Healbot vs. Grid+Clique

[viporoptix]

You can set grid to monitor who has buffs or is missing buffs. It might take an extra addon, i'm not sure though, but mine tracks prayer of mending and works for other priests too.

you can add any buff or debuff to the Grid setup and assign it to show a colored square or whatever else you'd like. i use it to keep track of buffs and different hots (druid)

i haven't delved into this yet, but this is an awesome article in regards to setting up Grid:
http://www.resto4life.com/2008/06/25...hin-the-boxes/

it does favor druids, but can be adapted of course.

[Zeuq]

This looks like one of the most well thought out grid vs. healbot posts I've seen that isn't "healbot is for bad players". So I figure I'll respond to this:

I used healbot for a good year with grid just for raid frames (no clique) before moving to grid+clique only. Three main reasons for the switch: 1) healbot was getting increasingly buggy (mixing up people in groups, showing people at half health when they were really at full) which, despite multiple re-installations with wiping the saved variables files did not fix and

Quite honestly, I haven't had any bugginess with Healbot except right near the beginning of BC and LK when there were major changes to the underlying code. In fact, the only time since sometime back in Karazhan that Healbot bugged out, other than a few days after expansion, was last week at KT when I was so bored during Phase 1 that I was dorking with my UI settings and reloaded my UI mid-combat

2) healbot takes too much screen space, if I wanted to make the bar big enough to see the nice little PoM, GS, and Shield icons and not obscure the actual health bar, I would have to resize the boxes to be waaay too big.

Perfect example is http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.ph...4019#msg734019 (screen shot is too large for me to want to repeat post)

I can't see for the life of me on the healbot bar if the person with those three buffs is at 100% or 50% health without squinting and the transparency thing with health percentages still doesn't help (I grappled with this for a while on healbot). With the grid frame, I know where the icons or dots show which buffs are active and I can clearly see the person's health bar and keep the frame relatively small.

This is a valid point, and this is also why I don't have healbot configured that way. I find that I prefer the icons because I'm use to seeing what my PoM, Renew, PW:S or GS icons look like, so I find them easier to digest quickly. I also like seeing icons for debuffs because sometimes debuffs need to be dispelled immediately, and sometimes it's a waste of my time, so I can intelligently decide if I want to remove it or not. Granted, that's normally only an issue on trash where I don't necessarily remember every mob that's in every pull and what debuffs they put up, while I have to remember for bosses.

Instead, I put the icons off to the side of the health bar. It does make the whole interface a little bigger because the space has to be there, but I'm working with 1920x1200, so I'm not terribly worried about real estate. Plus, since it's off to the side, a debuff popping up can easily be spotted against the black background, so I generally have a quick response to it.

Either way, the difference between icons and dots to me seems more like a preference.

3) GridDynamicZoneSwitch - no more scrambling to change the healbot profile from a 40 man to a 15 man if I move from an AV to a WSG, the Grid frame size changes automatically if I want to enable this setting.

This is one a bit of an inconvenience, but only a minor one as, rather than it automatically switching, since I want it to fill up about the same amount of space in my UI regardless of whether it's a five-man, 10-man, or 25-man, I do actually have to go into the settings and change it, but it only takes about 2-3s to do it whenever I start a run, so it's hardly enough of an inconvenience for me to switch.

[segma]

Personally, I use Healbot and I really don't understand the vitriol that so many other people seem to have toward Healbot and people who use it. As for your specific question, Healbot was very simple to set up for Frost Blast. All I had to do was go to the debuff tab, type Frost Blast into the custom debuff box, and click save. On the next KT encounter, anyone who got a Frost Blast, their bar turned the custom debuff color which I had previously configured for other debuffs (but you can disable it), and it also displayed the Frost Blast icon on the Health bar.

Well, that sounds simple enough. I'll definitely give that a try then, thank you.

I don't understand their fury either. I recall in the past Healbot chose the heal for you so all you did was click on it and it made the decisions for you. I don't believe it has functioned that way in over 2 years.

[Girryn]

In my opinion Pitbull 4 is already better than either and it is still in alpha. Curious about the claim that grid updates health faster though if you could explain that more?

Does it work like Instant Health?
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-a...ject-6450.aspx

[Kelesti]

In my opinion Pitbull 4 is already better than either and it is still in alpha. Curious about the claim that grid updates health faster though if you could explain that more?

Does it work like Instant Health?
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-a...ject-6450.aspx

I'm not sure if Grid has instant health by default now, or if I downloaded it back in 2.4 and forgot completely about it, but yeah that's pretty much how it works. *shrug*

[sparks]

well I found a healbot how to. Then it was pulled as being out of date.
Is there a grid how to set up and use tutorial?

last year when I first heard of this discussion people were saying that healbot was for pallys and grid was for priest
I am just saying not stating this because I don't know

I wish there was a big picture file on how to set up grid and what the little color boxes mean...anyone know one?

[Hatch]

The only problem I have so far is not being able to (as far as I know) move frames around. Say you want to have all tanks next to each other so you can track them easier, I haven't found a way to do that yet but it's not a big deal. Only time I wanted it is in PuGs and I had trouble remembering all the tanks, or even just finding them (especially 40 man groups).

i usually use the 25man+ora tanks (or wtv it is called) i works really nice, gieves me a new "group" with all the tanks there.

but yeah, as far as i know u cant move frames around independently

[wowman]

one question about grid.

With healbot I have the option to configure how many columns or rows I want.

Can I do that with grid? or does it always put it in a perfect square?

[Nezoia]

Curious about the claim that grid updates health faster though if you could explain that more?

Does it work like Instant Health?
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-a...ject-6450.aspx

Yes, it works like that. And it's default, opposit to Pitbull

[Lenerien]

Been a Healbot user for a long time. after reading this post and many many others about each i desided to try grid clique one more time. Been using for awhile now. have it set up to where i can see druid buffs on my raid party and other stuff needed.

Did 10 man naxx 2 times now. just 1 more quarter to go and no issue healing. In fact now that i can see others healing the raid i can target my healing even better. With healbot i couldnt see druid hots on my other raid player, i might not have set it up right. but now i can and its great.

Does take awhile to get use to looking at the corners for what heals are INC but once you remeber what is what its so much better.

Good bye Healbot Hello GRID+Clique

[wowman]

can someone verify my question above?

Can you specify how many columns or rows you want with grid? I looked for an addon for grid but was unable from finding what I needed. This is the only thing holding me back from switching from healbot to grid.

[Lenerien]

ive been using grid for awhile now and i have the same question. I do mostly 10 man and i can have it either horizontal or vertical in rows of 2. but i did a 25 man and it was a square. Took up alot of space. yes i can make it small but i wanted to make it 3-4 columns high and whatever per row can this be done ?

[Gibbon]

You may be able to do that in Grid2, which isn't fully released yet.

Remember that Grid was developped at a time when raid groups were important, concerning buffs and such. So there wasn't any purpose of displaying members in total disorder. This matter of fact has quite dissapeared with Wotlk.

You can display the layout by classes though.

[Girryn]

I think there is an addon like grid dynamic sort that sorts my class roles tank-dps-healer-?pets?