UI Mods

[Icebird]

Re: Elkano's Buff Bar

I don't get this. At all. No, seriously, can someone explain this to me as I've been wondering the whole time? What's the point of this mod? It ends up taking more space than the default UI, and I never understood why people can't use the icon to figure out what buff it is instead of listing a long name.

I tell you exactly why I installed it:

Blizzard's UI doesn't show enough buffs.

I'm one of the warlock tanks for the Twin Emperors fight. In our learning phase I was buffing myself to kingdom come and back. I found that if I didn't watch the order I buffed in, I wouldn't be able to see Blessing of Salvation in order to click it off. (For instance, summoning my Felhunter right before the pull because Paranoia and Master Demonologist ate two buff slots).

I found the default size hogged up too much real estate, but scaling it back to 90% made it visible without hogging more screen real estate than I wanted.

Ace2 mods seem to be all the rage at the moment as far as efficient use of system resources go (eg AG_Unitframes instead of DUF).

My question for Pete: are you primarily interested in cosmetic changes, or functional changes to your interface?

I use Discord Unit Frames for my unit frames and Bongos for action bars (warlocks never have enough buttons), plus a mod that replaces the default font with something I like better. A lot of my mods revolve around effective raiding: I use Perfect Raid for raid frames (more compact than CT-Raid or the default bars) and La Vendetta Boss Mods for visual timers on boss abilities. I still have CT-Raid purely for the MT target boxes (and a mod to add the raid icons to the boxes). Atlas is highly recommended if you run any instances at all.

I used to use Gatherer, but I think I've memorized every herb spawn location in Un'Goro Crater by now.:)

Chris

[Flymo]

Priests I'm less familliar with, but you'll probably want something that lets you cast beneficial spells on yourself while having an enemy targeted (like Easycast),

There's a setting in Interface Options to cast beneficial spells on yourself if you have an enemy targeted.

[--Pete]

Hi,

My question for Pete: are you primarily interested in cosmetic changes, or functional changes to your interface?

Given a choice, I'll pick function over form almost always. But if I can get both, then that's just a cake with icing;)

Some of the posts so far have given me some nice ideas. I like a lot of buttons available since I'm bad with hot-keys, but the default locations of the bars does little for me. Some of the optional read-out information might be useful, I'll have to try it. I'm less interested in automating too much, but that might change as I get bigger and a I play in larger groups.

--Pete

[Epi]

So I'm still looking for a good self cast mod that will be updated when it breaks (I'm always in fear that Telo's will break. CT's doesn't work unless you have their bar mods installed and turned on and I don't like their bar mods, the built in stuff sucks and has all the issues Conc mentioned).

Fear no more - it is already known for sure that Telo's mod will break in the very next patch, along with all other self-cast mods (since target selection will be now disabled from withing a mod):P.

To Pete: I personally don't think it make sense to setup your UI right now - the pre-expansion patch is coming soon (although, as usually with Blizzard, nobody knows exact date, my guess is one month maximum), and the modifications made into UI interface will break most of existing add-ons and made impossible a good portion of it. I recommend you to research only for those feature you absolutely can't live without, and leave the rest to the better times. If you're not used to some nice feature, you will not miss it when Blizzard disables it, you know;).

[--Pete]

Hi,

If you're not used to some nice feature, you will not miss it when Blizzard disables it, you know;).

Oh, yeah:) I remember the on again off again of UI mods throughout the beta. Made me appreciate the mods all the more whenever they all broke due to one patch or another.

--Pete

[Brainiac4]

Good to see that I'm not the only old-time Lurker coming back to WOW...

With BC now out, can we renew the discussion on recommended UI mods? I've tried Auctioneer and TitanBar, and found both of them helpful. I really want a mod to make the minimap more useful - it's just too small for these 41-year-old eyes, I guess.

[Watto44]

Good to see that I'm not the only old-time Lurker coming back to WOW...

With BC now out, can we renew the discussion on recommended UI mods? I've tried Auctioneer and TitanBar, and found both of them helpful. I really want a mod to make the minimap more useful - it's just too small for these 41-year-old eyes, I guess.

There are several mods that you can use to enlarge the minimap. Bongos has that function - among some others. But unless you're a hunter, or to a less effect a druid, the minimap doesn't really do that much. It lets you know where your party mates are, where resources (herbs and minerals) are, and what direction you're pointing, but that's about it. There's not that much function to enhance really.

Of course, if those are the things that you're having trouble seeing, then I'd recommend bongos to enlarge the map. It's very easy to use and not really memory intensive in my experience.:)

[Brainiac4]

There are several mods that you can use to enlarge the minimap. Bongos has that function - among some others. But unless you're a hunter, or to a less effect a druid, the minimap doesn't really do that much. It lets you know where your party mates are, where resources (herbs and minerals) are, and what direction you're pointing, but that's about it. There's not that much function to enhance really.

Of course, if those are the things that you're having trouble seeing, then I'd recommend bongos to enlarge the map. It's very easy to use and not really memory intensive in my experience.:)

Thank you -- checking it out now. My main (all of level 21 as of right now... I blame alt-itis) is a hunter, but mostly I'm just used to more location context information from my minimap. I think part of the problem is that it contains too much color detail; the D2 minimap which just showed edges and objectives was great in that way.

[Bolty]

My current mods. Keep in mind, I'm a healer, so interface is *everything*.

Ace2 mods (available at www.wowace.com):
ag_UnitFrames - Blizzard's default unitframes are so limited, it's not even funny. This is essential to me
Aperture - Lets me control the viewport of the screen, like the CT mod ViewPort
aUF_Banzai - Highlights who has aggro
aUF_RangeCheck_M - Range coloring on ag_UnitFrames
AutoBar - nifty nifty nifty automatic bar that arranges items for you in a handy key-mappable bar
BanzaiAlert - ZOMG U HAVE TEH AGGRO TEIM TO FADE!!!!111!!!eleven
Bartender3 - bars, bars, bars, wherever or however I want
BigWigs - you raid, you have bigwigs
Capping - Battlegrounds timers and such
Cartographer - This is fast becoming one of those mods that everyone has, it's sick useful
Cartographer_Herbalism - see above
Cartographer_Mining - see above
Cartographer_Noteshare - nifty to share your data with others
ColaLight - man, I've completed the quest and none of the rewards are useful - which will sell for the most?
coolDown - oh, I'm sure YOU can monitor the cooldowns from trinkets, spells, consumables, etc without this
FuBar - Who doesn't run FuBar nowadays?
FuBar_BattlegroundFu - I play alliance on a badly balanced population server. I want to see my queue time
FuBar_ClockFu - because it's handy
FuBar_DuraTek - see my durability of all items at a glance
FuBar_ItemBonusesFu - nice when comparing items
FuBar_LocationFu - mostly because I use Squeenix for minimap, this is handy
FuBar_MailFu - CT_MailMod without the CT_MemoryUsage
FuBar_MoneyFu - Invaluable, track all money across characters
FuBar_oRA2CooldownFu - nifty to see when the next soulstone/innervate/rebirth is ready
FuBar_PerformanceFu - framerate, memory usage, etc
FuBar_QuestsFu - this mod rules...track the quest progress of everyone in party, intelligent quest tracking
FuBar_RegenFu - you kidding me? I went through more than 50,000 mana against the Curator?
HotCandy - simple timer bar of my Renews
IceHUD - all the key health/mana info front and center of my screen
MobHealth - yeah, try using Shadow Word: Death effectively without knowing a mob's exact hit points
oRA2 - people still use CTRA?
Prat - invaluable chat system replacement
RangeRecolor - simple out-of-range bar icon replacement
SCT - because Blizzard's combat text just doesn't cut it
SeriousBuffTimers - I'd like to know how much time is left on my buffs, Blizzard.
SimpleCombatLog - Because "[You] hit by Moroes (9234)" it easier to read than "Moroes beats the everloving s*** out of you, lern2playaPaladin"
Squeenix - square-based minimap with lots of options, move it anywhere on the screen you want
sRaidFrames - CTRA what?
TinyTip - because I want to know what I'm pointing at, not have info about it put way on the corner of my screen
TradeskillInfo - egads this is useful, tracks tradeskill knowledge of all characters. Look at any item and know what it does, what character could use it, if they already know it, etc etc etc
XLoot - mostly for XLootGroup
XLootGroup - because Blizzard's default loot frames stink

Non-Ace2 mods (usually findable at www.wowinterface.com among other sites):
Forecast - until I find something better, still one of the best raid healing mods ever made
Guild Event Manager - awesome for guild alliance communication
KLH Threat Meter - if you raid, why aren't you using this?
MendWatch - the Priest's best friend until someone creates something better
Natur Enemy Castbar - there's probably something better out there now for tracking cooldowns, HoTs, DoTs, etc, but I haven't found it
RatingBuster - because I'd like to know what "12 spell crit rating" means without pulling out a freaking calculator!
SW Stats - nothing beats this mod's ability to break down *everything* that happens in a party/raid

Always on the lookout for new/cool mods.

-Bolty

[Arnulf]

Anyone remember FlexBar?

Since Burning Crusade this mod has gone void. It allowed me to place buttons anywhere, resize them. And I could toggle them on and off with just a keypress.

Is there a mod that does provide the same function? I'm not looking for fancy stuff.

[Brainiac4]

My current mods. Keep in mind, I'm a healer, so interface is *everything*.
<snio>

Wow, that's a lot for me to process. Looks like some good stuff in there.

I'm trying out FuBar, and having a bit of a problem getting it to show... do I need to load ACE itself? Some parts of FuBar seem to be working, like PetInfoFu, ToFu and such, but no bars.

Color me confused.

[Falomin]

Wow, that's a lot for me to process. Looks like some good stuff in there.

I'm trying out FuBar, and having a bit of a problem getting it to show... do I need to load ACE itself? Some parts of FuBar seem to be working, like PetInfoFu, ToFu and such, but no bars.

Color me confused.

If you merely download the package of Fubar2 from this link:

http://wowinterface.com/downloads/info45...ar2.0.html

you should be set, it includes Ace2 and most of the Fubar2 mods that you will want, you will still need to pick up some additional ones.

Also, some Fubar mods just work off of another mod, check your addons page to see if a dependency is missing for some of the mods.

[Icebird]

Successive patches have helped me cut down my mod usage to the bare essentials - I really don't like downloading more new versions than I absolutely have to.

Unitframes - ag_unitframes
Raid frames - PerfectRaid
Buffs - ElkanoBuffBar
Main tank targets and other raid stuff - oRa2
Font - ClearFont
Actionbars - Bartender3
Boss mod - LaVendetta
Chat pane enhancements - ls_chat
Instance maps - Atlas
DoT timers - DoTimer

Chris

[Brainiac4]

If you merely download the package of Fubar2 from this link:

http://wowinterface.com/downloads/info45...ar2.0.html

you should be set, it includes Ace2 and most of the Fubar2 mods that you will want, you will still need to pick up some additional ones.

Also, some Fubar mods just work off of another mod, check your addons page to see if a dependency is missing for some of the mods.

Thank you! That did it.

No idea what the heck I was doing wrong before, but it's working now. I think I like it better than Titan Panel -- it has some nice features. The package itself didn't include any of the mods, but did get FuBar itself working, which was the key ingredient. I then used WOWAceUpdater to get the mods I wanted, which was pretty slick. I ran into some conflicts between Cartographer and MetaMap, so I swapped back to using just MetaMap for now.

[Dynatos]

Bolty's list is oddly similar to mine. A few minor differences:

I use Chronometer rather than HoTCandy. Both are Ace2, and both do the same thing, so very minor.

Closet Gnome - Someone above suggested Item Rack. ClosetGnome is its Ace2 equivalent. Less memory, yada yada. I like it.

mik's Scrolling Battle Text - Similar to SCT (Scrolling Combat Text), but with a different look.

[loonygloss]

One of the neatest things I discovered about DOTimer is the notifications feature. It's the first thing I've found that'll warn me if my seduce and banish break early.

As for keeping stuff updated, I'd like to recommend the WoWAceUpdater. It's a Windows program that can be used to update, install, and uninstall any addon hosted on www.wowace.com. Yet another reason to keep as many addons as possible to Ace2.

Anyway, the most useful addon I've found lately is ArkInventory (also Ace-based) which allows you to split your inventory and banks into sections that items are auto-sorted into based on category. You can even change the category of an item if you don't agree where it should go. Here's a screenie. ArkInventory

[Watto44]

My current setup.

Visible mods:
ag_UnitFrames - What Bolty Said.:)
Bongos - Has a couple of extra features that I like, so I use this over Bartender
Natur Enemy Castbar - You PvP, you Necb:)Configurable version of bliz's enemy castbar, with some extra bells and whistles.
ItemRack - Stupidly useful gear management mod.:)
OmniCC - My personal favorite cooldown display mod. Since I have everything hotkeyed, I can layout my actionbars just to display a couple of range finders and all my cool downs. Makes anything more showie a waist of memory.:)(And it's also handy in that it shows the cool down of items in your bags, bank, character screen etc.)

Not visible mods:
GoGo Mount - Mount management for people too lazy to macro it.:)
eCastingBar - Purdy - and highly configurable - casting bar.
nQuestLog - Quest stuff. Same as everything else I guess. I just picked it at random from the ace page.:)
TinyTip - What Bolty said mark 2.
MobInfo2 - Basically mobhealth with a bunch of bells and whistles. I was using it because reverted to blizzards standard unit frames, and couldn't find an update of mobheathbliz. Will get around to switching back to mobhealth some day soon.
ScrollingCombatText - Highly configurable version of blizzards scrolling combat text. I really hate the enormous writing on the standard bliz version, plus I need it to run spellalertSCT.
SpellAlertSCT - You PvP, you spellalert.:)I prefer the SCT over the standard version for the bigger writing and the fact that it doesn't spam anywhere near as much.
Simple Combat Log - What Bolty said, mark 3.:D

To do list:
Download Prat. I was a massive fan of simple chat, and it looks like Prat would be a good replacement for it. I just wish it didn't have so many extra features that I'll never use, but such is the mod world.:)

[Trien]

Being an avid coder and having written a number of addons myself, I tend to have a continually changing mess of addons as I try out different ones to see what kind of neat ideas people have come up with.

I'm an information junkie... but I also like my visbility, so my UI is always a struggle between those two aspects, to try to balance the two.

Some highlights of my current list of addons (not the full list, since there's probably some 80 of them or so!):

BugSack - keeps error messages out of sight until I want to read them. Something like this is extremely nice when you're working on addons and don't want that big error box popping up continually while you debug things.
BuyEmAll - Lets you buy more than the 20-stack-at-a-time Blizzard limit of items, as well as multiples of prestacked items; great for refilling on reagants.
Clique - For decursive reasons
Conversation Manager - Addon I wrote to help me keep multiple conversations separate and managed when I happen to be chatting in raid and guild at the same time while fending off multiple whispers.
Double Wide - Has a full-length list of quests on the left, and then the quest description/text to the right of that, rather than trying to scrunch it all into the regular sized Blizzard quest window.
Druid Bar - Estimate of my mana while I'm shapeshifted
Durability Status - Estimated repair cost of broken items, and mass-repair of equipped and inventory items when visiting a vendor that will repair.
EzDismount - Dismounts you if you try to use any action/spell while mounted. To prevent those instances where you get attacked while mounted and end up stuck since you couldn't get your dismount off quick enough
Grid - My current choice of raid frames. Nice and compact, while still providing a decent amount of information
Ping Direction - Points a big red arrow towards the ping if someone pings the minimap. I wrote this addon after the idea came up during an Ossirian fight. When BC came out and questing all over the world started happening again, I added the feature of being able to point an arrow towards arbitrary map coordinates until you reach those coordinates.
oRA2 - CTRaidAssist communication, but without the raid frames (since I use Grid for that). Has MT targets, item checks, and all the other features as well.

And, for my current project... I got annoyed at getting items with the exact same icon confused (3 sets of gloves with the exact same icon, 2 helmets, 2 legs, etc.), so I decided to write an addon that would add labels to all inventory items. Unfortunately, that is just way too cluttered for my liking... so I'm now thinking of making it a hold-to-activate-labels feature, or maybe labelling only same-icon items. Any suggestions or insight would be welcome though:)

[Xanthix]

And, for my current project... I got annoyed at getting items with the exact same icon confused (3 sets of gloves with the exact same icon, 2 helmets, 2 legs, etc.), so I decided to write an addon that would add labels to all inventory items. Unfortunately, that is just way too cluttered for my liking... so I'm now thinking of making it a hold-to-activate-labels feature, or maybe labelling only same-icon items. Any suggestions or insight would be welcome though:)

I would be very interested in a mod that does this. I have thought of a similar idea, for example to tell apart gear, or to tell apart scrolls and recipes at a glance. Before TBC I used Transmogrifier, which allowed me to replace icons with more distinct ones, but it was tedious to set up alternate icons for everything.

If you could post the mod, or at least some relevant parts of the code that you use to do this, I would be most grateful. Thanks!

P.S. Ping Direction looks really cool! I'm going to try it, it seems like a great aid for when you have the coordinates to complete a quest and are trynig to get to them.

P.P.S. I just tried Ping Direction, and it's incredible. It's so elegant and useful, such a simple idea but supremely useful.

[RTM]

Yay UI mods! I tend to spend about as much time messing with mods as I do playing the game, but unfortunately I really like the way my current UI is layed out so I haven't been spending much time on it lately.:(

UI out of combat
UI in combat

I've got mostly ACE2 mods:
agUnitFrames
Bartender3
Fubar (DPS, quest, XP, performance, bag, gold, & time modules)
SimpleCombatLog
Squeenix (square minimap)
eePanels (black bar at bottom)
Cartographer (+ mining & herb modules)
IceHUD
oCB (castbar)
TinyTip
Postal
Prat
Buffalo
...and the non-ACE mods DoTimer and MikScrollingBattleText.

I'd like to give a special shout-out to DeuceCommander, which menuizes most ACE2 mod configuration. If you hate the text command method of setting up your ACE mods, then grab this and all your troubles will go away.

To do list:
Download Prat. I was a massive fan of simple chat, and it looks like Prat would be a good replacement for it. I just wish it didn't have so many extra features that I'll never use, but such is the mod world.:)

Prat is pretty large and bloated in its default configuration but it's easy to trim it down- there's a \modules folder under the Prat folder. Just delete the ones you don't want. My Prat modules folder consists of less than 10 modules, down from the 30+ you get by default. A warning though, if you use WowAceUpdater, you'll have to go and delete the unwanted modules every time Prat gets updated since it re-downloads the entire package.