Monday, March 23, 2009

My UI

About Kae's UI

My UI is a UI built not for just a healer, nor just for a feral druid. I made my UI with all roles in mind: I need to see everything, and I need to be able to see it quickly. I use the same UI for tanking, melee dps, caster dps, and healing, pve and pvp, solo and raiding. It took a lot of tweaking, but I am very happy with it, though would like to have the time to generate more of my own custom art for it :)

Below is an in-combat screenshot on my healer with no target. If I am targeting something, usually it is the boss to monitor threat using Omen in the lower right-hand corner. 4 of the circular buttons around the screen, including two around the sphere next to Omen, are menus that will open and close at a click or mouseover.


For a full in-combat screen with target, debuffs, threat, and castbars, I have a recent screen of a temporary turkey respec here.

The Mods:

Mods are something that I *can* play without, but really prefer not to. They tell me what I need to know in an easier to read format, so that I can make my choices quicker and more efficiently; they also make my UI much, much less cluttered to read by rearranging and rescaling things to my preference, and hiding things I don't want to see.
  • Bartender 4 (action bars)
  • Bindpad (hidden)
  • Buffalo (buff rescaling/positioning)
  • Button Facade (+styles)
  • CaelNameplates
  • Capping (PvP, auto-turnins)
  • CastDonut (small cast bar + GCD circling the mouse pointer)
  • Chatter
  • Clearfont2 + Fontpack, (disabled, but accessed via SharedMedia)
  • Cowtip - settings here
  • Deadly Boss Mods
  • Debuff Filter
  • FacadeBuffs
  • FuBar
    • LocationFu
  • FuTextures
  • Gathermate
  • Ghost Pulse
  • Grid - settings here
    • GridAutoFrameSize
    • GridIndicatorCornerIcons
    • GridIndicatorCornerPlus
    • GridLayoutPlus
    • GridManaBars
    • GridStatusAFK
    • GridStatusHots
    • GridStatusLifebloom
    • GridStatusMissingBuffs
    • GridStatusRaidIcons
    • GridStatusReadyCheck
    • GridStatusRes
    • GridUnitMenu
  • Headcount
  • Hear Kitty (audio combo points)
  • IceHUD
  • Inflight
  • kgPanels (custom artwork)
  • LootRollMover
  • LunarSphere - details here
  • Mapster
  • Omen Threat Meter
  • OmniCC
  • Oomni
  • oRA2
  • Peggle!
  • PitBull 3.0
  • Power Auras Classic - settings here
  • Quartz
  • RecipeKnown
  • Recount
  • SendSelf (mail)
  • SexyMap (minimap)
  • SharedMedia
  • SmoothDurability
  • SquawkAndAwe
  • SurfaceLib
  • Surfaces
  • TargetCharms

Macros/Keybinds
As can be seen by the minimal action bars in the screenshots, I have the vast majority of my actions keybound and memorized, but a finger-press away. These keybindings are the same on both of my druids, and for ease of reflex, I keep similar abilities bound to each key on my non-druid alts.

On the Lookout For:
I'm always on the look out for new mods that will make my UI a happier place to play in. Particular things I seek right now include:
  • A way to apply OmniCC style cooldowns to my buff bar, rather than using text timers
  • A better world map mod, cartographer was just too heavy and clunky.

3 comments:

Jason said...

I love your UI and gotta have it for my druid but having trouble trying to configure it to look like yours. Do you have your UI posted on Wowinterface so I can download it and install it from there or a link from your blog to download it. Thanks for all the wonderful information you have shared on your blog, it has been a big help. Thanks!!!

Kae said...

I do not have it hosted anywhere, but I will look into it and see what I can do to help replicate the UI. Some of the graphics are custom artwork I made (added using kgpanels), but those aren't very visible in the screenshot since they are blending into the Sartharion background too well!

My grid settings can be found elsewhere on this blog (check the menu, I have it hotlinked).

lex' said...

For a OmniCC style timer added to buffs - have you looked at SatrinaBuffFrames instead of Buffalo? I think (if I remember correctly) it has an option to add timers/cooldowns to inside buffs under the Timers tab.

Great UI and blog though - very helpful as a new Resto Druid.