Addon Spotlight: Your Addon Questions
I know, I promised you more raid healing rundown this week, and I apologize for the absence of that, but I'm testing a few new raid healing addons (Grid, Clique and Healium) and I want to be thorough. I've also been getting a lot of reader questions, so I thought it was high time we did an Addon Mailbag.
If you have addon questions, or want to make us aware of an addon that we should be covering, do drop an email to olivia@wowinsider.com. We have a lot of questions to cover, so let's get going. I'm asking for a lot of reader feedback this week for addon questions that have stumped me, so get involved in the comments below!
Ailindah of Wyrmrest Accord asked:
Using a laptop with a 17" screen I am unable to really customize the WoW UI the way I would like to, however there is one quirk I was hoping you could help me out with: Boss Frames. Like you I do not care for the default ones and have searched for ways to change them, however it seems to not be possible without using an alternative unitframe addon, something I do not really care for as I prefer the Blizzard raid frames.
Wanting an alternate boss frame without installing an alternate unit frame addon seems like a tall order indeed! However, it seems that Ailindah's principal objection to unit frame addons is that they replace the standard Blizzard raid frames. As a big fan of those frames myself, I can sympathize with this objection.
But, I have good news! It's highly possible, even using a unit frame replacement addon, to pick and choose what's replaced and what's not. Shadowed Unit Frames is one of the most popular pure unit frame replacement addons, with good reason given its ease of use and compatibility. While it doesn't, unfortunately, seem possible to have the unitframes for just the boss active without the player and target unit frames active, it is completely possible to have the boss frames active with the Blizzard raid frames still working.
Alroxasitas of Earthen Ring asked:
I was curious to know if there was an addon that might summarize what a particular toon did in one sitting. It would be comparable to the popular service X360voice whereby it tracks the progress of an avatar and then "posts" about said avatar. Something like the following: "Alroxasitas raised 5000/6000 of rep today for Shao-Pan (Friendly) and earned a total of 120g. He also finished 2 heroics!!"
The addons I knew of that did this have sadly fallen out of active development! I'm throwing this out to our readers, to see if they know of anything that does this now. In the meantime, TitanPanel includes many a widget by default that shows you your progress in that particular session. You can see an example of the XP one to the right, and while it doesn't encapsulate anything like what Alroxasitas is after, it does provide quite some information.
It also offers the same level of input for gold, for crafting, for heroics, for reputation, for anything you can progress on. Most of this is default, I haven't spent a huge amount of time looking into the various optional modules for TitanPanel, but it's highly likely that this can track everything you need, although not quite how you wanted to! Most achievement addons and rep addons, such as Factionizer or Overachiever, will also inform you of progress in a session.
Sebastien asked:
Do you know of any addon that would create talent/glyph profiles, allowing one to switch between profiles with a hotkey (or something of the sort). I keep queueing into battlegrounds with my soloing talents/glyphs. I also have different configurations for PVE single target and PVE multi target. It gets to be a bit much, and I'm sure I'm not alone in this.
This is another addon request which has been sitting in my inbox for a little while. I've been trying to research and got nowhere fast, having not been able to find an addon to do the job well.
I would, in Cataclysm, have recommended a great addon called Talented, which allows you to save specs and import them using things like the wowhead talent importer, but without leaving game. Unfortunately, this has disappeared with 5.0, and is definitely not working. Wowhead's system to use a talent build is also conspicuous by its absence, and the rework of the talent system makes me think that this is potentially no longer something that can be done by addons. The design of being able to change individual tiers without consulting a trainer etc. does rather seem to make it harder to work via an external program.
I'd love to hear otherwise, though, so if your readers have any input please do let me, and Sebastien, know!
Phyruus asked:
I absolutely love Adibags, but there's one part that irks me about it...
When I'm dumping a bunch of cooking mats into the bank, or selling a handful of greens, or some other form of quickly clicking on a bunch of stuff, the order of the categories tends to switch up on me, often causing me to dump gear or mats or whatever that I didn't intend to get rid of.
Is there a way to keep these categories locked in place, at least for the time that the inventory window is open? If it changes up after closing down the window, I don't care so much about that.
Why yes, yes there is! While it won't keep the slots specifically with the same gaps, it will maintain the order of the groups. If you lose an item or remove an item from one group, it will no longer reshuffle your entire bag. I found this ages ago and have had it checked ever since, and it isn't (as ever with Adibags) in the most intuitive place, so here's a screenshot to serve as a map!
Wowgrl asked:
I have toyed around with the settings in the UI and I can't figure out how to get that angle like the one featured in the Reader UI from Slim. It appears that it was taken 'inside' one of the instances. I can never get the view zoomed out quite that far in my UI when I am 'inside'. And many times, I end up looking at stuff right in front of my face. Scrolling out doesn't do a thing. Unfortunately, I can't pull up the UI options that I use right now because I'm at work but I have toyed around with them and when I am outside, I can replicate the view - zoomed out as far back as I can go. The issue just seems to happen when I am in a room. Is there an addon that controls the camera angle or is it a setting I haven't found in the standard UI?
While this isn't technically script spotlight, or standard UI setting spotlight, I thought I'd help Wowgrl out. There is a setting under Interface/Camera that allows you to set your camera distance, slide that all the way to "Far".
And if that's not far out enough for you, you can type this into chat: /script SetCVar("cameraDistanceMax",50)
That will pull your potential max camera distance all the way out. This was something I did to my UI in Cataclysm to take out Ryolith as a tank. He was so huge he was blocking my view!
John asked via Twitter:
Got an addon ? for you. I play a DK dps, looking for a mod that shows which direction the boss is facing. Ideas?
What a great question! I have searched and searched, and come up with nothing. I would love to see an addon like this so much, for bosses and adds. I'm not even sure it's possible, so if you are aware of anything at all, that would be fantastic.
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.
