Preferred UI's for Tanks

Post by Uteuean

Hi I recently respecced prot after about 4 months of being MS. I am really finding that my UI is cluttered. I saw Yakra's UI and thought that there might be some nice stuff out there. If anyone could post what they use and the reasons they like it that would be amazing. Pics would be a sweet bonus too. Thanks a lot :)

Post by Fitzlestick

I don't really have a screenshot atm, but I use the following mods:
* x-perl: For player, target, target of target, MT list and party frames
* Grid: For raid frame
* Simple Combat Log: Filters out the intresting information in the combat log and makes it a lot more readable
* Grim Reaper: Shows a small frame with the damage and healing received on yourself or any person in the raid. Really good to learn what fights are all about.
* Bartender: Ability to move all your bars to sort them they way you want it
* Morganti's Buff Bar: Replaces your buff/debuff bars. Customizable, Shows 24 instead of 16 buffs.
* Lot of other mods that don't really effect the UI: item rack, sw stats, ...

Post by Arideni

I used to use Nymbia's Xperl Classic (I don't know if Nymbia updates or even plays anymore). It was thorough & highly configurable. Xperl was built mainly for the raiding scene, but I don't know how it held up in comparison to the default UI. It was much nicer to look at, though.

I hear rave reviews about Grid for finding information you want, when you want it. Some very pronounced players in PVE use this.

I used SW_stats for analyzing things (though I'm sure there are addons specifically tailored for this) such as damage types, most used player abilities, various other statistics, etc.

I've heard good things about Bartender3, but I haven't ever used it.

I also used Outfitter to build armor sets...it probably a little heavier in weight than item rack, but it plugged right into the Character Pane so you just click a small list menu from there & voila - endless armor sets to dress up in (not that I did that or anything...)

Oh, and Fubar. A very minimal & lightweight toolbar which has "plugins" so you can have as little or as much as you need on your screen.

I'm not a big fan of using many add-ons, once you start doing that...you're basically detracting yourself from the game.

What to fix on your UI?

Always make sure you have health & target (& Target of Target) options in your UI. You need to see how much health everyone has & often it's useful to see what value they're missing (the deficit). If you're a caster, this can be useful also. Being alert to health bars & combat states is very important for monitoring group members in pugs (and raids, lol) -- paying attention even when you're not paying attention is key to easing the burden of extraneous repair bills.

Player/Group Windows - Maybe you need more space on your screen, maybe not. The trick is adding info. such as Health & Mana or even missing health values onto the screen for easy viewing (aka health deficit). There's a lot of things you can see about players (health value, combat status, debuffs, etc.) that just isn't readily made available with the default UI.
Timer - What this does is time the length of your spells, dots, hots, etc. so you know when to reapply them. With all the changes to the UI over this year, this may not be as needed, but I still would grab one. It only takes up space when needed & can be customized to ignore certain abilities, etc.
Buffs, debuffs - There are mods which use graphs or bars to display the duration of a buff or debuff...this can be important & help remove unwanted space from your screen (for example, having them all color-coded & placed in one section for screen real estate, e.g. red bars = bad debuffs). Being aware of your surroundings & potential threats while taking heed to the color & number of debuffs displayed can let you infer exactly what's happening without having to read a tooltip.
Boss mods - some guilds use a "boss mod" that essentially tracks the actions & events of a battle or certain fight & alert you to any special instructions you may need to take. You should research this & ask guildmates about it. Not sure if anyone uses these anymore (there's a built-in warning system from some fights now I think).

hm, can't think of much else, =P have fun!

Post by Uteuean

voila - endless armor sets to dress up in (not that I did that or anything...)

That made me LoL =D. Thank you both for the input. Keep the posts coming and I would love screenshots!