Armaggedon's coming!

My most loyal reader writes in to ask a question:

oh scorchy green-haired one:

I was listening to The Instance podcast last week, and they mentioned an addon that sounded great to me: Watcher. It’s supposed to help you play your class more effectively, and of course, I want to do so. the only problem? This addon has no mage love. I guess there are other addons out there for other caster classes (they mentioned facemelter & others), but I have yet to find one for mages.

Do you know of one that works like this?

The Scorchy Green-haired one responds:

I heard about that on The Instance as well and was a little curious, not curious enough to follow it up until you wrote in mind you, but curious none-the-less.

So I had a look… Looks like an awesome mod, but I don’t think it’s for us.

You see some classes have traditionally been considered easy mode, Hunters being one of the main targets (whether fairly or not). These days it appears that Blizzard has ensured that for these classes to achieve excellent results they need to jump through hoops.

Mages on the other hand seem to have been at best left alone, although I dare say some would suggest they have been dumbed down to only require one two three buttons of significance, which as long as they are pressed at the right time, will give great results.

The other classes are dependent on “user proc’d” rather than RNG proc’d skills.

Where Mages are at the mercy of the RNG to proc hotstreak etc, rogues and warriors need to work within their rage and energy bar limitations while teeing up the right skills for maximum damage or threat. Likewise Hunters need to build up the right “proc points” to unlock the most damaging shots.

No Help Required?

So if we don’t have a priority list, there is no need to helper mods right?

Right!

There is no NEED for the helper mods, but there is no reason why you shouldn’t get and use one.

There are two that come to mind that I have used/do use and that you might find helpful. Both are fundamentally the same, so it will come down to your preference for simple but sweet or pretty and powerful.

The two mods I am referring to are Tell Me When and Power Auras. Both of which can be utilized by any class for any skill from class skills through pots, buffs, profession cooldowns.

As I say, they both do the same thing, so what’s the difference?

Tell Me When

Simple interface which allows you to configure skill icons to appear on your screen depending on the skill status. From memory you can have up to 16 skills configured and they can be configured to appear under all sorts off circumstances. On cooldown, off cooldown, proc’d absent etc.

Tachyon had a short post about TellMeWhen a while back: Addon Tip: TellMeWhen

Power Auras Classic

Same same but different.

Power auras basically does the same thing but also allows you to use custom “icons” which you can put over your too n, or move anywhere for that matter. Add timers and custom sounds (by custom sounds I mean you can not just use the sounds available in game, but theoretically you could record your own… Why decipher the fishing sound to mean hotstreak is up, when you can record “Pyro Now Noob!” and have that play whenever hotstreak procs).

Luthvian @ Polymorph: Pwny had a couple of posts about Power Auras Classic and it’s follow up: PAC, cont’d

They will take a little bit of screwing about to get perfect. Is the skill a buff or debuff? Do you always want to be reminded, or only in a party, raid, while in combat etc? Which skills are the same so they can be grouped (eg: the various Arcane Brilliance variants, not to mention Intellect…)

Need or Greed?

You don’t NEED these mods, but there is no question they can add to your playtime enjoyment. Not only will you be reminded of the essentials, but extra icons popping on the screen and sounds filling your ears can really add to the excitement.

Gnome and Out!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2009/07/22/skill-priority-mods