Mod Configuration: Watcher

In the Burning Crusade, hunters needed one button.  In my case, it was the 3 button, and you would laugh at the difficulties that caused.  I actually bound that action bar button to a fourth button on my mouse, and I would alternate between pressing that button with my right thumb and pressing "3" with right and left index fingers.  Oh my god I hated long fights in the blistering and cramping they caused.  I actually in large part loved Archimonde (even though melee destroyed me on the meters) because it gave me so much extra stuff to do.

Thankfully, those days are behind us, and hunters actually use a few different buttons these days.  This, of course, introduced some new difficulties of its own.  When I first came back to the game and did a Naxx10, I stared at the timers on my action bars and tried to manage a Survival priority system with nothing else.  I actually managed 3k DPS on Patch10 wearing BoE 80 blues and 70 raid gear, which isn't terrible, but the more I raided that way, the more I hated it.  I didn't actually do anything to fix it, though, until I saw my boyfriend setting up his UI to play offspec ret on his holydin.  He found this mod - and I can't remember what it was called - where he set up a simple priority list.  Then the mod would display a large icon of which ability he should be using at that second, with a smaller icon to the right of the next ability he would be using.  If a higher priority ability came off of cooldown during the global cooldown (or rare cast time), the "on deck" icon would change.

It was an epiphany, and the second he finished showing me how it worked, I went back to my computer to find something similar.  The eyestrain-eliminating mod I found was Watcher.

I'll begin by quickly summarizing what the mod is intended to do.  It's pretty simple: first, you set your own shot priorities in the mod's configuration screens.  Then it shows you when those abilities are going to come off of cooldown in an intuitive, scrolling timeline fashion.  It also prioritizes them according to your settings, stacking lower priorities behind higher priorities.  Here's a shot of the mod in action:

Here's what you're seeing in this screen shot:

• The dark gray vertical bar to the right is where abilities will "stack up".  When an ability's icon reaches this bar, it's off cooldown.
• The light gray horizontal bar on the bottom is the timeline.  This counts down your cooldowns for you.  I have it set to go out 6 seconds, so I have time to plan what I'm going to do.
• The icons for Chimera and Aimed Shot are showing how far out those abilities are.  CS will be available in 1.8 seconds, while AiS will be available in 2.6.  The global cooldown is 1.5s, so the rule to follow is: "don't fire a steady shot if you've got a high-priority ability 1.5 seconds or fewer away".
• You can also see that CS is "behind" AiS, which indicates that Aimed is a higher priority ability.  In this case, however, I would probably choose to go with CS - CS actually does more damage, Aimed's priority is higher because, over the course of a long fight, you're hoping to outweigh lost Chimera Shots with gained Aimed Shots.  If AiS is .8s behind CS, though, I'm just going to use CS.

Next, a shot of the first configuration screen:

Here's what you're seeing in this one, leaving out the self-explanatory stuff:

• "Bar Scale" is set to 1 because I liked the default size, but you could scale it up and down to make the whole thing bigger or smaller without changing the length of time shown on the timeline.
• "Alpha" is another word for transparency.  An alpha of "1" is completely opaque, while an alpha of "0" is completely transparent.  I chose an alpha of .5 so it's easy to see, but doesn't obscure the screen behind it.  I've since chosen to set "Background Alpha" to 0, since I only care about the timeline and ability icons.
• "Max Time" is the number of seconds out the timeline will go.  I've found six to be a good fit for me, but experimentation can't hurt.
• "Interval", as far as I can tell, sets the first time mark.  Since 1.5s is the length of the GCD, that's what I've chosen.
• I use Quartz to watch my swing timer and GCD, so I have them disabled here.

And the last shot:

Here's the all-important screen where you set your shot priorities, so there's no bulleted list here.  I've chosen a Survival list here, just because it illustrates how things work better.  I've got Kill Shot as my top priority, because it does more damage than anything else.  Explosive, as my primary damaging ability, is second.  Black Arrow, as my source of LnL procs, edges out AiS, since Aimed is just not very important to SV damage while BA is.  Last listed is AiS.

I've left two things off of this list: Serpent Sting and Steady Shot.  The reason is that neither of these abilities have cooldowns, so they just clutter up the timeline.  I monitor SrS with Quartz and fire Steadies whenever nothing else is available.

I'm sure you've noticed I haven't touched several of the options screens.  I played with the labels and keybind settings, and they do what you'd expect: put extra text on the icons.  If, to use the SV example above, I set the label for my fourth priority as "AiS," then that text would appear in the middle of the icon on the timeline.  The keybind screens are just the same: in my case, AiS is bound to "6", so I would enter 6 for the fourth priority for the primary spec.  Then the icon would have a "6" in the middle when it was visible on the timeline.  I didn't really find either of these options helpful, so I elected not to use them.  Like, I know what the Aimed Shot icon is and I know I've bound to 6, right? I don't really see the point, but maybe those options are good for you. Spell Settings is there for you to add custom spells to the mod, since as you saw, you set your priorities from dropdowns.  As the mod is no longer updated, this screen should hopefully extend its life a bit.

Anyway, this should be enough information to get you up and running with the mod.  As always, I'd be happy to answer any questions about it, about priorities, or anything else!  I would also be more than thrilled if anyone could link in a comment or email me their alternative ability watching mods, especially ones that support priority systems.  If you've got a mod you use and love for this purpose, please let me know!

UI customization

Very few raiders keep the default UI, and I'm not one of them. It does a good job at providing new players with most of the information they'll need for leveling and even instances, but tends to fall apart once the player reaches endgame. It doesn't make the information you need readily available, while it displays a lot of extraneous information in ways that obscure the visual field. There are a lot of mods out there, though, and simply going to curse and trying to build a UI from scratch without any familiarity with the possibilities is an intimiating prospect. So I'm going to post a picture of my UI in a raid so you can see what decisions I've made and why, and what mods I used to get the results I wanted.

First, here's a sized-down version of the screenshot:

And here's a list of the mods in the screenshot:

1. SLDT
2. Tipsy
3. Satrina Buff Frames
4. SexyMap
5. Scrolling Combat Text + Scrolling Combat Text Damage
6. Pitbull4
7. Watcher
8. Quartz
9. Chatter
10. Bartender4 + ButtonFacade
11. DoTimer
12. Omen
13. Grid

Now I'll go down the list and explain briefly why I chose each mod and what it does for me, starting with:

1. SLDT stands for "Simple Light Data Text", and is the most compact way I've found to easily and intuitively track a couple things. It's highly configurable and has many more modules available than I actually use, like bag space and FPS monitors. It displays more information upon mousing over one of its elements, such as the "Guild: 33" text. When you mouse over that text, a simple, scrollable list of everyone online in your guild appears, along with their rank, location, etc. You can click on a name to whisper that person or alt-click to invite them to a group. Mousing over durability displays a dropdown of the percentage durability left on each item slot. So easy!

2. Tipsy is a tiny, intuitive mod to move your tooltip around your screen. With all the other moving around of things that the other mods did, I needed to move my tooltips to keep them from obscuring other things.

3. Satrina Buff Frames, or SBF, is an easy way to configure display of buffs and debuffs. As you can see, I've configured my buffs to be smaller and and half-transparent, because that's good enough to check them before the pull, but keeps them from getting too distracting as they multiply and overwrite each other during an attempt. Debuffs, on the other hand, are big and bright, so the second I get something like Mark of the Faceless I know to disengage away, get out of the fire, etc.

4. SexyMap lets you resize your map, move it around, control which buttons display on it and when, anchor it or hide it, or make it sexier with cool glowing blue borders (not pictured).

5. Scrolling Combat Text (SCT) in combination with SCTD lets you define which sorts of events (heals received, heals cast, debuffs or buffs gained, reactive abilities activated) go to which of three "frames". I have Frame 1 display most of the stuff that happens (heals received, energy gains, damage taken, buffs gained) displayed to the left, in an upward scrolling curved hud configuration. I also use reduced opacity to keep it from being too much in the way - I mostly glance over at it to see if I'm, for example, getting mana gains from Judgement of Wisdom. Damage out goes to the right, and debuff gains scroll a message right under my feet in a larger font and at full opacity (again, great for things like Mark of the Faceless).

6. Pitbull4 is an example of what are termed "raid frames". Once more, I've elected to disable most of the mod's functionality. I choose to display my healthbar, my pet's healthbar, my target, and my target-of-target. I also have the focus frame enabled, and it appears above Grid to the right side of my screen when I have a focus target set.

7. Watcher is an ability timer. As abilities come off of cooldown they scroll from the right to the left, then stack up in order of highest priority first. When I took the screenshot, both aimed and arcane shot were off of cooldown. Aimed is displayed in front of arcane because it's a higher priority. This mod is great for two reasons. The most obvious is that it saves my eyes from staring at the teensy-tiny buttons on my action bars. The second, less obvious one, relates to steady shot's cast time. Steady shot does less damage than anything else I could do and, under raid buffs, it frequently has a cast time about the length of the global cooldown. So if casting a steady shot will delay a much more valuable arcane or chimera shot, I'll just wait the half a second or second and fire the other shot.

8. Quartz is, mostly, a castbar and swing timer mod. Sadly, I didn't choose the time of my screenshot ideally, or you'd be able to see the very large, obvious castbar displayed when my target is casting something. Very, very many bosses in the game cast or channel something as a warning that they're about to use one of their abilities requiring a specific reaction (Brundir's overload, Mimiron's laser barrage, Yogg's lunatic gaze), so I've made it very easy to see and respond to those abilities. I have a second, smaller castbar above that one for myself. Attached my castbar's location are my debuffs on the boss. This is more important for Survival hunters than it is for Marksman hunters, but it's still good to have an easy place to check to make sure serpent sting is on the boss. You don't see hunter's mark there because the other hunter in the raid has improved hunter's mark, so we both do more damage if I don't overwrite his.

9. Chatter just lets me resize and reconfigure my chatbox. Nothing too exciting!

10. Bartender 4 is a highly configurable actionbar/menu bar mod. It lets you resize, move, and change the configuration of your action bars, as well as hide and display them. I have my pet bar hidden, my mini-menu hidden but available on mouseover in the lower left corner of my screen, and my main action bars scaled down so they don't take up quite so much room. I also use Button Facade to reskin my buttons to make them a little prettier. This mod is especially nice because it works with Satrina Buff Frames too!

11. DoTimer, as the name implies, is mostly designed to watch your dots. It also, however, can watch your cooldowns, which is what I use it for. You can move it around, resize the bars, change the style of the bars, and configure the abilities that appear in a couple different ways. You can either have it display everything and then selectively block abilities, or you can set it up like I have, with a "whitelist." That means I list specifically the abilities that I want to know about. This mod helps me make sure I get the maximum use out of my cooldowns.

12. Omen threatmeter is an essential for any and every raiding tank or DPSer. Use omen or pull off the tank, die, and wipe the raid.

13. Grid is another, different raid frames addon. More popular with healers than with DPS, I still find it invaluable. From a convenience standpoint, it's excellent for summoning the raid to the instance, and you can also keep an eye on it to get an idea of the raid's average health. Further, as hunters, we can use it to do things like easily Misdirect to the tanks mid-battle or use master's call on a healer rooted in fire.

As you've probably gotten a sense of from my descriptions, my primary goal with my UI is for it to display the information I need in an accessible way without cluttering my screen or making it hard to see when I'm standing in fire. That's why I've made several elements semi-transparent and shifted a lot of the remaining elements to the borders of the screen, leaving the middle as wide-open as possible. Your goals and priorities for your UI may be different, but hopefully this post has given you some starting points so you can build something that works for you.