My mods and why I use them

Here's a list of mods I use.. some of them are on trial, some I'm not happy with but have been unable to find replacements for (ignorance is a curse!) and others just plainly rawk. I am not an ace purist (yet) mostly because (a) I've been unable to find certain mods in their version and (b) their mods are sometimes released a bit too raw and untested and break my stuff.

Please feel free to post your mods or suggest better versions!

(Legend: must-have addon, addon on trial)

• AckisRecipeList - for profession completists. Gives you a full list of ingame recipes and where they drop, and tells you what you're missing.
  
• Aloft - customised V-bars. I make mine larger and add more info to them, plus they colour according to class (helpful for PvP healing). Lacks a bit of polish, but very useful to me.
  
• AtlasLoot - lets you browse drops, rep. rewards, pvp rewards, badge rewards and all sorts of other stuff ingame. I don't have the Atlas map mod, but don't really miss it as I'm rarely party leader so I can leave the "omfg we're lost again?!!" to others.
  
• Auctionator - auction house managing addon, more lightweight than Auctioneer. I love this addon!
  
• Bagnon - instead of 5 bags I get one big container for it all. May look messy to some but has the nifty feature that you can search, including your alts! Yes, great for remembering which char has all those rare reagents you banked ages ago. Also works for the bank slots. (I know Onebag does mostly the same, and it's an ace-mod, but every time I've tried switching to it I miss some of the things Bagnon does).
  
• Bartender4 - very nice and easy to setup action bar mod - lets you move your bars around, make customs bars and keybind everything to your needs. Reinstalled after Enth reminded me of its existence!
  
• Chatter - nice and simple chatmod made by the same people who did Omen. Supports Chatlinks, coloured class names, etc, etc. Replaces my ChatLink and ChatMOD addons.
  
• DeadlyBossmod - handy for raiding, it warns whenever a boss does a omg-special-ability that you need to react to. Such as an AoE thing that will wipe the raid unless you stand on one leg and stick your tongue out at the same time. Or just stand there and DON'T MOVE. It also makes a noise so it gets your attention if you're busy healing or stacking dps stuff and not really paying attention to something raising its big hammer.
  
• DrDamage - one of my favourite addons. It lets you customise actionbar buttons to show estimated damage/healing per spell. Very handy for seeing how much more your heals will land for as you switch gear (great for evaluating crit/haste vs spellpower stuff).
  
• Examiner - adds advanced info to your /inspect. Lets you see talent builds, gives a stat overview etc - also caches other players profiles so you can look them up later.
  
• Fishing Buddy - fantastic fishing addon, makes the profession a lot easier with tracking of fish types per zone, autocasting, autoluring, etc.
  
• flagRSP2 - lets you add a custom description to your characters that other users of the mod can see. Good for roleplayers. I don't like the way it pops up in combat, apparently an earlier version of it doesn't do this, but I just pull the popup description offscreen so it doesn't bother me enough to change it.
  
• GettingThingsHealed - helps you set and broadcast healing assignments. Very simple, drag and drop healers, and save configs.
  
• LightHeaded - lets you view WoWhead comments on quests in your quest log. Helps you see how far down a questline you are, what the previous/next quests were/are.
  
• Livestock - pet/mount manager, lets you bind one key to zone-specific mounting (flyable/waterform/incombat/indoors) and set which pets you want to have out (and when).
  
• Mappy - very simple and easy to use Minimap addon. Turns it into a square, makes it moveable and it can be made to autoarrange all addon icons around the periphery.
  
• MikScrollingBattleText - it does everything SCT used to do, and now lets you customise a lot more than it used to (fonts, positioning, etc).
  
• Outfitter - gear manager. I can equip sets with a single click (or hotkey), lets me bank or retrieve full sets from the bank, and even does simple automation, such as switching to a special set when you're in town, or switching weapons as you switch druid form. Also lets you see whether you're carrying gear you never use (as in, stuff you haven't added to a set). An alternative mod is ItemRack, but last time I tried it I didn't like it.
  
• RatingBuster - enhances your tooltips to make it easier to compare items. Not as simple as Equipcompare, but gives you more numbers and stuff.
  
• Recount - damagemeter! The latest big thing, and fairly easy to use. I used Recap while levelling (the prettiest one of these imo), but I'm warming up to Recount. It's definitely better and more informative than SWStats, the one I used last time I raided.
  
• SatrinaBuffFrame - very customisable buff panels. Lets you make various panels, with varying visibility, depending on buff/debuff. You can have your auras hidden except on mouseover, make your debuffs big, and hide buffs greater than X seconds duration. I love this. With this and a good scrolling combat addon you will never miss when your specials proc.
  
• SellFish - adds the vendor value of items to their tooltips. Handy for choosing which reward to pick for vendoring.
  
• SunnArt - I use it to customise the viewport. Looking for a lighter version, as this gives you the option to skin the black areas around the screen, etc.
  
• Tipsy - lightweight, moves and locks the tooltip anchor to somewhere more convenient than the bottom right corner.
  
• TomTom - in-game satnav system that can read coordinates from Lightheaded. Was very useful to me when alting and doing my Loremaster achievement.
  
• Toons - tracks info on all your characters on that server (same thing Titan and FuBar do, but I don't have either).
  
• TrinketMenu - trinket manager that adds two icons. Lets you automate switches and gives you warnings, etc. I like it.
  
• XPerl - unit frames that (imo) give you better information about your party/raid's health, debuffs, etc. Customisable to a degree yet easy to set up. Includes all the usuals like rangedetectors, aggrohighlights, etc. I really like this mod, much better than Grid imo.

Old Mods I would love to have back:

• Yay, nothing!
  

I also use the following class-specific mods: Necrosis (warlock) and TotemTimers (shaman).

I use several of the mods that Marveen mentioned earlier, but the two things I'd have a really hard time living without are Pitbull and Bartender... they spice up my game.

Pitbull - This is in essence a unitframes mod, it supports a plethora of configurations that can be too much for some, but then when you really want to modify something it gives you a great selection to customize everything you could imagine using unitframes for. Castbars, texts, portraits statusbars etc. Usually works without a hitch, some small nicks always persist

Bartender - This is the actionbar mod that I've found best answers my needs. Supports remapping and moving up to 10 actionbars in addition to all the blizzard bars like exp, rep, bags and so on. You can also make conditionally visible buttons, complex keybind combinations and more. If you ever wanted your actionbars more flexible and easier to use, try this one

CyCircled - Don't know about you but I got sick of the basic actionbar button look a long time ago. CyCircled gives you preset options for your buttons to change their look. You can get humoristic frames or just a crystal clear box which I use myself for clarity.

ItemRack - some things would be very painful without this. I've also tried outfitter but ItemRack gives me fast keybinds and working configurations, along with one-click bank storage and retrieval for entire sets. Never leave home without this

Here are the mods I use that haven't been listed already. Oh, and just to note no mods are *required* to raid with WMD yet!

Chatter:

An all-in-one chatmod from the makers of Omen. Does what all the others do but is more user-friendly, simpler and polished.

Auctionator:

I got sick of the bloat in Auctioneer and the constant errors, so I switched to this. When you sell something it quickly scans the auction house for the same item and suggests a price based on the competition. It makes selling lots of junk a lot faster and I'm not interested in playing the auction house for the best deals, so this is ideal.

Quickmark:

This puts a small bar with all the raid markings on it that you can move around, so if you want to mark a mob with any icon you can just by clicking it on the bar. Saves making a ton of macros. I couldn't tank without it now.

Diamond Threat Meter:

Forget Omen, Diamond looks much nicer and the information is much more clearly presented.

CT-Mod:

The only reason I use this is for CT-Unitframes which allows me to put percentages on the health and mana bars of my party mates, and the actual figures on my own health and rage bar. The Blizzard one only lets you do one or the other, you can't mix and match.

Updated my first post to add new stuff I've been trying out. I've put dropped/deprecated mods at the bottom of the list.

Addon's not listed: Cutup (for rogues), Decursive (as mage... ), Quartz, Gatherer, sRaidframes (sometimes thinking to replace with Grid), oRa2, BigWigs, Prat3, Cartographer +Bayi's Extended Questlog+ QuestHelper, and JumpCounter.

Updating them with Curse client.

Am still looking for better raidframes than xPerl unitframes. These give me exactly the info I need, but also a lot of extra stuff I don't want/need and I'd like to remove from my ui. So, I tried Pitbull.. after 2 hours of fiddling with settings I still couldn't find some of the functionality of xPerl:

• My HoTs on a target don't have a timed countdown, so I have to guess when there's 1-2 seconds left to refresh Lifebloom (xPerl puts a numeric countdown in HoTs and DoTs).
  
• I can't mouseover a raid members' buff and instantly see in the tooltip who is missing that buff. xPerl adds text to the tooltip so if I mouseover Advent's MotW I see "Missing buff: Kayte Derky" (example).
  
• My buffs/debuff icons don't show any different than other players' of the same class. Minor issue at the moment as I'm the only resto druid we have, but I can't see if the Faerie Fire on a mob is mine or Advent's. xPerl shows a larger icon for my spells on the target, so I can instantly see what I have up.
  

To put it shortly, Pitbull's buff/debuff management is inferior to xPerls, as far as I can see. Can anyone who uses Pitbull point me at the settings that enable these functions? I suspect Pitbull wasn't made with the "needs" of a resto druid in mind.. and if the options aren't there, my quest for a better healing UI will continue!

And one more thing about Pitbull: it seemed to be slow in refreshing the frames.. up to 1-2 seconds before showing new HoTs up, etc! I assume this was my fault in setting it up as something like this should bomb an addon regardless of how pretty it looks... :s

Is there a mod that does what RACURE used to do? As in one macro dispells all sort of thing.

Its the only mod I have not managed to replace...

I am also working on a new version of gatherer if anyone wants the completed version once I have tested it ill post it on here somewhere.

Blizzard recently re-opened the connection their database servers so you can map all spawn points of all herbs/mines etc and also see when are up (If you are in the same zone as them) I had this before TBC but Blizzard banned it, its now unbanned again so ill re-code it for present use!

D

Updated my list of mods.

Also, now that fishing is a lot more accessible, I strongly recommend FishingBuddy - it takes a lot of the annoyance out of the profession! Autoluring, switching to your fishing gear with one button (ties in nicely with Outfitter too if you like), tracking of what zones drop which fish, and quickcasting makes this a big favourite of mine.

Another recent favourite is Livestock, which helps me manage my pets and mounts.

Raid Managing Addons

WoWinsider has run a few articles on raidleading (mostly aimed at PUGs), and they've brought to my attention the existence of this category of addons. Some named include:

- Failbot: reports in raid chat (or another channel of your choosing) whenever a raid member "fails." These fails are only things that are preventable by the individual on a consistent basis.
- CastMonitor: places a movable list of players that you can then monitor their target, as well what spell they are casting. This is great when you want to double check your healers are on the right targets or doing what they are supposed to.
- RaidBuffStatus: reports on a configurable dashboard or to /raid on consumables, buffs, AFK, mana, aura, talent spec and many many others but in an intelligent automagic way.
- BigBrother: lets you check for buffs like flasks and other consumables as well as lets you know when CC like Shackle or sheep has been broken and by who.
- RaidCooldowns: tracks all the abilities with cooldowns in a raid. This will display battle rezes, innervates, Divine Hymn, Lay on Hands etc.

I don't think all these are useful to us, but we're already using Failbot so I thought we should see what else is out there. Personally, I don't like how spammy Failbot is. I'd prefer a summary after combat ends to see total fails - can it do that?

CastMonitor sounds a bit lame - with just 2-3 healers we don't need this level of micromanagement (plus if people can't monitor their targets themselves they shouldn't be murlocs! :p).

The other three sound more interesting - I use XPerl to see if anyone is missing buffs, but perhaps we should assign one person to do this more systematically with the help of one of these addons? I'd love to hear if you have experience with one of these three addons (RaidBuffStatus, BigBrother and RaidCooldowns - or something else along these lines), and whether you think we need this to monitor flasks, food buffs, cc breaks, cooldowns, etc.

Actually, I had planned to run failbot silently as a means to assist people (and myself) to avoid problem areas. With Mimiron it was suggested that I announce it in raid instead.
Unfortunately it does not appear to contain any summary, so it's spam-mode or off.

Personally I think it's a good idea to have it running, if everyone can agree to take responsibility for when you screw up (and it being public), and we all agree to not make a big deal of it, instead showing support he someone has a hard time with a particular past of a fight.

To be clear, the above is only partially a response to Marv's post. The main parts are some of my thoughts on the use of Failbot openly in the raid.
Please let of know what your thoughts on the one and if I should leave it announcing to raid or not.

I don't have a problem with using Failbot at the moment. I found it very useful. I'm always trying to figure out what's killing who, so Failbot is a God-send in that regard.

However, it might start to get annoying on bosses where mistakes aren't always your own fault, and on farm content it might be spammy.

Keep using it for now though!

Well, the philosophy behind the mod, is that it should only report "fails", or things that can be avoided. But of course theses always "human error" to take into account.

But I know what you mean.

(Was very fun to have it running in the 25-man KT-pug that me, D and Gimi did this week. )

Trying Getting Things Healed (wowinterface) out to sort out healing assignments - helps me remember who I've assigned to do what, and gives healers the options of whispering me "heal!" to remind themselves what their assignment is (no Taq, stop whispering me for haelz! ). It is very simple and seems to work alright as long as I'm doing the assignments right. Would've loved to use this on that Naxx25 PUG the other night!

Not sure if I can turn off the "whisper Marveen for heal! etc" line. The addon options are very basic, but the addon itself is work in progress. The assignments itself can get a bit spammy when posted (in 10-mans), sorry about that!

@Derky: ItemLevel is allegedly a lightweight addon that adds the iLvl to the tooltip, it's available from http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/itemlevel.aspx

Alternatively, use RatingBuster - it adds a stat breakdown to your tooltips (taking into account bonuses from talents, gems and enchants - customisable) and includes the iLvl at the bottom of the lot: http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/rating-buster.aspx

Read my mind.

Ill install rating buster looks more fun.

Thanks

D

I'm using RatingBuster, it also does stat comparisons to what you are currently using.

Mnemo wrote:I'm using RatingBuster, it also does stat comparisons to what you are currently using.

+1