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| Okay, this is a little ridiculous. |
While preparing for an upcoming article on an exciting new addon, I decided I’d go ahead and run WoWAceUpdater since it’s been a few weeks since I last did so. “Updating 74 addons … ” Wait, what? How many addons do I have, anyway? I double click on the shortcut to my addons folder (this shortcut is probably one of the early warning signs of addon addition). Excluding the Blizzard_* addons that come with the game, I have 115 addons installed.
…
Maybe this has something to do with the fact that it takes me a minute or more to log into the game or recognize a disconnection. But what can I do? I need all my beautiful, shiny bells and whistles! Don’t I? Well let’s see …
DeadlyBossMods: Yeah, I have to have that. My guild says so. Otherwise I might explode on top of someone in Gruul’s Lair and laugh because they don’t have Barkskin to keep them alive… er… I mean, apologize profusely and promise to be more careful in the future. So DBM stays. But do I really need DBM_Hyjal? DBM_TheEye? I know I’m not going to be needing DBM_BlackTemple. /sigh /delete Unfortunately, I think the author of DBM was smart enough to make these addons not actually take up memory if you aren’t in the relevant zones so I probably haven’t really helped my cause. I do feel a little better about the number of addons in my folder, though.
Atlasloot: The addon for those of us who like to look at items we can only see otherwise by hanging around in Shattrath. I don’t think I need the addons for “Old Instances”, “World Loot”, or “Outdoor Raids.” /delete
ArkInventory: It’s a memory hog, to be sure. But once you’ve actually played with ArkInventory, you’d rather play without your right arm than having to manage your inventory using the default interface. (Gah, individual BAGS?!) It stays.
Minimalist: Tell me I’m not the only who sees the irony here. I don’t actually remember what this addon does (always a good sign). A little GoogleFu and I discover … that there are a lot of pages on the Interwebs with the words “Warcraft”, “addon”, and “Minimalist.” So I give in and go find the page on WoWAce.com. Ah, this is the addon that automatically declines duels for me, automatically repairs my gear. It does a few other things, but I discover that these are functions that are handled by other addons. /delete
Proximo: I haven’t PvPed this season. I can always download this again later. Ditto for StinkyQueue (helps to queue you and your groupmates for Battlegrounds simultaneously). /delete and /delete
InFlight: This estimates the total time it’s going to take you to reach your final destination. I probably can live without this. /delete
So I’m down to 97 non-Blizzard addons. That’s a little better, but I’m feeling like Spring Cleaning so let’s see what else I can lose:
- Aloft: Makes nameplates pretty. It’s painful since I’m such a fan of aesthetics tweaks, but /delete.
- Autobar: Love it. Can’t do without it. Mr. Phae actually keeps a pair of vertical bars with all his consumables on it (you should see his Windows desktop). I sneakily installed Autobar once, and he either decided not to say anything or didn’t notice. I feel better, though. It stays.
- Bartender3: Best. Buttons. Ever. Makes using and tweaking my Nostromo a breeze.
- !BugGrabber and BugSack: For someone who runs as many addons as I do, these two are practically essential since they hide the errors that pop up when a particular addon is using outdated code.
- Bulkmail: This addon used to allow you to send 20 or so items to people through the mail system. With Patch 2.3, it’s superfluous so /delete.
- Cartographer: Lets me stalk Valenna (and other guildmates who have it installed), even when we aren’t grouped. Also records the locations of mining nodes, fishing pools, and herbs. I couldn’t play either of my gathering alts without it.
- Omnibus: An in-game notepad of sorts, I originally intended to use this to help me record ideas — or whole text excerpts — for my blog while raiding. But I generally just have my laptop open and write there, so this addon isn’t really needed. /delete
- ClosetGnome: I switched over to Outfitter a while ago so I can get rid of this. /delete
- DontBugMe: Hides AFK and DND messages after the first time you receive them. Nice idea, but nonessential. /delete
- FishingBuddy OutfitFrame: I don’t use FB anymore, so this can go. /delete
So after about an hour of work, I’m down to just 79 non-Blizzard addons. Not minimalist by any means, and I couldn’t really bring myself to delete any of the real memory hogs: Pitbull (unitframes), ArkInventory, or Recount (damage/healing meters), but I am loading into the game at least a little bit faster. Might it be time for you to do some Spring cleaning?
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@Graylo: Oh, my mistake!! I’ve adjusted the description to be more clear.
January 21st, 2008 at 12:04 pm
I’d do some spring cleaning. ‘cept I’m lazy :(.
January 21st, 2008 at 12:44 pm
I should probably do some spring cleaning myself, there are sooo many addons i don’t use anymore.
On Inflight, i actually got rid of that awhile ago just because Quartz handles the same function. The one thing i can do is just check and see if any other addons are overlapping. I don’t think so but i better check anyway.
Recount, i love it to death but it is a HUGE memory hog, if you wanna cut down the memory usage, use SW stats (even though recount is awesome but ive had to just turn it off because its such a hog and SW dose pretty much everything recount dose but its always up in the air whether recount or SW is more reliable /shrug). I use X perl so i cant comment on Pitbull and its memory usage.
You might wanna get Stubby addon, it makes loading in the world a little faster as it automaticly loads the on demand addons.
I actually use an addon to give me more information on mod errors so i know exactly where they are coming from instead of hiding them. Ignoring problems like that is just a no no. I can’t seem to find the name of it on this computer, ill reply back when i get back to my normal machine.
January 21st, 2008 at 12:57 pm
You DO realize that your cleanup will just increase our addons’ number, right?
I’m testing half of the ones you deleted :S
January 21st, 2008 at 1:20 pm
Oh please, you’re a lightweight. I go through my addons once a month and clean out ones that I’m not using anymore. I’m currently sitting on (*goes to check*) 295 addons, of which ~250 are WowAce Addons. And this is after my recent cleaning (where I had over 400). My loading time is about 30 seconds to a minute, but it’s not really long enough that I notice it as a hassle.
One thing I found that was a HUGE help in reducing my loading time was reinstallating all my WowAce addons WITHOUT externals. This way it only has to load each library once, and it’s shared among all my WowAce addons, rather than each one trying to load its own copy. There’s no difference in memory in-game (it will only let one instance of each library be used), but it significantly helps loading times.
If you’re interested:
http://www.wowace.com/wiki/WowAceUpdater#WITH_Externals_vs._WITHOUT_Externals
January 21st, 2008 at 1:50 pm
*sigh* I counted my FuBar addons the other night, and those alone total 29!!
Phae, have you used Bongos? I have been tempted to try Bartender, but so far, Bongos hasn’t frustrated me to the point of going through the headaches of setting up a new button bar addon.
I have Autobar as well, and like it as far as it goes, but the latest iteration is buggy as hell, and not very easy (if not impossible) to modify. Unfortunately, I’ve yet seen an alternative at all, and I love the concept. Now if the implementation were a little smoother. (Why isn’t the Disenchant button on the Craft row??)
January 21st, 2008 at 2:22 pm
I havent expreimentd much with addons, I just use dbm xperl minimap coords gatherer and recount
January 21st, 2008 at 4:43 pm
Oh I just know what you are talking about. Whenever I read about new addons I must try them … My load times are awful and every once in a while the game disconnects me before I even get in.
I have already reduced Auctioneer & kc_item use to a dedicated bank character.
I got rid of Aloft, too. It is so pretty but so big and has terrible loading times. Pitbull and ArkInventory I can’t let go. Still they are huge. When counting addons I just leave out the ’sub’-addons and libraries, that does not make it seem so big. I even re-installed Warmup again to find out the worst offenders. I then also got rid of CyCircled. On the other hand what do a few MB memory and a few seconds load time do?
Maybe I should try Outfitter … I am still using ClosetGnome.
I keep switching between Bongos and Bartender. Bongos has more features I think but every once in a while it’s configuration is messed up.
January 21st, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Heh. I went through this lately. Frustrated with sub-10 fps in raids and excruciatingly long load times, I slashed and burned my enormous mod list.
I sat down at my desk with a yellow legal pad and wrote down all the mods that I absolutely must have for existence. Stuff like DBM, Pitbull, Grid, DoTimers, Bartender3, oRA2…
Then I moved out both my Addons and WTF folders (Backups good) and went out and downloaded all the mods completely from scratch.
After spending a couple hours getting everything set up again how I liked it, I healed an instance, did some quick arena, and wrote down all the other stuff I had forgotten I needed. Click2Cast, ItemRack, Assessment…
All in all, I am getting much better performance and load times, so it was worth the work. I’ll have to read up on with and without externals from the comments above; I’d always assumed that doing “with externals” would download all the pesky libraries I needed without me having to research/get the errors for all the Ace libraries my stuff needed, and add them separately.
January 21st, 2008 at 8:52 pm
I still like Bulkmail because it shows me everything in my mailbox at once, even if it’s stuck in one of those crates. I can then go through and take just the items I want without having to open each and every mail looking for it. Perhaps I shouldn’t use my mailbox as a second storage device?
January 22nd, 2008 at 1:49 am
If you’re like me and use Recount for the stats rather than the real-time charts, you can switch off the time-based data collection in the options window. That will free some resources. Some people like to switch off data sync as well, but that makes stats useless because they end up completely different among members of the same raid.
January 22nd, 2008 at 3:57 am
115 addons? That’s nothing. Last night while benchmarking damage meters I was sitting on 239 addons including blizzards ^:)
January 22nd, 2008 at 6:57 am
A note about Cartographer and Atlas Loot, Cartographer does everything that atlas loot does 2out of the box”, if you want to see what loot a boss drops view the map for the instance and click on the skull for that boss on the map, you will get a list of their drops :).
If you are only seeing numbers instead of item links, clicking the item will reveal it in all it’s glory :D.
January 22nd, 2008 at 10:44 am
I used a single-inventory addon for a long time, but then nuked it once I figured out how much crap I have to carry to raids, and how little of that crap I want to carry while farming/doing instances. Standard bags work like a dream for me.
Why do you need recount with WWS kicking around? A semi-permanent and easily-sharable record of a raid > personal stats any day…. at least IMO. Recount is very pretty, I’ll admit, but also terribly redundant with the ascension of WWS.
As for Pitbull…. love it to bits. What you should do, however, is assess what features you actually use, and disable those that are of no value for you. The author was thoughtful enough to make it very modular, and a half hour tinkering will save you much memory.
January 22nd, 2008 at 11:36 am
There’s something of a continuum between the default bags and mods like ArkInventory. The middle ground is occupied by things like OneBag or Bagnon, which give you all your items in one window, without any automatic sorting/categorization like ArkInventory… and thus they are significantly lighter on the ol’ memory.
Recount gives a *lot* of stats, and thus takes up a truly stunning amount of memory. If you’re not using it to its potential then you might want to look into something like Violation (very minimal) or Assessment (halfway).
Now BulkMail, the reason I came here to comment! The ability to send multiple items was always its least compelling feature. Where it really shines is in automatically deciding which items to mail to which people, based on rules you tell it. Mine automatically sends Aldor/Scryer rep items, various profession recipes, herbs, ore, and so forth to the appropriate toons. It saves a lot of time looking at my bags and trying to work out what I need to do with all that junk.
January 22nd, 2008 at 11:58 am
So, let me get this straight- ALL of you need every single one of those mods for whatever group you are in to be successful?
Every group has its modheads- I guess you all are that person for your raidgroups\instance runs\guildgroups.
Im running a whopping 29- does that make ignorance bliss? Best one lately is one that puts all your minmap buttons into one- reduces clutter and makes it easy to find what you want.
Low performance in a raid from your modmadness does not endear you to raidleaders-that leads to lagwipes and dc’s at bad times. Particularly if you are the person it happens to constantly.
Caveat emptor?
January 22nd, 2008 at 12:27 pm
@Zackoria: Good to know that Quartz will handle flights for me. I had no idea! I’d considered ditching Quartz with the changes to the GCD, but it still seems to be helpful. I will definitely check out Stubby; thanks for the recommendation!
@Hokuto: Ooooo … sorry, but I can see how that might happen! I would probably do the same thing.
@SaladFork: Wow. I bow down before your addons directory (and all that delicious RAM you must have. Thank you for the recommendation to install without Externals. I’ll have to do that, too!
@Kestrel: I have never tried Bongos. What would you say is its main selling point? I have always liked how easy it was to set up BarTender and that I can configure them to look like my Nostromo’s keypad. And /agree on autobar. Totally a pita to learn to configure - which is frustrating because I had just learned the previous iteration when it got updated!
@Fenlar: Wow, you sound like Mr. Phae. He refuses to install anything that isn’t absolutely necessary.
@Yashima: I actually tried swapping Pitbull for AG_Unitframes in this process but none of my unitframes would even show up. I finally got frustrated and switched back. I did cut back on memory by removing portraits (I was using the pretty, 3-D animated portraits). I switched to Outfitter from Closetgnome a few months ago. CG is nice, but Outfitter was easier for me to configure. Plus it has the ability to say “don’t show my hat” for one outfit while showing it for another. /win
@Kaera: Wow - that’s dedication. I will have to try that, too. It was a real struggle for me to cut back as much as I did, but I imagine your scorched earth method would be a healthy purgative every so many months.
@Drikke: As if we, as Druids, have a choice about using our mailbox for storage. ^_^
@Endivias: Oh! I will be sure to turn off time-based data collection. I wasn’t aware that was an option. What will I lose for doing that?
@Gwaendar: O.o
@Ashai: Wow, thank you. I will uninstall AtlasLoot (and probably Atlas) tonight.
@Karthis: Yes, Recount is a memory hog. But it also seems to be correctly associating the healing done by my Lifeblooms with me, giving me a more accurate idea of how much healing I’m outputting. Am I crazy or has anyone else noticed this? Great idea on stripping Pitbull’s features down. I think I may have done this a while back but I will check.
@David: What got me hooked on ArkInventory’s memory-intensive sorting was how easy it made managing the contents of my bank. Trying to keep only so many stacks of leatherworking or tailoring goods so as not to exceed the capacity of the back I’d mentally assigned to holding those materials was. so. frustrating.
@Autumnsong: I don’t see anything wrong with running a lot of mods as long as it isn’t adversely affecting your performance. Long load times don’t hurt anyone but ourselves, and my system is robust enough that it can handle what I’ve thrown at it. Still, I think a good cleaning out is important from time to time. =)
January 22nd, 2008 at 2:09 pm
DBM does only load the zone you are in and it is a must. For healers there’s nothing better than clique+grid. oRA2 > CTRA. KTM is not needed for healers. Totem timers is a must for Shammies. Gatherer is a must for farming. I have a few vanity add-ons like damage meters, topFU, and others, but I try to keep everything to a minimum and try not to clutter my screen.
Don’t give up on end game…it will come. I wish I could send you loots…it would make you sick how much resto druid gear (T-6 equiv) we DE. We have no resto druids and only one feral druid (who takes some of the healing stuff for an off-set). I think we may be getting a transfer though.
January 23rd, 2008 at 10:08 am
Hehe as everyone, I need to do some cleaning myself. Still got duckie-bank installed
Things I cannot live without?
Xperl, click2cast and DBM.
Also have recount (with time data disabeld), cartographer, atlas with atlas loot and a few more.
Really not something too much. Rather the usual. Have tried bartender etc but did not make a big difference for my game-style since I click 2 cast :D, so I reverted back to the default ones.
January 23rd, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Phaelia, Recount shows lifebloom ticks as belonging to me, but the final heal as belonging to the person it was on. It amuses me, at least, as I can get most of the raid onto the overhealing chart.
Kyamiko, yes, in an ideal world, healers don’t need a threat meter–heal your assignment, darn it, and let the tanks cope with the threat generated. However, in the “real” world, I’d at least like advance warning of when this hasn’t happened so I can pop a threat-reducing trinket or barkskin or /something/.
Everyone, is there someone who has tried both DBM and its WowAce competition, BigWigs? I can spot a few differences between the two without having used DBM (frequency of updates, loading style: BigWigs loads modules per boss, rather than per zone), but at the stage I’m at, BigWigs has one overwhelming advantage: working, updated modules for 5-man dungeons, too (LittleWigs). I know at one point DBM had a similar project, but it seems to be neither working nor being worked on.
January 23rd, 2008 at 3:00 pm
Oh, and i looked up the addon that gives better error messeges. Its called Swatter. It shows the error in detail, shows exactly where it originated from, and your able to copy paste it out.
January 23rd, 2008 at 5:12 pm
[...] has taken it upon herself to cut down her addon list to what is really essential. After all, load in and zoning times are vital, too. After deleting [...]
January 23rd, 2008 at 5:29 pm
I prefer BigWigs to DBM but would be fine with either. Cartographer over anything Atlas.
The mod I absolutely can not live without, if I want to keep what sanity remains, is RatingBuster. Couple it with EquipCompare or comparable for easy decisions.
The pair will compare tooltips on a piece of gear to the ones(s) worn in the same slot, with things like crit rating converted into percentages [RB] and showing the amount gained and lost [EC, others can do it too]. A lot easier than trying to remember how much spellcrit equals 1% at level 63 just to choose a quest reward.
mmmmmmmgood
January 24th, 2008 at 1:35 am
Phaelia, from what I can gather, Bongos is as easily configurable as Bartender. Its keybindings are independent of, but overrule, Blizzard’s keybinding interface (meaning if you use Bongos to map “M” to your “Melt Faces” macro, it will no longer open the Map).
The one place I find it to be a bit confusing is for changing stances, and page-changing (e.g., ranged bar to melee bar for hunters). However, I seem to have stumbled through it okay (although the only real stance changers I have are my rogues).
Bongos is compatible with CyCircled, you can have up to 10 bars, plus multiple pages of those bars, configured in as many rows/columns as you wish.
So really, there’s nothing wrong with it–and it’s probably about as popular as Bartender–but I’m just trying to see if there’s something better.
*sigh* I sure miss Discord Action Bars.
January 24th, 2008 at 5:59 am
Not uncluding blizzard ones = 200 addons exactly. I am Addon Addicted. But just a little.
January 24th, 2008 at 6:51 am
Bartender3 and Bongos are almost exactly the same, Bartender has the added advantage that it’s automatically updated by wowaceupdater.
January 24th, 2008 at 9:34 am
I have about 250 addons (a lot are sub addons of addons. ex. 20 folders for Cartographer). I of course have plenty of ram and horsepower to run them on my Mac Pro 2xDual core Xeon 2.66 with 8 Gigs of Ram and and 1tb (4×250SATA2) drive, ATIx1900XL(512mb) and Dual 23″ monitors (Gotta have a place to read/research on the web while playin)…
January 26th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
hmmm, one mod that most healers i know are using and that has not been mentionned once is PerfectRaid, it s very easy to customize and very compac, i use it to buff the raid, because u can see who is missing MOTW and Thorns. Plus i use it to heal during raids by clicking on the bars to switch targets.
What mod do u use to switch targets during raids… I used to use Ct raid before this one but Perfectraid makes switching targets much faster.
January 28th, 2008 at 10:44 am
@ Adremma
I guess I should have put KTM should not be needed for healers. I don’t have it installed and have never had a problem, in raid, pulling aggro. I admit, I did carry one in my bags for the occasional 5 man PUG, but I found that avoiding 5 man pugs at all costs is worth the free bag slot. Bottom line: if you are pulling aggro as a healer, then leave the group, as either your tank is not up to par and/or your CC isn’t; it’s not worth the repair bill.
January 30th, 2008 at 11:05 pm
I use way too many addons myself. Many of the same ones you have mentioned here. To replace recount you may want ot look at one called Violation.
Cheers,
Klanksta