Curse of Doom: Personalisation - User Interface

WoW Blogs - Curse of Doom Warlock Blog

Last Updated on Wednesday, 01 September 2010 12:28 Written by Insertfoot Wednesday, 01 September 2010 11:03

A Warlocks User Interface (Warlock UI)

Sorry for the delay in posting! Finally down that annoying nub at the end of ICC so I’ve been celebrating and visited real life (???)  This week’s topic will be about Add-ons. Everyone has their own comfortable style, some like it free and clear, others prefer a jam packed info nest. I’ll try and compare a few of the highly used add-ons out there with either the lesser known alternatives or the more obvious standard options right in front of your nose.

One of the eternally changing aspects of WoW is Add-on usefulness.   According to Curse (.com) there are over 5,000 add-ons, which is a crazy amount if you think about it.  In a strange way it occurred to me add-ons are like life. You start with none and if you play long enough you’ll probably end with none. Then I slapped myself for talking psychological dribble and thought just blog. Since they are almost a must in PvE and because not all of us will have the skills of Azeal or Inflamez in PvP we will take a deep(ish) look.

Questing

One of the best additions for blizzard has been the quest helper since the single biggest turn off in the game was levelling when you have no idea about anything. I think I lost track of the quests which read ‘go kill the baddie at XX’ and because I had very little knowledge of the game I would instead chase the nearest mage around furiously clicking on him and resorting to /spit. Thankfully we now have the default quest helper, which  is as good as any of the add-ons out there so I don’t think I will drone on and on about this, but I will give a special mention to Quest Helper for all those special people who struggling at reading information that expands over 4 lines.

(Quest Helper - http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/quest-helper.aspx)

DoT Timers.

This one is slightly trickier to compare since the standard UI started occasionally bugging out on me and stopped showing the DoT icons which can really mess with your DPS. Otherwise the standard UI has a nice count down feel on the enemy portrait. You can also keep track of another DoT’d target by using focus frame, but won’t help if you need to track DoTs on more mobs.

For back up purposes I use ButtonTimers mainly because I like how you can customise and interact with it. You could even go as far as using this to replacing your action bar. The downsides to this add-on comes from it only showing one set of DoTs at a time even though it keeps track of all DoT’d mobs and it does not show pet abilities or debuffs.

The main add-on used by the majority of Warlocks would be Forte Xorcist. This add-on doesn’t just track and show every DoT it basically covers everything which belongs to a Warlock i.e. shards, summoning emotes, spell warning, etc. Recommended not only for beginners, but for anyone who would like a simplistic and efficient add-on.

(ButtonTimers - http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/buttontimers.aspx)

(Forte - http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/fortexorcist.aspx)

User Interface.

There is actually a way to move your interface by using the slash command aka > /  <. However these can be complicated so it’s best to be 100% sure of what you are going to enter and save them on a note pad or in a macro. Here is an example which allows the target and player frames to become draggable till you log out or reload U.I.

/run for _, f in pairs{PlayerFrame, TargetFrame} do f:SetMovable(true) f:SetScript("OnDragStart", f.StartMoving) f:SetScript("OnDragStop", f.StopMovingOrSizing) f:RegisterForDrag("LeftButton") end

I would need something the size of a paladin’s ego to list all the add-ons created to help modify U.I. The most renowned are Xpearl and Pitbull, which allow you to both customise and change the appearance to suit your needs, but these can get really bogged down including masses of other add-ons.

(X-Pearl - http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/xperl.aspx)

(Pitbull -http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/pitbull4.aspx)

For something in between, you can download MoveAnything. It pretty much does what it says, it unlocks and moves anything. This is the best option if you like the look of the standard U.I., but want to customise it.

(MoveAnything - http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/move-anything.aspx)

Casting bars.

The default casting bar is pretty decent mainly because it is always positioned correctly in relation to the portrait and the character buffs / debuffs. The option to enlarge focus frame is an added bonus particularly in PvP and covers all the bases in regard of what you need to see.

If you are looking to modify the casting bar Quartz is a very good option. You can move, resize and customise every available cast bar as well as providing a pet bar. While that may not seem particularly interesting, I found the quartz pet bar simply more stand out if you need to pay attention to that detail.  On the negative side I couldn’t mimic the positioning of the standard cast bar in relation to buffs or debuffs, but this is a minor  point which relates to the amount of buffs / debuffs or by moving the bar that bit further away.

(Quartz - http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/quartz.aspx)

There are other cast bars which may perform better, but these are usually integrated into the U.I. add-ons so I’ll leave them to that section.

Diminishing Returns or Cool Downs.

For Warlock these are manly needed in PvP. The two man add-ons used to monitor this info are cc & dr tracker. When configured correctly not only do they do a wonderful job of displaying all the information you will ever need individually, but they can be combined to form a super add-on. The main problem of-course is configuration; it isn’t a fast or an easy process unless you are very familiar with this sort of thing. The other problem comes from entering mass PvP, ie A.V., where the bars often explode into sky scrapers of information.

(Cc tracker - http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/cc-tracker/download/350729.aspx.)

(Dr tracker - http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/dr-tracker.aspx.)

WoW does have its own way of helping you with dr’s and cd’s if you use your initiative. There are several commands to reveal the stopwatch (/stopwatch or /sw), then there are commands to create a value for the stopwatch to count down from (/stopwatch XX or /sw XX – with XX being the value) and finally the commands to start or stop the stopwatch (/sw play or /sw stop). This allows you to create a personalised timer which dings when the countdown finishes. The problem with this, and it kind of a massive problem, is the limitation to only show one at a time and if you overwrite it, you lose track of the previous info.

Macro example (*diminishing returns is 15 seconds, but add the cast time of your spell to it because the countdown starts once the macro is pressed.)

#showtooltip fear

/cast fear

/sw 16

/sw play

Next week I’ll try and include more specific Beta information and maybe some Ruby Sanctum. I’ll also try to include any feedback or touch on the recent success of Warlocks in MLG especially Azeal’s play against Team Digitas.