01-28-2005, 05:07 AM
Since the topic of UI mods has come up, I wanted to post to let you all know of some good ones that may save you some hotkey troubles. I am a UI mod nut, so I have tried tons of them.
First, CastParty. If you are a healer or regularly cast spells on partymates, this is THE mod for you. Basically, you get healthbars in a cluster for your partymates. You define what happens when you click, right-click, shift-click, etc on each name. For example for me, left click a name = Flash Heal that person. Shift left click = Greater Heal them. Middle click = Renew them, right click is Shield them. Alt-click is Cure Disease, and so on. This saves tons of clicks and keypresses. No more "press button for spell, click on portrait." No more "select party member, press button." No more casting Dispel on an enemy when you wanted to cast it on a friend, or failing to shield yourself because an enemy is targeted. Pure gold.
Second, I recommend any of several mods for extra toolbars. Cosmos and GypsyMod are good. Gypsy has the advantage of letting you choose which components you want; in Cosmos it is harder to turn off un-wanted items but it does have a lot of other nice tools. FlexBar is also good, and extremely customizable, but with a steep learning curve. (You can make buttons appear and disappear based on triggers such as being in combat and having enough mana, but it may take a few hours to set up:)
Third, bc_TrackingMenu. If you have tracking skills, this changes the icon for them by the minimap into a menu that lets you choose which to activate. Removes the need for keeping tracking skills on hotkeys.
Those are all the mods I have that help with hotkeys, but here are some more great ones in general:
- Gatherer - icons for herb and ore nodes you've found, in the minimap and main map. Invaluable for gatherers.
- MobHealth - shows the estimated health of mobs you attack.
- SunderThis - shows how much a target's armor has been sundered. Awesome for warriors.
- UseByName - adds a function that a macro can call to use any item by name (instead of by inventory spot).
- WeaponQuickSwap - uses UseByName to provide easy weapon swapping macros.
I have found all of these mods to be very helpful. I hope they help others as well. I think that the default interface is good, these are all excellent tools to extend it, to allow us to achieve our true ability in-game.
First, CastParty. If you are a healer or regularly cast spells on partymates, this is THE mod for you. Basically, you get healthbars in a cluster for your partymates. You define what happens when you click, right-click, shift-click, etc on each name. For example for me, left click a name = Flash Heal that person. Shift left click = Greater Heal them. Middle click = Renew them, right click is Shield them. Alt-click is Cure Disease, and so on. This saves tons of clicks and keypresses. No more "press button for spell, click on portrait." No more "select party member, press button." No more casting Dispel on an enemy when you wanted to cast it on a friend, or failing to shield yourself because an enemy is targeted. Pure gold.
Second, I recommend any of several mods for extra toolbars. Cosmos and GypsyMod are good. Gypsy has the advantage of letting you choose which components you want; in Cosmos it is harder to turn off un-wanted items but it does have a lot of other nice tools. FlexBar is also good, and extremely customizable, but with a steep learning curve. (You can make buttons appear and disappear based on triggers such as being in combat and having enough mana, but it may take a few hours to set up:)
Third, bc_TrackingMenu. If you have tracking skills, this changes the icon for them by the minimap into a menu that lets you choose which to activate. Removes the need for keeping tracking skills on hotkeys.
Those are all the mods I have that help with hotkeys, but here are some more great ones in general:
- Gatherer - icons for herb and ore nodes you've found, in the minimap and main map. Invaluable for gatherers.
- MobHealth - shows the estimated health of mobs you attack.
- SunderThis - shows how much a target's armor has been sundered. Awesome for warriors.
- UseByName - adds a function that a macro can call to use any item by name (instead of by inventory spot).
- WeaponQuickSwap - uses UseByName to provide easy weapon swapping macros.
I have found all of these mods to be very helpful. I hope they help others as well. I think that the default interface is good, these are all excellent tools to extend it, to allow us to achieve our true ability in-game.