Poor, poor Warlocks, how you must lament your role as the misunderstood badboys (and girls) of World of Warcraft. Sure, the SL/SL thing seems to work out for you, and Destro locks just can't seem to crit for less than 5k anymore, but if only people knew how hard it is to keep track of so many damned spells.
Truth be told, I love my Warlock, even if he's still terrorizing Azeroth in the forty-ish bracket. However, even by the time I got my Felsteed, I was wondering what to do with all the spells and abilities, I was rarely using some of them and wasn't happy with so many full actionbars. Around the same time, I was beginning to take notice that many Warlocks were saying the oddest things when summoning demons and their mounts. I wondered if there was a group of players taking part in a new "forget leet speak, let's just use grammatically questionable English" movement. I asked one about the random blurbs, and she was kind enough to point me in the direction of Necrosis LdC.
Okay, it was actually Necrosis back then (I need to level my lock...), but the idea has survived the test of time. Necrosis LdC is a circular menu addon that wraps all of your spells and abilities into collapsible menus much like Totemus. (To be fair, Necrosis actually started the whole circular menu thing, the Godfather of Sphere Mods so to say.) It will also manage your Soul Shards, warn you about different procs (Backlash, Shadow Trance), things you can do to your target (Enslave, Banish) or not do (target is immune to fear), and will show you a spell timer to track your DoTs, Soulstone cooldowns and more.
There's more, check in after the requisite break for some tips on using Necrosis LdC.
Nice to see the Summoning worked. Welcome back to our look at Necrosis LdC, the must-have Warlock addon. Now that this little companion addon has cleaned up your actionbars, you may be wondering about some of its bells and whistles.
To access the Necrosis LdC menu, you can right click the sphere, while out of combat, which opens a multi-tabbed interface. You can peruse most of the menus, they are fairly self-explanatory. However, I have a few things I always do when I re-install my addons and fire up Necrosis LdC.
- I turn off the random "speeches" (People get tired of hearing it, honestly)
- In the "Miscellanious" tab
- Select "Put shards in the selected bag"
- Select the bag number that coincides with my shard container
- Select "Destroy all new shards if the bag is full"
- In the "Button Settings" tab, I select "Automatically display menus while in combat"
- This is like having extra actionbars pop up when you need them
- I use the main sphere for Life Tap, which is configured in the "Sphere Settings" tab
This addon hides some of the very situation specific abilities, but still gives them to me in combat. I like the efficiency and unique interface of Necrosis LdC. So, how about it people? Is this a go amongst you Warlocks? If not, what are you using to manage your huge number of carnage options? Check this gadget out if you haven't, and, as always, let me know your thoughts on it. Dismissed!
Are you an addon-addict? Is your User Interface a living work of art? Welcome home, my friends! Every week, Addon Spotlight profiles a different addon, brings you mod-related news and dishes out free addon advice. See out what's been said and done in the addon community by checking out past features or our addon and UI directory.
Subscribe
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
5-04-2008 @ 3:14PM
Tran said...
I've used Necrosis LdC and its forerunners since they first came on the scene and I can never go back! Someone pointed me in the direction of the Forte Warlock suite and while it certainly looked good it was (a) too difficult to configure and (b) didn't do as good a job as necrosis. The only thing I don't use necrosis for is the timers, which I use dotimer for so that my screen looks a little bit cleaner.
All in all, Necrosis ftw!
Reply
5-04-2008 @ 3:17PM
Tran said...
(Oh, and being a keyboard heavy user, I don't use the 'Curse' button for dots, I mash some keys :))
5-05-2008 @ 7:12AM
Thijz said...
Me neither, I use Necrosis on my lock but I only use it to do buffs and spells I barely use.
5-04-2008 @ 3:57PM
Tutunkommon said...
I have used Necrosis for quite some time. I don't use any of the spell menus however. I use it simply for shard management, demon and steed summoning. All my spells are mapped to my keyboard, and I honestly cannot imagine trying to click the icons during battle.
Reply
5-04-2008 @ 4:23PM
Yaimano said...
Ditto, except my mount button is mapped to a macro too (flyable, noflyable). I couldn't live without it for managing shards, calling demons and some smaller things like nightfall proc alerts, though.
5-04-2008 @ 4:25PM
anon said...
i have to say that i've tried to get on board with necrosis but found that it is just too flashy, too bulky, and provides very little in terms of actual aid to warrant using it.
Shard bags now track how many shards are in it, and DoTimer handles tracking dots in a much more effecient manner. All in all I have to say that this is addon is all flash and little substance.
Reply
5-04-2008 @ 5:51PM
Acceptable Risk said...
Agreed. Necrosis is an ugly bastard. I don't know why anyone else adopted the sphere layout. It splays itself all over the screen with tiny buttons that are hard to click but still manage to get in the way.
I used to use Necrosis way back in the day because it was one of the only things that would track and sort shards reliably. Plus the Nightfall notification was moderately handy. Now those things are built right into the default UI and I can get the rest of the functionality through macros or lighter, more attractive addons.
5-04-2008 @ 4:35PM
Aaron said...
I prefer ShardAce from wowace, good shard management, announcements for soulstone/soulwell/summoning and a popout menu for minion summoning :)
Reply
5-05-2008 @ 8:39AM
Swiss said...
After trying many of the different warlock-centric addon solutions, I found myself sticking with ShardAce. It's lightweight, doesn't take up valuable screen space, it's easy to configure, and less-used spells are only a button click away (hides / shows these spells with a button press).
I highly recommend this addon.
5-04-2008 @ 4:53PM
Reinard said...
Alternatively, for other classes (or for the really picky warlock that likes to be able to customize *everything*), I like LunarSphere :)
Website here: http://moongazeaddons.proboards79.com/index.cgi?board=lunarsphere
I'm not sure if it's on Curse or any other addonsite, too lazy to look, but I think that's the main website x) It's highly customizable and works for every class.
Reply
5-09-2008 @ 10:15PM
George said...
Ah; I LOVE lunarsphere- I use Necrosis for my 'locks, since it is specialized for 'em and works beautifully, and Lunarsphere for everyone else... Excellent sphere mod!
5-04-2008 @ 4:54PM
TonyMotorola said...
If you need shard management and not all the other trash that comes with necrosis, free up some ram and get eeshards or shardace from wowace.
Reply
5-04-2008 @ 5:12PM
Meyl said...
I used to use Necrosis. It used to be indispensable. I know a lot of locks still swear by it.
But other than its circular interface, its other functions have now been largely replaced by the timer mod of your choice and the in-game interface.
DoTimer is better for tracking DoTs and cooldowns, IMO. And as others have said, shard bags now track how many shards are in them. (If you overflow your shard bag, you have to manually destroy the excess, but that's not a big deal to me.)
The rest is superfluous. Mount speeches? Cute at first, but they quickly become irritating. Summoning and Soulwell announcements? Not necessary. I could easily make a quick macro to announce those events if I wanted. Nightfall proc announcements? Black sparkles around me and a distinctive sound already. Fear immunities? I don't get surprised by them very often.
These days, whether Necrosis is really useful to you depends largely on whether you like using the circle and popout menus for combat. I don't, so I uninstalled Necrosis and don't miss it...
...well, except for scaring the heck out of my hubby with the demonic voice yelling, "Your Soulstone has expired!" That's *almost* worth re-installing it. :-D
Reply
5-04-2008 @ 5:22PM
Aaron said...
I also want to give a slap to the developer whose idea it was to make dreadsteed summoning announce in yells. Gah that's retarded and annoying.
5-05-2008 @ 12:37PM
harywilke said...
i used necrosis for about a year, bur recently gave it up because it was taking up too much space and most of the things i was using it for had found their way into other mods that i was already using.
Autobar for mount/pets/stones
Quartz for dot timers (doesn't track multiple mobs though)
Bongos keep track of number of shards on my action bar
the one thing that i do miss is the big bad voice ominously warning that 'Your soulstone has expired!' I've noticed that i've become a bit slack on putting them up now >
5-04-2008 @ 5:28PM
Eternalpayn said...
Ooh, Cozumel's fun, I was there for spring break.
Reply
5-04-2008 @ 6:49PM
NeSuKuN said...
This is another dinosaur of the addons, highly outdated and buggy. Yeah sure 90% of the warlocks have used/uses it but it's because if you want all the functionality it provides you'll need 10+ addons.
Reply
5-05-2008 @ 10:46AM
xanielyene said...
I think the addon should have alot of its bells and whistles cut off, down to just the action bars.
The circular interface is very stylish and popular, and it should be modified to work for any class and spec so more people may enjoy it.
5-05-2008 @ 2:44AM
Preston said...
To be honest, I mock people who yell out "I am summoning a steed from nightmare!!" Necrosis was one of the first addons I ever used, and one of the first I uninstalled.
Reply
5-05-2008 @ 3:57PM
patrick said...
I use it but I disabled all the speeches, don't really click on anything on it and for the most part what I love is the audible nightfall warning which I can't miss if there's a lot of chatter in vent. I use the dottimers it gives as well but perhaps I should consider an alternative. New comp coming in this week, been holding off on too much changing around until I get it up and running so I don't have to go through the process twice.