Summarizing experimental tests and statistical analyses of game mechanics
Healer UI & Configuring Grid
Posted 02/20/10 at 7:55 PM by Rezarel
I wanted to put something together for a few friends in guild and needed somewhere to host some pictures. Nothing too original here, just a summary.
The first part is a discussion of my overall UI, and the second part is a short tutorial of how to set up Grid to display important debuffs/buffs.
UI Design
Put information that you need for second to second decisions close to the center of the screen. Put stuff you don't need immediately at the edges. If you don't need it regularly, hide it altogether. The more of the world you can see, the better you'll be able to react.
To use some specific examples, I keep Grid close to the center, since that's where all my attention usually is. This lets me see out of the corner of my eye if I'm standing in the fire. My unit frames also help with that - if my health is low I can tell without taking my attention away from whoever I'm healing. I'm not a tank so I don't need a detailed threat window - just how close I am to pulling aggro. Having the target frame right there makes it easy to spot spellcasts so I know if I need to be ready to heal someone or interrupt or run or whatever. A small Target of Target frame also helps predict who's going to need heals soon.
I don't need a dps meter, a combat log, or a display of what all the tanks are targeting. If I had a 30" monitor maybe I'd toss that stuff up there, but since space is limited I don't display them normally. I just changed my keybindings so I still have all those displayed, but once I'm used to them I'll hide them too and just display the important cooldowns.
Grid Configuration
Grid and Clique make a very powerful interface for healers. They allow you to see a wide variety of important information and react to it immediately. Click casting saves a keystroke which saves you time, but it also allows you to keep the boss targeted so that you can see what abilities are about to land on the tank, or who's about to be hit by a random ability.
One of the very useful things Grid can do is display custom debuffs on user frames. It's not obvious how to set this up, so here's a few screenshots of the process.
For reference and to give examples of why this is useful, here's a list of all the things I have Grid display on the center icon. It's mostly stuff from 5 man fights, ToC, and the first few fights in ICC.
Curse/Disease/Poison - for cleanse
Death's Respite - P1 Black Knight in ToC, causes a large amount of damage shortly after application
Deep Freeze - Garfrost in PoS. Large amount of damage when it runs out
Gravity Bomb - XT (Ulduar) - damage when it runs out
Impaled - Marrowgar (ICC) - large DoT
Incinerate Flesh - Jaraxxus (ToC) - must heal a lot before debuff runs out
Mark of the Fallen Champion - Saurfang (ICC) - large DoT
Marked for Death - P3 Black Knight - takes double magic damage
Mortal Wound - Stinky/Precious (ICC) - reduced healing
Penetrating Cold - Anub'arak (ToC) - large DoT, lets you know who's at 10% and fine and who's at 10% and about to die
Slag Pot - Ignis (Ulduar) - large DoT
Vile Gas - Festergut (ICC) - large DoT
I'm sure there's plenty more I should have, but I just add things as I need them.
Step 1: Add the buff/debuff to Grid's Aura list.
Step 2: Find the new buff/debuff in the list and customize it. You can change the color used for corner dots, set the priority (if multiple buffs are set to show in the same area, the one with the highest priority gets displayed), set whether buffs cast by other players get displayed, or other options.
Step 3: Tell Grid where to show the new buff/debuff. Center Icon will show an icon on top of the frame. The corners will put a small colored dot in the corner (I display my riptide, earth shield, and aggro warning in the corners).
If you want to change the size of the unit frames or other options, go to Frame->Advanced. You can change the size of the center icon, the size of the individual frames, or a few other things here.
The first part is a discussion of my overall UI, and the second part is a short tutorial of how to set up Grid to display important debuffs/buffs.
UI Design
Put information that you need for second to second decisions close to the center of the screen. Put stuff you don't need immediately at the edges. If you don't need it regularly, hide it altogether. The more of the world you can see, the better you'll be able to react.
To use some specific examples, I keep Grid close to the center, since that's where all my attention usually is. This lets me see out of the corner of my eye if I'm standing in the fire. My unit frames also help with that - if my health is low I can tell without taking my attention away from whoever I'm healing. I'm not a tank so I don't need a detailed threat window - just how close I am to pulling aggro. Having the target frame right there makes it easy to spot spellcasts so I know if I need to be ready to heal someone or interrupt or run or whatever. A small Target of Target frame also helps predict who's going to need heals soon.
I don't need a dps meter, a combat log, or a display of what all the tanks are targeting. If I had a 30" monitor maybe I'd toss that stuff up there, but since space is limited I don't display them normally. I just changed my keybindings so I still have all those displayed, but once I'm used to them I'll hide them too and just display the important cooldowns.
Grid Configuration
Grid and Clique make a very powerful interface for healers. They allow you to see a wide variety of important information and react to it immediately. Click casting saves a keystroke which saves you time, but it also allows you to keep the boss targeted so that you can see what abilities are about to land on the tank, or who's about to be hit by a random ability.
One of the very useful things Grid can do is display custom debuffs on user frames. It's not obvious how to set this up, so here's a few screenshots of the process.
For reference and to give examples of why this is useful, here's a list of all the things I have Grid display on the center icon. It's mostly stuff from 5 man fights, ToC, and the first few fights in ICC.
Curse/Disease/Poison - for cleanse
Death's Respite - P1 Black Knight in ToC, causes a large amount of damage shortly after application
Deep Freeze - Garfrost in PoS. Large amount of damage when it runs out
Gravity Bomb - XT (Ulduar) - damage when it runs out
Impaled - Marrowgar (ICC) - large DoT
Incinerate Flesh - Jaraxxus (ToC) - must heal a lot before debuff runs out
Mark of the Fallen Champion - Saurfang (ICC) - large DoT
Marked for Death - P3 Black Knight - takes double magic damage
Mortal Wound - Stinky/Precious (ICC) - reduced healing
Penetrating Cold - Anub'arak (ToC) - large DoT, lets you know who's at 10% and fine and who's at 10% and about to die
Slag Pot - Ignis (Ulduar) - large DoT
Vile Gas - Festergut (ICC) - large DoT
I'm sure there's plenty more I should have, but I just add things as I need them.
Step 1: Add the buff/debuff to Grid's Aura list.
Step 2: Find the new buff/debuff in the list and customize it. You can change the color used for corner dots, set the priority (if multiple buffs are set to show in the same area, the one with the highest priority gets displayed), set whether buffs cast by other players get displayed, or other options.
Step 3: Tell Grid where to show the new buff/debuff. Center Icon will show an icon on top of the frame. The corners will put a small colored dot in the corner (I display my riptide, earth shield, and aggro warning in the corners).
If you want to change the size of the unit frames or other options, go to Frame->Advanced. You can change the size of the center icon, the size of the individual frames, or a few other things here.
Total Comments 2
Comments
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Good post. In my experience, not enough healers (or raid members in general) take the time to properly configure their addons. I primarily raid as a tank, and I find that having grid display debuffs can be extremely helpful. Even for debuffs which don't require direct action from me, it's really helpful to see who's afflicted by what. For instance, on nearly every encounter in ICC, there are debuffs which will affect my healers' ability to heal me. I try to work CD use around these events. A partial list includes,
Marrowgar -- Impaled LDW -- Mind Control Festergut -- Vile Gas Rotface -- Mutated Infection Putricide -- Malleable Goo BQL -- Pact of the Darkfallen / Shroud of Sorrow Dreamwalker -- # Emerald Vigor Sindragosa -- Unchained Magic / Instability LK -- Necrotic Plague / Valk debuff? Not sure if one exists haven't paid enough attention yet. Some of these buffs simply require movement, others completely prevent action, and others limit healing in other ways, but I find that being able to see at a glance which healers in the raid are incapacitated in some form really helps me contribute to my own survivability. I also found it useful to enable the Centre Text 2 indicator, which allowed me to display a player's name without having it overwritten by death / ghost / FD warning or incoming heal numbers. This is primarily something I do for my resto druid alt, since I'm generally pugging content, and not intimately familiar with the raid group's layout. |
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I take this a bit farther with the four corners addition to grid available through curse. 1 corner is set aside for curse, 1 disease, 1 poison, and the last for riptide. I started doing this due to debuffs such as turning into a slime in the plague quarter trash in icc that looks like a poison debuff but is actually magic, got tired of waisting the time to try to dispel it when I can't, so now I have an easy reference.
I reserve the middle for debuffs of the utmost importance such as stacking debuffs, injections on rotface, or anything that is or is about to deal a massive amount of damage. |
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