The Rogue UI: Your Silent Partner - Page 3

TheXo · 03/24/09, 3:33 AM

Originally Posted by velocibrad

I'm in agreement here. I've seen a lot of talk about what specific mods are useful, and I've tried out a lot of different buff mods and unit frame mods and such. In the end, all I really use is NeedToKnow and RogueFocus. I find both to be indispensable while raiding. One to track my energy regen and combat points, and it has a nifty little enemy HP thing on it. And the other to simply track my HFB, DP, Rupture, SnD and Expose Armor(when I need to use it).

Here's a link to the UI, it's pretty simple.

Fenriz UI in Combat

which addon does the buttons highlights of your running HfB, s&d, rupture and poisons?

@EBB: I used it half way through BC for tracking my buffs/debuffs, but at some time (i think it was patch 3.0), it showed me not only my rupture, but all of the other rogues as well, i cant figure how to show only mine.

I really liked EBB because of its stacking groups and colouring.

Now i'm using nugrunning, a modified version of it, so it tracks also my procs like Card, Berserk, Trinket ...
A benefit of nugrunning is also, that it tracks not only your target (dots on your current target are highlighted), but it also shows every other mob, you have dots on as it was primary made for shadows and affl.locks.
but there are no groups, only different stacking for buffs and debuffs. which makes it sometimes growing big, if you FoK with DP on.

Rensy · 03/24/09, 5:24 AM

Originally Posted by Latito

A UI that has your Reflection of Torment buff mixed in with Sacred Shield and Turn the Tables won't allow you to do this effectively.

This is exactly correct. No matter how much can be said for collapsing your UI elements onto each other for centralization, a certain amount of specialization is required for actual use when maximizing your DPS.

Now, on to an important point that someone brought up that I would like to elaborate on. There is good play incorporating high dps and survivability, overly-cautious play, and overly-dps oriented play. Each of these have their place in a rogues arsenal. If your guild is pushing for firsts on your server/battlegroup/continent etc then you probably want good play. If you are learning a fight for the first time, you probably want cautious play, and for guilds that want to push DPS and attempt to get top kills on sites like the old WWSscoreboard.com and now wowmeteronline.com then you will want to focus your play around eeking out every little bit of DPS that is possible-- so maybe you will want to show an overkill tracker, internal cooldown tracker, accurate DP ticker, etc etc etc... all of which and more myself and Latito use to their fullest (and I'm sure other rogues too!)

Your UI will help you with these goals, and while that is clear, I think it speaks to an important point on preference/use of mods. Someone may prefer to not have a large chunk of their UI portioned out for short duration DPS buffs, saving room for screen visibility etc... while others might have their screen absolutely cluttered. Ultimately, then, someone should be shooting for something that suits them-- but some players need all three and PVP too! These types of players need a finely tuned machine that intelligently gives you the best of all three worlds. Here are some things to keep in mind:

1- Keep your chat window and non-relevant shit small if possible.

2- Hide as much as possible, I have all of my non cooldown abilities hidden (why do I need to know if my rupture is on my bar), and I hide all profession/etc stuff on mouse-over bars (bartender).

3- Use your mods properly to stream line information. Instead of a normal bar with "(ICON) Slice and Dice -- 00:13" and the same background as all my other buffs, I've used elk to slim it down to just a yellow bar. Rupture is the same except red and with a name (to distinguish from garrote), and HFB has more info on it to distinguish from tricks on me (which me and latito will often time off of each other so we can plan for pooling energy inside of a tricks gain).

4- For god's sake I know you like to look at pretty frames and nice portraits and things but just get rid of that shit for performance. Opaque backgrounds gotta go,

Okay so here is my UI. Trying to give an example of simplicity without sacrificing any function what-so-ever.
http://i108.photobucket.com/albums/n...dfdfdfdf-1.jpg
Everything is self explanatory. Above the grow-down mini-buffs on the left are survivability gains like evasion/CoS/even HOTS and other things. I actually don't play with recount shown because of the distraction/space it takes up but I pulled it up so I could look cool I guess. Incoming damage is on the left, heals on me are in the middle along with some important gains. Things that come off cooldown flash a small icon also in the middle a bit lower. Debuffs appear above my combo point bar, and since I'm staring at that combo bar a lot, it's a perfect spot for it. CENTRALIZED DEBUFFS ARE ESSENTIAL!!

I intentionally ignored how my UI looks when I swap over to PVP (which I spend a lot of time doing), because I don't think that is the goal of this thread. PVP is for assholes anyways. Basically what I have here is a UI that is tuned for all three functions. I have perfect control of survivability and dps, and there are spots not showing in this picture with various utility functions. Nothing is here to be aesthetically pleasing, for that is not that way of the soldier. I'm not your fucking Martha Stewart.

One Last Important Thought!!
Just like how my debuffs are above my combo points, and certain words/etc are stripped from some of my bars, you must remember that some things look nice and some things WORK. It isn't just about what information you have and where it is, it's about the MANNER in which it is displayed. As a general rule of thumb, basic information that is nearly always present like slice n dice should be minimal yet centralized, whereas niche information like Berserking buffs should be detailed and available, yet ignorable if you are doing some fancy footwork on a boss fight.

Originally Posted by Niitra

As rouges we really only need to track Rupture, SnD, DP and HfB. Other than this the ability to easily track our own health bar energy and combo points is key to survivability and also needs to be centralized. Obviously these are points that have been made in earlier posts, but I still see a great deal of examples where cumbersome buff readouts or combat text seems to really just add too much information to the screen. I'd be interested in seeing some discussion of what mods and information we can perhaps do WITHOUT. The goal being to increase situational and raid awareness.

Check out my post. You are the perfect example of the player focused wholly on cautious play with standard/acceptable DPS. That is fine, that is a play style. Other players might want to save that mut for 1-2 seconds and see if anything procs, or unload a finisher before their buff fades instead of pooling energy. Your style of UI doesn't allow for this without an unreasonable degree of discomfort.

minormistake · 03/24/09, 9:45 AM

I can relate to the "less custom UI is bettter" argument, mainly due to how terrible my computer is. Being a raidier, my computer stresses more and more every time something new comes out. In order to combat some issues of both computer side lag and overheating my computer, which cause more computer side lag, I try to run only the bare minimum. In my mind, the bare minimum is Recount, Omen3, Grid, and DBM or Big Wigs.

In this screenshot I have DMB, but I have converted to Big Wigs because I find it more accurate and dependable.

As you can see, their is a lot of room for vision and mobility. Their are a couple of downsides however, the biggest one being how you have to track both h4b and SnD on the default buff bar on the top right. Call me old fashioned, but I find this to be easier than messing with cooldown timers and bars. Another thing to be taken into account is how blizzard has implemented a lot of useful raiding tools into the default ui, even since BC

Is this to say that this UI is the one for you? No. But if your computer tends to have trouble, even just for raids, and you want to ease the pain while increasing visibility and raid awareness, this may be for you. This idea is taking your UI back to the basics, and it works well for me.

Dranaerys · 03/24/09, 9:51 AM

I dont think anyone has mentioned DoTimer yet, I find its a fantastic addon for tracking cooldowns with minimal clutter. As other posters on this thread, I would check cooldowns on my bars, but eventually realized that keeping 20+ buttons on screen just for the sake of tracking the CD status of 5 at most, was a waste of screenspace. You can set up DoTimer to display only your current skills on CD. These vanish when they become available, so I keep them to the right of my HUD - if I see an icon there, I know I can't use that skill yet.

I'll also be another huge supporter of IceHUD, I use the two right bars in my HUD to track HfB (the numeric value below tells me how many seconds it has left), Energy, and within the energy bar with another colour and opacity is the SnD bar.

I only wish there was a beter solution for buff icons around the map, in a typical Heroic raid that space gets very, very cluttered.

• Maestroquark · 03/24/09, 9:54 AM

Originally Posted by Dranaerys

I dont think anyone has mentioned DoTimer yet, I find its a fantastic addon for tracking cooldowns with minimal clutter.

It would have been better had no one ever mentioned it. DoTimer has a horrible communication module that is sending out much more information to everyone in your raid group than it needs to, causing extra lag. Supposedly even when you disable the comm parts, there's still old code that's transmitting data for no reason whatsoever. Do your raid a favor, cut your losses and find a replacement.

ieatpaperbag · 03/24/09, 10:09 AM

Originally Posted by Dranaerys

I only wish there was a beter solution for buff icons around the map, in a typical Heroic raid that space gets very, very cluttered.

Photobucket is blocked where I work, I assuming you are using the default display for your buffs/debuffs (Sorry if this isn't true). Probably the most popular mod for this is ElkBuffBars (was mentioned in earlier posts as EBB). Very customizable, if it still takes up too much space you can reduce it down to small icons with just their durations, there is a screenshot of this if you follow the link. If you go back to the first page of this thread you can see it in use in Vulajin and Neto's screenshots for more examples.

raphaeldan · 03/24/09, 10:27 AM

Originally Posted by Neto-

Of course, this is mostly a preference thing, but you can easily hide your actions bars and only show the abilities that you want to see the cooldown/range of for a less congested UI. For example, here's my UI. Showing less buttons allow you to make them bigger without compromising a large portion of your screen, and as such, they are more visible and centralized. It took me a while to get used to hidden bars, but once you do get used to them, you won't want to go back to the mess that showing your bars is (by the way, make sure your vehicle bars are working fine if you do this); it just takes a couple hours of playing before you get comfortable with hidden bars.

So neto, i liked your UI, can u upload?

Tks

velocibrad · 03/24/09, 10:56 AM

Originally Posted by TheXo

which addon does the buttons highlights of your running HfB, s&d, rupture and poisons?

It's called NeedToKnow. You can configure it to track other stuff if you'd like, but I just have it tracking what I listed in that post.

Edit: It just hit me now that you might have meant Dominos that is highlighting the buttons on the bottom of my screen. That's just a typical bar mod. Sorry for the confusion >.>

schoolbus · 03/24/09, 11:28 AM

What about turning off your damage output text? To me, it's too distracting to see how much your swing hits for. However, I find addons like SCT to be very useful to show if your anesthetic poison removed an enraged effect or to show that you're taking damage and what type.

ieatpaperbag · 03/24/09, 11:49 AM

Originally Posted by schoolbus

What about turning off your damage output text? To me, it's too distracting to see how much your swing hits for. However, I find addons like SCT to be very useful to show if your anesthetic poison removed an enraged effect or to show that you're taking damage and what type.

This may not be the most efficient way to do this but you can get SCTD (damage version of SCT). You can selectively turn off different parts of your damage (I use to turn off my white damage) or position the frame somewhere on your screen where it can spam away without being to distracting or alternatively as you are asking, you can turn off all of your damage by unselecting everything.

Kurosuke · 03/24/09, 12:24 PM

While improving my UI I stumbled upon this addon: Debuff Filter.

Basically it lets you specify which debuffs are shown on your target. For instance, I have the addon set to display only Expose/Sunder and FF, so there are no more distracting caster debuffs that cluster the screen. There's also an option to only display your own debuffs, I am going to test on Malygos if it can single out your own engulf stack, which imo would be awsome.

Gus · 03/24/09, 12:54 PM

Originally Posted by ieatpaperbag

I just want to point out a few more things about PowerAuras, it will also track debuff types so you can have an indicator to if your target is poisoned (will be somewhat unnecessary for 3.1). You cannot set it to check if your target is bleeding however, you can set it to have an indicator to when an ability is usable so you set it to indicate when 3.1 HfB is usable (works on the PTR).....

That's a good idea, however you can have it indicate if a target is bleeding, it's just not simple. You could set up 1 icon in the same position for each of the bleeds it could detect from various classes... garrote, rupture, mangle, etc etc. It's a bit of work but it would basically tell you if the target is bleeding, you just wouldn't know what particular debuff is causing the bleed.

Either way, good stuff.

Len · 03/24/09, 1:20 PM

Originally Posted by Kurosuke

While improving my UI I stumbled upon this addon: Debuff Filter.

Basically it lets you specify which debuffs are shown on your target. For instance, I have the addon set to display only Expose/Sunder and FF, so there are no more distracting caster debuffs that cluster the screen. There's also an option to only display your own debuffs, I am going to test on Malygos if it can single out your own engulf stack, which imo would be awsome.

One step ahead of simple debuff-filter might be Auracle. I've run some tests with it (just today got hint that this might be the Demon-replacer for 3.0), and this seems very useful. With quick glance you can check what buffs you have/don't have, and what debuffs target is missing. There is lot to configure, though; just check RogueCraft's Buffs-sheet if you want to see all what I'm after.

gyrinth · 03/24/09, 2:05 PM

Originally Posted by Gus

That's a good idea, however you can have it indicate if a target is bleeding, it's just not simple. You could set up 1 icon in the same position for each of the bleeds it could detect from various classes... garrote, rupture, mangle, etc etc. It's a bit of work but it would basically tell you if the target is bleeding, you just wouldn't know what particular debuff is causing the bleed.

Either way, good stuff.

Or you can set a single power aura graphic that is activated by several different debuffs. Honestly, I think PowerAuras already does a "Bleed" type debuff.

On topic for the thread: there are several mods that allow for streamlining indication of basic debuff/buff categories (e.g., poisoned or not, bleeding or not), which is something else we need for good performance (as one might infer from above, I use PowerAuras with some heavy configuration). This is especially true for the new overlapping buffs - I care that I have Rampage or LotP, but I not too concerned about which it is. I care that target mobs have CoR or FF up, but not which one. So using a mod that determines that "At least one of X type of buff/debuff is up" cuts down on screen clutter and what we have to have stored in our heads.

Offhand, I know there are some other mod options to accomplish this (I even vaguely one that guesses what buffs/debuffs should be present, then presents a single box that is green if you everything you should, red otherwise), but I don't recall them.

• Andeh · 03/24/09, 4:29 PM

What mods/macros are people finding most effective to handle announcing kicks (WITHOUT spamming if you button mash)? I consider this a forgotten yet important part of a Rogue's raid interface, and have been thinking about this a lot lately, having tried the latest version of Iron Council on the PTR. It looks like there's a very old mod called Aftercast that lets you write a macro along the lines of:

/aftercast /p Kicked %t, Kenpachii next!
/cast Kick

However, I haven't had a chance to thoroughly stress test it, and would like to see if it can handle announcing to multiple channels (like both whisper and party). I'm also trying to rewrite an old Drums of Battle mod/macro combo to accommodate my design criteria, but it's going slowly since its been years since I coded anything.

Also, on the topic of general Rogue UI design, I'm surprised more people don't have their combo points on their player frame. To me, this seems logical for the following reasons:
1) During normal DPS cycles, you're principally concerned with your energy, combo points, and what move you have to do next. Just like you try to keep your buff/debuff indicators in a condensed but clear format, it would make sense to keep your CPs & energy close to each other.
2) By moving CPs near to your energy, they are also by association near to your health. Thus your eyes are more likely to quickly notice changes to your health, improving survival reaction times.