arena controller

Playing arenas is a new challenge. It's similar to doing a pull in an instance except it's different because you don't know what mobs are coming in that pull, and they're not so... repetitive.
As with most instances the key to "winning" is proper communication and people doing their jobs well.

Today's setup is designed to give you a big open screen space to see around you while still giving you all the information you need to keep on top of every mob.

We start by using ElkBuffBars to move our buff / debuffs to the top corners of our screen. Pitbull party, player, focus, and target frames line the left of your screen. With debuff highlighting built in to Pitbull you can quickly see when a friendly player is in need of help. Along the top is Control Arena, a newer arena target frame AddOn that let's you see all of your opponents and what they're casting. It also shows when they're crowd controlled so you know who to avoid easily.



RicoMiniMap, EePanels2 and Bongos 2 round out the layout.

When I'm doing arenas one of the most frustrating things is actually the part before the arena begins. Buffing. Enter ZOMG buffs.
ZOMG buffs puts a single "action bar" button that's movable on your screen. Simply assign buffs to every class and at the start of each arena start smacking that button until it's all clear. Done.
If you hover over the button it shows a display of everyone in your group / raid and what buffs they currently have.

The final pieces for our setup are AZCast only showing my target's cast bar right in the middle of the screen (which you could add focus right below it to watch a healer or other) and ControlFreak which simply watches your focus target for crowd control. I recommend using a macro any time you have a crowd control that's used a lot in arenas.
Something like :

/stopcasting
/clearfocus [mod:alt] [target=focus,dead] [target=focus,noexists]
/focus [target=focus,noexists]
/stopmacro [target=focus,noharm]
/cast [target=focus] Polymorph
/p CCing %f !


This macro allows you to set a target (healer, etc.) and for the rest of the match cast your crowd control on your focus without changing your current target. You can of course change Polymorph to whatever cc you'd like and can change your focus by simple holding alt while you click this. If you set ChatMod's highlighting function to watch for "CCing" it'll give you a nice warning before the cc lands so you don't break it right away. =)

ControlFreak watches your focus frame and gives you an audible warning whenever your cc breaks and can even be clicked to recast as well.

A last minute idea I had after putting this together was to add in MobHealth to get an educated guess to your opponents total health on their frames.

Powered-Up Pally

Ok, for most healing isn't exactly... fun. Yes, raiding may be fun for you, your guild may be fun, but healing is not very fun. As a healer you get blamed for a lot of things.

Bad healing: blame the healer.
Bad tanking: blame the healer.
Bad DPS: blame the healer.



I don't know why people put up with it really but, in the name of sanity, we go to some extremes to do the best possible job we can.
AddOns have ranged from functional to rediculous for healers. Ideal AddOns for a healer should make the job of healing 25 people easier without adding confusion. Surprisingly some AddOns create more work for a healer by adding so many more visual queues that you don't know which area of your screen to stare at during a boss fight.
In my opinion most healers could be very functional if only they had a simple easy to read layout. In the spirit of simplicity I give you "healer in-a-box".

Raid RX likes to call raid healing "X-Treme Whack-a-Mole". This layout gives you a nice tight box to jam those moles in to. Whack away!



We started out with Pitbull. I really like Pitbull for healers because it has a few features that make your life easier.
1) Visual Heal. This module shows incoming heals on each players bar so you know which low health player has something incoming and which doesn't.
2) Range Check. This module shows when a player is in range so you can either move closer to a certain player/group or focus your heals on people in your range.
3) Threat Bar. If you install the threat library (same library that Omen uses) each player's frame can show their threat on their current target. This gives you a good idea when certain DPS'ers are about to get aggro and need healing.

Next we used *Bongos 3 for action bar duty, NQuestLog and, Combuctor for a clear sortable bag. Then we threw a simple EePanel 2 frame around the raid/party area to make it stand out. Elkano's Buff Frames, Mappy and, Chatter round out the clean look.




As always I hope this has given you some ideas and ways to get started converting your eyesore layout in to something that actually helps you be a better player!
Good luck and BBQ!

*If using Bongos 3 please be aware that it's best to start with a clean slate. In most cases your spells will be all over the place since it creates virtual bars. If you don't want to have to clear your action bars and create all new keybindings try Bongos 2 or Bartender 3.

~ cellular black ~

Welcome to the bbq folks!

Ok, our first custom UI will be a simple one. This idea was based on an old setup I remember from a while back. It's primarily designed for dps classes that don't need a ton of info visible. Let's take a look.



So as you can see there's not much to... see. This is a great setup for a hunter, rogue, dps warrior, that just want the basics of their info and that of their target.

We started out with a simple rectangle using EePanels2. Greyish-black background and class matching border colors. Next we took the Player + Target unit frames (using Ag_Unit Frames here) and placed them on top and bottom of Action bars 1 + 6 (using Bartender3 here). Next, using ChatMod, we shrunk and placed our chat frame at the bottom.



Now for the non-visible parts of this. Instead of using the default cast bars included with Ag_UF, I decided to use Quartz, giving me a cast bar / swing timer for myself on top of the block and one for my target at the bottom below the chat frame. Using Quartz also gave me some nice tidy dot timers as you can see above my cast bar. TipTac was used to move the tooltip to the bottom center of the screen making it more visible.

VMiniMap is shown both open and closed and is nice to free up some space when you don't need to see a minimap, such as instancing.

Lastly I positioned all the buffs in the upper right corner with Satrina Buff Frames and then matched the buff color to my class as well. The buffs / debuffs from Pitbull are still being used and are positioned to the right of their respective frames.

The only thing I didn't get to do was install FastQuest_Classic so I could reposition the quest text that's kinda blocking the chat in the images.

All-in-all a very sleek simple layout that works great on it's own or as a great start for a more complex layout!

PS. Sorry for the delayed post, they will be earlier in the day from now on, promise =)

Back in Vengeful.

Ok, so 2.4 has been out a couple weeks. Maybe you've found a AddOns that work. Now it's time to move beyond random AddOns and get you a UI that's worthy of some screenshots.

The 2.4 patch has been a doozy for sure. With the changes to the combat log and a few other minor changes a LOT of AddOns broke. I've been testing release versions and beta versions alike to find what's keeping up with all the new changes. A few favorites are still just not working well enough for my taste, but there's plenty that have rolled with the punches and even some new choices!

I think I've given you the foundation pieces for any layout in previous posts. In every player's UI I strongly believe in testing multiple choices whenever available to see which AddOns you prefer and that fit your playstyle. I'll continue to do comparisons here but, we're going to delve into the deeper waters of UI compilation for a bit.

If you're tired of every compilation looking the same, join me every saturday afternoon for a look at a new creative UI that I'll be designing from scratch! As always I welcome ideas so keep them coming!

Mini is the new big

A lot of people get tired of the normal; not because it doesn't work, but because it's stale. Looking for simple ways to spice up your interface can sometimes lead you on a wild goose chase. The easy fix: the MiniMap.

There are a few fan favorites such as *Squeenix and Simple MiniMap, but those are long out of date. I chose to try everything I could find, as usual, but some are so old I have no clue how long they'll last.

Yet Another Square MiniMap (YASMM) is very current and pretty simple. It offers the basic features of mouse scroll, square texture, and hiding of the normal objects, day/night, zoom, and world map. You can also choose which corner it's anchored too, but cannot just move freely (may be coming soon). You can also minimize the map to just see the zone text, which is handy for the super-minimalists. At a tiny 5k this is probably the map for most people.

IDMiniMap did pretty much the same things, but you couldn't move it, couldn't minimize it, and it was still a circle... and it was twice the memory.


My favorite ended up being the easy vMiniMap. A little heftier than YASMM, but in my opinion (that's why you're reading right?) it looks better. vMiniMap also comes with built in map coordinates, which is nice to not have to constantly swap to your world map once you get close. You can also place the MiniMap anywhere you'd like.

If you're the "big taco" kinda interface RicoMiniMap or Simple MiniMap (funny name, I know) may be more up your alley. A lot of cool features, multiple skins, and lots of flexibility. Pretty much anythign you'd like from your MiniMap... well, no they won't make you tacos. mmm tacos.

Go big

or go small

you're MiniMap can do it all!

AddOns tested:

IDMiniMap (10k)
RicoMiniMap (443k)
SimpleMiniMap (621k)
Squeenix (489k)
vMiniMap (14k)
YASMM (5k)

*squeenix author Tekkub says he is not the one updating the mod anymore, so use at your own discretion!

Are you a swinger? Oh behave!

As BRK says: MQOSDPS (massive quantities of sustained dps)
If that's your role you owe it to your party to be as good as you possibly can be. What happens though if you lag ? Get interrupted ? Dual-wield ?
It can be tough to really keep up with all the small details that can be thrown your way as melee DPS. Swing Timers are popular because they take a lot of the guesswork out of DPS'ing. A Swing Timer can be the difference between being #5 and being #1 DPS for a raid.

Let's take a look at what to look for in a good Swing Timer. A good Swing Timer should be easy to read, be accurate, be able to account for lag (high latency), and be easy to use.


LD50_aBar was the first Swinger I tried. It supports dual-wielding or 2hander. When something resets the swing timer it shows with text what reset it. You can also adjust the refresh rate to help if you have low FPS (frame rate). LD50 can fade out when OOC (out of combat). And lastly LD50 shows each weapon's speed on the left and time remaining til next swing on the right. All in all a good Swing Timer.

The next Swinger I tried out was Attack Bar Timer . Attack Bar Timer does the basics and takes a lot less memory. My only issues with this addOn is it can be a bit buggy and spams LUA errors when fighting multiple mobs with similar names (trash, etc.). I disabled LUA errors (in Interface options) and didn't really notice any actually problems with the bars, but just be warned. The cool thing about Attack Bar Timer is it will also track your target. You can disable this for pvp if you like in the options.

Last but not least, and also the first time an addOn makes a reappearance, is Quartz. Now I know we reviewed Quartz for cast bars, so if you're using Quartz already or want to replace both, your cast bar and get a swing timer, Quartz may be for you! For this test I removed all modules for Quartz except what's required for the swing timer to work but, there was not much change in the addOn memory usage, so feel free to use as many of the modules as you can to maximize bang for buck.

I hope you have to chance to swing this week, yea baby!

AddOns tested:

AttackBar Timer (51k)
LD50_aBar (1.17m)
Quartz (1.2m with only Quartz,Quartz_Player,Quartz_Swing,Quartz_GCD)

Garbage ? We don't need no stinking garbage !

After a long day farming solid stone to get a few points in engineering, I was oh so excited to look in my bags and see them full of what looked like good mats. Half of the lot was not only not what I needed, but was nothing more than vendor trash.

/begin rummage

The annoying part, the bad bits look way too much like the good bits.

/commence clicking
Whoops... thank God for buy-back.


Ever wish you didn't have to do this ?

Now you don't. Vendor addOns make the end of the day a breeze by simply selling everything you don't need with a single button click. Some even offer customization by letting you add / remove items from a list so you never have to dig around in your bags again (except for quest items /sigh).

For me the hands down winner was Junk! Go to a vendor, hover over the mote of mana icon in the top right and Junk! will tell you how much your junk is worth. Click and everything is sold. Type /junk and link an item to add it or remove it from the sell list. Don't want fish oil, ever ?
/Junk [Fish Oil]
done.
Want your favorite über mace to not be sold
/Junk [The Stoppable Force]
done.

Junk! also has the option to auto-repair you when you open a vendor that can do so. You can also set Junk! to auto-sell as well.

Junk Manager, AutoProfit and, GarbageFu* all do the same and also have the bonus ability to drop the lowest value grey item with a single click. Need a bag slot free for that BOE epic ? done.

The conclusion:
If you want dirt low memory usage; Junk! Want drop lowest item; AutoProfit.

If you want sound sleep, knowing your bags are clear of garbage, give Junk! a try and you too can say, "garbage ? We don't need no stinking garbage".


AddOns tested:

AutoProfit (39k)
GarbageFu (771k)
Get Vendored (97k)
Junk! (16k)
Junk Manager (1.79m)
Sell Junk (394k)

*GarbageFu requires an additional addOn, GarbageFu prices , in order to use the drop lowest item feature.

open casting today !

Jim: So I hear Tommy's back in town (grinning)
Joey: Yea, and he ain't happy neither
Jim: Meh
Joey: Meh ?
Jim: Look if that stooge wants to duel he won't know what hit him.
Jim: Besides, I heard he ain't half the gnome he used to be.

(from behind a very small garbage can appears Tommy and he looks angry)

Tommy: JIM!!!
Joey: Oh heya Tommy, long time no see (Joey takes off running)
Tommy: So i hear you've been talking smack in /trade again ?
Jim: naw Tommy, I'd never (cowering)

(Tommy begins walking towards Jim and pulls out a verry large stick)

Jim: (begging) Tommy this is just a misunderstanding.
Tommy: Jim, I like you, really, that's why I'm gonna leave you a few teeth.

(huge stick flies)

Fade to Black

What's that ? Wrong kind of casting ? Oh. Oh, you meant the casting bar ? My bad.

Well the best is AZCast Bar. What you want proof ? Since when ? Oh alright.
AZCast Bar will let you show player, target, pet, focus, and mirror. You can even move, resize, change texture, AND you can add in new timer bars with plugins ! So far there's plugins for BG timers and Flight timers. AZCast Bar also gives you visual feedback on your latency to your server helping you to know how long you actually have to wait before casting your next spell. And all this while still only taking 73k ?

Ok, so you need some comparisons.

eCasting Bar is pretty lightweight, but only handles player, target, and mirror bars. It does have a lot of textures and you can add in new ones (which you can do with any of these addOns in my opinion).

Casting Bar++ handles player, target, and mirror too, but also does focus. It allows different skins and textures, and alpha blending (transparency level).

Huh? These aren't doing enough ? Ok ok.

Try Natur Enemy Cast Bar (NECB). Here's how it describes itself.
"Shows Debuffs (e.g. Sheep timers), Casts, Gains, Stuns, DoTs, BossTimers, Cooldowns, Diminishing Returns by lovely colored CastBars - Supports 'target' and 'focus'. Recognizes unknown spell casts, stops and delays!"
Sounds like a DOT / HOT timer to me, but I won't be picky. Just beware, if you're a warlock, or a healer, you're going to have a LOT of bars (unless you disable a lot of function). Don't say I didn't warn you.
Also, an early warning. I actually like NECB and have used it for a while in the past... but... the author has stated that this addOn will break with 2.4 and he doesn't have time to fix it. So don't get too dependant. (2.4 is going to change a LOT of the combat system. A lot of addOns may break)

A little simpler (but somehow more memory intensive) is Quartz. I've used Quartz quite extensively and do like it. With a lot of cool features like global cooldown, swing timer for melee weapons, tradeskill casts are merged (create 28 bandages becomes 1 cast bar showing total time), and interrupt recognition. Quartz also watches your buffs and displays buffs on your target, so you can hide the default ones if you like the more compact display. Everything is adjustable to your liking but takes a little bit to get the hang of finding what does what.

All in all there's a few good addOns here so play and find what does everything you need. While some do take more memory, they may fill the place of more than 1 addOn so the memory could be justified. If you however find yourself just disabling a lot of features you may want to try something new !

AddOns tested:
AZCast Bar (73k)
Casting Bar++ (215k)
eCasting Bar (186k)
Natur Enemy Casting Bar (422k)
Quartz (1.56m)

Aimed Shot the Unbound

/vacation off
/sigh

well, I hope you've all had a great holiday, but I really hope you're ready to start trying some new addOns !

If you are THE point & click king you will not want to continue reading.

I try to bind absolutely everything. But, just because you want something bound doesn't mean you actually need to see it. And there's the problem.

Even some of the popular action bar addOns won't let you use a hotkey for a button that's not visible. So someone did something about it... ok a few people. That's a good thing.


Spellbinder is pretty simple. Open the menu pick an ability / spell, pick a key / mouse binding and, go. Want to bind polymorph to mouse button 5 ? Want to bind frostbolt ... rank 1, you can. You can even bind macros, items from your inventory, trinkets, anything you like.


BindPad chooses a more drag & drop approach but gets all the same things done, and takes less memory. Also having a choice to assign a binding to the current character or to everyone is really nice. /inspect macro, everyone. /cast Misdirection ..... maybe just this guy.

Either way, there's no reason to waste good action bar space on your first aid or Goblin Hand Grenades anymore. Give them both a try and let us know what you think !

addOns tested:

BindPad (84k)
SpellBinder (377k)