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AddOn Spotlight: RatingBuster
This one is nice and simple. You know those combat ratings that Blizz introduced in 2.0.1? Crit rating, hit rating, etc.? What RatingBuster does is translate those into percentages. This is harder than you may think, because the relationship between rating and percentage varies according to your level as well as the type of rating. RatingBuster does the math for you and makes your tooltips look like what you see in the screenshot. Specifically, it inserts the little percentages in parentheses by the spellcrit and spellhit ratings.
AddOn Spotlight: Totemus
TOTEMS! Yes, I'm the quintessential WoW Switcher. Vlambaard is sitting on a shelf, gathering dust, decked out in Judgement gear with his Herald of Woe. In his place, Wyahld has leveled like a madman, busting out totems and frostshocks all over the place. In my eternal quest for better living in the World (of Warcraft), I came across Totemus, a UI mod for shaman in the spirit of Necrosis. As you can see in the illustration above, Totemus is essentially a big round button, with some little round buttons surrounding it. Let's break it down, so you can see how it'll be of use to you. It's pretty darn configurable, so I'll just reference my installation, and let you rock your own from there.
AddOn Spotlight: MetaHUD
When I posted my UI the other day, as well as when I posted about ArcHUD, I got a lot of Drathal's HUD (DHUD) fans telling me I should use that instead. I had tried DHUD before, but it never really grabbed me. However, I figured if so many nice WoW Insider readers liked it, perhaps I should give it another shot. MetaHUD seems to be DHUD's successor, so I downloaded that, and have been playing with it for the last day or so.The verdict? I love it! You guys were right; MHUD is really, really nice. I'm not sure I'm going to throw away Arc just yet, but MHUD is making me very happy indeed. I think my favorite part is the casting bar, which I liked so much I put up a shoddy video on YouTube of it (please excuse my YouTube noobiness; it looks better on screen, I swear).
AddOn Spotlight: ItemRack
This is one AddOn that I'd recommend to just about everyone. ItemRack lets you construct sets of equipment, and allows you to switch them based on hotkeys, events, or menu activation. For example, on my Priest, I have a heal set, a solo set (pictured), and a fire resistance set, which I use ItemRack's menu to switch between, although I should probably set hotkeys (it's also got plugins for FuBar and Titan Bar). I also have a Plaguelands set, which consists of my Argent Dawn trinket, that gets auto-equipped whenever I enter the PL, and a mount set, which has my boots with spurs, that gets auto-equipped when I mount up.
AddOn Spotlight: CT_MailMod
This is a venerable piece of code, having been around WoW at least as long as I have. In general, the sprawling CT universe of AddOns has been remarkably persistent in staying around and staying updated. CT_RaidAssist gets all the glory, but other CT mods can be really handy. I find it crucial to keep an alt to mail things off to, and it would be a huge pain without CT_MailMod. It allows me to send off multiple items with one click, as shown in the screenshot: enter the recipient's name, alt-click all the items you want to send, hit "send", and you're done.
AddOn Spotlight: ArcHUD
This is my HUD. There are many like it, but this one is mine. I've gotten a few questions from various people about how to make the rings show up around your character, and this is how I do it. ArcHUD, like other HUD mods, puts meters for your health, your mana/rage/energy, your target's health, and other things right by your character where the action is, so you don't always have to go looking up into the corner of the screen. In the screenshot, for instance, from left to right, the bars are: my mana, my HP, my casting bar, and target's HP. Near the bars, you can see text for various things: the name of the spell I'm casting (lol, Smite), my HP and MP in numerical form, the time left on my cast, and my target's percentage health remaining. Below all that is some extra info on my target, target of target, and target of target's target, along with a nice little 3D model of my target (this helps to quickly see who you're targeting when healing).
AddOn Spotlight: Demon Trainer (Continued)
Hello, mod fans! Back again with a simple, should-be-in-the-default-UI fix for all you Warlocks in the crowd. This one's been around for quite some time, though it seems to have been continued by a new author for the new patch.Do you have a Warlock? Frustrated with the unnecessarily clunky book-buying interface on the demon trainers? Look no further! Demon Trainer (Continued) converts the demon trainer interface to look just like all the other trainers! What's more, it memorizes which spells your demonic pals already know, so there's no duplicate purchases or hunting through page after page to try and figure out which spells are next. Harnessing the dark energies has never been easy, so why not make this part of your every-even-level ritual a little easier: try Demon Trainer (Continued) today!P.S. Nerf Warlocks. (But not really.)Download at CursePrevious Spotlights
AddOn Spotlight: Grid
I used to raid heal using mainly the CT_RaidAssist emergency monitor. Call me a bad healer if you want; it was a lot nicer than having 40 health bars all over my screen. The emergency monitor is not clickable in WoW 2, and thus began my hunt for a way that I could see everybody's health and still see the fight. CT_RA bars, Blizzard's bars, and the like were all out due to being simply too big. Furthermore, I find them a bit overwhelming, making it hard to spot who's low on health. I mostly heal main tanks, but I like to be able to easily see if a Rogue or something takes a big hit. So where does one turn for a set of raid health bars that's small, legible, and informative?
AddOn Spotlight: ClearFont
Being a big fan of typography, ClearFont is one of the first addons I reach for on a fresh install of WoW. All it does is replace the in-game fonts with your choice of several beautiful, readable ones. Some people don't have a problem with Blizzard's choice of fonts, or simply don't care about fonts at all, but for those of us who do, ClearFont is a godsend. Thank you, Kirkburn!
AddOn Spotlight: EngBags and Advanced Bags Plus
Unlike most of the mods I've been posting, EngBags is a pretty new one to me, but I'm already in love with it. It's an all-in-one bag window that sorts your stuff for you -- trade goods go in one area of the window, quest items another, etc. Brilliant and a little bit demented. It's highly configurable, which can make it seem a bit daunting, but the default config is pretty good. I always found keeping my inventory organized a bit of a chore, and now I've got a mod to do it for me (though I do occasionally have to reassign things' categories for best effect).Advanced Bags Plus is a slightly different solution for the same problem. It replaces your five bag icons in the bag bar with a modifiable number of virtual bags for different item categories. It seems slightly easier to configure than EngBags in terms of which items should go in which categories, but it keeps multiple bag windows, which I don't like as much, having used AllInOneInventory/OneBag/Bagnon and the like pretty much since I discovered mods.Engbags at CurseAdvanced Bags Plus at Curse
AddOn Spotlight: EquipCompare
From the "Should-be-in-the-default-UI" department, I humbly present to you: EquipCompare. This is one of those addons that I've been using for so long, and that feels so natural, that I honestly forget it's a mod at all. What it does: every time you mouse over a piece of equipment, the mod displays a tooltip next to the item's tooltip showing what you're currently wearing in that slot. That sounds a bit complicated, but trust me, it's totally not. (In the screenshot, for instance, I'm mousing over a Twilight Cultist Robe while wearing a Robe of Volatile Power (because Golemagg just refuses to drop my Robes of Prophecy).) As soon as you start playing with it you'll wonder how you ever got along without it. It's updated for WoW 2.Download it at Curse or your favorite mods site.[Thanks, Ethan!]
AddOn Spotlight: LootLink
Regardless of how long you've played, I'm sure you've run into LootLink at some point or other. LootLink is an in-game item database that's populated as you encounter new items in Azeroth. It's searchable, and the items within the database can be linked in game to other players. (Yes, this is how you end up with countless linkings and relinkings of every new and awesome piece of gear in the game.) However, besides the infinite amounts of fun you can have with this mod by playing around in the dressing room or teasing your friends with epic items, there's some good utility to this mod as well -- though perhaps it's just my poor memory that makes me say that.Have a favorite mod, or a unique mod you can't live without? Send us a tip and maybe it will wind up in our next AddOn Spotlight!
