(Note: This is part two of a four part series, if you arrived here directly, why not check out Part I first?)
Welcome back! In this section of the guide we’ll be going over all the add-ons that we’ll be downloading, installing, and setting up in Part III. If you’re on the lookout for new add-ons, or want to replace a few of your own, or even if we’re just curious as to which add-ons I use, keep reading!
For the sake of organization, and ease of browsing, this’ll be split up into several sections. If you’re looking for a specific type of add-on, skip right down there and have a blast! We’re going to start with general overall add-ons, and slowly work to more purpose-specific ones. This was a really long list (I am an addon-aholic after all), so I’ve gone ahead and split up Part II into multiple posts, with each one covering a different part of your UI, this part will cover overall UI and action bar overhauls. Without any further ado, let’s get going!
While reading this article, you’ll probably notice that I tend to pick add-ons that are available on WowAce over ones that are not. There are two reasons for this, and they are both reasons I think you should consider when picking and choosing your add-ons. Before I explain these two reasons, let me explain what Ace is (source):
Ace is a lightweight and powerful system for building World of Warcraft addons. Ace provides developers with the tools needed by most addons, freeing them from repeating common tasks and allowing them to jump right into the creative part of building their addons. New and experienced addon coders alike can benefit from Ace’s features.
Now, first of all, if installed, used, and updated correctly, all your Ace add-ons will share the libraries that they have in common. Ace is a system where libraries are built to aid add-on developers in doing common tasks that may be shared among many add-ons. These could include drawing bars on the screen, querying another player for information, or calculating threat. If you were to go and install two add-ons that were not built with Ace libraries, and they did similar things, there would be a lot of redundancy in the coding. Each add-on would increase the time it takes to load into the game, and the memory imprint of all your add-ons once you’re in the game. By having add-ons share common libraries, you not only reduce the game’s load time, but the memory imprint of your add-ons in-game. For example, I have 350 add-ons activated on my Mage while I play. I can load into the game in under 60 seconds, and my total memory imprint from add-ons is around 39mb. My brother, who currently has about 100 add-ons (most of which are not Ace, and do not share libraries), takes about three times as long to load into the game, and has about the same memory imprint. Before you ask, our computers are more or less identical in terms of hardware.
Second, thanks to WowAceUpdater, you can update ALL your WowAce add-ons with one click! This means you never have to worry about your add-ons being out of date and having to constantly search for where you downloaded them from and updating them all. You just open up WAU, click F10 (or File -> Update All Installed Addons) and it will go through and automatically update all the add-ons you have installed (that are on the WowAce SVN)! Additionally, you can install and uninstall add-ons right from the client itself! My settings are as follows:
One more small benefit to having an add-on come from WowAce is that it will most likely have support for FuBar! This keeps your minimap nice and clean, and yet still allows you to easily customize your add-ons as you like. We’ll go into this one more in depth in Part III.
Let’s start with the biggest overhaul your UI will ever have, a UI replacement. This is something most people usually start with, and it’s something that wholeheartedly replaces the default Blizzard UI that many are so used to seeing. There are quite a lot of these out there in the wild, but there’s one that seems to be the most popular, and one that is so rich with features I absolutely have to recommend it. It’s an add-on I personally use and love, and it’s none other than Zeksie’s X-Perl. With everything from status highlighting (a cursed raid member will have a purple portrait), to HoT monitors, to ready checks being built in, this add-on absolutely has it all. Additionally, it’s updated regularly by its author! It’s options screen is chock-full of options, and you can customize it exactly how you want it. Unlike many other UI replacements, it doesn’t assume you want things to appear a certain way, it let’s YOU chose how and where you want things. For those who are hardcore raiders, it comes with built in support for CTRA and oRA2 (including MT Targets, and durability/item checks). This one will take you a little bit to customize how you want it, but it’s well worth the time invested, and won’t let you down. X-Perl will replace your player frame, target frame, target’s target frame, and raid frame. It’s split up into modules, each of which can be disabled individually (so if you have other raid frames, you can use those instead). I personally disable XPerl_GrimReaper, though some may like it. (Update: Zeksie has ported X-Perl onto the WowAce SVN, meaning you can updated it through WowAceUpdater! Yay!)
A relatively popular alternative to X-Perl is none other than ckknight’s PitBull. PitBull is a WowAce addon and relies on WowAce libraries to work, but provides a uniquely different interface from X-Perl. This add-on prides itself in its modular structure and, like X-Perl, you can enable/disable things individually without removing the whole add-on. PitBull, while it has a few preset configurations, relies on Dog Tags for customization, which can easily confuse non-technical people. If you have a technical friend, or are technical yourself, you can easily and quickly customize Dog Tags to show you a wide variety of information, exactly how and where you want it. Otherwise, you may be better off copying a setup from the WowAce forums or the Elitist Jerks forums.
The third most popular UI overhaul is another WowAce addon called AgUF (Ag UnitFrames). This uses a tag system, similar to PitBull, but relies on Watchdog as opposed to Dog Tags. It was the first unit frame to be created with the WowAce framework, and was created with the object oriented development techniques from Ace2 in mind. It has a low memory imprint, which may be beneficial to slower/older computers. It also tries being “smart” in many ways to help the user, such as not showing the Target of Target frame when you’re targeting yourself. However, the add-on is not as polished as the previous two, and is missing common features such as party targets, pet targets, and tracking main tanks. It prides itself in using a theme table to allow its users to fully customize their unit frames.
There is no easy way to pick the best add-on for you, and they’re all going to feel weird, strange, and unusual at first (especially if you’re used to a different one). What you’re going to want to do is to pick one of them, try it out for a while, and then see how you feel. Find things you like, things you don’t like, features you’d like, and so on. Then try a different one and compare them. There is no one UI replacement that works for everyone, it’s a personal choice, so pick the one that works best for YOU.
Next up we have add-ons that will help (or complement) your Blizzard action bars. These are the buttons along the bottom (and optionally the right) of your screen, where you put all your spells, items, and macros. They give you quick access to abilities without needing to open up your spell book, macro window, or your bags. Some will do nothing more than allow you to have more buttons than what Blizzard provides, while others will allow you to rearrange them on your screen, change how they look (sometimes depending on the situation), and provide other cool features.
Let’s go ahead and start with the big boy of action bar replacements, and one that I personally use and love, Bartender3. Bartender does everything you could ever want from an action bar, outside of automation. It allows you to setup custom paging options (different bars for bear/cat/tree/moonkin/caster form, or different bars when you’re stealthed, but have them use the same hotkeys and the same bar on the screen), it allows you to color unavailable spells (due to mana/range) red, it allows you to hide the macro and keybind text, it allows you to scale, size, pad, and relocate all your bars, and even hide bars you don’t use! Recent versions even include the ability to make frames “sticky,” allowing you to rearrange your bars in a way that looks fantastic without any trouble. On top of that, it’s really lightweight as it reuses default Blizzard buttons to increase performance and save memory. It’s a very popular add-on, and for good reason, it does everything you need it to do, and does it well. Plus, it has full support for CyCircled, which I’ll cover in a bit. The only downside to this add-on is it’s limited to 12 bars with 12 buttons each (although you can customize the number of rows and columns in each bar), which means you only have 144 slots total. However, both on my Mage and my Druid which are very button-demanding classes, I’ve had multiple bars spare,even after being generous with my use of the action bars.
Next up, we have FlexBar2. What’s interesting about FlexBar2 is that rather than allowing you to manipulate action bars like similar add-ons, this add-on focuses on allowing you to manipulate action buttons instead, including the ability to group them together as a bar. It allows you to have an unlimited number of buttons, and an unlimited number of bars (groups of buttons). It also allows you to have button paging (by group or by button), and allows you to chagne the texture, alpha, and scale (by group or by button). This is a relatively popular add-on, and it may be what you’re looking for. If you like the idea of having full control over each individual button, give it a shot!
Another popular action bar replacement is InfiniBar-2.0. InfiniBar boasts it’s tremendous power when it comes to button paging (even allowing bars to change depending on your target!), fully customizable use of up to five text areas per button, and many other popular features. It’s ability to be customized is ridiculously powerful, and for all those who want a little more power from their action bar, look no further than InfiniBar.
We also have AutoBar. AutoBar is not an action bar replacement, but rather a supplement for it, that uses automation to assist the player. Autobar automatically adds potions, water, food, quest and other items you specify into buttons for easy use. It is a very useful add-ons, and allows you to save valuable button space. It’s simplistic in nature, and if it sounds like something you’d like, why not check it out?
Finally, we have a fun little add-on called CyCircled. CyCircled is not an action bar replacement, but just allows you to skin any action bar (that’s supported). This is supported by all the addon’s mentioned above. I’m personally a huge fan of Serenity Glossy, but it has everything from circles to squares to hexagons and gears. If you want to change the way your action bar looks, this is the add-on for you. You can see an example of Square Glossy in the InfiniBar picture above.
That’s all for this installment, next time I’ll be talking about various add-ons that will help you manage and maintain your Inventory.
Continuing from the last segment, where we covering gearing a Feral Druid from a new 70 up through instances and heroics, we’re going to continue and gear your Druid up through T4 instances. This will include Karazhan, Gruul’s, and Mag’s. By this point I’m going to assume you’re able to run these raids enough times that you can get enough badges to get all the badge gear, although you won’t be able to do so immediately. It will all come in time, however. I will also include higher-end crafted items that you should now start being able to afford.
For clarification, each level of gear described below is not absolute. What I mean by that is that just because I show a row of items doesn’t mean you have to get all those items before the gear becomes viable. Go and download Rawr, install it, play around with it, and learn to use it. When you obtain a new item, let Rawr now, and then re-optimize. Rawr isn’t perfect, but it can be a tremendous help for you, and save you a LOT of time. Again, remember to tell it to keep “% Chance to be Crit” at “<= 0″ when optimizing.
Well, let’s not waste any more time, and get to it!
Okay, so you’re starting to find heroics getting easier and easier. You’ve got more than enough health and armor for any situation, and your healers love you. You’re also starting to run out of gear you can get without raiding. So you look to your guild and at other with similar interests to yourself, and you all head into Karazhan. After running that for a while, you generate enough interest for a larger group and run both Gruul’s and Mag’s. You start to see a fairly steady stream of [Badge of Justice] flowing in, and with your good gear money is starting to be less and less of an issue. This is where the game really starts to shine and you start to have your most fun tanking the huge guys with millions of health.
You’ll notice that even though we break through the T4 barrier, a few items are still from the last gear level. Another thing you’ll notice is we broke through the 30% barrier. If possible, try to have above 30% dodge (buffed) before you go into Karazhan. Just add this as another parameter to Rawr and it should do the rest, ;)
Again, keep in mind this is an optimized solution created by Rawr. In most cases (including the case where you don’t have EXACTLY the setup below), there will be items better than the ones listed below. For example, [Slikk's Cloak of Placation] is a much better cape overall, but turns out to be worse in the one instance below. Again, use Rawr yourself for your best outcome, ;)
(Note: [Idol of Terror] makes an excellent alternative for the idol below. See the comments for discussion about this trinket vs. [Idol of Ursoc])
Let’s go ahead and gear up as follows:
| Head | Neck | Shldrs | Back | Chest | Wrists | Hands | Waist | Legs | Feet | Finger | Finger | Trinket | Trinket | Wep | Idol |
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The biggest difference you’ll notice is that our health, armor, and dodge are a LOT higher. In fact, you should hit the armor cap once you’re all raid buffed up, which along with the dodge will result in you receiving a lot less damage. Your healers will love you for this! =D
If you have all of the above gear, you will find yourself with the following statistics (self-buffed with MotW):
| Health: 17697 (T) 16804 (NE) | Armor: 32730 (T) 32752 (NE) | Dodge: 36.92% (T) 38.67% (NE) |
| Miss: 6.12% | Mitigation: 73.24% (T) 73.25% (NE) | Dodge + Miss: 43.04% (T) 44.79% (NE) |
| Total Mitigation: 82.88% (T) 83.36 (NE) | Chance to be Crit: -0.06% | Overal Points: 116515.6 (T) 114211.3 (NE) |
| Limited Threat: 950.52 (T) 933.50 (NE) | Unlimited Threat: 1223.58 (T) 1206.884 (NE) |
I had finished writing up the whole T5 raid section and had picked out most of the gear we’d be using, and even built a pretty little table for it all, when Rawr crashed out when I tried Optimizing. After numerous restarts and trying a few more computers, it seems Rawr crashes if you have too many items picked out as “available.” I’ve been talking with the developer for the past two days, and hopefully will have a copy that works soon. This post was originally going to cover T4 and T5, but due to the freeze up I’ve temporarily forgone the T5, but didn’t want to just leave the T4 information sitting in my box as a draft, so here it is.
Next time, we’ll venture into SSC, TK, and ZA!
Arguably one of the easiest classes to gear up is a Feral Druid. This is due mostly to how easy it is to obtain good gear (especially at the early raiding level). However, no Druid should leave home without doing their research. A Druid who walks into a heroic without crit immunity won’t last to tell the tale. Lucky for you, fellow Druid, I’m here to do most of the hard work for you.
For most of this research and work, I’ll be using Rawr, a phenomenal tool for Feral Druids (and quite a few other classes as well). I highly recommend it to anyone who hasn’t already created a giant excel spreadsheet that does all their math for them (*cough*). Not only will it rate items based on it’s mitigation and survival values (for druid tanks), but it even has a big [Optimize] button, where all you give it is what gear and gems you have available, and it finds the best combination possible! It even has a similar button for finding upgrades! Absolutely amazing, and no druid should be without it.
Each gear level below will have a title, and next to that title will be a download link for the .xml file for the character I used for that level. To save it, right click the link, and chose “Save Target As…” or “Save Link As…” and save it somewhere you’ll remember. Then in Rawr just go to File->Open (or hit Ctrl-O) and select the .xml file you just downloaded.
We’ll start at the beginning, where all Druids have to start out. You recently hit 70, and you’re looking to run a few level 70 instances, both heroic and non. Due to the ease of obtaining gear, you can very quickly turn this gear set into a heroic set, and eventually a Karazhan set. The biggest help you’ll have at this point is either a high Leatherworking skill level yourself, or a friend with a high Leatherworking skill level. Since you recently hit 70, I’ll assume you’re completely ungeared, and won’t ask you to get anything from instances (yet). To make up for this (and to get you crit immune), we’ll be relying heavily on gear you can obtain by just PvPing for a while.
Our armor set will look like the following:
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