This addon post is valid as of April 17, 2010.

The above picture was taken during a recent run of Violet Hold and dose a good job of illustrating how my screen looks in dungeons. There are very slight differences in raids (which I’ll explain below), but by and large, this is what I see when in combat:

1. FuBar – Outdated as it may be, I still prefer FuBar (and its various Fu-Plugins) to the variety of LibBroker addons out there. I utilize Broker2Fubar to make Broker plugins work on Fubar, and generally find the addon useful for random bits of information.

2. Multishot/Achieved – These two addons work really great in conjunction with each other. Achieved lets you resize and move your achievement panels, while Multishot takes screenshots whenever you earn an achievement, level up, or kill a boss, among other things. I like having my achievements pop up in that upper left corner – that way it doesn’t block anything.

3. Shadowed Unit Frames – This unit frame replacement addon provides a very customizable view. I don’t use this as a raid frame however – but it works very well for dungeons.

4. Satrina Buff Frames – Buffs and Debuffs on me go into the upper corner, which is good to give me a generalized idea on things like…how much longer I have before my buff food runs out. The buffs and debuffs of my target appear below the target (near where the number 8 appears on the screenshot). I use this “6 wide” in dungeons, and “9 wide” in raids.

5. X Loot (featuring X Loot Monitor) – A relatively simple addon, X Loot cleans up loot windows, and shows you what you (or your group members) have looted.

6. Parrot – Much like various other scrolling combat text addons, Parrot shows the damage you’ve done, the damage you’ve taken, and the heals you’ve taken (or done).

7. Prat – Prat is a chat replacement frame addon, and I like it for several reasons, among them the ability to use my mouse to scroll through chat windows, and a copy/paste function. I have chat windows set up, side by side. The one highlighted is for general chat, trade, etc, while the one between that and my map is for guild, raid, and party chat.

8. Bartender – Bartender is an action bar replacement addon. I find it particularly useful on classes like Death Knights, Paladins, or Druids, that have multiple “stances” that they can go back and forth between. It also works well with switching of specs – so in Grim’s case, switching to his tank spec would put completely different bars up.

9. Yury’s RuneDisplay – A lightweight easy to customize display for runes that has a variety of options for countdowns, layout, and such. I like keeping it simple, and right where I can see it.

10. Mappy – Mappy turns your mini-map into a square, makes it movable, re-sizable, and has a few other little adjustments thrown in (like blinking nodes – useful for farming).

11. Omen – Omen is a threat meter, required by nearly every raiding guild out there. It’s decently customizable, and I like having it tucked out of the way with audio alerts turned on (read: it makes noises at me if my threat is getting too high!).

12. Recount Recount is a damage meter, showing you how much damage you’ve done since you last reset it. It can be a bit CPU extensive, but it provides a useful benchmark to show you how much damage you’re doing in a fight compared to those around you.

13. Injector Injector is a raid/party frame that looks and behaves a lot like Grid (but better, at least in my opinion). It’s very customizable, and can be placed in different spots for different characters – useful if say, you have a healer amongst your characters and want it in the center of your screen on that character. This is the only frame I use in raids.

14. Need to Know – Need to Know tracks cooldowns and procs, allowing you to put that information someplace where you can easily see it. While something like SBF also can track procs, it won’t tell you the internal cooldowns, and at least with my setup, isn’t in an area that I can respond to it quickly.

Any questions? Feel free to comment or send me an e-mail and I’ll be happy to answer questions!

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