Edge - Builds, Glyphs & Rotations Review

EDGE is the newest product release from Manaview, the team behind BOOSTER and TYCOON. Where the latter two addons exist to address more specific needs (leveling, making gold), this one is touted as actually being usable by any WoW player.

With 11 million subscribers, that’s a pretty large bill to serve. So does EDGE live up to the hype? I got my hands on a copy to see for myself:

First Impressions

EDGE is pretty simple to figure out. It’s actually more streamlined than TYCOON and BOOSTER, so if you had any problems with those products that shouldn’t be an issue here. After downloading the product (and Manacore if you don’t have that) you just run the Manaview Updater to check for any updates, then fire up World of Warcraft.

Since EDGE is supposed to work for any class and any purpose, I decided to use it on my Level 61 Worgen Druid I haven’t touched since finishing the new quests from 1-60. The thought of questing through Hellfire Peninsula again makes me a little sick, so I wanted a way to level through the Random Dungeon Finder as a tank.

Keep in mind I’d never tanked before; hadn’t even thought of a bear spec, since mine was just full-on cat for leveling. But after logging in my Worgen I clicked the EDGE button on the Manacore frame, selected Leveling as my purpose, and took a look through the options it gave me.

Much to my surprise, there was a Feral Bear Dungeon Leveling spec, so I selected that and decided to trust it on auto-spec. After I had that all sorted out, it told me the best glyphs to get (since I couldn’t get all of them) that would help me most while tanking dungeons of my level. It also gave me a strategy for tanking singles and multiples. I took a few notes, but I knew I’d forget later.

Before queueing for a dungeon, I took a look through Edge and found the spec for raiding Bears. It looked different than my leveling spec, and I wanted to know why this was. 

Common sense of course says top level Bears need different stuff, but I wanted a conclusive answer, and I also wanted to test the support for this product.

I sent off an email (to support@manaview.com) and queued for my first dungeon. Following the advice in the EDGE strategy, I was able to hold aggro decently. At first I thought I was just doing terrible because one of the Death Knights would have it all the time, but I looked over and saw he was in Blood Presence, so I can’t blame the addon for that. I also can’t blame it for the lumps I took while learning, and the bit of time I used to re-reference the Strategy pane.

All in all, my dungeon was successful and thanks to my rested XP I made about half a level from one 20 minute dungeon run. Not too shabby!

I ran a few more, and right after hitting 62 I checked my email, just in case. Someone from Manaview had already responded to me:

“Hi there,

First of all, thanks for trying out EDGE! Your question about the Bear dungeon spec was forwarded to me, as I helped design the spec you’re currently using. I raid as a Bear and I’ve also leveled two Bears via the RDF. Back when I was looking for specs for my first Bear, all anyone had was just a makeshift Cat spec, or a high-end Bear spec. Neither of those work very well for tanking dungeons

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For quick comparison’s sake, here’s the spec that’s in EDGE for dungeon leveling Bears:
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#0ZfzGfoubdrckMcz:0rqzVaMmz

And here’s the Bear raiding spec:
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#0ZfMGdoubzrckMcu:q0r0zVMmz

There’s a lot of similarities, but the key difference is trading out some survivability for more damage, which in turn means more threat. This is the biggest problem Bears face while leveling up. Every healer can keep you alive with their eyes closed, but competing with heirloom-geared DPS for threat is incredibly frustrating. So the dungeon leveling Bear gets full King of the Jungle for a damage boost on Enrage, which you should be using on cooldown like the Strategy says. You also get Primal Madness to help with the issue of being rage starved at lower levels.

What you lose is Perseverance – a must-have talent for raiding Bears – and 1 point from Infected Wounds. Both of those help keep you alive, but again: You don’t have much trouble with that while leveling through dungeons, especially if you’ve got heirlooms.
I hope that helps answer your question. Let me know how the leveling goes!”
I expected some canned response, and maybe a “it’s this way because it is,” but I ended up getting a detailed explanation of not only the differences between the specs, but why they exist. Needless to say, I was pretty happy with that answer and it helped make my EDGE experience a very positive one.

Let’s get down to the nitty gritty here, though. My rating:

Interface 4.5 / 5
The interface is sleek and clean. It’s simple, and that’s probably a good thing. There’s only a few things for me to click before I get my spec, and it’s all really easy to understand what does what. My only qualm with this would be that I’d like a way to maybe detach the Stategy pane so I can reference it without having to view everything else.

Features 4.5 / 5
The EDGE site lists the addon as a talent, glyph, and rotation manager. I’d say it definitely lives up to that. The talenter comes in two flavors – auto and manual – so you can pick and choose as you like. The glyph choices aren’t explained, but they seem pretty obvious in most cases. And – at least from my experience – the rotations and strategies given are solid.

Customer Support 5 / 5
Not only did they get back to me the same day I asked my question, but they answered it thoroughly. Even just dealing with this one person has given me hope that they really do have experts working on these products. No complaints from me here.

Value 4.5/ 5
This is always the tricky one, because what I consider good value may not be what you consider good value. But frankly… EDGE is a great value. Less than $40 and I’ve got an all-access pass to every class and every spec in the game, for life.

Overall 4.5 / 5

I definitely think EDGE was worth what I paid for it, and I haven’t even explored all its uses. I was pretty skeptical about anybody being able to use this product, but I’ve learned a ton already. Like I said, my only downgrade was just for a feature I wish it had. Overall I’m pretty impressed!

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Tycoon Gold Add-on Review

The Tycoon Gold Guide is one of Manaview’s latest inventions. It’s a new in-game addon that claims to automate the most powerful gold strategies in the game leading to an increase in gold income of about 500%. It helps transform ‘gold making’ into a fun, quick, and immensely profitable experience.

This is something WoW players have been waiting for since Vanilla and it has the power to completely change the way we make gold.

So, does Tycoon live up to the hype? I’ve received a copy, used it for a week, and will give you my honest review here.

Does it work?

I’ll get straight to what you want to know. Does Tycoon really work?

Yes, it absolutely works!

They claim you can make 230% more gold by using Tycoon. I found this to be a conservative number. I personally used the addon for several days now and I’ve always managed to open my mailbox to over 500%-700% more gold than I normally get using the exact same strategies by myself.

How Tycoon Work

The idea is simple, yet incredibly powerful.

Manaview took the best gold strategies in the game and made an addon that automates the difficult or most time consuming parts of the strategy. Since it’s automated, it basically means they optimized the strategy so you’re more efficient in doing it, resulting in about 5x more gold than you would normally get.

The 5 current strategies included are Gathering, Grinding/Farming, Crafting, Auction House Playing, and Dailies. This is 95% of all gold making strategies used by the WoW community, so almost nothing is left out.

The addon intelligently studies your server’s economy and shows you things like:
- Exactly what strategy will make you the most money
- What item will make you the most money based on its calculations
- The best way to get that item by giving you things like, optimized gathering routes or hot farming locations.

- It knows if too many people are using that strategy and will often times tells you to get an item with no competition but high in demand. This means you’re the only one getting that particular item because there’s no competition, resulting in getting more of them. And there is high demand meaning you can sell it for super high prices.

Detailed Walkthrough

When you startup Tycoon, the first thing you need to do is scan the Auction House to help Tycoon learn your economy. This is super quick and done with a click of a button. This is similar to Auctioneer but it’s a much quicker scan that takes no more than 30 seconds to complete.

When the scan is complete Tycoon has enough information to do its magic. A window will appear with lists of items ordered from top to bottom by how much Tycoon believes you will make, per hour, if you go for that item.

I’m impressed with how accurately Tycoon is able to give you solid advice on which items will make you the most money.

Often times, items that you never thought would make you the most gold per hour will appear at the top of the list. That’s where Tycoon really comes in handy. It has the ability to scan through an enormous amount of data that would take a human several hours to figure out. People usually skip past the economy studying part and just go straight for the highest level items, but with Tycoon you’ll discover those aren’t always the items that will make you the most gold per hour.

It knows your economy better than a human ever can, it knows if the market is inflated and knows when there’s too much competition. If situations aren’t right to go for one item, Tycoon will give you another one. It’s a good feeling to know you’re always doing the strategy that makes you the most gold possible at that point in time.

Tycoon does more than just tell you the best way to make the most gold. It shows you!
If Tycoon tells me to mine say, Cobalt ore, all you need to do is click the “Show me routes” button and it will give you highly optimized mining routes. This creates ant trails around your which guide you over the most populated mining node locations. This feature is great and allowed me to double the amount of ore I typically get mining by myself.

This was an awesome feature added to the Gathering Module and I can’t go over all the features in this short review. But all 5 Strategy Modules have some kind of special feature that helps you get the most of that item in the shortest amount of time!

The CONS

I could only find one bad thing about Tycoon.

Sometimes Tycoon will put an item at the top of the Most Profitable list which isn’t in very high demand. It does show you the “demand” of the item is low though. So, as long as you pay attention to that and don’t go for any items that are low in demand, you should be able to quickly sell it. Otherwise, if you don’t mind waiting, you will still sell it eventually.

Conclusion

Tycoon is a truly revolutionary product that is going to change Gold Making forever. Once you’ve used Tycoon, attempting to play without it will be nearly impossible.

The addon is beautiful and has very few bugs for a new product. With the data, tools, and special features of this addon, it is very hard NOT to make more gold using it.

They have gone above and beyond everything you will need to make 500% more gold per hour, or more. Every aspect of the gold strategies included has been enhanced by helpful data or features to help you do it better and faster.

Everything you can possibly need to become a true gold tycoon is right here in this brilliant addon by Manaview.

So, if you’re looking to make more gold – a LOT more gold – I highly recommend checking out the Tycoon Gold Guide. It is by far the best way to make the most gold possible in the shortest amount of time.

Impulse Keybinds and Macros Add-on Review

IMPULSE is the latest addon from Manaview, a team that’s turning quite a few heads in the industry with their growing suite of quality products. Booster, Tycoon, and Edge have all received great reviews with a nearly flawless customer satisfaction rating, but will IMPULSE fare as well?

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: 4/5

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