Three (Healing) Addons to Rule Even More

Yes, more useful healing addons right here.

The most popular post on this blog was posted a year ago, and it's time for continuation of the oh-still-so-valid Two (Healing) Addons to Rule Them All.

In the previous installment of "healing addons that rule" series, I highlighted two essential ones: Quartz and VisualHeal.

A year after Quartz is still the best casting bar there is, so go get that if you for some non-sense reason haven't already! (Even if you are not a healer, Quartz is for you, as it has has useful plugins, like flight time and tradeskill timer)

VisualHeal is also still an essential addon, but note that several addons (including the most popular raid frames addons like X-Perl and Pitbull) use LibHealComm-3.0 too, so check if you have one installed already.

VisualHeal, PitBull, BunchOfBars, oUF, Grid, PerfectRaid, ag_unitframes, X-Perl and sRaidFrames all use LibHealComm-3.0 for communicating healing. Ideally all healers in the group should have VisualHeal or another addon that uses LibHealComm-3.0 installed. VisualHeal will continue to function even if some healers don't have it, but it will not be aware of healing cast by these players.

Three (Healing) Addons to Rule Even More

After you have Quartz and VisualHeal (directly or through LibHealComm-3.0), you'll be wanting these three too:
Clique
Grid
SmartBuff

Why these, you ask?

Clique

Easy mouseover casting

When healing in a party you can manage targeting each player and casting a spell to'em, but on raids you will need simple mouseover casting (which helps you in 5-man teams too). And Clique makes setting up your keystroke+mouseclick shortcuts to all your spells so simple that adding tailored macroes yourself would be a waste of time.

Grid

Very compact and highly customizable unit frame

Grid gives you compact view to the whole party/raid, and through some configuration, you'll have all the information you on one glance. For example, you can see who has your renew or Prayer of Mending on them and if you need to recast one soon, see incoming heals to the whole raid (as all healers are using VisualHeal or some mentioned LibHealComm-3.0 addon right?).

If you setup your unit-frames nicely, you can go without Grid, but I like it's compact view a lot, and use it as my only raid frame. And Grid works superbly with Clique, so there you do, get'em both :)

SmartBuff

Super easy buffing

I don't want to check if someone needs that Stam or Spirit buff, or if I should renew my well-fed buff, or even worse, have someone in the raid shoud "Stam buff please!". Smartbuff does it for me, and all I have to do is roll my mousewheel and it's all done. This way I always have my Inner Fire up and the lone one who took one for the team at last boss gets the needed buffs from me before we rush on. Works for all classes.

Bonus Addon

Some people say you don't need Decursive if configure and set-up Grid as your decurse/cleanse point, but I like to have those curses and sicknesses in different area of the screen, so I prefer Decursive. Every class with any curse- and/or disease-removing abilities, should have this.

Where to Download Addons

Download the addons from wow.curse.com or WoWUI or any site you prefer (those two are the biggest and get fast updates for the popular addons)

You also want to set-up a system to automatically check updates for your addons, because to avoid using old/buggy version, and skip the manual work of checking, downloading and installing the new versions.

Unfortunately WoW Ace Updater is no longer with us, as wowace integrated with curse.com, and for me, curse updater just isn't very good (tbh, it sucks big time).

But you have at least two great options: Wowmatrix being the most popular I believe, and WUU - WoW UI Updater which I'm using at the moment (because I happened to find that before wowmatrix).

Both Wowmatrix and WUU support all the possible addon sites and give you one-click version check and update of the addons while at it = Less time updating addons, more time enjoying the game you love.

More "Healing Addons That Rule"

Two (Healing) Addons to Rule Them All

Do Not Downrank that Heal (to Save Mana)!

10 months ago and at level 70 downranking your heals was a standard way to save mana, e.g. by spamming downranked Greater Heal continuously but still staying with almost full mana (because of mana cost and mana regen).

However, this all changed in the patch 3.0.2 (Downranking from WoWWiki) :

With the release of patch 3.0.2, downranking was essentially eliminated for its ability to conserve mana, as all spells are now reliant on current base mana. It can still be used as a choice should a player want to use a faster spell

So if you downrank your heal, you'll be using the same amount of mana but heal a lot less. Generally this is a bad thing (there are exceptions, if downrank is faster to cast but this is pretty rare).

And this is exactly what I did all the way from level 70 to 80, and even *on* the level 80. I downranked all my heals, I was healing about 2/3 of my max heals but I was using the same amount of mana. I did Heroic Culling of Stratholme like this (not easy), I did Spider Wing of Naxxramas like this. Basically using level 70 heals all the way.

Why?

For the sake of it? Because I'm crazy? Well, yes, but that's not the case here.

I use combination of addons called Grid and Clique for my heals. Grid is super simple, but modifiable, group/raid frame. And Clique enables you to bind any spell in your spell book to keypress-combinations used with different mouseclicks & cast them on mouseover (so no "targeting" in a sense). All this works beautifully apart from this one small thing...

When you "map" a spell with Clique (e.g. by holding down Alt and right-clicking a spell in spellbook with Clique config open, that spell is mapped to Alt + Right-click), it essentially maps the certain *rank* of that spell. Now you probably see why I was using level 70 heals all the way...

I've been using Clique for a very long time, so of course, I had mapped my level 70 heals to it. In came the expansion, I never went to see Clique's config - why should I, spells were already mapped and I was mostly dps leveling my way up - so all the spells were at level 70 rank.

I'm so happy the fellow priests noticed this when we were doing Naxxramas (don't remember the exacts, but I was throwing 7-8k crit Greater Heals, when it should be closer to 11-14k range). So I remapped all my spells and now it's good.

Conclusion: Addons are very helpful, but don't rely on them to work as you think they work, make sure they do :)

Zemalf out, See You in Northrend!

Two (Healing) Addons to Rule Them All

The most useful healing addons right here. Individual needs and preferences apply, but these ones I love the most.

I'm addon "freak", I use them a lot, so I reckoned to make another topic out of it.

I'm constantly tuning my UI, removing unused addons and adding new ones. I like it simple but my screen always ends up cluttered, as I feel that I need this and that.

I prefer Ace addons, as they're constantly maintained (a blessing after patches). With WowAceUpdater it's easy to install new addons and it keeps all my installed Ace addons up-to-date with single click. As all Ace addons use the same library, the addons are lightweight for cpu (compared to having same number of independent addons)

I use Omen and BigWigs, which help a lot in raids/groups.

I have Pitbull unitframes (even more important after, for some reason, my Grid started malfunctioning).

For heals I use Clique (different mouse clicks with different modifiers (alt/ctrl/shift) to do mouseover heals on frames/player).

For decursing I use, well, Decurse. And tons more (e.g. Fubar,Bartender3,Buffalo2,AuctioneerAdvanced,etc)

But if I would recommend two addons to all healers (and all casters, and they benefit melee too), it would be these:

Quartz
VisualHeal

Here's why Quartz and VisualHeal are sooo good:

Shamelessly ripped from my own posts on several forums (as I love these addons so much I'd love to more people getting the benefits, and as they will benefit even more if others would use them too).

QUARTZ

CastingBar

Holy efficiency! I stumbled upon this castingbar replacer - and even that it's very very simple - Quartz is absolutely, hands-on, the best addon I've ever seen!

Why?

Because Quartz adds "latency" to your casting bar. Without going into any client-server jargon, you're normal casting bar is showing how your client sees the casting time, but because of latency, your spell is actually going off at server before your casting bar reaches the end.

What this means? And How Quartz helps.

It means that if you have 200ms latency for example, you can see that visualized in Quartz and start your next spell / action 0.2s before your casting bar is actually full and the spell still goes off! So with ten spells, you have saved 2 seconds. With 500 dps, that's free 1000 damage more. make it 100 spells and it's 10000 damage! And all this just by tackling the latency with Quartz. If you experience 500ms of such latencies, it comes even better! Don't let lag and latency get you, get Quartz

VisualHeal

Healing Visualizer for both Healers and the ones healed

For healers: VisualHeal shows where target's health will end up after the heal hits
--> cancel unnecessary casts which would cause too much overheal

+ it shows if someone else has same target and is also casting heal on it
and it adds all this to the estimated health after your heal hits --> you can cancel cast if it would mean too much overheal, as the other healer has the target covered.

For others: VisualHeal shows incoming heals to you = where your health will end up when heal hits you --> can use abilities accordingly.
- low health & no heals coming? better use some "saving" ability!
- low health, but two heals incoming. Great! Keep pounding.

For all this to work, everyone needs VisualHeal, so once again, get it!
Must for healers. Recommended for everyone else too

+ VisualHeal shows up in unitframes too if they support it (PitBull does), so if every healer uses VisualHeal, it can be easily seen who is not healed yet = less parallel healing

So I'd say that every healer (if not everyone) should install VisualHeal (make the bar invisible if you want, but do have it). I'd think it will help you and your guild a lot, especially in 25-mans.

Where to Download Addons

Get WowAceUpdater! Keeps your addons up-to-date, and easy installs for every Ace addon. That is the best way to get Quartz and VisualHeal (and Omen, BigWigs + loads of other goodies), and keep them up-to-date.

EDIT: Unfortunately WoW Ace Updater is no longer with us, as wowace integrated with curse.com, and for me, curse updater just isn't very good (tbh, it sucks big time). New and improved alternatives for easy addon maintenance: Wowmatrix and WUU - WoW UI Updater.

There are many other places too to get addons, like Curse.com (they also have installer, which isn't nearly as good as WowAceUpdater) and WoWInterface.

More "Healing Addons That Rule"

Three (Healing) Addons to Rule Even More

Don't Break My Shackle!

Especially in Karazhan Shacking is Priest's bread and butter. Dwarf Priest intro/guide to the Priest Crowd Control is good place to start.

Set up your focus macro for both shackling and emergency re-shackle using netherweb net (if you're tailor) and your set to go.

But I just wish there would be some way to make people not to break my shackle :) That's the one reason, I always hit BINGO in Karazhan.

I'm now using CCBreaker (attaches to Fubarnicely) to both get one more way to get warning about shackles breaking and get history who keeps breaking my shackles - so I can try to educate them to not to do it in the future (Paladin Consecration is the hardest as they don't have to target the shackled foe). Just reminding "don't break my shackle" usually works, but when it doesn't it causes so much irritation (and wipes, when things go bad).

I guess I could also use Tattle addon or similar addon to rant about the breakage "live".

So everyone - don't break shackles (or any other crowd control for that matter)

How we make our gold

This topic was inspired by discussion thread at Auctioneer Addon Forums : "How we make our gold using Auctioneer"

I play a Dwarf Priest, specced Holy. So I heal, and grinding for money is both hard and boring for me. So how do I finance my raiding, gear and everything in between?

I use Auctioneer addon, or to be more precise, a collection of addons called Auctioneer Advanced Suite. The bundle consists of all kinds of tools to create profit in the virtual economy of World of Warcraft. For example, there are tools to buy items for disenchant and disenchant those items one by one. In short, all the tools are there to find profitable items from Auction House: either for resale, disenchant (to sell the disenchanted materials), prospecting, etc.

So always before and after I log in with my main, I log in to one of my Alts, who sits at one of the main cities (near auction house/bank). I go to Auction House, and start scanning the items there and start buying items that I can make profit from. When done, I go to mail box, get all items out, disenchant the ones I want, head back to Auction House, and place everything on sale (unless prices are very low at that point). This takes about 5-15 minutes per log-in, so I use about half an hour daily for this and make anything from tens to hundreds to thousands of gold weekly with only buying and selling items others have collected/grinded.

Sometimes I find super-bargains, where items worth 1000g is put on sale for 100g or even 50g. But most of my profits come from buying disenchantable items cheaply, disenchanting them and selling the materials. Sometimes I buy materials for crafting professions, like leatherworking or tailoring, create some items either for sale or to be disenchanted.

All this has given me heaps of gold, epic mount, all the materials/recipes/items gearing up I have needed to buy. I don't have to think about "can I afford to buy" potions/elixirs/flasks/other consumables, I just get what I need and want, and I know when to buy'em with good price, as I have data what they usually sell for.

Like said, I don't like to grind for primals/herbs/ore/leather, but I enjoy playing at Auction House so much, that I think I wouldn't play WoW so much if there wasn't well implemented Auction House and so great addon(s) for it.

If you want to join the fun, head to the Auctioneer Addon website, download the latest preview version, check the forums there for latest tips and start learning your way around the addon when you get in the game.

So are you an auction house addict like me?

How do you make your gold?