Healing UI's/Addons
 

Hello, I'm a 70 Draenei Shaman now specced resto. I'm still somewhat new to healing and while I can usually do my job fine with the current UI, I get the feeling it's more DPS-oriented. I've looked as screenshots from other raiders and see stuff that causes me to wonder what it is and if it could help me. One example of that is that raid group setup thing that looks like a bunch of square grids, I see alot of healers with it, no idea what it is though.

I was wondering if any healers (Shamans especially :D ) would like to share what they think greatly helps their healing efficiency, specially in raiding situations and such, whether it be just their UI setup or any particular addon.

Any input would be greatly appreciated (screenshots for ideas would be great too! :) ) Thanks!

Grid-like set up is called Grid, actually. :) It's available from this site, or you can get the most recent version from www.wowace.com/files

Combine Grid with Clique (also available from WoWI).

The thing with squares is probably
Grid
in conjuction with a click-casting addon like
Clique
or
Click2Cast
and (optional) plugins like
GridStatusHealer
GridSideIndicators
GridLayoutForHealers
GridStatusHots
GridAlert
etc...
More info on Grid at the wiki

Awesome, thanks for that link Seerah. I was wondering where everyone was getting all these other UI additions and things like eePanels (which I could not find previously) but had no idea where to look. I'll probably have fun messing around with that long list, I saw some of your SS', very nice, but a daunting list you have. :eek:

And thanks for the links Dridzt, exactly what I was looking for in terms of info on Grid. Thanks for the links to clique, looks like a very interesting and useful addon. :)

I was never a big fan of Grid, I found the squares too small to give me an idea of who it was that I was healing, I"m sure it's great I just never liked it.. I liked using sRaidFrames (as a note almost everything I list here, unless links are provided, are Ace2 addons) to give me general overview of the raid as a whole. I found RDX.Cid which looked cool and promising but really wasn't plausible for anything larger than a 10 man raid. I really have yet to throw a lot of time into RDX so maybe I can fool with it a bit more.

I'm the primary healer in our 10 mans so I definitely use Main Tank frames and a set of Player Target frames provided by ORA2. I can for the most part ignore the rest of the raid and focus heals on tanks plus my priority list of targets.

Also, I found Healbot Continued to be awesome. It needs some work to take into account the +healing my character has so that estimations aren't as far off but it's awesome for a 5 man run or even a 10 man. It needs a few other features like bar colouring when I need to disspell or abolish. As a shaman though it's just a totem if I remember correctly.

Frames are such a personal preference, if you like having the little grids so you can spot heal whomever needs it when they need it rather then needing to prioritize in your head based on name / class then Grid would probably be good for you, takes up less room which is always nice. I also have a Druid which I occasionally bring for off healing and DPS rather then my priest as a main healer (main healing is stressful!) and I actually just use a collection of player target frames to spot heal certain members to ease the pain of the main healers.

My 2 cents.

You can resize the squares in Grid, not only with scale, but also by width (maybe height, too). I have mine wider as rectangles, Increased the number of letters in the name to show to 5, and changed it so that health went down from right to left instead of top to bottom.

Top to bottom health bars irritated the living daylights outa me. To each their own, I was a long time user of CTRA (as was everyone I'm sure) so sRaid just worked well for me. Maybe once day when I get to larger raids (I can't take my healer to Gruul's yet, not the right gear and my tank doesn't need frames) I'll look at grid again for smaller more usable frames.

Yeah, I currently use CTRaid Frames, but I've begun to notice a lot of people who use other raid frames instead, so it sparked my curiousity. :p

Pitbull, if the Raid portion works for you. The healing estimator plugin is great. Combine it with Clique and you are set.

For raiding, click casting and grids for raiding ive been using kilk, the follow up to clickheals from before the BTS patch, Has it all in one mod and is very customizable. Cant say if its better or worse then any of the suggestions here. It suits my style and i suggest it purely based on that. Unfortunately its not available from wowinterface.

One thing that I like to do is create healing macros that allow me to "mouseover" a frame, character on my screen, etc. that I can heal using the macro. They are a lifesaver in PvE and PvP alike. I don't have to change my target with the macros that I set up this way.

I set up macros for my cleansing / decursing spells as well; I even have a shadow priest that I have fun with using a macro to purge buffs and such. :D

Another useful addon is one called Spellbinder (you can find it here: http://www.wowinterface.com/download...fo.php?id=5614) that allows you to set your spells and macros directly. Pretty cool stuff.

Same for me. ^^

I tested "Grid" as well (in combination with Clique), but I never got used to that style of unitframe (and healing). So I switched back to "sRaidFrames", and I absolutely love it. Me playing a paladin, I also use "Smart(De)Buff" (right now I'm testing "Decursive" again, which I used before). Oh, and "Bartender3" and its "Selfcast"-option is a big help for me as well. Whenever I wanna cast a spell on my char, I just use the right mousebutton. Very easy usage in hectic raid situations. ;)

Well, those are the addons I couldn't raid without as a healing class. The "end product" looks like this then: