Addons: (De)Buff Tracking

In my last post, I talked about ways to become a better healer. Some points were about proper spell selection, others were very basic tips about healing in general and well, I also advised every Shaman to very closely watch specific buffs to maximize his output.

Why is this important?

1. Tidal Waves: Casting Riptide or Chainheal will grant you 25% more crit on LHW or 30% spellhaste on HW for your next two spells or until the buff runs out (15s). Doesn’t this sound good? 25% crit is A LOT, it helps with throughput and with mana regen through IWS. 30% haste will bring HW nearly to LHW speed, which leads to incredibly high HPS. In order to cast as much LHWs and HWs under the influence of Tidal Waves, you will need to track this buff somehow. Again though: Healing is not about rotations. You don’t have to proc Tidal Waves and then cast LHWs twice, healing is always a dynamic process. But tracking the Tidal Waves buff will grant you more LHW/HW cast with TW active compared to not minding the buff at all. In addition to that, it will also remind you to proc the buff in an idle moment (e.g. Icehowl is stunned, you’re healing a the group, shortly before he hits the tank, the Tidal Waves buff needs to be up, there’s really no excuse to deny your tank a spell with +25% crit/+30% haste).
2. Earth Shield: The strength of your ES is determined at the moment you cast it. So it’s a very good idea to track SP procs (Totem Relic, Trinkets). Our ES is very cheap mana wise. If my trinket procs and my +234 SP from the Totem relic are up, I mostly always recast ES on my tank if I have a GCD to spare, even if I have 4-5 charges left. Don’t forget kids: ES looks like poop flying around your tank, but is actually one of our best spells.

Of course, the buffs above are just those, you might not yet be tracking. But every shaman knows, that he has to watch his WS, his ES as well as his totems. This could be done through any addon in this post, but I guess most of you guys favor a shaman specific addons like Totem Timers or ShieldsUp.

That’s the theory. Now there a lot of addons out there to track Buffs and Debuffs and I hope most of you are familiar with at least one of them. I’ll give a short description of those addons I have used and will tell you what I like about them.

All addons work in a very similar way. You specify a buff or debuff you want to watch and then select the unit you want to track (player, target, targettarget, focus). Some addons will also allow conditions like the addon having pop up stuff in raids or the icon showing when the buff is missing instead when he’s present.

• Power Auras: I’ll start with the biggest name in the business, which is at the same time the addon I like least. Yeah Yeah, I know, Power Auras Fanboys won’t be pleased to hear that. That’s why I add this: The main reason why I don’t use Power Auras is because I just don’t like how the icons look. You got me, I’m super superficial and ignore the personality of the addon. The addon itself is in fact, great. It will offer you the basic (de)buff tracking, but unlike the other addons I present, it will also help you to manage cooldowns. So you could have a little symbol pop up whenever RT and NS are ready and let it disappear whenever they are on cooldown. Apart from that, the addon also let’s you specify conditions. Let’s say you want to do better at managing your Mana Totem, just specify an icon to show whenever your Mana drops below 75%, at which point you would fill your mana back up to ~100%. If you want, you can even assign sounds any event you specified. I’m not sure about the memory footprint, so please tell me in the comments if Power Auras is a memory hog or not. Llyra has written not one, but two posts about Power Auras. Mystic Chicanery isn’t about shamans, but the post about a proper Power Auras setup is very good.
  

  NeedToKnow

• NeedToKnow: This addon will present you buffs and debuffs in form of bars. The addon is very easy to set up, it’s not resource hungry and it looks pretty good. The only thing about it I don’t like: it uses up to much screen estate for my needs. Bars are great for damage dealers. A rogue needs to know if he has to refresh Slice and Dice, Rupture or if he can squeeze an Eviscerate in. Bars are also a great representation of holy priest’s Serendipity, a healing related buff where good timing really matters. For the buffs I track, bars are just over the top.
  

  Auracle

• Auracle: I’m using this addon for a pretty long time now and I’m happy. It offers a lot of different levels of configuration and fits neatly into my UI. The best thing about Auracle is the possibility to add multiple buffs/debuffs to just one icon. This isn’t super important for me as a shaman healer, but it definitely has it’s places. Let’s say you’re a caster and want to track the debuff which will grant you 3% hit. With Auracle you can track Misery and Faerie Fire at the same time, if one of those debuffs if active on your target, the icon will light up, if it’s missing it will stay grey. Another nice thing: you can pick if the number in the middle of the button shows the cooldown (good for procs) or the charges (good for tidal waves).
  

  Auracle tracking important raid debuffs

• Filger: This is the .lua guy at the party. This is the addon I’m using at the moment. It’s a very very small addon, looks good and works like a charm. The downside? You’ll need to edit the .lua to get it working. This might sound like rocket science, believe me, it isn’t. Just head over to WoWInterface, search for an UI compilation which includes Filger and take it from there. Or you take a look at Lanacan’s spell list and copy/paste whatever you need. Shantalya also offers a very good looking group roll frames, threatmeter and totemtimers, so check out all his addons.

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  Filger

Of course, there are a lot of other options to track buffs and procs. Satrina Buff Frames are a very good buff replacement and let you filter important buffs to an easy visible place. GoodNewsEveryone is a nice little addon to track procs and works beautifully, if all you want to do is keep track of Tidal Waves. If you really like .lua addons, there is rFilter2, which is very similar to Filger.

That’s it for today, let the buff tracking begin.

Comments are welcome as well as girlish affection for Power Auras.