Classic WoW Interfaces - Getting Started

When making a UI there are several things to keep in mind. Is the information I'm being relayed relevant? Am I getting the information I need and do I need to get rid of some of it.

Before continuing, I'd like to preface that this is NOT a guide as to how you should exactly make your UI. World of Warcraft is amazing in that we can create user interfaces that fit our own tastes and likings. This is also why I continually update and change my UI based on what my current play style is like.
I hope that it can help give a new perspective on how to approach user interfaces, which may or may not be of any use to your UI. Even when researching for this post I gained insight into things I could change to improve my own experience.

Now to start talking about what we should keep in mind when we start planning our UI. First let's take this example.

In this interface there are a lot of elements and the fight is very cluttered. There are a lot of things on the ground to dodge, that need to be visible, to avoid stepping on them.

If we now start considering: what do our eyes look at the most during the encounter.

The inner circle for this UI is of a rather gracious size, and assumes you can perceive that much data at a time, but realistically it can be too much. What we can see from the picture is that a lot of the data like the action bar is outside the circles, which indicate they are not main points of focus. If we wish to keep track of the action bar shown, it becomes a situation that is not much different from when you focus on something else whilst driving. For a brief moment you lose track of what is happening underneath you.

On a different note, the raid frames are not too far away and their size, whilst they could be even bigger, it still provides an easier way to see if something is wrong. When we're losing health we want to perceive it as a warning indicator which is a big flaw in the default UI positioning. This can especially be seen on ultra-wide monitors.

Now these are mere visual cues, and we can add more of these. More details on options will come later in this post, but lets review what else we can do.

Audio Cues

While seeing blinking lights is a good option, sometimes we get caught in something else and need a reminder about actions we're supposed to take.
If everything suddenly becomes stressful: Like lots of AoE mobs that need to be handled, or maybe the healing is on a thin rope. Then it can be easy to lose track of mechanics, even if it's part of our rotation.

I would always recommend having Boss Frames, but most importantly try and add sounds to them! Example for DBM is Voicepack VEM, which warns about certain mechanics or what actions to take. While boss mods aren't very well supported in classic at the moment, I'd still advice that you try to configure as many different kinds of audio notifications as possible. Raid warning text is very easy to miss or end up distracting.

But, this is not limited to boss mechanics. You might have a rotation with an important cooldown that you want to maximize usage of. Once again, getting caught up in other things might make you less aware, and a subtle sound cue may not necessarily be of much use to you. Even then I would still recommend adding some for the most important cooldowns.
You can use addons like WeakAuras and add audio actions to a cooldown WeakAura. Make sure to avoid having overlapping sounds.

So, fundamentals?

From this we can conclude that we need to design an interface that lets us keep track of our spells, the fight, and our relevant unit frames. It is important that we focus on location, and the amount of information given for our surroundings.

Importance of Unit Frames

Unit frames relay a lot of data about you and your surroundings. This information is best relayed as close to your character as possible. In some cases you can even display it like below.

There are no real go to frames as they all depend on your playstyle and how you like to play, but what is important is retaining as much important information as possible.

Blizzard Unit Frames

These frames are not to be underestimated, especially the newer raid frames. They work excellently. I do however recommend for healing usage that you use HealCommClassic to add healing prediction.

The default placement, especially with player and target frames are sub-optimal and I'd recommend moving the frames to be more centered.

If you don't do any healing then having the raid frames to the side is a perfectly viable option, as long as you are aware of situations like dispelling etc.

ElvUI

Using ElvUI means you're not just replacing your unit frames, but instead making a total conversion of your UI. That is not to say that you can't use custom action bars.

It is widely used and has many customization options and has a large fanbase. Because of this you'll find many guides, plugins and profiles.

Shadowed Unit Frames

This is a set of frames that have been tested by time and has lost some traction, but is still very useful.

Luna Unit Frames

Very customizable player frames with a similar feel as Shadowed Unit Frames, albeit gives a more light weight impression.

VuhDo

While this isn't actually a set of player frames, it can be heavily customized to work similarly. It is designed with healers in mind and has click healing built-in. It can be heavily customized to your liking which makes it very powerful.

While the configuration can be a bit tricky to get fully into, customizing the basics is fairly simple. Because it is heavily used a lot of guides can be found online and Wago.io has a database of profiles available.

Spells

Action bars is the default way we keep track of our cooldowns. There are several ways we can approach this if we wish to have it more attention grabbing. Making indicators and/or moving our action bars.

WeakAuras

This is an excellent addon that can help you keep track of missing cooldowns, adding timers and generally make small tools for yourself. You can easily make some basic cooldown displays, but you can always look at Wago.io for a huge database of different WeakAuras and alike, which can be imported.

If you so desire you can even replace your action bars completely with WeakAuras, as timings are mostly what are relevant to you. Doing this will remove the need for having action bars and thus clearing up space on your screen, but will require you to remember your hotkeys. Optionally you can use on hover to be able to show some action bars when not needed.

In fact, if you wish to do so you can even replace your player unit frames with weak auras.

Bartender / Dominos

These are both excellent action bars that can be moved and highly customized. We can even make them on hover or look differently.

We can put them closer to our main focus area to retain the most useful information or just re position where we want them located.

OmniCC

The default cooldowns show spirals on the action bars to indicate time remaining, but OmniCC can add convenient timers so you know the exact second they are available, without any guess work.

Bonus

OPie

I think OPie is a lovely tool and clears up my action bars a lot. You can essentially take anything you'd normally have on a action bar and hide it behind a wheel.

I personally use it primarily for keeping a lot of things I don't always need, like paladin buffs in case I need to buff someone outside my party, food, potions and portals!

WIM (WoW Instant Messenger)

This is an addon more convenient rather than providing any gameplay bonuses during our fights. I'll still add it at the end as I find it to be very useful. It supplies for Instant Messaging style chat windows.

Macros

Macros exist in many shapes and forms, be it for healing, dps, changing gear or even just as a short hand for addons.

DPS Macros

Rotations are hard, but they can be simplified. I'll mention a few examples to give an idea of the bonuses.
If you work with dots, then you often end up putting them on multiple targets. It can be convenient to have nameplates that can track it, like ElvUI or KuiNameplates.

However, you'd normally still have to change targets. Especially with instant dots like Shadow Word: Pain, you'd want to quickly apply it to multiple targets.
A macro like the one below will allow for you to hover over the target / nameplate and use that as the target.

#showtooltip
/use [@mouseover,harm,nodead][] Shadow Word: Pain

For warriors they have certain spells restricted to certain stances. You can handle it using a macro as well

#showtooltip Charge
/cast [noform:1] Battle Stance
/cast Charge
/startattack

Especially for warriors I highly recommend you look up macros as they can be very useful due to how stances work.

Healing Macros

I used to use VuhDo and I loved the fact that when somebody is dead it'll try to resurrect instead of healing. To replicate this for either button macros or Clique then a macro like the one below might be of use.

#showtooltip
/cast [@mouseover, nocombat, dead] Redemption; [@mouseover, nodead] Flash of Light

While #showtooltip doesn't do anything for Clique, when it comes to putting it on your action bars it will, in this case, display as Flash of Light. You can be explicit by writing the spell name after #showtooltip.