My Review of Impulse Keybinding and Macros Addon
By admin | September 19, 2011
First Impression
IMPULSE is, at its core, a keybinding addon. The most basic features allow players to use a pre-designed list of keybinds and macros for their particular class, spec, and role. As you can imagine there are a lot of different combinations here, and IMPULSE promises a setup that is intuitive for each.
I can’t say how well it works for every single class and spec in the game, but I tried it on a few and I will admit it feels intuitive. I didn’t have to think very much about it, and I was able to adjust to the keybinds pretty quickly. The most involved thing I did was a heroic with some guildmates, but I think with a bit of practice I could easily learn the keybinds well enough to increase my performance in raids.
Interface
This is one of the first addons I’ve seen where you actually have some say over how the interface works out. When you first set up IMPULSE you choose what hand placement you want. For example, you can use the Basic setup which is WASD, or you can use the FPS setup which is ESDF. From there most of the means by which the player interfaces with the product depends on his or her personal interface.
IMPULSE auto-detects your spec and then fills out your bars with action buttons and macros bound to certain keys depending on your setup. And don’t worry, for those of you who wouldn’t touch the default Blizzard UI with a 10 foot pole, it works with Bartender and other popular bar addons.
Because of this I’m giving a pretty high rating for interface design. What doesn’t integrate the Blizzard (or Bartender or Dominos…) UI is sleek and accomplishes its purpose.
Rating: 4.5/5
Features
You’re probably wondering what’s so great about an addon that accomplishes something you can do on your own. And you may have a point. You can set up keybinds on your own, and if you take the time you can customize them so they’re easy-to-use, intuitive, and made just for your needs.
But really, who has that kind of time and room for trial and error? IMPULSE does it for you, and throws in some great macros to boot. With just the macros alone you could find your gameplay significantly improved, but the keybind design obviously has a lot of thought and research behind it.
The best feature for me though is that if you don’t like any aspect of the setup, you can change it. You can remove and rebind abilities. You can choose the macros you do and don’t want. And if you decide to start over, just one click and you’re back to the default. This addon definitely delivers on features.
Rating: 5/5
Customer Support
I’m gonna be brief with this one, because really… it’s Manaview. The customer support hasn’t changed, though I will mention that they did move from the open forum model to a community where you can ask questions, report bugs, and bring your ideas to the table. I actually like this model a lot better, to be honest. It’s straight to the point, a lot more organized, and you can easily see how quickly the moderators and Manaview staff are responding to their community. Which, as always, is within 24 hours. Usually much, much less.
Rating: 5/5
Value
This is pretty subjective, because $40 may be cheap for me but it may be expensive for you. However, you can easily compare it to similar products that players use to gain an edge with accessing their abilities faster. I’m talking of course about gaming keyboards and mice, which usually cost upwards of $100. And frankly, even those won’t give you the same value as this does because they can’t pick and choose the best possible setup for you. IMPULSE wins on value hands down.
Rating: 5/5
Overall
This is a solid product that’s useful to pretty much every WoW player. Even if you’re still leveling your first character you can train yourself into good habits while the rest of us are stuck breaking bad ones. If you’re a clicker, this makes the transition far less painful. And even if you’re a keybinder, you could probably use some fine-tuning. All in all, IMPULSE is another great product that gets the job done.
Rating: 4.5/5
Topics: Wow Interface | No Comments »
Merchants
By admin | August 17, 2009
Merchants can be very helpful in the game as well. There are many items that you need to buy from merchants and you can also sell items to vendors that you to not want. There are merchants located in different areas of every city or town. You will find specific merchants for trades, for potions or mushrooms, etc.
Whenever you need to supply yourself, you need to look for a merchant who has what you need. There are also merchants and vendors that can repair you when you have damage to your equipment or items in your inventory. You will have to search for one that can repair you. You can also sell items from drops that you do not want to merchants to get them out of your inventory.
Topics: Wow Gold Guide | No Comments »
Banks
By admin | August 17, 2009
Banks are available to help you store items that you might need or use later. Warlocks can put extra soul shards in the bank. You can also put items that you are not of a high enough level yet to equip or supplies that you use for your trade skills in the bank.
You have the opportunity to purchase additional bag slots for your bank. They go up in price each time you buy and extra slot from — to 1g to 25g and up. You must buy the slot and then also have a bag to fill it with. So the bigger the bags in your slots, the more room you have. When you start collecting a lot of things in your bank, you will want to organize it so that you can find things easier. You may also want to keep a stock of trade skill items. For example, if you are a tailor, you might keep extra thread there so that if someone suddenly wanted you to make something, you wouldn’t have to run all over the place getting supplies. You can have your thread, cloth and anything else you need right in your bank.
Topics: Wow Gold Guide | No Comments »
Economy
By admin | August 17, 2009
The economy of the game is very important. There are many different ways throughout the game where the economy is going to be very important. Just like real life, it is based on money and just like real life, there are the haves and the have-nots. You can be one of the Haves if you play it right and follow some of the tips we will give you in a later section.
You will need money to use the windmasters, to learn trades and new skills, to buy supplies for many professions and to play in the Auction House. Money comes into play when you are looking for items made by other players and items that do not come from drops. You also need money for your mount when you reach level 40. So you can see that it is important that you have a steady flow of income to help you with things you need throughout the game.
The economy is set up so that if you plat the game normally, you will have enough money to do most of the things you need or want to do. When you play you will get money, items, and drops to sell for money so you are constantly making more if you keep questing, grinding and just killing stuff. However, if you always want to have the best or be a step ahead other players, you might need to find some tactics for making more money so that you can more easily achieve this.
In the game there are copper, silver and gold coins. When you kill targets, you get money and items that can be sold for money. Before you start training skills, this is the way you make money. So the more you kill, the more money you will have.
Topics: Wow Gold Guide | No Comments »
Trade Channel
By admin | August 17, 2009
You want to become familiar with the Trade Channel because this is also a great opportunity for you to get items, sell or trade items and make money in the game. You can get to it by typing /2 in your chat window or by going to the chat options just above the chat display area. Keep an eye on people buying and selling. (For those of you that are new, WTB stands for “want to buy” and WTS “want to sell”.)
Sometimes you will see people with stacks of items, items they just want to get out of their inventory or items they do not realize the worth of and you can grab a great deal. Even if you can’t use it yourself, you can resell for profit. So keep your eyes on that trade channel. You can also use it to sell your items or services. For example, if you are an enchanter, this is where you can advertise it to other players.
Topics: Wow Gold Guide | No Comments »
Auction Houses
By admin | August 17, 2009
You are going to want to become familiar with the Auction House right away. You will be spending a lot of time and a lot of activities here. This is one of the best and easiest ways to make money and to get items that you need. It is not hard at all to figure out the Auction Houses. Think, eBay for World of Warcraft.
The best thing you can do is get to your local AH and look around. The price to list items varies on how much you are listing for and how long the listing is for. You can also browse through everything and see all the different listings, different categories and different prices on things. This gives you an average idea on prices and what items are commonly found in the AH as well as those that are not commonly found.
Topics: Wow Gold Guide | No Comments »
The World Itself
By admin | August 17, 2009
When you begin to play, you need to know something about the world you are playing in and how to interact and move around in it. WoW is a large world with five basic regions that each have different zones inside. There are many guides available both on and offline to help you if you need to understand these zones and where they are located. The more you play, the more comfortable you will become with moving around these zones and regions.
Travel
There are different ways to travel within the game. You are going to want to learn these ways and take advantage of them as they will be very important to your success in the game. Even from the very beginning at low levels, you need to know how to get back and forth from different places in World of Warcraft.
The regions are:
• Northern Kalimdor
• Southern Kalimdor
• Lordaeron
• Khaz Moden
• Azeroth
• Outland
Hearthstones
One of the first ways to move around in the world is through your hearthstone. Your hearthstone will automatically be set for your starting town. To reset the stone, you need to talk to an innkeeper in a town. Once you talk to the innkeeper, you can reset your stone to take you back to that location every time you hearth. When you click on the Innkeeper it will ask you “Make this inn your home” and you click on this to reset the stone. Most people will set their hearthstones for a major city or capital city like Orgrimmar. This makes it easy to get back to the auction house, bank, trainers and other locations you will need regularly in the game.
Mounts
You are going to hear quite a bit about mounts in the game of WoW. Mounts are available when you finally make it to lucky level 40. There are different mounts depending on your race and class. When you have honor, you can also get a discount on your mount. Below is a list of the mounts and their prices.
Riding is a skill, just like First Aid or Mining. Riding costs quite a bit to learn, so saving up to get trained in Riding at level 40, 60, and 70 will be one of your main goals in WOW. It will cost 90 gold for Apprentice Riding, 600g for Journeyman Riding, and 1,000g for a flying mount in Outland.
Flying Mounts
In Outland at level 70 (the Burning Crusades area) and in Northrend (at level 77) you can purchase and ride flying mount. There are a wide variety of flying mounts available. Many are only available for purchase when you have enough reputation with the correct faction.
Trainers
Your trainers are very important. Throughout the game, you are gong to find yourself looking for them quite often. But if you want to be really successful, you don’t want to waste any time. So learning where your trainers are or how you can quickly and accurately find out where your trainer is, will help you get through the game more efficiently.
Another thing to keep in mind if you are having trouble finding your next trainer is to read the message from the last trainer. For example, if you need Artisan, and you talk to the Expert trainer, they will tell you where to go to find the next trainer.
Dying and Resurrecting
You are likely going to become familiar with this image above. When you play, you will die. And when you die, you will come face to face with the Spirit Healer as a ghost. When this happens, you have a choice.
You can run back to your body and resurrect and you will come back with half health. The downside is when you rez in the middle of a mob or some other dangerous location. If you are in a group, they can protect you until you heal. Another downside is that sometimes it can take a very long time to run back to the location of your body and it’s pretty easy to get lost the first time this happens as well. Your body will show up on your mini-map to help you find it.
If you don’t feel you can run back to your body safely, you also have the option the let the Spirit healer bring you back to life. The only downside to doing this is that you will have “rez sickness” for a period of time afterwards. Items in your inventory will also be damaged and if you try to auction it later, you will have to repair it first.
Topics: World of Warcraft Guide | No Comments »
Spellbook
By admin | August 17, 2009
Your spellbook is important and you will become very familiar with it the more you use it and the more skills you continue to learn. Above you can see the screen with the spellbook open. You can open this screen by clicking on the book at the bottom in your toolbar or by the P key. The spellbook contains different categories.
You will want to become familiar with your spellbook so you know what items are available for you to use. When you level, you can go to your trainer and if you receive new training, your skills will go into your spellbook. Be sure to update these on your hotkeys so you are using the best spells you have.
You want to be sure to go back to your class trainer regularly to get new spells. When you have them, you can check your updated spellbook and then update your hotkeys to be most efficient.
Topics: World of Warcraft Guide | 1 Comment »
Make All The Gold Profit You Can
By admin | August 17, 2009
You’ll encounter wandering supply vendors. Be sure to look at the last page of their inventory. There are usually some rare or limited supply recipes to buy. The vendors in strange or outlying places are even better for recipes you can’t get anywhere else. All of these recipes could possibly sell for 200-1000% profit in the Auction House. Or, if you’re needing one of them, you’ll be typing ‘/cheer’ a lot!
How about a sneaky strategy? Buy 5 different tuxedo patterns from the tailor in Ironforge for around 40 silver each, then turn around and sell them in the auction house for 2 gold or more. Or this: there are two thorium recipes off of the engineer supplier in the gnome area that can be resold in the Auction House. This works because sometimes people don’t know that vendors sell these recipes. Keep in mind they’re all limited sell so if a recipe isn’t there check back in 20 minutes.
The arcanite rod enchantment and some other high level recipes can be found in Moonvale. Sometimes they can be purchased for 1-2 gold, then turned around and sport a buyout price in the Auction House for 5-7 gold.
Do this right; keep all these balls juggling. You should have about 20 auctions going at a time. Be wily; don’t have 20 of the same item at auction. Move your inventory in and out, following or even anticipating Auction House trends. You can make scads of gold (20-30 gold a day is possible) from about 30 minutes work. You can do it at any level.
Create an Auction House agent. This is an alt character whose only function is to check the mail, put stuff up for auction, run to the bank if needed, and then put the profits back in the mail to your character of choice. This can save you tons of time at having to check into the big city when you could be out questing or grinding.
Keep your eyes open for recipes you can loot, or buy, and then resell to the lazy and the uniformed at the Auction House. Ashenvale is a good place to look. You can get the expert cooking book and the big bear steak recipes (the bear recipes cost 20 silver and you can get lucky and sell them for 1 gold a lot of times, and they are in unlimited supply). Look for a Wetlands vendor in the middle of the map. Even in Stormwind, in the old town district, upstairs in the pub, a guy sells about 20 different cooking recipes, many of the same ones you have to quest for.
Topics: Wow Gold Guide | No Comments »
Fun and Income with Fishing
By admin | August 17, 2009
Fishing can be lucrative. At a skill of 89 on fishing you might find items that can sell for 15s to a vendor. Sometimes you’ll pull up gems that sell to players for 5s and even if you catch a fish they are usually worth 50c-1s apiece! Don’t forget that a lot of times you’ll catch things that other professions need for their materials. These gems, fabrics, and so forth can be sold for some serious coin, if you have the time and patience to do it right.
If you’re going to invest your time in fishing, then keep your equipment upgraded and in good shape. At a skill level of one buy a Bauble to add to your pole to increase your fishing by 25. By using this Bauble you will find better stuff at a lower level and raise levels faster.
As you level up your fishing skill you’ll catch better stuff. Hunters need to feed their pets to keep them happy, some cooking recipes call for the fish you catch. Supply these needs, at a good profit to yourself.
Topics: Wow Gold Guide | No Comments »
« Previous Entries