much cleaner than the previous post and works amazingly.

Gear Planning

I am having a lot of trouble these days planning my gear upgrades. I've been doing my dailies every day, so I can possibly get one crafted item with Primordial Saronite, however, by next Thursday I should be at (or close to) 95 Emblems of Frost, allowing me to get my 2nd piece of tier 10, the Bloodmage Hood (I believe this is the best possible upgrade at the current time. Using Rawr's Item Cost feature, it tells me the hood is the best next upgrade. So I switch out my head piece, do a quick optimization, and Rawr tells me to then swap out my Khadgar's Gauntlets of Triumph for Gloves of the Lifeless Touch (which have been sitting in my bag, ungemmed and unenchanted for ages). And also to swap my rods out (hit/haste swapping). So we'll go with that optimized setup for now...

Setting the optimizer to choose my next two emblem purchases, it quickly spits out that I should purchase the T10 Shoulders and Legs. However, it doesn't take into account that I should be able to purchase one crafted item with Primordial Saronite. If I optimize with the Leggings of Woven Death selected, it tells me to obviously get the Shoulders and Gloves. If I optimize with the Sandals of Consecration selected, it tells me to go with the T10 Shoulders and Legs. However, I don't think I can get both the crafted boots and legs, so if I have to pick one, which way do I go? I think it's the legs.

Optimized with legs, acquiring T10 Shoulders & Gloves = Rawr "Score" of 8949.536
Optimized with feet, acquiring T10 Shoulders & Legs = Rawr "Score" of 9014.053

So it's a 70 point gain I believe to get the legs crafted before the boots. However, the problem I run into is I can't accurately predict what other upgrades I might get along the way. What if I get the Plague Scientist's Boots this weekend from Festergut? Well then the Sandals are of no use. And if I get other upgrades as I work towards my 3rd piece of T10, then everything could change. I guess I'd just like to figure out what to shoot for next after acquiring the Bloodmage Hood. Rawr tells me my best next purchase is the Gloves of False Gestures, but that makes no sense with T10 gloves, so it then tells me to get the Circle of Ossus, which is a beautiful belt, but then it puts me in the position of waiting even longer for 4pcT10.

I'm still stuck, and here I thought I had it all figured out...

A New Title and More

I just added my latest title to my ever growing list of titles - Twilight Vanquisher Tiddlywinks. Last weekend, I saw someone looking for 5k+ DPS for a Sarth 3D 25 man attempt. I of course was intrigued, so decided I'd lend a hand. After multiple attempts, at the end of the hour (and on the last try I had before I was leaving for the night), we got him down. We did a classic zerg, but rather than having a druid kite the drake away, the tank held him, which, inevitably led to his demise. We had some people arguing about it, but in the end, we got him down - through a rogue evade tanking Sarth after the tank went down.

It was certainly a crazy fight and through the attempts, I was able to pull more than 8k DPS for the fight - of course, most of it was burst with the heroism at the start, so I was doing 9k+ for a good amount of time, which would then decline as the fight went on. Here's my log for his death (note: it will expire, sorry about that). I ended up doing a sustained 7.7k DPS for the fight.

And while, during the 6 attempts, I died once due to stupidity, there were many others there that I just could not understand how they could not grasp the fight. They'd get caught in flame walls repeatedly, get hit by a void zone, etc. I know it's easy to get caught up in your rotation and the fight does get pretty crazy at times, but there's only two mechanics you need to constantly look out for - flame walls and void zones - that's it! And yes, I died in a void zone once. I moved out of the way from a flame wall and got complacent in my positioning and was watching other things on the screen. But it only happened once...not each and every time like some others were failing on.

Lastly, I did not get the drake (or I would have posted much sooner!). A warlock who did weak DPS barely outrolled me for it. I was stoked when I got my 87, but I didn't think it'd hold up, and the lock ended up rolling a 95. But I got a couple new achievements and a new title, so I was happy.

Rotface Down

After a couple weeks of attempts, our 10 man team finally got Rotface down. A couple of quick observations:

- 2 heal it. We were always overwhelmed when we had three healers. The extra DPS is essential in this fight (especially in the last 30%) so you must find a way to 2-heal the fight if you can.

- Use Heroism within 35%. Again, even though it might be anecdotal evidence, every time we got under 35%, slimes started to spawn much quicker. Reading through all the posts around the net, people are still debating if the slimes get thrown out quicker by Rotface based on time elapsed or based on his HP. We believe it his HP that triggers faster slime generation. If this is the case, it is essential that heroism be saved until the end.

- Pally OTs - use Blessing of Freedom and cleanse the slime people. We had our pally tank who was on the large slime moving around the outer ring of the room - but whenever he would encounter a quadrant with ooze, he would detour close to the boss in the middle of the room. By using Blessing of Freedom, the ooze did not snare him and the damage it does in inconsequential. Similarly, since we were 2-healing the fight, the healers did not have time to cleanse the slimes off of people. The OT makes a perfect cleansing candidate. While he is kiting the large slime, he could easily cleanse us as we ran towards him. Alternatively, if you have a ret pally or shadow priest DPSing, they can cleanse too. Having the healers cleanse is a waste of a global cooldown that should be used for heals.

So there you have it...Festergut and Rotface down - Festergut is a push over once you figure out the extent of his damage once he has inhaled all the mist. Our healers now know what to expect and we one shot him this week. As for Professor Putricide, we still have a ways to go on him. We extended our scheduled raiding time last night to get 9 tries in on him and he's one tough SOB. We got him down to about 50% on our best try, but we lost the abomination at a critical time, so we are learning...and we might get lucky next week, but it'll probably be a couple weeks before we get the Professor down.