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Reader UI of the Week: Five Death Knight UIs

Elizabeth Harper
Updated ·8 min read


World of Warcraft allows all of us an unprecedented ability to modify our user interface to meet our needs. Each week WoW Insider will bring you a fresh and detailed look at reader submitted UIs. Have a screenshot of your UI you want to submit? Send it, along with your character name and server, to readerui@gmail.com.

Last week we took a brief glance at three assorted UIs, but this week we're taking a look at five Death Knight specific UIs. (A closer look at four of them, though the fifth came without much background information. However, that fifth has a unique look that was worth showing off, and here's to hoping someone in the audience help identify some of the mods it's using.) I was curious what mods DKs might be using to keep an eye on their runes, and for those who don't want to read the whole thing to find out this crucial piece of information, the five UIs here include two users of Magic Runes, one user of X-Perl, one user of DKI Runes, and one unidentified rune interface.

For UI details -- and your comments! -- read on.

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Karula of Ysondre (H) sends in the above setup, which is aimed at maximizing viewable space while keeping a lot of data close at hand. In groups and raids, Xperl's tank frames reside directly above Omen, and the party frame above that. Since Karula isn't a healer, raid frames are entirely disabled in this UI. The Blue chat in the lower left corner is general chat, the red chat in the lower right side is the combat log. (Prat helps scale text and the chat frame size to get more room.) The top Bartender bar (top button bar in the lower center of the screen) is typically reserved for items that don't need to be hotkeyed either due to rarity in use, special use, or because of lack of hotkeys to bind (Karula uses a Nostromo). The pet bar is directly below that, with pet attacks hotkeyed as well.

Addons used:

  • Bartender4: A replacement for WoW's standard button bars. These are at the bottom of the screen, in the center.

  • Omen: Threat meter, on the left-hand side of the screen, above the unit frames

  • Recount: Damage and healing meters, not visible in this screenshot.

  • FuBar: An info bar in the bottom center of the screen, below the buttons. Here it's displaying durability, gold, XP, and bag space, but you can set it up to display lots of other things.

  • X-Perl Unitframes: A replacement for WoW's standard player frames, on the left-hand side of the screen. (If you don't know what that means, unit frames are what shows your and your party's health, buffs, and other information.) I'm guessing that Karula's rune interface is X-Perl.

  • Elkano's BuffBars: A replacement for WoW's standard buff display (seen here in the upper right of the screen).

  • Autobar: A button bar that automatically populates itself with items in your inventory (food, potions, bandages, etc).

  • MonkeyQuest: A replacement for WoW's standard quest tracking display. Not visible in this screenshot.

  • Mappy: A square minimap, upper right.

  • Skinner: Lets you change a variety of things about the default UI. Karula uses it to black out where button bars and chat windows sit so you can't see through them.



Rorschack of Ravenholdt (US) sent us the above UI, saying he has a fondness for clean UIs, but also likes them to have a bit of flair. Rorschack's UI philosophy is, "if it doesn't need to be on the screen for my to do my job as a great DPS, then I won't have it on. So a lot of things are there just invisible (I.e. Bag bar is invisible because you don't ever really use it (bind B for all bags))." The screenshot is (obviously) taken in a solo environment, but doesn't look much different in a raid, save Deadly Boss Mods in the top left corner of the screen.

Addons used:

  • ag_UnitFrames: Like X-Perl in Karula's interface above, these are a replacement for WoW's standard player frames. (If you don't know what that means, unit frames are what shows your and your party's health, buffs, and other information.) Rorschack seems to have unit frames directly above the button bars in the center of the screen.

  • Bartender4: A replacement for WoW's standard button bars, bottom of the screen, in the center.

  • LunarSphere: A customizable circular button bar. All I can see of this in the screenshot are the four buttons above Rorschack's runic power display.

  • Deadly Boss Mods: Timers and notifications for boss encounters, not visible in this screenshot.

  • Diablo 3 dynamic orbs: This is what Diabloizes the interface, with orbs for health and runic power.

  • DoTimer: DoT, HoT, and cooldown timers. These seem to live above the runic power display, with another set on the left-hand side of the screen.

  • MagicRunes: A mod that customizes your rune display. Rorschack has them showing up just above the button bars, in between the health and runic power orbs.

  • Outfitter: A mod that allows you to quickly switch from one set of gear into another. Not visible in this screenshot, but a handy addon, nevertheless.

  • Quartz: A replacement for WoW's default casting bar.

  • Recount: Damage and healing meters, not shown here.

  • SexyMap: A mini-map replacement. Says Rorschack, "By far the coolest mini-map mod I've ever had the pleasure of dealing with!"



Entropic from the Panda Attack guild on Dark Iron gives us the above UI. He explains, "I like having my high-priority info handy (health, runes, target, etc), so I tend to cluster that and my buttons in the middle/mid-bottom of the screen. Then I just try to space everything out on the periphery as needed. I'm considering resizing everything to give me a little more space on-screen, but I'm pretty happy with how everything is for right now." The combat shot above looks busier than the UI usually is, since a number of things (Omen, Need to Know, etc) fade out when not in combat (see out of combat screenshot). The weird key layout at the bottom is simply to match (for the most part) the way Entropic has his N52TE gamepad and Logitech mouse buttons mapped.

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, instead of explaining each of the addons on this list, I'll just point you to the annotated screenshot Entropic sent in. Addons used:



Straightforward and to the point, Eric's DK UI above uses the following addons:

  • Pitbull: Replaces the default unit frames for player, target, pet, target of target, and party. Visible on the left-hand side of the screen, at the top.

  • Grid: Replaces default raid frames (above the Omen window in the lower left).

  • Bartender4: Replaces the default button bars, on the bottom of the screen, in the center.

  • ButtonFacade (with Caith button skin): Allows you to style your buttons in different ways.

  • Omen: A threat meter (in the lower left, above the chat window).

  • Chatter: customization for chat windows.

  • SexyMap: a minimap mod, using a simple square skin. Upper right. (Compare this configuration of SexyMap to Rorschack and Entropic's, above.)

  • Elkano's BuffBars: Buff/Debuff bars, showing above on the right-hand side of the screen, below the map.

  • DKIRunes: Rune display and timer, just above the button bars.

  • OmniCC: Adds big, obvious cooldown timers to your buttons.


Anjuna of Ysondre (EU) sent us some screenshots of an awesome UI... but I'm afraid that's about all. The only things I can indentify with complete certainty are Omen and Recount in the raid UI above. The raid frames might be Grid and the button bars might be Bartender, but the rest is up in the air. However, it's a very swanky looking UI with a unique look, so I'm featuring screenshots despite lack of information. If any commenters could shed light on what it's made up of, I'll add in the information here. See also the UI solo and the UI with pet (for the latter, is that some kind of pet UI or some kind of different targeting UI?).

Interested in getting the most out of your user interface? Check back once a week for more examples of reader UIs! Or for more details on individual addons, check out AddOn Spotlight.