My UI

Had a few requests to see it so here it is. This is one I took to show off how high my shadow gets when the Hyjal ring, Hex Shrunken Head and 2pc t4 procs. Everything I have keybound isn't on screen- all the buttons you see are clicked.

Per request here's the mods I run...I left off some... The ones I have listed here are either cosmetic or functionally useful.

Apeture: The big big black bar at the bottom of the screen.
DoTimer Suite: The DoT timers on the right side of the screen and cooldown in the bottom right of the screen.
Bongos2: My button bars and keybindings.
Clearfont2: My different than normal fonts for most things. Baar Sophia is the font for everything but target's damage you see.
Closetgnome: The gear sets.
eCastingbar: My cast bar, target's cast bar, and fatigue bars.
eeShards: Shard display plugin for FuBar. Also, automatically deletes excess shards above any number you set.
FuBar: The bar at the bottom. Clockfu, Bagfu, Durabilityfu, Moneyfu, Questsfu(which is the quests in the top left too)
Good Damage Font 2.0: The damage font. It's Adventure.
Itemprice Tooltip: Not seen on screen, but this adds the vendor price to the tooltip of every item.
Onebag/Onebank/Onering: Just combines all my bags into one big bag and changes the background.
Pitbull: My unitframes.
Prat: My chat mod.
Ratingbuster: Shows percentage equivalents to spell hit rating, etc.
Scrolling Combat Text: I think most people have this =P
SharedMedia: Shares fonts, textures, etc across several addons and saves memory by doing so.
Squeenix: My square, borderless minimap.
Visor2: My "move stuff" addon. Nifty for shifting things around that aren't covered in other mods. Like the tracking menu, buffs frame, etc I've moved around.
Xloot: Very nice loot mod. Just makes the looting window look really slick, adds a quick link all items to guild/raid/etc and expands the size of the looting window based on how many items are on a body.

Swap Demonic Sacrifice & Dark Pact?

Apparently one of the ideas I put forward in the post I linked to in the previous entry is quite popular. That being the idea of swapping Demonic Sacrifice & Dark Pact combined with a change to Mana Feed.

Demonology's idea would be that Mana Feed would be changed to act as a source of mana renewal for the demons. The demons, gaining back their mana would both act as damage/utility *and* as a mana battery for the Warlock. This synergy between the Warlock and their demon is simply paramount to the Demonology tree so why not extend it? Demonology should thrive on having it's demon out and having synergy with it, not sacrificing it!

Affliction would get an altered Demonic sacrifice, because, well Affliction already has improved Lifetap, and having the best health leech abilities is better suited to sacrificing health for mana. This Demonic Sacrifice would only be a 10% damage increase(down from 15%) but also bestow a 10% increase to health/mana received, further reinforcing Affliction being the health/mana sponge.

Destruction, finally, would gain both a buff to Conflagrate and Shadowfury, with Conflag being changed to both a burst and sustained damage ability which would renew, rather than consume, Immolate giving Destro a new ability to use in raids, help their sustained damage in PvP and make Fire Destro just that much more appealing. Shadowfury wouldn't actually get a buff in damage, but rather would debuff the mob/player to take more damage, in PvP helping to focus train target(s) with both a stun and damage debuff, and in PvE would give Destruction some utility.

http://www.war-tools.com/t50549.html

In conclusion, Demonology would become more synergistic with Dark Pact/Mana Feed and not have a nearly wasted 21 pt talent in DS, Affliction would have it's damage and mana/health stealing capabilities increased by DS and Destruction would move away from being forced to pick up DS just to spam Shadowbolt ad nauseum, and would begin to use DoTs(Immolate+Conflag) and debuff the mob more(Shadowfury) making it much more of a Warlock and much less of a "Shadowmage."

Thoughts?

DS Forum Post

I think I got a pretty strong (and dramatic!) discussion going on involving Demonic Sacrifice here. Heading to bed now, it should be interesting to read tomorrow afternoon!

Talent Tune-up: Suppression

So I figure I'd write something about talents that just don't seem "right". Not in interest of trying to get buffed(Hell not many people read this Blog anyway for me to have much effect), but rather from a design/mechanical perspective things that just don't make a whole lot of sense... The backseat game developer is sneaking through!

Today I'll talk about Suppression. Yes our friendly tier 1 talent. I guess my gripe here is that it doesn't seem all that focused. For raiding even deep Affliction Locks need to cap their Spellhit for Shadowbolt, Immolate & Soulshatter. Its usefulness there fails. For leveling you generally won't be fighting mobs over +2 levels(8%) so Suppression exceeds this cap. The only real purpose it serves is to pad your hit cap while gearing up for that 16% hit for bosses, though this is a very brief period.

Ultimately I'd change this talent in one of two ways: A direct change to Suppression itself or making all that hit useful in some other way. Both tie into existing phenomenon which I will go into detail about...

Changing Suppression: Change Suppression from 2/4/6/8/10 Affliction Spellhit, to 1/2/3/4/5 Shadow Spellhit. This would cover everything but Immolate(no biggie) effectively lowering the real hit cap to 11%. Not nearly as nice as Shadowpriests and their 6%, but a much nicer change from Suppression's current incarnation. Secondly, it would be a very nice tier 1 talent for both Demonology and Destruction to pick up.

"What about DS/Destro? They won't ever have room in their build to get Suppression." To that I say: Demonic Sacrifice is flawed, especially given the placement in the tree. Blizzard will be extremely hard pressed to create a 51 point Destro talent that rivals DS for two reasons. A) DS is a very strong talent. +15% damage or 3%mp4 are both very appealing buffs. B) What use do Destruction Warlocks even have for their pets in raids anyway? There is no real opportunity cost with DS because giving up your pet means is but an afterthought for Destruction, making the talent all the more desirable. IMO Demonic Sacrifice should be nerfed and made into a trainable ability as it will only cause problems whenever Destruction spec choices/balance are involved.

Making All That Spellhit Useful: What if Affliction had its own "spam" attack that took advantage of Suppression? I'll admit I've never been the biggest fan of the concept that even as Affliction the spell I cast the most is Shadowbolt, a Destruction spell. But even still, what if Drain Soul actually was *actually* good for doing damage? With the 15 second duration and 50% "Drain coefficient" it's far from useful as DPS. Simply remove the 50% coefficient cut, and then make a talent in Affliction increasing the tick speed, and reducing the overall channeling time from 15 seconds down to 10, thus artificially raising the coefficient much like Bane does and making it tick every 2 seconds instead of 3. It would be competitive damage then, and Suppression would actually see use past a couple points.

Either one would work. I'll admit I'm partial to #2, but #1 is far more simple and elegant. Either way, this is a flawed talent and I'd love to see it somehow changed.

Respec Time

So I did a slight respec the other day. From 43/7/11 to 45/5/11. Dropped 1 point in Improved Lifetap(with the new spirit changes a raid buffed Imp can nearly sustain me) and 2 points in Demonic Embrace(I'm a little burnt on arenas ATM, so why not?) and used those 3 points to fill out Shadow Embrace from my former 2/5. Hopefully the raid will appreciate it and it'll even help a little when doing dailies! GG 3% less damage.

Don't Bother With Forums On The Weekends

I'm probably preaching to the choir here, but do yourself a favor and completely ignore the Blizzard forums between Friday night and Sunday. The level of stupid(not ignorance, ignorance is quite forgivable) on the forums on the weekends is simply atrocious. Between thread necros, trolls, and morons you've got better chances of having an intelligent WoW conversation with your grandmother. Right.

Finished Atlas Shrugged

So I finished Atlas Shrugged. Actually, I finished it a couple weeks ago but forgot to write anything about it. I'd highly recommend it to anyone who identifies themselves as (fiscally) conservative. It's definitely the longest single book I've ever read, and I'll admit it had some rather dull parts to it including a 50 page speech I read only 30 pages of, but I feel I gained a lot out of reading it and if you can dedicate the time to reading it you will too.

Gives Us Infos...

A bunch of us were talking on vent about WotLK earlier. We're just dying for infos, especially those of us considering going Deathknight(Not so much personally, but I'd still like to know about them) It looks like Friends & Family beta is starting soon so maybe we'll get some info in a couple months but cmon... Speculation is only fun when we're at least getting a steady stream of tidbits! One of the CMs said some info might come out in the next Blizzcast but we don't know when that will be.

I feel like such a consumer fool. Goes to show there's still much room to be filled in the entertainment industry. When you have people like me rabidly foaming at the mouth awaiting the next game, book, or movie you know you've got more profits to rake in. And I'll gladly give you your profits, but god damnit it push your content faster!

A Not So Longwinded Post...

So this post is actually pretty short and to the point. It's not regarding sweeping changes or anything like that, just a few little tweaks to remove some unnecessary annoyances...

Check it out!