shieldb

I'm probably in the minority here, but I prefer having them dropped on a visible (albeit extremely scaled down) action bar for the times when I'm really tired or having to set things up significantly out of order.

 

aleyro

I take back my earlier comment; I <3 Simple Raid Target Icons so hard, my wife is jealous.

 

aleyro

So, in the original spirit of this post, I thought i might outline some key "raid leading" needs, and what i'm using (and considering...) for each one.

• Real time monitoring As raid leader, I like to have a good idea of the overall "health" of the raid, as well as the status of a few key members. I use a variety of mods to do this:
  • XRSprovides me with a high level, aggregate view of healer/tank/dps health/mana.
  • Grid gives offers incredible information density; I can quickly see who has aggro, whos in trouble, who's getting healed, whos low on mana, whos debuffed, whos dead, etc.
  • Pitbull allows me to really focus on specific players when required. specifically, when raiding, i have pitbull hide my party, but show my target, the main tanks, their targets, main healers, and my focus target. I then turn on "interaction lines", and I can very clearly see who's healing whom, who's targeting what, whats damaging which tanks, etc.
• Event monitoring/notification
  These tools include boss timers, proximity warnings, and event warning systems that assist in learning/downing complex encounters. The major players here are:
  • CTRA is the oldest kid on the block, and the "standard" for many guilds. some of the raid leaders in my guild still use this, so I have it lying around (not enabled). Can't wait to drop it, though.
  • Deadly boss mods is what I'm currently using, and I love it; however, I've recently been considering...
  • ... Bigwigs, which is getting tons of good press, and which is based on ace, which makes me happy in the pants.
• performance analysis
  These tools allow you to track performance related stats for your raid, including obvious things like DPS and HPS, but also more subtle things like DoT uptime, interrupts, etc.
  • recount is my current favorite mod; if your a data geek, this is the perfect mod for you. realtime histograms, comparison charts, cause of death analysis, the ability to seperate out the last 10 fights, and extensive per-ability breakdowns are just some of the awesome features of this mod... but they come at a price. recount gobbles memory, and is relatively new, so I'm not quite sure what the overall performance hit is.
  • swstats is well regarded throughout the community as an excellent, lightweight, synchronized soluton to tracking many of your raid performance needs.
  • recap is old, and less flashy than the other two, but it works, and it shouldn't kill your system. very, very intuitive, fluid UI, easy reporting, and comprehensive stats.
  • Omen is an excellent threat meter, that supports multiple targets, and interoperates with other threat meters.
• preperation tracking
  these mods help you form your group, track consumables, track buffs, etc.
  • CTRA is the granddaddy of all of these mods, and its still alive and kicking.
  • oRA2 is a lightweight, ace2-based replacement for CTRA. i use it now, and i love it; it certainly feels feature complete, and i can't think of anything that i could do in ctra that i cant do in Ora.
  • XRS tracks buffs, and i can have it notify the raid when buffs are missing.

i have two major decisions to make. first,

i'm considering dropping xrs, because i don't find myself actually using it that much. what are ya'll using to track buff coverage across your raid? is there something else that will let me view aggregate health/mana pools for pre-defined classes?

second, i'm thinking of replacing Deadly boss mods with BigWigs. have any of you made the switch, in either direction? care to share your experiences?

 

Pstar

Does anyone have a suggestion for a loot-distribution mod? I'm not talking about managing DKP or anything like that, but more for the BOE greens that are littered about -- it's three clicks to put a green in your bag when you're master looting, and it doesn't seem like it should be any (they're BOE and you're master looter, shouldn't they just go in your bag?)

Thanks in advance, great thread btw

 

aleyro

the whole set of xloot mods are relatively nice; it doesn't just put the loot in your bag, but it does reduce it to.... 2 clicks, i think?

 

sovelis41

From bigwigs I like that important timers (i.e. Leos Whirlwinds and Phase shifts) are moved to the center of your screen and made really big when they're about to expire and, of course, the Final Fantasy boss victory music!

Although, in the end, I use both mods for complete coverage. Some timers are better for one than the other. Sometimes on al'ar for instance, DBM won't show me an enrage timer, but BigWigs will.

 

Valjean

I really like Xloot. The ability to announce to the entire raid and the entire guild who got what is nice. Sorting by class on loot is even nicer. All of the important options are there on one click.

I use oRA2 to replace a lot of CTRaid functionalities. Durability check, zone checks, etc.

I have not standardized on one boss modd. I use both Bigwigs and DBM. But if I could find a mod that does the auto-response and raid status via whispers like DBM does, I would drop DBM and stick with BW.

 

◊ Vectivus

I'm currently using:

- Pitbull - only just starting to learn how to use this. To avoid clutter, I currently only have myself, my target, and my target's target up. I'm trying to find intelligent ways to utilize more of the functionality, particularly without crippling my now-free screen real estate, though.

- Omen - far and away, the superior threat addon.

- Recount - again, still learning about all the functionality here. Gives you all the classic meters, plus much more (the breakdown by ability is a huge benefit - look and see how many healers still play like we're pulling those first two Molten Giants!).

- Grid - also learning about this one. Currently, I basically use it as a way to see who's low on health/dead. :P

- BigWigs - timers. Good ones.

- Quartz - I encourage everyone to use this, just for the added functionality.

 

Aonghus

The Ace addon BossWhisperer does this auto-response. It also blocks whispers during a boss encounter (which you may or may not like), and unfortunately just loses them entirely. I use HeyFu to record the whispers so I can review them after the encounter is over.


Agree with many of the previous responders:
XLoot with grouploot addon
XRaidStatus
oRA2
pDebuffList
Recount for analysis
Grid - As DPS I don't necessarily need raid frames to do my job, but do like them as a raid leader.

 

dilznic

I'm looking for an addon to handle DKP auctions. I've looked around but everything out there seems like it hasn't been updated in months. I just need basic functionality, something that will give an auto response to players that whisper me bids, and the ability to update a raid channel with the current/high bid. Anyone have a suggestion?

 

Karmen

There are some ACE based mods that will do what you are asking like Bidder I think but they seem very unyieldy. Unfortunately DKP has been a very neglected part of the game in my opinion in regards to mods and back-end databases. There really aren't many options.

Late Night Raiding www.skeletoncrew.org

 

Belenos

BidTracker was written by me for just the scenario you describe. It should work fine in the current version of WoW, just select to load out of date AddOns.

If you have any problems with the mod, send me a PM here or on WoWI or email me and I will check it out.

WoWInterface Downloads : BidTracker

 

dilznic

I used BidTracker last night for the first time and it worked great. No errors or weirdness at all, very easy to install and use

 

Hannes

I recently found missing whispers when I hovered the FuBar menu of BossWhisperer

 

Trouble

I still much prefer RABuffs to for buffing and monitoring buffs over XRS. The display makes it much much quick to identify what buffs are missing and who is missing them.

 

Ana

I'd have to agree. It also lets you announce missing or soon to expire buffs and instead of just saying 2/25 dead you can shift mouse click on it and it will show you who is dead, oom, etc.

 

Vast

Can anyone recommend a mod for tracking how many times each healer is successfully casting resurrection?

I find that in addition to raid afk, slow resurrection after a wipe kills the time you have to raid.

 

Vonwen

Recount is now telling this, always nice to check the Ressers overall data after the raid and see who is slacking ;p

 

Jelloshots

I have a question about waitlist mods. We offer the same rewards to the waitlist as we do to the raid, but the caveat is that members of the waitlist need to be able to enter the zone five minutes after they've been called in. To this end, waitlist attendants need to be just as present as raid members. We currently keep the list manually, but with more than five people it becomes cumbersome.

Ideally, I'd like a mod to keep a list, but I'd also like the mod to be able to query the waitlist attendants for a response and register it automatically with a timeout feature. NRT has an automated feature to add people to the attendance list after boss kills, but I'd like something that allows user-generating querying. Am I the only one who's interested in this functionality?

 

Korhath

While sorting out invites I generally place "wait listed" people in group 8. We use the NiKarma system and anyone in the raid is awarded "Karma" as long as they are online and in the raid, not necessarily in the zone. 25 man raids with a 40 man raid window leaves alot of room for "wait listed" people. I use CTraid tracker as a back-up for tracking attendance and Loot distrobution and it treats my "wait listed" people no differently then any other raid member. Simply inviting wait listed people into the raid raid and having them in "non combat" groups would simplify DKP awards and tracking attendance, WWS parses would only show players active for each fight.

I understand your desire for Querying people for a response... other then manually sending /w ocassionally and kicking non-reponders from the raid, I don't see a work around.

 

Redbeard

While everyone needs to prepare for the raids, I think this mod I recently stumbled upon could prove to be useful:
Tactics (GD) | World of Warcraft @ Curse.com

Basically you can prepare (write up) your chosen tactics and print them out to raid chat in a flash before each boss encounter. Your own tactics can be easily overwritten to the ones provided in the mod. Just keep a backup of your descriptions.lua file

 

Cosa

One question:

During whole raid leading time I always wanted addon that would:

1) Scan all inventory on raid start
2) Scan all inventory on raid end
3) Give report how much of consumables raiders spent during raid

Anything that work this automatic? I usually check how much pots people have before raid but i would actualy like to see how much consumables they spent during raid. Also via recount/wws you can check "gains" too, but simple addon might work better.

 

Tylerlee

BigBrother from the Ace directory is a great addon to check flasks/consumables/pally buffs, no other mod does this currently i dont think, also i dumped Recount as i was experiencing random reboots of my pc, tried Assessment (Ace2 also) and never DC'd since, one thing it lack is timestamps, but shows deaths alot more graphically instead of text spam.

 

sarf

It might be possible to mod oRA2 / CT_RA to have this functionality.

It would probably be *much* easier just to track the uptime of the consumable buffs, though, as that would bypass the problem with tracking "gains" (gains-messages are not triggered when refreshing buffs, at least for some things). It would also be better since only you would need to have the addon tracking them (this does not work for weapon buffs such as oils, though).

It would of course not solve the issue of detecting slackers at start of raid but tracking uptime is better, generally, since that allows you to improve the ones that bring the pots but forget to re-apply them.
One could even just track the uptime during combat and not while dead, which would give a better estimation of "consumable-efficiency" than "<number of pots at start>-<number of pots at end> = <pots spent>".

This sounds like a good idea for BigBrother to monitor - feel free to suggest it to the current maintainer or in that thread.

 

Barish

Hmm, great lists all.

Bigbrother is nice.
i'm looking for something more specific.
as Rogue CL, i want to track the buffs of one class.
for example: i wanna see if all rogues use poison or stones, if the use food buff, elixir or flasks.
I'm not interrested in the rest of the raid :-P

i can imagine that it is also handy for other classes.