An Addon for everything!

I gave everything a bit of a shuffle a couple weeks ago, mostly because I needed more help watching my Focus (Lich King) target’s cast bar (Defile) and who is being targeted (Me, or someone else in the raid). I switched to Shadowed Unit Frames. But changing my unit frames led me into making other changes.

Because I don’t PVP much these days and very rarely heal so VuhDo isn’t nearly as prominent in this layout as it has been in the past. I’ve also switched back to the default Combat Text because I just like the positioning of the text over the targets so much for AoE.

I thought it might be worth consolidating everything into a single post.

The Interface – Out of Combat

Out of combat, in raid

Out of combat, in raid, with add ons marked

The Interface – In Combat

In combat, in raid

In combat, in raid, with add ons marked

Add ons

Bloody Font | Combat Text
This tiny little mod will replace the default font for combat text with any TTF font file you want to use. I’m using Dafxter at the moment because the characters in the set are smaller than your average character font set and even double size critical hit numbers render quite well. Most fonts, including the default one, look jagged and pixelated on my screen.

Decursive | Raid/Unit Frames
Click to Dispel Magic and Cure Disease on any raid or party member. VuhDo can do this just as well, but I like this function to be separated out. My post about Decursive is here.

Dominos | Action Bars
Every spell bar or button, including my inventory and bags, are positioned and modified using Dominos. I like to leave a couple big button spaces free so I can move in fight specific spells eg Pyschic Scream for Lady Deathwhisper. My Shadowfiend pet bar appears in the gap right in the middle. My post about Dominos is here.

Deus Vox Encounters | Raid Boss Mod
A lot of people use Deadly Boss Mods for raid encounter timers and announcements. I switched to Deus Vox and stuck with it because it uses so many audio cues for the warnings. You can customize every single boss encounter and turn on only the warnings and bars that you need to know about. Deus Vox also comes with its own Proximity/Range finder (see above my mini map) and its own boss health bar (right of the mini map).

Elkano’s Buff Bars | Buff and Debuffs
I have a 4 column buff/debuff bar layout (you can see three of the four columns in these screen captures). From left to right:

1. Special buffs (not displayed) – includes things like Heroism, Power Infusion and Storm Power (if you remember Hodir), basically anything that will change how I cast temporarily goes here. These are scaled up significantly and coloured green.
2. Debuffs – in the screen capture you can see Chill of the Throne. I make sure my debuffs are very prominent and show both the icon and the name in text. They are coloured by the type of debuff (poison is green). They also work as timers which is really handy for watching important debuff countdowns like Blood Queen’s Essence of the Blood Queen and Sindragosa’s Instability stacks. I don’t know how I’d play with the default debuff icons! This is one of the most important parts of my interface.
3. Self Buffs – the tiny little line of self buffs is my readycheck checklist. Should contain at any given time Shadowform, Inner Fire, Vampiric Embrace, Flask of the Frost Wrym and Well Fed. I rarely look at this list once I enter combat but any trinket or gear procs show up here.
4. Buffs from others – occasionally I will scan this list to make sure I’m in range of a totem but otherwise I ignore it during combat.

Lathere’s post about Elkano’s Buff Bars is here.

ForteXorcist | DoT Monitor/Spell Timer
Another game changing mod. ForteXorcist tracks every single one of my active DoTs, across all mobs, during combat. Makes multi-dotting much easier and lets me track what mob has Devouring Plague even when I’m targeting something else. Unfortunately it doesn’t track DoTs on your Focus target. Or at least I can’t figure how to get ForteXorcist to track that. My post about ForteXorcist is here.

gChat | Chat Pane
A little add on that neatens up the Chat window considerably. All the buttons are hidden as is the input bar until you type “/” or hit Enter.

Omen | Threat Meter
The standard Threat Meter. Mine only shows up when I’m in combat.

Quartz | Cast Bar
Measures latency and displays it as part of the cast bar. An essential for any caster. My post about Quartz is here.

Recount | Damage Meter
The standard Damage Meter. I try not to look at it during combat.

SexyMap | Mini Map
Makes my mini map look good, hides all the buttons and things like the calendar and time until you hover your cursor over the map.

Shadow Green Light | Shadow Priest Mod
A mod that calculates whether it’s worth recasting Shadow Word: Pain based on how many debuffs are on your target and how many debuffs are available with your raid composition.

Shadowed Unit Frames | Raid/Unit Frames
Replaces the player, target and focus frames in my user interface. You can use Shadowed Unit Frames to draw frames for party members and raid members too, but I use VuhDo to do that. Sometimes it will display a boss frame, but not consistently for all bosses. I’m thinking about turning this feature off.

Tidy Plates | Name Plates
Replaces the default name plates with something a little prettier. You can download a few different skins if you don’t like the default design.

VuhDo | Raid/Unit Frames
The best healing raid frame add on out there. Even though I rarely heal VuhDo compacts all the important information about what’s going on around me in the raid – who is dead, who is being resurrected, who has DCed, who is a ghost, who has aggro etc – into a small space. It also shows who has been raid marked which is really handy when you’re running a boss mod like Deadly Boss Mods or Deus Vox Encounters so you can quickly identify the raid members with Spores in Festergut, Unchained Magic in Sindragosa, Mind Controlled in Lady Deathwhisper just to name a few. Lathere has written two posts about VuhDo: here and here.

Fine-tuning

My user interface is definitely a work in progress. I’ll always be tinkering.

Eventually I plan to bring my player, target and focus frames down underneath my cast bar. The other thing I’ve noticed is that the Deus Vox bars and warnings really get in the way – they tend to overlap my damage output numbers or get in the way of my target’s name plate.

ForteXorcist stops tracking DoTs on a target if I set that target to my be my Focus. I find it much harder to track DoTs when they’re listed in two different places and in two formats. I wish I could figure out a way to keep ForteXorcist tracking my Focus target.

And finally, I think I need to set up some kind of tool tip add on. My tool tips usually appear in the very bottom right corner of my screen and overlap my menu bars there. I’m not sure where I want my tooltips displayed, but I know that I need a special spot for them and an add on that can put them where they’re meant to go.

My UI during raid, out of combat

My UI, with mods labeled

Mods Visible on the Screen

Dominos is used to modify & move my spell action bars, XP bar and bags. To lessen the clutter on my screen I have Bars on both the left and the right at 10% opacity, so you only see the buttons when you hover over them.

Vuhdo is a raid frame replacement and click casting addon. As a healer this is the most prominent part of my interface.

Elkano BuffBars replaces the default icons representing the buffs applied to your character. I have mine listed vertically under my portrait.

SexyMap hides all your mini map buttons and makes your mini map look good! Also includes map/location coordinates, if you’d like them.

Decursive makes cleansing a simple matter of clicking the highlighted squares, with Lath I can left-click to remove curses and right-click to abolish poison.

Recount is an in-game damage meter that allows you to keep track of your DPS and healing output during boss fights.

Omen allows you to keep track of your threat in comparison to your tanks and other party/raid members.

eePanels2/Sunn Art Viewport The screenshot above was taken using eePanels2, however after overwhelming comments pointing me to Sunn Art Viewpoint, this is now installed and has been configured. My interface with Sunn Art Viewport looks similar, however, the video display ends just above the Vuhdo/Omen/Recount section leaving a solid black empty background behind all those mods.

What you Dont See, But I Do Use!

Quartz to replace the default cast bar.  As an Oceanic player this is a must! It shows you visually how much latency is affecting your spell cast time so you can compensate.

Mikes Scrolling Battle Text to replace the default combat text options and separate my incoming heals (from myself/other players – left side of my character) and my outgoing heals (right side of my character). I love this mod because it plays a sound and notifies me on screen when Wild Growth is off cool down.

Deadly Boss Mods to keep me aware of important boss encounter stuff – light bombs to enrages.

Additional Mods I use, and Recommend

Combuctor to combine all my bags into one.

Atlasloot lets me know what loot drops are available in each raid & dungeon boss.

RatingsBuster helps me compare item stats in a matter of seconds without leaving the game.

RandomMount because I don’t want any of my handsome mounts feeling missed out! This mod intelligently selects the most suitable mount type for me to fly/ride.

RandomPet because I have a number of pets under my care, this mod randomly brings one out so they all get the love and attention they deserve.

Where to Start

If reading this blog post has inspired you to start tinkering with your own UI then I suggest you have a read through some of the articles Cass wrote when she first started her journey.  Cass has done a series of mod guides which should help you feel comfortable customizing the mods to better blend into your UI design.  You can find these articles here.

Changing your raid frames is always a big step if your new to mods and add ons.  If you are keen to use Vuhdo and need some help setting it up, your in luck because the add on authors are very responsive.  The best place to start after downloading the mod, is the Vuhdo Wiki.

I want to finish this with a final piece of advice for anyone who uses mods while playing WoW.  Download WoW Matrix and create a shortcut to the application on your Desktop.  Every time a patch comes out mods cause widespread chaos in a raid.  Having WoW Matrix lets you update any out of date mods to the latest version with minimal effort required.

Action Shot!

]]> http://www.hotsdots.com/2009/08/the-evolution-of-my-ui-final/feed/ 11 http://www.hotsdots.com/2009/08/the-evolution-of-my-ui/ http://www.hotsdots.com/2009/08/the-evolution-of-my-ui/#comments Wed, 05 Aug 2009 01:48:21 +0000 Lathere http://www.hotsdots.com/?p=795 Over the years I have played WoW my UI has changed. From using the standard interface, to dabbling with mods, I have slowly “evolved” to what I feel is a more sophisticated and user friendly interface for my game play. My biggest challenge has been mod customisation. I need things to be pretty user friendly after install otherwise it is all too much and I give up on the mod all together. I went through my screenshot folder today and have picked out pictures of my many UI attempts some of which are quite embarrassing but I’m going to share anyway!

My 1st Raiding UI

My UI When I Was First Raiding Karazhan

Mods were still a new and exciting thing for me back in my early Karazhan days.  As you can see we are still using the ingame sound, vent was something that seemed silly – why install another program when you could just use the ingame version!  Back in this era, I was using:

• Titan Panel
• Decursive
• Omen – this was fairly new and exciting, most people were still using the very popular KLH Threat Meter
• Deadly Boss Mods

And yes, people are hovering in the air (hence why I originally took this screeny) there used to be a bug which sent people who died during the Chess encounter back into The Menagerie (Curator’s Room) and plonk them in the air.  It certainly made us laugh!

My Healbot Experimentation Phase

My Healbot Experimentation Phase

This was a fairly short period of my raiding life when I tried to use Healbot. While I have heard it is now greatly improved, back in the day when I was tinkering around with it Healbot hated Tree Form. Most of my other mod choices have remained.

This screeny was taken during a naked gnome race to Booty Bay. I’ve always wanted a gnome with pink hair…. one day perhaps!

Discovering Recount

You Mean… Decursive Can Move?

When I look at this picture, the first thing I think is “Thank God I Finally Managed To Move the Decursive Buttons!” Aside from my new found discovery of how to move Decursive squares off my mini map, my mod list has also grown and changed.  I’ve discovered Recount and have also installed Quest Helper which makes questing a breeze. Through this phase I used:

• Fubar
• Atlas
• Decursive
• Recount
• Omen
• Deadly Boss Mods
• Quest Helper

An Over Ambitious Disaster

2009 – The Year Of The UI Overhaul

Ok that screenshot above is a terrible mess…. urghhh. I decided to experiment with Grid, Healbot I had learnt was not for me and I was sure that with the right raid frames I could improve my healing… really take it up to the next level. Unfortunately I had found that Grid was taking me a while to get used to, so I played not only with Grid, but also the standard Raid Frames taking up a chunk of my screen so I could still feel in control.

Other mods of note in this screenshot is my newfound discovery of Elkano’s Buff Bars, which I am still using today. I have also installed Spartan UI, which at the time I thought was beautiful. I look at it now and just think, meh…. not worth the reduced MS and frame rates. Mods in this screenshot include:

• Spartan UI – The big grey bar at the bottom
• Chincilla – A mod that allows you to move your Minimap
• Prat – Chat mod that colours the name of the person talking to their class colour & adds a time stamp
• Fubar
• Omen
• Recount
• Decursive
• Elkano’s Buff Bars
• Grid

Vuhdo I Love You!

Taking Control of My UI

After my major overhaul attempts, I got exhausted with trying to make it all work. I went back to standard UI raid frames and layout for about a month before I was ready to dive back in. I wanted things to be simple this time. I still wanted a better raid frames system but I knew I was never trying either Healbot or Grid again. I was ready to start looking into XPerl when I saw a Plus Heal forum talking about a new mod called Vuhdo. I decided to take the plunge and give it a try and I simply love it.

During my UI attempt, I also tried Dominos based on Cass’s advice and by complete accident stumbled across a mod called Sexy Map… which is great because it hides all the mod buttons until you hover over the map. Mods used during this minimalist phase are:

• Dominos
• Vuhdo
• Recount
• Omen
• Decursive
• Deadly Boss Mods
• SexyMap

eePanels2

Tweaking & Nit Picking

I knew I was near the end of my UI journey.  I had finally found raid frames that I liked and I had a group of staple mods that I was now comfortable with.  I wanted to keep everything towards the bottom of my screen with the raid frames taking front and centre position so I could easily heal and view the events surrounding my character at the same time.

I discovered eePanels2 which allows you to put colored panels on your screen to better break up your layout.  In the screenshot above I have 1 Panel which is a stark black in which the majority of my “workshop” is based. Mods used in this screenshot are exactly the same as those listed above, I’ve just added eePanels2 & Elkano Buff Bars.

My final UI is similar but more simplistic again.  I am still happy with the layout shown in this screeny but I found when doing Flame Leviathan – Orbituary (4 Towers) the black panel covered up too much of my screen and blocked part of my vehicle.  As I generally am the gunner for a demolisher and need to constantly scout the ground for Pyrite, this wasn’t good enough.

Stay tuned for a separate post covering my final UI (once I get it all working again with the new patch!) and each mod used & how I got it to work together!

*Update* Evolution of my UI: Final has been posted.

Why a Buff Bar?

The first time I decided this was a critical requirement in the success (or failure) of my interface was when we were wiping on General Vezaxx and Yogg-Saron. For some strange reason other elements on my standard UI would sometimes cover up my Saronite Vapor (Green Goo) ticks/debuff and it was also covering up my Sanity debuff. This was incredibly stressful mid-fight and there were several occasions when I cautiously left the green pools too early and missed out on precious mana. I was also running to the Sanity Wells in Yogg more often then necessary which meant I wasn’t in position and potentially missed out on cleansing/healing a raider right when it was needed.

Elkanos Buff Bars

Elkano Buff Bars Out of the Box

There are probably a number of mods that alter the display of your buffs & debuffs.  I found Elkanos Buff Bars after reading a post by Matticus on NoStockUI and downloaded it immediately.

The great thing about this mod is that it does it’s job straight out of the box, no changes or customisation required.

Customising Elkano Buff Bars

This is thankfully a fairly straightforward mod to make changes with.  To bring up the main configuration window you simply type /ebb config however you can do most of the modifications by simply right clicking on the header (Anchor) for each group.

Right click on a group heading (anchor) to access the configuration options

Groupings

The standard out of the box set up for this mod is 3 groupings – Buffs & Tracking, Debuffs & Tench.  I have no idea what Tench means but to give you an idea things that show up in this section include fishing lures & old fashion wizard oil for your weapon.

I didn’t want to go too crazy with the groupings, however I did customise this a little bit, and changed the groups to: Buffs, Debuffs & Tracking. This is done by editing the Name option when right clicking on the header.

Look & Feel

The first thing I did was drag my buff bar to the left side of my screen under my character portrait. This suits my UI layout because I do not use the standard party interface which places party portraits down the left side of your screen. Cass has her Buff Bars on the right side of the screen under her mini map, so the positioning is pure personal choice.

I also changed to scale of the groups to 70% which takes up less space, but is still easy to read.

I really didn’t like the bright blue, red and purple colours of the bars.  I changed these by going into the Bar Layout -> Bar section and changing the colour for Buffs to Black and then lowering opacity so it comes of as a pale clear gray.  I also dulled down the Debuff and Tracking groups to a dark red and purple and also lowered the opacity.

The final thing I did was remove the headings for each section, purely a cosmetic change but I thought it was more effective looking in conjunction with my overall UI.

Final Result

Lathere's Elkanos Buff Bars with Customisation

Cassandri's Elkanos Buff Bars with Customisation

The Verdict

I absolutely love this mod.  I can simply see a listing of all buffs my character has, and clearly tell if I’m missing something important.  Most importantly however, is how easy it is to see any debuff my character is experiencing and react accordingly.   I don’t know how I managed without this!

What’s next?

View/read all the articles in this series.

If you already have a good raid frame system set up you can use that to monitor magic, curses, diseases and poisons. However, if you’d like to have a separate, stand-alone Addon for quick click removal of nasty stuff I’d recommend Decursive.

Introducing Decursive

Decursive is going to make your response time for removing the bad stuff from your friends really fast.

Default Decursive (just imagine the last line reads "Curse of Weakness")

The best thing about Decursive is that it self-configures to suit your character class when you log in. To use Decursive all you need to learn is:

• Red = Type A debuff = left click the square to cast your Type A to remove
• Blue = Type B debuff = right click the square to cast your Type B to remove
• Orange = Type C debuff = ctrl+left click the square to cast your Type C to remove
• Purple = Type D debuff = ctrl+right click the square to cast your Type D to remove

The Type A, B, C, D debuffs and corresponding cleansing spells you can use to remove the debuff will change based on what class you’re playing at the time and what cleansing spells you have available. The most common stuff you’ll need to cleanse will almost always be cleansed with a simple left click.

When I’m playing Cassandri, my Priest, I can Dispel Magic Red and Cure Disease Blue. Can’t remove poisons as a Priest? They won’t show up in Decursive if you can’t do anything about them.

Swap over to my Shaman, Xata, and in Obsidian Sanctum my Decursive flashes up Purple squares when raid members are cursed with Drain Life. Ctrl+Right click a couple times and it’s gone.

It’s also worth pointing out that the top left square in Decursive represents yourself.

While it’s true that Decursive is great out of the box, you can change the size, colours, layout and position of your Decursive squares and also define specific debuffs you wish to monitor and who (based on class) should be monitored for those debuffs.

Also, Decursive calls the bad stuff it monitors “Afflictions” so I’ll use that term from here on out.

Final Result

Decursive and other Addons, shown out of combat with no afflicted raid members.

Configuration

Decursive is a mix of shades of green and purple and grey with thin and thicker borders when you first install it. I think the default colouring is to do with range (out of range, in range but not afflicted). I did discover that the borders exist to identify the class of the player.

My thoughts on cleansing are:

• It’s pretty damn important to do most of the time in raids (fights like Yogg-Saron spring to mind)
• It’s the player’s responsibility to be in range of the cleanser
• Everyone, regardless of class, is worthy of cleansing, even if they can remove it themselves

With that in mind I scrapped the borders completely and switched all the in-range-but-not-afflicted, out-of-range settings to grey. I also scaled up my squares to about 120%. I think I also reduced the information displayed in the tooltips to just the name of the affliction.

I did come across a setting that colours the square differently when the player is “cloaked” (a rogue stealthing or a mage using invisibility) and I set this to black. I think this might help me in Battlegrounds where my Dispel Magic/Cure Disease could give away the position of my hidden friends. Not that I BG much, but I thought it was cool.

Eventually I plan to move Decursive right down next to my Grid Addon, but I keep looking towards my minimap (the original position of Decursive on install) so this is an intermediate step.

Monitoring Specific Afflictions with Decursive

99% of the time the default settings in Decursive will do the job.

But this is the situation I found myself in. Ulduar 10 man hard mode Thorim with his lovely wife Sif. Sif thinks she’s a frost mage. And just like a frost mage in a BG she likes to run around annoying players while they try and get on with the killing. All her debuffs are magic, they’re non stop (my Decursive lit up like a Christmas tree) and there are alot of them. But only one of the abilities was consistently getting people killed: Frost Nova.

With Decursive you can configure your Custom Afflictions to monitor Frost Nova (must be dispelled), Frostbolt Volley (ignore) and Blizzard (ignore) separately. Go into the Decursive menu, then to Afflictions, then Add a Custom Affliction and type in the name of the spell. It will now appear on your Afflictions list and branch out to a list of all the player classes:

• Checked = ignore this Affliction on this class
• Unchecked = behave normally and track the Affliction

Setting up Custom Afflictions with Decursive

You can find a mage to duel and test this out if you’re not sure. Worked like a charm for me the following week. Just don’t forget to change your settings back when you BG or Arena next!

You can also configure your Decursive to not light up when another Priest in your raid is afflicted by Magic (on the assumption they should cleanse themselves). I chose not to go down this path because I like to see everyone afflicted by magic in order to make smart Mass Dispel decisions.

What’s next?

View/read all the articles in this series.

If you’ve wanted to try Grid but don’t know where to start you’ve come to the right place. I’m trying it out for the first time too!

A smart reader asked why I would go through the pain of switching to Grid from Healbot. I’ll admit a small part of me wants to be a fantastic Priest healer: DPSing up the meters one day and switching to Discipline and doing just as well – saving the world with the right Shield/Heal at the right moment.

When Dual Specialisation came out I was asked to choose Holy. I threw spells into Healbot for raid healing and I just couldn’t fit all the spells I wanted to use onto 2 mouse buttons + some keys. I was just starting to learn the combinations I had set up when I changed to Discipline as my secondary build and I’m struggling even more to relearn my key combinations. A perfect time to see if there’s something better out there.

What Grid Will Do

Grid creates a square representing each of your party/raid members. Click the square and you will target that player. You can choose (Grid gives you a hell of a lot of options) what information about the player you wish to display in their little box, but usually you’d start with their name and build up from there.

Grid is intended to replace the default UI raid frames – you know, the groups 1-5 that you have dragged onto your screen from the Social>Raid window.

What Grid Can Do

I honestly don’t know the answer. Ask a devoted Grid user and they will tell you Grid can do pretty much everything.

I do know that you can extend the functionality of Grid in many different areas to accomplish want you want. For healing, you can:

• Download modules that allow you to more successfully monitor your HoTs (a lot of Druids go down this path)
• Download Addons that will work with Grid and allow you to cast heals using mouse button combinations (referred to as click casting, check out Clique and Click2Cast).
• Set up mouseover macros in WoW that let you hover your cursor over Grid and smack your regular spell keys to heal your target

The Basic Basic Setup

Grid is, unfortunately, really really ugly when you first install it.

Default Grid display... does it make your head hurt too?

It took me a couple hours wading through the configuration menus but eventually I beat Grid into something attractive, meaningful and helpful. Personally I think most of this stuff should be set by default. If the creators of Grid made Grid look like this out of the box they’d win over a lot more users. By the way, Grid refers to each player as a “unit”.

• Switch to horizontal health bars, not vertical
• Increased the width of each “unit” so they are rectangles, not squares
• Show more letters/characters in the unit’s name (I think I maxed mine at 20)
• Turned off all the Top Left, Top Right, Bottom Left and Bottom Right corner settings
• Removed the border around the Addon
• Removed (or changed to a Flat) background texture
• Removed all the Border (the border around each unit) settings
• Turned off units for pets

From this base, blank canvas I added some meaningful information. But I’ll go into that later.

The Final Result

Grid in Alterac Valley, 40 players but only a few in range.

Grid in Ulduar, 25 players mostly in range (and yes I captured this for another reason - go number 1!)

My Configuration

Building up from the base setup described above I selected some additional information to display on my unit frames from the options in Grid:

• Unit Border:
  display on aggro (the player/s with aggro get a red border)
• Unit Text – second line:
  display the amount of health lost (eg “7.5k”)
  when they have the Weakened Soul debuff (ie “Weakened Soul”)
  when they have died and released (ie “Ghost”)
• Top Left Corner:
  a square appears when the target has Power Word: Shield active

My advice would be to keep the amount of information you’re monitoring with Grid pretty minimal at first. If you wish to monitor several things try and consider which ones might happen at the same time and don’t assign these to the same visual alert (you have borders, text and four corners to play with essentially).

From Healbot to Grid

If you’re like me and are used to playing with Healbot, I suggest that you run both side by side for a few weeks while you make the transition. This is a screen capture I took as Xata while I was still figuring out the nuts and bolts of the Grid options (you can see I haven’t yet turned off pets and something is being monitored in the bottom left corner of some units).

I recommend running both Grid and Healbot until you adjust.

One thing I love about Healbot is being able to see the icons specific to your class on your raid. It’s really easy to monitor how many charges of Water Shield I have up and also how many charges of Earth Shield is up on my target. I can also see who else has been Earth Shielded by another Shaman. On my priest I can see Power Word: Shield, Prayer of Mending, Pain Suppression and Guardian Spirit, regardless of which priest cast it, which can really come in handy.  Unfortunately I have no idea how to achieve this in Grid, or if it’s even possible.

So far I absolutely love monitoring Weakened Soul with Grid. For such a long time I have been right clicking units on Healbot to Power Word: Shield them when things are going wrong (the only “heal” I can perform without leaving Shadowform).

Final Thoughts

Good luck! Grid takes a lot of work and most of the configuration menus don’t make a lot of sense to first time users. If it all gets too hard, give Healbot a go.

Remember, at its essence Grid will simply replace your current default Raid Frames – nobody is forcing you to try mouseover macros, fancy key bindings or click casting. And Grid won’t do any of those things for you on its own.

I’ve briefly tried mouseover macros – and loved it – except I just don’t have enough easily accessible keys not already taken up with damage/dispelling keys on my Priest (where the 1-0 keys are taken) and it seemed counter-productive to set up keys like X and Z which I find hard to hit. I’m definately keen to try this on my shaman, Xata.

I’m also planning to try click casting using Grid (and Clique or something similar) or trying out Vuhdo which is getting rave reviews. But that’s a topic for another post.

ps. The guild member I quoted above eventually qualified for my Mute and Ignore list when he suggested we all change factions and play horde because “Horde are so much better”. I’m fairly confident I won’t be missing anything worth hearing.

What’s next?

View/read all the articles in this series.

What I really want is an option in the WoW Interface that lets me scale up the size of my DoTs on my target to about 200%. Unfortunately this option doesn’t exist. Hiding everything else except my own DoTs would also have been a nice option.

DoTs = Debuffs

A critical lesson. As a Shadow Priest your damage over time spells are considered debuffs on the target. During combat these spells all count as debuffs on your target:

• Shadow Word: Pain (applied by casting Shadow Word: Pain)
• Devouring Plague (applied by casting Devouring Plague)
• Vampiric Touch (applied by casting Vampiric Touch)
• Vampiric Embrace (applied by casting Vampiric Embrace)
  and
• Misery (passively applied when you cast other shadow spells)
• Mind Flay (applied during a channeled Mind Flay)
• Mind Trauma (passively applied when you cast talented Mind Blast)

The only spell that I cast regularly that doesn’t leave a debuff on my target is Mind Blast.

Of the list above, I only need to watch the progress of my Shadow Word: Pain, Devouring Plague, Vampiric Touch and Vampiric Embrace. These are the DoTs that need to be reapplied immediately when they wear off.

Quartz Buff/Debuffs

I tried a couple of different options. Most Addons that monitor your DoTs (a) format them into bars that animate down as they wear off and (b) show all your debuffs, not just the ones you want.

I tried very hard to like the module in Quartz Cast Bar that shows debuffs. But I really disliked the horizontal progress bars, not to mention the self-sorting by duration default setting, and I was quite distracted by Mind Flay which popped up each time I cast it.

Quartz Buff and Debuff monitoring might work for mages, but I didn't like it for 20 second duration DoT monitoring (displayed as progress bars).

Introducing Debuff Filter

Debuff Filter lets you watch just the Debuffs/DoTs that you’re interested in. You are also given the option for each debuff to only show the debuff if you were the player to apply it (thank you! I’m not interested in anyone else’s Shadow Word: Pain).

Final Result

Debuff Filter positioned above Quartz cast bar

My Configuration

Debuff Filter Configuration Options

I added the first four debuffs listed above (SW:P, DP, VT, VE) to my “watch list” in Debuff Filter and for each spell ticked the Self Applied Only option. I removed all the boomkin stuff that was set up when I installed it too.

I placed the debuffs so that they appeared directly above my Quartz cast bar. I can look at my DoTs and then decide what to cast next while I watch my cast bar to decide when to cast. I love it.

I also chose to display timers on my debuffs (not shown in the capture above). This required me to download and install OmniCC. So I did, and it worked with no additional setup. Not sure I actually like the timers yet. I might turn them off.

What’s next?

View/read all the articles in this series.

Introducing Quartz

Getting maximum DPS out of your casting sequence is about queuing up your next spell as soon as possible. Quartz monitors your latency (the information transfer gap between your computer and the server) and displays this on your cast bar as a red zone. I tend to treat it like this: when your current spell has hit the red zone, start casting your next spell.

I love Quartz and it does everything I want my cast bar to do. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t need some customisation.

Final Result

Quartz Cast Bar while casting Mind Flay

Please note that I’m casting a channeled spell (Mind Flay) in the example. For channeled spells the bar progress animates “down” from right to left so the red zone is at the end of the spell on the left. Most direct damage spells (like Mind Blast, Fireball etc) would be the reverse traveling left to right.

Configuration

It’s very rare that I take my gaze completely off my cast bar during combat. I’ve positioned my cast bar directly under my feet in the center of my screen and stretched it out wide. In Quartz settings this is all done in the “Player” menu (ie the Player Cast Bar).

Quartz will also replace the Mirror, Target and Focus Cast Bars if you enable them. I like to leave everything except my own bar turned off and let the default interface handle the rest.

Most of my changes to Quartz are cosmetic. I’ve dropped off the shaded border, removed the background gradient shading (choosing the Flat option) and even removed the name of the spell from the bar. I’ve kept the spell icon up (this registers in my brain faster than the spell name) and the cast time.

I’ll probably recolor the bar at some stage too.

Some Shadow Priests have suggested customising the background texture of the Quartz bar to show approximately where the 3 Mind Flay ticks occur along the bar. I’ve decided not to do this because my latency is high and fluctuates enough that I think the 3 markers would be misleading.

What’s next?

View/read all the articles in this series.

Before I realised I was looking for an Action Bar replacement Addon, I downloaded and trialed SpartanUI. SpartanUI is an all-in-one User Interface Addon. But I just didn’t like it. It places your player frame and your target’s information side by side like Street Fighter. Using SpartanUI made me realise that I’ve used the World of Warcraft default UI for a long time and I don’t want a complete change.

Introducing Dominos

I’m not entirely sure how I chose Dominos. I was reading information about Bartender and Dominos and downloaded both at one point. However, it was Dominos that I chose to install and tweak first. One site said that Dominos was easy to work with out-of-the-box and they were right! The author of Dominos has stated that he is trying to stick as close to the Blizzard functionality as possible and I think this is a smart position to take. Nobody wants an interface that breaks the first time you jump in a vehicle.

I strongly recommend you try Dominos if you like the look of all my “buttons”.

The Final Result

Here is what my interface changed to with just the addition of Dominos. Note: Ignore Healbot and Grid, installed but not configured yet, just left of the center of the screen.

Xata's Interface with Dominos replacing the default action bars and menus

My Configuration

I found the configuration of the action bars was very straightforward and mostly a case of dragging stuff where you want it. No guesswork involved, the menu options behave just how you expect them to.

I’ve moved the XP/Rep progress bar to the very center bottom of the screen, scaled it right down and dropped the opacity. My main action bar of spells sits directly on top of that. For Xata my totems and mounts are spread out horizontally above my spell bar. For Cassandri, my pet bar is positioned one step further up. Professions/utilities and buffs are vertically arranged to the right. Overall, my set up is very similar to Left/Right default action bar placements.

The placement of action bars on the screen is entirely up to you. And you can set up a lot of bars, many more than the default interface will give you.

Update
A day or two later and I look at Xata’s string of totems with new eyes. I’m going to set up 4 separate action bars in Dominos – one each for fire, water, earth and air – and arrange each bar as a column with the most often used totem at the top. That means I can click four icons right next to eachother at the start of the fight.

Tips and Advice

My advice in this step is to stick fairly close to the arrangement you currently use. Too much change will disorient you, so if you want to make major changes, do them one at a time over the next month or so.

If you need to place spells on your interface that you know are irrelevant during combat (eg mounts/professions) you can configure these action bars to show at a low opacity until you hover over them. I’ve chosen to do this with three of my bars on Cassandri (mounts, buff spells and professions).

Once you know where everything is by heart consider scaling down the overall size of your icons/action bars. You can do this in the World of Warcraft>Video options. I have reduced the scale of my interface to about 75% of the default setting in the capture above.

What’s next?

View/read all the articles in this series.

Perhaps if I explain the research I went through I can save you some time on your journey to a better interface.

Some Websites

NoStockUI

NoStockUI features complete interface packages like this one from Taeo. You can download it too.

While a lovely site with great UI examples, I couldn’t quite figure out what Addons were doing what in each screen capture.

NoStockUI will occasionally package up a whole interface for download (basically you unzip and replace your WTF & Addon folders with theirs). I wouldn’t recommend doing this unless you actually like cooking in someone else’s kitchen.

ShadowPriest.com

ShadowPriest.com runs an Interface Competition (the winning entry could also be downloaded in full). All the entries seemed too extreme for me – too far from the default interface which I’ve used for years. And I guess most of these Shadow Priests never heal because they had the smallest, tiniest, square raid frames you’ve ever seen. As small as the mini-map!

ShadowPriest.com also has a great list of suggested/recommended Addons that I came back to over and over again.

Curse

The place to download all these goodies. Except maybe Auctioneer.

Some Guides

In addition to the sites above I read some great guides. Definitely worth a read if you’re interested in healing and raid frames.

Mouseover Macros by Sydera

The idea here is that you’ll use your (right) mouse hand to hover your cursor over your raid frames (using something like Grid) and use your left hand to click a key nearby to cast a healing spell on them. No cursor clicking required to select your target to cast.
http://www.worldofmatticus.com/2009/03/23/a-guide-to-mouseover-macros/

Grid vs Healbot by Keeva

Keeva is a Restoration Druid and long term Grid user. She sets out to compare both Addons and how they can be customised. The only problem is that she tries to turn Healbot into Grid. Now if she showed me how to display a health bar percentage underneath the player’s name using Grid (basic Healbot functionality) I’d be more impressed. A good article nonetheless.
http://treebarkjacket.blogspot.com/2009/02/project-compare-raid-frame-heavyweights.html

Keeva’s Mimimalist UI

Keeva's UI dissected and labeled

More interesting than the Grid/Healbot debate, Keeva dissects her minimalist interface here:
http://treebarkjacket.blogspot.com/2009/02/my-current-ui.html

Terminology

Some lessons that I learnt along the way:

Raid Frames

When you drag raid groups out onto your screen from the Social>Raid window – these are Raid Frames. Raid Frame Addons like Grid, Clique, Healbot (and Pitbull?) will replace these with something better and probably save you quite a lot screen space too.

I should also point out that Decursive, which creates a clickable box representing each member of the raid for the purpose of decursing/cleansing/dispelling, is also a Raid Frame Addon.

Action Bars

Any thing you can drop a spell onto is an Action Bar. Action Bar Addons will replace/configure your bars and let you move them pretty much anywhere it suits you and drop them down until they are almost invisible if you like. Action Bar Addons may also modify you XP bar and main menu (you know, the thing you click on to open a ticket or laugh at your latency). I tried out Dominos but Bartender is very popular too.

Ace and Non-Ace

Ace is a type of programming language or library that can be used to build World of Warcraft Addons. That’s about all I know! I don’t have a preference for one over the other.

Debuff

Debuffs can be bad when they are cast on you and should be cleansed (and this is what I think of when I see the word) but they can also be good when you are casting them on something else. For a Shadow Priest, your DoTs are debuffs on your target.  Shadow Word: Pain, Misery, Vampiric Embrace and even Mind Flay are all debuffs. Mind Blast is not a debuff – it hits and it’s done.

What’s next?

View/read all the articles in this series.