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We killed heroic Anne Frank tonight which is pretty damn amazing. We gave him a shot once when the sonars could bounce and gave up. The normal mode has been consistently our worst fight: we can one-shot chog'all/al'kir/nefarian, but a fight we eight-manned in greens/blues on our second pull kills us half a dozen times or more every week. Tonights hard-mode attempts took little more than an hour and gets us ranked top-50 US 10-man and puts us within sight of #20 US is within site (We've had some pretty good runs at Conclave of Wind so there's a chance we'll get it Monday).

Unlike the other fights we've done it doesn't feel like there's any RNG at all. If you died its' because you were bad and there's never a point where "stand there holding your dick for 60 seconds" is part of the strategy. I'm sure the nerf bat has gutted the fight since we last looked at it a month ago but it's still fun and generally pretty excellent..

Our next guild party is in Vegas a few weeks from now and I think that's lit a fire under their asses: nobody wants to get drunk and celebrate being the 'second best' guild on the server.

We killed heroic Anne Frank tonight which is pretty damn amazing. We gave him a shot once when the sonars could bounce and gave up. The normal mode has been consistently our worst fight: we can one-shot chog'all/al'kir/nefarian, but a fight we eight-manned in greens/blues on our second pull kills us half a dozen times or more every week. Tonights hard-mode attempts took little more than an hour and gets us ranked top-50 US 10-man and puts us within sight of #20 US is within site (We've had some pretty good runs at Conclave of Wind so there's a chance we'll get it Monday).

Unlike the other fights we've done it doesn't feel like there's any RNG at all. If you died its' because you were bad and there's never a point where "stand there holding your dick for 60 seconds" is part of the strategy. I'm sure the nerf bat has gutted the fight since we last looked at it a month ago but it's still fun and generally pretty excellent..

Our next guild party is in Vegas a few weeks from now and I think that's lit a fire under their asses: nobody wants to get drunk and celebrate being the 'second best' guild on the server.

I wish I had time to raid, I'm basically stuck, I have pretty much the best gear I can get pre-raid minus one or two heroic pieces which isn't worth the farming. Unfortunately due to real life time constraints I can't, and the guild I am in is very casual, I think only a few people in guild have as high a score as me so the guild doesn't raid.

Could someone give me a hand on talents/addons/playstyle with a priest? I've been playing Shadow since I made the char and the only time I did some healing was during TBC on which I payed the 1000G for dual spec so I could go disc. However since all these massive revamps to talents and such I don't know anymore on where to start.

There are two basic disc builds: with atonement and without.

With and without still have the same basic play style: you'll use penance, prayer of mending on cooldown, use shield=>penance=>greater heal for "oh crap" or flash heal burst healing, prayer of healing and binding heal to recover from group damage. They're both viable and it really comes down to a mater of personal choice in most cases.

The main difference is in "filler" abilities: what you do when you're just maintaining the group. With atonement you'll smite the mob which heals the lowest health member within 15 yards of the mob. The more you smite the harder you hit and heal for (up to a point). You'll keep your stacks of evangelism up by smiting in low damage phases and then use archangel to convert those stacks into increased healing and some mana when you need more burst healing. It works pretty well for raid content where there's a cycle between low healing required and "oh crap you're going to die" (which is most encounters).

Without atonement you'll cycle greater heal and shields as your filler spells instead. Healing reduces the cool down on weekend soul so you can shield a target more often. This tends to work better as a tank-healing spec where you're more focused on one person than half a raid. It's group healing isn't really any worse than atonement (you can just heal other people instead of smiting the mob) and the mana consumption is fairly similar.

This is the core disc build without atonement. With atonement you lose the cooldown on shadow fiend and drop the points in strength of will to pick up evangelism/archangel and atonement. Disc priests don't really have any 'flexible' points. You'll notice mine priest has a non-standard disc build: it's because I was smite spec'd for heroic wyrmbreaker they replaced him with a 372 token vendor.

Also currently I'm using TukUI which I'm quite happy with. I'll post a screenshot at the end of the post. Any other usefull addons recomded for healing?

The stock UI has gotten to the point that it's pretty passable for just about everything. I think something like power auras or SBF are really the only things that are lacking, the stock UI doesn't do enough to let you know when you need to react to a buff/debuff. For example it's not immediately obvious you're standing in black goo or have the flames debuff on maloriak (and hanging out there will kill you in short order). The stock UI presents this information but it's not really prioritized the way it should be.

While you can get buy with mouse over macros for healing, something like Clique is usually a nice addon. It lets you bind your mouse buttons to your common healing abilities to allow you to react faster than click target/push button style healing.

Boss mods (like deadly boss mods) will show you when creatures are going to do certain things and allow you to coordinate your cooldowns a little better. The stock system is okay (I cleared all of the normal mode raid content using it) but more information allows you to play better.

Grats on pet, but watch out, sounds like you're addicted.. Now that you got that pet it will be one more thing you need/want.. then one more then one more and soon enough 4 years have gone by

I'm not addicted, I'm just shocked and amazed.. the same day I hit 85 .. I get the pet I've been wanting since Cataclysm's launch, especially since he has a 12 hour respawn timer.. AND because he's a rare.. not to mention the fact 5 seconds after I tamed him.. a mage tried to swoop in and kill him. :happy:

I'm not addicted, I'm just shocked and amazed.. the same day I hit 85 .. I get the pet I've been wanting since Cataclysm's launch, especially since he has a 12 hour respawn timer.. AND because he's a rare.. not to mention the fact 5 seconds after I tamed him.. a mage tried to swoop in and kill him. :happy:

Sounds like you're addicted, to be honest.

Problem is every hunter in the game is getting that pet now. Both the hunters in my guild have him, along with most hunters who are in raiding guilds on my server.. So it makes his excitement not really mean so much anymore. Thats what sucks

I finally broke my addiction. I added an authenticator to my account, got 4 characters to lvl 85, finally one day snapped after having some little pos tell me I sucked at life cuz I was only doing 9k dps in a heroic, realized I had wasted 6 years of my life sitting infront of a computer for 8+ hours and NOT MAKING MONEY FROM IT. so I proceeded to sell everything I had on them, randomly give the gold away to strangers, deleted ALL of my characters and smashed the authenticator. Its been almost a month since this all happened and in that time I have realized that I really enjoy restoring old cars. DO I regret the time I spent on wow? Sometimes. But if I consider it a complete waste of time I may as well shoot myself. It ran its course with me, and to be honest I didnt really find cata that much fun.

How ya'll doing Heroic halfus? Can't decide whether to two tank it or three.

Two tanks, 3 healers - no cheesing spec required any more so just go with whatever you normally bring. Our tanks are swapping for MS debuffs but that's not any different from normal mode. You can kinda cheese that with paladins but it's not really necessary.

We let out storm, nether, and whelps on the pull. One tank grabs halfus, one lets out whelps, and then some DPS free the other two drakes and the tanks taunt and/or get tricks/misdirect to help them pick up all the adds. There'a big AOE orgy while people kill off the whelps and then get to work on nether. About 10 seconds into the fight I release time and people are expected to not take any raid damage apart from the breaths from that point on. You could let out time on the pull but we delay it a bit just so that everyone get get into position and so that the tanks have taunts up for the event that one misses. Once nether is dead we switch to storm and then finish off with time. All the dragons should be dead before phase 2, if they aren't you'll need to smack your DPS for tunneling on the wrong mobs (they do it all the time to pad meters). We usually blow bloodlust around 15 seconds in - it gives tanks some time to get vengeance and establish some threat and it helps your healers catch up -- their trinkets/pre-pots are active for the first 15 seconds so it's not so bad. The fight is most challenging during the first 45 seconds and then it gets dramatically easier as it goes on. Don't feel guilty about completely blowing everything you've got in the first minute or two.

I don't have a kill video post-nerf and the pre-nerf one is nothing like the current one so it wouldn't be very helpful. If you can get nef I have no doubt you'll be able to get your 372 tokens in short order.

I don't have a kill video post-nerf and the pre-nerf one is nothing like the current one so it wouldn't be very helpful. If you can get nef I have no doubt you'll be able to get your 372 tokens in short order.

We downed Cho'gall Monday. Hoping to finish off Al'akir this week (he's a pushover once you master P1, think we had an 8% wipe with just explaining **** on vent as we went along) and then start working on Nef. However we'd all like to see some more of Halfus. I think we got the DPS for the fight and we 2 healed Cho'Gall, so with the three normal healers I think we will be fine there and each tank is geared enough for it. Just gotta figure out the way it'll work for us.

After last nights rather rough attempts on heroic robot council (~50%) I've been asked to spread the word that we're looking for a competent holy paladin and hunter. 3 nights per week (Tuesday+wednesday then sundary/monday), roughly 8-11 PST give or take 30 minutes. Officially it's loot council but really it's "dibs with peer pressure" - none of us really give a damn about gear and prefer to pass than to roll (do some soul searching: if you roll on tiny upgrades you'll be miserable because attitudes will be incompatible).

Competent players with past "hard content" experience should give me a shout. It's a fairly small guild and reasonably close (ie: we share phone numbers and addresses, get together to party now-and-then, every raider has one-another on real id, etc) but if we're not on to raid there's probably not going to be many people on unless they're banging out a heroic daily or leveling an alt. Casual but progression minded, nobody yells or screams at failure but we're all capable of seeing who's screwing up - if you don't take well to pressure to perform well you're probably not going to be happy.

We've got a healthy mix of male/female raiders (60/40 split), most of us have completed an undergraduate - a handful of us are grad students/professional school types but I'd say 9-5 desk job is most common -- younger players might have a hard time connecting with the group (I can't remember the last time we had somebody under 21 in the guild). During a trial period you'll be cycled in and out - performing well will land you in the raid more often. As a rule people are willing to sit for others on 'farm content' to help distribute loot but we might cycle people in/out for hard mode content. So far we've been pretty good about just rolling with whatever we had online - maybe swapping a lock for a mage but avoiding the "lol 11 druids" style of raid stacking.

Sorry for my late reply, but thanks on the tips and help! :)

Before I read your post I was playing around a bit with the talents and this is what I made of it:

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/hellfire/vivacino/talent/secondary

Looking at it I wasn't to far off! I just put points in Darkness instead of Veiled Shadows.

I'll play around without Atonement atm since I'll mostly be doing normal 5-man stuff.

I did use the default BlizUI for a long time now, it's just since recently I made the switch to TukUI since I like the clean look. DBM is also one of the first things installed. I'll have a look at the other add-ons when I get home..

again thanks for the help and I'll try to report back in here in a more timely fashion on my finding about playing with disc :p

There are two basic disc builds: with atonement and without.

With and without still have the same basic play style: you'll use penance, prayer of mending on cooldown, use shield=>penance=>greater heal for "oh crap" or flash heal burst healing, prayer of healing and binding heal to recover from group damage. They're both viable and it really comes down to a mater of personal choice in most cases.

The main difference is in "filler" abilities: what you do when you're just maintaining the group. With atonement you'll smite the mob which heals the lowest health member within 15 yards of the mob. The more you smite the harder you hit and heal for (up to a point). You'll keep your stacks of evangelism up by smiting in low damage phases and then use archangel to convert those stacks into increased healing and some mana when you need more burst healing. It works pretty well for raid content where there's a cycle between low healing required and "oh crap you're going to die" (which is most encounters).

Without atonement you'll cycle greater heal and shields as your filler spells instead. Healing reduces the cool down on weekend soul so you can shield a target more often. This tends to work better as a tank-healing spec where you're more focused on one person than half a raid. It's group healing isn't really any worse than atonement (you can just heal other people instead of smiting the mob) and the mana consumption is fairly similar.

This is the core disc build without atonement. With atonement you lose the cooldown on shadow fiend and drop the points in strength of will to pick up evangelism/archangel and atonement. Disc priests don't really have any 'flexible' points. You'll notice mine priest has a non-standard disc build: it's because I was smite spec'd for heroic wyrmbreaker they replaced him with a 372 token vendor.

The stock UI has gotten to the point that it's pretty passable for just about everything. I think something like power auras or SBF are really the only things that are lacking, the stock UI doesn't do enough to let you know when you need to react to a buff/debuff. For example it's not immediately obvious you're standing in black goo or have the flames debuff on maloriak (and hanging out there will kill you in short order). The stock UI presents this information but it's not really prioritized the way it should be.

While you can get buy with mouse over macros for healing, something like Clique is usually a nice addon. It lets you bind your mouse buttons to your common healing abilities to allow you to react faster than click target/push button style healing.

Boss mods (like deadly boss mods) will show you when creatures are going to do certain things and allow you to coordinate your cooldowns a little better. The stock system is okay (I cleared all of the normal mode raid content using it) but more information allows you to play better.

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  • Posts

    • You literally have to do it on a desktop, which is incredibly annoying in our mobile-first world. What???
    • What part of "you can’t really depend on service providers to maintain features forever" is not clear enough?
    • 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.
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