026: “Addons, Part II”

All right, so let’s talk about the User Interface, or UI. UI refers to how your screen looks to you.

Here’s my fairly fresh 85 paladin, Lucie. (Ignore the fact that Recount says she’s a druid– the name originally belonged to a druid until I deleted her and transferred this paladin over.)

Click to full-view.

Not bad, right? You can see just by glancing at this screenshot that I don’t use much of the default UI. I used to use addons like SexyMap, which are fun, but I found that I prefer to have less to deal with when I make new characters, and since I make a lot of characters, well…

Here are the visible addons, clearly labeled:

I’m not a huge fan of macros, but I always have a /focus macro. (That’s literally all it is, is a macro that says: /focus. I use this because I need to get focus on my tank on all of my alts (except my tanks…). I highly recommend focusing the tank. I don’t recommend doing stuff like macroing all of your heals to your focus target, but I do recommend putting a focus on the tank. This lets you see your focus’s target at all times, so that you can assist off of them and try your best to always be attacking their target.

Here’s a look at some of the less-noticable addons:

Clairey, my leveling priest, showing off her Quartz castbar, and also showing you that castbars appear noticeably for players on the party frames. (Note: I turn off X-Perl’s raid frames because I feel VuhDo is enough.) Also, let’s all ignore trade chat, shall we? 😐

Here’s a slightly better glimpse of Quartz. It’s a very helpful addon as it calculates latency in a way that is easy for someone to see. I always use it right there, lower-center of my screen. When the cast is in the red you can actually start your next cast! You can see my heal falling away on the left side also. (Heals = left side, damage/parrying/etc = right side.)

This is Jenevieve, my hunter, pew-pewing on a target dummy to help you get an idea of what DPSing looks like on my UI. Mik’s Scolling Battle Text can be tweaked to show more or less information. Sometimes less is more– it’s less distracting and anyway, Recount tells you if you’re failing as a DPSer or if you’re doing okay. You don’t need or want to constantly eyeball the damage you’re doing, because one 70k crit is honestly not that exciting. No, really. Remember when a 300 crit was a big deal? HAH.

For some reason, Black Arrow’s DoT has never shown up on my ClassTimer addon, but that’s the only trouble I’ve ever had with it, since it shows literally anything else you could ever want it to. As you can see in the screenshot(s) above, the damage done covers ClassTimer’s DoT timer bars, but that’s okay– at a glance I can still tell if I have Serpent Sting on the target. Something Mik’s does also, is, as you can also tell toward the bottom of the above screenshot, it tells you when things come off of cooldown with a weird POP! sound effect. This is helpful audio-wise and visually. You can also see what VuhDo’s pet bars look like.

The metal bar is an auto-attack/swing timer, I barely even notice it’s there anymore, but it gives you a rough idea of when your auto-attacks will go off.

Other things I do:

-I always keep my camera zoomed out.
-As you can see on those screenshots, I keybind a lot of stuff. Wheel-up, wheel-down, F, G, R, and sometimes H, plus B4 and B5 (mouse buttons). B4 and B5 are usually my mount buttons, though they are keybound on my priest for Prayer of Mending for VuhDo. As for what I do with my camera if my wheel is bound to attacks? I use the arrow up/down keys on the keyboard. I’ve found I’ve never EVER needed to zoom out/in within moments anyway, but I do need to be able to have FAST interrupt speed, so having my interrupts bound to wheel-up? Is amazing. (Hunter + Priest don’t have an interrupt.)
-I ALWAYS keep food/drink/mage’s mana cakes on my bars so that I don’t spend forever hunting for them. When I’m healing and I need to drink, I might have a douchey tank who isn’t paying attention or who runs ahead anyway. Even if it’s 5 seconds faster to click it on my bars (vs. hunting through bags), that at least helps me get back some mana!
-Cooldowns, potions– these things MUST be on your bars!
-Years ago I had professions on my bars, but I no longer do this. Leatherworking/etc don’t need to be there, they’re easily accessible via P –> Professions. However, I usually bind helpful profession things to =, like million, disenchanting, and fishing!
-My top bars are completely unnecessary but I like all that stuff out of my way where I won’t have to look at it. I will sometimes put spells like Levitate, Slowfall, etc there, and/or companion pets for RP purposes, or even super shiny mounts if I feel like jumping on a cool one without hunting through my bags.
-As you can see with my screenshots of some of my characters, I keep wMarker up on the screen. (It’s the addon that shows the colored circles/marks.) You click the circle to drop it on the ground, which I find incredibly helpful in dungeons where you need to explain where to go or where someone should be standing. The marking skull/x/sap/sheep/etc is done via clicking on the target and clicking the marking you want to put on it. If I already have my target selected it’s a little faster than right-clicking the portrait and selecting a mark that way, which can save you time which is helpful in places like Vortex Pinnacle, where the Adepts Must Die First.

Here’s a quick labeling of the minimap addon buttons I have:

How to fix Chatter so that you can move it around:

And, last but not least, the best-best-best thing about Quartz!

What, are you having trouble seeing what I am seeing? It lets you move your TARGET’S CAST BAR! Awesome, right? Wait, do you not see why this is awesome? First, it can help you see when to interrupt, and secondly, some bosses, like the final boss in Vortex Pinnacle, and some trash, like the giants in Stonecore, require you to jump right before they get Static Cling/Quake (respectively) completely cast. This addon will help you see when you need to jump so that you won’t have to look away from the fight to see those cast bars! Yay!