Holy Tauren! Time certainly does fly fast when one is on vacation. Let’s play a quick game of ketchup, shall we? Err… catch-up.
One topic that really has me excited though, is being able to design my first add-on that’s going to be used by more than just myself. After another night of raiding where half the DKP was deducted from the wrong person and had to be fixed up later, a friend of mine IRL, who’s also the raid leader, approached me and asked me if I would be interested in designing an add-on for him that is tailored to the guild’s exact DKP system, to make the bidding and distribution of loot faster and easier. I’ve been thinking about it over the past few days, and already have several ideas that I believe will make the bidding and distributing of loot take no more than 30 seconds to 1 minute!
Since I know I have some readers who are interested in designing and add-on for themselves (or for their guild), I’m planning on posting about each step of the add-on designing process. My next post will discuss the initial design process, which includes me getting together with two guildies in real life to sit down and discuss and plan what we want from this add-on. I’ll also go over some problems I’ll be facing in the design (such as how to minimize looting time), and how I plan on solving them. Stay tuned!
(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.
Wynthea over at World of Matticus wrote a post yesterday about why she’s always checking the meters. She raises many good points about how she uses “the meters” to help her better herself in raids. I agree with many of her points, and believe she’s definitely on to something. However, I feel like playing devil’s advocate, and play the opposite side. Don’t get me wrong, I do believe that Wynthea is correct in many aspects, and in many ways I’m on her side, I just feel like stating the opposite approach to get myself (and you) thinking. I’m going to go ahead and say that you should go ahead and toss your meters away. Ignore them, don’t even look at them. Got your attention, didn’t I? Well, let me explain.
Before I go into why “the meters” are something you should stay away from, let me explain what I’m referring to. When I’m talking about “the meters,” I’m talking about any utility where a player’s performance is represented as a number, and then compared to other players in the same group. I’m talking about utilities that track everything from DPS to heals done. I’m talking about Recount, Violation, Assessment, WoW Web Stats, SW-Stats, DamageMeters, and other add-ons of a similar nature.
I can’t deny that in certain situations they can be tremendously useful. However, the middle of a raid is not one of those situations. These add-ons are most useful after the fight, for analysis. While raiding on my mage, I would save my Recount data after every boss fight, and crop out the relevant section of my combat log for WWS. After every raid, I’d sit down and look at the recap of each fight, and analyze my performance. I look at everything from the timing of my cooldowns to when I use my potions and trinkets. I could compare various item sets, and various spell rotations. I would use this information to better myself, and to perform even better at the next raid. Healers can use this information to better downrank their abilities, and to work on the timing of their heals, and the use of their cooldowns and potions. Tanks can work on timing their “oh shit” buttons better, and learn when to use their trinkets.
Few players in the game go out of their way to research their class, reading about each spec and how it works, and looking into the math behind their game. Few players optimize their item builds, and research optimal spell rotations. However, even fewer players go the extra length and analyze their raid style after the fact. When they do, it becomes clearly obvious that they took the extra mile. When I was raiding with my mage (pre Frost buff), I was a healthy 5% above the other mages in my guild (including equally geared fire mages). But that’s because I knew exactly when to use each cooldown, and each trinket, in order to maximize my DPS.
The biggest mistake with the meters is that people think they’re making the most progress by analyzing their raid style while actively raiding, when in fact you make the most progress and do your best work if you analyze the information afterwards.
I know what you’re thinking right now. You’re going to tell me how seeing your meters creates a need to achieve, and creates the sense of competition between you and the other DPS. You’re going to tell me that seeing yourself drop below your usual rank inspires you to give it that extra 10% and see yourself rise the ranks again, which improves the raid’s performance.
Well, I’m going to say that I think that’s a completely wrong way to approach the situation. I believe that it is the duty of every player in the raid to always bring their best game to each and every fight that the raid encounters. Not doing so would be letting the raid, and your fellow raiders, down.
There shouldn’t be an extra 10% to give, as you should already be giving it your all. You should be doing everything in your power to perform at your absolute best. If there’s an extra 10% you should be giving, then you’re not working hard enough.
Relying on the sense of competition to give it your all can easily end up with one (or more) of three problems. First of all, think about it, if you need that sense of competition to be your best, what are you going to do when you don’t have that competition? Are you not going to be able to give it your all? Are you going to under-perform? Being used to constant competition to enhance oneself only hurts you when you don’t have that competition.
Two, it can form unhealthy relationships. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve made many friends and had an absolute blast when we’re really close on the charts, and we’re going back and forth, and the competition is something that makes adrenaline pump through your body. However, think of the player who can’t seem to reach where they want to be on the charts. I’ve seen multiple instances where the meters have caused guild drama, and have even ruined friendships.
Finally, it can actually harm the raid. I’ve been in quite a few fights where two players were fighting for the top spot, and were blinded by the need to beat the other, and ended up ignoring the logistics of the fight and causing a raid wipe. In many fights DPS have various roles, and focusing on the charts too much can cause you to forget a responsibility you have, which costs the raid.
First and foremost, the meters should be the last thing a healer should look at. The only reason a healer should be looking at the meters is to look for sudden DPS spikes so they can proactively heal the player that’s about to pull aggro. Healers have a lot going on around them at any one time. They need to watch health bars, watch their own mana, track their cooldowns, track the other healers’ mana, track what’s going on in the fight, do downranking, and so much more. The last thing they should be focusing on is the meters in the corner of their screen. The healer’s job is to keep players alive. Knowing that you healed for X amount over the whole fight tells you absolutely nothing useful. Additionally, a healer’s performance can vary greatly based on their healing assignment, and the fight. The only thing a healer could possibly use a healing meter for is for benchmarking purposes, and even that’s a bit shaky, as situations change (tanks become better, or take more damage this one fight, etc.). And let’s not even mention how some don’t correctly track statistics such as Lifebloom blooming, and Prayer of Mending bouncing.
A few of you are probably going to tell me that you use meters to help track your overhealing, in an attempt to minimize it. That again is both class-dependent and situation-dependent. And in many ways, it’s affected more by other players than by yourself (someone throws a quick heal to a target you were healing). However, tracking overhealing is something important, but I state yet again that it’s something that’s better done after the raid is over, in order to analyze one’s performance, as opposed to watching it while the fight is happening (and comparing it to the other healer’s performance).
I considered not even writing this section, as it almost speaks for itself. However, discussing only two out of the three roles in a raid made this post seem incomplete. Honestly, I’ll be surprised if any tank out there can actually get valuable information from the meters (other than the threat meter, of course) while a fight is happening. Knowing how much DPS someone is doing doesn’t help the tank, knowing how many deaths a player’s had isn’t really helpful either. Even tank-related stats such as Damage Taken, Total Threat, and (for Druid and Warriors) Rage Generated are completely and totally unhelpful in a raid situation.
Again, quite a few of these statistics can be very helpful in improving oneself after a raid when you’re analyzing your performance (”Where did most of my damage I took come from? Should I get more dodge or more health? Why did I die? etc.”), but there’s really no reason to have any sort of meters (again, other than the threat meters) open while tanking.
When I tank, I look at only one meter (after the raid), and that’s “Healing Received.” I look at the healers who gave me most heals, and focused most of their time on me, and whisper them a quick thank you, and compliment them on a job well done.
In addition to each role not really requiring the meters during a fight, there are many reasons not to have the meters open on your screen. First and foremost, the meters are a “heavy” add-on. They take up a lot of memory, and are very active during the fight (as they sync with the meters of other players). I’ve found disabling my meters during fights has given me a 5-10 fps increase easily. While for quite a few people this isn’t much, those raiding at 20-25fps will notice a huge performance boost by increasing their fps. Some meters (such as Recount) are smart as to when they sync to minimize this, but they still take up a lot of memory, it just can’t be helped.
Another thing that removing the meters will give you is increased screen estate. I play WoW on two computers, with resolutions of 1280×1024 (2560×1024 if you count the other monitor) and 1680×1050. My brother plays WoW with a resolution of 1024×768. I’ve found that if there’s one thing that remains constant regardless of how much space you have, is that you never have enough space. With my UI setup, I aim for a minimal approach, but my screen can still look and feel really cluttered during a boss fight. I have threat meters bouncing over here, I have my damage meters bouncing over here, all my raid and their health bars and casting bars bouncing over there, all my incoming/outgoing information bouncing here, my buffs taking up that space, my cooldowns taking up space as well. You can never have enough screen space, and eliminating the meters will not only free up some room on your monitor, but also remove a HUGE distraction (don’t lie, we all feel that “oooh, growing and shrinking bars” feeling).
Additionally, you’ll find that you’ll become a better player overall, as not only are you focusing on the correct things during a fight, you’re doing the proper analysis afterwards. Plus, as I’ll talk about in just a moment, you’ll find that you’ll become much better at doing the role you’re assigned, and your guild will notice.
Finally, and to sum it up, the meters are almost never practically useful during a fight. They don’t provide immediately useful information (for any role), they take up memory, they are distracting, they make you lose focus of your goal, they can cause disagreements and arguments, and can ruin guilds who focus on them too much. The bottom line is that the meters are truly no more than an ego boost for whoever’s at the top.
One of the reasons I love my guild as much as I do is they way they approach this tricky dilemma. Most guilds use meters as a way to rank players, and use it as a means to remove players who are under performing. I’ve seen some guilds use it as a way to attempt to improve raid performance by offering bonuses (ie: extra DKP) to those on the top of the charts. If you’re in one of those guilds, and you’re happy with your system, then more power to you, I have nothing against that. However, I think the way my guild handles it is phenomenal, which is one of the reasons I’m in the guild in the first place.
The way my guild handles it is by thinking of each fight as a collection of roles. Basically, each person has a job. The performance of each person is determined solely by how well they did their specific job (or if they did it at all). True, for many fights a job can be something as simple as DPS the boss and ignore everything else, but every so often you get a special job, like “pick up the add that spawns”, or “dodge the bombs”, or even “CC this target at this time.” If you do your job, and you do it to the best of your ability, then that’s all the raid can ask of you. If we don’t kill a boss within the enrage timer, we may sub out some DPS, but that’s rarely based on how they did on the meters, but rather their gear level. We assume everyone is optimizing their spell rotation and pushing themselves to play as best as they can (given their gear). My guild simply approaches the situation with a simple yet complete question; “Did you do your job?”
I asked a very simple question over on Twitter:
“The Meters” (damage, healing, etc.), useful or not? Ditch them or keep them?
Anna from Too Many Annas replied:
[They are] situationally useful. Keep them, but on a short leash (so to speak)
Brendan from With That Said stated:
They are useful until you are repremanded [sp] for being too low. They should only be used as a guide to how your raid is doing as a whole
Chris from ChrisWeeden commented:
I’d say keep them. The data is useful if you look beyond the generic who did the most damage/healing.
Aurdon from I Sheep Things mentioned:
I vote keep them but turn them hide them during boss fights to keep you focused on other meters like omen
Softthistle from A Little WoW for Me had the following to say:
I like them so long as they’re not used in the wrong way - ie fighting for 1st position etc >_<
I’m sure you probably have a lot to say after reading my post. Perhaps you still vehemently believe that everyone should be using meters, and that throwing them aside would be a tragic mistake. Or maybe you used to believe that and after reading my post I’ve changed your mind and now you’re unsure or have switched sides.
So I ask you, what do you think about the meters? Do you use them personally? Do you recommend them to new players? Do you analyze your performance during a raid or afterwards? How does your guild approach this situation? Does your guild encourage them, or discourage them? Does it use them to rank players?
Let me know what you think in a comment, or in a blog post of your own!
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