Still pushing on

Well finished clearing SM:Armory and SM:Cathedral. My team is now 43 and heading to Uldaman where I figure I'll level until 46ish then head over to hinterlands for the ZF mallet quest then off to ZF until hopefully 52ish. See how much xp I can pump out of there. Next will be sunken temple until 55 then a mix of BRD, Strat, Scholo and LBRS. Finally off to outlands for some initial questing then ramps at 61.

Hopefully I will be able to steal away some time soon to finish my videos and UI.

Instancing and my UI

Well so far I've full cleared RFC, WC, RFK, SM: Graveyard, SM: Library. My team is 34 right now. My next post will have videos of the bosses as well as my UI and addon list.

Where does my time go?

So after deciding to ditch the warlock at 60 I said, screw it might as well learn the class now. I logged onto my main account and the account that the warlock is on and started 2 druids. As I got them to level 8 in 1 hour and 45 minutes the time doesn't seem right to me but then again the tauren starting area is nothing but collection quest gg. About 50% into 8 I get people in vent saying, hey dummy come heal nexus for us. So off I go to get onto my shaman. Well low and behold it's normal mode and I'm sitting on heroes and badge gear so I decide to start screwing around and pulling mobs two pulls ahead which no big deal since 4 of the 5 of us are sitting in vent laughing our asses off. At this point the tank was probualy thinking I was a complete tool. But anywaze long story short we get to the last boss and Bam! Server down. Thank you Illidan for ridding us of your wonderful lag replacing it with server crashes. So we finally get back in and the druid is nowhere to be found so we bring in a friend tank and zone in to find the instance had reset. At this point I really wanted to get back to my druids but they insist on finishing it. So we start pulling again this time we have a heroes warrior and shaman so more goofing off goes down. I'm pretty sure we cleared all the trash in 3 pulls plus I got that damn awesome santa hat from the boss! Wish I'd remembered to upload my screenshots. As soon as we get done here Bam! pm from my other warrior buddy saying hey heroic UK now!! So once again off I go. This was a fast fun run of people we knew, all well geared. By this time it's almost 10 o'clock and I had logged onto my shaman at around 6:30. In the middle of UK I had recieved a pm from my other shammy friend who I am on a 5's team with for the new arena season. He's like hey wanna heal 5's? Well I want some gear so I say yes and off I go to do that. By the time I'm done it's almost 11:15 and I'm trying to think of the fastest way to get my druid to 15. So I call upon my pally friend to boost me in rfc. So as soon as he is within 4 levels of my pally I hope on him and bring them both in. S now I have a 16 pally, 15 1/2 mage, shaman, priest and a 14 1/2 druid. By this time it's nearing 2 am. So I decided to give rfc a solo try.

So I get to the 2-3 mob pulls and wipe on a 3 pull. I refined my tactics a little more and try again this time I manage to tab my way through the mobs to keep them on me, mind you I am doing this with one hand so it's not the easiest thing to do. I wipe again after getting 1 guy down and another to 10%. My problem this time was VRCommander was lagging it up and I was getting late shields and heals. I decide to end the night on that. My thoughts afterward are to get my mage sheeping macro done and start going back to healing with just the keyboard to make sure I get the heals on time. So if I can condense all this to my right side of the keyboard. With that I'm possibly looking at putting rfc on farm leveling status tonight depending on if and how 25 naxx goes.

Now that I'm already considering going back to the keyboard I'm trying to think of the best way to set this up. I'm thinking about this setup.

Num 0 - Assist macro
Num 1 - Initial aggro/damage
Num 2 - Sustained aggro/dps
Num 3 - Target tank
Num 4 - Shield
Num 5 - Lesser Heal
Num 6 - Renew
Num 7 - Buffing
Num 8 -
Num 9 -
Num . - Mage focus
Num Enter - Mage Sheep

Maybe I should look into an x-keys pad soon, little pricey for me though. Once I get my hand back I can start using my G keys on my G15 keyboard .

Macros

So after screwing around on my main for a little last night I got back to leveling the group. Hitting 15 brought on a new thought, Macros. Starting off I had some simple macros for healing and my Warlock but as I gain more spells I think I'm in the need for some more complicated macros. Currently I'm using VRCommander to control my healer. This is not out of laziness or to make it easier but because I have a broken hand at the moment which makes it a little difficult to play 3 rolls at once. So I'd like to revise those macros so that when I get my hand back I'll go back to using just my keyboard maybe keeping VRCommander for simple but annoying tasks like assisting and buffing.

I've noticed that keeping assist out of the macro has allowed me to get initial aggro on a mob then switch to another while the first mob is dps'd downed until I say assist, which could be done through the keyboard but can become quite annoying needing to hit it every pull.

To simplify the creation and grouping of macros I've decided to split them up into initial aggro/ initial damage, sustained aggro/ dps and healing. My goal is to condense all my spells into enough macros to fill my numpad leaving my left hand when better free for targeting and movement. I'm debating whether I should organize these by class or by category. I'm thinking I'll go by category then class along with a general section.

Initial aggro/ damage

Paladin

/startattack
/castsequence Seal of Righteousness, Judgement of Wisdom

Warlock

/petattack
/castsequence reset=15 Immolate, Corruption

Mage

No real initial damage from frost mage

Shaman

No real initial damage from ele shaman

Sustained aggro/ dps

Paladin

/castsequece Seal of Righteousness, Judgement of Wisdom

Warlock

/castsequence [nochanneling: Drain Soul] reset=16 Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Immolate, Corruption

Mage

/cast Frostbolt

Shaman

/castsequence reset=12 Flame Shock, Lightening Bolt, Lightening Bolt, Lightening Bolt, Lightening Bolt, Lightening Bolt

Healing

Priest

/target *character name*

/stopcasting
/cast Power Word: Shield

/stopcasting
/cast Lesser Heal

/stopcasting
/cast Renew


General

Mage

/focus [target=targettarget]

/cast [target=focus] Polymorph

Warlock

/cast Drain Soul

As of writing this I have decide once I hit 60 I will be swapping my warlock for a boomkin for the crit buff and motw. Warlock doesn't offer enough to keep around plus it frees up a spot for gear.

The Setup

So with my goal being to successfully 5 box a team to 80 and run heroics, I needed to make sure my computer could handle 5 instances of WoW.

So here are the specs I currently have before my upgrade:

• Foxconn P45A-S
• E7200 2.53GHz Core2Duo
• 2x 1 Gig of 1066 G.Skill
• EVGA Geforce 8800 GTS

This setup is currently able to run the 5 accounts, Keyclone, VRCommander, Firefox, Ventrilo and iTunes. The only time I get lag is near major cities. Master runs in 1680x1200 with medium graphics and the slaves run in 800x600 low graphics settings.

The upgrades sitting on my desk are:

• Q8200 2.33 GHz Quad-Core
• 4x 2 Gigs of 1066 G.Skill

Hopefully these will solve my city problems. As soon as February rolls around I'll be looking at getting 2 SSD drives one for the OS and the other for WoW directories. I'll also be looking at an EVGA x260 maybe a x280 depending on prices.

And now for the team. My team consist of a Protection Paladin, Frost Mage, Elemental Shaman, Destruction Warlock and a Holy Priest. As of writing this they are all level 10. I use Keyclone to broadcast my key strokes and VRCommander to control my healer. Soon I'll post my planned talent specs as I head for 20 and possibly some videos of RFC or WC.