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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsAddon Spotlight: Community Choice 2
by Mathew McCurley 
Jun 24th 2010 at 4:00PM
Welcome to another exciting addition of Addon Spotlight! This week, we head back to the inbox to check out what the community thinks the WoW community at large should know about, if you already weren't aware of some of these excellent addons. We run the gamut today, from action bar and encounter mod replacements to helping you get you and your army of alts ready for the coming Cataclysm. Let's take a look at what your peers wanted you to see.
Macaroon
Macaroon is a very robust and powerful addon recommended by a lot of people during the first and second Addon Spotlight Community Choices. Macaroon takes a different approach to action bars, allowing you total customization and basically making every action button a macro in some way or another. You can have as many buttons on the screen as you want, and macros have a generous 1,024-character length as the limit. Stance bars allows you to set up bars that change with your stances, perfect for warriors and especially awesome for druids. And did I hear Button Facade support? I think I did!
What do you have to say about this addon:
Macaroon is pretty awesome, and if you want a little more flexibility with your action bars, the community recommends Macaroon.Hi!
I would like to share with the community this wonderful bar/macro addon:
Macaroon.
Despite the long configuration time, I love it because it allows you to setup macros outside the Blizzard interface, which I don't like and at the same time to drag it to button (in opposition to bind pad for example). Moreover you can associate any actionid to a button allowing it to create a custom vehicle bar. Having stance bars with layouts that can change with the stance etc is awesome. The only actual drawback now is that it does not have yet a performance macro catalog but I hope it will change soon.
"Feel the power of the macro side..."!
Onéira, EU-Elune
Download Macaroon at [Curse] or [WoWInterface].
Altoholic
With Cataclysm on the ever closer horizon, managing alts, heirloom items and professions across all of your characters might get a bit hectic. Altoholic is a fan favorite, requested in my inbox by a ton of people! Lots of people requested addons that manage their lives before the Cataclysm release, so Altoholic seemed like a great choice from the community.
Altoholic is basically a huge database of all of your characters. You can search for items and see who has what. Each of your characters professions are also available to peruse. Gold, /played time and reputation levels for all of your alts are quickly and easily accessible. The addon even gives you recommendations for where to level up, what items to craft to level trade skills and so much more!
Here's what you had to say about Altoholic:
Aka'magosh Mat!
How can you have no already talked about Altoholic? Not a day goes by that this addon doesn't save me time, going through my immense amount of tradeskilling alts. It is pretty much the greatest addon ever. I have been using Altoholic to keep track of all of my heirloom items (I have every. single. one.) and knowing where each is allows me to shuffle them around to up and coming alts. Thanks for what you do!
Liz (H-Frostwolf)
If you're one of those altaholics, then you need Altoholic.
Download Altoholic at [Curse] or [WoWInterface].
Lunarsphere
Another addon you jokers couldn't stop requesting was Lunarsphere, an interesting take of an ability browser. Hailing from the "sphere" category of addons, Lunarsphere acts as a repository for all of your class' abilities. Arranged in an interesting spherical layout, Lunarsphere allows you to customize every
button on the sphere to your liking. Ten buttons surround the main sphere, with an alternative extra 10 buttons per main button out from the original sphere. This allows a menu-type system for the main buttons. A mage, for instance, could have a portal menu appear off of one of the side main buttons, revealing their full compliment of portals and teleports.
Lunarsphere is modular to an extent, allowing you to pick and choose what to load to increase performance if needed. The addon also features many Automaton functions like selling grey items and restocking reagents automatically. This addon is a real package, full of functionality in a good-looking skin.
Here's what Gnilyas had to say about Lunarsphere (also, Macaroon -- see how much you love that addon?!):
Hey Mat – Gnilyas from Shattered Hand EU Horde here.
Apart from the usual suspects like Outfitter, Omen, Healbot, etc, and not sure if you've had a chance to see my previous email, but can I suggest Macaroon!
For bar and macro management, I find it superb, as I said last week or so.
Then there's Lunarsphere, which to me is the de facto sphere addon and works for all your toons out of the box, particularly good at sorting out new bits as you learn them whilst leveling.
Not very eloquently or persuasively put on either front, I'm afraid, but I'm relying on your vast addon experience to have heard about these before and just needing a nudge to look them over properly... or your journalistic curiosity and integrity ;)
Cheers,
Gnilyas
Download Lunarsphere at [Curse] or [WoWInterface].
Deus Vox Encounters (DXE)
We here at the Spotlight always love a good alternative to the king of any particular addon category, and Deus Vox is no exception. Many people recommended DeusVox as a replacement for Deadly Boss Mods or BigWigs and wanted the word to get out about their favorite encounters addon.
Deus Vox Encounters is a comparable and capable alternative to Deadly Boss Mods (the current king of encounter addons) and BigWigs Boss Mods (its happy, also comparable friend). Deus Vox has been said to run lighter than its counterparts, but I personally haven't seen a huge difference. DXE also has a little more customization than Deadly Boss Mods and what many consider to be an easier to use setup menu. Again, your mileage may vary, but it's never a bad thing to have some excellent options out there.
Let's hear what you had to say:
Download Deus Vox Encounters at [Curse].Mat,
Check out DXE, Deus Vox Encounters. Much lighter weight and more responsive than DBM. My entire raid group has almost switched from DBM to DXE. DBM does heroics and DXE doesn't, but as far as raiding goes... DXE is king. Food for thought.
-A
Thank you all for the emails and the suggestions. Community Choice Addon Spotlights are always so much fun. I hope you all will have another great batch of selections next time I decide to do this. In the meantime, you don't have to wait for Community Choice time to submit an addon. Want to see something on the Spotlight? Send me an email, post haste, to mat@wow.com.
Addons are what we do on Addon Spotlight. Have you started using Satrina Buff Frames yet? I told you it was cool! And remember, Addon Spotlight is fueled by viewers like you, so if you have a mod you think we should take a look at, email Mat at mat@wow.com. Filed under: Add-Ons, AddOn Spotlight
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 3)
Hollow Leviathan Jun 25th 2010 3:04PM
Deus Fatur...
God Speech?
Koskun Jun 24th 2010 4:16PM
Macaroon is amazing. I've been using it since it came out, replacing Trinity Bars (same maker). The modules you can get for it are pretty in-depth as well.
You are not limited to having a bar be only 10 buttons long, with Macaroon you can have a 1 button bar, a 20 button bar, or pretty much anything else you wish. All can be set to be hidden (until mouse-over), change with your spec and/or stance, alt, ctrl, shift modifiers, in-combat, out of combat, the whole works.
I recommend starting off simply and go a bar at a time in setting it up. One major thing to note is Macaroon does NOT store your buttons on the server like default/dominos/bartender does. All the button and bar placements are kept on your system. If for whatever reason you play on multiple computers you will have to either set it up on the others, or copy over your profile.
Roderick Jun 24th 2010 5:13PM
I absolutely love Macaroon, but I've been under the impression that it's no longer supported so I've been trying to wean myself off Macaroon and move over to Bartender. I was kind of suprised to see Macaroon so beloved and highlighted on this site, if it truly isn't support anymore. So, hopefully, someone can help bring me up to speed. Can we expect that Mac will continue to receive support/updates and (hopefully) work as we head into Cataclysm, or am I right to get myself an alternate bar mod?
Neyssa Jun 25th 2010 3:31AM
Sounds great, I will try it out!
I do not like cooldown bars, and do not like seeing my action buttons.
I have my keybindings and remember them. For cooldowns, I like to use OmniCC, and I made a separate bar on bartender only for my cooldown-spells (not too many, considering I am a resto druid. Swiftmend, rebirth, Healing Touch-Nourish macro).
Do you know if OmniCC works with Macaroon?
chipersoft Jun 25th 2010 11:22AM
You actually CAN make it store button assignments on the server, just not bar layouts. If you set all the buttons to use ActionIDs instead of macros then the client will sync the button contents back to the server. The downside to this is that you're limited to 120 actionids, and you have to be careful about planning how the IDs get used or else you get overlap.
I made a grid that I use for plotting out how I'm going to map the IDs that also shows how they appear on the default bars: http://chipersoft.com/ButtonMap.pdf (or http://chipersoft.com/buttonmap.php if you don't trust PDFs, but it only displays right in Safari or Chrome)
Blayze Jun 24th 2010 4:19PM
No love for Conditioner? I am sad.
Pyromelter Jun 24th 2010 7:44PM
Mat, have you tried tidy plates/threat plates? If I could really recommend one and only one addon for you to spotlight, it would be that.
Also, anyone have any idea how the heck to improve the chat box? The new chat box has totally borked prat, and chatter looks like it's having it's own issues with 3.3.5.
Javier Jun 25th 2010 2:50PM
Chatter has a lot of issues with 3.3.5 but the dev is working on it almost constanly and getting updates. If you have curse client you will most likely get some updates that hotfix your issues. Also, sometimes the errors are not specifically of the addon, they sometimes are server-side. For example: With chatter the chat box wouldn't save in the position I put it in. Every time I had to realod ui the box would appear on the default place, a few hours later without updating the addon, it placed itself where I wanted even after restarting the game.
My issues of patch day got solved in less than 48hs, so I no longer have issues with chatter or grid. Devs work fast ;)
ColbyWolf Jun 25th 2010 2:46AM
So... my favorite add on, Linkerator (of Gazmik Fizzwidget's Superior Gadget and Doodad Emporium), has been declared, at least for a time, dead. ...but I've found that I absolutly adore the functionality. Anyone have a good replacement?
Zenith Jun 25th 2010 2:58AM
I'm suprised at the lack of people who use altoholic but don't know about armory. It's very similar in function, but the interface is a lot closer to the ingame character/professions screens. The only thing that isn't like your own character is the inventory/guildbank screen, which is a list(with icons) and a search box. It also updates tooltips so you know exactly how many of an item you have across alts and guildbanks, who can craft it and who has learned that recipe
I personally never used altoholic but considered it several times, however the screenshots on the download pages always pulls me back - everything is in a list and you can't really look at the specific alt you want
Like I said I never used altoholic so may be very wrong about its interface(it's been a while since I saw screenshots of it too), but don't feel that armory lacks anything that will make me want to change
Shrike Jun 25th 2010 3:19AM
I really don't know what you mean by "can't really look at the specific alt you want". Altoholic lets you view individual alts and any shared information provided by other people with Altoholic (including your own other accounts, if you dual-box long enough to share data).
The "lists" you might be referring to are the tradeskill and equipment tabs, where those lists are *useful*. They make it much easier to glance over alts and see, for instance, what every character has in a given slot, or see what everyone's secondary skills are at.
Zenith Jun 25th 2010 3:57AM
Both are actually a reference to the equipment tabs, in armory the main window looks almost exactly like your character inventory screen with stats and a summary of professions and xp in place of the default 3d view, you select a different alt from the potrait at the top left. Achievements, quests and professions are available from tabs along the right hand side.
This made me realise the actual difference between the two addons : altoholic is meant for - well, altoholics, providing a quick overview of all your alts while armory is more concerned with a small handful of them, only showing one at a time. Both have the same functionality and information.
I tend to only work with a few alts at a time and the extra information of all others would just be an annoyance. In the end it all comes down to preference, but I just thought of letting people know of an alternative
Kylenne Jun 25th 2010 12:44PM
Honestly, I have a small army of alts, and was a loyal Altoholic user for quite some time until a guildie turned me on to Armory. Altoholic has too many stupid bugs now (I can't tell you how many times DataStore gave me errors or screwed something up), and too much bloat. I also find Armory's interface to be much cleaner and less clunky than Altoholic's.
Naryn Jun 25th 2010 4:20AM
I use LunaSphere and DXE, DXE is much better in my opinion on many of the fights because not only does it tell you when something is being cast, much like DBM, it also tells you the quickest way to get out of it, tomtom style. It's very useful especially on encounters like Professor Putricide and Festergut with Malleable Goo and Spores. Also with DBM it just flashed everything in the middle of the screen, with DXE you can customize it to the different countdowns during a fight to be shown at different points during the fight. The best part of the addon is that it records what % the boss was on. This means when you wipe on progression and people say what % was he on, I didn't see, it doesn't matter if you're targeting him or not. :)
LunaSphere is good though it takes a long time to set up properly and as it performs so many different functions (tooltips, autoselling, picking up stuff from mail etc) it really messed with a load of my addons
Zaniac Jun 25th 2010 6:24AM
Lunarsphere looks a bit like what I'm looking for, but it sounds as if it come pre-configured.
What I want, is something similar, but where every button and sub-menu button is EMPTY, so I can place whatever abilities and macro I want to on the wheel/sphere/buttons/sub-menu buttons/whatever.
Anything like that out there?
Preferably configurable, so I'm not forced to accept a spherical design?
ian_boden Jun 25th 2010 9:41AM
Lunarsphere comes empty but has class templates that it recommends for first time users. Its also very easy to delete buttons (I sometimes find its a bit too easy) so you can load a template then strip out what you don't want.
Imnick Jun 25th 2010 7:12AM
I suppose it would have been impolite for the column author to edit the email submission to remove the quote, but I still wish the person who sent the email hadn't written it in the first place :P
logicalfundy Jun 25th 2010 10:19AM
Used to use Macaroon - but the updates to it were rather unpredictable, and it was just a configuration nightmare. I scrapped it for bartender.
Never seen LunarSphere before. Looks like a rather odd addon. Not sure what the big deal with the big class icon in the center is. Not familiar with the "sphere" category of addons.
ian_boden Jun 25th 2010 10:50AM
There were a bunch of class specific addons based around spheres, the one I knew about was totemus for shamans. The idea is you have submenus of buttons that raidate out from the centre. For example in totemus you had a submenu for fire totems and then the head button would change to the last used fire totem as well as letting you close/open the submenu.
The large centre sphere has 2 gauges on it, typically used for health and mana/rage/etc but there is a whole range of things it can show including exp, reputation, pet health. It also functions like a button (although can't have a ctrl modifier applied to it as that launches the config menu). I think you can get rid of the gauges and scale it independently of the other buttons if you don't like it being so large. You can place whatever icon you want on it but it defaults to your class icon to help you remember what alt you are playing!
logicalfundy Jun 25th 2010 10:58AM
k, thanks for the info, might give it a spin, although it sounds like I'm already getting much of the functionality from OPie.