Post Your UI

[Rarch]

COnsolidate the debuffs on the boss (as a healer there's no reason for you to see these)
Threat bars are completely unnecessary if your tank has half a brain.
Not sure what the black box is on the left side of the screen, but it's another obstruction.
The lower 1/5 of your screen being covered in an opaque box is horrible for awareness. They don't do anything but make the ground harder to see


EDIT: just saw your post about the bar, it's even less useful than before. Why decrease your screen real estate for something that 100% useless?
Double edit: I'll post my ui here in a few when I head upstairs to my desktop

That's not how view ports work. It's akin to upping the resolution on a monitor, it makes everything slightly smaller, but doesn't infringe on your screen real estate. In fact, technically it expands his screen real estate, because you see more on the right and left sides when you use a view port like that, without losing any of the vertical real estate.

Think of it like 4:3 vs 16:9 for TV's. When they switched to wide screen, you didn't lose any of the vertical picture, you just gained all that stuff you'd been missing on the sides.

I still don't use a view port, because I don't like it aesthetically, but technically it might be considered better to play with one. Look at this video for more info on view ports: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLsb8Cxs8dc. The relevant stuff starts at around 13:09.

Edit:

On the subject of your UI, btw, Neos, I do tend to agree that it's a bit cluttered. I actually show both meters (damage and healing) on my UI, as well; healing because I'm the leader for our heal team, and damage mostly because I'm just interested, but they don't need to take up that much room. Maybe instead of side-by-side, shorten them and stack them in the same space that one is currently taking up. Then you could move that window on the left that has Player/Target with your heals in it in the space the other meter was in.

Don't know if that second black box under that Player/Target window is another chat window, but maybe that can go on the bottom right of your view port instead. I also agree that a threat meter just isn't needed anymore, especially for a healer. The only role I still use one on is when I'm playing a raid tank for swap mechanics.

Another thing to think about is that you probably don't need the micro menu, you can access all of that stuff from their respective keybinds. Also, don't forget that even though you may need the action bars (so do I, don't worry, you're not the only one who can't learn to key bind everything), you can adjust the size of the bars. Don't know if that actually helps you, but it may give you ideas for other stuff if your bars take up less room.

For instance, although I agree that view ports don't hinder you in any way, it seems rather pointless to have one if you still have so many of your UI elements outside of it. Also, remember that a view port is shrinking the stuff that is inside your play window, so unless you're appropriately shrinking all of your UI elements, any UI element outside of your view port is going to cover a larger percentage of your play window than if you did not have a view port. If you could shrink/consolidate enough to get your raid frames inside your view port, that would help tremendously with screen space right there.

All of that stuff is more clean-up and minor things, but the one thing that does very much concern me is the clutter within the raid frames themselves. Between the bar texture, the amount and size of the text, and all the other stuff you need to track, it seems like it would be very difficult to track important buffs/debuffs for things like riptide and dispelling. I would highly recommend using a flat bar texture, and getting rid of the health text. If you really want, maybe change it to percentage, instead of a x/max format, but really I find the bar itself to be more than enough of an indicator for healing. Last thing, I'm also a Shaman healer, and I wouldn't recommend tracking Earthliving on your raid frames. It's such a small contribution to your overall healing, and it can't really be controlled, anyway. The less things you track on your raid frames, the more those things you are tracking will stand out.

[Ham on Rye]

COnsolidate the debuffs on the boss (as a healer there's no reason for you to see these)

That's correct, but sometimes I do need to see the debuffs on my target. VuhDo doesn't show the text of what a debuff is, just an icon, so something unfamiliar I'll need to read quickly. I cannot figure out how to not show enemy debuffs but do show friendly debuffs in ShadowUF

Threat bars are completely unnecessary if your tank has half a brain.
Not sure what the black box is on the left side of the screen, but it's another obstruction.
The lower 1/5 of your screen being covered in an opaque box is horrible for awareness. They don't do anything but make the ground harder to see
EDIT: just saw your post about the bar, it's even less useful than before. Why decrease your screen real estate for something that 100% useless?
Double edit: I'll post my ui here in a few when I head upstairs to my desktop

The fact that you think it's useless is laughable and proves you don't understand how it works. The black bar enables you to put addons like chat windows, buttons, and other things on the screen but not so they obstruct the game area. The screen real estate is exactly 100% the same with and without the bar. If I removed the bar, there would be nothing I could see that I couldn't already see with the bar. All the bar does is squish the bottom of your screen up a bit to make some room.

And the black box is our healer chat channel - I separated it out so i can make sure to see important things without it getting lost in scrolling chat box text. I did make it a bit smaller, though.

I removed Omen - just so used to having it up never thought about removing it to be honest.

I can probably make VuhDo a bit smaller, but I'll deal with that after this LFR is over.

[WskyDK]

That's not how view ports work. It's akin to upping the resolution on a monitor, it makes everything slightly smaller, but doesn't infringe on your screen real estate. In fact, technically it expands his screen real estate, because you see more on the right and left sides when you use a view port like that, without losing any of the vertical real estate.

Think of it like 4:3 vs 16:9 for TV's. When they switched to wide screen, you didn't lose any of the vertical picture, you just gained all that stuff you'd been missing on the sides.

I still don't use a view port, because I don't like it aesthetically, but technically it might be considered better to play with one. Look at this video for more info on view ports: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLsb8Cxs8dc. The relevant stuff starts at around 13:09.

Ahh interesting, I've always wondered what that hideous bar was at the bottom of some people's UI was. Seems completely useless tbh

- - - Updated - - -

That's correct, but sometimes I do need to see the debuffs on my target. VuhDo doesn't show the text of what a debuff is, just an icon, so something unfamiliar I'll need to read quickly. I cannot figure out how to not show enemy debuffs but do show friendly debuffs in ShadowUF



The fact that you think it's useless is laughable and proves you don't understand how it works. The black bar enables you to put addons like chat windows, buttons, and other things on the screen but not so they obstruct the game area. The screen real estate is exactly 100% the same with and without the bar. If I removed the bar, there would be nothing I could see that I couldn't already see with the bar. All the bar does is squish the bottom of your screen up a bit to make some room.

And the black box is our healer chat channel - I separated it out so i can make sure to see important things without it getting lost in scrolling chat box text.

I removed Omen - just so used to having it up never thought about removing it to be honest.

I can probably make VuhDo a bit smaller, but I'll deal with that after this LFR is over.

If I've come off as attacking, I apologize.
But you'll never be able to convince me that having a space to put addons, where I already put them is useful in any way.

- - - Updated - - -


current UI.
Skada is normally hidden at all times.

[Ham on Rye]

The reason it's useful can be proven with YOUR UI. You cannot see if there's something bad underneath your grid or unit frames. If you had that black bar there, you would be able to see what was underneath them.

You're still not understanding if you think it's useless, so I'll try to explain a different way. Let's say your monitor lets you see in a 10"x10" square. You have some addons at the bottom, so the bottom 2 inches are a bit obstructed and you can see the top 8" pretty well, but not so much the bottom 2 inches.

You then install Viewport, giving you the black bar. You set it so the black bar takes up the bottom 2" of the screen. However, Viewport readjusts the dimensions of the game field so that the entire 10x10 square is squished into a 10x8 rectangle. You can now see everything without obstruction, and the bottom 2 inches is free for you to use.

It's exactly like the scoreboard ticker on ESPN or during football season. When it comes up, they compress the screen up a bit so you can still see everything, and then when the ticker is done, they stretch it back to normal size. The ticker doesn't obstruct anything when they do it that way.

TLDR: with the black bar you'd be able to see the entirety of the Tortos Rockfall circles on your screen, instead of having them covered up by your unit frames and grid and map.

To Rarch: Thank you for many good ideas. How's this?




[edit] - I made a couple other changes after that screenshot, moving the black chat box to the bottom right corner, moving the map above it (I like having the map, sometimes it's useful, plus in battlegrounds too), and moving the DXE main control window down so it's right on top of the main chat window.

[WskyDK]

...

No, you're not understanding. I have my addons where I want and need them, there's no reason to add something that looks like complete shit to it, just to say I have more space. Clearly I'm not in need of it.
You have so much shit on your UI, that you NEED IT TO BE FUNCTIONAL.

[Deleted]

Neo300: if you ask for advice, you gotta accept that some views will be negative. Have any argument on the internet on the basis of "your preference is wrong" ever led anywhere?

That aside, if you want a completely unobstructed view why not move everything out of the viewport window? Your raid grid etc still covers quite a bit, equally (or more) than the example shown by WskyDK. You still clutter your bottom part of what you actually see as much as most UI:s shown here without a viewport.

My tip would be:
You have several action bars that serve no purpose mid fight (the three to the right). You could move those to the side of the viewport window and have them on mouseover. Frees up space. The combat text mod could be simplified or at least move to the far right. Then even if you wanna see both HPS, DPS and threat, maybe lower the row count a bit and have all three in the same "column". Shift actionbars to the right and move grid and other ui elements down. Some further tweaks on CD display, alert bars etc and your viewport is almost 100% clean.
Bottom part would be something like: CHAT - METERS - GRID/PLAYER/TARGET/TOT - ACTION BARS - COMBAT TEXT

The topmost part, the buffs etc, could be cleaned up as well if you want to reduce clutter further. Maybe add a top part to viewport in that case, allowing those to clutter the viewing area less or just consolidate them.

[Deleted]

The reason it's useful can be proven with YOUR UI. You cannot see if there's something bad underneath your grid or unit frames. If you had that black bar there, you would be able to see what was underneath them.

You're still not understanding if you think it's useless, so I'll try to explain a different way. Let's say your monitor lets you see in a 10"x10" square. You have some addons at the bottom, so the bottom 2 inches are a bit obstructed and you can see the top 8" pretty well, but not so much the bottom 2 inches.

You then install Viewport, giving you the black bar. You set it so the black bar takes up the bottom 2" of the screen. However, Viewport readjusts the dimensions of the game field so that the entire 10x10 square is squished into a 10x8 rectangle. You can now see everything without obstruction, and the bottom 2 inches is free for you to use.

It's exactly like the scoreboard ticker on ESPN or during football season. When it comes up, they compress the screen up a bit so you can still see everything, and then when the ticker is done, they stretch it back to normal size. The ticker doesn't obstruct anything when they do it that way.

TLDR: with the black bar you'd be able to see the entirety of the Tortos Rockfall circles on your screen, instead of having them covered up by your unit frames and grid and map.

To Rarch: Thank you for many good ideas. How's this?

[IMG]<snip>[/IMG]


[edit] - I made a couple other changes after that screenshot, moving the black chat box to the bottom right corner, moving the map above it (I like having the map, sometimes it's useful, plus in battlegrounds too), and moving the DXE main control window down so it's right on top of the main chat window.

TBC called, it wants it's UI back :>

[Augusta138]

My current UI, best screenshots i could find right now:

Idle / OOC:


In combat / Raiding


In the last one, chatting with a gm due to a nice achievement bug:P nothing special.

[Deleted]

Unless you have a real need, I mean actually leading a raid and making decisions based on the meters then get rid of them, show them only out of combat.
Not a popular opinion, but you shouldn't have a need for both, and a lot of people don't have the need for even 1 of them during combat.

Damage meters are very useful during combat. Why wouldn't you need a damage meter during combat?

[Kaitain]

Damage meters are very useful during combat. Why wouldn't you need a damage meter during combat?

The upside is that they can sometimes be useful when developing/honing certain damage tactics on specific encounters. They can also be a source of motivation for DPSers that can't get motivated in other ways.

The downsides are that they can be distracting, they lead to a lot of counterproductive cheesing and ego, and can demotivate as many players as they motivate.

[Ham on Rye]

Neo300: if you ask for advice, you gotta accept that some views will be negative. Have any argument on the internet on the basis of "your preference is wrong" ever led anywhere?

That aside, if you want a completely unobstructed view why not move everything out of the viewport window? Your raid grid etc still covers quite a bit, equally (or more) than the example shown by WskyDK. You still clutter your bottom part of what you actually see as much as most UI:s shown here without a viewport.

My tip would be:
You have several action bars that serve no purpose mid fight (the three to the right). You could move those to the side of the viewport window and have them on mouseover. Frees up space. The combat text mod could be simplified or at least move to the far right. Then even if you wanna see both HPS, DPS and threat, maybe lower the row count a bit and have all three in the same "column". Shift actionbars to the right and move grid and other ui elements down. Some further tweaks on CD display, alert bars etc and your viewport is almost 100% clean.
Bottom part would be something like: CHAT - METERS - GRID/PLAYER/TARGET/TOT - ACTION BARS - COMBAT TEXT

The topmost part, the buffs etc, could be cleaned up as well if you want to reduce clutter further. Maybe add a top part to viewport in that case, allowing those to clutter the viewing area less or just consolidate them.

I moved some of the more useless action bars off to the side and hid them for mouseover, but I'm willing to live with the Grid on the viewable area. I think as a healer, it's important to have the grid closer to the center, because that's where you're going to be focusing. If you're always looking at the bottom of the screen to heal, you'll undoubtedly stand in bad stuff more often.

When I played DPS, yes, I had the grid small and off in a corner and was able to hide a lot more stuff. Since I changed to healer, I have found I don't have that luxury.

[Deleted]

The upside is that they can sometimes be useful when developing/honing certain damage tactics on specific encounters. They can also be a source of motivation for DPSers that can't get motivated in other ways.

The downsides are that they can be distracting, they lead to a lot of counterproductive cheesing and ego, and can demotivate as many players as they motivate.

More like they can help you improve yourself. Damage meters show what you've done up until that point. If you just look at it at the end of the fight, you got no clue how it looked during the encounter, even WoL doesn't provide you good enough information in that regard.

Just a small example is to see how your burst opening is working out and see how consistent it is. You can also notice if someone is consistently having a higher opener than you and then you start to think and try something else and you notice a increase and you learn.

How are they distracting if you want to look at it? It's not like you look at it when you don't want to as they are usually place in a corner anyway. And them leading to counterproductive cheesing and ego has nothing to do with having it on during combat as those things can happen even if you don't show it during combat.

[Kaitain]

The WoL time graph shows opening burst better. I did list up and downsides, as there are both.

[Deleted]

The WoL time graph shows opening burst better. I did list up and downsides, as there are both.

I'm quite sure you can't adjust until next raid though.

[Deleted]

How are they distracting if you want to look at it? It's not like you look at it when you don't want to as they are usually place in a corner anyway. And them leading to counterproductive cheesing and ego has nothing to do with having it on during combat as those things can happen even if you don't show it during combat.

One can always find a positive side, to any addon that provides information. However, when you have information displayed to you, that is not directly related to your rotation (procs, dot timers, etc), it is distracting. Being able to sort whats good information and whats useless information, is what makes a good UI. For example... as a DPSer, do i really need to know how many stacks of the debuff, the tank has on him? Do i really need a 20 seconds, a 10 seconds, a 5 seconds and a "happening now" warning, on that special ability from the boss? Do i need a cooldown bar on DBM, for every skill the boss does?

Most of the time, dps will improve, if you simplify your UI, without most of the information shown in the common UIs. Floating combat text is another thing... most people have it, id say most people dont even look at it, past the usual "omg what a huge crit!".

In this case, if you need to know your "burst dps" or "am i doing my usual dps?", in real time... a text data addon, that simply puts your dps as a number, on your screen (hopefully closed to the center of your screen, where your eyes are focused, most of the time), is enough.

That said, there are players who can read an e-book while maintaining 100% perfectly timed rotation and awareness. Those are usually on the top 100 raiding guilds. But they are the exception that confirms this rule: displayed information has a optimal peak after which it becomes distracting and counterproductive.

EDIT: kinda funny Saw your "UI guide" and in your own words "Notice how everything I track is right under my character. By doing this you can actually focus more on doing your job properly instead of having to look everywhere on your screen" and "When you design your UI make sure you think about what you really need to see and what you do not need to see. Cluttering your screen with unecessary information will only draw your focus away from the important parts"... pretty much what i said lol

[Jeremypwnz]

I'm quite sure you can't adjust until next raid though.

Depends if you do live report and check between pulls. Depending on how fast the group pulls, you might have to check the attempt from 2 attempt ago kind of thing though.

[Deleted]

Depends if you do live report and check between pulls. Depending on how fast the group pulls, you might have to check the attempt from 2 attempt ago kind of thing though.

How are you going to figure out where in the rotation you are by looking at WoL between pulls? As far as I am aware graphs don't show until like 1 day later. No one uses WoL that way. Or are you saying you are or were you just theorycrafting about that WoL can be used that way?

Damage meters are faster and more convenient. The only reason for hiding it in combat is for aesthetics reasons, nothing more. Anyone saying anything else is fooling themselves. "I don't want it to be distracting" is not a valid reason because you can just put it in the corner and just not look at it.

[Hulari]

I don't see the need for a damage meter to measure personal performance during a fight at all. The only time I used a meter was when I was playing a class I hadn't played for a while. That was to see how well I did against someone of the same class in LFR, even then I didn't use it during the fight. I'd look in between fights to see which of their abilities were used, how often and how much they did.

When raiding in a top guild I had no need for damage meter at all unless I was raid leading. I knew the rotation required inside out on my main specialization so the use of a damage meter was useless when I wasn't checking on the performance of other players. Even then I preferred to use WOL.

As with most UIs it all comes down to personal preference and what works for the user.

[Deleted]

I don't see the need for a damage meter to measure personal performance during a fight at all. The only time I used a meter was when I was playing a class I hadn't played for a while. That was to see how well I did against someone of the same class in LFR, even then I didn't use it during the fight. I'd look in between fights to see which of their abilities were used, how often and how much they did.

When raiding in a top guild I had no need for damage meter at all unless I was raid leading. I knew the rotation required inside out on my main specialization so the use of a damage meter was useless when I wasn't checking on the performance of other players. Even then I preferred to use WOL.

As with most UIs it all comes down to personal preference and what works for the user.

I've had multiple rank 1 logs and I still see the need for a damage meter. What you are implying is that you already played perfectly and there was no way for you to improve and you knew exactly how to use your spells for every new fight right from the first pull. Got it. Rotations are so clear cut that you will be doing the same thing pull after pull. There is no way to alter play style or rotation to adjust to the fight. Impossible.

And what you said is exactly what I said. The only reason you'd hide it was for aesthetic reasons when it could actually be useful.

Damage meters are way more convenient than WoL to check things during progression. WoL is just there to provide things damage meters don't.

[Dudziek]

its just Skullflower's UI with some tweaks here and there :P

Your combat scroll text looks very nice. What addon it is? and what font are u using in this addon?