Flux

Eventually the default World of Warcraft just doesn’t cut it anymore. Somewhere after heroic instances or ten and twenty five person raids you start asking. How many hitpoints or mana does your tanks or healers have left? Who is targeting what? Who needs healing, decursing, or debuffing? How do I try to keep track of all these people? These are difficult things to do using the standard frames. This is where custom Unit Frame mods step in.

What is a Unit Frame?

Broadly, a unit is a mob in the game and a frame has a list of them. Frames help you select and act on them without having to pick them out in in combat.

Let’s take a look at some and see what’s available. And if you don’t like details, just scroll to the end and read what you should use.

What we Have

There are four Unit Frames by default. You the player, your party members, your raid members, and your target. You can view percentage of health, mana, and buffs as bars and icons. You can even drag out raid frames in groups by selecting the Social Button (O on the keyboard) and then the Raid tab.

But this is fairly limited. We can have more and better.

What can we add?

How about 3d portraits, style adjustments, aggro warnings, casting bars, healing predictions, overhealing warnings, numerical displays, and even out of range and death indicators?

Or we can add a bewildering array of additional frames.

Player, Player’s Target (T), Player’s Target’s Target (ToT), Player’s Target’s Target’s, Target (TTT), Player’s Pet (Pet), Player’s Pet’s Target (PetT), Party (P), Party Targets (PT), Party Pets (PPet), Raid (R), Raid Targets (RT), Raid Pets (RPet), Main Tanks (MT), Main Tank’s Target (MTT), Main Tank’s Target’s Target (MTToT), Main Assist (MA), Main Assist’s Target (MAT), Main Assist’s Target’s Target (MATT), Focus (F), Focus Target (FT), Mouseover (Mo), Mouseover’s Target (MoT), and even some pseudo frames used in some arena mods.

Depending one what you are doing in the game many of these are invaluable.

[add more about frame roles]

Types of mods

Which features and options a mod offers generally falls into a couple categories.

• Arena - not technically Unit Frames but they serve many of the same purposes. Essentially they help you track targets in arena matches. (Proximo, Gladiator)
• Chrome - do not usually give you any new information or combat features, but they allow you to arrange and style the frames that you do have. (Sage, SimpleUnitFrames, Skinner)
• HuD - or Heads Up Display. These mods focus on you and your target. They are optimized to bring information as close to the screen center as possible. They are great for people who enjoy pvp. But if healing or tanking is your primary role, they are not optimal. They are for the first person shooter and elimination style combat. (ArcHUD2, DaHud, DHUD2, IceHUD, mHud)
• Multipurpose - offers wide variety of frames. These include party, raid, and target frames. They are widely used. (ag_UnitFrames, BunchoBars, PitBull, XPerl, Perl Classic, Satrina Unit Frames 2)
• Raid - are more specific to the raid environment. For example, they often don’t show what your party is targeting. But their features focus on raid functions like highlighting tanks and healers. (PerfectRaid, CT_UnitFrames, sRaidFrames, Grid)
• Target - fill in the gaps that the default frames and pure raid frames miss. Because of this target mods are often combined with other frame mods to make up the difference. (AlarTTFrame, PerfectTargets, MainAssist)

[add oUF]
Note that we were going to take a look at Discord Unit Frames as well. It’s a popular Unit Frame but it’s officially discontinued now with no new author yet in site.

Arena mods

Proximo -

Gladiator -

[possibly include SSArena Frames and SSPVP2]

Chrome mods

Sage -

SimpleUnitFrames -

Skinner -

HuD mods

ArcHUD2 -

DaHud -

DHUD2 -

IceHUD -

mHud -

Multipurpose mods

ag_UnitFrames - is an ace mod written by among others Andreas G. It is one of the more lightweight and feature rich mods for multipurpose frames. The style of the frame is familiar and the default configuration works without modification. This is a unit frame you can install with very little effort and find many features. The author is currently working on the next generation of ag_UnitFrames using Ace3 which will include party target’s and custom layout files.

BunchoBars - is another ace mod that true to its name, is a bunch of bars. By default it is compact and easy to read that focuses on text and lightweight notifications. This mod is for those of you who love command lines. Though ironically, one of the most interesting features is a sub mod called BunchOfBars_HealLines which literally draws lines between peoples targets in the raid. Usually only the healers are targeting your own raid which means you can see who is healing who. BunchoBars is lightweight but HealLines takes a a little more. HealLies requires 2.73s of your CPU over ten minutes in the test below. But it is fun watching the lines dance. [has main tank through oRA]

Pitbull - Pitbull is a dog. Yes I hated it when I first tried it. But it is the most feature rich Multipurpose mod we reviewed. It can do almost anything with training, but takes some patience. To start with, after you install the mod all your frames will be in the middle of the screen and need configuration. But once you understand it, you can make it do anything.

Xperl - comprehensive, well done, and in line with the original default frames. [more segmented, bars are busier but more compact] [can use CTRA or ORA MT targets] [player, pet,pet target, target, targets target, ttt, focus, ft, party, pt, raid, raid pets] [raid groups are by number and not mixed together by default] [nice mod, a little busy by default] [very interesting feature, when you mouse over a buff on anyones portrait you see all those in the raid without it]

Perl Classic - less config, and less chrome, which is probably one of the reasons it runs faster. [basic pearl and peral classic show their origins as defautl fram replacements] [] [focus, focus targets, party, party targets, party pet, pet target, tot, ttt] [no raid frames!] [supports cast bars 3d portraits buff and debuff timers etc like pitbull]

Satrina Unit Frames 2 -

Raid mods

PerfectRaid - quick and compact mod which focuses on text and less symbols or graphics. [letter symbols instead of icons] [its only a party/raid frame/ groups, no targets pets etc] [no mana bars] [coloration is good, casting timers not shown] [click casting like most]

CT_UnitFrames - this mod is one of the originals. But some still demand to use it. Essentially it overlays the existing Blizzard frames for player, party, target, target and target of target. It displays health and mana numbers on top of or to the right of the existing bars. It has a solid control panel and is extremely lightweight. It’s a good choice if you need to only see health and mana numbers but poor if you are looking for additional features.

sRaidFrames - basic and clean. Numerically oriented with no health bars but a simple grey box layout. [player, target, tot, focus, pet, party]

Grid - when you first install this mod, you may feel like you are looking at a piece of abstract art. Then you might notice that all those colors are moving around. Finally, you get the idea it all means something. Grid is one of the most strange but interesting mods available as a Raid frame. I recommend it for a raid frame but it takes getting used to. Much like learning use Dvorak instead of Qwerty keyboards. [note fps locks when using dynamic layout] [no target info, or target of target, pet info with sub-mod]

Target mods

AlarTTFrame -

PerfectTargets -

MainAssist -

Frame Summary

Player

Party

Pet

Mod

Type

Player

T

TT

TTT

Party

T

Pet

T

PrPet

R

RT

RPet

MT

MTT

MTTT

MA

MAT

MATT

F

FT

Mo

MoT

How well do they all perform?

To test out the mods we ran all but the Arena mods for ten minutes in Alterac Valley while staying with the fight and keeping on eye on the performance meters. They didn’t appear to need significantly more resources after ten minutes. But they possible could after very long times which wasn’t tested.

For those are interested in the technical details of the performance measurements. Only the mod being reviewed and the performance mod were installed. The performance mod was FuBar + FuBar_PerformanceFu with CPU profiling turned on. The performance mods and any Ace mod reviewed were installed with externals so libraries did not conflict in the performance measurements.

Mod	Type	Memory (MiB)	CPU (s)	Version	Extras
Proximo	Arena
Gladiator	Arena
Sage	Chrome
SimpleUnitFrames	Chrome
Skinner	Chrome
ArcHUD2	HuD
DaHud	HuD
DHUD2	HuD
IceHUD	HuD
mHud	HuD
ag_UnitFrames	Multi	1.39	10.1	58854.1
ag_UnitFrames++	Multi	1.47	11.0		_Banzai, _Barfader, _RangeCheckM, _Layouts, _CC
BunchoBars	Multi	1.74	6.69	56264.32
BunchoBars++	Multi	1.98	7.61		_Buffs, _Agro, _Dispel, _Range, _HealEstimate, _Threshold, _SameTarget, _Highlight, _ManaBar, _HealthBar, _ToolTip, _Name, _HealthBarText, _VoiceIcon, _Maintank, _RaidIcon
Perl Classic	Multi	0.625	0.740	2.14
PitBull	Multi	6.92	65.6	59760
PitBull++	Multi	7.94	67.9		_Aura, _PowerBar, _HealthBar, _CombatIcon, _PvPIcon
Satrina Unit Frames 2	Multi	0.159	0.925	2.1.0
XPerl	Multi	0.415	1.48	2.3.9a
Xperl++	Multi	1.37	3.85		_RaidFrames, _Options, _Party, _RaidHelper, _RaidPets
CT_UnitFrames	Raid	0.199	0.062	2.006
Grid	Raid	3.24	15.4	60382
Grid++	Raid	4.08	20.0		ManaBars, StatusIncomingHealth, SideIndicators, StatusHots, DynamicLayout
PerfectRaid	Raid	0.322	1.89	1.30
sRaidFrames	Raid
AlarTTFrame	Target
MainAssist	Target
PerfectTargets	Target

Which one should you use?

[add witty interesting yet useful comments for non-mod people if that performance chart didn't scare them away]