Addon Review: LunarSphere

This blog is really intended to be a source of information regarding Blizzard’s policies as they pertain to the game of World of Warcraft. When I felt like I needed inspiration, I would hop over to the Customer Service forums and find an issue that needed to be addressed, and then addressed it here. As fail-safe as this technique has been, the recent patch craziness and incoming expansion has sent it all into a bit of a tail-spin off course. I’m currently pouring through all versions of the Terms of Use and EULA to see if there have been any unnoticed changes, and trust me, I’ll give it a nice writeup when I figure out what’s going on.

In the meantime, however, I’ve found myself desperate to have my gaming experience back. Despite my best efforts at being prepared for the 3.0.2 patch, my previously-gorgeous UI reloaded as a total mess. Days of searching and testing and configuring later, I’ve found what may now be my favorite mod.

I’ve mentioned my resto shaman before, and how much fun she is for me to play. With the drop of the patch, however, I found my favorite mod (which has been broken since 2.4) is completely kaput. The creator isn’t even responding to emails from people begging for permission to pick up the project. Farewell, Totemus, for I loved you thoroughly.

Hellooooooo, LunarSphere!

The fascinating thing that I loved about Totemus was that it was a scalable circle you could drag around the screen, surrounded by smaller circles. The smaller circles were buttons with different functionalities, several of which were customizable. It was most useful for managing totems – each totem type had its own button, which could be expanded into a line of all the totems for that type. When you cast one, the line would condense back to one button, and the button could be used to cast that totem again or open the menu again. Fast, easy, clean.

LunarSphere does the same thing, with one major difference: it’s not shaman specific! To aid that, the entire sphere and surrounding buttons are fully customizable.

So last night, I decided to try it out on the toon that truly mattered: Tchann herself. After hours of working on my Loremaster of Outlands title, I think I’ve finally found a setup that eliminates about half of my action bars from my screen. I have Auto Shot, Distracting Shot, and Hunter’s Mark all bound to a single button: right click to mark, middle click to distract, and left click to turn off auto shot so the mob jumps happily into my freeze trap. Fantastic. 😀

Another button gives me Steady Shot on a left click, Arcane on the right, and the middle button opens up a menu of assorted stings and shots that aren’t used often enough to warrant their own buttons. The button at the bottom of the sphere will cast Mend Pet when left-clicked, but opens up a menu of all pet-related spells on a right click. Below the sphere is my pet bar, in full, no longer needing to be near my Hunter’s Mark button because of the new auto-attacking functionality. Meanwhile, the main sphere shows me a simple visual of my current health and mana, while also keeping me informed on exactly how many bullets I have left in my pouch (somehow that * just doesn’t cut it).

My warlock is just as happy with LunarSphere – all the curses on one button, all the soul shard created items on another, and so on. Amusingly enough, while I’d downloaded it for my shaman alone, I have yet to actually set it up for her! But I look forward to elminating the five action bars of totems and weapon buffs that currently clutter up her screen.

I’m far from completely exploring all the possibilities LS has to offer me, or even exploring its weaknesses. I can say that it’s definitely a mod made for cleaning up your screen with seemingly infinite customization options. Its one downside, however, is also its massive customization: when I first opened up the menu, I was completely lost. It wasn’t until I grew brave enough to start clicking things in exploration that I was able to grab hold of the system.

Still, despite its complication, the benefits are fantastic. If I had some kind of rating system, I’d post its rating here, but since I don’t, I’ll just keep using the mod happily. I think that’s probably good enough. 🙂

Dreams made Reality

So, it’s been far too long since my last post. While I have a few guides and informational pieces in progress, I’ll admit to simply lacking inspiration as of late. My playtime of the game has decreased, not from any pre-WotLK slump, but due to other things in my life taking priority. Friends visiting, other gaming activities, and the dreaded work, etc…time for WoW has been brief.

Despite all that, I would like to encourage all readers – however many of you there are, I’m guessing about five – to ask me any questions you may have. I will do all I can to answer accurately and appropriately. In the end, I really created this blog because I enjoy doing Customer Service work, and WoW just seemed to be the topic I am interested in the most at this time. So please, give me the chance to flex my service muscles!

Lastly, and I regret to admit, the true reason for this post. I arrived home yesterday evening to find a box sitting on my doorstep. I carried it up the stairs gingerly, then opened it with as much gusto as I dared use. Inside, among tightly packed cardboard and a plethora of bubble wrap, lay the manifestation of over two years of entertainment:

Tchann Thundercleave is real, and she is sitting on my mantle. This, to me, is so damn cool I can barely describe it in words. ^.^