2009-04-09

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

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