At any rate, let me tell a story.

I was testing out one of the leveling guide add-ons that aren’t $60 and advertised in banner ads out in Wetlands, when a Hunter dropped in and insta-invited me to party.  I figured he was killing the same murlocks I was melting and wanted to speed the quest along for both of us.  I hit accept.

Silly, naive Skip.

I found myself in party with the hunter and another priest somewhere off in another area and was instantly queued for an instance.  IT’S A TRAP!  But instances are good XP, so I rolled with it.  While we waited, the hunter was being helpful and on most of the same quests as me, so I was lulled into a false feeling of comfort.

who r u

Wha’, huh?  Oh, it was the other priest.  I wasn’t really sure how to answer the random whisper and was locked in heated combat with more gnolls than someone of my limited priestly understanding should ever be, so I let it scroll away.

stop talking in whispers with him. y won’t u talk to me!?!

I should’ve figured this was my exit, but I calmly tried to explain that I was just killing gnolls and wasn’t holding any secret conversations behind his back.  The instance started!  I figured things should calm down now.  Don’t ask me where all this uncharacteristic optimism and faith in humanity came from.  I’m as baffled as you are.  But faith is a fickle mistress and I was quickly proven wrong.  Gnomer came up and the party (some of which were on their 3rd time there in a row) just wanted out.  The priest wanted to do every side-quest in the area and was quite the vocal minority on the matter, threatening to go off on his own on several occasions.

After grating the tank to the point of insanity, he was kicked with such swiftness I barely got to look at the Yes/No dialog box.  He was replaced instantly like the cheap DPS fodder that he was and the instance went on.  Shortly after, I received a whisper complaining how I didn’t stand up for him.

This friendship is over!

Excuse me?  Friendship?  Yeah.

And this forcefully transitions into my intended topic.  Real ID.  See, I’ve been seeing a lot of chatter and complaints about Blizzard’s new in-gamne chat interface, as I’m sure you have too.  To highlight a few concerns:

• Your real name is displayed. Whether it be worry of stalking or privacy, lots of people are worried about their Internet life crossing with that IRL thing.  Bloggers are worried about piercing their aliases.  People just, in general, love their anonymity and alternate identities.  They keep the Internet in the Internet.  I’m no stranger to this, myself.  One of my early Internet communities was a collection of authors and writers, and amidst that particular community it was generally considered proper to go by your real name.  I deviated and chose not to, and have written under various pseudonyms for as long as I’ve put words to media.
• Your friends know all of your characters. No matter what server you run to, what alt you play, or what corner of the world you curl up into, your Real ID friends can find you, hockey mask and machete at the ready.  One luxury of WoW was always that you could make a new character and it was a clean slate in every way.  Some make alts just to get away from guildies or other online friends, just to take a breather and play the game.  Sometimes you just need to get away.
• You can see the friends of your friends. Like any modern social networking site, you can see what people your friends have connected with so that you, in turn, can find mutual friends and add them yourself.  Remember that this is your real name, so it just manages to make itself that much further out there.  In this era of identity theft, we certainly want to covet every tidbit of info we can.
• You have to give your friend your account login name. In order to become friends, you have to share your battle.net email address.  For quite a while now, this has also been our login, and so whoever gets this is one-half of the way into robbing your account.  Sure, they say you should have an authenticator, though until they actually come shipped with the game or are otherwise offered up as a part of the existing fees, you can’t expect people to shell out yet more money to Blizzard’s monolith of income.

The list continues, but I think I hit the high points.  And as such, I’ve read that many people have chosen not to use the Real ID system.  And to those people, I congratulate you for making an informed and intelligent decision.  Your reasoning may be slightly off-tilt, but you’re hitting the right targets.

For everyone else, I started with the story I did to emphasize a point.  The priest in that story was an extreme example, and probably just some kid looking for attention, but it’s not an isolated incident, even among mature adults.  I feel that the Internet, particularly social networking sites, have skewed our definition of “friend”.  I’ve met people with over 500 friends on their FaceBook/MySpace/Friendapocalyspe/etc.  Are they all really friends?  Friend has plenty of definitions, and someone you’ve met only briefly and made that interaction enjoyable can certainly be a friend.  But I feel that maybe the phenomenon of collecting friends like stamps has further depersonalized the meaning.

I could debate on that for far longer than a paragraph, but its a topic far better suited for dialog than just me waving my finger and saying “back in my day, we had to walk 50 miles, in the snow, up hill, both ways, to get friends, and we were happy!”  The point I guess I wanted to get at was that Real ID is not a “friends list” as we have come to know it.  If using it concerns you, than you are completely in the right for dismissing it.  In fact, those concerns can be made into a bit of a checklist.  Or better yet, a Choose Your Own Adventure book!

• [Page 1] Does this friend know your real name?  If not, would you be comfortable with them calling you by it?  If so, turn to [Page 32].
  If these are people who you only interact with on a guild or blog level, and you do not want them behind that veil, turn to [Page 102].
• [Page 32] Would you be comfortable with this friend having your address and cell phone number?  If they showed up uninvited to your door, would you be happy?  If yes, turn to [Page 58].  If these thoughts make you uncomfortable, turn to [Page 102].
• [Page 58] Would it be alright if this friend talked about you with their other friends, even the ones you don’t know?  Would sometimes meeting their other friends not be too much of a put off?  If all of this is fine, turn to [Page 93], else turn to [Page 102].
• [Page 93] Would you trust loaning this person things on occasion?  Maybe you would loan or spare them a little money from time to time.  This person would be respectful and thankful of that which your share.  If this is the case, turn to [Page 105].
• [Page 98] The room quickly fills with water.  Unable to escape your weighted shackles, your last gasp of breath fails you and everything fades to blackness.  You’ve learned all too late the dangers of taking candy from strangers.  Also, you shouldn’t read ahead in Choose Your Own Adventure books, cheater.
• [Page 102] Perhaps this friend is not a good choice for a Real ID companion.  They may be a perfectly upstanding person and maybe one day your relationship will blossom into befitting this union, but for now, you should stick to being regular WoW-based friends.
• [Page 105] Congratulations, you have met someone truly worthy of your Real ID friendship.  Cherish this bond for all time and it will give you many happy memories and raids.

Yes, I’m being a tad extreme and silly with it.  I admit that I’m just having a little fun in order to take a go at a far simpler point.  If features in the Real ID system have you on edge, it’s very possible that what it is peddling isn’t particularly aimed at your needs.  It’s certainly possible to have deep and fulfilling relationships with people with which you would never get more personal than letting them hear your real voice over Vent.  My main point is that you shouldn’t feel the need to shoehorn this feature into that life, nor blame the feature for not catering to your needs.  I only know two people playing the game who I’d share IDs with, both people I know face-to-face, and only the one has shown open interest in the idea.  He plays on a completely different server and is moving away in a couple months.  I’m happy that Blizzard has come up with a system to fit that singular need for me.  For the rest, the old system has worked just fine.

I didn’t forget.  Your fortune cookie:

[Page 61] After much debate over the dangers of recursive anomalies, you decide to pick up the Choose Your Own Adventure book from the dusty library shelf and begin reading.  Turn to [Page 1].

It’s been a fun little dance thus far, though I have to admit, it hasn’t always been an easy write when my interest in WoW tends to phase with the moons.  That’s not really what made me fall off, though.  In truth, the time I typically dedicated to writing became filled in with work.  That probably has something to do with the fact that I wrote most of my articles at work.  Funny how that pans out.  Nope, there’s only so many months an employer will let you goof around aimlessly on the Internet before they cautiously put down their foot but not too hard and ask gently if you could maybe work on a project if it’s not too much trouble thank you.  That’s government for you.

Now summer is arriving, and with it comes the potential for a little personal project time.  I’ve strongly debated on it, and I think the time would be better spent on more diverse endeavors, like my WoW-less parent website.  I’d point you to it, but Skip isn’t about the wanton self-promotion.  That’s not how he rolls.  Wait, yes it is.  Skip rolls that way all the time.  But this one time, I’ll go against the grain.

Fortune Cookie:

This isn’t the last you’ll hear of Skip.  You’ve just become family now.  That means you get calls on holidays, birthdays and when he needs money.

Wait, what?

Making guilds!  Right.

So you want to make a guild.  Maybe you’re tired of your guild leader’s inability to cater to your every whim.  Maybe you don’t want to be bothered by people offering for you to join their guild.  Maybe you accidentally took a few extra Celexa this morning and rational thought has taken a backseat to manic impulse.

Whatever the reason, I’ve put it in your head, and now you want to make a guild.  But how?  Don’t worry, Jimmy.  Skip will tell you how.

Step 1: Acquiring a Guild Charter

For the simple price of 10 silver, you can acquire a guild charter.  If you don’t know where to get one, go into any major city and spam trade chat until someone tells you.  Don’t bother with proper grammar or spelling.  People who need for you to spell out your communication in full, well structured sentences to understand you obviously aren’t smart enough to know the answer anyways.  However, many people have difficulty seeing or paying attention.  They may be old or watching TV while they play.  Be sure to repeat yourself often.

Step 2: Picking a Name

Now that you have a charter, you need to pick a name for your guild.  Think carefully.  Whatever you pick, you will be stuck with until next week, when you give up and start a new guild. Blizzard has a strict naming policy when it comes to guilds.  But they’re also lazy and probably won’t care what you pick.  I mean, the expansion has been out for like a year, and paladins are still OP.  So, pick something cool, like <TeH gAy VaMpYrEz>, or <TRANNY SHAMMIES>, or <asdkghldhfsa>.  If they make you change it, remind everyone that Blizzard is gay and how horrible this game you play 12 hours a day is.  What have they got against Shaman Transmission Specialists, anyways?

Step 3: Getting Your Charter Signed

What, you don’t have a guild yet? That’s right.  In order to become an official guild, you have to get your charter signed by 9 people.  A common tactic is to enter a starting area and offer new characters a few gold pieces for the service of signing your charter.  This gives them very beneficial starting capital at little actual cost to them.  A less common tactic is to actually have 9 friends ready to join and run a guild with you.  You aren’t going to do either of those things.

Instead, enter a crowded capital city and run up to every individual without a guild you can find, prompting them immediately with the guild charter signing window.  Most people are dicks and won’t sign, but keep doing it and you’ll eventually succeed.  Don’t talk, just charter.  Talking wastes valuable signing time.  Some people consider this rude, but you’re a rude person.  If they don’t figure this out now, it’s just going to create issues later when they’re in your guild.  It’s better you weed out the soft-skinned pansies now.

Step 4: Guild Management

You’ve done it.  You now have your own guild, complete with new members.  Your responsibilities have ended.  Chat with your new peons.  Remind them that this will be the best guild ever.  The more everyone says that, the better it will be.

Pro-Tip: Promote all of your new members to officers.  Just like in real life, people will do things for you if you make them feel important.  Yet really, all you’ve done is given them the ability to do all of the work for you.

Now, just sit back and enjoy your new guild.  It probably won’t be as exciting tomorrow, but you can always just take the good stuff from the guild bank and /gdisband later.  It’s good to be the guild leader.

Your Fortune Cookie:

Your guild is going to be the best guild ever!

Wait, no, wrong story.

I game on a laptop. Well, it’s not so much a laptop as a small desktop with an identity crisis. I replaced my Frankenstein of a desktop with it because a) I wanted to game out in the living room and stop being such a shut-in, and b) the desktop was a fire-hazard waiting to kill me in my sleep.

An old picture I found of the old desktop taken from behind. Made mostly of yardsale and fleemarket parts, the power-supply didn't fit overtop of the CPU fan, religating it to a precarious perch atop the case.

The laptop, a stylish Toshiba Qosmio x305, became my new means of gaming. Its gaudy, metallic-flame design on the lid was always good for a laugh. The thing is massive and loud (both audibly and visually). I quickly realized that it needed good airflow to operate well, so I began placing it on an old notebook binder to give it a flat surface. The heat issues gradually climbed, and it was eventually cutting itself off, even with flat surfaces. One day, I came back from the bathroom to find it had cut off, and that the plastic sleeve on the binder had MELTED.

How hot was it getting, exactly? Well, if the sensors inside are to be believed, the machine was reaching 105 degrees Celsius before cutting out. If you’re not of the metric persuasion, let’s just point out that water boils at 100 degrees Celsius. Yup. That hot. After some reading around, I found I wasn’t alone in this, and that according to a Toshiba tech, the laptop is set to cut off before it can damage itself. Thus, it is rated to operate perfectly fine around 100 degrees. I found this pretty hard to swallow, but they’re the guys who built it, so whatever.

I invested in a cooling pad. A good one. This thing could keep a drink cold, and it worked great. The laptop became married to the pad, unable to continue running for more than half an hour without its arctic associate. Fast forward a few months, and it’ll still cut out with the pad if anything even remotely blocks the pad from getting good air flow. I finally decided it was time to void what was left of my warranty and bust the beast open to blow out the dust. I did and was amazed to find that the thing was nearly pristine.

Toshiba Qosmio X305 - It's very... red.

Fast forward again to a few days ago. The thing is running like garbage. I’m running around collecting carrots for the daily cooking quest. The area is nearly barren. My graphics are turned all the way down. Game play is jerky. I’m fed up and blaming Windows Vista, as I’ve never seen the piece of garbage run well and think “screw it, I’m getting Windows 7,” and I do so.

Imagine my wonder when the upgrade is complete, all of the software is in place, and I’m running around a packed Dalaran with my graphics turned up to medium without so much as a stutter. I admit to myself that I hadn’t actually expected it to work, and was just looking for an excuse to get rid of Vista. It’s running smooth, I’m holding a giddy conversation with my favorite Bossy Pally when all of a sudden — *black*…

WTF, mate?! Right… the heat. I give it the requisite few seconds, reposition it on my lap for optimal air, and give it another go. It boots up about 5 times faster than normal. I’m feeling cocky again. I load into WoW super-fast like no one’s business. I apologize and go to do some mindless questing — *black* Son of a Fel Reaver! Okay, we can do this. I brush any and all dust from the fan vents, make sure the fans are turned to full, and we go at it one more time.

–

*black*

…

FFFFFFFFFFU***********************************!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And so here we stand. My computer is running the fastest and most efficient it has ever known, and can’t seem to handle it. I’ve dialed back the speed, but it’s no use. The video processors (of which it has 3) can’t take the heat anymore. I’ve ordered an extraction fan to stick on its rump, which will try to suck heat off of the video card, but my hopes are low. I suspect I’m going to have to rip it completely apart again (an exercise in masochism if ever there was one) and apply new thermal grease. Maybe I’ll find where those extra screws from last time go.

So, at any rate, Skip is AFK until such time as he can get this garbage sorted out. That is unless the netbook will run WoW… maybe… no… maybe?

Your Fortune Cookie:

I looked at my kingdom, I was finally there, to sit on my throne as the Prince of Bel Air.

(I’m also putting it here so I have it for later.  >.>)

Melee Hit Table FAQ – The Fluid Druid

So, after coming back from a few days of settling myself into the educational system, I was a tinge stunned at the results. (Yes, I am a student part-time, and have been for a duration typically reserved for future doctors and the mentally handicapped. There is no PhD in my future.) What I found was thus:

288 views for January 19, 2010. w00t, I think. For this, I have Twisted Nether Blogcast to thank for close to 200 of those, and The Daily Druid for a sizable chunk over that and the last few days.

Is this an outlier of a number that inaccurately portrays the public interest through artificial inflation caused by links from shared topics? Yes.

Do I care? No.

Do I like big numbers, by any means necessary? Yes.

Moral of the story: Do your shared topics, bloggers! You too can have the have the empty gratification of shallow, external validation, just like me! That is why the Internet was made. That and porn.

Your Fortune Cookie:

You must gather your party before venturing forth.

Thus, this article will be about focusing on keeping your fuzzy kitty butt alive. There are those who will disagree with my points of view here, and given my experience, maybe they’re right. Still, I think it’s a meleer’s responsibility to be as self-sufficient in their survival as possible, and that’s the attitude we’ll be going into this thing with.

Proper Attire

You’re a lucky sort. Almost all gear these days seems to come with Stamina. Most Critty Kitties will be using Rogue-ware, as its the latest trend in dominatrix fashion, so you’ll be getting primarily Agility and Stamina. You can actually afford to go balls-out offense. If you find you’re just not staying alive, you do have options, though. A wealth of tanking leather and druid weapons are available. If a few good ones fall to you for being the feral in the party, save them just in case. You’ll probably only have to compete with the Survival Hunter for them. Your group and your DPS may not approve of your clothes, but in an undergeared situation, it might just be better to go in doing less damage than spending the fight face down dealing zero damage.

Talented Survivor

While you do have a cornucopia of tanking talents to boost defense, many of them are Bear-only. Boo. Bear is greedy. But, all is not lost. Kitty comes equipped for the job too.

Improved Mark of the Wild – We’ll start off with a minor off-spec talent. You probably won’t bother if you’ve got a Resto tree in your usual raid group, but if no one else has it, this has good all-around bang for its buck. +2% more to all of your own attributes in addition to improving one of the best buffs in the game. More armor, attributes, and the ever-elusive resistances. If no one else in your group has it, you can’t go wrong with it.

Thick Hide – The Thick Hide vs. Feral Instinct debate is a raging, axe-wielding, possibly menstruating one. You’ll probably take one or the other, and when leveling, I always took Feral Instincts. But, the stealth element is somewhat underplayed in group instances, and whether Swipe (Cat) is worth buffing is arguable. +10% armor isn’t going to make Azeroth move, but it might be worth more than Feral Instincts to you.

Feral Swiftness – I consider this one mandatory. The speed buff gets you out of harm’s way and back into the fight. Your mobility is both extra damage and defense in a sexy little bundle of death. +4% dodge is an extra ounce of defense that the average platey has to spend 4 talent points to match.

Survival Instincts – Identical to the Warrior’s Last Stand, except that you don’t have to go down a different tree to get it. It can still be a stubborn beast to fit into a build, and I’ll admit, it’s often one of the first things I cut out. It’s more worth your while the higher your HP gets, since it heals based on a percentage (and thus will always be of more use to a tank than you). The other problem is remembering you have it.

Predatory Strikes – You’ll be taking this one anyways, simply for the raw attack power. But I tossed it in because of the instant-cast heals it makes available. They can be a life-saver.

Nurturing Instincts – There are those who refuse to take this talent. I refuse not taking it. I consider it irresponsible, really. They see the +healing, and go “*scoff*, I’m a DPS, not a healer, thank you very much.” But the part we want is part Beta: +20% bonus to all healing you take as a cat. A lot of small heals fall around a busy battlefield. The more often you’re topped off with quick or stray heals, the less attention you need compared to your party members. This also improves Improved Leader of the Pack, which may just keep you topped off on your own.

Survival of the Fittest – We discussed this earlier, we did we did. Crit Immune and +6% to all attributes. Probably your single best durability talent. You want this, you do you do.

Improved Leader of the Pack – Either the single best group buff you can offer, or worthless. If you have a Bear tank in your regular group, she probably took this, and yours doesn’t stack with hers. Since you can easily crit once every 6 seconds, this will be a steady source of small heals for you. Nurturing Instinct will improve that heal by 20% (but won’t improve it based on your +healing), giving you an extra 0.8% of your HP each time.

Primal Tenacity – This is primarily a PvP talent, and probably won’t make it into your regular builds. There are bosses that make heavy use of stuns and fear, so you might bring it along conditionally. Probably not, though.

Predatory Instincts – Extra damage is always welcome in my home. You’re probably looking at maybe an overall +1% to 1.5% increase per point, depending on your crit chance. The focus here is the 30% less damage from AoE attacks. Sometimes, you’re going to stand in the fire briefly. Sometimes, bosses blast all the melee around them to knock them back. It’s an unfortunate fact of life that poor kitty is going to get caught in some mess. This applies to a lot of the damage you can expect to take, and 30% is no small dip. Don’t ignore this one.

Berserk – I’m posting this one mostly as a no-no. Berserk makes a great fear-breaking trinket in PvP, but if you save it for that in an instance, you’re wasting it. It creates a HUGE burst of damage, and should be popped off on each and every boss that can afford the aggro spike. I learned this one from experience. Even when the situation arises to use it to break fear, I have to spend a second or two of potential super-damage running back to the target. No bueno.

The Strat: HP > 0

I harp on this a lot, but I’ll say it again. As Kitty Kit Kitterson, you have two traits to hone to a razor’s edge: Awareness & Mobility^TM. It’s really easy to get tunnel visioned when staring at those buffs and bleeds, but you’ve also got to find the backside of your target, get there, recognize threats, and get away when necessary. Your #1 survival tool is your own head. A few pointers to further the point:

Stay Out of the Green Sh** – It may be self-explanatory, but we all seem to forget from time to time. Those flames/fumes/tentacles on the floor hurt. You’re probably more resilient than many to them, but hurting yourself is still bad. Get out!

Optimal Attack Location – To get off your Shred and to improve your accuracy, you want to be behind your target. However, many many large enemies like dragons and giants have rear-attacks. Some also tend to do instant 180 turns from time to time, just to annoy you. The optimal spot is typically on the side, just slightly to the rear. They won’t hit you with their tails/back-kicks, and if they flip-flop facing, you’re a tiny side-step from being in position again.

Billy Don’t Be a Hero – More basic knowledge, but worth repeating. One of the worst things you can do for your own safety is to pull aggro. Attack the target that the tank is properly tending. Don’t feel its your job to pull things off of the healer, cuz you’ll just get in the way. Don’t rush the enemy healer in the back, just because you think you’re the only one smart enough to notice it. Call it, get the tank on it, then shred with the peace of mind that comes with not having your skull caved in with two blows.

Back of the Class – This is more a tanking issue, but it’s spelled my doom a time or two. A good tank should face enemies away from the group. One reason is so everyone gets the nice juicy backside exposed to them for the rocking and the socking. The other reason is because if there are more enemies ahead, they will be… well… ahead. A wandering patrol is far more likely to come in from the front. If you’re the furthest ahead because you had to go there to get behind the enemy, you’re the first thing they will see, and it won’t be pretty. It’s not something you have a lot of control over, but be aware of the situation and watch your own back.

Barkskin – You forgot you had it, didn’t you. Ah-aah-ah-aaah (yes, I am five years old) , I knew it! It’s not just for casters anymore. Barkskin works in all forms, doesn’t have a painfully long cooldown, doesn’t trip the Global Cooldown, costs nothing, and offers a short burst of very good damage reduction. If you can’t be bothered to remember you have it, I suggest macroing it to an ability you will remember, like:

#showtooltip
/cast Runic Healing Potion
/cast Barkskin

You’ll at least pop it every time you go to use a potion, which is probably an appropriate time to assume you’re freaking out. If you have any other defensive abilities, like Lifeblood from Herbalism, go ahead and macro it to that too. Basically, anything you already use to mitigate damage.

I Will Survive

Melee damage has a bit of a stigma. People picture us primarily horizontal. It’s a challenging role and we get a lot of hate for it. But respect can be earned. Stand tall and proud. Or, er… As tall and as proud as a kitty can. Come to think of it, we are always horizontal…

Ugh. Long, wordy, potentially informative… where’s that delete button? Alright, alright, I’ll leave it, but under one condition! I want to see related posts for Death Knights, Ret Paladins, Rogues, Enhancement Shaman, Fury/Arms Warriors, and, heck, even other ferals. Lots of people talk about how to maximize your damage, but it seems somewhat glazed over in the area of staying alive. How do you keep your melee DPS alive? Then I can sit back and read them while posting random topics about how casual I am. Your challenge is posed!

Your fortune cookie:

As long as I know how to love, I know I’ll stay alive!

Edit: Haha, awesome! I have become the BlogAzeroth shared topic of the week! >>Forumeth Posteth<< Okay, so I did post it there, meaning I wasn’t exactly nominated for my blinding brilliance so much as I was the only person to make a suggestion for that week. (Running unopposed ftw) And as I hadn’t really planned to be omnipotent topic of an entire week, I hadn’t paused to consider that Melee DPS isn’t exactly a universal topic. Whoops. Still, the bloggers of WoW-land are resourceful, and so be sure to watch that space for creative individuals adapting the topic to their interests.

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badkitty pr0n

No joke, I get one of these roughly every day.  Yes, it seems Bad Kitty has a naughty and unintuitive interface for the uninitiated. It took me a little fumbling to figure it out too, as is the case with most add-ons, but maybe I can spare a few of you that troubling pain. It’s time for:

Bad Kitty Move Configuration Naughty Tutorial J!

flashy background!

Let us begin. If you’re unfamiliar with Bad Kitty, I already discussed it a little while back.

TL;DR Version: Bad Kitty is an Add-On for WoW that tracks assorted buffs, debuffs and cooldowns related to feral druiding. It does so with indicators and bars that are highly customizable. Feral druids like this because they have a lot to watch (especially kat durid) in the way timey things.

The very basic start: Opening Bad Kitty’s control panel. Type:

/bk

That is all. You’ll get a dialog box with options. For many of you, this is where you’ll go “oh, that’s all I needed, thanks!” and run off to leave me talking to myself. Do enjoy. Glad to be of service.

For the rest of you, who’s eyes are glazing over at the sight of boxes and dongles, fear not, for we shall break it down a bit more. I am, however, going to insert the odd page break here, since this could get a bit image intensive. I like to keep my front page and RSS feed light-weight. It’s my prerogative. Don’t judge me!

When you first press “/bk”, you’re going to be looking at an options page.  On the left bar are your tabs for the different pages, which we’ll look at individually.  You’ll see something like this.

Okay, you probably don’t have my same add-ons, admittedly.  That would be weird.  Like you’re stalking me.  But, er… anyham, to the right of it will be the first, general options page, as portrayed in Diagram 1.

General Options

Diagram 1 - General Options

And here’s what all of those fancy bits mean, according to our snazzy number-coded keys:

1 – BadKitty shows information in two forms: bars and indicators.  Here you can set which you’d like to use for your Cat and Bear forms.  If you only wanted bars and only during your Cat Form, you could check “Cat Bars” and uncheck the other three.

2 - Lock Frames - This answers the question of “how do I move the bars?”  When unchecked, all of your bars and indicators will appear on the screen and can be dragged around.  When they are where you would like them, you recheck the box and they will hide and begin to function normally.  As it says in the parenthesis, you can also type “/bk lock” in your chat box, and it will toggle the lock mode on and off.  This can be handy if you just need to quickly nudge the box over and don’t want to bother with going through the options.  Everyone will need to learn this option, as you can’t rightly just leave all of your bars in the middle of your screen.

3 – Hidden Out of Combat – While checked, the bars and indicators will disappear entirely when you aren’t fighting to free up the screen.  I like them always on, so I leave it unchecked.

4 – Bar Frame OoC Warning - OoC is Omen of Clarity, the Resto talent.  With this checked, an Omen of Clarity icon will appear behind your bars whenever it procs.  It’s actually sort of annoying, but that’s the key.  You want to notice it.  I don’t use it, because I have other add-ons that give the warning instead.

5 – Bars Scale with Cooldown Length – This alters how the bars size.  Some people prefer bars where 1 second is the same for every bar.  Others like the full length of the bar to equal the full length of the cooldown or buff duration.  It’s a matter of taste.  I like it checked, because I find short duration abilities difficult to track without the scaling.

6 – Colorblind Mode – Colorblind friendliness!  I actually am colorblind, but I get by without.  No “colorblind mode” has ever corrected for the fact that I can’t tell a new flightpath from a quest.  But, there you are.  I’m not even sure what it changes.

7 – Show Berserk Duration – Most bars show either the duration of an effect or the cooldown left on that effect.  Berserk is unique in that you can watch both, if you choose.  When checked, Berserk’s bar will say “Berserk is UP” while Berserking and show the buff duration, then switch to a normal cooldown meter when the buff is up.

8 – Bar Text Color – I think this is a tad out of place here, but there you go.  Self-explanatory: The color of the text on the bar displays.  The default text color on the bars is yellow, but I like good ol’ white.

9 – Center Frames - Remember that annoying place all of your bars used to be when you first installed BK?  Now you can put them back there with a single click!  Cause yourself mental anguish all over again, with perfect symmetry!

10 – These are all sorts of sliders to adjust the sizes and appearance of your bars and indicators.  One worth noting is the “Warning Threshold”.  Typically, indicators appear when a cooldown is up or a buff/debuff is not on the you/the target.  By setting a number here, you can have the indicators appear early with a countdown warning before the effect will need your attention again.  3 isn’t a bad number, since it gives you two GCDs to work the effect into your assault.

11 – Bar Background Colors – This one is a bit misleading to a lot of people.  What it basically does is change the background color of your bars briefly when the game sends you a feedback message such as “Not Behind Target”.  So, when you go to Mangle a target you can’t reach, the background will change red.  It won’t change until you attempt and fail the attack, so it isn’t constantly watching to make sure you are in position.  If you attempt to Shred someone from the front, it will turn yellow in reaction to the “Not Behind Target” error.  If you Mangle someone from the front, it will not turn yellow, because there’s no error for trying to do that.  Got it?  Handy information if you know what you’re looking at, huh?

Bar Look and Feel

You’ve actually survived the worst of it.  It gets easy from here.  Diagram 2!

Diagram 2 - Bar Look and Feel

Only two major regions of interest.  Region A decides the color of the bars on each effect.  I actually like the default colors, so that’s what you’re looking at.  Region B lets you set the texture of the bars.  That’s just the snazzy paint-job look of them, and aside from making them easy or hard on the eyes, they don’t have any major effect.  Go wild!

Bar Layout

And this answers another one of the more common questions: how to organize your bars and indicators.  Diagram 3!

Diagram 3 - Bar Layout

It’s not immediately obvious how to use this, though there are instructions up top.  Still, we’ll break it down, yes no?

Region A is the order.  When you press an up arrow, that ability swaps places with the one above it and ascends the list.  Down arrow swaps with the one below it and lowers it.  You can’t just press one up arrow rapidly to keep going up, or you’ll just have the same two swapping places back and forth really fast.

Region B is a sort of threshold.  It decides what bars you actually want to display.  Whatever ability it is next to will be the last in the list.  In Diagram 3, Instant Nature (which, if you’re confused, is the duration of the instant-cast effect granted by Predatory Strikes) is selected.  So, I don’t have bars for Mangle, Rake, Rip, FF, Berserk or Shred Count.  For the purposes of information overload, you probably won’t want every bar showing.  My offensive abilities aren’t on bars because I track them via warning indicator instead.  Which brings us to:

Warning Layout

Diagram 4 - Warning Layout

Looks kind of familiar, huh?  Region A works exactly like the Bar Layout options from Diagram 3.  Region B is new and shiny, though.  Warning Indicators, if you haven’t gathered, are just icons.  They don’t have to be in a straight row, and BK gives you the option of ordering them in a few ways.  You’ll see that I actually do like them in a straight, vertical row, because I’m boring.

Please Turn In Your Copy Books To Your Teacher or Head of Class

I hope you found this lesson informative and useful.  It’ll be on the final exam.  I’ll be available after class to answer questions in the comments.

Technical Specifications

Name: Survival of the Fittest
Class: Druid
Spec: Feral
Tier: 6
Ranks: 3

This is a talent I’ve wanted to highlight for some time, simply because it is recockulously amazing. I’ve been running more dungeons than anything else lately, and so I’ve been putting extra effort into refining my Critty Kitty DPS.

Survival of the Fittest is primarily a tanking talent. In fact, it is no small stretch to say that it is required for tanking. Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.

Crit Immunity.

Tanking 101: See, when a Warrior or a Death Knight or a Paladin want to tank, they put on lots of heavy metal and defense items so as not to die. Enemy raid bosses, no matter who they are, have a 5.something-or-other % chance of scoring a critical hit on you, making you take double the deuce in damage. What’s worse, that’s spikey quick damage that healers may not be quick enough to deal with. Luckily, you can raise your defense rating and reduce your chance of being critteded. They want to hit a magical “def-cap” number (which, oddly enough, isn’t a “cap”, since it’s actually a desired minimum, not a maximum) where the crit reduction is higher than that 5.whatsit%, making it so they’re incapable of ever scoring a critical hit.

And this is all well and fine, except you’re a drood. You don’t deal in metal and shields and such. You rob the Rogue’s kinky leather wardrobe and expect to tank in it. Enter SotF! Survival of the Fittest gives you +6% crit reduction! 6% is higher than 5.Jiminy-Cricket%, and thus you can never be critted by those nasty raid bosses. What’s more, now you can spend all your gem slots and fancy armor on Stamina and Agility and chrome grills. The plateys are jealous.

You don’t have to be a tank to enjoy this protection, though. 6% is a healthy chunk of crit reduction off of what you could be taking in PvP. You’re obviously not immune, but at the cost of 3 points, there are few defenses better worth your time. Nope, you don’t have to be in your Bear Form to enjoy it. I enjoy the luxury on my PvE kitty build. As a melee damage role, I’m going to take a few lumps. A stray crit can take you out of the fight fast, so I carry insurance.

Feature #2

+6% to all attributes. Yay! It’s the better half of a Blessing of Kings up all of the time. Since every attribute is useful to a Druid in some capacity, I’ll take whatever I can get. If anyone ever asks why I took SotF on a DPS build, I quietly point to this talent, and don’t have to say anything else. Publicly, it’s about the attack power. Privately, I like not dying. You’re a druid. You can have it both ways.

Feature C (C is for Cookie!)

SoataFu’s last benefit, as if it needed more, is pure and unadulterated tanking. In Bear Costume, you get +33% armor from your cloth and leather armor. It’s roughly equivalent to giving Bear a shield. If you’re not a tank, it can still come into play. PvP Cats sometimes swap to Bear to survive a few hits or to dispense a quick Bash. If no one brought a tank to AV, you also might be able to weather the boss for them. It’s all about versatility.

Point of note: I get in trouble during dungeons for turning into a bear. If you’re in as a damage role and people see a bear for even a split second, I’ve found that you will be scolded for breaking role. I’m not even joking. I’ll be passing out Mark of the Wild before a run and accidentally Bear it up, simply because they share the same mouse button, and people will go for the throat. And they’re sort of right. Kitties take small, quick healing really well and are remarkably easy to keep alive with minimal attention. As a dispensable damage dealer, that’s what they’re going to cast on you. Pop a potion and Barkskin and ride it out if you even remotely trust your healer.

I’ve had to, on occasions, use Bear to pull stray enemies back to the real tank, but that’s only when the tank has been really bad.  Doing this to even a half-decent tank will just blow their rhythm and make their job harder.

Bear responsibly. The more you know!

Summary

Survival of the Fittest is about survival. That’s why it’s a “tanking talent,” and thus this is mandatory for Bear tanks. But it’s important not to neglect your survivability in your PvP and DPS roles as well. Kitties are quick little melee damagers who can be extremely resilient and easy to maintain with the slightest of heals. Combine with talents like Nurturing Instinct and Predatory Instincts, stir in the ample Stamina your gear already has, and your healer will love you. The extra damage afforded by the +6% to your attributes is icing on the cake, but if anyone asks, it’s why you took this talent. Let them think you’re being a good little glass cannon.

And your fortune cookie:

Buttercup is marry Humperdink in little less than half an hour, so all we have to do is get inside, break up the wedding, steal the Princess, and make our escape, after I kill Count Rugan.

As proof of my achievement, here is a screen shot. It is in no way altered or doctored.

I thought there’d be a parade.  I pictured half-naked people appearing to pleasure me and feed me grapes.  I mean, I am now part of the cream at the top, aren’t I?  I’m an 80!

Well, nothing of the sort happened.  A few people gave me congratulations in guild chat.  I’m only a social member and they’re all hardened elite raid-monsters, but they were still very kind enough to take notice that it was my first 80 and to shower me with attention.  I’d have made a true party of it, but the assault on the Arathi Basin Stables wasn’t going to pause for my celebration.

Shortly after, I was invited to a random heroic!  ”Random heroic,” I thought.  ”That sounds fancy!”  I shouldn’t have felt let down when it happened, because I already knew, but there was something off-putting about rushing into my brand new “random heroic” and seeing dungeons I could’ve already done prior to 80.  We’re sort of lead to believe there’s some mind-altering world behind the curtain.  Instead, I saw the Wizard and found him to be a lie!  I don’t even get any ruby slippers!  Hmm, you know, Ruby Slippers work a lot like Hearth Stones.

Level-cap seamlessly continues along.  There’s more quests to do.  There’s dungeons to do.  I can still PvP (if I want to spend a few hours as paste under the shoes of super-geared gods) in all the same areas.  But now the number next to my name is the same as my friends, so I can join them on random dungeon runs.  It’s not that there wasn’t anything new.  It just came along over the last 10 levels.  There’s more to come.  But it doesn’t magically appear just because I’m 80.

So what of progress?  Well, as anyone will tell you, it’s all gear now.  Which means running heroics in rapid succession and gathering emblems and drops.  I’ve gathered a strong sad 47 Emblems of Triumph and 4 Frosty ones.  I finally found the emblem merchants, though I’m still sorting out just what I’m supposed to want.

I want a PvP set, because even though it was the BGs that just got me this capped level, I’m already itching for it again.  I haven’t clawed out a spine in a couple days.  I need my fix, man!

I guess I need to start getting some PvE gear.  I’m only doing 1.5k DPS on the average heroic.  I hear “that’s not horrible for a starting 80″.  Everyone I’m grouping with is breaking 3k.  Including the tanks.  Sad kitty needs hurty sticks.

Then there’s the Heirloom items.  I suspect I should save these for last.   I’m not going to lie, I’ve been considering doing them first.  I have a fever and the only cure is alting.  My Resto Shaman is in that sweet spot of early 30s where she can heal most of her groups while AFK with a healing stream totem.  There’s something satisfying about hearing “omg finally a good healer, thanks” as I spend half the fight stumbling with a spilled drink.

Anyham, I’d best get back to it.  I need about a thousand emblems, and I’m getting them at a rate of about 5 a run.  This could take a while.

Your fortune cookie:

There’s no place like home.  There’s no place like home.  Crap, my last bind is in Exodar.  WTB port 2 Kansas.