Keiya’s UI Version 4.0

KeiUI-4-Party

Edit: Download link and more info has been posted here.

Except for a few things, I was fairly satisfied with my previous interface so KeiUI 4.0 really isn’t too different than KeiUI 3.2. Same goals as my previous UI incarnation:

  1. To retain functionality while reducing clutter, both in terms of appearance and addons used.
  2. To maximize screen visibility. I don’t like UI elements showing when they are not being used and I prefer to keep the center of the screen as clear as possible, barring scrolling text mods and stuff like that.

Ultra minimalistic DPS complications have an elegance that I love, but just won’t work for my purposes. Even though I don’t do so much raid healing, tanking or leading nowadays, I still feel like I need high information visibility in addition to my thousand keybindings. Everything, more or less, has its own place either along the bottom screen or shoved up at the top. Critical items like Omen, class spell timing bars, health bars and the like are condensed within a small area at the bottom center of the screen for easy visual access. Other times like the map, buffs and Recount are at the corners up top. When not in combat or not grouping, everything other than my player frame, the map and the hotbars will fade away.

KeiUI-4-Solo

Main changes: Dominos was dropped in favor or Bartender 4 because of the way Dominos would handle vehicle bar replacement. Since BT4 doesn’t allow you to customize the experience bar, I reinstalled XPBarNone, which automagically changes the display based on your level and what reputation is currently being grinded out. KGPanels was also dropped in favor of more visibility and reducing addon clutter. I really dislike interfaces with a giant opaque black bar obscuring the lower quarter of the screen so I wanted to shy away from that type of design as much as possible. At some point, I may even just fade everything except for the map when I am not in combat.

I dropped my other nameplate mod in favor of Tidy Plates, which looks quite a bit nicer. Autobar was also dropped in favor of just keybinding my Auras on the G13 and moving consumables elsewhere. I really liked the way Autobar condensed the different types of food and what not. It may get reinstalled when I start raiding. I am also using Holy Trinity to keep track of Holy Power (the three flat horizontal yellow bars right above my player frame). There’s a small holy power interface element that pops up in the middle of my screen whenever I am in combat. Not really sure where that is coming from or how to get rid of it :/.

KeiUI-4-Raid

My hotbars have been rearranged to correspond with how my Logitech G13 is laid out: Instead of having four 12×1 chunks arranged in a 2×2 configuration, I now have four 6×2 chunks arranged in a 4×1 configuration. It’s easier for me to keep track of how everything is keybound this way. The first chunk is bound to 1 through =, the second chunk is bound to shift + 1 through = and so forth. Will post my G13 layout later now that is has been “finalized.”

I’ve tried the new Blizzard raid interface, which is surprisingly nice though limited in terms of how you can configure it. Though I think the real problem is that I have been using a certain raid bar configuration for around 5 years or so. I love the way Grid and Perfect raid look in regards to how clean they are, but they just feel way too foreign. So I just stuck with Pitbull’s raid module which is fine.

KeiyaUI-4-Vehicle

Things that I may change: I am thinking of moving ClassTimer below my player frame, given that there is enough space. The only UI element located in that spot is a narrow bar that displays whenever I am in a vehicle or whenever a pet is out (not relevant to my paladin obviously). The vehicle thing isn’t an issue, since I’m using the Blizzard default vehicle frame (BT4 hides when I hop in). It’s not going to work out for my hunter though, since that is where my kitty’s healthbar is located.

Apologies for not responding to any UI inquiry emails received within the last couple of months by the way. Busy, yada yada. If anyone is interested, I can post this compilation somewhere. Though beware, it’s really only tested and designed for WoW in windowed mode at 1920×1080.

Cataclysm & Cloaks

Hey, the cloaks in Cataclysm are pretty sylin’. Anyone else notice this or is it just me? I have gotten into the habit of just auto hiding cloaks since all but a handful of WoW cloaks have traditionally been pretty bland or butt-ugly. These are actually nice looking; I like how the melee cloaks look like melee cloaks with plate, chain etc. I guess if you are going to stare at a character’s backside for hours on end it may as well have a pleasant looking cape dangling off of it.

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Ding! Level 85!

Keiya-85

Oh wow I sure didn’t bother blogging much this time around. Oh well, too busy playing. Anyway, ding. I hit level 85 on Keiya Sunday afternoon. I could have taken more time leveling, but it was fun going into full on obsession mode for a bit, especially after effectively not playing for more than an hour a week for the last month or so. Besides, everyone was already at level 85 and having fun doing level 85 things without me!

I will go over more zone sin detail if I get around to it and as I complete more of them. I did: Half of hyjal, half of Vashj’ir, all of Deepholm and most of Twilight Highlands before hitting level 85. I am currently working on finishing up Twilight Highlands. I’ll probably move over to Uldum next before finishing up the zones that I half completed.

vashjir_0

Of the two starting zones, I am going to go with Vashj’ir over Hyjal. Hyjal is a very well done zone, I love the quests and storyline but Vashj’ir is absolutely gorgeous. The environment and everything is so rich. Also, the swimming mechanic isn’t really as annoying as I had originally anticipated. I do run into depth issues because I like to play with my camera way zoomed out, but it’s not really that bad.

Deepholm was nice but it is effectively a giant cave. A giant grindly cave. I wanted to make sure that I played that zone to completion so that I could unlock the Therazune daily quests and maximize the easy quest reputation for the shoulder enchants and rewards (Keiya is a good raid farmer!). Speaking of which, guess who forgot to do her dailies today? Task.

Keiya-85-Gear

The dungeons that I have ran are well designed and the bosses fun. We wanted to start queuing up for heroics, but folks were about 1 gear average point shy of the 329 iLevel threshold (a tank wasn’t available, had to use the dungeon finder). So we ran Halls of Origination, spend some justice points, swapped a few crap pieces out and ran about half of Heroic Deadmines before running out of time.

The heroics are hard again by the way. See, that’s one thing that I missed when WotLK hit. We started farming entry level heroic instances as fresh level 80s with little to no preparation. I recall trying that in Heroic Coilfang after hitting level 70 in the Burning Crusade and getting curb stomped by a giant spore thingy. Having to rethink encounters and approach mobs with more caution, versus just AoEing down everything is a welcome challenge.

Cataclysm: Day 1

login-queue

Well 20+ minutes isn’t too bad; I was expecting it to be at around an hour. On the other hand, it took about 20 minutes for the authentication servers to get to this point. And as I write this, the queue keeps jumping up…boo. At least the WotLK login dragon is gone! As daunting of a character Deathwing is, we are fortunate that he does not roar every couple of seconds or so while you are waiting patiently in queue. I am one of the fortunate or unfortunate people, depending on your opinion, who did not bother taking the day off of work to play. So while you all were having fun playing during the low population times of the day, I was staring longingly at WoW Insider news feeds on my phone. QQ.

geddon_2

By the way, zone spoilers below. I leveled in Hyjal instead of Vash’jr in favor of trees and greenery over swimming. Also, as someone pointed out, meleeing mobs underwater sucks pretty hard. For me at least because I fail at depth perception or whatever life skill is needed not to suck at that. A few of our old friends from the Molten Core are chillin’ in Hyjal. There is a giant corpse pile next to Barron Geddon. I figured that it was there because people were being retarded and screwing around. Found out later that was not so and added my own body to the pile. We are clearly not as smart as Galrond, the NPC who repeatedly warned people NOT TO STAND IN THE FIRE.

deathwing

I didn’t do any instancing, just straight up questing. I will try out some of the new dungeons either tomorrow or Thursday. Hopefully tomorrow but, we will see. Boo real life. Is there an inn in Hyjal? I swear that I couldn’t find one. Oh and for the first time ever in six entire years, I bound my hearthstone to Darnassus. I made the mistake of hearthing to Stormwind and having to get back to Hyjal (to fly to STV to pick up my loot card goodie, which was the [item]Sandbox Tiger[/item]). The boats from SW harbor run just about as often as the trains here do, almost never. Man, I have been using the Dalaran and Exodar portals for so long that I have almost forgotten how to get around in the old world. I really really really want to level my Worgen but I really want to hit level 85 first.

Anyway, I am obviously having fun with the expansion pack. So much so that I am just going to cut this post short and publish it so that I can go to bed because it is late. I did though finally make it to level 81 before logging off for the evening. Folks are already at level 85. Jesus. Apologies if this post made little to no sense. It is late and I wanted to post something before I went to bed.

ding-81_0

Cataclysm: Day 0

cataclysm0

Protip: Now is not a good time to train flying. I am weak against Collector’s Editions. If it weren’t for me wanting to complete my collection of WoW collector’s edition boxes, I would have probably just ordered Cataclysm digitally for the sake of being able to stay up with half of the guild for half of the evening fawning over my new love. I kind of sorta wish that I had taken tomorrow off. I will be sitting in an office all tomorrow longing to play! Oh it’s not fair (/whine), guild members already have their game ready to go and here I am sitting here with my nose pressed against the glass. T_T.

Keiyaheat

>Anyway, a couple of quick updates since I haven’t bothered posting about WoW in a couple of months. This post probably officially ends my short WoW hiatus. In lieu of the guild leveling system (and the benefits of being in a large active guild) and steady player attrition within Paradigm, most of us have merged into another guild on Proudmoore. Given our number of active players, it would have been very hard to recruit that many people and honestly, I’m not sure I have time to do all that anymore. It is really odd migrating over to another guild after four years, but online home is where your online friends are <3. New faces!

I am probably going to level in Vashj’ir tomorrow. Not really sure, it depends on who is leveling where at what time. Because I have intentionally not kept up with the Cataclysm previews and news, I really don’t know where to go to do anything. It’s more fun figuring everything out (turning off all questing mods). I spec’d my paladin back into Retribution with a *gasp* Holy offspec. I really want to roll my Worgen druid right away, but I really do not enjoy spawn competing with a thousand other players. In theory the starting zones should calm down a bit after hitting level 85.

…I also promised a couple of coworkers that I would eventually roll a Goblin something on their server. I really want to play through the horde quests at some point.