Addons: The Overview

this is not the goal

I’m still some days away from Naxx (fist time in there…yay!) which let’s me some spare time to talk about Addons before I get back into raiding. I’ll try to show you briefly what addons I like to have for a good raiding User Interface. I know most of the things coming up are widely known but in my opinion worth pointing out again and again and a roundup of addons working at this very moment wouldn’t hurt anyone.

In short a good UI for me needs to be a) functional b) eye candy and c) stable/with low memory usage. Don’t clutter up your screen, you might want to see what’s going on and where AoE is going to land. Keep as much as possible around or in the center of your screen, having to look all around the whole screen is distracting and PEOPLE WILL DIE. Keep the few buttons you might want to click during a fight close to your healing frame and try to maintain short mouse paths.

my old layout and a bad haircut

General Addons

Every good UI needs a good base of must-have addons that I consider vital for every UI. Yes I know you can play brilliant even with Blizz UI but why have it complicated if you can simplify nearly everything with just a few addons.

• Unitframes: Yes you will need a replacement for the default unitframes. I personally prefer to have my healthbar and target unitframe close to the center of the screen and _not_ in the upper left corner of the screen. Personally I’m rolling with oUF (many beautiful pre-configured layouts are available, my choice is oUF_Lyn) and I have used Pitbull for over a year with nearly no complaints. X-Perl is a very simple and easy to set up unitframe that might match your needs if your just starting out with Addons or want to stick close to the Blizzard frames with rather few options to modify the looks of your frames. Mrs. Rogue points out that she loves X-perl because of the Target of every group member shown in your party frames. If raid targets aren’t clearly set (which of course never happens) she likes the possibility of bashing just the same mob as a fellow group member she trusts most at this moment.

pitbull frames in action

• Actionsbars: You’ll probably want good looking actionbars somewhere in the lower center of your screen even if, again, important things should always be all over the place in tiny buttons you’ll click keybound. A very simplistic choice could be rBars2 if you don’t mind a little .lua-editing. Those aren’t a replacement of the Blizzard actionbars but a simple modification of those. Downside at this point: no petbar will pop up if casted in combat (no feral spirit while fighting, no petbar will pop up on some quests where you’ll need them in combat). The other two big names are without doubt Bartender4 or Dominos, which you choose should come down to personal preference or old habit. Combination with OmniCC highly recommended.
• Combat Text: Helps me a lot, just having an immediate visual Feedback of my overhealing. I’m using MikScrollingBattleText, SCTD is another popular choice. Apart from that I have ingame healing enabled, slightly modified with gdFont for the looks, those big flashy green numbers that pop up when chainhealing just make my heart go boom boom.
• Castbar: Addons like Quartz, AzCastbar or oCB offer better control over your healing when showing latency and helping you with timing when to start casting your next spell. When dishing out damage target castbar helps if you are on interrupting duty and help you see incoming boss abilities.
• Equip-Management: Very optional, but very much helping being a good situational healer. Itemrack is my friend, it helps my organize my outfits, one for max. haste gear, one for super mana regeneration, one with shadow resistance and of course one for dancing nude in og. etc. Closetgnome and Outfitter can do cool tricks as well, so I hear.

another rather old interface...good old ssc

Raiding Addons

• Bossmod: Know your fights, know your enemies and of course know which DD might possibly soon stand in the f*ing fire again for the 10′000th time. Deadly Boss Mods or for me Bigwigs help you be aware of soon to be incoming damage.
• oRA2: Be nice and get this addon, you’ll help the raid leader and get a neat little MT target frame in return.
• Threatmeter: Omen is the way to go. At this moment I’m testing out sThreatMeter, seems to be a solid very lightweight alternative, .lua editing might be needid. Having the nameplates shown on enemys helps when AoE tanking is going on, glowing nameplates=bad!, you might want to run towards a friendly tank paladin.

OMG….Teh Healing!

• Raidframes: Your Unitframes like Pitbull might already cover this. If not, Grid is the tool of choice of every friendly healer. Grid is in fact a little bit tricky to set up but worth every hour minute of setting it up (i might post an in depth guide to Grid later on). Helpful addition to Grid is GridStatusRaidDebuff which let’s you see raid specific debuffs as little icons on Grid, very very neat.

grid love

• those frames go well with: Clique. If you aren’t into mouseover macros Clique let’s you assign chainheal healing spells on any mouse button (i highly recommend a mouse with 1-2 thumb buttons). Hover over your raidframe, click specified mouse button and voila: healing extravaganza.
• …and for the lazy ones: Healbot combines both Addons above, just never did it for me.
• Decursing: Oh how i just can’t get over Decursive. I guess i could easily set up all decursing with Grid an Clique, especially now with cleanse spirit, but somehow Decursive just stays.

Shamanistic Addons

• Totem Management: I have some castsequence totem macros, in addition to that Totemtimers helps me out. Yata is a solid, ace base, alternative.
• Various: Shaman Friend can be a good friend. Reminds you of having imbues on your weapons and shields up, tells you what grounding totem just absorbed and tells your party/raid when you pop bloodlust/heroism or mana tide.

Analyze Me

• Meters: Meters are numbers. Numbers can help you improve. Numbers tell you a lot. Numbers help you prove your point. Just keep in mind that numbers aren’t everything. Recount is fantastic for in-game penis enlargement analysis. Wowwebstats are a beautiful way of reviewing fights at a later point, i do recommend to post wws regularly in your guild forum and tell people how to read it. As to how accurate each meter is at the moment only time will tell, post 3.0.2, i got strange numbers from time to timer with both means.

"mr. shaman....your healing...its so...big!"

That should do it for a first roundup, I’m looking forward to present some addons and some tweaking in the future. If you think about building up a new UI from the scratch now’s the perfect time. Some Addons are broken, some new ones have popped up. If you do wish a new clean UI you might consider starting out with a compilation:

• Lyn UI: Lovely, my pick of the day, my UI is just that with only a few alterations. Only bad thing: I use grid AND the oUF raidframes which show the same information twice, I’ll have to think about that.

my layout right now, sporting lynUI

• Caith UI: I did use this for a good chunk of TBC raiding in a  1280×1024 version available here.

good old caith ui days

• Acaciaizm Semi: Did run on our laptop for some time, unit frames might be a bit too gray. And gray makes puppies sad.

Please tell me which Addons you’d like to hear more about and what addon-related topics i should cover in the near future.