Saturday, October 16, 2010

Addons 4.0 - Starting out fresh

I took a friends good advice and burned my addons folder to the ground. At first I thought I'd just remove everything and then replace it all with up to date addons one by one. But then I thought - hey, why not take this opportunity to completely redo my interface? I like addons. I've put plenty of time on the interface I'm currently using, with xperl, dominos, grid and clique at its core, but what the heck. It's only addons. So instead I decided to make it easy for me and get a ready and set ui. Inspired by Loves choice I went with Tukui, and so far so good (link can be found at bottom). Tukui has several of my favorite features built in, like "sell-all-grays-in-bags"-feature which without the game would be unplayable. This also means I could cut down some on the amount of extra-addons I've been using who only have one function. Addons that in themselves are great, like AutoProfitX, but if they're already there I don't really need them.


So I am doing to my UI what I usually do to my chars. Instead of patching something up I rip it all away and start fresh. That way I know exactly what works and what doesn't. There were some issues with tukui that I have decided to tolerate at the moment.
First of all, I don't like the placement of the bars 100%. I like to have some bars close to my char, so I don't have to move my eyes when I want to check some skill on my bar.
Secondly, it has placed the totem bar up in the far left corner. What is it doing up there? Also I could only find one totem bar, when I should have three.
Thirdly, Tukui gives you a completely new bar when you use a shapeshift. Like when going into Metamorphosis or Shadow Dance. But I don't want a completely new bar, because both these shapeshifts mainly use the regular skills. Also this "shapeshift" bar is one of the four default bars, which means that when shapeshifting you'll have two identical bars next to eachother, with the same skills. Since its really the same bar. It's difficult to explain, but believe me when I say it's silly.

EDIT: Everything on the picture below not marked is part of the Tukui.


Once I had installed Tukui I ran around a little to figure out which other addons I needed to complement it, that were also updated to the 4.0 patch. Here is what I found so far and it is working well enough for me to be happy with playing again.

Clique - The only alternative to this one is using mouse-over macros. This addon does the same thing but is way easier to set up. I did notice that it didn't work flawless with Tukui however. There seemed to be a delay or targetting issue when using Clique and Tukui together which meant I had to sometimes clique my skill a couple of times on a target for it to actually be cast. Hopefully just a minor problem (that will be resolved soon). I am aiming at having Tukui raid frames replacing Grid, and so far it looks good, but I haven't tried it in a real raid setting yet so that can still change. UPDATE 22/10: Due to the issues with Tukui raid frames I have gone back to grid, and Grid+ Clique works as well as ever.
DBM - Yesterday I raided without DBM and most of the time this works well as long as you just keep your eyes open. The shit on the ground that you're not supposed to stand in is usually quite visible. But yesterday with everything else going on, me trying to make heads from tails of my skills, I actually completely missed that I was standing in the middle of Swarming Shadows on heroic Blood Queen. Which kinda killed me. First time I died from standing in fire in a looong time (I do admittedly die from Malleable Goo on Putricide from time to time, because if you move from one you can run into another...). In any case it made me realize I needed DBM.
DoTimer - DoTimer used to be a frickin awesome addon for tracking any kind of buffs and debuffs on yourself and your target. I especially loved it for tracking Prayer of Mending. Then something happened and DoTimer started tracking -everything-. Which completely spammed my face. So I had to replace it with SexyCooldown, which was ok but far from as good. For one, DoTimer tracks several debuffs on separate targets simultaneously and also removes those timers if my target dies before the debuffs runs out. Making a long story short, DoTimer has started working again. Not as well as it once did, for instance I haven't gotten it to track PoM as good as it used to. But at least it track my debuffs, and that is well enough.
Recount - I have to be able to keep track of how I use my skills! This is the best way to do it. As a disc I will always be lowest on "healing done" but then I check "guessed absorbs" for comfort (and worldoflogs consolidates heals and absorbs fortunately, so it doesn't seem like I suck).
AutobarMuffin - Autobar is one of the most important addons in my addon-arsenal. It gives me what I want when I need it. Unfortunately Autobar didn't make it to 4.0, but AutobarMuffin does! Just don't use class bar, because that seemed to give me alot of errors still. If you want to know more you can read my post on it.
AuctionLite - I've written a post on this one too, and it concludes why I still want to keep it around.
BadBoy - BadBoy blocks spam, not the regular trade-trolls unfortunately, but the goldsellers. I haven't seen a goldsell-message in my chats for years, and I want to keep it that way.
BugGrabber & Bugsack - I've written a post on the BugGrabber & Bugsack combo too. I played briefly without these two and that was a big mistake I won't do again.
ArkInventory - Tukui has a built in bag mod which is a simple allinone-bag. Dreadful. With ArkInventory you can create a bag that suits your needs perfectly, and it is fairly simple to do so.
Postal - Not being able to just press a button to empty my mailbox made me extremely furious. How do people stand taking stuff out one by one? Postal will ease up any mailbox usage alot. Even if you don't mail stuff often, which I don't, you'll want this.
Chocolate bar - Gives me a neat little bar at the top of my window where I can keep track of interesting to know stats. Like durability of my gear, how much ammo I've got (which is moot now that people don't use ammo anymore, but anyway), how much money I've got, how much bagslots I've got free and etc. Tukui has many of these features built in already, but I like my little bar...
Broker Allxp - Shows xp on my chocolate bar. Since I play so many alts this is good to know, otherwise you don't know when you're going to ding! I've played a couple of chars that way from time to time and it does add a certain amount of suprise to the game. Also, not knowing when you'll ding will prevent you from ever thinking "oh but I'm so close to ding, just 5 more quests!". Maybe I should remove this ^^
Mik Scrolling Combat Text - I tried Blizzards own Scrolling Combat Text, but it's right over my char, and I don't like that. At all. MSBT at least allows me to move it away somewhat so I can see what the heck is going on at my char. I mean if I am raiding and supposed to move from fire, I have to see that I am standing in fire...
AtlasLoot - I love being able to check out gear without having to go to the internets. And for some reason I do this alot.
SecretAdmirer - I got this from Love a long time ago. He secretely put into my addon folder, and I haven't removed it since. Try it out to see what it does ;)
NoDuel - Automatically cancels any duel request from anyone. Why would I want to duel random dude while running through some place? If I want to duel you I'll ask.
SavedInstances - This is a life saver when you've got one trillion alts like me. It displays any instance any of my chars are saved to. So I don't have to relogg to check if I did weekly on my warrior already.


There are alot of addons I'm still missing however and that I will implement into my arsenal as soon as they've been updated.

Autobar - Yeah I know I've got it already, but as mentioned the class bar isn't working. This is only an issue on two of my chars - my hunter and my shaman. I want the totem bar that autobar has, it's awesome for shamans. And the class bar for hunters is a great way to tuck away all those hunter skills you almost never use, like tame beast, beast lore, dismiss pet and the like.
DrDamage - The best way to keep track of your skills effectiviness is through DrDamage. Or at least used to be. It hasn't been updated for ages and has been working so so. I fear 4.0 will be the killing blow, but I really, really hope someone will update it. It's awesome. Shows the exact hpm, dps, casts till oom and seriously everything you'd ever want to know about your skills. If this won't work again I need to find a good replacement, any tips are very welcome!
PallyPower - I have left this for now since I haven't dared to play my paladins yet. I am also secretely hoping Blizzard will have implemented something like this already into the game. On the other hand it seems like Blessings have been sufficiently simplified to make this kind of addon unnecessary (finally).
Talented - The way the talent frame works right now is basically what Talented used to do, so maybe I won't need this addon anymore. One feature Talented had that I'll be missing however was the possibility to save specs, look at them from any char and also share them with friends. Because of this I'd probably get this addon anyway if it gets updated.
TargetCharms - Allows for quick marking of targets which I still think will be important. Maybe even more so when Cata comes that we will actually have to mark for cc.
RatingBuster - Displays stat gains and losses from any gear. Not just the raw stats, but also what they're converted into so you don't have to think about how much dodge you're loosing from removing all that agi. This will be less important now that they've removed alot of stats, but on the other hand it could be nice to know how much crit and spellpower you would gain from a certain amount of intellect on some gear. So I still want this addon. Makes gear choices a piece of cake.

And some addons I won't need anymore;
Gearscore - I've grown away from gearscore. I think. I'll try to play without it at least.
TidyPlates - Name plates are working really odd in default Blizzard settings. disappearing and reappearing totally at random which makes targetting as a melee rather frustrating. TidyPlates was great in that it easily showed which targets you had aggro from, which was particularly handy when tanking. But this is built into Tukui already, so I won't need it.
Itemrack - This is already built into the wow-ui. Itemrack is definitely alot better. For one I know that the built in equipment manager chrashes from time to time, which Itemrack never has done to me. But now that Itemrack doesn't work at all anymore I might as well get to love the built in one.

My two main sources for addons are wow.curse.com and wowinterface.com. Tukui has its own download page however.

6 comments:

  1. Zinnnn what is your minimap addon? I love how it displays the time!

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  2. Unfortunately (?) it is part of the Tukui and can't be had separately :/ Unless you know how to play with addon-code ^^

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  3. Oh you are so brave dumping your addons! I am really hurting without my standard set.

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  4. @Xeppe
    I would normally too! But now my frustration over my addons not working properly got the best of me ^^

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  5. I tried something different; default unitframes and action bars (although the frames have been moved to more rational locations). I've actually grown quite fond of the new unit portraits.

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  6. @Kiwi
    Default Unitframes.. now that is brave! I had to use them somewhat before I got my addons working again, but they're still way too bulky and rigid for my taste :/ If they work for ya it's perfect though since they'll never crash!

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