The Anatomy of a Targeting Macro

If you remember back to my blog entry entitled Raiding 101: The Duty of a DPS, I mentioned briefly the concept of a targeting macro and how it can be useful in a raid environment. It can be helpful to know the quirks of the /target command as it doesn't necessarily behave the way you might expect it to. This post will detail some of the finer points of the /target command.

Not Necessarily the Target in Front of you...

The targeting command of the past could be somewhat confusing to understand. While it targeted the first mob with a given name, it wasn't always the closest one to you.

Thankfully we don't have to deal with that complication anymore and the targeting command has been brought in line with a much more intuitive system that targets the closest mob to you, regardless of it's position around you. This means that you may end up targeting a creature directly behind you depending on positioning and spawn locations, but a quick pan of the camera by holding the left mouse button can help to quickly find stray targets.

Multiple Target Priority

A typical targeting macro for a raider will tend to have multiple targeting lines in it that each target a creature with a different name. For the most part these will generally be mobs that are active in different encounters so target overlap is not an issue. There are situations, however, where a targeting macro can assist in general target priority for all of the various adds that spawn during the same fight.

NOTE: The latter scenario is not typically recommended. Target swapping manually is a very valuable skill for any DPS or tank raider to have. Targeting macros are very strict in the order they target mobs and it's not always the case that a stringent kill order is the best. Assessment of the current situation and sound combat decisions based on a solid understanding of the fight will trump a targeting macro every time.

In order to keep your target priority straight when your macro has multiple targeting lines that will be used during the same encounter you need to make sure to structure your macro so the the mob with priority will be targeted by the time the macro has run it's course. There are two ways to do this and neither is particularly better.

Using a ranged DPS target priority for Valithria Dreamwalker: Blazing Skeleton, Suppressor, Blistering Zombie, Glutinous Abomination

Method 1:

/target Blazing Skeleton
/target Suppressor [noexists] [dead]
/target Blistering Zombie [noexists] [dead]
/target Glutinous Abomination [noexists] [dead]

Method 2:

/target Glutinous Abomination
/target Blistering Zombie
/target Suppressor
/target Blazing Skeleton

In method 1 you can see that the target priority is done in the order of the kill priority. Each line after the first will check to see if the current target (presumably what the previous line targeted) exists or is dead. If it does exist (meaning you have a target) and that target is not dead then the next targeting line will not execute, leaving you with your original target.

Method 1 is a good method to use if you find that method 2 causes your computer to hang, if you have very few targets to include int he macro or you have a mod that allows you to make macros with more than 255 characters. The fact that each line after the first must include two conditionals to operate effectively make this a bad method to use if you have an extensive list of targets or other commands you would like to include in the macro as the conditionals on each line tend to push on the default 255 macro characters limit rather quickly.

As you've probably already realized method 2 uses a reverse targeting order in it's design. This method of placing the highest priority last effectively means that if any two targets are up at the same time you'll target both of them, but by the end of the macro you'll have your highest priority target in the cross hairs. For most PCs this should be completely transparent - you won't even see the intermediary targets, just your last one. However, if you find this causes you to hang for a moment because of a slow PC or laggy unit frames method 1 may be worth a look.

Automatic or Manual?

There are two options for integrating a targeting macro into the boss fight, and for the most part they both depend on play style.

For those like myself the automatic option is the best. This method works well if you tend to target a vast majority of things manually as you will be able to get by with a minimum number of target lines in your macro. The idea is to integrate all the ultra high priority targets from various encounters your guild runs into a single macro that will replace the main button in your DPS rotation.

This is what a macro of this sort might look like:

#showtooltip Lightning Bolt
/target Bone Spike
/target Blazing Skeleton
/targetlasttarget [dead]
/cast Lightning Bolt

As you can see there is a very limited number of targeting lines in this macro as placement here is strictly for high priority targets. Additionally, no targets both occur in the same encounter so the order of the targeting lines is irrelevant.

There is one additional line where the target last target command is invoked with the dead condition. This is included because of the nature of this type of targeting macro. When embedding a macro into your DPS rotation like this you'll want to use a frequently cast spell which will result in spamming the targeting functions. Often a mobs corpse will take a few moments to despawn but a targeting command will still target the corpse. After the targeting line switches to the corpse this line checks to see if the target is dead, in which case it targets your last target so you don't have to waste DPS uptime targeting a corpse.

This type of macro is beneficial because it allows you to move smoothly between encounters instead of remembering to prepare a macro for each fight. It would require (if not used in conjunction with other targeting macros) manual targeting for a good portion of adds throughout raid instances as this certainly is not a comprehensive list, but as raids are more and more dynamic with each instance released this is a very important skill to foster going forward.

For those who prefer an extra action bar with a bank of targeting macros specific to each fight there is a manual option. This would require you to either make several macros or use a mod that supports macros without character limits and make one long super macro. Either targeting method works so this is largely up to preference and your macro character limitations.

For a manual macro system there would be no integration with existing spells, you would simply make a separate macro (or macros) that you'll have to manually click or give it's own keybinding to. This is best for making a comprehensive list of all targets in a particular encounter, much like in the targeting method 1 and 2 examples above.

Raiding 101: Interface Setup

Disclaimer: This is not an article on making your interface look good, moreover it is a guide on how to optimize an interface for raiding. If you're interested in beautifying your interface the WoW Interface and Macros forum is a great place to go! There usually is a "Post your UI" thread where making an interface that is consistent and aesthetically pleasing is usually the focus.

I've put off this topic for quite some time due to the immense nature of the topic. After all, different roles within a raid require different types of interface setup and some of these roles are even split up between the same class or even spec. For instance, an elemental shaman who traditionally kites adds when needed may need a slightly different toolset than one that only needs to hammer away at the boss endlessly.

That being said, there can be a great deal of simplicity when it comes to setting up your interface and though it may seem daunting it really boils down to one simple question:

What information do you need to see in the heat of battle?

This can be a tricky prospect, however, as a great deal of information can be perceived as necessary when it actually isn't. In this respect it can be helpful to take a good long look at your interface elements (Preferably not during an encounter that requires your undivided attention!) and ask yourself.. do I really need to see that?

Here are some common elements that can be eliminated from most interfaces when there is a lot of clutter:

• Superfluous Action Buttons - Most of the time during a fight you won't need to bring out a Traveler's Tundra Mammoth or cast Water Breathing on someone. These extra non-combat utility and vanity spells can be placed on an action bar that hides itself when in combat or not moused over. OPie or Geist can also be used to give you a bank of action buttons that remains hidden until a keybinding is pressed.
• Full Buff Lists - In the current iteration of the game there are an obscene amount of buffs flying around. So many, in fact, that Blizzard is changing many of the talented raid wide buffs to be auras to cut down on lag as a result of buffs constantly being reapplied. One handy little feature that was added recently was the ability to consolidate long term buffs into a single button. You can find this by opening the game menu, clicking the 'Interface' button and opening to the 'Buffs and Debuffs' category. If you're worried about missing a particular buff when the readycheck goes out because they're consolidated try a mod like BuffEnough, which will give you a clear indication on whether or not you are fully buffed based on your raid composition.
• Scrolling Combat Text - OK, this isn't completely something to get rid of. However, it's not always strictly necessary to see all your uber crits rolling in as they happen. It wastes real estate and distracts from the goal at hand, which is to kill the boss. Try and keep scrolling combat text to important events like procs that you need to respond to, cleanses and buff and debuff application and removal. The goal here is to see the information you need to make an informed decision and nothing else.
• Extra LDB/Fubar/Minimap Buttons - With minimap buttons coming in as the lesser of the three evils this is another thing that commonly chokes portions of an interface. Try and keep these down to the minimum information required. Hide as many individual AddOn menu buttons as you can stand and use slash commands or the Blizzard AddOn menu to configure them (Game Menu -> Interface -> AddOns tab).
• Damage Meters - These are an intensely useful way to scrutinize your performance on demand, but embellishing the damage meter window by making it overly large or placing it in a place where it's distracting can detract from performance. Remember that the focus needs to be on the boss, the numbers should only gain focus in between attempts. Consider hiding the meters while your in combat to keep the largest part of your screen clear and prevent the meters from becoming a distraction.
• Redundant Information - If you have debuffs displayed just below your own unit frame then they probably don't need to be shown in the top right corner. If you have a damage meter that comes packaged with a threat meter try configuring it to switch to threat mode during combat instead of loading a separate threat meter. The basic goal here should be that a piece of information you need to have on the screen should only be displayed once on the screen.

Field of View

If you recall my first ever Raiding 101 post, the first and most important rule of raiding is to... not stand in the fire! An unwritten prerequisite for this is that you need to see the fire in order to not stand in it.

To help with this make sure the center of the screen, where your character is, is free from nearly all clutter. Avoid placing raid frames, cooldown bars or anything else that will probably be up for more than a second or two over this section of the screen. If your interface is cluttered up in the middle you might not know it until you're dead!

Viewports can also assist with your field of view, especially if you aren't running without a wide screen monitor. What this does is push the sides of the screen out so you have a better peripheral view of the game. This can help you see threats approaching from the sides before it's too late, an add charging your way for instance. Make sure your viewport mod shrinks the actual rendered area of the game instead of just placing a background over a portion of your screen.

Shrinking the rendered area of the game in this way can also benefit the rest of your UI placement. Not only will this give you areas where interface elements can be placed completely out of the rendered game world, but if the viewport is only adjusted on the top or bottom it will push your character (and thus the spot where bosses drop fire for you to not stand in) up or down, giving you extra space to place UI elements without overlapping onto your character.

An example of how the viewport can increase the field of view taken from the oUF_Viv page, an oUF layout that includes a viewport:

Some view ports that do this are: Viewporter, Viewport

Prioritize!

Understanding what your role and responsibilities are can go a long way towards knowing how to properly set up your interface for maximum efficiency. Though the three roles in WoW have some very different information requirements there are some things that are shared over all three roles to some extent.

• Interrupting - though there are some exceptions among the classes there are a good portion of specs that include at least one way of interrupting a spell - even if it has to be done via a stun or knockback. Make sure the enemy target cast bar (and focus cast bar if you're assigned to interrupt on a different target than you're assigned to target for another role) is highly visible and obvious. In this case the center of the screen is not a bad idea provided it's kept minimal to prevent obscuring environmental damage excessively.
• Cleansing - Oftentimes those not fulfilling the healer role can forget they have a cleanse button, but this is an area where the healers would probably appreciate a reprieve. Remember a raid environment is all about supporting the group, and any burden that can easily be take off another should be. Use a mod like Decursive for an easy click option for cleansing or configure your raid frames to change health bar or border color for debuffs that can be removed so decurse target can clearly be identified.
• Crowd Control - Moreover today than in raids of yesteryear it's not just DPS that has the ability to crowd control. The role of CC today is very different than the trash controlling techniques of the past. Generally speaking CC is a dynamic aspect of boss fights like Lady Deathwhisper. Decursive also has support for this type of response.
• Movement - More and more raid encounters are highly movement oriented. You need to be able to perform your duties on the move a great deal of the time and this can be especially difficult for healers and caster DPS. Using keybindings for spells as much as possible can be helpful, but prioritizing instant cast spells on single keys can increase the efficiency of keybindings, the basic idea being: do you really want to try and hit ctrl+5 at the same time you're fanning out to avoid the next Defile from the Lich King?
• Cooldown Management - Whether you're a tank, healer or DPS you have some type of cooldown you can use to help survive or eek out that much more DPS or healing. Having an appropriate mod like CooldownWatch or CoolLine placed in a central location can help manage these. The former is shown via a configurable list of bars and the latter places all cooldowns on a timeline. Personally I prefer bars over the line as I feel it's more accurate for my time sensitive DPS rotation but if it's not vitally important that a cooldown be used as soon as it's finished the cooldowns in line format are perfectly adequate.
  

DPSing

DPSing may seem like a no-brainer in terms of interface management but the job of a DPS is deceptively involving. Generally speaking it's a good idea to push out the hammer mentality as soon as possible when a DPS character is your main. Of all the roles in WoW this can be the easiest to pass the buck off to someone else, but a good DPSer will do more than just top the meters. Often a great deal of support and utility can be squeezed out of a DPSer.

Here you can see the basic (though slightly outdated) DPS layout for my interface. In a column directly below my character I have everything I need to fulfill my basic role: target, target debuffs, cast bar (the enemy castbar is a couple inches above the target frame so it's blatantly obvious when an enemy is casting a spell), cooldown timers, my debuffs and my health and mana - both of which glow when I'm getting low to draw my attention.

This won't necessarily be the best arrangement for every single DPS, but in general you'll want to ask yourself what tools you need for your main role and then place them in a place where your eyes won't have to wander far.

It's not necessary in most cases to place everything front and center. This can lead to excess clutter that confuses the information you need. Anything that uses audio warnings can be placed in non-central locations. As you can see from the screenshot my threat meter is placed just above my mana bar as I largely don't have issues with threat. However, when I am creeping up on the tank a unique audio alert quickly draws my attention to the threat meter.

Boss mods generally work the same way, though it can be a good idea to place the large or imminent progress bars closer to the center of the screen so your eyes don't have to wander to a wayward corner of the screen to find out what tricks the boss has in store for you next and take your attention too far away from other important information.

Tanking

Tanking largely worries about many of the same things melee DPS worries about, but threat can be more of a priority for a tank, so it may be prudent to have a more detailed threat meter in a more central location. Skada and Omen are both very good detailed threat meter AddOns.

And yes, I'm going to harp on Nameplates... again!

Bosses aside, they're just a real handy way to see if an add that you don't have targeted is still aggroed to you. Unfortunately since the patch that allowed nameplates to overlap a bit of configuration is needed to optimize them:

Open Interface options in the game menu and under the 'Names' category uncheck the option to 'Allow overlapping nameplates'. With this option enabled nameplates would overlap with each other making it near impossible to single out each enemy. Without nameplates overlapping you should be able to easily identify and target anything you may be losing aggro on by the highlight fading to yellow or disappearing.

Of course, nameplates aren't exclusive to tanks. As they're an easy indication of aggro on mobs that aren't currently being targeted it can be a good indication for DPS that some stray enemy is about to become an unfortunate friend!

Healer... ing

The most obvious element to healers is the raid frame. A little bit of personal preference can dictate here, but your raid frames should be very close to the center of the screen. As a DPS/healer hybrid I put much more emphasis on my target frame which is placed just below my character, leaving the raid frames just to the right of my character. This leaves the space over my character clear while still providing me with the necessary elements in close proximity to the center of the screen.

For pure healers a more appropriate space may be right underneath the character as that area tends to garner a greater amount of attention. Once again, personal preference will dictate to some extent but you'll want this vital piece of information to be close at hand. Placing raid frames in a corner of the screen may not detract from healing and seem like an acceptable location as they tend to take up a large amount of real-estate especially in 25 man raids, but placing them too far away from your character can contribute to tunnel vision and deaths as a result of standing in fire!

Eliminating Common Redundancy

While Decursive is a great mod for folks who need to perform certain utility on the raid like cleansing and crowd control of mind controlled players, if you need to run with a raid frame for healing Decursive become completely redundant. In this situation using Clique can provide identical functionality to any raid frames you may already be using, cutting the real estate taken up by raid frames in half.

Damage meters like Recount can be resource hogs as they track and log just about every combat log event. If you think it may be slowing you down switch to a modular meter like Skada and only load the modules you want to track information for.

Optimization

Unfortunately not every mod put out is suitable for raiding. The main reason for this is performance. Some mods that are very popular are also very CPU intensive and can impact your frame rate on a computer that's not top of the line. Just to name a few CPU hogs:

• Pitbull
• SatrinaBuffFrames
• ButtonFacade
• Recount

Not that these are bad mods by any means. In fact all of these are incredibly robust and feature-full mods. This is partially their downfall, though as far as ButtonFacade is concerned any mods that are purely aesthetic are not the focus of this particular blog.

An important distinction to make, however, is that a mod that uses up a ton of memory is not necessarily impacting framerate. What impacts framerate is generally mods that eat up extra CPU cycles. a good way to determine what mod is eating up CPU cycles is to use... another mod!

AddOnProfiler is a mod that you can set to profile your AddOns and report back on how much memory and CPU cycles each one is using. A good indication of a bad mod is one whose CPU cycles grow and then shrink again repeatedly and substantially. What happens here is that the AddOn is creating a lot of "garbage" that is used briefly and then thrown away. WoW will automatically run the garbage collector when RAM usage gets too high, but if you see the described behavior above from a mod it means that mod is creating an excessive amount of garbage and the collector is being run more and more often. When the garbage collector is run excessively this can create a drag on performance.

Once you've identified a problem mod with AddOnProfiler take a peek at some alternative mods that perform the same task and try a few out until you find one that you prefer and that doesn't cause the garbage collector to start slowing you down!

The Best Interface... is Your Interface!

While all these things are important considerations for how you set up your interface for raiding there are many nuances to how the interface works together that are exclusive to the person using the interface, and the best interface is one that's been used extensively and tweaked to support the playstyle of the user.

It's important to realize that if you've made an adjustment mentioned here and it's just not working for you go ahead and switch back or try something different. If you move your debuffs down to midscreen and suddenly find you just can't adapt to the new location move them back... but consider migrating other related pieces of information into the same area to reduce the amount of time you have to spend searching your screen for various bits of information.

It's highly important to recognize elements of your interface that are holding you back and adjust to compensate for them. Much like adapting strategy to deal with a bosses mechanics, adjusting your interface to display the right information at the right time is crucial to success. If you died from a debuff because you didn't see that you had it you may need to look for a more robust warning system or move the debuffs to a more noticeable location. If you're constantly fumbling your DPS rotation because you didn't notice your debuffs drop off the target make them bigger, or set up a warning in PowerAuras to make the status of the debuff more clear.

In general a successful interface will display everything you need to know and nothing you don't. It may take a bit of experimentation over time but adjusting the flow of information properly can mean the difference between success and defeat!

Note: though other roles were included this article primarily focused on elements of a DPS UI as that is my primary role and the primary focus of the blog. If you have any additional comments or suggestions for the other roles please do leave them in the comments!

Clique: Not Just For Healers Anymore!

I occasionally like to showcase a mod on my blog that I feel is incredibly versatile and solves a serious problem for all the raiders out there like myself.

My last entry on this subject, PowerAuras: the Best AddOn You've Never Used!, showed off just a small portion of the robust warning system the mod PowerAuras brought to the table. Today, I'll be covering the finer points of the mod titled Clique.

Since I've been spending a bunch of time in the higher end 10 man encounters healing on my shaman I became intimately familiar with this life-saver of an AddOn. I hadn't actually healed full time in a raid since about halfway through the Burning Crusade expansion and Clique severely shortened the re-learning curve for me and, I feel, made me a better healer than I had been in the past relying on keypresses and raid member targeting.

But I LOVE My Keybindings!

I don't blame you. In fact, I wholeheartedly support you in mapping as much as possible to keybindings. Using a keybinding setup for spell casting is far superior to clicking. It increases reaction time, decreases the amount of miscast spells and allows you to focus more on what's happening around you and less on where the mouse pointer is.

However, when you're talking about raid frames and any interaction a player might have with those raid frames be it healing, buffing, decursing or ressurecting... you'll find yourself relying on raid frame mouse clicks one way or another.

This is where clique can help you out the most by not only freeing up keybindings for other spells that would otherwise be devoted to heals or buffs, but by eliminating the targeting step of raid window interaction. It does this by binding spells to mouse clicks instead of keyboard bindings. These mouse click bindings work with any unit frame unless otherwise specified and are independent of any keyboard bindings you may already have for the same spell.

The All-In-One Raid Window Assistant

You probably have, at the very least, a raid window mod if you ever have to mess with the raid windows.

Often pure DPS will have the window hidden or not run with a raid window mod to save on memory and CPU cycles, but most folks will need their raid windows out at one point or another for some reason and regardless of which baseline mod you go with Clique can probably help you perform certain tasks better.

The exception to this are mods like Vuhdo or HealBot, raid window mods that have built in Clique-like functionality that renders Clique itself redundant. The concept and configuration for this functionality between mods, however, is nearly identical.

Some folks also go with mods like Decursive that provide a secondary raid window specifically for purposes of cleansing and other non-healing raid utility like crowd control and buff management.

Keep in mind, though, that clique can bind any spell that is targetable to mouse clicks so all of these other things that redundant raid frame mods take care of can also be taken care of in Clique, streamlining your interface and saving screen real estate.

All of these things (and probably more) can be handled through Clique bindings:

• Healing
• Crowd control
• Cleansing
• Buffing
• Intercept
• Tricks/Misdirect
• Resurrection
• Divine Intervention
• Macros
  

There is also a custom macro system where you can assign a macro version of a spell without using up one of the limited macro slots provided by the default interface.


Configuration

Clique has a very simple configuration, albeit a very important one. It is extremlely simple to set up, but getting your click-binding priority straight shouldn't be neglected.

Once the mod is installed simply open your spell book in game. You'll see an extra tab which, when clicked, will open up the Clique configuration menu.

Take a moment to notice the dropdown on the top right side of the Clique configuration window. This dropdown controls the conditions of the keybindings. Anything placed in the "default" page will take precedence only when another condition isn't active and/or isn't bound to anything.

To bind a spell to a mouse clock simply browse your spellbook with the Clique config window open and click the spell you want to bind with the mouse click combo you want to use for that spell. For instance, to bind Healing wave to Shift+LeftClick hold shift and left click Healing wave and it will be added to the Clique window.

For example, in the default section of my Clique bindings I have Ancestral Spirit bound to right click. In the "helpful" section of my bindings I have right click bound to Lesser Healing Wave. This means that while I'm clicking a friendly unit frame, right clicking will cast Lesser Healing Wave on the unit. While out of combat, however, the Ancestral Spirit binding will take precedence and will be cast instead of Lesser Healing Wave on right clicks when not in combat.

The Right Frame at the Right Time

It's a good idea to give a little thought to which frames you want to have the Clique bindings work for.

For instance, when I first set up my clique I had completely neglected this part and while clicks were enabled in the player frame I found I was unable to change the difficulty of an instance as right clicks on my player frame were attempting to cast Ancestral Spirit.

That being said, even showing the right click menu can be remapped to another click-binding through Clique.

Raiding 101: Dragons!

They've been a one of the most revered and feared mythological creatures throughout time with their portraits etched in stone from every corner of the world. Sometimes benevolent, sometimes cruel tyrants, and more often than not found perched atop a mound of treasure any adventurer would covet... they are Dragons!

And in this blogger's opinion they should come hand-in-hand with boobies more often!

WoW is no stranger to these beautiful and powerful creatures, and throughout the game you'll find these dragons exhibit similar attack patterns to those found in classic pen and paper games like Dungeons and Dragons.

There are several static dragon attacks that can almost always be counted on. This is not a comprehensive list of all dragon abilities throughout all of WoW raiding, but will provide a baseline understanding of the types of attacks that all dragons share. As with any encounter, it's ultimately necessary to have a good grasp of the mechanics that are specific to the fight you're currently working on, but knowing what kind of generic mechanics this awesome creature type exhibits can make learning a new encounter that much easier.

Cleave

Most dragons will use a frontal cleave that will hit anyone in front of them in a fairly large arc. This is generally a quite powerful hit that only the tank should be taking.

Breath Weapon

All dragons have a frontal cone breath weapon. Many have different mechanics associated with them, but this is another attack that really should only be hitting the tank. Just like all cone mechanics the area of effect gets wider the farther away from the boss you are. If you find yourself in front of a dragon book it to the left or right as soon as possible to get out of the area of effect, noting that you'll have to run farther to find a safe spot the further away from the boss you are.

Tail Swipe

Most dragons, with Malygos being the exception, have a tail swipe attack. This attack is, in effect, a rear cleave with a knock back.

Take special care not to be standing behind the dragon and eat one of these attacks as often there are environmental mechanics to avoid and getting knocked back by a tail swipe can put you face to face with a clutch of dragon eggs or drop you in a bath of hot lava!

Fear

Fear is a classic dragon mechanic back from the Dungeons and Dragons days, and not all dragons in WoW have a fear mechanic. It is, however, something to be aware of. Dropping a tremor totem or using trinkets and class abilities to break fear can help long term survivability.

Generally when a dragon fears it fears the entire raid, so take advantage of fear breaking mechanics whenever possible on these fights.

Safe Spot

Now that nearly the entire encounter area around a dragon boss has been cordoned off by various attacks it's a good to mention where the best place to stand is.

As you can see in this picture of the Sindragosa fight in Icecrown Citadel, the cleave, breath weapon and tail swipe are marked in orange around the boss. These attacks create a safe spot on each flank of the boss. The best and easiest way to identify these areas mid fight is to simply stand between the dragon's fore and hind legs.

You may also notice there are no orange areas directly overlapping the dragon. This creates a safe zone directly beneath the dragon that can be used to pass through to the other flank if environmental or grouping issues call for it. Don't be afraid to take advantage of this, just be aware of any other issues that may cause the boss to move like phase transitions or tank swapping and/or repositioning.

When in doubt, stay between the two legs on the dragon's flank.

The Legend of the Flying Dutchman

It's been a long time since my guild had taken a serious crack at One Light in the Darkness, the last Ulduar achievement many of us needed for Glory of the Ulduar Raider and the Rusted Proto-Drake that goes along with it. Last night one of the officers, Mhoe, approached me wondering if I would be up for a few attempts. Being that it was an off night and I had no plans I happily accepted.

Upon joining the raid and plowing headlong into all the trash bosses standing between us and Yogg-Saron Mhoe mentioned that "There was a Flying Dutchman sighting, good things are going to happen."

I had no idea what he was talking about, and as I joined the ventrillo channel late I assumed I had just missed a part of the conversation and went about the night of clearing. As circumstance would have it, I was not the only one who was as yet unaware of The Flying Dutchman; And once it was mentioned a second time the inevitable questions arose from the raid and Mhoe imparted the tale of the shadow guild member, the Flying Dutchman... Hephaestus.

Hephaestus has supposedly been in Prime for longer than any other and yet, not even the founders know who he is. His logins are rare and silent, coming online for only a short time once in a great while and then disappearing back from whence he came once again. However, these logins are greeted as a boon! Much like carrying around a four leaf clover or rabbit's foot, the guild believed that a Hephaestus showing was a good omen.

Said Mhoe, "When there's a Hephaestus sighting, good things happen."

Superstition aside, this was something of beauty. My guild had it's very own legend!

The night went on fairly normally clearing a handful of lesser hard modes that made the kills faster and having a few frustrating wipes on 1 Light Yogg due to some bad RNG... although we did have several attempts that made it look as though the achievement was definitely within our grasp; And rightly so, as we were terribly over geared for the goal at hand. But the fact that a group was put together and made it to Yogg was, in and of itself a slight miracle so I wasn't about to karmically expect anything more...

Low and behold, on the last pull of the night, pushing 20 minutes past the normal raid end time, we break into phase 3 with only one trip to the brain room. With nine and a half minutes left on the enrage timer and all raid members up we easily slew the old God of Death, netting a good majority of the raid group their achievement... and a rusted Proto-Drake.

"In Hephaestus we trust!" exclaimed Mhoe. I think next time I see him online I'll hit Zul'Gurub once more... I've always wanted a raptor mount on my Alliance shaman!

Blue Buttons: Making Your Interface look "Cool"

I recently posted a new "mod" that some folks on wowinterface.com are thoroughly enjoying. I hesitate to call it a mod, however, because there's no code, no AddOn to enable or disable, and the amount it interacts with the rest of the interface is minimal.

What is it? Blue Buttons.

Less of a mod and more of a skin, Blue Buttons simply provides a host of textures that skin the blizzard interface buttons to be a different color. I've long detested the "angsty red", as OarisJM posted, and liked the idea of changing the skin to be something different. I'd sifted through a handful of UI compilations at one point in search of a skin for the entire interface, but what I found were either incomplete panel skins or button skins that looked out of place against the rest of the UI textures.

So I set out with a simple goal: skin the in game interface buttons to be blue, like those found on the login screen. The solution is rather simple, and can be accomplished easily with just a few free tools. My version of the blue buttons is posted at the link above, ready for download, but what if you want the buttons to be green? or orange for cataclysm?

The following tutorial will show you how.

First, you'll need to download a few Programs:

• Custom UI ToolKit: This is Blizzard's own custom UI toolkit, although it's not so much a toolkit as a set of resource files. Once you download it, run the installer and tell it to install the interface art. You can have it install the interface data as well if you like, but those files are not necessary for this tutorial.
• BLP2PNG: Blizzard uses the file extension blp for it's textures, but this isn't an easily edited format, so to convert the files into something we'll be able to edit we need this command line software. It come in a zip file and doesn't need to be installed. Simply extract the folder to some place you can get to easily like your desktop. NOTE: If you are working on a system whose desktop does not reside on the hard drive(for instance if you are on a computer that is part of a domain and uses roaming profiles) you'll want to place this in a location on the hard drive like the root of your C: or system drive.
  
• Paint Shop Pro free trial: This is the software we'll use to change the color of the buttons. It is a paid program but offers a free 30 day trial. I personally own my copy and have found many miscellaneous uses for it over the years. If you have another photo editing suite that has a color changer tool you may be able to use it instead, just make sure it will change a range of color in a region and not only one contiguous shade.
  

Once you have all those things go to your WoW directory and you should find an interface art folder that the Custom UI Toolkit left for you.

Inside that folder open the BUTTONS folder and copy the file named UI-Panel-Button-Up.blp to the folder with the BLPConverter in it.

Next, right click a blank space in the same folder and create a new text file named whatever you like (for this one I use the file name 'topng' since this batch file will convert textures from the blp format to the editable png format). Open the text file and type in the following:

BLPCONVERTER -m UI-Panel-Button-Up.blp

Then save the file as a batch file. To do so, go to File -> Save As. In the save dialog box change the file type to all files and put the extension .bat at the end of the file name.

Once you've got the batch file in your BLP Converter folder double click it and it will briefly flash a command line window as it performs the conversion. Once the command line window disappears you should see a new file in your BLP Converter folder. This is the file we can now edit in Paint Shop Pro.

Next, open the new PNG file in Paint Shop Pro and use the scroll wheel to zoom in on it. Choose the color changer tool from the toolbox (if you can't find a color changer tool it shares a button with the bucket flood fill tool; mousover the bucket icon and click the arrow beside it to get a drop down and select the color changer tool).

Now, with the color changer tool selected you can click on the red background to change the color of the button. Make sure to set your foreground color on the upper right corner of the screen. The RGB values I use for the Blue Buttons are: red 38, green 66, blue 143. If you accidentally color the wrong section the key combination ctrl+z is a quick way to undo your last change. As a side note when editing the remaining textures later on, I came across a texture or two that didn't cooperate with the color changer tool as well. For these textures you may have to experiment with coloring different regions of the image to get the desired effect.

Feel free to play around with different colors but keep in mind that any text placed over the button will come up yellow, so if you use the wrong color you may not be able to see what the button actually says! Once you're satisfied with how your new button looks save the file.

The next step is to make another batch file just like the one above with one exception: change the .blp extension to .png so your new batch file should look like this:

BLPCONVERTER -m UI-Panel-Button-Up.png

I name this one 'toblp'. Regardless of what you name your batch file, make sure to get the old blp file out of the folder before you convert (to prevent corruption of the file) by either deleting it or, preferably, moving it to another folder for backup purposes.

That's it!

Now that you've successfully skinned the button you can add it to your interface. To do so, copy it it your WoW directory under Interface\Buttons. If the folder is not there go ahead and create it. What happens in game is that WoW loads and extracts all these textures from it's MPQ files to a hidden directory in Interface\Buttons. You can't see these directories, but while the game is loaded they are effectively there. By creating a skinned button with the same name and placing it in the same directory our skinned button takes precedence over the default textures. This works for any texture you can find in the interface art folder created by the Custom UI Toolkit.

OK, so I lied. That's not completely 'it'. There are actually a ton of files you would need to skin like above to get the desired effect on all the UI buttons. Conveniently enough, all of the buttons that you'd need to skin are located in the same Buttons folder in interface art:

CancelButton-Down.blp
CancelButton-Highlight.blp
CancelButton-Up.blp
UI-DialogBox-Button-Down.blp
UI-DialogBox-Button-Highlight.blp
UI-DialogBox-Button-Up.blp
UI-MinusButton-Down.blp
UI-MinusButton-Up.blp
UI-Panel-BiggerButton-Down.blp
UI-Panel-BiggerButton-Up.blp
UI-Panel-Button-Down.blp
UI-Panel-Button-Highlight.blp
UI-Panel-Button-Up.blp
UI-Panel-CollapseButton-Down.blp
UI-Panel-CollapseButton-Up.blp
UI-Panel-ExpandButton-Down.blp
UI-Panel-ExpandButton-Up.blp
UI-Panel-HideButton-Down.blp
UI-Panel-HideButton-Up.blp
UI-Panel-MinimizeButton-Down.blp
UI-Panel-MinimizeButton-Highlight.blp
UI-Panel-MinimizeButton-Up.blp
UI-Panel-QuestHideButton.blp
UI-Panel-SmallerButton-Down.blp
UI-Panel-SmallerButton-Up.blp
UI-PlusButton-Down.blp
UI-PlusButton-Hilight.blp
UI-PlusButton-Up.blp
UI-ScrollBar-ScrollDownButton-Highlight.blp
UI-ScrollBar-ScrollUpButton-Highlight.blp

Additionally, you'll need to edit your batch files (right click the batch file icon -> Edit) in order to convert the entirety of the files for skinning. You can add as many files as you want for skinning with the same batch file, simply tack another name on to the end of the line with a space in between each file name. For ease of conversion I'm including the full batch files i use below for your copy and pasting pleasure. Happy skinning!

toblp.bat

BLPCONVERTER -m CancelButton-Down.png CancelButton-Highlight.png CancelButton-Up.png UI-DialogBox-Button-Down.png UI-DialogBox-Button-Highlight.png UI-DialogBox-Button-Up.png UI-MinusButton-Down.png UI-MinusButton-Up.png UI-Panel-BiggerButton-Down.png UI-Panel-BiggerButton-Up.png UI-Panel-Button-Down.png UI-Panel-Button-Highlight.png UI-Panel-Button-Up.png UI-Panel-CollapseButton-Down.png UI-Panel-CollapseButton-Up.png UI-Panel-ExpandButton-Down.png UI-Panel-ExpandButton-Up.png UI-Panel-HideButton-Down.png UI-Panel-HideButton-Up.png UI-Panel-MinimizeButton-Down.png UI-Panel-MinimizeButton-Highlight.png UI-Panel-MinimizeButton-Up.png UI-Panel-QuestHideButton.png UI-Panel-SmallerButton-Down.png UI-Panel-SmallerButton-Up.png UI-PlusButton-Down.png UI-PlusButton-Hilight.png UI-PlusButton-Up.png UI-ScrollBar-ScrollDownButton-Highlight.png UI-ScrollBar-ScrollUpButton-Highlight.png

topng.bat

BLPCONVERTER -m CancelButton-Down.blp CancelButton-Highlight.blp CancelButton-Up.blp UI-DialogBox-Button-Down.blp UI-DialogBox-Button-Highlight.blp UI-DialogBox-Button-Up.blp UI-MinusButton-Down.blp UI-MinusButton-Up.blp UI-Panel-BiggerButton-Down.blp UI-Panel-BiggerButton-Up.blp UI-Panel-Button-Down.blp UI-Panel-Button-Highlight.blp UI-Panel-Button-Up.blp UI-Panel-CollapseButton-Down.blp UI-Panel-CollapseButton-Up.blp UI-Panel-ExpandButton-Down.blp UI-Panel-ExpandButton-Up.blp UI-Panel-HideButton-Down.blp UI-Panel-HideButton-Up.blp UI-Panel-MinimizeButton-Down.blp UI-Panel-MinimizeButton-Highlight.blp UI-Panel-MinimizeButton-Up.blp UI-Panel-QuestHideButton.blp UI-Panel-SmallerButton-Down.blp UI-Panel-SmallerButton-Up.blp UI-PlusButton-Down.blp UI-PlusButton-Hilight.blp UI-PlusButton-Up.blp UI-ScrollBar-ScrollDownButton-Highlight.blp UI-ScrollBar-ScrollUpButton-Highlight.blp

Raiding 101: The Duty of a DPS

"Duty...

A starship captain's life is filled with solemn duty. I have commanded men in battle. I have negotiated peace treaties between implacable enemies. I have represented the Federation in first contact with twenty-seven alien species. But none of this compares to my solemn duty as... Best man."

But enough from Captain Picard. The duty of a DPS is quite unlike the duty of a starship captain. While Jean-Luc here was tasked with diplomatic exploration and peaceful contact with alien life forms... a DPS just has to beat the shit out of anything with a red health bar over their head.

That's right, I went there.

So the life of a DPS may seem simple, but I promise you that it's not. Take away all the baseline expectations of a DPS like: learning your spell rotation, optimizing your spec and gemming and enchanting properly; What you're left with are all the combat decisions that could mean life or death for you and possibly the raid group. While much of the time these decisions are based around survival that's not always the case.

Rule #1: Don't Die

This is really the only hard and fast rule of a DPS. There are times when damage taken is out of your control and beyond a certain point you need to be healed, but a vast majority of the time understanding the mechanics of an encounter and properly avoiding damage can mean a world of difference in your DPS output: You can't DPS if you're dead. Period.

There are plenty of types of attacks, many of which are detailed in my previous post, Don't Stand in the Fire. It is imperative that these types of attacks are avoided at all costs. There is a reasonable expectation of attention from the healers but in return DPS must avoid as much collateral damage as possible to minimize the stress on healing and allow them to focus on more important targets.

Keep in mind that running away isn't always the only way of getting away from dangerous enemy attacks. Many classes and professions have ways of traversing distances quickly to escape areas where damaging attacks are destroying anyone in the area so keep those abilities in mind. Some examples are the Mage Blink, Engineer's Rocket Boots and Hunter's Disengage. Additionally there are tricks to avoid damage altogether like Ice Block or Divine Shield.

The final measure of survival is the most important...

Threat Management

Do not pull threat from the tank.

It's easy to pass the buck and claim the tank is shitty, but that excuse won't prevent a DPS from being dead, especially one wearing cloth armor. There are tanks whose skill level are not quite at par, but in the vast majority of cases I feel like there is a fundamental misunderstanding between the tank and the DPS. That misunderstanding relates to the fact that all tanks... are melee.

There are few things more annoying to a tank than to tag a mob and watch as a flurry of spells pulls aggro from the lone shot fired and the tank now has to taunt the mob back or chase it down. All tanks have some method of tagging a creature from a distance, but that doesn't solid aggro make. Since all tanks are melee it isn't until they come toe to toe with something that solid threat can be established and it's imperative that DPS allows the two to connect in melee before engaging.

There are all manner of mods that help to monitor threat and a DPSer should have on installed and visible at all times. If you find it's hard to remember to check it than Omen would likely be the best choice, as you can configure it to play a customizable audio warning and/or shake and flash the screen to warn you of high threat. SimpleThreatMeter and TidyThreat are also great threat meters, but lack threat warnings so require a bit more attention. Where they excel is at saving screen space as they provide a single bar representing your threat relative to the tank instead of an expansive overview of the entire group.

Do not pull threat from the tank. They say the best method of embedding something in memory is to repeat it three times. Do not pull threat from the tank. =)

DPS Target Priority

Efficiency is the key word here. The best of the best DPS teams will work in a coordinated fashion to burn down targets as efficiently as possible. That usually means following a kill order. It's important that a DPS knows what kill order they should follow, and keep in mind that it may not always be the same, or even the same as another DPSer's kill order.

With the new raid instance open for business it's even more important to know, at the very least, which targets need to be killed first and work in tandem with your other DPSers to focus fire targets down. This is especially true when targets can regenerate health or get heals from other enemies. Focus Firing targets down will also lead to less strain from multiple damage sources on the healers and allow them more breathing room to perhaps throw DPS some more incidental healing.

Teamwork

Always remember that, especially in 25 man raids, it's not the individual that accomplishes the goal, it's the team. When other DPSers are encumbered be having to move out of fire or being crowd controlled by the enemy it lifts your spirits a bit to get that much more of an edge on the damage meters.

When these incidents lower one person's DPS it lowers the DPS of the group and stretches out the encounter closer to the enrage timer. There's not always anything that can be done to get that person back in the game, but on occasions where help can be rendered it's important to do so in order to get your team back at it's peak operating capacity.

The most obvious form of help would be from decursing effects that impede the ability to DPS like silence and slowing effects. One of the increasingly more common instances is when a raid member is disabled by a killable aspect of the encounter. During the Northrend Beasts encounter Gormok throws Snobold Vassal's at players that sit on their back and kick players, interrupting spell casting. Also, in the new Lord Marrowgar fight he periodically impales players on bone spikes, immobilizing them. It is important that DPS switch to these targets as soon as they can be DPSed and free trapped players. If immobilization is allowed to stack up at all the raid force will be less and less effective until the entire group is disabled, and slow breaking of these effects can drag out an encounter with DPS unable to contribute to the fight.

Most of these effects are important enough to get down immediately that it's advisable to use a macro for targeting them. You could either set up a separate macro that would need to be clicked independently or make a macro for one of your main rotation spells and you'll automatically target them, alerting you to their presence. Whichever way you choose you can enter these lines into a macro to automatically target the above mentioned mobs:

/target Snobold Vassal
/target Bone Spike

Enter as many of these lines for priority targets as you like. If any two or more targets could be available at the same time in the same encounter make sure you put the highest priority target as the last targeting line in the macro. The downside of this is that dead mobs will still be targeted, so if you are using this as a macro for one of your main rotation spells (which I recommend) you'll end up spamming your spell on a corpse. To prevent this add the following line to your macro after all the targeting lines, but before /cast spell name:

/targetlasttarget [dead]

Support

The proper handling of encounter dynamics and damage enhancing buffs and debuffs can ramp up raid DPS by up to 30-40% of the bosses health if the proper optimization isn't already taken into account.

Some weeks ago my group had been working on the Northrend Beasts encounter in Trial of the Grand Crusader, and through one issue or another we slowly lost and replaced many members of the raid group throughout the night. As we did so we slowly became further and further behind on Gormok to the point where the worms were coming out the gates with Gormok still at 40%, following an early showing of clean transitions just an hour or two prior.

What was unfortunately neglected in the confusion of the night was that those key players who lost power, were called away on an emergency or otherwise hadn't been able to attend brought key buffs and debuffs that were, up till then, taken for granted. By restacking and reshuffling duties we pushed ourselves right back into a clean transition.

With that in mind, keep an eye on all the necessary debuffs that you, yourself can provide and consider using PowerAuras to monitor them. Be aware of when a key member leaves the raid an whether or not you need to fill in for the buffs or debuffs he was providing. Keep Curse of Elements up when an Unholy Death Knight is unavailable, or Expose Armor up when a Warrior is not in attendance, etc. If you're not sure who might cover the same buffs/debuffs as you, there is a handy raid composition tool at MMO-Champion. You can mouse over the effects you provide and it will class color abilities other classes provide with identical effect and highlight the particular spec, if applicable, on the other side of the page.

Where totems are concerned, try to lay them in a central location to those who need the buffs. Placing melee totems near the boss or melee target, and the caster totems near the healers and ranged for instance.

Crowd Control

I'm sure there are many DPS who have a special place in hell for being delegated to crowd control duty, but if it's important enough to be assigned then it needs to be a priority. Preventing a healer from topping off a burn target or a caster or other deadly enemy from demolishing the raid en masse are just as important as the damage meters. Allowing those mobs to kill players damages the effort of the raid as a whole and in some extremely nasty cases can result in a wipe.

Moreover, it's important to take initiative and use crowd control during encounters where players can become mind controlled. Having one of your own heal the enemy, slaughter another member of the raid or even pop Heroism or Bloodlust for the boss can seriously impact the performance of the raid as a whole. Make sure you get these people under control with sheep, traps, fear, stuns or whatever it takes. When another player is mind controled take them out of the fight if you have it within your power to do so.

Just don't kill them. That doesn't count!