Addon Spotlight: Your addon questions - chat, pet battles, mounts, Dinomancers
Right, it's been quite some time since I last scoured the internet for obscure addons on behalf of the WoW Insider readership, and the mailbag has been filling up, so it's time for another edition of Your Addon Questions! As always, if you have questions, pop them in the comments or send me an email.
Wordgardener asked:
I'm using ElvUI, and every time I do a quest that awards honor or another currency, the gain isn't displayed in my logs. It used to show up where the XP and gold gain was. I couldn't find a setting today for it - any idea where this info is? How to turn it on/make it appear?
ElvUI is a sneaky devil with this. It seems to shift from window to window with every update, but there's a very simple way indeed to make sure it pops up where you need it, and what's more, it allows you to completely customize your chat panels.
Hover your mouse over the title of your chat window, the one where you want the information to appear, in this case XP gains, profession skill gains, currency gains and the like. Right-click, and select settings from the menu that appears.
You'll notice the categories to the left. Chat deals with all the different types of chat, guild chat, whispers, yell, say, everything that isn't global chat channels, as they live in Global Channels. Global chat channels are Local, Trade, Localdefense, and so on. And you can see above that Other is everything else! Checking the box next to the relevant text item will put it in the window you right-clicked, which is also helpfully named at the top. In this case, the window is called General.
What's great about this is that you can completely customize your windows. For example, I have a Raid window, and a PvP window, both of which completely ignore everything but channels relevant to raids and PvP. No more being distracted by whispers and guild chat while I'm in an arena, or general chat in raids. The chat channels are all still there, they're just in their own window, out of the way. I keep Trade and General in a different spot, too, so they don't bother me unless I need something from them. I know, I'm all take, take, take. You'll note that, using this menu, you can also edit the channel color of every single chat text, should you want to. And this is far from exclusive to ElvUI, it works with the standard chat panels, and pretty much every UI replacement I've used.
A sudden flurry of emails asked:
Since my random mount addon broke at the end of Cataclysm, I've grown tired of the predictable nature of mounting. Please, Addon Spotlight, won't you find a random mount addon for me?!
Of course, sudden influx of readers bored of the drudgery of knowing what mount you'll be riding before it appears beneath you! I did a very brief bit of research into this and discovered an addon called GogoMount. It allows you to keybind a general mount key, as well as a specific key for no-fly zones, using the in-game keybinding menu. Simply scroll down, almost all the way down, in the keybinding menu which is brought up when you press escape, and select binds for GogoMount. This also allows you to get your mount keys off your bars, which, if your bars are as full as mine, is something of a blessing! I've been using it for a while, and it hasn't let me down yet, although, as with anything that selects randomly, one becomes convinced it favors certain mounts over others. Conspiracy!
I'm sure our commenters will know of other addons that do the same thing, so check that out below.
Castor27 wrote:
I am looking for help on an add-on. While killing Dinomancers I started thinking how nice it would be to track how many we had killed (it was a bunch to find the 3books we needed). I previously had an add-on that did it but cannot remember what it was or if it even works still. Is there anything out there that will keep up with kill counts for mobs?
There certainly is! Rarity has recently been updated, so do make sure you're getting the most current version, which is also on Curse. Rarity is essentially a luck monitor, as its creators put it, it allows you to see how many chances you've had to obtain a given item, mount and so on.
As can be seen above, the addon tracks attempts, and shows how lucky you've been. You can customize rarity to track items, too, so if it's not looking for something you want to track, it can start. It even shows you on the achievement bar, for relevant items, just how many tries it took you. If you really want to know just how unlucky you are, Rarity is an excellent choice. It even has the option to rank achievements by difficulty!
Rarity also plays nicely with many of its recommended friends, which its author is good enough to point out on the project site:
Rarity works best with an LDB display like Fortress, Button Bin, or Titan Panel. If you don't have a display, turn on Rarity's minimap icon. There are lots of displays available - if you don't like one, try another! (Olivia's Edit: ChocolateBar is another good one!)
AddonLoader is highly recommended. This will let you keep the configuration UI unloaded until you need it.
Collectinator is a good companion add-on to Rarity. It will show you where to obtain everything that Rarity tracks.
Archy is recommended to replace the default Archaeology UI, which Rarity has been known to cause problems with.
I would certainly recommend Collectinator, for anyone who's trying to collect just about anything it's a great addon, and as I've mentioned before, Archy is a fantastic aid to digging things up at higher pace.
Beth asks:
Is there an addon that lets you know via tool tip what pet should fight a certain type? For example aquatic is the best pet type against flying type
Aha! An addon question I've sort of answered already! I'll let Beth off, as a couple of people have been asking about pet battle addons, and it's been a wee while since WoW Insider covered a large amount of them. Why, then, have I chosen her question? I got the idea into my head that there should be an addon that would recommend specific pets in your arsenal to take on other pets. So if the Fluxfire Feline is the best choice, it would tell you so, but for the life of me I can't find one that is so specific. Therefore, I'm throwing it to the floor, to my second best resource after google and the depths of my dark mind: the commenters!
Having said all that, the best I can find is Pokemon Trainer.
As you can, perhaps, see from the image above, Pokemon Trainer will look at your current setup and assess their strength against the team you face. The highlighted pets are the active ones, so on the left, my Tiny Harvester, and on the right, my opponent's Phoenix Hatchling. We can see, quite clearly, from the intersecting red and green highlights, that my Tiny Harvester is in rather a bad place against the Phoenix Hatchling. Unfortunately, none of my other pets have a particular advantage against the Hatchling's fiery powers. However, this doesn't really dig through your pets and make recommendations.
Pet Theory is also a good choice for this particular task, as it adds information about the pet's strengths and weaknesses to its tooltip. This gets the closest to doing what Beth's after, of the pet battle addons I've been able to find.
I suppose any pet battler worth their salt should know what they have that fits into the categories shown in pet theory, but I can't help thinking about how that addon that I invented in my head might work. Track successes and failures? I don't know, but hopefully I've been able to help, Beth!
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.
