Almost a year ago I posted a screenie of us wiping on Sarth-3D and talked about the various elements of my UI. It seemed to me that an update was in order, so for a change here is a screenie of us wiping to Heroic Anub!

The style is pretty strongly inspired by the Parasol Edition of Tapestry UI, but the fundamental elements haven’t changed over the last year. I have a middle stack of buttons, Grid, and user frames, and a big black text box in the corner. There are a few changes under the hood, however.

Out: Pitbull, In: Stuf
Pitbull was always a huge memory hog, so I was happy to find a suitable replacement in Stuf. One thing both mods suffer from is too many options — given infinite time and patience, you could make your user frames look like almost anything. Pitbull addressed that somewhat with the in-game template features, while with Stuf you just overwrite the LUA file. It can be tough to source attractive frame files, though, and it’s a little intimidating for someone with limited mod experience. Once you get it set up, it looks good and has very low overhead.

Out: Buffalo, In: Satrina Buff Frames
I enjoyed my cute tiny buff/debuff icons for years, but at some point during a couple tiers of LK raiding I got tired of having to squint to see how long I had left on Thaddius’ polarity and such. I could have just set up Buffalo to do that, but I figured I may as well take the opportunity to finally update to a more current add-on. SBF does everything you would expect, with low overhead, and a few extras. (I like being able to turn off things like Heroic Presence, for example.)

Out: BigWigs, In: Deadly Boss Mods
Huge upgrade. DBM has, in my experience, more complex timer available and gives more information to the player than BigWigs. Additionally, DBM works in some 5-man situations (it will time Make It Count for example) and by default has timers for important events in Battlegrounds like graveyard captures. No contest, DBM wins.

Best in Show: Power Auras
Oh, Power Auras. Tough to set up, but once you do you will possibly never find a mod that is so useful to every class in so many ways. “All” Power Auras does is put the symbol of your choice (including size and color) on the screen at a pre-set time or condition. For example, see that little green symbol to the left of my body in the screenie? That means I have three stacks of Serendipity up. It’s just a simple graphic that goes red, yellow, or green appropriately, but it makes a huge difference as to the next spell I cast. The flexibility to add even more clear, concise symbols to my game play in the future, in any way I need, makes this a pretty powerful add-on.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
Hmm, one tiny change in my philosophy of add-ons I guess: I just noticed that I’m not running a DPS meter in the 2009 raid screenie, whereas it has a place of prominence in my UI now. How odd. Did I turn it off for the shot in an attempt to be modest? Or was I actually not running one? Perhaps I’ve gotten more numbers-focused in the last year.

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Technical Issues mods

Right before 3.3 hit, I knew it was going to be an exciting patch. There was a whole new raid instance! And new recipes, a new legendary, new crafting orbs, three new heroics, and a new faction. Oh, and some change to the Looking For Group interface, but whatever, pug runs are stupid.

So here we are, a week after launch, and I have to admit that my 3.3 fangirling was right on the mark. Everything is fun and exciting! What I didn’t expect was becoming such a Looking For Dungeon addict.

I cannot say enough about this new system on a few different levels. As a guild leader, I love seeing lots of people on being active, and now in between raids you can look at the guild list and see people running everything, all over the place. Two or three guildies wanna group up? No problem. There’s no more “Oh, sorry, I ran that already,” and alts are suddenly really popular. I’ve even had a few people return to playing simply because they love being able to run a heroic any time their heart desires.

On a personal, player level, I have really enjoyed all my groups. Some of them were with excellent players, like the time I cleared Halls of Lightning in a fraction of the usual time (props to you mad chainpulling tanks!). Some of them were with barely adequate players. One of them was a heroic Nexus where I was not only the healer but also second highest DPS, and it was a BLAST. Granted, it was with a really good pug tank who didn’t need much looking after, but being a battle priest was probably the most fun I’ve ever had in Nexus, if not in recent heroic memory.

I even had the stereotypical dumb DK in one group, who announced halfway through that he was leveling his unarmed skill. I replied that I was going to start leveling my “unhealed” skill. The rest of the group chuckled.

Each LFG heroic is an adventure. Where are we going? What kind of tank will I have? Will the DPS be any good? Will people talk or be silent? Will they have silly names that I can ask about? (Favorite so far: a DK named Schmarthas.)

Before 3.3 my resistance to pugs was pretty well known by the guild. And I was happy that way! But suddenly I have become a Liore of the People, with badges and gold and titles and adorable puppies and alt gear and good stories.

So bravo, Blizz. I would never have asked for this feature, but now that it’s here I cannot get enough of it.

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Technical Issues, WotLK LFG, patch

So 3.2 is here, probably a little earlier than we anticipated, and it is still making me cranky. (Cranky enough to not blog, but not cranky enough to stop playing!) Allow me to summarize:

GOOD

• Oracle pet!
• Adorable raptor pets with giant heads!
• New dailies!
• Raid timer extensions!

BAD

• Too many raid settings. Four different versions of Wyrms is not actually four different bosses.
• Three different types of T9. Some need badges. Some need general tokens. Some need class specific tokens. Some need tokens AND badges. I need a flowchart.
• The armor is still ugly. If you’re going to make all clothies wear the same style of gear, at least give us a rad menacing warlock design!

I kind of know what Blizz was doing, at least in part, and I appreciate that new recruits will be able to gear up faster now on their own and get to T8/T9 readiness without us having to run them through Naxx. Still, as one of my guildies said on patch day, the fact that you get three Conquest tokens from three bosses in the new 5-man really devalues the badges we’ve gotten so far in 25-man Ulduar (25 man regular, not 25 man Heroic hahahahahah oh man where am I).

Oh, and the bugs have been outstanding, although that’s to be expected with a patch and doesn’t really bother me. Our server was dead for most of patch day, and last night in Ulduar we had the awesome quintuple bots bug on XT. I’m not sure if everyone found them so amusing, but the sight of an ocean of bots swarming towards us — and the associated cries of panic on Vent — kept me giggling for the next hour. Never have I wished so badly to be DPS and on Mind Sear duty.

Anyway, on the guild front we have been toying with P3 of Yogg, and with the raid timer extension I feel pretty confident that we’ll get him down by next weekend. Then I think we’ll focus on hardmodes and dabble a bit in the new Colosseum. I admit my 21 shards and I selfishly hope the guild spirit is still up to learning Three Lights in the Darkness.

I suppose I can’t really complain too much. Summer doldrums are over, there’s some new content to be had, and I have bets with friends over which one of us will be asked to leave Blizzcon first. And, hey, at least T9 won’t make me look like a paladin.

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Raiding Ruminations, Technical Issues, WotLK Colosseum, gear, patch, raiding, Ulduar

So remember when I posted a couple of weeks ago declaring that I had forsaken all alts and alt leveling? Ironically enough, writing that post got me thinking about alts, and how I’ve always wanted a paladin. Truthfully, I think female characters look really awesome in most plate gear. More importantly, though, paladins are a great class for PVP, both battlegrounds and arenas. While I adore Liore and the priesthood, I’m saddened sometimes that I am destined to get chewed up and spit out in arenas, or that battleground achievements like Ironman are a million times more difficult with my chosen class.

Of course, I level like a turtle, and paladins are not renowned for their quick leveling anyway. I pondered my options, did a little reading, and then decided to join a whole new level of WoW-geekery: I was going to two-box a couple of characters and boost them using the Recruit-a-Friend bonus. It’s a little extra money for a couple of months, but it held the potential for fun and I love deciphering new toys.

Getting the account started was very easy. I mailed myself a Recruit-a-Friend code from my Blizzard Account, signed up with my own name and credit card, and voila! Starting up technically was a little trickier. I use one computer with two monitors and two accounts, rather than multiple computers. To start with this setup, follow the first six steps on this page. You’ll also want to install the mod Jamba on both accounts.

Getting the hang of dual-boxing is.. tricky. Set a master and a slave in Jamba on each character. Get them in a group, make each other their focus, and set the slave to follow the master. With Jamba you have to manually open dialogs such as quests and flights, but once you have it opened on each character the slave will follow the master. So, for example, if both have the flight dialog open, when the master hops on a bird for Dalaran the slave will automatically pick the same thing.

HotKeyNet (which you set up in the earlier guide) allows you to send a key press to both characters at once, which you can toggle on and off with the Scroll Lock key. (Type  in chat on the master char without deselecting the Scroll Lock, and your slave will start freaking out and opening windows and whatnot.) From here you want to write macros and keybind things. For example, the “2″ key on my paladin is set to “/startattack” and “/cast [target=focustarget] Wrath” on the druid.

This is where the really neat aspect of multi-boxing comes into play. You get to look at the combat styles of two classes and figure out how they can mesh. My favorite is the button that casts Moonfire and Judgement of Light (with Seal of Righteousness, at the moment). A big burst of damage with a dot for the mob and health back to the pally — love it! Figuring out macros and spell rotations is like a puzzle, and great fun.

The XP bonus for RaF is ridiculous. It’s a flat 150% on everything. Killing a mob that usually generates 70xp will give you 175xp, and that adds up quick. In about 8 hours of play (excluding AFKs and just fiddling with the interface) both characters hit level 20. Watch out though — make sure you hit the auction house at least every 10 levels for gear upgrades, since you’ll be getting fewer quest rewards than usual.

Not only is RaF fast, but I ENJOYED those 20 levels like never before. Leveling is easy in WoW now, even without a huge XP bonus. You’ve got leveling mods to tell you where to go and when, quest items sparkle, and lowbie elites have been nerfed. But trying to move a duo through the content was a really fun challenge. I’m learning two classes at once, plus advanced macro writing, plus the puzzle-solving of how to mesh the two in combat. (As I joked in guild chat, I can blow away mobs 4-5 levels higher, but sharp corners have become my greatest enemy!)

Of course, I’m already planning on ditching little pally Miercoles and druid Suiyobi for the time being and focusing on leveling up a couple of Hordies. Feral Druid and Shadow priest, maybe? Suddenly, I’m looking forward to going home and leveling alts. How things change.

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Random, Technical Issues mods, quests/dailies

It’s here! It’s here! It’s finally here! I can’t believe they surprised almost everyone, but it’s finally time for Patch 3.1. I’m freaking out. I actually had a hard time sleeping last night (neeeeeerd!). I feel like I should be stocking up on canned goods. THE PATCH IS NIGH!

I would love to post something useful here about new priest specs or Ulduar or crafting changes or, you know, anything tangible and helpful. Instead I am mentally running around like a chicken with no head trying to get myself and the guild ready to rock.

Ahhhhh, what is my new spec? Did we mention the later raid time tonight? Will the servers be up? What are people doing for dual spec? What’s that — who’s getting the legendary mace? Umm.. I.. um.. Which boss is fourth in Ulduar? Will Grid be broken? How many healers do we need on the raid? Did I remember to buy Shadow glyphs before the prices go up?

Man I love big patch days. Seriously. It doesn’t get more exciting. Good luck out there, WoWnauts!

Patchy Links!

• Holy2Shadow dishes on  The Flame Leviathan
• No Stock UI points out 3.1-Ready Mods
• Dueg agonizes over dual specs for healy priests
• Highmesa ponders which  Argent Tournament NPC pets will be the most popular

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Technical Issues, WotLK patch