Your WoW UI!

[Jodwahh]

Spoiler: show

http://img64.imageshack.us/img64/353...0710054857.jpg http://img64.imageshack.us/img64/wow...pg/1/w1568.png

Fairly happy with my ui atm. Any comments? :D

Edit: Grid goes in the bottom right next to Recount when I am in a party/raid.

Pretty tidy. I'd remove the scroll tabs from the side of the chat log for a little more sleekness though

Figured I should upload mine, all suggestions welcome

Spoiler: show

Solo town shot.



Out of combat in AV

I'll try to remember to get an action shot next time I raid.

[Onorgul]

How the fuck do you play with that shit on your screen? It's not the worst i've ever seen but it comes close..

I play one of the most attention-oriented specs in the game and I find myself terrifyingly bored almost all of the time. Monitoring various different things keeps me awake. How do you guys play with your wide expanse of nothing watching the same spell/attack animation you've been using since level 4? I mean, it's nice that you guys act as though I cannot see anything, but I have no difficulty except with the sort of things that are totally unrelated (e.g., turning spell effects down to minimal interfering with the visibility of certain enemy attacks).

I killed the SUF raid bars (which has already caused me some nuisance but it's minimal), removed the HP/MP redundancies from my HUD, and decided that Recount and Omen not terribly relevant, so now I have a whole lot of empty space on my screen... as I tunnel-vision on what I'm actually doing, anyhow. I suppose if I was a two-button wonder class like Rogue or Mage, I might get bored and want to swing my camera around randomly to see if there are any critters nearby to smack. About the only thing time I get gibbed by something I couldn't see is the fire beam in Halls of Stone, which is not going to be changed regardless of how wide open my screen is.

And I know it'll come as a shock, but a lousy framerate does not translate to system lag or similar. I perform as well or better than most even if I don't see every little particle of the tank's Devastates.

Wait, I've figured it out. Do you guys play with your camera halfway up your toon's rectum? Because I zoom way out, even when the screen is largely empty. My toon takes up, uh, maybe 8% of the height of my screen? If I wanted to stare at his back as he channels Mind Flay for the 10,000th time today, I suppose I would have trouble seeing anything, but that has nothing to do with negative space on the screen.

[Izzy]

I play one of the most attention-oriented specs in the game and I find myself terrifyingly bored almost all of the time. Monitoring various different things keeps me awake. How do you guys play with your wide expanse of nothing watching the same spell/attack animation you've been using since level 4? I mean, it's nice that you guys act as though I cannot see anything, but I have no difficulty except with the sort of things that are totally unrelated (e.g., turning spell effects down to minimal interfering with the visibility of certain enemy attacks).

Translation: Hey, guys. It's cool that you all drive Lamborghini Diablo and Dodge Vipers to work, but my Plymouth Reliant gets me there, so it's just as good as your cars too right?

Yes it "works for you", but holy fuck that is one ugly UI.

[Onorgul]

As a non-car guy, I enjoy car metaphors. I don't think that one quite applies, though, because it's implying that I'm playing with something stripped down. Barring some redundancy and superfluous bullshit, however, the major difference between mine and the two or three posted on the last page is that I'm working in a smaller resolution. You guys do recognize that, right? Pretty much every UI I've seen has Omen, Recount, DBM, a non-standard cast bar, and two or three kinds of damage log visible, to say nothing of various little "Drrr, hit this button now, jackass!" mods for the people who can't handle running a rotation or priority list. What do you suggest I do when my resolution is limited by an aging processor (and by the fact that I'm far-sighted and can't have fonts set much smaller than they are if I ever hope to read them)? It's effortless to jam a dozen questionable mods and occasional redundancies into a resolution that's literally twice mine.

[Correction]

4 easy things you can do to immediately clean up your UI without losing any information.

Disable both sets of your raid frames and install Grid.

Remove aura icons from your target's unit frame

Shrink Recount down to top 2 or top 3. I question it even being active during combat.

Uninstall those curvy hud things, whatever they are. If you can't get Quartz working for you post your problems, many of us have ample experience wrangling it to our needs and can walk you through the config.

There, you just got 60% of your screen space back. Now you can see void zones better on kited fights and will notice anub spikes being kited through your general area.

[[Cookies]]

Wait, I've figured it out. Do you guys play with your camera halfway up your toon's rectum? Because I zoom way out, even when the screen is largely empty.

I zoom way out. As a healer (and ranged class for that matter) it's important to be able to see my surroundings, where there are spaces, if I need to spread out more, etc.

You say you perform better than most yet you somehow manage to die to the fire beam in Halls of Stone. That's a huge problem.

It's effortless to jam a dozen questionable mods and occasional redundancies into a resolution that's literally twice mine.

You're using two raidframes (which are also HUGE, you're not a healer you know) and a HUD for a start. Then there's those horridious power auras which totally cover up your character. I've played on a resolution smaller than that and my UI had a hell of a lot more space and as much if not more functionality.

Oh and FYI, i've played a shadow priest, it doesn't require that much attention. That's what useful addons are for.

[Correction]

Power Auras aren't a cardinal sin since they go away after a few seconds and are for the most part transparent. He just took a screenshot with what appear to be 3 going off at the same time. It's about as obtrusive as scrolling combat text in the context of a long fight.

[Onorgul]

You say you perform better than most yet you somehow manage to die to the fire beam in Halls of Stone. That's a huge problem.

Did I say that I die? I said that I can't see the motherfuckers before they get fired. You know, because I'm facing away from them. Y'all can see behind yourselves with all that wide open space to the left and right?

Correction, I killed the SUF raid frames. Not going to kill Healbot. I use my off-spec a lot. Omen got removed because I realize the only place that aggro is meaningful (since it cannot properly track AoE threat) is in Heroics where I can temporarily tank, anyhow. I had long kept Recount off but wanted to see if it was helpful to keep it on. It isn't, dunno why I see so many Rogues with it on except that there's nothing else to keep them occupied as they spam Mutilate and Envenom. I cut the HUD down to what I need: two cast bars where my eyes can see them. The auras I tweaked to not cover up my toon but, as Correction pointed out, that was the start of the fight and just a pile of procs all at once. I was trying to find the most hectic screenshot possible to get this kind of feedback.

I will grab a raid screenshot later if I can.

Edit: From a party, so imagine the party frame is gone and Healbot is substantially more filled-up.

Spoiler: show

http://img121.imageshack.us/img121/1493/ui010710.jpg

I always go with too much first and scale back afterwards. Yes, that has resulted in some painful situations. Nonetheless, I was still having zero trouble dodging Anub'arak during the latter half of that ToC25.

[Correction]

Your healbot is taking up far more space than it needs to. Grid + Clique's default settings take far less real estate on your screen once group sizes exceed 10, and it works with vehicles/pets a lot better than your current config.

Seriously switch off aura icons on unit frames, you don't give a shit unless it's a buff you can dispel, which grid (and presumably healbot) notify you about anyway.

Recount is a useful tool, but knowing the top 15 dps isn't useful realtime information. It's true value lies in its RDPS graphs anyway, and only for progression leaders. For personal epeen you can keep it at top 3 where it takes up far less space and lets you know if you're at the top of your game or if other guys still steal your thunder.

[Onorgul]

What the fuck is it with you and all that empty motherfucking space? No, seriously, what the hell am I supposed to be looking at? When I'm healing, which I do often, that's pretty much all I'm looking at and, I've gotta tell you, I misclick often enough (like... once per encounter, but that's still more than I like) that finding a smaller grid would be absurd. I could remove the group labels, but, again, why does it matter?

As for the "auras" (debuffs, I don't give a shit what Blizzard wants to call them) on bosses, again, so what? There's nothing interfering with me seeing both the status of my debuffs and any buffs that need to be dispelled. Moreover, I use that frame to track the status of my debuffs. I don't read bars well, so stuff like ForteXorcist and MFClip lower my DPS.

Really, now, I've got a smaller resolution than a lot of you guys and I still have all this blissful empty space accomplishing nothing. I can see Anub'arak just fine. I mean, if I can't see him, I swing my camera while I'm casting a spell, but chances are that I cannot see where his spikes are because he's behind me, and even then I'm often looking to my rear. I can see fires and Death and Decay as well as possible with spell particles turned down to low (nature of the beast in 25 man raids with this machine).

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the input. I've managed to cut out a lot of superfluous stuff that I'd have simply lived with because I'm a creature of habit. But you guys have really yet to explain why I need to have a huge, wide open, totally useless plane of open space. The human eye doesn't perceive like that, it looks at one little spot and hovers in circles around it, then it moves to another little spot. It's why optical illusions work. Is your reaction time is so piss-poor that you can't see movement on the right side of your screen behind some translucent boxes? When I'm solo, there's practically nothing on my screen and all I keep thinking is, "Goodness, I wish this was accomplishing something other than looking pretty."

[Mugekuge]

My question is going to be totally different to what others said, looking at your last UI, how do you keep track of your Mind Blast and your dots?, i see you use Omni CC for that but at least for me i had to install Nugrunning and put the bars at sides of my toon and i made them big lol so could be easier for me to keep track of them xD.

[Onorgul]

It's largely a matter of rhythm. I know that there are mods out there that make it "easier," but I've been doing this for so long that unlearning it has been harder than not. On Mind Blast, though, I'm assisted by Mik's Scrolling Battle Text. It will alert me whenever various cooldowns are ready and I've set its threshold for 5 seconds, so I get a ping every 5.5 seconds saying "Mind Blast ready" (you can just barely see it in my original, terrible screenshot). It also helps with Shadowfiend cooldown which a lot of people overlook as great burst DPS in addition to mana returns.

But as for all my DoTs, that's what OmniCC does for me and what X-Perl formerly covered. Whenever possible, I try to avoid becoming dependent on add-ons to do something radically different than what the base UI can do (Healbot being a huge exception, though I think Blizzard has finally acknowledged how much their default sucks for healing). After years of FFXI and getting fucked in the arse every time Recast would break, I've learned my lesson and am even more reticent to rely on add-ons that seriously change the game. Sure, most of them get kept up-to-date, but devs quit playing and don't pass their code onto someone else and then it's just more headache than having been able to do my thing with the base UI.

[Correction]

The theory behind more empty space is that it forces your UI into certain visual zones that demand attention only when attention is required. Nobody is telling you to make Grid tiny. Make it huge for all I care. The problems begin with duplicated raid frames getting far busier than they need to be when health pools/debuffs start to get dangerous to your raid. Having notifications on both the left and right side of your screen generates NOISE and noise is very very bad for healers and their critical reflexes.

It's in that spirit and that spirit alone that I say things like 'disable unit frame auras,' because such info is frequently redundant to your own buffs and debuffs you care about show up in grid (all the activity in one place to grab your attention). Similarly, the HUD bars probably don't tell you more than your player's unit frame does, including casting bars, etc. Redundancy = noise.

I'm not promoting minimalist UI design and memorized keybinds (because that really only works for, like, mages), but I think you're getting the wrong message when we tell you your UI is cluttered.

[Plow]

Y'all can see behind yourselves with all that wide open space to the left and right?

Spoiler: show

http://www.hostanyimage.com/files/77...1674703773.jpg

Yes.

[Onorgul]

The theory behind more empty space is that it forces your UI into certain visual zones that demand attention only when attention is required. Nobody is telling you to make Grid tiny. Make it huge for all I care. The problems begin with duplicated raid frames getting far busier than they need to be when health pools/debuffs start to get dangerous to your raid. Having notifications on both the left and right side of your screen generates NOISE and noise is very very bad for healers and their critical reflexes.

It's in that spirit and that spirit alone that I say things like 'disable unit frame auras,' because such info is frequently redundant to your own buffs and debuffs you care about show up in grid (all the activity in one place to grab your attention). Similarly, the HUD bars probably don't tell you more than your player's unit frame does, including casting bars, etc. Redundancy = noise.

Yes, and I agreed on the raid frames, which is why they went away. But why do you keep whinging on at me about the space that Healbot takes up? Grid is going to take up a similar amount of space just so that I can see and read and click.

Your point about unit frame auras is starting to really confuse the hell out of me, though. Unless there's something I really do not understand about Grid, it doesn't tell me shit about the debuffs I have on a mob. I'm Shadow first and foremost, but I don't even target players unless I absolutely have to when I'm healing except strictly to cast Pain Suppression (putting that into Healbot would mean I'd either forget where it is or activate it at the wrong time). There's no redundancy involved.

Where I do have redundancy, though, and where it will stay is in having two enemy cast bars. Like I said, the human eye can't see everywhere at once, so when I'm watching my own cast bar, as I often do because of latency and needing to know when to clip Mind Flay, it pays to have an enemy cast bar in the same neighborhood that my eyes are looking instead of having to look up. Similarly, when I'm watching my debuff cooldowns up on the target frame, the cast bar up there lets me see it without having to glance down. Redundancy is bad when it creates noise, but not all redundancy is noise.

[Correction]

The problem I've seen consistently with aura icons on unit frames is how much they move around as buffs/debuffs expire, and with more than one shadow priest in the group it's too easy to lose track of which debuffs are yours and which belong to the other guy. I noticed this a lot as rogue with my poisons and rupture cycles. Addons like classtimer and others track only your debuffs applied to target and, being a much shorter list, don't change nearly as often and aren't prone to being misidentified And yes they can get attached to unit frames so it's not really a matter of real estate, it's a matter of only getting the data that you really need. Who gives a shit if your target shows wound poison/sunder/etc? Hopefully not you.

[Plow]

altogether it sounds like you'd be well served to put together a centralized ... "chunk" with your castbars, your enemy castbars, and your dot timers

it sounds kinda funny but getting everything in 1 place really helps prevent tunnel visioning (i.e. not seeing the fire before it gets to you) because you're not focused on the wrong part of the screen

[Onorgul]

You've never used SUF, have you? If you look closely, you'll see that my debuffs are at the front of that list, larger, and have cooldowns ticking on them. I have no trouble whatsoever seeing which are mine. If I wanted, I could make my personal debuffs HUGE, but I don't need to. X-Perl was the same way, for that matter. What unit frames are you using? Only major one I've not messed around with is Pitbull and I'd find it hard to believe they lack the exact same functionality.

Edit:
Plow, I've used add-ons like that. First off, it definitely makes tunnel-visioning worse. I tunnel bad with Healbot, but there's no way to seriously heal a raid without it. My eyes dart all over the place and that's a good thing. And maybe I'm weird, but vertical cast bars have always worked better for me. I don't track horizontally well, which is strange given how prolific a reader I am.

[Plow]

I'm sure pitbull does too, but none have the customization levels of the dedicated buff bars.

[Meph]

Im having a hard time getting aura-icons to show up properly with the new pitbull. took 2 days to just get it working like a previous pre-made UI I got from someone here on the boards, guess I gotta spend even more time on those fucking auras

basically I just want my own debuffs to show on the target (easier to track SS) but for some reason it shows partymembers debuffs even tho Ive specifically chosen Self Buff Only >_>