For the Sake of Convenience

For a long time I have been using a lot of “Lua config only” addons due to lower memory use, lack of SavedVariables and often flexibility. oUF and rActionBarStyler (old version) are two major examples of these. Similarly, outside of the game world I used to use Archlinux on my Laptop with window managers such as Awesome. The principles are the same as “Lua config only” addons — you’d have to customise a lot yourself and you’d end up with exactly what you want.

Following an update of Awesome, none of my settings were relevant and I’d have to start from scratch with the very lengthy customisation process. It was at this point where I had had enough and just decided to find a balance between powerful and quick to setup. I started using WMs such as KDE, GNOME and XFCE, switched over to Ubuntu (and later Mac OS X, but that’s another story) and changed in my computer habits quite a bit.

Anyway, my point is that I’m really getting to that point with WoW now too. My lite and simple tooltip addon, sTooltip (ripped from rothUI) has been spitting out errors lately and lacking a certain feature. The old version of rActionBarStyler I’m using has a fair few bugs, no profiling support (good and bad), and I don’t like the new version at all. Most imporantly, making a simple change to my custom oUF layout really takes far more time than it’s worth; even simple things like repositioning are becoming a major pain in the ass.

I enjoy dabbling in Lua, but my skills are just not up to scratch for many of these tasks. I don’t want to fix bugs myself in most of my addons, and I don’t want to get the new version only to go through a potentially massive reconfiguration. Bottom line: life’s too short. This isn’t to say that Lua config addons are a bad thing — some can really be setup once and left for months — but I believe certain functionality, particularly unit frames, require a level of customisation that just begs an in-game GUI.

So now is the time to really look into some addons that are relatively simple to setup where I can be sure that the changes I make stay relevant for a long time to come. I would also like to streamline an interface well enough that only few addons need setting up when I pop onto a new character as much as possible, but of course this is unrealistic to fully complete. I will document my experiences below.

oUF_shkm & oUF_FreebGrid to oUF_Nivaya

oUF_shkm is my custom layout which was based off P3lim’s. It has just about everything I need, but with some loose ends that I’ve slowly been trying to fix up. oUF_FreebGrid is, as the name would suggest, a Grid-like addon. It has support for indicators, and again has everything I need apart from the annoying lack of an option to show names in addition to HP values.

oUF_Nivaya is one of the few oUF addons with a load on demand in-game configuration. This is what makes it an excellent choice to switch to: it has all of the benefits of oUF whilst being aesy to configure. If a feature is missing, there’s the option to delve into Lua and not suffer too much in correcting it. I’d like to avoid touching the Lua as much as I can, though, due to reasons mentioned above.

The in-game configuration is very well done. It’s user-friendly and, given the wealth of the options, blows most other standalone unit frame addons out of the water. Some particularly nice features are:

• Positioning can be done with coordinates or click/drag
• “Symmetric” option which keeps player and target frames exactly opposite
• Target of Target’s Target (TToT, TTT) support
• oUF_TotemBar, oUF_RuneBar & oUF_DruidBar support
• Name and HP value in group/raid frames (“Healer mode”)

I managed to setup what I think is a very sleek, usable layout which resembles my previous one quite a bit. Most options are there, but these are unfortunately lacking:

• There are no raid indicators, which I find vital when playing a healer
• Cast bars need to be moveable. I like to have them close to the corresponding frame (player or target) but they’re placed somewhere in the middle of the screen by default, without the possibility of separation
• Certain frames are often grouped, which is convenient but doesn’t allow you to customise each one apart. For example, I’d like a cast bar on focus but not ToT, and I’d like to make focus bigger than ToT.
• While the group/raid layout can be changed from horizontal to vertical, you can’t change the way it grows. I’m using the vertical layout and would like it to grow up, but it grows down.
• Can’t change HP deficit move down (on raid/group, like grid) rather than left
• Text on HP bar doesn’t appropriately move up when a class-specific bar is in use
• No class-specific bar configuration
• No option to change frame fonts (size) separately
• Lack of configuration for HP on group frames. I like to hide HP when the player is full and only show the deficit otherwise. “-” character in deficit is a small waste of space on (ideally) small frames.

There are surely some smaller issues, but I miss the above quite a bit. The lack of raid indicators is going to kill my shaman, and moving those cast bars is key to a fast reaction. I can only hope that the developer will fix some of the bigger issues soon, but for now I may jump into the Lua in order to fix cast bars.

Despite its shortcomings, oUF_Nivaya is shaping up to be an incredible set of unit frames. If it continues to be actively maintained, I have little doubt that it will become one of the really big players. It really bridges the gap between Lua-only and in-game configuration to give birth to a Lua-optional setup. I’ll continue to use oUF_Nivaya and highly recommend it.

rActionBarStyler to Bartender4

Though the old version of rActionBarStyler had some major bugs, one of the switching points for me is profiling. I’m not usually a fan of setting up certain characters differently to others, but some classes need a pet bar and others don’t. I wanted to setup two bar profiles: one for classes with pets and one for those without. The profile with pets would have the typical 3 action bars (that I find necessary) set to a lower scale, with the pet bar just above them.

Bartender4 does not disappoint. I could do the above with ease. I particularly liked the positioning menu, which lets you set anchors, quickly center, and position with coordinates (though dragging is an option too). Bartender4 has a whole lot of options and an extremely user-friendly configuration GUI, but I don’t use many of these options so I can’t comment on them.

Now that I have two profiles set, I’d like one of them to be my default. This is the only feature that I really miss. I don’t like going on a new character to see that most of my screen is covered in bars. Sure, it only takes a couple of seconds to load a default profile, but it would be much more elegant to have the ability to set a default profile. I’d also like the ability to set all bars at once: I had to go through each of the 3 bars and set the scaling, padding, etc. This coule potentially be expanded on with a “Copy from bar n” button, similar to that used by SBF.

In summary, I’d highly recommend Bartender4. It’s an excellently designed addon that I’m sure would fit anyone’s needs

sTooltip to CowTip

Like rActionBarStyle, there were some bugs with sTooltip (Lua errors) but the big reason for the switch is the ability to turn off tooltips on certain frames or in combat. I like the tooltip to be anchored to the cursor, so healing with a small raid frame setup like Grid can be very annoying when the tooltip is in the way of half the members.

I tried a few different addons in this category and they all fell short. TinyTip and TipTac were two big ones which I experienced issues with, particularly regarding the health bar overlapping other text (with the health bar set to outside the tooltip if permitted). I was a little reluctant to use CowTip as it’s really quite a large addon, but now I’m quite happy that I am.

CowTip has a very simple setup window, which beats the lot in the “Show Tooltips” section. I’ve set it to not show unit frame tooltips in combat. In addition, CowTip supports the incredibly powerful DogTags — which, if you use Pitbull, you’ll know all about. They allow you to display pretty much anything you could ask for in the tooltips, based on your conditions. They’re relatively user-friendly too, though the edit window could certainly do with an update.

I can’t say much more, as a tooltip is a tooltip. CowTip works for me, and it can certainly fill many a niche with its powerful DogTags support.

Conclusion

I’m very satisfied with the result. My UI should now be much easier to update and keep together. Now, if someone could only poke p3lim to fix pMinimap, I’d be a happy man.

Update: After some experience with these addons, I ultimately didn’t keep them all. Read about it here.