Greetings!
This is a whole new author for the site, Jestricide, writing. I am here to bring in some light reading, musing over the everyday things of a WoW gamer. Hope you enjoy the post – don’t hesitate to give me feedback and ask questions in the comments!
These days, most WoW gamers have customized their UIs – some looking for aesthetics, others for improved game play, most for both. It’s usually that one guy in your raid team who uses no addons whatsoever that is the weird one. Though, one cannot claim that you NEED addons to be a good player… … I don’t think I could give them up myself.
So. What is it that we do to our UIs to make them all pretty and handy? Well, first of all, we all start out from this:
The default UI
This is what you see when you log onto the game for the first time, with less abilities of course.
Now, as there are many many single addons for specific uses, that you can combine to make a completely customized UI of your own – and we will get to those later – there are also quite some UI addon packs out there. I.e.. you download an addon, and often all that you will need besides it for the perfect raid layout is a DPS/HPS output meter (Recount, Skada) and raid unit frames, if you dislike the default ones.
Addon Packs
As said, there’s a bunch of UI addon packs available – many of which popular and used by raiders. Here are two examples.
ElvUI
This is the near default of ElvUI, combined only with Grid2 (raid frames) and Recount (Damage Done meters):
ElvUI is an addon that Ive found a lot of my friends using – and I really don’t see why. I do like the centered player/target frames, and the panels for the chat windows, but the rest, for me, is an eyesore.
The map has been opened in order to show all that ElvUI really changes – it gives this grey blocky feel to the map, the interface and so on. You do lose the RP feel here. Also, in the chat, it uses emoticons!!
In ElvUI’s defence, it does have a great many extensions to it, for example the Recount/Skada overlay extension (look it up on curse.com, beautiful). I’m guessing you can change the skin on this, make the action bars more attractive, disable the emoticons.. ..but it really just doesn’t speak to me.
SpartanUI
THIS, on the other hand, is what I achieved with SpartanUI, with mere 2-3 clicks! Grid2 and Recount, present as ever:
I hadn’t even heard of SpartanUI until I went addon hunting for myself while tinkering with my UI. And this beauty does make me want to throw away the UI I spent hours on adjusting until it’s just right. Very snazzy.
The player buffs and debuffs are still up top on the right, but the rest is pleasantly aligned into the bottom bar, together with the viewport skin. Map in the middle (with which you may still use addons such as SexyMap), player/target frames aligned around it, and look! It puts the tooltip (that thing that says Ironforge Guard) ABOVE the viewport!!
Also, keep in mind this can yet be customized. You can change the font, probably the skin too, add/remove bars and move them etc (in fact in the default layout there is still a bar between the hotbars and recount, turned that off).
Custom UI
Here’s presented the option of picking in all the addons YOU want, and combining them into a UI that is perfect for you. This, of course, may take longer to setup than an addon pack, and includes much more installing and learning-to-use, but.. for me, at least, totally worth it!
Now.. If you look through some of your friends’ UIs, you might pick up on some trends, or choices that people make; there’s the where do I put the map and unit frames (up in the right corner, in the middle on the bottom..), what shall my action bars look like (side, all on the bottom, some in the middle of your screen?) and shall I have a viewport?
Have a look at my UI:
As you can see, this screen cap is much more informative of what they layout will look like during combat, mainly due to the included WeakAuras, and my Grid2 being test layout mode.
I do like most of my stuff neatly packed away on the bottom, with only Grid thrown somewhere (as melee DPS..), player frames up top, and my auras and CD/keybind bars in a central position for easy access during combat.
With just these same addons you may achieve a very different look – here, I have only replaced SunnArt with KGpanels:
For a healer, or possibly even a tank with mousebinds or Clique, this might be a more accurate setup – raid frames in a centered position together with the major defensive cooldowns, being able to monitor the raid output as well as your own.
In conclusion, even though doing a whole make-over to your UI by manually searching for each independent addon sounds cooler, some of these addon packs are really quite awesome – and function just as well if not sometimes better (?) than uh.. the home-made UIs. All in all, it’s worth it to have a look at what’s in the market, because you’ll end up with something amazing!
Do you know a great addon pack, or have you also worked for your own, perfect UI? Would you like to know more about an addon you saw, or for me to test one for you? What do you think about the layouts presented? Comment on the post!
Did you see something you liked? Here’s what’s used in the UI:
-SunnArt Viewport art + Art Pack 5/”Red Glow”
-Sexymap “Rogue”
-Bartender4 (actionbars & key binds)
-Weakauras2 (auras, including dynamic groups for combo points+anticipation and holy power)
-Grid2 (raidframes – test mode, will show in class colours & customized indicators in combat)
-Recount
-Xperl (player/target/target’s target unit frames)
-Prat3 (Chatmod, hidden by the eye!)
-Titan Panel (character overview, hidden in the top of the screen)
I found my fantastic chat-covering Dragon Eye by t1na on Deviantart, here