Inspired by Anea over at Holy Discipline, I am here to post about my UI. I haven’t really done a post like this since I was like level 55 because I figure this blog is largely a screenshot dump anyway so I’m sure you’ve all seen it by now. But hey, this gives me an excuse to talk about addons, right? And I get a lot of comments asking about mine sometimes, so why not!
Startin’ from the top:
Ah, X-Perl. Sometimes I go and try to replace it with something different and then I cry and run back to X-Perl. X-Perl is the unit frames mod that you see there, making you and everyone in your party all 3-D and purdy and in general just looking a lot better than the default thing. It also comes with approximately fifty million options to play around with. It’s kinda buggy and bulky at times but I still secretly love it, meaning this is one o’ those “I wish I could quit you!” addons that I’m sure a lot of us have.
Now let’s hop over and take a look at the lovely Drake-Mounted Crossbow in my bags which I recently traded in for the sexiest gun since Wolfslayer *drools*:
See how it’s giving me a “Stat Summary”, that’s RatingBuster and I couldn’t live without it. I mean really. Makes gear choices a lot easier to calculate out on the fly. Remember though that you have to tweak the options to take things like gems and enchants into account (I’ve certainly wound up with a few false “upgrades” because those options were unchecked) , and obviously this addon isn’t gonna be the answer to all your gear upgrade problems. You’re still going to have to mentally think about stuff like sidegrades and the like. Still, lovely addon.
(Also, looking at that screenshot now, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t take scopes into account. Just a heads-up.)
And below that, you see Auctioneer. Would you guys believe I actually went Auctioneer-less for a while? No really, there was a month or two right after WotLK launched where I decided I didn’t like the new Auctioneer and auctioned all my stuff manually. I am a Neopets restocking veteran, I figured, I didn’t need no silly pricing addon.
Then one day I reinstalled it, figured out how to work the new Auctioneer, realized that I really really like it now, and it’s been good times since. <3
And finally we go down to the bottom of my screenshot and we see StellarBars. I love StellarBars. No having to worry about moving your action bars around, no having to worry about logging in and seeing like twenty extra random action bars filling up your screen, no having to worry about re-doing your keybindings… no, this is the pure and simple Blizz action bars but prettier and with some nice stylization options. I combined mine with ButtonFacade for maximum prettiness. Sure, I can play without StellarBars, but it sucks. I had to play without it for a couple days after this latest patch cause it was broken for me; I actually went and told the SB guy about my problem and he had it fixed in a new version literally the next day. So much love <3
Moving on to combat!
The scrolling combat text? Is SCT and SCT-D. I like this a lot better than the built-in game version because it tells you which shot is doing what and I find that immeasurably useful. For example, I can see how my Steady Shot crit in that screenshot for 1865, but I can also /chuckle inwardly because I know that I’ve seen Arcane Shot crits that go well over 4000. Very handy, and the numbers don’t bounce all over the place like they do with the Blizz version. You can customize it a lot too, to display the numbers where you want to and change the colors around. The written [Cobra Strikes] proc you see there is also a part of SCT/SCT-D. I do know there are better scrolling combat text addons out there by this point that are more frequently updated, but I’m happy with the old standby for now.
Up by my map is Omen, I don’t leave home without it, and neither should you. /cough
And straight down from there is Recount, the obligate damage meter. I usually don’t have my damage meter open and visible even when running things; I display it briefly after bossfights to see how I did, or when I’m pounding away at the training dummies. It’s a good tool for testing and troubleshooting.
And now moving on to the addons that I have but weren’t visible in those screenshots…
Deadly Boss Mods: when I was raiding in Burning Crusade I somehow wound up with the unofficial title of “Deadly Boss Mods Person, Give Me Assist Please” and even though I think I’m not the only one in our group who has it these days, I still have it just in case it’s needed. Basically it tosses up warnings and the like during raids and it can be handy for a lot of people. Now we just need to get it to draw a frickin’ line on the ground on Heigan and I’ll be all set.
CensusPlus: Take a census of your server and upload it to WarcraftRealms. I’m a sucker for this kind of thing.
And finally, the Addon Graveyard, of addons I used at one point and no longer do. RIP…
FuBar. I really like FuBar, I do. But 75% of the FuBar plugins that I used quit working with 3.0.2 and never updated themselves, and in my latest reinstall it was borking my minimap somehow, so I canned it entirely. Maybe someday in the future I’ll look into it again.
MyRoleplay: I like what RP addons do, not just cause you can see details about other peoples’ characters, but cause it’s an easy way to see who else roleplays. It got to a point, though, where 1.) it was hogging up all my chat channels, 2.) I don’t actively roleplay enough (I’m more of a mental roleplayer), and 3.) not enough people on my server even use the thing. So it got booted. Again, I’m more than willing to look into an RP addon someday in the future, if I ever feel the need or urge for one.
Gatherer: Displays on your map where you’ve found various herbs/mining nodes/etc. in the past. Semi-handy but in the end I’m enough of an herbalist junkie at this point that I know where everything is anyway. Oh, and while we’re on the subject, if you want Briarthorn, go live in Silverpine Forest. Trust me.
Lightheaded: It takes about three seconds to alt+tab and use the WoWHead search bar on my Firefox. In the end, it wasn’t worth it for me to take up extra memory to be able to do that in game. Your mileage may vary!
Well, that’ll do it. If you’ve got questions/comments/discussion, lemme hear ’em!
XPerl is my favourite addon ever, for one simple reason: I can display my EXP and current Rep in my main unit frame. EXP is a bit imprecise because you can’t hover over and see exactly how much you have left to go, but it’s pretty handy.
Then again, I go for a minimalistic approach to my UI, in a way – I don’t like all the excess space taken up by sheer grey on the default Blizzard UI.
I love X-Perl too. I’ve tried others, only to spend hours trying to make them look like X-Perl and not being happy with the result! I’ve used some form of Perl for unit frames for years after it was included in addon pack I downloaded about 3.5 years ago…up until that point I’d never realised you could change the unit frames! I’ve been an addon junkie ever since, hehe.
I need to clean up my UI. I’m using spartan UI and it’s nice but I’m having trouble getting it to fit on my screen, no matter what resolution I use and it’s just cluttered to all hell. /sigh
I love addons…
But I’m more excited about your mention of Neopets!! Neopets was my first online game obsession 😀 How I miss it, it wasn’t quite the same after discovering WoW…
3sec to alt-tab? BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
3min+ is more like it. WoW does not like to be alt tabbed on my system, and most times the LH/DH combo is far quicker than even swiveling 60degrees to use the laptop…
No Quartz?! How?
Hehe. Your UI looks so much better than mine. I know mine looks cluttered to the un-initiated. But, its not really -that- messy. I know where everything is… and that’s all that matters, right? ^_^
@ Mazil – I’ve tried to get back in Neo a time or two. It is hard after having switched over to WoW. I’m still proud of my Royal + Electric Draik. <3
@ Maevet – Times it takes a couple minutes for me: when I’m in Dalaran, or when I’m on WindowsXP. ‘nix handles it all surprisingly well. Though I can certainly understand having Lightheaded in those aforementioned situations! *nods*
@ Rilgon – I… I sorta prided myself on not using Quartz to time my Steadies, pre-WotLK. But I have been thinking lately, it would probably be a good idea for me to look into now. Thanks for the reminder. XD
forgive the nubness, but +30 ranged hit addition on the crossbow?
@ Kobol – Biznick’s 247×128 Accurascope. The schematic drops in Molten Core. http://www.wowhead.com/?item=18283
Makes a change to see a UI that is almost standard :), know what you mean about sucking to play without certain addons though, my one was autobar. Took ages to wean myself off of it. Just a quickie for you to try, I started using Skada damage meters and so far I have managed to replace both omen and recount with it. The figures are very close to recount for damage, and identical to omen on threat, it’s got tables for healing as well (don’t often use them tho) and it’s a lot less bulky than recount and omen together.
I love FuBar and haven’t had any issues with things not working. It’s such a handy repository for add-on buttons and displays. I’ve got performance fu, location fu, tracker fu and xp fu plugged in there along with a clock and my Omen toggle button.
I couldn’t play without Dominos (Bartender4 would be fine too), and I use Chinchilla for modifying and moving my minimap. Gatherer is a must too for my mining Shaman.
Other than that, I pretty much use many of the same addons as you, Pike. I tried Miks combat text instead of SCT/SCTD but I’m just so used to SCT that I kept that one instead.
/delurk
Love the UI settings!
One thing I was wondering tho… why no PetEmotes? I love PetEmotes & hearing people’s comments when my pet does something silly. It’s customizable and so easy. BBB had a good writeup on how to customize and they update the addon frequently.
Good read & i’ll keep coming back for more 🙂
/lurk
@ Noah – Gosh I miss ExperienceFu, that and MoneyFu are really the only two things from FuBar that I miss.
@ Chaninn – I suppose I always figured my pets were pretty quiet! >.>
I have always prefered using a HUD around my character so i don’t have to look up into the corner to see my health/mana/energy/rage/runic
Icehud is the one i’m using right now. it’s quite robust and moderately easy to configure.
I run with curved bars for my (and/or my pet) health/mana/ect on the left of my character, and target’s bars on the right. (( X )) like that. When i’m on my boomer, I have squawkandawe underneath my character so I can keep an eye on my active debuffs on the boss.
I haven’t been very active with my hunter since wotlk came out (only 73 so far), but used to use sorren’s ez shot rotations as a timer.
I do use the full auctioneer/enchantrix suite, gatherer, I have titan panel running at the top of the screen keeping track of various stats.
For the most part, I run standard unit frames and action bars tho. I have both side bars active, and both bottom bars, leaving me to switch between two for my hotkeyed bar.
XPFu is pretty good. It provides a nice thin unobtrusive xp bar that runs just under Fubar, showing your xp/rest state or rep gain, and a toggle-able xp/rep counter. I find it efficient and compact.
Another add-on I use is Feed-O-Matic. It is configurable to different food types, and you feed your pet by clicking your pet’s “mood face”, and it adds a tooltip note to foods saying if your pet likes, doesn’t like or loves a certain food. Plus it provides a cute emote when you feed your pet.
@ Pike – Aw, awesome! I always wanted a draik 🙂 Although I could never earn enough money to afford any really amazing paintbrushes, I was lucky enough to catch a short-lived “rainbow fountain” promotion years ago, where you could sign up to websites to get tickets and paint your pets for free. So, I managed to paint my korbat faerie for free when it was a new and rare colour, but otherwise I was a pretty poor Neopian!
To those speaking of XPFu, the addon FuXPFu provides a similar XP bar, but it is extra pretty! You can configure the colours and transparency and there is a nice “spark” that shows your progress (which can be made as shiny or unobtrusive as you like).