Are you a swinger? Oh behave!

As BRK says: MQOSDPS (massive quantities of sustained dps)
If that's your role you owe it to your party to be as good as you possibly can be. What happens though if you lag ? Get interrupted ? Dual-wield ?
It can be tough to really keep up with all the small details that can be thrown your way as melee DPS. Swing Timers are popular because they take a lot of the guesswork out of DPS'ing. A Swing Timer can be the difference between being #5 and being #1 DPS for a raid.

Let's take a look at what to look for in a good Swing Timer. A good Swing Timer should be easy to read, be accurate, be able to account for lag (high latency), and be easy to use.


LD50_aBar was the first Swinger I tried. It supports dual-wielding or 2hander. When something resets the swing timer it shows with text what reset it. You can also adjust the refresh rate to help if you have low FPS (frame rate). LD50 can fade out when OOC (out of combat). And lastly LD50 shows each weapon's speed on the left and time remaining til next swing on the right. All in all a good Swing Timer.

The next Swinger I tried out was Attack Bar Timer . Attack Bar Timer does the basics and takes a lot less memory. My only issues with this addOn is it can be a bit buggy and spams LUA errors when fighting multiple mobs with similar names (trash, etc.). I disabled LUA errors (in Interface options) and didn't really notice any actually problems with the bars, but just be warned. The cool thing about Attack Bar Timer is it will also track your target. You can disable this for pvp if you like in the options.

Last but not least, and also the first time an addOn makes a reappearance, is Quartz. Now I know we reviewed Quartz for cast bars, so if you're using Quartz already or want to replace both, your cast bar and get a swing timer, Quartz may be for you! For this test I removed all modules for Quartz except what's required for the swing timer to work but, there was not much change in the addOn memory usage, so feel free to use as many of the modules as you can to maximize bang for buck.

I hope you have to chance to swing this week, yea baby!

AddOns tested:

AttackBar Timer (51k)
LD50_aBar (1.17m)
Quartz (1.2m with only Quartz,Quartz_Player,Quartz_Swing,Quartz_GCD)

Garbage ? We don't need no stinking garbage !

After a long day farming solid stone to get a few points in engineering, I was oh so excited to look in my bags and see them full of what looked like good mats. Half of the lot was not only not what I needed, but was nothing more than vendor trash.

/begin rummage

The annoying part, the bad bits look way too much like the good bits.

/commence clicking
Whoops... thank God for buy-back.


Ever wish you didn't have to do this ?

Now you don't. Vendor addOns make the end of the day a breeze by simply selling everything you don't need with a single button click. Some even offer customization by letting you add / remove items from a list so you never have to dig around in your bags again (except for quest items /sigh).

For me the hands down winner was Junk! Go to a vendor, hover over the mote of mana icon in the top right and Junk! will tell you how much your junk is worth. Click and everything is sold. Type /junk and link an item to add it or remove it from the sell list. Don't want fish oil, ever ?
/Junk [Fish Oil]
done.
Want your favorite über mace to not be sold
/Junk [The Stoppable Force]
done.

Junk! also has the option to auto-repair you when you open a vendor that can do so. You can also set Junk! to auto-sell as well.

Junk Manager, AutoProfit and, GarbageFu* all do the same and also have the bonus ability to drop the lowest value grey item with a single click. Need a bag slot free for that BOE epic ? done.

The conclusion:
If you want dirt low memory usage; Junk! Want drop lowest item; AutoProfit.

If you want sound sleep, knowing your bags are clear of garbage, give Junk! a try and you too can say, "garbage ? We don't need no stinking garbage".


AddOns tested:

AutoProfit (39k)
GarbageFu (771k)
Get Vendored (97k)
Junk! (16k)
Junk Manager (1.79m)
Sell Junk (394k)

*GarbageFu requires an additional addOn, GarbageFu prices , in order to use the drop lowest item feature.

open casting today !

Jim: So I hear Tommy's back in town (grinning)
Joey: Yea, and he ain't happy neither
Jim: Meh
Joey: Meh ?
Jim: Look if that stooge wants to duel he won't know what hit him.
Jim: Besides, I heard he ain't half the gnome he used to be.

(from behind a very small garbage can appears Tommy and he looks angry)

Tommy: JIM!!!
Joey: Oh heya Tommy, long time no see (Joey takes off running)
Tommy: So i hear you've been talking smack in /trade again ?
Jim: naw Tommy, I'd never (cowering)

(Tommy begins walking towards Jim and pulls out a verry large stick)

Jim: (begging) Tommy this is just a misunderstanding.
Tommy: Jim, I like you, really, that's why I'm gonna leave you a few teeth.

(huge stick flies)

Fade to Black

What's that ? Wrong kind of casting ? Oh. Oh, you meant the casting bar ? My bad.

Well the best is AZCast Bar. What you want proof ? Since when ? Oh alright.
AZCast Bar will let you show player, target, pet, focus, and mirror. You can even move, resize, change texture, AND you can add in new timer bars with plugins ! So far there's plugins for BG timers and Flight timers. AZCast Bar also gives you visual feedback on your latency to your server helping you to know how long you actually have to wait before casting your next spell. And all this while still only taking 73k ?

Ok, so you need some comparisons.

eCasting Bar is pretty lightweight, but only handles player, target, and mirror bars. It does have a lot of textures and you can add in new ones (which you can do with any of these addOns in my opinion).

Casting Bar++ handles player, target, and mirror too, but also does focus. It allows different skins and textures, and alpha blending (transparency level).

Huh? These aren't doing enough ? Ok ok.

Try Natur Enemy Cast Bar (NECB). Here's how it describes itself.
"Shows Debuffs (e.g. Sheep timers), Casts, Gains, Stuns, DoTs, BossTimers, Cooldowns, Diminishing Returns by lovely colored CastBars - Supports 'target' and 'focus'. Recognizes unknown spell casts, stops and delays!"
Sounds like a DOT / HOT timer to me, but I won't be picky. Just beware, if you're a warlock, or a healer, you're going to have a LOT of bars (unless you disable a lot of function). Don't say I didn't warn you.
Also, an early warning. I actually like NECB and have used it for a while in the past... but... the author has stated that this addOn will break with 2.4 and he doesn't have time to fix it. So don't get too dependant. (2.4 is going to change a LOT of the combat system. A lot of addOns may break)

A little simpler (but somehow more memory intensive) is Quartz. I've used Quartz quite extensively and do like it. With a lot of cool features like global cooldown, swing timer for melee weapons, tradeskill casts are merged (create 28 bandages becomes 1 cast bar showing total time), and interrupt recognition. Quartz also watches your buffs and displays buffs on your target, so you can hide the default ones if you like the more compact display. Everything is adjustable to your liking but takes a little bit to get the hang of finding what does what.

All in all there's a few good addOns here so play and find what does everything you need. While some do take more memory, they may fill the place of more than 1 addOn so the memory could be justified. If you however find yourself just disabling a lot of features you may want to try something new !

AddOns tested:
AZCast Bar (73k)
Casting Bar++ (215k)
eCasting Bar (186k)
Natur Enemy Casting Bar (422k)
Quartz (1.56m)

Aimed Shot the Unbound

/vacation off
/sigh

well, I hope you've all had a great holiday, but I really hope you're ready to start trying some new addOns !

If you are THE point & click king you will not want to continue reading.

I try to bind absolutely everything. But, just because you want something bound doesn't mean you actually need to see it. And there's the problem.

Even some of the popular action bar addOns won't let you use a hotkey for a button that's not visible. So someone did something about it... ok a few people. That's a good thing.


Spellbinder is pretty simple. Open the menu pick an ability / spell, pick a key / mouse binding and, go. Want to bind polymorph to mouse button 5 ? Want to bind frostbolt ... rank 1, you can. You can even bind macros, items from your inventory, trinkets, anything you like.


BindPad chooses a more drag & drop approach but gets all the same things done, and takes less memory. Also having a choice to assign a binding to the current character or to everyone is really nice. /inspect macro, everyone. /cast Misdirection ..... maybe just this guy.

Either way, there's no reason to waste good action bar space on your first aid or Goblin Hand Grenades anymore. Give them both a try and let us know what you think !

addOns tested:

BindPad (84k)
SpellBinder (377k)

rolling... and... ACTION!

ahh, the action bar. It amazes me how many different ways I've seen action bars setup. Some people install an addOn just to replicate the default bars. Some people separate EVERY SINGLE BUTTON and put it in it's own spot.

Depending on how crazy you want to get there's a few ways you can go.

Bongos is an easy starting point. The menu is very simple, but still offers a lot of control. Right-click self-cast is my favorite feature. If you just want to get close to the default setup you'll be ready to go in about 2 minutes. Copy paste feature lets you use the same layout for any character on your account or create unique layouts for everyone.

If you need all out button mayhem try Trinity Bars. It has all the popular button masks (hex, gloss, square, etc.) and is not too hard to get the hang of. As with Bongos it handles the cast bar with a module that can be removed, but it also includes the target cast bar as well. Trinity also separates the XP and rep bars so you can show/hide as you like. With a simple and advanced edit mode most users will be able to get it going fairly easy, and with the new clone feature that will be implemented soon, you won't have to hand craft multiple bars with the same layout.

Bartender3 and FlexBar2 are both good addOns as well, with Bartender3 falling between Bongos and Trinity, and FlexBar2 being the most... flexible. FlexBar2 basically asks you to create each button and do whatever you like with it. You can create action bars with state recognition (shadow form, defensive stance, etc.) but it doesn't follow the blizzard paging, so it can be a LOT of crafting. If you need really complex layouts though this is for you.

If you're just looking for some unique action bar "upgrades" there's some good choices. Action Pad seems to be something a lot of people look for. It simply recreates action bar 1 in to the shape of the left side of your keyboard, allowing you to easily keybind spells/macros to action bar 1 and see it visually. It hides the menu and bags also. It does hide the Pet frame as well, so if you need it just get the Action Pet Bar also.

CogsBar takes that up a notch letting you add custom layout buttons to your default action bars. Want a 4x3 box? done. 6x2? done. 'nuf said. It doesn't however hide anything from the default setup.

XBar works a bit more like a pop-out menu for buttons. Most people will find these useful for things like buffs, potions, warlock curses, hunter traps, hunter tracking, but there's really a lot you can do with this if you get creative.

Last but not least, is IPoPBar. I really like this for a lightweight way to add a few extra bars with absolutely no setup. IPop doesn't remove/change the default action bars, it simply adds, in the location of the menu/bags, a new action bar. You can easily toggle between the action bar and menu/bags with 1 click. If you want to adjust it you can either have just the 1 bar or up to 3 (the 2nd and 3rd are pop-up therefore hidden unless you hover over the first). I really liked having the hidden pop-ups for things like tradeskill, buff food, trophy pets, and other items you don't need visible during combat.

Any way you cut it, there's no reason to not have everything you need at your fingertips. If you've exhausted your default bars give one of these great and easy upgrades a try!

AddOns tested:

Action Pad (105k) Pet Bar (10k)

Bartender3 (1.47m)

Bongos (486k)

Cogs Bar (37k)

FlexBar2 (768k)

Integrated PopBar (50k)

Trinity Bar (1.23m)
XBar (800k)

LFG!!!

Chuck Norris once had to use the LFG channel... Once.

Thank you whoever made this picture !

Ok ok, so Chuck would never have to use LFG, something about roundhouse to the face. But for the rest of us who occasionally have to PUG it, this is for you.

I actually have to PUG a lot, and with a few 70's it can be a pain.

I started looking for tools to help making groups easier. In the past I've tried a lot of different addOns that did a lot of different things. One addOn let me just type in a message and it would spam that message to any channels I set at any interval I set. Another filtered the LFG channel to only show messages that contained key words of instances that were in my current character's level range. Both of those I liked but have not been maintained and are therefore buggy or just don't work.

The simple solution I decided on was to just stay in the LFG channel and watch for a group that I could use on any char and then swap.

Problem 1: every time you change zones, character, or almost anything else, LFG turns off

Problem 2: every time you group with someone, for a trade sale, buffing a friend, or a group that falls apart before it gets started, LFG turns off

Solution: get an AddOn that keeps it turned on

Both AutoLFG and LFG Channel Always get the job done, but in testing the latter seemed to have less instances of not enabling, and used less memory overall.

Either way, don't let Chuck roundhouse your LFG channel. Get one of these addOns and Happy Grouping!

AddOns tested:

AutoLFG (374k)

LFG Channel Always (31k)

Can We Talk ?

Okay, so there's not much to talk about when it comes to your chat box. Some people's chat looks the same as it did the day they logged in. Others, well, let's just say, it looks like they're playing a text based game.

For me the chat box does it's job well, so I prefer to use an addOn that's more ball peen than sledge.

Enter Low Memory Chat . At a stunning 2k, it gets all the basics done, hide chat buttons, scroll with mouse wheel, abbreviated channel names, sticky chat, working arrows, edit box on top, timestamps, and a few more minor changes. Down side, no options. You can remove a few of the pieces from the addOn folder if you don't like them since they are in there as modules, but not much more than that. My only complaint is that it didn't play nice with a few other common chat mods, but if this is the only change you make it'll work great.

If you need something a bit more... robust: Prat . Prat is an ace based, module oriented chat mod, so you can pile it on or pare it down. It does just about anything I could think of for chat, but it really is nice to be able to whittle it down to just the parts you like and not pay the memory cost to have all the stuff you don't want. Chat sounds is my favorite in this addOn, never miss a whisper in the flood of trade spam again!

Trinity Chat moves into a more complex realm, but is still pretty simple to configure. It offers cool ideas like acronym filtering (want SV to show up as steam vaults ?), an english filter ( want no wai to show up as no way ?), and private channel creation. It will also save channels you've created, with their password, between sessions. It also allows for linking in private channels if the other person has the addOn running as well. It does all the other basics and more, so raid & guild leaders may want to check this out!

If you like chat management without the other stuff Cirk's Chat Manager will get the job done. Cirk's allows for creating and managing private chat channels. You can also rearrange the numbering for any channel. If you join/leave channels a lot you know what this means, no more trying to find the healer channel every time you join a raid. You can also easily see a list of every person currently joined to a particular channel. A healer avoiding the channel ? Someone in a channel they shouldn't be ? All easy to find. It still does the basics as well so no need to add in anything else usually.

Chat is one of the few addOns that I don't think there can be a winner since everyone needs something different. If you like the ability to click the word invite in a whisper to add someone to your group, to have key words highlighted in chat or shown on the middle of your screen, or even move you edit box totally away from chat itself, these are all doable. Give a few of these a try and see what fits best for you !

AddOns tested:
Chat Frame Extender 2 (80k)
ChatMod (140k)
Cirk's Chat Manager (263k)
Custom Chat (58k)
IDChat (75k)
Low Memory Chat (2k)
Phanx Chat (519k)
Prat (2.92m) (with default modules running)
Trinity Chat (344k)