Today’s modern military pilots use a heads up display to feed essential information in an easy to find place. This reduces their dependency on looking down at their instruments and frees them to keep their head up at where all the action is. The HUD can be a great addition to any player’s arsenal of addons. Kickass HUDs display information players need to make the correct decisions right away.
Below we present 4 HUD addons that are popular and have been known to work with the latest versions of World of Warcraft.
Of the four show HUDs, ArcHUD displays the most values on screen. Player’s current health and mana are shown in the middle along with their percentage values. Inner right arc displays the spell cast progress. Spell name is shown on the left. Mob information is right in the middle. Applied debuffs are shown on the bottom right. All information fades away when not in combat.
Spellcast progress bar is displayed in the inner left arc. Spell information and time remaining on cast is right below. The red part at the top shows the latency cut off of the spell. Mob debuff information is shown below the right arcs.
Any cooldown timers that are activated will display on the outside of the right arc. In this case, Elemental Oath has kicked in along with another ability. .
Sports a range finder and active debuffs on the mod. The outline of the inner right arc shows the progress bar of your spell cast. Name of the spell is on the top right. Inner arcs represent your health and mana whereas outer arcs represent target health and mana. Mob information such as level, name and type are listed at the bottom.
Found a cool addon? Want to share a UI tip? In the mood to contribute a guest post? Have some ideas for future posts? Feel free to 
Personally I’ve never used an HUD before, but I like the way MetaHUD looks and I’d consider giving it a try. I just don’t see the big deal about them, since they don’t replace unitframes. Feels like just another thing on my screen.
Personally, I enjoy having my HUD. It is especially useful when healing because it’s in the center and easy to notice. I use IceHUD for all my UI needs.
So far i’ve found IceHud to be the best, but i tend to disable my HUD in a raid environment, I’m a resto druid click healer so i try to clear as much space for my healing ui as possible.
Good review guys, i think i’m going to give DHUD a try, i like the look of the timers on the right hand side, are they part of the stock hud or do they have a dependancy like a timer addon?
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[...] 4 Popular Heads Up Displays [...]
I discovered Metahud a few months ago and now I wouldn’t be without it, the graphics are highly customizable (is that a word?) and it’s much easier when I’m healing, I don’t need to look around for information when it’s all centred on my Priest. Very occasionally, when entering an instance the animation freezes for the bars so I need to /reloadui…that’s my only irritation. However it’s very infrequent and it could just be my setup and not the addon. If you are looking for a HUD I would recommend Methud, give it a go.
I used MetaHud all through BC, but it wasn’t working when wrath launched and I changed over to ICEHud.
I like them both for centering important information right in the middle of my screen. As a Bear/Kitty in BC and a DK now I need to know my health, rage, energy, or runic power at all times. These are also great for tracking combo points and now more importantly to me Runes.
Since I base my attacks off of a priority system always knowing what runes and how much runic power I have without having to take my eyes off the mob is a lifesaver.
Omenscourge’s last blog post..Monday Morning Blues
Since I couldn’t select an old post, here is where I discuss my UI and focus on ICEHud in particular.
http://omenscourge.blogspot.com/2009/02/obigitory-ui-post-and-discussion.html
Omenscourge’s last blog post..Monday Morning Blues
Just like Omenscourge said, only with ArcHud. I used ArcHud all through Burning Crusade, but when 3.0.2 came out, it just didn’t work any more. That’s when I switched over to IceHud. I still ArcHud better, but I haven’t gotten around to going back, yet. I’m going to go do that right now. :-D
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Nice listing – I’ve used a couple in the past.
I’m downscaling my current UI and considering going back to a HuD over unit frames. My biggest concern is that being a hunter it is important to keep track of pet health and focus. I found that IceHuD did this well when I previously used it. However, being a sucker for pretty mods I wouldn’t mind trying MetaHuD (the range finder is also valuable for Survival Hunters – at least until 3.1).
Anyone know if MetaHuD has pet arcs as well as player / target arcs?
I beleive it does
I tested many HUDs when I started playing WoW, but none of them really suited my needs. I good UI would have to completely replace my player/target frame, but as I’m quite happy with the setup of my frames, that’s not really needed.
A first step before getting a HUD could be rearranging your unit frames. All your frames are in the upper upper left of your screen? No wonder you consider using a HUD. If you’re not comfortable with rearranging your frames or want to disable them at all, HUDs can be an excellent option.
The only thing I use, that comes close to a HUD is:
http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info11544-Digits.html
When I tank I just love to have my health and rage in HUGE numbers in the very center of my screen.
drug’s last blog post..Addons: Ressources
Currently using DaHud in conjuction with XPerl for party/raid portraits.
Huds are best for getting info about yourself vs your target, so they’re awesome for DPS, useful for tanks. For healers, they’re best at reminding you when YOU need healing!
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I started with metahud then when 2.0 broke it (for only a bit, but it was enough) I went looking for another hud… ended up with Dhud. But alas, the author decided to cease public production on it and I went back to metahud. Now I run a modified metahud made by nukin. For my unit frames I only run a hud when I’m soloing and then grid for raids and party. It works quite well and keeps my screen clean.
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Was a former ArcHUD user, but switched to ICEHUD. Love Ice b/c it has an ArcHUD compatibility mode which looks just like ArcHUD did.
I am a longtime ICEHUD + DIGITS user myself, especially for tanking. For my DK (which has become my main) I have been looking high and low for something that fits in that playstyle. Right now I am using OUF combined with magicrunes and Runevolution, but yesterday I checked out UNDERHOOD, which looks to be a all-in-one HUD add-on. Surprised not to see it mentioned here. That combined with DIGITS 2.0 would be sweet….
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