UI alterations

I did in fact have something I wanted to talk about besides MM, I'd just forgotten about it...

Altering your UI (user interface) for fun and profit. I'm currently running xperl
and bartender 4, and it looks like this


When I installed bartender, it looked like this


And this is what my UI looked like before all the fiddling...




I did this because, well, I installed xperl to make my life easier, and decided that the default bars looked really clunky (and were kinda getting in my way). So I decided to give bartender a try. It took some configuring (about 15 minutes of playing with both xperl and bartender to get them both to where I was happy with them), but it was well-worth it. You can see that s1 stuff on the top picture? All those abilites are now set to shift+1, 2, ect and more importantly, I can see them. I stink at remembering hot keys. I like the fact that I can shrink bars and make bars fade (there's a bunch of abilities I don't use much but l hate having to go through the spellbook to find them).

Plus it makes it far easier for me to target what my pet is targeting, and xperl gives so much more info, like party buffs, who can res, who's targeting what, ect. It's awesome.

Ghost Running

Hi. I'm Aidelyn, and today we're going to discuss a very important subject. Now, I'm a Stormwind girl, never really made it out of Elywnn, and this here Lunar Festival seemed like the perfect time to get out, see a bit of the world, and party. So I did. And I may have done a bit too much partying, because I woke up with a pounding headache and discovered that my invitation had disappeared. So there I was, stuck in Moonglade, with no way out. It was a fine how-do-you-do to Kalimdor, let me tell you. Never been on this continent in my life, and now I'm stuck here.

Thankfully I got out, and I'm going to tell you how so you can too...
First, and this is the most important step... DO NOT PANIC! Especially not if you're a night elf female. You'd think with a millenia-old civilization that somebody, somewhere, would have discovered the bra. But I digress...

Second, find the flight master, so you can come back later. He's on the other side of the lake from the town (and what idiot civic planner decided that was a good place for him?)

Third, strip. You heard me, take all that pretty shiny gear and armor off. Unless you haven't changed your underwear in a month of Sundays, or you're Horde (except for the elf ones). Then please, for the sake of my sanity, keep your pants on. Literally.

Fourth, figure out where you're going. I picked Darkshore, since I knew I could get a boat home from there. Barrens might be a good alternative for the Horde.

Fifth, start running. Leave Moonglade. At this point you will die and get dropped at the Spirit Healer...

In Felwood. Saves you some running. Now, I know we all go find our corpses when we die, but this time DON'T. If you go back, you're just going to die. Again and again and again.

(From this point on, nothing I say's going to help the Horde much. Sorry guys, you're on your own)

Sixth, start running south. See on the map above, where the river and the lakes are? You're going to hit that area, make a sharp right and keep going. Aim for the coast. You'll fall off some cliffs, but who cares? You can't die if you're already dead. Unless you're undead, and I always wondered how that worked.

Seventh, once you make it to Darkshore, find the road. It should be between where you fell into the zone and the coast. If you can't find it, don't worry and just run up the coast.

Now here comes the challenge. You're looking for...
white on white. They're impossible to see when dead, I swear.
Here's a full listing by zone, or you could just find 41,36 in Darkshore. It's along the main road, north of the town. Once you find it, DO NOT REZ. Log out. Switch servers and log into another character. Then come back.

Now rez.
This should be what you see, more or less... except without me in underwear. If you see me in underwear, you may still be at the party. You also may be stoned out of your mind. Just breathe and go get some munchies.



Auberdine is just a little ways south, and you can get ships from there to Stormwind, Darnassus, or that space goat place. Plus, hit the flight guy for...


A way back to an incredible party.

A few more thoughts on MM

Well, after a weekend spent killing stuff (and getting coins), I now have a better feeling for MM.

I am still pulling off Cub (my bear) like WOW. Even in Aspect of the Viper (which I stayed in for a while to practice shot rotations) I am pulling off him. I am still hopeful that this has to do with the 3 lvl difference. (Please, let it be the level difference. I don't want a gorilla, but I want mobs suddenly realizing that I've just pwned them even less).

And in other news...


I crited for over 1K! Little squishy lvl 61 me! Thank you Arcane Shot!

Now to level like mad. You think I can get up 19 levels in what, 19 days? I think I can. (I wants the Northrend Elders. I WANTS THEM)

And I found this and yay
the Four Shot Marksman Rotation I figured since I found this so useful, other people might too.

Last, prowl still turns itself on. Blizzard, bug not fixed. You just think it is.

A web of professions

I have alts. I get bored with them and play them more or less depending on where I am with Garetia. I also have this lovely web of crafting because, well, I did it in LotRO and I'm going to do it in WoW.

I give you my web of professions on SC.

The main is an Alchemy/Herbalist. I don't use the potions much on her, but I like herbalism. I'm not sure what the max-level stuff is for alchemy, so I may end up changing to something else. What, I have no idea, but something.
The DK on SC is a miner/blacksmith. I like mining, and I think I'll like bs once I get it to a decent level. The grind right now is a little annoying.
The Pally is a miner/engineer. I heart engineering but omg the extra stuff I need is annoying beyond belief. But things go BOOM! :)
The rogue of squishiness is a skinner/leatherworker because, well, all my rogues are skinners/leatherworkers, but I didn't have one on SC. I've never gotten it past apprentice because I've never gotten a rogue past 10, but I've been in a roguey mood lately. Plus her ponytail goes swish.
The much-neglected mage is a miner/jewelcrafter because she's a space goat. I liked jewelcrafting a lot to begin with, but she's run smack into the bronze/iron gap and I don't like playing her. Apparently there's a trick to mages and I don't know what that is or can't manage it.
And the bank toon/shaman is a tailor/enchanter. I just leveled her tailoring to her max (she's only lvl 10) and I had fun and now I want to level her to 25 so I can level her tailoring more. I had leveled her to 10 to get her enchanting up, and enchanting, while nice to keep bags clear, is an eh prof. Tailoring is fun cause I can make pretty things and bags and then they sell. Hmm. Maybe I should switch the main? Must ponder more.

I don't have an inscriptionist because it was like watching all my herbs disappear into this huge black hole and wow, what a time/money sink.

And yes, I have more or less the same web on horde side, or will. Main's an enchanter/herbalist, hunter's a miner/blacksmith, priest's a tailor/skinner, rogue 1 is a skinner/leatherworker, and the DK is a miner/engineer. Since most of the toons are squishy-city, I've not gotten very far.

Oh, and last but not least, I give you, My Belf DK. I'll be adding her to the sidebar too. She's going to be used mostly to feed shiny gear to my other characters (mostly the priest and warlock) and to get gold.

Some thoughts on respecing

I haven't said much about my respec because, frankly, I was busy doing lowbie quests and hadn't noticed much of a difference. My damage numbers went up, I got two new things to play with, but I was still using the same rotation and basically the same tactics.
I haven't reached the bottom of the MM tree yet, so I don't have chimera shot. But while questing in Felwood last night I did discover a few things.
1. I now pull off my cat and get high threat warnings much more.
2. My cat takes longer to kill things by himself.
3. I'm having to use more traps and more disengage, plus concussive shot. It's been levels and levels since I've used concussive shot. I think this is a good thing, it forces me to practice kiting and trapping.

I did discover something very interesting this morning. I switched out my cat for my bear (who may be replaced by a warp stalker when I can get one), and my bear's holding aggro better than my cat. And my bear is 5 levels lower than me.

I think that the lessened damage my cat is doing can't compensate for my increased damage, but the aggro-holding abilities my bear has can do the job. I did pull off the bear but he would generally pull the mob right back. This made me happy. If Cub (leveled to 60) hadn't been able to hold aggro, I was going to have to go get a gorilla and I don't want a gorilla. I don't like the way they look. But since he's holding aggro pretty well at 5 lvls lower, I don't think I have to worry.

Oh, and Happy Lunar Festival to everyone. If like me, you want achievements, may I point you to....
The Wow Insider Guide
and
The Tour Guide Elder Add-on. I used (and still use) Tour Guide on my low-level toons to tell me where to go and what to do next. I don't always listen, but it's nice to have. Plus, it uses less memory than questhelper (which I also have). Between Tour Guide, Lightheaded, and Questhelper, I'm more than set for leveling.

Goals

I need to have goals in games. Whether it's "see all this stuff" or "kill these things" doesn't matter. I just need to have them or I flounder and get bored and wander off. Obviously my long-term/meta goals are to level the characters to 80. But that's a long way, so I need goals in the middle.

My current middle goals in WoW are...
Get both DKs to Outlands levels of crafting. I'm focusing on Llonya for now, and just got past the tin to iron gap. Her blacksmithing is at 100, and considering I just started last night, I'm pretty happy with where I am there. Neither DK is getting anything in the way of XP right now, since I'd rather level professions along with the character.

Get Garetia exalted with somebody other than Darn. Gnomer would be nice. I spent most of the day yesterday running through Azuremyst and Bloodmyst, and got about 4k of Gnomer rep, as well as maybe 8k? of Exodar. There's only 2 quests that give direct Gnomer rep there, and those two got me 500. The rest was all bleedover from the Exodar rep.

Get Loremaster of Kalimdor done on Garetia. Obviously the other goal can be used to further this one, and I have been. This does mean my lvling slows down, but I can live with that. I'd probably stay in Azeroth till 62 anyway (I tried the first few Outlands quests before the patch and I went SQUISH!), so I don't think it's a huge impact. I have several zones I haven't touched (the Barrens, Felwood, Silithus, Azshara) a few left in Un'Goro, an entire quest chain in Desolace, and a couple left in Winterspring. I'm close to 500 if not at 500 so I think (hopefully) getting those zones done should do it. Plus I get more gold (still not at 400), more quest rewards, and more herbs. And heck, once I get the cash for the mount, I want to start leveling Alchemy again (sitting at 270), and I'll need extra herbs for that.

I won't touch or worry about any of the other Loremaster stuff till I'm 80, but with Kalimdor I figure I'm close, I remember where I haven't done stuff, and it's going to be easier to get it done now rather than a few months down the line.

Character Specs

After a bit of research, I think I may have come up with specs for my various characters, and I'm sticking them here so I don't loose/forget them.
My Warlock-> is here. Granted that's a lvl 80 spec and she's lvl 20, but it gives me something to shoot for. The spec came from Elitist Jerks and is designed to be a fire makes things go boom! spec. I may switch some stuff around while lvling, but thus far it's been fun to play.

My hunter-> If I go over to MM, this is probably the winner. If I don't, I still need to respec and clean up.

MY Dks-> is where my deep blood came from, and he talks far more intelligently about it then I could. I'm thinking my new DK will be going unholy, and using the unholy spec he talks about.

I still have a bunch of alts that I haven't made decisions about yet, like my pally, but I figure I'll add them here as I do the research and come up with them.

And 3.08 is a go!

So, my game just patched itself to 3.08. I'm just yanking out stuff that matters to me, and stuff I feel I can comment on.

COOL THINGS!
I can haz a DK on Trollbane now!

I can haz a mechanostrider. Once I get the rep up. I'm at 4250 revered I think. Shoot me now.

New graveyards and faster death runs! YAY!

"Reputation rewarded for killing mobs will no longer automatically deprecate. This means trivial mobs will continue to give out their full amounts of reputation on kill for the majority of cases in the game (level 70 creatures in Stratholme, for example, will continue to award the full amount of rep to level 80 players seeking to boost their Argent Dawn faction). " -> This is great. Maybe now I can get to friendly with the stupid centaurs (2 rep per kill means, well, I have driven them before me, heard the lamentations of their women, and wiped them all from the face of the earth. Repeatedly, and their counterparts still don't like me.)

Arcane Shot is cheaper. I like it, so that makes me happy. I dunno how this will affect shot rotations, but since I'm doing a complete respec, I'll figure it out later.

"Mining veins and deposits no longer require multiple hits to receive all the ore. Players will receive around the same amount of ore, stone, and gems they would have received from multiple hits. " ->OMGWTFBBQ YAY! That'll make lvling my DK's mining easier! And yes, I am really happy because I have 3 mining characters.

"Prowl: This ability will no longer sometimes turn autocast on by itself. " -> Thank deity. Very annoying bug if you have a cat.

"Demon Armor and Demon Skin: Armor increased by approximately 120%." ->Yay my warlock being less squishy.

"Hand of Reckoning(NEW): Available on trainers at level 16. It’s a 30 yard range taunt that causes Holy damage. "-> Ranged stuff for a pally! HUZZAH! Maybe I won't have to wait so long for the dynamite cooldown now.

"Improved Tracking(Survival): This talent has been slightly re-designed. Now reads: While tracking Beasts, Demons, Dragonkin, Elementals, Giants, Humanoids and Undead, all ranged damage done to those types is increased by 1/2/3/4/5%. " ->Every MM build I see uses this talent, so it'll be interesting to see what the theorycrafters make of the change.

"Warlock Pets: Some pets were not properly classified to receive correct creature scaling for Wrath of the Lich King. Their health and damage done will now be higher. "->Yay. Not that it matters too much on my baby warlock, but yay.

I thought they had upped Growl's aggro power, but I'm not finding it. I sincerely hope they did.

Volley nerf is a eh. I don't use it much, so it doesn't really matter to me.

So, I think it's a good patch, all things considered. The mining thing makes me ridiculously happy (I just started lvling my DK's mining), and the rep thing is a yay (there's an entire quest chain starting from friendly with the centaurs, and if I want Loremaster of Kalimdor, I need to get it)

Now if the servers would just come back up already....(taps foot impatiently)

I apologize for the lack of entries this week. The truth is...

I haven't been playing Wow. I probably managed about an hour this week. There are several reasons for that, guild drama, the fatigue of hitting 60, but mostly, fear. Yup, fear.

Perhaps some background would make things a bit clearer. I have a family history of addiction. It would be very easy for me to loose myself in WoW. Too easy. Things are hard right now, and one of my coping mechanisms has always been escape. And I'm afraid of giving into that, so I took a break, decided to focus on real world accomplishments. I now have a scarf done, and another started, I've discovered a local D&D group, and I've made the first steps towards surgery. Plus, I got two stories that are due at the end of January started, and a third original fic started as well.

I do have an entry ready to go once I type it, and I do have some things to say about leveling my priest. First off, apparently I chose the "blood elf male most luikely to enjoy taking it up the butt from a Tauren option". In my defense, I wanted to look at a cute butt while leveling, since I knew this character would take a while. Also, I have discovered this character's desperate need for a wand. The damage he does without one, well, sucks monkey balls.

Not much else to say, really. My DK is out of the starting area, and mining her heart out around Ironforge. I need the cash, so she'll be doing this for a while. My hunter will not be moving to Outlands until she is exalted with a faction that isn't Darnassus and gets the gold for a fast mount. Since the only other two factions I'm revered with are Gnomer and the dwarves, and I can't buy a mount from them till the patch, it may be a while.

DING!

One final push and I hit 60 at 5:45 am. To celebrate, I give you SCREENSHOTS!

My DE riding a drake.



My two bears



My ding



My new haircut



A better picture of my bear

A little experiment

Now, my hunter did not start out life as a BM hunter. Until the great respec of '08, she was a Marksman (and lvl 21 or 22). I've been considering moving her back for some time, and heck, I installed the beta client to see how the patch was going to affect me (didn't really notice a difference in practice, though the damage numbers have gone down a little bit).

Today I was talking with a friend, and she explained that BM is partially so popular because marksmen do more damage and their pets can't hold the aggro as well. She also said that I'd likely have to use a tanking pet. Thus my experiment was born.

Tonight I wandered over to the test realm, tamed me a bear (I have one on SC, but he's lower level and I tamed him after I copied Garetia to the test server), and then took something down. No aggro issues. Went to Darn, attempted to respec, discovered that I wasn't speced at all(?), and went full Marksman. Speced the bear and headed back to kill stuff. I did way more damage and the bear had no problems keeping the aggro. I then switched out the bear for Llofios (cat) and he had no problems holding aggro. The only pet who did was Eriador, who's 5 lvls lower than me (and lower-lvl pets always have issues holding aggro). I may lvl up Eriador and recopy her, and then retry it. I would think that cunning pets would have the hardest time holding aggro, so that might give me the best result.

Useful Blogs and Resources

Useful blogs and resources (okay, mostly blogs)
The blogs on my sidebar are hunter ones, so I figured I should find some for other classes too.

A Character Builder-> I haven't figured out really how to use it, but it's fun to play with and looks to be a good way to see how new gear might affect your character.

DK Builds-> There aren't many notes on the builds, so it's hard to get an idea of what's effective. But it might give you some ideas.

Bringing the Wood->Yes, the title makes me giggle. Plus, druid healing and tree form.

Kestrel's Aerie->Looks like this blog is shifting away from hunters and towards shadow priests, but it's still a good read.

A Girl and her (Space) Goats-> This would be a bad time to point out that I have 4 draenei among my 10 characters on SC. My main may not be one, but I certainly love the space goats.

A Mage's Musing Because sometimes you just need to freeze something and then set it on fire.

Altoholics Are Us Yup, that's me.

NoobDing A great newbie blog, with loads of useful posts.

A Moonkin's View of Azeroth Moonkin make me laugh when they dance.

A Paladin Tanking Forum I don't always understand what they're talking about, but it's always interesting.

Death Knight Tactics Because this blog taught me that um, it might be a good idea to hit the buttons in some kind of order, and what order that should probably be.

The Big Bear Butt-> I have never played a feral druid, am never likely to play a feral druid, and I still love the blog. Insightful and interesting.

And the alltime theorycrafting must, Elitist Jerks-> Most of the time I'm not quite sure what they're talking about, and I'm unlikely to ever open my mouth over there, but it's the big resource for theorycrafting. I plan to read up on hunter specs next.


On another note, I think I found my DK spec I made it myself
It's a deep Blood Dual Wielding, with a dash of unholy.

Well, internet is spotty at best, so no WoW for me for the moment. I have been pondering exchanging my cat for another cunning pet.
These are the ones I'm considering...
A Spirit Beast
A Wolf (the only skin I liked)
This moth

I think my first choice is most certainly the Spirit Beast, but it'll be a while before I get there.

And occasionally my brain just blanks out

Now, I have hordies. I don't play them much, but I do. And now I'm going to tell you a little story...

My blood elf warlock was wandering around when someone asked her to sign their guild charter. I did, went on my merry way, and thought no more about it. I didn't play her for a bit, and logged in tonight to check mail and because my primary server was full. There were people talking about making a WC run, and I thought they were in general. It wasn't until they started talking about other toons that I realized, hey these people are in my guild. A guild I know nothing about, other than I signed the charter.

Just a lovely moment of brilliance on my part. I had one earlier when I made a blood elf DK, and then discovered that at the moment I can only have a DK on my main server. I do have one there, and this is her. Just rolled the day before yesterday...

I haven't decided on spec yet, but I'm thinking blood.

There should be a couple of posts coming soon (like hopefully later today), one with resources for info, and one on the awesome OP of hunters. I just need to get a fic (that was due on the first) done.