Mandy's Life

Cataclysmic Return to WoW.

2011-04-12T11:43:00.000-07:00

So I fractured my wrist playing lacrosse here at The U, and I found myself in a cast, leaving me unable to play Call of Duty or lacrosse. So of course one of my bro's on the team suggested "play WoW". It's been a good year since I logged on any of my toons, but I broke out my free trial for my toon, played for 7 days, and decided I would buy a Cataclysm key and renew my subscription.

The grind from 80-85 was surprisingly fun on my shaman, leveling as Ele and healing dungeons here and there. I had a nice amount of honor packed away from my WotLK days, so starting the grind wasn't terrible.

Eventually however, the grind got painful. I don't remember it being that bad in WotLK, but maybe I'm crazy. Anyway, I went on to run some Shadowplay to around 1900 while I got acquainted to my new keybinds.

As chance would have it a geared arms war + ret pal needed a healer for 3's and I found myself moving towards the 2200 level. I'm sitting at 2161 at the moment, and just need a few more games for that final push. Will report back soon.

Projects for the future.

2010-08-19T19:21:00.001-07:00

As many (some) of you know, I'm an avid motorcycle rider, and I love the aspect of doing new things to my bike; however, I'm not exactly an automotive mastermind.

Marisa has some beefs with my bike, so I've been debating saving up some money for a new bike (not as in brand new, new, but a different bike). As an affordable consideration, the thought of purchasing a salvage title bike from the Tampa Bay Machinery Auction, or possibly from out of state, and having it shipped in.

So how exactly would I pull this off?

For those who don't know, a salvage title is issued to a motor vehicle that has sustained damage equal to, or greater than 70% of the original value (in some states it's as low as 50%). Since I'm graced enough to live in the fine state of Florida, I can repair one of these salvaged bike and have a clean title reissued. So what might a potential bike look like?

Yeah, it's not the prettiest thing, but I have some ideas of what I might do with it. Turn it into a streetfighter (not the video game). A streetfighter is essentially a stripped (super)sports bike, that has a more 'aggressive' styling to it. Here's a good example, also of a Ninja.

Personally, I like the styling and the price really can't be beat. It serves the purpose of a nice commuting vehicle, as well as weekend toy.

Next time I have another crazy idea, I'll be sure to throw up another blog post about it. I'm lazy these days, or preoccupied with something over at The U.

Cheers,

Mandy

Done with WoW.

2010-06-19T15:03:00.000-07:00

Indeed. Not worth the time of money, haven't played in months, and feeling great about it. So what am I going to blog about now? Whatever the hell I want to.

As a request for a friend my next entry will be about getting your Xbox 360 to work on a college network.

Let's set sail for fail.

2010-03-11T06:53:00.000-08:00

Still no lock, so no games. This seems to happen to me every season, but hey, what can I do? Transfer? That's one of the few options I have. I've got a mage friend that recently left his 3's team, but again, no lock.

I actually did some games over spring break, but they were all 5's; furthermore I'm trying to ween my way out of WoW slowly so I can focus on school, and the ever-so-important Marisa "Missy/Magic" Hivner.

Yes, Missy's new temporary alter-ego is "Magic". Much like Magic Johnson she has HIV(ner) ~~and is a lady's man.~~

What am I doing in the mean time? Back on the paladin and druid and improving my game play. So what am I going to do to improve my gameplay? Let's make a list for myself.

1] Stop mouseover healing

I've heard too much about the benefits of either binding every heal with modifiers to heal team mates; however, I have tiny hands (really, they're girlish) so I'm going to try out targeting with the scroll wheel on my mouse (scroll up = party 1, scroll down = party 2, shift+scroll up = party 3, shift+scroll down party 4 self target = click off whomever I'm healing).

2] More comfortable keybindings

I will confess I have Flame Shock bound to 0 and Lava Burst bound to shift+0, I'm going to move these keys to more practical places; I'm too used to DPSing when I'm not under pressure; that's the story behind that bind. I'll make sure to do the same with my Paladin limiting buttons 7-= for things like Lay on Hands and my mount.

I'm considering getting another mouse (using a classing Microsoft Sidewinder, my raid healing partner), I like the solid middle click on it (shift + middle click is my trinket, so it's kind of key) as opposed to my old Logitech g15 which I used on my hunter. I'm going to search out a comfortable medium so I have more options on my mouse and can mouse scroll/button target for 5's as well.

At this rate though I might be saving these tips for the summer when I'll have some real time on my hands to melt my brain by owning at Bioshock 2 and Modern Warfare 2.

From Bad to Glad: Part I

2010-03-01T08:54:00.000-08:00

First things first, I'd like to give a shout-out to an addon I started using recently called Lose Control. This simply let's you know when you're CC'd. I find it especially useful during times that I can't tell wether I'm silenced or stunned quickly.

Now back to our Arena progress:

It's been extremely difficult for our team to get games in this week; so we found ourself queuing against 1800-2000 rated teams rather than tanking our MMRs in order to faceroll our team rating back up to somewhere around normal.

As a result, on Monday (3/1) we were only at 836 rating. Why? Our warlock Scooch hasn't been on in about 2 weeks or so; very sad for me.

What are my options now? I can find another lock; someone just transferred server, played to 2000 rating in 2's, but no higher than 1500 in 3's. There's a bit of a risk there since 2v2 and 3v3 combat differ greatly, and we'd run the risk of him standing out in the open and getting nuked constantly like our last lock (well he actually played to 1800 in 3's and still sucked). I played a few games with this lock however, and he seemed to know what he was doing (2/3 of the games we lost were due to the shitty internet connection provided by the University of Miami). I'll see how far 2's go and I'll go from there.

UPDATE: My lock in 2's has disappeared as well. Fudge.

I'll make a segue to my hunter and other toons I've been leveling in the mean time. My hunter (already 80) I've played to the 1800 level in 2's a number of times before when the class was fairly gimped. However; now that I've played a shaman I've lost all motivation to play that toon again. Why? I simply don't like not being able to heal myself. That probably has to do something with why I decided to recently level a druid (70), paladin (35), and I've got various other toons sitting between 7-23. Although I'm 70 on the druid, and much closer to 80 I feel that playing a pally will give me the most options in my servers small PvP community. Druid locks me down to what 2200+ comps? WLD, Wizcleave? Not too many options really, but when it comes to a paladin I can run: Wizcleave, Beastcleave, PHDk, TSG, Double healer, which are all glad viable. I just feel pigeonholed playing a shaman (especially as restoration) where I can play Wizcleave, RLS, RPS, and that's about it.

My current game plan for alts is to retire my hunter and leave him as my bank/engineer/miner. Do the daily every day on my druid (starting at level 69 you get Emblems of Triumph for doing it), and leveling my paladin as I have time. From there I'll most likely level a warrior, dk, or priest, I'll come back to my warlock and rogue when I'm done with that tall order.

Enough of that rant though, hopefully we'll actually get some games in shortly...

What happened?

2010-02-24T11:59:00.000-08:00

To start things off, an old friend of mine brought up the fact that a teacher at my old middle school was charged with endangering a student (what a beautiful mugshot too). Always something thrilling to hear! So here's where I say my prayers for never having him as a teacher... and back to what the fuck happened.

I know I was going to start blogging about what happened past 1500 rating, but I had a bit of 3's 'drama' that resulted in me creating a new team. Long story (not so) short, I had agreed to run RLS with a lock and rogue I had played with before. I ended up playing with them for a bit, got to 1500, and then the lock had asked if we could play with his friend IRL who was a warrior. I agreed reluctantly, took the team to 1800, and then asked if we could play with our rogue again. He really wanted to play with his warrior friend, so I left the team, they tanked the rating to 1600 with some other shaman, then I recommended a druid healer to them, who they are now happily playing with.

Where does that leave me? I made a new RLS with a new lock and rogue. More experienced ones (3x glad rogue/2k rated lock). Things are looking bright and we just grabbed some team so we're all sitting at 96 rating. I'll post back with how games are going as soon as we play some.

Week 0:

Oh, on another note I'm calling these PvP updates "From Bad to Glad (1800 - 2.2k +)"

AIDS, the new PvP system, and Marisa's foot.

2010-02-18T14:29:00.000-08:00

I was playing on my friends character a few days ago and decided to have some fun while I was helping him make some gold by selling glyphs. I told whoever whispered me that I had contracted AIDS. He ended up actually believing me and one of his friends decided to make him a "sorry you got AIDS cake". He decided not to tell anyone he doesn't have AIDS until he gets the cake though.

Not sure who's heard about the new PvP changes. But I'm feeling like they are going to change the grindy/afk-y nature of BG's and make the grind for PvP gear a little less painful. On the other hand I don't know if I agree with the Wintergrasp changes. I was less than thrilled about the transition from dailys to weeklys, but that's another story.

Other than that Marisa is back on her feet (pun intended yet again) after our Valentines Day fiasco. She'll be back to kicking my ass in no time!

The PvP UI

2010-02-16T06:24:00.000-08:00

Improving your UI is one of the immediate things you can use to improve your arena game. It's frequent that players transitioning into PvP to PvE have screens that are simply showing them too much information at once, and often in the wrong places. Another dilemma is having a UI that is so simplistic that the most important information is presented in such an obscure manor that it's virtually impossible to see what you need to know. A great benefit to transitioning your UI for PvP combat is that your PvE game will generally improve as well; it will allow you to identify key buffs and debuffs on boss battles, become more mobile, as well as swap to CC targets and adds faster.

The first step to cleaning up your UI is fairly simple: cleaning up your keybinds. Keybindings are an essential part to PvP; if you are a clicker, you will quickly learn the benefits to keybindings. While I have met people who have reached 2200+ rating clicking, even they could stand to improve by redoing their keybinds. To redo your keybinds I recommend getting an addon called Bartender. Bartender allows you to do a number of things that will make your UI much cleaner and effective. First, Bartender will allow you to manipulate your action bars in a number of ways: they become moveable, you can keybind directly to the bars (rather than going into the interface menu), you can also hide bars that you don't need to see.

You may be asking yourself, " why would I want to hide a bar?" By creating new keybindings, you are able to have a spell that is accessible with a simple key stroke, so for spells with no cooldown (Lightning Bolt, Purge, Cleanse Spirit, etc.), it's beneficial to put it on a bar, keybind it, and then set the opacity on the bar to 0 so that you no longer have to worry about those buttons taking up space on your screen.

Here you can see how I hide my bars in Bartender. You simply place all the spells you don't need to see on the same bar, keybind them all, and then go into the the Bartender interface (/bt) and click "Always Hide" under the Visibility tab for the bar you placed all your spells on.

The dilemma you may be having is "how to I bind all of these keys effectively? There's so many spells!" I used to play a Hunter in arenas, and I feel for them the most, but my suggestion is to bind your keys from f1-f5, 1-5, q-t, a-g, z-b. Also, bind those keys with shift, ctrl, and alt. Some players will be able to bind more or less keys depending on the size of your hands (i.e. if you have large hands you may very well be able to bind all the way to 7 effectively). Also you may consider binding shit/alt/ctrl with you left/right/middle click buttons for even more binding options. I have a friend who is left handed a plays with f8-f12, 8-=, i-\, k-', <-/ and turns using the arrow buttons. It's mainly preference, but the important thing is to keep all of your keybinds easily accessible. If you need to take your hand off where it was resting to hit a key like 8, it's not a good idea to bind that key; it's much easier to hit shit+f, even though it's two keys.

Another way to minimize the amount of keys you need to bind is by making help/harm macros. These macros will allow you to bind one key to two useful abilities that will react to wether you have a friendly or hostile target.

/cast [target=mouseover,exists,help,nodead] Cleanse Spirit; [target=mouseover,exists,harm,nodead] Purge; [help,nodead] Cleanse Spirit;  [harm,nodead] Purge; [target=player] Cleanse Spirit

I only recommend double binding keys that have no cooldown to prevent any confusion; by double binding you can effectively half the amount of keys you use.

After you have bound all your keys it is extremely important to hide everything without a cooldown, it will allow all of the buttons with cooldowns easily viewable. To accentuate this I also recommend getting an addon called OmniCC, this addon places a little countdown timer until your spell is usable again, this helps to prevent spamming a button, waiting for a cooldown to refresh, as well as letting your teammates know how long you have until key spells like Hex and Stoneclaw Totem are up.

Another thing we're going to want to practice is moving using only the mouse, as well as unbinding A and D (or whatever you have bound for turning) from movement. Keyboard turning can be an extremely bad habit in PvP, and the sooner you start turning with the mouse you should notice some immediate improvements. As a keyboard turner, anyone with a mouse can continually go behind you and continue attack, whereas you will take a full 10 seconds to make a 90 degree turn. Mouse turning is extremely simple, and is often overlooked; you can do so in two ways. One way is hold the middle click button on your mouse button and steer your character where you want to go, using Q and E (default) to strafe. The alternative is to hold down left and right click simultaneously, while steering your 'toon in the same fashion. Of course there will be situations where you need to click things while moving, so there's nothing wrong with using W to go forward, or Q and E to strafe.

At this point you're ready to start customizing your UI visually; you have all the basics for success at your fingertips (pun very much intended). To begin, I'd like to bring up what is most likely the most popular addon inside of the arena: Gladius. Gladius displays a plethora of useful information about opposing teams such as health and mana, key spells that have been casted, trinket status, as well as cast bars. This addon is very much essential to you success in the arena as it helps you identify a number of things that can make the difference between a win and a loss.

Other than the aforementioned addons, anything else is really preference, so I'll share some of my personal favorites for PvP.

Aloft is a name plate addon that can also display a large amount of information in enemy (and friendly) name plates such as health, mana, cast bars, and cc durations compactly and effectively.

Simple Light Data Text (SLDT) This addon has been discontinued as of recently, but I've been able to make it work (to an extent). This is a convenient way of checking to see if your arena buddies are on simply by mousing over the friends/guild tab. It also has some other nifty features such as a gold total count.

Shadowed Unit Frames is my unit frames of choice, because of the immense amount of customizability it offers; however, any unit frames will work for arena.

Quartz is my castbar, it's simple, clean, and is easily visible; it's also very customizable, much like Pitbull.

Tip Tac a lightweight addon for tooltips. Again; very customizable, allows you to show buffs and debuffs in the tooltip as well as specs.

Capping this is on of my favorite under the radar addons I've recently downloaded. It acts as a timer for Wintergrasp, BG and arena queues, and an objective tracker for various battlegrounds.

Elkano's Buff Bars It's been a stable buff management addon for me as it makes it very easy to identify what buffs are missing, and important debuffs.

Power Auras I use power auras for a number of things such as remember buffs before fights (Earthliving Weapon), refreshing Water Shield, to identify buffs on targets quickly (such as Ice Block and BoP).

One of the addons that I use that isn't currently visibly, but extremely useful is Auto Bar Saver (ABS). ABS allows you to save your keybindings and restore them should you decide to respec; it also replaces spells that are lost during respecs. This is very effective for people who primarily PvE and only PvP occasionally. It allows you to adjust your bars instantly after you respec rather than reconfiguring every key.

The last addon I would like to mention is Mik's Scrolling Battle Text (MSBT). If you're a fan of combat text, I recommend this addon, but I advise that you change the damage threshold or make it to only show crits. I know we all like to see those big numbers pop up on the screen, but in PvP they can be a large distraction. I have mine configured only to show crits over 2.5k, procs, and dispels.

Once again the list:

Auto Bar Saver

Aloft

Bartender

Capping

Elkano's Buff Bars

Mik's Scrolling Battle Text

OmniCC

Power Auras

Quartz

Simple Light Data Text

Shadowed Unit Frames

Tip Tac

Hopefully some of the following addons/skills will help you improve your arena game and send you towards your future Gladiator title. Even for those who don't PvP at all, these tips will improve in PvE encounters as well.

"Under what circumstances did you first learn how humans have heterosexual intercourse?"

2010-02-15T20:09:00.001-08:00

Had this as a question for my human sexuality class. I thought I would share my answer for everyone's amusement and my own embarassment:

I first learned about how humans have sexual intercourse at around the age of 10. I was never sat down for the “Birds and the Bees” talk, but as a rather deviant youth, most of my friends had already become accustomed to foul language and dabbling in other things that our parents may have considered taboo. The term “porn” was thrown around rather liberally in my circles, and I had a basic understanding of what it was (pictures of naked people), Playboy, Penthouse, etc. I’d never actually seen one though, as my mother was a devout Catholic who never allowed my father to have subscription of those sorts. However, my father was a bit of a tech freak and with the dawn of the Internet I had been familiarized with the operation of Windows ’95 and the 56k modem. It wasn’t long before I had put two-and-two together and decided that a HotBot search (I wasn’t always loyal to Google) for “porn” might render the fabled imagery I sought to my eyes. Alas, the venture was a success, with thousands of results. I glanced over the names until I found a website called “funpicxx”. I clicked it and there was a barrage of image galleries with provocative names. Since there was no YouTube at the time, or a fast and efficient way of downloading videos I settled for imagery, and I could see how things worked (penis goes into vagina, rinse, wash, repeat, etc.). As one might have guessed, I became aroused, and felt some stimulation in my penis. My immediate thought was something along the lines of “I can’t wait until I get to do that”. The feeling of my newfound erection was quite a sensation, and I found, as I shifted my weight, that whenever I had something brush on it, I had an increase sensation. I remedied this by putting a pillow beneath my genitalia and the mattress and continuing to thrust. Eventually that led to ejaculation, which both thrilled and enthralled me, and would become a wonderful hobby for the next decade.

Resto Ain't Easy

2010-02-15T12:37:00.000-08:00

I have been dabbling with the idea of blogging about playing a resto shaman in arenas, but there have been a few things that have been preventing me from going about that. Mainly school work, secondly there's my girlfriend who has recently moved in with me and has managed to break her foot within a few weeks of that. Other than that, my workload at school is beginning to settle in and I actually need to read books/study/~~drink~~/etc. but I've decided I'll partake in writing this anyway.

I must confess, I have never been a Gladiator, but I would like to think I know a little something about arenas and how to become "good" at them. Last season I was feeling strong playing Wizard Cleave (resto shaman, destro lock, frost mage) and manage to reach a rating of 1880 before both my lock and mage decided to take a hiatus. Now I have only been playing a Shaman for one season, but I have learned quite a bit about the class since then and I have much to share with other shamans struggling in arenas as well as with people new to PvP and the arena system.

I am going to document my journeys in the arena world while simultaneously trying to help shamans who are new to PvP and also have dreams of being a Gladiator. I am going to start at 1500 rating and see how far my team can go this season, and try to guide others to high rating by exploring important facets of arena combat such as gemming/enchanting, different arena specs, gear selection, positioning, spell selection, teamwork, UI's, keybindings, and a number of other skills. Additionally I would like to take questions from readers to try and address specific problems that players may be having.

Hopefully the folks at www.WoW.com might be interested in this, I would love to get resto shamans on the right foot when it comes to arena, as well as give other players insight into the arena scene.

Valentines Day

2010-02-14T20:10:00.000-08:00

Wake up in the morning, feeling like p-diddy. We discuss plans; Marisa works 2-6. After Marisa returns from work, I strongly encourage her to get her foot checked out (after tripping on the stairs yesterday). We go to the E.R. Pretty Woman is on, I narrowly catch the ending. Verdict is in; fractured 2 bones in the foot. Woosh, cast. I score an I-told-you-so as it's difficult to wear skinny jeans with a cast, and like any sensible male, insisted on the purchase of short skirts. We finally get out of the E.R. around 8. I run back to the dorm, grab her a shoe, sock, and pants that will accommodate the splint. Moving on, I bring down Marisa's handicap apparel, she changes in the car. Best part of V-day: Glimpse of Marisa's pink thong, very hot, I remember why I like hospital gowns. Now initially I had planned to take her to Shula's by tricking her that we were going somewhere else (Red Lobster). I recall she isn't quite a steak fanatic and then insist on Red Lobster anywho. As we leave the parking lot we get rear ended by some idiot who thought kissing WHILE driving was a romantic idea (it isn't folks). Fast & Furious couple keep us waiting in the parking lot while we wait for an officer to give us a form and tell us to fill it out ourselves. Next stop food. Marisa decides Red Lobster is too far so we try for fridays. We drive by, the line is out the door, F-that. We keep driving down US1 to check Panera Bread since nothing says "I love you" like a sandwich. Almost hit two guys on the street trying to sprint past the turn lane. Panera is tragically closed. We move on to Subway since we both hadn't eaten anything all day. On the way to subway we almost hit two other people who decided they are in the Olympic spirit and think they can jump over 2 lanes of traffic. Marisa watches "Making it in American" attentively whilst eating a $5 foot-long. Ah, romance at its finest.

I'm considering blogging, anyone for that idea?

One step

2009-10-14T16:13:00.001-07:00

In the right direction.