Yeah, yeah, I know. Cats and dogs, living together, mass hysteria.
I’m playing my Retribution Paladin alt, having fun, soloing in Borean Tundra lately.
Along the way, I came across something that I did not know, got irritated, figured out a quick solution, and then had the thought, “Maybe somewhere out there is another noob Ret Pally like me, and they could use this too.”
The situation?
The Retribution Paladin Talent “The Art of War”, when 2/2, increases the damage of your Judgement, Crusader Strike and Divine Storm abilities by 10% and when these abilities critically hit your next Flash of Light spell becomes instant cast.
Nice, right? Insta-cast self heal in the middle of a scrum, no interruptions.
On my interface, when one of these three activities crits, a little buff icon (with timer since I have the buff timer activated under Inerface Options) pops up showing The Art of War is active for 14 seconds, and of course during that 14 seconds, any single Flash of Light cast is instant, and consumes the buff.
The problem?
Fine and dandy, but on my interface, the only way to tell it’s live is by actively looking at my buff section, and trying to see if it’s popped up or not.
When you’ve got Replenishment popping up and down, auras for various trinkets going off and on, and, oh, I dunno… you’re in a stressful situation where you might actually NEED an instant cast Flash of Light, I personally find it a pain to try and keep an eye on the buff section and see if I can recognize The Art of War active up there before I take time to click the heal.
My solution?
Well, I use Scrolling Combat Text, have for years, and I love it dearly. It already has the functionality built in to display messages. It’s what it’s for.
It has, by default, many of the special moves various classes use already built in and active, and when a buff goes live or a special ability becomes active, it pops up a message letting you know it’s time to activate it.
The Art of War, for some reason, is not one of the defaults built in.
So, you can do what I did, and create a custom event to make The Art of War display.
Here’s how.
First, a simple screenshot of the settings I used in Scrolling Combat Text “Custom Events” to make it work.
And now, as I promised…
Film at eleven!
Have you looked at powerauras instead dude?
LikeLike
You know, I’ve never seen this as a problem, but then again, during my leveling I didn’t use Quartz, so it was pretty clear. Plus, with my min-maxing of better crit for worse stam, I could depend on Art of War constantly being up. Although on a PVP server, that particular min-maxing was probably not a good idea. >.>
LikeLike
Bang art of war is a great mod for telling you when certain procs are up
LikeLike
Talon,
There are some really good resources for Ret Pallies out there. Ferraro’s blog is awesome. She has several “How-To’s” for ret (including leveling) and they’re pretty darn funny.
http://ferarro.blogspot.com/
Also, http://www.retpaladin.com has quite a bit, but it seems to be more focused on high end raiding paladins.
LikeLike
For the love of the Holy, switch from ret to prot for levelling.
You are insane for single targetting.
Protadins can take 10-15 mobs at a time and consecrate them all down. you’ll zip through it plus be able to tank in noobstances!
LikeLike
I have to agree with Xabbott. I would *highly* recomend you try out MikScrollingBattleText from Curse. It was recommended to me by a friend and I absolutely love it.
It’s also extremely handy for combo points for both rogue and cat form and it’s the best addon I’ve found for Riposte. It’s easily customizable and I have mine set up to say “Finish Him” from Mortal Kombat so I don’t even have to watch for combo points, which is a big deal on raids where you have a lot going on.
Load it up, set Art of War to large font and use the following macro (I keep mine next to my Crusader Strike for ease of use).
/target YOURNAME
/cast Flash of Light
/targetlastenemy
There’s a fancier macro I use but this one works fine.
LikeLike
I would love Power Auras Classic if I didn’t have to manually set it up for every buff for every character, and if I could actually figure out how to get it to do what I want it to. Seeing as how my experience with PAC has been terribad, I went and found Nao. It shows a (potentially very) large icon on your screen. You can move it, change the size, and set the direction that these proc icons stack when you have more than one. It already knows most procs that require some action on your part for (almost) all classes. Check it out!
LikeLike
Be advised that casting your instant Flash of Light will reset your swing timer and result in a non trivial amount of lost DPS.
LikeLike
Coming late to the show, But it’s funny. I have a post like this one all lined up to show how I used Power Auras to do the exact same thing for The Art of War. Maybe I’ll have to push it to the beginning of the queue.
LikeLike
Take your time no rush, I know you like to get extensive with you explanations But really it’s no rush i was just wondering cause even though me and my wife have leveled up atleast 1 of every character to 70 ( 25 total) I srsly Have no clue how to play a ret pally. Wierd eh?
LikeLike
Talon, I seriously doubt I’m the one to go to for DPS advice on Ret Pallies. 🙂
I’ll put something together when I get home, okay?
LikeLike
Xabbott, that’s funny. I used to use Mik’s SBT, and just remembered that.
I think I know what happened. When I changed computers, I wrote down a list of what I had, and just put SCT. When I reinstalled the Curse Installer, I just searched for each addon by name, and put in the old SCT, which is still an option.
Thanks a lot for pointing that out, I appreciate that!
LikeLike
Hey BBB, I was wondering, my wife is leveling up a ret pally, any DPS tips, Comments you could Make off your experiances that might help her. ( she is 74 still levelin also)
LikeLike
In my opinion Power Auras Classic is a much better solution to this kind of problem.
LikeLike
I agree, PowerAuras is ideal for those talent procs. I don’t play a Ret Pally, but I do have a Frost Mage and a Balance Druid. I use Mik’s Scrolling Combat Text, but even with that, I miss procs of Brain Freeze and Eclipse. So I get Power Auras to place an aura around me as soon as those procs happen so I can adjust my rotation to make maximum use of them. Check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neW33NDt-es to see how I use Power Auras on my Hunter main, and Balance Druid and Death Knight alts.
LikeLike
Or use something that isn’t discontinued. MikScrollingBattleText http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/mik-scrolling-battle-text.aspx
Yes, Art of War is already built into it. You will need to add more and more of these events to SCT since the author quit to play WAR. SCT is an active WAR addon.
LikeLike
oh and I should figure out how to set sct-messages to just be on one character – my priest really doesn’t need to know when Battle Shout falls off…
LikeLike
Oh I really should get my gear together and set up a SCT-message for Lock ‘n’ Load…. and I should play my pally more 🙂
LikeLike
Or you could just use TellMeWhen Does this and nothing else… 😉
LikeLike
And you can in fact add sound to the SCT events too, if that is why you like the PowerAuras, fyi.
LikeLike
Thanks, but I don’t like Power Auras.
LikeLike
Yep, Power Auras Classic. You can make it so something pops up and a sound plays when a certain buff becomes active.
LikeLike
Nevermind, I figured out what I’ve been doing wrong. It is working fine now.
LikeLike
Which addon is that one? I have the Scrolling Combat Text, but it seemed to stop working some time ago.
LikeLike
Have you looked into powerauras instead? IMO a way better option for exactly these kinds of things..
LikeLike
Good solution BBB!
Lots of classes have these annoying little procs now-a-days, and keeping track of them can be a pain. My alternative answer was to configure Elkano’s Buff Bars to send a specific list of buffs to a seperate display section, which I have centered just above my character, the advantage being I can see the time remaining on them as well. Druids don’t have a lot of good examples, but I know I find it a lifesaver on my Arms warrior. It lets me keep track of annoying short term buffs like Battle Shout as well as the three different random procs I might want to use at any given moment, and prioritize which I use first so I don’t waste any of them. My wife’s Mage also loves this feature for things like Missle Barrage.
LikeLike