At The Top of Your Game
(Character Management Through the Eyes of a Healing Priest)
The general concepts and much of the information in this article apply to all players and all classes. The specific context in which I’ll discuss those concepts is that of level 80 healing Priest play with a raid emphasis. My own character, Oddly <Aegis> on Draka, is a Holy Priest.
What I hope to do is to identify issues and concepts that better players think about, and link you to some of the best and smartest information sources and discussions out there so that you can learn from them how best to apply those concepts to your character. And I hope to get most of it right.
Skill will always be the most important element of good play -- but knowing how to manage and play your character more effectively is a buff to any level of skill, and will put you at the top of your game.
First I'll briefly link some general sites that are useful to all players as well as a number of good class-specific sites, then talk about character and gear management and playing style, and finally take a look at a healer’s UI. I'm sure there are a lot of good informational sources and sites that I don't know or use; these are the ones I do.
All-Class Sites and Info
The most basic database reference sites – the very first sites that I learned and still go to for specific information about (and other players’ experiences with) an item, a profession, a quest, an achievement, a festival, etc. – are Wowwiki, Thottbot, and Wowhead:
World of Warcraft universe guide - WoWWiki
Thottbot: World of Warcraft
Wowhead: The one thing on which Ninjas and Pirates agree.
I also enjoy looking at WoW Insider for the latest game news and information:
WoW.com: The new WoW Insider
A couple of sites with very good guides, forums, and discussions covering a broad range of topics include Elitist Jerks and World of Raids:
Elitist Jerks World of Raids | World of Warcraft News Guides Raid Strategies Guilds Forums
TankSpot (Project Marmot) is my favorite place to watch encounter vids and learn fights. I also think that the information generally on the TankSpot site is some of the highest quality to be found anywhere, and that the TankSpot forums are some of the best discussions out there:
Project Marmot -- TankSpot Raid Movie Guides - TankSpot
Of course the Wow Armory is the definitive site on which to look up other players’ gear and stats, etc., and Wow-Heroes is another great site on which to do the same, as well as to look at guild gear rankings, etc.:
The World of Warcraft Armory WoW Heroes - World of Warcraft PvE character info & ratings
And two useful sites for character gear development and management are Be Imba and LootRank. Be Imba will pull your character and gear from the WoW Armory and rate you, telling you among other things if you're missing any enchants or gems, or whether those you have are optimum or should (or could) be upgraded.
Be Imba! - the online Character Auditor for World of Warcraft
LootRank is a phenomenal gear management tool. It will generate a gear list ranked by slot based on a set of parameters that you enter into its matrix, such as your class and spec, whether you intend to gem with rare or epic gems, and numerical values for the stats that are important to your character.
Figuring out numerical stat values and relative weights for any particular class and talent spec is the hard part. This is important stuff for all players – regardless of class – to understand, and I’ll talk more about it in Effective Gear Management, below.
I think that LootRank uses its own default stat weight templates for each class and spec, but you can tweak them as you wish if you have different preferences:
GuildOx - WoW Guild Progress and Loot Rankings Class-Specific Sites
Here are some of the better sites with which other (non-Priest) classes can begin to look for information that will help them apply the general concepts discussed in the Character and Gear Management section below.
Each of these sites will lead to other class-specific sites, and those to others; it’s a process of chasing down rabbit trails until you find the small handful of key sites, articles, threads, and discussions that ring your bell and provide you with the information that helps you to manage your character better and play smarter.
Multiple-Class Guides - Ensidia Elitist Jerks Druid http://thebigbearbutt.com/ Passport to Shandris Hunter Hunters Rhok Mage Critical QQ Paladin Blessing of Kings - Banana Shoulders Priest (not mentioned in the text below)
World of Snarkcraft Holy Dueg! Rez The Weak! Holy Discipline Guild Mum Violaceous Mana Rogue Parry! Dodge! Spin! Shaman Fel Fire Flame Shock - Shaman and Achievements in the World of Warcraft Warlock Mystic Chicanery Fel Fire The Warlocks Den Warrior Need More Rage Tank TankSpot - World of Warcraft News, Guides, and Community Tank Hard! TankingTips.com - A guide to tanking as a Warrior in World of Warcraft Healer World of Matticus PlusHeal.com • Index page Character and Gear Management
It’s this simple, really: poor character and gear management will diminish your skill, and good management will buff it. Here are the elements of character management that, if handled properly and effectively, will allow you to use your skill to its full potential:
A. Correct Spec Talent Build
Glyphs to enhance talents
B. Gear Acquisition
Appropriate stat values/relative weights to properly rank gear
Priority goals and overall balance
C. Gems & Enchants toward goals and balance
D. Elixir and Food buffs to enhance power and balance
E. Playing Style
Effective character management is not all that hard, but there's a lot involved. Through reading and thinking about what very good, smart players have to say on these topics, I am constantly refining a better understanding of how to manage and play Oddly. The point of this article is to help you to do the same.
Aside from the clearly Priest-specific details, the basic management concepts discussed and the thought processes described in the rest of this section are intended for and apply to all players and all classes. I'll try to highlight the info intended for all by making it this color. So here goes. Let me note at this point that the there is significant agreement that the specifics (not the principles) of character management for a healing priest -- both Holy and Discipline -- change meaningfully once your average gear item level (described below) reaches about 226. Accordingly, I’m going to discuss talent build and gear acquisition both for a “pre-226” healing Priest and a “post-226” healing Priest. [U]It’s not unlikely that this phenomenon occurs with respect to other classes to a greater or lesser degree at some gear level – this is something well worth researching for your class and spec.[/U]
For a character with pre-226 average gear item level (in other words, from the time you first hit level 80 through Ulduar), one of the best overall Holy Priest guides that I’ve seen is the one written by Poptisse of Ensidia (the guild which world-firsted Ulduar):
Priest Holy - Part 1 - General - Ensidia
Poptisse (who, based on her accomplishments, is hard to argue with) believes that after Patch 3.1, intellect is the key Holy Priest stat, and that the value of spirit has been diminished considerably by the 3.1 nerf. Although she discusses the merits of haste, unfortunately she makes no mention of crit, which figures importantly in Holy Priest manaregen talents. But Poptisse covers a great number of topics, and I follow much of her advice regarding glyphing, gemming and enchanting, and elixir and food buffs (so I will not repeat that advice here).
Poptisse links two classic and definitive pre-226
Holy Spec Talent Builds – it’s important to note, however, that a thread post points out and Poptisse confirms that the first build linked should have Surge of Light rather than Healing Prayers. (For Discipline Priest talent builds, see the the BobTurkey and Elitist Jerks links below.)
I cannot overemphasize the importance of a correct talent build. While I understand that some talent choices may be a matter of personal preference, I also believe that many are so important as to be considered “correct” and should be selected. There’s no downside to looking around to see how other good players have built your spec, and why. It’ll either confirm what you already knew, or make you think about one or two small changes that might make a difference.
In fact, for a pre-226 Holy Priest, I think any deviation from one of Poptisse’s two classic builds should be well thought out (and Aliena's thoughts, below, taken into account as well). Of course, we all play differently and have different preferences, and that’s fine. But a sound course of action vis-à-vis your talent build would be to begin by finding one or two “classic models” like Poptisse’s, and then thinking carefully about any changes you might want to make. I deviated slightly in Oddly’s pre-226 build, but only after careful thought and what I believed was sound reasoning for me.
After reading the article I changed Oddly’s pre-226 talent build from the classic 14/57/0 build to the first one linked (and used) by Poptisse, an 18/53/0 build that takes advantage of the mana reduction benefits of Mental Agility in the Discipline tree.
But I differed from Poptisse's build in one major respect: she doesn't have Healing Prayers in her 18/53/0 build, and I put both points in it. In addition to PoM, I used PoH a lot, it's mana-expensive, and a 20% mana cost reduction was just too good for me to pass up. To get those two points I took one point out of Spiritual Guidance (and left it at 4/5) and gave up Spirit of Redemption.
With respect to Spirit of Redemption, my reasoning was that my mana savings on PoM and PoH would exceed the regen I would get from a 5% spirit gain -- whether it actually did or not I don't know, I just felt that it would -- and that I’m a more effective healer overall if rather than rely on after-death healing I concentrate on staying alive (yes, I forget to not die sometimes) and throwing the most heals for the longest period of time that I can. Sure, in one out of seven or eight hard fights my Spirit of Redemption might have actually made a meaningful difference, but I opted instead for a talent that provided me with potentially significant additional longevity in all eight fights.
And I chose that potential longevity also at the expense of the fifth point of spell power gain in Spiritual Guidance. I become a piece of furniture if I run out of mana during a fight, so my pre-226 talent-build and gear management favor longevity. Although I understood the importance of balance and making sure that my spell power throughput was sufficient, I decided that in this case the potentially significant longevity gain outweighed the minor spell power loss.
About the time that a healing Priest's average gear item level reaches 226, however, everything changes. At that point, Poptisse published Part 2 of her guide:
Priest Holy - Part 2 - Ensidia
Post-226, Poptisse radically changed her talent build, and much of her thinking. At the point at which a player is fully Ulduar-geared, Poptisse believes that priorities change significantly: mana is no longer a real concern, and she places talent points that she previously spent for mana reduction elsewhere.
Poptisse’s changes are thought provoking, far from what was previously considered “classic”, and bound to be controversial. I’m a little nervous about them, but I understand them and I like them. I’m not sure that Oddly’s post-226 stats measure up to those cited by Poptisse in her Part 2 (no, wait... I'm sure they don't!), but I have now adventurously adopted a talent build almost identical to Poptisse's new one. I cannot completely let go of longevity, and I still use PoM on every cooldown and PoH not infrequently, so I still have my original 18 points in Discipline. Convinced partly by Aliena (below) and others, however, I now have Spirit of Redemption and full points in Spiritual Guidance again, and the four Holy tree points I now have sacrificed in order to keep Mental Agility are: 1 point in Blessed Resilience and all 3 points in Test of Faith. I’m in the process of figuring out how those changes affect my play, and it’s fun.
Aliena, of TankSpot fame, has also recently written excellent comprehensive guides (covering everything from spells to talent builds to gearing, gemming and enchanting), replete with videos, for both Holy and Discipline Priests:
WotLK Holy Priest Guide WotLK Disc Priest Guide
Aliena doesn’t make a distinction between pre- and post-226 average gear item level Priests, and while she wrote her guides in the “post-Ulduar era” and hence I think they likely have a post-226 bent, there is great information for all level 80 Priests.
Aliena’s views with respect to Holy Priests differ somewhat from Poptisse’s, but are no less authoritative or insightful. Aliena favors spell power and haste for throughput, and intellect for longevity, and in the post-Ulduar world I have come to agree. She also still ranks spirit as the third most desirable stat behind intellect and spell power, reminding us that Meditation allows 50% of mana regen to continue while casting and that Spiritual Guidance increases spell power by up to 25% of total spirit. I like that, because I have never been able to agree intuitively that spirit is as worthless as many now seem to think it is.
The second time I read through Aliena’s Holy Priest guide many of her thoughts and ideas began to sink in and gel, and in a short time her guide has become an integral source for me, to be weighed and balanced with and against other valuable sources, point by point, as I continue in my search for the ever-changing balance of what "feels" right.
Once a character has a correct talent build, it's crucial -- and an ongoing process -- to gear (and gem and enchant) properly. In order to understand Effective Gear Management it’s helpful to have some understanding of how gear works.
Each item in the game has a level and, by slot, the items on each level are equal to one another. For instance, all level-213 chest pieces are equal in power or effectiveness – that is, the sum of all the stats, after each one has been multiplied by its relative value or weight factor as determined by Blizzard, is the same on each piece. There is a stat/ability "budget" for each item in the game, and all level-213 chest pieces have the same budget. The stat budget for items increases with the item level.
Here's a brief but terrific example of how the budget and relative stat values work with respect to, say, some of the Patch 3.2 epic gems: http:///bobturkey.wordpress.com/2009...g-spell-power/ But although level-213 chest pieces are equal to one another, they're not all equal for Oddly (or any character). Cloth gear doesn’t even have strength or agility, for example, because those stats have a zero value to all caster classes. Among the stats that cloth gear does have, hit is important to a dps-spec’d character but worthless to a healer, and mp5 is worth more to a Holy Priest than to a Shadow Priest, etc. – characters have different stat/ability needs, both by class and by talent spec within a class.
Hence each stat has a different value, and weight relative to other stats, for each class talent spec. Blizzard establishes the fundamental stat values and weights for item budget purposes, but it’s up to us to figure out how to modify those values to determine an item’s worth for any particular class talent spec.
And determining the relative stat weights for any particular class talent spec is the subject of never-ending debate and strong disagreement between even the best and smartest players. This is the heart of theorycraft, and it's all about math based on assumptions flavored by opinions and play style.
It’s worth noting that as a result of the interplay between gear item level, specific class talent spec stat weights, and overall balance, it turns out that -- depending on what I decide my priorities are – a particular level-213 chest piece may actually be better for Oddly than a particular level-219 chest piece, and so on. In deciding whether to acquire a piece of gear, I focus primarily on specific stats (relatively weighted) and overall balance. The gear item level, though certainly in the mix, is of less concern.
In order to help me know what gear is good, better, and best for Oddly, I use as a guideline the gear list I have developed on LootRank, where I have tweaked the standard LootRank template stat values based on what I believe is the best healing Priest information available.
And for me the best information out there, from a healing Priest theorycraft standpoint, comes from BobTurkey (”Gobble, Gobble”), and I check his blog regularly:
Priest Theorycrafting – Summary (Part 6) « BobTurkey’s WoW Blog
Bob’s healing Priest
Stat Weights analysis is the best and most comprehensive I've seen, and his stats are what I use on LootRank. (Bob carries them to four decimal places; two is enough for me.) For pre-226 healing Priests, he concluded that the Holy and Discipline Priest stat weights should be:
STAT HOLY DISC
sta 0.20 0.20
int 0.69 0.89
spi 0.52 0.32
sp 0.60 0.60
crit 0.38 0.36
haste 0.31 0.29
mp5 1.00 1.00
BobTurkey explains in Part I of his discussion that he bases his calculations on certain assumptions, like 90% of time healing spent in the five second rule, and six-minute fights, etc. And there's the rub: some very good players disagree with Bob's underlying assumptions (and with each other) to one extent or another.
The disagreements mostly center around differences in opinions and playing style that would lead to different underlying assumptions, which in turn would change one or more of the mathematical variables and hence the results. A lot of the differences are valid, but usually not as much a matter of right and wrong as of personal preference, and at the end of the day you gotta land somewhere. For me, BobTurkey is an excellent place.
While Bob's stat weight for spell power clearly underscores the importance he places on throughput, his pre-226 weights are generally configured (due to his underlying assumptions) to favor longevity over pure throughput, and I agree with that. Bob's calculations take into account all appropriate talent interactions and procs, etc., and he has both defended them against and adjusted them for a number of feedback responses. Again, once you buy into the underlying assumptions, it's hard to argue with the correct math.
And BobTurkey agrees with Poptisse that everything changes when your average gear item level reaches about 226. At that point he posts the following revised healing Priest gear stat weights:
Priest theorycrafting for 3.2 « BobTurkey’s WoW Blog
Bob figures that after the stat threshold reached by Tier 8 (25) gear – item level 226 – spell power is the stat that scales best by far, and so weights it at twice the value of mp5. At this level, at least for now, Bob’s whole philosophy has shifted: from gear that favors longevity to gear that favors spell power throughput.
Another great source of healing Priest play and management information is Elitist Jerks. The EJ Discipline Priest Healing Compendium contains two classic pre-226
Discipline Spec Talent Builds, as well as a great deal of other useful information.
Discipline Healing Compendium v3.1 - Elitist Jerks
Of course, in her discipline Priest guide Aliena discusses talent builds as well, and in the following post BobTurkey discusses raiding and lists his talent build for the post-226 Discipline Priest.
How to raid heal as discipline « BobTurkey’s WoW Blog
This is all good stuff, and while I don't know as much about Discipline Priests, I would be hesitant to vary from one of these talent builds without careful thought.
EJ also has a good general healing guide and corresponding thread discussions as well, with some of the BobTurkey disagreements and responses by Bob:
WotLK Healing Compendium v3.2: Same Old Thing - Page 15 - Elitist Jerks
And EJ has established its own set of pre-226 stat weights for Holy and Discipline Priest gear that are different than BobTurkey’s and may better suit some players' thoughts and styles. The core difference in philosophy is that EJ appears to favor spell power throughput over longevity by about a 6:4 ratio even before average gear item level reaches 226.
At this point I think it’s important to note that many of the best players don’t place as much reliance as I do on theorycrafting. Even though it basically represents the science behind the game, a lot of the better players rely more on their general understanding and intuition. Even Poptisse, in Part 2 of her guide, states that intuition plays a bigger part in her game than the math of theorycrafting. For myself, I prefer to know what the science would say about specific gear selection, and then try to use that knowledge intuitively in order to achieve balance...
Because all of the better players, regardless of how deeply they get into theorycrafting math for gear selection, agree that the key to proper gear management is to remember that with respect to the big picture It’s All About Balance.
That is so important it bears repeating: balance is the big picture, and if your balance is too far out of kilter it will negatively impact your play.
For Priority Goals and Overall Balance, A Dwarf Priest (“I Melt Kneecaps”) (who pre-dated BobTurkey, and back in her day took teaching and learning about playing a Holy Priest to a new level – it was because she stopped writing after Christmas 2008 that Bob began his work in Spring 2009) was the first place that I found clear and convincing Holy Priest gear goals and priorities to achieve a certain balance:
WotLK Priest Survival Guide « A Dwarf Priest
Dwarf Priest said to gear to achieve these goals in this order:
1. A 5:1 ratio of spell power to mp5 (inside the five second rule)
2. Crit to 20% unbuffed
3. Haste to 10%, then increase
These are WotLK pre-3.1 thoughts, but the concept remains ever relevant. Until recently, I have not again come across clear and definitive priorities and goals such as these, and so I have simply built upon them and modified them as gear stat weights have changed and I have learned more about them.
Aliena also discusses priorities and goals in her guides, if not quite so definitively. For a Holy Priest she believes that stat priority order is now intellect, spell power, spirit, crit/haste, mp5, and stamina. With respect to crit and haste, she (very common-sensibly) advises stacking crit until “you’re comfortable with your average number of Holy Concentration and Surge of Light procs", and then stacking haste. She mentions aiming for the “generally accepted” thresholds of 30% crit and 20% haste raid-buffed which Oddly, unfortunately, is nowhere near (ouch).
On a pre-226 basis I loosely prioritized acquiring intellect and mp5, then spell power, crit, then haste, and then spirit. As a post-226, I now favor building haste, together with an emphasis on acquiring spell power and intellect, and then spirit and crit and mp5. For me, it’s a juggling act and I’m not always sure Im making the right decisions, but it’s important that I'm always thinking about the concepts of and issues associated with priorities and goals and balance.
The practical application of priorities and goals and balance, of course, affects how I make gear selection decisions: as a pre-226 character, I used my LootRank list as a guideline for gear acquisition rather than as absolute slot rankings carved in stone, and I tried to fit each individual gear piece decision into my vision of overall balance.
For example, because the pre-226 Holy Priest stat weight value of crit is a little higher than that of haste, most of the gear with crit on my pre-226 LootRank list (in every slot) is ranked higher than otherwise similar gear with haste. But in order to obtain any kind of reasonable balance I obviously can’t always choose to acquire crit gear to the exclusion of haste gear. And I also didn’t want to be spell power-heavy with not enough manaregen. Or vice-versa. And so on.
As a post-226 character, I've become a little more comfortable with my knowledge and intuition, and I don’t rely on LootRank quite as extensively as I used to, although I still like to refer to it, often to see how much higher it ranks a certain piece of gear, etc.
What I want is to achieve the goals and to strike and maintain the overall balance that Dwarf Priest set out prior to 3.1, as modified by the reality of what I believe I can achieve and some good thoughts I’ve seen from Poptisse, Aliena, BobTurkey and others since then.
The bottom line is that in order to effectively acquire and manage gear it’s equally important to use appropriate stat values/relative weights to figure out correct gear rankings for your character and then to temper those rankings with priority goals and an overall balance that seem right. Playing Style
Many of the sites I've linked discuss actual play, and they're all worth looking at and thinking about. Again the smartest players differ in thought: some believe that there is at least some sort of a classic action-bar/spell “rotation" for healing Priests like there is for many of the other caster classes, and perhaps melee classes as well. Others say there is not. I think that, as with most divergent points of view, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
Certainly there are those who believe that raid healing is conducive to a rotation. Poptisse, for instance, cites this as a pretty good Holy Priest quick raid-healing rotation:
CoH --> PoM --> Flash Heal preferably on Surge of Light proc (at least 1 stack of Serendipity is nice) --> PoH
And I recently ran across a discussion on EJ stating that Holy Priest raid healing (in Ulduar) is all about Burst --> Lull --> Burst, where each burst consists of:
FH (3x to stack Serendipity) --> PoH (2x) --> CoH --> FH (2x) --> PoH + CoH
Then, after a “lull” to regenerate mana, you repeat another burst. While this is interesting and uses Serendipity effectively, I can’t understand not using PoM as part of raid healing, or not using CoH before stacking Serendipity for PoH, and I’m not sure how I could get away with “lulls” long enough to regenerate significant mana.
It’s possible that the EJ post might have great appeal for another Holy Priest with a different playing style, but it doesn’t work for me.
The point is that reading and thinking about playing styles, rotations, tips and advice from other good, smart players, and picking up on things that resonate, helps me to be more aware of my own style and sometimes leads me to try something new that enhances my own play. Here’s an example:
Not long ago Matticus (see link below) posted a terrific dual-action heal that hadn’t occurred to me: Inner Focus + Divine Hymn. This is a great way, once a fight on a 10-minute cooldown, to get a powerful crit-likely smart-AoE heal for free, which would otherwise be less crit-likely and very mana-expensive. I never ever use DH precisely because it is so expensive, and I usually forget to use IF (mea culpa); now I’ve created a key-bound combo for the two actions, and I’m going to try to form the new habit of remembering to use it in every boss fight at an appropriate moment.
My own play instinct goes something like this: Depending on my assignment and what I know about a fight, I can sometimes predict damage and be proactive, but most of the time for me it's about reacting to health bars and who needs to be healed. When I’m not simply reacting or addressing a specific issue, then my raid healing “rotation” is fairly similar to Poptisse’s:
PW:S on a tank at the pull (even if I’m raid healing unless s/he already has a dedicated Priest) --> PoM (every cooldown) --> CoH (every cooldown) --> Renew(s) and/or Flash Heal(s) --> PoH(s) or even an occasional Greater Heal whenever prudent.
In a fight where I have to move a lot, I’m going to favor Renews. Sometimes, though, even when I know that a Renew would be faster (and, ahem, meter better), I opt instead for a Flash Heal in order to stack Serendipity haste for my next GH or PoH. And sometimes there's no reason or opportunity to use that GH or PoH in time to take advantage of the Serendipity. Knowing exactly when to do what separates the better healers from the good ones.
And I rarely run out of mana during a fight. As a pre-226 character my talent build and gear management favored longevity (as a post-226 less so, but it's less of an issue), and as a matter of play style I use Shadow Fiend in every mana-intensive fight at about 50-60% mana, then pop a mana pot if my mana gets back down to 30%, and if the fight lasts through my Shadow Fiend cooldown I immediately use it again. If I absolutely run out of mana, or see that others have, I channel Hymn of Hope to finish the fight.
Because a healer has to make quick decisions and a situation can change in the blink of an eye, playing style relies heavily on instinct and skill, and is probably the single most important factor involved in a his/her performance.
But determining the quality of a healer’s performance isn’t always as simple as looking at the amount of healing done during a fight, and I would be remiss if I didn't say a few words about the Healing Meter.
Although it sounds nice, and even knowing what I know I still often wish I were, being at the top of the healing chart is not my job as a healer. Either that, or I've come up with a mighty fine rationalization for generally not being at the top of the healing chart.
While it’s widely accepted that meters are one of the best tools dps players can use to analyze their performance, the usefulness of the meter for healing has always been a subject of debate. I like Recount, and believe that healing meters can be useful. But it simply isn't true -- as we sometimes have a tendency to believe -- that the chart toppers are always the better healers.
Rather, it takes time and understanding to decipher what you're seeing on the chart from a healing standpoint. It is pointless to, say, compare two healers to each other if they are on widely different assignments. Moreover, Discipline Priests simply don't meter well, tank healers in general don't meter as well as raid healers, shielding doesn't even show up on the meter at all but is part of every Priest's healing repertoire, etc.
On the other hand, Recount is a good tool for a raid leader who wants to use it to look back at a fight to see what went wrong and how assignments might be changed for the better. Or for seeing certain trends – for instance, a Holy Priest raid healing probably shouldn't be consistently at the bottom of the chart, and one who is might benefit from some suggestions on character or gear management, playing style, etc.
Here's the best and most insightful discussion I've read about the real usefulness of the healing meter: What Can Healing Meters Tell You? | World of Matticus A Healer's UI
I’ve always liked addons, but it took me years before I was comfortable or confident enough to think about using them to change my whole User Interface. Once I took the plunge, though, it totally enhanced and elevated my play, and now my UI has become an indispensable part of healing for me.
Many of the sites and articles that I’ve listed talk about healing addons; some have entire threads devoted to UIs. Here are just a few examples:
User Interface, Addons, and Macros - TankSpot User Interface and AddOns - Elitist Jerks Addon Spotlight -- WoW.com UI | World of Matticus No Stock UI Raid Frames: Which One is Right for You? «
Some UIs I’ve seen make the whole screen too busy for me while others don’t have enough information, many concentrate information near the character so that your attention stays focused there and your eyes don’t stray far – and the list of thoughts and preferences and differences goes on and on. But it was only after looking at a lot of other UIs that I was able to cobble together what works for me now.
Here are the mods that I use and how my UI looks:
Aegis Website - WowStead
X-Perl
Dominos
Quartz
Atlas and Atlas Loot Enhanced
Titan Panel
Recount
Deadly Boss Mods
Simple Minimap
Satrina Buff Frame
TipTac
Sunn Art
XLoot (Monitor, Rolls)
FuBar (GuildFu, DualSpecFu)
Carbonite
Prat
Talented
Bagnon
Examiner
Obituary
All of them -- except Carbonite -- can be downloaded from Curse Gaming, and perhaps all of them from Wow Interface:
World of Warcraft Addons - WoW Addons - Curse.com WoWInterface - Find World of Warcraft AddOns!
In my gallery of photos posted online, the ones at the top are the most recent, and reflect my current UI. The following description relates to the last five or six photos posted.
The health bars/raid frames form the foundation of a healer’s UI. A lot of great players begin with Grid or now often Vuhdo, both of which are so compact and full of information that I sometimes think I should just bite the bullet, install one, figure it out, and get used to it. But as a pure healing visual neither appears as easy for me as the X-Perl Inverse Bar set-up that I use.
With X-Perl I've put all my raid health bars together at the middle bottom against a black background (courtesy of Sunn Art), so that no matter how frenzied the action gets above, the lights and flashes and color and movement never compromise my healing visual. What really floats my boat, though, is the X-Perl Inverse Health Bar feature, which shows damage on my health bars as bright green (to yellow to orange) going left to right, rather than vice versa -- the visual is 1000% better for me and took no getting used to at all.
In other words, the bright color on my health bars is the amount necessary to be healed, rather than the amount of health remaining -- it's more intuitive and takes less thinking. Look again at my UI, pick a photo that's in the middle of a fight and glance down at the health bars. You'll see instantly who needs healing and for how much.
Aegis Website - WowStead
I have separated my groups slightly and set (only) curable/dispellable debuffs to appear to the right of each health bar, where they don’t clutter the bars themselves and are easy to see against the black background.
My X-Perl health bars also track my PoMs and Renews, as well as PW:S. Look at the most recent photo of the 10-man Thorim encounter. The large, sparkly dot on Group 1, Player 4 is my PoM. I have two Renews up, shown by the thin yellow sparkly line receding from right to left on Group 1, Player 3 and Group 2, Player 5. Regardless of how difficult this may be to see on the photos (depending on their size), the tracking of both spells is easy to see on full screen. Additionally, the X-Perl health bars display little (square, circle, triangle, etc.) icons for marked players, and (skull and other) icons to indicate any player who has been singled out for a special boss mechanic, like who's in Ignis' Slag Pot or Kologarn's Right Arm, or who has Incinerate Flesh during Lord Jaraxxus, etc.
All of my heals are key-bound, so I'm not a "click healer" in the classic sense of clicking on heals in my action bars – I agree that you simply cannot be an effective healer that way. But I do target-click on players' health bars to heal. I've tried mouseover macros and they don't work for me; I make too many mis-heals that way. For the same reason I don’t use the addon Clique, which I understand works as a mouseover, and which a lot of great healers swear by.
I use a trackball mouse, though, which is (at least, lol) twice as fast as a traditional mouse, and all my health bars are close together and easy to see. I’m simply more comfortable (and so I play better) with a target-click and key-bound heals.
When sometoon has died because my heal didn't get there fast enough, I'm pretty sure it was because I need more skill (ouch, but probably most often the case), or haste, or I had to move or my attention was distracted, and not because I wasn’t using Clique or a mouseover macro. (Cliquers and mouseovers will no doubt disagree, and I’m prepared to live with that.) Recently BobTurkey made a compelling case that mouseover heals greatly improve mobility, and that’s an argument I’d really like to ignore (because I’m comfortable, Bob!) but I have to consider.
I’ve come to agree that the more information I can center around my toon and near the health bars so that my eyes don’t have to stray far – without cluttering up the screen so that I simply can’t process it all – is the way to go. The most recent 10- and 25-man photos show pretty clearly the information that I have centered below and around Oddly sort of like a V, and the photos of my 25-man UI show how I simply drag my minimap to the upper right corner of the screen to make room for 5 groups of health bars below.
Here’s how it evolved into its current state: first I decided that I really liked a broad black background stripe at the bottom, against which I could put a lot of stuff to remove it entirely from the action: chat, my health bars, minimap, and action bars. Doing that allows both parts of my screen to be free of and unaffected by the other.
Then the first thing I did with the top "screen" was to position my own unit frame -- at some point I realized that I had become so comfortable raid healing with all my health bars at the bottom, it was now awkward and I didn't like healing 5-mans with the group health bars way over on the left side of the screen. So I made my X-Perl party frame (the other four players) much smaller, moved it down to the same place I put my 10-man raid health bars, and placed my unit frame directly above it. Now 5-man healing very closely resembles 10-man in terms of where my health bars are, and it's what my eyes are used to again; I've posted a 5-man healing bar photo just to show this.
Aegis Website - WowStead
Next, I mirrored my target frame on the other side of the screen from my own unit frame. I used Dominos to put, between the two unit frames, a small action bar with just six buttons – I don’t use this as an action bar per se, but rather solely as an easy visual for spell and trinket cool downs. Directly above this bar is my Quartz spell cast bar, and directly above that is where my DBM warning bars end up, building upwards.
Satrina Buff Frames displays a series of small countdown bars that show when my talent procs, like Serendipity, Surge of Light, etc. are active, and I’ve put mine just above the buff icons on top of my unit frame, offset slightly to the left and set to build upward. I began with the same one filter that Poptisse recommends – d<60&my – and then set the bars small and limited the spells I wanted to see. It’s great information to have.
On the right side of my screen, just above the target frame, I put my target’s Quartz spell cast bar (which is much smaller than mine), and above that slightly offset to the right my target’s target unit frame. Just above that, again slightly offset to the right is the place where my DBM raid warning bars start out before dropping into the middle when time draws near for the warned-of event.
All together, it’s functional and not too cluttered, it’s the information I might want to see during a fight (as much as I can process), and I don’t have to look into far corners to see anything. Other data, that I’d like to see but not during combat, such as Recount or X-Loot, as well as my mini-map when in a 25-man group, I’ve put at the top of my screen, and don’t pay any attention to during a fight.
Carbonite is a map mod that I think is the bomb, but I realize that some players might feel that it makes questing too easy. It makes maps look and behave like Google maps, with landscape topography and the abilities to zoom in and out, drag-move around and pinpoint areas to zoom in on, and find and follow a straight flight line to anywhere. It also tracks quests, and shows on your map and mimimap the places in which to perform your quests, etc. (I’m not sure that even now I could do the Troll Patrol daily in 20 minutes without Carbonite literally pointing the way and telling me that Crystalized Hogsnot is on shelf 3, item 4, lol.)
A Carbonite option allowed me to separate my minimap buttons from the minimap itself and group them into a selected number of vertical columns each with a selected number of buttons. I chose one column, and moved it to the upper right side of the screen, building down; my minimap is clean, and the buttons are out of the way and easily accessible.
Carbonite - Homepage
My UI fits my style and level of play now. I've seen screenshots of other UIs that look terrific, and I don't represent mine to be better. But it took me a lot of thought and tinkering to get it to this point, and I wanted to share it in the case that (at least some of) it might appeal or make sense to other healers.
Blue Skies and Green Lights
By this point, you're probably thinking the same thing that occurs to me a lot: damn, Oddly, after reading and thinking about all this stuff you ought to be a MUCH better player than you are! Well, ... and the horse you rode in on, Buckaroo (wide grin). In all candor, it does help me to be a better player, but at the end of the day I can only be as good as my skill -- which is worthless on some days and competent on most, sometimes reasonably good but rarely if ever uber/imba -- will allow.
So that's it for now. I hope I got most of it right, and that it helps.
Oddly < Aegis> Draka
At the Top of Your Game
