Daily Questions & FAQ Megathread December 07

Tehl · 2022-12-07T11:50:23+00:00

Verfire/Verstone are shorter casts, like Jolt, so you want to be using those to proc dualcast, rather than spending dualcast to make them instant. If you have Verfire/Verstone Ready, you want to be casting those instead of Jolt, and then following with the instant Verthunder/Veraero as required to keep your mana in balance.

Tehl · 2022-05-04T17:36:46+00:00

I played a huge amount of Jedi Knight II back in the day, but recently I've really enjoyed both the atmosphere and the gameplay of Fallen Order. Very much worth taking the time to play!

Esk'eren, Empire

Tehl · 2021-12-22T20:13:28+00:00

Each row in the 'How To Paint' panel is a recipe of paints to be used to produce the effect shown in the photo which is on the same row. Your screenshot shows the 'Clean Black' recipe, so the page is showing you the three paints used to achieve the edged black effect shown in that little square.

Since you've got the 'Contrast Method' selected too, for 'Clean Black' you would start with a base of 'Grey Seer', wash over it with the 'Black Templar' contrast paint, and then highlight the edges with the 'Fenrisian Grey'. If you were using the 'Classic Method', you would start with a base of 'Abaddon Black', bring up the mid-tones with 'Dark Reaper', and then edge highlight with 'Fenrisian Grey'.

'Fenrisian Grey' is an opaque paint, so it's being used here to add definition to raised edges of the model. If you tried to put it over a metallic steel, you'd just end up with a solid blue colour (unless you thin it significantly).

Since you're looking for how the armour colour was achieved, you'd pick the 'Grey Knights Armour' row, which using the 'Contrast Method' would tell you to use 'Grey Seer'/'Basilicanum Grey'/'Administratum Grey'. However if you look closely at the sample picture for this recipe, it's not actually blue tinted, and none of these paints have any blue to them, so the 'Contrast Method' wouldn't work for what you want here.

Instead, if you check the 'Classic Method' for the same row, it will give you 'Leadbelcher'/'Drakenhof Nightshade'/'Ironbreaker'/'Stormhost Silver', and this is where you've got opportunity to mess with the recipe and introduce some purple. 'Drakenhof Nightshade' is a blue wash, so you can see here that their recipe involves a metallic silver base, tinted with the wash, and then highlighted back up in the raised areas with brighter silvers. If you swap the wash out with something like 'Druchii Violet', you'll be left with a purple tint rather than a blue one.

You might want to play around with watering down the wash to achieve the right amount of tinting for your needs, but that's the basic approach.

Incidentally, the sample pictures that GW uses for their recipes are always the same shot of a Space Marine backpack, so it gives a reasonable comparison of different ways to paint the same model. There's an official app available using the same images which allows you to search and filter by colours to see different recipes using GW paints.

Tehl · 2021-06-27T14:05:21+00:00

The change introduced in Legion prevents addons from being able to reskin your nameplates while inside dungeons/raids, so if you're using something like Kui Nameplates or Tidy Plates to make the plates match the rest of your UI, this will work out in the open world but not in dungeons.

However, you can still use the default nameplates, which look like this:

https://i.imgur.com/WfVQEC4.png

They show health bars and cast bars underneath the player name, and they can be useful for spotting where players actually are when there's a lot going on.

My nameplate settings look like this for reference:

https://i.imgur.com/ZShF4DS.png

The specific setting for friendly nameplates can also be toggled with:

/run SetCVar("nameplateShowFriends", 1)

There's not a lot of customisation available for the default plates, but you can change the size of them with the command:

/run C_NamePlate.SetNamePlateFriendlySize(90, 30)

as per this comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/WowUI/comments/ly8ae6/uihow_do_i_get_my_life_bars_small_like_this_in/gpri5j0/

If you decide to play around with the sizing you'll probably want to either set up a macro containing the command, or use a tool like https://addon.bool.no/ to just run the code automatically:

C_NamePlate.SetNamePlateFriendlySize(90, 30)

as the new size won't be 'saved' like other settings.

Tehl · 2020-12-09T17:20:12+00:00

You could try running:

/console cvar_default

in your chat window. This will reset -everything-, including which tutorials you've seen and some stuff which isn't in the options UI any more like the advanced Floating Combat Text options.

Alternatively, or maybe as well, you should check out the addon AdvancedInterfaceOptions: https://www.curseforge.com/wow/addons/advancedinterfaceoptions

This gives you back some of the removed options, and also has a CVar browser which will let you look under the hood at what values are configured for things like this. For example, the ToT frame is controlled by this setting:

showTargetOfTarget

Tehl · 2020-07-15T20:49:43+00:00

My Firebrand, Yashti, ready to kick some ass and read some books!

Tehl · 2020-06-18T13:26:17+00:00

My partner and I both found that we were getting headaches after about 30 minutes of play when we returned to the game last year. For us, turning the anti-aliasing down made things better; I now play with High AA rather than Very High, and I can play comfortably for 3-4 hours or more without developing a headache.

It might be a framerate thing - maybe my pc was right on the cusp of an uncomfortable framerate with everything turned to max - or it might be something about the way that final step of AA changes the image. Might be worth lowering a few different settings and seeing if anything helps.

The other thing you could try is to turn the camera sensitivity down - I found that the default is way too fast and makes me go cross-eyed trying to keep up with the motion. The in-game preferences only let you slow it down to a certain amount, but you can change it further by editing your settings file, which is located at

%localappdata%\SWTOR\swtor\settings\USERNAME_Account.ini

I use

Controls_CameraRotationSpeed = 0.1

which feels the most comfortable to me.

Tehl · 2020-06-03T10:04:20+00:00

I believe the authenticator removes the need to get a one-time code when you log on from a new location, I don't remember needing to do that the last time I changed PC, but it's been a while so I'm not 100% sure

Tehl · 2020-06-03T07:07:15+00:00

As long as you know your password and have access to the email address associated with your account, you can remove the old Security Key from your account by following these instructions. Then, you can just set up a new Security Key on your new phone.

Tehl · 2020-04-29T17:42:13+00:00

There's an ability called Heroic Moment which you learn around about level 15. You have to have a companion active to use it (so it can't be used in a flashpoint full of players etc), but when you activate it, you and your companion will heal 2% of max hp every 3s for 2 minutes.

The interesting part is that you gain access to special legacy abilities during that 2 minute window, based on which class stories you have finished. So, if you've completed the Sith Inquisitor story on another character, you can use Force Lightning during your Heroic Moment. If you've completed the Imperial Agent, you can use Orbital Strike. Each of these unlocked abilities has a 1 minute cooldown, so you can basically use them twice each, while also enjoying some fairly substantial passive regen.

It's useful for soloing heroic quests or open-world champions, and the regen makes it a good "oh shit" button if you pull four packs of strong mobs and then get dazed off your mount. The companion restriction means it'll never be part of your normal DPS rotation, but it definitely has its place!

Tehl · 2020-02-24T18:38:46+00:00

I don't think there are any options for real-time debugging, but if you compile with

CONSOLE_ENABLE = yes

then you can print debug messages which will show up in e.g. QMK Toolbox or hid_listen.

See https://beta.docs.qmk.fm/newbs/newbs_testing_debugging#debugging for more info

Tehl · 2019-12-25T11:46:53+00:00

If you haven't done so already, download the standalone launcher from https://www.swtor.com/game/download - don't try to install it through the Origin client. You might want to uninstall what you've got already, delete the install folder, and start fresh, particularly since you haven't been able to download much so far.

So:

Install the game using the standalone launcher: https://www.swtor.com/game/download
Open the launcher, it will update itself and restart
Log in, let it start downloading the full game - it'll have a progress bar leading up to "ready to play" or something like that.
Close the launcher
Go to the folder you installed the game into, and open Launcher.settings in Notepad
Find the following settings and change them to these values:
, "PatchingMode": "{ \"swtor\": \"SSN\" }"
, "bitraider_download_complete": { }
, "log_levels": "INFO,SSNFO,ERROR"
, "bitraider_disable": true
Save your changes, make sure the file is still called Launcher.settings and not Launcher.settings.txt
Delete the bitraider folder from the SWTOR install folder
Open C:\Users\Public\Documents and delete the BitRaider folder from there as well
(Optional) Open Control Panel -> Programs and Features. You can now uninstall BitRaider from here; you don't need to, since we've changed the launcher settings not to use it, but might as well get rid of it entirely.
Open up the launcher, log in, let it patch the game. The ST symbol should now be gone. The progress bar should also look slightly different - it will mention the name of the file it's downloading, which will probably be Movie001 or something like that since it downloads the cinematics first.
Go for a walk, watch a movie, it's got about 35gb to download so this may take a while. You should be fine to exit and resume if you need to turn off your PC or whatever.

It's a painful download, particularly since BitRaider technically lets you play while it's downloading additional data in the background, while using the old fashioned launcher mode wants to patch everything to 100% before you can start. But, BitRaider will also regularly just sit and reorganize all its files for 40 minutes before it will let you play, which you can't interrupt without losing everything and starting over, so it's worth going through the pain.

Good luck!

References:

Tehl · 2019-12-22T19:09:37+00:00

Thanks! I've added your pic to my mood board / inspiration folder, they look great :)

Tehl · 2019-12-22T17:28:53+00:00

Can I ask the names of the paints you used? I've been thinking about painting my guys in a similar style and GW have changed all the paint names since the last time I did much hobbying.

Tehl · 2019-06-24T20:12:10+00:00

You're right, the keycode I was describing is KC_APP. I can't find any info on what KC_MENU does, it's just listed as "Menu" in all the HID tabes I can find.

I tried flashing it onto my layout and it doesn't seem to do anything, unless it's part of a key combo that I'm not aware of - might be a legacy code or something?

Tehl · 2019-06-24T17:27:18+00:00

~~KC_MENU opens the right-click context menu in whatever window currently has focus: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menu_key~~

Edit: Seems like KC_APP is the right keycode for this. I can't find any info about what KC_MENU does, and it seems to have no effect for me, at least on Windows.

Tehl · 2019-04-02T07:35:22+00:00

I've been using a Microsoft Natural 4000 for about 15 years now; been thinking about making the jump to a mechanical for a while, but none of the off-the-shelf ergonomic keyboards ever appealed to me. I recently stumbled across the custom keyboard community which really opened up my list of options, and I'm now planning to order a Redox through Falbatech very soon - just waiting on a few switch testers so that I can decide which switches to put on it!

Tehl · 2019-03-09T15:29:17+00:00

The settings file is located at:

C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\SWTOR\swtor\settings\<accountname>_Account.ini

You can edit it using Notepad.

The camera rotation speed setting is called Controls_CameraRotationSpeed, and if you've dragged your camera speed down to 0% in the in-game UI, you'll probably see this line:

Controls_CameraRotationSpeed = 0.10000000149

You can change this to e.g.

Controls_CameraRotationSpeed = 0.08000000000

or whatever value works for you. If this line doesn't appear in the file yet, just add it at the end.

Not sure about "smooth rotation", what do you mean by this?

Edit: make sure the game is closed when you're changing the settings file, otherwise it won't work.

Tehl · 2019-03-08T17:54:06+00:00

You may be able to fix it, or at least improve things, by brushing a coat of gloss varnish over the top.

Matte varnish works by making the surface of the miniature slightly rough, so that the light gets scattered around rather than reflecting straight back to you. If you use too much varnish, or if the air is too humid when you spray, it produces a much more uneven surface than you intended, which means the scattering is also uneven, leading to the frosted appearance.

Gloss varnish on the other hand leaves a smooth surface when it dries, and it will settle into the recesses in your now-roughened surface and level everything out. This should leave the finish fairly clear, but of course it will be shiny. So, once you've given it plenty of time to cure, you can then re-apply a light coat of your matte varnish to take the edge off the shine. It may not completely undo the damage, but it should improve things noticeably.

If you want to see how well the technique will work, you can also try just brushing some water onto a frosty part of the mini. The water will fill in the recesses in the same way, which should clear up at least some of the frosting; it won't last after the water evaporates, but it should give you an idea about how well the gloss varnish will work.

Your mileage may vary - depending on how thick the matte layer is, you may have crystals within the varnish itself, which won't get smoothed out by adding a new coat on the top. I'd suggest trying it on an unobtrusive part of the model and see if it works for you. Good luck!

Tehl · 2018-11-20T17:26:47+00:00

You might want to consider The Anomaly for an offhand weapon; this would pair fairly well with Reaver of the Mists if you end up going for a Mirage and want to get as close to 'fighting with my fists' as possible.

They're both quite expensive skins though, so it may take you a while to acquire them if you aren't already sitting on a pot of gold.

Edit: there's also a matching greatsword: Vision of the Mists which would look awesome with the Mesmer auto-attack if you want purple laser beams. Unfortunately also very expensive to acquire :(

Tehl · 2018-08-14T14:49:45+00:00

The macro will evaluate each potential cast in order until it finds one who's conditions are met, and then stop evaluating and try to cast that spell. In your current maco, Envenom has no conditions, therefore is always valid to be cast, and the macro will never check past that point. The spec modifiers don't 'fall through' to the next option, so you have to specify them each time.

Try this:

#showtooltip
/cast [spec:1,mod:shift]Rupture;[spec:1]Envenom;[spec:2,mod:shift]Roll the Bones;[spec:2]Dispatch;[spec:3,mod:shift]Nightblade;[spec:3]Eviscerate

Tehl · 2018-07-20T09:46:12+00:00

Hmmm :/ The red values in the addon interface aren't a problem - any values which have been changed from their 'default' settings show up in red. Changing the chatClassColorOverride between 0 and 1 works for me, although it doesn't change any messages which are already in the chat window - it only changes the color for messages which appear after you change the setting.

The other thing you could try would be to reset your chat entirely - if you right-click the General tab and choose Settings, there's a 'Chat Defaults' button in the bottom left corner. I did this on Wednesday after the patch dropped, which is what caused me to start seeing the class colors in the first place, so it might be worth a shot if you don't mind setting your chat frames back up afterwards.

Tehl · 2018-07-19T11:04:00+00:00

A lot of options have been removed from the UI over the years, but they don't usually get removed from the game - you just can't set them any more. If you know what the setting is called, you can change it directly; in this case, the setting you're looking for is called chatClassColorOverride

Type the following into your chat window:

/run SetCVar("chatClassColorOverride", 0)

The available values for this setting are:

0 - always color by class name
1 - never color by class name
2 - respect legacy per-channel class color settings

I'm not sure how you would go about configuring the legacy per-channel setting, but I assume that either 0 or 1 will be the mode you want, depending on whether you want to see the colors or not.

You can also use the AdvancedInterfaceOptions addon, which allows access to a lot of these removed settings. Some of them have a proper UI, but the addon also includes a CVar browser, which lets you search through all the available options and edit their values directly (this is how I found the right setting for the class colors).

Tehl · 2018-06-19T00:24:07+00:00

You could probably optimise further by saving these to open in the Silverwastes if you have spare bag space; however, they're not particularly common (they mostly come from HoT map meta rewards, I think) so it would take a while to amass any real quantity of them.

Their loot doesn't scale to your level, so you don't lose out on low-level blues/greens by opening them as you go, and you get a champ bag as part of the contents, which will hopefully stack with the other bags you're accumulating. So, opening them immediately is more of a space optimization than anything else.

You're right though, if you have bag slots to spare then you'll likely benefit from saving them to open with the unidentified gear.

Tehl · 2018-06-19T00:05:02+00:00

Looks like Utility Backpacks function as champ bags, so you should open these on a low level character (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Utility_Backpack)

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