Rift Head Start
Just as a quick heads up to anyone who still subscribes to my RSS or visits the site, I’ve begun playing Rift on the Keenblade-US server as Ithato (Cleric) and Alolamous (Rogue). Feel free to say hi in-game!
In: Meta, Rift · Tagged with: rift
Closing Up Shop
Just a quick notice to any readers who have for some reason kept my RSS feed or URL bookmarked, I’m officially shutting this blog down. I haven’t written new content for it in over a year, I competely retired from raiding a good 7-8 weeks ago, and have let my subscription to WoW lapse as well. I’m uncertain at this point whether or not I’ll even be returning for Cataclysm. I’m less than thrilled about the changes Blizzard has been / is making to my classes, and finding all the extra free time surprisingly enjoyable.
I do know that I will not make any more half-assed attempts at blogging about WoW if I do return. If you’d like to keep in touch or keep an eye on what I’m up to, feel free to follow me on Twitter. Thanks for stopping by, and may you kill many internet dragons and receive epic, phat lewtz!
Re-thinking My Druid Specs for a New Patch and a New Guild
Last night, after several weeks of frustration at the hands of piss-poor attendance, most of our dedicated raiding core in my 10-man semi-casual guild flew the coop. We (as this includes myself) were welcomed with open arms into the guild of a good friend of our GL. Their population seems high without being out of control.
It’s been almost two months now since I was part of a guild regularly doing 25-man content, so I’ve been able to get away with using a bastardized catch-all Resto spec, leaving my other spec slot free for whatever tomfoolery I wished. (Lately, this has been bear tanking.) So, I’m returning to my old ways, of optimizing top-to-bottom for a given role, with regards to my talents. I’ll be using two somewhat distinct, and highly focused builds to fill either the role of raid healing or tank healing as need arises.
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In: Druid, Feral, Gear, Guild, Meta, Raiding, Resto, Trial of the Crusader, Ulduar · Tagged with: 25-man, Druid, Feral, glyphs, Guild, Raiding, Resto, tanking, via posterous
IV? Innervate!
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that “intravenous” and “innervate” are both often abbreviated as “IV”.
Starting today with patch 3.1.2, when the realms come back online, Innervate and its glyph have been changed as follows:
Innervate: This ability has been redesigned to grant 450% of the casting Druid’s base mana pool to the target over 20 seconds.
Glyph of Innervate: Has been adjusted to grant the Druid 90% of his or her base mana pool over 20 seconds.
That makes this spell at least as handy as was before 3.1 if not moreso, and is a very nice buff. According to the information here, a level 80 druid casting Innervate on another can expect to restore 15,732 mana to his target. If he or she is also glyphed, he will additionally restore 90% of his or her base mana pool to himself (3496).
Methinks we just became a lot more popular in the raid. The concept of Innervating your Paladin, your Hunter, your Mage, etc. is no longer inherently ridiculous. With the glyph being fairly powerful, we will once again be able to consider sharing the wealth.
In: Druid, Raiding · Tagged with: 3.1.2, Druid, glyphs, innervate, patch notes
Post-3.1 Musings
Sorry it’s been so empty and dark around here, folks. I’ve been busy writing over at NoStockUI.com. We haven’t been doing much of anything that’s new or shiny in my guild. A good chunk of our officer corps are off to Vegas for a wedding (Congratulations, Baynn!) and so we’ve put “official” raids on hold, especially with the patch going live yesterday. Our (un?)official healing lead, David, has been on vacation for the last week, so it fell to me to do healing assignments on fights like Patchwerk and Thaddius’ first phase. That was both exciting and stressful. I wouldn’t mind keeping it up, but we’ll see how the big patch shakes out and if we alter our guild structure much.
In: AddOns, Druid, Gear, Hardware, Meta, Raiding · Tagged with: 3.1, Balance, Celestial Being, Gear, Guild, Hardware, healing assignments, NoStockUI, NSUI, Resto, ulduar, upgrades, writing
Rule 76: No Excuses, Play Like a Champion
Well, so here’s what I’ve been working on lately, and it’s been a hard secret to keep. NoStockUI is a blog that is all about that esoteric layer of whoozits and whatzits that come between you, the player, and your on-screen persona. It’s the brainchild of Matt Low of World of Matticus fame, and is off to a great start with posts by yours truly, Matticus, Brajana of Mend Pet, Lilith, and Andrea of Altoholics ‘R’ Us.
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In: AddOns, Lua, Meta · Tagged with: AddOns, announcement, blogging, links, NoStockUI, NSUI
IthatoUI: My Current Raiding Interface
This post inspired at least in part by Lilitharien’s post over at World of Matticus.
Raid Screenshot
Click the image above for the full-resolution 1680×1050 screenshot.
As you can see above, I have a lot going on in my interface, but I’ve tried really hard at keeping it clean, concise, and lightweight, in terms of addon efficiency. Chat messages and names on Recount have been blurred to protect the innocent.
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In: AddOns, Druid, Lua, Raiding, Resto
IthatoUI: Tekkub, You’ve Spoiled Me
At the risk of sounding (correctly) like a giant fanboy, I feel a great need to point out a prolific, skilled addon author than some of you may not have heard of. His work appeals to me as a fellow programmer as very efficient and minimalistic, which is what I strive for when it comes to my UI. See my previous UI article for some insight on that.
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In: AddOns, Lua, Tradeskills · Tagged with: tekkub
IthatoUI: AddOns I Love
Before I do an in-depth look at my own UI, I thought I’d start with an appetizer of sorts: a list of addons I can hardly live without. So without further ado, here they are.
- Unitframes: Haste’s oUF and oUF_P3lim, and oUF_Perfect for party frames but tweaked to not display raidframes
What can I say, I’m a sucker for attractive, lightweight, and expandable unitframes. P3lim does some great work! - Actionbars: Bartender4
Hands-down the best actionbar addon IMO, though prior to 3.0.x I used Dominos. - Chat: I prefer PhanxChat over Prat, etc.
- Map/Minimap: Mapster and pMinimap
- Auction House: Auctioneer Advanced
Let’s face it, folks. You’ve heard this spiel before. If you like making money on the AH with whatever you can gather or make, I highly recommend AucAdv. - Equipment Management: Outfitter
For a hybrid class who keeps multiple gear sets and needs to switch on the fly, Outfitter is a major boon. It even makes it easy to pop items in and out of your bank. - Leveling Help: A combination of LightHeaded, Tekkub’s TourGuide, and Carbonite.
Now I know many of you swear by QuestHelper, but as a programmer, I am horrified every time I look in the general direction of QH. It causes crashes, huge framerate drops, DCs, etc. I just prefer the look, usability, features and general stability of Carbonite. The only one of these I keep enabled on my 80 is LH, though. - Visual Customization: ButtonFacade with the Caith skin, Tekticles for my fonts, TipTop for tooltips
- Raidframes: Grid for the frames and Clique for click-casting goodness
- Meters: Omen3 for threat, Recount for damage, healing, etc. although I may replace with Skada as it matures
- Other: QBar for an Autobar-style set of buttons for my Usable quest items.
Well, this definitely turned out to be longer than I planned or expected, but I hope you enjoyed reading and maybe saw a few new addons to try!
In: AddOns, Druid, Lua, Resto, Tradeskills
Ding 80!
Well, as you can see on my armory page, I’m level 80 as of this past Sunday.
I had taken a long hiatus from playing, blogging about playing, or Lua coding through the month of December, and now I’m back in the saddle. Hitting 77 was when it really all started coming together. Guildies were finally paying attention to me, not to mention being able to fly greatly sped up both my leveling and my herbing for spare gold.
I hit 70 for the first time ever a mere 2 days before the launch of Wrath. It was both exhilirating and exhausting, and a tad disappointing. I might see level 70 raid content here and there on a whim, but never shall I know how very unprepared I am. Also, I haven’t PvPed since my 20s or so, besides the world PvP that comes with playing on a PvP server. (That’s a lot of P’s.)
So, knowing that, dear reader, you might be able to sympathize how childlike and new I must seem to my guildies and friends. I had several first experiences over the last week, including:
- First Heroic: Culling of Stratholme. Arthas, you talk too frakking much! No lewtz for me, besides a quest reward.
- First time in AB
- First time healbotting in WSG: our Warrior tank Kosantu got his Iron Man achievement thanks at least in part to me.
- First time in Strand of the Ancients: I still don’t know what’s going on there.
- First time making gold hand-over-fist by finishing older quests
- First rep grind: tie between Kirin Tor and Knights of the Ebon Blade (nope, neither above Friendly yet!)
All in all, between all of that and sudden inspiration for a new direction with one of my own personal addons, my interest in WoW has been greatly increased. So, expect to hear more out of me soon, and feel free to watch my Path of a Hero blog for less momentous interim entries.