I like the idea of compressed AoE scrolling text, like your "FoK - 8 Hits (XXX)", but I don't want to change from SCTD. Does anyone know mod that could be compatible with SCTD and eliminate the spam from FoK? I was thinking of modifying WindfuryTally to work with FoK, but I'm terrible at Lua.
I switched to Mik's Scrolling Combat Text from SCTD, for exactly the reason given. I think it's a solid replacement, unless you made a lot of customisations to SCTD.
Ignorance can be solved with a book. Stupidity requires a shotgun and a shovel.
<snip>
So, to draw a conclusion at the end of my post, a clean and "competitive" UI should have:
- Default Buffs squares provided by Blizzard, there is no need for a separate addon;
- Default combat floating text, same as above, no need for a separate addon;
- Player/target frames who show your/enemy HP, your energy, your combo points on enemy, also raid debuffs on enemy.
- Raid frames - use Grid, is small and good.
- Time status bars - use any you like who can provide main rogues abilities: Rupture, HfB, SnD, DP, WP, anything you want to know by preferences.
- Action Bars - hide some of them, don't show them all at a time.
- No Omen/other threat metter, no need to worry about pulling aggro on bosses.
- No Recount/other damage metter or keep it hidden. Use LoggerHead to automatically enable/disable combat log and at the end of raid load that log on a site like Wow Web Stats
While I agree with several of your comments and reasonings, I disagree with the buff mods. Now, I can see in your screenshot that you have a mod for tracking SnD/Rupture/Poisons. I think everyone can agree that those are *required* (and HfB if you have it). I would go further to state that additional information about important buffs is quite handy - not required but definitely a good thing. Having properly filtered/grouped sets of buff bars allows you to, at a glance, determine information like "am I getting all the proper buffs", "do I have a lot of procs up (good time to use cooldowns)", etc. I'm not advising large blocks of bars (such as you have) since they obstruct your view too much. I prefer smaller, tighter, ideally medium-opacity bar groups that are well filtered and managed. Example: Screenshot
At a glance I can see my important buffs. I realize I tend to run information-heavy with lots of stuff on my UI, but it is well managed and the viewing area around my character is quite open.
Regarding outgoing damage, I'd agree with a few other posters here that seeing it is handy for a quick "am I in melee range" check. Shrink the font, move it out of the way (top of the screen for me) and it won't get in the way, but whenever you want to check it, its there. Default combat text is large, bulky, poorly animated and in the way.
I'd definitely agree about Party/Raid frames - Grid is amazing (you can see in my screenshot that I'm missing LotP, a quick check on grid shows that the feral is out of range). No need to show Party/Raid frames when you have grid.
I still feel as though Omen is important. Its not that useful on most bosses, but anything with an aggro wipe or new adds.. Omen is handy. Tanks will do more tps than you in the long-run, but if they miss the first attack and you're on a mob right away, that can be trouble. Tricks of the Trade helps mitigate this, but for a fight with adds (or trash...), that's not always available. Recount - personal preference. I can see a lot of reasons why it should stay closed, I just like it open.
Simply put, your UI should be supporting you. It should highlight important information and filter out the useless clutter. Designing a UI is about balancing what information you display (open areas display the raid environment.. void zones, fires, etc) and where. I think this thread is mostly about helping people think about their priorities when it comes to designing a UI (realizing the tradeoffs they are making), and then helping them use the tools (mods, macros, etc) available to implement the design.
RogueHUD Update 1:
- fixed DP tick timer to work on your current target, not stuff you aoe
- fixed DP tick timer to start the moment poison is applied rather than the first tick
- threat rounded, no more 65.342346223111% threat :p
- increased the size of the trinkets frame, it was too small to fit some of the names
New to posting, but i've been reading these forums for quite some time.
I'd have to agree with Latito and many other's choice to display their raid frames, even while on a class that really doesn't use them. Setting it so you have a Range finder on your raid frames can tell you at a quick glance if you're out of range for important things. Running around blind to that can be quite detrimental sometimes. This also comes from experience as a Pally MT/Healer throughout BC and LK as well as being a Raid Lead. Knowing where your people are and the status of the raid at a glance is very important.
I personally use the standard Blizzard UI, X-Perl, Recount and Omen for my Rogue. That's it. Standard Blizzard action bars on the bottom and right side and the Buff/Debuff system at the top right next to the minimap. I've downloaded, configured and toyed with dozens of mods including some listed here for other UI's, buff bars, etc. but found them all to be.. well, in the way. As many have said, the center of the screen is "prime real estate" and should be used to see your character and the environment alone. The half dozen buff bars and other tidbits I see floating around people's characters only add to the clutter really. I run Information heavy, like Latito does, with both personal and raid information around the screen, but nothing but the standard combat text (which i need to change really) in the center. As much as some people seem to hate Combat text being immediately visible, it can be very valuable for quick range finding, positioning, etc.
As Latito just said, your UI should be supporting YOU. Don't clutter it up with a dozen different mods just because others say they're good. Keep your UI simple, clean and clear. Your enviornment is paramount, with your dps coming in second even for timed runs and dps races. Nothing stops those big flashy numbers like you being dead because you didnt/couldnt see something that killed you.
As Latito just said, your UI should be supporting YOU. Don't clutter it up with a dozen different mods just because others say they're good. Keep your UI simple, clean and clear. Your enviornment is paramount, with your dps coming in second even for timed runs and dps races. Nothing stops those big flashy numbers like you being dead because you didnt/couldnt see something that killed you.
First-time poster here and your statement pretty much sums up how I tried to design my UI.
Raid Frames: Pitbull. I like how customizable these frames are and I especially like the point bar directly under my target's name to tell at a glance how many CPs I currently have.
Action Bars: Bartender4. I prefer to keep the majority of my abilities keybinded and hidden and only have one bar to show my more important cooldowns.
Buffs: Elkano's Buff Bars. Very useful addon for clearing up a good deal of screen real estate.
Ability Timers: Needtoknow. Being able to see things like Reflection of Torment, HfB, and SnD as well as Rupture and DP next to the frames they pertain to is immensely helpful.
Cast Bars: Quartz. I keep the cast bars directly under the names. For instance, Sapph's cast timer would be between the combo points and the Rupture timer.
Basically, I prefer to keep most things centralized on my screen and for them to take up as little space as possible. My DBM timers are set to use the center area between myself, my target, and my target's target when they reach <10 seconds so it's rather hard to miss something important. Also, this keeps all the more pertinent information right around your character itself which makes monitoring these things while avoiding things like void zones during Sarth far easier.
Until visiting this thread I wasn't aware there were addons to monitor things like DP and Rupture ticks but now that I know I'll have to find a way to work that in here.
First off, I'm a sucker for a slick UI so being able to see what other rogues are doing is really interesting for me, that said sparing myself a really dumb story about my early rogue-ing, I've been devout about Rogue Focus Classic - Addons - Curse rogue focus classic, my vision isn't the greatest so being able to clearly see, my energy, tic and cp's is really important to me.
I searched this thread for my favorite rogue UI addon (rogue focus classic) and it appears this is the only mention of it. It shows enemy HP, combo points, and energy in a very compact package that I can stack right on top of the fight without being annoyed by it. It certainly isn't 'pretty', but you can vary the size to suit your UI needs and obviously place it wherever you want. If you aren't satisfied with your UI in terms of looking around for enemy HP, CP, and energy, I highly recommend this very simple addon which will not clutter your UI.
To me, that UI is way to busy. The bottom 3rd of the screen is completely obscured from view, making anything that might pop up there extremely difficult to see. On top of that, all of your panels are a highly visible white color, making them draw your eye to them, making it difficult for you to see the action in front of you.
I'm sure this works for you, but the way you have your short duration (de)buffs (HfB, SnD, Rupture, Deadly Psn) is very difficult to determine with a single glance. As I said, I'm sure you're used to the display so it works for you, but its not something I would use in my UI.
Probably the only thing I like about your UI, is how you display your long duration buffs. They are compact and out of the way, but still visible so you can see if you're missing something. The synergy with the target debuffs works well, and you can easily see if something is missing that is needed to maximize rDPS.
I think if you toned down the central display area and made the panels a little bit less visible, it might work better for me.
RogueHUD Update 2:
- created sorta config, read the configuration section in the original post
- fixed target raid icon not showing
- added ability to put energy markers, as much as you want, with any color
- added ability to limit some bars, so for example you put a limit on slice and dice bar 10 seconds and it will stay full till the value drops below, so it will draw attention when needed
- added ability to easily rearrange bars and change the colors
I'd just like to quickly reply to Herrjeh a few posts up (Here.. it got moved). This is a good example of several things not to do, while at the same time displaying some basic concepts correctly.
First, regarding this thread, you linked thumbnail pictures, which makes it difficult to see anything. The YouTube link was nice, videos of a UI in action are always handy (and in this case the only way to see anything).
The entire bottom third of your UI (as mentioned by Xaoc) is completely obscured. It seems like you went out of your way to block off your view of the floor here. Your chat window and recount/options area could easily switch to a transparent background. The ovular shapes around your map, player, target and target's target frames, etc basically just act as solid masses of color on your screen - you could easily display that information in significantly less space.
Aside from HfB and SnD, you seem to have shoved all of your buffs into the top corners and shrunk them down tremendously. These buff timers are of no use to you during combat. Even if the only thing you use them for is checking buffs pre-pull.. why not filter out the countless caster buffs to make that easier?
There are several small pieces of information that you aren't displaying. Some prefer to keep a very clean/minimalistic UI and therefore don't show this stuff (deadly poison tick timer, proc buffs, sunder/expose on target, etc). You seem to be using a fair amount of bulk in your UI without any of the benefit from highlighting these pieces of information.
All that aside, I think you've got the right general idea in bringing the most important pieces of information to middle of your screen, without completely blocking off your character from view. You could probably afford to zoom out a bit more and remove a lot of the wasted space in your center-console area with all the unit frames. You seem to of done a reasonable job working with [scrolling] combat text - I can't read the German (or whichever language you speak) but nothing gets in the way too much. I would comment that the section on the left could probably drop the spell names - that's a LOT of text which can be replaced by just a spell icon.
I'm reading EJ-Forums for a long time now and just thought now would be a good time to post the first time...
Anyways. I love the UI-Thread, cuz I'm rly a UI-"fanatic". I always tried to customize my UI, to find a way between an aesthetic looking and a simple design showing the most important things I need for raiding.
Buffs are looking kinda strange. They are flashing when their duration is <30s.
Someone here wrote he is using SBF for HfB/SnD and DP/Rup, I really liked the idea and replaced Classtimer with SBF.
Addons:
Pitbull and Grid for Unit/Raidframes
MSBT
SBF 3.1beta for HfB/SnD + DP/Rup
naiCombo
Skada for Damage and Threat
Buffalo
omni CC and Doom Cooldownpulse for easy Cooldown watching
Ticktimer for DP Stacks
Quartz for Player, Focus and Targets castbar
some other cosmetical addons that aren't worth to be mentioned
Just wanna start off by saying I've been reading these forums for 3 years and really appreciate all the work everyone has put into maximizing rogue dps output.
For my UI I made it as simple as I could think of while accomplishing everything I needed while leaving as much space open as I could.
Dominos - Bar mod
Classtimer - i did use rogue power bars which was an amazing addon for tracking snd, hfb,rupture,trinket procs, deadly poison. but as of lately it's been lagging really bad. the only difference between these two is classtimers doesnt have the option to give separate colors to every bar.
cccombopoints- its a really outdated mod but displays flashing circles under your char so you can basically be looking anywhere on the screen and still know your combo points.
Sexymap - just a visual addon, hides all of your buttons until you mouse over the map and puts a name near the ping so you can see who pinged.
Xperl raid and unit frames. cut down to the bare minimal options, just to see health and energy on unit frames and only health on raid.
Prat - Another Visual Addon
Recount - not recommended, I disable mine before raids because as time goes on it can become a memory hog.
I'm always looking for new mods to track snd, hfb, rupture and what not but so far RPB was the best i could find, hopefully it gets an update soon
what I'd like to say about buff mods is only buffs that really matter to a rogue are the ones he/she applies so using elkanos or whatever is just a personal preference and can be done more effectively with less memory usage on the regular squares
Great thread, good idea. I'm in fact someone who enjoys setting up the UI to perfection.
My own UI is based around creating space (I don't understand people have those huge empty screens that I've seen posted in this thread. Guess I need a larger monitor) and keeping overview. I kill two birds with one stone by keeping everything together as much as possible, and keeping it small. I've hidden all abilities I don't need to see the cooldowns of by putting them on separate Dominos bars, keybinding them and then hiding the bars. All that shows are my cooldowns - which, as a rogue, still takes quite some space. On my warlock I show about 5 spells total - the rest of my spells is hidden.
The main addons I use are;
-Dominos
-X-perl
-Grid
-SexyMap
-Recount (hidden most of the time)
-Scrolling Combat Text (though I'm going to try out the addon Latito was using)
Basically I put my minimap in the lower centre of the screen, with two bars to the left and right of it with my cooldowns. To the right above the map is my target, to the left above it my own portrait (though I'm considering to start using a HUD).
When in raid, I have grid in the top left corner of my screen, my party hidden, and recount (hidden) below Grid.
Ideally I would want an interface like RTM (1st page, http://img113.imageshack.us/img113/7...9002731bw8.jpg) or Vulajin posted, but I think my computer screen is too small for that. It's max sized as it is, and I hate small, clamped screens. Any hints on what I should buy? ;-)
Yesterday night my ClassTimers (v2.1.290 from 2008-12-02) bars and my NeedToKnow (2.0.1 from 2008-10-15) bars got refreshed by whatever I did and additionaly by the events of the other rogue in the raid as well. As long as you are the only rogue in the raid you might as well keep on using these two addons but if there is more than one rogue on your raid these addons will not give you proper information until they have been updated.
You can go visit WoW AddOns - WowAce.com to get a much more recent version of Classtimers that has been patched to work in 3.1, for some reason new versions of classtimers' aren't being pushed out to curse.com.
I've been using ElkyBuffBars to track (filter) my Rupture and Deadly Poison on my current target... however since the latest release, it appears to be displaying ALL Ruptures and DP's, which obviously causes some issues. Can anyone else relate?
As for MSBT, the latest release has adopted some great SCT features (ie. Loot tracking) but at the same time, it appears to have accidentally lost a few. I'm sure these bugs will be corrected soon, but does anyone have any immediate "hack" fixes?
I've been using ElkyBuffBars to track (filter) my Rupture and Deadly Poison on my current target... however since the latest release, it appears to be displaying ALL Ruptures and DP's, which obviously causes some issues. Can anyone else relate?
You may have already seen this, but on the Curse page for EBB, a user recently made a post on how to filter for only your own buffs.
Originally Posted by Pigmonkey
A quick fix for the Self Cast Buffs:
1. Open ElkBuffBars.lua in Notepad
2. Find the line that contains "isMine = UnitAura". Note that there will be some code before and after this segment in quotes
3. After this line, add:
if isMine == "player" then
isMine = true
else
isMine = false
end
You can go visit WoW AddOns - WowAce.com to get a much more recent version of Classtimers that has been patched to work in 3.1, for some reason new versions of classtimers' aren't being pushed out to curse.com.
I can only find "Classtimer" there, and the latest update is for patch 3.0.9.
...my NeedToKnow bars got refreshed by whatever I did and additionaly by the events of the other rogue in the raid as well.
From wow.curse.com (I havent tested this myself yet):
Originally Posted by Bogsie
To fix this, navigate to WoWDirectory/Interface/Addons/NeedToKnow and open "NeedToKnow.lua" in a text editor. Then find the following line of code (it is near the bottom):
"elseif ( buffName == bar.auraName ) and ( (isMine and bar.onlyMine) or (not bar.onlyMine) ) then"
In this line, replace "isMine" with "isMine == "player"". Now it's back to only tracking your own debuffs
Or just simply go to Group Settings -> GroupX -> Filter -> Self Cast Buffs -> White List
Then go to Filters -> White List and check the Buffs, you want to observe.
Blizzard changed how player specific debuffs are passed back to addons, so it will filter debuffs you select, but not just the ones cast by the player. That is why you need to add the isMine == "player" line of code to your addons.
I can only find "Classtimer" there, and the latest update is for patch 3.0.9.
You are correct it is listed as 3.09 but if you read the change log information for the most recent patches you'll see "Updated for 3.1 Aura changes, should work on live" and indeed the latest version listed there does work on the live servers, direct link here: WoW AddOns - ClassTimer - WowAce.com don't use the option to download from curse, just use the download option.
I tried to download from that link Kaidger but it still showed the rupture and things for other rogues aswell. About that .lua change, i tried that aswell but i cant open any .lua files or however that works (totally noob with things like that) It would be highly appreciated if you could upload youre fixed version for those who doesnt understand anything about .lua things.
-edit-
An option for those who cant get Needtoknow or Classtimers working: Satrina's buff frames got a lot of options, and can give you the same kind of bars as Classtimers could. It even gives you a little warning when something is about to expire and it works with mik scrollings text aswell (sound warning, whisper warning, warning in Mik scrollings text etc all the way you like it)
Update 4:
- fixed overlooked change in 3.1 API which went unnoticed due to me being the only rogue
- added support for Pyrite Infuser (45s internal cd assumed)
04/07/09, 12:37 PM
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