Toon updates... hoooooo!

Wow, it's been a helluva while since I had anything to say.

I'm not even entirely sure right now that I have much worth blogging about. But... I'm going to do it anyway, because I can.

I guess first of note... I managed to get my 2nd level 80 toon this December! She's another moonkin - Raynn, on the Kirin Tor server. The sole purpose of this toon was actually to play on the same server as my long-time closest friend, who in fact got me interested in the World of Warcraft in the first place!

I server transferred and then faction-changed my second (horde) druid over, so that we could spend some time playing together again, as I'd missed her company. Unfortunately she happened to get promoted in her guild to main 25m raider right after I hit 80... so rather than get to play with her, we occasionally get to chat while she does 25m content and I work on 10m content. Heh. But, it's worth it, because after 12 years (we met my freshman year in high school!), what wouldn't I do for that crazy blond? Haha.

On a less personal note... I also managed to scrounge up a THIRD 80...! My little baby huntard Rinoak. And she is a huntard indeed! I admit, I knew absolutely nothing about hunters, up to and including the point where I hit 80 on her. I would cast hunter's mark, my fancy schmancy macro would send in my faithful and loyal cat, Cow, at the target, and I'd basically play whack-a-mole with my shot cooldowns!

I've not gotten much better, but at least I've begun to learn a little about the rotations and things, and I've managed to reach the hit-cap. Heh! Thanks for all your help, Tunac! That said though, I still vastly prefer my moonkin. There's really nothing I like more than hopping onto Syri and seeing 20k crits popping up on my Mik's Scrolling Battle Text.



Not a lot else going on in the toon department, really... However, seeing as this has become an update about all that, I guess I'll continue in that vein.

I've also been working on a few other toons. My paladin, Irael, has reached level 70, and recently got herself a dual spec as Holy. I had an awful lot of fun doing nothing but healing in a couple AV's last night, and managed to do fairly well all told, despite her grand total of something like 400 spellpower! Then again, I guess when you're the ONLY one on your side doing much healing... any healing will look good! Hah!

My mage, Jori, has also hit 71... I think she's probably one of the few alts I actually enjoy playing. Probably because she reminds me so much of my moonkin.

My little priestess Caele, and my warlock Xalia both hover around 60, where they stalled out, as did my Rogue Siun, who has been relegated to packrat and alt-bank status. I never did like melee much! However, I did recently start a Warrior, who has reached level 43. I'm working on picking up a couple of pieces for her before I try my hand at Tanking in order to level her. May Elune have mercy on her group's souls, because I haven't tanked a damn thing before in my life!


I guess that's it really on the Character update front... not particularly interesting, but hey, it's what I've been up to in between raiding and making moonkins or painting boxes! :)

And I think I'm going to go ahead and leave it there for now. Until next time!

Why you dead?!

How many times have you heard someone ask, "What?! Why am I dead?!" Well, today's your lucky day. Saveyoursanity over from Livejournal.com and the Wow Ladies community has an answer for you.

Next time that idiot dps or the annoying tank whines because they don't understand why they died, well...

You know what to say!

3.2, Tier 9, and and 10m Ulduar Hard modes, oh my!

As many of you may have heard, 3.2's patch notes have been released, and the PTR has been opened once more for trial. So far I'm relatively pleased with the direction that moonkin are now moving in, though as Graylo mentions in his blog, there's still a few kinks that need to be worked out, and I'm desperately hoping that the 4-piece tier 9 set bonus is just a place holder! Eep!

Anyway, I must say I am pretty excited overall however. Blizzard has made a few good strides toward improving moonkin dps so far with the current patch notes, and I'm pretty eager to see what else is coming.

On another note however... the release of the PTR patch notes and the flood of information regarding 3.2 has started to worry me slightly. As you may remember, my guild worked toward (and succeeded at!) getting the Glory of the Raider achievements completed with 3.0/naxx/eoe/os. However, when 3.1 came out, the ability to complete that meta achievement and get a Plagued Proto Drake was removed, leaving a few of our group shy ONE measly achievement (gonna go when the volcano blows, of all things!) of getting their drakes.

I would absolutely hate to see something like that happen again when 3.2 comes out... I want to see more of my guildmates sporting the Rusted Proto Drake so I am hoping that the patch will be a good while longer in coming.

However, we did get started on our achievement runs last week! We "built" a group of raiders and took them into Ulduar 10 with the desire to work on some hard modes and tackle a few achievements. In about 3 hours, we managed to do Flame Leviathan 2/4 towers, 1/3 Freya's elders, as well as get the Crazy Cat Lady, Stokin the Furnace, Lose Your Illusion, Heartbreaker, and I Could Say That This Cache Was Rare.

Pretty proud of the crew, and we're going in tonight for even more attempts, and I think we're going to try our hands at 3/3 elders, IC hard mode, and possibly the 25 dwarves on Razor. We'll see how it goes!

Multi-Boxing World of Warcraft and Auto Hot Key

Wowza, has it been half an age since I last updated! Among all the other real-life emergencies, events, and activities going on in my days, something had to give and it was the Blog. And for that... I'm sorry!

Recently I've begun a Refer A Friend drive, where I have "referred" a friend to wow and we level toons together. In the spirit of that, I decided I wanted a few horde-side toons as well, so I took advantage of a 10-day trial period to give Multiboxing a shot. Whew, can it be tough! But it's FUN!

Right now I'm running around with a warrior, and a healbot druid tagging along behind her. To make this whole endeavor more simple on me (as well as to save time and frustration!), and minimize the amount of tabbing back and forth between wow applications, I downloaded a program called AutoHotKey (AHK), which allows you to send keystrokes to multiple applications on your machine.

Before you ask, yes this is PERFECTLY legal with Blizzard (as you can see here and here!), so don't worry, I'm not doing or advocating anything against blizzard policy!

The only problem I ran into when choosing to multibox was that I was struggling to control both toons, and downloading AHK managed to solve that... after doing quite a bit of research. You see, AHK doesn't come automatically equipped to handle your wow-playing, and you must then take the time to create a script pertaining to your wow applications that detailes what happens when you push each key! At long last, I found one on Elitist Jerks that worked nearly perfectly... except that it did not include an Alt+key command in the script.

Eventually, I figured out how to add in the alt commands, and so here I give you the perfect AutoHotKey World of Warcraft script for multi-boxing your toons!

;ClonesPush(strKeys)
;{
; global WowWinId1
; global WowWinId2
; global WowWinId3
; global WowWinId4
; global WowWinId5
; IfWinNotActive, ahk_id %WowWinId1%
; ControlSend, , %strKeys%, ahk_id %WowWinId1%
; IfWinNotActive, ahk_id %WowWinId2%
; ControlSend, , %strKeys%, ahk_id %WowWinId2%
; IfWinNotActive, ahk_id %WowWinId3%
; ControlSend, , %strKeys%, ahk_id %WowWinId3%
; IfWinNotActive, ahk_id %WowWinId4%
; ControlSend, , %strKeys%, ahk_id %WowWinId4%
; IfWinNotActive, ahk_id %WowWinId5%
; ControlSend, , %strKeys%, ahk_id %WowWinId5%
;}

;ClonesClick(strKeys)
;{
; IfWinNotActive, ahk_id %WowWinId1%
; ControlClick, , ahk_id %WowWinId1%,, %strKeys%,
; IfWinNotActive, ahk_id %WowWinId2%
; ControlClick, , ahk_id %WowWinId2%,, %strKeys%,
; IfWinNotActive, ahk_id %WowWinId3%
; ControlClick, , ahk_id %WowWinId3%,, %strKeys%,
; IfWinNotActive, ahk_id %WowWinId4%
; ControlClick, , ahk_id %WowWinId4%,, %strKeys%,
; IfWinNotActive, ahk_id %WowWinId5%
; ControlClick, , ahk_id %WowWinId5%,, %strKeys%,
;}

ClonesPush(keys) {

global WowWinId1
global WowWinId2
global WowWinId3
global WowWinId4
global WowWinId5

Loop, 5 {
win := WowWinId%A_Index%
IfWinNotActive, ahk_id %win%
ControlSend, , %keys%, ahk_id %win%
}

}

ClonesClick(button) {

global WowWinId1
global WowWinId2
global WowWinId3
global WowWinId4
global WowWinId5

Loop, 5 {
win := WowWinId%A_Index%
IfWinNotActive, ahk_id %win%
ControlClick, , ahk_id %win%, , %button%,
}

}

;Grab unique window ID's
WinGet, WowWinId, List, World of Warcraft

; *******************************
; *** Only if WoW is in focus ***
; *******************************
#IfWinActive, World of Warcraft

;*** Special Functions ***

; *** Makes clones follow main ***
^-::ClonesPush("{- down}{- up}")

; *** Makes clones assist main ***
^=::ClonesPush("{= down}{= up}")

; *** Makes clones jump with main ***
~Space::ClonesPush("{Space down}{Space up}")

; *** Suspends HotKeys while typing on main ***
~Enter::Suspend, Toggle
~/::Suspend, On
~Escape::Suspend, Off


; *******************
; *** Hotbars 1-0 ***
; *******************
; *** Hotbars 1-0 ***
~1::ClonesPush("{1 down}{1 up}")
~2::ClonesPush("{2 down}{2 up}")
~3::ClonesPush("{3 down}{3 up}")
~4::ClonesPush("{4 down}{4 up}")
~5::ClonesPush("{5 down}{5 up}")
~6::ClonesPush("{6 down}{6 up}")
~7::ClonesPush("{7 down}{7 up}")
~8::ClonesPush("{8 down}{8 up}")
~9::ClonesPush("{9 down}{9 up}")
~0::ClonesPush("{0 down}{0 up}")
~-::ClonesPush("{- down}{- up}")
~=::ClonesPush("{= down}{= up}")



; ***************************
; *** Hotbars Alt(!) 1-0 ***
; ***************************
~!1::ClonesPush("{Alt down}{1 down}{1 up}{Alt up}")
~!2::ClonesPush("{Alt down}{2 down}{2 up}{Alt up}")
~!3::ClonesPush("{Alt down}{3 down}{3 up}{Alt up}")
~!4::ClonesPush("{Alt down}{4 down}{4 up}{Alt up}")
~!5::ClonesPush("{Alt down}{5 down}{5 up}{Alt up}")
~!6::ClonesPush("{Alt down}{6 down}{6 up}{Alt up}")
~!7::ClonesPush("{Alt down}{7 down}{7 up}{Alt up}")
~!8::ClonesPush("{Alt down}{8 down}{8 up}{Alt up}")
~!9::ClonesPush("{Alt down}{9 down}{9 up}{Alt up}")
~!0::ClonesPush("{Alt down}{0 down}{0 up}{Alt up}")

; ***************************
; *** Hotbars SHIFT(+) 1-0 ***
; ***************************
~+1::ClonesPush("{Shift down}{1 down}{1 up}{Shift up}")
~+2::ClonesPush("{Shift down}{2 down}{2 up}{Shift up}")
~+3::ClonesPush("{Shift down}{3 down}{3 up}{Shift up}")
~+4::ClonesPush("{Shift down}{4 down}{4 up}{Shift up}")
~+5::ClonesPush("{Shift down}{5 down}{5 up}{Shift up}")
~+6::ClonesPush("{Shift down}{6 down}{6 up}{Shift up}")
~+7::ClonesPush("{Shift down}{7 down}{7 up}{Shift up}")
~+8::ClonesPush("{Shift down}{8 down}{8 up}{Shift up}")
~+9::ClonesPush("{Shift down}{9 down}{9 up}{Shift up}")
~+0::ClonesPush("{Shift down}{0 down}{0 up}{Shift up}")

; **************************
; *** Hotbars CTRL(^) 1-0 ***
; **************************
~^1::ClonesPush("{Ctrl down}{1 down}{1 up}{Ctrl up}")
~^2::ClonesPush("{Ctrl down}{2 down}{2 up}{Ctrl up}")
~^3::ClonesPush("{Ctrl down}{3 down}{3 up}{Ctrl up}")
~^4::ClonesPush("{Ctrl down}{4 down}{4 up}{Ctrl up}")
~^5::ClonesPush("{Ctrl down}{5 down}{5 up}{Ctrl up}")
~^6::ClonesPush("{Ctrl down}{6 down}{6 up}{Ctrl up}")
~^7::ClonesPush("{Ctrl down}{7 down}{7 up}{Ctrl up}")
~^8::ClonesPush("{Ctrl down}{8 down}{8 up}{Ctrl up}")
~^9::ClonesPush("{Ctrl down}{9 down}{9 up}{Ctrl up}")
~^0::ClonesPush("{Ctrl down}{0 down}{0 up}{Ctrl up}")

; *** Move clones ***
~Up::ClonesPush("{Up down}")
~Up Up::ClonesPush("{Up up}")
~Down::ClonesPush("{Down down}")
~Down Up::ClonesPush("{Down up}")
~Left::ClonesPush("{Left down}")
~Left Up::ClonesPush("{Left up}")
~Right::ClonesPush("{Right down}")
~Right Up::ClonesPush("{Right up}")

; Quest Turn ins
~[::ClonesPush("{[ down}{[ up}")
~]::ClonesPush("{] down}{] up}")

; Healing
~H::ClonesPush("{H down}{H up}")
~+H::ClonesPush("{Shift down}{H down}{H up}{Shift up}")

; Buff Weapon
~V::ClonesPush("{V down}{V up}")

; Totems
~F1::ClonesPush("{F1 down}{F1 up}")
~F2::ClonesPush("{F2 down}{F2 up}")
~F3::ClonesPush("{F3 down}{F3 up}")
~F4::ClonesPush("{F4 down}{F4 up}")

; Attacks
~t::ClonesPush("{t down}{t up}")

; Formation
~Delete::ClonesPush("{Delete down}{Delete up}")
; Misc
~\::ClonesPush("{\ down}{\ up}")

; Clicks
;~XButton2::ClonesClick("X2")
;~XButton1::ClonesClick("X1")
^x::ClonesClick("X2")

Voila! Enjoy, and feel free to ask if you have any questions!

Wow... PEGGLE?!

Ok, so I know this isn't exactly moonkin related... but I just had to share it!

Are you one of those gamers who just has WAAAAAY to much free time? Did you fly circles around Shattrath? Do you find yourself picnicking or dancing on the bank stairs in Dalaran or showing off your mount in Kraseus' Landing with nothing else to do?

Or maybe your guild refers to strat-explanation as "Story Time with (insert your own raidleaderhere)!" (Ok, or maybe that's just us...)

Well... if that sounds like you, you ought to check out the new Popcaps wow addon, Peggle for WoW!

Ok, I know I know. What's so cool about a game within a game? Why would you want to do that? I don't know. But I do know that peggle is disgustingly fun, and a great way to pass 15m where you really just have nothing better to do. Fishing for your turtle mount? Peggle while you cast!

Anyway, there's an amusing little write-up on it over at The Escapist, as well as a direct link to the game (as well as wow-bejeweled!) over at PopCap! Enjoy!

Flame Leviathan?

Well, after waiting most of the day, we were finally able to log into Emerald Dream around 9:30pm EST. I was suitably impressed when the servers remained stable long enough for us to get two 10-mans going (sadly, we were short about 6 people for a 25), and despite an accidental miss-start (whoops!), we were able to begin the first event.

And I just have to say... that was so much freaking FUN! I haven't enjoyed a raid encounter as much as I enjoyed the time up to Flame Leviathan and the ensuing boss fight since... Vanilla WoW.

The dual-aspect of teamwork required for the vehicles was a blast, and I've since learned that I am one damn fine shot with an anti-air missile! Somehow, despite not knowing what in the bloody-feathered moonkin hell we were doing, we managed to down him on our first attempt, and get "Shutout" as well.

Sadly, the two giant lava-rock-golem type trash mobs at the start of Ignis' room wiped us, and due to server issues, once dead, you could not re-enter the instance. D'oh!

However, after seeing how amazing the instance looks right from the start, as well as how incredibly fun the first encounter was, I and the rest of the guild can't wait to get back in there and continue. It's gonna be great!

3.1 and Ulduar Releases on 3/14

As many of you know, there's been much skepticism about when 3.1 and Ulduar would be coming out; well, according to Zarhym, it should be going live tomorrow.

This will also herald in the end of season 5 for arenas; enjoy your Frost Wyrms if you are so lucky!

Last but not least... Extended Maintenance!

We will be performing extended maintenance on the below realms beginning at 1:00 a.m. PDT, April 14. Maintenance for all US and Oceanic realms not listed below will begin at 3:00 a.m. PDT, April 14. We expect all realms to be playable again by approximately 11:00 a.m. PDT.

Antonidas
Anub'arak
Blackwater Raiders
Bladefist
Borean Tundra
Cairne
Cenarion Circle
Cenarius
Darrowmere
Drak'Tharon
Drenden
Echo Isles
Farstriders
Fenris
Garrosh
Hydraxis
Hyjal
Korialstrasz
Lightbringer
Maiev
Misha
Mok'Nathal
Moon Guard
Nazgrel
Nesingwary
Nordrassil
Quel'dorei
Ravenholdt
Rivendare
Shandris
Shu'halo
Sisters of Elune
The Forgotten Coast
Tortheldrin
Uther
Vashj
Winterfhoof
Wyrmrest Accord

Enjoy the patch, you've got about 4 hours to finish off your achievements! Good luck, and see you in Ulduar!