Recommended Posts

3.1 isn't out yet. It's still in the works. The latest version is 3.0.9.

You should be able to get the latest patches, but you just won't be able to access any WotLK content until you buy the expansion.

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.x...;n=Touchymcfeel - Isn't that your priest Evn? Believe that's the name that was on the statue you posted a picutre of.

Addon request:

An addon that annoucnes when you get a buff or something. For example when I get Bloodsurge (Slam is instant cast), it'll announce in the middle of my screen or something, same thing would apply to Sword and Board (free SS). Anyone understand what I'm saying and if so any addons?

There are definitely mods like that. I think Mike's Scrolling Battle Text does it. I'm not quite sure exactly because I have too many addons, but there are definitely some that do this. Give the WoW Curse website a look.

@gigapixels:

Howling Blast is now the Frost 51 point talent. Bonus frost damage has been reduced. Another Frost talent was moved. Gargoyle was also moved to a 51 point talent. Pretty much 32/39 and variants are completely dead. It seems Blizzard is pigeonholing DK into using cookie cutter builds like all other classes suffer from.

If you use something like SCT, you can set up custom events and make certain things like that appear exactly when and where you want it.

Mine always tells me when I have Howling Blast (well, not anymore, since I switched back to DPS with an Unholy build) or Rune Strike available.

There are definitely mods like that. I think Mike's Scrolling Battle Text does it. I'm not quite sure exactly because I have too many addons, but there are definitely some that do this. Give the WoW Curse website a look.

@gigapixels:

Howling Blast is now the Frost 51 point talent. Bonus frost damage has been reduced. Another Frost talent was moved. Gargoyle was also moved to a 51 point talent. Pretty much 32/39 and variants are completely dead. It seems Blizzard is pigeonholing DK into using cookie cutter builds like all other classes suffer from.

Well I've been doing an almost complete Unholy build (with the exception of enough points to get Nerves of Cold Steel and a couple leftover points in Subversion). Would my DPS be affected much?

As much as I'm looking forward to 3.1, I love my DW and I really don't want to have to give it up.

Any idea on how much it has been affected?

Hmm... Nope not really. 45/26 I think it is might not get affected much either. But, the two proc on hit talents in unholy are getting nerfed too. Main hand only and changed to procs per minute.

i never said that i was going to do ulduar in lvl 70 pvp gear i just said that is all i have at the moment i intend on replaceing it with heroic gear or what not before i tread into ulduar im not stupid.

App'd to a 25 man guild actually wanting a prot warrior. Invited me to guild and I was whisked away to do Malygos. First time ever seeing Phase 3, and **** those drakes.

Gotta love gimmicky vehicle battles... Gotta pray half the raids UI isn't screwed up so the abilities actually work.

Anyone got any tips for sarth3d as 10man im told its harder than 25man. Weve done 25man Sarth few times now so im just wondering how you guys have found it. Seens how we got a few folk in s3d guilds :)

A few pages back Spookie was kind enough to give some info on how he and his guild accomplished it.

Post

I finally got around to taking a few more slightly updated screen shots of my UI.

I've gone for a strict minimalistic feel with most things either hiding or showing themselves whenever I am in combat and other such triggers.

It also makes heavy use of macros especially along the bars in the bottom panel of the screen. I have created macros that will cast both Arcane Intellitect and Arcane Brilliance if i left or right click. A mana stone button that will either use a mana stone on left click and conjure a new one on right click. An armor button that will cast Molten Armor on left click, Ice Armor on right click and Mage Armor on alt left click. And an eat/conjure/table button that will eat some food on left click, conjure a stack on right click and cast a table on alt + left click. All of the teleport buttons along the bottom left will teleport me on left click and create a portal on right click.

Since these screenshots were taking i have moved the money line over to the right with the durability line and centered the stat line in the middle above the center bar.

All of my buffs are shown up next to the minimap and debuffs are shown next to my unit frames. I also have it set so the raid frames and party frames will be highlighted with a purple border when affected by a curse, which works well in addition to Decursive.

I also have the quest tracker over on the top left, there is also an auto-hide fubar panel on the top right which mostly deals with PVP related things, like BG scores, honor scores and BG Queues.

Recount and Omen only show themselves when in a party/raid and in the case of omen only when in combat

Images:

http://i43.tinypic.com/14448et.jpg

http://i41.tinypic.com/mb70nn.jpg

http://i40.tinypic.com/2i8akl.jpg

http://i43.tinypic.com/2ex1mz4.jpg

http://i41.tinypic.com/261evjs.jpg

Finally got WOTLK. I bought my flyer yesterday, get to Northrend today, can't use it. Sweet. Seriously is flying that much of an advantage Blizzard doesn't allow it til 77?

They want you to enjoy the scenery and **** first. It's really not a pain as all the zones you will be leveling in are built for ground mounts.

@Adam - I totally want to get on the PTR but the lag of the few times I attempted it, have told me not to.

Last night my guild got down Heroic Obsidian Sanctum with 2 drakes up (Tenebron and Shadron) with yours truly main tanking Sartharion. I must say it was very fun to tank Sarth as a DK - maintaining all my cooldowns and communicating to the healers when I had no cooldowns available for a breath. Very fun indeed. My tanking gear is not up to par with rest of the guild due to the fact that it's not my main spec. I'll be in need of a few more Heroic Naxx pieces before going for 3 drakes. If I remember correctly Vesperon is the drake which lowers health by 25% and I need more gear/health to compensate at the moment. All in all its one awesome fight.

I finally got around to taking a few more slightly updated screen shots of my UI.

I've gone for a strict minimalistic feel with most things either hiding or showing themselves whenever I am in combat and other such triggers.

It also makes heavy use of macros especially along the bars in the bottom panel of the screen. I have created macros that will cast both Arcane Intellitect and Arcane Brilliance if i left or right click. A mana stone button that will either use a mana stone on left click and conjure a new one on right click. An armor button that will cast Molten Armor on left click, Ice Armor on right click and Mage Armor on alt left click. And an eat/conjure/table button that will eat some food on left click, conjure a stack on right click and cast a table on alt + left click. All of the teleport buttons along the bottom left will teleport me on left click and create a portal on right click.

Since these screenshots were taking i have moved the money line over to the right with the durability line and centered the stat line in the middle above the center bar.

All of my buffs are shown up next to the minimap and debuffs are shown next to my unit frames. I also have it set so the raid frames and party frames will be highlighted with a purple border when affected by a curse, which works well in addition to Decursive.

I also have the quest tracker over on the top left, there is also an auto-hide fubar panel on the top right which mostly deals with PVP related things, like BG scores, honor scores and BG Queues.

Recount and Omen only show themselves when in a party/raid and in the case of omen only when in combat

Images:

http://i43.tinypic.com/14448et.jpg

http://i41.tinypic.com/mb70nn.jpg

http://i40.tinypic.com/2i8akl.jpg

http://i43.tinypic.com/2ex1mz4.jpg

http://i41.tinypic.com/261evjs.jpg

looks good but the full screen glow effect sucks :/

Last night my guild got down Heroic Obsidian Sanctum with 2 drakes up (Tenebron and Shadron) with yours truly main tanking Sartharion. I must say it was very fun to tank Sarth as a DK - maintaining all my cooldowns and communicating to the healers when I had no cooldowns available for a breath. Very fun indeed. My tanking gear is not up to par with rest of the guild due to the fact that it's not my main spec. I'll be in need of a few more Heroic Naxx pieces before going for 3 drakes. If I remember correctly Vesperon is the drake which lowers health by 25% and I need more gear/health to compensate at the moment. All in all its one awesome fight.

I did also, except we left Tenebron and Vesperon up. I think next week we may do Tenebron and Shadron to see how DPS does in burning Tenebron down before Shadron comes down, and start working on a CD rotation for the Sar tank.

I did also, except we left Tenebron and Vesperon up. I think next week we may do Tenebron and Shadron to see how DPS does in burning Tenebron down before Shadron comes down, and start working on a CD rotation for the Sar tank.

Leaving Tenebron and Vesperon makes the most sense - giving the most time between drakes. We were trying that for a while. Then we singled out Vesperon as being the real show stopper. With Vesperon's aura where everyone is basically killing themselves it seemed to be the harder combination for our raid. We even had a hard time downing OS with only Vesperon up. When Vesperon comes down was Tenebron way past dead at that point and you merely cleaning up adds until he dropped?

Leaving Tenebron and Vesperon makes the most sense - giving the most time between drakes. We were trying that for a while. Then we singled out Vesperon as being the real show stopper. With Vesperon's aura where everyone is basically killing themselves it seemed to be the harder combination for our raid. We even had a hard time downing OS with only Vesperon up. When Vesperon comes down was Tenebron way past dead at that point and you merely cleaning up adds until he dropped?

Killed Tenebron about 10 second after heroism faded (probally need to be faster for 3D), then we would have roughly 20 seconds or so to AOE all the elementals and whelps up. By the time they were all dead, I would charge to Sar and keep Demo/TC up to help with the increased melee damage, the add tank (pally) would continue to pick up any elementals while the 4th tank (all we had on for a 25th) would pick up the other drake. After that everytime a portal went up myself, all meleee, and one holy pally would go in and take out the disiple who would only take about 10 seconds to kill, sometimes 15.

After that it was bursts of damage on Vesperon, and about every third portal, instead of melee booking it to Vesperon they would kill of some adds on the add tank to lower his incoming damage. I'm sure it's far from perfect and we would need a fair amount of work to be able to do 3D but we managed.

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Posts

    • Nope. That lack of surround sound capability (analog) won't fly with me. Sure, I use headphones most of the time, but still.
    • Creative Sound Blaster AE-X PCIe review: your headphones will love it by Steven Parker If you have been reading Neowin for any length of time, you may remember that I reviewed the Sound Blaster Audigy FX Pro back in April. I found it to be an excellent budget sound card, even though it lacked support for formats such as DTS over the included SPDIF port. Anyway, Creative reached out to me again asking if I was interested in reviewing the Sound Blaster AE-X. It is a card mainly targeted at headphone wearers, which I'll get into a bit later. Before we get underway, here is a disclaimer: Creative Labs provided a free sample without any review pre-approval. Here are the full specs of it: Creative Sound Blaster AE-X Dimensions: 179 x 126 x 18 mm Weight: 263g / 9.28 oz Platform: PCI-e DAC: ESS ES9039Q2M Connectivity Options Side: Rear: 1 x HD Audio Front Panel Connector, 1 x ⅛“ Headphone port, 1 x RCA Line-out (Left) port, 1 x RCA Line-out (Right) port, 1 x Coaxial SPDIF-out port, 1 x ⅛“ Mic in/Line-in port, 1 x TOSLINK SPDIF-in port Surround: No DNR / SNR: THD+N: 0.0001% Dynamic Range 130 dB Recording Resolution: PCM up to 32-bit / 192kHz (Stereo) Direct Mode: Line Out (Stereo): PCM up to 32-bit  384 kHz Coaxial SPDIF Out: PCM up to 24-bit 192.0 kHz Headphone Amp: PCM up to 32-bit / 384kHz (Stereo) Native DSD: DSD64, DSD128, DSD256 Output Impedance: 1Ω, Supported Headphone Impedance: 8–600Ω, IEM: 0.5Vrms, Low: 1.5Vrms, Mid: 3Vrms, High: 6Vrms, Maximum output power: 350mW @ 32Ω (High), Maximum output voltage: 6Vrms (High) Front Panel Headphone Amp: PCM up to 32-bit / 192kHz (Stereo) Native DSD: DSD64, DSD128 Output Impedance: 10Ω, Supported Headphone Impedance: 32–300Ω, Maximum output power: 40mW @ 32Ω, Maximum output voltage: 1.9Vrms ASIO: ASIO 2.3 Total Harmonic Distortion: THD+N: 0.0006% Dynamic Range: 114 dB Scout Mode: Yes EMI shielding: No (but it passed all the FCC emission tests) Operating temperature: 0–45°C Input Power: 12V⎓0.5A Warranty: 1 Year (MSRP) Price: $179.99 / £169.99 The Sound Blaster AE-X was announced at the end of May, and it becomes clear that it is mainly for headphone wearers. I should also note that the card does not support DDL/DTS encoding technology, but it is said to support decoding through the coaxial SPDIF port. I was able to test this working with the classic Windows Sound properties, but I could not get a DTS (decode) signal through my Logitech Z906, it defaulted to 3D sound whenever I played DTS content through Plex or Emby. In addition, this card only supports two channels (stereo) over the speakers. The surround support is limited to the Headphone Amp, so before I get underway, what we have here is a card mostly intended for headphone use, especially with its SPDIF In (Toslink) port where you could connect another device like a console. So what about the highlights of this card? The AE-X is powered by the ESS SABRE DAC (ES9039Q2M), which is capable of a 130 dB dynamic range. In addition, it supports 32-bit/384 kHz playback for deeper detail and clarity. The headphone amplifier delivers up to 350 mW @ 32Ω, which admittedly far surpasses standard onboard audio, offering support for studio-grade headphones. DSD256 and ASIO 2.3 are also supported. What doesn't it have? No support for What-U-Hear, Super X-Fi, or the SmartComms Kit No EMI shielding, but it passed all the FCC emission tests (from the FAQ) I also want to make it clear that I am no audiophile. For me, it's purely subjective and it should just "work" out of the box. First impressions As I said in the introduction, I was a bit sad to see that the AE-X only supports stereo output, meaning it would not be on par with my ALC1220 over my speakers, as I mentioned it seems like this card is marketed toward headphone users. Since I am not an avid gamer that would rule me out as a potential customer, but I can still test its capabilities! The card arrived in a nice-looking box, as shown above. It's quite a bit larger than the Audify FX Pro that I reviewed back in April, and at first I thought the covering meant that it was EMI shielded, but it isn't as mentioned above in the highlights section. What's in the box: 1 x Sound Blaster AE-X PCIe card 1 x 3.5 mm CTIA TRRS to Dual TRS Headset Splitter Cable 1 x Quick Start Guide Aside from the Quick Start Guide, which someone at my age (I guess) needs a magnifying glass to read thanks to the tiny fonts, Creative Labs also has the manual online, which first requires you to prove that you're human in order to access it (so I can't direct link it). Anyway, the box is mostly made up of cardboard, and the only plastic in it is the anti-static bag for the card itself. Design Top Bottom The card itself looks pretty cool and actually wouldn't look out of place in an all-white build. There's only one connector, and for some reason it is awkwardly placed on the side (front-facing) that is for the front panel audio connector, which will let you use the headphones through the front PC audio jack. Since the front panel Headphone Amp has fewer capabilities than the rear headphone port, I decided not to use it. Rear of card PCI-e interface The rear of the card is completely open and is normally where you would find the front panel connector. The PCIe interface side is completely covered, which initially made me think it was EMI shielded. I/O panel Side (front-facing) with Front panel connector On the outer rear bracket side we have the TOSLINK SPDIF in, Coaxial SPDIF out, RCA line out (Right), RCA line out (Left), Headphone out, and Mic/Line in ports. On the front facing portion of the card itself is the F-panel connector. Usage Test System Our test system consists of the following: AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D Gigabyte X870E AORUS MASTER (BIOS F12) Corsair RM1000x (2024) Thermal Grizzly Kyronaut (33x33x0,2mm) 2x 32GB Kingston Fury Beast RGB DDR5 6000MT/s CL36-38-38-80 T-Force Z540 2TB (PCIe Gen5) NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition (NVIDIA) Creative Sound Blaster AE-X Windows 11 25H2 Pro I installed the card into the Gigabyte X870E AORUS MASTER which includes the RealTek ALC1220 onboard audio. For our subjective listening tests, I used the Coaxial SPDIF port to my Logitech Z906 speakers. For headphone tests I used the OneOdio Studio Max 2 Wireless DJ Headphones that I reviewed last month. After installing the audio driver, I installed Creative Nexus, which is a relatively new app designed for the latest Sound Blaster cards. Then I discovered the AE-X needed both a driver update from 1.00.15.0001 to 1.01.09.000 and a firmware update from 1.00.06.0000 to 1.00.06.0002, then I was set to go. It should be noted that the card did not work without the driver (not Plug and Play). As you can see above, you can manage the firmware, driver, and inputs via Advanced Settings on the Device tab. By default Nexus enabled "Direct Mode". Upon clicking on Acoustic Engine, the Equalizer can be enabled and set to four different presets, which are: Gaming Music Movies Footsteps Enhancer There's also a dedicated Scout Mode for gamers. I mainly used Tidal and Spotify in the past week to listen to some of my Liked Songs (which now total over 700) in Shuffle mode; there were no pops or interference that I could hear. I also found a 5.1 Surround Music playlist on Tidal that sounded really great over Studio Max 2 headphones. When I reviewed the Audigy FX Pro, I went out and purchased a Logitech Z906 set second-hand for €100 specifically to use with the card, but in this instance all I could get on the AE-X was the 3D output of surround sound through Coaxial SPDIF and although it still sounded great, it isn't quite as good as DTS Interactive via my onboard Realtek ALC1220. Conclusion So what have I learned? The AE-X lacks multi-channel support for 5.1/7.1 setups and drops support for modern surround technologies like Dolby or DTS, functioning strictly as a stereo output device. So to really benefit, you will need Studio-grade headphones to "hear" the benefits of this card. With that being said, I can imagine it will appeal to gamers who are switching between console and PC. By utilizing the SPDIF in port, you could just plug your headphones into the AE-X (front or rear port) and then switch between PC and Console without having to move the headphones to a different port. As I said in the Sound Blaster Audigy review, the EQ in the Creative Nexus app offers safe presets, which allows a user to further tweak the lows, mids, and highs for a personal listening experience. Of course it all depends on the headphones you hook up to it. Speaking of headphones, I kind of wish I had higher-quality Studio-grade headphones to really test this card with; I'm not usually wearing headphones in my day to day duties. The only time I will wear them is if I want to listen to music very late at night and I don't want to disturb my neighbors, so my rating (verdict) is based on this fact. Someone with a PC/Console setup and wears headphone religiously to game, and consume media will benefit much more than I from the high-quality Headphone Amps that are included in the AE-X. Once again, I do feel like Creative could have gone the extra mile to support the S/PDIF port a bit more. Why include it if you're not supporting the main popular digital formats? It seems like the decision was more of a legacy-based one, offering uncompressed 2-channel PCM audio, for users with high-fidelity audio systems and external DACs. Maybe I will be lucky enough to review a card that truly includes all these features in the future. I am sure readers with far more knowledge on audio systems than me will correct me in the comments below. I'll just say I am happy to learn what I don't know! Where to buy The Sound Blaster AE-X is available to purchase now in preorder for $179.99 on the U.S. Creative website, or for £169.99 on the Creative UK website and will start shipping to customers from June 25.
    • $80 or 90%, anything else would be financial suicide one way or another.
    • Or... just use Bitwarden. Free, and has on-prem option as well. Works both on desktop and mobile, wherever you are. The age of local password files is over.
    • Thanks
  • Recent Achievements

    • Week One Done
      Supreme Spray LV earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • One Month Later
      Genuinetonerink- Dubai earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • Week One Done
      Genuinetonerink- Dubai earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • One Year In
      hhgygy earned a badge
      One Year In
    • Week One Done
      AMV earned a badge
      Week One Done
  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      513
    2. 2
      +Edouard
      164
    3. 3
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      88
    4. 4
      Steven P.
      74
    5. 5
      Michael Scrip
      73
  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!