The Burning Crusade Hunter UI Management

9.1 Mods

There is some controversy surrounding over-use of mods. Purists believe that mods automate the game excessively or do all the thinking for the player. Whether you choose to embrace or abstain from mods based on this is up to your own philosophy. Regardless, I will say that mods can make your life a lot easier because they give definite advantages. Being able to tell what your opponents are casting at all times, having information on your mini-map about all tracked targets' lvl and faction information, and having a display in WSG of the name of the person carrying each flag, all give you an edge over those who choose not to use these mods.

The premiere source of mods is curse-gaming ( http://www.curse-gaming.com/en/wow/addons.html ). You can find all sorts of mods by different categories, as well as information and feedback on each individual one. If you're lazy, you can just grab a compilation of hunter mods such as Anathema's ( http://www.curse-gaming.com/en/wow/addons-3056-1-anathema-hunter-mod-pack.html ), and then selectively turn on or off each mod. You can also check out Avlar's post on hunter mods ( http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?FN=wow-hunter&T=1251909&P=1 ).

One caution about mods is that when new patches arrive, some mods become broken, and this may drastically handicap your ability to PvP until new versions come out. If you are dependent upon a mod and it's nonfunctional, you can be left with having a tough time. However, on the bright side, most of the major mods are generally updated very soon (within days) of when a new patch is released. Another important note is that when new patches come out, typically all your mods will become disabled by default. You will need to go to your addons and choose the "load outdated addons" option.

9.2 Macros

Macros often make life easier at the expense of flexibility. For example, some hunters use a melee spam macro that tries to cast each of our melee abilities in some order, and also get our pet to attack the target. Many hunters use a feign death + freezing trap macro in any of its various forms. I've mentioned several macros here and there is a wealth of macro information in another stickied FAQ ( http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=12733804&sid=1 ).

Experimenting with macros can be fun although sometimes frustrating. The macro debugging tools are not very helpful, so if you make a mistake then you may get spammed with error dialogs. An easy way to test new macros is to just duel a friend, or try them during a particularly lopsided BG where you are clearly winning. Learning macros also has long-term benefit because once you're comfortable with the language (which is quite simplistic), you can apply it to your future characters or whatever situations you need.

One very useful application of macros is to tie abilities that you would ordinarily *forget* to use into macro. For example, I usually forget to use deterrance and rapid fire during my games, so I'll play a whole 60 minute game without ever popping either! To get used to activating them, I've put them into macros. My aimed shot will automatically start rapid fire if it's available. My melee spam will automatically cast deterrance if available. In addition, I notice that I do not use either my PvP or AV standard as often as possible. I've also hooked them into my aimed shot macro. Basically whenever I try to aimed shot, my macro will attempt to do the following:
1. Cast Furious Howl on my wolf (to buff the damage from aimed shot).
2. Lay down a standard.
3. Start rapid fire (to shorten the aimed shot casting time).

9.3 Keyboard Management

In general, the mouse is best for movement and rotation, and the keyboard is best for actions. This means you should be using your mouse as much as possible for manipulating your character, and you should be using your mouse minimally to select actions. Thus, one of the main reasons I use macros and key bindings is to minimize the times when I need to explicitly click on an action bar button. Hitting a keyboard button or using a macro that contains several actions is much faster than having to locate an action bar button, and you are less likely to make mistakes. If you are constantly having to click on an action bar button manually, chances are that you are much slower than a hunter who has his actions mapped out on the keyboard and tied to macros.

I often find that I have so many abilities to keep track of that it's difficult to manage them with my action bars. Get the Flexbar mod, which allows you to map any key to any ability or script. I use my numbers for most-used abilities such as multi and concussive, and put lesser used abilities as shift-number. For example, concussive could be number 2, and scatter could be shift-2.

There's a mod that switches your action bar to a different one when you get into melee range ( http://www.curse-gaming.com/en/wow/addons-1549-1-rangehelp.html ), similarly to how rogues have a different action bar during stealth. I suggest getting this because is will help reduce your clutter.