Ghules

Easy, free, no spyware, no adware, and bless it's little heart it will batch convert all your screenshots if you want it to.

http://www.faststone.org/

the Image Viewer is an all in one package. The other packages are just if you just want one specific set of functions.

--Ghulesy

I'd also say those are either far from final or a "low rank" version, that or blizz is nerfing the pvp sets because they'll be *MUCH* easier to obtain (IE pvp for a couple of weeks, spend your points and buy your gear, and you've got a full set vs the present warlord grind with an organized team)

It's only 5 pieces vs tier1's 8 piece or the current 6 piece pvp set. So it leaves some room for tweaking with additional gear. The socketing will be what really makes or breaks it I think.

Here's some comparisons between current Tier1 and Warlord sets and the Level 70 pvp sets.

((I didn't include tier2, tier3 or the AQ set in the numbers here.))

Tier 1 Mage set Arcanist (8 piece set)

160 int

109 sta

72 spi

11 mp5

584 armor

+128 dmg

+2% crit

Current Mage warlord/pvp set (6 piece set)

95 int

148 sta

38 spi

858 armor

+169 dmg

+3% crit

Mage lvl 70 pvp set (5 piece set)

216 sta

61 int

134 dmg

613 armor

spell crit 77 or roughly +3.5% crit

Resilience 110 or roughly -2.8% less crits against you and -5.6% damage from crits that actually hit

Tier 1 Priest set Transcendence (8 piece set)

170 int

113 sta

117 spi

18 mp5

584 armor

+134 dmg/healing

+30 healing

Current Priest warlord/pvp set (6 piece set)

128 int

154 sta

0 spi

12 mp5

898 armor

+169 dmg/healing

Priest lvl 70 pvp set (5 piece set)

228 sta

100 int

128 dmg/heal

613 armor

121 Resilience or -3.1% less crits against you and 6.2% less damage from crits that hit you

--Ghules

Wow. Looks like they really are taking spirit out of the game. All the stats on caster gear is stamina and intellect, ungodly amounts of each I'll grant you, but, no spirit and no mp5 either. Any idea what that "resilience" is all about?

Again remember that's pvp gear, and even the current pvp gear is light on SPI and mp/5 compared to your dungeon sets.

Definitely seems to be a trend in moving away from spirit in general though. Most notable in the tier3 sets from Nax for casters.

From a blue post in the forums regarding the new "stats" on items in the expansion.

Combat Ratings conversions at level 70 (rounded to 1 decimal point):

Weapon Skill Rating: 3.9 rating grants 1 skill point

Defense Rating: 2.4 rating grants 1 defense skill.

Dodge Rating: 18.9 rating grants 1% dodge

Parry Rating: 31.5 rating grants 1% parry

Block Rating: 7.9 rating grants 1% block chance

Hit Rating: 15.8 rating grants 1% hit chance

Spell Hit Rating: 12.6 rating grants 1% spell hit chance

Critical Strike Rating: 22.1 rating grants 1% critical strike chance

Spell Critical Strike Rating: 22.1 rating grants 1% spell critical strike chance

Haste Rating: 15.8 rating grants 1% haste

Spell Haste Rating: 15.8 rating grants 1% spell haste

Resilience Rating: 39.4 rating grants 1% less chance of being struck

by any type of critical strike, and 2% less damage taken from critical

strikes

--Ghules

Lead any groups? No.

Assisted? Yes

Setting up tank windows, groups, ready checks, etc. All smooth as butter.

Had no trouble at all with them, which is surprising knowing how much I like to

poke at things, heh

ORA2 has it's own set of commands for durability, resistance, ready checks, etc.

However, it also fully supports CTRA's check functions as well, so you can even use the same commands that you use in CTRA and they will work.

Just to be clear. ORA2 has no built in raid frames like CT does.

All the Raid frames you see in my screenshots are just the standard blizzard raid frames "skinned" with AG Unit frames. However I've always thought CTRA's frames were more than a bit clunky anyway.

Here's the link for ORA2's site on WoWAce.

http://www.wowace.com/wiki/ORA2

It gives a good list of what it can and can't do in comparison to the CTRA package.

It also suggests alternative addons for the functions it doesn't cover on it's own.

I've personally used each of it's suggested alternatives as well

The rest of this post's spam is just my own personal feelings on the alternative addons suggested by ORA2's devs.

Bigwigs for boss warnings/spawn timers. BigWigs is what CTRA boss mods should have been all along. Static timers for events. No spammed warnings, and the ability to block out the spam from others if necessary.

Detox for decursing. Clean little mod with great prioritization features.

XRS as a Raid Status replacement is another good one with some interesting features. It has it's on built in buff checks, that will show you who is missing what buff without having to sort through the whole raid.

It will also tell you who's flagged.

Squishy as an Emergency Monitor.

I'm not going to say Squishy is a bad mod, because it isn't. It's actually quite a slick little piece of code.

However for the "Heal bot" type who just like to see the bar come up in emergency monitor, click the bar and you're done. Squishy is not for you. Your head will probably explode from information overload very quickly while using it.

Now for those of you that like something smart enough to change the priority of the display based on if someone else is already healing the target or if a warrior is taking more sustained dps than that poor half dead rogue <Sorry Rogues >, or people that are out of your healing range, already have a HoT on them, have a shield on them currently, or the debuff from a shield and can't be reshielded yet, all at a glance....then Squishy may be your cup of tea.

Again if blinking Xmas lights tend to give you seizures. Avoid Squishy

http://www.wowace.com/wiki/Squishy

However if you're an information junky and like fast twitch healing, and combat triage, with all the information presented to you, then Squishy will be your new best friend.

and last but not least

SRaidFrames as a replacement for CTRA's raid frames.

I've used this one but not extensively. Mainly due to the fact that all I usually use my raid frames for is easy click targeting for buffing and group composition.

When I have used SRaidFrames I had no issues with it. It's a nifty little addon with some cool features. It has all the features that CTRA's frames have, debuff coloring, mouse over to show how much time is left on a buff, soul stones, dead, and a whole lot more.

Anyone that cares to give these or any mod a try but is worried about mucking up their current setup, just load them up on an alt and invite a few folks to a raid.

I'm always available to help out if I'm online.

If the mod isn't to your liking just pull it out or uncheck it to keep it from loading and your main is none the wiser.

All that aside. Try things and see if you like them, you never know what you may come across.

--Ghules

<3 Rhoach

Now here is where I'm exposed as a cheater.

As much harping as I do for CT Raid.....I don't actually use it

I use ORA2 which is basically a slimmer but muchmuchmuch more functional version of CT Raid. It has a lot of improvements over the original ORA as well.

It still supports all regeant, durability, resistance, etc checks. It will actually report back a current CTRA version number if it's interrogated by someone using CTRA and thus keeping your secret safe

For instance in the Middle Left the green bars are the expiration timers for the Arcane Intellect and Arcane Brilliance Buffs. Under that is a Cooldown Monitor for all the raid goodies Soulstones, Battle Rez, etc. Currently the only thing on cooldown in that shot is Bunny's Soulstone.

Both of these are built into Ora2 and completely configurable as to what information you want displayed.

The Main tank windows in the Top Center are also ORA2.

In the shot below the Upper left is just an example of one of the many frame types that come with AG unit frames.

This layout is displaying numerically the current and max health values on the healthbar itself.

May be a bit hard to make out due to the fuzziness inherent in shrinking the image down.

Also an example of two timer mods in action.

Center Right in this shot we have Big Wigs Boss timers. Currently showing the count down for Rag's Aoe knockback and the time left before Rag's submerges

Big Wigs is a great boss mod pack and I highly recommend it if you're looking for an alternative to CT's Boss Mods

Up and to left are Natur's Enemy Cast Bar's showing the same timers. Normally I only use Natur for it's functionality in showing an opposing mobs spell casting or to watch the warlocks banish timers on mobs, so I can start casting just before it breaks, but it is enabled here to show some of it's additional functionality.

Rawr Molten Core.

Looks like we got a dog with these giants.

Center Top is my main Tank windows

The purple highlights on the Upper left are the debuffed members of the raid. In the middle right with the floating purple text is Detox mod, with an abbreviated list of the cursed. Detox is similiar to Decursive or the CTRA decurse. It tends to be a bit more memory efficient and is much friendlier when assigning priorities.

Directly under my Detox List is the respawn timers for the trash mobs in MC. This is a timer plugin for Big Wigs boss mod. It has timers built in for trash mobs all the way up through Naxx.

And under the BW Trash Timers are my Target and my Target's Target. The target's debuffs are actually covering up autobar because I'd evidently been wiggling the frames around, heh

Center Left is OCD (cool down bars) I'm a fan of the reverse progress bar, so these follow in the same vein. In this shot it's showing the cooldown of my Icebarrier and trinket. I also have it showing a duplicat numeric cooldown on the the spell buttons itself. 6 seconds on the Trinket and 4 seconds on the Ice Barrier

Middle Far left is Threatmeter.

Chemmy Wins!!!

I nominate Rhoach for 1st Runner Up for this gem.

Ok Breaking these up from the original post for a little clearer explanation.

There are tons of other mods or plugins that I have running or just kind of doing their thing in the background.

And all the elements on the screen can be turned off or changed independently of each other with a couple of clicks.

If you would like a full listing\links and/or memory usage statistics please just let me know.

This is just my Default Ui.

We were on a 10 man UBRS at the time of this shot

A basic explanation of the layout of my screen.

Raid Frames in the Upper left.Buffs in the Upper right.

Middle Left is my player frame. My Target and my Target's Target will appear Middle right.

Bottom is divided into 3 sections. Lower left is raid/party/channel chat. Lower right is Guild and Whispers.

Bottom Center is just my spells and my buffs/conjurables on their own bar.

Lower Right bar is a mod called Autobar. It autoloads it's buttons with nifty things like potions, bandaids, healthstones, mana gems, etc. It does it intelligently as well. Example if you have 2 healthstones and a health pot in your inventory. Healthstone is showing on the button as it is in my screenshot. If you click the button and use the healthstone the button changes to your Health Pot, because it knows the other healthstone is on cooldown. All this is straight out of the box no configuration necessary. Save some button space if you use a lot of consumables.

Buffs in the Upper right are presented in a reverse progress bar form by Elkano's Buff Bar mod.

My player frame and raid frame are Ag_uf. It has several styles built into one package. So you have lots of options you can switch to if the current one isn't pleasing to the eye. It's defaults are pretty snazzy and it has a very simple editor built into so you can actually change around things without having to be a coder. All that and it has a fairly small memory footprint.

The screen is sandwiched top and bottom between Fubar.

If you use or have used Titan Panel. I highly recommend Fubar. I found a lot of the functionality in Fubar that I was missing in Titan and a *ton* more plugins.

/sadpanda

For the best I suppose. More time for bug fixes, and a smaller flood of patches in the initial weeks after release.

*stares at the character selection screen*

Hmmm, maybe enough time to catch up with V in 60's

--Ghules

Current Druid, Paladin, and Warrior changes:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.h...90255&sid=1

More changes reposted from another related blue post:

We’ve made some additional changes to the talent calculators today. In addition to changing many of the icons, we’ve also made the following changes:

(Hunter) Aimed Shot - Rank 7 not listed, 370 mana, 870 damage.

(Druid) Leader of the Pack - Increases crit % by 5, increased from 3.

(Druid) Moonkin Form - Increases spell crit % by 5, increased from 3.

--Ghules

Here's a copy of the post regarding the Hunter Mechanics changes:

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classe...er/changes.html

1. Attack Power and Crit related changes:

* Hunters now get 1 AP per Agility rather than 2. This change helps us provide more interesting stat distributions on hunter items. Previously, Hunters valued Agi significantly above any other stat, such that it was extremely difficult for us to create variety among Hunter items. For example, before this change, we could have spent 1 stat point on an item to give you either 2 AP or 1 Agi (which gave 2 AP along with a small bonus to crit and a small bonus to dodge... clearly the better choice). However, several changes have been made along with this change in order to offset the AP loss.

* Hunters now get significantly more crit per point of Agility than before (about 33agi/crit at level 60).

* Hunters now get more dodge per point of Agility than before (about 20agi/dodge at lvl 60).

* Ranged weapons have had their damage values significantly increased (and consequently the weapon's dps)... this also helps make weapon upgrades feel more meaningful for Hunters than it did previously (along with the other changes, this change is retroactive).

* Most Hunter equipment has been updated to have a better distribution between +Attack Power bonuses and Agility.

2. Traps are now on a 30 sec cooldown, but can be used in combat (you no longer need to feign/trap).

3. When feign death is resisted, you are still reduced to 0 threat for any targets that did not resist feign death (although if any creature resists the feign, you won't be taken completely out of combat, you'll still be on the creature group's target list).

4. Aimed Shot related changes:

* Aimed Shot now resets the Hunter's shot timer. This talent was always intended to be an "opening" shot, and not something that would be woven between shots. However, since Aimed Shot became such a core element for Hunter DPS, we didn't want to make this change until we were prepared to make several other changes to increase hunter DPS to offset it. Fortunately, this means that some of the odd side effects of the old Aimed Shot are no longer relevant, such as requiring hunters to use extremely slow weapons to maximize their DPS (weapons slow enough to be able to use Aimed Shot in between auto shots)

* Arcane Shot now does substantially more damage than it did before, and scales with AP.

* Steady Shot has been introduced as a core ability in the expansion, and provides much the same kind of gameplay as Aimed Shot did in the past (a shot you weave in between your normal shots), but to a much more managable degree (since it's a 1.5 sec shot, it doesn't require as slow of a weapon to take advantage of, and doesn't require to stand still for as long).

5. Other note: Wyvern Sting may now be used in combat.

Looks like the love was fairly evenly spread between the trees. Although it's a bit deeper in some trees than others.

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classe...ter/spells.html

Here's a few examples:

The Beast Within - When your pet is under the effects of Bestial Wrath, you also go into a rage causing 30% additional damage for 18 sec. While enraged, you do not feel pity or remorse or fear and you cannot be stopped unless killed.

Readiness - When activated, this ability immediately finishes the cooldown on your other Hunter abilities.

0/3 Concussive Barrage - Your successful auto shot attacks have a 2% chance to daze the target for 4 seconds

New spell:

Misdirection

Requires Level 70

326 Mana100 yd range

Instant cast2 min cooldown

Threat caused by your next 3 attacks is redirected to the target raid member. Caster and target can only be affected by one Misdirection spell at a time. Effect lasts 30 sec.

Have your hunters in an aimed shot/multishot/misdirection rotation and apply the affect to the tank or an off tank and mobs should stick like glue.

--Ghules

What's this "sleep" thing you people keep mentioning?

Admit it!

You've been dipping into Depaa's stash!

--Ghules

I've got mine.

--Ghules

That was a good one.

Have to say my favorite is still

http://www.blizzard.com/wow/screenshot.asp...x=62&Set=64

Druid goodies for the expansion are finally out and now we must fear the free-fall moon fire spam!

Spells

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classe...id/talents.html

Flight Form (Shapeshift)

Requires Level 68

498 Mana

3 sec cast

Transforms the Druid into a flight form, increasing movement speed by 60% and allowing you to fly. Can only use this form in Outland.

The act of shapeshifting frees the caster of Polymorph and Movement Impairing effects.

I must remember to stock up on lightfeathers for those aerial duels...

Oh! Healers start sucking up to your favorite druid now. "Tree of Life Form"....nuff said.

--Ghules

Ghules is attuned

Blizzard finally posted the Priest talents and spells for BC.

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classe...est/spells.html

Here's a sampling:

Prayer of Mending - Rank 1

Requires Level 68

976 Mana30 yd range

Instant cast

Places a spell on the target that heals them for 702 to 858 the next time they take damage. When the heal occurs, Prayer of Mending jumps to a nearby raid target. Jumps up to 5 times and lasts 1 min after each jump. This spell can only be placed on one target at a time.

AOE Demagic

Shadow Word Pain adding a 5% increase to spell damage taken

Spirit Buff adding +Damage/Healing

A heal that works while in Shadow Form

And pets!

/drool

--Ghules

Thanks for the offer, but Waldy would still beat me to 60 no matter how much help I had.

--Ghules

Count me in!

Hmmm, now where did I put my lucky fishing hat?.....

--Ghules

Happy Birthday you old Scalawag!!!

May your day be filled with good food, good friends, and good fun!

*looks around nervously*

:bunny:

I see your 3 pancake bunnies and raise you 1 pancake bunny and 9 assorted

--Ghules

Thank you all!

Had a great time Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

Despite it all I'll be glad to return to Azeroth and away from my long lost friend Vokda and the tomfoolery/hijinks that tend to accompany him.

All photographic evidence has been confiscated and locked away in a safe place.

Nothing to see here. Move along.

PS:

Thanks for the tip Rhoach. Without your words of wisdom there might have been an unfortunate birthday candle accident.

PPS:

I hear a certain warlock is crawling Over The Hill to join me this week

--Ghules