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Addon Corner: Talented

Now that patch 2.3 is out you might need to freshen up your addons folder. Patch 2.3 makes a couple of addons I used prior to it obsolete by including either some or all of their functionality available in the default interface. Those two addons were CT_MailMod (which I used for mass mailing) and GFW_TrackMenu (which I used for easy "Find" skill changing).

As well as trimming out those addons which are no longer needed, why not add one?

This week I’ll briefly mention a great addon called Talented. Talented as you might guess is a replacement for the Talent window.

Talented displaying Ryliana’s Frost build

Talented displays all three of your talent trees at once giving you an "at-a-glance" view of your build. This is more convenient than the default talent window as it doesn’t require clicking tabs or scrolling to view where you’ve spent your points.

Talented will also show at a glance what spending your point in a specific talent will do.

As well as this, Talented lets you set up "templates". These are builds that you can switch to easily to remove the tedium of re-speccing. This way you can have, for example, a Deep Frost, an Arcane and Elemental (Fire/Frost) mage builds that you can switch to simply by paying the re-spec fee at a trainer, then clicking two buttons on the Talented window. Instead of having to manually spend your points (and remember where they should go).

While certain classes will have more use of templates than others, Druids and Warriors spring to mind, they are useful for everyone, especially at endgame.

These features are the kind of thing you don’t notice until they aren’t there.

You can get Talented from here.

Tags: addon, mmo, wow

Addon Corner: Cartographer

Cartographer is an addon that replaces the default world map. The default map has the main disadvantage of taking over the entire screen, Cartographer allows it to show in a scalable window as well as having the ability to hide the map frame.

Cartographer also comes with a whole bunch of other useful features, like showing where gathering nodes are (such as ores for mining or herbs for herbalism), showing where other party/guild members are on the map.

But perhaps  the most useful feature in Cartographer is the abilty to show waypoints, typing /waypoint x,y will produce an arrow that points to that location along with the distance. This alone makes completing quests so much easier, combined with an addon such as Lightheaded this gives you clickable co-ordinates that automatically generate a waypoint arrow simplifying questing and making finding those awkward mobs a breeze.

Cartographer is one of those addons that once you’ve used, you can’t imagine not having used them.

Tags: addon, mmo, wow

Addon Corner: Useful Addon Sites and Tips

I’m not going to rabbit on about a specific Addon this week, I thought I’d mention a few of the sites I trawl on a daily basis and other things that are useful when dealing with World of Warcraft addons.

WowAce

I’ve spoken briefly about the Ace libraries and how it benefits addon makers. The WowAce site acts as a repository for almost all the addons that use the libraries. As well as being able to manually browse what addons are there, you can also use their own custom utility.

WowAceUpdater shows at a glance which addons have updates

This tool is called WowAceUpdater (or WAU for short), this enables you to browse, download and update all your Ace addons in one fell swoop, it’s a great little tool with a nice interface.

Curse

Curse are a general MMO portal site but they have an expansive World of Warcraft section including a massive addons section. A lot of addon authors use curse as their main mirror for their addons.

Curse also have a utility (called the Curse Profiler) that monitors when addons are updated on their site, I have it set up to monitor non-ace addons (as WAU updates those for me), it also doubles as an addon itself, uploading character information to your Curse profile if you want it to.

WowInterface

WowInterface doesn’t have the nicest or friendliest of site layouts, it’s based around vBulletin and looks very cluttered, but it does have a few exclusive addons. It’s definitely worth checking out.

Tips

These few tips are mostly common sense but they can save you from tearing your hair out or breaking your monitor in frustration. Here they are:

1. If everything is working fine for you, don’t update! Only update if you are experiencing issues (for example after patch days) or there is a new feature that you really want.
2. After a patch, if you notice an addon missing or something not working how you expect, double check that you have "Load Out of Date Addons" enabled via the Addon button on the character select screen, most addons work fine after a major patch, but until the author releases a new version you need to force them to load.

Hope this post has been useful.

Tags: addon, curse, mmo, wau, wow