Recently we had a great suggestion by a reader, for the writers on this site to post about their UIs. After some deliberation we have decided to do this in a posting format from each of the different bloggers. The main reason for this is to give us the ability to explain the inner workings of our UIs instead of just posting some pictures along with an addon list. We hope you enjoy.
Hey guys! My name is Chuck and I play a Shadow Priest on Windrunner(US) named Chuckenorris. I write for NSUI and I have my own Shadow Priest blog at www.adarkenedsoul.com.
I have never felt comfortable playing the game with Blizzards stock interface, so I have been modding for quite some time. I have always felt that sticking with one UI forever is like saying that your playing style will never change or you will never play another character. My UI is always a work in progress but has come to the point where I don’t change much unless there is a problem. The setup is for a combination caster/healer due to the fact that I am currently raiding 25 mans as Disc. It was necessary when designing this interface that I keep all of my dps oriented addons and my healing oriented addons available without causing clutter. I absolutely hate screens that are filled with giant bars and name plates and junk.
This first screen shot is the cleanest view of my UI, being as I was not in a raid or party. My current bar mod is Bartender4, which is a great and highly customizable mod that I have been using for a very long time. The translucent box in the background of the bottom part of the screen was created with EEpanels. EEpanels is very easy to use, even for beginners and can add some really original and dramatic effects to a UI. Personally, I went with a simple purple/black gradient background that faded out on the right side. I set this panel as my goal for holding all of my visible addons. While it wasn’t 100% successful, the final product turned out much better than I was hoping. You can see that I have placed only a single line of action buttons with my unit frame right below it. I used Pitbull unit frames because I am not a fan of complicated character frames. I prefer to keep that part very simple with only the health and mana bars showing. Chatter for my chat window, Recount as my damage meter, and Sexymap as my minimap are the other 3 addons grouped in my panel. In the top right hand corner you can see that I use Simple Buff Bars to replace the stock buff timers. Also showing in this shot are Decursive, slightly to the left of the dragon and the closed quest tracker for Carbonite on the right hand side.
When questing or leveling my screen looks more like this. Really the only difference is the expanded Carbonite tracker and quest map(top left).
I use Cartographer, Gatherer, and Carbonite to create a map that gives me everything I need, from quest details to flight path timers. The combination of these three addons is pretty amazing for just about every aspect of the game. When I PvP the Carbonite minimap not only shows info about objective within the battlefield, it also shows all of my teammates, whether or not they are in combat, and how many they are fighting. When I am farming I use Gatherer to show me all of the nodes I or my guildmates have previously hit and it even shows me the quickest routes to hit all the nodes again without doubling back.
These next two screen shots are to show one of my favorite features when keeping my screen clear of clutter. Hidden bars can completely change a UI from a cluttered mess, into a sophisticated work area. I typically take macros and buffs and place them on action bars like the ones in this picture and place them off to the side of my screen. You then go into the Bartender options, select the bar you wish to edit, and in the Visibility tab click fade out. You can see in the difference from the first screen shot and these that the bars were there all along but had to be scrolled over to be accessed.
These kinds of bars can be used for anything from bag bars to mount buttons to the Micro Menu. Although I don’t recommend using this feature for combat buttons.
You might notice the lack of Omen or another threat meter in my UI and you would be correct. While this is almost definitely not a good idea for most people, I no longer use a threat meter for several reasons. The deal breaker of course is that as a Disc Priest in 25 man raids, I pretty much couldn’t pull aggro even if a hunter misdirected to me. Overall I play a class that has a get-out-of-jail-free card in the form of Fade.
This is a slightly older picture of my UI, but almost everything is the same except for the buff timers in the upper right hand corner. The shot shows the battleground map on the left side, Pitbull raid frames in the middle next to my unit frame, and a raid view of Recount. Other than the battleground scorecard in the middle you can see the the screen is very clear even when in a raid or party.
Inventory management is another pet peeve of mine. I happen to be a collector of several things in game and while Blizzard sent a godsend in the form of mount, pet, and currency tabs, I still occasionally feel the pinch of dwindling bag space. To combat this I have employed the best bag mod I could find, named Ark Inventory. While I could go on for quite sometime about this addons features I will stick with my favorite which is the ability to create bags by item category. The gist of this feature is that you dub a bag “Equipment” and Ark will automatically put all of your soulbound gear into this bag. Even better is when you run out of bag space in this bag Ark does not allocate another entire bag to gear, it creates an imaginary bag with just enough spaces for you gear. If you look at the bags in the bottom right hand corner of this screen shot you can see that the first section is gear, the second section is quest items, and the third is everything else. This feature can be used on banks and guild banks as well and has many other options for categorizing bags than the ones I have listed.
There are several other addons I use regularly but do not consider part of my UI because they are always coming and going. These are; Overachiever which I use to customize and upgrade my Achievements window, WoW Instant messenger for sending and receiving in game tells, Parrot which is a scrolling combat text mod, Deadly Boss Mods(this mod is always a part of my set up but is not visible so I put it in this section), AuctionLite for makin some dollas on the AH, and Fishing Buddy. There might be one or two others but because I am constantly reviewing addons I don’t keep many of them for very long.
Chuck’s complete addon list:
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- Atlasloot
- AuctionLite
- Bartender4
- Carbonite
- Cartographer
- Chatter
- CT Mail MOD
- Deadly Boss Mods
- Decursive
- Doom Countdown Pulse
- eePanels2
- Fishing Buddy
- Fontain
- FuBar
- Gatherer
- Itemrack
- Overachiever
- Parrot
- Peggle
- Pitbull
- Quartz
- Recount
- Sexymap
- Simple Buff Bars
- WoW Instant Messenger
- xLoot
My UI is constantly changing so even as you guys are reading this I might have switched an addon or two, but I hope this was a good view into the UI of a addon reviewer. I am also planning on making my UI downloadable at some point, but for now I have too much junk that I haven’t cleaned out of it yet. If you guys have any questions please leave a comment, email me at darkenedsoul1@rocketmail.com, or look me up on my Twitter feed at www.twitter.com/chuckenorris.
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 
Just wanted to say it looks really nice. Clean and simple, and allowing a lot of viewing room. One thing I would recommend to you as a Recount user is to grab Recount_threat. Handy little module that will allow you to use the same spacing you have now, but be able to see threat on an as needed basis.
It is almost scary how similar my UI is to yours!
As a raiding Shadow Priest I do need to see my threat though, but I just keep an Omen Window in the exact same spot as my Recount window and just set Omen to only show in combat and Recount only out of combat. That way I see the information I need when I need it, without even needing to scroll through Recount panels.
I’ve never liked the way the default UI makes you keep your information on opposing corners of a triangle…it always seemed so unintuitive. When I first found out about Addons, it made the difference between me continuing to play and quitting. I’ve never looked back!
Wenchie’s last blog post..Ousted by Vent
Nice. I always appreciate seeing other UI’s. Thanks for the post. It is also Nice to have another verification that I am using good mods, as I use a lot of the ones you fo. I am going to check out Parrot, though as I am getting bored with SCT.
I hope some of the other authors are more interested in having a pretty UI. No offence meant ;)
Thx for the comment and the suggestion. I have already downloaded Recount Threat and plan on trying it out tonight. I put out a respectable amount of damage and don’t really get that close to pulling aggro and if I ever did I have Fade to protect me. However, a threat meter is always an important tool to have available if you need one.
I really like this idea of keeping both addons in the same spot for another reason than just keeping your UI clean. I think a lot of people spend to much time looking at meters during a fight. Having it invisible and only your threat showing while in combat reminds you of your priorities.
You know a few years ago I got really into trying to make my UI really stand out and eye catching. the problem was that my UI was always catching my eye. Pretty UIs tend to be distracting. This is one of the main reasons I have switched to using very simple graphics such as my unit frames. There is no part of a 3D full body animated avatar that helps you while trying to avoid falling ice blocks in Hodir’s chamber. But if you are into really graphically oriented UIs, I can point you in the direction of a few compilations that are quite pretty.
Is it just me or are all the screen shots not re-sizable (possible new word):)
I find it difficult to see details and the blog engine makes the whole column so small:(
Edit to my last post, the very first screen is not re-sizable, the rest are a little, could really do with some bigger images:)
First thing, I’d suggest looking at Skada (no link posting from phone) it’s a nice dmg meter with a built in combat switching tool to turn into a threat meter.
And update to kgPanles?
Nice to see a blogger from Windrunner ^^ lol
Pretty nice UI and other people pretty much covered the suggestions I was gunna make lol
Hm, it might be a good idea to switch from eePanels to kgPanels (the successor). Structurally the UI looks good. Have you considered putting a structured color scheme in it? I can imagine a coherent color for all healthbars + class coloring limited to text only, you would get a stunning result! :)
I’ll have to check out Overachiever, thanks for the info and sharing your UI.
I’d love to see these posted with more than a small image.
Unfortunately the header image for each post has size constraints. All of the other images on the post are linked to larger versions.