Welcome to another installment of Addon Spotlight, the quiet home of mod enthusiasts amongst the whirlwind of breaking news that is WoW Insider. Reader Kyle "strongly" suggested that I profile Talented, an addon that replaces your talent interface and opens up some extended features for talent planning.
Considering the tone of his suggestion, I would venture to say that Kyle has grown frustrated by his fellow players' tendency to screw up their builds or they're taking too long to respec. This can, indeed, become an issue when one is respeccing for raiding, arenas and different roles for hybrids.
This is where Talented, and its companion Talented_Data, can save you time and a little money if you're prone to selecting the wrong talents when you're in a hurry. This addon allows you to build talent templates, which can be applied via one click after a talent wipe. I do this when I switch from a PvE Retribution spec to Holy for progression nights or arenas. I have to say, it helps reduce the risk of mistakes, which can leave me free to spend more time remembering to grab the correct gear out of the bank.
Amid the madness of yesterday's patch, there has been some desperate drama happening in the official UI & Macros Forums. It seems the massively popular leveling addon QuestHelper has encountered some troubles, with many users not able to use their beloved quest... helper.
As with many crossroads in life, this presents an opportunity to consider a change, or at least a reason to try something else out while the developer of QuestHelper figures out the disconnect. Some time ago, I stopped using the memory-hogging giant in favor of one of Tekkub's creations. TourGuide may very well be Tekkub's greatest mod to date. It serves much the same function as QuestHelper, but it takes a different approach, one that doesn't eat up nearly as much memory. To me, it was sort of like selling my huge truck for a fast, agile Subaru. (Which I did in RL, yay!)
I've been promising to profile this bad boy for a couple of months now, as I've yet to finish my own work on it, but I felt like you all needed an alternative. Besides, you may end up swearing by TourGuide like I do, it was more my style. (I've been working on a guide for TourGuide, but my day job has been bogging me down.)
TourGuide is more akin to a traditional leveling guide than the so-called smart system of QuestHelper. With the "helper", I felt like I wasn't doing quests in the right order, at the right level and that I was missing out on some great quest chains.
Today I thought we'd look at an addon that many guilds require their paladins to use. To be honest, I'd never really understood why until I transitioned to 25-man content. Coordinating blessings with one other paladin (our Karazhan runs rarely had more than two paladins.) was never complicated, but when you've got three or more paladins, it can get messy and can waste valuable raid time.
As my guild continues its efforts in The Eye and Serpent Shrine Cavern, I've found myself somewhat frustrated by paladins who don't use this one. Granted, I was that guy until recently, thinking that because ZOMG Buffs played nice with buff assignments via PallyPower, that I was good to go. Now suddenly I'm taking a more active role in buff assignments and realize that like Omen, Healbot and logging for WWS, the more players using a utility, the better.
Welcome to another installment of Addon Spotlight. Today I thought I'd present you with four addons that make minor changes to your UI while providing little or no additional functionality. Call these vanity addons if you like, although you may find one or more of them actually useful.
In the spirit of the holiday weekend (for those of us in the U.S.), I thought I would start with some color-oriented addons. I use these almost entirely for the sheer joy of some more bright colors on the screen, but I as I always say, having a quick visual reference to information adheres to the simple but powerful UI philosophy that less is more.
oGlow is a very simple addon that does one thing, it lights up the icon border of an item with the color matching it's quality. As my paladin's character pane shows, epic items are brightly lit with a purple border, rare items are blue and green items are green. (Okay, no green items there, but you get the point.) I think I replaced that green item with my Medallion of the Horde last week, am I supposed to get a pen for being green-free or something? The only real use I have gotten from this, aside from a pretty glow, is being able to quickly assess another player's gear while inspecting them. I would like to think I am able to tell this by just looking at them, but I like to snoop anyway.
Ladies and gentlemen, I rarely get very excited about new addons, but OPie has revolutionized my UI in a way that absolutely fits with my clutter-free mindset. Ultimately, as I test addons, only a few end up being a permanent part of my gameplay. I can't necessarily promise OPie will stay, but it's looking like such an innovative mod that I may just come to rely on it.
We've discussed both Totemus and Necrosis here at Addon Spotlight, and praised the way they wrap things into a neat little package. OPie does the same thing, but to an extent that not only are your spells hidden until you need them, but they can be easily integrated with a minimalist play-style.
What OPie does is take spells, items, trade-skills and macros and creates virtual rings for them to reside in. By assigning a keybinding, one can simply press a button and have a quick menu (a ring) appear on the screen, which will cast a spell, use an item or a macro based on where the mouse is hovering in relation to the ring.
Welcome to the Father's Day edition of Addon Spotlight. I honestly tried to think about an addon that would match the holiday theme for all of thirty seconds before deciding to just write about an addon I've found to very useful. (Although perhaps you got your Dad some tools, or your Dad is a tool, so take it for what its worth.)
TipTac is a tooltip mod that adds a load of features to the little informative frames that appear when you hover over characters and objects in the game. As I've implied before, I enjoy quick and easy visual references to important information. This includes a character's class, health and reaction. (in the case of NPC's)
TipTac provides another way to discern details; a redundancy I embrace for the sake of easy targeting and planning.
It's Friday, which means that it's payday for some of you. With that in mind, why don't we take a look at an addon that helps you stay on top of your virtual finances. For those of us who are not only information junkies, but also control freaks, this addon is a great way to maintain sovereignty over how your gold comes and goes.
AuditorFu, contrary to what the name implies, will function with or without the Fubar addon. However, I find it best suited as a center-aligned, top-bar, Fubar mod, as it allows me to see the important stuff at center stage. (Alongside AuldLangSyne) There's nothing worse than having an inflated view of your gold total and quickly realizing the mats for your Red Belt of Battle are out of reach.
The good news is that this addon can help you be more diligent if you're saving for a crafted epic or your Artisan Riding skill. Every copper counts, my friends.
Welcome to a special "maintenance day" edition of Addon Spotlight. Today, we're going to take a look at one more Hunter specific mod, wrapping up my week of hunter love. Thus far, we've taken a (another) look at Fizzwidget's Feed-O-Matic and some off-the-beaten-path macros. I'm going to, once again, feature an addon that integrates macros into the major functionality and one written by my favorite developer: the ever-candid Tekkub.
True to form, Tekkub wrote this addon to be simple, efficient and easy to use. The aptly named Fuzzy Logic is a macro-based addon that will react differently based on the current status of you and your pet. As with many of Tekkub's Random Crap, this addon works with pretty much no memory footprint, and very little setup required.
What I love most about this type of addon is how much they add to my own gameplay while asking so little in return. I use this, amongst others, so often during my daily grind (when I get around to rolling my Hunter), that I can't imagine life without them. In a sense, Fuzzy Logic has become part of my own "default UI".
Come on back after the jump for Tekkub's description and how to configure this one. (Just for you, Tekkub)
It's been awhile since we talked about Gazmik Fizzwidget's little trinkets. As I promised in this week's Macro Anatomy, here is an addon designed specifically for Hunters and their pets. Feed-O-Matic handles feeding your pet, automating the process of opening your bag, finding food and stuffing into your pets face. The part I find most useful is the reminder it creates for feeding my hungry wolf. I've configured the addon to create an emote when I feed my pet, just so everyone knows how humane I am in my treatment of a pet I ask to fight on my behalf. (Ironic I know, but it helps me sleep at night.)
You can configure this addon to avoid foods needed for quests, anything that provides a "Well-Fed" buff and/or is used for Cooking recipes. You have complete control over what food your pet is allowed to eat, through a series of slash commands, so with just a bit of configuration Feed-O-Matic can streamline the entire process.
Come back after the break for some tips on setting up your new pet-feeding addon.
Ever wanted to make your mark in the WoW community? Want to see your handiwork featured in our Reader UI of the Week? Or maybe you've always dreamed of an frameset with a Hello Kitty theme?
Well, WoWInterface's new raffle might just give you that chance. WoWInterface is an addon download site, brought to you by the parent company that runs Allakhazam, Thottbot, and Wowhead. They announced yesterday in their forums that every Sunday for the next five weeks they'll be raffling off two copies of World of Warcraft Programming: A Guide and Reference for Creating WoW Addons.
And, no, it's not some dusty old tome they are trying to unload because Mom wants them to clean up their rooms. The book was published May 5, 2008, less than a month ago. It normally lists for $39.99, so this is a great way to get started on your new addon-writing career and save some money at the same time. Or just get something for free and make some stuff.
The best part is, even though the book's authors are addon pros James Whitehead II, Matthew Orlando and Bryan McLemore, this book is written in such a way that you need no programming knowledge to get started writing your own WoW addons. To enter the raffle, all you need to do is register for a WoW Interface account and make sure your real email address is on your account. They'll be pulling the winners from the list of members. For more details, see the raffle rules.
Good luck and write some good addons for us to review!
For today's Addon Spotlight, we'll be spending some quality time with an addon that serves one function; to make your UI look very, very pretty. I only recently began using Skinner, as I hadn't ever bothered to change the default skins of my UI. Skinner will apply different backgrounds to the different windows of your UI, from your character sheet to the Auction House interface. It will also handle skinning many of your addons, tying your UI into a neat, attractive package.
You have the option to skin just about any part of your UI, as well as creating background panels on the top or bottom of your screen. When I don't auto-hide Fubar, I like to have it sitting on a gradient-background courtesy of Skinner.
There is also an option to create a viewport, which changes the size of the rendered world, allowing you to put UI elements outside of it. There are a number of options and ways to configure this one, so check back after the break.
Warlocks, it's time for you to get some love. In this week's Addon Spotlight we're going to take a look at lock-centric addon. One of the first things I noticed when I started playing my warlock was that I had a hard time remembering which abilities my demons had trained on. I thought it was interesting that Blizzard opted to make demon training a unique system, as opposed to skill training at your class trainer or even pet training for Hunters. Cool! I can teach my blueberry about sacrificing itself via a grimoire, the ultimate in fel magic publications.
Then came the caveat; I bought this damned pamphlet on Seduction, used it, and now the merchant didn't save my purchase records like any other bookseller! I didn't expect him to suggest other grimoires I might enjoy based on my interest, but come on! I am aware that I can burn through some shards to summon each of my demons to check at the trainer, but what a waste! There had to be an easier way.
Then I discovered Grimoire Keeper, an addon that aids budding demon-wranglers in remembering which abilities, and ranks thereof, their demons already have. Keep reading to discover it for yourself.
Greetings, folks, I have returned from my vacation, and the hiatus that followed. (Vacation to recover from vacation? Madness!) Today, we're going to take a look at an alternative navigation tool, an addon that provides some of the functionality found in the Cartographer suite. (We've talked about Cartographer before.)
TomTom is a mod that provides a few simple features that can supplement your adventures, especially while leveling. Combined with Lightheaded, (We've also talked about Lightheaded before.) TomTom can shave time off your travels between quest objectives.
The primary purpose of TomTom is to facilitate the creation and use of waypoints. Using this feature gives a player the option to have a Crazy Taxi-like arrow displayed that will guide them towards their waypoint. Combined with Lightheaded, which can be used to find coordinates for quest objectives via user comments on Wowhead, this addon can let you bounce between quest objectives with a minimum of wasted time and travel.
Unfortunately, it cannot be used to auto-run your character, so you can forget about grabbing a sandwich on your way to Marshall's Refuge. TomTom will also display a coordinate frame that gives a quick visual reference to your current location.
There is more to see, come back after the break to get your addon fix for the day.
Sean is diving, sunning himself and trying to drink all the cervezas in Cozumel this week, so don't feel bad if he doesn't respond to emails and comments. He'll be back in action next week, fresh and ready to re-join the Addon Army's battle for the perfect User Interface!
Welcome to this installment of Addon Spotlight! Today, we're going to take a look at another of Tekkub's addons. I've being singing his praises for weeks now, but don't worry, he's not paying me to do this. I enjoy his addons as they are simple, sleek and highly functional. Besides, eventually I will have written about all of his work, or perhaps not.
So, today we're talking about Steal Your Carbon, a reagent stocking addon. Here is how to get started; open the config window by using this command:
/syc
Once you're in the window, drag an item from your inventory into the little box. Then use the arrows to tell the addon what amount of said item you would like to stock. I use the "Overstock Items" option to make sure I always have enough of whatever item I am stocking. There is also a great feature that enables the addon to upgrade water automatically. For example, if you've been restocking Moonberry Juice, Steal Your Carbon will automatically update and stock Morning Glory Dew when you ding 45. This is a simple matter of selecting the "Upgrade water" option.
There's a couple more features, come on in the check them out.
Sean is diving, sunning himself and trying to drink all the cervezas in Cozumel this week, so don't feel bad if he doesn't respond to emails and comments. He'll be back in action next week, fresh and ready to join the Addon Army's battle for the perfect User Interface!
Today I'm going to feature an addon that I've been using for a long time, but often overlook because it's so simple. It's certainly one of those "fire and forget" addons that you can install and will start functioning right away. I originally downloaded this one on a whim, without suspecting its potential. OmniCC will add a text cooldown counter to item and spell icons. Simple, right? That's all it does really, nothing fancy, barely any memory use and the ability to have a very easy visual cue to manage your cooldowns. I find this especially helpful when I'm trying to manage cooldowns on my paladin, but having two level 70 paladins might make me biased.
Once you install this, you can access its options menu by using of two commands:
/occ
/omnicc
There are a number of options you can fidget with, from font size to colors and scaling. However, I have yet to mess with these, I find this addon works right out of the box.
Although there is a simple visual cue to cooldowns in the default UI, I found that having big numbers on the spell icon, counting down for me, helps to time things. Combined with the swing timer from Quartz, I rarely miss an opportunity to cast a spell or use a cooldown. (Except in the Arena, where I am apparently the food of choice for every class)
That's it folks, short and sweet, check out OmniCC for your cooldown needs. 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.
Welcome to another installment of 
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