Hey, what's going on guys, this is Reckles with WTBGold, and today I wanted to answer
one of your comments, one of your questions, asking what UI addons I'm using.
Now, I talked about gold making addons in 20 Days of Goldmaking a while back, so I have
a video up on that, but I never covered UI stuff.
So I wanted to go through that.
And actually, the day before a couple of you asked...
And actually, there hasn't really been a day since the channel came out where someone hasn't
left a comment...ARGH!!!
Ok so, I’ve been wanting to do this video for a while as a point of reference for y’all,
a list of what I use, but I also want it to be a guide for new players or anyone who hasn’t
set up a solid interface before.
So we’re going to have a list of all the addons I use, everything I get asked about
all the time, and then we’re going to go into how I mentally approach this with customization,
minimalism, and consistency.
And then how I actually apply those, how you can, and how to tie it all together.
Side note: this is gonna be just UI.
If you’re looking for goldmaking addons, I talked about those in a 20 days of gold
making video.
I’ll link that here or in the description.
Alright, so first, here’s a list of all the addons I get asked about on a daily basis
in the YouTube comments.
The diablo orbs are an addon called Mistra’s Diablo Orbs
My sexy map in the corner is an addon called Sexy Map.
You can clean up your bars a little with the addon Bartender
To make your bars a little prettier you can put a mask over them with the addon Masque.
To make masque prettier I use Masque: Renaitre.
There's no joke or tie in there.
It's just, there’re a ton of skins for Masque but this has the only circular buttons I like.
When I said I use Bartender I lied.
I actually use Domino’s now.
It’s a little bit more customizable.
Better UI.
For my unit frames, the health bar, target, target of target, I use Pitbull.
If you ever see a video of mine that has a full body portrait next to my health bars,
that’s found in Pitbull here.
To make all my bags pretty I use Bagnon.
If you ever see a red border on a looted transmog item, it's just a bagnon option that just
means that item is unwearable.
It doesn't designate anything as transmog specifically.
I use a lot of weakauras, and these are generally on a per character basis to track different
cooldowns.
I use Tradeskillmaster, which was originally just an AH interface, but has now become more
of a full UI replacement for anything that has to do with goldmaking: Auctioning, Mailing,
crafting, Disenchanting, Looting.
It’s honestly replaced about 10 different addons that you may still be using: Postal,
Panda, Auctioneer, Auctionator, Acki’s Recipe List, TUJ, like, a lot of addons are obsolete
now.
For raid frames, I use VuhDo.
It’s like Grid had a baby with Healbot, and that baby not only took steroids but won
Miss America.
Yah I know, complicated comparison.
Shut up, it’s fine.
Vuhdo’s amazing but it’s pretty massive so I won’t be able to get into everything
on how to set it up this video if you want this video to be less than an hour long.
Also, when I said I use Pitbull, I lied.
I’ve shifted my unit frames over to BD Addons.
These are created for the top 10 progression guild Big Dumb Gaming.
Yah yah, BD maybe means something other than "Big Dumb."
They’re about as clean as you can get without sacrificing functionality.
This is also what makes my game menu super awesome looking.
Gives that little character thing.
So, now that we’ve got the list done for you impatient viewers, I need to talk about
mindset.
If you’re setting up a, actually no, I need to give a little preface.
Normally I try to be unbiased and disassociated in my statements.
You have to with informational guides, how tos.
But we’re getting into artistic territory here so if I ever say in the next couple minutes
“You have to do XYZ,” you don’t.
But I’m talking from an artistic mindset, so I have to make bold claims from an emotional
perspective.
It’s just how my brain works.
Grain of salt.
Blah blah blah.
Ok, so, first and foremost, wait can I say that this far into a video?
I don’t use ElvUI or any stock addon setup.
Each character has a different playstyle, a different approach you need to take with
it.
Tanks care about aggro, interrupts, and defensive cooldowns.
Things like that.
Fury Warriors need to first care about tracking their rage so they can dump it all the the
perfect time.
Feral druids and affliction locks care about energy almost as much as warriors do, but
their main focus is on tracking dots.
With a fire mage, you don't care about any of that, you care about procs.
Oh look, pyroblast procced.
Then cast pyroblast.
GG.
A resto druid on the other hand wants to see everyone’s health, who has a heal over time
effect on them, and if those are about to expire.
With Vuhdo, you can set that up on the raid frames.
So with each character’s UI, you want to be accentuating the playstyle you care about
with that specific class, and this is why on my fury warrior I use Mistra’s Diablo
Orbs.
It's not because it's pretty, it's just, it’s a big ole honkin rage bar you can see peripherally
even if I'm completely tunnel visioned.
Now, consistency is also important.
My rage and health bars are circular.
I whirlwind, I bladestorm, Sweeping Strikes.
Everything with a fury warrior is circular and flowing, so my sexymap is a circle, and
I use a circular mask on my action bars.
But we’re getting a little too deep into warrior specifics.
Let’s back things up.
Ok, so there’s a lot you can do with a UI, and because of that you have to keep things
as clean as possible to enhance the gaming experience and make it easier, rather than
muddling everything up.
Here's a neat little experiment you can do, and I recommend you do this on every character
you play.
Hit Alt+Z to take away your UI and just fly around.
Do a zone full of world quests.
You'll notice that everything feels prettier and more engaging.
It’s a better gaming experience.
But if you do this for 5 minutes you’ll notice occasionally that you forget your keybinds
for specific abilites or you keep glancing at the map and you don't have that information
available.
Write down on a notepad what you’re missing with this zero UI gameplay.
What you keep looking at and not getting information on.
For me, I need a map, basic ability bars that I’d use while questing, buffs and debuffs
because some dailies or heroic dungeons require that, name plates for aggro and faction tapping
information, and unit frames so I can time out when things are gonna die so I don't pull
extra mobs during world quests.
That’s it.
To get rid of everything else, go into dominos or bartender and set the faded opacity of
your other bars, your menu bar, and your bags to 0.
Keep the normal opacity at 100%.
If you ever need them, you can hover over your bags to open a specific one, hover over
your artifact bar to see where you’re at there, or hover over an action bar to click
on your Flight Master’s Whistle.
Next think about what abilities you don’t really need to see.
On my Demon Hunter or my warrior, I use the scroll wheel for my leap and my charge.
You know, my engages.
It’s got, both of those have a super short cooldown so it’s pretty much always up.
I don't care about cooldown.
I just put that on an invisible bar, and forget about it.
It clears up the clutter.
My Demon hunter also has sigils.
They're 6 second AoE silence, fear, vortex, or DoTs.
For this, I use Opie and I just press G or whatever button I set to it.
That makes the options pop up, and then I just move my mouse to whichever corresponding
button I need.
You learn that pretty quickly, it becomes second nature.
But after playing with this for a while in Mythic+, I saw that I needed the cooldown
information visible if they were on cooldown, because I was wasting GCDs by trying to cast
them when I couldn’t.
So I made a weakaura that appears off the the side when I can’t use them.
For when they're on cooldown.
This is a Demon hunter example.
Sure.
But you can apply for any class ability that you use multiple times in a dungeon.
You know, those 20-60 second cooldowns abilities that you use all the time.
Also on this, my sigil of flame is really important since that is an AoE dot that provides
a ton of damage and healing, especially on big pulls.
It's one of those abilities that I pretty much want to use on Cooldown so the fact that
it's usable is more important, so for that I also have an auditory flame sound that comes
up whenever it's off cooldown.
And as a warning, kindof, I used to have weakauras up for my big defensive cooldowns, and you'll
see this on a lot of raiders.
They'll have bars or artistic things that decrease whenever the cooldown being used
up, but after playing with that for a while, I saw that for me, I was getting more information
by just looking at the cooldown numbers on my bars, rather than looking at the art or
the icons, so for those, they were just cluttering things up, so I removed em.
But I did keep tthe thing, there's a big X that appears whenever I don't have any mitigation
up and I'm in combat and I'm in a group.
Then I want to know,"Yes, Friggin press something or you're going to die."
In short, Keep it clean, minimal, and only include the information you need.
And only include one copy of that information.
Now, as a tank when I’m progressing, I also need access to the skull and sheep markers
along with potions or healthones or things like that.
You know, survivability stuff.
So for that set up a few of my bars to only appear when I'm in a group and a few others
to only appear when I'm both in a group and in combat.
So for that, I use Exorsus Raid Tools, the sheep and the skull, which is amazing.
It's a pretty big addon that I absolutely recommend, I'd almost say it's required for
progression raiders.
Now, my action bar addon Dominos let’s you set up custom LUA code to achieve similar
effect.
It's one of the things that seperates it from Bartender.
You can do a lot of really cool stuff with custom code but I’m a noob when it comes
to it, so I'll leave that to the experts and your googling proficiencies.
Now, earlier we talked about consistency before moving into minimization.
If you have a fairly minimal UI but it still feels...busy.
Like something’s off but you can put your finger on it.
Check to make sure you’re using the same font and bar style on everything.
And color scheme too.
If you’re using the bar style “Aluminum” and a 12 point Times New Roman on your VuhDo
raid frames, having a flat panel and a 10 point sans serif font on your skada or Recount,
it's gonna make you feel uncomfortable.
It sounds silly but yah, you need to learn a little about Typography to play WoW well.
So here’s my challenge to you and a few example UI’s to give you some inspiration.
Take these concepts and you know, maybe a few of these addons that you haven’t tested
yet but I mentioned here, and explore with em.
Set something up.
Be creative.
Send me a picture of a UI you put together either and are proud of.
Send it to me either here in the comments here or on my Twitter account and in either
one, include the hashtag #WTBGoldUI so I can find em.
Next week I’ll put out a video highlighting all your best responses.
So, thanks for watching.
If this helped you, hit the like button.
Subscribe if you haven’t and you'll see when I post future content, and I will talk
to you guys tomorrow.
By the way, I’m prepping something kinda big for the channel.
A really cool expansion, so stay tuned.
I may not be posting videos as often as I normally do, but it’ll be worth it in the
end.
Ok, Bye guys!
See ya.