Method to the UI Madness

My last UI mumbles weren't just out of the blue. :) I had (still have) fairly good reason for all the changes. They come in the name of Aygaren. Remember him? That Tauren pally who wants to L2tank?


The basic goals of adjusting the UI were such: Useable across all characters; maintaining current/already known keybinds and, "field of view." Little things like swapping out different character rotation spells/attacks to match the keybinds sort of came with the territory, minor stuff.

Not that far from the subject, I happen to like reading several specific columns over at WoWInsider. The "Know Your Lore" column tops the list I guess. If I'm particulary working a specific class, there are the class specific columns nice and sometimes helpful to read. One such column I've followed regulary is the "UI of the Week." Each week a player submission is offered up and discussed. It's just been quite useful over the years for seeing different UI set-ups and the add-ons the player used. I'm am pretty sure it was somewhere in one of these year end columns, that I recall a slight mention of a UI trend which moves everything over to the side of the screen, instead of the staple bottom of screen.

Dufit, (my resident Horde testing subject) got the call to come up with something along this line and to determine it's usefulness. Part one, the set-up, got all arranged with only minor adjustments for everything to fit within the KG panel. There was some slight action bar position changes per personal taste, though everything pretty much held it's original settings otherwise. Dufit field tested the set-up, things went along pretty well, so now all the brothers in arms are field testing as well. Here's what the set-up looks like:



Side-based UI set-up with Aygaren

(Since this screenshot; casting bar, player and focus frames have been moved down to sit between chatter and omen frames. Much more visibility)

I was pretty good with the previous UI set-up (last UI post here). It looked good, worked out pretty well for me and all. Although I had managed to make that bottom bar panal as small as possible yet still useable enough for me to quick sight things I normally click outside of rotation, I still had the feeling that I didn't have quite enough open viewing area along the bottom. Here again, personal taste. Along with the thoughts that most groups Aygaren might possibly tank for could possibly end up in that area slightly hidden from my view. All things considered, the basic line-up of tank>melee>dps>healer, I had a little fear that one or some might end up LoS poor. I know. I'm being nit-picky. But the concern for me is real so the possibility of a side based UI went into motion.

So, most everything got moved off to the right side. My unit frame, casting bar/info, focus and target of focus frames got moved down some more. Omen became a bit smaller, but is easily sizeable during play as needed. And, there is plenty of open viewing area around these bottom elements now.

I like it. Initial field tests out in the open world of questing are showing good promise. Dungeon tests are yet to come. What do you think of it? Have you used something simular before? Any suggestions/thoughts are welcome.

Shattered Halls

During my usual nightly reading, I happened to wander over to the Armory to look through my achievements lists. I've been trying to solo many of the older dungeons and instances I didn't do way back when. There is an underlying method to this madness though. Only a small part involves just seeing game content I missed, the larger part has to do with beginning to learn my off-spec feral bear tank.


The over-all plan isn't really set in stone, since I am making efforts to learn as much as possible on my own, within my playstyle. Perhaps not the best approach since there really is a ton of information available across the nets on how to be a good/great tank. And yes, I have read much of it for it will have it's usefulness over time. But reading 'how to' and actually 'doing' whatever, remains two very different worlds.

My approach for now is to just let Sol jump into the instance with his main balance spec. After all, it is the stronger spec atm and he does handle it fairly well enough. Sol don't do any pre-fight research on these instances since he is level-capped and most likely able to just walk through them anyway. He takes his time in doing so though, making sure he does total clears, no missed trash or skipping about. Everything and every mob has it's value in knowledge gained. He always does multiple mob pulls and works the crowd for the experience. Getting to know who all comes along with the initial target pull and what is needed to keep the crowd in a decent AoE zone placement so he don't inadvertantly pull a bunch more. Which has happened a time or two :)

Then there's the learning part of how to bring the casters into the crowd so the AoE reaches them as well. This usually involves moving the crowd to them. Casters are so reluctant towards movement. ( I can't imagine why) Kind of a strange thing here...first he pulls the crowd towards him to seperate them from additional mobs. But then he may have to take the crowd back closer to the wayward casters. So additional care is needed in the decision of wheather or not to include all or part of the casters, maybe let one or two wait until the main crowd is down. Which means, he has to be able to take damage from them. Just something else to keep in mind when considering how his bear will deal with these situations.

I think my point here is, in having Sol boomkin the instance first, this is my way of researching the fight and developing some stratagies. He gets to know the layout of the instance and the trash progression towards each boss. He learns about zones which are safe to openly nuke in, and where he needs to be extra aware of possible adds. He gets a feel for each boss and their abilities. He also learns when his magic spells are about worthless. (thank Elune for shapeshift!)

All this brings Sol back to the post title, Shattered Halls. You may have been wondering how that fit in. Well, yesterday Sol did the quest line for the key to the Halls, and of coarse, jumped right in. What a mess that turned out to be! Very different from all the other instances he's solo'ed. Sol actually bit the dusty floor several times, ok, maybe 8 or 10 times, lost count. Stubborn though, kept at it until completed, and forked over the 50 gold for repairs. Sol did really enjoy the instance though. Lots of different trash abilities, mobs a bit closer knit to each other along with other surprise packages. Each death he endured brung about several minutes of comptemplation of how to proceed. It would seem to Sol that Shattered Halls required much more thought than any of the other instances he's done. This is all good. He will use this as a personal benchmark when he actually starts tanking for a group. It'll be a while yet, but as far as I can see, Outland isn't overly affected from the Cataclysm, rather stable. So when he's ready for groups, Shattered Halls will serve the purpose quite nicely.