Dec 09
18
I figured it might be a good idea to cover my UI, and explain a bit which addons I use and why. I am very much like a grumpy old man when it comes to UI’s: If I don’t need them, I don’t want them. What this means is that I will discard addons that really doesn’t give me any benefit on a day to day basis. This is often addon’s that give me information that is not crucial, and only a single click away, but which takes up my screen so that I can see it right now.
You won’t see me use addons like Titanpanel/Fubar/Big Freaking Line In The Top Of My Screen. Why would I need to know how much gold I have right now, or what my coordinates are? When did we actually use coordinates? At best, we go on Wowhead and look at a map to find out NPC, and then we fly around the area. It’s even easier with 3.3, where the integrated quest system will help you out a bit. I play on a big, 24″ widescreen monitor. I enjoy watching the game. Why clutter it up with all sorts of distractions.
I once made the mistake of downloading an addon package. Man, that messed up my whole game; It changed my font, it changed my settings and it gave me a lot of addons that I really didn’t need. There was this one addon, which made a small version of your character in 3D, just from the front. That’s great and all, now I can look at the back and the front of my character at the same time, but why would I need that? Here is what I do need:
This is an old picture, one that I took shortly after I joiend Escapism, but I use this because it has pretty much all elements of my UI in it. It doesn’t include Power Aura’s, because I installed that at a later time, but I will cover all the addons I use anyways. It’s very important that I keep my UI simple, while still offering the information I need. I try to avoid cludder in the middle of my screen – a nightmare I have from healing Molten Core back in the days, having 40 big player boxes just so I could cover the whole raid. To take it from the top:
- Top left: Grid. The bars are a bit wider now, but this space really hasn’t changed much in a long time. I used to use Pitbull for some neat, recktangular unitframes, but when I tried to install it the other day, I got lost in all the options and the confusing settings.
- Top right: Elkano’s Buff Bars. I like the easy overview, and the way Elkano lists buffs. I never really liked the classic Blizzard interface for buffs, so this is pretty much mandatory for me. It is a bit annoying though, when trying to mouse over a buff, just to have it jump away from my cursor with all the random stuff we have going on. Next to EBB, we have Ora2, or a part of it at least. Just a simple main tank list.
- Bottom left: This is the place for my sweetheart, Squawk And Awe. I don’t think there is a single decent moonkin that doesn’t use this, or something similar like this, but I will be honest and say that I only really look at the eclipse bar. Sometimes I forget which eclipse is on cooldown, and it helps me remember.
- Bottom right: Recount, just so I can keep track of whats going on, and if I’m doing alright. I find it encouraging to see that I am doing well on certain fights, and since im the caster classmaster in Escapism, and previously the guild master of my own little guild, I have a habit of having an eye on everybody else. Below that, you will find Omen Threat Meter. Who raids without that? You can also see unit frames from Deadly Boss Mods, and a few bars above my target frames showing my DOT timers with ClassTimers.
- Bottom: Ah, mon cheri, SpartanUI. I found SpartanUi on a random UI screenshot, and simply had to have it. It does have a lot of bugs – that is, if you decide to update it. I’m running an outdated version, and it usually works fine, although it broke back when 3.3 came out, and now won’t show my targets target. If I upgrade it, it goes haywire. I suppose it would be a good idea to do a clean install of all of my addons – at some point. Spartan is nice, because I can fit my chat in next to the action bars (which are powered by Bartender, by the way), and everything sort of just fits together.
- Middle: While you can’t see it on this screenshot, I have Power Auras running now to give me visual clues, just in case I need any more help. It’s a nice graphic, and its a really fun tool to use, and it allows me to have my eyes a different place, and still be aware of when Eclipse procs. I don’t have anything massively intrusive, like those addons that show you a massive circle with your health, mana and epeen – why would we need that, right in the middle of the screen? Instead, eclipse is shown by a circle made out of fancy runes, which is open at the top, circling around my character. I also use this to give me other notifications, such as Storm Power or frost stacks on Hodir, being in a puddle on Vezax (or rather, so I can see when the puddle stop giving me a mana cost reduction) and the like. Did I mention that it’s also really fun to use? I think I may just go in and make some visual clues for Insect Swarm and Moonfire at some point, just to play around with it a bit, but if I do, I will cover it in a later blog.
This is really all I use. What more do I need? What good is my amount of gold when I’m raiding? Why would I care what position I have when I’m running around in Dalaran? Am I really too lazy to open my bags to see how many free slots I have left? “If I don’t need it, I don’t want it“, said the grumpy old man.
As you may have noticed, I like things to be neat and accessable. I don’t like clutter. So with that in mind, I will leave you with a screenshot of when I decided to clean up in my bank, and organise everything according to item. This was before I got enchanting, mind you, and decided to get rid of anything that I knew I would never use.
Ironically, I just started looking at my UI again last night (after months of deciding to use the default Blizzard UI). We share many of the same philosophies — no clutter, more screen space, etc. — but much different views of how to actually implement it. I’m still working on mine, so you’ve definitely given me some ideas (Ohai, ora2!).
One thing that I might be able to help with… I used Elkano Buff Bars a while back. It’s definitely worth configuring them to show short-duration buffs (I define that as less than 1 minute) in a different frame, filtering them out of the normal buff frame. This is pretty easy to do. I don’t remember well enough to give you a step-by-step guide, but you can probly figure it out by scrolling through the menus.
I’ll just say this : i do like my visual space too, but that’s the reason why i do actually use Fubar (or whatever addon that does the same thing, ie removing icons from minipmap to group them somewhere else).
Fubar is usefull in that it allows me to group in one place a number of addon icons (stuff that i do use too often to want to type them or use a game menu for them but don’t need to have in sight at all times).
Mainly those are Bigbrother (checking if everyone ate and flasked), Recount (i don’t have it open all the time, i mainly use it after wipes to check who died on what), durability (when should i go and repair stuff without having to count wipes)
(listing them i realize those are all raid leading addons, so not necessarily usefull to everyone :/)
The interesting part is that i can configure Fubar to only appear when i mouseover the top of my screen. Same as you, i don’t want to have it take some screen space all the time, but the easy availability is a nice perk.
I don’t like things like Spartan UI that much because i hate UIs that totally block the bottom of the screen. I dislike Elkano’s buffs for the same reason, they cover too much of the screen for what they add in lisibility.
In order to not only be criticizing, here’s what my UI looks like (taken while healing and with some cleaning left to do on a few items) : http://jerome.pardigon.free.fr/wow/lux/interface_celdhy_20091006.jpg
Dps interface is mostly the same only with smaller grid frames (no need for hot timers)
Now closing comments on this, because of spam