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

YYYYAAAAAANNRRRRNNNGGGGGYYYYYAAAAAHHHHH!!!!

No one can holler like Arnold Schwartzenegger. Or so I thought until I tried to commit myself to lazyniess today and login to WoW. Tried being the operative word. I couldnt log in and erupted in a roar that would make Ahnuld cower for sure.

I guess they have been having billing issues with people's credit cards cancelling for no reason. Well that is me, and now it says my card is not a valid number. I just wanted to work on getting fat, on this, my first day off in over 3 weeks. (a week partying in New York does not count as a day off, I had to work hard at it)

Off I am to Walmart to get a gamecard. I hate Walmart. The high cost of low prices sickens me. That and the inevitable 3 year old I will see running around in a diaper, no parents to be seen, Kool-Aid stains around the mouth, rocking a mullet and carrying a baby bottle full of diet coke.
At least I am going home tomorrow and off to Vancouver this weekend to shop for a new truck. (read:get wasted in Vancouver-- I'm not an alcoholic, they go to meetings and I don't have time for that shit.)

As bad as Walmart is I'd rather get dressed and go there than wait an hour on the phone for Blizzard. I tried calling them already and it was not a winning call. Mazes of recordings and robotic queue time readings.

Loot, the root all evil.

Bitching about loot is the raiding guild's national past-time. Not to sound like I played uphill barefooted in the snow but being an experienced MMO player I've seen plenty of guild drama, and the majority comes from fighting over loot. That and fighting over who gets to be my best friend for the day.

Our guild has recently switched to a system called Suicide Kings. Aptly named because there is a list of raid members that bid on loot, and if you are the top positioned bidder, you win the loot, and "suicide" yourself to the bottom of the list. It's very nice and there is an addon that handles an ongoing list onto which we insert new raid members at the bottom. (people at the bottom still get loot quite regularily, and are not at the bottom for long anyways) It was working marvelously, and we would /roll on gear no one bid on for offsets, with a provision that your mainspec cannot roll on offset rolls ever, to avoid people not bidding and getting the loot with a roll and keeping their list position.

With dual spec, and only 3 nights of raiding Naxx25 to see the results, I can tell we are going to need a system to handle offset bidding, or allow people to use their bids on offset gear. Some people are already wanting to go offspec for gear because their main spec would gain only minor upgrades on their last few pieces of 10man gear.

On top of this source of drama, there was already the underlying gripes some people had with the suicide system in the first place. Issues like; Tanks and healers need the best gear so we can progress faster. Offset gear is useless to me because all my specs are dps. I miss all the minor upgrades saving my bid for the big gear. I miss out on big gear because I bid on every piece that is the slightest upgrade. This porridge is too hot. My chair is lumpy. It burns when I pee. My parents are disappointed in my choice of lifestyle. Waa paa pwa, and so on and so forth

Can you see the trend? Thankfully my guildmates are all adults and these issues are being handled peacefully and whatnot. It's better to hear everyone's concerns and ideas, at least we are dealing with issues instead of bottling them up for an explosion. It's really nowhere near as bad as it would be with a different group of people and I've seen it go south alot of times with lesser mortals.
I just hate having to discuss any of it in general. Every system of loot distribution is going to have downsides, and will always have people that dont like certain parts about it. I have no preference really, other than to choose rules which will minimize drama and maximize shutting up about loot rules.

First Post

yay me, maybe I won't be so bored at work.



Oh wait, yes I will. My bad.