Healbot vs. Grid+Clique

[talrob]

To be honest, the best setup is the one you are used to. You could take the best WW2 fighter pilot and put him in the 'best' fighter now and he would be even worse that the old one because he wasn't used to it. Same with wow the interface is only a tool to help you, the real skill comes from the Brain addon which lots of people don't seam to have installed.

There are probably people who can outheal you with only the default ui and some mouseover macros because they have got used to that setup and just 'know' that 'person x' is going to get spam healed and therefore you don't waste your mana where as someone else has an addon to say that. Just because you cant do that doesn't mean that someone else can't. Using your brain and learning the right target for the right heal at the right time will improve your healing hundreds of percent more than a custom UI.

Basically my point is this arguement is fairly pointless, if you have used an custom UI stick with it don't bother swapping, same as the choice between bigwigs/DBM, when you get used to one system it just feels 'better'.

[Tumdumdumdum]

Grid, just set it up. Everyone who knows how dropdown menu's work and know what they want too see.
Tbh, the biggest mistake ppl make is not making the units larger.

[Kelesti]

Grid, just set it up. Everyone who knows how dropdown menu's work and know what they want too see.
Tbh, the biggest mistake ppl make is not making the units larger.

Who needs bigger units? I can actually see boss fights now. :P

Although, I don't use Clique. Just Grid.

[Lenerien]

I tried clique and grid but i couldnt get the colors step so i could see them losing HP. I was able to get it to get horizontal but colors just messed me up. could be because i used Healbot for last 2 years.

Maybe ill give it another try. with HB it doesnt always cast what you want clique did everytime.

[Kenyawn]

i was a healbot user for years and just recently switched to grid+clique for the main reason of speed. as healbot added more and more features, it seemed to "slow down" to me, i assume because it's one addon processing a ton of information, when i switched to clique+grid, it seemed to show health bar movements quicker. with separate addons handling different things that healbot used to do alone, the whole combination just seems to react quicker than healbot. my setup is Grid/Clique/SmartDebuff. i just recently changed a few months ago, and am still tweaking grid, but overall, the response speed is noticeable enough for me to ditch healbot for good.

[Haveaux]

Reasons why I prefer Healbot:
- Health deficit is horizontal and the bar color changes in value from green to red depending on the health percentage.
**You can set health deficit as horizontal too, that's how I've got mine set up.
**I'm not to sure you can make it change colour, haven't seen an option for that myself.

- Renew/PW:S/PoM tiny icons show up on the bars when MY spell is on the person.
**http://www.wowace.com/addons/grid-status-hots/ ; Will track only your spells on the target aswell as changing the indicator colour. For example; My renew is bottom left corner, Green when it's got more than 6 seconds left, Yellow from 6-3 seconds left, and Red in the final 3 seconds. Bottom right corner is set up for PW:S with PW:S setup as yellow and weakened soul set up as grey. PoM shows a number indicator on the person it is on where the centre icon normally would be (I've only got specific raid debuffs showing here; ie Mark of the Fallen Champion)

- I can have the bars faded and set it so that when a player reaches a certain health, say 80%, the bar will become more visible so it's easier to react.
**I'm at work at the moment so I can't have a fiddle with my settings but I do know you can set the border to light up when they're below a certain threshold.

- I can see incoming heals from other players, which I know Grid also does, but it tells me the amount of HP the player will have after the heal or how much the incoming heal is going to overheal assuming the player doesn't take any more damage.
**Newer versions of Grid have the 'expected health' bar thingy (lol :P) that is slightly faded aswell as setting the Center Text (1 or 2) to the actual amount of incoming heals.

Reasons why I want to like Grid:
- I can see if someone has a disease or magic on them, though it would take me some time to memorize the colors & position of the tiny squares.
**Wouldn't it be the same colours? Mine are set to the default at the moment (Blue=Magic, Purple=Curse, Green=Poison, Browny Orange=Disease). I have my priority setup as Magic > Disease > Abolish Disease > Poison > Curse. So I can see what I need to dispell (or am currently in the case of abolish) before I need to yell at others to do it.

- It has a more appealing overall look - Grid takes up less space than Healbot and the squares look organized. I can make the bars on Healbot smaller but it can just never look as nice as Grid.
**Grid looks great, really nice being able to change it so look sexier then before.

- It seems as though every healer swears by this mod so I really want to like it, but I'm having trouble with that.
**Have run Grid since I started healing on my Paladin at the start of BC and cannot live without it.

There are also a few Grid Addons that I use and really recommend.
http://www.wowace.com/addons/grid-status-raid-debuff/
http://www.wowace.com/addons/grid-status-hots/
http://www.wowace.com/addons/grid-mana-bars/

[Zeuq]

Awesome necro.

I was a longtime Healbot user through much of BC and the early part of LK, but I eventually decided that I wanted more configuration than Healbot had available. It was nice and easy to set up, and could show most of the information I wanted, but I just wasn't happy with the presentation of that information, so my reactions weren't as intuitive. It's a nice choice for a quick set-up, where it works fairly well right after you install it, and you can get it fully configured in maybe 20-30 minutes max, but when you really get down to needing good presentation and more features, like most progression oriented healers do, it just doesn't cut. Now, I've heard it's been improved a lot since I stopped using it, but I haven't had a desire to try it again.

I played with Grid briefly, and the organization was better, but I wasn't happy with needing so many different plug-ins to go with it to achieve the same sorts of functionality that I had with Healbot, and since I was playing with VuhDo at the same time, after I realized it had all the stuff I wanted built in, I gave up before I got too far.

IMO, VuhDo is the healing mod of choice. It has the all-in-one part of Healbot with the nearly infinite configurability of Grid. It did have some short-comings compared to Grid when I started using it, most notably not having enough custom debuff slots and somewhat poor presentation, but that's long gone as you now have as many slots as you need and can even configure each custom debuff's presentation individually. It now even has features that, to my knowledge, don't exist in other healing mods. A good example would be one that was added recently, cluster detection, which is nice in fights where ranged can't stay grouped up, but I want to still make good use of CoH other than just on melee (Blood Queen and Putricide being good examples of where it's helped in that regard). Finally, and what I think is probably it's greatest strength, is that the developer is very active on the Curse and plusheal forums fixing bug reports or taking requests for features. Some of the configuration is still a bit clunky, and it sure is intimidating to new users, but it really is a fantastic mod.

[Stigma]

As a discipline priest, I far prefer Grid's customization to Healbot's seeming simplicity. I disliked the set up, and functionality of Healbot, and it didn't work particularly well with my Logitech mouse. That's my personal opinion - I've seen great healers using both addons.

What I was surprised about was how long it took someone to mention the custom Debuffs/Buffs you can get on Grid. Adding alerts for debuffs in raid situations is, in my opinion what makes it so much better to heal with, from my perspective. Being able to configure the boxes is also great, although I find that in more intense healing situations they fade out a lot. I use the border option of Grid to track targets with Weakened soul - This lets me really easily track who I can shield, and who I can't. The centre text tracks Prayer of Mending / Incoming heals. One crucial thing to do is to disable class colour healthbars - most of the time, I found this was just distracting. In turn, it lets you more easily see debuffs/dispels by virtue of a more distinguishable colour change.

Another great ability is changing the priorities, and even being able to hide debuffs on the fly, if the fight doesn't require dispelling.

Also Synge, my Grid shows pet health during Malygos, so I'm not sure if that's a more recent addition, or because of the GridStatusRaidFrames addon I use.

I also found that Healbot was comparatively more difficult to set up than Grid + Clique, because Grid's menus are largely intuitive, once you know where to find things.

Also, the mana bar addon is brilliant for raiding, glad that was mentioned.

[Auton]

I played with Grid briefly, and the organization was better, but I wasn't happy with needing so many different plug-ins to go with it to achieve the same sorts of functionality that I had with Healbot, and since I was playing with VuhDo at the same time, after I realized it had all the stuff I wanted built in, I gave up before I got too far.

I honestly cannot believe it took 5 pages for VuhDo to come up...

Personally I use VuhDo for healing (disc priest) since it shows all the information that I could hope to have available. Remaining time on PWS, who has Weakened Soul, all of the debuffs from the GridStatusRaidDebuff, all of the great looks of Healbot AND Grid available, and... it just goes on. The thing is litterally like taking Healbot mucking it out and adding all of the best features of Grid but easier to understand and in one package.

Now, I am no newby to Healbot (healed with it all through BC), or Grid (Still use this on my non-healing characters.. Righteous Defense clicks for the win!)... but when it comes to healing, VuhDo wins hands down. All of the info is there.

[Deleted]

Grid + mouseover macros > all

[Jonisawsom]

I honestly cannot believe it took 5 pages for VuhDo to come up...

If you read more than the last post you should have realized how old this thread was.

Personally I tried healbot and didn't like it. Grid/Clique was what I saw most people recommend so I learned to use that first. The fact that it comes in "pieces" is both good and bad. If only 1 is broken or outdated, you can disable only that part of it. You can also cut down on memory usage, though grid/clique are already very efficient in that area. I loved it for healing on my resto druid and tbh I think I'd still prefer it on that toon. But it didn't have all the functionality that I was looking for. The downside is also that when major patches come out, it can take a while for the authors to update every single piece of it. Usually not a big deal though.

I too went to VuhDo near it's release and although at first I found it to be clunkier and not as good as the other two, I saw it's potential. Forming your own frames/groups etc was one thing that I didn't find with the other two that VuhDo offered (sometimes I like it for having the tanks in a separate group). When healing on my shaman I sometimes had trouble keeping track of ES/WS, and the buff frame was excellent for that too. When it was new, I think they were all about equal, but VuhDo seems to be pulling ahead in the amount of unique things it has/can do. Overall I'm glad I made the switch. VuhDo seems to come out with regular updates/fixes and new features very often as someone else said. I don't follow the other two as closely anymore, but I can't say I've seen anything new/unique come from grid lately. I keep it installed but it's only updated for major content patches, whereas VuhDo's creator is regularly trying to improve it.

One thing I don't like about it is the limitation on the amount of HoTs you can track, though I guess technically I should never have to worry about more than the 6 it allows you to track. I haven't played around with it, but I also don't know if there is another option for tracking debuffs like poison/disease/curse/magic to dispell. Grid I could set them to different dots or indicators so I could see if someone had both a disease and a poison, but in VuhDo the whole frame changes so I can only see one at a time. This is why I'd prefer to have more custom indicators in VuhDo (like Grid does), but otherwise I haven't really found myself wanting it to do something that it can't do (other than maybe auto heal heroics for me lol).

[Zeuq]

One thing I don't like about it is the limitation on the amount of HoTs you can track, though I guess technically I should never have to worry about more than the 6 it allows you to track. I haven't played around with it, but I also don't know if there is another option for tracking debuffs like poison/disease/curse/magic to dispell. Grid I could set them to different dots or indicators so I could see if someone had both a disease and a poison, but in VuhDo the whole frame changes so I can only see one at a time. This is why I'd prefer to have more custom indicators in VuhDo (like Grid does), but otherwise I haven't really found myself wanting it to do something that it can't do (other than maybe auto heal heroics for me lol).

On the HoTs, you also get 3 HoT bars. TBH, I'm not a big fan of the bars, assuming they were mostly aimed at Druids, but I've started using them in the last week or so because I ran out of indicator space. Yeah, I kinda wish there were more indicators, but at the same time, I can't really imagine having more without them not being immediately obvious what they mean just from position and color. That said, I'm currently tracking effectively 7 things (Renew, PoM, PWS/WS, GS, PS, Clusters, and Abolish Disease).

Personally, I prefer the color change method that VuhDo uses over indicators because of how I process the information. That is, the stuff I track with indicators are important things to know, but I only need to know them if I'm looking at that person (eg, am I able to PWS this person? does he have renew running? Do I need to cast AD to remove the disease or is it already on him? etc.). However, debuffs and custom debuffs are things that I need to have my attention drawn to them, and I've found that the bar color is more effective at this. Beyond that, I also use numerous colors for custom debuffs, where I have 3 or 4 different colors to cover the different ones I need to watch for a given encounter, each generally standing for a different level of severity, and thus I immediately know, without having to determine where the indicator is or what the icon is, how to prioritize my healing/dispelling. Yes, it can be bothersome if the color of a higher threat debuff is overwritten by a lower threat one (Festergut puke target gets a spore, or Saurfang mark gets boiling blood, etc.), but it's seldom a problem since I usually know who has the important debuffs before they get something else on top of it, and when it is a small problem, I found my reaction is much better than the other way around. And yeah, it can be annoying with Magic/Diseases, but how many encounters have both, 2 or 3? In those cases, one isn't so much worse than that other that it makes a real difference what order you do it in.

But, FWIW, in a recent update, I think when he added the ability to manually enter a HoTs rather than from a predetermined list, there's an option to watch dispellable debuffs using the indicators, so you should be able to get exactly what you want.

[Jonisawsom]

But, FWIW, in a recent update, I think when he added the ability to manually enter a HoTs rather than from a predetermined list, there's an option to watch dispellable debuffs using the indicators, so you should be able to get exactly what you want.

Thanks, I'll have to look for that.

I understand how in a raid generally there is only 1 debuff that you'll have to worry about so if the unit frame changes to reflect that, it probably is better in that circumstance. For me I mostly meant 5 mans, like say in PoS or HoR. The 4 trash packs after Ick have diseases, and a fireball DoT that ticks for 3k I believe. So if you get a group that isn't the best geared etc, sometimes I find it important to know how many GCDs I need to top someone off, or if I need to PS the tank etc. I just find that after using Grid for so long and using the square indicators in VuhDO to track my HoTs that I feel more comfortable tracking all the information the same way instead of half and half.

Perhaps it is also my configuration that could use work. When I used to raid naxx with my old guild I had a couple other healers that weren't particularly 100% reliable. As a resto druid I found myself also tracking diseases for say Heigan, because the pally was too busy FoL spamming the tank to cleanse anyone and the holy priest would die on the first dance. Instead I would see who was going to need heals and pick up the slack. Now using VuhDO I don't even think it tracks the debuffs you can't dispell by default. I'd like to track them all but through multiple indicators like I could do with Grid.

With all the addons, you could have an absurd amount of indicators in Grid and I'd personally like to see more customization with the squares. The one gave you (I think) 3 extra indicators next to the default ones, so in one corner you could track all 4 dispells (poison, magic, curse and disease) and still had plenty of others left for your own HoTs etc. There was also an addon for I believe 2 or 3 center text lines which could show specific debuffs such as ice tombs on KT etc. I think the unique abilities of VuhDo are great and surpassing the others, but it's customization is still lacking just a bit. I continue to use it though because I think it'll soon be well ahead of all the others in every aspect. It's still fairly new compared to the rest so I don't expect it to be the best with the first version.