2011-10-19

Glitch to the rescue!

Ninefinger
I've been playing Glitch for a few days now. It's fun, in a really really, casual sort of way. Considering you can learn skills without ever even logging in to the game!

Give it a shot at Glitch.com.

2011-07-12

Name Generation

I've always been a fan of having other people do good work for you so here is a great online name generator.

Online Name Generator

It does nick-names, character-names, even random project names for those dreaded but un-named projects at work that tend to go on and on for years without end.

2011-06-29

Video Game Free Speech Ruling Aftermath

Video Game Free Speech Ruling Aftermath: "On Monday we discussed the U.S. Supreme Court's decision that a California law banning the sale or rental of violent video games to minors was in violation of the First Amendment's free speech protection. By now, both sides of the debate have had a chance to respond to the Court's ruling. Congressman Joe Baca and CA State Senator Leland Yee pledged to continue the fight for stricter controls on the distribution of violent games, while others cried, 'think of the children.' Game industry groups were unsurprisingly pleased with the decision, but warned that this won't be the end of it, and asked lawmakers to stop wasting time with such legislation in the future. An article at the NY Times points out how the ruling highlights the lack of clear evidence supporting either side of the debate, and Time notes the Supreme Court's double standard, asking, 'Why does the court treat violent images and sexual images so differently?' Finally, an editorial at Gamasutra reminds us that even though most game developers are breathing a sigh of relief, many would like to see the industry shift toward something more creative and meaningful than violence.

2011-03-02

Companion / Vanity Pet Sales To Spike

Companion / Vanity Pet Sales To Spike: "From Cold's Gold Factory

WoW Companions
Patch 4.1 PTR Data

Vanity pet, or companions as they are now called, sellers should start to see a spike in sales with the new achievements for companion collectors. Coming in Patch 4.1 are 2 new achievements. These achievements will be awarded for collecting 100 pets and 125 There are also 5 new Vanity Pets coming soon.

New Companions
Landro's Lichling

Landro's Lil' XT

Nightsaber Cub

Panther Cub

Winterspring Cub
New Companion Achievements
Petting Zoo

Menagerie
Companion Pets Sales Spike

If you aren't in the vanity pet market, then now may be a great time to enter and start dabbling in this market. This has long been a very lucrative market on my server, especially if using the neutral auction house to trade cross-faction. Players just love collecting things likes mounts and vanity pets. There is ALWAYS a spike in sales of companion pets when new acheivements are introduced into World of Warcraft. These achievements will spark an increase in sales of these companion pets as early as...already. Players that are already aware of the incoming achievements have begun to start pushing for those new achievement quantity requirements.

Read More.."

2011-02-23

Grid Updates

If you haven't noticed, Grid has received some great updates with Cataclysm. Clique has been updated many times but Grid has just recently been given a face-lift (well, the options have). The interface is much easier to understand and much more intuitive. I encourage you to take a look if you were puzzled by the interface in the past. Personally, I like the mass amount of options and wouldn't trade it for Healbot any day of the week. The new interface really makes those options more available and easy to understand. Go try it out, NOW!

Grid and Clique: a healer's dream.

2011-02-21

Cataclysm Hunter Macros Guide

Cataclysm Hunter Macros Guide:



View other WHU WoW Cataclysm hunter guides.

Macros are a way to combine several actions into one, and automate simple, common tasks to make life a bit easier for your hunter. Different hunters use different macros, and differing amounts of macros. Some hunters will just have one or two macros and live happily on it, while other hunters will almost never use a single ability out of the spellbook, preferring to use macro’d versions of them.

Here are a handful of useful hunter macros, distilled from the collected wisdom of the WHU. I don’t use a whole lot of macros for my actual gameplay, personally. I have my Misdirection macro, aspect dancing, pet management, and various utility macros for setting raid icons, assisting, etc. I have, however, included several popular hunter macros here in addition to the ones I use.

If you don’t see the macro you’re looking for, drop a note in the comments. The WHU is filled with wise and knowledgeable hunters, and if it’s possible to do, I’m sure one of us can supply you with the macro you need!

Hunter Macro Shortcuts:


Misdirection Macro

As a hunter, one of your jobs is to misdirect to the tank. We also sometimes use Misdirection at other times when our threat is getting a little scary. My preferred way to manage Misdirection is to set the tank as my focus target (just target the tank and type /focus) and then use this macro to handle my Misdirection so that I never have to switch targets. This macro will cast Misdirection on your focus target, but if you don’t have a focus target it’ll misdirect to your pet instead for seamless group/raid/solo misdirecting.
/cast [@focus,help][@pet,exists] Misdirection

Aspect Dancing Macro 1: Switch Aspects as Needed

This macro will let you easily swap between Aspect of the Hawk and Aspect of the Fox with the push of a button. If you’re in AotH, it will put you into AotF. If your in fox, it will swap you over to hawk. If you’re in any other aspect, or no aspect at all, it will put you into Aspect of the Hawk. Simple and effective:
/cast Aspect of the Hawk

/cast Aspect of the Fox

Aspect Dancing Macro 2: Switch to Aspect of the Hawk for Instant Shots

This macro combined with the previous one is probably the best aspect dancing solution I’ve seen. This macro will automatically force you into Aspect of the Hawk any time you’re casting an instant shot. If you’re already in Aspect of the Hawk, it will not change or remove your aspect. Ideally you want to create this macro for every one of your instant shots, that way you’ll automatically, instantly, switch into hawk for those shots that you can cast on the move.
/cast !Aspect of the Hawk

/cast Explosive Shot (or whatever instant shot the macro is for)
Note that you do not want to do this to automatically swap into fox during steady/cobra casts (though you can, of course). With the recently buffed Aspect of the Hawk attack power, you want to be in hawk any time you possibly can — so you’ll have to manually swap to fox when moving.


Trap Launcher Macro – 2 Button Press to Launch a Trap

It is currently not possible to macro your trap launcher to just one button press — sadly. We can, however, macro it into a two-press macro, so you just have to tap this macro twice and you’ll get the green targeting circle.
/castsequence [nomod]reset=3 Trap Launcher, Freezing Trap

Pet Management Macro

We hunters love our pets, but that doesn’t mean we have to have half an action bar cluttered with pet commands. This macro will do the following: if you don’t have a pet out, it will summon your pet. If your pet is out, it will cast Mend Pet. If your pet is dead, it will cast Revive Pet. If you right click on it, it will dismiss your pet. Note however that this macro will only call one of your pets, the one specified by which Call Pet you use (Call Pet 1, Call Pet 2, etc). So you have to have the right call pet command, alas.
/cast [nomod,nopet]Call Pet 1

/cast [nomod,target=pet,dead]Revive Pet

/cast [nomod,pet,nomod,button:1]Mend Pet

/cast [nomod,pet,nomod,button:2]Dismiss Pet

ZOMG Kill Now! Macro to Blow all Hunter Cooldowns

As a hunter, you have a lot of cooldowns and pet cooldowns available to you. This macro will blow them all at once, useful for big burn phases in boss fights. If you have specific racial abilities you can add them on here as well — as long as it doesn’t trigger the global cooldown, you can keep piling them on until you hit the character limit.
/cast Rapid Fire

/cast Call of the Wild

/cast Rabid

/cast Bestial Wrath

/use 13 (activate trinket)

/use 14 (activate the other trinket)

/use 10 (activate gloves if you’re still using the eng glove tinker for whatever reason)

Deterrence Macro to Cast and Cancel Deterrence

Deterrence is a fantastic hunter tool, but often you don’t want it up the entire duration — once it’s done its job, you’ve got shots to fire. This simple Deterrence macro replaces your Deterrence button — hitting it will cast Deterrence for you, but if Deterrence is already up, it will take it down. Just be careful not to spam it!
/cancelaura Deterrence

/cast Deterrence

Macro Modifiers

Just a couple of macro notes that you’ll likely want to use in your hunter macros. These are just a couple of commonly used lines that you can toss into your macros:

Show Tooltip
#showtooltip AbilityName
Make this the first line of you macro (obviously “AbilityName” is the name of the ability — Explosive Shot, Mend Pet, whatever) and the icon for your macro will automatically be the icon for that ability. So if you use #showtooltip Explosive Shot, then regardless of what you put in your macro, the macro will have the Explosive Shot icon.

Note that while you get the icon, you will not see the default UI timer on the icon, nor will it light up for special abilities, like Killing Streak or Lock & Load.

Pet Attack
/petattack
This line will tell your pet to attack your current target. Some hunters like to have this macro’d in with their shots to ensure that their pet is always attacking the same target they are. Personally, I prefer not to, because there are times I deliberately do not want my pet to attack my target, so I prefer to control my pet manually.

Stopcasting

Some hunters like to macro a stopcast command into their big hard-hitting shots, like Kill Shot, Chimera Shot, etc. The idea here is that if you started casting Steady Shot or Cobra Shot when you shouldn’t have, it doesn’t matter. When you hit your big shot it will automatically stop the steady/cobra cast and fire the big one off. Just add this line before your shot:
/stopcasting
Personally I don’t like to do this. I’m a button spammer, and I’m hitting my next shot a fraction of a second before it’s necessary and I don’t want to cancel my casts with only 0.1 seconds to go. If I do screw up and cast steady/cobra at the wrong time, I just twitch my character to cancel it. But mostly I just don’t cast cobra/steady when I shouldn’t.

Mouseover
/cast [target=mouseover] AbilityName
When you press this macro, it will cast the ability at whatever target you are currently moused over, even if you don’t have them targeted. In this way you can turn any macro into a mouseover macro.

Talk
/s whatever (say)

/p whatever (party)

/y whatever (yell)

/rw whatever (raid warning)
You can always modify your macros to announce what you’re doing — this is particularly common for CC abilities like Freezing Trap or Wyvern Sting. You macro in an announcement that you’re CCing so people (in theory) know not to attack it. You can also modify this by announcing the name of your target with the %t command like so:
/s I’m trapping %t so don’t attack it. Or else.

Set Raid Icon

You can also have your macro automatically assign a raid icon, or lucky charm, to your target (assuming you have permissions to do so).
/script SetRaidTargetIcon(“target”,8)
The number 8 on the end is the Skull icon. Each icon has a different number.

Clear Macro Errors

Sometimes you’ll have something in your macro, like using a trinket, that puts up an annoying error message every time you use it when that ability is not ready. This command will make it so that error doesn’t display.

/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear();

2011-02-17

I can't shake him...

Kinda funny... my Pally with 280% flying and Crusader Aura can out-fly fireballs from mobs in Hyjal. I actually had to stop so the fireball could catch up to get this shot.

Account Security

Blizzard has posted a new account security page for Battle.net. You should all take a look. Having your account broken into is no fun at all.

2011-02-08

But I Like the Lich King Dungeons

What kind of BULLSHIT it this? So now all of my 80+ alts can't do Lich King dungeons? Is it that hard to get people to do the new content? There are a lot of achievements and drops (drakes) that I want from Lich King dungeons. Now I have to go to each zone?

It seems they developed the random dungeon finder for a reason and that wasn't to force us to do specific content, it was so we could do things easier.

Not to mention I don't always have time to spend 2+ hours on new content. Sometimes I want to be able to do a quick instance and enjoy the older content. Some of us don't get to spend hours a day in the game. What a load of crap.

Give me back my dungeon finder!!!!

2011-01-22

Mining Obsidium and Experience

I am still on the grind for an epic ride on my pally. I have almost 30 stacks of obsidium now so I hope that will bring in close to what I need. As a nice by-product of the mining process I am 3/4 of the way through level 80 with nothing but experience from collecting. I haven't done one quest. It should make thing easier when I start questing, I guess. I'll be a little ahead of things if it matters much. I have stuck to a simple pattern of mining around a few nodes in Mount Hyjal. I can usually avoid people and get almost a stack per route. Now, if I just had more time to play.