Last week’s Karazhan run sounded like great fun, a positive first step into Karazhan and Arvariena got some nice purple loot ([Gloves of Saintly Blessings]) to boot. I’ve got a message from The Boss (Railor), on how it all went:

Our first Karazhan run the other night was a success thanks to the dedication and enthusiasm of the Lords and also from Lamagra’s advice and guidance. Lamagra is a paladin that we discovered on the LFG channel and subsequently recruited(!). He volunteered to join actually, which is a great bonus as he has a wealth of Karazhan experience. When I say success I mean in terms of what we learnt about ourselves.

We killed Attumen but suffered at the hands of the Maiden. It’s clear that our gear will need to be that little bit better. We aren’t tooled up enough for want of a better expression. To that end I personally will be attending as many heroics as I can, to pursue the better purples. Speaking for myself, I have the firepower, I just lack stamina and mana.

However Kara isnt a learning instance, so those folk that want to go on the runs really ought to be as good as they can be at their various characters. I think heroic runs beforehand will help to give everyone that knowledge. But Karazhan is fun, hard work and I think everyone that goes will really enjoy it.

Another pair of runs are provisionally scheduled for Friday / Saturday night. Check out the signup thread on the forum, and / or sign-up on GEM in-game. I’m regularly updating the minimum stats for Karazhan post with extra details on gearing up, so please keep checking back. If you find any great resources on the same lines for your class, please let me know so that I can add it.

Quick non-Wow item, but just wanted to share this story from BRK about an Operational Readiness Inspection as it entertained me. I’ve included an excerpt below.

An ORI? The Air Force has this little thing called an Operational Readiness Inspection where it tests a military base’s capability to respond in time of a war or other surprise. What happens is a plane lands and a high-ranking military official respectfully requests the base commander’s presence. They meet and the base commander is handed a folder that says,

Congratulations, your base is at war. Be prepared to deploy to Location X in 48 hours. Good Luck, your chance at a promotion to Major-General is in the balance. Love, The Chief of Staff of the Air Force.

The base commander has a heart-attack, the vice-commander slaps him back to consciousness, and the base goes into ORI-Mode. Pack this, move them over there, get the airplanes airborne, load all your equipment on the C-5, don’t sleep for 36 hours, then get your duffel bags filled with 2.8 pairs of underwear over to the processing facility to get shipped out. All of this under the watchful eyes of the ORI Inspection Team.

Read the full story at BRK’sOperational Readiness Inspection

Managing addons, finding new ones, installing them and keeping them up to date can be both daunting and time consuming. This post should hopefully include some pointers to make it all less scary for anyone new to addons, along with some tools that I use to make addon management easier.

Finding

There are 4 main addon sites:

• Curse
• Wow Ace
• WowUI
• WowWI

Use the search tools in the sites, or alternately this all in one addon search to search all four sites in one go. The main way I find addons is by reading blogs to find recommendations - I’ll be spotlighting a few addons on this site over the next few weeks. The wtfaddonbbq site makes good reading, introducing lots of interesting new addons

Installing

The Addons page of our site has instructions with screenshots for installing GEM. Steps 1 - 3 can be followed for other addons too. There are also addon installation instructions at wtfaddonbbq. Once installed, the main question is how to access the addon in-game. Most addons automatically add an icon to the minimap, others you may need to watch the automated text in your chat log as you login - this should show the addon names e.g. sct. Typing /addonname (e.g. /sct), normally then reveals the command that can be used to display the addon’s menu.

Updating

WUU Screenshot

Perhaps the hardest thing with addons is keeping them up to date, especially once many are installed. I’ve started using the WOW UI Updater tool to keep them updated. This is a tool that you install on your PC. The first time you use it is probably the trickiest, as most of your addons will get updated which can be a bit traumatic (I had a couple of really old non-standard addons including clearfont that didn’t update very well). After that it’s one or two addons at a time being updated which is a bit easier. Once you’ve got it installed, the basic pattern of usage is as follows:

• Open WWU from desktop icon
• Addon -> Scan Directory (or press Cntrl D), to scan your current addons directory and work out what you have installed
• Addon -> Update from Master DB (or press Cntrl M), this updates which addon site WUU will choose to download from for each of your addons
• Addon -> Check online version (or press Cntrl V) to find the latest versions of your installed addons. The first time you do this all addons will be marked as needing update, as WUU doesn’t know what the current version is
• Addon -> Update to latest (or press Cntrl U). This is where the action is - WUU will go away and update all your addons

For the faint of heart, there are instructions on how to do this safely without overwriting your addons, which are worth a read. Please note, all applicable disclaimers apply. At the very least, please take a backup of your interface\addons folder before using the tool!

Once you have updated, there will be some addons highlighted in pink, which WUU can’t determine the source of. You can right click on these and manually set the site ID (after checking it at the source site). For example, Curse addons all have a URL of the form “number/addonname” and this bit is used for the site id, and WoW-ace addons use the addon name as used in the wowace URL - case sensitive.

Setting the site ID for a Curse addon

Check the source from the URL at the source site and then right-click in WUU and update in the Site ID section so that it can now update correctly. There are further details on this in the WUU manual addon setup section

If these instructions make no sense, or for an alternate view, check out the WOW Insider WOW UI Updater article. Also any questions or problems, give me a shout in-game, or post in the comments and I’ll try and help.

A trial Karazhan run is on the cards for this weekend, intended as a ‘fun run’.. The plan is to get in the door, take a look around, likely die a few times, but to have fun and keep things informal and relaxed if we can.

We’re thinking of this Friday or Saturday at 8pm (maybe 7) UK time (9pm and 8pm server time respectively). To sign-up, please post on the sign-up thread, contact Railor in-game or signup to the GEM event once created. Also please make clear if there’s only one of the two nights that you will be available.

Please note that GEM should be updated to version 2.27 or higher, as there have been problems with earlier versions after Blizzard made changes.

Also it’s worth checking out the previous posts on Karazhan planning (including raiding addons) and Minimum stats for Karazhan along with any other class specific resources you can find. Also please try to bring consumables - food, water, bandages, health pots, mana pots etc as appropriate to help things run that little bit more smoothly.

I’ve been reading the World of Warcraft Blog by WoWGrrl. She has plenty of interesting articles covering things as varied from helping your tank maintain aggro to fishing. The article that grabbed my attention was this one about keeping your account secure from the world full of nasty people who want it.

This article is gives good advice that should be followed to protect your important data even if you don’t have a WoW account. The only part I wouldn’t necessarily agree with is the use of Firefox (I run Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera browsers). Although there are security holes in Internet Explorer, Mozilla isn’t completely without its vulnerabilities either. Opera claims to be the most secure browser, but no browser guarantees you complete safety.

Have fun, but keep safe.

Multi-mob tanking is an essential skill for effective tanking, acting as crowd control for 2 or 3 mobs and stopping them from squishing the clothies! It also seems to be topical, as there are a couple of recent excellent blog posts on the subject.

Karthis at Teeth and Claws (who I’ve linked twice now and I really need to add them to the blog-roll) has a post about multi-tanking macros for feral druids.

Meanwhile, Tank Hard has tips for warriors tanking 2 or 3 mobs in his primer for multi-tanking for Warriors

Minimum stat requirements for Karazhan were briefly mentioned in last week’s post on Kara Planning, along with an exhortion to check on google for useful information. The idea is that these can then be used as targets when gearing up.

World of Matticus has already put together some starting figures in the Minimum Class Stat Requirements For Karazhan post. This saves much googling for the Lords, so I’ve taken the liberty of re-summarising most of it below for convenience, but please check out Matticus’s blog too; it’s very good Also you may notice I’ve learnt how to spell Karazhan since the previous posts, so Kara is no more

The figures are as Matticus says absolute minimums, so if you can go above, then all the better. Also if people have any updates to these or any more ‘gearing up’ guides, let me know in the comments and I’ll update it.

For lists of suggested pre-Karazhan gear that can be used to help meet these minimum stats, please see the Gearing your level 70 for Karazhan post

• Warrior
  • Tank: 12000 Armor, 12000 hp, 490 defence, 15-30% Dodge/Parry
  • DPS: 1700 AP, 70 hit, 33% crit
• Druid
  • Tank: 415 defence with 3/3 Survival of the Fittest, 12000 hp, 30% Dodge, 20k armor
  • DPS: 600 dmg, 15% crit (caster form), 75 mp/5, 75 hit
  • Healer: +1000 heals, 100 mp/5
• Rogue
  • 1300 - 1400 AP, 90 hit, 20% crit
• Priest
  • Healer: 6000+ health, 7500 mana, +1000 healing, 100 mp5
  • DPS: 6000 mana, +650 dmg, + 3-5% hit
• Hunter
  • Beast Mastery: 8000 hp, 6000 mana, 1450 AP, 17.5% crit, 75 hit
  • Marksman: 8000 hp, 6000 mana, 1750 AP, 17.5% crit, 75 hit
• Shaman
  • Resto: 950 - 1000 heals, 110 mp/5, 10% crit
  • Elemental: +500 dmg, 20% crit
  • Enhancement: 1000 - 1200 AP, 20% crit, 8% hit
• Mage
  • +600 dmg, 90 hit, 25% crit, 6000 hp and 7000 mana
• Paladin
  • Tank: 102.5% Total avoidance (dodge/parry/block), 490 defence, 10500 hp, +100-150 dmg
  • Healer: 1000-1200 heals, 80-100 mp/5, 8000-9000 mana, 15-20% holy crit
  • DPS: 1300 AP, 25% spell crit, 7000-8000 HP, >6% hit (in addition to Precision)
• Warlock
  • Affliction: 7000 hp, 6000 mana, +600 dmg, 90 hit
  • Destro/Demon: 7000 hp, 6000 mana, +600 dmg, 90 hit, 20% crit

V’Ming Chew has an interesting article on building an arena team at WoW-Insider.

He focuses on class composition, particularly examining the class representation of the most successful arena teams and also a breakdown of four traits needed to be competitive in arena: damage, heals, control and durability. In 2v2 particularly, durability is important (so Wise & I setting up a 2v2 mage / priest team might not be the best plan ). He then examines the group compositions of 3v3 and 5v5 teams. Well worth a read for arena fans, especially as it has pretty pictures

The Lords of Nordrassil ran riot around Outlands last night. Firstly Terrok was taken down for Ragnesis and several others, followed by a Fel Reaver for Jemma and Konstorion.

Finally after a bit of PVP inaction in Hellfire (the horde were hiding), several Lords headed back to Azeroth to take an initial sightseeing tour of Karazhan. It was a good exercise despite not being a full group and fun for all involved. More people are keen to get attuned though, so I thought I’d include the full steps (reposted from WoW-Wiki) for this attunement to help people (including me ) with completing this.

• Arcane Disturbances: Deadwind Pass; standard soloable exploration quest
• Restless Activity: Deadwind Pass; standard soloable kill quest, can be done at the same time as above
• Contact from Dalaran: Dalaran; talk to NPC
• Khadgar: Talk with Khadgar in Shattrath City
• Entry Into Karazhan: Dungeon; first key part to be found in the Shadow Labyrinth, Auchindoun
• The Second and Third Fragments: Two dungeons; the second key part is found in The Steamvault and the third key part is found in Arcatraz
• Escape from Durnholde Keep: Dungeon; Pre-requisite for Black Morass:
• The Master’s Touch: Dungeon; Talk with Medivh in the Opening the Dark Portal (Black Morass) instance in Caverns of Time. He’ll give you his own key.
• Return to Khadgar: Soloable; just return to Khadgar

Patch 2.3 is scheduled for next week (Wed 12th Nov for Europe) according to Drysc at the Wow Forums. So what’s the big fuss about, other than all the addons that I just asked you to install stopping working?

Here’s a quick summary of what 2.3 promises:

• Faster levelling from 20-60 and a new quest hub in dustwallow
• Alterac Valley reworked to stop the rush tactics
• Zul’Aman - a new 10 man raid instance to do once we’ve pwned Kara
• Heroic dungeons can be entered with honoured rep (rather than revered)
• New flight points e.g. Rebel Camp in Stranglethorn to help make that STV grind easier
• ‘Old-world’ instance loot buffed
• Elite mobs outside of pre-Burning Crusade dungeons have been changed to non-elite
• Healing items now grant 1/3 spell damage too

Full details are on the test realm patch notes; final confirmed details as we get them