7 buffs you need to know about

One thing I think is important for a healer UI is to let you see important buffs. In general I think displaying relevant information is one of the essential features of AddOns, but in particular I think a healer benefits from having an accurate view of the raid's status. This view naturally would include debuffs, as we often need to dispel them or heal people affected by them. But I feel another important part of that view is the display of certain types of buffs:

1. HoTs: Naturally you want to see who has your HoTs active. You may also want to see when people are covered by HoTs, so you know there is some healing coverage there. GridStatusHots provides a great display of these.

2. Shields: Disc priests will want to see who has PW:Shield active, but all healers can benefit from this: seeing a shield lets you know there's less need for immediate heals. An active shield is like a few thousand extra temporary hit points, so you want to see shields to get a proper view of everyone's health.

3. Immunities: Spells like Iceblock and paladin bubbles can be good to see, so that there is no need to focus healing on a target that won't need it.

4. Mitigation buffs: It's very helpful to see when a tank pops Shield Wall, Icebound Fortitude, Last Stand, or a similar skill. It shows that the tank will be taking less damage, and it indirectly conveys info on what kind of damage the tank expects in the near future, and on the condition of the encounter.

5. Lesser mitigation buffs: Things like Shield Wall greatly affect healing, but there are also lesser mitigation effects. Grace, Inspiration/Ancestral Fortitude, and Blessing of Sanctuary all can reduce damage by a few percent: not really vital to know about, since their presence probably won't change your healing decisions, but nice to see. Divine Aegis may fit in here too, as a typically smaller shield spell.

6. Reactive healing buffs: Prayer of Mending and Earth Shield should definitely be tracked by priests and shamans. MendWatch and other mods track these for the purposes of knowing when to recast them, but it's also good to have these display on your unit frames, so you know who can safely take a hit from an add or AOE without losing HP right away.

7. Back from the Dead spells: Spirit of Redemption and Shadow of Death allow players to keep playing even after they die. Most unit frames will show these players as still alive and kicking, even though they are living on "borrowed time." Naturally you want to know which raid members won't be with you much longer!

Other buffs can also be useful to see, from boosters like Arcane Power, to regen spells like Innervate, to encounter-specific spells. They range in important from vital to know, to mere convenience. But I think overall, any healer can benefit from thinking about how seeing some of these buffs will help them.

A rep to remember

The Sons of Hodir
Giants in the snow, with names
Unpronounceable

Thrusting Hodir's Spear?
Blowing Hodir's Horn? Really?
Who's this Hodir perv?

Do these silly quests
Or buy Ulduar Relics...
Cha-ching! Exalted!

Farewell Hodir's Sons
Hope to see you again soon!
(When my shoulders drop)

Angel Dwarf form!

I just uploaded a header image that I've been playing around with for this blog. Hopefully it is pleasing to the eye!

I chose the Spirit of Redemption form (or as it is more correctly know, Angel Dwarf form) for the header image because it's the closest thing we have to the long-wished-for Holyform. And it is a pretty good form. I had my doubts when it was first implemented, when it was snarkily referred to as "Improved Death." I even tested it on the PTR back then, respeccing and getting myself killed by a boar so I could try it out (and then spending 15 seconds realizing I probably should have tested it somewhere I could actually heal someone).

But I came to love Spirit of Redemption over the years. Obviously it shined most in PvP, where in battleground skirmishes I often was relieved when I died, since now I could heal people without those pesky CC's, stuns, and interrupts. When the glyph of SoR was announced I was excited and I used it for some time, managing to keep Angel Dwarf form going for 45 seconds to a minute, before the glyph was nerfed.

It's true that the spell only comes into play if something goes wrong and you die, but it has nevertheless allowed me to get in a lot of last-minute healing, and pull out some victories in heroics and arenas that otherwise would have been full wipes. And now that I'm disc specced I do miss it. Some day, probably when dual specs arrive, I will become an Angel Dwarf again!

Priests: we heal more after death than most classes do all day.

The importance of sound

Every so often, someone will say they play WoW with the sound off, and listen to music or TV while they play. I don't really get this... I can do that while I'm mindlessly playing an alt, but I really need sound while raiding or doing heroics.

Part of it is that sound adds a subconscious level of immersion. Playing with the sound off just feels detached to me. Plus it's rather hard to focus on a raid while Mythbusters is on TV! But I also feel that sound is an important part of the user interface, and I think that its use should be encouraged and enhanced, and not muted.

There are many built-in sound cues in the game. You can hear a sound effect when you get clearcasting, or when your attack is parried, or when your Prayer of Mending bounces. These are a good start towards building situational awareness, but like the rest of the default user interface, leaves something to be desired. Plus there's the fact that all the ambient sound from players near you and the world all combine into a cacophony of spell effects and grunts and clangs of steel!

So, we extend the role of sound, just as we extend the default UI. Our mods can play sound effects. This is ideal because we can choose which events to single out with an auditory notice, and we can pick any sound effect we like to go with each. Blizzard created a lot of great sound effects, but sometimes there's a subtle sound effect for what is actually a very important event, like a void zone spawning under your feet! When we configure mods to play our own sounds, we can pick distinct and memorable sound effects to go with important procs or debuffs.

A well-known recent example is how Deadly Boss Mods yells "Run away little girl!" when Sartharion summons a lava wall. Interesting that they chose to play a (very recognizable) sound clip when this happens, in addition to showing a timer bar. On the other end of the mod spectrum we have Comix, a mod that plays the old Batman "POW!" sound effects when you crit. Silly yes, but very evocative, and it also plays other sound effects when you get important buffs, and sings "Extra life!!" when you get a battle rez. If the author added funny sound clips for getting Grobbulus's disease, or the different charges on Thaddius, perhaps it would be a required raiding mod!

A personal example is that when learning Sarth 2D and 3D, I had trouble avoiding the Shadow Fissure void zones. With 2 drakes up, between the extra healing demand, the fire walls, and the adds, it seemed I often forgot to look at my character to see if I was standing in a zone. So what I did is write a mod that plays a silly sound effect each time a Shadow Fissure is cast. Once I had this enabled, I was able to make the association: hear sound, look down to see if I'm in a fissure. It has been a great help; I still get healer's tunnel vision at times, but now I have auditory cues for fire walls and void zones.

I think these example show how sound can be used effectively in mods. Sounds are transient, but powerful. Sounds can act as an interrupt, an alarm. This is why fire alarms use sound, why ambulances use sirens, and it's also why someone calling an important event on Ventrilo is often far better than everyone having one more timer bar in their already-cluttered UI's. We are visual creatures, but a full raid UI is already overtaxing on the eyes. Best to use sound as much as we can, to let the ears help us parse information. To only use sound effects for ambience is to miss their power in alerting us to important events.

Twice shy... for now

Bad pugs, like sponges,
Soak up all my healing spells,
And my will to live

The tank has full health
Yet the DPS is dead
Let the tank tank please

Enlightened, we flee
Never to pug that again
'til we need more rep