Hunter Add-Ons & UI Mods

Posted by admin on 05 12th, 2009

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If you are anything like me then add-ons play a major role in your overall gameplay experience. Fortunately updating them all no longer takes hours trying to track down the newest versions, downloading, and installing them all. WoWMatrix was a vast help in the management department, and now the Curse Client fills that role (though I refuse to pay for “premium” membership). Finding the right addon for the right job can be a fairly daunting task. Curse has over 5000 addons alone. This isn’t finding a needle in a haystack, it’s finding a needle in a haystack that also happens to sit in the middle of a mine field. I’m going to attempt to make that search a little easier by examining some of the add-ons that I have found throughout my career as a Hunter. Hunter Specific Add-Ons SimpleMD : In my personal opinion this is a must have for the raiding hunter. This particular addon will display a message whenever you or any other hunter in your raid/party casts Misdirect, as well as who they cast it on. It also displays a cool down bar for each hunter. Anyone else with this addon will see the same information, so if your MT is always asking which hunter has Misdirect up, advise them to download this addon and it will eliminate their incessant questioning. If your raid is having a problem maintaining a steady Misdirect rotation, SimpleMD is a step in the right direction towards fixing it. ShotAndAwe : Any Survival Hunter knows there is no such thing as a shot rotation for us, only shot priorities. If you are new to the Survival tree this addon should help you adjust to the concept. It gives you a visual representation of which shot should be used next, based on it’s priority. If your Lock & Load procs, it will automatically move Explosive Shot to the next shot in the “queue”. I won’t guarantee that you’ll see an increase in your DPS by using this mod, but it should give you a better understanding of what shots to use in specific situations. There are also variations of this addon for balance druids (SquawkAndAwe), as well as Enhancement Shamans (ShockAndAwe). ViperNotify : Absent minded hunters rejoice! I’ve lost count of the times I’ve checked my Recount meter only to see that my DPS was way below it’s normal range only to realize that I just went through an entire trash pull or part of a boss fight with Aspect of the Viper turned on. This addon will play a very loud (no seriously…it’s really loud) ding whenever you reach a specified percentage of your mana, as well as a Raid Warning style notice in the middle of your screen. ShotProc : Another addon that tends to cater more towards Survival hunters, but useful to all three talent trees. ShotProc plays an audio notification whenever certain conditions are met. If you are specced for Improved Aspect of the Hawk, it will play the “spotted” sound from Metal Gear Solid, and a shotgun cocking sound whenever your Lock & Load procs. With the addition of the spell effect and audio notice for Lock & Load in the recent round of patches and hot fixes, some might say this addon is obsolete, but I still prefer ShotProc over the default option. General Addons Quartz : I simply abhor Blizzard’s cast bars. I’m not real sure why, but I don’t like them. For the majority of my career the only cast bar I used was the one that came packed with MetaHUD, and it was just a colored outline on the mana bar of my target and myself. That is until I found Quartz. A much more intuitive, configurable method of keeping an eye on your own spells, and those being cast by your target. Right out of the box it will display the current spell you are casting, the amount of time left on your DoTs/Debuffs and even buffs that you cast. What really got my attention was the autoshot timer that appears on top of the regular cast bar. The addon even displays how much lag there is between the time you activate a spell/ability and when it actually casts. This is displayed as a red area inside the cast bar. It will even tell you how long it takes when crafting multiple items via tradeskills. Deadly Boss Mods : Flame walls, void zones, adds, and the occasional teleport can make raiding a rather challenging venture, especially if you don’t know it’s coming. Deadly Boss Mods takes most of the guess work out of those tricky little situations you often find yourself in. Got a set of bosses that have to die within seconds of each other? DBM will display those bosses health bars so that the raid knows which boss needs to hold dps or increase depending on where their health is. Configuration isn’t necessary, though you might want to reposition some of the notices if you’re having trouble with screen clutter. Recount : Want to know how to spot the face-rollers from the experienced players? Check their spot on the meters! Recount can be configured to show the damage done, healing, DPS, damage/healing taken, and a multitude of other variables. Excessive use of Recount can cause increased epeen, or a decrease depending on where you wind up on the meter. It will also record individual fights so they can be reviewed later. Another interesting feature for you amateur theorycrafters out there is the breakdown of your damage/healing done. Just mousing over a name on the meter will give you a condensed version of the information, and right-clicking a player’s name will display a more detailed graph of said information. Omen : Another meter, yay! Only you don’t want to be at the top of this one. Omen displays your threat on the current target, as well as the rest of your raid group. Under the tank, and above the healers is a nice place to be in case you were wondering. This will also help you decide whether or not you should Feign Death and let the DK that has been beating you on Recount have the mob, or just taking the hit so the Druid right below you on Omen doesn’t catch the aggro you just dropped at their feet. RatingBuster : Trying to decide whether or not you’ll really benefit from an item drop because it has 3 more agility than your current piece of gear can be frustrating. RatingBuster will give you a very simple breakdown of the gears benefit versus your current gear. It’s a tremendous help in determining whether or not it is really an upgrade, or just a sidegrade. Trying to maintain your hit cap, crit rating and RAP is effortless with this addon. It even takes enchants and gems into account when displaying the benefit of an item. UI Mods Spartan UI : If you are in the market for a very clean looking UI that eliminates screen clutter and places everything in the same general location for easier viewing, then look no further. I recently made the switch to SpartanUI, and quite frankly, I love it. Spartan organizes your action bars, character, pet, and party frames on the bottom of the screen so you can actually see the game instead of all of your different addons. Customization can be a little confusing, but this addon works great right out of the box. My only real complaint with it was the lack of included raid frames, and the default Spartan buff display. I remedied both of these problems by using Xperl raid frames, and installing the CT_Buffmod (which has to be downloaded directly from the CT_Mod website, as it is not hosted on Curse.com). If you are worried about Spartan conflicting with add-ons you already have installed, you should be fine. At last count I had about 87 addons that I use across all of my toons and the only conflict I really ran into was SexyMap not agreeing with Spartan, but even that problem was corrected with minimal effort. X-Perl : Xperl is probably one of the most popular UI mods on the market. I originally started using it because of the animated character frames, and only after installing it did I realize what a great mod it truly was. The customization options offered by Xperl are very extensive, giving you control of the appearance of just about everything on your screen. It also comes preloaded with some useful features such as cast bars, raid warnings, and a number of other bells and whistles. So there you have it, my top add-on and UI mod recommendations. I realize there are a lot more add-ons out there that may be better than the ones I’ve reviewed here. I’d also like to point out that I’ve used more UI mods than SpartanUI and Xperl, but these are the two I found to be the most useful. Most of the others that I tried were very similar to Xperl. I’m going to toy around with PitBull and a few other UI mods and probably cover them in a future post. These are just add-ons that I have used firsthand (with the exception of ShotAndAwe) that I’ve found very easy to configure, are very functional, and don’t drain your system resources and drag down you game. If you have any suggestions that I failed to mention don’t be afraid to drop me a comment or an email and let me know about them and I’ll check them out. This Post From: The Hunter’s Mark .

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