Tuesday, April 13, 2010

UI Post!

So I did a UI post way back in the day, but now it's completely different.  I found problems with Quartz recently - there are these little tiny bars that track my dots that appear on both the top right and bottom left of the Quartz cast bar, and for the life of me, I couldn't figure out how to get rid of them.  They screwed with my whole set up, and I completely deleted the UI in frustration and started over.

I downloaded Coehl's UI after it was featured on WoW.com one day.  I kept finding that I had this weird need to have access to all sorts of actions and items even though I didn't need them necessarily in combat.  Coehl's UI was the answer - it's set up to where there's a bunch of buttons hidden behind the dps meters (in this case, Skada) so that you can merely click on a tab and have access to them if you need them, but you don't have to clutter your screen with extra action bars.  There's also some extra action bars on a sort of "sidebar" that is also hidden at any time with the click of a button (if you wish), and the minimap does the same thing.  I did not find everything that I wanted with Coehl's UI, however, so I erased some things and replaced others, and added yet a few more (ugh, I hate you PallyPower, but dammit you are necessary). 

Here's a screenshot of a very recent raid - last week's Heroic 25 man Festergut and Heroic 25 man Marrowgar, to be exact:



  • A.  Fortress - my Fubar thingy, I'm "meh" about it, really, and I've seen better looking ones, but I've been too lazy to go searching for a fix.
  • B.  CooldownButtons - I don't even know why I installed this, really - to keep track of the Rebirth cooldown?  I look at it for my Fear Ward cooldown, but that's about it - I need to consolidate this information into the "shorter" cooldown tracker
  • C.  Decursive - Ah, good old Decursive, how I love you.  I really prefer this method of dispelling poisons, diseases, and curses to tracking this stuff on Grid or some other method - the familiar sound it makes when something is applied to a raid member that I can remove/dispel, the little colored box (and number, if stackable) - this addon is essential for me
  • D.  Grid - I'm sort of apathetic about my raid frames - I want something that's not totally in the way when I'm dpsing or tanking, but I do want to be able to see everything I need to see when healing.  I can move this Grid frame out of the way or disable it if I need to, but it seems to really take up a lot of space.  I dunno.  Doesn't fit anywhere else for now.
  • E.  Chatter - my chat addon, gives a lot of information and filters, but I just use it straight out of the box and it suits me fine
  • F.  Heatsink - My cooldown timer.  ForteXorcist was giving me hives, was doing something wonky, so I removed it and switched to Heatsink.  I can't seem to figure out how to add abilities to track on it, however, and I think it's only tracking cooldowns and not actual dot durations like the duration of Flame Shock (it'll track the cooldown of general "shock" spells, but it won't tell me how long Flame Shock is ticking on my target), nor will it tell me what's ticking on mobs that I'm not targetting (though I think there's a way to add this).  I might try something else - seems like there should be something easy that tracks dots AND cooldowns.  My head is stuffy just thinking about configuring something like that for all of my toons and specs, though.
  • G.  Pitbull - my unit frames.  serviceable, I suppose, but nothing spectacular - does what I want, and that's good enough for me - G is me, G1 is my focus, G2 is my target's target (making sure my tank has aggro on what I'm attacking), and G3 is my target
  • H.  AzCastBar - I dumped Quartz to make out with this, though I'm not as in love with it like I was with Quartz.  Seems to do what Quartz did, though, so I'm not sure what it is about it that I'm not all that impressed with ...
  • I.  Bartender - I like Dominoes, since it's so easy to configure, but this UI package came with Bartender and I didn't have to configure anything, so I have no opinion of this
  • J.  (the one in the middle of the screen - I'm a noob and labeled two J.'s)  MFClip - just for shadowpriesting, but it seems to be very in your face, I don't know if I like it all that much
  • J.  (the one at the bottom right)  Skada - Recount+Omen in one, does everything except the pretty pie charts - this UI comes with a second Skada window (you can easily make one yourself, though) for tracking threat (J1) at the same time as dps, and it takes less memory that only Recount, much less Recount+Omen - I love it, and will probably never switch back, even if a future UI package comes with the two
  • K.  Mik's Scrolling Battle Text (MSBT) - my combat text, really easy to configure, the main thing I like to see on a combat text is how many targets my Mind Sear is hitting - everything else is just filler for me (though Mik's throws out the "____ spell ready!" messages that are handy
  • L.  Power Auras Classic - PAC is a proc tracker - I also want to roll this into my cooldowns and dots tracker, but for now, this works - the exclamation mark is telling me that Black Magic has procced (there's a timer for it, but it's hard to see in the shot) and I can refresh VT and DP and drop MB for the duration of it, and time another DP and VT at the end if I didn't get one in the beginning
  • M.  Deadly Boss Mods - my boss mod of choice - I've tried Deux Vox and Bigwigs, but nothing beats that "BURR BURR" warning sound telling me to get my ass out of the fire, etc
  • N.  pMinimap - resizes and moves the minimap and let's you configure what you want showing on it - nothing too exciting here
  • O.  TipTac - I love this tooltip addon, but don't ask me how to configure it
  • P.  Satrina Buff Frames - my buffs/debuffs tracker thingy, I like glancing at buttons more than bars
  • Q.  TidyPlates+ThreatPlates - LOVE this nameplate addon combo - big and green outline for mobs that I do not have the aggro of, red and smaller if I have aggro - can't be much simpler - very handy when I'm tanking and looking at a screen full of nameplates - I can just manually click on the green nameplates and taunt
So that's it - I like the layout, and everything I want is on the screen, but I dunno - seems a bit cluttered, and I'd like to consolidate my cooldowns, track my dots, and track my procs in one addon, if possible.  I also want an easier way to tell if I am missing a buff or not.  Any suggestions on improvement, simplification, or complete redos would be appreciated.

1 comment:

  1. Yay for UI posts! I used to have a decent custom UI back in my raiding days but right now I'm just casually playing my Resto Shaman. I know you have an 80 shaman who smashes faces with maces (c wut i did thar?), but can you recommend any good addons that might be resto friendly?

    Right now I'm only using Decursive and Grid, but I didn't know if there were any Grid plugins like there were for Resto Druids.

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