My kingdom for a better unit frame addon

Guides UI and Macro
1

I’ve done ElvUI, VuhDo, Grid2, Shadowed, and years ago, I even tried Pitbull and others. For the life of me, I cannot find a unit frames addon I really like.

I like, maybe love, the aesthetics of ElvUI frames. All of them that I try, I try to simulate the look and feel of ElvUI, and so far, I’ve been able to do that. Where I run into problems is two areas.

  1. Positioning and size based on group size.
  2. Buff/Debuff display

Positioning/size
I want raid frames to fill the same space, no matter the size of the raid. Therefore, the size of the individual units will have to change to make room or fill space depending on how many units are present. Some do this ok, others, not so much. Some require a lot of work to configure each raid size individually, which I can live with if the rest works well.

I want healers to fill from the bottom right. I place raid frames near my character sprite on the left and want the unit frames to populate up and to the left into the available space. I want non-healers to instead anchor the raid frames near the left edge of the screen and populate up and to the right. Several can do this, but, they are missing other factors that are also important to me.

As a bonus, I would like an option to have raid/party frames anchor to the center and expand left and right if I decide to position the frames under my character instead.

Buffs/Debuffs
I would like to be able to have a few things with the buffs and debuffs that I cannot find all in one addon. Like positioning, I can find all of these features, just not in a single addon.

I want to have configurable buff/debuff groups. For instance, I would like to be able to set up all tank cds into a group. I would like to be able to choose the position each of these groups in the key positions around the frame similar to how Grid2 works. I would like the buffs in these groups to position themselves next to each other anchored where I choose and growing in the direction I choose if more than one is present. For instance, druid hots. Some will stack them so that you can only see the most recent one and the others are under that one. Some do the list growth well, but then are lacking in position options. Some do the position options well, but do not do the growing list well.

I would like some common filter options to be built in. I don’t need to see guild champion from the guild tabard, power word fortitude, etc. Some do this well, others, not so much. I don’t want to have to build an entire whitelist/blacklist of hundreds of spell ids manually as I encounter them and have to tweak or deal with a cluttered mess when I enter LFR until I have them all. Obviously, there will always be some one-offs you might have to manually add from time to time, but, I would like the bulk of them included out of the box in filter groups.

The best for me so far have been the VuhDo frames and the ElvUI frames. Both have had some issues with raid frames not populating when I enter World Boss groups, etc and having to reloadui to get them to show. Also, neither really does all of these things the way I really want them, but, they do more than others.

Any suggestions on others I should try? I’m starting to think I’m going to have to learn LUA if I want some that really do what I want.

Edit:
I had no idea this would be such a popular thread. I decided to try pitbull since the last time I tried it was probably 10 years ago. It might be my best fit so far, but, I still have issues with it because I cannot highlight specific things like if the tank has a cd up in a way I like.

2

Keep in mind that Pitbull includes LuaText, which means you can script a text indicator (typically a . colored a certain way, or a word indicating the buff/debuff that is present/missing) for pretty much anything you could do with an addon.

You can also do a Weakaura and have it highlight the unitframe of the party or raid member that has a given buff under the Actions tab.

3

First, thank you for the feedback. Before I sound all negative, which I’m about to do, am I being unreasonable about wondering why these features aren’t common in these addons?

My point is, why do I have to study lua to do this in a way I think is common sense? Is it really so unusual to want to filter out meaningless buffs/debuffs? Is it so uncommon to want to show the same types of auras in groups together? Examples; your hots together in one spot and all tank cds in another, while letting the user decide which go where?

Note: If none of the addon developers thought to do it MY way, then it’s possible my way isn’t “common sense”. Then again, “common” sense isn’t so common these days. Maybe, this is a limitation of the Blizzard APIs, but, I really doubt that since like I mentioned, all of these features are present in different addons, just not together in the same addon.

What could be an hour or so of setup with these kinds of filters pre-created becomes a full weekend if I have to figure out the lua to do it, wowhead all the auras to build custom whitelist/blacklist, and tweak x/y offsets for everything to get it where I want it…oh, and since different group sizes will be different scales, it may all need to be tweaked individually for each raid size, depending on how that particular unit frame addon decided to implement it.

4

Filtering is commonplace, both blacklists and whitelists, and widely available both in unitframes add-ons and in standalone buff add-ons.

You didn’t ask about filtering, you asked about defining a specific subset of buffs and displaying them differently, while still showing the other buffs. That’s less common out of the box, and is handled very well by specialized add-ons like Exorsus Raid Tools, or more generally (and more customizable) by something like WeakAuras.

This is why I recommend the WeakAuras for tracking those specific cooldowns in those specific unitframes. Set your unitframes buff filter to only show your buffs and dispellable debuffs, let WeakAuras handle the tank CD notification, and set up your groups in the unitframes as you see fit - the WeakAura can be anchored to the unitframes of whoever has the buff you are tracking, and will move around dynamically as group sizes change.

For what it’s worth, you asked for a ton of incredibly specific stuff that I haven’t seen widely if ever and I’ve been playing WoW and heavily into add-ons (including some development, and writing my own LuaTexts for Pitbull) for 16 years. I think your version of “common sense” is not terribly common.

Which is fine, that’s why add-ons (especially WeakAuras) are so customizable, and why it’s pretty easy to learn Lua and write your own.

Edit: basically you are asking for 3 or 4 different add-ons to all be included in the unitframes, and you have very specific requirements for how each of those big components is supposed to work. That’s always going to be hard to find out of the box, regardless of what the specific requirements are.

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5

Not really. I asked about pre-built filters of grouped types so that I’m not spending an entire weekend on wowhead with spreadsheets to make them from scratch and have to remake them if I redo my UI. I’m asking to group specific kinds of buffs so that, for instance, tank cds can be tracked in the center icon and hots can be tracked in the lower left icon position. I want buffs of a specific type grouped together in a chosen location. They all, except for Grid, do this, you just have very little control over the grouping AND positioning unless you are willing to spend an inordinate amount of time configuring every buff in the game one at a time.

Can you point me to a source for this? When I tried to set this up, I had to pick a specific unit frame to anchor it to. I can’t find the option to have it anchor to the unit the buff is on. I also am not seeing an option to have it scale based on the size of the frame. The menus in WA are beautiful…but huge, and it wouldn’t be the first time I just overlooked options/settings.

I disagree in that all of these features exist specifically in unit frame addons, just some here and some there with varying levels of control over them. VuhDo and Pitbull probably have the most control inherent in the addon, BUT, require painstaking hours of trial and error and internet research setting up custom “bouqets” or LUA for every buff/aura.

6

Because “flexible” unit frame addons are a large undertaking. Addons are generally created by authors with a preconceived idea of what they want their addon to do.

That and life expectancy (or life in general) are a few of the major limitations to complex addons providing every possible option, much less every conceivable combination of options.

7

I was a compsci major until switching at the last moment to networking. That was a LONG time ago now and I wouldn’t dare call myself a programmer. Having said that, as I’ve said, the features all exist already. It would simply be a case of plucking them from the addons that have them and getting them to work together. That’s no more complex in most circumstances than what has already been done. That’s not to say it wouldn’t be a lot of work, but, so is what they have already done.

8

As a former comp sci major, you should know better. That’s straight up stealing somebody else’s code, and is a huge no no.

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9

Only if they put rights restrictions on them, which many do not. Moreover, you don’t have to straight copy/paste so much as see how it was done. My point stands.

1 Like
10

They don’t have to. They have to definitatively remove the ARR restrictions as it is an automatic right given to original work. The days of having to display Copyright to receive it are long gone.

If you were copy/pasting for your own never to distributed addon then fine.

To know what/how to copy/paste you have to understand how the addon works which takes time. If it was so easy, OP would have done it by now.

11

My point still stands. Anyone developing these addons could collect these features into one addon. It would obviously require work, but less than original design would have.

12

They would have to actively hunt down other addons, figure out how they work and keep any/all code working whether they are interested in it or not?

You obviously have little idea who creates WoW addons and/or the resources they have or are prepared to commit to the <cough> “job”.

13

I think the biggest problem is that if you make the ‘does everything’ addon then it will have complicated menus and options to navigate through the ‘everything’ set of features.

So few people would actually want that particular set of everything, out of the box, that the addon would not be widely popular and thus just a waste of time for the developer to integrate.

14

Not for what I’m talking about. It’s as simple as adding options to the already existing drop downs, or in some cases, just adding pre-made groups of buffs/debuffs instead of just empty group templates. For others, it’s simply adding a center anchor instead of just a left or right anchor. None of the features I’ve suggested are more complicated than that in the frameworks that already exist.

15

I can kind of see where you are coming. Indeed I’ve been toying with ideas in the back of my head for making it easier to offer a handful of “default” layouts/configs that you could just adopt with the push of a single button. Then you could tweak to your heart’s content.

This does kind of convince me to actually try that project when I have some free time.

1 Like
16

Feel free to learn Lua and build it yourself if you are convinced it’s so easy.

17

For the people who made the existing addons, it would be simple, though, obviously, still time consuming. It’s funny how hard people attempt to twist logic to not be wrong. Never works, though.

18

If I was you I’d start with ElvUI as the base. As you’ve mentioned in other threads, it has a feature set you like.

Then you can look at extension addons for it and/or write your own to enhance/tweak the features to your liking.

https://www.tukui.org/addons.php

Saves you from reinventing the wheel and keeps you compliant with licenses.

1 Like
19

Thank you.
I actually found an option in Grid2 that I think will satisfy my wants if I spend the time to set it all up.

Under the status, they have both buff and buffs. Turns out, the plural is important because it is for grouping buffs and allows you to set up the groupings I talked about. You can even configure how many icons it will show in the group before overlapping.

Obviously, this is a blank template, so I will have to spend significant time setting up all of the groupings for different classes or specs, but, it’s the framework to do what I want.

That just leaves a wish-list item of having some of these groupings be pre-configured. Once it is set up to my liking, I’m going to see if it’s possible for me to export them to make them available to others. That makes me wonder why Wago doesn’t have a Grid2 category?

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