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.