Before I pass the hat to my guest author, I want to remind folks that what works for one person may not work for you, and that's ok. This article is intended to offer one direction for your UI. So feel free to agree or disagree, but comments suggesting that addon X is better than addon Y and player Z is a fool for using said addon will find themselves in the dark and abysmal comment graveyard.
Here are a few of the common abbreviations used below:
UI = User Interface, technically a GUI (graphical user interface)Now, since brevity is the soul of wit, without further delay, allow me to introduce my guest author, the esteemed Wisprunner!
UF = Unit Frames (the bars showing you, your party/raid, or your enemy)
HUD = Head's Up Display (much like a UF, only it tends to arc around your character)
WMO = Wow Meters Online (combat log analyzer)
WoL = World of Logs (combat log analyzer)
Lua = Powerful, fast, lightweight, embeddable scripting language
ToT = Target of Target
ToTT = Target of Target's Target
ToTTT = hahaha yeah ok, I'll stop
Hello everyone! Wisprunner here. Some of you may recognize me as the writer for the Raiding Basics @ Lvl 80: Moonkin Druid thread. Others may know me as that no life always posting at TMR. What you may not know, is that I’m also a UI freak.
Ok, some of you that follow TMR probably know that. The UI thread is practically my home there. Anyways, the reason I’m here is that our friend Relevart sent me a message stating he had been receiving emails about his UI. To quote him “since I developed my UI while following your advice/philosophy, I decided I would ask you if you had any interest in doing a guest article on my blog about your UI design/philosophy and recommended addons.” I’m privileged to take some time to break it all down.
I've been posting UIs at TMR ever since SSC, but have been working on mine ever since I found out you could make changes to the Blizzard UI. While I feel like I can make solid UIs that others can modify from there, I don't claim to be on the level of others that have thousands of downloads of their UIs. I'm a musician at heart; I don't have a creative eye to be able to create a masterpiece UI. I'm not computer literate enough to make complex changes to lua coding or to design an addon myself. I just like taking what others create in terms of addons and seeing what I can piece together.
My design philosophy:
It's very simple when you look at it, but sometimes I make it sound difficult. My thoughts with UI design are as follows: If it's not 100% imperative that you see it in combat, then it doesn't need to show. It sounds minimalistic and it is. While I'm not minimalistic to the point where the only thing you see on my screen are my player and target frame, I try to show as little as possible to open up screen space so that I'm more aware of what's going on around me. I personally don't use a damage meter in game. I don't use Omen. I don't use any over the top art addons like KG Panels, or Btex anymore. There are some designs around Viewports and such that I've experimented with, and have liked what I did, but I eventually strayed away from them. To me, these things cause clutter and when other addons perform their functions or 3rd party sites (WMO, WoL) are better at their job, there's little to no reason for me to use them. That’s not to say that using them is bad, it’s just personally, I don’t.To me, maximizing your screen space is imperative given the requirements of raiding and pvp in WoW currently. Being aware of your surroundings and what's going on around you at all times often means the difference between a wipe and a kill, a win or a loss, a premature death or living. I try to set myself up so that I am aware of pretty much everything going on around me. I find clutter to be distracting and useless information to be a large hindrance. Duplicate information such as a HUD and a player/target UF showing bug the hell out of me. There are many that will say that they need that HUD and player/target frame. I say that shows the sign of a bad player who can't or doesn't want to train to become more aware of themselves and their surroundings.
Now I’ve probably just confused the heck out of you, so here’s some visual representation that may help clear up any confustion. The following 4 shots show me in 4 different settings and show how I try to design my UI to show the information necessary, but still keep things relatively clean so that I can see everything going on around me (click to enlarge).
As you can see, there’s plenty of space to see what’s going on. Is it perfect? Heck no. I still see things I can do to clean it up, but all important information is shown: Cooldowns, damage, boss mods, health of myself, target, and my raid. FF is there as a range check, as is cyclone for a fight like Deathwhisper where I cyclone MC’d targets.
My Addons:
So if I’m lucky you're going “Wow, not bad, what addons is he using?” Well here’s my list:- Unit Frames: Shadowed Unit Frames
- Action Bars: Bartender4 with Button Façade Svelte skin
- Cast Bar: AZ Cast bar
- Boss Mod: Deus Vox Encounters
- DoT Timer: Classtimer
- Damage Text: Mik’s Scrolling Battle Text
- Chat: Chatter
- Minimap: pMinimap
- Tooltip: TipTop
- Cooldowns: OmniCC
- World Map: Mapster
- Error Text: pError
- XP/Rep Bar: XPBarNone
- Inventory: Carg_Bags with the Carg_Nivaya layout
- Nameplates: Nameplates Modifier
- PvP Addons: Gladius, Capping
- Alignment: Graphpaper
- Media: Shared Media
Alternative Addons:
So my addons aren’t the only options. In fact, if everyone used the same set of addons I did, I’d be very worried. There are alternatives to pretty much every addon I have that are just as efficient, and functional. If you are looking for an addon, I’d highly recommend checking out a great website called Vranx. It breaks down addons by category as well as providing other useful information. But here’s a list of my personal favorite alternatives for the addons I use.- Unit Frames: If you’re good with lua coding, oUF is a must imo. Stuf Unit Frames are also a good option
- Action Bars: Dominos
- Cast Bar: Quartz
- Boss Mod: BigWigs, Deadly Boss Mods
- DoT Timer: Squawk and Awe or ForteXorcist
- Damage Text: Parrot
- Chat: LM Chat, Prat, Basic Chat Mod
- Minimap: Chinchilla, iMinimap
- Tooltip: loltip, TipTac, CowTip
- Cooldowns: CoolLine, ForteXorcist
- World Map: Cartographer, Carbonite
- Error Text: None that I know of
- XP/Rep Bar: Nothing compares to XPBN imo, but your bar mods usually have decent ones in them
- Inventory: ArkInventory, Bagnon
- Nameplates: cael_nameplates
Now, these aren’t the only alternatives, but these are just my personal favorites that I’d go with if I wasn’t using the addons I use now. Vranx’s site has even more options for addons in categories that I don’t mention here (such as art, pvp, questing, professions etc.)
While I firmly believe that your UI can and does affect your ability to perform in a raid or pvp setting, everyone has different tastes with UIs. You are the one that looks at your computer monitor for the time you play WoW, therefore all decisions made on your UI should be up to you. While taking suggestions and getting a fresh set of eyes on it is always good, pick and choose the suggestions you decide to try. This keeps the UI yours, not someone elses. My philosophy has worked for me, and there are many that agree with it (including our friend Relevart), but it’s not for everyone. Many in my own guild hate my UI because they feel it’s too minimalistic. They feel it doesn’t show all the information I need. That’s ok. I disagree respectfully, but hey, if everyone agreed with me, UI design wouldn’t be that interesting.
I want to thank you guys for taking the time to read this, and to Relevart for asking me to write this up. Hopefully this clears up any questions you have about his UI, as he states that he follows my philosophy on this as well as follows my advice. I guess in a weird way he’s crediting me for his UI, which is flattering to me. If you have questions, please ask, I will try to follow this post for the next couple of weeks so that I can answer any questions you have, but if you follow TMR, you can message me there as well. Forgive my moment of self promotion here, but as of right now, my UI is not available for download, as I’m not 100% happy with it just yet. Should I get enough requests, I will gladly upload it to WoWI.
Stay Classy Moonkins,
Wisprunner ‹SELECT geeks FROM WoW› Icecrown-US
I'd like to thank Wisprunner once again for taking the time and effort to lay out his . . . layout, as well as offer some excellent resources for modifying your playing field. Being comfortable with your UI can greatly increase your enjoyment (and performance), so take some time this weekend and tweak your UI a little bit. Clean up those mismatched fonts and random button textures, center your important information, eliminate duplicate information, and breathe a big sigh of appreciation for all of the extra space now available. Who knew that behind the clutter of DBM and SCT and nameplates there was a game with beautiful graphics!
