3 UIs, tested and approved by Drug
Yes, I have three copies of WoW on my computer. This might seem extreme, but it has several nice advantages. The biggest advantage for me is, that I can try out as many cool and shiny UI compilations as I want, without messing with my current UI setup. Also, if a patch goes live, I have several options of UIs, that might or might not be working. When it comes to trying out new addons and playing around with predefined UIs, I’m really geeky. But the possibility to tweak your UI in the way blizzard allows us to is just a brilliant little meta-game for me. I think it is great to be able to launch WoW with one set of addons, then with another set a few seconds later and have a totally different visual impressions. At this point I have three different UI compilations up an working and I did 5 mans with all of them and a lot of raiding with my favorite pick, Quse UI. So following three little mini-reviews of those three UI compilations.
1. Quse UI by Qupe
QuseUI in action, Bigwigs is meanwhile replaced by DXE
This is really my favorite UI at the moment. It adds a lot to my gaming experience and the the feeling of raiding with this baby is very similar to my first few steps with eiszeit’s beautiful LynUI. The backbone of the UI is Stuf unit frames with nice textures and nice, nearly over-the-edge coloring. Player frame as well as Target and ToT are all lined up cleverly in a vertical line, the raid frames are just below the three mentioned frames. The Stuf raid frames work out of the box pretty well. But if you are used to grid, it just takes a few minutes to adapt your grid so it blends in perfectly with the UI. ForteXorcist and DXE (the new underdog in the world of bossmods), are situated on the right respectively left side of your raidframes and show you crucial information right next to where the healing clicky-clicky-action takes place. Skada will take the part of threatmeter as well as damage meter. EavesDrop will provide discreet scrolling combat text right over your minimap,I still prefer my combat text centered and provided by MSBT though. caelNamePlates makes targeting mobs very easy, if I tank with my warrior, caelNamePlates are by far my favorite choice of nameplate addon. Domnios actionbuttons can be hidden, shown on mouseover or be visible all the time. I have them shown all the time and even upscaled them a bit, as well as added some 4-5 buttons right on the left of my character, to watch my cooldowns. I also prefer sThreatmeter2 over Skada, mainly because I like to have the damage meter shown all the time. If you’re looking for a well rounded, beautifully looking UI, especially as a healer, look no further. As a bonus for everyone with an old screen, this will work with 4:3 resolution.
2. Led v1 by Led ++
Led v1 as DPS warrior
Actually, this is not only a functional UI, this is art as well. If you’re looking for a very minimalistic UI, with looks that will just blow you away, then Led has really done a fantastic job for you. Player frame is split up into health and mana/rage with the player cast bar as well as CoolLine arranged beautiful in between those two. The Target frame is arranged very similar on the right hand side of the screen. Everything comes in extremely stylish colors with a hint of the 3D avatar as overlay. As in Quse UI, Stuf unit frames are responsible for the unit frames magic. Sadly, the UI doesn’t come with raid frames. Sou you’d either have to set up Stuf raidframes or Grid to fit with the UI, in the case of Grid you won’t come to a very satisfying result. Both damage meter and threat meter come with empty bars, which fits in very well with the overall looks of the UI. SBF will provide you with buff and debuff information. A very nice idea of Led, was to show some filtered buffs just below the player frame. So it is easy to show important buff procs like Tidal Waves (or BS + SD proc in my sreenshot) at a very visible place. What I didn’t like was the target castbar, which is just too discreet and comes without the name of the spell. I just added a huge target castbar in the top center of the screen, this is just the way I like it best, be it to interrupt targets or to watch out for evil boss spells. Also, aloft just doesn’t work for me as nameplate mod. It slows my computer down, so I adapted caelNamePlates to look pretty with this UI, the screenshot still shows aloft though.
3. Roth UI by zork
Roth UI abused for tanking BG action
This might easily be the most popular of all UI compilations. Zork’s work for the addon community is really exceptional. Not only is his UI one of the most spectacular and unique UIs out there, he also provides tons of non-resource hungry addons like rBuff, ractionbuttonstyler or ractionbarstyler. The main reason why I didn’t play with this UI all too often was the fact, that I don’t think it is very healer friendly, the raid frames just won’t really work for healing out of the box. On my warrior though, this UI is great. The heart of the UI is oUF_D3Orbs, which will show player health and rage/mana in fantastic looking, animated orbs, right on the left and the right side of ractionbarstyler. All this is done in a beautiful diablo3/goth artwork, witch just looks insane. Be aware though, if you want to tweak this UI, it has to be done all through .lua editing. Also, the UI won’t come with a WTF folder, so you’ll have to figure out a good UI scale/chat arrangement for yourself.
A great resource for good looking UIs is Vranx. There you’ll find all the sweet looking UIs, ready for 3.2 as well as some oldies, who might still work.
Please do comment and tell me which UI compilation you like or if you just build something on your own. Links to a screenshot of your UI are very welcome as well.
A Coin of Ancestry
Looking For Multitudes
Toravon the Ice Watcher (25 player)
1500 Dungeon & Raid Emblems
Crap. All that sexiness is going to make me spend a night doing nothing but tweaking out my unit frames. Have you no compassion?
I don’t install UI packages usually, because the vast majority is set up for widescreen monitors. I have a two normal 19″ monitors and am not planning to go widescreen anytime soon, and I don’t want to fiddle around too much.
Of the UIs listed, I like the looks of the first one best. Looks very nice.
But now pray tell, sell me Deus Vox instead of BigWigs. I didn’t like DBM ultimately, but I am always interested in hearing about other boss mods. Might give it a spin in Naxx today, actually.
Kadomi, you should really really consider getting a widescreen monitor. Out of every piece of hardware I ever got or addon I ever installed, nothing improved my gaming experience as much as going 16:9. A 4:3 resolution is just a relic of ancient times, not built to cater to the physiology of our eyes and not at all making use of our very well developed peripheral view. Considering the amount of time most of us spend in front of a computer screen, be it to do work, play games or just browse the internet, I just don’t see the point of not getting a quality, still very very inexpensive monitor.
The thing I like about DXE is also its greatest weakness: it is still in development. I was never fully happy with both Big Wigs and DBM and DXE is really trying to go its own way, with an ear very near to the community and just overall looks/degree of customization I really like. In terms of updating to match new encounters/patches, it might still lag behind DBM and BigWigs a tiny little bit, for me that’s a small price to pay how considered how fast the very core of the addon is improved with updates, while both DBM and BigWigs are more or less finished addons. The addon might need some more months though, until it can be fairly compared to his competitors. The biggest missing feature at this point is the missing range indicator, who is crucial on Thorim HM.
While I personally don’t like UI compilations for various reasons I can’t agree more on the widescreen stuff. Buy. Widescreen. Now. At least 22″, better 24″. Once you get used to it it feels so awkward sitting in front of a 4:3 again.
Maybe for Christmas. We just moved, so a new monitor is really low on the list of things that we need to live comfortably.
I actually gave DXE a shot in Naxx yesterday, and overall I liked it. It displayed a lot less things than BigWigs, but just enough that I needed to know for all the encounters. Only downside was range indication on KT. As melee DPS I had no indicator if I was too close to people, causing a double iceblock situation.
I’d say the first one is more appealing to me.
But I’ve never ever installed UI packages. I haven’t tried, to be exact. I prefer building the set on my own, but I love looking at the UI packages and how it works (watched in Youtube).
I definitely going to give some of these UIs a try. Need changes once in a while.
Trying out UI compilations is really something I recommend. The WoW addon system is very modular, so it easy incredibly easy to combine pieces of your own UI with an UI package.
In most predefined UIs, the unit frames, the buff addon, the minimap and the arrangement of the chat give you a very good start for a good looking UI. Everything else, like raidframes, actionbars, bosstimers, buff/debuff watching can easily be implemented or changed to your own likings.
The main reason why I use UI compilations as a base for my UI is purely aesthetic: I just prefer a good looking UI over a clumsy X-Perl arrangement any time. Second reason: The guys who build those UIs know their stuff, most of them have a far better understanding of coding or graphical stuff than I’ll ever have. Third reason: Most UI compilations are updated and constantly improved.