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Reader UI of the Week: January 31 to February 6
Once again it's time for the ever-increasingly popular Reader UI of the Week. This week brings us something special, in that these teeny-tiny images link to GIANT MONSTROUS IMAGES. This is the widest screen setting I've seen so far. Be warned, clicking opens massive real-sized images that are about 2 megs each. Character Name: Seperioth (50 druid) (pictured is my 19 rogue twink. Seper) Screensize: 2560x1024 (2 19" lcd's) General Theme: Anything that helps make gameplay easier and information brought forward to where I need it. Addon's Used: Atlas, Atlas Loot, Auctioneer, CT_MailMod, Enchantrix, FlightTime, MobsToLevel, punky_coords, Titan, TitanBG, TitanHonorGrind, Titan Emote and FinalFantasylization (not all the time though) I go searching for addons every week now to try and find answers to problems I might be having or have had in the past. A big one is I tend to miss my buddy's and my health (because its so far to the left :p) so sometimes we wipe because of that. I haven't found an answer to that yet. Other problems in the past have been how many mobs to lvl (i like grinding mobs when i'm a few bars away), what loot a boss drops ( when i was making my twink this came in handy) and flight times (so i can go get a drink or snack real quick). I use all these things alot and dont know how i went through 30 lvls without them :p Ive attached 2 shots. One of my UI the other shows the beautiful screenshots I can take that a single 19" monitor could not take. Alot of people are amazed I play at that resolution. Some of you might not realize I have the LCD frame in the middle of my screen :p So my character, bars etc. are all cut in half :p. But you get used to it after awhile. So there you have it, another amazing Reader UI setup. Discuss in the comments, and remember to submit your UI to "readerui at gmail dot com". Just be sure to type it correctly!
AddOn Spotlight: MazzleUI
This is a big one, and one I've been waiting for for quite some time (about six months, I'd say). I don't usually bother even looking into compilations of mods, since I've found I can always put together a more satisfying solution myself, but MazzleUI may well prove to be the exception. Here's how Mazzlefizz, the author, describes it: MazzleUI is a comprehensive, customized user interface for the World of Warcraft that attempts to be clean, symmetrical, provides lots of information, use minimal space and be highly efficient. Sounds great, right? However, for most of MazzleUI's life, it's been in closed beta. MazzleUI 1.0 was just released today -- I saw the news when I woke up, and haven't done anything but install and play with it since. I'm just taking a break to tell you all about it, and then I'm sure I'll be diving right back in
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.
Reader UI of the Week: January 23 - 30
The response to last week's Reader UI column was fantastic, and we're glad you enjoy seeing and learning more about your fellow gamers' UIs and the mods that make them tick! Let's dive on in to this week's UI then! Character's Name: Aburr (Guild: Dragonstar; Server: Whisperwind) Screen Size: 19" Samsung SyncMaster 930B running 1280x1024, 72 Hz General Theme: Information Junkie - I spend all day at work absorbing information, and I can't shake that tendency once I'm logged in. The more information I have access to in a relatively clean, customizable, uncluttered interface, the better. Addons:TitanBar (including DamageMeters, Crit, and Roll) - basic infoMonkeyQuest - gives the ability to monitor all the quests in your log at onceDeadly Boss Mods - raid and battleground timers/warnings CT_mod and CT_raidassist - functionality that is so parsimonious, Blizz should just buy a licenseEquipCompare - compare loot with what is currently equipped; saves time in a roll!OmniCC - big, viewable numeric cooldowns on each button as necessary Atlas and AtlasQuest - adds information and functionality to standard world mapEZDismount - dismounts you upon attempting a spellcast or talking to a flight mastervBagnon - (open in screenshot) consolidates your inventory into one window, on-demand highlighting of various item types, remote viewing of bank inventory TipBuddy - attaches tooltips to your cursor, reformats tooltips with more informationJIM Abacus - evenly distributes mini-map buttons, hides unused buttonsAuctioneer - useful for EnhTooltip, which adds pricing, selling, and disenchanting information to the tooltip ErrorBlock - takes the big red pop-up errors and moves them to your chat windowEnhancedFlightMap - adds flight paths and flight masters to your world mapx-perl - allows for total control of player, party, raid, target, and focus frames Improved Camera - allows your camera to zoom out farther than normalScrolling Combat Text - gives more information and is more customizable than that offered in the standard UIBongos - customizable action bars General Blurb: With the number of addons I have, patch days (particularly to 2.0) can be dreadful. Despite this, I persist using so many addons because each one provides a useful functionality that is not available or underpowered in the standard interface. I feel like this UI is pretty clean for how powerful it is. It also allows me to be flexible; some nights I get too tired to remember my keybindings and I have to rely on button clicking, so having everything available to a mouseclick is convenient. While the standard UI is nice and uncomplicated, having this much functionality at my fingertips has really helped my playing.
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 :CyCircled
I love finding new addons. Let me tell you how I found CyCircled, my favorite new change to my UI. I was looking through some of the excellent submissions we're receiving for Reader UI of the Week (shameless plug), and was inspired to go looking for an update to my own UI. Somewhere along the way, I came across the All Deuce UI. Impressed, but slightly overwhelmed by ADUI, I was about to go back to my old setup. There was, however, one feature of ADUI that I really adored from the get-go. ROUND BUTTONS! I wanted, no I *NEEDED* round buttons. I like consistency in my UI. If I'm going to have a round minimap, and round minimap buttons, then I've got to have round action bar buttons, right?
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.
Reader UI of the Week: January 15 - 22
Welcome to Reader UI of the Week, your new weekly feature on what your peers are using in the world of AddOns and enhancements to improve the World of Warcraft experience. Each week we'll look at one reader-submitted entry, and expose you to new ideas for your own UI setup. As we're just starting this week, we'll start with my own UI. Character Name: Wyahld Screen Size: 1680x1050 - 20" Widescreen Monitor General Theme: Uncluttered - I need room to see the game while I'm raiding or in a party. I didn't like the default action bars that took up so much screen real estate. I don't like the lack of info in the default unitframes. AddOns Used: Bongos, Titan Bar, X-Perl Unitframes, CT-mod Core, CT BuffMod, Bagnon, TrackerDial, Call of Elements I've had a lot of UI themes over the years, but I've come around almost full circle to realize that simple is best. If I can leave my screen mostly uncluttered, then I find myself focusing on the game rather than any extraneous information. So this is my shammy, he's level 40 now and leveling quickly. The only add-on that really has an impact on gameplay is Call of Elements, which is a great tool for setting up totems. So, gather up your UI screenshots, as well as your Character's Name, the Screen Size, your General Theme, the AddOns you're using, and a little blurb about it. Once you've got all that, submit it to readerui at gmail dot com. Oh, and feel free to rip my setup in the comments, and give me advice on making it better.
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).
AddOns for the complete noob
[Note: Hopefully this will be a valuable resource for new players. If you know any, feel free to send them here. If you already know how to use AddOns, there is probably very little in this post that will interest you.]You just got WoW, or maybe you've had it for a while. You heard about these neat things called "AddOns" and you want to try them out. How do you do it?
Problems appearing in 2.0.3
2.0.3 doesn't seem to have as many problems as 2.0.1 did, but there's at least a few going around.The first is more of a problem players are having-- the actual code is "working as intended." More than a few players were distraught to note that crowd control trinkets like the Tidal Charm are now "fizzing out after level 60," according to the tooltips. Drysc says about what you'd expect: that this kind of stuff is part of the CC nerfing going on, and that the trinkets coming in BC will make your eyes pop out of your head anyway. Tough luck, basically.There's a few known bugs going around, however. One a lot of people are dealing with is that the default target frame-- the little portrait of your target next to yours-- is disappearing. One small fix is simply typing /console reloadui: that seems to bring it back up for a bit, but it usually drops away again. It's definitely a repeatable bug, though, so hopefully a word from Blizz is forthcoming.Another known bug leads to issues changing and promoting raid leadership and main looters. Blizz acknowledges they're working on this one. Meanwhile, Kelriia over on LJ supposedly has a fix: either type /promote [name of leader][last letter of leader's name] , or /script PromotetoAssistant [name and last letter again]. Not sure if anyone else has tested those (or why you'd have to include the last letter repeated), but if it works, there you go.A few people are complaining that their addons aren't loading-- here's a quick reminder that after a patch, you have to go to the addon screen and actually check "Load out-of-date Addons." Worked for me.And finally, just a personal disappointment, being a Shaman: Where the heck is my Totemic Recall? Never mind-- commenter mubari says it's waiting for me at the trainer. Sweet!
AddOn Spotlight: AutoSelect
I like efficiency. If it lets me skip a click, I say, it's worth a download. And AutoSelect lets you skip many, many clicks. What it does is jump past the "gossip" screen at NPCs that offer one, going straight to the vendor interface/flight path map/whatever it is that NPC is actually for. And if you really feel the need to see Innkeeper Firebrew say "Fill your tankard and pull up a chair" one more time, just hold down control when you right-click the NPC -- that disables AutoSelect.The author has quit developing the mod in dissatisfaction over WoW 2's restrictiveness, but not before updating it to work with 2.0.1. Hopefully someone will take it over when it needs changes; for now, it works perfectly.Download at ui.worldofwar.netPreviously on the SpotlightHave a favorite mod? Drop us a line, or post a comment.
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
On TextMate extras
Like me, there are probably a lot of fresh new TextMate users out there in the audience thanks at least in part to MacHeist, so I thought it would be pertinent to point out a few helpful resources Allan Odgaard (TM's developer) maintains at macromates.com. Of course the searchable mailing list and IRC channel are handy for getting your discussion on, over which TM user Brett Terpstra just shared a WordPress templating bundle he's created - quite possibly a good addition to that theming workflow we just blogged. Another powerful resource is the TextMate wiki, which houses a plethora of learning tools and resources such as a bundle repository if you're looking for some features or a language not included by default, as well as an RSS feed for bundle changes. Of course, what text app would be complete without user submitted themes? Last on my resource roundup (but by no means the end of what's available) are a few TextMate plugins, including a WebMate plugin that turns TM's Web Preview into a full-fledged WYSIWYG HTML editor based on WebKit. There's a lot more from where all this came from, so dive in or simply get your feet wet with this swiss army knife of text editors.
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!
WoW Model Viewer updated to 2.0.1 alpha
WoW Model Viewer has been updated to work with 2.0.1, and they've got a new website to boot. If you've never used it, the model viewer is a program that lets you poke around inside the WoW resources on your computer, and check out the 3D models of players, armor, NPCs, and so on. The latest version is being called .5 "very alpha" and can be found here.A few words of warning: as the name implies, the software isn't quite done yet, which means it's likely to (at least) crash, and (at worst) break your computer (I doubt that's likely to happen, but anytime you run alpha software, it's a possibility). In addition, the model viewer is in no way created or condoned by Blizzard-- there's a chance (albeit small, I realize) that they could consider this using a 3rd party program to modify the game files. Again, it's not likely-- I doubt this program actually does any editing, just reading-- but the possibility is there.Anyway, the Model Viewer can make for some pretty cool looks at content you haven't yet seen in the game (or haven't yet been able to examine closely). And the Model Viewer is also responsible for some pretty amazing fanmade videos, too. The new version allows you to access the Blood Elf and Draenei models, so if you're interested in seeing what's just around the corner with the expansion (and willing to use unofficial alpha software to do it), have at it.
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!]
Return of the addons to Azeroth
My guild headed back to raiding last night (seems a lot of guilds are taking a vacation lately, with the patch and the expansion giving a one-two punch to the PVE game), and while BWL wasn't quite ready for us-- the Razorgore orb was bugged, and our MT couldn't see a pet bar for him-- we finally got back in the groove in MC. We'd been at a loss with new specs and a lack of our usual mods, but tonight, with various means and instruments, we were able to finally down some of our old farm targets and pick up some epic gear.Decursive, as I said last week, was the big one. Apparently it was number one on the devs' hitlist, and for good reason, because it definitely took a lot of work out of cleansing decurses (like the one Lucifron throws out). But we've found alternatives that are "good enough." One of our mages now swears by Grid, an addon that works with 2.0.1 (I haven't tried it, but it comes highly recommended). And even more people benefited from this macro, posted in the Forums. It seems that if you create a macro that says "/cast [target=mouseover] Remove Lesser Magic" (or whatever decursing spell you want to use), you can then run your mouse over players or their raid icons while spamming the macro button, and you've got a reasonable facsimile of what Decursive used to do. In fact, this is even better-- Shaman (like myself) can create a mouseover Purge macro, run your mouse across a group of enemies in PVP while spamming the button, and never have to put up with a buff or renew spell ever again.Speaking of my Shaman, when I asked for help last week, you all gracefully answered. I was extremely frustrated with the changes to addons (I lived by all the extra info redHeart gave me), but when I finally tried out and used Clique, I finally felt back at home. It's simple to set up and use, and makes things almost as easy as they were pre-2.0 (the author even has a video up showing how simple it is to use). Finally, the brand new version of CTRaid, 1.621 (I think that's the third version they've released since the patch) finally gets rid of that extremely annoying "clicking" noise the patch added to raids. A few things are still bugged in a few raid instances, but finally, raiding is getting back to normal.
