dragonflight’s-ui-is-nice-however-i-am-not-going-to-uninstall-my-addons-simply-but

World of Warcraft: Dragonflight is ready for launch on November 28, 2022, and it brings together with it an overhaul to the practically 18-year-old consumer interface. 

WoW’s UI may need regarded fairly good when the MMO first launched again in 2004 however it’s develop into a little bit of an eyesore in recent times. In fact, this may be simply remedied with using WoW addons however these must be up to date typically they usually can add vital loading occasions, in addition to a drop in efficiency in the event you’re not cautious. 

With the introduction of the brand new—and far more customisable—UI in Dragonflight, it is potential you will not want as many addons to get the look you are after. And as a lot of the updates are actually current within the Dragonflight beta, it appeared like a good suggestion to search out out what it may well do.

Move with the occasions 

You discover the UI modifications the second you log in to Dragonflight. The whole lot appears a lot cleaner and extra compact than it has prior to now. Maybe some of the apparent variations is the participant health bar—it is moved from the upper-left nook to its new residence simply to the best of your character. This has develop into the popular place for gamers over time because it helps you to keep watch over your health with out having to take your eyes off your character throughout hectic fights. However up till now, you have wanted an addon to maneuver it. The scale of the health bar has elevated too, which is significantly better than the tiny sliver of green we’re used to seeing with the default UI.

The default Dragonflight UI now reveals two motion bars stacked, moderately than having them run side-by-side throughout the underside of the display screen. The “bar artwork” has additionally been up to date and different choices comparable to luggage, quest log, character sheet are housed in a much more refined group within the bottom-right nook. 

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WoW Dragonflight UI

Dragonflight’s default UI (Picture credit score: Blizzard)
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WoW Dragonflight UI

WoW Basic UI. (Picture credit score: Blizzard)
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Dragonflight UI

Present Shadowlands UI with no addons. (Picture credit score: Blizzard)

You may move just about all the pieces you may see utilizing the Edit Mode in the primary menu. Among the particular person components have further choices for resizing too, or the power to entry further menu choices straight from the edit window. You may toggle varied components, comparable to raid and celebration frames to regulate their placement and there is even a grid so you can also make positive all the pieces traces up. When you’re accomplished moving all the pieces round and have it to your liking, it can save you the structure as a profile which may be utilized to all characters or simply your present one.

That is not all of it although: there’s additionally a good quantity of customisation that is not instantly apparent. For instance, you may consolidate your luggage into one giant container, and arrange a modifier key so you may cast spells on mouseover as an alternative of getting to focus on them instantly. It’s also possible to make changes to the best way fight works. “Press and hold casting” helps you to frequently cast the identical spell with one keypress as an alternative of getting to repeatedly faucet the identical key, and the “motion fight” possibility mechanically targets enemies in entrance of you. Fairly neat, huh?

All of it provides up

So now that we’ve an thought of what the Dragonflight UI can do, I made a decision to see how shut I may get it to my present Shadowlands set-up. The outcomes are literally fairly shut as you may see within the comparability beneath.

The obvious distinction between the 2 is the participant health bar. Within the Shadowlands model, I am utilizing ElvUI—that is additionally what’s giving me the Titan Panel-style bar on the prime. Within the third screenshot, I’ve added the Weakauras and Plater addons to the Dragonflight UI. 

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WoW Dragonflight UI

Dragonflight UI (no addons). (Picture credit score: Blizzard)
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WoW Dragonflight UI

My present Shadowlands UI with addons. (Picture credit score: Blizzard)
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WoW Dragonflight UI

Dragonflight UI with Plater and Weakauras put in. (Picture credit score: Blizzard)

So far as appears go, the brand new UI is fairly smooth however there are nonetheless loads of addons that both work behind the scenes or have develop into accepted as a part of a great set-up. To call the obvious, Lethal Boss Mods, Weakauras, or a injury meter aren’t probably to get replaced any time quickly, and in the event you actually just like the customisation that ElvUI presents, there’s nothing saying it’s a must to eliminate that both.

In fact, your addon utilization will come all the way down to the way you prefer to spend your time in Azeroth—in the event you commonly raid or run mythic plus dungeons, then you definitely’re probably to make use of much more than somebody that collects mounts. Even so, I do not assume we’ll be moving away from addons anytime quickly, however Dragonflight’s massive UI update actually provides us extra choices for customisation than we have ever had earlier than. 

Dragonflight looks like a good time to take inventory of the addons you utilize and reduce out those that basically aren’t pulling their weight. Even in the event you reduce one or two of them, you will give extra respiration area to those who you do depend on—to not point out will probably be higher on your total load occasions. If you happen to assume addons do not have a lot of an affect on that, attempt disabling them earlier than logging into the game and see how a lot sooner you load in. You could be stunned.