Your guide to ElvUI TBC

https://i.imgur.com/JdPXFXu.jpg

Hello everyone,

Lately I saw a lot of cries from people in-game and a few friends also, about missing "the greatest addons from recent expansions". Someone cried about nameplates, someone about unit frames, healing grid, debuffs, etc. My question was "Did you ever hear about ElvUI? instead of those things you're calling UI and addons?" and they respond "We don't use that crap, blah blah..".

Before you judge by the look of my settings you should first check everything inside this guide and set ElvUI as you like! Yes, it's 100% customizable and moveable. You can place, move, or lock everything you see on your screen wherever you like. Including bonus addons you use (Recount, maybe Cartographer, etc..), I'll give you a few notes about them.

This is how my ElvUI looks like right now.

Let's return to basic things and setting everything up properly.
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Why should I use ElvUI?
- You'll find the answer using it. In short lines - the more you use it the more you'll like it.
- ElvUI is simple. Beautiful. It has everything you need. It requires little time to set up. Good for PVP, great for raiding! Awesome for everyone, 8+ or 88+.

Download ElvUI:
GitHUB | Download Last Version

Info and notes:

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This is the backported version of ElvUI for World of Warcraft 2.4.3
ElvUI is a full UI replacement. It completely replaces the default Blizzard UI at every level with a new and better interface. As such, you'll only ever have to update ElvUI and not worry too much about its individual components. This UI will arrange your interface to be more flexible and practical.

Plugins:

ElvUI_Enhanced
ElvUI_AddOnSkins
ElvUI_EnhancedFriendsList
ElvUI_ExtraActionBars
ElvUI_Microbar
ElvUI_MinimapButtons
ElvUI_CustomTweaks
ElvUI_RightClick
ElvUI_RaidMarkers
ElvUI_CastBarOverlay
ElvUI_BagControl
ElvUI_AuraBarsMovers
ElvUI_DTBars
ElvUI_DataTextColors
ElvUI_EverySecondCounts
ElvUI_LocPlus
ElvUI_SwingBar

Please Note: These plugins will not function without ElvUI installed.

Extraction and placement:

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• If you're done with downloading, you can find your ElvUI-master.zip file inside the download directory.
• To open this thing, you'll need WinRAR, 7Zip, or any other archive extractor.
• Right click on the file and pick "Extract Here" or double click, open it, and Extract somewhere you’d like (Desktop).
• Now you should see a new folder named ElvUI-master with 4 sub-folders inside with all the stuff you need.
• Copy all 4 folders to your World of Warcraft directory, inside Interface > Addons > Right click and Paste or CTRL+V.
• You're ready to start the Installation and Settings!

Beginners Guide for ElvUI
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Instant Installation:
- My advice for you, at the start disable all other addons just so you can set it up without any distractions.

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1. Once you enter the game, you'll get Welcome message and ElvUI Installation window open by default. Hit the Continue button.

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https://i.imgur.com/8mkSjtl.jpg

2. Hit Setup CVars button.
3. Hit Setup Chat button.
4. Theme Setup is your to choose. Personally I like the Classic version. The Dark one will make almost everything black and Class one will make your nameplate pink if you're paladin ofc ;)
5. Optionally, I would choose High Resolution button.
6. Combat role. This is just basic setting, you can set your frames as you like after this setup is done. You can choose whatever you play. For this guide I'll pick Physical DPS.
7. For Auras, the best choice for TBC, for me, was Icons Only.
8. Click the Finish button and your UI will reload. Or you can reload it by yourself by typing /reload ui

From this point, you're ready to start using it! Roam around a bit, try to kill something, test your buffs position, debuffs and everything you usually track, use or watch time to time.

An IMPORTANT thing to do after your interface finishes reloading is moving the things you DON'T like or would like to reposition.

In ElvUI you have an option to do so by using GRID system, a set of horizontal and vertical lines you can use to get rid of your OCD ;)

GRID and Anchors:
- Hit the Enter button on your keyboard and type /ec or ESC and click ElvUI button on your screen.

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1. Click on the Toggle Anchors button on the top (Unlock various elements of the UI to be repositioned.)
2. You can see the grid on your screen which looks like this

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https://i.imgur.com/lwPIUij.jpg

3. As you can see, you can move EVERYTHING on your screen wherever you like. I saw a lot of interesting UI's from various people in my Internet Cafe.
4. Let's make some notes about what is what.

• Micro Bar - Not enabled by default, you should enable it. Check the big post later down about Advanced settings.
  
  Spoiler: Show

  https://i.imgur.com/tgjH64v.jpg
• MT/MA Frames - Main tank, main assist, not sure if this works in TBC, never tested.
• All other frames are pretty easy to understand, we will cover important ones in the Advanced section bellow.

Everything else you would like to enable or disable is inside the Settings window of ElvUI (type /ec).

When you're satisfied with the look, you can simply lock everything and proceed with everyday use if you like. For more custom things, and things I did personally, there's a section bellow.


Advanced Guide for ElvUI
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Sections of Advanced Guide:
1. General Settings
2. Action Bars and Keybindings
3. Auras
4. Bags
5. Chat
6. DataBars
7. DataTexts
8. Maps
9. NamePlates
10. Tooltip
11. UnitFrames
12. Plugins
13. Profiles

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1. General Settings
- A lot of things to play with. Let’s cover the important ones.

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1. Version Check - Disable, it's extremely boring sometimes.
2. General Tab:

• Raid Control - is great if you're a raid leader and you prefer to move, control, mark and split people into groups or other things.
• Announce Interrupts - is a great thing which will give your raid/party a note that you interrupted some important spell cast of a mob/boss.
• Auto Repair - great option if you have gold to spare, and you don't want to move your mouse much to click the repair all button at vendor. When you right click repair NPC it will repair you automatically.
• Vendor Gray - is GREAT option which should be enabled by default. Whenever you speak with a merchant NPC it will sell all your gray crap from all of the bags you have.
• AFK Mode - is good if you afk a lot, otherwise there's no need.
• Auto Scale - good if you play WoW in Windows mode and you resize much. Or multi boxing.
• Auto Greed/DE - is good if you're lvl 70 and you don't need any GREEN items, it will automatically select greed option OR Disenchant if you're an enchanter.
• Bottom and Top Panels - whatever you like.
• Enhanced PVP Messages - Awesome for pvp, do not disable it.
• Everything else is default and fine.

3. Media tab:
- Whatever you like. Play with it if you have problems with your eyes, or if you simply want something bigger on screen.

• Default Font - I like PT Sans Narrow and Friz Quadrata. I also apply them to all with the button on the right.
• CombatText Font - it's the combat font on your screen, Homespun is good but Continuum is better from my point of view.
• Replace Blizzard Fonts is a must!
• Textures - ElvUI Normal or Blank, both are good, you can choose.
• I don't touch colors, but you can.

4. Totem Bar tab:
- You choose, I'm not a shammy but I think as shaman you should experiment in this field a bit.

All other tabs are yours to pick. I don't touch anything because there's no need for me.

2. Action Bars and Keybindings
- Every "pro" player, and every MMORPG player will normally use keybindings to make his plays faster by simply binding spells to keys and getting used to them. We all know - there's no good healer without mouse-over reactions, tank without defensive cd's and dps without fast keybindings and good rotation.
Keybindings ARE important.

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Click and expand Action Bars Settings.
1. General Options

• Macro Text - is good if you want to track where your macro is for something if you use the same icon for it as your main spell inside.
• Keybinding Text - Hell *#%$ing yes.
• Lock ActionBars – Simple, yes.
• Pick Up Key - If you have Actions locked and you want to move a spell on your bar just hold Shift, click-drag on the spell and move it somewhere else. You won't break the lock.
• Colors and Fonts as you like.

2. Keybinding Mode
- An extremely important button to hit! Once you hit it, you can choose to make a separate keybinding for THAT character by hitting "Character Specific Key Bindings" checkbox on the screen. Now everything you set on this character will NOT copy to any other. If you DO NOT check that box, keybinding mode will apply keys and shortcuts to all your characters on that account.

1. Mouse over the spell on your action bar.
2. Hit the key on your keyboard (1, Q, E, R), or set of keys (Alt+1, Shift+E).
3. Move your mouse to the next one and repeat, or move it away and click Save.

You can do this for ALL keys you want. You can also do this for your macros. If you use modifiers inside, it will still work but only if you hold it as usual. No need to use mod key when making simple keybindings like we do now.

3. Pet Bar
- If your class uses pets, Enable it, if not, there's absolute no use of this for you. Everything inside is set by default. You can use keybinding mode as we mention above, it's the same procedure for pets. All other things are pretty easy to understand, like number of keys in a row, or their size, etc..

4. Stance Bar
- In TBC this is probably great for all classes, since a lot of them use it, like my druid. Keybinding mode works on them too.

5. Micro Bar
- We already mentioned that you need this one. Do you?

6. Bars 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
- Bar 1 is your default bar, it must always be enabled, all others are yours to set up. Some notes bellow about settings:

• Backdrop - is a black border with little padding on the sides and black half transparent background. Enable/disable a few times till you figure it out.
• Action Paging - DO NOT touch on Bar 1 or you'll have an extremely bad time later.
• Mouse Over - good for Micro Bar, or maybe Pet bar, idunno, your choice. I use it for Micro since I don't want to look at it always.

3. Auras
- Playing with the Buffs/Debuffs section near the minimap, the things you ask for when you're screaming for Paladin buffs.

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Reminder – is a good option if you forget about some buff available for your class.
Everything else is understandable.

4. Bags
- ElvUI has pretty interesting way of managing your bag space. If you enable this thing all your bags will be displayed as ONE big bag full of different things you collected, similar to the Bagnon addon.

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This is how it looks like on my screen.
https://i.imgur.com/KY9Rtzo.jpg

- It's important to notice the difference and advantages of this. Let’s go through the settings available:

• General section is for Currency display and simple things. I personally like item level so I usually enable that one.
• Size of the bags.
• Bag Bar - only if you want to display bags near the bag windows, you can move it around in grid mode. It's not needed anyway.
• Sorting - is amazing. It keeps your bags sorted and clean, I use inverted sorting personally.

There are also 4 little extra buttons in your bag window.
https://i.imgur.com/3gyakLB.jpg

Those are:
1. Vendor Grays - if you don't enable this automatically you can simply click on it.
2. Toggle Bags - Displays your bags.
3. Toggle Key – Displays the bag with keys for HC, etc.
4. Sort Bags - You'll get used to clicking this a lot :)

5. Chat
- I bet you’ll like it a lot, you’ll have so much freedom to experiment with the chat, freedom that you never had before.

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1. General tab:

• URL Links - Yes, yes, yes. When someone sends you a cool song in whisper just play it instantly!
• Short Channels - Great! Instead of writing [6.global][Halward]: Yo nubz. it will be shorten to [6][Halward]: Yo nubz.
• Hyperlink Hover - I love to use this! No need to click when someone links the item.
• Sticky Chat - AMAZING! When you type to whisper John by using /w John instead of typing /w John again you can hit the enter and talk to him all the time. This option will stick to the current chat channel you're in, if it's a party or raid it's the same thing. It will not drop out till you change the channel.
• Chat History - Good for taking screenshots of someone swearing at you in another language :D
• Spam interval - Holy *#$& yes. 45 sec always.

2. Alerts:
- I love this option! Big Yankee Devil! When someone whispers to you, alert will play the sound you choose.

Everything else is good by default but you can experiment a lot.

6. DataBars
- I have them both enabled, XP bar and Reputation Bar.

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1. XP Bar - good while leveling, its position is attached to the left chat window, it's simple and great. You can hide on max level.
2. Reputation Bar - most important on TBC, track your reputation, it's attached to the right chat window. If you put your mouse over it, you'll see the reputation you currently follow in the character screen window.

7. DataTexts
- Use this to make custom things to follow bellow each of the chat windows, down in the left corner and down in the right corner.

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By default the right one displays FPS, MS, Local Time and Gold amount.
By default the right one displays Power, Durability and Haste, at least for my spec.

You can change those in this window. It's Left and Right Chat.

For Time you can also set the date if you’d like.

8. Maps
- With Cartographer this one is good, without it, it can be even better!

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1. World Map:

• Smaller World Map - No one likes Full screen World Map.
• World Map Coordinates - Yes. You can always send where you saw an awesome farm place to your mate.

2. Minimap

• Enable - Yes.
• Location Text - Good to have, I set it Above Minimap.
• Reset Zoom - good to enable.
• Minimap Buttons - You should keep Time hidden and you can use the rest whichever way you prefer.

9. NamePlates
- Here you can find a lot of things to play with, but ElvUI default set for this is extremely good and I would not change a thing.

Go through them, read everything and change something if you’d prefer it in another way.
Enemy Player Frames and Enemy NPC Frames are good for me, I love them and I changed only a few things there. I like to see class color when I'm attacking someone, and I also like to see the NPC level and Elite Icon.

10. Tooltip
- When you mouseover something or someone in the game, you see a little popup message which we call Tooltip. This is an option window, and you can customize it. There's no need for me to go through things because it's good and you shouldn't change it.

11. UnitFrames
- Important for you. Important for everyone. Play with this a lot!

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1. Sometimes in General I use Class Health display. Usually when I'm healing.
2. Player Frame - I use Heal Predictions, the Rest Icon and the Combat Icon. Threat Display on Glow. Bellow, at the end of that window, you have a little drop down menu for changing particular things. I like Portrait and I use Overlay sometimes.

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https://i.imgur.com/rhLE51Q.jpg

3. Buffs and Debuffs in that section, in that little drop down menu, are great for Player and Enemy frames. But when it comes to Raid and Party I have to make some changes so I can see debuffs well and dispell them fast enough.
4. In Target Frame I use range check all the time. If someone is far away from me, nameplates will turn gray.
5. No need to use TargetTargetTarget Frame, Target of Target is good tho, and I love it! In PVP it's great. Even in PVE you can see if a boss is targeting the right tank or someone else.
6. Arena, Tank and Pet plates are yours to play with, I mostly don't use them.
7. Party/Raid/Raid 40 Frames - A LOT of things to play with. You need to manage everything, spend some time setting this up right. Click on Party Frame and click Display Frames at the top to see what they look like. Now play with the debuff and buff position, dispells are important so you need to make things right. Mouseover will always work on your frames so if you see everything right on your screen you can test it in the dungeon.
Same goes for the Raid. I use Raid settings with dispellable debuffs in the middle of the character nameplate, buffs are at the right side of the window and I can click through dispells to heal without dispelling instantly. Range Check, Heal Predictions are great when you're a healer and play an important role in the raid.
Play with those settings a lot! You need to test them, you need to fix them, you need to move them wherever you like and make custom changes for your class and your style of playing. When you figure everything out, there's no heal who can beat you on speed, healing or dispells.

12. Plugins
- On ElvUI Github I linked above you can download all the plugins you want, need, or you can simply skip them.

You install them by downloading and Copy-Pasting to Addons folder. NOT inside ElvUI folder. Remember!

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ElvUI_Enhanced - https://github.com/ElvUI-TBC/ElvUI_Enhanced

- Great to have, must install! Great options added. I like:
Show Quest Level - It shows the quest level in my Quest list next to it, no need for me to wonder what level that thing is, is it 30 lvl gray or 58 lvl gray.
Model Frames - Just enable it.
Train All Button - Learn ALL things from the Trainer or Professions
PVP Autorelease - When you die in BG, you auto release.
Enhanced Time Color - Yep.
Minimap > Location Panel - YES!
Tooltip > Item Level Border Color - Yes from me.

ElvUI_AddOnSkins - https://github.com/ElvUI-TBC/ElvUI_AddOnSkins

- All addons you use can take a similar look of ElvUI like Recount on the right panel of my screen. Same goes for Cartographer and few other addons.
https://i.imgur.com/yk4mIiA.jpg

ElvUI_EnhancedFriendsList - https://github.com/ElvUI-TBC/ElvUI_EnhancedFriendsList

-Great to have! Customize fiend list as you like!

ElvUI_ExtraActionBars - https://github.com/ElvUI-TBC/ElvUI_ExtraActionBars

- Good sometimes. I don't use it cause there's no need to, I have enough bars.

ElvUI_Microbar - https://github.com/ElvUI-TBC/ElvUI_Microbar

- Amazing, yes!
https://i.imgur.com/5Ns1JJQ.png

ElvUI_MinimapButtons - https://github.com/ElvUI-TBC/ElvUI_MinimapButtons

- This will put nice skin of ElvUI on your minimap buttons, even the one from extra addons.

ElvUI_CustomTweaks - https://github.com/ElvUI-TBC/ElvUI_CustomTweaks

- No need to use.

ElvUI_RightClick - https://github.com/ElvUI-TBC/ElvUI_RightClick

- I dont use it.

ElvUI_RaidMarkers - https://github.com/ElvUI-TBC/ElvUI_RaidMarkers

- Perfect if you lead the raid or party group, as a leader or tank it's a must have! Great for fast marking the mobs.

ElvUI_CastBarOverlay - https://github.com/ElvUI-TBC/ElvUI_CastBarOverlay

- No need to use.

ElvUI_BagControl - https://github.com/ElvUI-TBC/ElvUI_BagControl

- Nothing special.

ElvUI_AuraBarsMovers - https://github.com/ElvUI-TBC/ElvUI_AuraBarsMovers

- Movers for aura bars.

ElvUI_DTBars - https://github.com/ElvUI-TBC/ElvUI_DTBars

- Bonus bars.

ElvUI_DataTextColors - https://github.com/ElvUI-TBC/ElvUI_DataTextColors

- Colors, nothing special.

ElvUI_EverySecondCounts - https://github.com/ElvUI-TBC/ElvUI_EverySecondCounts

- I don't know what this is.

ElvUI_LocPlus - https://github.com/ElvUI-TBC/ElvUI_LocPlus

- Localization.

ElvUI_SwingBar - https://github.com/ElvUI-TBC/ElvUI_SwingBar

- Floating bar on the top with bunch of information I don't find useful most of the time.

13. Profiles
- You can Import/Export the whole Profile or some Filters so you can move to another computer or friend. Also, you can make each profile for different spec and in one click change them whenever you change the spec.
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If you liked this guide, you can send some tips via in-game mail. Also, share your ElvUI Settings with us. Enjoy! :)

Is there a way to make the nameplates color based on aggro / Thread ?

Its a good addons in general but
1 doesnt have the tick timer on rogue energy bar
2 swing timer dosent reset properly with arms warrior slam
3 different from grid, it doesnt have any indicator/border color setting in raid frame when someone got aggro.

Is it normal buffs/debuff are bugged?
Cant see timer on it, and if a buff is refresh like flowerlife, cant see the new duration on it

Was just wondering if you know how to actually get addon minimap buttons back? like atlas for example. I tried the eluvi minimapbuttons no good :(

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Originally Posted by Treebelicious

Was just wondering if you know how to actually get addon minimap buttons back? like atlas for example. I tried the eluvi minimapbuttons no good :(

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I'm having the same issue. I had Atlas Loot before installing this and it was visible on minimap but after installing ElvUI it's gone. I downloaded the ElvUI Minimap Buttons plugin too but it did nothing. There's a minmap button grabber anchor which I can move around when I hit the "Toggle Anchors" button but nothing is attahed to it. To me it seems like ElvUI hides all minimap buttons by default but I can't find any option to bring them back

I had the same issue with add-on icons vanishing. You can add them as data texts instead to give you access to the configs.

Vistaleon! You are giving me hope. I'll google how to do that and try, does it also work for tracking gathering? Since I thought I could live without that but nope >.<

Tracking is changed by rightclicking your map - very easy ;)

Can someone help me with nameplates? I'm trying to enable class color for nameplates but it doesn't work. When i mouse over "Use Class Color" in Enemy Player Frames it says: "Depends on Class Caching module!" Do i need to download something in particular?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Blackmane91

Can someone help me with nameplates? I'm trying to enable class color for nameplates but it doesn't work. When i mouse over "Use Class Color" in Enemy Player Frames it says: "Depends on Class Caching module!" Do i need to download something in particular?

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get on the ElvUi backport discord, one of the devs has been pushing fixes all summer and may be able to help with anything - plus little old me floating around and I can check what you want to fix pretty fast given a screenshot or two