Clean 2: Too Clean?
This is the second post about my current UI. In the last post, I went through some justifications for my unit frames, which I think are easily the most important visual element of any UI. I’ve added a few elements to this screenshot which I will discuss.
Differences
There are three major differences between this screenshot and the last, and by “major differences” I mean “differences.” Action bar, cast bar, buff representation. I think these three represent the second “phase” of UI construction after the unit frames. While this screenshot isn’t that informative (and in fact is just a copy/paste on to the old screenshot), I can talk about how awesome everything is.
Cast Bar
The cast bar placement is more or less a relic of my days as a warrior, but I honestly can’t think of a better place to put them. The player cast bar is under the player frame. I find I don’t need spell text OR cast time – it reduces numeral clutter and draws an immediate visual distinction between the target cast bar and the player bar without requiring distracting color combinations. As for the target cast bar, I like to know target casts for interrupts or preparation for boss abilities. Though I must say that I find myself using that cast bar less and less in raiding situations and relying on boss mods more and more.
There’s something wrong with the player bar texture in this screenshot, but they’re both Hal A (the rest of the UI is Hal K). Again, visual difference while keeping stylistic coherence. The unfilled parts of the bars are transparent, and match the slim black border around the unit frames.
Action Bars
I was a little rushed in putting this screenshot together, so please just ignore the Dr. Damage text on the action bars – I don’t display it because it’s borderline useless and is easily found in the tooltip. Anyway, I have three other action bars which are mouse-over only, which contain buffs and incidental things I have keybound and don’t care about (mount macro) or click very rarely (potions).
I use my action bars to monitor cooldowns in addition to the global cooldown. The static positioning of the cooldown text is far superior to any other method of monitoring cooldowns (more info here). Essentially I can’t justify creating a different element to display information which can easily and clearly be shown on an existing element. The action bas aren’t just cooldown monitors, they also show distance in a more meaningful way than either PitBull or Grid, and help monitor other conditionals (i.e. enough mana to use an ability or hand lockout).
Buffs/Minimap
I honestly don’t care about them at all, except when I have to ABSOLUTELY know something and then they’re there. It’s more out of habit than some design justification. For those two elements in particular, I find “out of the way” to be the best justification imaginable.
Self-buffs are only really important in a few contexts, and if I were any kind of designer I’d set up custom SBF containers to show those close to the unit-frames. Thankfully, that type of notification is replicated by my boss mod so I am spared the otherwise miserable task of setting up conditionals in SBF.
I’m still working on setting everything up to my liking, but the next screenshot will be the final and will be “real” in that I won’t wipe out the background and it will show 100% of everything I see in a raiding environment.
