Screen Shot: Take 6

Tarsus made my day by tagging me in his blog. I guess that means it's my turn to post a screen shot. Without further ado:



This is my fire spec mage, Twichy, on Azjol Nerub. He's rockin' out with the Chieftans. Good times, that.

This was a great walk down memory lane, so thanks for inspiring me to dig back into that folder.

Incidentally, picture number 7 was Billy dinging 70! And I think it was turning in the quest that gave me Dabiri's Enigma - my first tanking trinket ever. :)



I in turn choose to tag:

Veneratio - It's not the usual thing you'd see in his blog, but it would make my day.

Talldar

Nairi

Skeleton Jack

Khol Drake

I shouldn’t have to use Last Stand though

I stole the title from Vene's post about the Glyph of Last Stand. Right off the bat, please take into consideration that it is taken out of context, and this post is just my idea triggered by reading Vene's post. It is not a commentary or editorial on his work.

IT COULD ALL CHANGE LIKE THAT!

This post is also strongly influenced by the fact that I am not a raider. (yet) And I'm sure when we get around to the harder content, this will change.

But for now... I frequently find myself in 5 man heroic content with all my "panic" CD's unused. The sole exception is when running with a noobish or undergeared healer. In that case I try to take the edge off for them while they get their feet wet or pray to the RNG gods.

Well, I lied. The other sole exception is when I'm bored. Yup, I sometimes use Last Stand or Shield Wall just 'cuz.

From time to time I find it fun to use my dusty abilities in entertaining ways like popping enraged regen on each CD just to see how much healing you can do. Then at the end of the run, spam the healing done on recount and count the "WTF's". That's good times right there. To augment this one, bandage the crap out of anybody you can if there's any down time.

YOUR HEALER IS BORED!!!

If you don't believe me...just ask him or her. If you're on 5 man content, the healer is decently geared, and you (or your gear) don't suck, your groups damage output is decent, and your healer isn't bored, then slap me silly and call me Susy.

Personally, when I don't suck, and consequently my healer is bored (that happened once on a Tuesday back in January) and we've got a boss around 35% with my health bar topped off, I'll tell my healer that I still have SW, LS, and ER available so they should see how much dps they can do.

You're doing them a favor in the long run. And if you paid attention to my self heals trick above, it gets you a few more % of total healing done :)

This post was brought to you by the Foundation for Rediculous Compound Sentences.

Valentine Woes?

Not Really

My introduction to raiding was scheduled for Saturday 8PM - 10 man Nax. Yes, this happens to be Valentine's Day, but my wife and I have never celebrated it. I have moral issues with the price hiking that goes on, as well as the unrealistic expectations some people have regarding the holiday, but that's a topic for another time.

So I went ahead and got the spousal OK to dedicate time for raiding on Saturday. Other members of our casual guild have family ties to a serious progression raiding guild on our server, and the plan was to fill the gaps with some kind folks from over there. We've been going about our week seeking gear upgrades through heroics, farming mats for consumables, and researching the fights.

Enter the Mother-in-Law

..and no, this is not a bad thing. She's an incredible lady, and the in-laws are fun to hang out with. She called with an offer to take us to the NHL game Saturday night. I would have turned it down, but the tickets are second row behind the Coyotes bench, and there's free food involved.

Billy never turns down free food!

It's bitter-sweet for sure, but my raiding intro will have to be postponed. Honestly though, spending time with my wife away from the kids is a novelty at times and far outweighs WoW moments.

I may try to PUG into an off-tank position this week to get a look and be reset for our guild's next week attempt.

Note: I still owe you an update of my UI and keybinding adjustment. I'll get to it. I chuckled when reading Kadomi's last post. Misery loves company and all that...

Growing Pains

Addons and UI's and Keybinds, OH MY!

Last week I messed around with my UI. I like the look and feel of it for the most part. I'll post a screen shot when I get home. Pitbull caused me issues with huge raid frames. I also didn't like the poor choices for visibility of elite vs. regular mobs. So it's deactivated.

I also switched to keybinds. At first I had almost everything bound, but it was just too overwhelming. Now I have the core abilities bound, with an "OS bar" just below my toon with trinkets, shield wall, pots, etc. It's been rough. I'm tired of passing up invites to raid and run heroics. I'm having a hard time being as mobile as I was before and I thought increased mobility was one of the major reasons to keybind.

I do like the benefit of situational awareness. I like being able to use my keys to keep up my rotation while easily spinning the camera to look for adds, etc.

I've been running Stratholme a bit to adjust and develop the muscle memory as well as hope for the mount to drop, but before binding, I could do that run in about 12 min, now I'm closer to 20 with occasional near death moments when a lot of mobs are pulled on accident.

Overall, I'm extremely frustrated and ready to scrap it. I guess I'm looking for advice on how long to expect the adjustment to take, and if I'm doing something wrong.

These are my binds:
F1 = Thunderclap
F2 = Shock wave
F3 = concussive blow
F4 = Cleave
F5 = Heroic throw
1 = Shield slam
2 = Revenge
3 = Devastate
4 = Heroic strike
5 = Shield block
Q = charge
E = taunt
Movement is W and S for forward/back and A and D for strafing left and right.

I cannot comprehend how many of you use shift and alt modifiers. It's just way to much to do with one hand, and I want to limit how much my hand is off the mouse.

Let me know what you think along with any advice. Praise would help to, but only if it's sincere, lol.

I'll make another post soon with a screen shot of my UI with a list of my addons with links.