The Daily Quest: Go go gadget rocket boots
by Alex Ziebart 
May 20th 2009 at 9:00PM
- Graylo of Gray Matter talks stat weights and spell priorities for the second in a pair of Moonkin builds.
- Rogue-Rogue reacts to the Nitro Boots stealth nerf from patch 3.1.2.
- Shields Up! pulls together a few essential macros for Shaman of all flavors.
- Hunter DPS has changed significantly since The Burning Crusade, shifting from a shot rotation to more of a shot priority system. If you're not sure what that means, you should probably read this.
Filed under: The Daily Quest
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
sixers2329 May 20th 2009 9:19PM
I don't see why blizzard is trying to balance engineering. It creates and atmosphere in the arena where you have to weigh stats between something that gives you a one up or the stats on the gear. Like how they nerfed stealth detection goggles, you either took the good gear or traded it off for the goggles with lower stats, but with a useful buff.
Lemons May 20th 2009 10:07PM
Yea, that sounds good in theory until you realize the stealth detection buff they recieved by wearing the goggles GREATLY outweighs the stat debuff. Lets say your a rogue...getting the jump on another rogue is often difference between winning and losing a match. For the other classes it doesn't matter so much...If a rogue can see you and has half a brain he'll just keep to your back 180 degrees where your stealth detection is virtually nonexistant with or without goggles. There's more than one reason that rogues do it from behind!
That said everyone should read the Nitro Boots article...not because the author has any great insight on the Nitro Boots nerf, but because after he's done QQing he mentions a nice little registry trick that improves your ping! I did it and I went from my normal 260-360 to around 180! Of course you should back up your registry before you make any changes (TM)...
x May 20th 2009 9:24PM
Nitro boosts may be nerfed in arenas but regular rocket boots xtreme and xtreme lite still work (I think), sure the schematic is extremely rare, sure they cost 500g to make, but they boost your speed by 500% for 5 sec, that is extremely OP in arenas.
i dont think blizz has nerfed them yet because so few people have them.
peagle May 21st 2009 11:14AM
They haven't been usable in arenas since Oct'08, and the schematic for either is a very common drop for engs off the mech boss. Or were you being sarcastic?
x May 21st 2009 4:30PM
Nope.. wasnt being sarcastic >.<
Havent tried my rocket boots in arenas since last summer, didnt realize they got removed.
As for the schematic drop, its a 6% drop off of mechano-lord capacitus, (wowhead)
Fung May 20th 2009 9:55PM
a warning about your solution to wow lag (i commented this on the rocket boots link, but as i know a lot of people here will read it i'm reposting)
what you are doing is tuning a dial that belongs to the part of windows that handles the tcp stack (for noobs: roughly equivalent to "the internet's messages").
by default, it's tuned towards being a moderate setting to handle most types of traffic. traffic can take very different shapes, from a large direct download from a single site, to many concurrent smaller streams such as in bittorrent. to make a comparison, it's defaulted to be a jeep and be prepared for most driving surfaces, as opposed to a formula f1 that needs a clear and open track, or a dunebuggy thats prepared to drive the sahara desert and steep inclines. in tuning this dial, you are adjusting yourself for wow-type traffic, and will likely suffer when your formula f1 has to drive in sandy bittorrent.
not a decision to take lightly, and not something to set and forget if you run into issues down the line. still potentially worthwhile for the hardcore, as it will commonly drive average pings down from 200 to 30 so i hear. i believe that the blues were once against it and supposedly issued a "patch", but backtracked on that, with the correct assertion that there isn't much they can do about it, as it's not a part of wow so much as an inherent operating system setting.
patching vista works too, but as they are diff operating systems, there are different actions to take, and setting the xp registy setting accomplishes nothing. some outdated sources will claim you need a hotfix (and refer you to dubious download-sources for those patches that are not microsoft.com and i highly advise against ever using) that has since been rolled up into a service pack and any updated vista can skip that step and do the latter part of the vista instructions.
still, 95% of people shouldn't be doing this because they have other purposes for their computers. i host a small website on my wow comp so it's absolutely out of the question.
Thander May 20th 2009 9:56PM
Spell/ability/shot priorties is the new thing Blizz is trying to achieve for all classes. Most classes and specs are now priority based for 30-50% of their dps. Pallies are not but they are trying to change that.
Lemons May 20th 2009 10:13PM
Wait...so...are you saying that the different kinds of traffic other than WoW Traffic will be slower or just won't work at all? Because if it takes a little longer to download random crap, but I can enjoy a more responsive WoW experience I think I'll take the hit.
Lemons May 20th 2009 10:14PM
Heh...this was supposed to be a response to Fung's comment...stupid comment system!
Fung May 21st 2009 12:42AM
not at all, i honestly doubt there'd be any situation where it'd prevent traffic entirely. enough people have done it and swear by it that i'd tentatively say it's ok for average home use. to go back to the analogy, you rarely drive the sahara desert. if something else is causing poor traffic, this will won't help though. i can't even categorically say bittorrent is guaranteed to suffer either. another thing i'm not wholly certain about is whether this makes you a "greedy customer" and were everyone to do it, we'd be taxing their servers.
Fung May 21st 2009 12:51AM
i guess i contratict myself by saying "tenatively ok for average home use" and "9% of home users shouldn't" huh?
that's because i really don't know how to call it, but i advise caution. ymmv.
theRaptor May 21st 2009 2:09AM
You can see the details of the registry entry here (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/328890). The basic idea (from a quick glance, I am rusty on my TCP/IP) is that by default Windows doesn't acknowledge every bit of data it gets straight away, this is good for streams because it reduces the number of outgoing packets you need to send. Changing the value to 1 forces Windows to acknowledge data straight away.
So what this appears to do is increase the bandwidth (negligibly for a home user, but probably adds up on Blizzards end) used in the connection but reduces the ping because Windows isn't delaying acknowledging the data.
Physis May 21st 2009 3:20AM
Thanks for all this information and the cautionary advisory. It is good to know what is involved. I ended up trying the technique anyway. So far, it looks like it dropped my latency from 240 ms to 70 ms. This is such an exciting change for me. I haven't seen below 100ms in almost a year.
Sindarwin May 20th 2009 11:12PM
You guys jacked my saying.
*points at title*
abraxxis May 21st 2009 2:17AM
Something really, really bad is happening on your site. I strongly suspect a bad Javascript or GIF animation. It hangs both Safari (3) and Firefox (latest). Chrome doesn't seem disturbed by it.
Depending on the ad content mix, it seems to be 100% reproducible. I've reproduced it on my Mac (Safari and Firefox) and PC (Firefox).
Alex Ziebart May 21st 2009 2:20AM
You're going to need to give us many more details than "something bad." What, exactly, does it do? Can you get us screenshots?
Send us all the information you've got using this link: http://www.wow.com/contact/corrections/
Avrus May 21st 2009 10:54AM
I think it's flash related. It hangs on my work computer with Firefox but not on my home computer.
theRaptor May 21st 2009 2:17AM
Anyone who didn't see this boot nerf coming hasn't been paying attention. Since classic WoW Blizzard have been trying to make Engineering a not required profession for PVP (Oh grenades and mind control helmet, how I miss thee). In WotLK they appear against making ANY profession required for anything other than a bit of fun and making money (which TBH makes them largely useless, as only the hardcore crafters can put in the effort to make money back). So if you felt you NEEDED to craft these boots to compete in arena you were DOIN IT RONG!. The nerfbat has obviously been looming for some time.
Actually, right back when they released arenas didn't they say they were going to prevent all engineering items working in there? I seem to remember some consternation from the 99% of PVPers (myself included) who had leveled engineering.
Nayr May 21st 2009 3:05AM
Question for the Queue -- When will the new site be updated to the old "i.wowinsider.com" format? The new format is really rough on iPhones. Thanks!
Alex Ziebart May 21st 2009 3:08AM
Use this: http://i.wow.com/