Focus Magic: Mage Addons

In this episode of Focus Magic, OMF discusses Mage-Specific addons!

Intro, with thanks to Caoboi

In 2009 a devilishly handsome troll mage was covered in pink glitter and Hello Kitty stickers by a pair of Blood Elf ladies for a crime he didn't commit. This mage promptly cleaned off his girl-i-fied robes and escaped to the Dalaran underground. Today, still targeted for poking and glitterification by the crazy girls in AIE, he survives as a soldier of fortune and podcast segment host. If you have a mage problem...if no one else can help...and if you can find him...maybe you can listen to...Focus Magic! DOOT DO DOOT DOOOOO!!! DOOT DOOT DOOOOOOT!! Welcome back to Focus Magic guildmates, this one's number 10! As per normal (as per normal, as per normal....) I am your host, Dahkar, or as you likely know me, OLD MAN FRANKS!

Yeah, I missed one. Cut me Some Slack!

Yes I did miss the last show, due to craziness surrounding the impending birth of my Godson. Josiah Allen Henry, son of my extremely close friends Josh and Angie Henry, entered this crazy world we call "real life" on July 18th, 2009. And in case you're wondering, he is in fact, really really adorable. I hope you will join me in congratulating them both.

Addons!

For our tenth segment, I've got a quick one for you this week folks, I'm going to cover some really good addons for mages. I'm really not one to completely revamp my UI, I don't even use any action bar mods, but I do know of a few addons out there that I consider absolutely essential.

Cryolysis

The first of these is Cryolysis. C-R-Y-O-L-Y-S-I-S. For those familiar with the classic Warlock mod Necrosis, this is a mage version of that mod. It provides a central sphere which can graphically display any number of atrributes, from your health, your mana, how much food you have on you, to a whole host of other options. Surrounding this central sphere are a number of smaller spheres with a host of options. There's a sphere to manage your conjured food, another for your water, and one for your mana gems. There's one which, upon clicking, pops out a series of sqheres for each of your teleport and portal destinations. Another sqhere has a similar pop out menu to manage your various buff spells. Each of these spheres has a displayable tooltip which tells you what happens when left clicking or right clicking them. For example, the food sphere typically conjures your highest rank of conjured food available when right clicked, and left clicking it will cause you to eat it. Any of the Teleport destinations will typically conjure a portal if right clicked, or simply teleport you there if left clicked. There are even three customizable sphere buttons you can program to use (though i've not tried this myself) This mod is excellent for all those utility spells we mages have but don't necessarily need in combat, allowing us to minimize the spells we keep on our actionbars most of the time. It keeps them all in a small, compact and easy to move around interface. I highly recommend it. A quick note, this particular mod has been through several iterations by various modwriters. I believe the current incarnation is known as Cryolysis3. You can search for Cryolysis on Curse.com and usually find the most up to date one.

MageAlert

The second mod I have to talk to you about is called MageAlert. All three of our specs have a special ability that, when it procs, makes one of our spells more powerful, and we need to quickly cast that spell before the proc wears off. For Arcane, this is Missile Barrage. For Fire, it's Hot Streak. Frost actually has two, Frostbite/Fingers of Frost (they more or less do the same thing and if one has both, they proc together), and Brain Freeze. What MageAlert does is simple, when one of these abilities activates, it provides an extremely visible screen flash and an accompanying sound effect. These screen flashes and sounds are, in my opinion, unmistakable for anything else, extremely cool sounding, and will ensure you never mis a chance to use these abilities again. Now you might think you don't really need these, and you could be right. When you're leveling, it can be hard to NOT see that these abilities have activated. MageAlert shines in a group setting, where there are lots of things going on, and you may sometimes miss a proc because your attention was focused elsewhere. These abilities are so good that not using them when they're up can significantly hamper your DPS, so once you're at a level where you can get these, pick this addon up.

Scorchio2

My final addon specifically for mages might just be my most favorite ever: It's called Scorchio2. It's a timer bar mod, that as you might can guess, was originally intended to use for tracking the uptime of the Improved Scorch effect. However, it tracks a LOT more than that nowadays. As you know, the Improved Scorch effect provides the same type of debuff as a frost mage's Winters Chill and a Warlock's Improved Shadow Bolt, and that these do not stack. Scorchio2 will show you which of the three, if any, is currently on your target, as well as a countdown timer for how long they have left. It will also give a timer for each of your proc abilities I mentioned earlier, letting you know exactly how much time you have before they expire. As i've mentioned before, you should not use these proc abilities the second they activate. In the case of Hot Streak and Brain Freeze, you should finish your current cast and then cast your Pyroblast or Fireball then. For Missile Barrage, you should always charge up three stacks of the Arcane Blast debuff before using it. However, sometimes you can use them right away. Maybe you have to move, or Ice Block yourself. Scorchio will let you see how much time you have exactly before they fade. Other things it tracks include Polymorph, Slow, and perhaps my personal favorite, any ability that would activate Torment the Weak (and it labels it as "Torment the Weak" even!) Each of these bars is clearly labeled, color coded, and even has a small icon next to it. You can easily and quickly tell by looking at the mod what effect is currently active. If an effect such as Winters Chill or Torment the Weak is active across multiple targets, the bars will become translucent if it's on the mob you're not actively targeting, and switch to full opacity if you change to the appropriate target. Finally, the mod is super customizable. You can choose which effects you want to track, change the bar color or text that displays, change the level of translucency, and of course, move the addon around on your UI.

Other Addons that Aren't Mage-Specific

Those are just a few of the possible mage specific addons that you can find out there, but they're absolutely my three favorites. Now obviously there are other addons out there that you can, and should, get, such as Recount or another damage meter, Omen for watching your threat, a bar mod such as Bartender, or a unitFrames mod like X-Perl, but those aren't specific to our class, they're something that any class will probably want and benefit from. I highly recommend those mods i just listed as well, but you may not get as much mage-specific benefit from them as the three I've highlighted.

Incidentally, as these three mods provided only specific mage benefits, you may be annoyed when you log in to your other characters and find them cluttering up your UI. Cryolysis will especially look ugly, as it won't detect any of the spells it needs to populate the spheres. Be sure you go into your addon manager by clicking addons in the lower left of your character selection screen, and disable these mods for your non-mage characters. The easiest way is to select "All characters" from the drop down menu, and then uncheck all your mage-specific addons. Then select your mage from the drop down and check them all again. This will ensure they don't load in your UI of all your other toons, though you will have to disable them for any other character you create after that as well.

Outtro

That's it for this week, my fellow students of the Arcane arts. You've got some good addons to add to your UI, so go and customize it to your liking? Need some help with that? Talk to my friend Bouvi of the UI Clinic!! This is Dahkar, aka Old Man Franks, reminding you: Help control the gnome population, roll a troll today!!