Bloo Driver

I have a bit of a question here on people's experience with raidframes - specifically Grid vs Healbot for Ret Paladins. I have mashed the idea into my raiders' heads that, as the OP stated, if you can cleanse or manage debuffs or have mid-combat abilities to use on the raid, you should have something to help with that.

I spent some time using Grid + Clique, then Healbot, and I didn't see any real functional difference. I ended up with Healbot simply because it was the second thing I had tried and I was used to it at that point. Whenever a discussion of raid frames like this comes up, nearly no one mentions Healbot, so I wonder if there's something very critical I'm not seeing about how it's inferior.

 

noxicon

What is the ultimate purpose of having Combat Text displayed?

I personally don't see the need for Combat Text and find that it adds additional clutter to my screen. Seeing big numbers is nice, but I'd rather keep it clean and only display information essential to my performance. I used Parrot for a while, which I really liked and would recommend if I had to, but I most definitely didn't find it to be essential to how well I perform.

If I'm missing a reason for it, I'm all ears, as I'm always looking to improve.

 

Glutton

On an encounter like Heroic Anub'arak 25 seeing damage spam is key in determining if you're in the proper position to hit all four adds plus the boss. I do agree that in general floating combat text is not too informative as a DPS.

 

Noraj

Ultimately it comes down to a matter of personal preference. Both solutions work equally well so long as they cover the features you want and you're comfortable using them. I think most of the preference though comes from the deeper customization options of Grid along with its compact size compared to Healbot vs. the option not to need a second mod to handle mousebound casts.

"The question is not how far we are going to take it... the question is, do you possess the constitution to go as far as needed?" - Il Duce

 

• frmorrison

I have Eavesdrop (modifies the combat log) that shows my damage and healing only. I can know I am OOR of adds if I don't see a lot of SoC hits in the log.

Also floating combat text can lag your computer, so another reason to drop it.

DK - Ashbane Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

 

Terryn

IVe. Internal Trinket Cool-down Watcher

Procodile
Another basic addon that tracks internal Cooldowns on just about anything.

 

Gormal

Personally, I find floating combat text to be most useful for alerting me that I'm taking damage rather than what I'm putting out. I thought it was Xyrm who used to have a mod that painted a circle for consecrate range on the ground. It wasn't in his new videos so I'm not sure, but if you're looking for DS/cons range I'm sure a circle could be drawn inside of the larger to let you know if you're in range before you actually swing.

 

Eligius

at first thanks for those good advises .... i gave Opie a try and I love it.

you mentioned this circle for consecrate ... does it still exist ?

in addition to most of the addons here I use an addon called Aloft. There you have a huge amount of customizable settings for your nameplates. especially I like that you can put a lot more of information in there.

by the way : apologize mistakes in language ... I'll always try my best to make posts readable

 

Noraj

Nameplates : Aloft
I really like Aloft for making adds and trash easier to target, but it does have its issues as regards raiding:

1. It's pretty memory intensive compared to most mods. The only things that run higher for me are QuestHelper when it is turned on, Skada, and GearScore with its huge list of everybody I've ever moused over.
2. Without having your camera zoomed very far out, or setting the relative position of the nameplate to the model to be very, very low to the ground, you can't usually see boss nameplates. Setting them low enough to makes them uncomfortably low on smaller models.
3. Most of the extra information you can make available on the nameplates is redundant, and since the nameplate moves when the mob does, it's never in the same place, making it harder to constantly monitor while keeping your attention everywhere else that it belongs at the same time.

Basically the only really useful things I find with it are being able to set the alpha of your non-target much lower, keeping the nameplates looking like the rest of your UI, and making them easier to manually target. Beyond that, I don't need another threat display, another set of statistics, or any other sort of information.

Do any of you have any particular tweaks, tricks, or touch-ups for nameplates that make them more useful than this? Is there anything raid-specific that you've found useful in regards to nameplates that could help others out?

"The question is not how far we are going to take it... the question is, do you possess the constitution to go as far as needed?" - Il Duce

 

Maylander

I personally prefer HealBot; I find it a bit smoother, and easier to set up properly. However, Grid does have more options and support available (extra stuff you can add). I generally find little use for that though, so I'm sticking with HealBot for now.

"If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.
If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.
If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle." - Sun Tzu, Art of War

 

• Zurm

I'll include Procodile, Healbot, and Eavesdrop (I wasn't aware it was still being updated), but I won't include Aloft.

I didn't list every mod I use. While I personally use Aloft, it doesn't really add much. Sure, it allows you to see % hp remaining so you can more easily Tab-->HoW, but it really doesn't serve any function that I felt is necessary. It definitely makes the nameplates look much neater and more appealing, though.

Again, though, don't hesitate to mention new addons. If others feel that Aloft SHOULD be added, I'll gladly do it.

 

Redcape

I have a pretty clean UI at the moment, but I have one particular thing I want a mod to do that I have not found a solution for: Get rid of the mouseover text boxes on the lower right. When I mouseover a mob/player/game element and get the box in the lower right it obscures part of my mods and I don't want to dedicate a huge chunk of screen real estate to that if I can avoid it.

Does anyone have a mod that allows you to deal with those tooltips? Shrink, move, remove, whatever.

 

Thethiala

Aloft has a module which allows you to see cast bars even on opponents not targeted, as opposed to the default nameplates which only shows a cast bar for your target. It might be of benefit on fights like Faction Champions.

 

Lightbender

I'm fairly certain the standard Blizzard interface options allow you to turn these tooltips off.

 

• Zurm

In addition, TipTac allows you to change where it is anchored, and change appearance/info on it. I personally have my mouseover text anchored to the mouse itself (slightly to the right).

Is this new? The version I use doesn't have this functionality.

 

Thethiala

You've got to download the module separately.

 

Soulblazer

I use Tipsy to set my tooltip window. It's pretty light and simple to set.

 

MallyMW

An excellent replacement for Aloft is a mod called Caelnameplates. Compared to Aloft the mod is very light on memory and it does everything I can think of that Aloft used to do for me.

However, the main issue people may run into is that at the moment Cael does not have a config option, and any changes you wish to make must be made directly to the lua. This may be a turn off to some people, but despite my poor knowledge of computer nonsense, even I found it very very simple to make the two or three cosmetic changes I felt I needed to make.

 

Exemplar

I previously recommended (and will again) MoveAnything. It allows you to literally move/resize any item of the Blizzard UI that you'd desire elsewhere. It does not have the added functionality of altering tooltips that dedicated tooltip mobs have.

Having what you want to see where you want to see it is a great efficiency booster.

Rock: "We're sub-standard DPS. Nerf Paper, Scissors are fine."
Paper: "OMG, WTF, Scissors!"
Scissors: "Rock is OP and Paper are QQers. We need PvP buffs."

 

Glutton

As others have mentioned - a mod like TipTac will allow you to set the anchor location, set the growth position (ex. bottom right, top right), resize the tooltip, or even disable mouseover text while in combat.

 

Redcape

TipTac was exactly what I needed. It also brought a lot of really nice extras like being able to see who in the raid is targetting the mob I am mouseing over and such.

 

Alcapwnd

I use TipTac as well for tooltip manipulation. Another approach I've been using for a while that works well for me is using Bartender4 to make a action bar button cluster laid out exactly the same as the keypad on my keyboard. I use the keypad on my keyboard for casting and I have a group of buttons that's numbered and laid out identically sitting just to the side of my character on the screen. This allows me to focus in the middle of the screen while getting a easy visual indication on which button to hit next that my brain can quickly map to the corresponding keypad.

 

Eosrain

Well this thread is a nice find... I've been looking around for stuff to maximize my own potential DPS as a raider, and all of these macros and addons are useful. I've downloaded several of them, but the problem I'm having is that the organization of those addons + default Blizzard UI is annoying.

I'm probably going to get an infraction for this... but I have to ask anyway, because I've been searching the WoWinterface forums for about an hour and I cannot find what I'm looking for.

Zurm, the only things I need to know... is how you got rid of the default Blizzard UI. You've got your own custom action bars, your minimap is tucked into your chat window, your character portrait is gone... Everything is tucked neatly into the bottom of your screen. I need organization like that, because frankly, the Blizzard UI is making it difficult to organize Grid and Skada without cluttering my screen too much. I'm sure I can find some other character health bar thing on my own, but dammit, I can't figure out how to do what you did with the bars and such.

Help would be appreciated.

 

• Zurm

The addons to replace Blizzard's action bars and unit frames typically hide the Blizzard ones. I'm sure there is a setting in whichever one you chose to use.

 

Eosrain

I haven't found a decent action bar addon... especially not one that allows you to move the map into a different module like yours does.

I'm thinking you have Dominos but I'm not positive.