Nephthys

I fully endorse the OP's UI values. I think my old UI with Discord is a fairly good realization. I used it for raiding. Notable features:

Visual simplicity. Having the unit frames, action buttons, and minimap together in one continuous block makes it easier to find the information they contain, because there's not extraneous background colors or shapes interspersed among them. This is part of the reason people like having the black bars at the bottom of the screen.

The UI I linked could be improved by having the Slice & Dice bar and cooldown reminders better integrated with the main block. I put the minimap in the main block not because I really needed it there, but because it made the UI that much cleaner. Later on I just mapped minimap show/hide to a hotkey so I only saw it when I needed it.

Layout. The information I look at most is as close to the action as it can be without getting in the way: near the center of the screen at my character's feet. This is my main problem with UIs that have everything at the bottom of the screen.

Reminders for abilities that are NOT cooling down. I'm mainly interested in knowing when I CAN use my abilities, not when I can't. Discord allowed you to set up buttons that appear when the ability is ready. That's what the two buttons are above the yellow timer bar. These days I use NeedToKnow for this. PowerAuras can do it, too.

 

scrub

From reading this thread i'v managed to improve my UI quite a bit, firstly by moving my player frame and target frame down to the lower part of the screen where the action is. Also by freeing up alot of space.

Before it was like playing through a fogged up windscreen with all the bars around my screen :/ Switching from sRaidFrames to grid saved a lot of space. I have all my healing spells on an invisible hidden bar also now, as they where all keybound and I never clicked them anyway.

 

Illundai

Just noticed this thread, thought I'd add mine.

Clickie

First of all, I wanted something that looked good. I'm staring at this interface 5 hours during raids, it has to appeal to the eye. Then, I wanted as little bars as possible. And ofcourse, centralisation. A good UI will have all the necessary information bundled together.

Minimap and chat in the middle, with UI frames to the sides.
Totem durations and bosswarnings on the topright, together with Yata (I will often move my eye towards that spot to refresh totems anyway, so it's a good position to bundle it all.

My raidframe is on the bottomright, above my targetframe.

And final: Little memory usage. I hate red memory numbers.

I do need to add a castbar of some sort somewhere, though.

 

Zygar

I recently came to an amazing realization regarding keybinds.

The scroll wheel. On my Rogue, I rebound camera zoom to CTRL+Scroll Up/Down. I then put Stealth on my regular action bar, and bound that button to Scroll Up. When stealthed, that button is paged to this macro (you need auto loot turned on):

#showtooltip Cheap Shot
/cast Pick Pocket
/stopcasting
/cast Cheap Shot

It's basically the most amazing macro ever, and the fact that I can stealth, pickpocket and cheap shot all by scrolling up is incredible. It's way easier to Cheap Shot a moving target now.

Other fun macros:

#showtooltip Ambush
/cast Pick Pocket
/stopcasting
/cast Ambush

#showtooltip Garrote
/cast Pick Pocket
/stopcasting
/cast Garrote

#showtooltip Sap
/cast Pick Pocket
/stopcasting
/cast Sap

(Only problem with the sap macro is that if pickpocket is resisted, you destealth.)

A combination of these macros and the scrollwheel... wow, I don't know how I played without them.

 

◊ Kyth

I bound the scroll wheel to target next/previous enemy (and when I'm on an alt pvp-healing, it's next/previous friendly.) That was very game-changing for me, as a warlock.

 

◊ Asgorath

Swap the Pick Pocket with the Sap, the Sap will still land even if the Pick Pocket is resisted. Slightly safer version, I've found.

 

Machichi

I'm curious about what other warlocks do for their pet management. I suppose this could be in the class mechanics section and I'll repost if felt necessary, but I figured I'd try here for because it's more of a UI type question in my mind.

Anyways, I find my pet to be kind of unwieldy at times, although I think a large portion of that is because I've been using dark pact almost exclusively since 50 and have gotten used to my mana-battery imp. I've got my petbar bound to F1-F8, but I really only use f1-f5 since that allows me to use the basics + devour/seduce/spell lock. Any suggestions on how to bind my pet abilities more effectively? Should I start using some macros to streamline things? L2P?

I like you peoples...

 

◊ Kyth

I bind pet abilities just like I bind all my spells: convenient keys. Seduce is 'w', Sacrifice is 'x', etc.

I couldn't imagine reaching for the function keys in pvp (or even pve) to seduce something, much less remembering which it was ("w" is easier to associate, for some reason than F plus "some number")

 

trost

One of the major problems I have with most unit frame mobs is that they don't have a good VISUAL indicator of whether a mob is elite or rare. I admit I could be a total noob and just don't know how to enable the correct option, but most UF mods out there simply show the word "Elite" in small type somewhere in the target frame.

I'm not saying I want to go back to the gawdy gold and silver blizzard dragons, but some visual indicator of a mob's elite status, aside from the small print, would be greatly appreciated. Maybe a simple gold border around the target frame if the mob is elite and a silver border if it's rare? Are there mods that can do this already?

 

lazerpewpew

hmm, how come? Have you used Pitbull/AgUF/X-perl?

AFAIK, they all support the visual indicator of an elite mob or rare.

 

trost

I've tried AG and X-perl and I couldn't find the option. The best I could get was the word "Elite" in the target frame.

I guess I just need to do a little more digging.

 

• Poly

My solution for using my pet abilities is a macro that I have keybound (SHIFT-E for me). The macro using the conditionals introduced in 2.0 to cast a different ability depending upon what pet I have out.

/cast [pet:felhunter] Spell Lock; [pet:succubus] Seduce; [pet:imp] Fire Shield; [pet:voidwalker] Sacrifice

I use a click casting mod (Clique or UnitActionBars both work) to allow me to click on a unit frame to use devour magic (though I tend to leave it on autocast most of the time)

These are the abilities for each that I generally want to use on demand (Imp is Fire Shield for easy buffing, because what else do I care about? =)

I also have another macro keybound for general pet control:
/petattack [nodead, harmful]
/petfollow [dead] [noexists] [friendly]
/petpassive [dead] [noexists] [friendly]

This makes my pet attack my target when my target exists is alive and harmful and tells him to go passive and follow me if not

I really like the idea of using my scroll wheel to cast a sequence of things, going to have to think about how I can use that...

 

Toran

Do you remember Servitude? This macro uses a primary and secondary function like that did. I use this regularly. This does not manage their Aggressive/Defensive/Passive status though. However it does just about everything else.

Primary:


Secondary:

See this thread for more details on it: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...40783&sid=1#14

 

◊ Malan

Has anyone had any luck in finding an addon that will alert/display buffs while in a raid intelligently?
ie, only show my Fortitude buff when it has less than X time on it, or if its missing, and only do either of those if a priest is in the group. If solo, don't do anything.

Vyktianity already has over 75 billion followers. The first verse in his book "Gift of the Wild" is "In the beginning Vyk cast lifebloom and then maul."

 

souja

Haven't had a chance to try it yet, but this addon I found on wowinterface piqued my interest:

http://www.wowinterface.com/download...3-RABuffs.html
Not sure if it's exactly what you're looking for, but the querying feature looks like it might be fun to play with.

 

◊ Malan

No that's more like a raid status addon, and I've got all that through RDX already.

I'm asking about a better way to display Player buffs, the ones on ME. Not on other people. It was briefly mentioned in this thread before - the idea is that if I am in a raid with a Druid, a Priest, and a Mage, I expect all 4 possible buffs to be on me - Spirit, Fort, MotW, Int. Once they're on me, I don't ever need to see that stack of 4 buffs again until they're about to run out, or are now missing.

Vyktianity already has over 75 billion followers. The first verse in his book "Gift of the Wild" is "In the beginning Vyk cast lifebloom and then maul."

 

Gretten

I found out that having multiple pet-abilities chucked into 3 macros is neat. For instance, I have one macro which does Spell Lock if my pup is out, Seduction if the hooker is out, Sacrifise if Void and Charge if Fel Guard. And then I use a defensive macro which uses Invisbility for the succubus, Devour-self if pup and Fire Shield-self if imp. I like it alot

 

Leaflock

I agree with a lot of the general rules a lot of people have already posted-- simplicity, ready availability of important information, elimination of unnecessary information/pointless frills, etc. I have a couple of my own, though.

1. Centralization of... the viewing area! Some UI setups (and some of the posts here) seem to take centralization to the extreme-- I think it's important to not have to look to far for key information, but at the same time, why is it necessary to free up the bottom left and bottom right corners of your screen? For me, really, all four corners are the least useful areas to keep unblocked by UI. Accordingly, I have Player/Party frames upper left, buffs upper right, chat lower left, and Recount/Omen lower right. I don't need to stare at any of these during your average fight, but they're all important to me to have readily available at some point. The middle of the screen is for seeing what's going on, clicking on mob health bar nameplates, etc.

2. Nobody mentioned it, but... symmetry. A UI is more aesthetically pleasing if it's symmetrical, and a number of UIs posted here are not, surprisingly. If something goes on one side, it looks better if there's something else on the other. It's also for this reason that I choose to keep 4 action bars, clumped in a single rectangle, on my UI. Most mods are rectangular, and it keeps things looking proportional, sticking with parallel lines. The top two action bars are clickables that I'm generally too lazy to open my spellbook/bags for (I think hotkeying itself has a limit of usefulness-- I don't need my stack of Spicy Crawdads ready at the push of an Alt-Shift-Ctrl-Z, but having an icon with a little number indicating how many I have left is useful to me). The bottom two have hotkeyed spells, and swap depending on what form I'm in.

3. My UI depends on having a widescreen monitor-- I've had both, and widescreen is just hands-down better for setting up UI with good viewable space. For one, it lets me scroll sct and sctdamage to the left and right of my character comfortably without obstructing any other UI. Most centralized is NECB, directly below my character, for castbars/debuff durations for cat and bear-- very important for me to see all the time-- so sct and NECB for me make a minimalist (and symmetrical) HUD.

 

• topojijo

One thing I know alot of people say is having information at the bottom but that is really a preference also. How my monitor is on my desk with my chair, when I'm sitting my eye level is actually about 1 to 2" above the top of my monitor, so that I'm actually looking at a downward angle.

This makes things on the top of the screen for me significantly more apparent and quick to grasp, where as information on the bottom of the screen I have to look way down to see it.

 

• Chicken

I work along that same principle as well, though not for entirely the same reason. I prefer having as much of my 'Must know fast' information on the top area of my screen; the only exception being my chat, but that's why I've enabled auditory warnings when someone says something in a channel likely to be important mid-raid.

Here's a crude ASCII represenation of the basic layout I use:

Than I just fill it from left to right like this...

First Row:
- Player, Player Cast Bar, Target, Target Cast Bar,Target's Target, Target's Target's Target frames. These are stacked from top to bottom in that order. And yes, they do approximately take up that small amount of space.
- Target's Buffs/Debuffs
- Threat Meter
- Boss Timers (These move and get enlarged to the center of my screen when the time is nearly up)
- Recount
- Minimap

Second row:
- Party/Raid Frames
- Player Buffs/Debuffs

Third row:
- Main Tanks
- Raid Cooldown monitor

Fourth row:
- Paladin buff mod
- Eavesdrop

Fifth row:
- Chat Window 1 (Not too important stuff + loot)
- Action Buttons (I don't technically need them to be there, but I'm just more comfortable with them being visible, plus I actually reasonably often make some changes to what action buttons do what depending on the fight)
- Chat Window 2 (Party + Raid + Whispers + Officer)

Other:
- Two seperate FuBars on the exact top and bottom of my viewable area. This is mostly for misc. information, configuration and resetting buttons. I disable FuBar plugins of mods I'm done configuring usually (So despite using Grid I don't have the Grid icon on my FuBar because I've already configured it to my liking). This is mostly to get rid of minimap buttons, because I don't think they work well on a square borderless minimap... Not to mention they clutter up your minimap like mad.

That's all on a 1280x1024 resolution.

The upper and bottom portions are covered by a viewport, the sides aren't but would only potentially benefit from being hidden when I'm in a raid, and are basically free of UI clutter when I'm not raiding. I should potentially experiment with trying to cover it through eePanels or something similar when I'm in a raid, but I can't say it bothers me.

SCT takes care of most of my 'on the spot' knowledge of damage taken/done, and thanks to Cooling also shows when my abilities are ready.

The purpose of arranging my UI like this is that information is basically arranged in importance from top to bottom and left to right, while keeping the center as clear as possible so I can see what's going on. That's a different approach from what a lot of people try, but I find it works far better; I also don't like HUDs for this reason myself, some people find them nice, but I find them more clutter than anything.

I've stacked the 'big' unit frames all in one place with it going from top to bottom on purpose as well; I find it more intuitive this way. I look at it and I see: This guy on top is me, than the one below that is my target, than comes his target, and finally the target of the third guy. It also takes up as little space as possible on purpose, when I'm tanking I want to be able to see the status of my own health as well as what my target is attacking as quickly as possible, while when I'm healing I want to see the status of my own health/mana, my target's health as well as whether my target matches the target of his target in a single look. I've tried varying other setups, but this is what eventually turned out to be the most intuitive and clear.

I used to follow the same basic setup except from left to right with the unit frames having too much information attached to them, since that time I've heavily reduced their size and information display. All I really need from the majority of frames is a name, class (Or type in case of mobs), level, and for myself and my target I enjoy having a power bar. There's also a cast bar attached to only my own frame and my target frame for that same purpose.

That also puts me at why I have my cast bar there; that was a gradual evolution. I used to have the standard bottom centered cast bar, but I've always had my player frame in top left. Then the 2.0 patch came, and I had to install a plug-in for AG_UnitFrames (Which I used at the time) to get a target cast bar, it also came with a cast bar attached to the player frame, which I gradually noticed paying more and more attention to. Some time later I just got rid of my old bottom centered cast bar; I never watched it any more anyway.

The same happened with buffs/debuffs. I found out that I generally only cared about the ones on my current target, and I had timer mods for showing me my own buffs/debuffs on different targets. So I disabled those on the target's target and target's target's target frames, found out how much space that saved, disabled their power bar a few minutes later, and put them close together with the one earlier in the 'sequence' on top.

I'll replace the crude ASCII image with a proper screenshot link later tonight.

 

mitsukurina

I am loving this thread. I recently twiddled with my UI fairly significantly, but after this thread got started, I went back and made some tough decisions on what was there because it needed to be, versus what was there "because I could" (yeah, I had raid target frames :P), and managed to strip out a lot of redundant or distracting stuff. The biggest thing, functionally, was removing my player, target, and target's target frames, since these resided in the top left corner of my screen. I found myself fixated on my player frame while raiding -- watching energy, threat, and CPs, and having all that information so far removed from the heart of the action can be dangerous (like not noticing that I'm standing in a cave-in until I've taken a tick or two, which sucks on grow #10).

I've kept my action bars (although I've scaled them down considerably) -- I find they're just too handy not to have. One thing I would like, though, is to be able to adjust the alpha of my action bars so that they're faded out when I'm OOC -- a similar idea to what, say, IceHUD does. I'm using BT3, but that option doesn't seem to be available (there's a fadeaway option, which I'm using for non-essential abilities like GotW and professions, but it's all-or-nothing, no option to set the alpha for that). Is there another bar mod out there that allows you to set the alpha for in-combat/out-of-combat that still offers the features that BT3 does? Or have I missed an option in BT3?

The other thing I'm looking for is a decent cooldown bar mod that fully supports druid abilities. I had one that looked like what I wanted, but irritatingly did not display cat form or bear form cooldowns unless I opened the spell book and flipped to the Feral tab (so, pretty much useless). Or it would do funny things like call Enrage Innervate. I don't recall which mod it was, it might have been oCD. Any druids out there have a cooldown bar mod that doesn't do this (preferably one that displays timers for abilities and items)?

edit:
Okay, here's what this thread has done for me:
Before
After
Changes include:
- autohiding FuBar
- Removing Player, Target, and Target's Target frames (since that in