A merry…

Have a happy and safe holiday and enjoy your day off, folks.

Snowgal Yas tips her hat off to you.

UI tastiness.

So I haven’t mentioned this but for the duration of Yas’s healing career, I’ve gone through a few computers or so. The first was a poor laptop that was ill-equipped for handling anything graphically intense and resulted in hours of staring at a poor resolution, low fps game on dialup no less. I’m surprised I didn’t turn into a murderous psychopath but I had some support and eventually got a technically superior if somewhat used desktop. This computer served me well except for the fact that its innards were slowly deteriorating and a few months ago showed signs of its impending need for retirement. So I had this computer for a long stretch of time until finally I was afraid that it would die and I was able to get a job where I could save enough to get a brand new computer.

Now where am I going with this? Well my old computer had a really cruddy resolution. Half the time I couldn’t use anything higher than 800×600 for fear of random crashes and freezes. This, naturally, led to a really constrained UI which you can see a few posts back. And being a healer, my screen real estate was virtually nil half the time. Once I started tanking on my druid, I realized just how much of WoW I’d been missing. What do I pull? What does this boss do again? And now I went from not noticing the instances to not really being able to see anything past my large posterior.

But now, with a 19 inch widescreen monitor, I can see again! I can actually design a UI I like and not try to squeeze in everything. It’s glorious.

And now I present my current UI (a work still in progress):

Listed above (and hastily drawn in mspaint):

1) X-Perl Unit Frames – I wanted to get away from Pitbull and ended up going back to these. I’m not quite happy with it , so if anyone has any suggestion for a unit frames alternative that is not Pitbull, I’m happy to try it out.

2) Chatter – A chat mod.

3) Simple Minimap

4) Autobar – Convenience! Laziness!

5) Dominos – Like Bartender, highly customizable action bars.

6) Fortress with several LDB mods such as Statblock_coords, PicoGuild and others.

7) Elkano’s Buff Bars – There are more minimal mods out there, but I like the look and predictability of this one.

8 ) TourGuide – So I cheat and take convenient and efficient quest routes, kill me XD

9)  Omen Threat Meters – Even healers need to watch it!

10) Smart Buff – I hardly use the buff portion but the Debuff part (that I seem to have lost) is great for keeping track of who needs decursing or dispelling in a timely and easy way.

11) Recount – Healing e-peen. Or not.

Not labeled:

- EE Panels – for that nice little black background to keep your messy addons looking spiffy.

It’s a scaled down version of what I’ve had before which was way overloaded and half the time I didn’t know what I had.  But I do think I have a fair amount more space than I did before. I still need to see if I can stand to scale things down more or just try again from scratch XD But! It’s fun having a computer that can handle WoW for once.

I can’t grant any wishes…

…but if you’re nice, I’ll let you ride my carpet. Maybe.

Why yes, I do lead a lavish lifestyle.

And something visual:

I wanted to add some pictures of some of the memorable times I’ve had leveling:

Dalaran from above

Is it hot in here or just me?

We're off to see the---oh hai.

More scenery

Oh Yas, how do you get yourself into these situations?

The Nexus is soooo pretty.

I approve of the blue-y

Awesome quest XD

Yas posing with some penguin buddies.

Another awesome quest. And yes, I did every conceivable emote I could with this costume on XD

Future Me is a bit mean! XD Northrend must have been a trip. And lay off about my shoulders...

*Spoiler* The infamous Battle for Undercity. I stayed up late finishing this chain. Protip: If you're doing this part, it works like the last DK quest so WAIT for the event to restart if you don't see Thrall outside >.> We learned this the hard way...

For the Horde!

Wrath Recap

So I haven’t written here in a while. That’s totally my fault, and of course, WoW’s fault.  In the land of Yasura, I finally got to 80. With a boomkin leveling partner, we managed to mostly AOE and blaze through most of the zones. I have to say, Blizz really outdid themselves on this expansion. Every time I’d finish a quest line and say, “Oh my geez, that’s the most awesome chain ever”, I’d stumble across another chain that’d have me saying the same thing and squeal unabashedly.

Quick notes:

- A Disc/Holy build is great for leveling. I never ran out of mana and I was a decent healer.

- Holy Nova is a great way to mitigate the health losses of an AOE-hungry boomkin while still dishing out some dps.

- The Levitate glyph is very handy for leveling especially in quest zones with a lot of water to get across. Also, you get the added bonus of looking like a special diety with your own special water walk. (It’s too bad this goes away next patch, now everyone can be special. Boo! )

Speaking of the next patch, I can’t say I’m entirely surprised that priests got COH nerfed and otherwise lackluster updates (in the holy department, anyhow).  I really wish they would give Holy just a slight boost in mana regeneration and a few more tricks to make Holy stand out more as a raiding build. Guardian Spirit is nice but it’s been situational for me so far. Divine Hymn is really poorly scaled and I mostly use it for my gimmicky “Change is here!” macro. I’ve heard a lot from priests regarding the COH change from praising it to bemoaning it. I’m actually a bit lukewarm, as I’ve been consciously trying to wean myself off using it as much as I used to. Prayer of Healing has had a bit more bang for my buck with scaling. I haven’t tried to raid with my spec yet so I can’t say anything regarding that, but I’m hopeful that holy priests are still pretty viable in raids.

My current project is mostly trying to finish questing in the zones I haven’t finished for the tailoring stuff I need (as well as instances). I am also attempting to finish leveling my professions. I am really awed at the people that got realm first achievements with their professions. That is some insanity.

Speaking of insanity, I’m currently also powerleveling cooking and fishing to get the Merrymaker achievement. >.> …Yea. I’m not all there, I suppose.