Hi. I tank. I've tried moving UI elements like unit frames closer to the center, but they haven't helped me. Actually, they've made it harder. I've also tried "heads-up display" addon. Same thing.

The problem is that moving all the activity to the center of the screen gives me tunnel vision. It takes more work to refocus from the mob on the center of my screen, to the elements on my screen that told me, for example, what my health was, than it was to get used to screen scanning patterns that take my focus from one corner to the next.

Our motion acuity is in our peripheral vision. Checking my health at the upper left doesn't detract from my situational awareness; I can sense the activity at the center of the screen better, in fact.

Maybe it's just me, maybe it's habit, but my UI has gone thru several short-lived evolutions trying to get it work, and I've decided that clustering everything at the center just doesn't work for me.

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What mod are you using for the curved health bars in the middle of the screen?

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Hey Adam,

As a Tankadin, I probably need all the tanking help I can get. So I'm interested, but I can't click on your image to see the higher res version. Thanks!

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I'm a pally tank and I also found that moving mission critical information together and to the bottom really helped. The use of a hud was also very useful and improved my performance. I still haven't perfected my cooldown management however.

Now if only I could find that spell reflect button!

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Think you are on to something. I have build up a UI quite similar to yours, the basic idea at least. What i would suggest was either to moove your bag and micro menu to the bottom of the screen - or even better get Titan panel or Fubar, to get rid of all the stuff on your screen you dont need for combat. And instead put your main action bar to below your target, that should give your eyes even shorter travel distance. :)

Also it might work for you to make a small cluster of healing pots, trinkets etc. in an isolated group. You might have your hotkeys working, but thats a big help to me.

No doubt that manipulating your interface to match your own temper and style is a good idea.

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I build all of my UIs now with a centered design. Even for my low level alts I drag X-Perl into the middle of the screen, and use MetaHUD as well. For my Rogue and Tankadin, my main chaacters, I have my action bars stacked on top of eachother right below that and have scrolling COmbat text as well. The only things on the sides are meters and raid frames and other similar non-essential displays

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As a pali tank I've done something similar, and it helps alot. I'll spare you the life story, but I can multi task better than a female. I've spread the Critical infomation around the screen, forcing me to at least take in the battle if not focus on it. I also group similar spells together so even before my eyes reach it, I can have my mouse heading in the right general area. It also helps to have same abilities on the same keys - judgment is on 1 regardless of what I'm doing(I have a solo/dps bar and a tanking one). Think it similar to battle/beserker/defense stance.

I recommend also learning how to "bar dance". Similar to stance dance, but you ctrl+# to swap the bar, hit the skill and ctrl+# back.. saved me more than once.

For those interested in palitank interfaces... pitbull for the uf's, arcHUD in the middle with a custom set up(mob on the right, focus on the far left and me inbetween), bongos 3 for the bars, elekks buff bars in the bottom right, pally power for the buffs and omen2 in the middle.
http://img404.imageshack.us/img404/9532/wowscrnshot032608224903yu3.jpg

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A couple of suggestions:

1) Your action buttons are keybound anyway, so why do they need to be full size? Shrink those puppies down, then install Jim's Cooldown Pulse so you don't have to look down to see when they come off of cooldown.

2) Using the space freed by action bar shrinkage, you can install Grid and nestle it in down there as well for an at-a-glance look at the condition of the raid and configurable aggro notifiers (in the case of multi-mob fights).

The other thing centralizing your UI allows? Actually being able to SEE the instances you're tanking, rather than spending all of your time swapping between health bars and button cooldowns. ;)

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I've had my UF centered below my character since I discovered that it was way easier to check my rage that way while leveling my warrior to 70. Now I'm tanking the rage is still nice to keep track off and the health bar helps to decide when to pop Last Stand / Shield Wall / HS. My UF Target is to the right of the Player UF and Target of Target to the right of Target. Focus & Target of Focus above those. This enables me to easily stack some sunders on the focussed offtarget by simply hovering over the Focus UF using a mouseover macro. Or in case of more than two mobs, simply mouseover the mob or mob health bar on screen.

macro would look like this:
#showtooltip devastate
/cast [target=mouseover, harm, nodead] [harm] devastate

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Pally tank here.

Download Bongos2 and set up short cut keys for everything you regularly use - for me that is all my seals, spells, heals, special abilities (perception, bandages, divine intervention, etc etc) - then use them and memorise them.

Set those bars to invisible. They still work even if you can't see them. Now you have a lot of real estate free to put your unit frames in.

Put all the other things that are odd or unusual, or that you need to see the amount of (eg greater blessings, trinkets with cooldowns, etc etc) on another bar(s) that is not invisible.

Favor a layout that is like an inverted T. The I part of the T is the part where your eyes naturally focus. Leaving the sides of the screen uncluttered allows your peripheral vision to work and avoids tunnel vision. Westerners prefer to read from the top left to the bottom right - layout your components along the bottom of the screen from the left to the right.

Maintain good situational awareness and avoid information overload. If you are tanking you do not need to see everything, some information (such as the amount of damage you are doing, wether your scored a hit/miss) is not necessary and you can filter it out by disabling those combat text elements. If you find yourself automatically disregarding certain kinds of data, either:

A) It's not important and you should eliminate it (since you are ignoring it anyway!)
B) It's important and other things are getting in the way of you paying attention to it.

Know where you are standing and what your group mates are doing. Get good at using the mouse to move and rotate the camera. Ideally you would get in to a position when tanking that allows you to see the entire party. If you can't, then you will need to occasionally pan the camera around to check up on them to make sure they aren't running out of your taunt range, standing in the lava, etc etc.

Use Buffalo and put your debuffs slightly above and to the right of your HUD. This area will usually be clear so when things appear you will notice them at once. I still haven't figured out a good place to put my buff lists, at the moment they are to the left of my HUD in a long narrow vertical strip.

This works for me - your mileage may vary.

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