[Lizana]

You need better raid frames if your unable to tell the classes apart in yours. The simple fact each class has their own color means you should be able to easily find anyone even with the base raidframes

[qygibo]

Source: bubbleandrun I like using buff addons just for the effiency of it all. Instead of finding one person of each class in my raid frames, I just click one button in an addon. I'm currently manually buffing again, due to ZOMGbuffs acting wierd, and it makes me realize how ineffiecent manually buffing really is.

How do you have your raid frames set up to begin with? Even the default UI lets you pull out people by classes; and most other raid frame programs separate classes easily enough so that you can know at a glance what classes are in what party.

[Rune]

Will take another stab at this, I honestly am baffled at the first few posters having the attitude that you can do it as well without and if you need it, basically you are an idiot.
Short of a seriously messed up genius I fail to see how a person can buff each type of char, checking on instant glance in every case that all are: in range for buffs/alive, remember off the top of your head how long since they were all buffed, that since say 1 of the rogues, 2 druids, 1 warlock died last time so even though the rest are buffed when brought up need to be rebuffed, while not needing to rebuff the rest, tracking that for the next time, also I remember it being said also quite easy to also rem to keep up little might for the feral druid, and all this of course apparently as quickly and readily as somone with the addon.
And of course all this while tactics and mob designations going on is no problem.

Easy answer of course is always rebuff everyone every time anyone dies and buffs get near 15 min, and it will work no problem but I honestly find that inneficient and wasteful probably needing two eat breaks (unless you're holy). Add-one means you buff just as much as needed when needed, have it done as quick as possible given you see when you have a complete available set of a type in range and ready and can have all done thoughtlessly most of the time and be waiting at the end for the single last to come into range.

No brainer efficiency for me and I can talk tactics and think of what needs to be done on the fight instead of wasting time and thought on buffing.

[qygibo]

Source: Rune Short of a seriously messed up genius I fail to see how a person can buff each type of char, checking on instant glance in every case that all are: in range for buffs/alive, remember off the top of your head how long since they were all buffed, that since say 1 of the rogues, 2 druids, 1 warlock died last time so even though the rest are buffed when brought up need to be rebuffed, while not needing to rebuff the rest, tracking that for the next time, also I remember it being said also quite easy to also rem to keep up little might for the feral druid, and all this of course apparently as quickly and readily as somone with the addon. And of course all this while tactics and mob designations going on is no problem.

People did this back when blessings were only 5 minutes and there were no Greater Blessings to be able to bless all classes with the same buff. People did this back when there were up to 40 people in a raid at a time, and they had to keep the buffs up during the boss fight because it took 2 and a half minutes just to get every single buff up on every single person in the raid; at a time when, again, the buffs lasted for only 5 minutes.

Nowadays, though, the situation is different, and pally buffs are very simple. Any group with 3+ paladins is going to have every major buff given anyway. Now, in a 10 man, if there are only, say, 2 paladins, might be a different story, but that just means that there are less people to coordinate with in order to give out the buffs. Either you have multiple paladins and feel a need to micromanage their buffs, or you don't have enough paladins thus negating the need to micromanage a group of paladin buffs. Especially with the addition of overlapping buffs (i.e Mana Spring Totem, Battle Shout), the need for as many paladins has been diminished. With one shaman in your raid, you no longer need BoW. With a single dps warrior, you no longer need BoM. So either you have a multitude of paladins or, to achieve proper raid composition, you have other people to provide buffs, thus making it so that there are only 2 pally buffs really left to provide: Kings and Sanctuary.

And the additional thing with pallies using Pally Power is that they're going to by default be using 30 minute buffs, not 10 minute buffs; so everyone with the class will get the same buff; regardless if they needed a refresh or not if a person of that class wiped. At the point that you're rebuffing one class, it makes sense to go ahead and rebuff the entire raid so that everyone in your raid has the same time left on their buffs. Even if you are a prot pally and your 9 global cooldowns use all your mana, with the new amount of mana restored by drinking, you're only looking at a few seconds downtime to bring you back up to full mana. You're also talking about wiping on trash; raid buffs aren't needed on trash, that's why it's trash. And after a boss fight, there will be plenty of time to regen mana while looting after you rebuff everyone. Now, if the reagent cost of (13.5 silver to rebuff 9 classes) is really that much of a hinderance, I'd recommend that you do dailies. One starting Argent Tournament daily will net you enough gold to do 100 rebuffs of all 9 classes. Even if you're wiping every 5 minutes, 100 rebuffs will last you for over 8 hours worth of raiding.

[Rune]

Source: qygibo People did this back when blessings were only 5 minutes and there were no Greater Blessings to be able to bless all classes with the same buff. People did this back when there were up to 40 people in a raid at a time, and they had to keep the buffs up during the boss fight because it took 2 and a half minutes just to get every single buff up on every single person in the raid; at a time when, again, the buffs lasted for only 5 minutes.

In a different era the best I'd imagine used several add-ons to make it manageable and reached decent levels, and you're talking about in raid buffing where it was a core part of the play to keep those buffs up, taking 1/2 of the players usage of time?
What relevence has that to today it was core to infight gameplay and even then would have only matched efficiency if you used an add-on.
Seriously, with naked UI people kept all those up in perfect cooldown chain and covered the lot while that not using up most of their time and concentration, allowing for death rebuffs and timings always knowing from sight if range was good and remembering if all 40 had been covered from memory?

I have money to afford loads of reagents at 10 times the cost, I can manage without pallypower too, but it simply wastes more time, is less efficient for time and attention management. Thats it, plain and simple, and I dont get why people are saying in the olden days we did that on one leg and an arm strapped behind your back.......hardly, ye did it differently as needed to be in a different gamestyle, and doing it now as then would get you shouted at for wasting too much time on buffing, and probably have one of them shouting he has none of a certain buff. Quite simply human error will always kick in, even the best of em would have missed buffs without an addon. We can do it faster now and it needs to be we have other things to do.

Honestly I see regular giving out about lack of buffs from people but never about me, mine are on and done and I'm ready to go chatting bout tactics while the rest catch up. Thats how it suits me. I'm never the one people are waiting on.

[qygibo]

Source: Rune In a different era the best I'd imagine used several add-ons to make it manageable and reached decent levels, and you're talking about in raid buffing where it was a core part of the play to keep those buffs up, taking 1/2 of the players usage of time? What relevence has that to today it was core to infight gameplay and even then would have only matched efficiency if you used an add-on. Seriously, with naked UI people kept all those up in perfect cooldown chain and covered the lot while that not using up most of their time and concentration, allowing for death rebuffs and timings always knowing from sight if range was good and remembering if all 40 had been covered from memory?

It has a lot of relevance to today. People back in the day of vanilla WoW didn't have the addons that are available today. There are plenty of people who managed to raid back in the day and still keep their addons up, you have quite a few right in this very thread who did raid back in the day who had to do just that and still be up on the boss strategy. It's not a matter of that they had a different playstyle; it's the fact that they had things a lot harder than healers/buffers in general do today and thus learned how to live without addons that a lot of healers/buffers today claim they can't possibly live without.

Honestly I see regular giving out about lack of buffs from people but never about me, mine are on and done and I'm ready to go chatting bout tactics while the rest catch up. Thats how it suits me. I'm never the one people are waiting on.

I'd say that there are other issues with your other buffers then if they can't handle one or two buffs on other people and be able to remember and act appropriately during a boss fight. Buffing is something that should take 30 seconds nowadays, with or without an addon. I'd be scared as to what else your other raiders have a hard time with if something as simple as buffing throws them over a loop. I'd also be worried to raid with someone like you who likes feeling superior to other people because you got your buffs out a few seconds faster so that you can "focus on the strategy", boss strategies aren't so insanely difficult to master that you have to focus on them like you would a thesis project.

[Rune]

Source: qygibo It has a lot of relevance to today. People back in the day of vanilla WoW didn't have the addons that are available today. There are plenty of people who managed to raid back in the day and still keep their addons up, you have quite a few right in this very thread who did raid back in the day who had to do just that and still be up on the boss strategy. It's not a matter of that they had a different playstyle; it's the fact that they had things a lot harder than healers/buffers in general do today and thus learned how to live without addons that a lot of healers/buffers today claim they can't possibly live without.

Basically it was harder, but as good as they are without add-ons its just not possible to do as efficiently, I respect their abilities for being able do it, today those abilities are better channeled into different things and forget about buffing.

Source: qygibo I'd say that there are other issues with your other buffers then if they can't handle one or two buffs on other people and be able to remember and act appropriately during a boss fight. Buffing is something that should take 30 seconds nowadays, with or without an addon. I'd be scared as to what else your other raiders have a hard time with if something as simple as buffing throws them over a loop. I'd also be worried to raid with someone like you who likes feeling superior to other people because you got your buffs out a few seconds faster so that you can "focus on the strategy", boss strategies aren't so insanely difficult to master that you have to focus on them like you would a thesis project.

I'm far from the type to feel superior to other people, don't assume you know me. I use the add-on and I find that using it lets me get my buffs out fast and on time. Its as simple as that, and some others (by no means all I raid with) who do or dont use it whether because they prefer not to or whatever reason do seem slower.
I'm responding to someone who seems to be claiming that the old school guys didnt need any add-ons, if anything I could say you seem to be more suggesting superiority for those types and by extension yourself, but to say that is making assumptions without knowing you and that wouldnt be fair.
I used that as an example of comparison between with and without the add-on, as simple as that.
Boss strategies arent that impossible but at times it is difficult in progression phases when you are trying to imporve on previous attempts, especially when missing key members of teams who know the fight better, or in any number of circumstances when you are missing enough CC or interrupters, etc. then I think it is a fair call to spend the time trying to improve your teams efforts.
Are you suggesting that you raid with a group who all know the strategys perfectly and dont need to discuss it at all?

Also dont feel 'scared' for me about having people who have a hard time about buffing, that it throws them for a loop. When did I say that, slower doesnt mean they dont get it done, that they have huge difficulty, maybe just means they havent quite got the last buffs when we were looking to move but do it close enough.

[Lizana]

Do i use addons to manage buffing, yes, is that addon pallypower or has it ever been pallypower, No, because i prefer to be able to do more than pally power is capable of doing. I use grid + clique for healing, cleansing, casting things like hands spells and even for buffing as my pally tank. You know how simple it is to have grid grey out frames that are not in range. Its so simple because it does it by default. It also color coordinates the frames so i can instantly see every class. You know what else it allows me to do, oh yes, keep track of buffs up on a target. It will even show a duration. And its a simple click to buff. The best part about using something like this, It means i am not using any extra memory for an addon that does nothing but help "special people" who cant remember something. Also any raid leader worth anything would prevent the people from spamming or even asking in raid chat for buffs. You do not need buffs for trash, you need them for bosses, and most raid leaders are smart enough to use addons that allow them to see all buffs and do a single reminder. Why should they use pallypower unless your only having pallies in the raid. It is better to use an addon in that case that works with all classes buffs.

[qygibo]

Source: Rune Boss strategies arent that impossible but at times it is difficult in progression phases when you are trying to imporve on previous attempts, especially when missing key members of teams who know the fight better, or in any number of circumstances when you are missing enough CC or interrupters, etc. then I think it is a fair call to spend the time trying to improve your teams efforts. Are you suggesting that you raid with a group who all know the strategys perfectly and dont need to discuss it at all?

We actually have an expectation that our raiders will not only have seen videos of an upcoming fight but to also have read at least one strategy guide about the boss's abilities. In the event that we do have to actually verbalize a boss strategy, our raid leader is very capable of simply explaining a boss strategy to include all major points, and in doing that within a matter of a minute or so. That would appear to be a reasonable expectation for any raid leader of their raiders: that they be prepared. Sounds like there are more issues with your group than with how long buffing takes if boss strategies are having to be explained each time you're going in there.

[morelore]

Source: qygibo It has a lot of relevance to today. People back in the day of vanilla WoW didn't have the addons that are available today.

This is actually untrue. People in vanilla wow had much more powerful addons that could automate much more than the addons of today can. Healbot and buffbot back then literally could play your character for you. Very early on, they could even move for you.

Anyone who played a pally back then and who manually managed blessings is an idiot. It doesn't matter if you could do it or not, the addon could do it faster and better than you. Doing it manually just meant you were slower, less efficient, and were able to do less healing when you weren't buffing. Especially if you're honest about going "without addons", since there weren't raid frames then, and there certainly weren't raid frames with buff highlighting. If you raid healed and buffed without a raid frames mod, you were absolutely crippling your performance, and bragging about it doesn't get you any points in my eyes.

Anyone who refuses to install pallpower or a compatible mod (like zomgbuffs) is making their raid leaders life harder and needs to stop. I don't care if you can manually buff everyone and you never slip up and forget a buff. Using pallypowers means I can give your assignment without waiting to make sure you heard me. I can do it while there's other discussion going on about tactics or scheduling or whatever. Any time you can coordinate without the need for manual, verbal discussion you should take advantage of it.

If trying to outperform a computer at dull, repetitive tasks is your idea of fun, good for you - but don't do it in my raids.

[Selyndia]

I use Pally Power for the convenience it holds. The timers on how much time each of the buffs it has is useful, it has a convenient littler timer for Righteous Fury, and it allows me to see exactly who has or needs which buffs I am responsible for. It also allows me to manage buffs amongst the various paladins when we don’t have four so that everyone can get the buffs they would want (It’s very useful with Sanctuary, as often times the Prot Pally has varying things to buff).

Let’s look at it this way, if I can have a little timer and mod show me buffs on people so that amongst leading a raid, marking pulls, getting trash ready, moving the raid, calling things out, assigning tanks and making sure healers are assigned, why shouldn’t I use it? It doesn’t make me a better player to be able to micromanage something that doesn’t have to be micromanaged, so why go through the hassle?

Mana, and Reagents are mostly irrelevant, it’s mostly so that you can see, at a glance who is missing which buffs in the raid amongst the various classes, and makes it easy so that a single paladin can do multiple blessings, and so you can coordinate them amongst multiple paladins. I can count to sixty, so why do I need mods that count down boss abilities? Surely counting to 30 isn’t very hard, but nearly everyone uses timers for boss abilities. In EQ, I used a stop watch to time things, like debuffs and AoEs; it doesn't mean I want to do that now.

[Lizana]

My argument isnt for not using addons, but using addons that work for all classes buffs instead of just pallies.

[qygibo]

Source: morelore Anyone who played a pally back then and who manually managed blessings is an idiot. It doesn't matter if you could do it or not, the addon could do it faster and better than you. Doing it manually just meant you were slower, less efficient, and were able to do less healing when you weren't buffing. Especially if you're honest about going "without addons", since there weren't raid frames then, and there certainly weren't raid frames with buff highlighting. If you raid healed and buffed without a raid frames mod, you were absolutely crippling your performance, and bragging about it doesn't get you any points in my eyes.

That was assuming that you were even brought in for healing. From what I have read, there were people who were brought in *just* to buff, or *just* to rez and stay out of combat entirely during vanilla WoW before that got changed. There was a lot more class stacking that went on back in the day compared to now, and not all 40 people were brought in to even do what we figure are their jobs today.

Anyone who refuses to install pallpower or a compatible mod (like zomgbuffs) is making their raid leaders life harder and needs to stop. I don't care if you can manually buff everyone and you never slip up and forget a buff. Using pallypowers means I can give your assignment without waiting to make sure you heard me. I can do it while there's other discussion going on about tactics or scheduling or whatever. Any time you can coordinate without the need for manual, verbal discussion you should take advantage of it.

I can give raid buffing assignments just as easily without Pally Power, and our raid leader has appropriate addons to publicly announce when a buffer of any type hasn't buffed, or put on a flask, or gotten a food buff, etc. You don't need Pally Power or even ZOMGbuffs to do any of that.

If trying to outperform a computer at dull, repetitive tasks is your idea of fun, good for you - but don't do it in my raids.

Your addon might break someday when Blizzard does an update and it might not get immediately fixed. What would you do then?

[Insahnity]

In general, I find this thread to be sickening, Tankspot is usually a collection of intelligent, capable and COURTEOUS bunch of WoW players. Much of what could be said here could be without being pigheaded.

The original OP was looking for an alternative to PallyPower, not to argue its merits.

Source: Lizana My argument isnt for not using addons, but using addons that work for all classes buffs instead of just pallies.

It would be more constructive to spell out WHAT addon(s) you have in mind, end of story. If you don't, you are either suggesting one should be written or trolling, and I hope it is the former.

qygibo, you apparently are not getting the gist of what people are saying:

1) Can we do without Pally Power? Yes. Do some of us, despite having Pally Power, manually rebuff? All the time, I frequently abandon it because the other paladins don't have it, except to see who's in range before expending a symbol. If it's functionality is broken, no sweat, I expend an extra symbol if a person fails to follow directions like "group up for buffs", it's cheap and mana is a non-issue, even for me as a prot pally, i just drink quickly.

2) You counter why have something when you don't need it? It's like asking why have cell phones when you can walk to a land line? Or why have a car when you can have a horse and buggy, it's more environmentally friendly. Yet, I don't see you misplacing your crop/whip/etc. in your purse (incidentally, why not have burlap sack instead of a purse??)

It's a convenience of life. We can do without it, but it is nice. Now, back to the original question, is there another equally useful addon? Or a BETTER one?

3a) Yes, we did all sorts of things in the days of vanilla, and really I miss those days. But we are here today, and the OP has a question about the game as it applies today. And I will be the first to agree that the raiders of vanilla are 100 times more skilled than today's raiders, but enough already, that's not the point of this thread.

If I wanted to be snide, I would point out that if you can execute your task in a wow raid flawlessly but your brain fails at day to day tasks, you may wish to reconsider your priorities in life, especially if you are about to have a baby depending on you. But I take the more positive view that you should be congratulated on your upcoming child, I'm sure you will make a great mom given your abilities to be nimble and organized in wow, and best wishes in raising your child.

3b) Much of the anti-pally power sentiments are assuming you have a guild that can put together 25 mans on their own, and anybody that doesn't make it is replaced with equally skilled players. In that situation, those people could probably manage buffs on their own, or at least follow directions, because they have the requisite skills, and we wouldn't be having this idiotic sidebar.

That's great, but reallistically that has become a small fraction of today's raiders.

Blizzard wants to have accessible content. That means for many people who come to this site for help, they deal with idiots raiding. Idiots, who disagree with your opinion of what buff should be given, or can't remember their assigned buffs. For some, its a choice of not raiding or dealing with the occasional idiot. Instead of ridiculing what you perceive as inferior abilities, attempt to help them, please.

PERSONALLY
-I don't have an alternative that works quite as well as Pally Power, and I wish it was rolled into something more univesal like Healbot or whatever, given that I have all 10 classes on my server. I defer to others who have tried ZOMGBuffs and the like.
-PallyPower makes leading easier for those new to raiding, especially PuGs. I have seen many new paladins start with PP as a crutch and progress to the point where they use it as a convenience like me. Sometimes, vent is difficult, as people don't have microphones, speak a different language (or is deaf, as is the case with one person I raid with), etc. and this is a useful tool. A nice change to PallyPower would be to add functionality to monitor who does not have a buff (guess at the missing info), but hey, you get what you pay for. In light of this, it's something that I keep until I find an alternative.

[Rune]

Source: qygibo We actually have an expectation that our raiders will not only have seen videos of an upcoming fight but to also have read at least one strategy guide about the boss's abilities. In the event that we do have to actually verbalize a boss strategy, our raid leader is very capable of simply explaining a boss strategy to include all major points, and in doing that within a matter of a minute or so. That would appear to be a reasonable expectation for any raid leader of their raiders: that they be prepared. Sounds like there are more issues with your group than with how long buffing takes if boss strategies are having to be explained each time you're going in there.

Good for you, you have an elite group there, you do realise that that doesnt apply to the vast majority of groups.
Ignoring that point, even with that if you all know the strategy that is only part of it, surely you need to co-ordinate who does what role, how duties are divided, whether it might be better to switch to a different person in a role because the set-up suggests it is superior?
Again why are you suggesting my group has major issues because we are willing to optimise as we go?
Do you follow the ideal set-up put in place by whatever big guild make the vids for it with no variation?

[serrasin]

Source: Lizana Never said it was hard to use, But i find it funny how many pallies find buffing once every 30 min such a hard thing to do.

Its not hard, but it's not something I want to deal with. You're almost sounding like some of my web developer peers that code strictly in notepad as opposed to dreamweaver as if they were going to get a 'hard mode' accomplishment. Sure you can get by without it, but having code hints and color coded lines are helpful and streamlines the process. Same with pally power.

[Lizana]

You realize you people saying that it isnt hard, and you use it for convince, that Qygibo and myself are basing the arguments off of other pallies in this thread and their exact words.

But i digress.

RaidBuffStatus - Addons - Curse

Thats the addon i uses as raid leader to manage my groups buffs. You have both a trash buff reminder and a boss buff reminder. It will post a warning saying who is missing all raid buffs, and will tell the person running it who is in the raid capable of buffing it. It also keeps an eye out on flasks and food buffs.

I have already said in a previous post how i use grid + clique to cast my buffs, that + this addon allows me to buff effectively on any char or class. To assign some one a buff we tell them over vent to do it. If your too stupid to listen to vent and the buff doesnt go out your replaced. If its a pug, we make a macro and will repeat it out a couple of times before the first boss so all pallies will be able to see it. And expect them to remember it for the night.

This is an alternative to using pally power, something almost none of the rest of the Pally power fan boys has been willing to offer. This prevents anyone from having to download any addons outside of the raid leader. Thus solving the OP's problem.

[Kazeyonoma]

Really? This is sad.