Reader UI of the Week: Go hotkey crazy with Vardelm

Greetings!

I've been around since open beta of vanilla WoW. I started using addons almost as soon as they became available, starting with GypsyMod and eventually moving to Discord Mods. Seeing what other people use has always been fascinating, and sometimes inspiring for my own UI.

Somewhere in late TBC, I decided to completely rework my UI. I started with keybinding layout and became a "roaming index finger" player, similar to the configuration in this Blood Sport article. I also decided to get most of my action bars off my screen, except for the bare minimum to show cooldowns for my main attacks. I asked myself what I absolutely HAD to have shown on my screen during combat, and removed everything else. Ever since, I've used the same general layout for all classes. I started using the design while playing a hunter, moved to a ret pally, and since Cata my main is a shaman. I was exclusively enhancement, but lately I've started playing restoration as my secondary spec. Fortunately, my UI ended up working well for me as a newbie healer.

Generally, I trend towards a minimalist approach. The less I have on my screen, the more I can pay attention to the game world. At the same time, there's some amount of information I like to have available. I like "bottom bar" layouts, although I feel like some try to cram in too much there for my taste. Like many, I try to keep the middle of my screen mostly clear, except for my TellMeWhen icons right under my character to show my main cooldowns. I've been playing with this layout for so long now it feels like an old glove. There's room for tweaks to be sure, but overall I'm pretty happy with it.

Here's the rundown on addons:

TellMeWhen - TMW is one of my favorite addons for showing short-term cooldowns for my main actions. I had a similar system with Discord Mods (oh so long ago) and switched to TellMeWhen after Discord went the way of the dodo. Having these icons show just under my character allows me to know what I have available, almost without moving my eyes at all. I wish Blizzard & other game companies would start to incorporate functionality similar to this & action bar mods like Dominos or Bartender into their standard UI.

Bartender4 - This is the action bar mod I'm currently using. I've been a long time Dominos (& Bongos) user, but I've had issues with how to manage vehicles & possession. I wanted vehicle icons just under my character, like TellMeWhen, but didn't want to assign those buttons with the hotkeys I use for vehicles. The reason is that I have my action bars hidden, but laid out to mimic my keyboard so that I can quickly drag & drop spells or macros onto them and know what key the ability will be assigned to. You can see that layout in my "hotkeys" image. I use a Logitech G11 keyboard, which gives me 18 extra keys on the right side, which you can also see in that image. The one thing I miss from Dominos is having chat commands to toggle the action bar display on & off via a macro. For now, I use an alt+ctrl state driver to show them.

Dominos - Previously my main action bar addon, I now use this just for the totem bar, which I actually prefer to other totem mods like TotemTimers.

Shadowed Unit Frames - SUF has plenty of options for customization, & yet is easy to use. My only issue is that it doesn't have settings for right justification of text & length of text frames, so long names of my targets get cut off. It's a minor thing, though. One thing I really like about SUF is the ability to show focus, main tanks, and main assists and also make their positions relative to each other. I have them "stacking" on top of each other just above my minimap on the right side.

Raven - I started using Raven simply because I needed to be able to right click buffs to get rid of them. This was mostly for dual weapons enchants on my enhancement shaman. However, I also added longer cooldown icons up next to my totem bar. I used to use SexyCooldown, but I like just straightforward icons better now.

Clique - Playing healing classes, having some manner of click-casting on unit frames is important. I had this even before I started playing restoration. I've tried Vuhdo & Healbot, and liked them, but I get what I need from Clique + SUF and it's easy to set up.

kgPanels - Pure aesthetics. I use kgPanels to set up shaded backgrounds for my windows. It makes it easier to see chat and my TellMeWhen icons against the game-world background. Also, I feel that the gradient shadow on the bottom helps tie the various frames together & "ground" them, but doesn't make a solid bottom bar that feels so heavy.

ButtonFacade (with Nefs) - ButtonFacade, with the Nefs plugin allows me to have a very clean look to all my icons, including TellMeWhen, Raven, Dominos, & Bartender.

Gnosis - I like this for castbars. I have my player castbar and mirror bar (for breath, fatigue, etc.) right by my TellMeWhen frame. I also have a large, enemy cast bar at the top of my screen to make interrupts a bit easier to manage.

TidyPlates - For a long time, I didn't use name plates at all. The later versions of TidyPlates allow you to show ONLY your current target, which I feel is great as a dps class. I still have the same as a healer, and might start playing around with showing friendly nameplates.

TipTac - I use this to locate my tooltip at my mouse cursor, plus get rid of the standard border that feels "heavy".

Chatter - This removes the UI elements I don't need, and also shows the names of mains for guildies.

Adibags - Great bag addon! I tried ArkInventory for a while. This gives me a 1-window inventory plus categories without tons of setup.

Chinchilla - Gives me a simple, square minimap and removes the border, icons, etc. I've used SexyMap as well. Chinchilla gives me the options I need and seems to be a bit more stable for me.

DBM - Does anyone not use this? :-)

Recount - Great for showing dps, healing, etc. I have a macro set up to toggle the display on and off at will, so most of the time I don't have it up, even in groups.

Omen - Like Recount, I have a macro to toggle the display.

I have a few other minor addons (such as ColorPickerPlus) to make things more convenient, but I could easily do without those. The addons above are really what drive my UI and make interacting with the game world a pleasure rather than a chore.

Cheers!

Vardelm