Fishing Forgetfulness... So I Wrote an AddOn

Memory is a bitch. At least when it starts to fail. And for fishing, I really don't want to have to think about much besides "Where am I going for today's Nat Pagle daily?" Meaning, I don't want to update my pre-existing fishing outfit with a temporary Ephemeral Fishing Pole or Hightfish Cap. I just want to cast and pray for my required catches to accumulate as quickly as possible and hopefully catch a Lunker or two.

Ah.... Lunkers! Everything I've read points to having the absolute highest possible fishing skill to increase your chances on drop rates. Well, I have maxed my Fishing skill to 700., so that helps. But wait, there's more! You can get up to 1100 points in Fishing with a few relatively easy additions:

• Wear the Hightfish Cap or the Tentacled Hat for an additional 100 skill points.
• Equip the Ephemeral Fishing Pole for another 100 skill points
• Apply bait like Worm Supreme for a 200 point increase.

Boom - 700 skill becomes 1,100 skill. Now, I should be expecting some Lunkers.  Right? Hey, Blizzard -- where my Lunkers at, yo?

Anyway, since I'm a lazy bastard to begin with, and I'm getting more forgetful, I figured I'd automate the check in my bags for the temporary  +100 hats and +100 pole. See that's the rub -- if these suckers weren't temporary I'd simply add them to my Fishing Equipment Set and be done. But I'd rather have a fallback (like my trusty Mastercraft Kalu'ak Fishing Pole and Weather-Beaten Fishing Hat) so that I'm at least wearing something when those magic drops go poof from my inventory. Even when I had fished up an upgrade, I was forgetting to equip the sucker.

Enter Fishing Shack Pro (available on Curse). This AddOn checks if I'm currently using a fishing pole of some flavor, and if so, looks in my backpack and bags for a potential upgrade. This fires each time my inventory changes -- so if I start with my Fishing Pole and I happen to loot the Ephemeral Fishing Pole, the AddOn will automagically equip the new Ephemeral Fishing Pole. Same with hats; if I loot a Tentacled Hat while I'm either hatless or wearing something with less skill points, the AddOn equips the new magic hat!

There are still some refinements I want to make (like improve my test to determine what "fishing" means besides have a fishing pole in-hand or not replacing looted items if a bait buff exists), but this has been working for me and perhaps other WoW players out there may find it helpful.

Multi-boxing Healing using ISBoxer

In setting up ISBoxer to run a mixed-class team, I needed the ability to heal my team without actually playing the healer as a primary character. In other words, I'd rather play the tank to ensure that all the aggro is where it should be and control healing from the tank's perspective.

MiRai has several excellent tutorials (here and here) that illustrate how to accomplish this in ISBoxer. Using these as a basis, I then tailored the approach to meet my own needs. So, what are those needs?

Well, they're pretty straight forward.  First and foremost, I wanted to utilize click-to-heal within my active game window. In other words, click on a party member and have the healer cast a spell -- right click on the tank to cast Penance, middle mouse click to cast Power Word: Shield, and, well, you get the idea. Note, this is not limited to the tank -- any member of the party would benefit from this! And, extending further, I wanted distinct sections of the party member's unit frame allocated to the primary healer as well as alternative healers (so in a pinch the Paladin tank can cast Word of Glory or Lay on Hands if the primary healer fell behind).

So what did I need to configure to accomplish this?

A Foray into Multi-boxing

Multi-boxing (the same player playing more than one account at the same time) is a topic that can raise passion in players. I know, from personal experience, that it can really suck when a team of 5 shamans targets you in a battleground... Before you can do anything in defense, you're waiting for the Spirit Healer. So, I get that multi-boxing seems unfair.

That being said -- I'm going to admit something: I'm a new multi-boxer. Hold on before you unleash hell on me -- I'm focusing on PVE content and I'm not intentionally or unintentionally interfering with anyone else's enjoyment of their game. I'm keeping to myself, but myself now has 5 toons instead of one!

My Multi-boxing Team: "The Spice Girls"

One-Button Interrupt Macro for Death Knights

Continuing with interrupt tools, I took the basis of the Druid interrupt macro and tailored it to the Death Knight. Again, talents impact the options here with Asphyxiate or Strangulate, so the macro has to be smart enough to figure out what is known. Then, after we've used the longer cool down (and more robust) ability to silence all schools of spell casts, then fill in with Mind Freeze to interrupt that specific school.

/cast [mod:alt] Mind Freeze
/castsequence [talent:3/3] reset=combat/15 Asphyxiate, Mind Freeze, Mind Freeze; reset=combat/15 Strangulate, Mind Freeze, Mind Freeze, Mind Freeze, Mind Freeze

Let's explore the details.

One-Button Interrupt Macro for Druids

I've been messing around with my druid and working on Bear tanking. I like to maintain a minimalist or clean action bar, and I didn't want to hotkey multiple interrupt abilities. My solution? Macros!

After messing around, I'm pretty happy with the following interrupt macro, as it covers the various states my Druid finds himself in... either in Bear form, or in Cat form, or screwed up in shapeshifting and in no form at all! Here's the macro code:

#showtooltip
/cast [stance:3] Skull Bash 
/castsequence [stance:1,talent:5/3] reset=combat/30 Mighty Bash, Skull Bash, Faerie Fire, Skull Bash, Faerie Fire; /castsequence [stance:1,notalent:5/3] reset=combat/15 Skull Bash, Faerie Fire; /cast Cyclone

Ok, that's cool, but so what? What does this actually do? Let's step through line by line.

Update: Automator / AppleScript for AddOns (Mac OS X)

With Patch 6.2, my Automator / AppleScript got a workout!  With repetition, found an issue.  Apparently, not all AddOn authors follow the convention that the main folder contains both a .toc and a .lua file.  So, instead of checking for .lua files, I'm now checking for .toc files.  I had to switch around because while my Mac recognizes .lua as a valid extension, a .toc is not a registered extension so the older test failed.  Now, I check that the file name contains (".toc".

Updated AppleScript

(* This script will process each item selected within Finder and process the item (assuming each item is an AddOn folder or a folder with a collection of AddOns).
With each folder in the selected items, check that the folder contains a file with the toc extension. 
If the selected item (variable this_item) contains zero toc files then it is a parent folder containing multiple AddOns (like DBM).  In this case, begin a second loop over the folders within the item (the variable more_items) and move each folder to the standard AddOns folder. Once all more_items are processed, the parent directory (this_item) is deleted from the source folder.
Hack: a move screws up the count of files so the more_items object is duplicated to the AddOns directory instead of being moved.
Otherwise, the selected item (this_item) contains one (or more) toc files and is considered a as a standalone AddOn, and is moved to the standard AddOns folder *)

on run {input, parameters}
tell application "Finder"
 -- define desintation folder
 set wow_addons_folder to folder "AddOns" of folder "Interface" of folder "World of Warcraft" of folder (path to applications folder) as alias
 -- display dialog "wow_addons_folder: " & wow_addons_folder
 set selected_items to selection
 repeat with this_item in selected_items
  -- display dialog "this_item: " & this_item
  set this_item_alias to this_item as alias
  -- count the children objects with a toc file extension
  -- set number_of_files to count of (files in folder this_item_alias whose name extension is "lua")
  set number_of_files to count of (files in folder this_item_alias whose name contains ".toc")
  --display dialog "number_of_files: " & number_of_files
  if number_of_files is equal to 0 then
   -- no toc objects, so assume a parent addon folder containing a collection of stand alone addon files. start secondary looping
   repeat with another_item in this_item
    --display dialog "another item: " & another_item
    --display dialog "Copying " & (name of another_item) & " to " & (name of wow_addons_folder)
    -- hack: move screws up the count and causes errors. duplicate this object instead of moving it.
     duplicate another_item to wow_addons_folder with replacing
   end repeat

   -- after processing each of the children, remove the parent object to avoid moving empty folders to addons folder
   -- display dialog "deleting " & this_item
   delete this_item
  else
   -- display dialog "Moving " & (name of this_item) & " to " & (name of wow_addons_folder)
   move this_item to wow_addons_folder with replacing
  end if
 end repeat 
end tell
return input
end run

Mac OS X Automator / AppleScript Service for AddOns

Automate AddOn Downloads from Curse

Curse Mac Client Support

The Mac OS X gets no love from AddOn update scripts. I guess I could bitch and moan about this, but really, what would that accomplish?  Instead, let's solve the issue and move on (and indulge my inner wannabe programmer). My solution?