The long promised post on my UI setup

Promises Promises...

I've been saying I'd get this post out for a while but I've been dropping the ball. I should wait to take a cleaner screenshot, but if this post doesn't get done now it may never happen. So as a warning...this screenshot may very well be recycled in a future post.



So there you have it. The addons I'm rolling with are as follows:

CT Viewport - I like the fact that the top and bottom aren't chopped off of the picture, but you actually get a wider view. I'm spinning my camera like a spaz while tanking to look at my groups position and watch for adds, etc., and this gives me a wider view. It also gets most of my buttons out of the viewing area.


Ice HUD - This one is nice because I hate looking all the way up to the top left to see my hp, then back down to look for a cd button, pot, etc. I turned off all options except for the bars themselves, so I have the unobtrusive semicircles on either side of my character for quick viewing of my hp and rage without a bunch of extra clutter. I tried pitbull for this, and they have some sexy features, but I couldn't seem to get it configured in a way that I liked, so I got rid of it. I found the pitbull raid frames especially difficult.

Bartender 4 - This one has been great. I can easily configure action bars, xp or rep bars, buttons, keybinds, etc. I really like this mod.

Carbonite - Love it, Love it, Love it! I was using Questhelper before, but QH was such a memory hog, and I got a ton of error messages from it. I love the minimap that carbonite has because I can zoom in or out without toggling to the world map. I also really like the shaded areas on the minimap that show me where a quest mob or item could be rather than a single waypoint or dot on the map. It has been much less demanding on my machine while providing so much more in my opinion. I also like the battleground timers and such that it displays for me.

Omen - If you don't have it, you're a tool. And if you want to give me that "threat is dead" load of crap, you're an even bigger tool.

Recount - I linked this one to the wowinsider review rather than the download site because of the detailed explanation it provides. I used to hate damage meters due to the epeen abuse of them, but as I've learned the additional features (such as viewing your top damaging abilities, or the events leading up to deaths) I've learned to evaluate the group's and my own performance. I can easily answer questions like, "Am I heroic striking enough?" or "What kind of damage just killed us?" Another must have in my opinion.

Squeenix - Gives me the square minimap. Not so important, but I keep it. I'm not really sure why.

Behind the scene addons:

Lightheaded - This gives me a double wide quest window. The right side has WoWHead comment. It's helpful for those quests that you can't seem to figure out without having to alt-tab.

Deadly Boss Mods - This is extremely helpful for heroics, and near necessary for raids. It makes life much easier to know what abilities are coming up from the boss and mobs.

Atlas Loot - This lets you look up any instance or raid to see what quests are available and what loot the bosses drop. You can also look up any profession and what they can make, all the faction items you can get at each level of rep with them, etc. I love this mod as well for the reduced alt-tabbing. It's also a great tool for deciding what instance to run to gear up yourself or a buddy.

What didn't make the cut:

As mentioned above, I couldn't seem to get PitBull to work like I wanted. Elkano buff bars also got dropped, probably due more to my limitations than those of the mod itself.

Well there you have it. You may like it, you may hate it. To each his own. It's working for me right now, but it's also opened the door to me being more comfortable with change. So if I find something around the corner that sounds helpful, I'll probably give it a try.

I hope this was somewhat helpful for anybody thinking about moving away from the default UI.