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.

Introducing BillyWallace!

I decided to make a blog about my warrior in World of Warcraft. His name is Billywallace, and he is on the Skullcrusher US PVP server. To be honest, I hated playing Billy for the longest time. Between the struggles of levelling a warrior and the constant ganking on the server, Billy got benched around level 50 while I levelled a mage on a PVE server all the way to 70 before I came back to Billy. I really only came back for social reasons. A lot of friends had hit 70 on Skullcrusher, and my next highest toon at the time was my Pally at 31, therefore, I decided to work on Billy so I could run with my friends.

I played around with arms and fury specs but thought maybe I would enjoy tanking. So I went prot when I hit outlands. That was a flop. It turns out my guild was loaded with tanks who had levelled and acquired gear and experience. I returned to switching between fury and arms and finally understood the reality of a warrior's gear dependance. I tooled my way to 70, but still struggled with wanting to log onto Billy.

Some months before Wrath was released, I started to get the tanking bug again. I think it was when I stumbled across tankspot.com and tankingtips.com. I used the guide that Veneratio put together about gear to aim for when newly reaching 70.

Billy had a goal. Billy had a purpose. Billy was starting to get a bit interesting to play.

I still preferred my mage, but that all changed with the release of Patch 3.0 "Echoes of Doom." HOLY CRAP! Prot warriors suddenly were super fun! I still think I hit Northrend first with my mage and got him pretty quickly to 74. It was fun, but one night, my buddies on that server weren't online. I logged over to Billy and started grinding my way into the Borean Tundra.

I had also been somewhat unsatisfied in the only guild Billy had ever been in. There are a TON of great guys and gals in that guild, but I didn't have really close ties to them. (Not the kind of ties where you see so-and-so log on and feel compelled to drop what your doing to hang out with them.) There was a small group forming within the guild as well that bothered me due to their elitist attitude.

A friend from that guild had recommended another guild that he felt would mesh better with my personality. Boy was he right. My poor mage hasn't seen the outside of the Inn in Valiance Keep since Billy joined his new guild.

Since then, Billy has shockwaved countless mobs, and shield slammed his way across Northrend. He has tanked all but a few of the level 80 instances, and I just can't get enough!