Thread: I'm drowning with skills!

My LM is level 57, and i'm drowning in skills. It's not the rotation that it's hard, but i takes up like half of my screen.
Does anyone have any UI tips?

My lvl 60 hunter had the same problem. I found a UI plugin called the "wheel" here http://www.lotrointerface.com/index.php that helped him out. I should think some of the UI plugins for quickbars on that site should help you. My LM is only 22 so don't know what exactly will work for him after he gets a bunch of skills yet. I'll have to cross that bridge later haha.

There is also a Plugin called TonicBars on the same site

It has Class specific bars pre defined. But you can change them to suit

Example.
Using the Plugin Manager from character select screen. Have TonicBars load for ALL characters

You login your Hunter
Open Tonicbars (/tb) you will see bars for Stances, 3 Focus skills, 5 focus skills

Login Minstrel
Open Tonicbars, you will see Tier 1 ballads, T2 Ballads, T3 Ballads etc....

and so on

I use the buffbars plugin for potions and a 4th bar on the right side of the screen for food, mounts, ports, etc.

This is how my UI setup was when I hit 75.....almost is the same at the moment with a few changes here and there....leaves most of the centre screen empty and all the skills AND potions and stuff fit nicely enough without any plugins

There's options to undock all the quickslot bars and stuff and even make them vertical if you wish.....I'm a clicker so I dont go for the vertical bars ......so place them as you feel comfortable.....also, almost all UI elements can be sized up or down as per your preference....I usually reduce the size of fellowship/raid vitals because thats the only thing that takes up a lot of screen space....

Also increase the resolution of the game as much as your computer can support

As my characters advance, I determine what core skills fit my playstyle best and center those on the main shortcut quickbars (recently I've reduced that even further so I can access those skills from a gamepad's 5 buttons + Ctrl and Alt) The rest I put off to the side in click-only bars. Some skills I find that just don't ever use and those I get off the screen. If a situation arises where they are needed, I add them back in temporarily. I find that I enjoy my playtime more with fewer skills staring me in the face. (This is probably why I really enjoy playing my Warden. Gambits rule!)

Originally Posted by silverblade5445

This is how my UI setup was when I hit 75.....almost is the same at the moment with a few changes here and there....leaves most of the centre screen empty and all the skills AND potions and stuff fit nicely enough without any plugins

There's options to undock all the quickslot bars and stuff and even make them vertical if you wish.....I'm a clicker so I dont go for the vertical bars ......so place them as you feel comfortable.....also, almost all UI elements can be sized up or down as per your preference....I usually reduce the size of fellowship/raid vitals because thats the only thing that takes up a lot of screen space....

Also increase the resolution of the game as much as your computer can support

Could you list all the UI stuff you have enabled/disabled? I like it.

LOL you'll love my UI .

Originally Posted by ShotgunStalker

Could you list all the UI stuff you have enabled/disabled? I like it.

I havent disabled anything in the UI....just go to the quickslot options.....activated and undocked all the quickslot bars (there are 5 but only 3 I think are activated by default....you have to manually activate the remaining 2)....and once undocked, use Ctrl + \ to drag them around to the lower and corners of the screen so that they dont hinder visibility.....in mine, the quickslot bars are moved to, 1 is under ths chat window, 2 are arranged in side by side above the default bar and 2 directly above them.....

Mostly I've just rearranged and moved the UI elements using Ctrl + \ and moved them as much towards the edges and corners as possible....the 5 quickslot bars (and the 1 default) are quite enough to hold all the skills....

Originally Posted by Louvre

LOL you'll love my UI .

Gosh you have a lot of buttons are those Tonic bars?....

Originally Posted by silverblade5445

Gosh you have a lot of buttons are those Tonic bars?....

Yeah .

For the record , I think LMs need more skills ^^

As a player who is not clever enough to grasp the idea of Plugins...

I use just three hotkey bars, one is purely attacks, the other debuffs, and the last is utlity and heals.
Some skills are not in my bars at all (mounts, pets and consumables) I prefer just to quickly press 'K' to use a skill I dont have in the bar, and my consumables like parables and scrolls are all in bag no.1 so its easy to keep them up, even if we ever got more skills ...I'd still have enough space with just these 3 neat bars.

Originally Posted by Louvre

LOL you'll love my UI .

GAH. That is playing the UI and not the game.

I can't play games like that. I minimize my ui, sort my bars to maximize visibility and bind all powers to my naga and keyboard buttons. I use shift, alt and ctrl all as shift functions for more mappings to my naga. With practice I can turn off my UI and still play the game and actually watch the game like a movie instead of ignoring 90% of what is going on.

I wonder if some players actually remember the visuals in a fight and not just icons and health bars until loot time.

Originally Posted by Tamanous

I wonder if some players actually remember the visuals in a fight and not just icons and health bars until loot time.

Lol having the UI on doesnt mean one always has to keep looking at it Infact I am so used to the positions of my skills, I barely ever look at the quickslots while casting.....as it is, as LMs, we have a ton of things to look out for.....

The only thing I need the UI and quickslots for is because I'm a clicker

Originally Posted by silverblade5445

In fact I am so used to the positions of my skills, I barely ever look at the quickslots while casting.....as it is, as LMs, we have a ton of things to look out for.....

This .

I'm used to paying attention to a lot of things , my UI is an advantage for my playstyle .

Ctrl and \ refuses to work for me...what's going on? I try pressing Crtl plus anything but nothing happens...i use a skill instead...i removed the skill from that bar...still nothing :/

Originally Posted by ShotgunStalker

Ctrl and \ refuses to work for me...what's going on? I try pressing Crtl plus anything but nothing happens...i use a skill instead...i removed the skill from that bar...still nothing :/

Thats odd....IIRC, Ctrl and \ is the way to unlock the UI to move things around....I'll check when I get back into the game.....it should be that though.... You could ask on glff meanwhile....

I unlock them with alt gr + ç .

And it's been that way for me since I can remember .

If you think LMs have skill overload, try a Rune-keeper! In both cases, the "Christmas Tree" effect of piling on more skills and gear as players progress through level-based games has always been one of my turn-offs about rushing to end game. But, I digress.

First, separate out your combat and non-combat skills. Combat skills should be front and center. Non-combat skills should be off to the side or hidden. I like putting things NC like pets, travel locations, food, and crafting equipment on a single quickslot bar, moving it off to the side, and unchecking "Always Show Bar {x}". That way I only see the bar with non-combat skills when I hold down SHIFT, ALT, or CONTROL. You can set "show" keys for the other two bars in the Key Mapping options.

I use TonicBars, but I turn off their easy bars. I use it to have more slots and to have one extra block always visible and one hidden when I'm in combat. It's like what I described above on sterioids. You can also create cascading TonicBars: when you mouse over a single icon, a drop-down/pick list appears. This is great for things like crafting tools. You only see one by default, but when you mouse over it, it shows all three tools and you can pick one. The picked one becomes the single display item. Just be warned that some versions of TonicBars are bugged and will clear out any inventory items in them (but not in your inventory) if you use the auto-loader.

A bigger monitor is a big help with this.

On a UK keyboard, it's Ctrl + # if that helps.

No UI will be perfect until someone devises something very clever with a Kinetic module and we all just do the on screen animations:-) See All Ends and Frost Lore might strain some muscles!

I'd like a pet carousel that works but the ones I can find won't load. Rumour has it that EU clients differ from US ones in this respect.

Originally Posted by Mithithil

No UI will be perfect until someone devises something very clever with a Kinetic module and we all just do the on screen animations:-) See All Ends and Frost Lore might strain some muscles!

Lol that would be awesome! Lightning Storm would be frickin amazing! Not to mention Back From The Brink

Originally Posted by ShotgunStalker

Ctrl and \ refuses to work for me...what's going on? I try pressing Crtl plus anything but nothing happens...i use a skill instead...i removed the skill from that bar...still nothing :/

The button to customize the UI panels varies from keyboard to keyboard. It is usually the button to the lower left of the enter button. For me I have to press CTRL + ' for instance.

As for my UI setup, I have something similar to Louvre, messy, but effective for me :P

Ok, thanks for the replies. I changed the ctrl + \ into another key. I managed to move the bars where i wanted them.
Thank you all. Rep for everyone!!11

[QUOTE=silverblade5445;6164292]


not bad for keeping the centre clean. but where is your pet bar? and targeting?

This has worked well for me. Using a theme with a minibar and I reduced to quickslots to .70 (takes only a little getting used to).
I keep the travels over on the left vertically and out of the way.

[QUOTE=SirBeegus;6171258]

Originally Posted by silverblade5445

not bad for keeping the centre clean. but where is your pet bar? and targeting?

The pet bar is right above the bar with all the potions and healing/rezzing skills....targetting is where it is by default....by the time I did find out about this whole UI customization tricks and ideas, I had gotten used to the position of targets vitals and stuff....so I dint change that

I got DPS in main bar with blinding flash as "=" then by rows i do "heals" "buffs" "CD" "debuffs" "Pet" then i have a seperate vertical bar for pots and teles