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Links and screenshots forthcoming. Maybe. If I can be bothered.

For a long time the only customisation I did to my interface was to enable the extra action bars and install Quest Helper. About three weeks ago this changed and I went add-on crazy. This is my story.

Addons

Currently Installed

Quest Helper

People tell me I should use Tour Guide instead, but I can't really be bothered dealing with that transition right now.

Quest Helper forms an interesting node on my social graph that looks something like this:

PitBull 4

A highly configurable unit frames add-on. Works pretty well when you've got it set up, but it has one of those kitchen-sink configurations that is really hard to get right. I originally installed this because I wanted a better interface for healing, but I since found Healbot works so much better. I"m considering uninstalling it except I kinda like the way things look now.

One thing I did was put my own frame bottom-left next to my most-used action bar so I could see it and my cooldowns at the same time. If I had a separate add-on to monitor cooldowns, I might move it.

Healbot

My newest addon to help my priest through instances. Shows a frame with the health of all your party/raid members, and allows you to bind <alt|shift|ctrl>-click to different heals. People will also be highlighted if they're affected by a debuff you are able to dispell.

A neat additional feature is that out of combat it will go to "smart cast" mode where clicking on a target will fill in whichever buffs they might be missing, or automatically pick the most mana-efficient way to heal them back to full health.

Bagnon

Bagnon consolidates all your bags into a single frame. Items are highlighted if they are uncommon or quest items and there's a great incremental search that means if you're searching your bags for the Orb of Frobnitz, you just have to type "orb" and it's there.

Bartender 4

An action bar replacement. Allows you to reposition, resize and re-orient action bars around the screen. Another add-on that's a bitch to configure, mostly because you can't just drag the bars around, you have to go through this arcane ritual of choosing a position and adjusting X/Y coordinates. Still, I find the end-result a lot more useful than the stock Blizzard bars.

Gatherer

Indispensible for mining.

Auctioneer

I'm too lazy to learn how to play the auction house properly. Unfortunately this also makes me too lazy to be able to evaulate if Auctioneer's price suggestions make me more money than my previous tactic of picking numbers out of mid-air.

Titan Panel

An info-bar across the top of the screen that tells you your coordinates, gold, repair level and gives you stats on how quickly you're earning XP. Probably more useful when leveling, but it's got an auto-hide function so most of the time I don't see it anyway.

BasicMiniMap

A square mini map. not much to say here.

Recount

Lets you know how much damage, healing and so on you're doing. Like lolz said, it's much more useful as a way of seeing if some change you've made to your gear / rotation has had an effect on your DPS than as an objective measure of your value to the universe.

That said, I installed this just before we ran MC to see how puny my DPS was compared to Moonburn. It's nice to not suck so much any more.

Deadly Boss Mod

Spits out big warnings when bosses are about to use some special ability that you need to hide from. Or so I'm told, I only installed it yesterday and haven't run anything since.

Benched

Carbonite

A quest helper, map replacement and bunch of UI add-ons all in one. It was just too heavyweight for me. Like most suites some bits were good and some bad, but each individual thing was done better by a smaller, less suite-y add-on.

Grid

Another unit frames add-on. I tried Grid before I tried PitBull. Maybe if I was doing lots of 25-man raids the minimal interface would appeal to me, but for me it was too little information, and too much configuration to make it more useful.

Macros and Key Bindings

My main keys are:

1: Auto-attack (should probably replace this with something else)
2: Stun
3-5: core DPSo (Crusader Strike, Judgement, Exorcism)
6: Finisher (Hammer of Wrath)
7: Cleanse self (macro; removes 1 magic/poison/disease)
8: Flash of Light self (macro; quick heal, instant if Art of War is up)

Any number past six is a stretch to hit when your fingers are on WASD, so 7 and 8 are also bound to F and V. Everything else (including Consecration and Divine Storm which are in my DPS rotation) is moused. If I were to key-bind anything else, it would be my get-out-of-jail-free cards (bubbles, Lay on Hands) or Avenging Wrath.

I don't have any /castsequence macros because my sequence varies a lot based on what's happening/what procs when. I may as well have everything on separate buttons.

I should probably do modifier-key macros for my bubbles and heals, though.

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  1. Sep 28, 2009

    Andrew Lui (lolzcat)

    Thanks Carl, that's really useful info. I might give some of them a try, like basicminimap and titanpanel (fubar seems to be on its deathbed).

    I used to use a lot of UI mods, but I got sick of having to keep them all up to date (even with WoW matrix). Upgrading Patch 3.0 nearly convinced me to go addon free.

    Here's some other recommendations off the top of my head:

    • Postal — fabulous mail mod. One of my personal must-have mods.
    • ButtonTimers — I tried a few buff/skill timers and settled on this one. It's lightweight and helps me know when a cooldown or buff has expired.
    • ArkInventory — I actually changed over from Bagnon to ArkInventory. The biggest benefit of ArkInventory is the ability to sort your items under pre-defined columns in your bag. I got so sick of hunting around in my bag trying to find a quest item or consumable.
    • TourGuide — Even better than QuestHelper. Yes, Matt you were right. I was a die-hard QH fan too, but TourGuide is just too good. Perhaps not great to use on your first character as not everyone likes their hand held while questing.
    • LightHeaded — Lets you view wowhead comments on quests via your quest interface. Very very useful.
    • DeadlyBossMods — We'll probably start strongly recommending this for raiding. It basically give you warnings on boss fights when bad things happen.
    • Recount — A useful guide for improving your dps. However, it is only a guide. You can be a terrible dps-er and still get high recount numbers (e.g. AOE everything before the tank has aggro and wipe the group). I use it to test whether a gear change or spec change is better (usually on training dummies).
    • Omen — Threat meter. Currently none of us are at much risk of pulling aggro off Furgin or Rawm in instances, but Omen is a handy threat meter that can help you not die from going dps crazy.
    • Dominos — I don't use this anymore, but I'm listing it because of the problems that you said you were having with Bartender4. Dominos is a nice action bar replacement and does have drag and drop positioning and was quite simple to configure. It's a pretty good addon all up, but I cut it out during my addon-removal spree post 3.0.
    • XPerl Unit Frames — This is the unit frames replacement mod that I use. I tried PitBull4 and didn't really like it, but it's really just personal preference (I think XPerl looks nicer (smile) ).

    I don't bind many other keys either, although I know some people swear by it (I think Luke said that he binds everything). I've bound the 'R', 'G' and 'V' keys to my action bars, so I can get at more spells/skills, but I mainly use macros so I can use shift-click and ctrl-click combos to access stuff. I use mouseover macros too, so that I don't have to use grid or healbot. Once we start raiding I'd probably have to consider either of those though.