Healing Addons: A Cry for Help!

[Zurii]

Alright so, I'm one of those old school healers left over from BC who were introduced to Healbot and now can't wrap my head around the new fancy addons every ones been telling me to get.

Things I've heard have included trying out Grid since its the best healing addon available at this point in time in many peoples opinions, and other things I've heard is giving Vuhdoo (or however you spell the addon, I'm sure you know which one I'm talking about) a try or even just using normal raid frames with a mouse click addon! The popular voice says that Healbot is really lacking and seeing that I'm a pretty well progressed priest in a pretty decently progressed guild its time to seriously look into other options.

So I post here today looking for some good feed back, is Healbot really as trashy as the public makes it out to be? Is Grid really the better choice, and if so, why?
In short I'm looking to get a lot more out of this post then just a bunch of replies saying "get grid."

As another note: I've tried Grid previously but was unable to see the advantages of it over Healbot other then you get more screen space, but that's not an issue for me.

[Arcilux]

To each his own. I used x-perl unit frames with a mouse over macro for a while, then switched to healbot. I had some problems with healbot but once I got them ironed out I loved it. Tried Grid and Vuhdu but eventually went back to healbot. Granted I just off heal or heal for dungeons, when I raid I do so on my ret paladin more often than not, so I cannot speak for healing in current tier raids

[Frmercury]

Vuhdo and Grid / Clique work effectively the same and are even commonly configured to look the same. Vuhdo can do some cosmetic things Grid can't, but runs at a higher memory. Either are great and both are better than Healbot.

Whatever you pick I can't say this strongly enough: Take the time to look up guides / videos on setting them up and take an hour or two to set them up and get comfortable with the configurations! One of the biggest mistakes I see happen to people going from what is basically no addon setup to something this complicated is that they just get overwhelmed with the configuration, get frustrated, and give up. Your life as a Healer will be better for using them, so be patient.

[Moofer]

Hey there mate, ik one of those who are sort of addicted to healbot, i dont know why people dont like healbot. As i see it it's faster then grid or something else because it saves you 1 click and some keybindings ( i even use healbot as tank ).

Maby im just praising healbot right now and havn't tried the other addons well enough but healbot is doing The Same as wow did to me, once i started to play wow i didt like all the other mmo's and i guess healbot is doing The Same.

But at the end, your the one who desides :>

[Frmercury]

Vuhdo and Grid + Clique work the same way (Click casting), but can show more buffs / debuffs, refreshes faster, and reacts faster.

[Zurii]

Vuhdo and Grid + Clique work the same way (Click casting), but can show more buffs / debuffs, refreshes faster, and reacts faster.

That's what I was most concerned about, I had heard that Healbot had a delay on it compared to other options. To be honest, I can't say I've noticed any difference from when I hit the button to when the cast goes off but since I'm not familiar with any other addons its been in the back of my mind...

[Frmercury]

That's what I was most concerned about, I had heard that Healbot had a delay on it compared to other options. To be honest, I can't say I've noticed any difference from when I hit the button to when the cast goes off but since I'm not familiar with any other addons its been in the back of my mind...

It's the delay in showing debuffs that is a larger concern tbh. A Priest buddy who's familiar with .lua said it's easy to see why it's so slow and runs so heavy when looking at the programming. Apparently it's a real mess.

[Delial]

I find grid + clique to be an excellent combo
also, powerauras for when my SoL procs or I have 3 stacks of serendipity, among other things.
You'll probably also want to grab something that tracks cooldowns!

[Frmercury]

I find grid + clique to be an excellent combo
also, powerauras for when my SoL procs or I have 3 stacks of serendipity, among other things.
You'll probably also want to grab something that tracks cooldowns!

Power Auras is an amazing Cooldown and debuff tracker as well.

[Delial]

It is, although there are those that prefer to use something like ForteXorcist instead.

[Frmercury]

It is, although there are those that prefer to use something like ForteXorcist instead.

I personally use both. Forte for tracking procs like Lightweave / Ashen ring / Shadowfiend etc. I use Power Auras for things like PoM and Penace / CoH.

[Zurii]

It's the delay in showing debuffs that is a larger concern tbh. A Priest buddy who's familiar with .lua said it's easy to see why it's so slow and runs so heavy when looking at the programming. Apparently it's a real mess.

Once again, I couldn't say I've noticed it personally but I'm not going to doubt that, its an older addon that's been passed around a bit. What I'm wondering though is Grid just the condensed information of Healbot? From my experience with Grid it seems to really focus on providing the player with a clean unit frame that gives the person as much space as they would need. I understand that you can adjust the length or the width of the boxes, but its the corner style info boxes that have me wondering, or are those also customizable?
I suppose what I am saying is I can easily read Healbot but I no longer feel comfortable using it, and since my knowledge of these other healer addons is very small I have no idea if I can have that easy visual style that Healbot provided or if I have to get used to the tiny squares and plugging in a billion addons to Grid to customize it as I feel fit. (Which I'm sure is a must anyway)

[Frmercury]

It's not a billion, but I've run as many 12 at one point. Since then I'm down to ~5, but it's not a big deal. I'm only running at 5 MB of addon memory during fights.

Yes, EVERYTHING about Grid is customizable. Watch a configuration video and play around with all the options.

[Zurii]

It's not a billion, but I've run as many 12 at one point. Since then I'm down to ~5, but it's not a big deal. I'm only running at 5 MB of addon memory during fights.

Yes, EVERYTHING about Grid is customizable. Watch a configuration video and play around with all the options.

I'll look up some guides and play around with it, hopefully ending with me throwing Healbot out of the window! hehe

Also, if anyone has some suggestions to what addons I should also pick up for Grid that would be helpful Right now I only have mana bars.

[Frmercury]

GridBuffIcons
GridIndicatorSideIcons
GridStatusRaidDebuff
GridStatusRaidIcons

optionally:
GridIndicatorCornerIcons

[Zeuq]

I was a long time Healbot user through most of BC and early in LK. At one point I played with Vuhdo and Grid, and didn't like them (VuhDo was still being written and thus incomplete, and Grid seemed overly complicated compared to Healbot). Eventually, I just got frustrated with the lack of configurability and slow updating of Healbot and decided to take the time to play with the add-ons and, after spending the time it took to set them up, I found that it was worth making the switch and ultimately settled on VuhDo (mostly because I prefer the all-in-one approach and the very responsive developer).

Basically, the reasons that people suggest Grid or VuhDo is because either can do absolutely anything Healbot can do, but they can also do a lot more configurability wise, which means better display of information, and more importantly, they update debuffs and such much faster.

[anyaka21]

what's the best add-on to track pw:s for disc. X-perl has a shield option, but doesn't seem to show it when you click the options. It's supposed to have a purple outline, and only seems to work with shaman's earth shield, that I can tell.

Or is there just a pure add-on capable of just tracking that.

[Zeuq]

what's the best add-on to track pw:s for disc. X-perl has a shield option, but doesn't seem to show it when you click the options. It's supposed to have a purple outline, and only seems to work with shaman's earth shield, that I can tell.

Or is there just a pure add-on capable of just tracking that.

IMO, xperl just doesn't cut it as a healing tool; it's just too clustered up and disorganized. However, any of the mentioned Healing add-ons can easily track targets with PWS. Healbot will use an icon; I believe it shows another symbol to indicate Weakened Soul (maybe a little +), but it's been so long since I've used it I don't really remember. VuhDo and Grid, depending on how you configure it, can show icons or indicators and can also easily track WS with similar methods.

[Azyure]

I dont understand the hype behind all of the add ons either....im really not tryna troll, i just think if your good at your class you dont need much add on help. I use X-Perl and Bartender for my UI and frames....not much more other than paying attention is needed...ive never used mouse over healing ive never used healbot....i just think taht if you get to wrapped up in add ons you lose flavor for the game imho. Go with whatever you think you need, jsut dont distract yourself from what you should be doing.

[Deleted]

It's the delay in showing debuffs that is a larger concern tbh. A Priest buddy who's familiar with .lua said it's easy to see why it's so slow and runs so heavy when looking at the programming. Apparently it's a real mess.

In this entire thread, this is the only person who knows what he's talking about so far.

Healbot actually has a slight advantage over Grid+Clique or Vudho (or any other target based addons) in terms of selecting the healing target. This is because it uses focus healing, i.e. your current target does not change only a temporary programmatic focus target which you can never see in the standard interface.

While I was active as a resto druid main, I healed in one of the best EU realms in a highly progressed guild using Healbot and it worked extremely well. The only downside, as already mentioned, is that it is slower than Grid in displaying debuffs. So, if a fight requires a lot of dispels from all healers or you are assigned as one of the "dispel bots" in a raid, then Grid is significantly better than Healbot and even noticeably faster than Decursive! VuhDo was too immature to use at the time.

I used to run with Healbot, Grid+Clique and Decursive and kept them all up to date and could heal at the highest level with all of them. I configured them all to appear with a similar-sized grid (Healbot can be made to look like Grid except for the exact way it shows debuffs, for example). The reason why I did all this is because in a hardcore guild you have little to no excuses to not be able to do the job no matter the circumstances. One addon not being updated or failing after a patch update - which used to happen often for major patches - does not excuse you. I even practised extensively using just the standard raid frames and Clique, as well as Grid with only key healing. Note that you can configure all the addons and then simply toggle them off in the Blizzard addon interface. They will then take no run-time resources.

All else being equal, since I started healing with Healbot (from level 30), I had a preference for it in PvE. However, I much preferred Grid in pvp due to the much larger volume and importance of debuffs.

TL;DR. Healbot is fine for PvE high progression healing. But if you dispel a lot or do many dispel fights, Grid is noticeably faster with less resources and is more efficient at displaying debuffs (multiple debuffs and counts etc).