Overview

This is Kyth's UI from January 2009. It has since been updated, but a lot of people keep asking for the old version (visible in my Ulduar videos.)

It seems a tad silly to devote a whole page to this, but I get asked often enough that I figured I'd make a nice explanation.
My UI is definitely set up for a caster, not a healer or a tank.
The general guidelines I follow for myself are:

• Centralization of information: the key stuff I need to know *now* should always happen around my character
• Edges for reference: use the edges of my screen for things I will look at less frequently, but still need to know
• Simplicity: I want things attractive, which means not having a gadzillion bells and whistles all at once
• Duplication is okay: I can see low health as my health bar, an MSBT warning, and an aura around my character from PowerAuras -- that's okay, because that's critical information

Instructions

To Download

I can't and won't provide any 'tech support' for my UI, but if you want to download it and go it alone:

Kyth-Fusion-UI-Jan-09.zip

Remember, this UI was compiled in January 2009: you will want to update most or all of the modules.

Unit Frames

Grid

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/grid.aspx

I use Grid to keep an eye on the raid health, on who has aggro, and, with Clique, for decursing. I'm pretty free with dragging the grid frame around. That's its normal "parked" position, but I bring it to the right of my character on fights where I decurse.

The red dots in the upper right corners of the squares denote aggro.

UnderHood

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/under-hood.aspx

I adore this unit frame. It's technically a HUD, but it's so configurable that you can make it look like "normal" unit frames if you want, which is what I have in my UI.

First off, it supports sophisticated fade options. For example, I have mine be completely invisible when I'm OOC and not targeting anything. It's partially faded in if I'm OOC and targetting something, and then fully visible when I'm in combat. This allows for a very clean view when I'm running around town, without feeling awkward because my frames are visible but not the target's, while still being fully functional in combat.

Secondly, it supports creating arbitrary text strings through the use of "dogtags". These are complex, but very very useful and fully customizable. They let you do everything from specifying exactly the text string that you want for health and mana, to far more complex operations.

For example, I use dogtags in an UnderHood text box to show whether my target has CoE, Ebon Plague, or Earth and Moon. If you look *just* to the right of my character on the screenshot (or at the thumbnail to the right here), you'll see "C", "E", and "P" in a vertical row.

That's the output from the following dogtag:

[if HasAura("Curse of the Elements") then "C":Green else "C":Red]
[if HasAura("Earth and Moon") then "E":Green else "E":Red]
[if HasAura("Ebon Plague") then "P":Green else "P":Red]

The "J" is a similar dogtag for Judgment of Wisdom.

I also have a dogtag set up to let me know when my mana is far enough down to make hitting a mana pot worthwhile. I need to edit this for mana gems now that (1) I play a mage, and (2) pots are one-per-fight, but it's still useful to know it's doable:

[if (MissingMP >= 3000) then "Interface\Icons\INV_Potion_137":Icon(24)]

Personal Buffs/Debuffs

ElkanoBuffBars

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/elkbuffbars.aspx

I have heard from a lot of people "ew you use EBB? What a terrible addon, I hate how big the bars are!"

With EBB you get out of it as much as you put work into it.

I have EBB set up a lot of places on my UI. For one, it has a "normal" buffs display in the upper right. Can't see it? That's deliberate! It's almost completely transparent, and it also just shows names + icons. I can mouse over that area to see the effect of an unusual buff though (e.g. something I spellsteal) which is why it's there.

The second place is my debuffs: they're right under my cast bar and big and they show the bars to boot. I can always see when I get a bad debuff on a raid this way and I want to be able to react *quickly*. The one problem with my setup now is that the "Sated" debuff from bloodlust adds one too many debuffs to most fights, and my debuffs scroll up and behind my cast bar. I need to fix that.

The third place is my "short term important buffs" -- that's the tall list of buffs to the right of my minimap. As you see in the video, I haven't done a good job yet of filtering out the myriad of additional buffs I now get in Wrath. But EBB has the capability, and having an area of "short term buffs I care about" is nice: I can easily see the duration left on lust, on a trinket proc, or whether I just got Power Infusion.

The fourth place is my totem area. I have EBB set up to just show the totem buffs on me so I can easily tell when I'm in range of my shaman. That's directly to the top left of my player frame.

BuffEnough

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/buff-enough.aspx

BuffEnough probably wins my personal award for best mod ever. It's part of what allows me to completely ignore my normal buff display.

It looks at the members of your party or raid, decides what buffs it thinks you should have, and then shows you via the color of a square (resizable and movable) whether you have all your buffs (green) or you don't (red.)

You can also have it fade out when you have all your buffs (which is what I do): so when I don't have a buff, I see a big red square I can mouse over to see who is slacking. When I have them all, though, it goes green and then fades over the next 5 seconds, not showing up again on my UI until I'm short a buff.

It'll show yellow if you have a buff fading in 5 minutes (configurable time), and if you mouseover it, it will tell you which one.

You also can configure which specific paladin blessings you prefer, and whether or not you want it to make sure you have consumables up during raids.

Finally, you can shift-rightclick on it and when you're missing a buff, it'll send a tell to that person asking them to rebuff you.

PowerAuras

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/powerauras-classic.aspx

PowerAuras is the king of replacing text with need-to-know graphics, which is key to making a UI that is information rich and yet easy on the eyes.

You can see in the screenshot my "Hotstreak!" proc (something mages get when they crit two nukes in a row that allows them to cast an instant-cast pyroblast), but I use PowerAuras for many other things including showing:

• If I have replenishment right now

• If I have Vigilance from a prot warrior
• If I have bloodlust on me
• If my health is below 75% and...
• Another if my health is below 40%
• If my mana is below 25% and...
• Another if my mana is below 5%
• How many seconds are remaining on my Illustration of the Dragon Soul proc

Spells/Abilities

Quartz

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/quartz.aspx

Quartz has three functions for me:

• It shows my own cast bar with a GCD tick going across the bottom for instant-cast spells.
• It shows my target's cast bar, which appears right above mine but smaller
• It shows my buffs/debuffs on my target

I actually currently use both Quartz and Scorchio to show buffs/debuffs, and that area looks a little messy. The reason is that Scorchio just isn't reliable, but Scorchio tracks living bombs on other targets and scorch better than Quartz does, so right now I need both.

Scorchio

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/scorchio2.aspx

Just a mage mod.

As mentioned in the Quartz section, it misses living bomb and scorch sometimes, so I duplicate its information with Quartz's tracking of my target's debuffs. But I still keep it around because seeing my living bomb just exploded on our off-target lets me know to cast it again, and its multiple-mage scorch tracking (including number of stacks) is invaluable.

CooldownTimers2

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/cooldown-timers2.aspx

There's little special about this mod, other than it's generally inoffensive and does what I want.

The reason I use it specifically is its "announce" (aka "pulse") ability that flashes on my screen when an ability is ready. The bars are there if I want to know "how long until my ability comes off cooldown?" but the announce flash is what keeps me from looking down there every few seconds if I'm trying to time it exactly.

The size and duration of the pulsing animation are configurable. It's hard to see in the scale in the small the picture to the right, but the 'pulse' is wider than my unit frame.

BarTender4

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/bartender4.aspx

Most UI's have a lot of buttons visible. Mine doesn't.

There are 8 buttons on screen, and they are things I want to see the status of (how many charges of my mana gem do I have?) and the handful of things I click (evocation; clickies for dailies; rejuv pots since I haven't gotten around to keybinding those yet, but I will.)

Hidden offscreen, of course, are all my keybounded abilities. And BarTender4 has the nice feature that, when I get into a vehicle, it will make bar 1 visible, and I have it positioned right above my cast bar so I can do vehicle dailies (and fights like Malygos) easily.

People often don't believe they can play without seeing their bars until they try. I found it very freeing, as there's a lot more space on my UI now for actual useful information.

Geist

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/geist.aspx

I have every single combat ability (save the few mentioned in the BarTender section above) keybound, but there are still a few other things I cast -- and I hate using the spellbook for those.

For that I use Geist, a simple mod that, with a keypress, brings up 25 buttons on your screen that you can click on.

The keybinding is, of course, configurable (I use 'j' -- easy to hit but still out of the way, so it doesn't interfere with combat keybindings) and you can drag and drop spells onto the grid while it's visible (or edit your action bars in your bar mod -- the downside is it *does* use space on your main action bars.)

Combat Text

MyThreat

http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info8187-MyThreat.html

While using a full-blown threat mod like Omen isn't really necessary, I still like to know my own threat relative to the tank's.

MyThreat is a very simple display: your total threat, how much threat you can gain before you overtake the tank, and who that tank currently is.

I just have it centered on my screen, right over my character, where it's impossible to miss.

You can configure its thresholds for when it goes yellow and red to warn you that you are approaching the tank's threat. It also allows you to do things like track your threat versus your focus if you want to track threat versus two targets at once.

MiksScrollingBattleText

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/mik-scrolling-battle-text.aspx

Yet Another Scrolling Combat Text addon.

Why this one? Simply: it's the easiest, hands down, to configure. If you've ever fought with SCT before, you'll be so happy when you see how simple it is to set up MSBT. I've never regretted switching.

Still todo: filter out some of the extra crap that shows up in announce since Wrath -- e.g., I never want to see again that I've gained/lost Ferocious Inspiration!

EavesDrop

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/eaves-drop.aspx

A very simple mod, it creates a better 'history' view of what happened to you than either the combat log or scrolling combat text modules do.

It's very configurable, I took out a lot of the information so it could be very narrow and fit quietly on the side of my UI.

As a bonus, any line from it can be shift-clicked into your combat log, so you can, for example, link what killed you and by how much.

Recount

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/recount.aspx

It's a damage meter. It works.

I mostly have it for learning fights: I like being able to show, e.g., how many people were damaging "Mob That The Whole Raid Should Be Killing." Or conversely, who hit "Mob No One Should Touch."

It also lets me show decurse counts, healing meters, etc. and report all of that to channels.

The dps meters is just an added bonus.

Miscellaneous Non-Combat

Chatter

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/chatter.aspx

I use it as a replacement for prat, another chat mod. It adds timestamps, shortens channel names to just the numbers, and other sorts of simple chat cleanup that make it more pleasant to use.

ButtonBin

http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info10474-ButtonBin.html

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/fubar2broker.aspx

I no longer use FuBar, so ButtonBin (and the addon Fubar2Broker, which lets my old FuBar addons still work) is its replacement.

I like it because it has 5 different bins, which can either always be hidden/visible, or can show up on mouseover.

You also can just click the bin to "collapse" it, like you see in my screenshot. To the right is the bin expanded again.

The text is all configurable, so is the opacity. You can even make a bin look like a FuBar Bar if you really wanted.

All in all, it's a very nice mod for organizing your mod options without the overhead/fuss of FuBar, and it's more configurable as well.

Note that you will definitely want to pick up the second addon linked above if you want your older, pure-fubar mods to be able to show up in ButtonBin.

SexyMap

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/sexymap.aspx

Simply the most configurable map mod I've found.

The killer feature for me is that, as you can see in the screenshot, when your mouse isn't on it, all the buttons etc. disappear. But if you hover over it, you see them, zone info, etc.

Simply wonderful for additional "only as you need it" information organization.

RatingBuster

http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info5819-RatingBuster.html

Converts Ratings to Percentages, plus helps you compare two items of gear at the same time. Invaluable.