What Do You Pack?

Over at Blog Azeroth, the author of Shifting Out posted about consumables they bring to raids.  After reading their post, I found that I am not the only one who has half of their bag space taken up by needed raid consumables.

Since we’ve been farming Karazhan for endless months, I no longer use consumables here, but I still keep them handy just in case.  I actually used full consumables when I had to solo heal the first six bosses. 

Now that we’ve been spending some time in Zul’Aman and tinkering around in 25 man content, I am fully buffing myself to give us the best chance of success.  Ever since DO started Kara way back when, I have kept a full stock of raid consumables handy at all times. 

Bare minimum in my bags:

5x Flask of Mighty Restoration

5x Flask of Distilled Wisdom

20x Elixir of Healing Power

20x Elixir of Mastery

20x Elixir of Draenic Wisdom

20x Golden Fish Sticks

20x Blackened Sporefish

1x (5 charges) Superior Mana Oil

20x Super Mana Potion

10x Super Healing Potion

40x Heavy Netherweave Bandage

100x Sacred Candle (Fortitude/Spirit/Shadow all use them)

These items ensured that I could perform at my highest at any given moment.  Now that we are starting T5 content, I usually bring an extra 20x Super Mana Potions, 20x +stamina food, 20x mp5 food, and 1x (5 charges) Brilliant Mana Oil.  This, along with all my extra gear, assures that I am prepared for ANY situation, and can manage my buffs accordingly.

When 2.4 comes out, I’m likely going to be bringing along some Elixir of Mastery since there are going to be changes to how mana regen is calculated.

 Is this extreme?  Is this the norm?  What things do you consider essential?

[e]Added new consumables since 2.4

Beneficial Addons: Heal Organizer

Heal Organizer is an addon that allows you to quickly and neatly assign healing duties.  This tool will help streamline the healing assignments and should be used by all raid leaders, healing officers, or anyone else that may need to help out with healing assignments for a raid.  This is an Ace mod, that can be managed using the tools explained in my previous post, and can be downloaded here. 

The slashcommands are all under “/ho” or “/healorganizer”

The first thing you want to do after installing the mod is to create a macro that says:

/healorganizer dialog

Place this macro on one of your hotbars for quick access, instead of having to remember to type that command each time you want to make a change or broadcast the assignments.  Once you have the GUI up, you can start the process.  

You can create titles for up to 9 fields in Heal Organizer.  They are prefilled for you to give you an idea of what you can name them.  I like to put in the names of the tanks, specific people that are going to need healing, or a duty, in each of these fields.  Just click on the title to bring up a box that allows you to rename it.  Once you choose the title, click Save to enable the changes.

Once you have created your titles, you can drag player names from the left column to their particular assignment for the fight.  The list will let you choose from EVERY Priest, Paladin, Shaman, and Druid currently in the raid, regardless of spec, so be careful who you assign a duty.

The next field that you need to fill in is the “Remaining” field.  This is about half way down and it’s pre-filled with the text “ffa.”  In this field, you can type anything you want.  This will be broadcast in your messages.  You don’t have to use it for the remaining healers that you didn’t assign.  I like to type something like, “Confirm Assignment with Birkin” so that when my healers read it, they can let me know that they got their assignment.

Now that you have the assignments set up the way you choose, you can click “Save As” to bring up a box where you can give this setting a name.  This way, you don’t have to set up the titles every time you come to this fight.  You can just choose your previously saved data, and fill in the healers next time.  If you end up making a slight tweak to a saved setting, just click on “Save” for the changes to take effect.

    

The next thing to do, now that you’ve made all of your titles, given assignments, and noted any other comments, and saved your selection, is to broadcast this to your raid.  If you click the button at the bottom that says “Raid,” this will automatically send multiple lines of text to your raid channel.  It breaks it down into multiple lines, so it is easier to read.  You can also broadcast this to a specific channel, if you have a specific one set up for your healers.  Just type in the channel number in the “Channel” field and click the corresponding button.  Also, you may choose to select the option to “Whisper healers their assignment.”  If you do this, along with the raid or channel text, you will also automatically send everyone with an assignment, their duties. 

    

Also, as you see in the chat box, the last line says, “Whisper ‘heal’ for your assignment.”  This means that anyone in your raid can whisper you the word “heal” and it will send them a whisper back with their healing arrangement.  If they are not a healer, or not assigned anything, it will tell them so. 

 Since I am in charge of healing assignments for my raid, I use this as a crutch.  There’s nothing worse than having to deal with macros or whispers to your healers individually.  This addon has made my life so much easier, and I fully recommend using this if you think you’ll ever have to give out a healing assignment.

Void Reaver Disassembled

Draconis Occisoris has done it again!  We have added another boss to our progression list.  This time, with our first T5 kill. 

After a quick 45 minute Gruul’s Lair clear, we decided to test the waters take to the air, and give Loot Void Reaver a try. 

During the trash clearing to VR, our 4th tank disconnected and never came back online.  Seeing as how VR is suggested to be a 4 tank fight, and we had no others online, we decided that we would still finish clearing to VR and “practice” movement and positioning for the next time we could actually get a clean attempt in.

Our first pull we were able to see exactly how the orbs worked.  After promptly wiping and rezzing the group, we formed up for our second “practice” round, with only 24 in the raid.  We had several dps down by the time VR was at 50%, so we reset the fight to save from having to run back. 

Now that we had all seen the fight 2 (maybe 3, can’t remember) times, we were getting much better at avoiding the orbs.  One of our last attempts (because trash from before Alar was about to respawn), we had 24 in the raid and we got Void Reaver to 10% when he enraged.  We were all very impressed that we could do this in the first night of real attempts.

Thankfully, we were able to rez without having to run back and encounter the respawns.  At this point, one of our resto shamans logged online and was able to come help out on our last attempt.  Even though we didn’t need an 8th healer, we used him for the threat reduction that his totem brings.  We put him with our very threat capped shadow priest and mages, allowing them to put out more dps, and that was enough to bring Void Reaver down on our last attempt for the night.

Overall, I was very impressed by our tanks being able to put out enough threat to where we only needed 3 tanks for this fight.  I think we did very well for a practice run!

Solo Healing Kara

Every week, Draconis Occisoris takes one night a week to do a full clear of Karazhan.  We kill everyone from Attunemen to Prince, and it usually only takes about 3.5 hours (we hot swap guildies for certain boss drops).

 Well, last night when I was attempting to log in for raid, I wasn’t able to connect to our server.  I could log in, but when it came to the character selection screen, it just froze there.  Well I knew it wasn’t an ISP issue because I quickly logged into Ventrilo.  Apparently, I wasn’t the only one with the problem.  Several other people were complaining that they could not log in either.

After 20 minutes of attempting, I was finally able to log in.  It was just in time as it was around 6:20 server, and we start at 6:30.  To my surprise, we only had about a dozen people logged in the game at that time.  I was the only healer. 

“Officer channel: Birkin…you up for it?”

I’m confident in my healing abilities, and I shoot my mouth off a lot usually, so I was psyched up that I finally got to prove it and show people the real deal.  We entered Kara with 2 tanks, 1 healer, and 7 dps.

I’ve solo healed Attunemen before, so I wasn’t worried about it.  Heck, our tanks barely need heals at this point.  Attunemen dies.

“Officer channel: You think you can handle Moroes?”

I am thinking at this point that Moroes will be cake.  My renews are good enough healing for garrote victims, and I have mods to watch my HoTs, so I can keep them active at all times.  After explaining to the AOE classes that it will be much easier to have only one person to heal during trash to Moroes, I appointed one of them to get a dps head start on the rest of the aoe so that I can basically chain cast to keep them alive.  Any swapping targets, and someone will likely die.  This strategy was successful, as we were quickly to Moroes.  Moroes is promptly killed.

“Officer channel:  As the solo healer, I request we kill Maiden first before Opera this week.  I can easily heal Big Bad Wolf, likely heal Romeo and Juliette, but Wizard of Oz is going to be a problem.  Might as well kill a guaranteed easy mob first.”

Maiden was easy to do as we had an elemental shaman with grounding totem in the caster group, and a shadow priest capable of handling the majority of the dispels so that I could focus on healing.  Maiden went down on the first try, as expected.

“Officer channel: Please don’t be Wiz of Oz. Please don’t be Wiz of Oz.  Please don’t be Wiz of Oz.”

Let me start by saying that I suck at running from Big Bad Wolf.  Although, this was the one I was hoping for as it would be the easiest to heal, by far.  Thankfully, we got the Big Bad Wolf event.  I promptly ask for a soul stone, as if I do mess up on kiting, then we’re screwed. 

“Come here little girl!” **BIGWIGS: Birkin is Little Red Riding Hood**

Oh boy…

I started kiting BBW around the room and decided to “play it safe” and chug a swiftness potion really quick.  Well, the plan sort of backfired on me as I ended up running TOO fast and allowed BBW to cut a corner and kill me. 

It’s okay though because at this point he’s at about 25% and I still have my soulstone.  I pop back up and we win.  WHEW!

“Officer channel: Curator or Nightbane?”

Why did tonight have to be the night when, explaining the Nightbane fight, our recruit hunter asks, “You said Misdirection…do you mean Distracting Shot?  I don’t have that talent.”

/facepalm

After showing the hunter where in his spellbook Misdirection is located, and explaining how it works (sigh), we summoned Nightbane.  All was well until he landed after the 50% phase.  No misdirect and a dps that’s not paying attention = our first wipe of the night.  After reiterating how Misdirect works, we killed Nightbane on the second attempt. 

I was quite happy with myself at this point considering I don’t have any drops outside of T4 content (including crafted and BoJ), and I’m sitting at 2400 +healing and just solo healed a boss that we used to bring 4 healers to when we first started killing him.

“Officer channel: I can’t wait to see how fast we kill Curator!”

Basically 9 manning Curator (our Recruit/Friend/fill-in hunter had less dps than the prot MT and was running around like a chicken with his head cut off the whole fight, for whatever reason), we managed to kill Curator in 2:09, a guild record.  He was under 10% when he came out of his first only evocate.  I am tempted to bring in 8 of our regular raider dps next time to attempt to kill Curator before he ends his Evocate.  THAT would be cool.

“Officer channel:  Birkin?  What next?”

Well, we’ve come to the point where my arrogance confidence has hit the reality wall.  My biggest concern was Shade.  I know that it can be a lot of healing output.  I was semi-confident that I could heal Illhoof.  I was somewhat concerned about me getting sacrificed, but I figured with 2x soulstones and a battle rez, it would likely be possible.  I knew I couldn’t solo heal Netherspite.  The caster in the Blue beam takes tremendous damage alone (Although in hindsight I could have had the 2 warlocks take it and drain life the whole time).  I was pretty confident that Prince would be easy too.  If it’s a good attempt with nice infernal positioning, just have the tank sheild wall during phase 2 to ease the healing load. 

While I was willing to try it out, after talking it over with the guild leader, I decided that if there WAS a fight that I couldn’t solo heal, then we’re going to have to come back the next night and do this over again anyways, trash and all.  Instead of risking the chance to unnecessarily wipe the raid, I decided to realize that it’s likely best for the raid to call it at this point.

Needless to say, that solo healing 6 bosses in Karazhan was one of the most fun and rewarding experiences I’ve ever had.  I feel as if I’m at the top of my healing game, and it feels great.

Healer Pet Peeves

Over at Blog Azeroth, Matticus was blogstorming, and suggested the topic, “42 Ways to Annoy Your Healer.”  This got me thinking about things that really annoy me in game.  Although I did read the whole post and additions from other BA readers, when I tried to think of my specific experiences, I could really only think of a few things.  These are the things that, when they happen, I grit my teeth and start cursing.

Numero Uno

“I need a heal!!!!”

No $#!& kidding…

You know, I have ONE job. I do my job very well on my own.  I do not need you telling me that you need healing.  I KNOW that already.  Guess what!?!?  There’s likely a good reason your health is low. 

The most likely reason that I can think of is that you did something stupid.  That’s my first reaction.  If you’re not the tank, this is most likely true.  If you are the tank, then it’s also a good possibility. 

Another likely reason that you haven’t been topped off six milliseconds after you didn’t avoid that predictable AOE damage that you weren’t supposed to take in the first place, is because not all of my heals are the equivalent to mana free, no cooldown, Lay on Hands.  My significant healing spells generally have a casting time associated with them and I’m probably in the middle of casting when you blurt out your panicked words.

If you need more reasons, then your health is low is probably due to the fact that, despite your arrogant attitude, you are not the next best thing since sliced bread, and therefore — SURPRISE!!! — you are not my priority.  Yes, there are more important people in the raid than you.  It’s called judgment.  There, I said it.

Overall, I am quite aware that you are about to die.  In fact, I am so aware of this, that I will usually tell you that you’d better start using Bandages if you call out for healing one more time because you surely won’t be getting healing from me.

Number Two

“DPS Aggro”

There is a reason that we require the use of Omen.  It helps you manage your aggro. 

For all you PoM/Pyro Mages, Elemental Mastery Shaman, and “oops my Nightfall Shadowbolt crit” Warlocks, and any other class that is incompetent of using their aggro reducing abilities BEFORE you pull from the tank, this pet peeve is from you. 

Having a crappy tank is NO EXCUSE as to why you pulled aggro.  You can’t top the DPS charts if you’re dead, so watch your threat and use your abilities!  Feign, Invis, Vanish, Soul Shatter; no matter what your ability is, feel free to USE IT, and don’t go screaming, “I need a heal” either, as you’ll likely end up with your face on the floor anyways.  Believe me, you’ll just sound pathetic.

3

“I’m going to make a sandwich while I wait for a rez.”

Every wipe is not your personal Half-time.  If I’m running, so are you.

Just because I CAN rez your pathetic corpse, doesn’t mean that I’m obligated to do so, while you go yell at your kid.  I’m not responsible for your bad parenting.  If your kid can’t sit still through raid, either invest in some tranquilizers, a Wii, or a nanny.  It’s not my fault that it’s your weekend with the kids.  You should have thought about that when you put WoW before your wife.  If you were still married, you could yell at her to slap ‘em around and start running back to your corpse like everyone else.

Bottom line:  If you die, you’re running because I’ll likely make up an excuse as to how you’re out of range from me and I wouldn’t be able to get to you without pulling the boss anyways.  So don’t waste my time, or the rest of the group’s time for that matter.

Fourth Reason I Have a Headache Tonight

“Breaking CC”

There is always a reason for crowd control.  It probably has something to do with it NOT running around killing the healers.

Every instance you enter there is an opportunity to crowd control certain mobs.  If you’re blessed with a group capable of these CC abilities, then there’s a good chance that we will utilize it. 

Hunters, please do not Multi-shot.  Mages, just because the mob is at 1%, doesn’t mean that Arcane Explosion, Blast Wave, Cone of Cold, or any of your other “I’m not thinking about my environment” spells are your best choice.  Rogues, tab targeting is extremely inefficient.  I’m not even going to talk about Pally tanks using Consecration right next to the sheep.

Tanks, if your DPS continually break CC because they’re too stupid to stop and you’re too stupid to get another group, then do your part and tank the mobs AWAY from the CC.  You know, we did just clear all the mobs up to this point.  We didn’t teleport right in the middle of a room where we can’t move.  Here’s an idea: drag the fight down the hallway we just came from a little bit.  I’m willing the bet there’s not many mobs that direction.  This will allow you to group with other stupid DPS somewhat successfully.

 If you are assigned to mob CC, then do your raid a favor and make that CC your top priority.  Use a mod to tell you when your CC breaks.  Use a macro to get it under control as soon as it breaks.  Put some distance between you and your CC’d mob so that by the time you react to it and can get off your cast, it doesn’t kill you or a healer.  Above all else, if for some reason your stupidity allowed you to get railed by your own personal objective this fight, do not, under any circumstances, yell over Ventrilo, “I NEED A HEAL!”

Conclusion

Overall, there are many things that can rub people the wrong way.  Whether you’re a healer, a raid leader, an officer, or a player that actually likes to play skillfully, everyone has pet peeves.  If you fall under one of the above categories, please rectify the situation immediately or you’re in danger of being that “one guy” that nobody likes to bring along on the raids or PUGs.

Halazzi Put to Rest

 

This past week, Draconis Occisoris went back into Zul’Aman to attempt a boss we have never tried before.  We quickly did the timed event for Nalorakk, the Bear Avatar, and moved on to attempt to get a second chest in the timed event.  We came upon Akil’zon, the Eagle Avatar, a bit too late as our only wipe came at the end of the gauntlet due to an untimely Tempest pull.  Even though we didn’t get the second chest, we still managed to one shot Akil’zon. 

Usually at this point, we head towards Jan’alai, the Dragonhawk Avatar, but tonight we decided to add another boss to our list of progression kills instead.  We have never attempted Halazzi before, but we decided to make the clear towards him.  The lynx trash is much easier than the dragonhawk trash.  There seems to be much more, but on a couple occasions we accidentally pulled two groups at once and weren’t really in any fear of wiping at all.  I think that an additional pack in the dragonhawk trash would have been trouble.

After clearing up to Halazzi, the Lynx Avatar, we took a minute to discuss strategy before the pull.  After a couple of pulls to see what the fight was about, Halazzi went down relatively easy.  I would have to say the learning curve is a lot quicker for Halazzi than Jan’alai.

I am looking forward to heading back into Zul’Aman on Thursday with our guild, and hopefully take on all four of the Avatar bosses, now that we have killed them all as a guild, and head on to Hex Lord Malacrass afterwards. 

Beneficial Addons: The Holy Trinity

Many people use addons or mods to enhance their game-play.  Personally, I am a huge fan of addons, and i have replaced almost every aspect of Blizzard in my interface.

Since I have so many addons, I need a way to easily track, modify, update, and configure all of them.  In order to do this most efficiently and effectively, you will need 2 addons and an easy to use application.

WowAceUpdater

Many people, myself included, are a huge fan of Ace mods.  About a month and a half ago, Wow Insider posted an article about Ace explaining why Ace addons are the latest and greatest in addons.  Here is a snippet of their article:

“Ace was created because many different mods have to use the same types of basic functions. With ordinary mods, these basic functions would be written and included with each addon. With Ace, this basic functionality is packaged into a single library that all Ace mods use. What this means to non-programmers is that Ace mods use fewer system resources, because they all use a the standard Ace code, which is loaded once for all of the Ace mods you have. If you’re using non-Ace mods, these basic functions are loaded separately for each addon you have — and the more addons you have, the more this adds up. (On the flip side of this, if you only use one Ace addon, you don’t gain any benefits, but if you use all Ace addons, a little efficiency improvement in each can result in a big difference.) For the programmers in the audience, Ace means you can write your addon quickly, because you have immediate access to basic Ace functionality (you don’t have to reinvent the wheel — you only have to write code for what you want to do).”

If you are using a non-Ace mod, there is a good chance that there is an Ace alternative with the same functionality as your current one. 

By using this application, you can install, uninstall, and update all your Ace mods with just a couple clicks of the mouse.  Whether you use 1 Ace mod or 100, WowAceUpdater is an application that will save you time and effort.

         

Addon Control Panel (ACP)

With ACP, you will no longer have to log out of the game to enable or disable your addons.  This mod adds a button to the escape menu, called “Addons.”  It will bring up the same menu, in game, that you normally find on your character selection screen.  This is beneficial for a couple reasons.

For one, it saves you time from having to log in and out to tweak addons.  If you’re not in an inn or capital city, there is a potential of saving at least 20 seconds for logout time, each time you have to adjust. 

Another reason is that you can adjust addons without missing any guild chat or whispers.  The only time you will miss it is when you are finished enabling or disabling and you click the box to “Reload UI” for the changes to take effect.

Overall, this is another time saver and convenience for anyone with a love for addons and you can download it here.

DeuceCommander

Once you have installed and enabled all of your addons, it is now time to configure them.

Deuce Commander is an in-game addon configuration consolidator.  Deuce provides an easy to use drop down menu that provides links to all of your mod configuration pages.  Now you don’t have to remember any more “/” commands or clutter your minimap with tons of icons for your other mods.  Deuce is your one stop configuration shop for the addon lover.

Here is a link directly to the download.

Deuce Commander, along with ACP (and hundreds of other mods) are both Ace mods, and can be installed and updated via the WowAce Updater.

Conclusion 

All in all, if you are looking to build an addon empire, attempting to streamline your addons, or even just looking for useful tools, these three enhancements are the building blocks to successful addon management, and will provide you a lasting foundation to build upon throughout your WoW experience.

Common Courtesy

As we all wait for the new expansion to roll around, many of us choose to spend our free time in WOW in many different ways. Some of us do dailies for stockpiling gold. Some of us ride around on our epic flyers looking for mining/herbalism nodes to support our cash flow and consumable requirements. Some of us play alts to pass the time, and sometimes we like to run 5-mans and group quests with our alts. In these instances, we may need help with some of these things along the way.

I would love to think that as a whole, most guilds are selfless, and would do anything for their members. As a general rule, this is spot on. There are many people that will drop what they are doing to help out a guildie, even if it’s not with their main character. This type of behavior is what establishes great guilds. Sometimes though, these random acts of kindness seem to go unnoticed and, at times, without reward.

 
If you are in a situation where you need the help of a guildie or a few, you should feel free to ask for it. That’s what your guild is there for, to support each other. Just know that sometimes, everyone is not available or willing to drop what they are doing (which may or may not be equally important in your eyes) to come help you out immediately. On the other hand though, if someone DOES offer to help you out, you should keep that in mind the next time that they might need some assistance with one of their characters. It goes without saying that a kind “thank you” is always appreciated, but what would be really nice is if you returned the favor sometime in the near future.

A lot of times this can be pre-arranged. Are you the person that doesn’t like to ask for help? Do you feel uncomfortable posting that you need help with something for your alt? If this is true, then maybe you can come up with a proposition to reciprocate the help for whoever helps you. You can post up front what your plan is. Anything from, “I need help with a group kill quest in Netherstorm. If anyone can tank/heal/dps with me, I’ll help you out on some of your group quests too (for your main or alt),” to “Would anyone be willing to run my alt through SM Cath for a couple items? I’ll run one of your alts through an instance of your choice afterwards.”

Many times we take for granted the acts of kindness we see in game. This can also take place in the form of bumming consumables off other players. If you’re borrowing mana/health pots, elixirs, flasks, food buffs, weapon buffs, or anything that you would normally need for raids, from someone else in the guild, then you should compensate them in some way. Why is it fair that they have to farm for themselves AND for you? If you didn’t have time to farm some mats this week, do a few dailies, node searching, or fishing, and you happen to fall short on your consumables for the week, and you do end up asking someone for mats, you should throw them some gold or repay the mats, or offer them a service (run through on alt) to compensate. It gets really tiring week after week of people asking you to provide them what they should already have, and to add insult to injury, they get nothing to show for it in return.

Overall, building WOW relationships in game is similar to real life. It’s all about the give and take. The more you take and take without giving something in return, the more people are going to start noticing and be unwilling to give you more or help out when needed. As long as you keep that in the back of your mind and just remember that each and every one of us values their time in game. When our time is taken for granted, it starts to make the game not as fun and seems more and more like a job.

On the other hand, if you’re the one feeling like they’re being taken advantage of, then you can’t be apprehensive to ask for help in guild chat, or even ask for the reciprocation of your assistance at some point. At the same time, nobody is going to help you out if you don’t speak up and ask for it.

For the most part, this is not a problem in most guilds. There may be instances where this is the case, but I think that it is very limited. So take into consideration the things that you ask from your fellow members, and always remember to return the favor, even if you’re not asked.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

 

Tonight, we are cancelling raid for our members to spend some time with their loved ones.  This is good for me since I was planning on posting an absence anyways, but I was curious as to how many guilds did this?  I know this may be common practice for “major” holidays, but is Valentine’s Day considered a major one?  What about President’s Day?  Anyone cancelling raid for Monday?

 I’ll be headed out of town this weekend for a quick 18 mile canoe trip with some buddies, but when I get back, I’ll be sure to have something good to post!  Hope everyone has a great holiday.

How Interface Addons Increase Raid Awareness

A big part of being successful in current raids is having keen “Raid Awareness.” Raid Awareness is knowing what is going on around you at all times. This can include knowing where the mobs are around you during combat, knowing where to stand in a boss fight in order to not take unnecessary damage, knowing where your healers are in relation to you, or even realizing you’re standing in a big circle of destruction, aka Void Zone. Every day, WOW players are attempting to customize their game interface to be more “optimal.” What some feel are optimal, others may not, but there are some things that can be changed that most can agree on. 

Some people prefer simplistic interface. “Fresh install of WOW right out of the box and it’s perfect!” Some people prefer total customization. “Now that I installed WOW for the first time, let me go to Curse Gaming and download everything I need to be able to play comfortably.” Finding a comfortable balance between these two can be a struggle at first, but once the goal is met, and you have tweaked your interface to suit your play style, you will never go back to “bare bones” WOW because you love the convenience of total control that you’ve become accustomed to having.

There are many reasons people adjust their interface and install mods. These reasons can range from the convenience of adding extra cast bars, to having information at their fingertips (as opposed to alt+tab out of WOW to check WowHead) to see where an item drops or what reagents are required to craft a certain item, or to have tools to help with leading raids and guild management. All of these reasons are valid, and all of these reasons help streamline the gaming experience for the player. The one big benefit to customizing your interface, and the one I would like to highlight in this thread, is how changing from the default interface can increase your “Raid Awareness.” (**Note: Some of my opinions in this thread are based on a healer’s perspective. Although some of these tips and suggestions may not apply to DPS or tanking classes as much, there are many tips that will benefit everyone.)

By default, the player frame and target frame are in the upper left corner of your screen. When you join a party, by default, the party frames are all aligned vertically on the left hand side of your screen. As a healer whose number one priority is to make sure nobody’s health reaches zero, I have to keep my eyes on anywhere between one and twenty-five health bars at any given time. For someone who is so intent on watching raid frames, I still need to be aware of what is going on around me. The same goes for DPS classes and tanks. You may not have to watch other people’s health bars (unless you’re a flexible hybrid), but you do need to watch the target for interrupts, stuns, spellsteals, DoTs, casting bars, etc. If your eyes are focused on the upper left hand corner of the screen, then you may have trouble keeping watch of what is going on around you. Granted, I played like this for a very long time, but now that I have taken the time to test out certain interface enhancements, I love the change and can see the benefits every raid. By keeping your eyes more towards the center of the screen and your character, you can utilize the most of your peripheral vision to better enhance your Raid Awareness.

To accomplish this goal, I have changed the position of mostly everything (extreme) on my interface to give me, what I feel, is optimal Raid Awareness. I will show you some pictures of my Interface and how I have streamlined it for customization and utilization. I feel that personally, with my setup, I can not only do my job as a healer efficiently and effectively, but I can also tell what is going on around me at all times with minimal effort. 

This is how my UI looks while idle. No parties, no raids, not in combat:

 

As you can see, my Character bar and Target bar are below my avatar. I have also moved my minimap and Omen to the lower part of my screen so that the upper 2/3 of the screen are free from any distractions. My eyes are focused just below my character’s feet (lower-center of screen) so that I know where I am standing at all times, which is very important for Raid Awareness in those “void zone” encounters. No matter how focused on health bars I am, my eyes will definitely see my feet.

This next screenshot is how my UI looks while in a party. As you can see, I have moved my party frames a bit more to the center of my screen so that my eyes are not focused to the side (healer issue) and I have also enabled the option to view my party member’s targets:

 My current raid setup is very similar to my party setup, with the exception that I do not have the option to view their target enabled (way too many boxes at that point).  I also made the raid frames much smaller to save space, so that I can see as much as possible around my raid frames.

Another easy way to increase your Raid Awareness with minimal effort is to have all of your spells and abilities set to a key binding.  If you are clicking on spells and abilities with your mouse, you’re looking at your hotbar, and not the fight.  This is just one more distraction to add in to the mix when you’re job is to be at the right place at the right time.  If you don’t have to look down at your hotbar, you can keep your eyes up on the fight and on target bars and on health bars if you’re a healer class.  Hopefully, some of these tips and ideas will give you an idea as to what your ideal setup would be so that you can achieve optimal Raid Awareness as a top raider in your guild.