By popular demand, here are my Power Auras exports.

For information on how to set up Power Auras, and for druid-related PA inspiration, here is a great list of links:

Power Auras on WoWInterface
Power Auras Wiki
No Stock UI
Dreambound’s exports
Revive & Rejuvenate’s exports



First, this is what my PA looks like when I’m resting, and everything is off cooldown. Just so you can get an idea of how the auras fit together and whatnot. Note: They will only look nice and neat around my character like this if I am zoomed out a certain amount; if I have to zoom in or out, obviously the relative size will change.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Healing Sindragosa
• Healing Dreamwalker: Channeling your inner warlock
• Resto druid tips for Icecrown: The Plagueworks

Reader question time!

“I’m a shameful clicker but I can see the benefit in key bindings. I want to know from someone who is well versed how to go about key binding … how to change my mindset. I currently use WSAD for directional control, mouse for camera control and click those buttons furiously. My most common used spells with are bound to keys 1,2 and 3, but I’m mostly a clicker.

Can you give me some advice on how to swap to binding more of my abilities? How should I control my character?”



The transition from clicker to keybinder

There are two basic options; you could either go “cold turkey”, bind all of your frequently used abilities, and learn them all at the same time; or, you could bind a few at a time, get to know them, then bind a few more.

I found it quite easy to do them all at the same time, because I chose bindings that made sense to me (more about this later). But if you feel it’s a bit too much to learn all at once, just bind a few, get used to them, and then bind another, and another, etc, as you become more comfortable.

As druids, some of our keybinds will overlap with our different forms. Some abilities will be the same in every form, and some will be unique, but share a keybind. Depending on how you set yourself up, this can mean a LOT of keybinds. Because of this, I recommend that you create a table to record your binding choices, so that you don’t lose track of what the bindings are for each form. I’ll explain this more later, too.


Click casting vs keybinds

If you’re used to clicking, you may prefer to use click casting, which means you simply hover over the target’s frame and click a button on your mouse. The more mouse buttons you have, the more heals and spells you can bind (you can also use alt/shift/ctrl modifiers). Some frame mods such as Healbot and Vuhdo have this feature built-in; if you are using Grid or other frame mods, you will have to install a standalone mod like Clique.

Alternatively, you can use keybinds, which is where you have to target the person you want to heal (either by clicking on them or hovering over them if you are using mouseover macros), and then striking a key on your keyboard.

These options are completely personal preference, and neither is better than the other – you just need to find the one that suits you best. You can also use a combination, if you prefer.

(Personally, I find that using my mouse exclusively causes fatigue in my right hand, and makes me stumble on my clicks. I find striking keys to be more precise for me, and less tiring on my hands.)


How to actually bind your abilities to keys

If you choose to use keyboard keys, you can set these up through the in-game key bindings menu. However, it’s a huge list, and can be a pain. You’re much better off using a bar mod to place your abilities into, or even easier, download the mod “Bindpad“. This mod allows you to simply drag your abilities, macros, equipment or items (like potions, food, etc) into a page of empty binding slots, then you simply left click on the ability you want to bind, hit the key or combination of keys that you have chosen for it, and you’re done. Bound!

Here’s an example of what it looks like:




Most of the good bar mods will also let you bind the slots on your bars, rather than single abilities. This means that when you shift to other forms, your 1-2-3-4-5 (etc) buttons will now be used for your cat abilities, bear abilities, and so on. Some bar mods are also compatible with dual specs.


Druid forms and dual specs

Some abilities will be the same in every form – for example, I want 2 to be barkskin, because I can use it in every form. Or you might want to keep Tranquility available for every spec – just in case you have to pop out of Moonkin form to save the day. So some abilities will be the same regardless of your forms. But you might like to have your 3 button do something different depending on your form. For me, it’s LB, LB, Mangle, Mangle (caster, tree, cat, bear). 4 is Rejuv, Rejuv, Rake, Maul.

Alternatively, you can build macros that will choose an action dependent on your form. For example, “if I’m in tree form, use rejuv; if I’m in cat form, use rake; if I’m in bear form, use maul”. Or, “If I”m stealthed, use Ravage; if I’m not stealthed, use Shred”. This saves on bar space and key bindings; you don’t need to have 3 different key binds for your different stances; you can just have one button and one binding, and the macro will check whether you’re a cat or a tree before performing the action.

Not only does this save space, it will save you going mental trying to remember 3 or 4 times the number of key bindings!

Here’s a list of handy macros: Useful macros for druids

For the abilities constant through your forms (eg Barkskin), just bind the ability directly, in bind pad. For abilities that share a bind with feral form abilities, you can either put them on a bar and bind the SLOT, or put them into a conditional macro and then bind that macro in bindpad. Whichever suits you best.



Example of what my bars might look like in different stances.
Barkskin is always “2″, but 3, 4 and 5 change according to my form.


To make it much easier on yourself, I really do recommend that you draw up that table of all the different binds for your forms, so you can remember which are constant and which will change if you shapeshift. This will also make it easier to decide whether you want to bind them directly, or have them share keybinds with other abilities.


Using “logical” bindings

When making new bindings, I try to choose keys that remind me of their associated spell. For example, Alt-W is wrath, Alt-S is Starfire, Alt-R is Entangling Roots. It’s simplistic – but it helps.

I also “pair up” abilities that are similar or complement each other. For example, 3 is Lifebloom, and Shift-3 is Wild Growth, because WG to me is similar to LB but on multiple targets. Rejuv is 4, and Swiftmend (which is used with Rejuv) is Shift-4. My two direct heals, Regrowth and Nourish, are 5 and Shift-5. Abolish Poison is G, and Remove Curse is Shift-G. As you can see, I keep “pairs” of spells together because I consider them to be similar.

I use similar abilities across various characters. For every class, “1″ is my emergency button. Nature’s Swiftness+Healing Touch, Ice Block, Feign Death, Desperate Prayer, etc. “2″ is my “protect me for a few seconds” key – Barkskin, Power Word: Shield, etc. I use the same bindings for my cat finishers and my hunter pet finishers.

G and Shift-G on my druid are poisons and curses, and show up on my raid frames as green and purple respectively. On my priest, I’ve configured Grid to show diseases as green and magic as purple, and I’ve bound Remove Disease and Dispel Magic to G and Shift-G, just like my druid. When I see a green or purple frame, I don’t even have to process whether it’s a disease or poison or curse or magic – my muscle memory says “green – hit G” and “purple – hit Shift-G”.

If you keep similar abilities on the same binds across all of your characters, it will help you to commit them to memory much faster and easier.


Other tips

Other than the logical bindings, keep your most frequently used abilities on keys that are the easiest to reach, and limit the modifiers.

I have small hands, so I try to limit myself to 3, 4, 5, plus all of the left-hand letters except Q and Z (my small hands makes stretching my pinky awkward and clumsy). This is personal preference – if you can comfortably use your pinky, then you open up a few more keys to use.

3, 4 and 5 are my frequent, basic heals – Lifebloom, Rejuv, and Regrowth. The modified versions (Shift-3, Shift-4, Shift-5) are WG, Swiftmend, and Nourish. All of these are easy for me to hit without stretching, and don’t cause me any fatigue. Don’t bind your most common spells to a key that makes you stretch or strain!

Less important or infrequently used abilities can be bound on the right-hand side of the keyboard to save space on the left. For example, Innervate is Shift-I, Hurricane is Alt-H. The cooldowns mean that I can’t use them frequently, so using right-side binds frees up space on the left. It will mean that you have to take your hand off the mouse momentarily though – if you’re not comfortable doing that, if it feels clumsy, then stick with the left side of the keyboard.

Keep your emergency buttons easy to reach. Nature’s Swiftness/Healing Touch, Barkskin, Swiftmend, Tranquility, health stones and potions, bandages. You don’t want to have some crazy binding for your health stone – it has to be easy to get to!

Your mouse wheel is great for changing forms. It’s super fast. I use:



• Down: cancel all forms

• Shift Down: travel
• Ctrl Down: Tree
• Alt Down: Bear
• Up: kitty
• Shift Up: flight form


I use Down to return to caster, but using the same scroll binding twice will also return you to caster form. For example, scroll up – kitty. Scroll up again – back to caster.


WASD (keyboard turning) vs mouse turning

Finally, a note on movement.

Using your mouse to turn, reposition, and move your character is faster and smoother than using your keyboard. Keyboard turning gives you that “shuffling” look as your character slowly turns to the direction you want to face. In situations where you have to run out of fire (etc), it can mean the difference between taking a tick or two of damage, or none at all.

Personally, I use a hybrid mix of keyboard and mouse turning, and so do many druids. The reason for this is because many of us use mouseover macros or click-casting (clicking on your target with your mouse button to heal them). This ties up the mouse for periods of time, meaning that you have to fall back on your W key to move forward. It’s not necessarily a bad thing to use your W key to move forward, but I definitely recommend that you get used to using your mouse to do quick turns if you need to run. Shuffling will slow you down. It only takes a moment to move your mouse out into the open, turn, and then go back to healing while you run with W.

Backpedalling (”S”) is okay as long as it’s not used to get out of fire, etc – it’s too slow. I will often backpedal here and there to reposition, if my mouse hand is tied up; otherwise, I simply mouse-turn quickly.

Different people use different methods, but that is mine, and it serves me well.



As always – this is just an insight into how I do things, and what works and is comfortable for me. Explore for yourself, see what works. Click casting, binds, mouseovers – there’s a style for everyone, it’s just a case of finding what’s comfortable for you, and then training yourself to use it – either all in one hit, or gradually.

It’s not difficult – just write down what you want to do, bind a few spells, and start practicing until it’s second nature.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Power Auras exports
• Healing Sindragosa
• Glyph of Rapid Rejuvenation and 25man raid healing

Back in June, Kae over at Dreambound shared her Power Auras settings. I had seen Power Auras before but I think this post got the cogs turning, as I realised it could be very handy for a number of my cooldowns.

I don’t have buttons visible on my UI, so I rely on cooldown timers or monitors to count down for me, but my bar-style cooldown timers have really been playing up lately; occasionally they would refuse to show me Innervate or Rebirth; and it’s kinda important that I be able to see those! It’s really annoying (and embarrassing) to have to spellbook an ability to find out how much time is left on it.

So I finally, FINALLY got Power Auras.

Here are some shots of my current UI. No raid shots at the moment sorry; need to tweak it a bit. I’ll try to post some, sometime. Click for large versions.

Solo, no target:


With labels:


As you can see, I don’t have any abilities or buttons visible; all commonly-used abilities are keybound using BindPad or Macaroon. Some infrequently-used ones are on hidden mouseover bars; things like food, tradeskills, mounts, etc.


My Power Auras

Although my bar cooldowns were clear, I found that I wasn’t paying much attention to them. I guess they just never really suited me; they blend into the rest of the UI and I end up basically never using them.

I decided that I needed to see the following things:

1. Wild Growth. I either hit it when it’s not up (thus wasting time that I could be casting something else), or I don’t cast it enough. I wanted to be more aware of the cooldown.

2. Swiftmend and Nature’s Swiftness. These probably speak for themselves – I want to know when they’re up, without looking around my screen for timer bars.
3. Innervate. I want to Innervate early and often; plus, I need to know immediately if I can innervate the mage that is calling for it, or if I have to refuse them.
4. Rebirth. When my timers aren’t working, I think Rebirth is up, but it really isn’t. I call out that I’ll rez, but then discover that I can’t. This is very bad.
5. Low mana. For the times when I use my innervate for myself, I want to know when I’m missing a chunk and can innervate.
6. Missing buffs. There are still times that I forget to eat, or my flask drops off and I don’t realise.


As you can see, I’ve assigned icons for my short cooldown abilities (Swiftmend, Wild Growth, and NS), so that I can see at a glance when they are available. These icons stay on my screen as long as those abilities are ready to go; they disappear when I use the ability, and then reappear when the cooldown is over.

I was aiming for a colourful icon that basically said, “Hey! I’m here! Use me now!”

When Innervate is up, a purple rune sits around my feet. It tells me that it’s ready to go, whenever I need it. Similarly, a pale green ring tells me that Rebirth is ready when needed. If these rings are missing, I know the abilities are not available for use yet.

I’ve flattened the rings, to make them look as if they are flat on the ground, rather than around my character. I like how it turned out!

Next, when I’m under 80% mana, a purple rune appears over my character for 2 seconds, with a whoosh noise, to prompt me to Innervate (if necessary).This is the only “animated” image – the rest are static. The animation will hopefully get my attention – because scrolling text saying “innervate ready” never does!

Finally, I have two icons that only show during raids – missing food and missing flask. Obviously I don’t care about being well fed or flasked outside of raids, so I’ve set them to show only when I’m in a raid. If a skull pops up, I know to refresh my food and/or flask.

Hooray for Power Auras! Better late than never!

Possibly Related Posts:

• Power Auras exports
• Reader question: How can I stop being a “clicker”?
• How to add Wowhead links to your blog

Another blogger asked me how to get the Wowhead mouseover links to work in her blog. For example, when you mouseover this item, you can see its Wowhead tooltip: Support Girdle

This is a really handy thing to have – it makes it nice and easy on your readers; they don’t have to click the link (or go search for the item) to check out its stats. They won’t have to worry about going looking for the item to know what you’re talking about.

It’s actually very easy to implement this – it will take you about 2 minutes of your time. The script itself lives over at Wowhead.com; you just have to paste some code into your blog to point to it. Then, any time you post a Wowhead item link, it will automatically convert to a mouseover.


Adding Wowhead links to Blogger/Blogspot blogs



1. Go to your dashboard, go to Layout, and in the widget section, make a new widget.

2. Choose html/java, because it’s going to just be a bit of code pasted in. Don’t give it a title; this way it will show in your dashboard list of widgets as “html/javascript” but wont show on your blog’s widget list. It’ll be working for you behind the scenes.
3. Paste this in:
   
<script src=”http://www.wowhead.com/widgets/power.js”></script>

4. Save, and you’re done!



Adding Wowhead links to Wordpress blogs

Note: I run self-hosted Wordpress blog, and I can control the layout of my site entirely. I assume that Wordpress-hosted blogs are similar, you will just need to navigate to your template to paste the code in.



1. Go to your dashboard; under Appearance, click on Edit.

2. Open Header template file (putting it in the header means it will function on each page of your blog), and inside the <head></head> tag, paste this in:
   
<script src=”http://www.wowhead.com/widgets/power.js”></script>



Posting a mouseover link



1. Go to wowhead and grab your item’s address/link, eg http://www.wowhead.com/?item=1215

2. When you write your post, you’ll need to write the link like this:
   
<a href=”http://www.wowhead.com/?item=1215″>Support Girdle</a>


That’s it!

Possibly Related Posts:

• Power Auras exports
• Reader question: How can I stop being a “clicker”?
• Getting with the program, part 2: Twitter

While nothing has been announced, druids are reporting that the WG bug has finally been fixed.


If the above is true, self-casting should now work, even when your target is dead or out of range. While this is obviously kinda illogical, it was still annoying when it wouldn’t fire. It still occasionally tripped me up. It’s good to have it fixed without having to use canceltarget macros.


Please let me know if you run into any further troubles with it, as there hasn’t been any official announcement that the bug has been fixed.

Possibly Related Posts:

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• Power Auras exports

One thing I’ve always loved about Grid is that I can set up my frames to change to – OH-GOD-LOOK-AT-ME-I’M-BRIGHT-PINK – pink when someone has a nasty debuff. The rapid colour change to something bright and obvious immediately prompts me to bomb them with heals, run away from them, run to them, etc etc.


But with the release of TOC, it seemed that most (if not all) of the custom debuffs weren’t working. This was especially annoying for debuffs such as Jaraxxus’ Incinerate Flesh, which absolutely must be healed through to remove it, or the raid will take massive damage. If you can’t spot the person with the debuff, you lose precious seconds. Boss mods will announce their name, but having to scour through 10 or 25 people to find them (particularly bad in PuGs where you don’t know people’s names and classes) makes things very difficult. PLUS, if you can’t see the debuff drop off (either through being removed properly, or cloaked, iceblocked, etc), you’ll likely throw out 2 or 3 completely wasted heals to a target that no longer has the debuff. I know, because I did.


If you’re a Grid user and you haven’t tried GridStatusRaidDebuffs before, I really can’t recommend it highly enough. The reason I didn’t use it before was because I preferred to just set up my own custom debuffs; but the fact that TOC debuffs didn’t work, coupled with the fact that there seem to be more and more debuffs that I need to be aware of, pushed me to give it a try.


The one major problem for me though was icon placement. The icon needs to be large enough to see easily (since there are often 2 or 3 major debuffs in a fight and you need to be able to see which one your target has), but NOT obscure your frame information. And that’s exactly the problem I had: the icon was great, but it was sitting right over the top of my Lifebloom text, and obscuring the health bar. Bad.


To get around this, grab a module named GridIndicatorSideIcons – so you can place your icons at the side of your frame, not in the middle.


As you can see, the icon is clear, but it doesn’t obscure my HoT counters, texts, health, or any other information.


Perfect!



How to copy it:


1. Grab GridStatusRaidDebuffs here (Curse).

2. Grab GridIndicatorSideIcons here (WowAce).

3. Under Frame > Icon (Sides) > Left Icon, scroll down and check the box “Raid Debuff” (this will make sure that the GridStatusRaidDebuffs are placed on the left side).


4. To adjust the size and positioning, go to Frame > Advanced > Icon (Sides) and use the slider bars to resize and nudge the icon into the position that you want.


Note: if the icon is still showing in the middle of the frame, you may also need to go to Frame > Center Icon and uncheck Raid Debuff, and Status > Raid Debuff and uncheck “center icon”. Make sure the “enable” box is checked.


Your raid debuffs should be a lot easier to track, without obscuring your HoT counters or other information – it should make life a lot easier!

Possibly Related Posts:

• Power Auras exports
• Healing Sindragosa
• Glyph of Rapid Rejuvenation and 25man raid healing

Resto druids have a long-standing (it’s been months, now) problem with Wild Growth not playing nice with our mouseover macros. The digest version of the story, if you’re not aware, is that if you have a dead or out-of-range person targeted and you try to cast Wild Growth using a mouseover macro, the Wild Growth won’t fire (you’ll just get a “your target is dead” or similar error).

There are ways around it, specifically a /canceltarget macro:


/canceltarget/cast [target=mouseover]Wild Growth

..but it’s incredibly annoying to have to use clumsy workarounds when the issue shouldn’t be hard to fix (GC even said that himself).

Edit: the above macro may not be correct – if it doesn’t work, try this one:

/cleartarget/cast [target=mouseover,noharm,exists]
Wild Growth/targetlasttarget


This one comes from Restokin from a while ago. (PS – ignore my comments on that Restokin post – I thought my own macro at the time worked, but it turned out I was just lucky enough to go a long time without noticing the problem.)


After months and months, druids are still wondering what’s going on. Why isn’t it fixed? What’s the hold-up?

Then GC said this today, and I had to laugh:


I was going to post that we fixed this, because we did. But I’m glad that I didn’t because sometime during the 3.2 patch it broke again.

Sometimes when we don’t address simple things head on, it’s for reasons like this. We’ll try to get it fixed (again) as soon as we understand what happened.


It’s a serious issue that we want fixed.. but this really made me giggle. Glad they finally gave us word on what’s going on, though.

Back to waiting!



Possibly Related Posts:

• Power Auras exports
• Healing Sindragosa
• Glyph of Rapid Rejuvenation and 25man raid healing

Disclaimer: this writeup comes from experimenting with Grid and Healbot earlier this year (up to about March). If there have been improvements since then, they will not have been included in this post. If you know of a particular improvement that has since implemented, please let me know and I will edit in a comment to reflect the change. For example, if I say that Grid doesn’t let you put your tanks together, and you know that there has been a change or a new module to change this, let me know and I’ll include it.

However, with the many features constantly being added and improved upon, it would be too much work for me to keep updating the post as each addon evolves. Much like my “How to get 50 mounts before WotLK” it will be fairly static; it won’t be a dynamic, evolving “guide”, but a comparison of the addons in their current forms.

(This is basically to prevent comments in 3 months’ time telling me I’m wrong because Grid CAN do XYZ and Healbot CAN do XYZ… which I bet will still happen!)

Also, once again – these are my personal opinions of the various features and drawbacks of each addon. I have endeavoured to be as fair and objective as possible. Please do not take any negative criticisms against your preferred addon as an insult to you and your choice! Any nasty comments will be deleted. Feel free to disagree – but be constructive, please.

Also, I’m going to have to say it before I hit post: Yes, I do know about VuhDo and I may give it a try sometime – I just haven’t had time to have a look.






So – in the category of:

“Out of the box” functionality
WINNER: Healbot

Out of the box functionality – meaning how quickly after installing the mod you can jump into healing with it – is a huge factor for many people when deciding between different addons. Many people are happy to spend hours tweaking their UI to be perfect, but others prefer to hit the ground running with addons that are ready to go as soon as they are installed. You can have the most super awesome mod in the universe, but if the default looks terrible and it’s difficult to set up, then many people will steer clear.

It’s very cut and dried between the two addons in this case: for a healer, Grid has limited functionality out of the box – at the very least you will need to change the size of the boxes to be able to fit names properly and see health information. Fine for DPS/cleansing classes, but not good for healers. In fact, I think the addon would benefit greatly if the author was to add a couple of pre-packaged layout frameworks, one for DPS (similar to the current default) and one for healers, with the bar-like format that many healers prefer. This would make it much easier for healers to use “out of the box”, and prevent a lot of people from being scared off by Grid’s overwhelming customisation options.




Healers need to tweak Grid a fair bit in order to have an easy-to-read frame display.



On the other hand, Healbot comes out of the box looking pretty darn shiny; and while there are a bunch of things that I personally would want to adjust to suit my own personal style (can’t stand the way it fades bars – I only like faded bars for people who are out of range), I could easily use Healbot in its default state and do a respectable job. I wouldn’t be able to do the same with Grid in its default state.




Healbot’s appearance when you first unpack it, showing tooltip


Customisation
WINNER: Grid

Grid wins in this category, but not by as great a margin as most diehard Grid users might think.

Grid does have options that Healbot doesn’t, for example corner dot indicators, extra icons, extra texts, and of course the flexibility to change the placement, size and colours of each. Healbot really has everything you need to build a good frame display, it’s just that Grid goes further and gives you many more options so that you can truly customise the display to suit your own personal taste.

However, for many of these options, you will need to install additional Grid modules. While this makes for a far more customisable set of frames, the downside to this, obviously, is the need to find and install the modules you need, and keep them updated. As Healbot’s options are all built-in, you only ever have to keep one addon up to date to have them working.




Some of the additional Grid modules available at Curse.com



The big benefit here is that if you have some kind of catastrophic UI failure (we’ve all been there), you’re more likely to be able to get back on the horse as a Healbot user, because you won’t have to spend time doing the simple things like changing the size of the bars to make the raid’s names visible. From running with Healbot users and listening to them, there seem to be a few random minor problems with the addon, whereas Grid seems to be more stable on a daily basis; but if you lost everything, it’s going to be much easier to recover Healbot than to recover Grid, particularly if you rely on a lot of the additional modules.

Basically, Grid gives you tonnes of display flexibility in exchange for a bit of hassle setting it up and keeping it running. Healbot gives you all of the basic things you need to see – health, buffs & debuffs, heals, HoTs, and so on – and you can customise these to a point – but you don’t get all of the extra bells and whistles that Grid gives you.

But Healbot has definitely come a long way and is surprisingly customisable. I think a lot of die-hard Grid fans would be shocked at what you can do with Healbot – it’s definitely not the clunky, boxy, rigid set of frames that I expected.





Navigation and ease of use
WINNER: Healbot

Ease of use ties in with the previous category, logically. Grid’s extensive customisation options mean you also have to navigate…. extensive menus. Depending on what you prefer, of course, I found Healbot’s tabbed windows to be much easier to navigate than Grid’s drop-down style. But then, I think this is due in part to the fact that some of Grid’s options (to me) seem to be put into the wrong categories, and I often wish I could get in there and rearrange things a little.

Once you’ve been using Grid for a while, you’ll know where to find each option in the menus; but even as a seasoned user, I still often find myself getting a little lost in the long list of options in each section. With so many options to customise, it’s only natural that there are lots of boxes to check and fields to fill in, but I do think that Grid’s menus may need a bit of a tidy up so they are less overwhelming. I’d love to see give tabbed menus a try. Whether or not they would be just as overwhelming if they tried to cover the same options, I’m not sure; but surely a whole tab devoted to say, HoTs, would be a nice logical way to customise your frames.





Aesthetics
WINNER: Grid

I feel that Grid wins this category because it just gives you so many more options to customise the look of your frames, meaning that you can have a really slick looking setup according to your tastes.

BUT Healbot has come a long way, and does have quite a few customisation options. It has a couple of options that Grid doesn’t: the ability to display your frames in a single column (old-school style on the left or right of your screen), and the ability to show health bars as green progressing through to red according to health deficit, as a slow colour change. Grid allows you to set thresholds for the health bar to change colour and warn you (eg 85% or below = yellow, 50% or below = red) but many Healbot users enjoy that gradual colour change.

Overall though, Grid just has more bells and whistles, more options to change fonts, colours, icons, indicators, and other layout elements, making it more flexible and giving it the potential to be as attractive as you want to make it.





Information display
WINNER: Grid

Both mods display their information nicely, but I think Grid edges ahead, both because of it’s level of customisation, and because it has the ability to present more information in the same space.

Grid can show various triggers as:

- frame colour
- border colour
- corner indicator (and with extra modules, extra indicators on the sides and more in the corners)
- icons (and with extra modules, extra corner icons and side icons)
- texts (up to 3 texts, I believe)

It also has a better custom debuff system but I will go into that later.

Healbot does frame and border colour, two texts, and icons, but doesn’t have any corner indicators or as many options for changing colours etc. As far as I’m aware it has no options for adding extra texts and icons.

I’d like to stress that both mods will show you everything you want to see; they both display all of the important information that you need. Grid just gives you more options to display it in a way that you want, meaning that if you react faster to colours, you can set it up so that colours are one of your main triggers. If you work better with icons, Grid has the standard center icons but also corner and side icons. Grid makes it very easy for you to set up your frames in the way that YOU will interpret the information fastest – which might be completely the opposite of how someone else likes to see information – but you get the flexibility to choose.





HoTs
WINNER: Grid

In the past, the general opinion that I heard about Healbot was “fantastic healing addon.. Although probably not so great for druids.” During my time experimenting with Healbot, I found this to be true, for one main reason – the most important thing that druids should look for in a UI, in my opinion – HoT tracking.

I have to say that if I had to list what was most important for me to see in a frame mod, the health bar/deficit would be first (obviously), and HoTs would be second.

Grid’s HoT Trackers (GridStatusHoTs and GridStatusLifebloom) do a brilliant job. They allow you to put numerical, coloured counters in the center, sides or corners of the health bar, so that you can track each HoT. The timers can be a set colour, or can be assigned to change colour as the timer runs low; in the case of Lifebloom, you can also assign colours to stack numbers, so a single stack might be a red timer, and 3 stacks a green counter.

All of this information is displayed clearly, but does not obscure the rest of the information on the frame. This is where Healbot falls down in its HoT tracking; in my experience I found that trying to display the HoT icons on the bar meant that the name and health information was obscured. Making the icons smaller (to be able to see the bar) results in not being able to identify the spells very well (as the icons get smaller) and trouble reading the timers, as the texts of the counters are ultimately linked to the size of the icon. Similarly, if you increase the size of the font, it can also obscure the icon itself, making it hard to see if you’re looking at Regrowth or Rejuv, for example.




I found Healbot’s HoT timers made it hard to see information beneath them;
if made smaller, then the icons and texts become hard to see.
This means your frames overall have to be quite large to accommodate
the HoT counters and show the player’s frame clearly.



Healbot’s HoT icons look great. But in practice, they make the health information difficult to see (on a moderate sized UI), and scaling them down makes the HoT hard to see. You have to try to find the happy medium between icons that are large enough to see which spell they are (in turn allowing for decent sized timers), and still being able to see the person’s frame under those icons. With Regrowth, Rejuv, Lifebloom and Wild Growth all up on someone’s frame at once, I found it difficult to see the health bar, and this would make me very nervous in a raid. Grid’s timer information never obscures health information, so you can still make judgments on when to throw an extra emergency heal.




Comparing Healbot and Grid HoT displays when
both mods are set up to have similar sized frames.


As you can see, Grid’s HoT timers do not obscure the rest of the information in the frame. I found Healbot’s timers to either be so big they obscure the frame, or too small to read the text. The alternative then is to increase the size of the frame to allow for good sized icons without obscuring the other information – but this ends up making your raid frame quite large. I like my frames to be neat and compact.

Also, Healbot lays down the HoT icons in the order cast, not in a specific placement, which means that you can’t even get used to Regrowth being say, the one on the left each time – you still need to rely on being able to see the icon properly, as the icons will be in random order on each person’s bar. I find that Grid’s layout, with set positions for HoTs (that you choose according to your own prefences) makes it easier to interpret timers because you can rely on each spell always appearing in a set position. You can use icons if you want, or simply use colored dots or texts, plus the option to have these colors change over time. You can use the standard green/yellow/red, or choose any colour you like; you can also choose the time thresholds for these color changes to occur, to allow for your own style. Healbot does not have this depth of customization.

If I had to pick one major fault (for druids) with Healbot, HoT tracking would be it. I can honestly say that I could manage swapping from Grid to Healbot if the HoT tracking was improved. It’s definitely on the right track, but needs some changes so that HoT information is better displayed. Because we have 4 different HoTs at our disposal, often on many people at once, we need to be able to view and interpret tracking and timer information extremely quickly, to be able to make snap decisions. If the icon is obscured, the display order is random, and the text is difficult to see, then this reaction time suffers. This is a big problem. You don’t want your HoT displays to slow down your reaction time.

Any HoT tracking is better than no HoT tracking; but I strongly feel that Grid’s tracking options give you a much clearer view of your spells at any given time, they don’t detract from the rest of the information, which allows you to process the information faster. A druid with no HoT timers can perform well; but a druid with great HoT displays can really maximise his/her output and fine-tune their timing down to miliseconds.

Basically – if you’re serious about excelling as a healer and you’re doing difficult content, then you need a really good HoT timer to streamline your performance and improve your reaction time. Healbot is almost there – but Grid just does it better.





Buffs
WINNER: Healbot

This is another category where both mods can show you what you want to see, but in this case, Healbot has some cool features that Grid doesn’t.

Both will show you buffs present and buffs missing, depending on what you prefer to see. For example, I prefer to see a pink dot on every frame, denoting Mark of the Wild, and if someone is missing a dot, they need the buff. It’s just what I’m used to seeing. Other people prefer to only have a dot showing on someone who is missing the buff, which you could argue is more logical, since it is easier to see one person out of 25 who has a bright pink dot, compared to one person with no dot, out of a sea of 25 people. It’s just personal preference.

But Healbot goes further and has alerts for when a buff is about to run out – including sounds. I thought that was a really cool little feature. Most of the time I buff by default, and don’t need a reminder, but perhaps there are shorter duration buffs like Thorns that you forget to rebuff. Or it’s a special fight and you need to remember to give people Amp Magic or Shadow Protection.

Of course, Grid does have a little more customisation in that you can assign buffs to corner icons and whatnot, but I don’t think this is particularly noteworthy in this case. If your frame can show you a buff (or a missing buff) it probably doesn’t matter too much how it does it.





Debuffs
WINNER: Tie

Standard debuffs (curses, poisons, magic etc) are basically identical in both mods, aside from (once again) a little more flexibility in display options with Grid. Both will show you debuffs as a centre icon, border, or frame colour. Grid goes a little further and lets you have corner/edge indicators and corner icons (with extra modules). But both mods will show standard debuffs fine.




Poisons & curses – set to display as frame colours (my preference!).
Note: both mods can display these as icons, which many people prefer.



Grid edges forward a little for me personally with its custom debuffs. Healbot still allows you to display custom debuffs (for example, by changing the frame colour or adding a border), but if you want to use frame colour as your indicator, you can only use one colour for ALL custom debuffs. Most people would probably say, “so what?” but this is something that I am particular about, so it stood out for me

I like to be able to colour particular custom debuffs particular things (and sometimes with a particular priority). This is especially important in fights where there may be multiple custom debuffs that I would like to track. For example on XT002, I might colour Gravity Bomb bright pink, and Light Bomb bright green. I need to know who has each, but I also need to be able to discern between the two very quickly. Of course, many people just use icons, but I ditched that method long ago when I found that some curse icons looked like poisons (and vice versa). I find it much easier to react to colours than pictures.

So really it is an extremely trivial and TINY edge that Grid has over Healbot – and it will ONLY matter to you if you like to use frame colour AND have separate colours for each debuff.

Apart from that it is basically a tie.





Mouseover macro/Clique compatibility
WINNER: Healbot

Both mods are compatible with click-casting and mouseover macros.

In the case of Grid, you will need to download and setup another addon, Clique, for this functionality. I have seen many Healbot users criticise this fact in the past. In reality though, many Grid users don’t use click-casting, so this doesn’t matter to them at all.

If you are a click-caster, then Healbot comes ready to go – with no extra modules or setup required; you simply have to assign your spells accordingly. Many people see this as a big plus.






Summary

Healbot was once considered by many to be an “ezmode” healing addon that chose ranks of spells for you, which earned it a bad name as a mod that created lazy healers. Things have changed. It is now a powerful, feature-packed frames mod that shows you all of the things that Grid can show you. It is far easier to use “out of the box”, has easy to follow menus, and is easier to keep up to date. Its main failing for druids is the clunky HoT display; but I am confident this will be improved over time.

Grid simply offers many more options for customising your frames, according to how you want your information to be displayed. It has far superior options for HoT tracking, which is essential for druid healers to excel in their healing. It requires some setting up before use, and quite a lot of tweaking to suit personal taste; adding more modules will also mean more and more extensive dropdown menus, but this is the tradeoff for seemingly limitless options for customising the look and layout of your frames.

I think one of the most common arguments against Grid is that “you need to install so many extra mods to go with it!”. In reality, I think I have 3 extra modules – which is hardly a big deal at all. You could potentially have hundreds of extra modules installed – which would be a bit of a nightmare to keep updated manually – but what non-Grid users need to keep in mind is that while it may seem like a pain to have to use addons for an addon, this is where Grid gets its massive level of customisation.

And on the flip side, I don’t want a whole lot of non-druid addons included by default. Why would I need totem timers, or rune tracking? That would just be bloat, and extra options in my menus that I don’t need to see. With Grid you can “build your own mod” by picking and choosing your addons accordingly.

Many non-Grid users see this as a negative. Grid users understand that it means that the mod only includes options that we choose to use.





Really, I could write about these mods all day – I’ve barely scratched the surface of both. But I do hope I’ve given people a basic idea of some of the main features of each. The best way though is to give them a try and see what suits you. I believe more druids prefer Grid for their frames, but many use Healbot and swear by it.

If you want a mod that requires only minimal setup and shows you all of the information you need, with click-casting built in, Healbot is great.

If you prefer to tweak and customise your UI to exactly how you want it, including HoT timers, extra texts and icons, and custom debuff options, then Grid excels.

There is no right or wrong mod to use – it’s all about whatever helps you best.

Happy healing!

Possibly Related Posts:

• Power Auras exports
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This is the third installment in my “Grid vs Healbot” series. I had planned this to be a multi-part experiment and feature the other raid frame heavyweights such as Pitbull, XPerl, and so on, but really it’s such a massive job to look at them carefully that I don’t think I can commit to doing another one – not for a while at least.

But the most important challenge, I think, is definitely Grid vs Healbot. So many people ask, on a weekly basis, “Which is better, Grid or Healbot?” The answers given are often incorrect (due to people not understanding the capabilities of the other mod) or simply, “Try them both and see which one you like best” which is actually probably an excellent answer, but not what a lot of people want to hear.

So, without further ado, here is my attempt at giving those people are more definitive answer. This entry will be about Healbot’s features; then I will follow with another to compare the two mods directly (I need to separate the two posts because of their length, I don’t want to overwhelm people too much).


Legend

Once again, here are the symbols that I will be using to show what each mod requires to get them working to my satisfaction (legible, useful, and attractive, etc).




Note that the green check marks come in two flavours: ready to go, and ready to go (but you can adjust the display).

Some features are ready to go by default, but are usually set up in a way that isn’t very attractive or just isn’t quite what I want. For example, poisons will show up, by default, as an icon in the center of the frame, and a corner square also. I don’t like that – I prefer my frame to turn green to indicate poisons. I could certainly get by using the icons, but I prefer to use different display options. So, technically I could install Grid and have poisons showing just fine – but the options are there if I want to make things a little more attractive or to suit my tastes better.

A plain check mark, on the other hand, means that the feature is ready to go and presents in a way that is nice and easy to read, and doesn’t need tweaking to be attractive, and can be left as-is.

Remember – the final goal will be to be able to assess whether I could disable Grid and be satisfied to use Healbot instead. That, as a druid, Healbot can show me all the things I need to see in a raid, in a way that is both easy to interpret, and aesthetically pleasing.


Healbot


healbot -noun 1. a bar-style raid frame addon displaying target health, buffs, debuffs and other information. 2. Informal. a healer who follows his/her target around and acts as their personal healer: Keeva is my healbot for PvP. -verb 3. Informal. to act as a personal healer: Keeva healbots me in PvP.



Old Healbot
Healbot has been around since vanilla WoW; unfortunately, while being very useful, it gained a bit of a negative reputation because it would actually choose the “correct” rank of spell according to how much health your target was missing. This was obviously quite handy, but it did give the mod a bit of a bad name for “playing the game for you” – which is why I never used it. I don’t like mods that make decisions (such as spell ranks) for me. Your opinion on this may vary.

Healbot: Simple, beautiful
But, that nasty business aside, Healbot is well-known for being simple to use “out of the box”, meaning that as soon as you load it up, you can pretty much run with it. This makes it perfect for people who want a solid raid UI but perhaps don’t know much about customising UIs – with Healbot you can just install and run, with minimal tweaking.




Healbot does have some pretty nifty bells and whistles, but its biggest sell point, I believe, is this simplicity – that you can use it immediately with almost no knowledge of addons or UI customisation. If you want to load a raid UI mod and run, Healbot is definitely a great choice.


Alright, let’s get started on the nitty gritty.

1. Aesthetics

So, how is Healbot when you first fire it up? Pretty darn… well, pretty. The bars are a fairly good size, text is good.. and it has a really cool tooltip that shows you what your buttons are bound to, and what your heals should land for (how cool is that – especially if you’re like me and don’t run with any spell buttons on your UI).




Healbot when first loaded – showing tooltip


So if you wanted to walk into a raid right that second, your frames would be a decent size, legible, and attractive, even without tweaking them or personalising them to taste.

Let’s rate things in the same way that I assessed Grid.




There’s really not much to fault here. In terms of basic aesthetics, Healbot is excellent, and it is excellent with very little initial tweaking.

Despite its simplicity, Healbot does have a lot of options for changing its appearance. For example, some people prefer the green bars (that change colour gradually according to health deficit). I personally prefer my bars to be coloured by class, so at a glance I can see the class of person taking damage, and make split-second decisions – ie, triage.

Contrary to popular belief, Healbot doesn’t have to be green bars and only green bars – you can set it up to be coloured by class (like Grid), if you want to, although I think many Healbot users will call me a heathen for doing this




Healbot and Grid, both set to display frames by class colour. Please don’t hurt me.



You can also change the size of the bars, number of columns (something you can’t do in Grid), font type and size, border, background, group headers (and customise those as well). When it comes to displaying buffs and debuffs, you can choose between border and frame colours as well as the standard icons. Not as many options as Grid, but whether this matters to you will depend on the number of things you need to display on your frames at any given time. And.. I think we should pay attention to Mr Confucius’ wisdom above – keeping things simple isn’t a bad thing.

Healbot can show you 5, 10, 25 and 40 man groups. It shows pets, although I am disappointed that you can’t force it to show pets coloured by owner type. I like to see hunter pets as green, warlock pets as purple, for example, so that I can prioritise healing. That is not a huge problem, only a slight niggle.

Another small problem is that there is no background to the individual frames (perhaps this is something I missed). Grid allows you to set a customised background colour (eg red or black) to make health deficits easier to see. If you use the green bars on Healbot this is not a problem, because the bar will change to red as the person loses health; but if you are like me and prefer class coloured frames, this isn’t the case. I like to have a colour behind the bar to show me more easily how much health is missing. But – this is more a personal preference than anything.


2. HoTs and HoT tracking




HoT counters are now built into Healbot. They are shown as numbers on top of HoT icons on the target’s bar. Very attractive and simple. My main gripe here is that the counter doesn’t show up until the time remaining has dropped under double digits (ie, 9 seconds or less). This annoys me because I prefer to see exactly how much time is remaining, so that I know how many other things I can do before I need to refresh my Regrowth, for example.

I also found that the counters are quite cluttered on the icons; in order to make the counters legible, I had to increase the size of the icon and text, and this obscures the person’s frame, meaning that if they have a health deficit, it can be difficult to see. This would not be an issue for someone who chooses to display the HoTs off to one side (not on the frame itself) but as I prefer to have my HoT counters inside the frame, it is a problem for me. I found that having several HoTs on a target made things very cluttered.



Left: Healbot, set up to my preferred frame size, and showing all four HoTs. Disclaimer: different frame configurations will make your HoTs easier to see; this is merely to demonstrate that on my chosen frame layout, the HoTs are quite cluttered.


I don’t like that there isn’t a set position for each HoT; they are just put up in order of casting.

The Lifebloom counter also doesn’t count down with a decimal place; it only counts in whole seconds. If this is what you are used to, you will probably be quite efficient, regardless; but having fractions of a second display can make your Lifebloom rotations much cleaner and tighter.

As a druid, I think that the HoT display is possibly the most important thing on our UI, and as such, this is what I really focused on when I was looking at Healbot. I will go into this more in my comparison of the two mods.


3. Buffs and debuffs




Healbot shows missing buffs, rather than showing everyone who has a buff. You can choose a colour to display when someone is missing a buff, for example, red for someone who is missing Thorns. You can tell it who to check for these buffs – by class, by type such as ‘healers’ or ‘ranged’, and of course, the tanks. This is brilliant. Basically, you set it up to tell you when the tanks are missing thorns, and if they are, it turns them red. When they get their buff, they go back to normal.

And on top of that, you can have Healbot play a warning sound as well – in case you missed them changing colours.

I definitely give Healbot an 11/10 for “missing buffs display”.

However if you want to display who has particular buffs, then it falls down a little. Again, this is personal preference – some people like to be able to see if there is a renew on the tank, or weakened soul, etc – not necessarily their own pre-combat buffs. A minor issue for most, but probably something that some people don’t want to do without.

Custom debuffs, another important part of my UI, are also handled fine with Healbot. You can enter your own debuffs, such as Frost Blast, and have it display in a special colour (and again, a warning sound if you like!). The colour can be set to the border, icon or frame colour (but not to corners as with Grid). The only minor problem is that you can only choose one colour for all custom debuffs; if you want two different debuffs to display as different colours, you can’t do that.


4. Other




Most of these things are built in and turned on by default (or require a quick check mark or slider bar adjustment). I can’t find the low mana alert (if there is one) or feign death warning. Death is shown as an empty bar (zero health), but I prefer DEAD to show on the frame.


Overall

I’ll go into better detail when I write the final installment comparing the two mods, but for now, my super brief summary would be that Healbot:

- is really attractive out of the box, has plenty of great features and requires little tweaking

- has pretty good HoT display options built-in (no need for extra modules)

- has quite a lot of options for changing the appearance of the mod – and would probably surprise a lot of die-hard Grid fans. Still not as flexible and customisable as Grid, but it honestly has all the main stuff that most people would need.

- would be good for UI newbies and seasoned healers alike

Overall, Healbot shows you a lot of buff, debuff, HoT and healing information as soon as you load it. If you want to spend a little more time on it, you can pretty it up even more, but if you don’t have that time, you’ll still have just about everything you need as soon as you start.

Stay tuned for the final installment – Healbot & Grid side by side (dun dun dunnn).



Do you know of a great How-To guide for Healbot? There are a few out there for Grid but I had problems finding an up to date guide for Healbot. If you know of one, please let me know so that I can list them here to help out Healbot users.



Possibly Related Posts:

• Power Auras exports
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Healbot and Grid stuff again!

I’m nearly done with my side-by-side assessment of Healbot and Grid, and whether Healbot can do all of the things that I like Grid to do for me.

But aside from that, because I’m not an expert on Healbot, I am POSITIVE there are some cool bells and whistles that Healbot can do that I don’t know about.

So – Healbot fans: what are the features of Healbot that you just can’t live without?

I want to gather together a list of “must haves” in Healbot and examine whether Grid can do them, and if so, how well. I’ve already found a few things that Healbot can do that Grid can’t – but I’m sure there’s other stuff out there that Healbot can do a little better (or that Grid can’t do at all).

Can you help me find them? Because I don’t have the time to be able to get into all the nitty gritty cool stuff, and I want people to know all the cool things that the mod has to offer. The more info that we can give people on the two mods, the better they will be able to choose what suits them.

The main problem is that I know what *I* like in Grid, but if I were to go through all of the options and things that you could display, it would take me forever. Instead, it’s best if I ask people what they can’t live without, in case it’s something I don’t use and haven’t covered.

If you can point me in the direction of the cool stuff that you just adore, and a quick idea of where to change the settings, that would be great.

Thanks in advance everyone!





Possibly Related Posts:

• Power Auras exports
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• Healing Dreamwalker: Channeling your inner warlock