The little mod that could
by Allison Robert 
Sep 3rd 2008 at 5:00PM
Man, it's a cruel world out there for the lazy. But every so often you find offbeat but amazingly helpful mods that just work, and best of all, work unobtrusively without having to be diddled with every day or between characters and specs. For my part, I am completely ready to nominate OptiTaunt for whatever Total Slacker's Mod prize might exist. It's a tiny mod for tanks that tells your group, raid, and the player you're trying to taunt off of when a taunt is resisted or when the target is immune. It can also announce when you've had to blow mega-cooldown abilities like Challenging Roar, Shield Wall, and Frenzied Regeneration. Best of all, it whispers cute class-specific messages to the player who's pulled aggro (e.g. for Priests: "Warning! My Growl was resisted! Time for a final prayer!"). And you don't need to spend time worrying about settings between characters or specs as the mod will simply never activate on a toon that won't have to (or can't) taunt anything.
I love Titan, Cartographer is amazingly helpful, and we all depend on things like Omen, but OptiTaunt still wins the proverbial desert island contest for me. Sean could probably name dozen of mods like it off the top of his head, but I find any mod announcing a thinly-disguised version of "YOU'RE ALL SCREWED NOW!" pretty tough to beat. With that said, I'm trying to level some taunt-free classes to 70 before Wrath hits, so I'm on the lookout. Any suggestions for, say, a Shaman?
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Add-Ons
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Braundo Sep 3rd 2008 5:13PM
OptiTaunt is great. It lets the DPS know via raid warning to give me a little extra threat-generation time if my shield throw is resisted, without me even having to say anything.
Saiforune Sep 3rd 2008 5:25PM
Go roll a healer or something. Everyserver needs them.
Dotixi Sep 3rd 2008 5:44PM
Too bad she's a tank cuz NO server needs those.
Dotixi Sep 3rd 2008 5:43PM
I love Call of Elements for my Shaman. It puts all of your totems into expandable boxes and there is one for each type: Earth, Fire, Water and Air.
Eg: Earth set > Strength of Earth (showing), Stoneskin, Stoneclaw, Earth Binding, etc (all hidden).
The boxes flex so the totems you use most can be setup to always show the the rest will be hidden until you mouse over.
This is the only Shaman add-on I use.
Richwarf Sep 3rd 2008 6:03PM
I use a addon called,
Arkive UI.
It a whole UI, great all works nice with each other and all the settings are done for you :)
you can find it at ...
http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info7877-ArkiveUIWidescreen.html
Richwarf out :)
Calaana Sep 3rd 2008 6:26PM
For your shaman, I recommend chaman.
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/details/5809/
Also known as totemManager, it's the best I've found. Everything from reinc timer, to earth shield management to totems, and it looks purdy too.
It seems Loohq(He's french, so his instructions are rather confusing but their still pretty damn good) is making a fresh rewrite for wotlk, ace compatible, but it's not quite finished yet.. missing reinc timer and it's ugly as sin from what I can tell.
Darkwind Sep 3rd 2008 7:00PM
TotemTimers is one of my favorite addons as a Shaman.
It gives you a concise look at your totems, enables recasting, monitoring, shields and totemic call. Very little setup required, though several options for shouts and ordering configuration if you choose to use them.
http://www.curse.com/downloads/details/5492/
Grendelstein Sep 4th 2008 10:29AM
Try enhancer from ace. It has a timers built in for all 4 totems, reincarnation, and stormstrike. The totem timers are placed in small boxes in a square around your toon in the same relative orientation as when you physically put them down. After being put down once, you can replace them by a simple click on that square (it remembers the last one of that school you put down). There's also a weapon imbue button as well as a reincarnate button. Of course you can also click on the button for a single totem to recall it if need be (say that searing totem is gonna shoot a wandering mob while you drink, but you want your mana totem down still).
Wulf Sep 4th 2008 11:00AM
I too love Totem Timers. Its the first mod I ever used, been using it for years, and it keeps getting better and better as time goes on. Its got a nice simple, clean functionality but gives you all the tools you need for being a Shaman. Combine with the bar mod of your choice and you've basically got you Shaman UI.
hpavc Sep 3rd 2008 7:22PM
optitaunt has no love for warlock pet resists and hunter intimidation it seems, not that it advertises any i guess but the article seems to indicate that it might cover this in some fashion.
Justin Sep 4th 2008 1:29AM
Are talking about how the author wrote, "My Growl resisted!"?
If so, you can mouse-over and see that it's the Druid version of Growl. :)
Lanth Sep 3rd 2008 8:48PM
The one mod that I cannot live without is DoubleWide. It splits the list of quests you have and the description of the selected quest into two side-by-side windows.
It's so useful I'm surprised that Blizzard hasn't ripped it off yet.
Turtlehead Sep 4th 2008 1:29AM
You had me until:
"cute class-specific messages to the player who's pulled aggro (e.g. for Priests: "Warning! My Growl was resisted! Time for a final prayer!"). "
I sure hope that can be turned off. If a tank was spamming me cutesy messages tied to real alerts, I'd start letting her die. "Growl was resisted!" is valuable *and* easier to process on the fly. The rest is fun once...maybe.
My can't live without desert island mod is Rating Buster. Hands down. No more trying to remember how much +spell crit 17 points of INT gives at 67. Three cheers for readable tooltips!
Ilnara Sep 4th 2008 9:30AM
If you're doing your job right in the first place as a Priest, you shouldn't ever be 'next' on the aggro list anyways.
arcady0 Sep 4th 2008 4:00AM
Going to combine this in my UI with 'ThatJustHappened'.
ThatJusthappened lets me spam raid warning when somebody else taunts a mob off of me. Its very useful for proving, in a blatant way, that the warlock or hunter does indeed have torment, growl, or something to that effect still on with their pet or minion.
I catch a guilty party with it on about 1/3 of my PUGs - and its very funny to see the explanations / excuses / denials.
(The addon has a lot of other uses, listed on maintankadin, but that's what I do with it.)
Ian Oh Sep 4th 2008 4:56AM
I like Shaman Friend..
http://www.curse.com/downloads/details/6330/
simle mod that shows if you are missing weapon enchants or a shield. winfury crit amount.. has lots to offer for all 3 shaman specs.
Kamileon Sep 6th 2008 4:14PM
I use a combo of Autobar and Enhancer for all my shaman needs.
Enhancer was covered well in a comment above, but short version is that it has small, customizable timers for all your totems and shaman abilities, as well as being able to redeploy last totem, and recall individual ones as well.
Autobar I use for all my random item and ability and consumable needs that saves me tons of space off of my normal hotbars, but it also has very intelligent class-specific bars, and for shaman it has a bar for each totem type, elemental shields, your pet totems, and a ghost wolf button. So when I need to dig in a menu for a rare totem, I use that. Very similar interface to TotemTimers and other mods.
The other thing I use for totem management is a castsequence macro with my usual totems written into it, so I can spam one button to drop my normal loadout, and to recall them all:
/cast [modifier:shift] Totemic Call
/castsequence reset=8 windfury totem, mana spring totem, strength of earth totem, searing totem
Shift-click will pull up all the totems, and spamming the button will drop all 4 totems. Write out the totems of your heart's desire, and the 8 second reset gives you time to drop all 4 totems in the midst of casting a couple other things if necessary, and if you hit it more than 4 times, it won't redrop the first totem again.