Mage UI: First Step - Nostromo Game Pad

I've been thinking about what I can do to free up space on my screen. I'm just not happy with the way everything is currently laid out, and I know I can do better. Will it increase my DPS by insane amounts? Will it make me out heal the uberest of uber-geared folks? Of course not, but it's really something I'd like to do.

So.... since I've had a Nostromo game pad since Christmas... of 2007, I figure that I should finally put it to use. Phaelia over at Resto4Life had posted about how she uses (or used as the case may be) the game pad here. For a mage, it's basically a starting point. At least for me it was. I can't really get all of my spells to fit in the 29 slots that she's suggesting. Nonetheless, it gave me some great idea for both my mage and my shaman (which I'll go over at a later date).

I know all of you mages are sitting on the edge of your sit wanting to know how I'm going to set up my keys, so here goes:

Row	Column	Normal	Alt
1	1	Invisibility	Evocation
1	2	Icy Veins / Combustion	Mirror Image
1	3	Use Mana Gem	Spellsteal
1	4	Dragon's Breath	Arcane Missiles
1	5	Blizzard	Flamestrike
2	1	Fire Blast	Ice Lance
2	2	Counterspell	Remove Curse
2	3	Polymorph
2	4	Living Bomb	Scorch
2	5	Frostfire Bolt	Pyroblast
3	1	Fire Ward	Frost Ward
3	2	Arcane Intellect	Arcane Brilliance
3	3	Dampen Magic	Amplify Magic
3	4	Mana Shield	Arcane Explosion
3	5	Blink	Frost Nova

This still means that I have a pool of spells I don't have bars for (Arcane Blast, Fireball, Frostbolt, Mage Armor (I'll let SmartBuff take care of that one, could probably remove Arcane Int/Brilliance as well), Ice Armor, and Cone of Cold). There's also set of spells that I'll have off on the side somewhere such as Professions, Portals, and other non-combat essential items. (I suppose Slow Fall is debatable on that list, but it's in there nonetheless.) I also have potions on that list. I know, I know... they would be combat "essential" but with everything being freed up for non-clicking, I figured those two items wouldn't be a big deal. So, I'm off to install Bartender to see if this setup will work for me.

Making a Difference

I've told a number of my friends how much I've enjoyed playing my shaman. Heck, I think I've mentioned it here in this blog as well. I obviously really enjoy playing Wow. And I really enjoy playing the game with others, hence why MMO's in general have such a big appeal to me. But the thing that's really appealing to me lately is being able to make such a substantial difference as a healer.

Now, by that last sentence, I am not professing to be some uber healer. I have mostly blue gear. I probably overheal a ton. But I enjoy doing it.

Last Saturday night, we ventured in to Ulduar. We took down Flame Leviathan pretty easily, but that's really not role or class specific. You could walk in there with 10 mages and still down it pretty easily. What we were lacking for the next fight (Deconstructor) was a healer. We had 2, and with our group, we knew it would be a challenge. I kept volunteering to grab my shaman (I was on my mage), but the raid leader wanted me on my mage. (He knows how blue my gear is on my shaman, maybe he really didn't think I could help out, who knows. lol.) After a couple of wipes on Deconstructor, I grabbed my shaman. We had one wipe after that, but it was more of a communication error, and then we took him down easily. Also Razorscale went down easily with me helping to heal.

So, after the struggles we were having with only 2 healers, I knew it was me healing that made the difference. (Again, I'm not trying to take credit from the other 2 healers, I'm sure they did a much better job than I did.) It was the difference between a night of wipes and downing just 1 boss, and success with the short amount of time we had and downing 3 bosses.

And I guess that's also why I like PvE. In PvP, there's a winner and a loser. While you don't know your opponent, there's still a human controling that toon. With PvE, it's a bunch of friends playing against a computer. So all human partipants win with the boss dies. Partly the same reason I like games like Rock Band and Guitar Heroes, and sports games where you can play against a challenging computer opponent with your friends.

At any rate, healing a group has been a lot of fun, and I hope to do it a lot more in the future.

My UI Sucks

That's the funny thing about inspiration: you never really know when it's going to hit.

I was playing Wizard101 with my kids last night. (I think I've mentioned that I play that on occasion before.) It's a very whimsical game. The combat speed is good for my 5 and 7 year olds. At any rate, it's a very minimalistic UI. As you can see from the Screen Shot here on the right, there's really not much to it. You have your basic health and mana in the lower left corner. You have your xp bar in the bottom center. Chat and interaction buttons are found in the upper left. A compass and the options button (that also opens up all spellbooks and gear and such) is in the bottom right. (This picture is actually a little old since they've added your various "hearthstones" near the compass.) And I have no idea what it is in the upper right corner; mine is a link to go buy the game or get a membership. (We've always just bought areas when we're ready to go to the next area.)

So, it may not be fair because the combat system is completely different, but after putting the kids to bed, I logged on Wow and started to compare. Holy crap I have a lot of buttons! With 12 standard ones, then another 24 laid across the entire screen just above those, and then another 24 on the right side... And with my shaman (as with my mage for that matter) every single one of those is taken up with something important. Which is actually quite humerous since I know I'm not casting 60 spells!

So, let's focus on the shaman for a second. 3.2 will take care of a lot of these problems since I have a lot of extra buttons just in case I need some random totem. Then, I'm not really sure I need all 3 shock spells. (Well, technically there are 4.) Especially when I'm in Resto (which is only when I'm in a group in an instance).

I know I've put off completely redoing my UI because on my standard screen (non-wide) there's just not a lot of real estate, but really... that's exactly the reason why I should do this.

I really need to go look up my blogging friends' posts. I know I've seen a couple people that have had some great approaches to fixing the UI. Then again... maybe I can put it off so that 3.2 doesn't break all my add-ons. lol.

Browser Usage

Today's post is almost completely non-Wow related. I was reading about Google's new operating system and decided to check out Chrome. It's pretty schnazzy, but Firefox is still my #1 choice. One of the big bonuses is that Chrome seems to load everything really fast. But Ad Block-up Plus (an add-in for Firefox) means that I never have to see all the advertisements... also means that they don't actually load. So, I'll be sticking with Firefox for that reason alone. (Doesn't look like there's a way to block those yet for Chrome. I could be wrong.)

But it seems that I'm not alone in this. According to a small sampling of data from Analytics from my Blog, I.E. isn't the clear cut winner as the media would make you believe. Then again, I doubt the average WoW player (or at least the ones that would be searching for anything they would find on my blog) is anything like the average Internet user. I'm guessing that we're just a slightly be more technical. And with just under 50% of us using Firefox lately, I'm sure that's the case.

Midsummer Festival Flop

I'm not really big on the whole holidays achievements. I think it's really cool that there are holidays in Wow that change the game up a bit, but they're simply not my cup of tea. And every time a new holiday comes out, I forget that for a bit, get all excited to get the achievements for that holiday.

Midsummer Festival was no different. I was all excited about getting this achievement done. With our truly more casual raid schedule, I knew I'd have plenty of time to get it all done. I got the Tabard for both Leiandra and also for Zanderfin. And I even set out to extinguish all of the fires. The key word there being "set out". I got the one in Orgimmar. And then the ones outside of Exodar and Darnassus. There was even going to be the bonus that I could finally finish the Explorer Achievement... which I've never gotten around to doing.

There's a reason I've never done the Explorer Achievement. Because running around the world for these meaningless points is boring. And unless it's a really cool title like "Leiandra, Slayer of all that is Evil"... I'm probably not too interested either.

So, once again, I didn't get the achievement for the holiday. And I'm okay with that. A lot of people enjoy those, and that's fine. It's just not a part of the game that I'm particulary into. I do like however, that you can go back and see when you did certain things. I can tell you when my toons hit 80, for example. Or when I first cleared a certain dungeon. Very cool. But the points for the sake of points... I'm just not that into it.

Healing Through: The PvP Edition

In my attempt to gear up Zanderfin, my resto druid, a bit faster, I've resorted to looking at some PvP gear choices. The thing is: it's not going so well. I find that I feel like the Black Knight after his arms have been cut off. I still try to do something, but it feels rather ineffective. With Earth Shield still up and Riptide cast every chance I get, I'm still just prolonging the inevitable when I'm the only one left guarding a point in AB.

Honestly, I really don't know what to do as Resto besides heal. As a mage, pvp was so much easier when I had a pocket healer. It certainly makes sense that I need to have the same as a healer. But I'm finding that Pug pvp is probably as frustrating as Pug groups. People running all over the place and no organization... It's just frustrating. I guess the only thing that makes it slightly less annyoing that running instances with a Pug is that it usually doesn't last as long.

So, I'm really looking for suggestions here. If I can't get anyone to stick by me, what do I do? I'm thinking the best thing may be simply to start Resto ('cause that's what I want to do), but if nobody will stick by me or leaves me in the dust, whatever... I should use my dual spec and go back to Enhancement. Sure the gear's not quite as good, but may seem to make more sense.

Thoughts?

Putting the Casual Back In Raiding

I really don't know where to start with the whole 3.2 Patch. Everything that I hear about it seems to be good. I'm sorry, but if there's somebody that's whining about Emblems of Conquest being handed out in Heroics (and all the lower raids) and Emblems of Triumph being handed out through Daily Quests... well... what did you expect? You're obviously Hard Core... and better than all of us (see whut I did thar)... and you'll get your upgraded epics way before the rest of us. So, simmer down, clown.

But one of the best things for casual guilds is the ability to extend raid lock out times. Honestly... one of the best things ever. Take our casual guild now. We run once per week, and generally about 3 hours. It's enough to clear Ulduar's first 4 bosses. And that's about it. There's no way we'd be able to clear Naxx in that amount of time. But in two weeks, completely possible. On our schedule, we'd be "clearing" Ulduar forever and still never see progression in. (Well.. we can skip bosses, but that's not the point.)

The hardcore people still get to be hardcore, but it really opens up some of the deeper parts of raid instances to more casual players. Great move, Blizzard. I wish I would have thought about this myself. (And if I wasn't lazy, I'd dig up the link where I did think this up, 'cause I'm 95% sure I posted about it. I'm 100% sure I've thought that it should have been done before now.)