Addon Spotlight focuses on the backbone of the WoW gameplay experience -- the user interface. Everything from bags to bars, buttons to DPS meters and beyond -- your addons folder will never be the same. This week, LDB! LDB! LDB! Brooooooker addons! Again.

Wow, you guys love broker addons. The amount of emails I received from readers about their favorite broker addons was astounding, and worthy of a second go. You guys are all about the LBD, so who am I to deny you the satisfaction of more broker plugins for your little bars? Let's clutter up those ChocolateBars just a little bit more, shall we? Check out part one first, of course.

First, I'd like to address the FuBar issue. No, FuBar isn't dead. I didn't mean to imply it was. Rather, FuBar is like VHS -- it was awesome when it was the best thing out there, but addon developers in general have moved on to the more welcoming LDB. All of the addon developers I have talked to about this said it's just an easier environment to work with.

All right, on to the addons. Emails, emails, emails! You sent them, I read them and now I'm posting about them.

Ara Broker Guild Friends

A few people emailed in to profess their love for Ara Broker Guild Friends, an awesome broker addon that keeps track of your guildmates and friends. The addon comes complete with two windows for friends and guildmates, and provides one-click access to whisper or an alt-click to invite them to a group. Officers of guilds even have some special commands to set notes, the guild message of the day and officer's notes.


This broker addon is awesome, but what really shines is how neat and functional it is. One little addon replaces almost half of your social ("O") menu instantly. Am I the only one who just loves it when an addon like this exists, saying to myself, "This is how it should be done?" Give Ara Broker Guild Friends a try, and major props to its creator, Aranarth (from whence we get Ara, the prefix to all their broker addons).

Download Ara Broker Guild Friends at [WoWInterface].

Ara Broker Tradeskills

Screw it, let's turn this into an Aranarth love-fest. Ara Broker Tradeskills is an awesome broker addon for those of you out there with loads of alts and their many daily cooldowns. Ara Broker Tradeskills is a deceptively simple tradeskill interface that tracks your tradeskills and your cooldowns across characters. Middle-clicking the addon options up a robust set of options, and for those inclined to color choices, the addon has an author-admitted amazing amount of color options to tinker with.

I cannot recommend Ara Broker Tradeskills enough. It's another one of those addons you will use for a while; then patch day will come around, and after it breaks, you will contemplate the will to live.

Download Ara Broker Tradeskills at [WoWInterface].

Tekability, a simple durability addon

Tekkub, one of my favorite addon developers, has a handy little addon for dealing with equipment durability called Tekability. While not only a data broker addon, the mod does come equipped with a great broker addon datafeed, making the addon really stand out.

Tekability adds percentages to your equipment icons in your character pane, as well as provides durability data on your broker display bar of choice. There isn't really too much to say -- much like most of Tekkub's addons, a short summary is all you need. The addons speak for themselves. They do the job, and they do it simply. Give it a try.

Download Tekability at [Curse] or [WoWInterface].

Ara Broker SpecSwitcher

All right, fine, one more Ara broker addon. This one is called SpecSwitcher. Click to switch your specs. You can set an equipment set to each spec as well so that your gear will change with your spec. Awesome. Simple and easy. Nothing complicated about this one! Use it and love it.

Download Ara Broker SpecSwitcher at [WoWInterface].

How about we answer some mailbag questions? Yes. Let's.

Hi Mat --

First, just want to say I love your column -- it's been incredibly useful in my eternal quest for the perfect ui. I'm hoping you can help me with one little thing, though. I used to use ArkInventory but grew really frustrated with it when an update broke all of my inventory sorting rules and I recently switched to AdiBags. I'm really happy with AdiBags -- it's a lot lighter weight than ArkInventory was, and I really like the way it autosorts things. It does, however, lack one feature of ArkInventory which I'm finding difficult to live without -- it doesn't track inventory and put that info in the tooltip when you mouse over an item, the way ArkInventory did. I tried Possessions, but I don't want to pull up a new window and search for things, I just want to mouse over something and know that I already have 27 Strange Dusts in my bank and another 40 on my bank alt (or whatever). I tried MaterialsTracker but that only tracks mats (and apparently only when you have a profession that uses them), and I want it to track everything. I've already spent hours trying to find an addon that will do just this one thing, but it seems it's only part of the big inventory management addons like ArkInventory that I'm trying to get away from. Am I out of luck?

Thanks!
Erin

Thanks for the email, Erin. I am pretty sure Altoholic will track items in that way, but I'll try to do you one better. Let's fix your ArkInventory. A lot of the sorting rules were changed in a recent upgrade to ArkInventory, and I was plagued with the same problem. After a tiny bit of research, I changed around my rules and bam, everything worked great.

The two biggest issues I had were with sorting things by words in their name and by outfit. Here are my two new rules for sorting my tabards into their own virtual bag and sorting my gear into another:

name( "Tabard", "Herald", "Blood Knight Tabard", "Argent Crusader's Tabard" )

outfit( "Tanking", "Resto", "Enhancement", "BOSSRet", "DPS-Ret", "Elemental" ) -- names of my outfits

Try formatting in that way and you should be good to go for some of the simpler commands/rules. Here is a link to the full ArkIntenvory wiki and FAQ as well. It's invaluable to me.

Hi,

First, thanks for the excellent column. I'm a huge addon junkie, the customizability of WoW is a big draw for me.

I liked your article on LDB addons and have just started using Chocolate Bar. I've been looking around for new addons, and stumbled on one called Broker_Transit which creates a dropdown menu of mage portals you can cast.

It occurred to me that this would be a great way to handle all of those sundry "utility" spells and abilities every class has. Do you know of any LDB addon that lets you create menus of arbitrary abilities or macros of your choosing?

-Ian

Thanks for the email, Ian. I actually have no idea, to be honest. This is our comment question for the week -- does anyone have any ideas for Ian, here? Are there any broker addons out there that can act as blank repositories for spells and abilities? This would be pretty invaluable, I would think.

That's it for this week, guys. Keep stuffing those data broker display bars full of awesome plugins, and I'll see you next week.

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Addons are what we do on Addon Spotlight. Didn't we do broker addons already? Like, last week? Yes! But there are so many of them! 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.

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Tags: add-on, add-on-configuration, add-on-guide, addon-configuration, addon-guide, addons, broker, broker-addons, data-broker, featured, guide, LDB, wow-add-on, wow-add-on-guide, wow-add-ons, wow-addon-guide, wow-addons, wow-guide

Filed under: Add-Ons, AddOn Spotlight