In the World of Warcraft many things can make a huge impact on your game play experience. They can be simple in game things such as gear, groups or quests. They can also be things that make your life easier like the many different UI Mods that aim to do just that. How do you choose which UI Mods to use though, since there are so many of them out there? Byron “Messiah” Mudry steps in to look at the UI Mods he can’t go without as a Death Knight.

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Death Knights as with any other class can be played perfectly well with the basic World of Warcraft interface.  However, also just like most other classes, you can get a lot more out of the class with a few well chosen UI mods.  With well over 4,000 UI mods out there though, which ones should you use?

For a Death Knight there are several great UI mods that you really should look into.  The ones that I rely on are as follows: Omen, Runewatch, Deadly Boss Mods, Tankpoints (if tank spec), Rating Buster,  and Recount (if DPS spec).  There are many others but I find these to be the base minimum.

Omen

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The Omen window shows your current threat level compared to everyone else.

Omen is one of various threat meters out there, but it is the one most commonly used.  While Blizzard built a threat meter into the World of Warcraft with the release of Wrath of the Lich King it is at best an early warning method. It does its job adequately but does not provide a constant easy to see ranking of threat on the current target -  that's what Omen does.

Omen displays all players in a ranked bar chart in a window on the screen.  The chart shows players from high threat on the top to low threat on the bottom. It also shows the total threat of each player in a number and percentage format on the chart, and the total threat per second they are generating.  This makes it easy to look at and see if you are gaining or losing aggro as a tank, or gaining aggro too quickly as a DPS player and likely to pull aggro from the tank.

Every player in a raid or group simply needs to have a threat meter like Omen running.  If you are the tank in the group you need to prioritize your threat generation to remain at the top of the list.  If you are DPS in the group you need to ensure you stay below the tank and leave enough room to accommodate DPS spikes from effects like Hysteria, Frenzy and crit chains.

Runewatch

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RuneWatch makes it easy to see your current runes, cooldowns and runic power.

Runewatch is a great Death Knight only UI mod that moves the energy, rune, and several other key counters into a nice display that you can put at eye level on the screen.  It displays each rune and a numeric timer showing when it will become available again, an energy bar, a timer for your horn of winter, and disease timers.

With the default UI from Blizzard players are forced to look to the top left of the screen to see their energy and runes, and then over slightly for the diseases on the current target, then all the way across to the left for the horn of winter timer.  All this needs to be done constantly, then pan back down to look at the actual enemy you are fighting, then your spell buttons for players that may not have them memorized (although you really should).

With Runewatch all this is in one place, and you can move it around as desired.  Most players place it just below their character on screen, and then you can see it all the time while doing short eye pans down to see spells, threat, guild chat, and more.

Deadly Boss Mods

This is another must have UI mod for any player that raids.  It does several very useful things for you inside of a raid.  The most important thing that it does is provide warnings on the screen when bosses in raids are about to do something, or have done something.  This is tied into an early warning system for bosses that use set timers and a set of countdown timers showing when an ability is going to be used next.

Other great features include the ability to automark players that get debuffs that hurt the party, such as automarking a skull over the player that gets the poison bomb debuff from Grobbulus in Naxxramas.  This makes it easy for players to see who has is, even it if is themselves and move away.  It has a range utility build in for fights that require you to stay a certain distance from other players.

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The TankPoint Calculator lets you play around with numbers and see what they would do

In short, this is a must have for raiding, so if you do raid, either as a tank or DPS, get this mod.  Enough said.

TankPoints

Ever have issues deciding between gear as a tank?  Is that piece of gear with 10 stamina more but 2 defence and 5 dodge less better or worse than what you are wearing?  All tanks go through this and while it is sometimes highly situational as to which piece of gear is better, this UI mod does a very good job of rating tank gear with a point system to help you determine which is better. Remember though that it is situational; do not ever just blindly follow its ranking system, as it looks at each piece individually.  If you follow it blindly you may equip all of your best pieces of tanking gear, walk into a raid and be hit with a critical hit because you are not at the defence cap.  This is due to it looking at each piece, not the whole.

With that big warning in mind, TankPoints can be extremely helpful when you are trying to decide between gear with very mixed stats and are not sure exactly how much better one is compared to the other. This helps not only while equipping gear you already have but looking at gear drops objectively to decide if you will roll on them.

Rating Buster

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This mod shows what all the numbers really mean.

Rating buster is another little utility that is very helpful and should almost be built into the default UI.  It shows what each stat on an item is going to provide.  So, for example, that 50 agility on a piece will provide X amount of crit at level 80.

As explained for TankPoints above, Rating Buster again helps decide which gear that you have to equip and which gear to roll on when it drops in a raid.  Both of these should ideally help prevent you from taking very minor upgrades that could be better served going to other players that may need them more, or to spot huge upgrade items that you may not have considered.

Recount

Recount is a damage meter and more.  While most players simply use it to track damage and DPS, it also tracks healing, decursing, and much more.  It really should be used by almost any class at all times.  What this utility really helps with as a DPS player though is to fine tune your DPS and give you something to aim for as an improvement. How many times have you gone into an instance and thought “that went smooth” then ran it again a few days later and thought “that was rough, what went wrong?”  Without something to compare against, how can you tell?

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Recount offers a lot of additional information that many players never even look at.

While many players just chase meters and try to be on top, the real power provided by recount is the ability to chase your own meter.  When you ran that instance two days ago and did 2500 DPS, but today only did 1500, why was that?  Many times you can find explanations, and they are valid, for example you may have had to off tank several enemies, or you died early in a few fights, or any other number of reasons.  But, if none of those happened, what did? Did you change gear, spec, rotation?  It gives you numeric values to look and to try to quantify changes and see what happens.

This is where the detailed window from Recount really comes in handy.  When you click on any player (usually yourself) in the list, it provides a window that displays what actually makes up the overall numbers it is displaying.  If you picked damage from a boss fight for example it will show what you did that caused that damage and what else you did that missed, was parried, blocked, etc.  This is one of the greatest utilities to use to find possible improvements.  For example if you see parries listed, that means you did not get behind the boss.  If you see misses, you forgot to hit cap.  There is a ton of information provided, and like the saying goes, information is power.

Lastly, it does allow you to chase the meters too.  As a DPS player, my firm belief is that if you are not chasing the meters and trying to push for #1 spot any chance you get, you are not doing your job correctly.  Keep in mind though that you should also be aware that some fights you cannot do that, so do not compare overall damage ever. Look at boss fights or reset it often and look at sections of instances or raids.  Also topping damage but drawing aggro away from the tank is a very bad thing. Respect the tank before the meters!


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Last Updated: Mar 13, 2016

About The Author

Byron has been playing and writing about World of Warcraft for the past ten years. He also plays pretty much ever other Blizzard game, currently focusing on Heroes of the Storm and Hearthstone, while still finding time to jump into Diablo III with his son.

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