Add-ons

First I think add-ons are great and wonderful. That’s not what I’m talking about today. I’m talking about the near divorce/WW3 that occurred last night at my house around some add-ons.

My wife was doing some research on her Warlock class the other day to see if she could boost her DPS any and came across a site that was very helpful and recommended a specific add-on. I’ll leave the names out here, because I think the add-on itself was very well done and players with much more time and patience could probably utilize all features and settings more easily. Anyways, it looked really slick, and I’ve been using the same UI setup for several years now so I thought I would give it a try.

I get it installed and immediately notice that my action bars are completely messed up. Ok no big deal right? Wrong. After about 15 minutes I get my bars positioned how I typically play with them and feel like everything is ready to go. Instance time. Let’s see if Mrs. WifeAggro’s new spell rotation is any better. I should acknowledge that she warned me ahead of doing an instance that I should quest with the new UI some to get used to it before the instance. Bah. I’m tech savvy enough and have been playing WoW on and off since release. I got this one in the bag. (Surely this won’t comeback to bite me right?)

We get into one of the new Scarlett Monastery instances (not sure which) fairly quickly. I’m the healer and she’s a DPS. Alright I’m ready to heal the dickens out of this instance. Wait. Where are the group bars? Ohhhh there they are. Well I’m not used to that, but I can make it work. First pull incoming. Where is my target window? Oh over there. Got it. Where the heck is the tank’s health bar? What??? Oh ok. Wait people are dead…I think. How is that happening. Oh all my hotkey bindings have been removed so most of spells weren’t actually casting. Hmmm. Great.

So we rez up and push on. I can’t figure out the health bars to save me so I just cast HoTs on everyone and keep the tank full of HoTs with occasional direct heals just based on what feels right. Everything is fine until I realize that I have no idea where my mana bar is. Grrrr. Innervate on myself whenever it pops. We actually made it to the through with no significant setbacks with this strategy. Then we got to the whirlwind boss. In old school WoW it was the guy that dropped Herod’s shoulder and I think that it’s some sort of ancestor of him in that place now. As a healer I never really get to look at the boss targets. I’m always staring at health bars. Anyways, I can’t keep up with health bars and people are dropping, I’m dropping, tanks are dropping and I’m having to mouse click half my heals because I can’t find the key bindings setting in this new UI. After a couple of wipes and a lot “suggestions” from my wife. I drop group. I literally could not heal with that set up and had no way to fix it in short order.

After I left, I camped, deleted all the new add-ons and reinstalled the old set up. Luckily it kept all my settings, and I was back up in no time. So in the end, add-ons are great and I strongly suggest them, but use what feels good and definitely toy around with them on your own before getting into group situations. It’s like they say, you never appreciate what you have until it’s gone. That applies with me and my add-ons too. Once I got my old set up back, it was like putting on that old pair of comfy pants or sweatshirt. Everything just felt so right and cozy.