Tag: addons

UI Quest: Cast Bars and Cool Downs

Posted on by Gazimoff

In previous episodes of my UI quest, I’ve covered how to configure your own action bars and set up your own target frames. For this instalment I wanted to focus on two areas that are crucial to caster classes – casting bars and cooldown trackers. When used well, both of these will help to maximise your performance without needing any equipment improvements.

To start off with I’m going to cover how to replace the default cast bar. The cast bar is the small rectangle that appears on the screen whenever you cast as spell. When you use a spell like Arcane Blast it slowly fills up, with the spell being cast once the bar is full. For channelled spells like Arcane Missiles or Blizzard, the spell has a continual effect until the bar is empty. As a side note, the mana cost of a channelled spell is spent immediately, while the cost of a cast spell is only deducted when the spell goes off.

Although there are several cast bar replacements, the one I tend to use is Quartz. It’s a fairly lightweight addon that provides a range of functions that are useful to different classes. For mages, the main thing we’re interested in is how our spells are casting, what our target or focus is casting in case we want to counterspell, and what our pet is casting in case you’re frost specced. The configuration window can be found by typing in /quartz in the chatbox or by selecting it from the addons part of the interface menu.

There are four main cast bars: the Player bar, the Target bar, the Focus bar and the Pet bar. If they’re not already present, you can make them visible by unticking the Lock option on each bar’s configuration pane. You can then move them around the screen and position them where you’d like them. I’ve stacked mine, my target’s and my pet’s cast bars in the centre of the screen, while my focus target’s cast bar is above the focus frame on the far left. You can play around with the scaling and transparency of each bar so that they blend in with the surrounding frames.

I’ve also disabled the Buff bars from showing via the Buffs section of the menu on the left. I’ve already got buffs covered by the way Shadowed Unit Frames is configured, and I’ll also get alerts to key buffs or debuffs through raid warning addons like Deadly Boss Mods. Mage-specific addons like MageAlert also provide audio cues on when buffs are ready to use, but I’ll be covering these in more detail later in the series.

To get the most from Quarts it’s worth spending a little bit of time looking at how the new cast bar works. With Quartz, the latency between yourself and the server is already factored in. There’s also a sweet-spot just before the latency cushion that you can use to cast your next spell. By queueing up spells in this way, you can daisy-chain them without having to wait for the server latency between each cast. An even better method is to press the key down early, but then release it just before the cast bar hits that red cushion. Once you get used to it, it’ll increase your DPS because you’re working around whatever server latency you normally face.

The second part of this guide is about tracking cooldowns. In previous episodes I talked about using OmniCC to show the cooldown of spells on your action bars. It’s also possible to add to this by showing trinkets, procs and other effects that have an internal cooldown that’s not always visible. Again there are a number of addons that do this, but for lightweight performance I prefer Sexycooldown.

You can see a configured Sexycooldown bar configured between the two unitframes. It’s showing the internal cooldown of my cloak enchantment and a trinket I’m using, as well as how long before I can use another mana gem. It also helps to track long cooldown spells such as Mirror Image.

Configuring Sexycooldown is pretty simple. Type /sexycooldown to bring up the config window, with which you can move the bar around and adjust the size. You can also give it a skin and change the colour as I’ve done.

If you want to track separate cooldowns on separate bars, Sexycooldown does support this but needs to be configured to add it. Similar addons like ForteXorcist do all this as standard, but also use more resources. If all you need is a simple cooldown tracker, you’ll probably find that this will do the job.Mages will probably be fine with the default configuration, while Warlocks and Shadow Priests will probably want to break out a separate bar to track their debuffs on their current target.

The reason tracking cooldowns – even internal ones – is important is because it means that you can pop your trinkets and abilities at the same time. If you know the internal cooldown on your trinket is over soon, you can time it so that your trinket procs at roughly the same time as the rest of your abilities. This can result in an even higher surge in DPS when you need it.

The UI Quest Series (in progress):

UI Quest: Staying on Target

Posted on by Gazimoff

Continuing in my series of UI customisation, I wanted to spend some time focusing on what most people call unit frames. These small boxes display how much health and power (mana, rage, energy or runic power) you have, along with a bar to show you how much is remaining. They also do the same for your party members, raid members, your target and so on. As a result, they’re a popular target for customisation.

There are several popular unit frame addons available, including X-Perl, Pitbull, ag_unitframes and Shadowed. I’ve used X-Perl in the past, but I’ve never been a fan of the blocky way that frames are presented by default. I’ve also tried ag_Unitframes in the dim past, but wanted to try something that would fit more with the streamlined look I was going for while still being easy to configure. In the end I’ve gone for Shadowed Unit Frames as they’re cleanly presented and easy to configure.

Once installed, a dialog box appears asking if you want to disable anchoring. You should do this, as otherwise all your unit frames will appear glued together and you won’t be able to pull them apart. When you’ve removed anchoring, use the command /suf to bring up the configuration window.

As you can see, I can immediately start moving the frames around, then just tick the Lock Frames box when I’m done to fix everything in place. The first thing I’ll want to do is put the frames where I want them, so I start by dragging them into place above my button bar. If you remember the original plan I drew up, the idea was to keep the top three quarters of the screen as clear as possible.

After a bit of tweaking, each frame is tucked up above the button bar. From left to right I’ve got a focus frame, my character’s frame, my target’s frame (with the portrait on the opposite side), my target’s target and my target’s target’s target (phew!) You can pick which unitframes you have enabled from the Enabled Units menu. I’ve decided not to have Party or Raid Frames shown by Shadowed, as I want to use something else for these. I’ll be covering party and raid interfaces later on in this series.

You might not need all of these frames visible – a lot of them can be hidden and it depends on your playstyle if you’ll find them useful. The focus frame is useful to me for tracking polymorph targets, so if you’re in the habit of using crowd control it’s very useful to keep an eye on. Knowing who my target is targeting is also useful to me, because if I’m solo farming I want to make sure the mob I’m looking at hasn’t been tagged by someone else. It also means in a dungeon or raid that I can see if the tank has aggro or I do.

The target’s target’s target sounds like a bit of a mouthful, but is only really useful in raiding when a tank is tracking multiple targets at once. If I’m targeting a mob, I want to know if that mob is targeting the tank (target’s target). I also want to know if the tank is focusing on building aggro on the mob, or if he has a different target that he’s attacking. Because I can now see which mob the tank is building aggro on, I know if I can nuke the target safely, if I need to drop my DPS slightly or if I need to swap to whatever the tank actually has targeted.

Once I’ve got the unitframes I’m interested in displayed and the rest hidden away, I can then work on the detail for each one. Options like portraits and bar colours are first on the list, but there’s also some tweaks I want to make.

Each unit frame can be individually customised to suit my needs. The first check is to make sure Combat text is enabled – this means that I get a visual flash on my unitframes during combat. if you’ve ever used Scrolling Combat Text, you’ll know that it can get spammed up with stuff really quickly. By having something unique that’s only affecting what I’m interested in, I won’t miss something in the spam.

I’ve also made a couple of changes under the Aura settings. By default all the buff icons would be below the unit frame, ending up right over my action bars. Under the Auras tab I can change these so that they appear above both my unit frame and my target’s. I’m not really interested in the auras of other unitframes, so I’ll leave those disabled. By enabling buffs then setting the position to the top of the unitframe, they’ll grow upwards. I can also tag debuffs to anchor to buffs, so they’ll follow suit. I’ve even ticked the Enlarge Your Auras option under debuffs so that the Arcane Blast debuff appears larger than the others and is easier to track.

The final part of any unit frame is deciding on the text that should be shown. Again, this is one of those things that you’ll need to decide as part of your playstyle – do you want to know the absolute health of a mob or just the percentage? The former’s useful in raids where you have a boss that switches phases at a certain percentage of remaining health, while solo players just want a feel for if they can take on a mob or not. The best thing here is to experiment with options until you find something you’re comfortable with.

Wrapping up, the Hide Blizzard option means that I can hide parts of the default UI if they make up part of my unit frames. In this example, I’ve decided to hide the default Focus frame and Buff Frames, as I have them covered elsewhere.

There’s a lot more that Shadowed can do and I’ve only covered the basics here, but hopefully this will have helped to point you in the right direction. As always, feel free to leave questions, suggestions and observations in the comments.

The UI Quest Series (in progress):

The Crutches, They Do Nothing!

Posted on by Gazimoff

Over the last few days I’ve been raiding slightly more than usual. I’ve been back into Icecrown a couple more times, where it feels that we’re around the Festergut-Rotface level of progression. I’ve also been back to ToC10 in order to pick up more badges and test out my new UI. It’s been a pretty interesting experience, as I’ve suddenly realised a couple of things.

The first thing that struck me was how I didn’t miss my boss mods, although it feels a bit weird playing without them. I had it drummed into me after blowing up the raid on Baron Geddon in Molten Core that I needed to download CT RaidAssist and pay attention to the pings. As I progressed through content, I moved to BigWigs then DeadlyBossMods, but I’ve always had something installed. I thought that it was one of those essentials, like raidframes.

Back in the day of Baron Geddon, you needed the boss mods. The debuff was a subtle effect, so unless you were watching out for it the first thing you’d know about it would be when everyone yells at you on Vent. Nowadays it’s like a giant Christmas bauble has landed on your head, making it blatantly obvious that Something is Wrong. Even The Bad is more blatant now – Blizzard famously changed the flooring in the Koralon encounter to make the flames easier to see.

As a mage it’s even easier – you don’t need to watch for when the boss is doing his Super Special Ability as he’ll usually shout it to make it blatantly obvious. The XT-001 fight is a typical example – you have plenty of time to prepare for the heart to drop, pop your trinkets and nuke your face off. The only time I was missing things slightly was during the Lord Jaraxxus Fight, and that’s only because I was missing out on some great spellsteals.

I know it’s different for healers. When I’m on my priest I like to pre-empt the nasty AOE ith a precast AoE heal. I’m not doubting that it’s different for other classes as well, who either struggle to see The Bad from their perspective, or need to track debuff stacks etc. But even though I’ll probably get round to reinstalling DeadlyBossMods, I don’t think I’ll rely on it much unless the fights change drastically later in Icecrown.

The other thing that rebuilding my UI has brought out is this incessant need in me to tessellate everything. The action bars must be square, which must line up with Recount and Omen. Everything must be the same colour, and have the same style, and fit together.

And there must be NO GAPS

Which causes a problem when the minimap is round, but I want it in the bottom corner with my other stuff. I could make it square to fit neatly, but then it doesn’t look all shiny. But with it being round there are gaps, which wastes space, which drives me nuts. Still, I’ll relax. I’ll go and flick through the Warcraft Ikea Catalogue that is Curse Gaming’s addon site, and find something that works and fits.

Finally, I’ve promised that if I ever get the Argent Resolve on my priest, I’ll race-change him to Gnome as soon as Cataclysm launches. People will hate me for it.

UI Quest: Mashing the Buttons

Posted on by Gazimoff

For the first step in rebuilding my UI, I’m going to concentrate on what I think is the second most important part: the buttons. These colourful icons are usually laid out like strips of candy, just waiting for you try one. What I’m going to try and do is make them more useful, ensuring that only the important ones are shown while the rest are tucked out of sight.

In case you’re wondering, the most important element of any user interface is the collection of video settings. If you’re thinking of playing around with these, this excellent forum post should help to get you started. A good baseline is to go for around 40 frames per second (FPS) while in a 25–man raid or a busy battleground before you start using any addons. You’ll probably find that your FPS will vary wildly from area to area, so it’s a good idea to design your UI based on where your computer will be working the hardest.

It’s worth pointing out that I’m using a 20.1″  TFT monitor set at 1680×1050 (that’s a 16:10 aspect ratio) and hooked up using a DVI connector. If you’re using a different screen resolution or aspect ratio you’ll probably want to tweak things to suit your own needs.

Before going through the button bar changes, it’s worth taking a look at the default UI and explain what I’m hoping to change. As standard, the default interface comes with a single action bar (configurable row of buttons), the minimenu and a row of bags. There’s also an XP or reputation bar that runs above the buttons. The XP bar and bags will be tackled another time, but for now we’ll focus on the action bars and minimenu.

There are a few addons that will replace your action bars but by far the most popular is Bartender4. This addon adds a beer tankard shaped icon from your minimap, from which you can control where the bars sit on the screen as well as adjust each bar’s settings. I’ve started off by enabling bars one through four, and dragging the first three to the bottom of the screen.

I’ve left bar 4 floating to one side to start with, but then start using it to hold actions that I don’t need in combat. Abilities like crafting professions, mounts and conjurations can all be moved to this fourth bar. I’ve deliberately left off portals completely, as there’s some useful addons that I’ll cover later that are great for these.

Now that I’ve got my block of three actionbars, I can start to tidy the others.

My fourth action bar – the one with all the stuff I rarely use – will end up on the side of the screen. Likewise the minimenu will be changed from being a long strip to a block. By playing with the Rows attribute for both of these, I can change them from their default appearance so that they’ll fit where I place them. I can also change the size (scale) and spacing (padding) of these buttons to suit their low usage.

I also want to make some further tweaks to bar four so that it doesn’t interfere with the rest of the action. I’m going to make it more transparent out of combat by setting a fade, but I also want it to vanish completely during combat.

By setting the visibility of the fourth action bar to Hide in Combat and by giving it a suitable Fade Out Alpha, I can make it look transparent unless I hover over it with the mouse cursor. As soon as I go into combat it vanishes completely.

To finish the look, I’m going to use two further addons: ButtonFacade and OmniCC. The first one allows me to change the shape and look of the buttons in a process called skinning. You can find several different skins from minimalist boxes to cog shapes as separate downloads from addon sites. OmniCC adds an overlay on top of the button to show what the cooldown remaining on an ability is. I’ve used the default settings on OmniCC and the Zoomed skin that comes included with ButtonFacade to complete the setup.

I’ve not covered macros in this guide as they tend to be class specific. And as I’ve said before, I’ll be coming back to that bag bar and XP bar later on.Of course, this layout may not be to your taste, so feel free to experiment!

The next one in the series will be around unitframes and making sure you have enough information about your character and your target. As always, if you have any questions or if you spot something I’ve missed, feel free to shout in the comments.

The UI Quest Series (in progress):

The Annoyance of Addons

Posted on by Gazimoff

Once you play Warcraft for any length of time, you end up using addons. These small pieces of software are designed to make them game better, either by presenting new information or showing existing stuff in a clearer way. But just as using some of them can enhance your performance, using them badly can be a millstone around your neck.

For me this all kicked off yesterday when I decided to try out ForteXorcist based on Derevka’s recommendation for priests. I thought the same tool could be used to keep track of Mage cooldowns such as Arcane Power and Mirror Image. This was a big mistake because of two things:

  • I didn’t practice with the addon first to get used to the information it was telling me, how it would help and how I would integrate it into my UI
  • I decided it would be a great idea to go raid ICC with my guild instead and tweak it during the raid

Seasoned veterans will probably be laughing at this right now, and yes it was a schoolboy error. More than that though it’s also got me thinking of how my overall UI layout affects my performance, both as ranged DPS and when I’m playing my healer.

Currently my UI looks something like the chart below, and by all terms it’s crap. It’s evolved over a number of years, where I’ve “just grabbed an addon” to do a particular task and just plonked it in a blank spot on the screen. Some of it’s a hangover from when I was running as a raidleader or officer, while others seemed useful at the time but are now pretty pointless.

The biggest issue with this interface is the sheer amount of wasted space. In my primary role as DPS on my mage, I don’t need to know the health and mana of everyone else in the raid. An overall snapshot might be useful, but this level of detail is too much. When I’m on my priest the unitframes show too much information – I end up having to enable Grid just to get the information at a reasonable level.

The next problem is eye focus. I should be looking at the centre of the screen, making sure that I’m on the right target and that I’m not standing in the bad. Visual prompts near the centre should be helping me in hitting my rotation and maximising DPS – anything else is clutter. I shouldn’t need to look at my button bars unless something outside of normal combat occurs – everything else should be driven from muscle memory. Having things scattered around the screen like some kind of neon buffet doesn’t help either – it means my eyes bounce around and get distracted by all the shiny.

Having to do a lot of eye movement is a bad thing – I’ve felt knackered at the end of farm runs and it’s not because I’ve been focusing. The eye strain from having a badly laid out UI is tiring, making me a slave to the goddess of coffee for the following four or five hours.

The third problem is performance – by running a shedload of addons I’m degrading my computer performance. I’m spending CPU cycles on calculating stuff that I pay no attention to anyway, when I could be spending it on making the game run smoother or look better. By cutting out what I don’t need, the technical experience of the game should improve.

What would an ideal interface look like? I’ve had a rough stab of it, so although it’s going in the right direction it’s nowhere near a perfect ideal. It basically takes the idea of getting rid of the crap I no longer care about, grouping similar stuff together and making everything else optional depending on the role I’m playing.

As a result of all this, I now have a quest. Over the coming weeks I’m going to be working to streamline my UI in order to reach that nirvana of elegance and efficiency. When I find something cool (like ForteXorcist), I’ll share how I’m using it and how it’s configured. Over time this should build up into a collection of posts on how to get the most out of your interface as well as having something that’s fit for those action shots or fraps videos.

At the end of the day, a UI has to bridge that gap between what you want to do and what the game is telling you. If you’re getting overload with information, it’s failing in that basic mission. By being ruthless about what you choose to see, the theory is that you’ll only focus on what’s important. This should lead to better performance, which is what we all want to reach.

The UI Quest Series (in progress):