On Friday I decided to rebuild my user interface.  The impetus for this was an issue I was having during Punch and Pie’s first 25 man raid.  My unit frames were acting up in a way that prevented me from seeing the names of the people in the raid.  This made being master looter very stressful.   Prior to Friday, I used a compilation of addons call ArkiveUI .  Arkive is a luxury UI with all the bells and whistles; not a light weight user interface.  Prior to blowing away my UI, I took a look at my setup through Addon Control Panel (yes, I have an addon to manage my addons).  My priest had 156 active addons consuming easily 170MB of memory (that is before recount gets rolling).  The power of Arkive is that it will configure all of the included addons specifically for your class.  The down side is that you do not learn what or how all the addons work, so if you want to tweak something or if something breaks it can be difficult to fix.  The last part is why I decided to Trim the fat and reduce my UI to only items I absolutely need.  Read on for the details of what I chose and how I configured my UI.

For my action bars I chose Dominos .  Dominos is very easy to configure.  I use a Logitec G11 keyboard, so I configured three of the action bars into 6 button groups to mimic the 18 G keys on my keyboard.  I made Action bar 1 my main bar and shrunk it to seven buttons.  I have Q and E bound to my two most frequently used spells and then 1-5 bound to the other spells I regularly use.  I have a Priest and a Death Knight with two specs each, so I had to set up my bars four times.  Paging is a feature that will  switch your action bar to a different set of buttons depending on your stance/form.  I prefer to have my buttons the same for a given spec, so I turned paging off.

Action bars and unit frames are the two biggest changes to the default UI.   For healers the unit frame is the most important.  For my unit frames I chose Pitbull4 .  Pitbull is overwhelmingly customizable.  The basic idea is that you create a layout.  A layout contains the information that is displayed on your frame.  You can change the text, mana bar, health bar, etc.  A layout is applied to either a frame (player, target, etc.) or a group (party, raid, etc.).   I created three layouts for my unit frames.  I used the normal layout (default) to apply to my target, player (me), and party members (5-man).  I created a 25man layout that shows the name, health, health deficit, and mana of each of my raid members.  This is applied to the Raid group (both 10, 25, and 40 man).  I then created a layout called simple.  This I used for pets and my focus.  Oleander has a great post at Plusheal.com that gives an example of how to set up Pitbull4.  I used it to get started.  There are also a few videos out there (part1 , part2 ).

I selected Quartz as a replacement cast bar.  As a Priest healer timing casts is important.  Quartz calculates my latency to the server and provides an indicator of when it is safe to begin the next cast (without interrupting the current one).  While configuring Quartz I discovered a few bonus features that I really like.  One is the target cast bar.  I put this over my toon’s head so I can see what my target is casting.  I use mouse-over macros for all my heals so I am usually targeting the kill target.  The target cast bar is a must have for my Death Knight Tank for interrupts.  Another nice feature of Quartz is that it will show your target’s buffs/debuffs.  Its great for timing dots, diseases, and hots.

I cannot stand the Blizzard bag interface.  Arkive uses a great addon called Combuctor .  I really like Combuctor because it is simple.  It allows you to see what is in your alts bags and you can sort by item type or quality.  When using combuctor my bags were a mess, but I got pretty good at using the search feature.  So many folks have been raving about ArkInventory I decided to give it a try.  ArkInventory is another addon that can overwhelm you when you are trying to configure it.  I am keeping things basic for now.  My bags are still a bit of a mess but no worse then when I was using Combuctor.  I think over time I will get the items I regularly use grouped in a useful way.  Here are some links to example code for ArkInventory rules.  Rule Function , Example Rules.

My Priest is Discipline and I am a mass dispel fiend.  It is one of my favorite spells to cast.  I am like a cleansing totem in Dranei form except better.  I cannot live without Decursive .  If I didn’t have it the entire raid would be frozen to the ground for eternity or so I like to think.  No configuration necessary other than positioning it where you want it.  I put it just above my raid/party unit frames.  I like this addon so much even my Death Knight has it (maybe someday I will remember to disable it at the login screen).

The remainder of my “must have” addons are very simple.  Everyone should have Omen Threat Meter and Deadly Boss Mods .  To improve my Action Bars I use OmniCC .  This replaces the default grey “clock” cooldown timer with a number.  Another great addon is RedRange .  This will turn your button red if the target is out of range.  The default UI will turn the keybinding indicator red if the target is out of range.

If you haven’t been keeping count, that is nine addons.  This all fits in under 10MB of memory.  After playing all weekend with my new UI, I think it will be viable for me for a long time.  It has worked well in 5-mans and in 25-man raids.  There are two addons that I really miss,  Gearscore and Recount .  If you don’t know, Gearscore scores give you points for each item of gear you have equipped.  The higher the item level the higher the gear score.  Recount measures all sorts of statistics from your combat log.  It is primarily used to evaluate DPS performance.  I know there are a lot of people who hate the culture these addons have created,  especially gearscore.  I like gearscore because this game is very gear centric and gearscore gives you a quantifiable number to tell you if you are winning or not.  I do not plan on installing gearscore any time soon.  To me Recount is a very valuable tool.  Without it, I have no way to measure my performance.  Without a feedback mechanism I cannot measure improvement.  It is only a matter of time before I have recount installed again.

Image of ArkiveUI and my New UI .