Pimped my UI, part 2
The last time I significantly changed my UI was way back in April when I was still rocking the Gundam tier and had a shock of white hair. Oh, simpler times.
Anyway, recently I’ve gotten really bored of my UI and wanted to add a few more keybinds to the mix in order to finally get rid of any clicking I’ve been doing. So, I bought a new mouse with two extra buttons on the left side and got to work.
This is what I came up with:
Unlike my previous UI, this iteration has everything I need to look at concentrated near the bottom middle of the screen. And most importantly, all my major abilities are mapped to some key.
I’m pretty happy with it so far. I took it for a spin in Uld10 last night and I found that my reaction times were a lot better for certain things (like self-cleansing Falcon Punches) and my 969 rotation was much, much smoother.
Sad side note: I finally jumped on the DBM bandwagon after sticking with BigWigs for years. I don’t regret the jump. There’s just no comparison in terms of presentation and what information is presented to you. For example, doing the Disarmed achievement on Kologarn was infinitely easier with DBM’s health bars for all three parts of the boss sitting in the middle of my screen.
Armory Feed
Hey if it not to much trouble could you list all the mods you use here in this UI, Its pretty badass and wanna try setting up something like it.
Are you really rocking 80MB of addon memory?
@Rhidach
26 October 2009 at 11:23 am #
@Spiteless: Let’s see… Pitbull for unitframes, Bartender for bars/buttons/keybinds, DBM, Recount topleft, Omen top middle, Buffalo top right, BasicMiniMap bottom middle, and Grid bottom right for raid frames.
@Adgamorix: A lot of that is probably Recount and Auctioneer, haha. I might just leave Auctioneer on all the time. >.>
Have you tried out Deus Vox as a boss mod? I sadly switched from bigwigs to that and I have to admit that I’m loving it.
@Rhidach
26 October 2009 at 12:59 pm #
No, I can’t say I’ve even heard of it, but I’ll definitely check it out.
@ alystala
why sadly?
OK – you inspired me to put my own UI up.
Funny coincidence – it looks like you and I both have Shift-F for Arcane Torrent….creepy.
http://i753.photobucket.com/albums/xx172/steelhuevos/WoWScrnShot_030709_224015.jpg
I think its fair to say that Falowin’s UI is the king of all UIs.
Ok i saw your Ui.
Is the middle top your threat meter?
I see near the bottom middle you made some sort of custom elkano buff bar frame for your Pally buffs. I don’t really think that is necessary. For Holy Shield i look at the button for when it’s ready to recast and i just recast it. No bosses dispel your buffs so no reason to look at them in middle of the screen. You will just be distracted by unecessary info.
My old UI
http://mognet.dlinkddns.com/?p=130
Yes the grid is minimalist but i find it disorienting to keep track of peoples health. So i prefer Ag Unit Frame even though it takes more space. ( in screenshot you see me using grid to the right side but actually i later removed it because i was only using it for testing purposes).
For Pally Power i can hide/show it when not using by clicking the titan panel button at the top right.
The normal tanking buttons i use are the 2 rows of buttons in the bottom of the screen.
Button 1: Righteous Defense (Aoe taunt)
Button 2: Righteous Hammer (threat generator)
Button 3: Reckoning (Single taunt)
And you see the third top most row of buttons that are spaced out are filled with my important mitigation spells. Besides buttons 1 to 3, i don’t use any short cuts for the other spells. I just button click them using my mouse.
To start the fight i press 3 for single taunt, followed by shield slam (i use ranged shield if it’s a ranged target), consecate, holy shield, and the ranged shield, divine plea and judge wisdom. Notice how most of my taunt and threat spells are clumped close to each other so my field of vision need only look at this part only for a quick glimpse for cooldowns..
Raid health bars, omen threat meter, DBM timers, and my debuffs are all focused more towards top left and middle left as my general vision usually strays to this part of the screen. To me this is easier for me to keep track for the fight.
To the right side of my screen are non essentially important things i don’t need to look at in the middle of the fight. Buffing, current buff and DPS meter. Decursive is top right which is rarely used unless i am doing bosses like Iron Council.
You don’t see this from my UI, but by holding down shift+left click on my unitframe i can flash myself, and shift+right click ont my unit frame i cast holy light. Of course i don’t do this during tanking but it’s important stuff.
So because of this setup, my vision is focused only on one area of the screen and gives me time to observe the raid situation then be bogged down in any sort of tunnel vision. Also buttons are simple to use especially for taunting which is critical.
:x Later maybe i can show my new UI. It looks less crowded and more nicer looking, but i’ve gotten too use to tanking with my old UI that i switch to it for important boss fights heh.
Must be just a tank thing…loving them crotch-shots of bosses.
@Rhidach
27 October 2009 at 8:35 am #
@W-Crusher: If you know a better way to tank a boss other than my face in their crotch I’d like to hear it!
@Meloree: What do you use for buffs? Don’t say Elks. I hate that addon.
A couple of suggestions: 1) Deus Vox Encounters is massively better than either of the other two, and it gets better as more people in the raid use it. I still run all 3 mods, myself, mostly because in week one, each one tends to do a different thing properly.
2) Get rid of the blizzard buff icons, move Omen over into the top right corner there, and increase the transparency of Omen so it doesn’t decrease your viewing area by as much.
3) Get Mik’s Scrolling Battle Text or something similar to replace Blizzard scrolling combat text. The big advantage to one of the scrolling combat text mods is that it lets you break out different types of events to different areas.
Personally? I use Xperl unitframes, and I just use the buff display on them, with the smallest possible setting for icons. There are probably better solutions. That said, I’m getting really tempted to turn all buffs off, and only leave debuffs on. I’m never actually missing any possible buffs, and I can check my HP to know the status of the important ones. The default Blizzard buffs just take up way too much screen space for my liking.
A lot of it comes down to personal preference. Half my guildmates have told me I have the worst UI ever made (and it’s definitely not pretty, but it is well organized), and the other half have asked me to make it into a package. I played MUDs back in the day, I’m pretty comfortable with lots of fast scrolling text to pick out information, so there’s a lot of that going on in my UI, with various things parsed into various output areas.
I use ‘Debuff Filter’. I don’t actually use it to filter debuffs but rather just buffs. It only show the buffs I tell it to. I have it show only Flask, Well Fed, Fort, Sanc, Kings, Mights, Shouts and GoW.
I can resize and drag the buff icons where ever I want and have them grow in any direction.
Great addon, really cleans up my buffs because I don’t care if I have Divine Spirit.
I think this game needs more Moroes-style backwards tanking.
Demogar @ Debuff filter is good so only the important debuffs get shown rather then unimportant ones. But sadly i am unsure how to configure this for different fights using Elkano.
What i liked about Elkano Buff is i can split buffs and debuffs into different frames. So i drag the debuff frame to my left side where i can view it better. Buff frame is only for reference whether i buffed myself before we start the fight.
Meloree @ It’s more important i find that your UI is functionally useful to you then looking prettier. If it’s pretty but hard to use, then whats the point? There should be a balance between aesthetics and functionality, that is why i am considering whether bartender can make the unorganized button bars i am using hidden unless i mouse over on them. Maybe that will clean up my screen when not using them.