January 2016 – the misty teahouse

Elvui Update – A Gift

Good news, everyone!
While my blog was having a minor breakdown, Elvui made an amazing new tool to import and export Elvui profiles. Guess what? Yes, I have added the my three profiles for Elvui on a brand new page in my WeakAura Library. Now you can easily import my profile to complete the look of my Mistweaver UI (and continue on the Windwalker and Brewmaster UI). Since it is a new feature, it might have some initial bugs, but I have tried it and it seemed to work as intended.

To find the profiles go to my WeakAura Hub > WeakAura Library > Elvui Profiles;

Or just click here.

It might be a little misleading to have it under “WeakAura Library”, but since it is as part of a set, I figured it would be best to have it easy at hand. Maybe I need to rename the things again, sometime in the future.

Anyway, here are images of the Elvui profiles I’ve made, in their “bare” format, so to speak:

Mistweaver Profile

Windwalker Profile

Brewmaster Profile

The profiles can be used on any character of course (they are not locked to a specific class or spec), and you can easily configure the colors to your liking.

I hope you find this a useful feature when you build your own UI! As always, I’m curious to see how things worked out for you; so send me pictures of the result! :D

Happy building!

The Misadventures of Misty Teahouse, and its Happy Turnaround

If you have visited the Misty Teahouse the past 2 days, you might have gotten a very strange “Server Error” page. If you follow me on Twitter, you probably saw me having a minor breakdown over this. But now when it’s up and everything is sunshine and rainbows again, I can tell you the story of what happened (oh before that, if you still see weird error messages, clean your web browser cache and it is back up again).

The morning of Saturday, I got a message from a friend telling me that my blog was down. I got up, and checked my blog immediately only to see a very nasty error page. I asked my brother about it (he is a web developer, and has been helping me), and at the beginning of all this chaos, we thought it was a plug-in that had gone haywire and messed with the code. Then we noticed that the web hotel I’ve used had been subjected to a DDoS attack. We called them, and they said servers were down and we just had to wait. This was the excruciating wait of day one.

On Sunday, the blog was still down. Called again, and this time they said that the servers were up and everything should be working. It obviously did not. So they said that they would put tech service on the case. Meanwhile, we tried to figure out if there were something with the blog’s code that was messing around. It seemed like it wasn’t. This was the excruciating wait of day two.

This morning, Monday, the blog came back up again, to my great surprise and happiness! Apparently, there had been something on the web hotel’s end that had messed it up. After the DDoS attack, there was a “node” that went bad in their “cluster”, which is what caused all this. It sounds very sci-fi to me, but maybe it makes some sense to you?

Everything seems to be back to normal except that I need to reinstall some plugins we had erased in the process. But I have my baby blog back (how I’ve missed thee), and I can go back to work!

Today, my new chair will arrive as well (or so they said…!) so I will have a longer stream going on Twitch to celebrate the resurrection of the blog and the new chair. I am thinking somewhere around 6pm CET, but it depends a little on how long it takes for the chair to get here and for me to assemble it. Tentative schedule! But I’ll hope I’ll see you there!

Major WeakAura Library Update – Live!

After innumerable hours of work, the WeakAura Library update is finally live! The Library is now split into three parts and include Mistweaver Icon Auras, Custom Texture Auras and a section completely dedicated to UI Troubleshooting. It also includes graphic auras for Windwalker and Brewmaster Monks! Since the update is so large, there may be some issues with some of the auras – if you find them, please report in the Troubleshooting page (comments are enabled there)!

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Streaming Alpha and More!

My unusual bad luck is withholding – I missed my guild’s first Archimonde Mythic kill because I had to do an exam, and while everyone in my guild was rewarded with an Alpha invite, I was not. But I am not bitter – I am crafty. My dear boyfriend got the Alpha, and guess whose account I have temporarily displaced on my computer? That’s right, I stole his alpha (sort of), so I can stream some Legion Alpha with you guys!

8pm CET tonight – Legion Alpha stream! Would love for you guys to join me at Twitch MistyTea. I haven’t touched any Alpha yet, so it’ll be my first impression!

On a slightly different note – while I will be streaming a lot of World of Warcraft in the future, there might be some off days I’d like to play other games as well. Problem is, I have trouble deciding which games. I need your help!

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Alpha Re-Launched and Design Notes!

Rejoice everyone, the alpha is up again and more WoW related news starts rolling in! First up, we have the patch notes of which I will of course focus on the Mistweaver related ones. Then we have some Design Notes on Tank & Healer design, which discussed the new view on both Tanks and tank healing – a very interesting read. Lastly, a plethora of cool new mounts and pets and other models. Have a look!

Patch Notes – Mistweaver

Invoke Chi’Ji’s Crane Heal now heal for 150% of SP, down from 200%.
Life Cocoon has now a 3 min cooldown, up from 2 min.
Renewing Mist now costs 2.8% mana, down from 3.5%.
Spinning Crane Kick now does 133.2% of AP, down from 600%.
Summon Jade Serpent Statue now heals for 50% as much as you.
Thunder Focus Tea now empowers Effuse for 150%, up from 100%.
Dampen Harm now reduces 30% of the three next incoming damage, down from 50%.
Diffuse Magic now reduces 60% of all magic damage taken, down from 90%.

Maybe not as much changes as was expected, but the changes were in line with the feedback. For example, SCK did way too much damage and worked as a better filler than any of the other damaging spells – at single target! The increase in cooldown of Life Cocoon was a bit a surprise, until you had a chance to read up on the design notes. Tank cooldowns have been nerfed cross the board, so it is not only a Mistweaver related thing. I will assume there will be more changes to come in future iterations though!

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The Scale of the World

To the roots of Pandarens and Monks, in Legion we will find our way back to the Wandering Isle. Shen-zin Su, on whose back the Temple of the Five Dawns still stands, and the resident Monks welcome us with open arms. Yet, the heritage of Monks can be traced back further, to Pandaria itself, whose image is based upon Ancient China. The link between the land of imagination and the land that sparked the imagination is something a curious mind like mine eagerly explores.

You have to forgive me, but with the standing news drought, I usually turn to more philosophical topics. I often go back to the origin of Monks – Pandaria. It is quite enjoyable to run mountless in the Jade Forest and let your mind wander where it will. I take inspiration of my surroundings and imagine all kinds of art I could do for my UI. But as I track my way around the forest, I cannot help to think of the link between the world as imagined in World of Warcraft, and its real life counterpart, China.

If I would imagine the process of creating a world like Pandaria, I imagine the developers make a deep dive into Chinese culture, trying to understand the whole, and pick parts of to represent the core of the culture. The result is an outstanding vision, with every nook and cranny deeply sated with the philosophical and aesthetics parts of the culture of Ancient China – and in extension, the Pandaren culture. But is only a symbol of the whole; a small miniature world that merely represents in a metaphorical way our ideas of what China is.

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Loading Legion Alpha – Improbable Predictions

Before you ask – no, I do not have Legion alpha (yet…) and no, I have no idea when the alpha will launch again. But I do know this!

I learnt a long time ago that I am crap at predictions. About 300% way off aim; I am somewhere out in the forest looking for the golf ball when it’s actually in the pond all along. Okay, apparently I’m also crap at metaphors. Never mind – my point is that I shouldn’t try to make predictions because they’re always wrong, but I can’t help feeling an itch to make an attempt anyway. See? Dangerous territory right there.

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Twitch with me!

Okay, so colloquial words are not my strong suit, but I have a vague feeling that “twitch with me” is not the correct phrase to use. I got a very weird mental picture. But – you may have guessed – I will attempt streaming tonight! I say attempt though, because we’re not hundred percent sure that everyone in our guild have come back from the holidays, but we do have a raid scheduled for tonight. If that fails, I may or may not be able to coerce some unfortunate people to play something else with me. Either case, I would be happy if you joined me!

You can find me on http://www.twitch.tv/mistytea and I will start the stream at around 8 p.m. Central European Time. See you then!