UI Spring Cleaning

Spring is nearly over, and for those of us compulsive procrastinators, that signifies the time to maybe think about spring cleaning before it's called summer cleaning. Since I've been meaning to spruce up my UI a little, I am going to share my experiences at getting more of what I want from my UI.


I'll go through my current UI and discuss the pros and cons, and what I am planning to change.


click to enlarge




1)Pitbull Unit Frames 3
One of my "must have" mods, although I am going to check out Vuhdo, it sounds like it can accomplish what I want, I am also gonna check out Pitbull 4, apparently it doesnt have an options UI that has thousands of ways to modify it.What I have now is bar fade on raid members out of heal range, hp/mana in numerical form--an easy way to gear check someone.
It shows incoming heals on a target as you can see on Emfer and Tembell in the screenshot)Health bars flash and change from green to red as health drops, making for very easy mouseover healing.I want to change this so that the bars are smaller, and neater along the edge of my screen.I would also like to re-enable cast bars so I know who is casting what, but I have that part disabled in an attempt to keep over 10fps during 25 mans. I also want to get my unit frames more responsive to debuffs for cleansing duty so that I can get rid of Decursive altogether (it's usually under my buffs but is disabled for Maly as it is not needed.)

at 1A I have target info. You cannot see it at the moment, but just below my health bar is where my pet's bar would go, and just right of my health bar is the target's bar. It's empty because the power spark I had targetted had just died, and I was switching targets back to Malygos.What you see currently is my Focus target (emfer) and the focus' target. Just above the focus is where my actual target would be, as well as a bar of my target's target.
I want to clean these up to make them smaller, and tighter along the edge of my screen. I'm also going to have these bars show or not show buffs/debuffs depending on which bar---my focus target's target is not going to have any info other than a health bar and a name, whereas my actual target is going to have every shred of info possible.

at 1b I have pet health bars. These are going to be either removed completely or changed to very very tiny health bars tucked along the right side of the screen.

2)Deadly Boss ModsGonna resize and reposition this addon, as well as eliminate the occurance of double messages about the Power Spark (this occurs in alot of encounters)

3)I usually use elkano's buff bars, and keep decursive tucked away here. I also usually have a minimap mod that makes it square, smaller and neater, but I have those all disabled for Maly to up my framerate. I'm not sure what I will do here, because it will all depend on my framerate.
I used to have a mega wicked UI but then I began raiding exclusively 25mans and the framelag was horrendous, I had been used to 10man where I could use every bells-and-whistles addon out there.The Ugly buff are on my current UI is fallout from not assembling a proper 25 man UI yet.

4)Totem Timers
This addon rules for shaman, and is hands down the best totem addon out there. Just because someone likes an addon better does not make it better. I have tried every totem addon and quite simply TT can do everything the others can do, and way, way more. And it's configurable to also do as little as you'd like.4a is also from Totem Timers, my plan is to resize and move all parts of Totem Timers to somewhere neater on the screen, as well as shrinking it further and fading it more.

5)Shock and Awe
The awesomest Enhancement Shaman specific addon out there. Audio warnings of when certain spells are ready or down, cooldown tracking and a simple rotation advisor.All I'm gonna do is resize and reposition this one, it's pretty much perfect as is.

6)Omen
What needs to be said about Omen? It's a raiding must. Just gonna resize and tuck this one away better, and make it more see-through.

7)Dominos
Super awesome action bar mod. Allows you to place a bar of any size or shape anywhere on the screen. Also certain spell buttons fade if your target is out of range. I'm gonna revamp this one ALOT. As you can see from the domino buttons, I have the top bar keybound to Numpad 1-9, as well as Numpad., Numpad* and Numpad-.The next row down is all the same buttons but with CTRL as a modifier, next row down from there is ALT as modifier, and the 6 buttons on the bottom left corner are bound to my mouse.
Alot of the spells I have on the action bar don't need to be there, so they wont be. Also I'm gonna resize and reposition this area.

7a is kinda like the batman utility belt of potions and stuff. Somehow it has become a placeholding area for professions, that is gonna change. The f5-f6 "potion belt" is gonna get shrunk and the professions are getting their own action bar that will be tiny, and fade to invisible unless I mouseover it.

7b I'm gonna give this a go at removing it. Noobish as it sounds this is simply a big huge button that I never click, but use to see if my autoattack is on.(it flashes red when I am attacking) Since I exclusively auto-attack with my Stormstrike macro I dont really need this at all anymore.

7c this has been my random area of "oh fuck, I have no room to put a button for that!"So I'm gonna not be so lazy and delete half of these buttons, and reorganize the rest.

8) This is where recount goes, but I turned it off for higher framerate and used /combatlog + WWS instead.


So basically, much like Ricky's 1979 Chrysler New York,or my old Dodge Ram, my UI works but it has some issues and is absolutely butt-assed ugly.


Hopefully the "After" comparison will be like my old and new vehicle. A 1982 Hunk-Of-Detroit-Pig-Iron vs the sensible sporty mid-sized SUV I got a couple weeks ago. I'm driving a Soccer Mom vehicle :*( DING!

p.s. to those that have asked, I promise to get the best in slot gems list done this week, along with some "those were the good old days" posts about Everquest