My Tankadin UI Guide, Part 3
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
I love the information I can get out of PowerAuras, but I still need more.
What Just Happened? (TJH)
When I hit Divine Protection aka Bubble Wall, it would be helpful for my healers to know that. What would be even more helpful is for them to know when it falls off. Now I could announce that over vent, assuming I see it, but instead I use a mod called ThatJustHappened (TJH).
I set up ThatJustHappened to announce when I pop Divine Protection, and when it falls off. It also announces whenever I get an AD save. TJH does require a little bit of setup for each event you want it to announce. I recommend you check out the MainTankadin thread for a list of TJH settings.
Bosses are Deadly (DBM)
Many times you want to pop your cool downs in response to something particularly nasty the boss is doing. Knowing when he's going to do those 'bad things' is generally pretty helpful.
I use Deadly Boss Mods to give me the low down on what's going on.
Here we can see that in about 10 seconds, I'm going to get a Freezing Slash. I should probably keep that in mind if I'm tempted to pop a dodge trinket. I can also see that Anub is going to submerge in 53 seconds. DPS has that much more 'quality time' with the boss. Finally, I can see we're doing fine on the Enrage timer. This is all key information presented to me by Deadly Boss Mods.
While I am a user of Deadly Boss Mods, I will be testing out Deus vox encounters next week and let you know what I think.
Power Grid
It's often helpful for me to know the state of the raid. Whose dead, how are the healers doing on mana. My addon of choice here is Grid. Basically it gives me a little box with everyone's name in it. I can see what's going on and who is still among the living.
I'm cool...down (OmniCC)
I like to see exactly how long my cooldowns have left. For this I use OmniCC .
OmniCC puts a number on the button showing you how long you have until the spell cools down and you can use it again. It's much more intuitive to me than just the graphic supplied by the stock UI.
Are you threatening me? (Omen)
The threat situation is sort of like the speedometer on your car. You need to know who is catching up to you, and how close they are to pulling. There are some fights where I know it's highly unlikely anyone will threaten me, and other fights where it's pretty much guaranteed they will.
The tool I use is Omen.
At a glance I can see if pink is on top and check the percentages of the DPS and healers. The bar layout gives a quick visual graphic of the situation.
Somebody Buff Me (PallyPower and SBF)
As a Paladin tank, I'm responsible for both my personal buffs and certain Raid buffs.
For my assigned Raid buffs, I love Pally Power. It give me a break down by class of what buff each person is getting, and makes it easy to assign a 10 minute buff to a specific person while giving the 30 minute buff to the rest of that class. When you raid with a Boomkin, Resto and Feral Druid all in your raid, that's a nice tool. It gives me a timer to show just how long everyone has left on their buffs and a click-able interface that I can use to actually cast the buff. The interface also uses highlighting to show if everyone is in range, saving me on reagents.
Pally Power doubles as a Righteous Fury indicator, and checks to make sure you have the proper Aura up. No realizing you have Crusader Aura up halfway through the fight. Oops!
Spartan's interface for buffs and debuff is one of it's weakest points. It's bad enough that I feel like I need a replacement for it. For my personal buffs, I use Satrina's Buff Frame.
It gives me a small bar of buffs and debuffs that makes it really simple to monitor my situation. I use it for debuffs moreso than for buffs. For buffs, I tend to look at my buffed health right before the first pull and make a mental note of the number. Then if the number is different on a subsequent pull, I know I'm missing something.
Why am I dead? (Recount)
The final information addon I use is Recount. As I discussed in "Using Recount as a Tank", I use Recount very differently from a DPS class. I'm using Recount to get the Death Report which shows what killed me. This is critical information as we learn a new boss or wipe on a 'farm' boss. Knowing what killed me will hopefully help me to avoid the scenario on the next attempt.
Recount will also show you why your fellow raid members died. I usually only supply this information to our Raid Leader and allow him to repeat what he thinks necessary to the Raid.
Now my UI is nearly complete, but not quite. Tomorrow, I'll go over my 'finishing touches' and complete the UI.
Part II
Part III
Part IV
I love the information I can get out of PowerAuras, but I still need more.
What Just Happened? (TJH)
When I hit Divine Protection aka Bubble Wall, it would be helpful for my healers to know that. What would be even more helpful is for them to know when it falls off. Now I could announce that over vent, assuming I see it, but instead I use a mod called ThatJustHappened (TJH).
I set up ThatJustHappened to announce when I pop Divine Protection, and when it falls off. It also announces whenever I get an AD save. TJH does require a little bit of setup for each event you want it to announce. I recommend you check out the MainTankadin thread for a list of TJH settings.
Bosses are Deadly (DBM)
Many times you want to pop your cool downs in response to something particularly nasty the boss is doing. Knowing when he's going to do those 'bad things' is generally pretty helpful.
I use Deadly Boss Mods to give me the low down on what's going on.
Here we can see that in about 10 seconds, I'm going to get a Freezing Slash. I should probably keep that in mind if I'm tempted to pop a dodge trinket. I can also see that Anub is going to submerge in 53 seconds. DPS has that much more 'quality time' with the boss. Finally, I can see we're doing fine on the Enrage timer. This is all key information presented to me by Deadly Boss Mods.While I am a user of Deadly Boss Mods, I will be testing out Deus vox encounters next week and let you know what I think.
Power Grid
It's often helpful for me to know the state of the raid. Whose dead, how are the healers doing on mana. My addon of choice here is Grid. Basically it gives me a little box with everyone's name in it. I can see what's going on and who is still among the living.
I'm cool...down (OmniCC)
I like to see exactly how long my cooldowns have left. For this I use OmniCC .
OmniCC puts a number on the button showing you how long you have until the spell cools down and you can use it again. It's much more intuitive to me than just the graphic supplied by the stock UI.Are you threatening me? (Omen)
The threat situation is sort of like the speedometer on your car. You need to know who is catching up to you, and how close they are to pulling. There are some fights where I know it's highly unlikely anyone will threaten me, and other fights where it's pretty much guaranteed they will.
The tool I use is Omen.
At a glance I can see if pink is on top and check the percentages of the DPS and healers. The bar layout gives a quick visual graphic of the situation.Somebody Buff Me (PallyPower and SBF)
As a Paladin tank, I'm responsible for both my personal buffs and certain Raid buffs.
For my assigned Raid buffs, I love Pally Power. It give me a break down by class of what buff each person is getting, and makes it easy to assign a 10 minute buff to a specific person while giving the 30 minute buff to the rest of that class. When you raid with a Boomkin, Resto and Feral Druid all in your raid, that's a nice tool. It gives me a timer to show just how long everyone has left on their buffs and a click-able interface that I can use to actually cast the buff. The interface also uses highlighting to show if everyone is in range, saving me on reagents.
Pally Power doubles as a Righteous Fury indicator, and checks to make sure you have the proper Aura up. No realizing you have Crusader Aura up halfway through the fight. Oops!
Spartan's interface for buffs and debuff is one of it's weakest points. It's bad enough that I feel like I need a replacement for it. For my personal buffs, I use Satrina's Buff Frame.
It gives me a small bar of buffs and debuffs that makes it really simple to monitor my situation. I use it for debuffs moreso than for buffs. For buffs, I tend to look at my buffed health right before the first pull and make a mental note of the number. Then if the number is different on a subsequent pull, I know I'm missing something.Why am I dead? (Recount)
The final information addon I use is Recount. As I discussed in "Using Recount as a Tank", I use Recount very differently from a DPS class. I'm using Recount to get the Death Report which shows what killed me. This is critical information as we learn a new boss or wipe on a 'farm' boss. Knowing what killed me will hopefully help me to avoid the scenario on the next attempt.
Recount will also show you why your fellow raid members died. I usually only supply this information to our Raid Leader and allow him to repeat what he thinks necessary to the Raid.
Now my UI is nearly complete, but not quite. Tomorrow, I'll go over my 'finishing touches' and complete the UI.
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