Add ons to get for the game

[Jarulf]

There is a nice sticky thread about game info, however, looking over it, I could not find much info on add-ons (or UI mods I suppose they should be called).

Suppose one get the game, what such mods should one get hold of? What do they do? What features are "vital", good, poitless, stay away from or just for curiosity?

FOr example, during beta I downloaded some, but they had turned into bloated "packages" with so many features of which I only wanted some, hated others and so on. So preferably, it should be something were one can pick and chose.

I recall during beta some that for example kept track of monsters you encountered and have seen references to some that keep track of quests (doesn't Blizzard posted that they game itself has such a feature now, or did I missunderstood?). Such things would obviously be good to get before one start out so that they are "complete".

[lfd]

In my AddOns directory I have:

CTMod - I use this for the life/mana values/percentages display, since I mostly play a priest and I like seeing what people's actual life is. Has lots of other nice features such as map locations and the ability to make notes on the map without being anywhere near as annoying as Cosmos. The smart casting and buff expiration features are good, too.

AllInOneInventory - it's just nice to open one window containing all my stuff, without having to search through bags for items.

CastTime - I found it interesting to see how long it was taking me to cast spells when I kept getting hit. Usually I use it to decide if it's worth hitting PW:Shield.

FlightMap/FlightPath - shows flight destinations, costs, connections and in most cases length of flight on the main map.

QuestHistory/QuestMinion - questminion has been pretty much superseded by blizzard's own UI, but questhistory is still useful especially if you've abandoned quests, as it'll keep track of where they were obtained for you. Also keeps track of where they're completed, which is great for finding Bjorn Randomtauren in Thunder Bluff.

Reputation - gives you detailed messages on the amount of reputation you earn/lose when you kill factioned monsters. Also gives you the numerical values on the reputation screen.

XPClock - small bar that shows how far to the next level you are, your average xp per kill, the xp of your last kill, and number of kills to level. When you target a monster, it tells you how many of that type you've killed, and for what xp.

Plus a couple of minor mods, one that removes the fade-in from the quest log text (although I think ctmod can do this anyway, so I don't need that one any more) and one that makes the quest log much taller, to save me scrolling up and down it.

[Gurnsey]

CosmosUI has many handy things, but is extremely bloated and interdependent - you often can't get rid of something without disabling 5 other things. Most of the 'essential' parts of this mod were put into the official UI by Blizzard. in my opinion (buff timers, quest tracker, extra bars).

GypsyMod is sort of the anti-Cosmos. It is designed in several packages to be independent of eachother - you can install only the parts that you want, and even when you do, you can turn on and off all the bits. This UI mod mostly concentrates on allowing you to move all of the screen elements around, as well as giving you a bit more information on party members, yourself, and enemies.

The RealOrang's Mods, including Flexbar and Popgroup, is unfortunatly out of bandwidth for the month. Flexbar is a mod which adds additional, totally programmable and moveable buttons. It is not 'user friendly' as such, since it is set up mostly by command-line, but it is extremely, well, flexible, and powerful. Popgroup is a handy mini-mod which pops up little names of all of your party-mates when you hit a beneficial spell (say, while you are targeting a monster). Very handy for quickly healing, de-poisoning, un-cursing, etc. your party-mates.

Those are the ones I have experience with. Good idea to make a sticky or a guide with some of this info. There is certainly no 'best' ui mod, it is very personal, but a guide to the advantages and disadvantages would be great.

[Arethor]

I use quite a few add-ons, probably more than I need, but I'll try and explain each one that I use, and why I have it. They are in no particular order other than the order in which i remember them. :) I'll be adding screenshots of each when I have the time.

QuestHistory
This add-on keeps a large amount quest information such as quest giver, coordinates of quest giver, experience gained from completion, rewards and location of turn-in. I've found it most useful when you're working on part of a chain and get sidetracked (either by an alt or questing in a different area) and need to find a specific person. Another nice feature is that it keeps track of quests you drop. This lets you abandon quests to clear up log space for instances, but still return to complete the quests later.

Telo's Selfcast
This add-on allows for self-casting of spells either by default or when you hold down the alt key while selecting your spell. Great for priests, druids, shamans and Paladins. Also useful for self-buffing Arcane Intellect as a Mage.

Gatherer
If you're going to do mining or herbalism, get this mod. Keeps track of node locations and puts them both on the world map and the minimap. Also keeps track of chest locations.

CoinCaddy
Not really a necessity, but allows you to see how much money you have without opening your bags. Also allows you to see how much money you've made/lost per session and total. Movable/lockable.

Telo's Infobar
Shows a toolbar with current time, FPS, Ping, Money, HP/MP regen rates. Individual items can be shown or hidden based on preference.

MiniGroup
Adds a small window that shows your party members' health, mana and buffs. Can place it anywhere, which allows healers to easily select people for healing and buffs. When used with Bibmod, Flexbar or any similar mod it allows you to set up a small section for healing. (Best seen in some of Flyndar's screenshots in the upper left.

CT_Raid_Assist
Also seen in Flyndar's screenshot above, adds healthbars for all 40 members of your raiding party. These can be selectively shown or hidden. Also able to show which mobs are being targeted by the main-tank and up to 4 others. A must for high-end instance runs.

CT_Mod
A large package of features. Allows you to move any window or information bar. Not nearly as much bloat as Cosmos. I'm sure Bolty can flesh this one out more than me, but there are too many different things this does for me to really get into. :lol:

Lootlink/Auctioneer
For those who want to know how much their items are worth. Lootlink scans the Auction house to see what items are being sold for and what current bids on the items are. It also stores the tooltip for the item, so you can look up speicific weapons and such. Auctioneer then displays this information in the tooltip when you mouseover an item.

Enchantrix
Keeps track of what items disenchant into and comes with an initial database, giving you a good idea of what material you'll get from disenchanting an item. Shows up in the tooltip on mouseover. When combined with Auctioneer, lets you see whether it's worth disenchanting the item or selling it.

Bank Statement
Keeps track of what items you currently have in your bank. Also allows you to see the banks of any of your other characters, so you can tell if your alt has the last bronze bar you need, or if one of your other characters has an item in their bank that your current toon can use. It can also show the banks of characters on any other server that you play on. You just have to visit the bank with each character the initial time and then it will automatically update itself each consecutive time.

Weapon Quick Swap
Not a necessity but useful. You also need to write a simple macro, but allows you to switch between sets of weapons. With using the macro once switches my warlock's staff to his sword/off-hand combo, using it again switches from the sword/off-hand to my fishing rod, and a third time switches back to the staff. This is a simple use of it, I'm pretty sure it can actually do more than just this. Good for warriors when switching stances, or rogues to equip a dagger main-hand for an ambush.

Reactive Macros
Allows you to set up automatic reactions, such as Auto-repair at vendors, Auto-Ding! in guild chat, and notification when you are under attack. I haven't taken the time to really look into what it's fully capable yet, but I'm sure there's much more you can do with it. Jooky has a thread on the WoW UI forum where people discuss ideas and solutions.

Frenn's Kill Log
Because sometimes it's fun to tell just how many things you've killed. Keeps track of kills, experienced gained, deaths from mob, etc. Also adds a tooltip when you mouse over an enemy showing how average exp per kill and deaths to the mob. Divides information into current session, overall and current level.

Telo's MobHealth
See how much health your target has.

ZoneLevel
Adds a bubble next to the minimap that changes color based on the level of the quests in the zone compared to your current level. Let's you know when you're somewhere that you shouldn't be yet or if you're in an area below your level.

PetXPBar
Hunter only. Puts an xp bar undre your pet's portrait. Also has a point that when you mouseover gives you information on your pets happiness, loyalty, stats and much more. I suggest that you turn this mod off when playing a warlock as it will display an error message if you mouseover the information point.


Edit: Not really an addon but something else I use is Teamspeak. Quick communication that allows you to talk while still killing stuff. Eliminates the need to type out common things like attack strategy. Also lets you put a human voice to the characters you're playing with.

[Pesmerga]

I used to use Cosmos strictly for the quest Minion that was packaged with it. But then Blizzard's implemented their own, so poof!, there it goes.

However, I still use a few

Quest Level - Heh, so I know what levels my quests are. I like to do them in order.... I'm wierd.

CTMod - Just CTRaid and the one main CTMain or something. I only like using CTRaid.

Gypsy Mod - I turn off everything in it except the changed party boxes. I think it looks cooler and less cluttered this way. It also changes the color of healthbars based on percent of health left, so a quick glance is all my healers really need.

[Phoenix]

AF_tooltip - customizes the tooltip

Atlas - in-game instance maps

AvailableOnly - shows availbable skills only when going to a trainer

BestBuff - figures out what rank buff to cast on people based on their level

BlindFlashCount - small indicators of how many blinding and flash powders left on the Vanish and Blind icons.

CastParty - intelligent heal-bot, able to bind specific spells to specific mouseclicks, etc

CooldownCount - visible indicators of cooldown on the skill icons

CT_RaidAssist - able to see hp/mana and buffs/debuff of everyone in the raid, as well as some other nice raid-stuff

FriendsFacts - remembers level and location of friends even when they're offline

GoodInspect - increases inspect range to the max and makes it possible to inspect the opposing faction

HideClassBar - enables hiding of the stealth/shift/aura/stance bar

ListFix - fixes how fast drop-down lists vanishes when you click outside them

MiniGroup - smaller, better party name/class/hp/mana windows

MobHealth2 - improved mobhealth, shows hwo much hp mobs have

MozzFullWorldMap - adds coordinates on map screen and shows undiscovered areas in 35% opacity

MozzSoundVolumeFix - fixes the alt-tab volume bug

myClock - changes the day/night icon to a small clock

myInventory - shows all your bags as one sleek nice big inventory

QuestLevels - speeds up quest text, shows quest levels, improves blizzard's quest tracker

QuickLoot - moves lootwindow under your mouse

ReplyBugfix - fixes the reply bug where you can't press r for reply after leaving a group sometimes

Reputation - adds numbers to reputation

RogueSpam - removes common error messages like "not enough energy"

ScrollingCombatText - shows damage taken as numbers popping up above your head, jsut like daamge done over your enemy's head. also pops up stuff like procs, windfury, etc.

SelfCast - enables alt-click for selfcasting, or smart selfcasting whcih casts beneficial spells on you if no friendly target is selected

SellValue - shows how much items in your inventory is worth

StanceSets - combine with weaponquickswap to enable automatic weapon switches when changing stances or entering stealth. is also possible to swithc weapons with the press of a button

StatusBars - pops up small hp/mana/rage/energy/combo points meters when you enter combat, for you and your enemy

StunWatch - pops up timer meters to show you how much stun is left

TitanPanel - information panel that comes with money, bag slots, location, coordinates, pvp kills, latency, time, volume, ui scaling. has a plugin system that other developers use to add more info to the panel

WeaponQuickSwap - see stancesets

[The Gnu]

CT_Raid_Assist
Also seen in Flyndar's screenshot above, adds healthbars for all 40 members of your raiding party. These can be selectively shown or hidden. Also able to show which mobs are being targeted by the main-tank and up to 4 others. A must for high-end instance runs.

Yeah, RaidAssist is an awesome mod with much customizability. I as a mage, for instance, have my RA set to only display curse debuffs. That way I can keep large parts of a 40 man raid curse free with relative ease. :)

[Xanthix]

There was also some discussion of mods on page 2 of this thread:
http://www.lurkerlounge.com/forums/index.p...topic=5155&st=0
It may be out of date but it's there.

I have been working on compiling my list of AddOns (I am a mod addict) into a condensed forum post. I will try to post it here when I am done.

[Walkiry]

(Best seen in some of Flyndar's screenshots in the upper left.
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Are you kidding me? You can barely see the actual game!

What WoW needs is multimonitor support. Just being able to deattach all those little UI windows and move them around freely would work.

And to think that the 12-button sidebar and the little second horizontal bar (that I coded myself, nyah) looked bad enough to me... heh :)

[KiloVictor]

Are you kidding me? You can barely see the actual game!
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One thing I found useful was to crank the UI Scale down as low as I could stand. It shrinks the buttons and other widgets so you can cram them further towards the edge of the screen and get a bit more real estate.

That, and I use Gypsy with two rows of visible buttons and page turning enabled. So it's basically one keypress to get the bar you want, and one for the skill you need. Works well without keeping all my tradeskills and stuff on the screen at all times.

That said, I find that CTRaidAssist is a must-have, and I actually don't look at the graphics much in something like an MC raid. My attention is all spent on scanning health bars, tossing heals, and dispelling magic.

Every now and again I just turn off the whole UI (ctrl-z or alt-z, I think) and look around. I get my fill of the ooh-ah graphics, and then go back to slaying at max efficiency. :)

Kv

[Xanthix]

What WoW needs is multimonitor support. Just being able to deattach all those little UI windows and move them around freely would work.[right][snapback]76015[/snapback][/right]

WoW does support multiple monitors. Don't ask me how, since my system barely runs the game on one monitor, but I have seen threads on the official forums about expanding the game onto a second monitor.

[mjdoom]

That said, I find that CTRaidAssist is a must-have, and I actually don't look at the graphics much in something like an MC raid. My attention is all spent on scanning health bars, tossing heals, and dispelling magic.

Every now and again I just turn off the whole UI (ctrl-z or alt-z, I think) and look around. I get my fill of the ooh-ah graphics, and then go back to slaying at max efficiency. :)

Kv
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Both of these are nice points. The first is exactly what you see in that screenshot. I have everything cranked up for max healing ability and seeing where everything is (and what the "scenery" is) isn't as important during those battles. I only have to have an idea of where the mobs are in case I have to move to stay out of harm's way.

And don't ever forget alt-z. It's always nice to be able to tell the UI to take a hike and look at the game for what it's worth sometimes.

- mjdoom

[Walkiry]

WoW does support multiple monitors. Don't ask me how, since my system barely runs the game on one monitor, but I have seen threads on the official forums about expanding the game onto a second monitor.
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Interesting, I tried repeatedly back when I was playing and was completely unsuccessful. I wonder what secret trick is needed...

[LochnarITB]

I have not checked anywhere else to see if this exists because I just thought of it and tend to forget if I don't put it in writing immediately. :blush: There is a small mod I would like to see (or get a pointer if it exists). I would love a sheep timer. I would like it to be used in a macro fashion to do 4 things:
- sheep my target
- start a displayable timer
- alert me at a selected amount of time remaining
- allow me to re-target the same sheep in event of a flock
It would seem that the sheep, pop a timer and alert parts would be doable. I don't know if remembering the target is though. Given the same name, it may get lost in the crowd. If all that could be done, one other thing that would really be slick would be to re-sheep at the given time interval. Hmm, that would maybe require the ability to turn it off to not resheep a baddie that has been popped intentionally.

I know, I know! Lazy mage! However, time flies when you're having fun ;) and it can be easy to not realize it's due to pop.

[Alrin]

When it comes to addons that I really do not want to play without these come to mind.
Ie, I use these daily and they push my enjoyment of the game even higher.

CTMod - I grabbed the package as it wasnt too bloated and it has nice features. Extra bars and some visual appeal.

CTRaid Assist - Once you start raiding, you NEED this. If not for yourself, but for the rest of your party. I would consider getting this a favor to your healers/dispellers.
Plus, it doesnt disturb at all when you're not raiding so theres no reason NOT to get this.

Auctioneer/Lootlink/Reagent helper
Nice stuff. Auctioneer for average auction prices on things. Lootlink scans the AH for -all- items when you ask it. Reagent helper identifies what different items are used for different trades. Ie, hover over a Ruby Gem and it will display "Used in Enchanting" etc.

Flexbar - I love this. I use it on all toons. It allows you to throw out buttons everwhere you want. Scale them, set if conditions to them and just customize them to death.

Gatherer - Convenience extraordinaire for gather professions. And the data transfers over to all toons. So if you have a herbalist that is 60 and has picked alot of stuff and start a new baby herb, you will see all previous spots where herbs have been found.

AvgXP - A small bar that displays your current xp% to level, avg xp/kill and estimated kills to level. Neat and functional.

MonkeyQuest - I use this instead of questminion/blizzard quest tracker.
This is perhaps because I just got used to it and enjoy how simple it is for me, but YMMV.

-- I am going to try out that bankstatement and kill log and enchantrix as well. Thanks guys for bringing those to my attention :)