Ok, so maybe obligatory is too strong.  Not EVERY blogger posts or talks about their UI, but many do.  Anyhow, I checked the old PTD inbox the other day to find this:

I love your blog; it is incredibly entertaining and informative.

Could you please give me an idea of what add-ons you use? I am particularly interested in your UI adds. I like the simplicity of your UI.

John P. Bacon

First of all, John made the right move by buttering me up first.  If you have a question, it’s best to compliment me first.  ;)  Anyhow, it’s not the first time someone has asked about my UI, so let’s get to it.

My UI, like most of yours I’m sure, is a mish mash of different elements tailored to my liking.  The evolution of my UI took place over time.  In the beginning I used Cosmos, which if you’ve never used it is basically an all-inclusive UI mod.  In the early days of WoW, it was one of the only major "mods" out there.  It’s been a long time since I used it, so I’m sure it’s changed a lot over the years.

After I played with Cosmos for a long time, I realized I wanted more flexibility, so I started using CTMod.  It gave me a lot of the things I wanted as far as improving my UI, and it was still fairly close to the default Blizzard UI.

I soon got irritated with CTMod as it never worked right after patches, and not too long ago I heard about Ace Mods, and started using them.  That’s when I started getting serious about modding my UI.  Before that, I had just used bits and pieces to enhance the existing UI, but once I moved to Ace I began to tear the whole thing down and tweak everything. 

Here is a shot of my UI as it stands today:

It’s not the most heavily modded UI out there, but it is fairly far from the default UI.  No, I didn’t do any fancy graphics work to tie it all together, I wouldn’t know where to start with that.  I did, however, overhaul it completely. 

The Elements of My UI

Red Box:  eePanels

The area in the red box is the background for the bottom of my UI.  I decided I wanted most of the "big" stuff to sit at the bottom of my screen.  eePanels is a mod that I use to create the background box.  I don’t do anything fancy with it, but it helps tie the UI together.

Orange Circles:  Bartender3

Bartender3 is one of the most important parts of my UI.  It’s the mod I use to tweak, nip and tuck all of my action bars.  It’s a very robust addon, and does everything I want it to do.  You’ll notice a box of action bar buttons in the middle left of my screen, that’s where I store most raid/group usable items.  You’ll see drums, pots, my Prayer Book, and other stuff.  I keep it there because I spend so much time clicking on party members in Grid, so it’s easy to hit a pot or whatever when I need it.

Blue Circle:  Elk Buff Bars

Elk Buff Bars is a recent addition to my UI.  It replaces the default buff icons with a list of bars with exact timers.  I like the way it cleans up the look and feel of my UI.

Pink Circle:  PitBull

I use PitBull for a few different unit frames, though not the main party and raid frames.  (I use Grid for that, but more on Grid later.)  I use PitBull for my frame, my target, target of target, pet and other "secondary" unit frames.

Purple Circle:  Quest Helper

Everyone uses Quest Helper by now, right?  Go get it.  It gives me that cool arrow to show me where to find stuff, and gives a better on screen quest tracker.  The only thing I don’t like about it is I sometimes have trouble getting rid of the arrow if I want to.  I don’t need quest waypoints while in a raid for Pete’s sake!

Light Blue Square:  Recount

I use Recount to track my mad DPS (yes, DPS!!), and it fits nicely in that corner of my UI. 

Yellow Circle (Yes, I know this isn’t yellow, but I don’t want to make anyone’s eyes bleed, including my own!): XPBar

I mostly put this in because I couldn’t adjust the Bartender3 EXP bar to my liking.  I wanted something more compact yet readable, and XPBar was the ticket.

Map Mod:  Simple Mini Map

I didn’t circle it, as it was already getting too busy down there.  I changed the size, shape and moved my Map with SimpleMiniMap

Green Circle:  Grid

Grid is another mod that I couldn’t live without.  It’s a very compact yet customizable set of raid frames.  I’ve tried Pitbull and others, but nothing beats Grid IMO.  It takes some work to get it set up, but once you do it’s golden.  In this shot I am not in a group, but below is a shot that shows Grid in a 25 man setting.  Keep in mind I have made some tweaks to my UI since this shot, but I haven’t gotten a shot from a 25 man since then. 

One other important mod to note that is not in the other shot is HOTCandy.  It’s the set of green bars just below my Grid setup.  This is what I use to keep track of my HOTs on various targets.  You can also see a couple other mods that I use in this shot, like Prat that handles my chat and Omen that I use to monitor threat.  I also use a whole bucket load of FuBar addons that you can see here.  I still use them all, I’ve just now made it so they auto-hide unless I mouse to the top of the screen.  I couldn’t live without all the little things FuBar does for me.  I used to use Titan Panel for this, but like the customizability that FuBar gives me with a smaller memory footprint.

Anyhow, that about does it I think.  I could probably spend another four pages just talking about the different mods I use, but this was more about the mods that make up my UI.  It’s not the fanciest UI out there, but I feel like I accomplished what I wanted to with it.  I wanted to streamline things a bit and open up the viewable area, and I’ve done that.  I hope you like it, and keep those emails coming!

Would Blizzard hear me?  Probably not.  I suppose I thought I could buy my way into beta by writing about the game, but I was wrong.  Anyhow, I don’t really have anything to say, and I thought it was time I wrote a really short post to give people a rest.

My only other thought for now?

Will the mentioned pre-release of some Wrath content kill raiding?

Hey everybody, it’s been awhile since I did one of these posts, but I thought this made for a good idea with some debate potential.  I’m sure we all have boss fights that are memorable to us, and I’m going to take this opportunity to share mine.  This will encompass encounters in both old world WoW and post Burning Crusade WoW.  We’ll start it at the bottom with number five.

#5 Blackheart the Inciter, Shadow Labyrinth

I know a few of you out there my cringe at this choice.  A lot of people hate Blackheart, and for good reason.  His fight can be VERY, VERY chaotic.  Frankly, that’s one of the reasons I like it so much.  I think you’ll see as this post continues that I have an appreciation for unpredictable fights.  I get bored with the standard bosses where a single strat works every time.  I don’t just mean the tank and spank bosses, but any boss where when you’ve got it down, it becomes a trivial fight. 

With Blackheart, a little bad luck on the "Time for fun" mind control phases can wreak havoc on even the most polished five man team.  Maybe you have a rogue in the group, and during the MC phase he goes all out on your priest.  Ouch.  Maybe a lock in the group works the tank over in a bad way.  Maybe a hunter decides to unload on the kitty druid.  Who knows.  There are a lot of ways that things can go wrong, and this fight is ALWAYS at least a little crazy.  That’s why I like it so much.

#4 Zul’Farrak Stairs Event

Back to old world Azeroth for my fourth favorite boss fight.  If you’ve never seen this fight, I’ll try to give you a brief rundown.  Basically, you climb to the top of a troll Incan pyramid style thingy to free a few prisoners.  You then fight alongside these NPCs at the top of the stairs as you try to fend off wave after wave of mobs, culminating in a boss you have to take down.  This is another fight I note for its chaotic nature.  I like it when things are a little out of control, it keeps me on my toes.  If you’ve never done ZF in a level appropriate group, you are missing out. 

This event also includes a nice bit of story with a traitorous twist at the end.  Well worth the price of admission.  ZF can also be noted as a whole as both a quick and well-designed instance.

#3 Priestess Delrissa, Magisters’ Terrace

I told you I liked chaos, and the chaos explodes in this tough fight in MagT.  With this fight Blizzard attempted to create a PvP style fight, similar to Moroes in Kara and the Hex Lord fight in ZA.  Delrissa spawns with four cronies of different "classes" that you must take down.  The mix of classes in her crew has serious repercussions in terms of the fight’s difficulty.  The right group can make it cake, the wrong group can make it a headache.  It has a good level of challenge, which is one of the reasons I rank it so high.  There are nights we have one shot this encounter, and there are nights where it took us 5 or more attempts.

Another reason I am fond of this fight is because it is one of the few events in group play where I get to use ALL of my tools.  And I often have to use all of those tools to succeed.  I rarely use cyclone, but bust it out with impunity here.  If the rogue comes my way, he can make quick work of me, but a well-timed cyclone can shut him down in a hurry.  I also often spend this fight both healing and contributing where I can to DPS.  Sometimes the small amount of damage I can add makes all the difference.  The moral of the story is that everyone has to contribute whatever they can in this fight.  Blizzard did an excellent job of making Delrissa’s cronies VERY good at what they do, for AI at least. 

#2 Harbinger Skyriss, Arcatraz

This is a fight where everything works together very well.  It makes a ton of sense in terms of the overall instance "story arc".  It is also both challenging and entertaining.  I’m a big fan of Arcatraz overall, and I’m a little disappointed that people don’t run it more.  It can be a very long instance, and people generally like to stick to the quick and dirty ones when possible.

If you’ve never run this instance, do it now.  I’ll wait.  Millhouse Manastorm is what makes this fight memorable.  His one-liners during the fight really make it a far better experience.  The fight itself is interesting, but the addition of a funny little NPC gnome mage puts it over the top. My favorite line from Millhouse?  "Aaalllriiiight!! Who ordered up an extra large can of whoop-ass?"

Every time I get to the end of Arcatraz - and it’s not all that often - I wonder why people don’t run the instance more often.  Oh well. 

#1 Dire Maul Tribute Run

I know I know.  This isn’t 100% technically a "boss fight."  But I couldn’t let this one go.  If you joined the WoW craze after Burning Crusade, chances are you’ve never had the pleasure of doing a DM Tribute run.  Perhaps you’ve heard the old-timers wax nostalgic about this old world encounter.   

For you post-BC babies, here’s the rundown on the "Tribute Run."  Basically, the tribute run consists of running through Dire Maul North without killing any bosses but the king himself.  You need to use several tricks to accomplish this, including fixing a huge frost trap to freeze one boss, and creating and then donning an Ogre suit to fool another.  If you successfully ran the instance without killing anyone but the king, you received the Gordok Tribute (hence the name), a chest with a high quality reward for each boss you did NOT kill.  The other bonus is that you could then go back and talk to the bosses you did not kill (as after killing the King you are named the new King, and all the ogres become friendly) to receive some nice buffs. 

I ran this many, many times in the days before BC, as for me it was the most fun to be had at level 60.  The loot was pretty darn good, too.  I nearly always logged on with the same phrase in guild chat, "Anyone up for a Tribute run?"

Conclusion

One of the interesting things about this list is that when I started to rank my favorite fights, it was all BC bosses.  I suppose it was a product of recent familiarity more than anything.  As I spent more time, however, I started to remember the old world instance fights that I loved so much.  In the end, I probably could have done a separate list for Azeroth and BC.

There are probably a few repeating themes in my selections.  Uniqueness of the encounter, difficulty and predictability.  All of those are important to me.  I’ve played this game for over 4 years now, and I like encounters that "mix things up" a bit.  If it was all about loot and progression, I would have quit long, long ago.

Very briefly, here are a few that missed the cut.  Kael’Thas in MagT, VanCleef in The Deadmines and the married couple in Arcatraz.  Kael almost made the grade based on the difficulty and chaotic nature of the fight.  VC was in the running for nostalgia, as he was the first boss I had the pleasure of taking down.  The Married couple (Dalliah and Soccothrates) in Arc almost made it based on their funny quips, my favorite being from Soccothrates when the group pulls Dalliah, "Have you come to kill Dalliah? Can I watch?"

That’s all for now.  I’d love to hear what some of YOUR favorite boss fights are and why.  Perhaps in the future I’ll address raid bosses.

They will tell you it can’t be done.  They will tell you that if you don’t raid at least 3 times a week, you’ll never see any success.

They tried and failed?
They tried and died.

They will say that you can’t learn the advanced encounters, that you’ll hold the group back.  They will tell you "show up 80% of the time, or don’t show up at all."

Lies, all lies.  And I am here to prove it.

One of the questions I often get asked is this:  "PTD, how do you do it?  How do you raid part-time like you do?"  Well, today I’ll try to give you some insight as to how I accomplish this seemingly impossible feat, and give some recommendations on how you can do it yourself.  Without further adieu, here are my five keys to casual raiding.

Key #1:  FOCUS!

It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.

The first key is simple.  To be a successful casual raider, you MUST have one character that is geared to the hilt, and raid-ready above and beyond any other character.  The more hard-core out there can afford to gear multiple characters for raiding, but for casuals like us, we need to focus.  In time, you can slowly gear another toon, but do NOT do it at the expense of your main. 

The problem with this key is that as a casual player you probably have a LOT of alts.  I know I have every slot filled with characters level 8 to 63, and I’m sure I’m not alone.  They key, though, is that my Druid is in very good shape.  I didn’t even attempt to start 25 man raiding until I was fully equipped in epics, with proper gemming and enchants. 

If you are going to try to raid only one night a week like I do, that one character better be good, very good.  Don’t get too wrapped up in gearing alts.  Make a decision on a main and stick to it.

Key #2:  Be Overly Prepared

Shield Practice.
Gurney, we had practice this morning. I’m not in the mood. 
Not in the mood? Mood’s a thing for cattle and loveplay, not fighting!

Similar to Key #1, you can’t afford to mess around in terms of knowledge, either.  You aren’t going to have the same number of attempts to learn about the various boss encounters, so be as ready as you can be.  To counter that, do your homework.  Read a few different strategy guides for the bosses you expect to see.  Watch at least one video, but if you can view a few different ones from different perspectives.  Admittedly, there is no replacement for actual in-game experience - but you need to get as close as you can. 

Also, make a point of being that guy that’s always early for raid night.  Make sure your gear is repaired, and make sure you are fully equipped with pots, oils, food, elixirs - everything.  Don’t be the guy that asks for a summons 2 minutes after the raid was supposed to start, or who asks if anyone has any healing pots.  Be there and be ready.  Be an example, and you’ll have a better chance of being invited back in the future.

One other thing regarding preparation is this:  don’t be afraid to ask questions.  If you show you’re actually interested in getting things right, the raid leaders will notice.

Key #3:  Be Honest About Your Availability

As the new Duke, I hereby invite you to ask me for whatever you wish. You may request anything of me, anything at all.

This part is just as important as the others.  When you are looking at raiding, make sure you are honest with the raid leaders about your availability.  Be honest with yourself, too.  Don’t say you can make 2 nights a week when you can only REALLY commit to one.  Don’t say you can make a 5:30 raid time if that’s the time you walk in the door after work. 

The point is to make things as clear as possible, before you even get an invite to any raids.  Don’t write any checks with your mouth that your butt can’t cash.  Chances are, they may already be hesitant about you and your limited availability, so don’t say you can do something you can’t.  On the nights you CAN raid, be utterly reliable.  If you can make EVERY Wednesday night raid, make sure the raid leader knows that.

This can also be important if you have issues similar to mine.  My wife wants nothing to do with WoW, and I have an 18 month old and another baby on the way.  I am VERY clear with her with regards to the nights that I raid.  She knows and accepts that Saturday nights I will get on the game before 8 PM, and she’s ok with that. 

Key #4:  Be Open to Other Raiding Avenues

I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when my fear is gone I will turn and face fear’s path, and only I will remain.

You must be reliable if you are to raid casually, but you also might have to be flexible.  I know it’s frightening to think of, but there are in fact 25 man PUGs that happen all the time.  Don’t be afraid to give them a try if that’s your best way to see that content.  Perhaps in the course of PUG raiding you will find other people with similar schedules.  Maybe that can lead to a more established raiding group.  If you’re not raiding at all right now, it’s at least worth a try.

Also be sure to ask around and see if there are guilds out there that are open to outside members to fill their raids.  Use the official boards to look for guilds that may be doing that.  Believe me, there are MANY guilds out there that can’t quite fill a 25 man, and they’d love to have a reliable fill-in.  Maybe you can find a group that suits your playtime, and since you are so utterly prepared (See Key #1 and #2), your success will net you future invites. 

Key #5:  Perform

I’m dead to everyone unless I become what I may be.

Above all else, this is the true key.  Beyond preparation, reliability, and flexibility lie skill and performance.  If you have any dreams of being able to raid on YOUR schedule, you had darn well better perform when you get the chance.  You’re like the rookie that gets one shot during a pre-season game to show your stuff.  Make sure you show it.  You can’t afford to make big mistakes or even little ones, you have to show that you have the goods from the first pull.

Don’t randomly go afk.

Don’t ignore the orders of the raid leader.

Don’t break sheeps, AOE in a bad place, pull aggro, or let someone die.

Basically, don’t do anything stupid.  Be as close to perfect as you can be.  If you show that you can handle the job, you’ll get the job.  I am normally way down the healing totem pole in terms of gear.  My +heal, MP5 and everything else are usually bringing up the rear, or close to it.  I still routinely lead the meters in terms of overall healing.  I think one of the reasons for this is that I get so focused about the one night I raid a week.  I make a point to get everything right, because in some way I have to.  If we fail repeatedly because of me, I would feel like I let a lot of people down.  So I make a point not to do that.  I mean business when I’m raiding, and the raid leader(s) know that.  My skill and overall performance trump my gear.

There you have it.  If you’re looking to raid casually, that’s my advice.  Focus on one character, be prepared, be honest, be open, and, most important of all, perform.  If you follow my advice, I don’t know how any raid leader could turn you down, regardless of how seldom you can raid.  The point of all of this is to assure you that it CAN be done.  I raid one night a week for four hours.  That’s it.  I’ve seen 5 bosses in SSC, 4 in Mount Hyjal, and 4 in the Black Temple.  So don’t listen to "them" when they say it can’t be done.  They’re just jealous is all.  Thanks for reading!

It’s hard to believe, I know.  Your friendly neighborhood tree, all Bear-Butted out, tanking Moroes.  So hard to believe, in fact, that it could only be true. 

Anyhow, here is how it happened.  I didn’t have anything going on last night, and I had a good 3-4 hours to kill in game, so I joined the Kara LFG channel.  That usually ends bad, I know, but I need badges for the Gavel of Naaru Blessings and most of the guild was otherwise indisposed. 

I got an invite fairly quickly, as my note advertised me as a Resto Druid with 1923 Healing.  Should be sufficient for Kara.  ;)  I did a quick lookup on WoW Heroes of the person who had invited me, and I really liked what I saw.  A strong tank goes a long way.

So we’re trying to fill, trying to fill.  We have tanks, we have healers, we need DPS.  Though I had a hunter I could have brought, I really wanted badges with the Druid, so I stuck to my guns.  After about 20 minutes the RL asked if I would be willing to respec and DPS.  Why not? 

Next thing I know, I’m the OT for the night.  The other warrior in the group turned out to be pure fury, and he didn’t even have a shield if he wanted to OT.  The MT was VERY strong, so I figured what the hey.  I tanked.  Here are pics to prove it:

I felt a little bad for the healers, as I don’t have the most HPs around.  That’s one area I’d have to really improve in my Bear gear.  I have the defense and other stats, but the health is lacking.

Still, we got the job done.  I also got to tank all kinds of other good stuff, along with Romulo.  The MT did most of the heavy lifting, thankfully.

Yeah, that’s right.  Thankfully the tank was very strong, and we did just fine with me as the OT.  We made it all the way to the Shade, but it was 3 am and myself and others were too tired to finish him off.  Oh well.  Still, I had a great time, and managed to snag a couple staves while I was there.  In the interests of summarizing, here is what I got:

• Staff of Infinite Mysteries
• Terestian’s Stranglestaff

Not bad at all!  I’ve been looking to pick of the staff of Illhoof for awhile, and the other staff looks like it might be the start of my Boomkin off-set.  It seems I’m headed towards true druidism, the ability to play any spec.  :)  That’s all for now, thanks for reading!