Addon Spotlight: 4.2 champions and troublemakers

Each week, WoW Insider brings you a fresh look at reader-submitted UIs as well as Addon Spotlight, which focuses on the backbone of the WoW gameplay experience: the user interface. Everything from bags to bars, buttons to DPS meters and beyond -- your addons folder will never be the same.

Patch day for 4.2, Rage of the Firelands, has come and gone. The world, surprisingly, did not end -- well, end again, I guess, since the cataclysm and all. Patch 4.2 went surprisingly well, with only a few issues with a couple addons, highlighting the fact that the changes made to the WoW interface did not catch most addon authors off guard and many addons didn't even need an update to stay solid.

So today, we're going to look at the champions and troublemakers from patch 4.2, Rage of the Firelands. Most addons stood the test of patch day, easily being integrated back into our UIs with the simple click of the "load out of date addons" button. We had a few troublemakers, but nothing that prevented the fall of raiding civilization like the patch 4.1 changes to scrolling combat text and damage parsers ... although there were a few snafus.

Champions of patch 4.2

It's time to give out some awards for addon this patch. First, the Totally didn't fail and actually let us raid award goes to the slew of boss mods out there that were updated and ready to go, even with beta updates, including BigWigs, DBM, and DXE. These boss mods worked out of the box, day of patch for most players and were ready to go with Firelands content. Some of the encounters in the Firelands raid were changed a bit from their PTR counterparts, but the timers and notifications were the same, and these addons delivered. I was very happy and surprised that DBM updated at least a few times yesterday, easing our raid night into less of an unmitigated disaster that it could have been.

Download the newest version of your favorite boss/raid warning mod so you won't be left out in the cool come the weekend for your big raid night:

Get Deadly Boss Mods at [Curse] or [WoWInterface].
Get DXE at [Curse].
Get BigWigs at [Curse] or [WoWInterface].

Taking inventory

The second award of the patch goes to an addon that I totally didn't think would break one time but did -- yet this time, it didn't. Inventory addons have been notoriously nasty on patch days, especially ArkInventory, whose complicated set of rules and guidelands can run afoul of patches easily. While extremely customizable, this setup can add one more hassle to the patch day process when the syntax on all of your created rules change. AdiBags had a few updates on patch day and worked solidly, even keeping my user-created categories for items and not screwing around with my settings.

It's been a while since I had used ArkInventory, my old inventory addon of choice, and I don't think I'll be going back any time soon as long as AdiBags does most of what I want. The inventory can be a fickle thing and since the keyring is gone, inventory addon authors had to have a keyring-less update ready for your consumption. Plus, I hope you enjoyed those new keys in your bag upon login.

Download AdiBags at [Curse].

Troublemakers of patch 4.2

Once again, scrolling combat text addons caused a lot of people framerate issues, especially during the new boss encounters. After updating to the beta and then the alpha versions of my favorite scrolling combat text addon, Mik's, I still had horrible jumpy problems when engaging Beth'tilac. I don't think it's the addon author's fault necessarily, but something keeps happening to scrolling combat text with each new patch. As of this writing, things should be working normally with an update to the addon

Some people were also complaining that seminal favorite Recount was screwing up some peoples' systems and, in fact, was causing some problems. A quick patch up and an alpha/beta upgrade, however, seemed to be enough. Addons were quick to update after 4.2's release, since many authors know their addons can be replaced by potential heirs to their category's throne. In the addon game of thrones, you Lua or you die.

All in all, patch 4.2 was not a devestating patch for addons. My own personal experience was extremely positive, only having to remember to click the "load out of date addons" button, and everything working seamlessly. In fact, most of patch 4.2 was a pretty smooth affair. Are we in a new age of patching for World of Warcraft, where the PTR accurately reflects the many UI changes happened, addon authors are ready to roll, and Blizzard's architecture just holds up solidly? Good times. Good times.

Addon mailbag time!

I've been putting off this question in the mailbag for some time, because I really wanted to find an answer but just couldn't hack it. I asked tons of rogues for suggestions on addons for pickpocketing, and none turned up a response for me. The advice they gave me was that most humanoids are able to be pickpocketed, and that Wowhead was the best resource for finding out what was in their pockets. With your help, maybe we can find poor Taggz here an addon that suits his purposes. What, if any, is a good rogue-helper addon that can be your one-stop-shop in game for pickpocketing information?

I think Mik's might actually be the addon you're looking for, but with all of the options currently turned on. One of the reasons I like MikScrollingBattleText so much is that it is amazingly customizable. You can turn off a bunch of events and numbers you don't want to see, resize the information feeds, change the size and font of the text, and more. By turning off a lot of the options and positioning the combat text displays to different areas of your screen, you might have the addon you're looking for right under your nose. I know I basically just said that Mik's and a handful of other scrolling combat text addons were a little broken come patch 4.2, but they usually bounce back pretty quickly through updates as soon as they can.

Barring that, Blizzard has an included scrolling combat text that has been in the default UI for some time now and is accessible through the interface option on the ESC menu. It also has a healthy bit of options, but nothing as customizable as Mik's.

Addons are what we do on Addon Spotlight. If you're new to mods, Addons 101 will walk you through the basics; see what other players are doing at Reader UI of the Week. If there's a mod you think Addon Spotlight should take a look at, email mat@wowinsider.com.