Grid is a compact and highly configurable party/raid unit frame addon. A compact grid of units lets you select a group member quickly, while retaining a good overview of the whole group. It displays as much information as possible without overloading the user. It allows you to customize what information you see, and how that information is displayed.
Grid includes status modules for health, mana, incoming heals, aggro/threat, buffs and debuffs, and range. It supports pets and vehicles. Each unit's frame is a health bar, with additional statuses overlaid on top. Information can be displayed using the center text, the center icon, the frame border, the frame opacity, or the colored square in each of the four corners.
Finally, Grid is written in a modular fashion that makes it easy for developers to add new status modules, new display indicators, or even completely new features.
Options are available from the minimap button or DataBroker launcher, or from the command line by typing /grid.
Due to its flexible design, Grid has a fairly daunting configuration menu. We recommend taking a few minutes to look through the configuration and familiarize yourself with the options available to you.
There is also a small User's Guide which you may find helpful.
If you downloaded Grid from wowace.com, please don't post here. The WoWInterface releases are actually tested. Anything from wowace.com is bleeding-edge and may or may not work.
How to report a bug in Grid
Please use the WowAce bug tracker to report problems with Grid. If you don't have an account on WowAce (hint: if you have an account on Curse, you can use it to log into WowAce), you can post a comment here as a last resort.
Before reporting a bug, check the bug tracker to see if someone else has already reported it.
Once you've verified that the bug hasn't been reported yet, submit a new ticket.
Be sure to include the following information in your ticket:
Grid version (ex: 1.30200.2009120101 from wowinterface.com)
WoW version (ex: 3.2.2 enUS)
What you were doing when the bug occured
What happened (ie. what the bug is)
Any error messages (enable Lua error display, or install BugSack)
A screenshot if it is a graphical bug
Design Overview
Grid is based on the concept of statuses and indicators. A status is a piece of information, such as a unit's health. An indicator is a part of the unit frame that can display information, such as the health bar.
More than one status can be assigned to one indicator, and one status can be assigned to more than one indicator. This is where the priority system comes into play. Each status is assigned a priority level. Each indicator will show the highest-priority status active at any given time.
For example: The Power Word: Shield and Weakened Soul statuses show you when those auras (buffs or debuffs) are active on a particular unit. If you assign both statuses to the Bottom Left Corner indicator, and give them priority levels of 90 and 80, respectively, then when you cast Power Word: Shield on a unit, you will only see the Power Word: Shield status, until the shield is absorbed or expires, at which time you will then see the Weakened Soul status until it ends.
Credits
Pastamancer: core, complete conversion to OO, modules
Maia: initial concept, UI design, status modules
Phanx: official maintainer
Mikk: icon
kaybe: german localization
JoshBorke: API documentation
Jerry: Pet support
Julith: HealComm usage
Change Log - Grid
1.30300.1265
Fixed settings related to incoming heals not updating when changing profiles
Fixed range checking in esES/esMX locales
Changed versioning scheme, because Pasta's was too damn long!
1.30300.2009121801
Added default settings for Forbearance, Lifebloom, and Riptide
Added X-WoWI-ID field to TOC for WoWInterface's MMOUI Minion
Updated esES and esMX translations (Guiaswow @ CurseForge)
Updated TOC for WoW 3.3
1.30200.20090120101
The selected Battleground layout will now be used in outdoor PvP combat zones (eg. Wintergrasp).
The text of the Unit Health status now shows the unit's current health instead of the unit's missing health.
Fixed an issue causing performance degradation when group members are using addons which repeatedly change their character's title.
Fixed an issue causing range filtering on individual statuses to prevent those statuses from ever appearing.
Fixed an issue preventing debuffs with the same name as their type (eg. Poison) from triggering the appropriate Debuff Type status.
1.30100.2009041601
Fixed nil error in GridStatusAggro
Updated for 3.1
1.30000.2009021101
Separate layout presets for normal and heroic raids.
Mouseover highlight can now be disabled under Frame -> Advanced.
Adding a debuff by name will once again prevent it from triggering the associated debuff type status.
Added tooltip for drag tab.
Added option to hide drag tab when unlocked and revert to old dragging behavior.
By Group 5 layouts sort by index and *should* only show your party in a raid or bg.
Better handling of cross-realm units.
Code cleanups.
Misc. performance improvements.
1.30000.2009011501
Please update any status or layout addons you are using. Some of the important new features in this version are not backwards compatible.
Handles multiple units with the same name (Malygos drakes, hunter pets, etc.).
..... Vehicles in battlegrounds and raids are displayed as pets.
Separate layout options for solo, group, raid, battleground, and arenas.
Improved aura handling
..... Can show only buffs you've cast.
..... Can show duration for buffs and debuffs on the center icon indicator.
Improved aggro status: can now show threat levels like the default UI.
Added readycheck status.
Added drag handle when Grid is unlocked.
Disabled statuses properly unregister events so they do not consume cpu time.
1.30000.2008112401
Added esMX locale.
Updated RosterLib to teach it about vehicles.
No longer registers '/gr' as a slash command. Use '/grid' instead which has always worked.
Added Death Knights to the By Class layout (I forgot to add them to the By Class w/Pets layout, that'll be fixed in the next release).
1.30000.2008101802
Fixed bug when icon border size is set to 0
1.30000.2008101801
Updated Roster-2.1 to prevent errors in arenas.
1.30000.2008101601
New versioning scheme
Updated for WotLK
r66550
Improved incoming heal support via LibHealComm-3.0.
Improved range checking now allows for multiple ranges to be checked.
r60382
Added pet support (Sometimes pet frames will not have any information and will target an unknown unit. There's nothing we can do about it.)
Updated to LibBanzai-2.0
Misc bugfixes.
r50615
Updated for 2.2
Added voice chat status module from Halgrimm.
r24388
Updated for 2.0.3
Remove center text 2 indicator from the menu if it's disabled.
Updated to Roster-2.1 and Banzai-1.1. This will break any Grid addons that depended on Roster-2.0 and Banzai-1.0! It also improves performance, so it's worth it.
Use CastCommLib for communicating incoming heals.
Added status for Feign Death.
Layout now reloads when switching between solo/party/raid/battleground. This should fix raid groups not showing up occasionally.
Made range module more friendly to addon developers.
Grid does not include power bars, as an intentional design choice. Power bars add a lot of visual clutter, but don't add much valuable information. In nearly every situation, the built-in Low Mana status is a better tool.
For example, if you're a druid, your main use of group member mana information is to help you decide when (and on whom) to use Innervate; if you set the Low Mana threshold to 40%, then anyone you see that status on can fully benefit from Innervate. (The 40% figure assumes that the average mana pool in your raid is at least 25k.) When you don't need the information (eg. when someone's mana is too high to benefit from Innervate) it's not taking up space on your screen.
If you're a shaman, your main use of group member mana information is to help you decide when to use Mana Tide Totem; since Mana Tide restores 24% of a player's mana bar (or 28% if glyphed), setting the Low Mana status to activate below 70% would give you an accurate picture of when your group's mana is low enough to benefit. Personally, my main is a shaman healer, and I use a Low Mana threshold of 30% to further reduce clutter, since most of the time I'm not actually going to cast it at 70%. Again, when you don't need the information, it's not cluttering up your screen.
Anyway, if you really believe you can't play effectively without mana bars on your raid frames, you can add them to Grid with a plugin. You should be able to find it by searching this site for "grid".
I've been pouring over the config menu (maybe I'm just blind), but I can't figure out how to get the power/mana bars to show up on the bottom of each unit, like Zara has on her UI.
Originally posted by Phanx Layout > uncheck Horizontal Groups
Thank you so much for this answer (and for not poking me for missing the obvious). I guess I was too caught up on how the anchoring affected group growth.
I feel as if I must be overlooking something, but I cannot figure out how to get my groups to grow vertically. To elaborate, say I have the grid frames showing just myself. Someone joins my party and their frame goes to the right of mine and the next person goes to the right of theirs, etc. What I want is for the party members to show up above or below me and grow vertically. I've tried all the different anchoring options, and none of them seem to make a difference in this. Is this possible, and if so, how?
ETA: At the moment, I'm only dealing with healing 5-mans, so the positioning of the next groups isn't necessarily relevant. I would imagine, though, in my preferred scenario that groups would be added horizontally.
There are several HoT- and custom-aurarelated plugins that may meet your needs, using gradients or other visual means to convey count and duration information. You may also be able to find a plugin that adds square-style indicators that do show duration spirals.
Regardless, duration spirals will not be added to square-style indicators in the Grid core.
As for stack count colors, there's no practical general solution that could be implemented, since every stackable buff/debuff has a different number of stacks, and there's no way to retreive the maximum stack count via the API. Plugins that support stack count colors do so by hard-coding in the maximum count for each specific aura they support.
Hot's are the big thing... currently it's either "you cannot see the duration" or "use an icon instead of an indicator" or "a textual countdown." Things like knowing the duration on Weakend Soul so you can make a decision as to whether you should heal now or wait and PWS helps as well... I use it for beacon of light on my paladin too.
Is it slightly more visually complex than not having any duration information available to you? Slightly, yes. But it's far less visually complex/area consuming than using icons for all of your hots or, worst of all, trying to cram text into the little grid box.
Injector doesn't have an OmniCC countdown or anything - just the spiral. It's the simplest/most elegant way of knowing the time on my hots and short-term buffs that I've found. Injector also does color-coding based on how many charges of something are left (so earth shield on my shaman for instance, the duration spiral lets me know how long the buff has, and the color of it lets me know how many stacks are left) which is awesome, but not nearly as important/awesome as the duration sweeps. It's just one of those things that, once you start using them, you never want to go back :-D
That said, I really do miss proper vehicle support and that little background frame that I can drag around in Grid.
No; you would need to find a plugin that added indicators with that functionality. As aura durations are very rarely important factors in making effective realtime decisions, the value of this information does not generally outweigh the additional visual complexity of displaying it, so it's not something that will be added to the core addon.
However, this is exactly why Grid was written from the ground up with extensibility in mind — the core can stay slim, while offering additional features to those who want them. If you can be more specific about which auras you feel you need duration timers for, and why, I may be able to point you in the direction of a relevant plugin for Grid that could meet your needs.
Is there any way to get the indicators to show the duration spirals like they can in Injector? (indicators, not icons). That's the one "killer feature" keeping me using Injector for now; I'd love to come home to grid.
I was wondering if for the next update, you could add the ability to make the health drain sideways.
I like my grid to be more elongated sideways than straight up and down, or a box so if you could just make it so i can make it drain sideways, that would be awesome.
Originally posted by Phanx Yes; you need to enable a range that your rogue can check. You're most likely using the 40-yard range check on your druid and shaman; however, rogues don't have any spells that can be used on friendly targets that have a range of 40 yards, so it's not possible for Grid to perform a 40-yard range check on your rogue. The next time you log onto your rogue, enable the 38-yard range check; that's the distance checked by the Blizzard "check interact distance" function, so it's available to all classes.
When you log onto a class where a 40-yard range check is possible, Grid will only activate the 40-yard range check, even if the 38-yard range check is also enabled in your settings, so you can use the same profile on both your druid/shaman and your rogue, without worrying that you're doubling up on range checks.
I've been playing around with these settings a bit.
On my healing classes, when the "More than 40 yards away" option is checked, the frame alpha works. When unchecked, the frames never fade regardless of how far away party members are or what other range options are checked.
On my other toons, none of the ranged options work at all (I tried the 10, 28, 38 and 100).
Grid's static memory usage is fairly high due to its reliance on the Ace2 framework. However, it's important to note that static memory usage has almost no impact on game performance at all. On a modern machine, you will not notice any drop in framerate due to any amount of static memory usage; it really does not matter whether an addon uses 1 KB of memory, or 100 MB. If static memory usage is what you're worried about, then you're worried for no reason. You might as well be worried about being eaten by a grue IRL.
Factors that do actually have an impact on performance are increasing memory usage (the rate at which additional memory is consumed) and CPU usage. The nature of Grid, or any other unit frame addon, means that it will use some CPU cycles and memory, as frames and other UI objects take up space in memory, and there are many events which the addon must respond to in order to update the frames with current information.
To answer your specific questions, no, there is no way to disable the configuration, and even if you made the necessary changes to make Grid load-on-demand, you'd only be delaying the allocation of memory, not preventing or reducing it.
TLDR: No, and stop worrying about static memory usage.
