Addon: Tidy-ThreatPlates

Addons: Tidy and Threat Plates
Current Wowcraft build: 3.3.5.

Yes, I've been gone forever. There are durn good reasons why, though. One is the Kingslayer title, which I now have. The other is the Insane title, which I also now have. And even beyond the hours and hours of work spent getting those titles ( X DD ), I've known in the back of my head that my next addon post was going to be about Pitbull4. And I really don't want to write up a post about Pitbull4.

But also, I got into the beta, so I've been playing that some. And since 4.0.1 got pushed to the PTR, a couple of things occurred to me in quick succession.

1. Wrath is 'ending' soon, and my 'bucket list' is still pretty big. There's still so much to DO. How can anyone be bored with this game? I don't understand. For one, I'm very close to 2500 emblems looted, and since all that emblem-change stuff just got announced yesterday, my already-lit-fire just got another log thrown on it. Also, I Really Really Want That Sarth 3D Drake. I wouldn't be surprised if Blizz nerfs the drop rate, so I really need to make sure I put together a 3D run every week now. And there's tons and tons of raiding achieves I'd like to mop up, not to mention I'd like to do more ICC raiding.... HOW is anyone bored with this game? I could play 12 hours a day from now till the end of November and not get it all done X D.

2. Every freakin' addon is going to break and need patching when 4.0 hits. Every addon is going to break AGAIN when Cata itself drops. Some addons may become obsolete, and some may not be fixed by their authors. (I just know FactionsFu is going to die and then I will be a SAD SANNA. SAD FOREVER.) So why recommend an addon now, when it's going to break in a month or two?

Number two there (and my 'don't want to write about Pitbull4' dilemma) got answered for me by a guildie, who asked me one day over vent, "have you heard of an addon called um.... Threat Plates?" And I said "YES OMG I LOVE THREATPLATES." I think I said it exactly like that too. Caps and bold and everything. And I would also like to specify that when I say 'love' here, I really mean 'I cannot tank effectively without this addon.'

Threat Plates (Curse|Wowi) (which requires the addon Tidy Plates (Curse|Wowi) as a base) makes the healthbars over the mobs' heads look like this:

This was taken when I was on my tank, so I have 'full threat' on the Advisor, and I have 'half threat' on the Tactician. (I was either gaining threat on a low-threat mob or, more probable, losing threat on a high-threat mob.) Threat Plates can tell what spec I'm in (prot spec) and knows that having threat is good for me (since I'm the tank) and colors and sizes the health bars accordingly.

But this shot works equally well if I had been on my priest. Since Threat Plates would be able to tell "at no point should she ever have aggro," then when I do not have aggro, the bar is green, and if I am gaining dangerous amounts of aggro (perhaps I could be the priest in charge of shackling the Tactician), then the bar is yellow like that.

Bad aggro (either a tank without aggro, or a healer/dps with it) looks like this:

I know you can't really see them relative to each other, but red bars are much larger than yellow bars, which are a little larger than green ones.

This addon works wonderfully everywhere in the game except Culling of Strat where all the excess little zombies clutter up your screen. Also, there is currently not support for "I am one tank in a raid and there is another tank, so if he has aggro and I don't, that's ok, don't show me red bars." People have asked for it from the Threat Plates author so I know he's aware that it's a desired functionality, and personally I'd rather have this not break when Cata comes out, so he can keep working on that if he needs to ^_^.

If you're a tank, check out this addon. If you're a dps who doesn't know how to watch aggro, get this addon. If you're a dps who aoe's and has a tendency to pull aggro that way, get this addon. If you ever say to yourself, "I wish I could easily see if I have enough threat on this mob, and if there's another mob I really ought to be building threat on," get this addon.

Next post: Pitbull4.... maybe. If I feel like taking and cropping and uploading and inserting that many screenshots. : x.