Ciderhelm UI Information

[Ciderhelm]

I'll expand this post more as I get time. However, I'm going to list some very brief details to answer questions popping up on the forum.





Current Mods Installed
In the following, I label mods as optional which do not directly affect the interface you guys see in the movies. However, they are genuinely useful mods, and I'd suggest picking them up if you can benefit from them.

Auctioneer
Bagnon
Bartender4
Bejeweled
Camera Plus
Carbonite
CBH Viewport
Gatherer
ItemRack
JumpCounter
MikScrollingBattleText
Pitbull
Prat
Recount
SatrinaBuffFrame
Satrina's Digits (HOT!)
Squeenix
Sexymap


Digits is the one that puts health and rage numbers on the screen. Go here: http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f120/...p-display.html

Sexymap is the minimap addon

Customization Options
Bartender & Pitbull -- These two mods are going to collectively take the most time to set up. If you want your UI to look similar to mine, be ready to take a half hour or longer setting it up.

CBH Viewport -- I have this set in the Interface Options to 140px top and bottom as blank space. Please beware that this is not simply cosmetic, but actually renders a wider viewing area as a result. Viewport has an added plus of making encounters feel more epic and cinematic!

MikScrollingBattleText -- Most of these settings are default. I haven't taken the time to learn how to set up specific warnings like Sword and Board (I just watch my cooldowns).

Prat -- Haven't figured out how to get the chat input bar to appear above my chat window since 3.0.


The Weaknesses
While the UI does look sleek, there are several issues I'm having with it at the moment.

• Buffs and debuffs need to be reorganized and larger. I installed Satrina's mod from scratch and have not changed any settings. I intend to move them to either the upper or lower black space similar to my older pre-TBC UIs.
• Cast bars are not easily visible or readable. I may try eCastBars soon to help with this.
• No raid frames. Not sure why they're not part of the PitBull package I downloaded, or if I need something else, but I don't see health or mana bars in raids right now.

Will post more as I have more to post!

[Satrina]

Depending on what you want in a chat addon, Chat Frame Extender may like you better. It throws the input bar over the chat window by default, and you can move it with alt+drag, and resize it with shift + drag. It doesn't have nearly as much fluff, er, options that Prat does though, and you see that in memory use (115KiB vs. 1-3MiB)

Chat Frame Extender 2 : WoWInterface Downloads : Chat Mods

That said, someone posted how to move the chat input with Prat on the UI forums, I just don't recall what the option was. It's there somewhere though!

[Caulle]

• Cast bars are not easily visible or readable. I may try eCastBars soon to help with this.
• No raid frames. Not sure why they're not part of the PitBull package I downloaded, or if I need something else, but I don't see health or mana bars in raids right now.

Cast bars you can easily modify in Pitbull if you're finding they're too small (I can't give you the exact shortcuts right now as the servers are down). Check the cast bar settings, and scale the height up. If you find that it's squishing the rage/player/portrait frames too much, then go to other>size options and scale the height up more to compensate.

To turn your raid frames on, you'll have to go All Units and check off Raid Frames. If you're using someone else's layout (or the default) you'll have to set up your raid frames yourself. I might actually do a separate PitBull tutorial on how to set up raid frames similar to popular raid addons (SRaid, Grid etc...) because Raid frames easily take the most time to set up.

[Lore]

How to make Pitbull raid frames work like Grid:

Step 1: Turn off Pitbull raid frames
Step 2: Install Grid

[Urrick]

I could never get into Grid, seemed to be way too much work to set up. I just use the ones that come with XPerl.

Nice UI though, I might have to try the Viewport.

[Caulle]

How to make Pitbull raid frames work like Grid:

Step 1: Turn off Pitbull raid frames
Step 2: Install Grid

XD Grid's a bitch and a half itself to set up properly as well. I don't find the config panel to be very streamlined at all. It takes me longer to set up Grid alone than it does my entire UI. >_> Okay, I probably exaggerate. But I could get my Pitbull looking like Grid in about 5 minutes. Frankly, I prefer SRaid.

[Endboss]

Try quartz for cast bars, I have mine set up so my target's cast is positioned directly above both my unit frame and it's unit frame, and is roughly 1/3 the length in size of my screen. Its pretty hard to miss when and what its casting.

The added swing timer is a bonus, not that it matters much for tanking, but since I used to play around with arms it was required. And its a nice "quick check" for latency for me, because quartz casting bars account for latency (hit mount and check my actual latency real quick, then cancel)

and <3 viewport, ever since my stint in EQ2, it doesnt feel right unless i have letterboxes on my screen.

[Blackfriday]

/prat

Module Control
Make sure the "Edit Box" module is enabled.

Display Settings

Edit Box

Set the position - anywhere you want.

[Inaoe]

For raidframes I would also use Grid as mentioned before. A while back I played a holy priest and once familiar with Grid it's simply great. For non healing classes I like it because it's simple to create some very compact raidframes with many options through plugins if needed. (manabars, special debuff alerts etc.)

Also Quartz is my favorite for castbars. Very easy to configure.

[Kazeyonoma]

pitbull raid frames woo.

[Tobius]

Grid is actually pretty easy to set up.... once you know whats going on.

Getting to that point might not be so easy unfortunately

For a tank it just depends what you like the look of really, though I must say Grid really shines on my Priests UI.

[tobarstep]

• Cast bars are not easily visible or readable. I may try eCastBars soon to help with this.
• No raid frames. Not sure why they're not part of the PitBull package I downloaded, or if I need something else, but I don't see health or mana bars in raids right now.

I'm using eCastBars now. I used to use Quartz but it was way more than I needed. ECB is really easy and lightweight. I only use the target cast bar anyway.

I actually stopped using raid frames a while ago. If I were a healer, they'd be mandatory. As a prot warrior I could never figure out why I needed frames for anyone but those in my own group. That said, I think you just have to go into the modules section of PitBull and activate them.

[Strahan]

for buffs/debuffs I recommend Elkano's buff bars
for castbars... well NECB is soon to be updated ..more here NaturCombatTimers : WoWInterface Downloads : Combat Mods

[kolben]

I look at raid frames during the ready check, and when you have that sneaking suspicion that a wipe is inbound lol.

I'm still in the experiemental phase. I dropped Bartender4 for Dominos, no strong opinion about either yet. Like some of your ideas, and will have to do the viewport thing again. I have to agree that it opens up the view which is nice even on a 23" monitor.

[Tortured-x]

<3

needs bigger text but, you'd have to be a hawk to read the combar log as is

[Ciderhelm]

<3

needs bigger text but, you'd have to be a hawk to read the combar log as is

I actually never read the combat log while tanking. I only ever turn it out for frapsing so people can watch the movies, pause it, and read it if they want to.

[orcstar]

I use pitbull for showing of buffs.
First things I do is enable buff filtering so it only shows buffs/debuffs you can cast and then I enlarge the buff iconsize to be very visble, this way you can see easily if a buff lands or is about to run out. (or see if it's your own buff)

[Tortured-x]

I actually never read the combat log while tanking. I only ever turn it out for frapsing so people can watch the movies, pause it, and read it if they want to.

yeh but i tend to watch that and omen while tanking, but mainly i focus on my global CD's so i know when to mash my shield slam or revenge

[Dagmarr]

I must say I like the clearness of your UI Ciderhelm. Yesterday I installed XPerl and it is rather complicated, but does have a raid health section, where you can move each group/class. It might be what you are looking for.

[Achtepa]

what's used on your UI Ciderhelm to display the portrait animation ? i tried turning on portraits but it added a square box to the left. any help on making them stick to the top of the frame ?

Thanks.