There isn't one.

Once a person gets used to Grid, it gives ALL the information a healer can require in a very minimal space. If the encounter isn't really that complicated, then a healer won't have to even worry about making the frames very large.

Most of the information people have on their screens isn't really that useful. For example, having grid -AND- party farmes doesn't make much sense at all. Having a combat log, or eavesdrop on your screen also doesn't make much sense.

Healers often times include many features which are either replicated on Grid, or are just not really important.

Okay, let me contest that statement for a bit.

Information I require when I heal raids that Grid doesn't give me:
- Health prediction for the target of my currently casting heal
- Feedback on heal size, overhealing, etc. Eavesdrop is great here, by the way, whereas SCT & MSBT are relatively crap. I want a log I can check as time allows, not momentary numbers floating in the play area where I'm usually not looking anyhoo.
- Precise raid mana status. An lom-blip is great, but I like knowing specifics for my Innervates. I used to use an XRS bar's tooltip which is a decently small way of getting this at need, by the way, even if not exactly optimal for the task.
- Overall buff status for buffs you yourself aren't providing. Again, XRS comes in handy.
- Duration indicators for all of Lifebloom, Regrowth & Rejuvenation.
- Full health information: current, deficit and maximum.
- Notification on exactly what mob is beating on whom. An aggro indicator is great, but the MT panels remain more detailed.
- Perhaps obvious, but boss timers, phase information, ability cooldowns and such aren't a part of Grid either and these generally need to be more centrally accessible and prominent for healers.

I've probably forgotten a good few features for that list. I can't really give any handy "good healer UI" examples either, haven't really had much interest in them since rerolling tank in BC. I did find my old setup from november last year: it's passable and meets most but not all the criteria I just outlined, although it's also done a lot of things fairly wrong. If I were to redo it for today I'd change quite a few things: remove one chatbox; centralise Grid, my action buttons, Bigwigs timers and possibly Eavesdrop; decentralise the minimap; redesign the MT boxes to add a prominent ToToMT panel while reducing the size of the MT and ToMT panels; add some debuff filters to my unit frames and change their current health information; replace the 50-odd less-used buttons I hid on Sprocket (how I miss thee!) with something else; etc. I'd end up with a smaller UI footprint than on that screenie, certainly, but I guesstimate it'd still take up twice the space of my current tank/raid leader-focused UI if I wanted to heal a raid and feel I had everything I needed to do so well.

I wasn't really clear before - Grid isn't a panacea, but it certainly negates the "omfg healers need so much stuff!" on their screen argument. Most of the stuff you've outlined below isn't unique to a healer, though I agree that Grid leaves much to be desired.

This is achievable on PitBull (I think). A healer wouldn't ever sacrifice their unitframes for Grid, and DPS classes need them too.

My point was that Eavesdrop doesn't need to be visable on the screen. Any combat log can be tabbed behind the chat window, and checked at convenience.

Many classes use DOT timers (Warlocks and Rogues, for example)

Achievable on PitBull.

I'd think all raid members would have tank targets =P

I'm not sure a healer has any more priority with these issues than a DPS class...though there are some exceptions.

Ideally, there isn't much difference between a healer and DPS UI. Not to mention, you're apporaching this from the perspective of a raid leader, which adds a whole extra element to clutter in a raid =P

Pitbull can show heal prediction on your target, which isn't necessarily the same thing as the person your currently casting heal is incoming on as the typical raid healer is either using Clique or the like and thus not targeting anyone in particular or pre-targeting and thus swapping targets about 5 times per second or so. Pitbull raid frames can solve that but, 'course, that'd mean pitbull raid frames

That's very much not feasible, imo. There's no time to swap a chat tab to check information mid-combat when healing, that's far more time away from the important parts of the screen. Heck, you'd even have to move the mouse pointer away from Grid, a huge faux pas. :p

What I look for as a feedback mechanism when healer is a log of my recent heal activity that's non-intrusive, readable at a glance mid-fight yet doesn't need to be constantly scanned. A visible (simple) combat log or eavesdrop fits the bill perfectly and is thus something I'd find completely vital.

Conceded. I mostly meant that to indicate that GridHotStatus' hot-display features are inadequate to fully cover the task. Most druids I know just show Lifebloom duration on Grid as refreshing stacks on multiple tanks gets stressful to track if you have to correlate DoTimer bars to people in Grid fast.

... for your current target, which is still often completely irrelevant for a healer. You don't get full health information for the entire raid with Grid, unless you use duplicate raid frames. I admit I sacrifice this one for clarity and space but doing so is a sacrifice: complete raid health information is something you'd ideally want to better determine heal priority.

In different ways, though. As a dps'er or tank I don't bother with ToToMT beyond having oRA's MT colour indicate if he has aggro or not; heck, when dps'ing I hide all boxes except the main assist most of the time. As a healer I need every single box in some ways, especially ToToMT as that's the one that actally tells me who is taking the damage.

To me, this makes me thing you don't quite grasp the huge difference in eye focus between healers and anyone else, and what that actually entails on a raid. Tanks and dps look at the play area, the mob they're targeting and the fight in general. At their leisure they can focus on their threat meters, raid frames, etc if they need to know something from them - taking a second or two to focus on a UI element at the edge of the screen can be done at almost any time and doesn't cost much in efficiency. I.e. as a rogue, taking 5 seconds to get a good look at the threat meter after a finisher while punching Backstab/SS doesn't really make you dps that much worse, if for some reason you had to do it.

Healers don't work like that: your eye focus needs to be on the raid frames while the play area and the rest of the UI is only seen in peripheral vision. Any time spent not scanning healthbars causes that much delayed reaction to raid damage, which gets people killed and so needs to be severely minimised. All the things you can blithely take for granted in terms of situational awareness as a dps'er or tank - knowledge of people's positions relative to you, where the mobs are, where they're facing, who they're targeting, what they're casting and what-have-you - are something healers usually have only a vague ideas about as it's not easily discernable in the area of the UI they're looking at. As a result, things like the Lurker's Spout which are very hard to miss when dps'ing him - because, hey, you're staring right at the muppet when he spews - need to be very, very clear in form of warnings, bars, etc for a healer to have a similar level of awareness without spending too much time away from healthbars. It's a distinct difference, it causes clutter and - sillyness like party frames aside - that you see a distinct increase in information overload on a healer UI is to me not a sign of bad design but a reflection of the inherent differences in playstyle and information needs between the types.


To sum: If healers and tanks/dps'ers had similar UIs then that'd mean they were interested in looking at the same things when playing. I, at least, look at entirely different things when I play healer. To me, that makes a world of difference in what I emphasize when I build a UI. I can't agree that "ideally, there isn't much of a difference": I think that, ideally, my healer UI must reflect the increased need I have when healing for interface-based clarification of information also available in the rendered game world. It's not just unit frames.

Interesting tip, have to look into it, and I Agree, the original Tooltip position is suboptimal, especially when you have your chatlog there.

What, you mean how the human mind process information which can be scientifically proved? My bad.

Obviously we're just going to have agree to disagree with that

Anyways, as for EavesDrop, the main reason I use it is that it's the best and cleanest combat log available, as for why I have it visible (I know I won't be looking at it while in combat duh,) but 90% of the time my game's actual Combat Log just decides to disapear while I play

But I'm the black sheep here it would seem with what I design my UI for

One question: pretty much everyone seems to have a combat log onscreen. But... I don't know.. the only time I ever use it is when the raid leader asks me how I got killed and I don't know right away. Maybe I'm missing out on something here...

What do you use your combat log for?

In Arena to evaluate the damage sources on me post game and see what type of stupid DPS I had against me for kicks

If you have the settings correct on the combat log, it can be the greatest asset of information on your UI within the smallest space. It picks up player abilities. "xxx gains...
" and allows for you to make judgements based off of that. The thing is that many people find it is too much information and they use mods to help break it down for them. In reality a minimalistic UI should include the combatlog because it is the most effective window to game information that is given to the player about thier current suroundings.

Ultimately, in my mind, this is what makes a UI good. Does the person using it like it?
No?? Why not? The entire UI is useless if the person playing it doesn't understand/like it. Some healers may want more information than others. Some DPS classes may know the exact location of each of their spells/abilities and therefore need only their health bars on the screen. A good "healer" or "dps" UI feeds the user exactly what information they need, in a timely, organized fashion, and in a streamlined way.

Yeah, this is all I use my combat log for, and I'm a dps class. I have CombatGraph to tell me my hit/crits, but my SCL is in place mainly for "xxx gains..." purposes. It's terribly useful ;D

The majority of people when they see my screenshots / movies generally say my UI makes watching my video completely unwatchable, but for what I do and with the stupid amount of information I have to deal with (Much more than I have or ever will have to put up with in PVE,) it makes it sensible for me to display timers, but I don't want any pieces of excessive information on my screen like Action Buttons :P

You're a post-splitter and I hate you.

Also, you guys are arguing over a highly subjective topic. What next, a point-by-point discussion on toilet paper choices? How about you accept that different people like different things on their screen, and desire different methods of obtaining useful (at least to them) information while playing. This "OMG UR DUM THATS A DUM MOD Y U HAVE THAT THER" back-and-forth you guys have going is just flat out stupid.

A threat meter is relevant as an predictor of when aggro swaps will occur. It's obviously not as crucial as for dps or tanks, 'course. I don't really have a need for a constantly visible damagemeter no matter what I'm plaing, but I like having Recount around for post-fight analysis; some people are more competetive than me, though, and play better if they've got a meter up and healrace. Eavesdrop, well, I'll get back to it.

On the contrary, the ToMT is crucial for me to get any mileage out of the MT frames at all: it tells me what size of damage is going to be incoming. If all I cared about was that someone has aggro from an MT's target then I'd remove my MT frames and go by Grid's indicators.

I'm not saying only healers need warnings, I'm saying they have a greater need for centralised and clear warnings than others because their usual focus isn't on what mobs are doing, its on what player's health bars are doing. As a tank I'm happy hiding my BigWigs bars at the top of the screen and routinely glancing at them, as a healer I'd be more constrained in my ability to shift focus from raid frames and thus be inclined to have the same timers larger and more centralised.

Ack, now you're putting words in my mouth

I'm saying that I want at-a-glance feedback as to what's happening with my recent spellcasts to aid in determining if I'm doing my job effectively. I can only get that by having a log visible in combat, it's the best way of feedback I've found.

But of course what I'm asking for is manufactured: all interface needs are. You could heal with no visible UI whatsoever if you so chose, determine damage by visual cues like spell effects and heal by selecting people in the game field. The vast majority of us would hate playing like that, but if someone can acchieve equal performance with that (lack of) UI setup then more power to someone.

Me, I want a great deal of additional, clear and visible information on screen when I heal compared to when I dps and tank. To me, the playstyles are sufficiently different to warrant a distinct change in approach for how I design my UI. Your mileage may vary, which is fine, but please don't assume that everyone will find a particular piece of information provided by some obstructing addon irrelevant simply because you do.

Also, Kaubel, thank you for making my point in a few less words :p

In some battles it can be very benefitial to look at the rendered game and ignore/hide some of your UI even as a healer. Thinking of our first ouro tries i remember how our healers utterly failed in this encounter after submerge because they could neither keep themselves nor others alive. I presume their cluttered UI and being used to staring at bars played a huge role (Having no healing experience back then, I looked at their UIs and wondered how they could even play like that).

Don't get me wrong... I dont want to advocate to only heal looking at the rendered game world.

I just wanted to point out that there are things you can't replace or predict with addons.
Healers need a lot of information but they also need to make compromises. But it seems very subjective and even dependant on their particular task where each person draws that line so lets leave it at that

I'm going to have to disagree with you here. I find, especially in BC, a lot more is happening that EVERYONE in the raid needs to be aware of. Now, our focus cannot JUST be on the health bars with everything else secondary. That's why I prefer grid and slightly less information. This way I can get a quick look at the overall status of the raid, who is diseased, poisoned, magic'd, etc, who needs heals, etc. If you die to spout, you're just plain bad. That fight is barely healing intensive and it's something HUGE thats going on. If you can't dodge spout without warnings, then I have a feeling you're going to be dying to a lot of flame patches.

Also, I feel you should know how much your heals are going to do. Just activate the 2nd center of grid and put health deficit full time on there. If you don't know what your average heals do, then you're not a very good healer to begin with.

So, I think to make a better healer in BC (In PvE; I can understand where syeren is coming from), you need a lot less information overload. There is just so many things I need to be aware of and doing most of the time that just focusing on health bars and exactly how much my heals are going to do to them, etc will just cause me to die much faster with the way fights are in The Eye, BT, and Hyjal.

I've always wondered about this. I don't understand why people put combat logs on their screen, unless it has severely stripped down what it is displaying. For the most part it will scroll too fast to be of any use in a fight and therefore at best will be used after a fight. Perhaps people are just trying to find something to use their screen space on. I run at 1024x768 so every inch of space is valuable, therefore I've never had combat log visible.

Simply put a heavy throttle on your healing and damage output, should solve a lot of your combat text spam

That's not what I want, actually - it's still the same amount of text spamming my screen, albeit in set intervals. For now, I've gone back to the layout in my first screenshot, replacing SCT with Parrot, and just setting the text so it won't scroll through my raid frames and such. Thanks for making me aware of that option, though, I hadn't noticed it.

Okay, this is probarbly the wrong place to ask, and I've tried in many ways to find the incoming UI.

But where did you find the picture of that UI on the first post(Named sleekui.jpg) I would love to find out which mods were used and how they were made to look like that, I believe it's the nicest UI i've ever seen.

Thanks.

I play a shaman too, and I want to build a UI that displays as little information as possible and is useful in PvP. I remember reading earlier in the thread that the place to start is with the unit frames.

So, what exactly does the UI need to display?

1. Unit Frames (player, party, target, focus, target and focus castbars, enemy party for quick target switching on purge and shocks). You probably also need your own castbar so you can use quartz to increase HPS and DPS.

This is a lot of unit frames. Most of the UI screenshots in this thread only show the player and target frames. Where do the party frames and enemy party frames (like the ones you get from Arena Master or Gladiator) go? I get the idea that the player frame and the target frame need to be close to the viewing area so you don't have to go far to see what's going on. What about the rest of the frames? What about all the miscellaneous crap like pet frames?

2. I've hotkeyed almost all of my shaman spells, including obscure totems like stoneskin and tranquil air. But I still use a couple of action bars to show spells that have cooldowns. I also like the idea of having one bar that has 3-4 spells on it to act as a range indicator (I would use Gift of Naaru for 40yd, Chain Lightning for 36yd, Purge for 30yd and ES for 25yd). These would be second in importance after the frames, right? Where should these go?

I also have a general question about Fitt's law. It seems to be talking about the areas on the screen where it's easiest to move your mouse to. What about the areas of the screen where it's easiest to move your eyes to? If I want to click on grid to heal people, I understand putting it in the bottom right. But looking at the bottom right is far away from my character. How do you balance the mouse movement/viewing considerations?

3. Grid. Where to put this?

4. Text - a chat log and/or a combat log.

5. Omen - since I do some raiding too.

6. Buffs/debuffs - Long term buffs can be hidden far away. But I need to know how long it's going to take for the stun or hamstring to go away. Maybe I could stick totem timers with these too.

7. Minimap. I want to just shove this somewhere.

What else am I missing? Is there anything else that needs to go in a minimalist pvp UI?

Also, what are the best ways to orient these different elements? I could, for example, put the map in top left and buffs in the top right, but then I lose those for clicking. Is that a problem? What would I want to have in the corners that I would be clicking anyway?

Okay, lots of points, and quite a lot of thought here, I snipped the early part to not create a wall of text quote, and will break it up in consideration.

Please note, I'm not a minimalist player on my shaman at all. (My hunter has a minimalist setup however, but hey, he's never been to a raid either


So lets start. Eye tracking has been done, but mostly in regards to common things like websites and text comprehension, along with a few of the "major" label software pieces. In general, eyetracking makes a Z-inverse form across the screen, starting at the lower right on many cases, panning up and left to the middle, then up to the upper-middle (never really reaching top) then down in a line to the left corner. (This is a rough description, and very individual. Got the graphing here from how eyetracking and menu placement/logos should be done on website design, so its not perfect for this usecase

Still, Focus area in this game and computers in general is in the lower portion of the screen, with "less necessary" things in the upper portion.

Placement. For a pleasant experience, stick to the Golden ratio as much as you can, if you resize text-quadrants, hold them semi proportional to this. Most fonts are designed around the golden ratio, and in typography it has a long tried part of "this works better". However, break it if you need, no laws are set in stone here.

Corner and corner use. Where do you have your mouse most? I've found that I'm still using the lower quadrants of the screen more than the upper, so I have "passive" UI-elements in the upper, and "active" in the lower, meaning I put my Bag menu + Character/minibuttons on the upper left, and the Map + Fubar panel upper right and middle. This puts them visible, but somewhat out of the way.

Next, party frames. Found it hard to get used to anything but the original placement there, so I simply realigned them a bit, put them on the edge left and put target-of-party there.

Focus? Well, I wanted it visible, but not "that" much focus, so I put it around where Blizzard original UI shows my target portrait. My eyes were used to that position, and it worked quite well for Focus, Focus'target and so on.

Buffs/Debuffs in the general area where they are in the original UI. The buffs are "passive" information and can live neatly there, out of eyefocus. The Debuffs could probably be highlighted more however.

Castbar, And target castbar, Got my own castbar in the dead center ( quartz ) near bottom (below it I have my pot/consumable-bar for easy access) Above it a small Grid frame, on each side of grid, the Target's castbar, and the focus' castbar.

I found that the suggested placement in many ui's for Target and Self in the middle of the screen works quite well, except for the trained reflex to look at the original location for your own portrait's health.

Omen? Active information in case you raid as DPS, then it should live in the bottom quadrants, ( Down right somewhere, I tend to have it in the same place as I have the minimap for BG's ) if it's passive information, I'd simply hide it. (healer)


Text., Active information in large blocks, Original Blizz placement is quite good for this, I'd put the second chat-field in a mirror position for visual aesthetics.

Even though Spider already answered your questions (and imho very well at that), I'd like to throw in my 2 Cents.

Playing a shaman myself I tried to draw a rough shape of my UI and delete the elements you apparently don't need (just 2 extra rows of 5 buttons since I can't seem to hotkey everything I need without breaking my fingers).



Shot at 2007-07-23
Red: High priority
Orange: Medium priority
Green: Low priority

1. Unit Frames
Raid/ Party Frames: Give a click-heal mod a shot, if you're not using one already. Personally I use healbot, but there have been others mentioned which are probably just as good. It makes a world of difference in my opinion. You save the hotkeys for your healing spells, have your raidframes, overheal estimate, and all of that as transparent as you like.

Target Frames: One of the (if not THE) most important frames imho. Mine goes right (or rather left) next to my toon. The Target of Target Frame sits on top of it (very small as all I need to know are the target's name and life). Focus Target could go below the Target Frame, but so far I'm not using it as I just can't work my brain through that extra piece of information with so much else going on. Also, when healing, I simply don't need it, I just keep the target that I have to earthshock or whatever as my main target (healbot ftw).

2. Actionbar(s)
Pretty much standard position, haven't really seen anyone put those anywhere else. Although I like to hide a bar on the far right (vertical & faded) for my professions.

3. Grid
That's a raidframe addon, right? Hmm so I guess that's your equivalent for my healbot, don't know if you can make it transparent or not, in that case it would take up loads of space. Anyone remember the time when all you could get was CTRA? *sigh*

4. Chatframe
Standard position, also moved rep & skill gains as well as loot info to a separate frame tab, so my chat isn't that cluttered.

5. Omen
I like it right below my totem timers / yata. Easy to glance over, but not in the way.

6. Buffs / Debuffs
Split those with buffalo, buffs are underneath the minimap, debuff (more important to me) above the chatframe.

7. Minimap
Standard, never really like the square minimap, looks too artifical to me

What am I missing?
One of my latest additions has been JIM's Cooldown Pulse, now I can't imagine living without it. All it does is flash the icon of a cooldown skill that just finished ... erm ...cooling down. Anywhere you like. Any size you like. Can even play a sound if you still manage to ignore it. I like the default position right in the middle of my screen. Awesome mod <3


// On topic (don't think I've mentioned that when I posted pics of my UI):
What makes MY UI special, is the use of my actionbar (haven't met anyone else using it that way). I always only have one row of 8 buttons visible, and I flip through the different bars with my mousewheel. Saves a LOT of space, and also hotkeys. 1-4 and then Q, mousebutton 4,5 and middle works best for me. That way my left hand doesnt have to rush all over the keyboard, minimizing the chance to hit the wrong key