So I see a lot of streamers/youtubers have this popular clean/minimalist UI and I tried it many times but seem to lose a lot of awareness.
The UI I’m referring to is the player frame and target frame kinda in the middle of your screen with a weakaura for your class in between, and really nothing else.
Maybe it’s the 15 years of being a PvP player but I like my pet kick macros, pet stun macros, my death grip, all of my defensive in the same space. Basically I’m very used to like, kinda having all my spells at the bottoms like the default UI, although I changed it and make it more in the middle with bartender.
I also like to be able to see stuff like rune points/combo points/focus on my character easily.
I don’t know, am I gimping myself by not using this popular UI? Why is it so popular? I feel like I’m missing information by trying to remove everything from my spellbars and just using this small weakaura, most of these weakauras don’t even have defensives, which I know should be second nature but I like to know when my cooldowns are up or when they are coming off cooldown.
In terms of DBM, I use a weakaura that turns DBM into a raid line, that’s in like the right side of my screen kinda centred as well, then I have some weakauras for M+ which warns me of mechanics that are coming up, and ofc I have a frontal weakaura to warns me of frontal.
But I can not for the life of me get used to the “modern” target and player frame all of these streamers use and don’t get me started on the class rotation weakaura where you can’t even see your spenders, and I know your spenders are usually keybind to 1234 or something so you don’t need to see them but I kinda feel like I like to see them there?
Am I gimping myself or is there literally no difference to not having these popular youtube/streamer UIs?
Not necessarily removed, a lot of people just make it hidden… and it shows up when moused over, or the made less translucent when setting up their macros and abilities.
Usually a weakaura is used to display your core rotational abilities, resource bar and cooldowns/utility/defensives on it.
A lot choose to hide their skillbar to force themselves to pay attention to the spec WA, and to force themselves to rely on muscle memory for their rotation. A rotation done primarily through muscle memory allows them to focus their attention on what is happening during a fight, rather then constantly eyeballing their skill bar.
It is a personal preference in the end that is meant to help the learning process. Unless this question is for PvP my answer is no, you are not gimping yourself. Gimping implies a huge disadvantage, which is not the case here.
Keep in mind, that each streamer has custom made their own UI or has someone that has it customized to their playstyle.
So to answer you question as plainly as possible: YES and NO
YES: Because the default ui is pretty bad, and by creating your own, you can customize it and make it way better FOR YOU.
Even if you are ok with the default UI after years of usage, there are 2 areas where you HIGHLY limit yourself cause of bad UI.
Those areas being Health bars, and buffs/debuffs. The new customizations were pretty nice improvement from blizzard, but on the area of healthbars/buffs/debuffs, customization is pretty lackluster and you will limit yourself.
NO: As stated above, with the new customizations, you can pretty much skip on addons, EXCLUDING buffs/debuffs/nameplates. If you ignore those 3 weaknesses, you can easily make a default ui work.
So I use plater with a custom M+ script like Jundies which colors mobs.
In terms of health bars, do you mean the party frames so you can see what to dispel and easily buff or cleanse people? Because I use the default party frames set to raid frames and just put them kinda on the left middle side of my screen.
I think what i got from this so far is these streamers have memorised all of their spenders. I still found the lack of defensive /utility a bit off putting in the weakauras, but then noticed some of them have these cooldowns on the side of party frames, not sure what this addon is maybe OmniCD? and for utility i guess most utility has short cooldown so its not that important to be able to visualise it.
I’m still not sure if I’m buying it, my UI is super minimal as well, i have a 4K ultrawide monitor and aside from a 3 spell bars at the bottom of the screen and a weakaura that turns into DBM timeline, my screen is pretty empty. I even disabled some stuff like combat text to avoid screen clutter and I noticed a lot of streamers have the target frame to the middle which I have at the bottom since I don’t know why they have the target frame + Plater nameplates, i look at the mob nameplate not at the target frame.
From a PvE tank PoV it’s easy to keep track of your own hp while seeing mechanics without having to look in the corner for your HP. You can easily see buffs, durations on externals etc.
Usually they’re WA’s that will only pop up when you use them so you see the duration of them.
This will be purely for the visuals on screen. They’ll have a less cluttered UI to make it easier for audiences to see what’s going on.
When they aren’t streaming they likely have a lot more details onscreen.
Just have what’s suitable for you. I personally don’t need any of that stuff, just moving all the stuff around with edit mode is good enough for me as long as I can see what I need to. That usually just involves keeping the centre of the screen free from pretty much anything.
you dont ‘need’ a custom UI like those players have, it’s just objectively (not in every case though) better to have a custom UI where you can choose to leave out unnecessary information, and at the same time through weakauras or UI addons, add more information that’s necessary but isn’t displayed well through Blizzards standard UI.
they use action bars like that because they don’t feel the need to see useless info like spells with 0 cooldown or resource cost, and they add in other types of info like for example I use BigDebuffs to make all the debuffs I need to dispel appear much larger on my party frames, and you can use OmniCD to track party members cooldowns to whatever extent you need.
and although it can be harder to get used to it, it’s just objectively better to have a minimalistic UI where you have key abilities & resource bars closer to the middle of the screen so your eyes dont have to wander from the middle of the screen to the bottom of the screen constantly (on top of also looking at things like party frames)
In my experience, as a DPS not at all, as Tank or Healer also no but one could benefit from custom party/raid frames. I’ve never used DBM or WeakAuras and I’ve never felt like I needed them, however as a healer being able to customize how debuffs show up on my frames has been essential, can’t live without that at this point. On the flip side I see a lot of healers having defensive CD trackers for their party, I find that wholly worthless, I don’t care whether or not they have the ability off CD, nor do I care whether they used it, it’s simply useless information for me.
Just play however you feel is best for you, you don’t need to know everything at all times.
Nah sorry I meant nameplates, so plater is more than enough.
Either omniCD or AbilityTeamTracker. Displays the cd of party members (that u tell it to track).
Keep in mind, something that a good amount of people are doing is that they do not display abilities when they are off cd. So you actually do not display a utility skill, UNLESS it is on cd, where you just display it until it becomes ready again.
Again, if you can make nameplates and buffs/debuffs work for you, everything else is extra icing on the cake, so go for what works for you.
