Add-On Overview

Over at Outland Bound, Ess wrote about some of her experiences with add-ons. In a comment to that post, a reader named Sherri posted,

“I am weary about changing the interface too much, but I would like to try something simple, anyone have any suggestions?”

Well of course I do!

But here is my question for Sherri: What is it about the interface that you want to change?

For me, the most important add-on is one that gives me more flexibility with the button bars. Blizzard’s are (a) too restrictive and (b)don’t have enough buttons: On a couple of my characters, I have 50 buttons or more that I use. So, I use Bongos2; another equally capable one is Bartender3. Bartender is an Ace add-on, but since Bongos works just fine for me (and I didn’t see any improved functionality in Bartender when I looked at it), I haven’t changed.

I also don’t much care for Blizzard’s default unit frames(the graphics that display your character, pet, party, raid group and target(s),health & mana, etc.). There is so much more valuable information able to be displayed, so I use a unit frame add-on. The main drawback to these is they take quite a bit of fiddling to set them up "just so", and that dissuades a lot of people.

The one I happen to use is Discord Unit Frames. I’ve also used X-Perl, and a lot of people swear by Perl Classic. Pitbull is another popular frame add-on.

I’ve previously discussed Ace2 add-ons, FuBar, and ClearFont2. Everything I said in those articles is still valid.

A threat meter is a must: Mine is Omen, which will broadcast to KLH Threat Meter (KTM), and is an Ace add-on. (KTM doesn’t talk to Omen, though, so increasingly, I see people switching to Omen.) If you use a pet and are only soloing, a threat meter is still nice to have up, and of course in a raid group, they’re pretty much mandatory. It’s never, ever a bad idea to know when you become Public Enemy #1.

I also don’t like the way my inventory and additional bags (and bank bags) show up in the default UI: They take up WAY too much room, and obscure other important information. Besides, I have a large monitor—I don’t need things taking up so much screen real estate. So, I use BaudBag, which allows me to resize and reposition as I wish.

As my characters progress—even my four Level 70s—improving my gear is important (probably more important for those 70s!). But how can you tell if the Breastplate of Uber Killification really is an upgrade over the Chestpiece of Maximum Protection? The answer: Rating Buster. It will compare an item to the equivalent equipped item—linked,possessed, or in the AH—and tell you whether and by how much item A improves such things as Crit %, Attack Power, and Hit Rating.

Some other types of add-ons to consider are timers for cooldowns on spells, skills, and the like; combat text mods such as Scrolling CombatText (SCT) and SCT-Damage. Then we get into the whole range of add-ons that provide info on the various mobs you encounter, including mods specifically aimed at boss mobs (for instances and raids).

I could go on and on (and in future articles, as in the past, I will)…but now that I’ve presented a sampling of some of the better mods and add-ons out there, it’s your turn: What are you looking for? What would you like to see differently in your UI? I have a second copy of my WoW installation that is “clean,” and I use it for reviewing add-ons. So give me some ideas on what I can play around with and report on for you.