Absolutely all credits for the idea go to Lyn.

Download on Filefront.

Before you change anything, backup your WoW settings!

Raid screenshot

Instructions/profiles:

• 1680×1050
• uiScale “0.63999998569489″ (edit your config.wtf to match this)
• Grid profile: “stuf”
• DXE profile: “Drugfreeyth – Telrassil”
• Dominos profile: “Default” (Buttons on the right of my toon are for cooldown watching, not clicking!)
• MSBT profile: “Default”
• Skada profile: “neues”
• Bazooka profile: “Default”
• BankStack profile: “Default”
• Clique profile: “Drugfreeyth – Telrassil” (works with 5 button mouse)
• ButtonFacade profile: “Default”
• The alpha of actionbar 4 is applied by Alphabuttons.
• Buff/Debuff watching is done with rFilter2, if you want this to work, you have to change the .lua to match your toons name. Just replace “Drugfreeyth” with your shamans name or “Nianzu” with your warriors name.
• You can turn of SpeedyActions if you don’t like the idea behind this addon.

The Grid problem: Don’t update Grid at this point! The authors somehow rewrote the code, so all Grid versions newer than r1263 will break your Grid plugins. Wait until most of the Grid plugins are updated, then update Grid.

Please do comment if there’s stuff (or stuf) not working, looking ugly or if you have any ideas how to make this a better UI.

In WoW, I’ve spent my raid-free time with leveling a warlock on my girlfriend’s account. I just couldn’t bring myself to start an own lock at level 1. So I’m currently at lvl 75, enjoying SL/FG leveling. At the same time I’m still tweaking my UI. I ditched the pixel font from my last WIP, this just didn’t work out for my eyes. I then tried to get an old-school Lyn-look, this UI compilation textures/fonts bring back so many good memories.

WIP with Lyn textures

While working on this layout I was amazed to find out, that Lyn updated his latest UI layout here. I wasn’t all to happy with the functionality of the oUF layout though, so I adapted the looks into Stuf. Also, I went from Filger to rFilter2, Filger somehow doesn’t track debuffs correctly in my case. I’m quite happy with the result so far.

Stuf adaption of most recent Lyn UI

This just leaves me with one big question. Teal from screenshot one or the more standard blue from screenshot two? I just can’t decide.

Various stuff:

• If you’re looking for actual content: I love Vixin’s latest post on viability of theorycrafting in the real raiding world.
• AlphaButtons is a fantastic little addon for cooldown management. It will apply a low alpha value to everything off the cooldown, making the buttons transparent if they are not on cooldown. This works with Dominos or Bartender. You can also specify if this should work with all bars or just a few selected (in my screenshot only bar 4 is activated, that’s the bar on the left side of Grid).
• LFGStatusIcon is a very sweet little addon, which makes the status of your group searching visible right on the minimap button.
• Last but not least: I finally switched my dual spec back to enhancement. I’m loving it, very complex but great flow. A most welcome break from the rather simple elemental DPS rotation.

Guys and Girls: Blue or Teal? Any good enhancement blogs? Any good Christmas stories? Or any good addon tips?

early Christmas

temporary WIP

Did you get any new shiny loot? Any new good addons/UI compilations I should know about?

A lot of people ask me about Addons/UI/Settings uploads. I just don’t have time to Upload all kind of things and answer questions regarding an UI, which inevitably comes with an UI Upload.

Anyways, Quse UI hasn’t been updated for 3.3, so I’ll upload my personal fix to the UI including my Grid configuration. If you don’t know how to get an UI compilation running, don’t download. Don’t mess around with your folders without a backup! Don’t overwrite all your macros. I included them anyway in case you’re curious.

Download on Filefront

Screenshot:

Loading ClassColors will lead to a harmless .lua error. The newest version will break the whole UI. Just wait for the next update.

• uiScale “0.63999998569489″
• Grid profile: “stuf”
• DXE profile: “Drugfreeyth – Telrassil”
• Dominos profile: “Default” (Buttons on the left of my toon are for cooldown watching, not clicking!)
• MSBT profile: “Default”
• Skada profile: “neues”
• ChocolateBar profile: “Default”
• BankStack profile: “Default”
• Ailo profile: “Drugfreeyth – Telrassil”
• Clique profile: “Drugfreeyth – Telrassil” (works with 5 button mouse)

Filger Configuration: open Filger.lua. Change “local configmode = false” to “local configmode = true“. /rl. Drag the Buttons to wherever you want to see important procs/Flameshock debuff. Revert Filger.lua back to “local configmode = false“. /rl. Feel free to add your own procs/buffs to watch.

Action Button Bar 1 is shown on mouseover only! I have everything on those buttons keybound. You can change this in Dominos’ options.

Absolutely all Credits for this UI go to Qupe!

Backup all your files before you do anything! I will only comment if something is seriously broken.

WIP. New textures. New font. Got rit of ForteXorcist.

The Addons, SnowfallKeyPress as well as Speedy Actions are relatively new addons, both were release some weeks ago. They do one simple thing: They make action buttons fire the abilities on “Button Down” instead of “Button Up”. I guess you have already noticed the default behavior: If push or click the button of an ability, the ability goes off only as soon as you release mouse or keyboard button, not when you actually press the button down. The idea behind those addons is obvious now: gain a little advantage of speed and get abilities to trigger just a little bit sooner.

Both Addons work right out of the box, Speedy Actions offers additional blacklisting for certain Addons/Keys (e.g. active for Grid but inactive for Dominos) through a configuration menu. Any configuration you would want to do with SnowfallKeyPress or adding additional Addons to its whitelist, you would have to do through editing .lua. SnowfallKeyPress was released before Speedy Actions, so I think the author, Dayn, deserves the credit for the idea.

Both addons support the default actionbars as well as most popular actionbar addons. Speedy Action supports Clique as well, which makes it interesting for me as a Grid+Clique Healer.

So, should you install those addons? Maybe. Dayn, author of SnowfallKeyPress nicely sums it up:

“Dude, this addon is going to increase my DPS by so much!” No, it’s not. DPS rotations (or even priority systems) are not to any great extent affected by latency. Because they’re predictable, good players can anticipate what’s coming next and compensate for latency. In fact, if you’re a good player who is already compensating for the press-to-release latency, you may actually find that your DPS goes down when you first use this addon until you learn to readjust to the reduced latency. Find a target dummy and practice your rotation until you’re comfortable with the changed timing.

Dayn also points out, why his addon could be a good idea:

This allows you to activate your abilities faster than you could otherwise. This can really make a difference for situations where you need to react quickly, like when casting heals, when interrupting spells, or in PvP. In these situations, the addon can have an effect similar to reducing your network latency by 100ms. Of course, the exact impact depends entirely upon how much time you personally spend between key press and release.

That’s why I’ll leave this addon in my addons folder for now. Both addons won’t really changer your dps rotations, they won’t really help you in a situation where you cast one chainheal after the other. But maybe, they’ll make a difference when I cast a Riptide, throw a LHW at someone dropping low or Taunt with a tank.

Today I raided with the addon Speedy Action activated. Honestly, it’s really hard to say if it’s helping or not. After all, there is no way to tell if I just saved someone with a heal that would have landed too late without the addon. But I like the idea of the addon and even if in reality it doesn’t really make a huge difference, it might at least have some degree of Placebo effect.

Comments are welcome. I guess I might update this post after having done some raids with Speedy Action.

The problems with UI compilations are obvious though: they might not work out of the box, you might encounter errors the author didn’t experience and last but not least, you’ll have to tweak them too your likings, which is time consuming.

For me, testing UI compilations, adapting them to my play style and having 2-3 different UIs to choose from is something I’m very fond of. If have to stand in TotC 3-4 times a week and stare at the same walls over and over again, at least my UI can offer me some variety. Many elements of my UI I adapt into every compilation, like arrangement of raidframes, actionbars, cooldown tracking and raidframes, that way I feel pretty quickly at home with new UI compilations.

Today we’ll have a look at Neav UI by Neal. Many addons by Neal have been around for a long time, like nBuffs or nMainbar. Finally though he decided to upload his whole UI some months ago. What intrigued me to try out this UI, were the oUF raidframes. I really like Grid. I have a hard time healing without Grid. But the raid frames included in oUF_Neav offer a way to implement grid-like raid debuff tracking in form of a center icon as well as some corner indicators, already configured to show ES, Riptide and Earthliving. Of course that’s not as much information as Grid offers, but it’s a start. And it leaves me the option to save some memory and raid without Grid.

A VoA25 PuG seemed to be a very nice opportunity to test the new Interface. Even if the raid came to an abrupt end after some wipes on Emalon, I had time to tweak the UI to my personal taste and get a feeling for healing without Grid.

Neav UI vs. Koralon

I’ll highlight some defining points of the UI, so you’ll get a basic idea what this compilation is about. For further information, check WoWInterface.

• oUF_Neav: Unit frames are of course one of the core elements of every UI. Player and Target frame as well as the Party look very cool, even if they’re very clearly influenced by the blizzard default frames. Having my player frame in the upper left corner is somewhat irritating for me, so I adapted an idea I’ve seen over at Vranx, which is including oUF_FavHUD, an oUF based HUD. That’s the three thin vertical lines at the right side of my toon, representing my mana, my health and target health from left to right. The values of health and mana to left and to the right of my toon are oUF_FavHUD as well, maybe I’ll edit them out in the future. The interesting thing are of curse the raidframes. They look very slick. The debuff tracking with the center icon seems to be working fine as well as Riptide and Earthshield indicators. The animation of health values rising and dropping is differently animated than with Grid, smoother, but somewhat confusing if you’re used to Grid. I had no problems healing the raid though. On a side note: the castbars are a function of oUF_Neav as well.
• nMainbar: nMainbar is a very pretty modification of the standard actionbars. It offers three actionbars at the bottom of the screen as well as one or two on mouseover at the right side of the screen. There aren’t any menu buttons included (character button, LFG etc.), so you’ll have to keybind them or use an LDB addon like picoButtons. I like the old school look of nMainbar, of course it lacks some flexibility compared to an addon like Dominos. I for example prefer to have the actionbar at the very bottom shown on mouseover only, which isn’t possible. All other bars can be shown on mouseover only or can be changed in alpha value, all this is done through .lua editing. If you prefer to change the looks of the gryphons at the side of your actionbars, SquidMod might be a good idea.
  

  Another SquidMod skin

• nBuff, nMinimap, nTooltip and nNameplates are all very small but good looking addons continuing the overall style of the UI.
• The rest: for a complete list of all addons included, head over to WoWInterface. Also, I accidentally updated Omen, if you install the version included in the compilation, it has matching borders.
• The following addons are seen on the screenshot but not included in the UI compilation: modified dBar (the actionbar on the left side I use for cooldown tracking), Coolline, Filger, DXE, Totemtimers, ShieldsUp.

The verdict: This is one of the best looking UI compilations out there. I absolutely love the colors, the borders and the retro look of the unit frames. The raidframes offer nearly everything a shaman healer needs, though Grid users might miss some functionalities and the manual addition of raid debuffs is somewhat annoying, compared to the always up to date Grid module Gridstatusraiddebuff. If you’re looking for a low memory UI compilation, this might be just the perfect place for you to start.

Comments are welcome, as well as other good UI compilations, which might be worth my attention.

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.

• 

  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.

There is a very common mis-perception: shamans are easy to play. Most of the time, those people point at the few healing tools shamans have and then at the great variety of spells of a holy priest or a tree. This is wrong. Many shamans new to shaman healing fail at choosing the appropriate spells for the right situations. Maybe priests and druids are in fact more likely to learn firing the right spell in the right situation, because they have so many tools for specific situations and have to learn to handle them. Many shaman healers look self content at their small set of healing spells and just can’t imagine they could do anything wrong, having such a small choice anyway. Add to this the fact, that many resto shaman still think Chain Heal is the right tool for every situation and you get all those shamans in full T9 gear, still failing at the very basics of shaman healing and healing in general.

The second factor, which doesn’t help not so experienced shaman healers to make big steps into the right direction, is the image many raid leaders have stuck in their head: Illidan, P2, lots of group damage and an armada of resto shamans in sparkling armor mopping it all up with chain heal. This leads to many shamans being assigned to group healing tasks. Which leads to nonsense like: “Ok, everyone spread out so evil spell XY doesn’t jump from player A to player B. You two shamans over there, heal the group! Holy priest, heal the tank!”. Many raids and sadly many shamans themselves still completely ignore shamans as tank healers.

I know this might sound harsh. But I still see many resto shamans out there under performing with poor judgment in the matter of spell choice assigned to the wrong tasks. This is a call against mediocrity and self-content. Easy content is no excuse to suck at healing.

So here’s what I offer, 17 steps to not only be a decent healer but truly master the art of shaman healing.

1. Learn the basics. If you’re a fresh level 80, go look for some very basic shaman guides. Aurik hast written an excellent post, though part of it might be outdated. If you raid or plan to raid somewhere in the future, please read the Shaman: Restoration entry over on EJ. Then read it again. And don’t forget to bookmark it and return to this page from time to time. EDIT: I have seen mek’s guide is updated for 3.2, so there’s another, very well thought out guide.
2. Gain control over Tidal Waves. As you know, by casting Riptide or CH you gain two charges of this lovely buff, which will add 30% haste to your HW or 25% crit to your LHW. If you want to have a maximum of control over this buff, please monitor it. NeedToKnow, Power Auras or Auracle are Addons which will help you with keeping track of the charges. I’m not at all advertising some sort of healing rotation, nothing is worse than that. But every shaman should try to maximize the amount of LHWs and HWs, buffed with Tidal Waves.
3. Monitor your ES and supercharge it. Every shaman should provide a 100% uptime for our lovely brown and ugly Earth Shield. There is no excuse to ever let an ES fall of a target. Totem Timers or ShieldsUp both help with keeping track of the charges. But do you honestly think this is everything? If you want to maximize the healing of your ES, you have to monitor your Spellpower or trinket procs. Of course it’s a good idea to macro +heal on use trinkets to your earth shield. In addition to that, I monitor the buff from my Totem Relic as well as the proc from Pandora’s Plea. If both buffs are active and I have a spare GCD, I always refresh the ES, supercharging it with nearly 1000 (!) additional +heal.
4. I’m sorry, Riptide is not just the spell with the funny animation. Learn to use it. The first part of mastering Riptide is pretty obvious. This is training your reflexes and get faster and faster with dishing out the often life saving instant heal. This is a great spell to heal something you’re not assigned to, like squeezing an emergency heal on a tank or a group while not being assigned to those tasks. But only do so, if you’re 110% sure you won’t compromise your main task. Also, if you want to do a great job, monitor the HoT part, especially if you glyph Riptide. Don’t overwrite your HoT by casting Riptide over and over on the same target. Don’t eat up the HoT with CH all the time, but preferably on targets where the HoT is just about to run out. A HoT tracker like ForteXorcist or Grid with GridStatusHots will do a great job at monitoring the Riptide HoT.
5. Yes, LWH is good. It is fast, it will most probably crit, it is pretty mana efficient and it only gets better if you make smart use of Tidal Waves. It is a great tool for tank healing, especially combined with an ES and the proper glyph. It is a great fast heal to clean up damage NOW, whenever Riptide is on cooldown. But do you want to max. out your performance? Then it is all about healing situational. Keep an eye on your Tidal waves buff make absolutely sure, there isn’t another spell, doing a better job. Don’t forget: CH will jump to melees, HW is higher HPS and nearly as fast as LHW but mana hungry. RT is (*drumroll*) instant. The longer a player isn’t at full health the more likely it gets that another healer will heal him at full health or damage will kill him. Never underestimate the power if instant healing. Side note: If you stumble into an arena from time to time or have some honor left, buy the LHW relic! It will do wonders in tank healing situations.
6. I know you forget to cast HW all the time. That sucks you know. It is a great spell, and deep in your heart you know it. But when the shit hits the fan, your brain shuts down and you press your buttons for LHW or CH over and over again and forget your HIGHEST HPS SPELL on a single target which is also INSANELY fast when you Tidal Waves is up. Anticipate damage spikes, charge yourself up with two charges of Tidal Waves and Precast HW at the right time. A quick RT HW HW combo is absolutely amazing. So, grab a note and a pen and write down the following: “Dear [Your name]. Don’t forget to cast HW in the appropriate situation or you will burn in hell” and stick it on your monitor.
7. Chances are pretty good, that you kinda suck when it comes to you and Chain Heal. I’m sorry, but it just has to be said. If you ever mindlessly spam Chain Heal into a raid group you will burn in an even hotter hell than the one reserved for the guys not ever casting HW. If you’re one of the shamans producing tons of overheal but getting slightly aroused by their position in the healing meter, well then I it might be too late for help already. The animation of chainheal is pretty addictive, as are the big numbers popping up. Problem A) Holy Priests are better group healers than we are, with the rare exception of really steady damage and a clumped up raid. Problem B) I’m extremely sick of the argument, that it’s in most of the cases a good choice to cast CH to the end even if the main target is at full health, because the additional jump are going to find some good targets anyway. This is very often not the case. NEVER forget that it is possible to stop your cast and safe lives with a clever RT or LHW. Again and bold: STOPCASTING. Problem C) CH has heavy range limitations. Try to never cast a CH when it has no chance to jump. Be ashamed for every misguided CH just hitting one single target. Problem D) CH is very slow. So anticipating the damage and precasting CH is a must or else people will die. CH is too slow to just reactively heal the raid. There are a lot of situations where CH is too slow to do any good at all, e.g. topping up people at Faction Champions Heroic (whereas precasting CH on people where you anticipate damage with the raid at full health is clever).
8. You absolutely have to know what’s going on around you. I know it is hard to get away from the tunnel vision we healers sometimes have and this isn’t something you can change in a few days. But it is absolutely crucial to watch boss timers, so you can precast your heals for certain events. It is absolutely crucial to see what’s going on around you. If you see an elemental porting itself right into a group next to you (Jaraxxus Heroic), start casting your CH before the elemental starts his AoE damage. This isn’t something shaman specific but counts for every healer out there. Don’t just react to everything happening around you, learn to see what’s happening, who’s standing where, who’s in desperate need of healing and which fellow healer is in distress and might need help with his task.
9. You will need addons. Most importantly a decent healing frame and a good boss mod. I absolutely recommend a raid frame, which highlights raid debuffs. Grid and GridStatusRaiddebuffs are a good example, I’m sure other addons will do the job as well. You’re also going to need some brain muscle memory and key bindings and stop clicking on important stuff. Last but not least, you will wipe “turning right” and “turning left” from your keyboard and replace it with strafe. You will turn with your mouse from now on.
10. Don’t forget your own health. Dead healers aren’t that great at healing. In fact, healers should never die. I mean, you can heal yourself, can’t you? And you have Health stones. Herbalists have a nice little self heal. Have your player frame very visible and don’t forget to keep yourself at full health as often as possible. Don’t give in to the seductive calling of the raid frames and forget your own health bar.
11. Forget Healing Meters. They are only valuable if two people of the same class are assigned to the exact same task. They also somewhat help raid leaders to check if healers work with the right healing spells for whatever task their given. Apart from that, the only feedback you need is the survival or death of the task your assigned to.
12. Be flexible without neglecting your main task. I don’t think this needs any explanation, but both extremes, absolute tunnel vision on your heal assignment as well as cross healing all the time and endangering your heal assignment are absolutely horrible.
13. Manage your totems. Pick what’s helping the raid. Refresh totems if you have spare time and mana, don’t wait up to the last second. On longer fights, drop Mana Tide TWICE. It’s easy to assign a low mana treshold to Grid to around 60-70%, so you’ll easily see when your Mana Tide will bring up a good part of your fellow healers to nearly 100%.
14. Don’t forget to cleanse, purge, hex and wind shear. This can make the difference in ToC and its Heroic Mode.
15. Have a NS macro for both, CH and HW. With a 2 min cooldown you should absolutely use your macro very often. It is great to counter unexpected group damage or bring a tank back to full health. Don’t save it up for that one special occasion, which might never come.
16. Collect proper gear sets for different tasks. Swap out glyphs for different tasks. Swap out relics to match your task.
17. Fight for proper healing assignments. Learn tank healing. Learn quick spot healing. Talk to your raid leader or to whomever assigns you to your task.

That’s it. I’m really looking forward to comments pointing out anything I might have forgotten and update this list.

So, why should you change from a bossmod you’re so comfortable with to the newcomer DXE. Here’s 8 reasons why:

1. The addon is new. The addon is still in development. The addon is beta. This is a huge advantage over BigWigs and DBM. The authors of the DXE are still very much in the process of creating a great Bossmod. They still read the forums and try to integrate wishes of the community. Bigwigs and DBM on the other hand are more ore less final versions of addons and don’t see huge overhauls.
2. DXE has a great number of timer bars, not too many and none important ones missing. The bars are visually appealing and customizable. And don’t forget, for most people those two sets of bars, one for immediate events and one for longer timers, are the absolute core of a Bossmod. And for me, DXE does an excellent job at this.
3. The addon has a very neat control panel. The panel will show an overview of boss health bars, which is very useful in fights with multiple mobs. In addition, the panel provides very easy access to the option menu, range display etc.
   

   DXE Control Panel

4. DXE provides very neat 3D arrows. Those will help you run away from people targeted by Anub’arak spikes or Icehowl charge. It will help you move away from people with the Legion Flames Debuff when fighting Jaraxxus.
5. The slick looking range indicator shows the exact distance between you and other raid members with little bars. This helps a lot to find the right position and is a lot more intuitive than just a plain list of players in your 10yd range.
6. The addon provides a huge set of sounds and a lot of different sounds are assigned to different events in one encounter. This can be too much information at first, but having a lot of different sounds helps a lot, the more you learn to assign those sounds to the right events.
7. Screen Flash for very important effects is very noticeable but not annoying and can be configured.
   

   DXE Timer Bars

8. DXE is extremely customizable. All timer bars can be turned on and off. Screen flash can be turned on and off. Sounds can be assigned to your liking. Most importantly though: Even if the addon is highly customizable, it works excellent right out of the box.

For some more pictures of the addon, head over to No Stock UI and check out the post featuring DXE. A decent picture of the range indicator can be found over at Upyursh.

Comments are welcome, as always. And yes, DXE is really the best Bossmod out there.

_Cursor: This addon will add a little trail to your mouse cursor. Sounds stupid to you? Well it isn’t. As a healer it isn’t incredibly helpful, but especially as a tank I love it. Imagine a lot of mobs, a lot of AoE, your fps dropping and something hectic happening: This is the moment where I sometimes lose track of the mouse cursor. This addon keeps the cursor clearly visible at all times and helps me click and target the right mob just a tiny bit faster.

ActionButtonText: This addon let’s you assign buff or debuff durations/stacks directly on action buttons. You have a button for your flask? Add a duration timer to it. You are a rogue and want to Envenom? Add Deadly Poison stacks on your Envenom button. You are an Arms Warrior and need to track Rend? Add Rend Duration onto your Rend button.

Addon Manager: Do you sometimes switch addons on and off while logged in? Do you need to identify an addon which causes your computer to slow down? This addon will help you identify resource hungry addons and even better, turn addons on and off without logging out and back in.

Am I locked out?: Do you have more than one character at level 80? Then this addon will help you see which toons are saved to which instance. It will produce a simple LDB tooltip, which identifies 10 and 25 man instances as well as heroic and non heroic modes. Great tool for farming VoA and Onyxia with multiple eighties.

BankStack: Your inventory is a mess? Your bank isn’t organized? Click the minimap or LDB icon and BankStack will neatly sort bank and/or bag space.

Bimbo: Bimbo will highlight non-gemmed or -enchanted items in your character window or whenever you inspect someone. Missing enchants/gems can be printed out into the chat frame. Helps me keep all my alts decently geared as well as deciding if someone’s worth a pickup group or not. Highlighting on inspect sometimes highlights too much items, which is unfortunate. But as long as the printout into the chat is still OK, this addon works for me.

Dolemite: Enchanting items with Alt+Click on Item is a good thing.

GreedBeacon: The addon blocks the detailed loot roll spam and condenses everything into a nice little mouseover window.

Grunt: Hides duel invitations, auto accepts guild and friend list group invites, skips some vendor gossip and some more stuff.

lolThreat: A nice little addition to your Threatmeter or a complete replacement. Does nothing else than show your threat relative to your actual target as well as a written status like “Safe Tanking” or “High Threat”. Identifies if you’re a Tank or damage dealer automatically.

Molinari: The Twin Sister of Dolemite. Alt+Click will prospect or mill herbs in this case.

Obituary: Adds a clickable link to player deaths to quickly identify the cause of death. Can get a little bit spammy but helps a lot to analyze what happened after a wipe.