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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsThe Queue: I'm sick of pandas
by Alex Ziebart 
Jan 6th 2009 at 2:00PM
I'm bored of hearing about Pandas and Pandaren, so I am declaring today 'pandas aren't real' day. If you think about pandas at any point throughout the day, you must throw yourself out of a window. No, I'm not going to defenestrate myself for writing this, because I made the holiday so I make the rules. However, I will not think about pandas starting.... now!
Kevin Gass asked...
Is there a way (be it a mod or not) to alert me whenever a cooldown is done. For example, as a Shaman whenever Maelstrom is ready, a bright and noticeable pop up says it's ready. I would love something to tell me whenever Ghost Wolf and Shamanistic Rage are ready. I would use them more often! Thanks in advance!
I'm guessing you mean Feral Spirit and not Ghost Wolf, right? Well, either way, you're definitely going to need to look to mods if you want alerts that really pop out at you. Some things will show up in the Scrolling Combat Text in the basic UI, but that's sort of a clunky use of it and not everything shows up there.
There are a ton of mods that will do this for you, all depending on how you want it to look. If you want the cooldown on your action bar to be easier to notice, use the very simple mod called Cooldowns. It adds a big yellow countdown timer on your buttons. If you want something more than that, or something more customizable, you may want to go with ClassTimer or TellMeWhen. Another alternative is a more robust combat text mod, like ScrollingCombatText.
Maelstrom may be a problem since it's a stacking buff, so I don't know how well that works in these mods currently, but I bet our readers would know a bit more. Readers?
Frostfire asked...
Question about WI itself, where did "Ready Check" go? I was using it as a great guide to Naxx 10 and 25, but it disappeared before finishing every quarter. Thought it might be a holiday break at first, but now I'm missing it. It's a very helpful article and I was wondering what happened to it.
It didn't go away or anything, Jennie Lees has just been pretty busy with other things lately. Allison Robert (who covered Ask a Beta Tester with me pretty often awhile back) is going to be filling in for her, so it'll be back real soon.
Eternauta asked...
When will Blizz get rid of weapon skills? They are annoying!
They're pretty annoying, yeah, but I don't think they'll go anywhere. Leveling them is lame, but they're a fairly big part of how the combat system works. I think we'd see a change to make leveling them easier before we see them disappear entirely, if we see any changes at all.
K asked...
No matter how many times I turn it off, my pet just LOVES to cower regardless. Is there any way to stop this for serious?
Yeah, this is a known bug. You need to drag Cower onto your action bar, and turn off autocast there. If you just turn it off in your spellbook, it'll turn itself back on.
Have questions about the World of Warcraft? The WoW Insider crew is here with The Queue, our daily Q&A column! Leave your questions in the comments and we'll do our best to answer 'em!Filed under: The Queue
Reader Comments (Page 3 of 7)
Kaphik Jan 6th 2009 4:47PM
Why not take away all stats while we're at it? And no skill levels for tradeskills, either.
Sheesh..it's an mmoRPG people! That's part of the roleplaying game part, if you want to learn how to do something, especially doing it well, you have to take some time practicing it.
In the past two weeks I have leveled two weapon skills from 0 to 400. Each time it took me about an hour, and it only took me about 20 minutes to get to the point where I was able to beat on level 80 mobs without missing a whole heck of a lot.
Person Jan 6th 2009 6:06PM
Also there are some white quality weapons that are crazy fast (tuskaar have polearms and staves that are like 1.something) which are nice for levelling weapon skill (right?). Bought a dalaran rifle (again white quality but fast) to level gun skill from 100 to 375 the other day, and just ran around for maybe an hour or so in burning steppes helping someone else out, got it to 373...
Jaimie Jan 6th 2009 6:44PM
Weapon skills level faster if the mob is your level. To the person who went from 399 to 400 on the mob in Slabs, you could have done that a lot faster if you stopped at 399 and went to Northrend for the last stretch.
Maadcowmoo Jan 6th 2009 2:28PM
I use Ghostpulse. I find it super helpful because it will pop up a picture *of the spell or ability* when it comes off cooldown or when my ability/spell procs.
As a Warrior i've missed my free shield slam ability *sword and broad* sooo many times. I'm alway focusing on everyone around me and not myself. Everytime it *or anyother ability i want to show* procs a nice big pic flashes on my screen telling me it is rdy. You can put that pic anywhere and change the "fading" % so it actually doesn't block your view.
Leifo Jan 6th 2009 2:31PM
I've become a big fan of Parrot, as it works well across all classes and (despite a short learning curve) allows for some great customizations for alerts. For instance, I was sick of always forgetting or not noticing that Hot Streak was up as a fire mage. Now, a sound effect plays and HOT STREAK appears in a giant red font in the middle of my screen. Many such alerts are already built in and can be customized as necessary. I haven't played my Shammy in a while but I expect most of the alerts you're asking for could be added without too much trouble.
--Leifo
Grendelstein Jan 6th 2009 2:42PM
For enhance shammys, there's one really really great addon, Shock and Awe:
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/shockandawe.aspx
It has everything you need - cooldowns on your wolves, maelstrom weapon stacks, and flashes suggestions on what to use next to maximize your dps if you don't want to play "what's next highest ability on my priority list."
I also use Enhancer, which has totem timers, one click button for each totem family (once you've cast it or you can set up defaults), a weapon imbue button (click 2x to put imbues on both weapons), and an ankh counter and cooldown timer for reincarnation.
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/enhancer.aspx
Finally I use FloTotemBar to get all those totems off my action bar!
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/flo-totem-bar.aspx
Randy Jan 6th 2009 2:44PM
Before the expansion and I think even before the Echoes of Doom patch, the basic WoW UI was customizable to display your own base health number while displaying an enemy's health percentage. Is this possible anymore without a customization mod like PitBull? Showing percentages for a boss fight with distinct phases can be a lifesaver and let me know when to start saving up rage for that execute :)
jtrain Jan 6th 2009 3:00PM
I'm admittedly new to tanking, and I hear people talk about a 'rage dump'. Why would I want to dump rage? I thought the whole idea was to build up a good amount so I don't have to sit there auto-attacking waiting for my abilities to become usable. In Wrath, I never seem to have a problem generating rage and at the end of a fight in which I've pulled several mobs, I usually have quite a bit of rage still available. Am I doing something wrong?
Gutboy Jan 6th 2009 3:11PM
If you have 100 rage, or close to it, any additional rage you get that would put you over 100 is lost. So warriors (especially tanks) like to have some attacks at the ready that will knock off a chunk of your rage if it gets too high. These are called "rage dumps."
Murdock Jan 6th 2009 3:16PM
You should have just enough rage to use your core abilities. If you have excess rage at the end of the fight, then thats damage you could have done that you didn't.
For example, you are tanking. Using Shield Block, shield Slam, Thunderclap, Shockwave, etc. You have 5 sunders up and demo shout up. Yet you are still gaining rage, now is the time to use Heroic strike to add in some extra DPS by converting that next white hit into a yellow special attack. Your DPS goes up, your threat goes up and your rage goes down a little. You'll find a nice balance in there.
When tanking you are taking so much damage from the boss that its very easy to have 100 rage even with all your buttons going, thats why you wan't to dump that rage into extra DPS like heroic strike.
Shibdaddy Jan 6th 2009 3:17PM
The purpose of a Rage Dump is to get the extra dmg out of you special abilities such a HS or cleave while waiting on your SS, Rev, TC, and SW.
The word "Dump" may be a bit misleading for some. Think about it this way. When you're siting there with a full rage bar only doing white strikes and waiting on your cd's that is wasted rage you could be using to create more dmg and threat. You would never want to fully dump your rage bar as you'll need the rage when your rotation comes back up.
Catbirdman Jan 6th 2009 3:03PM
Is there a way to make tooltips smaller or even remove them entirely? They keep getting in the way of my UI. Also is there a way to resize the chatbox?
Murdock Jan 6th 2009 5:08PM
Under the interface and Help look for the "Enhanced Tooltips" You can turn them off there.
As for the chat box, go to the tab at the top and right click. Choose "Unlock" You can now resize it to your hearts content. When finished repeat and choose "lock"
Khanmora Jan 6th 2009 6:18PM
If you would like to easily move your tooltips there is also an addon just for that called Lithe Tooltip Doctor. The only thing it does is let you move your tooltip.
http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info5336-LitheTooltipDoctor.html
Rimefang Jan 6th 2009 3:03PM
I thought I remembered reading that weapon skill skill-up also depends on mob level; I could be wrong. In any case, I don't get why it took you 1 hr 3 minutes. I got 399 -> 400 with the 1h tank axe from SMV in about 30-40 minutes of questing in Storm Peaks.
In all fairness, leveling weapon skills is dramatically better than it was in BC. The time it takes to go 399->400 is a fraction of the time it took to go 349->350 in BC.
Leveling a non-ranged weapon skill from 1->300 is trivial and significantly faster than cooking 1->300 or fishing 1->300. All it takes is some planning if you want to be efficient about your time.
Panda Jan 6th 2009 3:22PM
But I go by the name Panda D:
Aaron Jan 6th 2009 3:23PM
Oh, thanks for reminding me of Panda! I see it was updated recently!
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/panda.aspx
Amaxe Jan 6th 2009 3:49PM
Hey! he said no talk of pandas!
More seriously that looks interesting for my Prospecting and will have to look at it
Murdock Jan 6th 2009 3:16PM
Pre-WotLK I had an addon that would "pulse" the buttons on the bar when things came off cooldown. It wasn't any of the above mentioned ones, anyone happen to know of other mods that do this? I don't want it out on my screen or in SCT I just want it to pop-up a little on my bars for a second.
Thanks.
JPN Jan 6th 2009 4:39PM
OmniCC will do this for you.