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 ._.