I’m a bit fired up about this topic so please excuse me if the tone is a bit rant-ish, I tried to keep it informative, maybe even inspirational. Thanks to Phaelia (My Hero) for helping me to solidify my arguments.
Last night I was running ZA (my favorite instance, NOT) and I started noticing that although there were three healers I was the only one casting heals on anyone besides the tanks, funny that doesn’t seem right. Druids aren’t exactly efficient raid healers. So nonchalantly and surprisingly friendly(for me) I ask the Paladin which add-ons he uses. “None, I don’t need them to heal.” WHAT!?!
“Really?” I say “I find that they help me quite a bit.” To which he replies “That’s cause you’re a N00b!” hmmm. At this point (third boss in ZA) in the raid I am doubling his healing done with 44% to his 22%, and doing it with less over-healing and less gear and I’m the noob. The Priest chimes in at this point to say that he doesn’t use any add-ons besides the guild required, Omen, and DBM. I’m befuddled. I’m out healing the Priest by 12% (he’s at 32% if you’re not good at math). Curious I check the Priest’s gear to see what he’s wearing to try to determine if he’s working to his potential or not and he’s in a mix of T5 and T6 and being out-healed by a Druid in T4 and welfare epics. So healing to his potential? No!
It’s sad to me that there are still people out there who WASTE their gear by not providing themselves with all the information that Blizzard has made available to them. They are at least as gimped as a raider who decides not to enchant, and sockets with green gems because they want to save money, Or who doesn’t use consumables because they don’t see a difference in their damage.
I’m not exactly sure what their thinking is. The comments I heard last night were, “I don’t need mods, I do alright without them,” “Add-ons seem like cheating to me” and “I ALWAYS keep my assignment up even if I don’t top the meters.” Each of these arguments is deeply flawed let’s examine each one-
- “I don’t need Mods I do fine without them” While you may show up on the meters and you may not be the bottom healer on any given night , if your geared to heal say 1.5 Million a night but you’re healing is gimped because you can’t easily see the health everyone in the raid, then you are making another healer work harder to pick up your slack. This means that you’re group will have to drink more frequently and your raids will take longer. Not being able to see everyone at a glance means that some poor Mage sits at half health for longer than necessary then any sort of incidental damage will kill that Mage and your raid will be down a DPS.
- “I ALWAYS keep my assignment up even if I don’t top the meters.” Let me get this straight you managed to make sure that just the one tank didn’t die during the course of the fight. That’s GREAT… but if the rest of the raid dies why you heal just your one target you did no one any favors. All the other healers that have an “assignment” are also throwing heals around the raid to try to ensure that everyone stays up. They are exceeding their assignment and that is the expectation for you as well.
- “Add-ons seem like cheating to me” Blizzard recognized after Diablo II that their audience knew best how they wanted to play a game. In fact Blizzard changed the model of their programming to allow players to customize their inetrface with the game. The Default UI is just a basic get you started level 0 UI so that you can play the game out of the box. If Blizzard didn’t expect you to use add-ons why would they have made all the information that you can’t see in the default UI in the combat log available to you.
As a Druid I find the default UI lacking in several areas. Of course there are other things I use add-ons for but these are the functions I don’t think I could live without.
- Buff Timers- at a glance I need to know how much time is left on my stacks of Lifebloom. I also have to know which players have a HoT that I could Swiftmend instead of casting a direct heal. Aside from combat situation the raid never has to stop for rebuffs on my account. I know when any players MOTW or Thorns expires and the next time we are out of combat I can refresh it.
- Aggro Indication- while I’m rolling my HoTs on the Groups Tanks I am constantly watching to see if anyone else is grabbing aggro. On AoE Pulls I start casting Regrowth on a the Mage who is creeping up the meters as soon as I see that an aggro shift is likely. If I waited until the Mage’s health started to drop to start healing him he’d be dead before my spell was half cast. I also like to know when a Tank is no longer taking damage. During trash pulls for example it is common to have four tanks and after a few second only one or two of them are still tanking. To keep casting heals on them would be wasteful, even if I canceled the spell before it landed I’ve wasted the casting time on a target that doesn’t need heals.
- Button Management- The Default UI has twelve buttons. If you used all the bars that Blizzard would provide you with you’d have six bars with twelve buttons. Seventy-Two buttons not to shabby but how are they laid out? do they look like your keyboard? Are they intuitive? Do they react to your changes in stance? Do they allow you keep keep your hand in one position and still do everything you need to do?
- Inventory Management- Before I found Bagnon, back in my Rogue days, I would spend a few minutes every session maintaining my inventory. I had a bag for skinning and cloth, a bag for vendor trash, a bag for potions and consumables, a bag for poisons. While this system worked alright, I would spend a few minutes everyday to keep things in some semblance of order or I ran the risk of missing something important. Those few minutes today are enough time to do a daily or two which would go a longs ways towards paying for consumables for the night. On my druid I have 4 complete sets of gear, I carry more consumables to a raid than I care to try to count, and with the addition of daily quests I have more quest items in my bag than ever before. I could not hope to know which feral drops are an upgrade for me if it wasn’t for the fact that I could click a few buttons and see what I have in the bank even from the depths of SSC.
For a raider the most import thing add-ons has to be the increased output that they facilitate. If you are not using add-ons and you miss just one heal in the course of the night you are doing yourseld a disservice. If that one missed heal starts a chain reaction that leads to a wipe you just did 4, 9, 24, 39 other people a disservice as well.
If you want raids to go faster so that OUR guild can farm more than two bosses in three hours, then you should be doing everything in your power to increase you efficiency and your output.
It is not about meters or “epeen” stroking (fun as that can be), it is about my time, your time and the groups collective time. It is not about using a crutch or being a “n00b”, it is about doing your absolute best. It is not about doing well enough to keep your raid spot, it is about the work of all the people in the guild who in return for their effort are relying on you to do give it your all.
Ultimately it is about playing a game, and like any game it is more fun when our team is winning.
Do you wanna see the inside of Black Temple? Me too. So let’s get our heads out of our asses and kill this thing.
23 comments
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May 1, 2008 at 2:40 pm
Pookies
I agree with this 100%. A while ago when we started running ZA, we realized that our holy/disc priest didn’t run with any addons except for a threat meter … not even the required DBM. And we would wonder why he was 10% below our holy pally (who was typically 5% behind me).
Were we clearing the instance? Yes. But could it have been going smoother? Probably.
Personally, I’m not interested in running with people who don’t express an interest in getting the most out of their toons.
May 1, 2008 at 2:58 pm
lifebloomer
Pookies- I’m curious to know what you did to encourage your Priest to improve his play. As I mentioned I’m not the best at being subtle so I could use the advice :). I also fixed your Who Which problem the secret is mine.
May 1, 2008 at 8:45 pm
Pookies
Sadly, I don’t think there’s much you can do past politely suggesting that they look into some addons to improve their gameplay.
In my case, I suggested that our priest get, in the least, DBM and some addon to track incoming heals on raid members (the pally and I used Grid with the Incoming Heals module). I wasn’t in any position to force him to do it and he knew he wasn’t going to lose his raid spot, so I don’t know if he actually took may advice to heart.
I passed the Dark Staff of Mending to this guy the first time it dropped under the condition that he enchant his old staff with Spellsurge to stack Spellsurges (which the pally and I were also doing), and he didn’t come through with that in the end, either.
I guess I’m not the best person to be asking for advice in this area … lol.
That group doesn’t run anymore though … that priest was a bit flaky and doesn’t even sign up for raids anymore.
May 2, 2008 at 8:21 am
Kyrilean
a healer that doesn’t use addons…
…still processing…
…ouch i think i hurt something…
…anyway, i’m curious as to which addons those are on your UI. I think I recognize xperl and grid(?) hard to see on my small screen.
i’m currently using g15 and xbar for buttons and newer version of xperl for unit frames. although it works well for me, i’m still looking for something a little better, but not sure exactly what.
May 2, 2008 at 8:28 am
Kyrilean
hmmm, need to work on my situational awareness. found your link to your Patch 2.4 addons.
May 2, 2008 at 9:07 am
lifebloomer
@ Pookies- I think you hit one thing on the head though, players who don’t use add-ons are also more likely to under-utilize their gear and are most likely just in it for the Loots and should probably be /gkicked before they /gquit when things get tough
@ Kyrilean- I don’t know much about g15 what is it and how does it work?
May 2, 2008 at 2:54 pm
Jessie
Hey you need to come back to Poky and teach me how to run these add-ons. I honestly have NO idea what I’m doing! Such a bummer.
PS- The omen healing aggro window never shows anything, so I have no idea what kind of aggro I’m getting anyway lol. I’m such a n00b…
May 2, 2008 at 6:07 pm
Abranor
“Really?” I say “I find that they help me quite a bit.” To which he replies “That’s cause you’re a N00b!”
I agree with this post, you are indeed a N00b!
=P
❤ Marira
May 2, 2008 at 6:47 pm
Jessie
LOL I don’t mean I don’t use it…I just don’t know how to put the settings. I’m all about the add-ons, and I’m excited to get to use them in raids. Good times!
May 3, 2008 at 6:22 am
kyrilean
g15 is an action bar addon much along the lines of bongos2. i switched to using it because i ran into a problem with the quest where you take over the fel reaver in SMV while using bongos2. the controls for the reaver wouldn’t appear on my bars. i didn’t want this to happen with the chess event in kara so i started looking for an alternative. it’s called g15 because the author believes it to mimic the g15 programmable keyboard.
personally i like bongos2 because it removes the original action bar setup which is cumbersome in my opinion. if you haven’t had any problems with any quest where you assume control of something else, please let me know.
May 4, 2008 at 8:18 am
lifebloomer
@ Jessie, Unless the tanking assignments are input into Omen the Healer mode does nothing. I think most guild have stopped Using CTRA which is where those tanking assignments needed to go. You can try to use the Overview mode but that can be pretty buggy.
@Kyrilean, Yeah I have to change my Bongos settings so that the Pet Bar is showing every time I do the chess event. All you have to do is open the Bongos control mode and the Pet Bar so that it is not hidden.
May 7, 2008 at 12:27 pm
Kyle
Could you talk a bit more about the add-ons you are using in the screenshot?
Also, do you show buffs/debuffs on your party icons? It doesn’t look like there is much space around each frame.
I’m really new to UI mods, so I’m slowly working my way towards a smoother configuration.
May 7, 2008 at 2:17 pm
lifebloomer
@ Kyle- Visible on that shot are:
Fubar- Across the top with the small icons, available at wowace.com, I usually read the info for the plug-ins for that and pick whatever sounds helpful.
Prat- Chat Mod, also availalbe at wowace.com
Recount- (Next to Chat Frame) Damage Meters (wowace)
X-Perl- Unit Frames for buffs and Debuffs on target and focus I use Quartz which is also my Casting Bar replacement.
Bongos2- Bar Mod, also used to reposition my mini-map.
Outfitter- (bottom left of the mini-map) Gear swapping made easier.
Lifebloomer- Druid Hot monitor, also show curable debuffs (to the right of the bars) at curse.com
Healbot- Unit Frames with Health and Mana indicators also shows missing cast-able buffs and curable debuffs, aggro, and range. (curse)
I have a fairly complete listing of the add-ons I currently use located here https://lifebloomer.wordpress.com/helpful-information/ tells them all not just the ones you can see.
May 7, 2008 at 5:18 pm
Kyle
Thank a lot. I’ve tried out several of those (X-Perl, Lifebloomer, Healbot, Outfitter), but am still working on my setup. I think I’ll try Bongos2 this evening.
Keep up the good work.
May 7, 2008 at 11:30 pm
Kyle
So far so good. I’m pretty happy with a number of changes I made using some of the add-ons discussed here. My only issue is that I am not seeing my tracked quests anymore. Any idea what might cause this and how I can fix it?
May 8, 2008 at 1:12 pm
lifebloomer
Kyle if are like me and you moved your mini map way down to the bottom of the screen you won’t see the quest tracker anymore because it is anchored to the bottom of the map. You could try SimpleMiniMap to reposition the quest tracker and to add some more customization to your MiniMap.
May 8, 2008 at 5:24 pm
Kyle
That occurred to me this morning, but I hadn’t had a chance to reposition the mini map and test it. Thanks so much for your help.
May 12, 2008 at 7:30 pm
Druantia
Word.
That is all. 🙂
May 16, 2008 at 4:49 pm
Dammerung
For most of this I agree.
And I use Questhelper/Auctioneer/Cartographer so I”m not entirely addon free.
But the following I want to argue:
Button Management- The Default UI has twelve buttons. If you used all the bars that Blizzard would provide you with you’d have six bars with twelve buttons. Seventy-Two buttons not to shabby but how are they laid out? do they look like your keyboard? Are they intuitive? Do they react to your changes in stance? Do they allow you keep keep your hand in one position and still do everything you need to do?
Hmm… Visually my buttons are laid out just like vanilla wow. But on the keyboard they are laid out in a more intuative manner(I’m using generic WoW for this bit). With Generic wow you can tie each button to almost any key, you can allow shift- alt- ctrl- to modify your buttons as well. Currently I use R, shift-r, T, Shift-t, X, z, g, shift-g, f, shift-f, shift-space,shift-e,shift-3,1,2,3,4,5, and ` to do the vast majority of my spells/skills. I never have my left hand leave home row and would have more buttons available if I wasn’t refusing to give up keyboard turning. I don’t use ctrl/alt because I haven’t felt the need to yet.
Key’s 6-0 and – and = mark mobs for me. and the number pad pulls my potions/totems/aspects.
Oh and when I shift forms… the basic 12 change…which has always been enough for me.
Vanilla WoW has a lot going for it sometimes. Granted I’m not a healer and I would possibly pickup a healing addon if I were. But I don’t need an addon to keybind my spells.
May 16, 2008 at 4:49 pm
Dammerung
Oh and idioticly I forgot omen. I use omen and beg anyone I know to use it as well.
May 28, 2008 at 1:04 pm
lifebloomer
@ Dammerung- If your systems works go for it for me I could not imagine having to remember if the ability which I use once or twice a week is mapped under [space] or [shift-space] that’s why my buttons are laid out to visually correspond to my keypad so that with a micro glance I can remind myself that the ability I’m looking for is above my pinky.
In regards to Omen I have a love hate relationship with that mod. Love it and have it installed so that other people can see my aggro in relationship to theirs. Hate that it never quite works for me (visual bugs and system lock-ups) mean that I never have the HUD open. I also hate that the updates for the add-on are so frequent and yet seldom seem to improve its functionality.
June 4, 2008 at 5:06 pm
Karmakin
I find Omen is next to worthless in tracking aggro to me. There’s nothing I can really do about it more often than not. The warnings are good enough. But in the end I just have to trust my tanks. (and I do).
Right now I run X-Perl with the entire raid configured into a 5×5 layout, I tried a click-cast system but it just didn’t work for me. I’m actually a Guild Wars transplant, so I’m fairly stuck in the mud. Omen (just because it doesn’t work for ME doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work for other people. It works fine for bosses anyway.) and DBM is what I started with.
Last week I added a Cooldown timer (for Swiftmend+Natures Swiftness) and Lifebloomer (WTF did I ever do without that?), and my effectiveness went up substantially.
June 5, 2008 at 12:05 pm
lifebloomer
A Major part of the problem with Omen is that few Guilds actually take the time to Assign Main Tanks in their UIs. Yes, there is a Main Tank in the group but until you tell the add-ons who it is Omen can’t tell you the aggro table for that tanks(s) target. Which is how it was set-up to work.
@ Karmakin- What add-on are you using for your NS, Swiftmend, and Lifebloom timers? Please share with the group.