World of Warcraft >

These are some old notes I'm posting up and will revise in the future.

See also:

• World of Warcraft technical notes

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• XP is not displayed

• Rep is displayed by an addon in the chat

Philosophies ∞

Display only the information I need ∞

Important (but optional) information must be hidden. For example, non-combat information must be hidden in combat. Who cares how damaged your armor is unless you're under x% or something breaks?

Remove as much clutter as possible ∞

Keep the middle area clean so I can see if I'm standing in fire.

Addons should do only one thing ∞

Such addons are more easy to maintain, so their author will keep them updated. If something random breaks after a patch, it's much much easier to track down issues. It's also trivial to disable just one single addon with its one feature rather than be forced to disable one mega-addon because one simple part of it is broken.

Probably more stuff that I can't think of right now ∞

• Additional screenshots will eventually trickle their way in.

• Raiding (also has to get into my healing methods, so this is complex)

If you catch something in a screenshot that I haven't mentioned, let me know and I'll explain how I did it.

• I've used the standard interface to modify the chat area and make specialized tabs. When I'm in an important group, I switched to Group and I don't see all the spam from other sources. So when raiding, I am not distracted.

• UPDATE: The black bars are from ViewPorter. I have a 1920x1200 screen so I can waste some real-estate. This view took some time to get used to, but now that I have .. you can see that this setup actually zooms me out even more and helps me see much more of the play field. This isn't just putting stuff out of the way in the game field, I've actually changed the aspect of the game and can see more to the left and right than I could before.. and without sacrificing seeing the top/bottom content areas either.

• UPDATE The top-right minimap and buttons are hotkey-hidable using a script I wrote.

• TODO The bottom-right food and drink ctrl-x ctrl-z (customizable) are from Buffet. It automates what gets put there, and modifies itself when entering combat. One set of hotkeys to eat/drink out of combat, or bandage, or cookie, or potion.

• Prat removes the game buttons from the chat area, adds the timestamps and does the class/etc colouring.

• Notice how I have my abilities arranged at the bottom-right? This is so I have easy access to either use or view the cooldowns for abilities. I've experimented with some systems to hide those buttons a bit better but I find they add extra complexity and another skill that I don't want to have loaded in my head.

  • UPDATE: Does Leatrix Plus do the colouring for me?

TODO: COMBAT

Unit frames:

• The deficit HP is displayed. This lets me quickly judge what kind of heal to cast.

• (not displayed) incoming heals are predicted, and both the heal and possible overheal is displayed. When multiple healers have the appropriate addons we can see eachother's incoming heals and avoid overheals and pick targets better.

Name Plates:

TODO: The non-addon I use

Hotkeys:

• TODO: BindPad
• I do not use hotkeys for abilities like other people do. They are for things like mounting, self-shield, self-healing and for panicing.
• Control-shift-space = fade
• Control-alt-space = prayer of healing
• Control-alt-shift-space = Inner Focus + Power Infusion + Divine Hymn (beat that Holy Priests)
• Shift-space = self-shield

• Control-space = self-heal

TODO: Super Duper Macro and my use of multi-class-capable macros.

Other:

• Range to target (SimpleRangeIndicator) is in the middle of the screen.

• I move with a combination of mouse and keyboard (nothing customized)

• I interact directly with the frames using Clique. Every spell linked to it is a custom macro. TODO: Bind through to Super Duper Macro.

• I also played with the ability to have a hotkey or odd mouse button work on mouseover on the characters on the playing field.. but that's kindof stupid to actually put to real use. Right now I use it for Mind Soothe so I can run past mobs without a care. It's sweet.

• Unit tooltips are disabled in combat. This is solely because I don't want to see mouseover when my mouse is always hovering over the unit frames. Also disabling this does save cpu cycles. TODO: Review

Several important pieces of information exist.

• Tooltips via Leatrix Plus

• (TODO) Skinnable / Minable (and if I have the skill level or not). This is also displayed on nodes and herbs with the skill required.

• (GhostRecon) Tauntable and immunities. Abilities. When a mob (or corpse) is selected, I see its abilities as icons above its head. I can hover over them to get the full game description. This helps me understand every mob properly before a pull or satiates my curiosity after combat. If that's important to you for marking then go check out Magic Marker and automate marking.

  • TODO: Re-add?