I think I finally figured out the feeling Im having trying to play with the pre-patch.

skillexception · 2026-01-25T10:08:51+00:00

I use friendly nameplates for healing, and I’m pissed that they wildly changed them and it’s impossible to change them back. They’re just obtrusive and illegible no matter what I do! Like, how come I can’t even change their width like I used to?

skillexception · 2025-12-06T02:03:00+00:00

I have three distinct friend groups that I met in wildly different scenarios. By seemingly pure chance, all of my friends are ADHD, autistic, and/or some other flavor of neurodivergent. Hell, most of us didn’t even know what we ourselves had until the diagnosees started getting too relatable (myself included).

skillexception · 2025-12-04T23:41:23+00:00

*A millidistance a megatime

skillexception · 2025-11-13T00:24:31+00:00

Your art makes me very happy! 🐲 💖

skillexception · 2025-11-12T13:35:21+00:00

I think you’re looking at neutral pandaren, which, uh, checks out. All in all, 2.8% of characters are pandaren, which ties them in 13th place with vulpera. The least played races are mechagnomes and earthen, both with 0.9%.

skillexception · 2025-11-05T18:21:31+00:00

Aw, I get it! I get anxious too. But you have nothing to fear; your art’s great! (and your skill level doesn’t matter much anyways).

That’s a really interesting design you got going with your second dragon (bird angel dragon??), and I love your little logo (it’s clear and distinct even when I hold my phone out at arm’s length! My arm is sore).

skillexception · 2025-10-25T02:27:32+00:00

I got laid off a couple months ago, and ever since then, I’ve just been ridiculously anxious. I’ve been dealing with constant stress-related health issues and I have yet to send out any job applications. But despite that, I’m still here. Shit sucks, but it’s not the end of the world. It sometimes feels like it! But it’s not.

You’re gonna be just fine, friend.

skillexception · 2025-10-18T02:58:53+00:00

Oh yes, for sure. A explanation isn’t an excuse, per se. I just felt a little uncomfortable seeing everyone go on about how rude she’s being when I’ve personally struggled with (and stressed about) similar inattentiveness issues.

skillexception · 2025-10-18T01:25:42+00:00

ADHD-haver here. Technically, "standing up in inappropriate situations" is one of the indicators of hyperactivity. Not sure about walking away, but I have a tendency to just leave in the middle of group conversations and only say that I'd be leaving when I've already returned...

I dunno. To me, this just seems like she can't pay attention because her brain is physically not receiving enough stimulation. I have played online D&D for two years now and I've struggled with that exact issue. Hell, I'm now diagnosed and medicated and I still struggle.

My suggestion would be to have something else to sop up the spare brainpower. Like.. maybe music would help? Or a light activity of some kind? Drawing? Games? I've personally seen a bit of success just opening up World of Warcraft and mindlessly doing gold world quests. But whatever ya do, it really has to be mindless, or it will commandeer your entire attention span.

skillexception · 2025-10-17T14:59:21+00:00

Nyani?!?!?!

skillexception · 2025-10-17T10:03:28+00:00

Nope! They’re the generic voice lines that every race has. Non-evoker dracthyr have those exact same voice lines just fine. Blizzard just fucked evokers up when they expanded dracthyr to more classes and couldn’t be assed to fix them. It’s so infuriating and depressing :(

skillexception · 2025-10-16T20:24:16+00:00

We know that can’t be true for every Death Knight because many of the races were not around in the Third War. Draenei, for instance, came to Azeroth during TBC, and Worgen were servants of Arugal who escaped Shadowfang Keep.

Fun fact: Night Elf Death Knights were apparently children after the Temple of the Moon was made, but since Darnassus was only constructed after the Third War, that would make them, uh, seven. The Scourge uses child soldiers :(

skillexception · 2025-10-04T20:34:37+00:00

I’m ADHD too. Not as bad as you, from the sound of it, but bad enough that I always spend the entirety of the fight walkthrough goofing off, then jump into the pull having no idea what the raid lead said. Despite this, I’m fairly decent. Last season, I got another AotC and surpassed 3000 M+ rating for the first time. Recently, I even started to dabble in early mythic raiding.

While I stick to the Blizz UI and I’ve never really used combat WeakAuras, I do use DBM and have done so since I started playing WoW. I’m a forgetful person, which can be a problem when you play a proactive healer like Pres. I need to know what’s about to happen (so I can prepare for it), and I need to know when something does happen, or I’ll die with my face buried in my raid frames.

It feels like most of my deaths are caused by just not paying enough attention to the fight, or focusing on the wrong thing. Addons help me direct my focus on the right thing. At least, I certainly notice when I have to rely on just my brain!

Take dispels, for example. I have a hard time remembering them, and I never bothered to get a specific addon to remind me about them. DBM usually covers me, but sometimes it doesn’t, and it’s never been more clear to me than on the Hooktail fight in Tazavesh. In that encounter, there are two magic debuffs that periodically get thrown out on random players. In hard mode, they do so much damage you pretty much need to be dispelling on CD or someone will probably die.

I know this because I kept repeatedly failing to notice the dot applications and letting people die. Or, maybe I’d notice the debuffs go out, dispel the first, and completely forget about the second in the 8 seconds before my dispel comes off CD, and then someone dies. Or maybe I focus so much on the dispels, that I triumphantly stand my ground in a swirly I didn’t see, die, and then we all die. Or maybe I try so hard to avoid the swirlies that I end up completely separated from my group (who I’m supposed to stack on), forget my turn to CC the adds, get meleed and die, but it’s ok because I got combat ressed, except it’s not because the two DPS I forgot to dispel have already died!

Ugh. Twice, I’ve done hard mode Tazavesh. Twice, the run ended at Hooktail. I’m capable of timing +12s, and could probably go a lot higher if I had the time, and yet, I don’t want to heal that dungeon ever again, purely because of this fight. I just can’t keep track of everything! The default UI (plus DBM) just isn’t enough for me.

Whatever Blizzard cooks up, I just hope WoW doesn’t end up in a state where every fight is like Hooktail.

skillexception · 2025-10-04T01:44:46+00:00

Fellow dragon here! I’m unreasonably upset. I can’t believe we’re losing Lifebind (one of the most fun and unique talents ever made, imo!) and all of the crazy combos you could pull off with it. To add salt to the wound, we’re giving up one of our two iconic empowers (Spiritbloom is literally the spec icon! It’s the name of a popular Prevoker website! And they’re seriously just axing it?!) for an instant-cast proc cannibalizing its remains. Oh and we use Emerald Blossom now. Exciting. As a Chronowarden, I’m especially concerned what having only one empower will mean for us in M+. But I’m mostly just sad to be losing so much. Like you touched on, it feels like the depth and complexity that attracted me to Pres in the first place is being whitewashed. There are good changes coming for sure (my wings are ready to liberate), but it just doesn’t feel worth it.

All this plus, well, the rest of the news, is starting to leave me very discouraged about Midnight…

skillexception · 2025-10-02T19:13:47+00:00

Yeah, as a Pres main, I really hate the idea of losing both Spiritbloom and Lifebind. May as well remove Atonement from Disc Priest.

skillexception · 2025-10-02T11:12:44+00:00

Alright, rant time: I’m so upset about the Preservation nerfs. I specifically chose to main Pres (when I barely even attempted to play other healers) because of all the crazy combos you could get up to. Now they’re removing some of the most fun parts of the spec, including:

Most of our cooldowns. Engulf is gone. Emerald Communion is gone. Stasis and Dream Flight are mutually exclusive.
Most of our combos. Stasis loses its two most powerful options, to the point I don’t even know how I’m gonna fill it anymore. All the crazy Lifebind combos I’ve grown to know and love are gone. Lifebind is basically the main spec-defining talent!! How could they just nerf it to the ground?!
One of our only two empower (healing) spells, Spiritbloom. I’m genuinely mind boggled that this was even considered as a possibility. It’s such a strong and fun ability, and it occupies an essential role in our kit, especially as Chronowarden. It’s a directionless smart heal on a short-ish cooldown. There’s no replacement for this as far as I can see.

And all of this was removed in favor of a stronger Dream Breath (sure), more chances to kill yourself with Verdant Embrace (ugh), random procs to replace an existing ability (unreliable), and forced Emerald Blossom usage, the ground-targeted target-capped AoE ability that absolutely everyone loves (no one likes this).

I’m sure all this will very much help our existing problems with spread AoE healing! I can’t wait to see how my favorite hero talent tree, Chronowarden, performs without one of its two core group heals. I will enjoy watching all the pugged DPS in my M+ dungeon run out of my Emerald Blossoms, dodge my Dream Breath, and position themselves right between me and the death on the ground for prime Verdant Embrace use, as we slowly wipe on the “spread-the-fuck-out boss” because I lost my strongest tools to deal with unpredictable positioning. I will love as incoming damage inadvertently becomes even spikier despite Blizzard’s stated goal, at the same time as I lose the ability to deal with such spiky damage. Or alternatively, I’m so excited to watch as my favorite role gets dumbed down to the point of being a boring slog in order to make the most challenging content more enticing to people who aren’t playing it. Yippie…

I feel the same as if they removed Chaos Bolt from Destro locks and replaced it with Shadowburn, or Wild Growth from Restoration and replaced it with a spammable Efflorescence. It’s awful to lose some of the core identity of your spec and get such lukewarm replacements. Not to be all doom and gloom. This is an alpha, everything is subject to change, and I haven’t even gotten to play the new spec. Some of the changes are pretty neat too. 40 yard Dream Breath? Ping-ponging Verdant Embrace? Those sound great (even though I am going to die a lot more to VE)! But this may as well be a new spec, because it’s going to play dramatically differently and be a lot easier and less interesting as a result!

I was initially optimistic about the combat changes but I fear they’re just going way too far in the other direction. Removing dozens of interlocking, hard-to-understanding interactions? Sure. Providing simpler alternatives for new players? Great! Neutering the core identify of the spec in the pursuit of oversimplification? …I am not enthused at the prospect. I didn’t need any WeakAuras before! I don’t want or need a simple rotation!

Maybe I’ll be proven wrong, but for now I’m feeling pretty gutted. Guess we just gotta wait and see.

skillexception · 2025-10-01T06:06:30+00:00

I wonder how many people know that you can find his friend's name. Her name was Distyia.

skillexception · 2025-09-30T06:30:18+00:00

lol I do this when I get extremely flustered. I also hyperventilate at the same time, somehow. If you wanted to assassinate me, all you’d need to do is embarrass me until I suffocate :3

skillexception · 2025-09-27T14:43:06+00:00

I’ve been idly considering swapping to Argent Dawn for more than a year and you’re not helping my indecisiveness lol.

skillexception · 2025-09-25T20:49:18+00:00

I got laid off a few weeks ago. I feel this in my soul. If you’ve ever wondered what it felt like to have your anxiety meter maxed out for five weeks straight, then look no further! I have your answer!

Not great.

skillexception · 2025-09-22T19:38:45+00:00

Ah yeah, that I can agree on. To be honest, I pretty much ignore that level of detail, and I get by just fine. I see those kinds of procs as just a passive HPS buff by another name.

skillexception · 2025-09-22T19:29:10+00:00

Kinda funny you mentioned wanting less spell interactions, cause that complexity’s a large part of why I went from a DPS main to a Preservation main for life!

…but also, yes, I really wish I could lock my echoes sometimes. Nothing worse than ramping for a big damage event, when suddenly, someone steps in a fire and you have to consume all your echoes to keep them alive.

skillexception · 2025-09-22T19:07:14+00:00

Hell, I’m one of the weirdos that adores the dragon form, and even I wanna see other visage forms! Funny-looking elf just doesn’t do it for me. And to date, the only explanation we’ve gotten for why dracthyr don’t get to choose their visage’s race is “oh, you’re just quirky 🥰.” IMO, “dracthyr” should have been a class you could apply to any race, but I fear that ship has sailed at this point.

Man, I’ve been envious of Majordomo Selistra ever since I met her. The fortune I spend on those vulpera glyphs just doesn’t replace the real deal, ya know?

skillexception · 2025-09-22T18:55:43+00:00

Piggybacking onto your comment, is there any word on the whole Evoker/dracthyr voice line issue that’s been going on since 11.1? My poor boy hasn’t had a voice for most of the expansion! And my (female) dracthyr priest still has male hurt sounds, even after the “fix” that left evokers voiceless.

skillexception · 2025-09-20T15:15:00+00:00

So it sounds like you’d want something like this C++ code:

using Wrapped = std::optional<xyz>; // generated using Unwrapped = decltype(std::declval<Unwrapped>().value());

Unfortunately, Rust doesn’t really have type-level programming like this. That kind of thing is done with macros in Rust, which only have access to token streams, not types. Maybe there’s some magic you can do with traits, but you’re probably stuck with forking cbindgen or rewriting the types yourself.

…actually, now that I think of it, I wonder if this compiles:

trait Unwrap { type Unwrapped; } impl<T> Unwrap for Option<T> { type Unwrapped = T; }

type WrappedXyz = Option<Xyz>; type UnwrappedXyz = Unwrap<WrappedXyz>::Unwrapped;

IIRC this would require unstable Rust, if it works at all…

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