Addon Spotlight: Mailbag 3
by Mathew McCurley 
Oct 20th 2011 at 5:00PM
Do you know where I am right now? I am probably at the Anabella Hotel in Anaheim, Calif., about to hand out some seriously sweet prizes to you awesome fans who are showing up for the party. If you're not here, you're most likely getting yourself pumped for the live stream. If you don't care about any of this and you're just reading Addon Spotlight today, well, I appreciate it and I love you, loyal readers.
Since I am writing this column in advance of my impending journey to California, I went with the mailbag motif. If you have a question for Addon Spotlight, want to recommend an addon for the column, or have a comment about addons that have been featured, send an email to mat@wowinsider.com with something Addon Spotlight-related in the subject. Let the good times roll.
Our first question comes from someone who is just too dang tired of being asked how many times someone died to a fire tornado. Seriously, people, they move so slowly now. Stop dying to fire tornadoes.
Hi Mat!Many raiders (myself included) like to run with an addon called Fatality. Fatality is a great way to track in real time what is killing your raiders, be it Lava Spew from the Alysrazor fight or Torments from Baleroc. Sure, it's a bit of a call-out in raid if you died from something you shouldn't have, but the information is right there and ready for discussion as soon as the wipe is called or the boss is beaten. Plus, the shame of dying to something and everyone knowing about it kicks some raiders into concentration mode.
I need an add on that will track how and why my raiders died and allow me to access that information later. World of Logs does wonders but it's difficult to navigate and I'm tired of explaining it to people. I need something that my officers and I can discuss later and see who might need help staying out of the fire.
- Tired of being asked how many time someone died to a fire tornado...
As for long-term, after-the-fight discussions, I honestly love World of Logs. Fatality also has logs and recording if you want to use it for the email's stated purpose, but I still have a soft spot in my heart for parsing World of Logs after a raid, checking my deaths and DPS, taking in all the sweet smells of fresh numbers ... Where was I?
Yeah, download Fatality. You'll enjoy it.
Download Fatality at [Curse].
Our next email comes from James, who wants to know what I personally use as my addon core.
Hi Mathew,Thanks for the question, James. I would love to give a list of my core addons that I currently use every day. The main addons that make up the visual elements of my UI are kgPanels and ButtonFacade/Masque. My raid addon of choice is Deadly Boss Mods. Grid keeps my raid and party frames organized, and Shadowed Unit Frames takes care of all things unit frames. I switched from ArkInventory to AdiBags for inventory mod because the complexity of Ark wasn't worth the ease of AdiBags. I haven't looked back yet. Chatter takes care of my chat box, Dominos takes care of my action bars, and Fishing Buddy makes fishing a tiny less ridiculous.
I came across your addon spotlight articles while getting my recently revived WoW account back up and running. How things have changed since 2.3.0.
Having found your articles interesting and objective, I decided to pull up all of your other addon related articles and start working through them looking for things I could use or needed.
I found a couple of things I liked or did the job better; however the entire time I was reading through your articles, I couldn't help but think that what was really missing was a comprehensive list of what addons you used personally.
While addons are clearly a subjective topic, each to their own as it were, I would have liked to have known what you were using (and why) so that I had a starting point to build upon. At the very least, I think it would be an interesting read for anyone with an active interest in addons, or people tossing up between Dominos and Bartender (for example).
Either way, I figured I would shoot you an email in the hope of planting the seed in your mind.
By the way, having just brought it up, I am now curious. What do you use; Dominos or Bartender?
Sincerely,
James
That's really it for the core of the setup. Some addons come and go, and the best ones get absorbed into the core over time. _Cursor, for instance, used to be on the short list of addons to drop, but over time, it became essential. I'll do a longer, more comprehensive list later for another column, buit I love the question. Look for it all soon.
For Addon Spotlight, yet another mog-related question: How can I find out what armor an NPC is wearing?The best resource I've used for figuring out what NPCs are wearing at the comments for said NPC over on Wowhead. The commenters do a great job picking apart NPC models and figuring out how to make replica outfits. You can also do a search for many of the WoW fashion blogs out there, our very own World of Wardrobe might start something similar in the future, or even hit up Wowpedia to see if that NPC has any comments associated with it and its outfit.
Thanks!
Our final email of the week is a simple one but nonetheless important.
So, I've taken the plunge and scrubbed my "all in one" UI and am building a UI from scratch and the question I have is; is there an action bar add-on that allows bars to be vertical or allow for the main bar switching a la the generic Blizzard action bars? I really don't like the default action bars and would like to be able to put my bars wherever I like but I would like some of the bars to be vertical as well as using "1-10" for other spells, like when fishing.Thanks for the email, Tammy. Any bar mod like Bartender or Dominos will allow you to make vertical bars by selecting the bar's options and changing the columns to 1. One column means all of the action bar boxes will be stacked up on top of each other, and you can plan from there. The main bar switching can also be done with these mods, where you set each bar up to be visible while in a certain stance or mode.
Thanks much in advance!
Tammy
Check out Bartender or Dominos on Curse.
That's it for this week, friends. I hope to see you all at BlizzCon or on the live stream. Get ready for a crazy weekend of information and reveals!
Addons are what we do on Addon Spotlight. If you're new to mods, Addons 101 will walk you through the basics; see what other players are doing at Reader UI of the Week. If there's a mod you think Addon Spotlight should take a look at, email mat@wowinsider.com.
Filed under: Add-Ons, AddOn Spotlight
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Bellajtok Oct 20th 2011 5:06PM
So as I go on in my great big journey of having way too many addons, I find that I end up replacing and/or improving the default UI piece by piece. In that vein, does anyone have recommendations for changing the minimap and the normal party frames?
EverythingRuned Oct 20th 2011 5:28PM
From my limited experience...
For the map, sexymap. Choose the palette "simple square."
For party frames, use grid or even the standard raid frames. Go to your interface->settings section, something in there lets you do this. I find suf and the like to take up too much space for anything but my frame and my target's frame.
dev_null0 Oct 20th 2011 5:30PM
I used dminimap, it hasn't been updated in a while but it is a simple square minimap that is easy to move. For frames, I use x-perl (over at wowace.com)
Jyotai Oct 20th 2011 5:31PM
I replaced my party/raid frames with Grid.
I have Pitbull as well for my own frame, my focus, my target, and my target of target...
But Grid 'organically grows' better when group sizes change - and is very easy to set up alerts for. So I know who has aggro for example, which is useful both on my tanks and on my healers.
And I can drag grid all over my screen on the fly - which despite picking a spot for it on my UI where it will 'stay' because its perfect... I end up doing once a night anyway because for some random situation I happen to want to see my left foot or whatever...
Jyotai Oct 20th 2011 5:43PM
Chinchilla is a better mini-map addon than sexy-map.
Smaller memory footprint by a massive margin, and it will remember its location better if you happen to turn off addons one moment and then turn them back on later.
keith Oct 20th 2011 5:46PM
Sexymap was always just a little too much for me... I was just using "Simple Square" anyways, so why did I really need a huge addon like Sexymap? Also, it seemed to get a little buggy from time to time, mostly with the hidden minimap buttons.
For something much simpler, try BasicMinimap. I can't remember if I've seen it here or in UI Spotlight, but ever since I've tried it I've never looked back.
Oh, and I personally like Grid for party/raid frames.
Bellajtok Oct 20th 2011 5:53PM
Lots of good minimap options here. I'll have to try some of them out. My problem is that I like the default raid frames, and I've just used some addons to expand their functionality, so I don't want to use Grid.
jfofla Oct 20th 2011 7:16PM
I tried Chinchilla, but I prefer SexyMap
radiationcowboy Oct 20th 2011 10:38PM
second on Chinchilla map. not as flashy as sexy map. but great functionality.
I really like the great flexibility of Stuf unit frames. It will handle your your party as well as your player, target, focus, etc. The flexibility comes at the expense of ease of setup. I have redone my unit frames several times with stuf and it is a pretty decent time investment.
If you dont like Stuf. Shadowed is similar with a much different setup interface.
I happened to find Stuf to my liking.
still using Vuhdo for my raid frames.
Literaltruth Oct 21st 2011 7:39AM
I would recommend Shadowed Unit Frames highly for party frame replacement. It's a lot easier to customise than something like Pitbull4 (which I used to use), is slightly more efficient alllows all the customisation that most people would ever want and looks pretty great "out the box", IIRC ((it's been a while since I've seen what it looks like with default settings). I was able to make it look *exactly* like my Pitbull4 frames in about a quarter of the time it took me to set up Pitbull.
For map addons I guess sexymap.
I personally use Carbonite - which is a huge addon that it so much more than just a map replacement. It gives you this amazing scrollable, dynamically zooming, resizable, GPS-like map that I really can't live without. It's also a quest tracker (similar to the old days of quest helper), tracks enemies, has a gatherer-type functionality that will make routes round gathering nodes etc. as well as soooo much more. It's hugely resource hungry, however (ridiculously so). I wish someone would do a map addon that just did the Carbonite map thing without any of the extras...because, like I say, I just can't play without it now. Having said that, the resources may be not that bad when you consider it's replacing three or four seperate addons I might otherwise be using (map addon, quest tracker, gathering database)
ecwfrk Oct 21st 2011 10:58AM
I use Perl Classic Unit Frames for player and party frames. They're easy to configure and I like the design.
I also agree with others on Chinchilla.
Another must have mod for me is Minimap Button Frame. It gathers up all the addon minimap buttons and puts them into their own movable frame.
Albrechtae Oct 21st 2011 11:38AM
I use Mappy for a nice simple square minimap, and X-Perl for party frames. I found X-Perl took a bit of working with to get the frames to look right for me, though. :)
Camo Oct 22nd 2011 4:44AM
If you want something special as a minimap, it's always possible to code (or rather modify) your own.
http://i1102.photobucket.com/albums/g452/banur/minimap.jpg
Without the buff tracker and party assemblance thingy, battleground icon is on the right side.
I used Qminimap as a basis and added the clock from xone minimap and the date from another minimap that eludes my mind at the moment.
Getting started isn't hard either, just load the .lua with an editor, I use notepad++, and look at thefunctions.
"Minimap:SetSize(150, 150)" or "Minimap:SetPoint("TOPLEFT", UIParent, "TOPLEFT", 10, -20)" should give you a hint what they do. Just start playing around with the numbers, save the file and do a "/console reloadui" ingame.
If you can't figure out what a function does, google it. In most cases wowprogramming wowpedia/wiki have a desciption.
The possibility of unique customization without the danger of losing profiles is why I like this approach.
Jyotai Oct 20th 2011 5:22PM
Along the lines of Bartender vs. Dominoes.
What's the difference?
Last night based on the Reader UI of the Week blog yesterday I tried out Macaroon. Ended in a disaster as I found the bars would show up in random locations on my screen after re-logs, with buttons moving between bars in unexplainable ways - compounded by any bar that had the forms of my Druid in it becoming 3x larger and un-movable upon relog.
So I went back to Bartender - but Bartender's limit of 12 buttons, and the loss of bars 7,8, and 9 to 'other warrior stances held in reserve' is getting on my nerves...
(and no I don't need 120-buttons, so the loss of 36 of them is unnoticeable, but it grates me all the same - just why does Bartender shove a copy of my main-bar into each of those 3 bars for my warrior, once copy for each stance?)
Bellajtok Oct 20th 2011 5:34PM
I like Dominoes for the more intuitive setup. Some parts are a little more difficult to configure, but in general, it's pretty easy.
Methuus Oct 20th 2011 6:06PM
I think you can turn off the "switch bars when I switch stances"
thing.
In Bartender configuration, select Bar 1, then the "State
Configuration" tab. Under the "Stance Configuration" section, there
should be pulldowns to control how the bar behaves when you change
stances. Pick "Don't Page" for each stance to turn it off.
As to the Bartender vs. Dominos question, I think it's one of those situations where they're both really good, try them both and pick whichever one "clicks" with you.
Erebos Oct 20th 2011 6:37PM
Bartender and Dominoes aren't very different. I used to use Dominoes, but switched to Bartender because I felt it had more customizability. I liked the rep/XP bars Dominoes uses, but the way it handles totems is clunky and I didn't like it. I think it's like Methuus said, it's just whichever you prefer.
Jyotai Oct 20th 2011 6:55PM
Except I need it to switch buttons when I change stances - but am annoyed at how this requires bartender to store the buttons of my other stances into other bars when 'not in use'. :)
Methuus Oct 20th 2011 7:14PM
For what it's worth, which isn't much, I don't think that's a limitation that bartender added. It's limitation of the underlying actionbar system. The actionbar addons aren't complete re-writes, they're just additional manipulation of the underlying built-in Blizzard actionbar system.
If you didn't use an actionbar addon, Battle Stance's action bar, for example, would actually still be stored in actionbar 7. It's just that in the default Blizzard UI, you can't access actionbar 7 as a separate thing; the default UI hides it from you, but it's still there.
Anyway, just saying that the addon authors aren't doing this stuff just to annoy you, it's just the limitation of the system they have to build on.
Lipstick Oct 20th 2011 7:16PM
Joytai .. I think you're misunderstanding how to change the paging settings. Because what you're describing shouldn't be happening unless you've got something set up wrong. It doesn't "store" things on those bars when not in use, unless you tell it to.