Publish-Updated-ed! >.>

Its updated to 1.1.0

You can still DL it here.

Published!

I published my UI! YAAAAAAAAY!

You can download it here. =D

Break time

I'm in Florida for the week. No WoW. Most likely no WoW updates. I might try to work a story in if I can/feel like it.

Have a good vacation!

Making a UI (ME) pt 2

Here's another update. I think its starting to look quuuuuite nice! I'm confident with the layout and look, and am thinking about testing it out soon. I'll cover this more later, but the steps to prefecting your UI are:

1. Build the basic framework & design (see previous post)
   
2. Use Align to make sure everything is in tandem (note the square >.>)
3. Look at it. For a long time. Seriously. See what doesn't match
4. Do some light test play with it. This will quickly reveal what problems and limitations the UI has
5. Go back and edit
6. Repeat # 4&5 as many times as nessary
7. Step it up. Play with the UI like it was "real" (and it is becoming a good UI)
8. Polish

Anyway, I realy got off topic. Sort of. Here's the screenies so far:

Casting and Target + ToT

Combat

Making a UI (ME)

So, after writing my own little post about making a UI, here mine is. So far. Its a WIP. I opted to go for minimalistic setup, as you can see. Even though its FAR from done, I'm posting it now because it's usable now. (Click for big image)


Idle and Target of Target

Combat

Casting

There is still a lot of work to do here. Especially lacking (in a very obvious manner) are aesthetics. I haven't gotten time to do the art yet. Also, I have not yet configured many extra addons such as DBM, Omin, etc.

How to make a UI, part 1

Lets get this ball rolling. If you are reading this, either you have mistakenly come across it while journeying through a series of tubes, or you have genuine interest in making a custom UI. If you are the latter, good for you! If you are the former, go say hi to 4chan for me. Or go make a post about spiders. I don't care.

Since if you are still reading this, I assume you want to make a custom UI. Good for you. Seriously. On the flip side, if you are still reading this, you most likely don't know where to start. That's fine. As a matter of fact, that's why I'm here today, posting: to help you out. Lets get started.

Before you think about the actual technicalities of designing a UI, you need to know what kind of UI you want to make / play with. For simplicity, there are three basic types of UIs. (I mean good UIs. The all-too-common "ima throw all sorts of shit on my screen and see how it looks" is NOT a UI type)

• Minimalistic UI - These kinds of UIs scrap everything that isn't necessary. Unit Frames (UFs) are kept small, often without portraits. Most of the screen is very barren, typically devoid of art of other unnecessary things. Bag bars, the Micro Menu, *quite a few* action bars, among other parts of UIs are hidden. The goal here is to provide you with the maximum viewing area for quick reaction timing, as well as freeing you from things you don't relay need to know -- excess information that will paralyze you. A good example is this UI.

• Graphic UI - A graphic UI is just that. Graphic. No, not gory. A graphic UI's point is to be pretty. I'm talking prom queen pretty. It's supposed to look good. To that end graphic UIs use a lot of skins, utilizing addons such as KgPannels to do skin/art. The result is a UI that looks very slick. Here's a good example.

• Generic UI - This is where it gets sticky. I'm actually going to start with a screen shot. As you can see, the UI isn't minimalistic - there's tons of stuff on the screen, much of it which can be downsized or removed. And its definitely not graphic. There's no art. So, if I had to define this kind of UI, I'd say something along the lines of: "A UI that has all the elements of the standard WoW UI, but considerably shuffles and reskins / customises most aspects of it"

So take your pick. Go look over some of the links, see what suites your style. Go on. I'll wait.


...


Back? Ok, good. Did you pick what kind? Good. Hm...interesting choice. But for everybody else out there who didn't pick your kind of UI, I'm going to keep this advise generic.

Step one

Back away from the computer. WAIT! Not yet, read this first. Back away from the computer. Clear your head. Take a quick walk. When you come back, log onto WoW, and just look at your screen. Where do your eyes go immediately? This is an important question, as this is where you are going to put the focal point of your UI. One thing you may notice about all the UIs linked above is that the main points of any UI (UFs and Action Bars[ABs]) are all in the lower center of the UI. The reason is: that's the place that in all likely hood, your eyes are going to be spending a majority of their time.

I'm going to assume you picked the same horizon line as everybody else, lower middle. You can alter some of my advise to suit your needs should the line not be there. Here's what we got so far.


Step two

Now, again, step back from the computer. This time with pen and paper in hand. Take all of two minutes to do a quick map outline of where everything should be. And label it. Go on. Do it.









Here's what I came up with. *SCT Stands for Scrolling Combat Text, or any other addon like that, such as Parrot. Omen Recount

You can see that right now I'm leaning towards a generic UI. At there's nothing 'minimal' about how much screen I'm taking up, and asides from my awsomtastic picture, there's no art (duh).

Step three

Also known as "start downloading". Here's a list of major addons you need in order to be able to customize your UI.

1. Unit frames. Pitbull and XPerl are two good examples, but by no means the only. These allow you to create custom setting for your UFs. Want a portrait? You got it. Need to move it? No problem. Need to do any number of funky things, including change skin? We got ya covered.
2. Some form of Scrolling Combat Text. I just covered that. I use MSBT.
3. Action Bars. These allow you to move your bars into all sorts of custom ways. Want a tiny box of your bars? That can be done. Need a big pet bar? that too. You get the idea. Bartender and Dominos are good ones.
4. Omen Recount. Some need them. I have both, but barely use them, being a tank. Also, if you stare at Recount and then stand in the fire, you suck.
5. Minimap mod. There's a ton of these, and they all do the same thing. Just Google "mini map wow addon" and you should get one. DONT USE SEXY MAP.
6. Buff / Debuff addon. IMO, theres two major competitors here: SBF and Elk Buff Bar. I personally LOVE SBF, but it doesnt fit into the UI that im running at the moment, so I'm using EBB.
7. "Hidden / extra" addons. Quick: these are extra things like Questhelper, DBM, etc. that enhance playstyle, with out affecting how the UI looks. You know what mods you need better then me.
   

Remember, just because I suggested an addon, does not mean that its the end-all, be-all. Now, Log in and play around with those mods. Get comfy with them. Know how they work. I'll be back with part 2 soon.

Leveling a Retribution Paladin

Updated for 3.1!

That's what I'm doing. When I'm taking a break from being the Unholy Champion of the Scourge, I enjoy a good romp as playing a Blessed Champion of the Light. And interestingly enough, my last alt (now discontinued at 69) was a Plate Wearing Berserker. I guess after being a Stealthy Strike-From-the-Shadows Cutthroat for nearly four years, I'm enjoying the big guys in Plate and coming in and smashing face.

That said, I'm here to share my leveling experience with you, the reader, to hopefully gain a better understanding of the class, and what your in for, should you decide to roll one. Before we go to far in, I would like to point out that I am NOT leveling this character to PvP, despite Ret - and Paladins on a whole - being the FotM.

A few notes before we start. This is important, so read up.

• Use a 2 hander. Just shut up and do it. Don't ask questions.

• Until level 50, where you get Crusader Strike, leveling retribution is possibly the most boring thing in all of WoW. You have one damage dealing ability until the aforementioned Crusader Strike (CS). I would go as far as to say that you have to get to 60 before it becomes fun.

• Grab all the Binds to Account gear you can! DO IT. YOU WILL THANK ME. Notes: enchant your weapon with crusader. Enchant your shoulders (as of 3.0.9, you CAN enchant your shoulders with the PvP enchant...none others work. You must be on your level 80 to do so). Grab the Mana restoring trinkets over the other ones. The reason is, until level 42, you will be EXTREMELY wanting for mana. After 3/3 JotW, you could go grab the other trinkets, but I didn't want to spend the badges on those, as it was unlikely that I would be leveling up another melee character.

• While leveling 1-58, your primary choices of gear will be "of (an animal)". A quick rundown of what you should be looking for varies due to level. From 1-42, you want "Of the Gorilla" for the Str (more damage) and Int (more mana). After you get Judgments of the Wise, go for "of the Tiger" gear, for Str (more damage) and Agi (more crit [as well as armor and dodge]). When you begin to get Outlands gear, where you can find some more interesting suffixes, go for: Hit, Strength, Crit, Expertise and Agility (not as good as the other stats)

• As much as you can, wear mail (and later plate). You are going to be in melee range 95% of the time, so reducing melee damage taken is a huge plus. Also, in an awkward way, mail (and then plate) gives you free mana, as you have to spend less time (and mana) healing yourself.

• After 60, when you have all three of your on-demand damage dealing moves, your "rotation" is actually FCFS, or First Come, First Serve. Read the links. EJ will do a much better then I will.
  

That said, lets get started, shall we?

Talents

I'm going to start off by listing the ABSOLUTELY KEY TALENTS THAT YOU CANNOT BE WITH OUT. I'm going to say that again. If your build does NOT include these talents, your leveling experience will be less then peachy. I know that Ret has many other very important talents, but these are at-a-glance, bare-bones ones.

I am not claiming that you can throw points at the rest of the tree all willy-nilly. Obviously 6% damage is better then 3% parry. My point is: these points will have the most significant change on how you play. Losing 6% damage is one thing. Losing a crap ton of mana is quite another.

I listed the talents in the order in which you should grab them.


Seal of Command - Your highest damage seal before SoB/SotM by far. You do yourself a great diservace by NOT grabbing this.

Pursuit of Justice - An absolutely essential talent. Getting from place to place 15% faster should reduce your overall leveling time by about 7-10%. That is, simply put, astounding. No other talent can match that claim.

Conviction -> Vengeance - 5% crit and 9% damage is just too good to pass up for a total of 8 talent points.

Judgements of the Wise - If you do not grab this, all three ranks of it, you fail. Simple. In the three levels that it takes to max this out, you go from being mana hurt at the end of every fight to mana being a back-burner issue.

Repentance - This spell has gotten a lot of love in WotlK. This fantastic ability allows you to take a target out of combat for a whole minute, which in WoW's battle system, is an eternity. Its uses are limited only by your imagination.

Art of War - When you first invest your points in this talent, you wont really see it proc, or notice its damage increase. That's because it only affects Judgement at that point. However, as you pick up Crusader Strike and Divine Storm, you will see it proc more and more. Those instant FoL's can really save your life.

Crusader Strike - It increases your damage and shaves off boredom! All for one talent! Grab it. (Note: when leveling 50-60, use CS before Judgment, or they will both come off cooldown at the same time, hurting your damage)

Sheath of Light - Significantly increases the damage of your Spells (Judge, HoW, Exor and Consa) as well as the effectiveness of all your healing spells. Get it.

Divine Storm - Another direct damage, on demand attack. Deals damage, heals you AND relieves boredom? For one talent point? Do I have to say it?

Onto the guide...

Levels 1-22

These first few levels are a good chance to aquaint yourself with the paladin class. See how much mana things cost, what its like to cast while enemies are beating on you, and the mindnumbing bordom of only having one attack.

Your goal as far as talent points go is to work your way up to your first two essencial talents, SoC and PoJ. I would recomend going Bendictioin (did I mention mana is an issue) -> Improved Judgements (you get to press your only attack more often! YAY!) -> Heart of the Crusader (crit = good).

Levels 23-39

This is where it start to hurt while leveling a paladin. A combanation of things happen here that make leveling such a pain. You start to become SERIOUSLY mana hurt. The quests get harder. Your damage is noticably low. If you are one of the feint of heart, stop here. Now that 3.1 is here, and you can use Exorcisim on any type of mob, these levels are not quite as bad, as you get an extra attack, which doubles as a pulling tool. Still, these levels are by far the least fun that you'll ever have.

As far as talents go, I would go 2/5 Conviction (crit = good, remember?) -> 3/3 Sancity of Battle (VERY powerfull in 3.1) -> 4/5 Conviction -> Scantified Retribution (3% damge for 1 point...duuur) -> 5/5 Conviction (finaly) -> 3/3 Crusade (1-2% damage per point is good) -> 3/3 Vengence (this is why crit is so important) -> 2/3 Two-Handed Weapon Spec. You're almost there. The next three levels make life much easier.

Levels 40-49

Things start to get easier here. You start to forget about your mana problems, and you are wearing plate, which means things start hitting you for a LOT less. After the pain-inducing leveling from 22 to 39, this should be a lot less painfull. You wont have to drink realy at all, and you can easily spare the mana to toss yourself a FoL every fight or so, should you be taking an unessary beating. You also start to get some of Ret's goodies, such as the biggest "SIT DOWN, SHUT UP" move evah.
The first few talent choices here should be fairly obvious -- I covered every talent on the new tier wearier on! You should go: Judgements of the Wise -> Repentance -> Art of War. After that, go 3/3 Fanaticism for the huge boost to Judgment damage and AoW uptime. Then grab that last point in 2-h spec.

Levels 50-59

W00t, motha-f***ing w00t. This is where it starts to get good. You have another attack, Attack Power -> Spell Power conversion, and the world is your oyster. Keep on trucking, your almost at the peak of being a Ret Paladin.

Sink that point in Crusader Strike. You earned it. I said this is where it gets good, right? Well, go grab Sheath of Light and enjoy your big heals and spells. After that, go sink a point in Sanctified Wrath, then 3/3 Rightous Vengence which is very nice that it procs off of CS and Judge (and DS). Then go max out Sanctified Wrath. After that, you have a free point. I opted to go 1/2 Divine Purpose, as its quite powerfull at 2/2.

NOTE: From now on (untill 60), your attack order is Crusader Strike -> Judgement, and then use each of them as soon as they come off cooldown. This is NOT beacuse Crusader Strike is more powerfull then Judgement. Its not. It sucks compared to it. The reason you use CS -> Judge is how the cooldowns work, and if you go Judge -> CS, then they will both come off cooldown at the same time, costing you DPS.

Level 60 and beyond

Ahhh...feel that? Feel that power? This is the great part about being a Ret paladin. You are at the top of your game at level 66...a good 14 levels before any other class. If you have been listening to me, then you have got absolutely every essential damage dealing talent at level 66. What this means is that when you sink your last essencial point in Divine Strength (more on that in a minute) your good. There are some NICE talents at this point, but none that are truely essencial.
So, here goes. Grab Divine Storm, your final on-demand attack. After that, go mosie over into Prot for Divine Strength, then finaly grab 2/2 Divine Purpose. Afer that, your done. You now have 12 talent points to play around with, doing what you like. I would STRONGLY suggest grabbing Blessing of Kings for group viability. Swift Retrabution, Eye for an Eye, Improved Retrabution Aura and Vindication (doesnt work on bosses) are all good choices.



You also get some VERY nice abilities from 60-80. At 64 (66 for Alliance) you get your highest damage seal, Seal of Blood/Seal of the Marytr. I would recomend against using it while leveling, as it significantly increses the damage you take. However, its damage beats SoC by a texas mile, so be sure to use it in instances, where you have a healer keeping you up.

At 70, you get the famous "wings" which do two very important thigns: Increses your damage and healing by 20% for 20 sec and makes you look totaly badass. (Please for the love of all thats holy, don't get so blown away by its coolness that you download this monstrosity).

Shortly after your wings, you grab the ever handy Divine Plea, which restores a fourth of your mana, which is hugely handy. Its also on a one minute cooldown, so you can use it fairly often. It reduces your healing done though, so that sucks ='(

And finaly, you get a somewhat usefull spell, Sacred Shield. This interesting spell is a very effecent "heal" that will scale with your spell power from Sheath come 3.1. If you get about 2-3 bubbles worth of damage prevention with this, then its more cost effective then FoL.

Thats it!

Get out there and get leveling! May the light be with you and all that jazz. Go smash somebodys face in with your shiny two hander.

Glyph of Disease

This is the subject of today's post. Out of all the new things being added in 3.1 for Death Knights, I believe that this one glyph will have the greatest effect on our play style. I'm going to go down the list of specs that could use this, and debate whether its worth it or not for that spec.

The main question to remember in the specs is: will a blood rune pull less damage then a Frost + Unholy rune, beacuse you are using Pestilence (blood) to save on Icy Touch (frost) and Plague Strike (unholy). Frost will not be mentioned here, as it cannot access Epidemic without throwing away 5 talent points that would be better spend in blood (NOTE: that refers to 2h frost. DW is still undergoing testing, and will remain to be seen if a DW build can work)

Blood spec

My initial reaction is that this glyph is very good for a blood spec, as you can go something like this:
IT -> PS -> HSx2 -> DS -> RPD to
HSx4 -> DS -> RPD
Pst -> HSx5 -> RPD
HSx2 -> DSx2 -> RPD
Pst -> HSx5 -> RPD

Repeating the last two forever.

FF and BP should not fall off at all, because they both last 21 seconds. This spec could work, because, simply put, DS > HS, in terms of sheer damage (HS > DS in terms of damage-per-rune). And then since using Death Strike will convert the F U runes into 2 B runes, theres another bonus.

Unholy spec

(note: in 3.1 Reaping will affect Blood Strike and Pestilance)

I think that this spec would benefit from the glyph even more then the blood spec would, as Blood runes are supplemental runes for unholy (and frost), used to create Death Runes. The rotation should look like:

PS -> IT -> BSx2 -> SS -> RPD to
SS x 3 -> RPD
Pst -> BS -> SSx2 -> RPD

Repeating the last two forever.

FF, EbP and BP should not fall off at all, because they both last 21 seconds. I think that this spec would do even better, beacuse, like I said, blood runes in this spec are supposed to become death runes, instead of being the primary damage rune. So using an ability that costs 1B wouldent be such a pain.

Time will tell.

My eyes

This is what turned up on the WoW UI forums.

Look at that UI. LOOK AT IT.

Now, I started this Blog mere minutes ago, and I did not intend to post this quickly. Sweet Jesus. I started this blog so I could rag on things, and there are very few things worth ragging on so hard as this UI. I'm going to have to do a list of things wrong with this monstrosity...

1. The unit frames are way out in the middle of nowhere. I can see this being a litte less of a problem in a healing UI, seeing as it has grid (more on this later), but jesus, its all the way to the left of the screen, tucked in a little nook.
2. The action bars. In my opinion, there are two reasons you should have action bars: You play a class like a ret pally, and constantly need to monitor what abilities are coming off CD or you like to look at them, and they add to the ethicist feel. Since they are off in the middle of goddamned nowhere, I can assume this guy only has the ba rs because he doesnt know they can be turned off. A tiny cooldown count showing WG, Innervate and Swiftmend would be much more usefull here, and clear up a significant part of the UI
3. His second action bar. WTF is this doing here? Normal the bigger action bar is used for, you know, the important cooldowns not for food and MotW ffs. In my UI, I have the bar for things that I cast only once every 30 min or so hidden (visible on mouseover).
4. Look carefully at the buffbar. Problem child number 3 is blocking some of the buffs. Thats just bad.
   
5. Heres the ONE point that I leave up to prefrence, and thats how big Grid is. I personaly dont like it that big (and opeque), but I can see that sort of thing being somewhat usefull, baised on personal taist. Still, I would resize it and make it transparent
6. Sexy Map. See this post.
7. Recount. I have recount, but I never keep it up for boss fights. Looking at it gets you tunnel visioned, trying to grow your epeen. If you are doing your job, moving out of the fire/poison/void zone/etc and a reasonable player, nobody will ever have a problem with you. Do your job first, and look at recount AFTER the boss. As a healer, recount is even more useless. If whoever you are assigned to heal doesnt die, then you've done your job.
8. WTF is that unit bar on the top right? /boggle
9. Chat frame is hugely intrusive in the UI. This alone is a problem, but its even worst when you see whats below it...
10. A LOOT *chat* FRAME. When I first saw this UI, I thought it was something *slightly* usefull like, oh, I don't know, a Combat Log. No. This log is ENTIRELY to keep track of loot. Wow.
    

Clearly, this is somebodys first romp into the world of UI desgin, but jesus, this is bad.

Here it is

Here's the first post. Its going to suck. Get over it.

I'll jump right into actual postings soon.