Roxanne Flowers

Think of the Stable Master as being "bank slots" for Pets. You "park" the Pet you want to keep in the Stable so as to be Petless when you go out and Tame the Beast(s) with the Pet Skills you want to learn. After you learn the new skill from the newly Tamed Pet, you can Abandon it, go back to the Stable and get your "regular" Pet back.

The only meaningful answer to that question is ... Ambush? (Y/N) Backstab? (Y/N) Since you can only use those attacks with Daggers, that's pretty much the only reason to equip Daggers, so as to use Ambush as your opening move and/or Backstab once combat is in progress. Since both attacks have a high Energy cost of 60, they aren't exactly something that you can spam constantly. Also, if you're soloing, you're going to need to use Gouge in order to consistently make use of Backstab, simply in order to prevent your target from rotating to face you (so you can stab them in the back, rather than in the front). As a practical matter, Ambush builds demand investment into the Subtlety tree to get the talent in Tier 3. Backstab builds have a less onerous demand for investment in the Combat tree at Tier 2, but that investment is in conflict with Deflection/Riposte at Tiers 2/3 and with Precision at Tier 2. If you don't feel like making that kind of investment is worth it to you, go with Swords instead. Or Maces. Or Fist Weapons. You get the idea ... but most people will tell you to go with Swords because of Sword Specialization at Tier 5 in the Combat tree.

Again, do some comparative testing to determine if the Immunity requires damage to negate an incoming effect. If you want to implement a fix for it, you need to document each and every behavioral "edge case" where the behavior that occurs deviates from expectations. This is a Show Your Work exercise to demonstrate the specific ways in which the advertising "fails" to meet those expectations.

So on the character sheet, you put the Bow in the ranged weapon slot and you keep the arrows in inventory. To "shoot" the bow, you go to your Spells window (default P) and choose the General tab at the top and go through alphabetical order to find Shoot and put it on your hotbar(s). And you're saying you've done all of that and it's still not working. Please provide a screenshot demonstrating what you have done. UI context is needed. Show Character window, Spells window and Bag with the ammo in it.

You didn't say if you also equipped a bow to shoot them with. Bow + Arrows Gun + Shot

Been a while since I posted an update to this thread. Finally got my Night Elf Priest to Level 26 for Starshards Rank 3 and ... the damage output is still consistent across all 6 damage ticks. There is no(t yet any) ramp up from the first damage tick to the last, meaning that the spell's damage isn't "backloaded" in a fashion similar to Curse of Agony for Warlocks where the damage ramps up over time such that the spell is at its most efficient when you get all the damage ticks in. It's also kind of interesting how when soloing single PvE targets that are within -6 Levels of you (so XP and Spirit Tap on kill) that there is a decided advantage to doing a Power Word: Shield+Holy Fire+Starshards+Wand rotation. Holy Fire has a long casting time, but you can spend that time "for free" if you're not already engaged. Immediately follow the completion of casting Holy Fire with Starshards. The interesting thing is that Holy Fire costs mana at the end of the casting, while Starshards costs mana at the beginning of channeling, meaning that casting the two spells in this fashion is extremely 5 Second Rule friendly. Finish off the target with spamming Wand because after 6 seconds of channeling Starshards your mana recovery is 100% of Spirit because you haven't been using mana for more than 5 seconds. Spirit Tap on kill has you back up to full mana and health in 15 seconds or less to engage your next target. You almost never need to sit down to drink while soloing. I'm sure that over the next 10 Levels from 26 to 35, Starshards Rank 3 will (again) slowly lose its efficacy once more relative to the HP totals of my Foes, but it's pretty awesome to be able to start burning stuff down with it again. All I need for it to work effectively is to keep my shield bubble up and not be interrupted by knockdowns at this stage.

Divine Shield Protects the paladin from all damage and spells for X sec, but increases the time between your attacks by 100%. Effect #1: (6) Apply Aura #39: Immune School (1) Value: 0 Depends on how it's coded under the hood then. Since Seduce does no Damage, that might be the reason why it can take effect. Makes me wonder if other no damage status effects are similarly able to "penetrate" a Divine Shield. Things like Mind Vision and Mind Control available to Priests would be other Shadow based no damage status effects and could offer a source of comparison testing to determine if there's an outlier of performance for the Succubus' Seduction spell. All you need is a "friendly" Horde Priest to run some testing with ... or an Alliance Priest willing to run the tests during a Duel ... under controlled circumstances.

Divine Protection You are protected from all physical attacks and spells for X sec http://db.vanillagaming.org/?spell=6358 School: Shadow Protection from physical attacks does not protect from Shadow Spells. Working As Designed And Intended.

All builds are viable ... the question you want to be asking is, are all builds optimal? This is a matter of some debate, and honestly it really depends on the people you run with. Some people are willing to let you experiment and try things they haven't seen (work) before. Some people are mired so deep in the well worn wagon ruts that if you deviate even slightly from the Tried And True™ strategies that they demand of you they'll kick you to the curb. Decide for yourself what will make you the happiest when you play and then find people who are willing to team up with you while you play that way. Everything beyond that is epeen circle jerking.

Something that I've been wondering about is whether the different Engineering Specializations have any "bias" or preference towards being a better fit for each of the 9 classes based on what that specialization makes available. So I went hunting for reference materials and found Gnome and Goblin Engineering pages at wowwiki, but those pages include stuff from post vanilla. So here's a shorter listing of what can be made (and used) in each specialization. Gnomish Engineering: Gnomish Goggles BoP Gnomish Mind Control Cap Gnomish Rocket Boots Gnomish Harm Prevention Belt Gnomish Alarm-O-Bot Lil' Smoky BoP World Enlarger Requires Gnomish Engineering but does not Bind! Plans: Inlaid Mithril Cylinder Gnomish Battle Chicken BoP Gnomish Death Ray BoP Gnomish Net-o-Matic Projector Gnomish Shrink Ray has ... interesting side effects ... involving +/- 250 Attack Power Ultrasafe Transporter: Gadgetzan Requires Gnomish Engineering Goblin Engineering: Goblin Construction Helmet BoP Goblin Rocket Boots Goblin Rocket Helmet Goblin Mining Helmet BoP Pet Bombling BoP The Big One Goblin Sapper Charge Recipe: Goblin Rocket Fuel Dimensional Ripper - Everlook Requires Goblin Engineering Goblin Bomb Dispenser BoP Goblin Dragon Gun BoP Goblin Jumper Cables XL Goblin Mortar Looking at this list, particularly the Bind on Equip and exclusive use list, I can only surmise the following class "bias" advantages for needing (or merely wanting) to be one or the other: Gnomish Goggles: Warlock while leveling for stats World Enlarger: damaging and healing spells do not break the effect (see testing by Sabre on Elysium below) Gnomish Battle Chicken: all Auto Attack with Weapon(s) classes due to chance for Battle Squawk adding +5% attack speed for 4 minutes to entire party, Hunter (also buffs Pet), Shaman (Windfury Totem) Gnomish Death Ray: Mage (Mana Shield), Paladin (Blessing of Protection and Divine Shield negate damage to self), Priest (Power Word: Shield will Absorb damage to self), Shaman? (Grounding Totem?), Warlock (Health Regeneration) Goblin Construction Helmet: Fire Resist and On Use Fire Shield (no class bias) Goblin Mining Helmet: Mail wearing Miners Goblin Bomb Dispenser: combat Pet (no class bias?) Goblin Dragon Gun: cone fire attack advantage to classes which lack AoE attacks and can be combined with Gnomish Net-o-Matic Projector(!) to pin a target in the damage cone Near as I can tell, this means that Gnomish Engineering offers some specific advantages to a very limited subset of classes, while Goblin Engineering is almost entirely class agnostic. Does anyone else have any particular preferences for an Engineering specialization for specific classes ... and if so, what is it and why? I'm not talking about the "usefulness" of the Gadgetzan/Everlook divide, but rather with the specific items that each specialization can make (and use) only on "their side" of the divide exclusively, since the rest can be traded (and thus obtained via the Auction House). Point being that if you have 2 characters with Engineering, each with different classes, which classes "prefer" to be given Gnomish Engineering and which "prefer" to be given Goblin Engineering, based on how the two options inter(re)act with what those classes can bring to bear?

You can lead a man to water, but you cannot make him THINK ... :(

Let me guess, it's a guild with 1 member still in it and the guild name is "Top" ...

Genetics!

In other words ... make whole cloth/leather/mail/plate NEW CONTENT out of ... nothing ... and make it perfectly balanced so that you can have fun with it? Um ... that's a rather non-trivial feature request you've got there. Good thing it can be fulfilled in zero time with zero QA with zero problems by an all volunteer staff who have nothing better to do, eh wot? We see what you did there. You may also find THIS LINK useful to you for the following notice from the staff:

What you have described is precisely the Blizz-like performance that was intended. Welcome to Vanilla.

The customer is always right ... until computers are involved. And don't tell me, since this is a rhetorical question ... what kind of game are we playing again? +1 Hudson response.

These servers? No.

What about an "if Target is Casting" type of conditional? Would that be possible?

Pets scaling with Hunter stats was a Blood Crusade thing, not a Vanilla thing.

Go fish.

So ... when are they going to tell the rest of us?

Stone drop rate is fine and doesn't need tuning.

So ... first and foremost, I know that I want to play my Warlock as a PvE Drain Tank on Darrowshire. In vanilla retail a decade ago, I was playing a Dark Pact build and using my Imp as a Mana Battery and was really enjoying the playstyle that grew out of that. Wind up the DoTs and let stuff expire at my feet. The whole thing played as a sort of "you're already dead, you just haven't gotten the memo yet" with nigh infinite mana at my disposal. So I'm looking at wanting to do that again here on Darrowshire. The thing is, a Drain Tank really doesn't "need" to have Dark Pact, since the playstyle is all about leveraging the combination of Life Tap and Drain Life to keep yourself topped up. Also, a Dark Pact build essentially "wants" to have the Imp out for the "bottomless mana" effect, but keeping the Imp on Passive mode so they can remain Phase Shifted (and thus invulnerable), which renders them useless for anything other than being a mana source. So, to put it politely, I'm looking for other options amenable to making an efficient PvE Drain Tank. So far, I've come up with 3 alternatives, none of which involves Ruin, ironically enough. (33/0/18) DP/SB: http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#IE0iVMboVoZxV0tM (30/21/0) SM/DS: http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#IE0iV0boVZfthuM0o (20/31/0) Soul Link: http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#IA0iVZfMhuGxot The DP/SB build is one meant to leverage 2/2 Nightfall for Shadow Trance procs to fire off Shadow Bolts opportunistically in between channeling Drain Life for Drain Tanking. This is kinda sorta the Dark Pact build I was playing a decade ago. The flaw in this build (as I see it) is that pretty much all of the Affliction spells that the build uses have no use for increased critical hit chance (since they're all DoTs, so the build really only uses critical chance for Shadow Trance procced 5/5 Improved Shadow Bolt debuff procs and for Shadowburn (yes, I know there are other Destruction spells, but they'd be of situational use to a Drain Tank playstyle, rather than routine use). The thing is, I'm pretty sure(?) that the debuff from Improved Shadow Bolt proc needs to already be on the target BEFORE hitting the target with Affliction DoTs in order to boost the Shadow damage throughput of the DoTs. So the question I have here is ... if an Affliction DoT for Shadow damage is already applied and in progress, does proccing an Improved Shadow Bolt debuff increase the damage of the DoT ticks that are yet to happen, or not? I have the sinking feeling that the answer is "not" and that the debuff needs to be in effect (and therefore available to be taken advantage of) before the Affliction DoT is cast. If true, that would functionally mean that Shadow Trance procs that yield instant cast Shadow Bolts fired between Drain Life channeling would realistically only buff the damage (and health drain?) of the next Drain Life casting, without bumping up the damage already being done by Curse of Agony and Siphon Life, short of recasting them during the Improved Shadow Bolt debuff duration (which would be wasteful). The SM/DS build is oriented around the notion of maximizing Shadow damage via use of Demonic Sacrifice. This functionally winds up being a sort of counterpart to the Dark Pact build in that your Pet becomes something of a "non-factor" during combat because they aren't actively participating in directly damaging your target(s). Both Dark Pact and Demonic Sacrifice cast your Pet into a "support" role in which their contributions are routed through you, the Warlock, in order to influence the outcomes of your battles, rather than leaving them as free agent independent actors fighting alongside you. For a Drain Tank build, going with Dark Pact functionally optimizes on the Imp, although the Succubus or Felhunter can be used as alternatives at higher risk to the Pet's survival. Conversely, for a Drain Tank build, going with Demonic Sacrifice optimizes on the Succubus being sacrificed for +15% Shadow Damage. Combine that with 5/5 Shadow Mastery and 5/5 Improved Drain Life (assuming this talent is working as advertised) and you've got a combined +25% Shadow Damage (SM+DS) and +20% Life Drain (SM+IDL) for some extremely strong Drain Tanking performance. The downside is that you are now "Petless" as a Warlock, but have some pretty strong survival potential as long as you can keep Drain Life and Life Tap going for all the mana you're going to need. Right now, I keep thinking of this as the Afflic Succ-Sac build, which doesn't exactly make for the best acronym to remember it by. Looking at the SM/DS build with its +25%/+20% bonus Shadow and Life Drain performance, I started wondering what happens if the build got shifted towards Demonology instead of going so deep into Affliction? In other words, could 5/5 Master Demonologist and Soul Link in any way make up the balance of what is "lost" by not going with Shadow Mastery and Demonic Sacrifice (of the Succubus) by keeping the Succubus around and using her as a supporting fighter Pet rather than as an aggro magnet? Obviously, the Drain Tank buffing from talents falls way down with this option, since you go from +25% Shadow damage and +20% Life Drain performance down to +13% Shadow Damage and +10% Life Drain performance in the build that I'm offering here, AND losing Siphon Life into the bargain! But conversely, I'd have a (living) Succubus fighting alongside me delivering additional damage, and with the talents chosen in the tree, she'd be delivering an extra +43% damage from her Lash of Pain every 12 seconds (Improved Succubus+Master Demonologist+Soul Link), be available for Seduction on Humanoids (situational advantage), and be doing an extra +33% melee damage (Unholy Power+Master Demonologist+Soul Link) while I'm Drain Tanking. Meanwhile, I'd be taking only 70% of the incoming damage, while the Succubus lives, thanks to Soul Link, counterbalancing the loss of direct Life Drain performance relative to the SM/DS build. And that's not even counting on the utility of being able to hot swap Pets as needed for different situations. So the Soul Link build looks like it's a much more versatile one with more tricks at its disposal. The question that I have though is would keeping the Succubus alive (and Lashing/Seducing/support meleeing) make up for the difference between +25%/+20% and the alternative of +13%/+10% and losing Siphon Life from Affliction if going the Soul Link route? Operationally, this all basically comes down to a question of whether or not having a Pet "out" is worth it for a Drain Tanking playstyle build that's intended to rely more on Affliction spells (and thus, Shadow and DoTs) than it is on Destruction (and Fire in general). Bear in mind that I'm looking at this from a strictly PvE perspective for playing on Darrowshire. I suppose the ultimate determining factor here would be whether trying to keep a Succubus "alive" and fighting beside me is more trouble than it's worth in either 5-man or 40-man environments, because if the Succubus is prone to dying then the Soul Link build strategy loses nearly all of its competitive advantages over the Demonic Sacrifice option. Are there any Soul Link Demonologists around who can share their experiences of playing on any of our servers here? What are the pitfalls and advantages in PvE that you have found to going all the way to Soul Link in Demonology, knowing that "everyone" expects you to be playing a SM/Ruin spec instead? Right now, my Warlock is Level 22 and I don't have to make a decision about which way to go with my build immediately, but I would like to know what my options are before locking myself into one path or the other (so as to save on respec expenses).

And here I was assuming a 100% coefficient cap the whole time. Shadow Weaving requires stacking before it gets useful. That means mutliple castings. In a solo situation, that means it takes at least 3-5 global cooldown cycles of 1.5 seconds each before you start getting serious debuffing out of the talent, assuming you're casting nothing but Instant to 1.5 second casting time spells (which you won't be, but that's a different problem of spellcasting rotation). In a multiple Shadow Priest situation (does this even happen?) with 2+ Shadow Priests applying their Shadow Weaving debuffs, you can obviously fill the stack to 5 that much faster and start reaping the benefits that much quicker. It is, however, a mistake to just gratuitously assume that every single spellcasting of a Shadow damage spell will automatically benefit from 5 stacks of Shadow Weaving "out of the box" gratis without needing to spend time to build the stack (or cast anything to get it going). If your typical rotation is Mind Blast, Shadow Word: Pain, Mind Flay until done, be aware that the full 5 stack of Shadow Weaving won't be there until the third Mind Flay, and all the previous spell casts will be deriving less benefit from Shadow Weaving, meaning there's a "ramp up" before Shadow Weaving starts really making a difference. Being able to exploit that "ramp up" most efficiently/effectively in any and all situations is neither assured nor guaranteed (especially when melting faces so fast that you never get to a full stack of Shadow Weaving). Shadowform multiplying Shadow damage doesn't have anything to do with spell power coefficients. Granted, the two inter(re)act with each other, but Shadowform doesn't "change" the spell power coefficient for Shadow spells. It's a different factor that goes into calculating throughput onto target. Now if you're talking about there being more debuffs AVAILABLE for stacking with Shadow than for Arcane, then that is quite obviously true. Shadow Weaving, Improved Shadow Bolt and Curse of Elements all combine for some rather powerful debuffing that in turn aids and supports anyone dealing Shadow damage. There is, to my knowledge, nothing comparable for Arcane in terms of the depths of stacked debuffing ... which makes sense, since Arcane is the "orderly" spellpower type while Shadow is the "rot and decay" spellpower type, so it only stands to reason that Shadow would have more debuffing options available to it, thematically speaking. The "price" for that though is ... debuff slots ... and needing to work under a limited cap of debuffs that can be in effect simultaneously. Fortunately, most raid groups have already figured out which debuff slots are spent most "efficiently" on what when stacking debuffs up to the cap and they organize (and base presumptions around) and assume things accordingly. Anyway, enough digression. Back to Affliction.