Roxanne Flowers

During TBC, I had written macros for all of my From Stealth opening attacks such that they would automatically Pickpocket (and autoloot everything) immediately prior to using Ambush, Garotte, Cheap Shot, Sap, etc. so that I'd never miss an opportunity for extra loot since use of Pickpocket doesn't engage a global cooldown. Likewise, I could Pickpocket on the move since I didn't need to stop, manually loot while parked, and then resume moving thanks to autoloot on Pickpocket, making the whole operation of silently gliding up behind something in Stealth, using Pickpocket on them, and then continuing on past them without stopping so much easier and more reliable with a lot less vulnerability (because you didn't have to stop to loot). That autoloot on Pickpocket is what I miss the most about the current game state here.

Wah! The DPS that I was gonna do was being done by a Hunter Pet! Oh woe is my lost DPS! The damage is still happening and getting done by the raid so it's not like the encounters are taking longer ... but the CREDIT for actually DOING that DPS isn't accruing to those Warlocks anymore, making it look like they're slacking on the DPS meter(s).

It's not "impossible" ... you just have to seriously outlevel them before you can do it reliably. How seriously? Try +10 levels seriously. The easiest mobs to pickpocket are actually the Defias Rogue Wizards at Hero's Vigil in Elwynn Forest. Why? Because their feet are nailed to the ground. They never move. They never turn around. That makes it excessively easy to Stealth up behind them and pick their pockets at your leisure. That said, pickpocketing definitely has a "One Try" bug to it where if you don't pull the loot on the first attempt, when you make a second (or subsequent) attempt against the same mob they will ALWAYS have nothing for you to loot, meaning you only get one chance to pick any mob's pockets. The difficulty of being able to pull it off consistently against mobile mobs involves a lot of practice and preferably 5/5 Master of Deception so as to help your level differential. It doesn't help though that almost every mob can see through very nearly any amount of Stealth from the front, so you have to sneak up on EVERYTHING from behind in order to pick their pockets. Stationary mobs make that easy, moving mobs make that hard (especially when they turn around to walk right through you). To me the most annoying thing is ... lack of an autoloot on Pickpocket function. I don't mind having to shift+rclick on gathering nodes, skinning and general looting of dead mobs ... but I DO mind not having an equivalent Loot All Automatically on use of Pickpocket, forcing me to manually loot stuff by clicking on it before I can resume moving again, because if I move while Pickpocketing the window will auto close on me and then I can't re-Pickpocket to get that (loaded) loot window back since the next time it opens on that mob it'll be empty (which I've been thinking of as "spoiled" when it happens). So far I think I've looted a total of about 2g out of the pockets of Humanoids in Teldrassil, Dun Morrough and Elwynn Forest. Looking forward to the more lucrative rewards of Pickpocketing the skeletons in the cemetary in Darkshire (wait, skeletons have pockets? who knew?).

Using napkin math, my impression was that I was getting 1 Stone per 5 Ore on average.

Correction. They asked to be able to see it ONCE ... but they didn't ask to have it rubbed in their faces 8x per hour. Reprogramming the announcement to happen upon login of characters would suffice. The present "spammer" behavior has reached the Unwanted Nagging level of being unhelpful.

I was somewhat surprised myself by the fact that you get a regeneration tick after 5 seconds while continuing to channel Starshards. I point it out not as something to modify the DPM "cost" of the spell itself (as you cite), but rather as a "end user" net overall consideration to include on a sidebar/footnote. It's just one more thing that helps the overall mana efficiency of Starshards perform better than you'd expect when reducing everything down to the spreadsheet/napkin math.

It's not so much that you "miss more" with faster weapons, since your chance to hit (all other factors being equal) will be the same either way. The difference is that faster weapons simply "roll the dice more often" in a given span of time, and when you roll more dice, the absolute number of failures will be higher (all else being equal) for the faster weapons than for the slower ones. My understanding is that the motivation for slower main hand weapons is the Big Numbers you can inflict on an alpha strike when using a slow weapon versus a fast one, in addition to pretty much all of your spells involving weapon strikes keying off your main hand weapon. For some spells, the relevant question to be asking is whether or not the damage buff of your spell(s) is going to be a "one and done" kind of thing or if it is going to be something that has a duration allowing you to get in multiple swings before the buff expires. Ultimately it all comes down to appreciating the ... granularity ... of what the different weapon speeds have to offer in synergy with your spells and buffs. By design, some will favor Big Hits™ that don't happen too quickly, while others favor "chucking dice" as fast as you can so as to proc certain effects the maximum number of times in the shortest possible duration. All of that then feeds back into what type of build strategy you're using (and why).

Considering the "fact" that it actually happened ... that would mean that the odds of it happening are indeed greater than zero. It might happen very rarely, but when your sample size is small ... you know the drill.

Personally speaking, the thing that I like most about Starshards is the fact that it's a 6 second channel time, rather than just 5 seconds ... meaning that use of the spell is even "5 second rule friendly" so long as you don't get any interrupt while casting, because you'll always get a tick of mana regen while casting even before picking up Meditation, so the mana efficiency of the spell is even "higher" than advertised, depending on your Spirit and Talents.

In other words, you skipped the part where (as cited above) you go back to the Trainer to get the skill that allows you to Feed Pet. Without the Feed Pet skill, you cannot Feed Your Pet. Shocking, I know.

Try this ... http://web.archive.org/web/20070226134300/http://petopia.brashendeavors.net/html/articles/resources/petcalc.html Go go wayback machine to Petopia!

Having a Beast Tame "Fail" is functionally the the same as throwing a spell at a hostile mob and seeing "Resisted" come up. http://db.vanillagaming.org/?spell=13481 Notice the School: Nature notation in that. You're basically casting a Nature Spell in order to Tame Beast. Nature Spells can be Resisted (ask any Balance Druid you can find).

Yes, this is normal in vanilla WoW. Welcome to vanilla.