Breakfast Topic: What mods could you not live without?
by Josh Rose 
Jan 28th 2011 at 8:00AM
Some people love their mods, downloading every single new thing that comes across the pages of Curse or any of the other addon sites. Others are very minimalist, using only what they need to function for raiding or PvP. And yet still others try and completely avoid mods altogether. The last group is clearly the minority; the mod community is a huge part of WoW, and mods have become such a common part of the game that some people forget what the default UI looks like.
Throughout the game, Blizzard has seemingly had a love/hate relationship with the mod community. Some of the mods it felt were so functional and helpful that it absorbed some of their functionality into the default UI; the raid frames are now similar to Grid, your map lights up with objectives and arrows like Quest Helper. Others Blizzard felt were overpowered and changed the game in order to break them, such as the original, one-button Decursive from vanilla WoW, and recently, AVR.
When I was in the recent beta, Blizzard turned off the option for any mods for a while, and the game was a flood of QQ from people who basically claimed they couldn't play with the default UI and without their necessary mods. Personally always running mod-light, I adapted quickly to the mod-free play, and it even led me to dropping a few things from live, such as my damage meter and chat mod. I have found the game functions fairly well without mods, but I do still require my raid warnings, threat meter, and my guild's loot mod.
What mods can you not function without? Has Blizzard ever changed the game to make a mod you felt like you needed no longer work? How long did it take you to adapt to playing without the mod again? Or are you one of the few who refuses to use mods at all?
Filed under: Breakfast Topics, Guest Posts
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 8)
Zapwidget Jan 28th 2011 8:04AM
Dominos
everything else I have is cosmetic or situational.
Josin Jan 28th 2011 8:37AM
Dominos as well. I need my bars.
Schadenfreude Jan 28th 2011 8:51AM
Dominos and Grid.
joystiq Jan 28th 2011 9:19AM
Dominos too. I only have 4 bars visible, hold down shift and they all flip bars 5-8 (occassional combat abilities), hold down ctrl and I see bars 9-12 (auras, seals, mounts, professions).
gandar54 Jan 28th 2011 9:59AM
Dominos also, I have only 6 buttons visible XD
Baba Jan 28th 2011 10:17AM
Bartender, when I'm PvPing I like to have my bars arranged to mimic my keyboard, in placement and button-size, so I can use all my abilities without having to glance down to see where my hand is :D If I just had a load of keybound bars, I'd find it much harder.
Guy Jan 28th 2011 10:56AM
Dominos for me as well. I use a Logitech G15 and the buttons are set up in a 7-7-5-3 format, and I need to be able to set my buttons up the same way as my G15. I have 2 mirrored set ups of 7-7-5 (I use the bottom 3 for self heals) and I like it to keep an eye on CDs and when skill proc.
The Angry Intern Jan 28th 2011 1:02PM
Another nod to Dominos. Best action bar addon hands down.
MusedMoose Jan 28th 2011 8:05AM
I've always been pretty light on mod-usage, but there are a few I've always loved. Coords is one, plain and simple - lots of people give notes on where they found things on Wowhead in coordinates, so being able to find stuff that way is great. EquipCompare was absolutely essential before Blizzard added its functionality into the game. I started using Omen when Cataclysm hit, and that's been very useful in dungeons.
I've become a big fan of NPC Scan, especially with my hunter - he's going for Bloody Rare and Frostbitten, the two "find and kill all the rares" achievements for Northrend and Outland, so getting the drumbeat and a "target this now!" popup when I'm near one of those has been a huge help. I also have another mod called RareSpawnOverlay that shows where those creatures hang out.
Also, now that I've started both tanking and healing, I know I'm going to need some more mods. I've heard great things about Healbot, and I have a page bookmarked that lists some tanking mods. Now I just need to start using them... Tanking makes me nervous and twitchy. @_@
Blayze Jan 28th 2011 8:06AM
You try raiding without a mod that tells you everyone else's threat, not just yours--and without having to use the tooltip, too!
Rodrigo Jan 28th 2011 8:07AM
Cartographer :-(....
Nawaf Jan 28th 2011 8:24AM
=(
The most important addon I ever used.
The Angry Intern Jan 28th 2011 1:05PM
yeah, shame it died, it was a great add-on
Garrossh Jan 29th 2011 12:48PM
That is why they created Carbonite.....love it!! Used to use cartographer before i switched to carbonite :) Go check it out!
Nick S Jan 28th 2011 8:07AM
Grid+Clique. Nothing beats the speed of just plain clicking on the person who needs a heal with the appropriate mouse button.
dcisko Jan 28th 2011 8:16AM
This. If Grid died, I guess I'd try the new raid frames, even though they don't display enough info. Or I might try to beat Pitbull into shape. But there's no way I'd run without Clique.
Bruce Jan 28th 2011 9:00AM
Mouse over macro's and keybindings to your heals :)
so you can hover over a party member Press a heal button and still have main focus on the tank :)
Nomad_Wanderer Jan 28th 2011 9:16AM
mouseover macro's are simpler, and give you more options.
I.e. unless you have a naga, you're talking about a limited number of spells you can set using clique. Sure you can use modifiers, alt+left click, ctrl+leftclick, etc, but it's still at most 3x4, or 3x5 total.
do this instead, it's better.
make a macro for the spell
#showtooltip Heal
/cast [target=mouseover] Heal
put that macro on a bar, and set the key bind for that bar to, say 1. mouseover someone press the 1 key they get a heal.
But the cool thing is you can do even more, as you get the whole macro system. Smite if the the target's target if you mouse over someone friendly, etc. Announce things (CLICK THE LIGHTWELL!)
with a belkin n52, and mapping ctrl, shift, and alt, to the side buttons of my mouse, I can easily have 44 mouseover spells. My mouse hand taps a modifer button on the mouse (alt,shift,ctrl), and the 4 fingers on my other hand sling spells.. (move with your thumb).
anderson.horn Jan 28th 2011 9:28AM
I use Xperl and Clique, but same thing, can't live without clique.
To the fella who says "do this, it's better" you haven't given click a chance. Anything you can do, I can do better...including macros tied to mouse-alt/ctrl/shift combos, separating in and out of combat, enemy or friend....anything. clique owns mouseover.
gadamsh Jan 28th 2011 9:33AM
I have always hated addons. They have never served to do anything but get in my way. I tried Grid+Clique in the last expansion, but I ended up disabling Clique. The only addon I've used in multiple expansions is grid. I'm the only healer in my guild that doesn't use healing addons and I take a lot of shit for it, but when I had clique I had to consciously think about how I had bound rarely used spells like cleanses or cooldowns. I ended up just using my keyboard for that stuff anyway.