I have been pretty busy at work lately with what I label a “Speed CRM”, where I leave all projects and work solidly on 1 system for a number of days… straight. Nearing the end of the third day, my brain is numbing and eyes are beginning to bleed, but there is alas light at the end of the tunnel.

WoW’ing has continued however. The leveling game drags on, with all of us now in our early/mid-twenties. We have loot run through SFK with the 70 Lock about a gazillion times, but we are now all finally happy with our gear and as of last night, leave the cursed walls behind.

We now are getting into the mindset of soloing. Being a lowbie all over again sucks, and don’t deny it. It’s a world full of Melon Juice, tiresome grinding and BoE greens and Cuddles says it’s not FTW. I think he’s sick of Lynx meat.

Coming up to our mid-twenties however mean’s one things is now possible. Ghost Saber. A trip to Darkshore would mean Snowflake and Arkaos would again be a rolling proud DPS duo. The risk of getting ganked on the way however has us tossing up whether or not to wait another 10 levels or not.

On vent last night, we we’re discussing various things, and the subject of AddOn’s popped up, as it usually does. We we’re surprised, as was everyone, to find-out our WoWMatrix says that we have 51 AddOn’s installed! We don’t. Many are installed, but not running. We like to try new things every now and then and we don’t condone this kind of AddOn wh0ring, but we do condone the use of several must haves. This is “Brucey’s Top 10 AddOn’s”, complied into a short list for your viewing and research pleasure. Please note, the list is not called “AddOns that MUST be installed” or “AddOn’s That If You Don’t Install Will Turn You N00b”. This is what we use and find helpful, and hopefully you all will as well

Brucey’s Top 10 Addon’s

10. CyCircled
Makes your action bars all pretty and circled, however it has different themes for those non-circle lovers out there. Turn your frown upside down with CyCircled. You will never look at your UI the same again.

9. BAYI’s Extendend Questlong
Hate Blizzards short little Questframe? Hate tracking only 5 quests at a time? So does the other half of the world. Grab yourself this baby and it will sort out all your bedroom questing woes.

8. Perl Unit Frames
Now this baby isn’t necessary, but we’re being to <3 it none the less. This is our newest addon, and the customization and personalization available rocks our jocks. Keeps things nice and slim, and in order. For this reason, Perl earns the number 8 spot. Just a note however, if you do install this, we also recommend Mob Info, so you know exactly how much beatdown that b4stard really needs!

7. FuBar
For anyone who has lived on Earth long enough, you probably know that the World rotates around the Sun. For those heavy into AddOn’s, you possibly think it rotates around FuBar. FuBar isn’t JUST an AddOn. It’s an AddOn that takes AddOns. Think of it as your WoW taskbar. Install whatever you feel you need to dump down there, but keep it all neat in order. Bundled with FuBar Gold Pack, you will have everything you need to further alienate yourself from society.

6. MikScrollingBattleText
As weird as the name seems, this is the best Battle Text AddOn/Mod we found. We love it. We customize it, we stylize it, we live by it. Some many options to suit any play style, sit back and watch those Crits fly!

5. Cooldown Timers 2
Heading into the Top 5, we begin listing things we probably couldn’t play without. Cooldown Timers 2 rocks. Fire your Arcane Shot and watch the 6 seconds tick down, and then, be suprised by a friendly greeting proclaiming your “Arcane Shot is ready”. You can even customize it to say stuff like “Your an Uber Hunter. Just wanted to tell you that your Arcane Shot is Ready. Also, your hair is looking mighty fine today”, but we don’t recommend it.

We are trying to work out how to get it to display a warning saying something like “You are sober, please purchase more alcoholic beverages at next opportunity”. Please, anyone, let us know if you find out how!

4. Kahurts Hunter Timers
Don’t get Cooldown Timers without KHT. Throw em next to each other and watch them work in tandem. KHT shows you how long that trap has left, how long before your Serpent Sting drops, pretty much how long anything has left on the target. It’s a great way to know when to throw that DoT up next. Learn it, Live it, Love it.

3. QuestHelper
The cream of the crop, the ducks nut’s of all Questing, the Quester’s 99 Virgins. Call it what you may, but for questing, this IS the shiznit. We never leave home without, and we owe our Blood Elf’s level 21 24 ass to it. To say we love it is an understatement.

2. Omen Threat Meter
We all know it, we all love. If you play WoW, you have some kind of threatmeater installed. If you don’t, then pass us your address. Snowflake is hungry.

1. Bongos
First to come and last to leave. We live with it and live by it. Get rid of that cursed Default UI…NOW! With Bongos, you can move anything, anywhere. Setup your actionbars the way you like it. They snap together like lego, and we can’t say enough about it. Hence the short, abrupt sentences. If there was 2 number 1’s in a Top 10 list, it would take them both. But then of couse, it would be a Top 11 list, and that just sounds FTL. So it’s a Top 10 list with an Uber Number 1.

Posted on April 10th, 2008 by Brucey
Filed under: Add-Ons | 5 Comments »

Well it’s official children. We did it. <Needs A Cuddle> has taken down it’s first boss in it’s first Guild run ever.

We ran through Ragefire Chasm on Saturday, and we we’re all quite surprised at how easy we pushed through it all! The vent server was full of “w00ting!” and cries of joy, before we all realized it was RFC and then vent waves went deadly silent. A moment of awkwardness.
Oh, the joys of being n00b all over again.

We did however, commemorate the occasion with some screenshots. Cheesy? Oh hell yeah, but we’re cool with it. We still have our Dwarven pride, so we’re sweet as a - oh wait a minute…

/sigh

Enjoy the B’elf goodness semi-decency

Posted on April 7th, 2008 by Brucey
Filed under: Guild | No Comments »

Class is now in session children.

Well after downing Rokmar the Crackler after 2 wipes, we we’re sweetly rewarded by this little drop, [Coilfang Needler]. We rolled greed, we we’re in a PUG and didn’t want to waste loot points on this baby, as we we’re firmly set on [Scorpid-Sting Mantle], which drops off the last boss Quagmirran. We Greed, and begin sacrifices to the Dice Lords, which mainly consist of Fruits and Grains, as we believe they are Lactose Intolerant. Dairy products will give you snake eyes for days!

Our prayers and offerings were accepted, and before you could say kitty treats, we we’re the proud owner of this baby. But will we drop our epic [Precisely Calibrated Boomstick] for this phat lootz? More DPS we says! Of course we will! Wait, slow fire rate however, less crits? We will sticks with the Boomstick tyvm. But wait, that can’t be right. Which item is better? Let’s work it out…

Stats wise, they are pretty equal. Only a drop of 2 Agility points for the crossbow, but we’re pumping an extra 22 points of AP, which is almost an extra 2 points of damage (remember, 14 points of AP will give us 1 extra point of Damage).

Lets say that equipping both items, we keep all the same stats. Same crit rate, and same RAP (forgetting the bonus’s to Agility and AP that the items give, to keep things simple).

We fire our [Coilfang Needler] for 60 seconds. How much damage will we pump into our target? Let’s see. The item shows this baby to have 53.6 DPS. To work out the DPS, we use:

DPS = [[MinDmg + MaxDmg] / 2] / WeaponSpeed
DPS = [[124+ 187] / 2] / 2.90
DPS = [311 / 2] / 2.90
DPS = 155.5 / 2.90
DPS = 53.6

Yes, I realize WoW calculates this for you, and is shown in the tooltip. But just for reference, that’s how it is calculated. And never start a sentence with “but”. Or “and”.

We can also find out, using this method, that min and max DPS are 42.8 - 64.5. Cool eh?

So if we are pumping out 53.6 DPS, how much damage per minute? Easy

Total Damage = DPS * 60
Total Damage = 53.6 * 60
Total Damage = 3,216

Also, good to know how many shots that is

Total Shots = 60 / WepSpeed
Total Shots = 60 / 2.90
Total Shots = 20.7 (21 shots)

Remember this isn’t including skills, talents, character stats etc. This is autoshot, over and over again, for 60 seconds. So how does our [Precisely Calibrated Boomstick] compare. Rinse and repeat this calculation process! We know it’s DPS is 34.7 so…

Total Damage = DPS * 60
Total Damage = 34.7 * 60
Total Damge = 2,082Total Shots = 60 / WepSpeed
Total Shots = 60 /1.5
Total Shots = 40 shots

Wow, much smaller. Double the ammo, and 1.2k short of the mark. Of course, this is obvious, we can just compare the DPS of each weapon to see that. But what about crits. This is what we wanted to know. We have double the shots, so double the crit chance right? Well, sorta. Let’s see.

Let’s say our crit is 15% with both weapons (the loss in Agility from the weapon stats won’t effect us that much). That means with our crossbow, we have 21 shots, and 15% of those have a chance to crit. So…

Crits = TotalShots * Crit%
Crits = 21 * 15%
Crits = 3.15 (3 Crits)

We’re going to (statistically) snag 3 crits in 60 sec of shooting. How much DPS is that? Well I saw somewhere that a crit will do Damge * 2.5. Don’t quote me on that, I will research later to check this. Our average damage is around 155.5 with the crossbow (MinDmg + MaxDmg /2). Base weapon stats only remember! So our crits will do:

CritDmg = AvgDmg * 2.5
CritDmg = 155.5 * 2.5
CritDmg = 388.75

So total damage (3 crit’s each at 388.75) is an extra 1,166 damage. Bwamo, Snowflake will love the rested jaw muching time!

Remember this is an average only. You may crit for more, may crit for less, and your talents/stats will increase/decrease these. We are just calculating on a level playing field. Now for the Boomstick.

Crits = TotalShots * Crit%
Crits = 40 * 15%
Crits =6 Crits (double the amount! We knew it!)

CritDmg = 52 * 2.5
CritDmg = 130Total Crit Dmg = 130 * 6
Total Crit Dmg = 780

And there we go. Even though we shoot more, and crit doublethe amount of times, we still get nowhere near the damage needed to match the crossbow. If the Boomstick increased our crit% to 25%, then we would pack 1,300 damage in crits. But that still doesn’t beat the crossbow with it’s standard damage. Also, the crossbow increases AP, so the DPS output would be slightly higher still, if we took stats into account.

So can a faster weapon out damage and slower one weapon with a higher DPS? Yes, I think it can. The more crit’s would obviously mean more damage. But in this comparison (as many may have guessed from the start), the [Coilfang Needler] far surpasses the Boomstick. We know it was a simple example, with almost obviously answers from the word go. But remember, the formula will still stay the same, no matter what.

Needless to say, we are walking around with a crossbow now, and from tests, that badboy can defintly pack a punch compared to our old gun. And it uses half the ammo! Half the ammo, double the grind time.

Yes, it definitely is slower, but we learn to deal with that…

Posted on April 3rd, 2008 by Brucey
Filed under: Theorycraft, Gear | No Comments »

Can you smell that? It’s the sweet sent of Ice Armor.

He’s back… almost

Edit: Looks like there may be a delay. A certain someone’s mid-life crisis seem’s to have halted all action on Styric’s tech front.

There are 2 things you don’t stand in the way of when it comes to Sty, his internet and his jelly.

Yes, you may hear the Jelly Story one day…

Posted on April 1st, 2008 by Brucey
Filed under: Non-Wow, Guild | No Comments »

Brucey: We no longer have guild bank for potions? Or repairs? Are we poor? Are we in a recession?

GM: We do, I just revoked privileges a week ago or so since that guy took the valor set items to give to some n00b

Brucey: Oh, how many items we have?

GM: Heaps.

Brucey: No, Valor pieces?

GM: Oh we had 2.

Brucey: Tier Gear, right?

GM: Yup

Brucey: What tab was it in?

GM: Public

Brucey: /sigh,

Brucey: All I wanted was some pots for the road…

We come out of WoW recession and find ALL Guild Bank privileges revoked. No repairs, no pots, no enchant mats and obliviously, no items.

/stopcasting Welcome Back Party

We find our self a little cheesed at this. We don’t take a lot from the GBank for starters. We ask for some Pot loving from time to time, when the funds are a little low. We also take enchanting mats, for Guild Enchants, which as the Guild’s Enchanter isn’t asking much, really.

I can understand how the Valor incident has caused problems, but to revoke ALL privileges, from ALL users. They created ranks for a reason people. And in the withdrawer’s defense, it was in the Public tab, possibly next to a stack of linen cloth! Valuables tab anyone?

Anyway, as you may have guessed, the Outlands have once again been polluted with the Brucey and Snowflake combination. So if you see us walking around, you can throw us hug, give us a wave, but if you’re going to do anything, then for the love of all Merloc’s trade us some pots!

/storm out

Posted on March 30th, 2008 by Brucey
Filed under: Guild | 2 Comments »