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.

HEY!!! This aint no soup kitchen!

To my dedicated reader - this two post Friday is for you.

BYOB

...that's bring your own buffs. When you get to a certain level in the game, I feel that you should be responsible to bring a certain level of commitment. Now I'm not an elitist raider. Heck, I'm not even a raider yet, but if you choose to participate in heroic level content and above, you should be prepared with the materials you need to be successful for yourself and your group.

This would include having gems slotted in your gear. Don't show up with empty gem slots unless you got the piece in a run you just finished. Even then, I don't think that it would be inappropriate to jump to the bank or AH to get what you need before continuing on with your group.

Another similar issue is enchants. Get your gear enchanted! Ok, so maybe you're thinking how casual you are, and therefore your gold reserves are a bit meager. Get a TBC enchant then. They're pretty darn cheap, and at least it's something.

The one I really want to talk about, because it's probably the easiest to get, is food. And no mages, I ain't talkin' no biscuits neither! Well, biscuits... yeah, for my healer. But I'm talking about food that will give you buffs to bump your survivability and/or performance.

Seriously, how hard is it to kill a damn rhino and cook his flesh? NOT VERY! I don't even care if it's not the stuff that requires the northern spice, but please bring and use something.

I've noticed a trend in the pugs that go ugly. Maybe it happens just as much in good pugs where you one shot every boss and tear through trash, but it's very noticeable when you run back from wipes and see that you're the only one eating. Everyone else is standing around waiting for the healer to heal each of them. Waiting for buffs. Waiting to fail again.

Sometimes I'll hand my healer some spell power or haste food if I have any, but come on, I'm a warrior. I shouldn't have to carry that crap around. You should know your class well enough to know if haste, crit, ap, or whatever is best for you. There's also the fact that there's some significant aoe damage from time to time. The +30 or 40 to stamina surely isn't hurting you either.

So please, bring your own
Because only the mobs (not you) should see me like this:

Toes on the Precipice

...and I'm afraid to jump!

I'm referring to two things. The aesthetic issue is my UI. I would like to get a customizable UI that frees up some screen space. I'm curious about Spartan UI for this aspect. I also want one that makes it easier to track certain important aspects, such as my health and rage. I've seen some screen shots where there was a semicircle on either side of the character - HP on left, and rage on right. I love this concept because I don't have to take time to look top-left to see how my health is to decide if I need to blow a cooldown, pot, or stone. I have no idea where to find that though.

I have noticed a deficiency in my performance as a tank. I feel that my reaction time isn't quick enough. One example is in Violet Hold, when one of the dragonflight "blinks" behind you. It takes me forever to turn around and reengage. (This is due to the dreaded keyboard turning.)

This brings me to my second point. I need to keybind! I've known for awhile that I need to, but finally I'm running heroics every day and saving up and spending marks. After such a long time of being the wannabe tank, feeling the need to leave my guild to seek more opportunities, and spending time out of game to research class mechanics or instance strategy and form gear lists to prepare me for game time - I am finally an active tank!

I know that adjusting to keybinds and mouse movement and developing the muscle memory will take time, and I'm reluctant to take a break from heroic instances to invest the necessary time to readjust. I also still have questions regarding fights where you have to move a lot while continuing to try to keep up a solid dps/tps rotation. I can't fathom strafing with A or D while trying to mash on my F1, F2, F3, F4, 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.

So here I stand at the edge. I want to jump. I really really do, but the fear is just strong enough to keep me where I am.

Somebody please push me!

Security!!!

In the virtual world that we spend so much time in there aren't any gun toting, jelly donut snarfing, servant of the public to keep us safe. There aren't even rent-a-cops with iron on patches to kinda pretend to keep you safe. You have to protect yourself...

So I finally ordered my Blizzard Authenticator. I really have no good excuse for waiting so long. If you don't have one yet you don't have a good excuse either.

There have been reports of a massive increase in hacked accounts lately. I just got my first tiered piece of armor last night, and if some gold selling piece of trash took that from me I would be pissed. Many of you have bank alts sitting on a large amount of gold and assets. Those of you who manage guild banks have a huge responsibility. This is one easy way to keep that stuff so much safer.

So if you don't have one, get one now. They're only $6.50, and Blizzard isn't even charging for shipping on this!