I'm posting this in the druid forum only becuase it concerns my druid alt Stache, but I'd like to hear some input from all of our healers on this issue.
As my druid approaches 70 I have been thinking more about how I am going to shift (heh) him into a healing role for instances / raids / pvp and I started doing some research on unit frames for healing. I've recieved considerable flack from a certain bear (rhymes with barkdelad) about not having decursive yet. As I've managed to do just fine soloing without it up until now it hasn't been a concern, but the time had come for me to finally bite the bullet and get it.
That was until I started pondering the myriad of options for healing / decursing / abolishing that exist out there and wondering if decursive was what I needed. Since I've never played a healer before, all I have floating around my head are names I've heard over the years: clique, healbot, decursive, ag unit frames, xperl, grid, etc. and I still remain confused as to which I should use to fill my needs even after a decent amount of research. I had decided to go with grid after reading this article: http://www.resto4life.com/?s=grid (http://www.resto4life.com/?s=grid) but have come up against some resistance from others who recommend other programs.
So what I'd like to hear from all you pro healers out there is what mods you use for these tasks? Is there one all-encompasing mod that works best? Is there no way around having multiple mods to get the job done? I'd like to have one mod that will allow me to heal / decurse / abolish while monitoring health, hots & aggro as simply as possible (no problem right?). Grid seems to be what I want, but I'd like some other opinions from a raiding standpoint. If you have any links to articles that explain how to use your mod or back up your reasoning please feel free to add those and help a noob druid healer out:)
While I'm not a raid healer by any means...what my little bit of experience has shown me is:
1) decursive (nuff said)
2) some kind of unitframes that makes single and party targeting easy for you, this varies from person to person a great deal...there are those that swear by grid, others that swear by xperl or agunitframes...just give them a shot and find what you like most.
3) Ora2...most useful thing i see here is how tanks can be assigned, pulled out, health monitored, etc. making it easier to see who might need a little assist and when - allowing you to be more situationally aware instead of tunnel-visioned in your assigned role as a raid healer
Good topic.
For me, group & raid healing is quick targetting w/mouse then one of 3 or 4 hotkeys, depending on what heal is needed. I like to keep things a little simpler and limit the number of AddOns. Therefore, I have decided against using the healing AddOns that others really enjoy.
With that being said, the AddOns I do use and strongly recommend are:
- Decursive - this seems to be borderline cheating to me, as it makes curing conditions waaay too easy. You would be crazy to not have it.
- Ag_unitframes - especially handy for raiding, new version has range checking to determine if your target is outside of healing range & aggro monitoring to quickly determine what target(s) has aggro and likely to need a heal
I also use ora2, but I don't feel like I must have that AddOn active to be an effective healer.
I'm sure some of our healer mains have some great advice on this topic.
I'll echo what Lyn said:
Decursive - It's easy mode, but you have to have it. There are plenty of times that you can't afford even one DoT tick on someone.
ag_unitframes - I use these as well. They're simple to set up but have lots of features. I have mine set up so each raid member has large health bar, with health values, smaller mana bars, and a cast bar. The range checking is great (sometimes a bit off, but still good) and I love the aggro highlighting. If someone has aggro, their health bar turns red. If it's a boss casting a Frostbolt or something like that, you can start casting your heal before the person even takes the damage. Also good for ignoring Warlocks with that obnoxious Life Tap thing ;)
Quartz - The main part of Quartz is a cast bar replacement. The nice part is that when you cast, you get a latency buffer at the end of your bar. You can start a new cast while your current cast is in that zone because of the time it takes your command to hit the server. Super useful for chain casting. I also have it setup to show my buffs/HoT's on the target. Once I have a target, tiny bars pop above my cast bar showing me time left on my Renew and Fort and such.
I do not like Grid because I do not feel that it displays the info that a healer should need. I like to know exactly how much health/mana a person has and what they're casting. Maybe Grid can do this, but the info is too crammed to retrieve quickly.
Other than that, it's clicking to target and keybinds to cast. I don't like the idea of relying on AddOns to a point that without them I'd be a weak healer. Some people like them, but I would recommend against getting mods that put heal buttons next to each person or other things that streamline healing too much, as you may never really get a feel for your own healing style and what techniques are most effective.
My healing technique revolves around using 2 addons with additional help from 2 others.
- ag_UnitFrames - I've used this addon for my Player/Target/Party/Raid frames for years now as it can show quite a bit of information in a compact space and is highly customizable. I am frustrated with the new patch as this addon requires frequent reloading of the UI to keep everything visible (every time I zone, the raid frames disappear). These issues should be temporary, though, and will hopefully be fixed within a week or two.
- Clique - I use this addon mainly to remove curses/poisons/diseases by mapping my mouse's scroll wheel click to the decursing spell in question (shift-click for lesser used ones like poison and disease, normal click for often used ones like curse). In conjuction with your raid-frame-of-choice, decursing becomes a quick (shift/alt/ctrl)click on the raid member in question w/o having to explicitly target them first. On my priest, I have also mapped my Renew to my middle button so that it's extremely easy to toss a quick heal all over the raid.
- Decursive - This addon used to be extremely useful, but now just sits below my raid frame and displays "blinky lights" that I mostly ignore since my ag_unitframes will highlight the affected person with the color of decurse I need to cast. I keep this addon for the rare case that I can't seem to shift-click fast enough or want to cleanse pets (since I don't show raid pets).
- ora2 - I know there's many reasons to have this addon, but the main reason I like it when healing is for the Main Tank frame. No matter where they are in your normal raid frames, having one frame with "keep these people alive at all costs" is invaluable sometimes when the moments it takes for your mouse to travel from Group 1 to Group 4 takes too long otherwise.
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A note on Quartz: I don't use this addon because I found that Blizzard already incorporated it's functionality into the game. If you cast a spell close to the end of your prior cast, it will queue it up and cast it immediately after your current cast is done. There's no visual indication of when that "close to the end" is, but I've not needed it.
Thanks for all the input so far! This is exactly what I was looking for. I think my major source of confusion was wondering why I would need decursive AND another unit frame mod. If clique can allow me to decurse / abolish by shift-clicking unit frames then that seems like a better option if I only want ag UnitFrames taking up space.
It sounds like ag UnitFrames is a favorite among the guild so I'll definitely look into testing that out tonight. I've managed to do just fine on my DPS classes without unit frame mods but I guess it's time to try them out.
What exactly does ora2 do? Does it just give you a seperate set of frames for tanks?
I've also noticed the buffer at the end of spell casts where I can start casting another one about 90% into the first cast but I wasn't sure if that was lag on my end or what. It would be interesting to see how quartz shows that.
Thanks again everyone, keep them coming if you have more input!
i personally like healbot, it allows one click healing without targeting, you can customize it to show who needs decursed and it puts everything in a small area....i love it in BG's it fades out out of range players so i dont try healing them all the time, and the one click is amazing, no more targeting then hitting a key binding. just plain and simple, just remember to reload the UI after you cange buttons around...works best with a 4 or 5 button mouse.
I'm pretty simple as far as healing goes. I use Decursive for poison/curse dispelling and oRA2 to keep track of tanks and that's it. As for unit-frames, XPerl has functionality similar enough to ag_Unitframes for me (aggro/healing highlighting) that I'm okay without it.