Improving Raid Awareness

[Tony]

As talked about in Shadow's Fireside Chat, a few things were mentioned about raid awareness. I know that when I first started in this guild, I had no idea what I was doing. I ran a few addons, and thought that I was doing my best.

I can tell you this. You may be doing your best, but there are so many tools out there that will 'make' you do better. Not to say that you yourself can do better. Think of this like "Would you fix a car with a socket set and a hammer, or a air ratchet and a blow torch? It's all about having the right tools, and consider this a thread where we can discuss what has worked best for us, and hopefully that might help others.

There are a few things that go into being a successful raider. I would like to state right now, that I am not, and never will be the best, but what I do know has helped me become "very good at what I do". The first and most important thing, is being "aware" of what is going on around you. Using the default blizzard interface is not going to help you much. Using addons to change your interface, will allow you to focus more on doing what you are supposed to be doing. Here is a picture of my UI. I have changed my interface more times than I can remember, and this one has stuck the longest. It is a UI pack from wowinterface.com called DegausserUI. If you look at the original, you will see that I have changed a few things around. That is mostly just a prefference thing, but it helps out for a melee class.




As you can see, I play on a pretty high resolution monitor. It really doesnt matter what size you use, everything is adjustable. A few addons that I think are IMPARATIVE are theses

Deadly Boss Mods
This is a mod that tells you what to do, and when to do it. Even if you know what is going on, it's still good to have a reminder. There are other boss mods out there such as BigWigs and Deus Vox. I personally prefer DBM, but they all do pretty much the same thing.

Dominos
This is a basic bar mod, that allows you to move your bars anywhere you want. This is a must have to track cool downs and bring your attacks up closer to the middle so that you arent looking down at the bottom of your screen all the time. I know what you're thinking Tris, keybinders dont have to do that, but we'll get into that in a minute. As you can see in my UI, I have all of my main attacks right below my character so that I am more 'aware' of what is coming off cd next. Above that, I have a few less important things such as bubble, cleanse, HoF and other things of that nature. The key is, the more important a spell is, the more carefully you have to track it. Dominos allows you to put that tracking system wherever you want.

Omen Threat Meter
Just a way to track threat. It's a MUST HAVE!

MSBT
Or, Miks Scrolling Battle Text is used to get all that green/yellow/white clutter OUT of the middle of your screen, and off to the sides so that you can see what is under you or the target you are focusing on at the time.

AzCastbar
This one isnt labled in my ss, but you can see it right above my dominos set up, am casting my hearth stone. This is just a basic Cast Bar addon. If you are a casting class of any kind, or assigned to do interrupts, and you dont have a cast bar mod of any kind, you need to get one NOW. It will help you, and the other raiders you are with.

Satrina Buff Frames
Or SBF, is used to move your buffs around and customize what they look like.

Recount
Tracks many things related to damage and healing. It's not that big of a deal since we use WoL, but if you are wanting to improve your performance, this is a great tool to help you do that.

Grid
This is a life savor for people that need to cast spells on helpful targets. Weather that be heals, hands, taunts, anything related to friendly targets, this addon is AMAZING!

Clique
Combined with grid and any other unit frame mods, this allows you to assign click's to your mouse to cast spells on that frame. A heal, a cleanse or whatever you use the most, or feel the need to have most readily available to you. It's much like mousover macros, just a little easier to set up.

Stuf
Finally, a unit frame mod I can understand! I love this one, particularly how easy it is to use. It's perfect, and has a config for everything. I don't use all of it, but what I do use, is so easy it's almost too easy.

There are a ton more helpfull addons in that particular pack at wowinterface, these are just a few that I think are very important. Most (if not all) can be found in our Addon Update Thread found in the Addons/Mods/Macros section of the forums. These are updated as soon if not before curse or wowace, simply because (and I am convinced of this) our GM actually writes all of them.


I know what you're asking yourself right now if you've actually read to this point. How do I get all that stuff to work? Well, if you clicked on the DegausserUI link, you will see instructions on EXACTLY how to set this up. This one is made for my resolution, and there are many customized 'minimal' mod packs for every resolution known to man, some of which support multiple resolutions. There are also a lot of people in our guild that are very knowledgeable about this stuff, so just ask! Throw me a message in game, or ask here, or email me. I wont hesitate to help you, because in the end, it will help everyone.


This thread will be a work in progress, and I will do my best to share as much information with you as possible

[Tony]

reserved for macros

[Tony]

reserved for keybinding

[Shadowwolf]

While I dont dictate what addons everyone has to use, for Boss Mods, I still encourage and stress BigWigs for many reasons. Primarily, its more accurate, the update frequency of BW compared to DBM is huge. DBM gets a change once every few months and BW is updated for accuracy almost weekly. Im not here to turn this into a BW v DBM debate because these are all good suggestions, just that with the vast majority of the guild using BW, having everyone using it improves its accuracy more since it syncs. Theres no harm in using both either, as DBM has some smack you in the face to wake you up on important events features that BW doesnt do as well with.

[Tony]

The only reason I am currently using DBM, is because it was included with DegausserUI. I prefer Deus Vox, but will most likely change my UI to BW tonight.

[Grendeel]

Well im all for what has been said about raiding in these threads.  Mods to me are a different issue.  I dont pretend to be the best player, but i do ok.  Im sure a couple mods would help me out but in general (for dps anyway), most of the mods people use arent "necessary" imo.  A blizzard UI has more than enough tools to allow a dpser to raid effectively.  I know i use it.  In fact there is only one mod I consider vital for raiding which is bigwigs.  I do use recount, but as Fie pointed out its not necessary because Shadow provides us logs of all fights.  I also use Forte (?) as a dot timer which also isnt necessary.  I still use the debuff icons on the boss from the blizzard UI  to reapply my dots.  The Forte i use more for self proccing buffs but this also can still be done through the blizz UI (just harder imo). Ora2.  I use this to permanently have tanks targets easily clickable for me. Omen for aggro warnings. I dont recall atm any other raiding mods i use.  (note that this is from a dps perspective..i suspect healing would require a couple more mods)

Things the blizzard UI can do for you

Track dots to reapply them
Pull out individual tanks to assist from
Create a focus target
Pull out all people in the raids
Aggro warnings  (even targets you arent attacking)
Shows people in range for buffs
Action bars at the bottom of the screen and up the right hand side
Blizzard has cast bars for enemies you are attacking or you could use the focus feature and have the same thing

Several other things i cant think of atm

The point is this: Although mods can make life easier raiding, the vast majority of them arent necessary. Most of what is needed can be done through the blizzard UI

I say this because some find mods very complicated, overwhelming, and frustrating.  For many players in this game, im sure mods are second nature and might not realize this.

[fiere redfern]

I say this because some find mods very complicated, overwhelming, and frustrating.

QFT. I'm not a fan of the pre-made mods, in particular. I've found them generally to be tailor-made to a specific system, with little to no support for people with different screen resolutions or video performance than their own, and so practically impossible to use without a -lot- of tweaking. My advice is, if you want to try and improve your performance through AddOns, make a grocery list of what you're looking for and see if we host them here before you go looking elsewhere. That way you can be confident you won't be downloading anything "extra" and there are guaranteed to be at least a few members of the guild who are familiar with what you're looking for.