Flux

Marking with the game UI can be a monumental pain. For those who aren’t into hotkeys or want some extra features let’s go over the various mods out there for marking creatures with raid targets. Consider one of these mods essential if you are regularly marking in raids or instances.

Previously we talked about marking with hotkeys.

The Ace mods listed below can be installed by getting WoWAceUpdater.

Button Bars

There are several flavors of mods to help you mark. But by far the most popular ones are the button bar types. You click on a creature and then click on a button bar to mark it. This is infinitely better than the default Blizzard interface. It saves you from having to click through two menus for every mark, making it quite simple. Two of the more popular ones are LuckyCharms2 and Krom, but they are essentially the same. If you are a FuBar fan you can combine LuckyCharms2 and FuBar using FuBar-LuckyCharms2. Let’s take a look at a couple other button bar mods with some interesting or unique features.

RaidMobMarker has the ability to raid warn and whisper people their targets. To assign a symbol to a mob, select a creature and then a symbol button. To assign a player to symbol, select the player and then right click the symbol button. The abiliy to automatically tell the group their targets is especially useful for those groups that keep forgetting what their target is supposed to be.

- Luckycharms2 Button Bar.

- CharmsFu and configuration

For the Ace fans you have two choices, FuBar_CharmsFu and JasonTag both of which have something unique.

CharmsFu has AutoMarking. By clicking Automark the mod will take the currently selected target of each party member and assigns their target a symbol. For example, the target of the first mage in the party will be marked as a moon, . It’s a good mod but since the button bar is inside of fubar it’s requires some extra mousing around between it and your target and the buttons are small. You can make the buttons larger but then fubar gets too big. This is still better than the default interface. The automarking is of debatable use, but options are nice. If you do not like the pre-defined symbols and lua doesn’ scare you off. You can change these by editing FuBar_CharmsFu.lua file around line 417. Keep in mind when you update it will overwrite your changes.

JasonTag which came out a few months ago would be just another button bar mod except it has the unique feature of drag and drop. You can click or drag a symbol from the bar onto a creature. You can even drag a symbol onto your raid and party frames. It doesn’t have any configuration options, but it doesn’t need them. It is simple and clean.

- JasonTag Button Bar

Note that LuckyCharms without the 2 is the name of an Ace mod for marking with macros not a button bar. It’s useful for macro’s, Skull on Demon Chains anyone? And Bananabar2, another popular one, no longer works because of patch changes.

More Pie

Another type of mod uses pie menus. You double click, or hold down a key and click, to open a menu right on top of the creature you have selected. You then mouse over to select the symbol you want. To change or remove the symbol, do the same thing again. Not much could be easier. For those that use their mouse most of the time, this is ideal.

There are only three mods for doing this; Baud Mark, ezIcons, and Simple Raid Target Icons (SRTI). SRTI was the original and has a few more features. ezIcons is nearly the same thing but uses Ace. Baud Mark has fewer options and is simpler. For those that prefer Ace stick with ezIcons. If you want a few extra configuration settings and the shared party marking use SRTI. Note that Baud Mark has the skull in the center and uses right click for no icon, if another mod uses right click and is not configurable this might cause conflicts. Otherwise all three do the job well.

The limitation to all of these is that you have to be able to mouse over the creature on your screen. If you are targeting a target that is around a corner, you will have to use the old way or hotkeys.

Share the Marking

This type of mods help a group to share marking between the group on your approved list. This includes mods like MarkMyWord, MarkMyTarget, MAcon, and Simple Raid Target Icons. These each work in a slightly different way and except for MarkMyWords, they require each person in the group to have the mod to mark.

MarkMyWords is an Ace mod that allows the leader to receive whispered commands to automatically mark some players target with a symbol. This lets another player who either installed the mod or who macroed each symbol and put it on a button, to also mark. This is not particularly useful in raids, since you can raid assist someone. But it can be useful in parties.

MarkMyTarget and MAcon let a player choose a symbol for themselves and whenever they target a creature that symbol will appear even if they aren’t the leader. Unlike the other mods, the player’s special symbol will follow around as they switch targets. This is not useful in small groups if you use a party frame mod with target of a target, because you can already see what each player is targeting. This is fun however and it is easier to watch the bouncing symbol to see who has what targeted.

And lastly, SRTI allows others that also have SRTI installed to share marking duties.

Auto-Marking

Two mods which have recently appeared allow you to auto-mark.  This can be an enormous benefit to the player who is stuck with the job, especially in 5 player instances with many mobs.  Auto-marking lets you hover your mouse over a creature and the mod marks it for you.  This saves time and let’s the tank

The are two current mods.  RaidMobMarker uses a simpler system of preassigned group member to target symbols.   And MagicMarker which is an Ace addon uses a more complex target logic and priority set which involves learning about how you mark.

Configuring the options for MagicMarker can be daunting and time consuming, so some players may prefer the simpler system of RaidMobMarker.  However MagicMarker handles large raids well and once it has learned your preferences can be very powerful to use.  RaidMobMarker is easier to use but requires being configured for each party you are in.

Summary

Whether you are marking with hotkeys or mods, it is easier than the p.i.t.a. default UI. For non-Ace users give SRTI, or one of the button bar mods like Luckycharms2, Krom, or RaidMobMarker, a try.   If you are an Ace user then use JasonTag for simplicity, CharmsFu if you want it on FuBar, or ezIcons if you like Pie.

If you want to give auto-marking a try, use RaidMobMarker for simplicity and MagicMarker for features.

Mark my words, these will make your life easier.

Tags: mod, skill
Author: aos

This entry was posted by aos on Sunday, December 16th, 2007 at 5:00 pm and is filed under Games, WoW. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.