AVR, Blue posts, MMO Report
Addon Spotlight - AVR
It's time for another spotlight! This time I would like to point out a fairly new addon called AVR (Augmented Virutal Reality) and AVR Encounters. This addon will let you draw markings on the 3D world anywhere and share it with anyone! This is incredibly useful for any raid leader, but it's not the only feature.
Some of these drawings can be automatized and triggered by spells and NPCs, this is how you get AVR Encounters! This submod adds warnings and very noticeable visual helps for for various boss abilities.
I know a lot of people will ask: this is JUST an addon and it doesn't use anything else than the Blizzard's API, you won't get banned for using that (but I cannot guarantee that Blizzard will not disable it at some point). For more information on the addon you can also check the following:
But it will probably be easier to understand how things work with a couple of screenshots and a video.
<div align="center">Draw range circles around you or someone else at any range
Clearly mark players close to you
Mark any location relative to player position and rotation, for example mage blink landing spot
Measure distances
Boss encounter warnings (using a separate addon)
</ul>
Boss encounters
AVR does not contain a built in boss encounters module anymore. They are now done by a separate addon. At the moment there are two options.
- AVR Encounters adds AVR warnings for various boss abilities. It does not require any other boss encounter addon to work. It is not a replacement for traditional boss encounter addons as it does not do ability timers, sound warnings etc. It can be used with any traditional boss encounter addon such as BigWigs, DBM or DXE.
- Raid Watch 2[/b] is a full boss encounter addon much like BigWigs, DBM or DXE. It has built-in support for AVR and also does timer bars and other kinds of warnings.
Whichever you choose to use, you will also need to install AVR.
Limitations and known issues
There are some fundamental limitations caused by what information is available to addons. These are mostly related to the exact position of camera and lack of unit Z coordinates. In particular you should note following:
- Drawing works best on a flat surface (note that for example Dalaran has very uneven roads).
- Camera getting stuck in a wall or ceiling will cause any markings to go out of sync with rest of the world.
- Any kind of stairs/slopes and such cause troubles.
- Jumping and other kinds of vertical movement causes the drawings to move with you.
- Everything is drawn over the 3d world. This means that things that should be behind walls or units will appear in front of them.
- Camera auto follow causes some problems.
Some other known issues are:
- All vehicles (like the ones at the start of Ulduar) are a bit problematic.
- Lifts, moving platforms and in particular Gunships in Icercown Citadel raid have some problems.
- Player map coordinates are unavailable in Icecrown Citadel raid on Lich King platform after the edges have collapsed. This means that any markings tied to zone coordinates or other players than yourself are unusable there. (Lana'Thel's room was fixed in 3.3.3 though the ramps leading there are still a bit odd.)
Blue posts
Quote from Blizzard staff
http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/...ns/idruids.gif Druid (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Wild Growth cooldown change in Cataclysm
This kind of thing comes up a lot, where players see us messing with cooldowns and assume it's a nerf instead of our trying to give them room to actually cast more spells.
Raising the cooldown on spells like Wild Growth and Circle of Healing are good things for healers. It's one of the few* things that will buy you GCDs to actually cast other spells. With a 6 sec cooldown, you really only get to cast maybe 3-5 other spells before you need to hit that magic button again.
Let me put it another way... if there was no cooldown on Wild Growth would you ever hit another button? The frequency with which druids use it today suggests the answer is: not often.
* - an alternative is to make the mana cost so extreme that you're making a very bad decision any time you use Wild Growth or Circle and 5-6 targets aren't seriously injured. I'm not sure that would be any more fun though. You don't always have the precious seconds to analyze the situation and calculate how many players need instant healing. It's one thing to guess whether your fast or big heal is more appropriate on a target. It's a little trickier to do that for multiple targets at once.
In before "It wouldn't be overpowered if we didn't do raid damage" and "Well we come to expect nerfs when all of our overpowered spells get nerfed." http://www.mmo-champion.com/Smileys/classic/smiley.gif (Source)
http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/.../iwarriors.gif Warrior (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Warrior tanking in Cataclysm
I'll abstain from using actual quotes here, but these things were basically said above.
Using Demo Shout to tank:
-- We don't like the feel of this. It hits for no damage and puts a debuff on the target that isn't visible and doesn't change the target's behavior at all.
Getting a new tanking AE to use when SW and TC are on cooldown:
-- What's the point though? Why not just remove TC's cooldown rather than add yet another ability you're supposed to spam in rotation?
On warriors losing Cleave:
-- You're not losing Cleave. You don't have infinite use of it, but you're not going to have infinite use of any of your abilities, because things will cost rage and if you spend rage unwisely you're going to starve yourself. Use Heroic Strike vs. single targets and Cleave against groups. Besides, I hardly see how Cleave is this panacea for the staggered adds scenario seeing as how it hits a grand total of one additional target (two if glyphed).
On tab targeting:
-- We really don't want to see a scenario (for any tank) where you just stop using your single-target abilities completely. It's fine to supplement those with an AE attack, but not completely ignore them in group situations. (As an aside, the paladin doesn't really do this now because he uses the same rotation for both singles and groups. The druid doesn't do this now because Lacerate doesn't hit hard enough relative to Swipe. Both are easily fixable though.)
[...] Let's take four scenarios that cover the majority of encounters:
1) If dozens of twilight whelps are streaming in, fine, just AE tank them and have the dps use Blizzard, Hurricane, Whirlwind, etc. I think you all know how to this by now. http://www.mmo-champion.com/Smileys/classic/smiley.gif
2) If you're doing a four pull and the mobs hit really hard, then CC one or two and dps the others down single target. You'll want to keep threat on all the loose mobs, but not by spamming an AE ability unless you can buy yourself plenty of room. I know everyone is scared of CC, but we actually made a pretty good spread of CC abilities in LK, and then sadly nobody ever got to use them. In Cataclysm we are making sure to spread abilities around even more.
3) Now, if you're doing a four pull and you think you can get away without CC, then ideally you'd use your AE attacks but still pick a target to focus on. That's the one that gets your Shield Slams and Heroic Strikes and that's the one dps should focus on first. Keep in mind in today's world the warriors are Whirlwinding and the Rets are Divine Storming even the single targets, which generates th...
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