gnomeDK – Your Pink Haired Guide to All Things Death Knight

Like the genius that I am I did a complete revamp of my WoW user interface (UI) and came up with something complicated which I loved. The genius part was I did this 6 weeks before patch 3.0.2. You know, biggest content patch in WoW history, guaranteed to break addons everywhere.

It took me almost a week after the patch, but I got my UI back up and running. In fact it even looks better and is a bit slimmer than before (though still more mods than a sane player with WoW patch experience would run). My hope is that when I install WotLK there isn’t another major mod disturbance. If that is the case then I have a great melee DPS based UI ready to be turned on for my death knight.

My UI is based on a custom setup a mage named Taeo created. His UI was featured on WoW Insider and is the best looking UI of the WoW Insider’s series, IMHO. Before the patch I copied his UI without a lot of tweaking. I removed the mage and caster based mods, added a few rogue mods, and adjusted for my screen’s resolution. Otherwise the look was all Taeo’s. That look came at a price, a lot of mods dedicated just to esthetics ranging from bar backgrounds (love) to custom fonts (could live without).

After the patch I experimented with some changes since my UI was partially broken already. I checked out SpartianUI, which I had used before the Taeo UI, but while it was updated it just didn’t have the same feel for me anymore. Eventually I decided to rebuild my UI one mod at a time. This lead to the culling of some mods, most because I really didn’t need them and I wanted to reduce my mod count as much as possible. The big change was to swap out ag_UnitFrames for X-Perl. I had used X-Perl in the past and upon re-examining it I found it matched my UI better in terms of a themed look.

Now I have a melee friendly UI which should translate well to the death knight. The only death knight specific mod I have my eye on right now is Rune Watch. I was able to use it during beta testing and I really like how it brings the runes and runic power to any spot on the screen. Given my UI focuses below the character’s feet and shrinks the character frame this works well for me.

To keep up with my addons I use WowMatrix. It is a free WoW addon installer and updater which works on Windows, Mac, and even Linux platforms. It tracks quest from multiple sources so it isn’t limited to just one site’s listings.

For those interested here is list the mods I plan to use with the death knight.

• AHsearch – Saves Auction House search queries.
• Align – Grid to align UI elements.
• AuldLangSyne – Friends list improvements: notes, remembering the information of offline friends, friend list syncing and backups, and a fubar plugin for it all.
• AutoProfitX – Automatically sells low quality gray items and selected white items to the vendor.
• AutoTurnin – AutoCompletes Scryer, BC, ZG Coin, PVP, Felwood, and other quests.
• Bagnon – Single window displays for the inventory and bank.
• Bagnon_Forever – Stores inventory information about your characters.
• Bartender4 – Simple and Advanced combined – Bartender4 ActionBar AddOn.
• Bejeweled – The popular game Bejeweled, now for World of Warcraft!
• BigWigs – Modular, lightweight, non-intrusive approach to boss encounter warnings.
• Cartographer – Addon to manipulate the map.
• ClassTimer – Timers for Buffs, DOTs, CC effects, etc.
• CooldownCount – Display Cooldown Count of Spell Icon and Item.
• Cosplay – Adds a button to undress the model in the Dressing room.
• DiscordArt – Lets you configure 20 or more textures for your UI.
• eCastingBar – Casting Bar replacement mod, updated for Burning Crusade.
• ElkBuffBars – EBB adds groups of bars to your screen showing you which (de)buffs currently affect your toon or some other units.
• EQCompare – Compare equipped inventory items against items in chatframe hyperlink and bags/bank.
• ErrorMonster – Filter and redirecter for errors, system messages and information messages.
• FuBar – A panel that modules can plug into.
• FuBar_ClockFu – A simplistic clock.
• FuBar_DurabilityFu – Keeps track of durability and pops up a dialog to repair when you go to a vendor who can.
• FuBar_MoneyFu – Keeps track of current money and all your characters on one realm.
• FuBar_PerformanceFu – Keeps track of performance of memory, latency, and framerate.
• FuBar_SpeedFu – A FuBar version of Titan Panel MonkeySpeed.
• FuBar_ToFu – A flight path time-remaining plugin for FuBar.
• Gatherer – Gatherer, displays stuff you gather in your minimap and world map.
• HatTrick – Simple cloak/helm checkboxes in the Character frame.
• ItemRack – Makes swapping equipment easier through equip slot menus, equip slot buttons, gear sets and automated swaps.
• MobHealth – Estimates a mob’s health.
• Omen – A lightweight, flexible, multi-target threat meter.
• oRA2 – A CT_RaidAssist alternative.
• Postal – Postal: Enhanced Mailbox support.
• Prat-3.0 – A framework for chat ehancement modules. BETA Version – Still in development.
• QuestHelper – Calculates an optimal route for you to follow while questing.
• RatingBuster – Item stat breakdown, analysis and comparison.
• simpleMinimap – manipulate the minimap in numerous ways; move, scale, skin.
• TheLowDown – Never forget to scroll a chatframe to the bottom again!
• TinyTip – Interacts with TinyTip modules, either integrated or standalone, to provide extra centralized functionality.
• WIM – Give whispers an instant messenger feel.
• XLoot – A remake of the built-in lootframe.
• XLootGroup – Minimalistic Group roll frames.
• XPerl – Replaces the normal unit, party, target, pet frames and adds target-of-target.

Click pics for larger version.