Nothing too fancy, I tried to put things in a place so I can see them asap without having to search for them. Set up Power Auras to show me when important things are up.

Red for Unholy Strength
Yellow for Reflection of Torment
Green for Greatness
Teal for Rime Proc
Rune UI Glows when Killing Machine is up.



Add-ons:

X-Perl Unit Frames
Skinner
Grid
Omen
Elkano's Buff Bars
Power Auras
Bartender w/ ButtonFacade
Sexy Minimap
Rune Watch
Eavesdrop
Closest Gnome
FuBar with assorted addons.

Bartender4 for the ability bars
Magic Runes for the Runes
Xperl for the unit frames
Carbonite for the questing addon (yes I quest with Unholy Aura)

This is how my UI currently looks like:

It is still work in progress, and I'm trying to clean it up a bit more.

My goal with designing this UI was to have all the info I need to quickly make decisions in middle of my screen and close to the action (not taking my eyes of void zones and what not.

I found that the most important thing is my rune/runic power addon (Runepack). I tried all other rune addons, but this one i like the best because: 1. it has BB and 2x FU pairs, 2. can set it to fade out 80% out of combat, 3. symetrical, 4. compact and 5. quick decision making friendly.

The white line below is my swing timer (Quartz) to see when my Runestrike hits. This is a bit bugged since Quartz doesn't show the next swing after using RS, but I hope it will get fixed soon. Target cast bar is not shown in the ss, but it's just above the runic power number.

Below the swing timer there's UB/Killing Machine/Sudden Death timer bar (ClassTimer) which is not shown atm, but it's just like the disease bars underneath it.

To the left of the diesease/utility timers there's the blade barrier tracker (PowerAuras), to the right is "Runestrike available" with the icon style and position same as blade barrier, and above Runepack there are buff icons with timers for Unholy strength and Trinket procs for timing gargoyle, who then too is an icon with duration left from the Unholy strength icon/timer.

The bar between disease timers and unit frames (Pitbull4) is ForteCooldowns, with the ability that just came of CD flashing between the center of the screen (player model) and incomming dmg/heals scrolling text (MSBT). Outgoing dmg/heals is scrolling right from the center of the screen.

Tried to keep cooldowns to the right so I can track all longer CDs at one place, but not totally satisfied with it yet. A lot of abilities (chains, blood boil, deathstrike, obliterate, mounts etc) are on a hidden bar keybinded, but are not important to show because they either 1. Don't have a CD, 2. availability can be determined by runes of CD. Trade skills, bandages, deathgate and simmilar skills are on a bar in the empty space between CD bar on the far right and minimap on the bottom right, and it is shown on mouseover.

Rest of the addons include: Chatter for chat, Bartender4 for bars, Recount left of bars in middle, Omen right from the bars in middle, Grid + GridManaBars (to check if it's safe to continue chainpulling)+ GridReadyCheck, SexyMiniMap (bugging out for me atm, it shows no map, gotta find what's wrong), ElkanoBuffBars for buffs/auras/debuffs, fuBar for info on top of the screen, ORA2 for raid CDs and MainTanks when they are shown (between Raid CDs and DK presences), TinyTip for Tooltips (still looking for a simple, but still more configurable tooltip addon), Skinner, Aloft for skinning nameplates. That's just the visible part, there's a lot of stuff under the hood.


Now, what I still don't like how my target buffs are displayed (right from target's unitframes, on top of target of target unitframe). This is painfull in pvp, and still gotta find how to solve that problem. One other thing I found in this thread and liked a lot is Opp-ressed's Cooldown Watch setup:
Think I will move the ghoul bar somewhere else, put the central bar lower and put Cooldown watch above the skill bar and below debuffs shown under the unitframes.


I'm satisfied where my UI is going, but I'd really appreciate some help with how to sort out target buffs. Other suggestions are welcome too.

For me the most vital addon is a debuff tracker like Class Timers to be aware of what diseases are up on whom.

My big problem right now is I am too stupid to remember to keep Horn up and recast or precast Bone Shield.

Is there a decent UI that is not overly busy and will just put a reminder somewhere letting me know that, say, bone shield is down and it's cooldown is up?

Awesome - I have seen Power Auras on so many UIs and was thinking about picking it up anyway. That's exactly what I want. Now if i can just get the text to just say "HIT THE B KEY DUMMY."

Then don't select "Use own texture" but "Text aura" like:


But anyway, anyone got a suggestion how I should solve target auras (just buffs, debuffs are under the frames) in my UI?

Apparently my previous post wasn't good enough to be considered "worthwhile" so I'll go a little bit more in-depth.



My biggest challenge when designing a UI is making it aesthetically appealing as well as fully functional to fit my needs. For my current setup I used Merde UI which is available from wowinterface (Merde UI v1.1 [1680x1050] : WoWInterface Downloads : Minimalistic Compilations) and I tweaked it to add my own personal flare.

One of the most important addons I use is called Need2Know which is a customizable cooldown timer that can be setup to measure any spell. I use it to display my diseases on the target, my defensive capabilities, and outside defensive capabilities such as guardian spirit or hand of sac. This helps to give a more visual representation of exactly what is going on during each encounter. I couldn't live without it.

Here is an example of it being used during sartharion

On PTR (3.1) ClassTimer ends up showing all DK diseases, not just my own. I'm wondering if this is a general 3.1 API bug or if its ClassTimer specific?

Blizzard changed the API slightly. It's generally easy to fix if you know a little about code if the mod isn't updated. I posted a fix for NeedToKnow @ WoWI in the comments since that's what I use, it shouldn't be too different across mods.

Details on the API change here: World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> 3.1 API Changes (and clarifications)

The part I'm interested in is the duration of Frost Fever and Blood Plague bars. What addon can i download to do this for me in terms of a bar and seconds left? May be a noob question but i am completely new to changing UI and also to DK's!

Useful thing I found was to put "Horn of Winter/Strength of Earth" in the Buff window. Stops you getting false positives (or negatives) if a shaman drops a totem.