Overlays For Fun And Profit

Hawtpants of the Old Republic Posted on by

Hold on to your butts because we finally have a decent way to track hots and shields in SWTOR.

Step 1: Install Starparse.  You should have this already, but if you don’t, we’ll look the other way.

Step 2: Turn on logging.  You can do this within Starparse.  If you do not turn on logging, there will be much swearing.  Not that I ever did that.

Step 3: Set up your hot overlays.

This is a little hard to grasp.  Imagine you are putting a raid frame on top of your raid frames.  Therefore you want the overlay to be the same size as your boxes.  First thing is to resize the raid box.  You need to unlock your overlays to see the box, and then you drag the bottom right corner to resize the boxes.  Grab the right side of the overlay and drag if you need additional columns for a 16-person run.

You got the size how you want it?  OK, now register the names.  The names will fill from top to bottom and left to right.  You register the names by hotting/shielding every member of your party.  Protip: lock the overlay frames first, then heal/shield to register the names.  You can’t target raid members THROUGH the unlocked overlay.

If you hot/shield everyone in the order of top to bottom, left to right, they will all be in the correct positions.  Go, look at your overlay (unlock it) when you’ve tagged everyone.  You should see a raid box on top of each raid box with the group member’s name on it.

But, haha, it’s never that simple, is it?  Your raid leader moves the position of raid members.  Someone is out of range and doesn’t get registered in order.  In that case, register everyone anyway and then drag the boxes into the right spots.

If someone leaves the raid, you can get rid of their overlay by clicking the box in the top right corner above the name on the overlay.  Move everyone else as needed.  If you add a new person, the name may register ON TOP of the last person registered (bottom right frame).  That’s ok.  Just drag the new name out.  The old name is still under there.  Play musical chairs with the names until they line up again.

Until you get quick at it, ask your raid leader to hang on a second until you set it up.  Trust me, they want you to see these statuses.  If you are pugging and they ignore you and rush in and die, well that’s their problem.

Step 4: Profit.

Chapter 15: The Sudden But Inevitable Betrayal

Hawtpants of the Old Republic Posted on by

This chapter was kinda fun.  It seemed like an old-fashioned story-chapter-ending ship crawl. Not a lot to talk about though since there was no flirting and well, you know how I like to talk about DRAMA.

***SPOILERS BELOW***

Finding A New Main

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Making Health Bars Go Up

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As I rejoin the game, it should be a surprise to nobody, except me, that my guild needs healers.  But nonetheless I am surprised.  I’m busting my ass to gear and whatnot

The Update With No Pictures

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NO PICTURES!  This is because screenshots don’t work in cut scenes, and using fraps kills my discord overlays.  I kinda need my discord overlays to see who is talking.  All you dudes sound the same.

Anyway, after flailing around for focusing on toons, I decided on my scoundrel for healing and my guardian for DPS.  I won’t bore you with the reasons except the one thing they have in common: I can leap to a friendly target.  Now, we know how I suck at jumping, so this is a huge reason to pick a class and saves the group time and frustration as they don’t have to coach me through finding the jumping spot.  I’m considering shadow as well, because stealth can usually make it so you don’t HAVE to jump anywhere.  Usually.

Patch 7.0 (Hooray?)

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Welp, Patch 7.0 happened…

The good

(1) Seasons changes

The weekly seasons changes are great!  They allow me to get most of it done, around my schedule.  Most of the time, it’s pretty flexible.  Things like “get x number of syndicate plans” can be done in a variety of ways.  A few crafting items too.  A+ on that one.  I just got my very own imp fleet stronghold and am saving up for the pub version.  Not too long, I think.

(2) Combat styles and loadouts

Obviously what’s not to love about dual spec.  OR 10-spec as the case may be.

In general, I’m having a bit of indecision because I’m kind of afraid to screw up my favorite toons.  What if my secondary style gets nerfed into oblivion or becomes something I like less?  Guides aren’t even available for half the styles.  So… I’m leveling alts I don’t care about to try it out.  Dumb, I know.

A small gripe about loadouts

Restrictions on switching in groupfinder queue SUCK.  One of the things I was looking forward to is to do missions in dps spec while I waited for my heal-fp queue to pop.  Nope, gotta sit in heal spec until it pops.  Boooo, I say.  In addition, it is still possible to queue as “heal/dps” but then if it slots you in as heals, you can’t actually switch to your heal spec.  That is very very dumb.

The bad

(1) Story too short

Very short.  Enough said on that.

(2) Must start story from Ossus

I have a bunch of lvl 75s.  Some have been leveled using the story.  Some ran flashpoints.  But the closest to legacy of the sith content I can get is starting from Ossus (which gives almost no xp to a level 75).  Then Onderon.  Then Mek-Sha.  Repeat.  I’m dying of boredom here.  By the time I get to Legacy of the Sith, I’m at 80 and don’t care.

(3) The Class Nerfs

I’m not happy about having what I consider to be must-haves behind a choice wall.

Scoundrel crotch kick is no longer baseline.  I can’t spec into it because I need to spec into “clever surrender” which makes my dodge drop threat.  And the reason I need to do THAT is because they removed my threat drop!  A healer that can’t drop threat is a dead healer.  And disappearing act has a depressingly long cooldown.  Without crotch kick, I have limited options for hard stun, depending on whether the mob is a basic or higher level (thermal grenade, flash grenade – which is also behind a choice wall).  Hard stuns are kind of important for some mechanics…

Commando hold the line also no longer baseline, and there is no longer an option to make it speedier.  This means that the only effective way to get out of the bad is booty scoot.  I fully admit it is my own incompetence that makes this a huge problem.  I need my speed boost to go forward.  No matter how much I practice with swiveling the camera and tapping and all that bullshit, I run into walls or off cliffs.  No thank you.

There are many more things.  I’m too annoyed to list them.  You’d be too annoyed to read my long list.

What do you think about the changes?

Manaan Natural History Museum

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The theme behind the one is a natural history museum.  I saw the upstairs, saw the Krayt Skeleton, and had to have it.  Everything was built around that.  There’s a petting zoo and a planetarium.  It really came together during this most recent furniture sale when I could buy snow globes (ecosystems) and luxury loveseats for the planetarium.

This stronghold is decorated to 50 percent and it’s DONE.  Trust me, you don’t need to get Manaan to 100 percent if you’re satisfied with how it looks.  The quest for 100 percent can lead to clutter (dark side, totally).

Main Level

Outside

ticket booth

Down The Decorating Rabbit Hole

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So it’s been a while… because I’ve been decorating.  Previously I focused on fashion for good reason — if I focused on something else as crazily as fashion, there’d be no room for anything else.  For the longest time I had one lonely stronghold that I lazily decorated, but

The stronghold bonus is a gateway drug.  Just unlock them, they said.  You can leave them empty, they said.

So I unlocked them ALL.  I learned I definitely cannot just leave an empty stronghold.  For the last six months I FUSSED.  I started out with crafting and rep decos and then transitioned to buying cartel items from the GTN when I finally had cash.  Always Be Upgrading!

This is boring, on to the pictures!  The most “done” of my strongholds (that’s a lie, they’re never done) is the Kaas City one.  The theme behind this one is a military outpost for imperial intelligence, for briefings, meetings, and whatnot.

Note, I’ve tried to bring decent lighting to my strongholds so none of these images have been retouched.

Front entry

Just a boring front office, nothing to see, definitely not a secret military installation, carry on.

 

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