I had absolutely no idea this was a thing. I’ve been doing setups before a dungeon then adjusting them afterwards. That’s super helpful!
I’ve actually had really strong success with Shadow Unit Frames, which has been amazing. The flexibility and the UI design are really nice. I have it so it only shows my buffs/HOTs and certain debuffs. Would you say those others do that better?
I haven’t used Shadowed for a while. Their main unit frames (player, target, focus, party, ect.) are amazing, but as I recall their raid frames are more limited than healer-focused ones. It’s not uncommon for people to use one addon for their unit frames, and a different one for raid frames. (Addons like Grid and Vuhdo only have raid frames, not any of the other unit frames.)
Many healers use raid frames even as their party frames as they tend to be more compact. (The less room they take up, the faster you can move your mouse between them, and the more room you have to see if you are standing in fire.)
Most healing-focused raid frames let you set up “indicators.” So, instead of it just listing a row of buffs and debuffs on the frame, you pick where different buffs and debuffs show. (And how it shows.) So, I could put a rejuv indicator in the right corner. It could be the standard icon with a timer on it, but if I only have rejuv tracked in that spot, maybe I just want to list a numeric timer and skip the icon to make things a bit cleaner and easy to read. Or maybe I just want a little colored square to show me it’s on someone, and maybe have that square change color when the time is low.
On the debuff side, if there’s a super important debuff you need to react to on a fight, you can make a specific indicator for that, and make it super obvious. (As opposed to picking it out in a list of debuffs while healing.)
As you can guess, if you put a lot of time into setting things up, you can get a very powerful, efficient interface. If your a casual player, it’s not necessary. I get by in casual content with the default UI. (And the main healers I play are disc priest and resto druids, which are two of the specs least suited for the default UI.) But I’m also leaning on 13 years of WoW healing experience, and wouldn’t do anything beyond LFR without getting off my butt and installing and configuring proper raid frames.
Is this hard to get used to? I’ve never done that before. I have my Shadow Unit Frames set up so it shows the boss encounter at all time around the center of my screen. Should I still be using that?
This sounds amazing. Especially adding extra bars. I organize my HUD weird, based almost entirely around mnemonic devices. Can you make a bar with only 2 slots on it?
I’ll definitely be experimenting on this soon. Even if it’s “too pro” for me, it sounds like it would be amazing for certain skills.
I downloaded Weak Auras 2 about a week ago, and I gotta admit, I have no idea how this works. It looks like you need to be super tech savvy to understand, which I am not. Am I dumb for not getting it?
And thank you for all the help! I really appreciate it. =)
And sorry for not sending this draft sooner. Apparently you have to post all your replies in one go? Kinda new to the forums, tbh.
This is freaking incredible. Can Vuhdo do that? Or is this Grid? Either way, organizing the location of buffs is really brilliant.
I plan on raiding eventually, though I doubt I’ll ever push Mythic raid content. I definitely want to get the most out of my UI as possible, so I seriously appreciate all the help you guys have been giving me.
The macro I gave you takes 20 seconds to make so you don’t need to be a pro. In game Hit main menu, macros, new, paste the macro text I listed, type in the macro (skill) name and pick icon, click save, drag to hot bar. Rinse and repeat make new macros for all skills. Just copy and paste the macro text and change the skill name where I have “regrowth” to “swiftmend”, etc. the macro still lets you heal by clicking a party/raid frame it does both.
I think you really missing out if you don’t try ElVUI considering it takes less then 20 seconds to copy the folders to your addon folder. This is a very popular UI addon. It gives you an ElVUI button on your main menu to open it up in game. You have nothing to lose by checking it out for a few minutes. The default with no customization or work automatically gives you a massive amount of great features. Including different color hot icons that drain down in the four corners of each player/raid frame. Frames also change different colors when players need dispels.
Here are a few basics you’ll want to do ASAP.
Click toggle anchors to move anything anywhere including party/raid frames.
Click the action bars section and enable bars 4,5,6, and the micro bar.
Click maps and then minimap tab, increase the size, mine is like 3X the size of the WoW default and its glorious!
Click chat and increase panel height so you can see more chat.
I drag the player and target frames, cast bar, and action bars 1-3 (12 buttons each for hot key assignment). higher off the bottom of the screen. Drag the bag and bank higher on the right.
Hmmm, won’t let me edit. Here is an example of how to make another cool simple weak aura. Let’s use a short cd swiftmend.
Type /WA in game to open weak auras 2.
Click new aura, from template, icon, abilities, pick swiftmend, adjust height and width to your liking. Click the “Trigger” tab, scroll to the bottom and change it to “not on cooldown”.
The swiftmend icon will show in the middle of your screen drag it where you want. I have it off to the lower left of my character.
Since we picked “not on cd”, you will only see the icon on your screen when it’s available to cast. After you cast it, the icon disappears. This lets me see the swiftmend icon “Pop Up” in my peripheral vision when I can cast it without having to watch a timer. If I need to see the timer it’s also down on my action bar.
This weak aura takes like 15 seconds to make. I also have one like this for wild growth and cenarion ward. I’m not in game there might be more.
Most of my personal experience is with Grid and Grid2, both of which have this. I think that of those two, Grid2 is probably easier to start off with, as everything is built in and it gets more frequent updates. Grid tends to require some more DIY. It’s been a long time since I’ve messed around with Vuhdo, but it also allows for indicators. It also has click-casting built in.
Click casting is sort of like the mouseover macros Astyrss mentioned, but requires addons and has a few more options. You can set up click casting so that left clicking on a player’s frame casts one spell on them, and middle-clicking casts a different spell. These addons also allow you to bind stuff to mouse clicks. (Mouseover macros don’t work on frames when assigned to mouse buttons, as frames “eat” mouse clicks.) The main downside is that you then are very much reliant on the addon to function as a healer at all. The addon Clique can add click casting to any raid frames, even the default ones.
One of the advantages of mouseover macros is that they work not only raid frames, but also players out in the world. So, you can heal or buff people you aren’t grouped up with without even targeting them, just by mousing over their character in game.
Personally, I stick to mouseover macros so it’s easier to move between computers without stressing about copying over addon settings. (Macros are server-side, so will always be there.) Some people have strong preferences for one style or the other, and some people will use a mix of both.
Nope. At least for me, it felt a lot more natural.
Weak Auras allows you to import auras that others have made, so you can let other people be tech savvy for you! Just make sure that any you import are from a trusted source. (It’s a very powerful addon, and there have been cases of people doing scams to get people to import a WA that then allow them to steal gold. WA and Blizzard both work quickly to make changes prevent this when it crops up but the baddies are always looking for new exploits.) So, getting a popular WA from https://wago.io/weakauras that has lots of downloads and a good rating is safe, but something a rando in trade chat links to should probably be avoided.
I use the Logitech G600 mmo mouse. The mouseover macros work perfectly on party/raid frames when assigned to any of my 12 side mouse buttons. I have many heal skills assigned to side buttons on my healing classes. I never tried on the two big main mouse buttons, which I assume you are referring to.
I tried Clique when I first started healing in early 2019. There were many times when randomly and suddenly I couldn’t cast mouseover heals in dungeons so I got rid of it.
Those side buttons are treated more like an extra keyboard so don’t run into the eaten click problem. In my experience, mouse buttons 1,2, and 3 (left, right, and middle) are pretty much always “eaten.” Anything beyond that seems to vary depending on your setup. I’ve always been able to use 4 and 5 with mouseovers with my Logitech MX 310, but I’ve seen reports of others not being able to use similar buttons on their mice. It’s easy enough to test. If a macro works when mousing over a player, but not a frame, it’s getting eaten.
I did this, and holy cow is that cool! I’m going to run dungeons tonight to try and get used to it. So far, I love it. I can’t wait to break all that in.
Okay, that’s really sick. Getting overwhelmed by all the options, but it sounds super worth it lol. Especially how easy it will be to access the overload of information from everything.
I actually didn’t realize that. I’ll do some looking into those some tonight too. That’s really good to know! Was worried I’d be left high and dry there lol.
I actually checked this out on the addons page, and I couldn’t find Grid2 anywhere. I found normal Grid and Vuhdo, but not Grid2.
Here’s the link on Curseforge for Grid2:
https://www.curseforge.com/wow/addons/grid2
Thanks! I downloaded it, and I’m having a blast with it. A few minor issues like the nameplates being stuck even though they’re “unlocked.” Very confusing, but it’s only a matter of time before I get the hang of it. I’m super stoked about all that. I also plan on experimenting with WA2, but that’s a bit advanced for me, even with the templates lol. One thing at a time. ^^
Edit: Nevermind, I’m an idiot about Grid2 frames. There’s a slider that moves them, not click and drag…