PowerAuras: Linking Auras

So hopefully by now you, dear reader, have discovered the wonders of the AddOn PowerAuras. This wonderful little mod has an incredible array of usefulness from buff and debuff tracking to cooldown, health and mana monitoring. If you aren't familiar with the basic setup you can check out my other entry on the subject, PowerAuras: The Best AddOn You've Never Used! for a quick rundown.

As I mentioned above, this incredibly versatile mod can help you out with a lot of tedious or hard to monitor UI elements, but each aura can only track one thing in one way at one time. The mod works like binary, meaning an aura can only be on or off... there's no in between. But what if you want an aura to display under a slightly more complicated set of conditions?

For instance, you may hear from a member of the Hunter class from time to time how clunky Aspect of the Viper is as a mana regeneration mechanic. Often a player will go through several pulls or even entire boss fights not realizing Viper has been left on long past it's usefulness! Unfortunately the only thing PowerAuras will be able to tell you with a single aura is whether the buff is on or not on. It won't tell you when your mana is full and Viper is still on - at least not with one aura!

This kind of complexity can be achieved, however, by linking multiple auras together. Think of each aura as a single condition. In the case of the Hunter's example above there would be a single condition for Aspect of the Viper being on and another condition for your mana level being at or above a certain threshold. By linking these two conditions together you can effectively use a single texture to display only when both of these conditions are met i.e. "Display my aura when Aspect of the Viper is on and my mana is above 90%".

I recently started DPSing on my Death Knight whom I specced into unholy some time ago. One of the more unintuitive aspects of unholy DPS is Bone Shield. The spell provides an increase to DPS while it's up, but can fade with damage and has a cooldown. A single aura to track this spell is impractical as the buff may have dropped, but the spell may still be on cooldown. This is another situation where linked auras can come in handy.

Linking Auras

First you'll want to set up an aura like normal. Pick a texture and color, then place and scale it to preference. For this example our first aura will be for activated by the buff Bone Shield.

Since I want to know when the buff is not active the invert checkbox is ticked and this aura is for my second spec so I've unchecked spec 1 down at the bottom of the page.

Next we'll close this aura and return to the main window. Click the copy button and then the character specific page currently highlighted on the top left to paste this aura into the same area. Now that you've copied the aura shift click the original to disable it(More on why we do this later). It's also helpful at this point to make note of the number in brackets in the tooltip for this disabled aura. For my own setup this number is 8.

Now open the newly copied aura (the one that wasn't disabled) so we can change the settings to match up to our second condition. For this example the second condition will be activated by My Spell Cooldown with the activating spell being Bone Shield once again. Make sure to uncheck the Invert box for this aura.

Now comes the part where we link the two auras.

You'll notice in the image to the left there is a highlighted text box. This box is unlabeled in the aura configuration, however on mouseover the tooltip will explain that this box is used to link the aura for multiple conditions.

This is where we'll enter the number of the aura we wish to link it to, in my case the aura number is 8.

That's it!

Now, earlier on we disabled the original aura. We do this because otherwise both auras would be displayed simultaneously. Since we copied the aura in the first place they'd be identical and the aura would simply appear less transparent as it's been doubled up. Disabling the first aura will prevent this from happening. Since the second aura is linked to the first it will not be displayed unless the conditions for both auras have been met.

Oobie's AddOn Roundup

I thought I'd take a break from my typical rants and raves about raiding etiquette and strategy to toot my own horn for a bit.

If you recall far enough back in my blogging career you may remember a post entitled Hello World: Your First AddOn. I decided not to follow up on that particular topic because, well, programming is not or everyone and isn't near as widely useful as much of the raiding topics that I tend to post on this blog. For me personally, I do enjoy the occasional visitation to the land of computer logic!

I am by no means an expert programmer, but I do know my way around basic computer logic and I've found many ways to apply that knowledge to AddOn authoring in WoW. My mods tend to be very lightweight and simplistic... but they do the job and do it well. And they do it without all the overhead added by all the bells and whistles of many more popular mods that perform the same task.

ChannelManager

ChannelManager is my most recent AddOn, being published for the first time the same day as this blog entry... and takes care of a very simple yet, in my opinion, highly valuable task. I tend to write mods that automate certain things that slip by under the radar and this mod is a perfect example of such.

What it does, simply put, is ensure that you are always in the channels you designate you want to be in. I don't know how many times my channels have mysteriously disappeared silently and I've only found out halfway through a raid when I've already missed some important discussion in a healing or tanking channel. The aim of this mod is to make sure this situation never happens again by automatically rejoining any channels you've lost.

LDB_AnkhTimer

Formerly known as StatBlock_AnkhTimer, this is an LDB plugin that displays your Ankh count (if you aren't glyphed to remove the reagent cost) and the time left until Reincarnation finishes it's cooldown.

BlueButtons

Truth be told, BlueButtons is not even really an AddOn.

In point of fact BlueButtons is a skin for the default interface. Meaning instead of code being run in game the files in BlueButtons overwrite the files used by the default interface to change the appearance of the red interface buttons to a Wrath of the Lich King themed blue.

Readiness

Readiness was born in a time when the ready check sound was a very quiet drum sound effect. What it does is provide an interface for you to choose a custom sound file to play for ready checks.

The mod comes loaded with a host of custom sounds, more of which can be added by modifying the config section in the mods lua file.

WoWGate

WoWGate has no configuration and works right out of the box. What it does is play a sound effect when a mage in your group or raid opens a portal. The sound effect also plays when a Death Gate opens if you are a Death Knight.

OobieUI

Last, but certainly not least is my complete UI, ready for download by any interested party!

I can't claim each and every mod in this compilation is mind - not by a long shot - but many of them have been modified to work slightly differently than they do out of the box in keeping with how I've set my UI up to work.

Many of the mods come ready to use as much of my interface's configuration is done in the actual lua files, but most mods that aren't have a profile names Oobiedoo - Ysera that can be enabled to import my settings.

Healing Tools: Grid

The duty of a DPS is rather simple all things considered. Granted, there are some not-so-obvious hallmarks of a good DPS but the level of complexity that I went into in the blog entry linked above shows where the truly great players can really shine. Beyond these intricacies, all a DPS really has to do is repeat a spell rotation or skill priority to maximize damage done.

Now compare that baseline role to that of a healer and a very different schema comes to light. The baseline job of a healer is to keep the raid alive. Granted, there are many instances where folks not standing in fire or ignoring fight mechanics can make that expectation impossible to meet, but assuming your raid group is performing well, there is somewhat of a hidden level to "keeping the raid alive".

The classic game of whack-a-mole has evolved within Blizzard's encounter design over the years from Molten Core where often healers would either be assigned to heal their group or a tank to nowadays where pretty much everybody has to contribute to raid and tank healing to ensure success.

The Hidden Layer

So what is it that separates the true healers from the..... combat medics? I mean aside from using the venom from a single alien creature to take care of pretty much every virus, infection and tick infestation the far side of the universe can offer....

Damage comes in, and heals go out, we all know this. The truly skilled healers know when damage is about to come in and react accordingly with shield, HoTs or priming* their heals.

Much unlike DPS, healing is not an all or none game. When you want DPS on a target you want as much as possible as fast as possible. When you want healing you want it fast... but you don't want too much. Extra heals not only mean wasted mana, but they could potentially cause a death in the raid if a healer is focusing on the wrong target to heal at the wrong time.

I Give You... Grid!

Grid is by no means a new mod. Personally, I've been using it since back during The Burning Crusade when it was the mod for raid healing. Nowadays folks have Healbot and Vuhdo that come loaded with tons of extra features all rolled into one. For this raider, however, a combination of Grid and Clique are all you need.

It comes with all the normal bells and whistles that healers need: fading out of range targets, pre-configured cleansing indicators, aggro indicators, class coloring... and with the addition of Clique healing spells can be bound to your mouse clicks for ease of casting in combat.

Why Grid?

What I like about grid over other raid frame windows is the custom indicator setup. Each part of the raid frame has an indicator that can be loaded up with all kinds of buff and debuff indicators, which can be prioritized in the event two indicators are active at the same time.

Pair this up with the ability to add a custom buff or debuff and all of a sudden a wide array of boss encounter information is being displayed right on your raid frame and you know, for instance, which 3 people in your grid window have been linked by Pact of the Darkfallen during the Blood Queen encounter.

In the example above I've set my Grid frame borders to display the three pact targets as a pink color. And whenever I see this during the encounter I know to start slinging chain heals on these three targets as they'll be running right up to each other, making my job much simpler.

Some other examples of excellent buffs/debuff monitoring in Icecrown Citadel are: "Frost Beacon" during Sindragosa, "Harvest Soul" during the Lich King and "Bone Spike" for heroic Lord Marrowgar (The Bone Spikes don't deal damage during the encounter on normal mode so it's not necessary to track them). In terms of buffs I've found it extremely helpful to add the buff "Essence of the Blood Queen" while I'm DPSing as it makes it much easier to identify raid members that can still be bitten during the fight.

Of course, there are other examples as these are just a few. When researching a new boss fight if you notice any debuffs that deal large amounts of damage to the target it may be a good idea to add an indicator to Grid to assist in healing the right target at the right time.

Configuration

"But Oobie," you say. "How do I set this up? The Grid menu is so confusing!"

Don't worry! I've taken care of everything...

First, open the Grid configuration window by clicking the minimap/Fubar/LDB button depending on which setup you use. Or if you're like me and prefer to keep all that crap off the screen the following command will open the menu:

/grid config

Once that's open scroll down and click on the Auras heading. You'll see a couple boxes where you can input a custom buff or debuff name. For this example, we'll add the Pact of the Darkfallen buff to the border of the health frame as depicted in the image earlier in this entry.

Type "Pact of the Darkfallen" into the debuff text box and hit enter.

Once this is done, expand the Auras heading and you should be able to find the new entry labeled Debuffs: Pact of the Darkfallen. Here you'll be able to set the color for the debuff and it's priority. Don't be concerned if the color is white regardless of what you choose with the color picker. The proper color will be reflected in the raid window when the indicator becomes active.


Once you've selected a color look up near the top of the config menu and expand the Frame heading and select Border just beneath it. Then scroll through the list of buffs and debuffs and place a check mark next to our new Pact of the Darkfallen debuff. NOTE: All of the items under the Frame heading behave similarly. I've found the best results using borders and corner indicators for debuff monitoring.


That's it! The new indicator is now set up, and this will work for all custom auras. Just make sure you add new items properly as buffs or debuffs as Blizzard tends to use both in their encounter design.

*"Priming" a heal is the practice of casting a healing spell before damage has actually been done to a target. This is done typically when damage is known to be incoming on that target so that the heal lands just after the damage comes in. Often when this is done a player will monitor the healing spell cast time and cancel it if it will be wasted.

Raiding 101: ZOMG Phat Lewt!

So you're fighting a new boss in ICC and wipe after wipe after wipe things seem to be getting nowhere. Then, from out of nowhere the fight comes together in a beautiful crescendo of fire avoidance, positioning and target priority... and with a thud the boss' grill hits the floor.

Congratulations, now it's time to loot! But does the boss drop anything you want? If he drops something you can use, will you need any other gear pieces to fit it into your set? Are there other players who will also be interested in this hypothetical item?

If you don't know the answers to these questions when the loot windows pop up, you probably should.

Best in Slot (BiS)

There is a lot of talk amongst the WoW community of items that are called best in slot. While it is typically beneficial for players to find a list of their BiS gear, what's BiS for one player may not be for another. This can be true even when comparing players of an identical class and spec in some situations.

True, there is a ceiling where items can be considered BiS for the entirety of a particular class and spec, but when you're talking about an individual person you have to be a little more flexible in your definition of BiS.

For the purposes of this blog entry, what we'll consider BiS is defined by the following parameters:

• Class and Spec
• Statistic Hard and Soft Caps
  
• Guild Progressions Level

Class, spec and stat caps should be pretty self explanatory if you're at a raiding level already. Casters take caster gear, plate wearers strength gear, tanks defense and avoidance gear, etc.

Balancing stat caps properly while inflating other non-cappable stats to the maximum achievable should be the goal in assembling a BiS list. For those with multiple stats to cap it can be even more important to plan ahead to avoid situations where you pick up an spectacular piece of gear only to lug it around in your bags until you can make up the lost defense or expertise.

Here is a list of cappable stats and their caps:

• Defense: 540
• Expertise softcap: 26
• Spellcasting Hit: 17% (14% with boomkin/sp debuff)
  
• Melee 1h/shield, 2h & yellow dmg Hit: 8%
• Haste rating softcap: 50%
  

Because the stats you need to cap these statistics are spread out over your gear set it's important to develop a full list of your BiS gear with properly balanced stat caps so that when an item drops you instantly know if it will be an upgrade for you over the long term.

This is important to the overall health of the raid because of how loot is dispersed to the raid. For instance, if a spellcasting neck drops and a caster with loot priority in the guild decides it's an upgrade over what they currently have they may take it. But in the grand scheme of things if there is a better item out there for that person that drops the next raid week that first item is going to be turned into a shard or vendored instead of being put to use by another raider.

Guild Progression Level

This is the factor that makes cookie cutter BiS lists less than optimal for those who are not yet fully progressed through a raid zone, or guilds who only run 10 main instances (although the 10-man 25-man distinction will vanish come Cataclysm).

The research necessary may seem daunting at first... I know I don't want to sift through all those wowhead pages! However, the folks over at mmo-champion.com have this nifty page that will show you an overview of gear from all of ICC that's easily referenced.

To assist in the compilation of a BiS list I recommend a spreadsheet. You can use the Microsoft Office suite if you have it available, but for broke folks like myself there are free alternatives, the easiest of which to set up is google docs. If you'd prefer software for your computer over a spreadsheet embedded in the browser Open Office is a free office suite that's compatible with Microsoft Office.

Setting up... The List!

Set up columns for slot name, item type (this will help later in organizing items), item name, each of your class and spec specific stats and each color of gem. You can see my full example spreadsheet here.

Under the slot name column you'll need 16 row names: Head, Neck, Shoulders, Back, Chest, Wrist, Gloves, Waist, Legs, Feet, Ring, Ring2, Trinket, Trinket2, Main-Hand, Off-Hand.

just below the Off-Hand row, beneath each stat column heading set the box to add up the sum of all the rows above it. to do this, click in the box and type the following (assuming the first column is column D): =sum(D2:D17)

For each column adjust the letter of what you type to the column you're typing in, so for instance, type the following into the box beneath the item rows for column J: =sum(J2:J16)

Once that's all done you're ready to start importing items. When I did my BiS list I simply imported every item off the 10-man heroic list and 25-man normal list because those are the items I would potentially have access to at my guild's current progression level. Use the Item Type column to list what kind of item it is, that was you can simply move this item's boxes up and line them up with the appropriate row.
Trinkets can be a difficult prospect for someone in a guild not fully progressed through 25 man content because often community discussion focuses solely on the best available from 25 man content. Thumbing through threads in your class forum on elitistjerks.com can often shed some light on which trinkets are best for your situation.

Once you're all done and satisfied with your list you can be prepared for loot drops during a raid. With this information at hand you can identify whether a particular item is going to be very useful or simply a short term upgrade. This is especially true for classes with multiple caps to juggle like tanks as it can be helpful to hang onto a wide array of gear in case you need to make up for lost stats when you pick up an exceptional new upgrade that, as a side effect, drops you below the expertise, or worse yet... defense cap.

There's nothing wrong with taking an intermediary item if it's better than what you have, but for those pieces that are not in your BiS list consider passing to another player, especially one who is under geared. After all, items do more good for your raid as a whole on another player than they do collecting dust in your bank.

The Anatomy of a Targeting Macro

If you remember back to my blog entry entitled Raiding 101: The Duty of a DPS, I mentioned briefly the concept of a targeting macro and how it can be useful in a raid environment. It can be helpful to know the quirks of the /target command as it doesn't necessarily behave the way you might expect it to. This post will detail some of the finer points of the /target command.

Not Necessarily the Target in Front of you...

The targeting command of the past could be somewhat confusing to understand. While it targeted the first mob with a given name, it wasn't always the closest one to you.

Thankfully we don't have to deal with that complication anymore and the targeting command has been brought in line with a much more intuitive system that targets the closest mob to you, regardless of it's position around you. This means that you may end up targeting a creature directly behind you depending on positioning and spawn locations, but a quick pan of the camera by holding the left mouse button can help to quickly find stray targets.

Multiple Target Priority

A typical targeting macro for a raider will tend to have multiple targeting lines in it that each target a creature with a different name. For the most part these will generally be mobs that are active in different encounters so target overlap is not an issue. There are situations, however, where a targeting macro can assist in general target priority for all of the various adds that spawn during the same fight.

NOTE: The latter scenario is not typically recommended. Target swapping manually is a very valuable skill for any DPS or tank raider to have. Targeting macros are very strict in the order they target mobs and it's not always the case that a stringent kill order is the best. Assessment of the current situation and sound combat decisions based on a solid understanding of the fight will trump a targeting macro every time.

In order to keep your target priority straight when your macro has multiple targeting lines that will be used during the same encounter you need to make sure to structure your macro so the the mob with priority will be targeted by the time the macro has run it's course. There are two ways to do this and neither is particularly better.

Using a ranged DPS target priority for Valithria Dreamwalker: Blazing Skeleton, Suppressor, Blistering Zombie, Glutinous Abomination

Method 1:

/target Blazing Skeleton
/target Suppressor [noexists] [dead]
/target Blistering Zombie [noexists] [dead]
/target Glutinous Abomination [noexists] [dead]

Method 2:

/target Glutinous Abomination
/target Blistering Zombie
/target Suppressor
/target Blazing Skeleton

In method 1 you can see that the target priority is done in the order of the kill priority. Each line after the first will check to see if the current target (presumably what the previous line targeted) exists or is dead. If it does exist (meaning you have a target) and that target is not dead then the next targeting line will not execute, leaving you with your original target.

Method 1 is a good method to use if you find that method 2 causes your computer to hang, if you have very few targets to include int he macro or you have a mod that allows you to make macros with more than 255 characters. The fact that each line after the first must include two conditionals to operate effectively make this a bad method to use if you have an extensive list of targets or other commands you would like to include in the macro as the conditionals on each line tend to push on the default 255 macro characters limit rather quickly.

As you've probably already realized method 2 uses a reverse targeting order in it's design. This method of placing the highest priority last effectively means that if any two targets are up at the same time you'll target both of them, but by the end of the macro you'll have your highest priority target in the cross hairs. For most PCs this should be completely transparent - you won't even see the intermediary targets, just your last one. However, if you find this causes you to hang for a moment because of a slow PC or laggy unit frames method 1 may be worth a look.

Automatic or Manual?

There are two options for integrating a targeting macro into the boss fight, and for the most part they both depend on play style.

For those like myself the automatic option is the best. This method works well if you tend to target a vast majority of things manually as you will be able to get by with a minimum number of target lines in your macro. The idea is to integrate all the ultra high priority targets from various encounters your guild runs into a single macro that will replace the main button in your DPS rotation.

This is what a macro of this sort might look like:

#showtooltip Lightning Bolt
/target Bone Spike
/target Blazing Skeleton
/targetlasttarget [dead]
/cast Lightning Bolt

As you can see there is a very limited number of targeting lines in this macro as placement here is strictly for high priority targets. Additionally, no targets both occur in the same encounter so the order of the targeting lines is irrelevant.

There is one additional line where the target last target command is invoked with the dead condition. This is included because of the nature of this type of targeting macro. When embedding a macro into your DPS rotation like this you'll want to use a frequently cast spell which will result in spamming the targeting functions. Often a mobs corpse will take a few moments to despawn but a targeting command will still target the corpse. After the targeting line switches to the corpse this line checks to see if the target is dead, in which case it targets your last target so you don't have to waste DPS uptime targeting a corpse.

This type of macro is beneficial because it allows you to move smoothly between encounters instead of remembering to prepare a macro for each fight. It would require (if not used in conjunction with other targeting macros) manual targeting for a good portion of adds throughout raid instances as this certainly is not a comprehensive list, but as raids are more and more dynamic with each instance released this is a very important skill to foster going forward.

For those who prefer an extra action bar with a bank of targeting macros specific to each fight there is a manual option. This would require you to either make several macros or use a mod that supports macros without character limits and make one long super macro. Either targeting method works so this is largely up to preference and your macro character limitations.

For a manual macro system there would be no integration with existing spells, you would simply make a separate macro (or macros) that you'll have to manually click or give it's own keybinding to. This is best for making a comprehensive list of all targets in a particular encounter, much like in the targeting method 1 and 2 examples above.

Raiding 101: Interface Setup

Disclaimer: This is not an article on making your interface look good, moreover it is a guide on how to optimize an interface for raiding. If you're interested in beautifying your interface the WoW Interface and Macros forum is a great place to go! There usually is a "Post your UI" thread where making an interface that is consistent and aesthetically pleasing is usually the focus.

I've put off this topic for quite some time due to the immense nature of the topic. After all, different roles within a raid require different types of interface setup and some of these roles are even split up between the same class or even spec. For instance, an elemental shaman who traditionally kites adds when needed may need a slightly different toolset than one that only needs to hammer away at the boss endlessly.

That being said, there can be a great deal of simplicity when it comes to setting up your interface and though it may seem daunting it really boils down to one simple question:

What information do you need to see in the heat of battle?

This can be a tricky prospect, however, as a great deal of information can be perceived as necessary when it actually isn't. In this respect it can be helpful to take a good long look at your interface elements (Preferably not during an encounter that requires your undivided attention!) and ask yourself.. do I really need to see that?

Here are some common elements that can be eliminated from most interfaces when there is a lot of clutter:

• Superfluous Action Buttons - Most of the time during a fight you won't need to bring out a Traveler's Tundra Mammoth or cast Water Breathing on someone. These extra non-combat utility and vanity spells can be placed on an action bar that hides itself when in combat or not moused over. OPie or Geist can also be used to give you a bank of action buttons that remains hidden until a keybinding is pressed.
• Full Buff Lists - In the current iteration of the game there are an obscene amount of buffs flying around. So many, in fact, that Blizzard is changing many of the talented raid wide buffs to be auras to cut down on lag as a result of buffs constantly being reapplied. One handy little feature that was added recently was the ability to consolidate long term buffs into a single button. You can find this by opening the game menu, clicking the 'Interface' button and opening to the 'Buffs and Debuffs' category. If you're worried about missing a particular buff when the readycheck goes out because they're consolidated try a mod like BuffEnough, which will give you a clear indication on whether or not you are fully buffed based on your raid composition.
• Scrolling Combat Text - OK, this isn't completely something to get rid of. However, it's not always strictly necessary to see all your uber crits rolling in as they happen. It wastes real estate and distracts from the goal at hand, which is to kill the boss. Try and keep scrolling combat text to important events like procs that you need to respond to, cleanses and buff and debuff application and removal. The goal here is to see the information you need to make an informed decision and nothing else.
• Extra LDB/Fubar/Minimap Buttons - With minimap buttons coming in as the lesser of the three evils this is another thing that commonly chokes portions of an interface. Try and keep these down to the minimum information required. Hide as many individual AddOn menu buttons as you can stand and use slash commands or the Blizzard AddOn menu to configure them (Game Menu -> Interface -> AddOns tab).
• Damage Meters - These are an intensely useful way to scrutinize your performance on demand, but embellishing the damage meter window by making it overly large or placing it in a place where it's distracting can detract from performance. Remember that the focus needs to be on the boss, the numbers should only gain focus in between attempts. Consider hiding the meters while your in combat to keep the largest part of your screen clear and prevent the meters from becoming a distraction.
• Redundant Information - If you have debuffs displayed just below your own unit frame then they probably don't need to be shown in the top right corner. If you have a damage meter that comes packaged with a threat meter try configuring it to switch to threat mode during combat instead of loading a separate threat meter. The basic goal here should be that a piece of information you need to have on the screen should only be displayed once on the screen.

Field of View

If you recall my first ever Raiding 101 post, the first and most important rule of raiding is to... not stand in the fire! An unwritten prerequisite for this is that you need to see the fire in order to not stand in it.

To help with this make sure the center of the screen, where your character is, is free from nearly all clutter. Avoid placing raid frames, cooldown bars or anything else that will probably be up for more than a second or two over this section of the screen. If your interface is cluttered up in the middle you might not know it until you're dead!

Viewports can also assist with your field of view, especially if you aren't running without a wide screen monitor. What this does is push the sides of the screen out so you have a better peripheral view of the game. This can help you see threats approaching from the sides before it's too late, an add charging your way for instance. Make sure your viewport mod shrinks the actual rendered area of the game instead of just placing a background over a portion of your screen.

Shrinking the rendered area of the game in this way can also benefit the rest of your UI placement. Not only will this give you areas where interface elements can be placed completely out of the rendered game world, but if the viewport is only adjusted on the top or bottom it will push your character (and thus the spot where bosses drop fire for you to not stand in) up or down, giving you extra space to place UI elements without overlapping onto your character.

An example of how the viewport can increase the field of view taken from the oUF_Viv page, an oUF layout that includes a viewport:

Some view ports that do this are: Viewporter, Viewport

Prioritize!

Understanding what your role and responsibilities are can go a long way towards knowing how to properly set up your interface for maximum efficiency. Though the three roles in WoW have some very different information requirements there are some things that are shared over all three roles to some extent.

• Interrupting - though there are some exceptions among the classes there are a good portion of specs that include at least one way of interrupting a spell - even if it has to be done via a stun or knockback. Make sure the enemy target cast bar (and focus cast bar if you're assigned to interrupt on a different target than you're assigned to target for another role) is highly visible and obvious. In this case the center of the screen is not a bad idea provided it's kept minimal to prevent obscuring environmental damage excessively.
• Cleansing - Oftentimes those not fulfilling the healer role can forget they have a cleanse button, but this is an area where the healers would probably appreciate a reprieve. Remember a raid environment is all about supporting the group, and any burden that can easily be take off another should be. Use a mod like Decursive for an easy click option for cleansing or configure your raid frames to change health bar or border color for debuffs that can be removed so decurse target can clearly be identified.
• Crowd Control - Moreover today than in raids of yesteryear it's not just DPS that has the ability to crowd control. The role of CC today is very different than the trash controlling techniques of the past. Generally speaking CC is a dynamic aspect of boss fights like Lady Deathwhisper. Decursive also has support for this type of response.
• Movement - More and more raid encounters are highly movement oriented. You need to be able to perform your duties on the move a great deal of the time and this can be especially difficult for healers and caster DPS. Using keybindings for spells as much as possible can be helpful, but prioritizing instant cast spells on single keys can increase the efficiency of keybindings, the basic idea being: do you really want to try and hit ctrl+5 at the same time you're fanning out to avoid the next Defile from the Lich King?
• Cooldown Management - Whether you're a tank, healer or DPS you have some type of cooldown you can use to help survive or eek out that much more DPS or healing. Having an appropriate mod like CooldownWatch or CoolLine placed in a central location can help manage these. The former is shown via a configurable list of bars and the latter places all cooldowns on a timeline. Personally I prefer bars over the line as I feel it's more accurate for my time sensitive DPS rotation but if it's not vitally important that a cooldown be used as soon as it's finished the cooldowns in line format are perfectly adequate.
  

DPSing

DPSing may seem like a no-brainer in terms of interface management but the job of a DPS is deceptively involving. Generally speaking it's a good idea to push out the hammer mentality as soon as possible when a DPS character is your main. Of all the roles in WoW this can be the easiest to pass the buck off to someone else, but a good DPSer will do more than just top the meters. Often a great deal of support and utility can be squeezed out of a DPSer.

Here you can see the basic (though slightly outdated) DPS layout for my interface. In a column directly below my character I have everything I need to fulfill my basic role: target, target debuffs, cast bar (the enemy castbar is a couple inches above the target frame so it's blatantly obvious when an enemy is casting a spell), cooldown timers, my debuffs and my health and mana - both of which glow when I'm getting low to draw my attention.

This won't necessarily be the best arrangement for every single DPS, but in general you'll want to ask yourself what tools you need for your main role and then place them in a place where your eyes won't have to wander far.

It's not necessary in most cases to place everything front and center. This can lead to excess clutter that confuses the information you need. Anything that uses audio warnings can be placed in non-central locations. As you can see from the screenshot my threat meter is placed just above my mana bar as I largely don't have issues with threat. However, when I am creeping up on the tank a unique audio alert quickly draws my attention to the threat meter.

Boss mods generally work the same way, though it can be a good idea to place the large or imminent progress bars closer to the center of the screen so your eyes don't have to wander to a wayward corner of the screen to find out what tricks the boss has in store for you next and take your attention too far away from other important information.

Tanking

Tanking largely worries about many of the same things melee DPS worries about, but threat can be more of a priority for a tank, so it may be prudent to have a more detailed threat meter in a more central location. Skada and Omen are both very good detailed threat meter AddOns.

And yes, I'm going to harp on Nameplates... again!

Bosses aside, they're just a real handy way to see if an add that you don't have targeted is still aggroed to you. Unfortunately since the patch that allowed nameplates to overlap a bit of configuration is needed to optimize them:

Open Interface options in the game menu and under the 'Names' category uncheck the option to 'Allow overlapping nameplates'. With this option enabled nameplates would overlap with each other making it near impossible to single out each enemy. Without nameplates overlapping you should be able to easily identify and target anything you may be losing aggro on by the highlight fading to yellow or disappearing.

Of course, nameplates aren't exclusive to tanks. As they're an easy indication of aggro on mobs that aren't currently being targeted it can be a good indication for DPS that some stray enemy is about to become an unfortunate friend!

Healer... ing

The most obvious element to healers is the raid frame. A little bit of personal preference can dictate here, but your raid frames should be very close to the center of the screen. As a DPS/healer hybrid I put much more emphasis on my target frame which is placed just below my character, leaving the raid frames just to the right of my character. This leaves the space over my character clear while still providing me with the necessary elements in close proximity to the center of the screen.

For pure healers a more appropriate space may be right underneath the character as that area tends to garner a greater amount of attention. Once again, personal preference will dictate to some extent but you'll want this vital piece of information to be close at hand. Placing raid frames in a corner of the screen may not detract from healing and seem like an acceptable location as they tend to take up a large amount of real-estate especially in 25 man raids, but placing them too far away from your character can contribute to tunnel vision and deaths as a result of standing in fire!

Eliminating Common Redundancy

While Decursive is a great mod for folks who need to perform certain utility on the raid like cleansing and crowd control of mind controlled players, if you need to run with a raid frame for healing Decursive become completely redundant. In this situation using Clique can provide identical functionality to any raid frames you may already be using, cutting the real estate taken up by raid frames in half.

Damage meters like Recount can be resource hogs as they track and log just about every combat log event. If you think it may be slowing you down switch to a modular meter like Skada and only load the modules you want to track information for.

Optimization

Unfortunately not every mod put out is suitable for raiding. The main reason for this is performance. Some mods that are very popular are also very CPU intensive and can impact your frame rate on a computer that's not top of the line. Just to name a few CPU hogs:

• Pitbull
• SatrinaBuffFrames
• ButtonFacade
• Recount

Not that these are bad mods by any means. In fact all of these are incredibly robust and feature-full mods. This is partially their downfall, though as far as ButtonFacade is concerned any mods that are purely aesthetic are not the focus of this particular blog.

An important distinction to make, however, is that a mod that uses up a ton of memory is not necessarily impacting framerate. What impacts framerate is generally mods that eat up extra CPU cycles. a good way to determine what mod is eating up CPU cycles is to use... another mod!

AddOnProfiler is a mod that you can set to profile your AddOns and report back on how much memory and CPU cycles each one is using. A good indication of a bad mod is one whose CPU cycles grow and then shrink again repeatedly and substantially. What happens here is that the AddOn is creating a lot of "garbage" that is used briefly and then thrown away. WoW will automatically run the garbage collector when RAM usage gets too high, but if you see the described behavior above from a mod it means that mod is creating an excessive amount of garbage and the collector is being run more and more often. When the garbage collector is run excessively this can create a drag on performance.

Once you've identified a problem mod with AddOnProfiler take a peek at some alternative mods that perform the same task and try a few out until you find one that you prefer and that doesn't cause the garbage collector to start slowing you down!

The Best Interface... is Your Interface!

While all these things are important considerations for how you set up your interface for raiding there are many nuances to how the interface works together that are exclusive to the person using the interface, and the best interface is one that's been used extensively and tweaked to support the playstyle of the user.

It's important to realize that if you've made an adjustment mentioned here and it's just not working for you go ahead and switch back or try something different. If you move your debuffs down to midscreen and suddenly find you just can't adapt to the new location move them back... but consider migrating other related pieces of information into the same area to reduce the amount of time you have to spend searching your screen for various bits of information.

It's highly important to recognize elements of your interface that are holding you back and adjust to compensate for them. Much like adapting strategy to deal with a bosses mechanics, adjusting your interface to display the right information at the right time is crucial to success. If you died from a debuff because you didn't see that you had it you may need to look for a more robust warning system or move the debuffs to a more noticeable location. If you're constantly fumbling your DPS rotation because you didn't notice your debuffs drop off the target make them bigger, or set up a warning in PowerAuras to make the status of the debuff more clear.

In general a successful interface will display everything you need to know and nothing you don't. It may take a bit of experimentation over time but adjusting the flow of information properly can mean the difference between success and defeat!

Note: though other roles were included this article primarily focused on elements of a DPS UI as that is my primary role and the primary focus of the blog. If you have any additional comments or suggestions for the other roles please do leave them in the comments!

Clique: Not Just For Healers Anymore!

I occasionally like to showcase a mod on my blog that I feel is incredibly versatile and solves a serious problem for all the raiders out there like myself.

My last entry on this subject, PowerAuras: the Best AddOn You've Never Used!, showed off just a small portion of the robust warning system the mod PowerAuras brought to the table. Today, I'll be covering the finer points of the mod titled Clique.

Since I've been spending a bunch of time in the higher end 10 man encounters healing on my shaman I became intimately familiar with this life-saver of an AddOn. I hadn't actually healed full time in a raid since about halfway through the Burning Crusade expansion and Clique severely shortened the re-learning curve for me and, I feel, made me a better healer than I had been in the past relying on keypresses and raid member targeting.

But I LOVE My Keybindings!

I don't blame you. In fact, I wholeheartedly support you in mapping as much as possible to keybindings. Using a keybinding setup for spell casting is far superior to clicking. It increases reaction time, decreases the amount of miscast spells and allows you to focus more on what's happening around you and less on where the mouse pointer is.

However, when you're talking about raid frames and any interaction a player might have with those raid frames be it healing, buffing, decursing or ressurecting... you'll find yourself relying on raid frame mouse clicks one way or another.

This is where clique can help you out the most by not only freeing up keybindings for other spells that would otherwise be devoted to heals or buffs, but by eliminating the targeting step of raid window interaction. It does this by binding spells to mouse clicks instead of keyboard bindings. These mouse click bindings work with any unit frame unless otherwise specified and are independent of any keyboard bindings you may already have for the same spell.

The All-In-One Raid Window Assistant

You probably have, at the very least, a raid window mod if you ever have to mess with the raid windows.

Often pure DPS will have the window hidden or not run with a raid window mod to save on memory and CPU cycles, but most folks will need their raid windows out at one point or another for some reason and regardless of which baseline mod you go with Clique can probably help you perform certain tasks better.

The exception to this are mods like Vuhdo or HealBot, raid window mods that have built in Clique-like functionality that renders Clique itself redundant. The concept and configuration for this functionality between mods, however, is nearly identical.

Some folks also go with mods like Decursive that provide a secondary raid window specifically for purposes of cleansing and other non-healing raid utility like crowd control and buff management.

Keep in mind, though, that clique can bind any spell that is targetable to mouse clicks so all of these other things that redundant raid frame mods take care of can also be taken care of in Clique, streamlining your interface and saving screen real estate.

All of these things (and probably more) can be handled through Clique bindings:

• Healing
• Crowd control
• Cleansing
• Buffing
• Intercept
• Tricks/Misdirect
• Resurrection
• Divine Intervention
• Macros
  

There is also a custom macro system where you can assign a macro version of a spell without using up one of the limited macro slots provided by the default interface.


Configuration

Clique has a very simple configuration, albeit a very important one. It is extremlely simple to set up, but getting your click-binding priority straight shouldn't be neglected.

Once the mod is installed simply open your spell book in game. You'll see an extra tab which, when clicked, will open up the Clique configuration menu.

Take a moment to notice the dropdown on the top right side of the Clique configuration window. This dropdown controls the conditions of the keybindings. Anything placed in the "default" page will take precedence only when another condition isn't active and/or isn't bound to anything.

To bind a spell to a mouse clock simply browse your spellbook with the Clique config window open and click the spell you want to bind with the mouse click combo you want to use for that spell. For instance, to bind Healing wave to Shift+LeftClick hold shift and left click Healing wave and it will be added to the Clique window.

For example, in the default section of my Clique bindings I have Ancestral Spirit bound to right click. In the "helpful" section of my bindings I have right click bound to Lesser Healing Wave. This means that while I'm clicking a friendly unit frame, right clicking will cast Lesser Healing Wave on the unit. While out of combat, however, the Ancestral Spirit binding will take precedence and will be cast instead of Lesser Healing Wave on right clicks when not in combat.

The Right Frame at the Right Time

It's a good idea to give a little thought to which frames you want to have the Clique bindings work for.

For instance, when I first set up my clique I had completely neglected this part and while clicks were enabled in the player frame I found I was unable to change the difficulty of an instance as right clicks on my player frame were attempting to cast Ancestral Spirit.

That being said, even showing the right click menu can be remapped to another click-binding through Clique.