Fizzwidget's Feed-O-Matic updated by Gazmik

So, if you were impatient and went through the trouble of my previous post, Gazmik Fizzwidget (this time I'm awake enough to see that I was typing the name wrong. Whoops!) has updated the embedded libPeriodicTable so that FOM now works with Cata foods "out of the box".

Nice.

Fizzwidget's Feed-O-Matic Cataclysm Update

Okay, so perhaps the title is slightly inaccurate, as there is currently no Cataclysm update for this one-click pet-feeding add-on, but there's no reason you can't do it yourself!

For those unfamiliar, Fizzwidget's Feed-O-Matic is an addon for Hunters so they can just click one button and their pet gets fed something from their bags. No muss, no fuss. It'll use "basic" (non-stat) foods and the lower-quality foods on it's own, and it won't start feeding the pet your hard-earned +90 agility eels unless you're out of everything else (and not even then if you uncheck the box for stat foods), so there's basically no downside.

...and no, I'm not talking about scrounging around in Wowhead's DB looking for item numbers and editing lua files. There's a far simpler way to do it.

Fizzwidget's Feed-O-Matic gets it's intelligence about what items are meat, fish, bread, fungus, and fruit from a library called LibPeriodicTable. Don't click on that link, tho'. That's the old, unupdated version of the library which has no clue about Cataclysm foods. Feed-O-Matic actually contains part of what's called a "private copy" of that library which you can see by looking in Interface\Addons\GFW_FeedOMatic\Libs for the three directories, LibPeriodicTable-3.1, LibPeriodicTable-3.1-Consumable, and LibPeriodicTable-3.1-TradeskillResultMats. If you go to the developer's site at WowAce you'll find newer versions of LibPeriodicTable which have been updated for Cataclysm. All you have to do is look on the right-hand side at the bottom of the Facts window and you'll see the alpha and beta releases (tagged with a A: or B:). At the present time the latest alpha version is LibPeriodicTable-r315 and so far appears to work just fine, containing all the new foods and the updated information about the old foods.

Download LibPeriodicTable-r315 (or whatever's newest) somewhere and open it with 7-Zip (if you're still using Windows' native zip file support, it's time to stop) by right clicking on it and selecting 7-Zip->Open Archive. A window will open and inside you'll see the LibPeriodicTable-3.1 directory, which you're going to double-click on so you can see all the various sub-directories it has. You don't need all those, so in this directory you're just going to multi-select the directories matching the private copy Feed-O-Matic uses, which are LibPeriodicTable-3.1, LibPeriodicTable-3.1-Consumable and LibPeriodicTable-3.1-TradeskillResultMats, and then just drag and drop them into Interface\Addons\GFW_FeedOMatic\Libs. Windows will ask you if you're really sure you want to do that, so tell it yes you're sure and you're done!

Now the next time you start up WoW, Feed-O-Matic will know about all the new Cataclysm foods, and you don't have to worry about when Gazmik Fizzwidget gets around to updating his addon (which otherwise, still works perfectly well).

Cataclysm Leatherworking Spreadsheet updated!

There's still a bit of cosmetic work yet left to do, but I've put in all the rest of the new Cataclysm recipes, moved just about every bit of data around, broke the calculations apart into multiple pages, etc etc. The result is considerably easier to edit.

One thing new in this version is automatic averaging of prices for some of the materials (don't worry, leaving a blank empty will not count as costing zero gold) so if you don't like your prices varying so much over time, fill in more than just the first sample (you get a max of three). The arbitrage column (scraps->leather->heavy) also figures into that as a fourth sample.

Basically, this revision is 100% better than the previous revision.

Feel free to clone the Cataclysm Leatherworking Spreadsheet so you can edit the prices to suit your own server, but I still suggest keeping a bookmark to my master version, as I'll be updating/tweaking it further with more features. I'm still working on an easier way for people to simply modify disposable copies of the spreadsheet so they can just plug their materials costs and not have to worry about anything else. Stay tuned on that one...

Cataclysm Hunter... or Pokemon Trainer?

So, as silly as the title may sound, this to me is about the simplest way to describe the hefty change Blizzard made to Hunters in the 4.0 patch leading up to Cataclysm. Before, you had to really plan carefully as to what pet you brought with you out into the wild... and for the most part this led to something boring enough to make it feel like having different pets was going largely unused.

Wolves and lots of them. If you were running around the wilderness in the pursuit of Fine Loots, you were generally traveling with a Tenacity (tanking) pet and it's wonderful Thunderstomp ability, and if you were doing an instance, by and large there was only one choice: a wolf, all because it gave the hunter (originally the entire raid) a 5% damage buff that was easy to measure. It didn't really matter that you could have a set of different ones in the stable, because if you were the only hunter around what you'd use in almost all cases was a wolf. If you weren't the only hunter around, your choices were less limited but more annoying because to help the raid/group you'd want to take a pet with a different ability, and that usually wound up in one place as well...

Armor reduction pets, and generally a worm. ...and then you weren't even bringing a 5% DPS buff with you which made you less impressive because players can't generally do enough math to figure out what DPS increase a reduction in armor causes, so most of them simply assume that "DPS is moar betterer". ...and then Blizzard went and changed the wolf's buff so that it only applies to the hunter and their pet. So... again, more wolves. It was nice that with a five-minute cooldown you could swap out one pet for another, but obnoxious to deal with in practice if you had to pug something out. Most people were carrying one tenacity pet, one ferocity pet, and then the 1-2 other pets that they personally liked having around to look at. Trying to get flexibility beyond that small selection was frustrating--especially if you'd specced into Beast Mastery because while there were a lot of interesting pet abilities out there, picking one up would mean cutting that rare purple and green sparkle-cat that you can't get anymore loose.

NO MORE!

Now you can have a stable of well, more pets than most people will even want to collect, and by the time you hit 83, you can carry five of them in what amounts to a "hotlist" or basically, the Pokemon Trainer backpack. Seriously. Mind you, Pokemon Trainers hoard a whole ton of Pokemon back in SOMEONE's computer (no idea why it was named that), but can only fit six in their backpack to take with them. That's pretty much the same thing going on here now. You pick your hotlist by talking to a Pokemon terminal, er... Stable Master, and then out into the wilderness you go. There's no longer even a cooldown on swapping them from your hotlist in the field--you just dismiss the one you were using, and summon up one of the other ones on the spot.

Hunters have definitely been gleefully taking advantage of both this and the new pet models. In the past week I've noticed that it's downright rare to see someone traveling with a mere wolf or gorilla. I've been seeing all sorts of crazy pets running around after their masters lately, many of which have been new models but for the most part, a whole lot of different pets which seems to represent that hunters are starting to tote the ones they like more often than the ones they think they absolutely need. Me personally? I've just been cycling through them like mad as I run quests, because I picked up eight more last week. I've got a poo-flinging monkey (Gorillas are not monkeys--Do not anger The Librarian.) a silithid with an exposed and glowing brain, a cute little fox (who will be replaced for a different color soon--don't tell him!) that can do a little dance, an eagle who can fly loop-the-loops, a semi-transparent wolf (who is not replacing Taxes), as well as a gen-u-ine Jowlie Mastiff Houn' Dawg named Slobbers.

This change thing, it is good. :)

Cataclysm is here! New leatherworking spreadsheet!

Okay, so *pant-pant* I've been a little bit busy scarfing up loot the last few days, and I think my cheeks are as full as they can stand to be for the moment, so it's time to do some updates!

But first... I'm already level 83. Neener-neener-nee-ner! Almost all my T9/10 gear went away before I hit 82, and I don't miss it a bit.

The best part?

I crafted a few of the replacement pieces, because once again, Blizz has given crafted gear reason to live. :)

So... here's an updated version of the Northrend Leatherworking Spreadsheet, with a few more enhancements this time around. I'll warn you that the new one is still very much a Work In Progress, but I've learned a lot of cool things about Google Spreadsheets since the last time.

The Cataclysm Leatherworking Spreadsheet spans multiple pages this time, and I'm going to be putting in a few hooks so you can actually avoid upcharging for miniscule things like vendor-sold materials. One page will have the recipes, one page will have the schedules, one page will have space for notes, one page will have price modifiers (so you can selectively charge more for blues than greens, etc). At the moment it's only about a third finished and just contains the recipes I've gotten at the moment (up to a skill of 500).

Either way, if you're doing Leatherworking, bookmark it or better yet, bookmark here.

(I'll be posting something about the new Pokemon Trainer aspect of huntering in a few hours. I have some IRL errands to deal with right now)

Midsummer Fire Festival and TomTom

Pastebomb your client with this once you have TomTom loaded:

/way Arathi Highlands 74 41 Midsummer Fire Festival (Horde)
/way Arathi Highlands 50 44 Midsummer Fire Festival (Alliance)
/way Badlands 4 49 Midsummer Fire Festival (Horde)
/way Blasted Lands 58 17 Midsummer Fire Festival (Alliance)
/way Burning Steppes 62 29 Midsummer Fire Festival (Horde)
/way Burning Steppes 80 62 Midsummer Fire Festival (Alliance)
/way Dun Morogh 46 46 Midsummer Fire Festival (Alliance)
/way Ironforge 64 25 Midsummer Fire Festival (Alliance)
/way Duskwood 74 51 Midsummer Fire Festival (Alliance)
/way Elwynn Forest 43 65 Midsummer Fire Festival (Alliance)
/way Stormwind 49 72 Midsummer Fire Festival (Alliance)
/way Eversong Woods 46 50 Midsummer Fire Festival (Horde)
/way Silvermoon City 70 43 Midsummer Fire Festival (Horde)
/way Ghostlands 46 26 Midsummer Fire Festival (Horde)
/way Hillsbrad Foothills 50 46 Midsummer Fire Festival (Alliance)
/way Hillsbrad Foothills 58 25 Midsummer Fire Festival (Horde)
/way Hinterlands 14 50 Midsummer Fire Festival (Alliance)
/way Hinterlands 76 74 Midsummer Fire Festival (Horde)
/way Loch Modan 32 40 Midsummer Fire Festival (Alliance)
/way Redridge Mountains 24 59 Midsummer Fire Festival (Alliance)
/way Silverpine Forest 49 38 Midsummer Fire Festival (Horde)
/way Stranglethorn Vale 33 73 Midsummer Fire Festival (Alliance)
/way Stranglethorn Vale 32 75 Midsummer Fire Festival (Horde)
/way Swamp of Sorrows 47 47 Midsummer Fire Festival (Horde)
/way Tirisfal Glades 57 52 Midsummer Fire Festival (Horde)
/way Undercity 68 9 Midsummer Fire Festival (Horde)
/way Western Plaguelands 43 82 Midsummer Fire Festival (Alliance)
/way Westfall 56 54 Midsummer Fire Festival (Alliance)
/way Wetlands 13 47 Midsummer Fire Festival (Alliance)
/way Ashenvale 38 54 Midsummer Fire Festival (Alliance)
/way Ashenvale 70 69 Midsummer Fire Festival (Horde)
/way Azuremyst Isle 44 53 Midsummer Fire Festival (Alliance)
/way Exodar, The 41 26 Midsummer Fire Festival (Alliance)
/way Barrens 52 28 Midsummer Fire Festival (Horde)
/way Bloodmyst Isle 55 69 Midsummer Fire Festival (Alliance)
/way Darkshore 37 46 Midsummer Fire Festival (Alliance)
/way Desolace 65 17 Midsummer Fire Festival (Alliance)
/way Desolace 26 76 Midsummer Fire Festival (Horde)
/way Durotar 52 47 Midsummer Fire Festival (Horde)
/way Orgrimmar 47 38 Midsummer Fire Festival (Horde)
/way Dustwallow Marsh 62 40 Midsummer Fire Festival (Alliance)
/way Dustwallow Marsh 33 30 Midsummer Fire Festival (Horde)
/way Feralas 28 44 Midsummer Fire Festival (Alliance)
/way Feralas 72 47 Midsummer Fire Festival (Horde)
/way Mulgore 51 60 Midsummer Fire Festival (Horde)
/way Thunder Bluff 21 26 Midsummer Fire Festival (Horde)
/way Silithus 57 34 Midsummer Fire Festival (Alliance)
/way Silithus 46 44 Midsummer Fire Festival (Horde)
/way Stonetalon Mountains 50 60 Midsummer Fire Festival (Horde)
/way Tanaris 52 29 Midsummer Fire Festival (Alliance)
/way Tanaris 49 27 Midsummer Fire Festival (Horde)
/way Teldrassil 55 91 Midsummer Fire Festival (Alliance)
/way Teldrassil 55 60 Midsummer Fire Festival (Alliance)
/way Thousand Needles 41 52 Midsummer Fire Festival (Horde)
/way Winterspring 62 35 Midsummer Fire Festival (Alliance)
/way Winterspring 59 35 Midsummer Fire Festival (Horde)
/way Blade's Edge Mountains 42 66 Midsummer Fire Festival (Alliance)
/way Blade's Edge Mountains 50 59 Midsummer Fire Festival (Horde)
/way Hellfire Peninsula 62 58 Midsummer Fire Festival (Alliance)
/way Hellfire Peninsula 55 40 Midsummer Fire Festival (Horde)
/way Nagrand 50 70 Midsummer Fire Festival (Alliance)
/way Nagrand 51 34 Midsummer Fire Festival (Horde)
/way Netherstorm 31 63 Midsummer Fire Festival (Alliance)
/way Netherstorm 32 68 Midsummer Fire Festival (Horde)
/way Shadowmoon Valley 40 55 Midsummer Fire Festival (Alliance)
/way Shadowmoon Valley 33 30 Midsummer Fire Festival (Horde)
/way Terokkar Forest 55 55 Midsummer Fire Festival (Alliance)
/way Terokkar Forest 52 43 Midsummer Fire Festival (Horde)
/way Zangarmarsh 69 52 Midsummer Fire Festival (Alliance)
/way Zangarmarsh 36 52 Midsummer Fire Festival (Horde)
/way Borean Tundra 55 20 Midsummer Fire Festival (Alliance)
/way Borean Tundra 51 12 Midsummer Fire Festival (Horde)
/way Crystalsong Forest 78 75 Midsummer Fire Festival (Alliance)
/way Crystalsong Forest 80 53 Midsummer Fire Festival (Horde)
/way Dragonblight 75 44 Midsummer Fire Festival (Alliance)
/way Dragonblight 39 48 Midsummer Fire Festival (Horde)
/way Howling Fjord 58 16 Midsummer Fire Festival (Alliance)
/way Howling Fjord 48 13 Midsummer Fire Festival (Horde)
/way Grizzly Hills 34 61 Midsummer Fire Festival (Alliance)
/way Grizzly Hills 19 61 Midsummer Fire Festival (Horde)
/way Sholazar Basin 47 66 Midsummer Fire Festival (Alliance)
/way Sholazar Basin 47 62 Midsummer Fire Festival (Horde)
/way Storm Peaks 42 87 Midsummer Fire Festival (Alliance)
/way Storm Peaks 40 86 Midsummer Fire Festival (Horde)
/way Zul'Drak 41 61 Midsummer Fire Festival (Alliance)
/way Zul'Drak 43 71 Midsummer Fire Festival (Horde)

Your world map will now be litterered with small green pips. Right-clicking on these will allow you select which one will be displayed by by the nice arrow on your main screen.

Good hunting!

Magery... who knew?

So last night after being fussed at for the umpteenth time about out-DPSing the mage, I pulled up her gear, fed it into Rawr, and began researching what might be necessary to make that gear better. Ignoring everything else in the interface (including the page full of various buffs that can be turned off and on for the simulator) I went straight to eyeballing each piece of her gear in detail.

Problem #1, a lot of missing enchants. You can see this pretty easily in Rawr because each item that is enchantable is in a frame with space under it saying "No Enchant". Clicking on this brings up a list of possible enchants, sorted by what you've selected ("Overall" by default). The little bar under the enchant name illustrates their relation to each other in power contribution.

The only issue with using this is that it'll show you enchants that you might not be able to apply unless you're an enchanter or a leatherworker or whoever else has those self-applicable armor boosters. You must pay a bit of attention to the viability of your selection or dig more deeply into configuring Rawr not to show you these things (but mostly more information is better than having something filtered out, see below).

Problem #2, several items were very, very far from the "best in slot" items at the top of the list on the right. Generally this is a sign that you can go pillage the auction house and add more DPS for mere gold. What else are you planning on doing with this money? At 80, everything else is cheap so you don't really need a dragon's hoard of gold (mekgineer's choppers notwithstanding). Seriously, if you can't see both the gear you're wearing and the top of the list at the same time in the pane on the right, carefully scrutinize each and every item in between using the right-click "Open in Wowhead" option to see if it's a world-drop you can score from the Auction House, a quest reward you probably misjudged (or haven't gotten to yet... W00-h00!) or something a player crafter can make. Do not ignore the player-crafted epics, they are your friend and just about everyone has at least one best-in-slot item that's player-craftable.

Some of the items in the released database don't properly list where they come from. If you see Rawr not mentioning the origin of an item when you mouse over it, or that origin looks wrong, right click on it and select Update from Armory/WoWHead to have Rawr try to get better information. One or the other usually works, although you may have to manually edit the item anyway to re-set it's socket bonus.

Problem #3, I'm an idiot. On the upper part of the right-hand pane you can turn on and off filters that will make Rawr not show (or consider) items that you can't (or won't) obtain. Since I'm not a jewelcrafter, I had BoP Jewelcrafting items disabled and Leatherworking stuff still on (which I'd rightly ignored). This is what I meant above by more information is better than less. Once that was fixed a new trinket and a couple of prismatic gems appear in the list. Suddenly the Twilight Serpent with it's two gem slots steps up and looks absolutely delicious.

Problem #4, I'm still an idiot. The 2.2.0 beta of Rawr has a slightly different approach to gemming than the patched (for Hunters) version of 2.1.9 I'm using, and for my version (equivalent to the stable 2.1.9 release in every way for all other classes) gemmings are handled by simply creating duplicates of the socketable item in Rawr's database of gear, and gemming each one manually. Getting around this is much easier than you might think. While you're ogling..er..browsing the list of gear on the right, look around and below the piece of gear you're wearing for items which have sockets. Right-click them, select Edit, and you see the list of all the permutations of that item (if any). There's a nice Duplicate button at the bottom that will let you clone an item as it's ungemmed form, and then you can simply click on the gem sockets to bring up a list of gems, sorted by their power contribution, to socket it. Everything in my database had been regemmed for Hunters, and attack power isn't what Mages really need. Doh!

Creating the socketed duplicates doesn't require you to make dozens of duplicates--nine permutations on gemming would probably be as many as you'd need because by now you should know what you're trying to gem for and won't be caring about the dinky green gems for the level 60 people. Once I'd regemmed a few things, suddenly Hat of Wintry Doom pops up as best-in-slot. W00t! MOAR DPS! The Twilight Serpent Figurine looked tons better, too.

WARNING! Rawr still has a bunch of gems from the upcoming 3.1 patch in the database it comes with. You will probably just want to delete them from the list for now because they do not exist in the game yet. I will leave how to do this as an exercise to the reader but most people will probably spot it easily.


Now... There is an optimizer in Rawr that can, in theory, produce a list of gear that you should wear based on what you've told it you have so if you have a collection of gear you weren't certain about, it might be able to hook you up with a list. To do this, in the right hand pane you will see a little diamond outline next to each item. Click this to mark that item as something you have or can easily get. Using the left-hand dropdown on the right-hand gear list pane you can select which slot you want to see shown, and do this for every slot, including gems and meta-gems. Once you've marked a pile of these the optimizer will hopefully show you a rating for your current gear and a higher rating for a gear combination you might not have thought of. I say hopefully because although the Rawr.Mage module is supposed to be working, it didn't immediately show me a useful list--only a less powerful set than what I'd fiddled in myself because I'd not marked everything properly yet (another "I'm an idiot" moment). On the theory that what I'd picked based on DPS-contribution was likely better anyway, I spent a few more gold (~700 in total) and snatched the last few pieces from the Auction House and made her take them to the test dummy.

I was a little horrified at the hit rating being so high, because I didn't know mages had a different miss percentage for their spells. A quick check of the Elitist Jerks forum and WoWWiki showed me otherwise. Hunters have it comparatively easy and can reach the hit cap at 262 without straining because their miss chance is only 8%. It's almost twice that for ranged casters... who knew?

Testing the old gear (including a few extra enchants) against the test dummy (three set of full-to-empty blasting) Recount reported ~1500DPS. The test was repeated with the new gear amid cries of "Oh my crit is so looooow!" with a hit rating a mere two points under the cap (she might miss against a boss mob once a week or two) and blasted out ~1800dps.

Don't anyone get excited about that not being 4,000 DPS against the test dummy. Using your own buffs only and no special buff foods/drinks makes your numbers against the test dummy more consistent and more accurate with respect to what your gear is contributing. Unless you're a warrior drinking spell penetration elixirs, it should be a given that any buffs you get in a raid or from elixirs/flasks are always going to be straight up MOAR DPS so they don't really have to be scrutinized as much. ...but feel free to use all those cooldowns, elementals, mirror images, and heck, even the peasants from Scholomance if you think they'll work against a raid boss. There was an initial problem with the testing of only using Frostbolt--which isn't the way you fight a boss--so the numbers really sucked.

700g ~= 300 MOAR DPS. This isn't that bad. I spent about 4,000g tuning up my toon, but that started practically the moment I'd hit 80 and before I'd gotten any serious loot from any bosses anywhere.

Gold. Spend it. Seven hundred gold isn't all that much money to spend at level 80 if you've got two gathering skills or one crafting skill you've been actively working on for money.