31 Days till Cataclysm

I've been pretty successful over the last few weeks in getting myself set to go for Cataclysm.  Yamira is 80 and about 3/4 geared.  That was made possible by the roaring success of my glyph business after 4.0.1 hit.  I must have been making about 5k a day once I got my addons straightened out.  It has dialed back to about 5k per week, even with that bastard Woodwitch camping the AH all day long.  Now that I'm pushing 50k it just doesn't seem to matter anymore, and I've managed to find a sweet spot for the high end glyphs where they always sell at about 300% profit, though it's probably to glyph resellers.  I'm fine with that.

I actually ended up gearing Yamira for Feral.  Yes, I'm tanking now.  The main thing that made me feel OK about gearing for it was that, apparently, bear and cat gearing is the same, it's all in the gems and talents.  I've been enjoying cat form too, so if I ever decide tanking isn't for me it wasn't a complete waste.  Not that the gear will stick around very long after the cataclysm.  I've got the basic tanking down, it's not too hard as a bear, but I really need to get some keybindings done and my cooldown tracker set up again.  I'm considering trying PowerAuras for cooldowns, but I think I like TellMeWhen's persistence in the interface.

I wiped out all my addon settings when 4.0.1 went live.  I haven't reloaded anything that changes the look and feel of the interface, except Vuhdo.  I think I can permanently ditch a few of the really heavy duty add-ons like MSBT, and I'm not going to re-install Omen, Recount, or (gasp) Deadly Boss Mods unless I feel I really need to.  The boss cues blizzard gives us are so blatantly obvious now DBM seems redundant.  Then again, maybe I just know the boss fights so well at this point they don't matter.  I won't be raiding for a while, so it won't be as critical.

I'm finally getting excited about the new expansion.  I'm tired of Wrath.  I barely leave Dalaran anymore, except to do the event quests.  I'm very disappointed that I missed the Echo Isles chain with Zully.  I got about halfway through it and called away to do something, and it was removed before the expansion hit, before I realized it was going away so fast.  Well, whatcha gonna do.

Finally got my Classic Raider achievement, and did Zul'Aman.  I'm hoping for a Black Temple or SSC run sometime soon.  I'd really like to get my Glory of the Hero done as well, maybe the guildies will help me out with that this weekend.

So About My Interface...

I guess I know what I'm doing for the next week.  Overhauling my interface.  Major updates are not good for the addons.  I'm going to try just turning them all off temporarily.  No, really.  I mean it.

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Things to do while waiting for Cataclysm

No raids?  Tired of dugneons?  Here's what I've been doing to pass the WoW time when I'm not in the mood for Starcraft.

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Armory for iPhone

Finally!!

The item search is really slick. This is going to save me a ton of time. Sorry WoWHead, I think your day to day usage is going to drop significantly for me. The armory was always too slow to look up items. The app is speedy. I'll still be using WoWHead to find drop rates and stuff but the "What the heck is Primal Tiger Leather used for?" Off to the iPhone.

The achievement interface is nice, the only thing I'd like to see is the "compare" feature worked in (so I can see what things Krom has gotten that I haven't) I also see myself using this when I want to go out and work on achievements.

I wonder if it will ever be able to do gear sets? I haven't used the built in equipment manager so I don't even know if saving gear sets is possible. I'm just such a fan of Outfitter.

Biggest problem I see so far: Can't save the talents tree you've worked on in the talent calculator. WTF? What use is a talent calculator if you have to redo it every time?

Basically, my iPhone has become even more of a necessary accessory for WoW. I already had to have it near me to authenticate, but now I won't have to alt-tab out nearly as often to go check WoWHead.

Now if WoWHead came out with an app... that would be epic.

Add-Ons List

I'll figure out the best way to post this later. Need to take advantage of the brain fart while I'm having it.

Current Addons
Auctioneer- Auction House economy tracking. Standard Deviation for all pricing data. Also auto-sells greys and helps price enchants. Used to be better when enchanting mats were higher. Mental note: start charging more for "with mats" chants. 10% of AH mats should be about right.

Omen - Threat Meter. Still learning this one. Custom settings by Tran

Grid - Unit health / debuff tracker. Still learning this one. Needs custom setup.

Quartz - Cast Bar / Buff / Debuff

Deadly Boss Mods - Boss Effects warning system for PvE, Tower/Flag status tracking for PvP

WarcraftRealms - Statistics. Because I'm a stat nerd.

Outfitter - One button gear and trinket management. Setups for Holy Set and PVP set. Need to learn the TrinketQueue system and reset the auto AV and Argent Dawn trinket macros.

DamageMeters - Damage / Healing statistics tracking. Because everyone always asks for it.

QuestHelper - Adds map waypoints for quests and searching of items / mobs / NPCs ingame. High memory cost, turn off before raids

FishingBuddy - Just for fun, and the fishing tourney. Easy right click cast/loot. And stats, because I'm a stat nerd.

Addons to Try
Clique - Right Click / Macro style healing. This is instead of HealBot, works better with grid from what I hear

FocusFrame - Allows visual tracking of /focus target. I really should be using Focus, especially for shackles.

Useless/Annoying/Difficult Addons
Bartender - Too much customization, does not eliminate "scroll wheel" bars

Default Customizations
I need to check my keybinding settings and put some "oh shit" buttons near WASD

I need a chat-log modifier or custom settings. Between grid and quartz the chat log is getting in the way and the combat log keeps disappearing.

I was still getting some spell cast lag in AV at Vann's doorstep. I think I can live with this but turning the distance down a bit might help

I need something easier lock my toolbars from dragging things around, I always forget to turn it on.

Kar -again

So it looks like our "once a month" Kara run is still on track. I got some seriously phat loot out of it. I got my T4 gloves, a set of healing bracers, and 2 high end enchanting patterns, Mongoose and Surefooted, not to mention I'm up to 30+ badges again between Kara and the two heroic Botanica runs I did. I think I've eliminated all the PvP gear from my heal set, but I'm uber squishy now. I'm not sure exactly what to do about that. Enchants I guess. And badge upgrades.

We've been farming the Brewfest boss too, everyone's gonna have epic trinkets by the time this holiday is done. I felt so guilty about winning everything in Kara I passed on the warrior trinkets with Morning last night so Gar could have them. It wasn't just that though, he's been a regular off-tank and it's stupid for me to roll against him for something he needs with my pitiful little mini-70 who does nothing but the Island and BGs.

I've gotta say, after doing some uninterrupted raiding, what was I thinking wanting to do this weekly, especially in a guild our size? Healing for 5 hours straight really wipes me out, especially since it's just me and Tran right now. I need to talk to him about healy-raid stuff. Maybe it's just the way my thinking is right now, but I feel like I make way more mistakes than he does. I don't know if it's because he's just better about keeping his mouth shut, because I'm doing more overall raid healing (we never really determined who is "main heals"), or if I'm just making a lot of mistakes. Maybe I just need more practice, I dunno.

Raiding is even harder now then it was before I started my 2s team because I want to keep my arenas going as well, so I have to spec back and forth between Full Holy and Holy/Disc in order to be effective when I need to. It's not the gold, that's easy enough to get, but every time I respec I have to make sure my bars are setup, remember which "special skills" I'm using, etc. It doesn't take very long for me to get warmed up, but going from 5k+ heals to 3k heals in one day on the same spell button gets really confusing.

Also, I need to get Grid+Clique set up this week. I had my first total heal disaster doing heroic Botanica this weekend. I'm wearing my soft brace this week to take some of the stress off my mouse hand, so my movement is a little more limited. I accidentally de-targeted the tank just as he pulled and I missed his portrait on the first click. By the time I finally got him targeted and started the heal, he was dead. 14000 to 0 in 2 seconds or less. Total wipeage. The tank has to trust me, and when shit like that happens it's like letting someone trust-fall into hot tar. I need to get it together, especially with us doing more raiding. So it's time to get advanced instead of stupid. I've always resisted any kind of mod, but every time I finally adopt one I'm happy I did.

I can't live without Grid. Take my Grid away, and you might as well put a blindfold on me and tie my right hand behind my back.

I have a feeling once I get used to a "click hover to heal" system it will be the same thing, it's just hard to break 2 years of habit. However, it's ridiculous to upgrade my graphics card to cut out the spell effect lag and then add half a second or more "lag" on my end moving my cursor from one end of the screen to the other.

In other news, My 2s team is still batting 50% in 2v2. I was just getting back into the swing when I had to log off yesterday. Poor Mal, he's been waiting for his chestpiece FOREVER. I finally broke down and bought my Merciless chestpiece and the blue gems and enchanting mats to get it up as far as I can, hoping desperately that I'd be replacing it right away. It set me back a good 200-300 gold. I need to be good about doing the island again, especially now that I have two 70s I can run it with. Unfortunately, he rest of the ladder didn't get the memo that now that my blue is gone we're supposed to win. And with the raid, our 5v5 team didn't run this weekend like we were supposed to, so I'll be up tonight AGAIN. Good thing I'm planning on season-pass subscribing to Heroes through iTunes instead of trying to watch it.