I hope you all had a great Christmas and New Years I spent my holidays doing very important things like;

• Nothing
• Smashing My Head against the wall in LFR
• Writing a couple of new addons

LFR Smart Queue

http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/lfr-smart-queue

Ever get sick of clicking Join Queue and waiting for ages, only to be prompted with a raid that’s only got 1 boss left? LFR Smart Queue allows you to define the maximum number of boss kills and will reject raid proposals and requeue you until a raid more to your liking pops.

This is a actually a module of UpysUIBase but I thought that people who aren’t looking for all the rest may appreciate it.

UpysUIBase

http://wow.curseforge.com/addons/upysuibase/

Combination of a number of key components/modifications I have made for my UI. The idea was to have a very simple to install starting point that can be quickly loaded and run with, using a handful of supporting addons.

The addon includes the following;

• Unit Frames for Player, Target, Focus, ToT, ToF (using oUF)
• Chat Tab Clean Up
• Minimap Modifications
• Artwork and Stat Blocks
• AutoLoot Switcher
• SmartQueue (for easier LFR Queing)

Detailed Description

Unit Frames

I have used oUF for building an easy to view HUD Unit Frames.

What it does Player – Unit Frame and optional Castbar and Buff/Debuff Frames Pet – Unit Frame Target – Unit Frame and optional Castbar and Buff/Debuff Frames ToT – Unit Frame ToF – Unit Frame

What it doesn’t do Party/Raid Frames – I decided that party/raid frames needs a lot of personal preference customization and there are other great offerings that can do this for you.

Chat Tab Clean Up

I got pretty sick of the ugly chat tabs, this enables class color chat tabs with no background images etc. Very clean and nice to look at and you can now also set the opacity of the text in both on/off states (i.e. have them hidden or near hidden when you don’t need to click them).

Minimap Modification

I got a little tired of the size of my minimap addon considering the small amount of functionality I really wanted.

• Removal of annoying Bliz buttons
• Set to square and location to Top Left
• Add Minimap Lock/Unlock (through options) to allow movement of the minimap
• Add a class color border and location text
• Add Coordincates
• Set minimap Scale

Artwork And Stat Blocks

using LitePanels to provide a central, clean place for your action bars. The layout provides multiple “stat blocks” that you can define the information you wish to display ranging from System/Net Stats (such as Latency, FPS etc) to player details (such as MP5, Intellect etc)

AutoLootSwitcher

Will automatically switch your AutoLoot setting based on whether you are in a party/raid. When solo AutoLoot will be enabled, when in a group it will be disabled

SmartQueue

Allows you to set the maximum number of dead bosses you want for your LFR run. With 0 being a clean run. The Module will auto decline raids offered and requeue you automatically.

Supporting Addon Recommendations

• Action Bars – I use dominos - http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/dominos
• Buff Frames – I just finished configuring Raven – very neat! http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/raven
• Chat Mod – I use Prat http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/prat-3-0
• Raid/Party Frames – I use oUF_Freebgrid for mine – you can check that out here:http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info12264-oUF_Freebgrid.html

Full Addon Pack

Get my entire Addon Pack here: http://www.curse.com/addon-packs/wow/upys-healing-raiding-pack

• http://www.worldofmatticus.com/2011/05/03/improving-the-in-game-recruitment-system/
• http://wow.joystiq.com/2011/05/02/officers-quarters-making-the-most-of-the-guild-finder/
• http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/2657799
• http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2483689459

The general feeling is that the concept of the new Guild Finder and the Recruitment side of it for GM’s is great, however it lacks some key features and functionality that means it will never truelly compete with other recruitment processes where a lot more information is required.

I found that the information I could provide to recruits was not enough to ensure they knew what we were all about, and on the flip side it encourages lazy applications (the kind we at Bizarro frown upon).

Some of the key annoyances I had with the system;

• Clicking “Invite” or “Message” would generally do nothing because the applicant was nearly always offline (for me anyways).
• No history or flag to say that I had actuall contacted an applicant (this gets to be an even bigger issue for guilds handling large numbers of applicants at once).
• No means of inviting or declining all applicants (again a big issue with large volumes).
• No way of copying the applicants name so that I could send them an ingame mail.
• Needing to rekey or have a text file with template mails.

So I got to thinking that these issues would be common for other GM’s/Officers and so Recruitment Enhancement was born on curseforge.

The initial objective was to simply add a “mail” button to the frame that would load a predifined ‘template’ subject and body into a mail message (if the mailbox was opened).

It has since extended to handle a lot of other things lacking in the first offering by Blizzard.

• Onscreen notification that a new application has arrived
• Minimap Icon that is only shown when you have applicants
• Simple output of current online applicants
• Redesigned Buttons (looks purty no?)
• Mass Invite/Decline
• Manageable Mail Templates
• View Applicant Archive including inbound and outbound mail
• Visibility of Online Status
• Invite or Decline Selected Applicant
• Mail Applicant based on the selected template (I have one for good apps and one for fail apps that suggests they put in more effort)
• View the WHOLE application comment, because the Bliz UI doesn’t always.
• View the Armory Link for the character so you can copy and paste it for easier review
• View applicant correspondence
• Disabling of buttons that are not able to be used because;
  • The applicant is currently offline
  • The mailbox is not open

Here are some additional screenshots of the Addon for your viewing pleasure!

You can download the addon here: http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/recruitmentenhancement.aspx

For those who have missed it Ayr (aka Are You Ready) is an addon that provides tools for self checking. This is currently split into 2 distinct flavours;

• Ready Check - Will check for Flasks/Elixirs and Food when a Ready Check is called for by your Raid Leader
• Preperation Check – Will evaluate your gear, chants, gems, addons and inventory for key attributes required for raiding. For example; it’s a requirement to bring 20 +90 stamina buff foods to a raid

Version 1.3 comes bundled with additional tools for Raid Leaders/Officers to gather raider data and view it; as well as an option panel for configuring the requirements you have for your raiders, for example on a night you know you will be pushing progression, you may wish for raiders to bring 40 pieces of food.

Raid Leaders can request a Preperation Check (either quiet or loud) of it’s raiders based on the requirements defined in their options panel, rather than the raider checking against there own requirements.

This makes for a much more dynamic and useful process for Leaders.

The below is the current Options Panel allowing configuration of key requirements such as;

• Buff Food
• Flasks
• Pots
• Etc etc

The following is the Scan Frame that Raid Leaders will use to trigger for a review gathered data;

To make the Ready Check process that much clearer and more obvious (because previously warnings were printed to the chat window) I have added a new frame that can be triggered from the Scan Panel or will auto fire when a ready check is called for and you’re failing at something (flask, food or buffs). The window is pretty simple with icons representing the areas requiring your attention.

This is all icons available visible (which should never happen for you in reality) and clicking on the icon will print to your chat window a description of what you’re missing.

The latest version can be downloaded from curse here:
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/ayr.aspx

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/charlie.aspx

Slash Commands
/charlie enable
/charlie disable

A fun little addon that does nothing but make you and your friends giggle my newest piece of work lol

NOTE: Will not operate while you’re in combat just to make it less annoying

The other driver for this rework was the deathly silence from the DXE team since Cataclysm was released. Now myself being a bit of an addon author, I get it, a lot of other things take priority over delivering an update to the community, but this one addon played a core role in my raiding interface. So with a little bit of a grumble I downloaded DBM, an old friend who overall just works but there are some aspects that (from a UI perspective) gives me the shits, and started configuring it to my needs. The boss frames almost made me cry and really inspired me to find a better way of delivering that piece of information.

Enter oUF_UpyHUD (I’m still debating about whether to release this updated layout for oUF) which is an update of my current oUF_Upy layout available on wowinterface, the key objectives to be delivered with this updated layout being;

1. Ensure key unit frames are central to my screen
2. Provide boss frames and remove the ugly Bliz default ones (those ones that sit off to the right of your screen)

So after making the decision to do it, I got my trusty scrap paper and pencil out and started drawing. I went through maybe 10 pieces of paper before settling of a good starting point for the UI.

Now I see a lot of UI’s with raid frames below the character. I’ve tried this but for me, it just doesn’t work. For some reason it encourages me to focus on my raid frames too much and my awareness suffers significantly. I have, and probably always will have my raid frames to the left of my character, close enough that even when I’m not directly looking at my characters surroundings I can see if something has changed or moved or exploded on or near my character. The unfortunate result of this is that it looks like an inbalanced interface, lucky for me I’m not obsessive compulsive about symetry I guess.

I wanted all of my essential pieces of information around my raid frames because that is where my eyes are looking for a large percentage of my raiding time. I decided to move the player frame to sit just below my raid frames (moving the pet frames to the left rather than below the player units) with the goal of improving self preservation, and built cooldown timers above my frames.

You can see in the screen capture below that there is a lot of information in quite a small area, but as a healer this is probably the most important info I need regularly.

On the right hand side I decided to move my other unit frames up and have them lined up vertically instead of horizontally. This will bring some synergy to the layout while also added very important information back into my area of focus.

The screenshot below outlines this part of the user interface

I designed the Layout so that my player and target frames are aligned with each other with my cast bar sitting along side my players from and meeting my targets castbar in the middle of my interface.

I also worked out how to add Boss Frames into my oUF layout (that also includes a function to remove the blizz ones (/vom). This is designed to sit at the top of my screen right in the middle. May not be everyones preference but it works for me.

These are the 3 core areas of change but I also made some significant changes to other areas. The end result is the below user interface. I will be updating my UI page with this and include all the details in terms of what modules are what.

I’m still tweaking and looking at other items I can add into my oUF layout (like tank frames!) but thought I would share my thought processes when designing or redesigning a user interface

Upy

The full addon details can be found here: http://www.upyursh.com/user-interface

My Buffs are always off the the right, and are generally pretty small as I rarely need to track a buff during a raid.

My Debuffs on the other hand are critical in many boss encounters

One of the recent examples of this is during Lord Jaraxxus, where there are two debuffs being thrown around but they require completely different responses from the raider. This is in fact what has inspired this post, we have many melee making similar mistakes but for some reason kitties used to do it a bit in our first raids (I’m looking at tourn,boom,kat & johnie ). On this fight the issue is Incinerate Flesh vs Legion Flame. Now DBM marks up peeps however we have seen marks drop off quickly for various reasons leaving nothing but your debuff frames to help you know what to do. If you have Legion Flame and you dont move, you really screw over people near you (obviously a bigger prob for melee). If you have Incinerate Flesh and move you risk going out of range of heals and either dying or even worse not dying and due to range the debuff isnt healed off causing massive raid wide damage for healers to pickup.

So enter Satrina Buff Frames, now I know their are plenty out there but this is my choice and it’s my blog so

Install the addon found here: http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/satrina-buff-frame.aspx

In game type /sbf config and the following panel will open and by default you will have 2 frames. “Buffs” and “Debuffs”

Buffs

Lets start with buffs, generally these are a lot less important so I move these off the the side of the window

Current Frame: Buffs

General

• Frame Unit: player (we’ll look at how this can be useful later)
• Show buffs: ticked
• Blacklist: ticked

These should all be defaults so no big changes here

Layout

Ok we can set our scale to be something nicer on the screen realestate, I set to 0.7
This is also where you can set the direction of your frame and a number of different options.

If I set the Number of buffs to 40 for example you can see that it now has 2 columns, to avoid this drag the Buffs per collumn to one and the new max will be 30. Set it to that to create 1 long vertical buff frame.

Timers

Set your font as you like and I like to also set an outline, I also like to enable “Color debuff timer by type”

Counts

I set my font to 13, select my font and outline

Bars & Names

I dont use Buff Bars and Names, don’t really see the point.

Ok that should be our buffs done.

Debuffs

It’s important that these are central to your vision so you optimise your awareness. I put mine just above you unit frames (which are bottom of the screen).

Current Frame: Debuffs

General

• Frame Unit: player (we’ll look at how this can be useful later)
• Show debuffs: ticked
• Blacklist: ticked

These should all be defaults so no big changes here again

Layout

Scale is important you need these debuffs to be clear. I set mine to 1.5

Ok now for some smarts, click the “Rows” checkbox and your frame should now be vertical. I also set my number of buffs to 12 (cant imagine a fight where you would have more than that).

Now you can also set where the buffs will grow from. I slide the Buff Growth to the middle so my first first will land there, then progressively get wider as I get more.

Timers

Set your font as you like and I like to also set an outline, I also like to enable “Color debuff timer by type”. Because of where I am I set the timer

position to 0,16 (default is 0,-15)
I also click N/A for Auras

Counts

I set my font to 13, select my font and outline

Bars & Names

I dont use Buff Bars and Names, don’t really see the point.

I think I’m getting much happier with the UI overall here it is;

Key things I have done;

1. Removed the NEED TO KNOW stuff in my LDB and moved it into the LitePanel layout (time,fps,ms,mem,durability) I have built
2. Hidden ChocolateBar in combat
3. Moved DXE around so, main panel now centered, short timers above my grid, long timers to the right, warning in the middle
4. Changed my auras/buffs to be a single column down the right hand side
5. Got GridAlert and dropped Decursive. I’m still going to see how this goes in a fight like Yogg but I’m happy with it so far
6. Got into the oRA2 lua and modified the size of the Tank Frames (I will be posting a quick guide on these changes later)
7. Used coelnameplate (although I find it hard to read sometimes but ill see how it goes)
8. Move target/focus cast bars to be more obvious (right under my own cast bar)

I will also move the tank/cooldown windows to either side of the the DXE panel (as shown by arrows in the screenshot). Also the Skada window is there for some reason, normally that is closed or on the right where there is more space.

So yeah I am pretty happy with the end result, the larger and ‘bunched’ indicators presented the information I needed quickly and easily without needing to take my eyes off of my unit frames while healing. I found my response time to incoming damage was much better so that’s good.