Zygar

I'm inclined to agree - but it doesn't mean that it can't be improved on! Hell, this is a generic Ace UI, yet it's brilliantly executed - it's consistent, something we rarely see. In fact, I'm going to add that to point 4 of the OP.

 

• syeren

Get a cooldown mod like coolDown and get Jim's Cooldown Pulse too, so that's that requirement of action bars gone. If you don't know your key bindings or don't use key bindings, then obviously you should be using action bars, but you should probably also posting on the official WoW forums rather than here, as for the range, just have a range checker enabled on your unit / raid frames, and that problem is solved. The only other thing is if people know they can use it, and in all honesty the only class who needs to know this is warrior in reality (even this can be argued, due to the fact that you will be ignoring the dynamic information which determines whether or not you will want to do these actions in the first place) but otherwise you should know the exact mana/power requirements for your abilities, and you should know if you can use them by your HUD.

Ultimately action bars are excessive information which can be replace in a far more efficient manner with a few mods, I haven't used action bars on my priest or Warlock for over a year, and the latter is probably the most intensive class to key bound due to the huge array of spells they have at their disposal

I'll post an action screenshot later of my UI later if I find a situation which will bring up all the required variables!

 

Machichi

I'm curious how you managed this, please detail. I've got ~40 buttons worth of action bars I'd like to ditch but I hate having to open up my spellbook to summon someone, create a soulstone, etc. I've tried the necrosis type addons, but after a bad WoW 1.0 patch left most've them borked I just gave up and decided to deal.

I like you peoples...

 

Miaxi

That works for healing spells but what about offensive spells? I can't seem to find a mod that just plops an indicator for 36, 30 and 20 yards on my screen, so I have 3 buttons left that double up as cooldowns for shocks and chain lightning. :/

Oh, and there is a huge problem that stop me from migrating from coolDown to Hourglass:
Hourglass creates a separate bar for every cooldown even of the same duration. My screen explodes with bars every time I use a shock or get my nature school interrupted. >.<

After tinkering about with my UI for 3 days, I gave up and went back to the generic viewport/skinner solution with everything below the rendered area. It just works. :s

 

• syeren

Well as a Warlock you have a lot of combat spells, but you have a lot more none-combat situational spells, and those spells are best binded to your Num Pad (Due to the fact that your hands don't really need to be in the optimum position when you are casting theses spells, You can also take advantage of using Shift / Cntrl + 1-6, and completely disregarding the majority of your movement buttons (WASD,) where only S' function cannot be so easy simulated using auto run / your mouse efficiently ;p It can take some use getting used to, but actually binding things around the amount you use them in to regards to the key's position on the keyboard can free the need for action bars, and don't forget to use CAPS LOCK too!

I'd also like to note I have a mouse which has 9 buttons on it, I can't stand playing WoW with a mouse with 3 buttons, it's just painful to be honest :/

As for the range checking, this may be a problem for your class (I don't know whether this is for PVP or PVE, the latter shouldn't really matter anyway due to the fact it is nowhere near as dynamic,) but things like Quartz's Range Check on Caster bar can help with offensive spells (I know you have a lot of instant cast spells,) it's just a shame that Blizzard decided to remove the function which enabled you to bring up your target's proximity a very long time ago. There is also experience which helps with this, I guess the more you play in X Situation you get more experienced you become with the variables in it

As for your decision to change the addon to monitor, it's one of the key reasons why I will never change addons, coolDown just does everything exactly how you want it, and never ever stops working or doing dumb things (the January release at least, the last revision creates multiple instances of your cooldowns on zonining) when you least want it too.

 

Miaxi

Deleting your IFrameFactory addon folder should fix creating of multiple cooldowns on zoning.

Quartz's range check is worthless, all it does to color my cast bar white if my target gets OOR while I am channeling.

No offense, but experience has nothing to do with it because mobs have different hit boxes. I have to be closer to Leotheras's center point than to Ragnaros's and I don't have any breathing space when I need to snare a mob that has a 15 yards melee range and will one-shot me if it manages to land a hit.

 

Taja

Ive got another solution for this then posted. Ive got around 40 keybindings on my mage. about 95% of the spells in theory I daily use.

For stuff like portals, buffing, water/food, professions I use Geist. 25 buttons bindable on a single button. Pops up where your mouse cursor is pointing at the time you pushing the button you binded for geist. Very usefull without taking up screenspace.

 

Mem

I agree on the motion that having a range checker on your unit frames might probably work for a class that only uses one range but for me, I need indicators for charge/intercept/intervene, melee (especially with this strange hitbox design in BC), intimidating shout and throw/shoot (since I do like to PVP sometimes).

 

levk

When I first started taking out bars with keybinds I started with professions and such - not combat spells. These are very easy to get out of the way since you don't have to think about good keybind placement. Also look into Geist - it makes an action bar that displays next to your cursor when you hold a keybind.

 

◊ Cowbell

Link to my UI.

As a holy priest with two other classes +60, and two other classes besides that +50, I have found that making a UI that has all the pertinent information and is still clean and readable is more difficult on a priest than any other class.

Here's some things I've done to reduce clutter:

1. Nix MT Windows -- You know who your main tanks are, you're not going to heal them any faster if you have MT windows up. I no longer have MT Windows in my UI and it's much cleaner for it.

2. Lrn2Grid -- Using this addon effectively can reduce so much raid clutter it's ridiculous. At a glance in a tiny box in either 10 or 25 man raids, I can see who has aggro, who is out of range, who has my buffs, who has fear weard, who has renews (and how many different ones, and how long is left on my personal renew) and who needs a dispel. It's an incredible addon and if you're not setting it up for your particular class and playstyle, you're wasting it.

3. WTFBUTTONS -- Someone else in this thread has mentioned Geist, and I use it as well. I have 25 out of combat or very rarely used keybinds bound to my Y key, that pop up when I need them. I don't care if I've pushed 6 a thousand times and know it's my max rank GH though, I still need to see it. I've also put all of my frequently used buttons with cooldowns (FW, DP, SF, trinkets, etc) on a separate bar on top of my other actions bars so I can see at a glance what's ready, and what I have on cooldown. This lets me get rid of those cluttered CD monitors with bars.

4. Fontalicious -- Get a chat mod, make your font smaller if you can bear it. Use something like ClearFont to get a cleaner look. Making this smaller and cleaner is going to save you space in the long run.

Also, I'd just like to say the new SWStats combat log is unbelievably great.

In regards to the "chat box left, combat log right, map middle" mentality -- people use this because it works. Putting things where your eyes are naturally drawn to them is not herd mentality, it's what works. I gave up on something different a long time ago, and now I'm striving to keep it clean and informative.

These mods are nothing beautiful and unique btw, so if there's a question ask, although I'm sure most of you already know what everything is.

 

Ashiya

For me personally, although I like fancy UIs I'm reworking mine to give me more screenspace, there are a few things that are important:

1) Low memory usage. There is something about my UI using more than 30 mib that pisses me off. I don't know why.

2) Unitframes have to be in a very clear position. I can't stand having unitframes on the topleft of my screen, for example. I rather keep them in the middle. They also need to have the functionality to have a deficit showing.

3) Combatlog. Although I'm a healer, I just can't live without a combat log telling me what hit me for how much and whatnot. I need to know.

4) Too many bars annoy me. 3 max.

5) I can't raidheal without Grid anymore. It's such a nice addon and it takes up little space.

6) KHLThreatmeter for when I am Enhancement spec, I disable it when I'm healing because of the high memory usage.

7) All timerbars in the same position. I need to know if I look in my rightmost corner that I can see all possible timers I need to be aware off.

8) Anything but the standard game font. It's completely horrid.


There's more, but that's it from the top of my head.

 

boomix

One thing I have found out is that larger the screen area gets more I need to move my mouse. I hate that I have my sensitivity at the max in game and out with acceleration enabled at 25%.

What I am looking to do now is organize my 3 bars around grid in the middle bottom while shuffling my character's unit frame as well as target unit frame to the top middle and disabling party unit frame completely. Now for this to work I would love to know if there is a mod that would track what my party has for buffs in small window that I can position anywhere.

I am also leaning towards new SW Combat log to replace Eavesdrop. I am pretty sure SW is very memory hungry but it does show info I need in concise manner.

I will be working on my concept sometime over the weekend or as soon as my priest dings 70 and I switch over to healing.

Last night was pessimistic skydive in a foolish narcotic shell

 

• Melador

How do you set this up? Or are there any good guides for setting this kind of thing up?

I've been using Chronometer for tracking my lifeblooms but it was getting confused with multiple tree druids in the raid last night and prematurely removing some of my timer bars when the other druid's lifebloom expired. I've already got a box that indicates a lifebloom is on a target, and I'd love to be able to indicate number of stacks/duration as well.

 

• Melador

doh, forums were wiggy and I double posted.

 

Machichi

TY Syeren and those who suggested Geist. Those're both great suggestions that I'm going to try to incorporate. I suppose my main problem will just be memorizing what spells are bound where.

On a separate note, I remember an Addon that allowed you to directly bind your spells to keybindings w/o mucking around w/ bars at all. Anyone know what I'm talking about?

I like you peoples...

 

boomix

Was it Clique?

Last night was pessimistic skydive in a foolish narcotic shell

 

c0rnflake

Sounds more like Spellbinder.

 

zeidrich

Ok, my UI standards are a bit different than the common theme. I'll try and give my input:

My current goals while designing a UI is one of transferability. I want to be able to switch between my own UI, and the default blizzard UI without missing too much of a step. Pre 2.0 I used a complete revamp of the UI, with conditional keybindings and macros, many of which were going to be disabled with the 2.0 patch. To combat that, before the patch I started playing with the default UI only, plus a couple of utility mods, such as KTM and oRA. I started to like using the default UI, and got very used to scroll wheel paging the action bars. I can keep on a central action bar and hit 1-7 without stretching, and I can scroll up and down 1 bar to give me 21 keys that I can use without skipping a beat.

With 2.1 some of my addons failed, and I was forced to delete my WTF and WDB folders to avoid constant errors on startup (Found out it was actually due to conditional castsequence macros requiring semicolon terminators now, but that was after they were deleted). It is important to me to be able to put together a UI that is useable after a complete reset in a minimal amount of time. As well, it is important to me to be able to use the default Blizzard UI to good capacity without having to re-learn it.

Space itself is less of an issue for me, as I run with at 1900x1200, but I respect a very clean viewport. I personally hate having HUDs, or anything blocking gameplay visibility. To me space saving is important because I want to see the game. Maybe this is less important to others, but I like to see what's happening around me. I cut down on clutter. Do I need to see the damage meters at all? Not much damage meter information is useful to me on the fly. So I hide it. I check it after a fight. Around the perimeter of my own viewspace I have my health, my targets health, and grid. I don't play with party frames visible, and I don't see mana of players, but grid warns me of low mana. I occasionally pull out blizzard default unit frames if I'm leading karazhan to see mana levels.

Id rather not show them than stick things over one another. It just leads to clutter doing that.

Near the action, but not over the action. This is where I see a lot of atrocities in my opinion. I see a lot of addons who love to stick HUDS and cooldowns and all that on top of their character. Maybe it works for them, but for me it's distracting. A lot of encounters in TBC require a level of awareness of your surroundings, and if your entire viewport is filled with crap, I can't imagine that being more effective than being able to see clearly. My health is near enough the centre that I don't ever die without knowing my health. My cooldowns are easily apparant. I have quartz above my health bars, with focus on left, target on right, and it shows debuff/buff timers above them.

I agree, and it's part of the reason I like Ace, just because of the more standard layouts.

For reference, my current UI. I'm still working on improving it, but standard keybindings, and it works great for me. But being a healer/tank I've got less of a dependance on a lot of information that DPS needs.

http://www.mopguild.com/ui.jpg

 

Machichi

Pretty sure that was it, ty much!

I like you peoples...

 

• Maligne

I prefer Bindpad.

What better cc is there for a druid than polymorph?

 

◊ Cowbell

I tried some DoT/HoT timers too before I finally found this, most were absolutely horrible for multiple renew/HoT ticks. I assume you're using Grid already -- you just need this plugin:

http://www.wowace.com/wiki/GridStatusHots

Luck!