Tanking and Healing UI rough draft.

[mikurachan]

Here is a screenshot from my magmaw kill. So far I like the way I have things set up overall.

I am using move anything to resize and move all my action bars, a hud, Logarithmic CD bar (not working for anything but buffs and trinkets), Decursive (placed above my action bars for easy dispelling for when I need to), recount, omen, target charms for easy marking, plus a lot of other mods not directly related to combat.

http://s1095.photobucket.com/albums/...611_204017.jpg

As a healer - Second time healing a heroic in cata. I didn't realize what the debuff was the first time though.
http://s1095.photobucket.com/albums/...911_021713.jpg

40 man healbot fills up the gap on the right. I have shrunk the remaining action bars. I also moved target charms and player score later for a nicer look.

I would appreciate your input on ways to impove my ui for tank (MS) and healing (OS). Also I need to find a cd bar that works.

[SquishyTheTank]

Oh god. And I thought my screen was a cluster fuck.

So, first thing you need to focus on as a tank is clearing out the unneeded stuff from the middle of your screen.

First... Why did you move your character nameplate down to the middle of the screen? You have a HUD addon, so that is unneeded. Its just taking up more of your limited space.

Second... The action bars you have overlapping the bottom of your character (the ones in the bottom-middle of your screen) are really bad. You need them moved somewhere out of the way, so that you can see animations along the ground and etc.

Third... Your chat box is filling alot of extra space by being toward the middle of the screen. You would have more room to work with if you moved it into a corner of your screen somewhere.

Fourth... Tracking quests looks pretty bad for your set up, it makes tracking your addons harder. If it wasnt enabled, imagine how much better the top right side of your screen would look.

Anyway, Good Luck! You have quite a bit of work to do.

[Netheras]

To keep from uh... well, being too disparaging, I'll just say what I would do with some of your screens.

Healing:

Agreeing with what Squishy said: you don't need the character frame and the HUD (icehud right?) right there. I had the same sort of set up at one point (but with target and target of target, until I decided to put my player frame there and take out icehud) but I also had my screen set up so that my viewable area (changed with Viewport) is uncluttered by my bars - and yours is pretty cluttered with bars. Choose one or the other and stick with it. Try some unit frame addons to change the player frame, or at the very least to remove the blizzard party frames/raid frames. You have healbot for that.

Tanking:

Your blizzard combat text won't be of much help because of the bars cluttering the middle of your screen... you can see your damage and healing but if you can't even see your character (I could not, and I did try) those will not be helpful. Disable them, or find an addon (personally use Miks Scrolling Battle Text to move it all away from the areas that I want to see). If the Logarithmic CD bar isn't working, take it out, you already have at least one buff mod right by your HUD.

Not to mention the redundancy in your buffs - try finding one buff addon, while at the same time disabling the default buffs/debuffs.

Go into your DBM/raid mod settings and set up your timers and raid warnings so that they are in places that don't cross over or overlap any of the important areas of your screen.

If those green boxes across the top of your bars are empty bar slots, either disable that bar or don't show empty bar slots.

Omen/Recount. The space that you have omen in looks large enough for both. Neither is critically important during the battle on your healing side, though for your tanking, you might want the omen closer in. Personally I use skada and have it set up to switch between threat and whatever other window I had open before the fight to cut down on space. I believe recount has its own threat module - see if that works for you.

I believe the playerscore icon is entirely unnecessary unless you aren't in combat - either way, its not something you need on your screen during fights. There is an option to turn it off.

If you do move your bars, just be sure to move things where you can easily reach them if you don't have enough keybinds for abilities/items. The bars really are a problem where they are, and look into getting a viewport mod to help with your viewable area and space usage on your screen.

I've said your UI is filled with problems, but thats a judgement based on available space and visibility. This doesn't mean that your UI isn't what you'd like it to be, as I'm sure you made the decisions based on what looked fine for you. However, I'm sure you will agree that you can still free up space while making the UI fit to your aesthetic sense. Most of the changes I've suggested all depend on where you like and would like to place your stuff, just tempered with things to keep in mind.

Something else to keep in mind: there is also a UI section of the forums. Look through there for help as well, and post your questions there. There are best practice guides for handling your UI, and numerous posts on addons that can help cut down on clutter/ work better than other alternatives.

[Airowird]

Basic 5-second advice on tanking screenshot:

* The space beneath where you currently have your hotbars is empty & wasted.
* Your HP & mana are shown 3 times: HUD, player frame & raid. Atleast 1 of those needs to go and it can't be raid!
* Chat frame looks out of place, move left
* Entire left bottom is taken up by meters

On healing screenshot:

* Using default frames for healing
* Again hotbars & HUD comment as above
* Meters still not much better.

Improvements:

* Get Pitbull Party Frames for instances, as it can configure a lot more than the default ones.
* Atleast move your bars to somewhere less ... in the face
* Meters: Look for a decent meter that can do everything at once (like Skada) or configure your DPS meter so that it is hidden in combat and overlay it with your threat meter, which should only show in combat. 1 square, 2 meters

[mikurachan]

I made a few some changes to my initial ui configuration. I replaced the HUD mode I was using with the better ICEhud. I grabbed xPerl for my unit frames. Chat frame was originally in top left but it was overlapping with the top party member. I had to move it temporary during the raid. I turned off the buff display on ICEhud. Also turned off the text displays on HUD that were overlapping with my repositioned action bars.

I think I am going to turn off the player score display and just use /gs

Here is a new screen shot.
http://s1095.photobucket.com/albums/...911_161022.jpg

[Mangea]

The new screen shot is an improvement, but I have to ask; what's up with having your action bars in the middle of your screen like that? I mean, if that's working for you, then rock on. But if you're looking for constructive feedback, then move those action bars down below on the bottom edge of the screen. Better yet, a neat trick is to use your action bar mod to show those bars only when you mouse over them. Move them out of the way and memorize the keybinds that you've set up. That way you don't need to have every ability showing.

Here's an example of what I mean. This picture is from last year.

WoWScrnShot_022710_154826.jpg

The only action bar I have is the one with all my main abilities. Things like Concussion Blow, Blood Rage, my shouts, etc, are on bars that I have set to be invisible until I mouse over them, then I memorized the keybinds. It's a pretty handy trick.

[mikurachan]

I have my action bars shrunk and placed right under my character so there is a minimal distance between my curser and any particular target I may have to select. It is a tanking thing. I might shrink them even a little more now that I am used to their size. I can't simplify my tanking down to 12 base abilities. There are two many abilities that can come in handy on occasion.

[mikurachan]

Oh btw what is the add on you are using for your cds. The one I previously found wasn't working for 4.01.

[Gameforreal]

Oh btw what is the add on you are using for your cds. The one I previously found wasn't working for 4.01.

Problem with the UI is your crap under character, blocks your view on poisen, fire, water and other MOVE away things.

Lui Ui <- is decent for tanking, and is already set up when you instal it, no wtf folder or anything - after that you can remove things and add as you please.

I added my map to a different location, moved the recount, added Tank making UI and Raid marking UI for postioning the raid under tatic explanation.

Nr 1 rule for tank Ui's is to have a great overview

Atleast thats how i see it =)

[Apocalypstix]

Are you like.. clicking the spells? While that's all fine and good key binding them would help you a ton as well. The bars wouldn't be in the middle of your screen (So you can see the fire under you! D: ) and your reaction to stuff would be better too!

[Maverickroll]

Wow.. just wow.. I mean to each his own for what they like but good god man.. so much clutter.

How does your minimap not annoy the shit out of you with a million icons around it?

The scrolling combat text in the middle, combined with all the health/rage/mana bars there, would give anyone a seizure watching that in a live battle.

Maybe its just me but I prefer a minimalist setup, I don't need every last piece of information the game can throw at my screen. As long as I know what abilities are on CD and for how long, the rest is flexible enough that I could play with the default UI if I had to (I dont but you get my point).

As a tank, you really only need Omen.

No raid frames, no DPS meter. Just Omen. DBM too I guess if you had to. Your job is to stick to the boss, move out of the fire and keep your eyes peeled on your threat level while maintaining position and micromanaging your abilities. You don't need a ton of addons to tank, but you do need the real estate in terms of screen space for the UI to be out of the way.

And as someone else mentioned..if you are clicking skills, don't. You can get away with this a little more with a healer but as a tank, you need to be using WASD to move (or a combination of 4 keys to move), your mouse to rotate your view and every last skill needs to bound to a key, or a macro for several on one key (if possible).

[Katzazi]

I try to have a multiple role UI, too. I don't try to make it look good but be playable good. (And I try to use as few addons as possible.)

I have the raid-ui at one side (normally at the right) of my screen. I also have stuff I don't have a key-bind for but may want to use as a healer now and again placed at a bar to the right - directly near my raid-ui.

By moving the raid-ui to the side, I get much more space to see what's happening around and especially right under and behind myself. That's where it's most important to see the "world". Modern monitors are not very high but quite wide. So you loose less information by covering up the sides but the top and bottom of your screen. At the same time, I keep my look up, when I heal. It's not fixed to stuff at the lower part of my screen, but at the height of the imortant stuff happening.

As I select the players to heal with my mouse, I shorten the time I need to klick those buttons I don't have key-bindings for by having them right beside the raid-bars. As most people have, different players are displayed above each other. So you have one to three columns of them. I think it's much better to have a collumn of buttons (quite like the original right hand bars of the default UI) beside your raid than placing them from the right to the left. At the same time I have much more free space in the middle of the screen.

For tanking this may be not as optimal as for healing. So I also have one bar at the buttomn, too. With important stuff placed more in the middle. But I don't think it's a good idea to have those big blocks of buttons, I always see in screenshots, covering so much space in the middle of the screen. Well you have those buttons because you probably have no key-bindings for them, so you don't need them all the time. Some of them you probably never need during combat at all. So why put them in such an important place of your screen?

Wow is much more about situational awareness than about the need to click rdm buttons quite fast. Most stuff can only be used about every 1 - 1.5s. The most important part is to realise that you have to use those buttons soon. Moving your mouse there (if you have no keybinding) does not take such a long time. So I think it's much more important to free as much screen-space to see the important informations (including the "world" around you) than to have your buttons right in the middle. Btw the only thing you need your mouse for in the middle of the screen is to select enemies. For small groups you will be able to target the one you want to have be using tab much faster, than by using the mouse. And it's probably easier to click your targets bars (or their circles on the ground) than to click their avatars in the middle of the screen. Your mouse will not be in the middle of the screen as often as most people seem to think.

Even when I said I want to have see the important stuff in the middle, I don't try to have all those nice statistic stuff there. I don't need to have stuff like recount, omen, "long time"-boss-cd-timers, player-cd-timers right in the middle. I also move them to the sides and recount (well actually skada) and omen right in to the corners of my screen. Nothing in recount is so important that I need to see it when the fight is in it's hottest phase. Same for omen. Even as I tank I don't need to see it. I know when I lose threat on my opponent when it turns around or runs away. Additionally I would recoment the tidy plates addon (or comparable stuff) that shows you much better the state of your opponents, including threat on them.

I also got rid of those life- and resource-bar hud. I had it for quite a time, but I realised that I did not need it, after a patch sometimes, when multiple addons where not working. As a healer I always see my health bar, anyway. As a tank, my healthbar is going up and down all the time, sure I have to know when it drops low, but my screen would blink red and I get a sound when that happens. Having placed my character bars somewhere where I can get a glimps to it, is enough for me, my eye catches big movement of the bars (and if my resources are full or empty) quite easily. But that may be just a personal thing.

One of the most helpfull adjustments I think one can do is to tune flowing combat text to what one actually needs. I don't need to see all the big green or red numbers for all I'm doing all the time. To see what's incoming to me, is much more important than to see big numbers flying from me to my target. Well I know that I pressed this ability, I know about what it is able to do. As I healer I even see the result in the bars I'm watching at, anyway. What I don't know is what the oponent or others do. So incoming dmg and healing (or maybe more important not incoming healing) is the stuff that should be easy to see at least as a tank and probably a healer.

Well that probably coves most of the ideas I have about healer and tank screens.

[Mangea]

I have my action bars shrunk and placed right under my character so there is a minimal distance between my curser and any particular target I may have to select. It is a tanking thing. I might shrink them even a little more now that I am used to their size. I can't simplify my tanking down to 12 base abilities. There are two many abilities that can come in handy on occasion.

Maybe you missed what I said about hiding action bars and memorizing keybinds. In that screenshot that I posted, I didn't simplify my tanking down to 12 base abilities, I set my other action bars (which hold all my other abilities) to be invisible until moused over. I then memorized the keybinds to the abilities on those invisible bars.

You can still use all of your abilities, they just don't all need to be visible on your screen if you've memorized their keybinds.

And the cooldown addon that I used in that screenshot was Forte something-or-other. I'm pretty sure a "forte" search on Curse.com will bring it up.

And wait a second...

I have my action bars shrunk and placed right under my character so there is a minimal distance between my curser and any particular target I may have to select.

Are you clicking on your abilities? It will be much more efficient to use keybinds, for the simple reason that keeping your mouse free to turn your character will dramatically improve your maneuverability. Keyboard turning is objectively inferior to using your mouse to turn, because keyboard turning is measurably slower. For example if you need to move in a direction behind you, it will be faster to use your mouse to turn and then strafe than it would be to use your A or D key to turn and then strafe, and certainly faster than walking backwards.

So don't click. Use keybinds and turn with your mouse. This will solve a number of issues for you. You'll be a more maneuverable tank and your UI won't be so cluttered up with the action bars in the middle of the screen.

[Torch]

The first thing I noticed is how HUGE the omen window is. Do you really need to have it that large? As a healer you probably only ever need to see the top five on threat because anything below that is irrelevant, aside from very specific encounters.

Secondly, as many people have mentioned before, your placement of action bars and character frames is...well...to put it nicely, I wouldn't advise anyone to have them set up the way you do. The reasoning is simple: they are obstructing the view of an area right next to where your character stands. This means you could potentially have a voidzone/fire patch/puddle of evilness spawn directly behind you and not know about it until it has expanded or until you have accidentally backed into it when dodging something else. If you are adamant to have your bars there, then reduce their opacity to prevent such a situation.

The decursive icons seem to be sitting on top of some of the actionbars, so you seem to be treating them the same way. While it does make sense to have them next to somewhere your cursor often resides for ease of access, they're just another addition to the pile of icons your character is balancing on like some statuette on a monument.

Your decursive "P S X" window can and should be moved somewhere on the side, top or bottom of the screen because in all honesty, it's quite rare in which you would need to be configuring that mod. Where it is right now is needless clutter. If you are configuring that mod a lot, then you really need to change your ui because ideally you want the same layout to work in and out of raids.

The width of your dps meters on the top left are unnecessarily wide. You can see from the names and numbers shown in that window that there is a large amount of space doing absolutely nothing, so it can easily be reduced and still show all the information.

You don't need both your character frame and icehud. They are showing you the exact same information and seeing as you have them so close to one another, you're just needlessly repeating information and using up some space that could easily be cleared.

[Kazeyonoma]

moved to UI forum.