SexyCooldown: One of my New Favorite Addons

Update: I just realized WoW.com posted a feature on this addon six days ago. Honest to god, I had no idea… Not only that, it had the same title as my post (which I’ve since changed). I actually originally got the idea from watching Kripparian’s video on NeedToKnow. I thought that writing a brief post about what I’m using would be a good idea. Oh well… guess I should be a little more current on other WoW blogs.

In my ongoing pursuit of UI perfection, I’ve settled upon another addon that’s now cemented itself into my on screen array of mods. This is of course, SexyCooldown.

Many of you are probably already familiar with this addon, but for those that are not, SexyCooldown is yet another cooldown monitor. So what’s different about it you ask..?

Well, for one, it’s a logarithmic cooldown bar timer much like ForteXorcist. Instead of showing cooldown bar timers, hourglass and/or numeric counters, SexyCooldown provides a bar with a graphical interface that shows all of your items and abilities that are on cooldown.

As items and abilities go on cooldown, they appear on the bar, riding down towards the other end, and accelerating as they near closer to completion. In other words, a long ability cooldown such as Rapid Fire, will sit at the end of the bar making its way very slowly down. Where as the shorter cooldown of Furious Howl will ride the bar much faster.

I’ve tried this addon in the past, as well as ForteXorcist, but never really saw the need. However, with the five bazillion procs that I now have due to gear, I find it invaluable. One of the things that sets SexyCooldown apart from the rest of the cooldown monitors, is that it shows you internal cooldowns.

Unlike OmniCC or some of the cast/buff bar addons out there, SexyCooldown can display cooldowns on procs right alongside your ability cooldowns. This is very beneficial for timing your big ability cooldowns, as knowing when the buffs are going to proc next is a huge advantage in terms of DPS. For example, let’s say your Armor Pen trinket (ie: Needle Encrusted Scorpion) is about to proc in 11 seconds… a split second before is when you’ll want to swill that Potion of Speed or blow your Rapid Fire (provided Heroism’s not up).

What I like about SexyCooldown is that it is highly configurable, yet extremely easy to use. The config screen is not even one tenth as bloated as that of Forte’s. Not to say that forte isn’t a great addon, but I’ve found that SexyCooldown can do everything I want it to and more, with only a fraction of the fat.

Now there are other alternatives to this, including a popular addon called NeedToKnow. However, I tried NeedToKnow and I found the logarithimic bar approach to provide more of an intuitive interface with less of a footprint. Instead of having bar timers for each proc and ability you want to monitor, you can have as little as one bar that shows you everything, and done.

Another thing that’s nice about SexyCooldown, is that it’s intelligent. It already knows what the cooldowns are on procs. NeedToKnow requires that you input all of that data in order for it to monitor said cooldowns.

I still use OmniCC and my internal meter for my shot priority, so all I have shown on my SexyCooldown bar are my item procs and pet abilities. This allows me to see the cooldowns on Furious Howl, Rabid, Call of the Wild, Whispering Fanged Skull, Needle Encrusted Scorpion, and my Ashen Verdict ring all in one convenient location.

It’s also equally as nice for PvP, in that you can configure it to show all of your defensive abilities for example, on one bar.

SexyCooldown is Sexy

You can also configure multiple bars if you want, with each one showing a different set of cooldowns. Personally, I like the one bar approach, but some like to use multiple bars for cooldowns, buffs, target debuffs etc…

Another nice feature of SexyCooldown is that it’s quite easy to filter or “blacklist” certain abilities from the bar to make it less spammy. All you do is shift-right click on the ability when it appears in the bar and it’s gone.

You may also notice that icon in the middle of my screen with a timer above it. That’s part of a new Power Auras configuration I’m playing with. As I’d said, procs are getting out of control, so I’m having to resort to using their actual icons to stay aware of what’s what. I’ll shed more light on the Power Auras config once I am settled with it. So far it’s working out quite well. I have all of my buffs surrounding me in an arc, highest priority ones on top.

Anyway, there’s a lot more to SexyCooldown, but I suggest you try it out for yourself and see what you think. It’s not necessarily revolutionary in its approach to monitoring cooldowns, but it’s pretty damn smart.

Captain Obvious Protip: All proc abilities are going to happen within the first few seconds of a boss fight provided they are off cooldown, so be sure to refresh that Serpent Sting when they do.

Tagged as: dps, internal cooldowns, needtoknow, sexycooldown