CTMod

Authors: Cide & TS
Official Site: ctmod.net

Download it here! (v1.853, 220kb, zip format)

Reviewed 1.17.2005 (Version 1.853) by Ethec

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Features:

Customizable hotbars - stack, move, and scale up to 4 additional hotbars (including pet and class bars), display cooldown timers on hotbar buttons, toggle hotbar buttons that fade when your target is out of range. Quest levels - Shows approximate level required to solo the quest in your quest log. Elite (party) quests continue to be marked as such. Rename your bags. Jot down notes about other players. Mail Mod allows you to send a single email to up to 21 friends with a single click. Map displays cursor and player coordinates, allows notation, and automatically records gathering nodes. A moveable party window that shows buffs active on all party members. Display an expiration message in your status window when a buff is about to expire. You can set at what point before expiry the message is displayed. Show values or percentages of health and mana remaining for you, your party members, your target, and your target's target. Self-cast - automatically casts friendly spells on yourself if an enemy is targeted. If an ally is targeted, the spell is cast on them. CT Raid Assist - A seperate, fully featured raid mod: Display health, mana, buffs, and debuffs for everyone in the raid. Multiple class / party grouping, sorting, and display options. Assign up to 5 main tanks and see the name, health, and mana of their individual targets. Auto-cancel healing spells if a target's health increases above a certain threshhold, (e.g. 85%). Report your health / mana or the party's via the status window One-click debuff curing and rebuffing. Quickly whisper to members of your guild within a set level range, and send a raid invite automatically if they reply. Non-invasive - most features disappear when no values are present (e.g. CT Raid Assist can be configured when not in a raid, but is hidden until you join or start a raid). Proven compatibility with other mods such as Atlas, CombatStats, Auctioneer, and Titan. French / German language support.

Dependability - Do this mod's creators keep pace with game patches?

In a word, yes . Cide and TS have a long history of keeping the mod compilation not only up to date, but the CT Mod team regularly adds new features as well.

Functionality - Does it work as intended?

It works brilliantly, and as advertised. While some users reported problems with hotbar buttons not fading when using the cooldown timer feature after the WoW v1.9 patch, I have yet to see the error crop up. I could only break the mod when using the rather arcane "viewport" feature, which adjusts the viewable game area on the screen. Even then I only received a flacid error message that allowed me to retool the screen anyway.

Usability - Is it easy to install, or are there underlying dependencies? Is this mod easy to use, or do users climb a steep learning curve?

While CT Mod is really easy to get into -- being almost entirely menu driven --it will take some time to learn. Nifty features like the cooldown timer floating over the spell button were toggled off by default, so you'll want to spend some time sitting in the inn getting to know CT Mod's capabilities. In fact, the only real gripe I have with the mod (it would be an info-mercial instead of a review unless I had at

CT Mod is a clean, feature-packed UI workhorse

least one!) is that I had to go through the mod setup feature by feature to find out what CT Mod could do for my game. While setting up and customizing the mod is a cinch, the documentation (on the official site and elsewhere) is pretty low key. This is a great, comprehensive mod especially for the entry-level modder, and the CT Mod team should do more to proudly "sell" it to the low-level WoW community.

Novelty - How cool / ambitious is this mod?

Being a robust UI Mod compilation, CT Mod covers the fundamentals very well and supplies enough bells and whistles to keep the average player smiling for many, many levels. If you ever switch back to the default interface, say at the opening bell on patch day, I wager you'll miss CT Mod's clean map interface, levels in quest log, and sundry other features like the dickens. While it is true that many of CT Mod's features are available in other downloadable mods, why shop around? CT Mod is the Wal*Mart of UI Mods. If CT Mod is missing two thing in the fundamentals department, it's an instance map interface and a small compass / coordinates window on the main screen. The former is already done very well by Atlas, and as for the latter; it'd be nice to zero in on a set of coords passed down from a guildmate or website without a frightful glimpse at the full-screen map.

Overall - How do we rate the mod, overall?

If I had to choose one UI from level 1 through 60, it would be CT Mod. Mind you, I'm not big into instancing or battlegrounds, and for the directionally challenged, CT Mod is a tad weak (which is why God made other map mods!). For the casual gamer or someone who's just getting started in Azeroth, this is one kickass UI mod. Highly recommended!

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