My VuhDo setup next to Decursive, Recount and my spell buttons

I’ve been asked by a few people what my layout settings are for VuhDo. I thought it would be easier to cover the topic as one single blog post with screen shots rather than by reply to each individual question posed by in game whispers, comments, twitter and email.

This article covers two things:

1. The layout options I have selected. This fits VuhDo all nice and snuggly into space on my screen freed up using Sunn Viewpoint Art.
2. How I have chosen to display my HoTs on my raid targets and my click spell casting options.

Sunn Viewpoint Art – What Is It?

The description from Curse Gaming:

Sunn’s Viewport Art allows you to change the size of the rendered world area (viewport) and adds textured artwork in the non-rendered areas.

Ok, that doesn’t mean much to me either. So here’s my own more basic description:

This mod creates an empty black section under your game screen. The good thing about this is that all your mods can go into the black area so you can see everything happening around your character without any addons covering your view.

While you don’t need this mod to play the game, my customised layout settings have been chosen to display VuhDo directly under my character within the black section of my screen. If you want to duplicate my setup you’ll get most benefit if you combine this VuhDo layout with Sunn Viewpoint.

Vuhdo Layout Options

Opening Screen

So the screen shot below shows VuhDo when you first open it up and the options I have chosen. My favourite part in this screen is choosing your resurrection announcement message. I change mine fairly often, and they are always extremely silly!

General settings, including resurrection announcement

The Panels Tab

Most of the layout customisation is done via the panels tab of VuhDo. This screen shot below is of my General section. I choose to have up to 12 columns available which is more then enough for a Wintergrasp or AV with a bunch of Warlock and Hunter pets thrown into the mix. I also don’t like to see my empty groups when I’m soloing or in a 5 or 10 man instance so I always tick the Hide Empty option.

Panels General settings

Sizing

The sizing I have chosen is specifically inline with my Sunn no-video black area. My individual Bar Height is set to 27 and the Bar Width is set to 55. I find the squares big enough to get a real feel for player health and mana but not too big that I feel like I’m back in kindergarten.

Panel Sizing settings

Bar Look & Feel

There are many textures to choose from for the look and feel of your bar. I like the Aluminium look, but go crazy and choose one that you like the best. I also like the background for each of my squares to match the Class colour of the player. This is very handy as you can see with a glance which players are the melee that need a HoT just before that crash or to work out which crazy Mage has pulled aggro too soon.

Panel Bars settings

Headers

I personally like to show the group headers so I can easily see who is in each group. Vitare generally place the tanks in group 1 and the healers in group 5 so you already have a feel for where people are going to be located when your doing some crazy healing in a pinch. I have the font fairly small and like Skurri at size 10.

Panel Headers settings

Text

I choose to have the text as the Class Colour, which I know sounds like it would be hard to read but it actually presents very well and is very legible. I have chosen to have the text centered, and the persons name in Skurri, Size 9.

Panel Text settings

HoT Icon Layout

You can set up your HoTs to display around the outside of each raid frame, I like the box option which has HoTs in each corner as well as centered at the top and bottom. I’ve included below the layout and order I’ve selected though you may prefer to place these in different locations.

Panel HoTs Icons settings

Click Casting Spells

I have all my spells set to click cast through VuhDo and this is available under the Spells Tab. My mouse set up is as follows:

Left Click: Lifebloom
Right Click: Rejuvenation
Middle Button: Wild Growth

Shift Left Click: Regrowth
Shift Right Click: Nourish
Shift Middle Button: Swiftmend

Alt Left Click: Target/Select Player
Ctrl Left Click: Rebirth

As I only have a 3 button mouse, all other moves that aren’t used frequently are key bound. During Heroic Anub’arak I specifically go into VuhDo and change my Nourish button to Healing Touch to ensure I don’t go on autopilot and spam Nourish instead.

More Information and Good Reads

• If you like the idea of VuhDo but want to know more about it’s great features I strongly recommend our introductory article on VuhDo here.
• Setting up and monitoring custom debuffs such as Penetrating Cold has been covered by Matticus here.
• The VuhDo Wiki is here.
• The maker of VuhDo is very active on the Plus Heal forums and with the healing community which is fantastic. The VuhDo Manual thread can be found here.
• And finally if you would like to download VuhDo and try it for yourself, find the Curse Gaming link here.

Happy Healing!

30 seconds til the battle starts!

This story doesn’t start in a Battleground. It starts in a PuG run of Old Kingdom. I was the last member to join. Skimming over the other party member names I noticed that we had one Paladin from our server’s number #1 raiding guild. Prot? Holy? Ret? I hovered over their frame in VuhDo to check out their mana/heath and read this instead:

Level 80 Paladin
Bad DK Alt of <Gigantor>

This struck me as quite amusing. Sure it’s funny to have a guild rank called “Bad DK Alt” but it’s even funnier to stick one of your Paladins on this rank. And it does seem like every player has a Death Knight Alt ready for some VoA action if you even mention that you’re short on DPS. They’ve logged off to change characters before you can say “wait! we already have 5 in the raid”.

In the Burning Crusade my guild had a special rank called “God of Nightbane” purely to humor one of our Warlocks who demanded to be the one to summon Nightbane whenever we ran Karazhan. It wasn’t the lowest rank in the guild, but it was close. And it was definitely lower than Member rank. And it didn’t include any privileges – you couldn’t even type in Guild chat.

When I joined my current guild the lowest guild rank was “FIRE STARTER”. Eventually I got the full story out of one of the long term members. The rank had been so named for a guild member who lost central heating during a raid and had to AFK to “start a fire”. Perhaps this is a legitimate reason to make your raid wait in some parts of the world but when you’re part of a predominantly Australian/New Zealand raiding guild during the height of summer (in other words, sitting at their computer in their swimmers with a fan on) the rest of us think it’s pretty darn strange.

This rank was renamed to “Special Mage” not long after I joined. Anyone who had a tantrum got demoted down to this rank. And yes, usually it was the Mages having hissy fits. Oh how I wanted to be granted this rank. I was eventually demoted down (after much begging) only to discover that Special Mages don’t get to repair using Guild Bank funds. Shame that.

Back to the story. With VuhDo, if they’re in my raid and in range, I can see their guild rank. That includes Battlegrounds. Yes, that’s right. This is now my favourite Battleground preparation game. While you’re buffing, I’m scrolling over my frames.

Who has the most bizarre, non-sensical or comical Guild Rank/Guild Name in the group?

I don’t think I’ve found anything quite as amusing as that Paladin on Bad DK Alt rank. And some rank titles are downright confusing – punishment or reward? I did once ask a Mage on the rank of “Audi TT” if that was a position of power in his guild, but he didn’t reply.

Here are some of my favourites:

Mercenaries for hire?

Yup, he won himself a healer for that AB match

Full of win: A strange mage name, a strange guild rank, and an awesome guild name

Hey! I promise this guy is NOT affliated in any way with www.hotsdots.com

Mages and their beverages...

Craaaaazy

I guess he's not the first person to aspire to be Britney

Madsnakelol. LOL. I just like the character name.

Anti patch 3.2.0? What do you think?

Ah, I thought this position was already taken?

We are young! Heartache to heartache...

Now this is a rank every raiding guild needs! Keep those teens in line!

Only a Gnome Warrior would consider Bladestorm "cute"

Read that one again. Slowly. Is this one for real?

* Myer is the name of a chain of department stores in Australia.

Both Cass and I have tried several raid frame addons and both of us have been using VuhDo for several months. We love it.

Introducing VuhDo

VuhDo out-of-the-box in Alterac Valley

VuhDo looks great, gives you all the customisation of Grid, and is as easy to use as Healbot.

You don’t need to be a healer to like VuhDo, and if you form any kind of party, battleground or participate in Wintergrasp battles, you might like playing with something more compact and meaningful than the default Blizzard UI.

Here’s just a highlight of what VuhDo does:

1. Displays need-to-know stuff about your party/raid members
   Life, Mana/Energy/Rage/Runic Power, Debuffs, Player Status (eg. Ghost or AFK)
   and especially for the Healers: Incoming Heals, who has Aggro, HoT Timers
2. Click Casting
   You can heal, decurse, target raid members with mouse clicks
   You can automatically resurrect and decurse players out of combat
3. Buffing
   Smart buffing, with 1 click will buff the entire raid – you can set up the parametres

But the stuff that is really impressive, I think, are these little things:

• See immediately who has aggro – you’ll have a Rejuvenation and already be casting Regrowth on that Mage before the mob even reaches him and the tank has realised something’s gone wrong.
• Players who can be resurrected can automatically resurrect simply by clicking on the dead player’s frame out of combat. Even better still, you can see who is already being resurrected (their character name turns green). And, of course, you can customise your I’m-rezzing-you announcement to say exactly what you want.
• Auto-cleanse off afflictions that are still on the player when you leave combat. If you’re chain casting heals the minute the last mob is dead the next heal you go to cast will instead be a cleanse to automatically remove any nasties from your target (that might be making you heal in the first place).

And overall it’s just easier to set up to monitor your HoTs and other buffs like Power Word: Shield on your targets as well as debuffs like Weakened Soul (for Priestys like Cass) than any other raid frame addon.

To access VuhDo’s options type /vuhdo opt

My Final Result

Lath's Interface with VuhDo dead center at the bottom of the screen (click to expand)

In my interface VuhDo takes center stage while my spells, bags and action bars are moved off to the side. Keeping the raid alive is my responsibility so I like having VuhDo right there where I can’t miss it.

I find it’s easy to identify who’s who by colouring my frames using the Class colours option and you can clearly see who’s tanking and taking damage by the red borders and >>Character<< symbols  to show aggro/threat.

I have it set up so that Rejuvenation is a little box on the bottom left (you can see in my screen shot the white boxes).  It does a count down from 9 ticks onwards so I don’t waste mana and refresh too early.

Lifebloom ticks and stacks are also easy to keep track of. 1 stack is red, 2 is yellow and 3 stacks is green. The timer lets me know how long I have until the stacks will bloom and fall off.

Pets can be displayed and customised to take up very little room (the green bar list to the right of my player frames).

Cass’s Final Result

Left: In 25 man Ulduar, playing as Shadow. Right: In Isle of Conquest, healing as Discipline

You can drag and drop VuhDo at any moment to reposition it, and that’s how I like to play. When healing, I’ll drag it closer in to the screen center. I like the 2 column format because it expands out so easily to accommodate 40 man battleground raid groups. 1 column looked too much like a rainbow (way too distracting!).

When I play as Discipline it’s important to track Power Word: Shield and Weakened Soul.

In my configuration Weakened Soul is represented by its debuff icon and is displayed in the top right hand corner of a frame. I have it set up to only display, at most, 2 debuffs, and Weakened Soul is given the highest priority no matter what else is going on.

Power Word: Shield is represented by the white little box in the bottom left corner of a player frame. The Paladin in Group 3 that has run out of range in the right hand battleground example (a sure fire way to die!) has both Power Word: Shield still active and Weakened Soul and “agro”.

Renew is represented by a little red box in the top left corner of a player frame (not shown in either example).

My spells are set to:

• Scroll up/down (easier than clicking): Target player
• Left Click: Flash Heal
• Shift Left Click: Penance
• Alt Left Click: Prayer of Mending
• Ctrl Left Click: Prayer of Healing
• Right Click: Power Word: Shield
• Shift Right Click: Renew
• Ctrl Right Click: Pain Suppression

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/ 12 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.