UI Setup Makes Changing Specs the Biggest Chore Imaginable.

[SaltLakeAtrocity]

So years ago when customized ui's were first becoming the mainstream way to play I developed my ui that, for the most part, I still use to this day.

Obviously as addons became more sophisticated I've updated and honed and refined my current ui, but its all-and-all the same feeling.



The only problem is it really just limit me to only having two specs because of the daunting 25-45 minute chore that occurs if I were ever to change specs (depending on how long it takes to make sure everything works as intended), essentially having to completely rebuild the ui for that spec from the ground up. And then all the diagnostic testing to make sure all the settings work exactly as intended in every possible scenario so that they don't suddenly fuck up in a raid environment. I don't have all the time in the world to play outside of work and classes I'm taking, and have little time outside of raid nights to log on.

But currently playing a pure dps class (warlock to be specific) where changing one of my two specs may be mandatory to remain competitive. And herein lies my question. Currently warlocks are going through such a roller-coaster of spec nerfs and hotfixes and radical changes that the primary min/max spec could and probably will change faster than the beginning to end of a sneeze. I need a more efficient way to change specs that doesn't cause me to have to undo such extravagant time expenditure in case blizzard once again decides to play musical chairs with our damn specs after I made the change.

Surely not everyone goes through such an ordeal to change specs. And honestly, my ui isn't half or even a fraction as complicated or heavy as a majority of players' uis I know.


My relevant ui addons:

Bartender
Tidyplates
ButtonTimers
WeakAuras


Bartender and ButtonTimers are the biggest time consumers. WeakAuras seems for the most part stable. That is, it keeps settings even when specs change. Tidyplates is just a quick 1 or 2 minute fix.

Resetting Bartender bars, buttons, settings, key binds, and layout is a choir and a half.

And Buttons Timers seems to take just a little longer than Bartender bars to set up. I know this is an obscure program that not many are familiar with, and are probably going to recommend alternatives to using. I have tried all kinds of buff/debuff/dot tracking programs, not of them nearly as comfortable to use as ButtonTimers.

Every alternative I've seen tracks everyone into a giant conglomerate mess on your screen, arranged in a time-based order and not a predetermined order on your screen. I don't want to scan my screen looking for when Corruption is about to fall off, i want to know exactly where that bar is and will be at any and every given moment during a fight. It shouldn't move if another spell is about to fall off sooner, it should be fixed to one pre-determined spot no matter what. I also don't like big cooldowns being next to commonly used spells.

Point is, I'm extremely picky how I like my dots and cooldowns arranged on my screen. And Button Timers is the only one that can do this for me that I've found.


And with Bartender, the profile system they have is complete and utter shit. Even though a couple times I've managed to get a saved profile to work, it arbitrarily decides when it no longer wants to work at random and completely either deletes itself off the face of the Earth for no reason or suddenly takes a layout nothing like what I intended for it to take. I can't count on the profile being saved as I need it to be.



I know I probably screwed myself by typing this damn much about this, TL;DR from hell right here haha. But I honestly don't know how I'd be able to abridge what I said without missing key points. I'd appreciate any and all advice offered.

If only we had triple-spec, and I wouldn't have to go through any of this ._.

[stevietv]

Action bar saver allows you to save action bar layouts so you can type a simple command /abs restore Spec1 or /abs save PewPewSpec etc.: http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/action-bar-saver

In combination with profiles in bartender you could save a profile for each layout you want, then when you switch it would be a case of switch profile in bartender and type /abs restore SpecX - should take 1 min!

[Ondonnick]

I can second action bar saver. Works great for multiple bar layouts and has never broken for me. Very reliable. Tidy plates supports multiple specs, being that you are a pure dps class not sure what you would change there when changing specs. As for buttontimers , is it possible to make a bar for each spec with the stuff you want to track and then just enable or disable it depending on what spec you are? Never used that addon so I am not sure if that would be helpful.

[a21fa7c67f26f6d49a20c2c51]

The way I handled this problem was to toss my entire warcraft folder into a git repository and then add anything I didn't want to track (.mpg/exe/dll files, logs/cache/screenshots/etc) . Then I can checkout a branch appropriate for the class/spec/ui I want to play and have everything change. I disabled server side sync for keybinds, macros, etc. so they'll be tracked per-character too. I made a few shortcuts so that when I want to swap UIs I can just double-click on some icon and it'll start warcraft with that UI.

The down side is that git is a bit confusing for people who haven't worked with some sort of version-control software in the past. It's also not exactly intended for this sort of thing. It does the job very well, but it's probably overkill. It also means you will have more difficulty getting the same configuration on multiple characters in addons that do support profiles. You can do it with merging but it's not as intuitive as just choosing another profile in wow: I usually just recreate the settings for each toon.

This approach is good because it'll let you have different graphical settings (ie: melee classes might want to turn down AOE so they can see the boss, ranged classes might want to turn it up to make avoiding fire easier), different interface folders (ie: for things like Miirgui/Aurora), different installed addons, etc. It also doesn't care about profile support in addons because it's swapping the entire WTF folder around - settings will always be saved. You can also have different versions of addons installed (ie: one with PAC and one with Weak Auras) so you can work on migrating from one to another without risking a UI you know that works.

There's a video about it on youtube (half an hour, pretty boring IMO, and the guy sounds like a huge nerd). It might be a bit more of a solution than you need, but it's worth considering.

[eyrie]

There's a video about it on youtube (half an hour, pretty boring IMO, and the guy sounds like a huge nerd).

Isn't that your video?

[Bryce]

The way I handled this problem was to toss my entire warcraft folder into a git repository and then add anything I didn't want to track (.mpg/exe/dll files, logs/cache/screenshots/etc) . Then I can checkout a branch appropriate for the class/spec/ui I want to play and have everything change. I disabled server side sync for keybinds, macros, etc. so they'll be tracked per-character too. I made a few shortcuts so that when I want to swap UIs I can just double-click on some icon and it'll start warcraft with that UI.

What was the commands to disable serverside sync, I think I have done it before but what are they just in case I haven't and they'd be in my config.wtf file wouldn't they?

[Deleted]

/run SetCVar("synchronizeBindings",0) SetCVar("synchronizeConfig",0) SetCVar("synchronizeMacros",0) SetCVar("synchronizeSettings",0)