Controlling chaos with Meloshs UI
Controlling chaos and the one rule
There's one rule to controlling the chaos that many addons bring and especially that the raiding/grouping UI can bring to an unsuspecting player: Accept chaos. You might not be the minimalist savant who can turn everything into perfection on your UI overnight. Frankly, most of us aren't. However, you can accept the fact that things will be chaotic at first, and slowly chip away at that chaos into some semblance of order.
I'll give you a quick anecdote. For a very long time, I never changed the default Omen3 frame. It never annoyed me because, frankly, I had bigger fish to fry and it just wasn't annoying enough for me. Eventually, before a raid one night, I spent 10 minutes configuring the border and colors, and now it fits perfectly into the setup.
Approach the chaos slowly. First, move things into general positions. Second, mold each addon into the general setup you want it to look like. Third, put on the final finishing touches, one at a time.
What does it look like?
Melosh has made some key decisions related to controlling chaos. First, relegating addons to one part of the screen allows the viewing area to remain relatively clean. Like most bottom bar UIs, he's set a ceiling for the height of the addons on the bottom and worked around that limitation. The SUF frames are large and easy to read, and I'm glad that Melosh let Grid take over the party frame functionality, as I think that it is one of the best space-saving decisions you can make.
Second, don't be afraid to leave empty spaces and find addons to plug in there later. Nothing on the UI is permanent, and setups aren't perfect the moment you turn them on. Leaving a bit of wiggle room or leeway can help a great deal when you're stuck with an addition that you can't quite fit. Melosh, for instance, has a bunch of action bars that don't necessarily have occupants at the moment, but that doesn't mean that in the future there won't be some nice tenant that comes by and wants to rent. Leaving a little bit of room can do wonders.
Buffs and debuffs
Keeping long form buff bars to the side of the player or target frame is a great idea, especially if you're into bar versions of buffs and debuffs, as I am. You can even scale down the bars to a manageable height like Melosh did and keep things simple. However, the issue is the length of the buff list. Elkanos has filter lists that you can create (the last time I checked), or you could switch to something like Raven to sort your buffs based on your parameters.
My solution to big debuffs on a boss is actually rooted directly into Shadowed Unit Frames. On my target frame, I show only the debuffs that I have applied to my target on top, accentuated with large boxes that I can always see. OmniCC counts down their time and ticks, and I reapply as necessary. No bars or a million boxes needed.
If you're going the Raven route, make sure to create sets of bars for each frame (player, target, focus), and you should be set. You don't actually get too many buffs on you anymore, especially with buff/debuff homogenization.
Replacing the HoTs and DoTs
As for a replacement for HoTCandy, personally I like something more akin to ClassTimer, which was pointed out to me from the comments a while back. Let's make this our comment question of the week -- what is your favorite DoT/HoT combo tracker? Favorites of mine include ClassTimer and Sexycooldown/Forte.
A solid setup
You've got a solid setup, Melosh. Just remember to keep updated, don't worry too much about unused bar areas, and never let your number of addons control the chaos. Only you have the power to keep things simple and under control, even amidst the ever-growing amount of additions to your UI. Take it easy, make it simple, and go nice and slow. Your UI will thank you.
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