Background

For the past two years I’ve spent my time in World of Warcraft behind the proverbial steering wheel of an orc warlock. I did the raiding thing pre-Burning Crusade, but got burned out a few months before Burning Crusade came out. Around six months after BC launched I did what every other Horde player did on a PvP server, and rolled a blood elf paladin. I got him to level 25 or so and left him sitting there for the next year while school and work kept me away from spending any significant time in WoW. About three weeks ago I got tired of never being able to find a healer and decided to level up the old pally. I leveled with a standard protection spec after level 40, and kept that spec until 3.0.2 came out, upon which I respecced to retribution to try out this wonderfully ‘OP’ spec I’d been hearing everyone complain about.

Two days ago I dinged 70. The next day 3.0.3 rolled out the promised nerfs to our wonderfully over-powered retribution tree. Not to be discouraged, I equipped my Blessed Battlegear of Undead Slaying and a nice axe I picked up from Kara a few hours after I dinged and set out to learn all I could from my helpful guild mates about my class and spec. Here’s a few helpful tips I learned that can boost you up the damage meters.

PvE Ret 101

1. ALWAYS DPS from behind. Learn it, live it, love it. Enemies can’t dodge/parry/block when you attack them from behind, so depending on the enemy you’ll go from missing 10% of the time to missing 1% of the time. I always thought this only applied to rogues, but I was wrong. Every melee class needs to do this.
2. Use Seal of Blood. I had been using Seal of Command while I was leveling, so I just kept on using it once I started running instances. Turns out SoB churns out a good 20 DPS more then SoC. Sure you take a little damage, but as long as you’re casting Judgement of Light and using Divine Storm you won’t even notice it.
3. Even after the nerf, Avenging Wrath still rocks the PvE house (it just takes one more minute to use it). Preferably use it when you’re dealing with a multiple mob pull, so as to not waste any of those 20 seconds of shiny winged glory.
4. Consecration. If you leveled as prot this was your best friend, and it still has utility in a DPS role. Generally speaking, if you’re dealing with two or more mobs that are level 68 or above it’s safe to drop a consecrate at the beginning of a fight. Recast once if there’s 3 mobs, and twice if there’s 4. Naturally, if you have a warlock or a mage lighting up the scene with AoE your fight may be significantly shortened, and you’ll have to adjust accordingly.

If you’ve played a melee class before chances a lot of this is old news to you, but if you’re like me and have been playing a caster all your life, these might just come in handy. After I started doing these things my DPS jumped up by around 100-150. The paladins that were coaching me had seen a 200 DPS jump just by switching to SoB and starting to melee from behind. Granted, that doesn’t take hit rating and other factors into account, but it’s a good representation of how much a couple simple changes to improve your DPS.

As I dig deeper into the numbers and theory of the class and spec I’ll continue to post tips like these, so check back every once in a while. If you have specific questions regarding the class or spec, sound off in the comments.

To get things started, you’ll need a copy of iDeneb v1.3 10.5.5 which can be found on any number of torrent sites. While you’re waiting for it to download, or for the disc image to burn to a DVD, take a few moments to create a new partition under Windows Vista. Name it OSX, and format it as NTFS for the time being.

Step 1: Enter your BIOS and disable the on board audio, then exit saving changes. Next boot off the DVD, select your preferred language, then click Utilities on the menu bar. Open Disk Utility, on the left-hand side, select the partition you created under Windows, then on the right-hand side, click on the Erase tab. Click the drop down for Volume Format and select Mac OS Extended (Journaled), hit Erase. Confirm your choice to erase the volume. After it completes, close the Disk Utility.

Step 2: Back on the Installers welcome screen, click Continue, then blindly agree to the license terms that will popup.

Step 3: On the next screen, select the partition you just formatted as your install destination. Click Continue.

Step 4: You should now see an Install Summery screen, click Customize. Scroll down and expand the options for Patches 10.5.5 Ready, and select the following patches:

Fix -> ICHx Fix
Fix -> AppleSMBIOS -> AppleSMBIOS 667

Click Done, then Install.

Step 5: After the install completes, reboot and complete the Setup Wizard that loads.

These instructions only cover the basics at this point, since I haven’t had much time to mess around with drivers. I’ll be updating this post as soon as I get greater hardware support figured out.

The biggest annoyance right now is that you have to disable the on board audio every time you boot into OS X or else it won’t recognize the keyboard and mouse. Needless to say, working audio drivers are high on my priorities list.

Update: Here’s how to fix the video resolution.

Edit the com.apple.Boot.plist file located in /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist and add the following:

<key>Graphics Mode</key>
<string>1680x1050x32</string>

Open Disk Utility and Repair Permissions. Restart.

Please note, fixing the resolution will not enable QE or fix the calibration issue.

The following items work:

• Ethernet
• Memory Card Reader
• FireWire
• DVD Burner
• Webcam (works, but doesn’t function with some apps since the graphics card isn’t supported)
• Touch Screen (no way to calibrate, so it’s off by an inch or so)

The following items don’t work:

• Audio
• Wireless Card
• Bluetooth
• Video Card
• TV Tuner

Now to endure the hype, controversy, and childish infighting that embodies American politics.

Yay, democracy!

Here’s some proof.

I’ve also posted instructions if anyone’s interested in trying it out.

There is good news though! I was able to get the touchscreen working under the OS X installer with very little work at all. Which bodes well for the full install, if I can ever get it to boot that is.

So if anyone has any thoughts on the IOACPI issue, let me know.

The processor (2.4GHz) is the same core speed as my MacBook Pro was, and even though the graphics memory is shared I think I’ll be able to survive, since it is a newer graphics chipset. Oh, and I did purchase a 4GB RAM upgrade for it (obviously not from Apple), so that should further help to even the playing field.

I think I still have a copy of my GeekBench scores for my MacBook Pro, so we’ll see how the new MacBook stacks up in comparison.

Plus, the way I see it, getting the MacBook with its smaller screen gives me an excuse to buy a nice big monitor down the road!

Don’t panic though, just boot off your Live CD and open up a Terminal window.

Then execute these commands:

sudo grub

root (hd0,0)

setup (hd0)

Close out the Terminal and reboot, and you’re good to go! Just don’t forget to eject your Live CD. This should apply to any Linux distro that uses the Grub bootloader.

• Interest: $32.08
• Dividends: $38.50
• Credit Card Rewards: $143.30
• AdSense: $11.70
• Text Ads: $47.04
• Surveys: $3

Netting a sweet $275.62 for the month.

Here are my totals for each month since I started this project:
September 2008 - $248.56
August 2008 - $216.32
July 2008 - $186.93
June 2008 - $241.33
May 2008 - $169.40
April 2008 - $128.41
March 2008 - $185.82
February 2008 - $122.74
January 2008 - $96.06
December 2007 - $128.09
November 2007 - $88.56
October 2007 - $63.19

Anyhow, for the month of November we’re aiming to knock out at least one blog post a day, and yes, in case you’re wondering, this post does count as our one post for the day. We’re off to a great start!

Oh, and if anyone still reads this blog, we’d certainly like to hear from you, and suggestions for future topics will be rewarded with free PEZ.

It has been suggested though, that adding one of Alexa’s widgets to your site might improve your rank, as it supposedly allows Alexa to register visits based off the number of times the widget has been loaded by unique IPs as well as those visits from users with the Alexa Toolbar installed.

In order to test this out, I’m going to add a traffic rank widget to Hijinks, which currently has a rank of 1,698,556. And at the end of the week, we’ll see if our rank actually increases.