Holy Paladin Add-ons (continued)
There’s no question that good Add-ons are important for improving your ability to heal. In an earlier post, I went over the Healbot Continued Add-on, which is your bread and butter healing Add-on. Today I’ll go over a few more Add-ons you should have installed to maximize your healing ability.
Decursive
Decursive is an important Add-on that will greatly improve your ability to cleanse poisons, diseases, and magic effects. There are some encounters (like Heigan and Maexxna) where instant cleanses are very important. Even when cleanse isn’t essential, quickly removing these debuffs can often be more mana-efficient and safer than trying to heal through the damage. Cleansing quickly using the default UI is much more difficult than using Decursive.
Decursive
What the Decursive Add-on does is add a number of almost invisble square boxes to your UI. Each box represents a person in your group/raid. When anyone in your group receives a debuff that you can cleanse, their corresponding box will turn a bright red color and a timer will appear on the box to represent how many seconds the debuff has been on the person. To cleanse the debuff, simply click on the red box and its gone. Its very quick and simple. In general, you’ll want to cleanse those who have the lowest number since they’ll get the most benefit.
The main problem with Decursive is that there isn’t a good way to tell which box represents which person (for example, the tank). The only exception is that you will always be the top-left box. Decursive can also take up quite a bit of screen space in a 25-man raid. You can modify the size and format that the boxes appear in, so try to make them as small as possible. Besides that, Decursive requires very little setup. There’s no question that Decursive will improve your ability to cleanse debuffs off your raid. You can download Decursive from Curse Gaming.
Deadly Boss Mods
Deadly Boss Mods is an important Add-on for anyone to have, but its especially important for healers and tanks. With Deadly Boss Mods, you’ll receive warning messages in the center of your screen and in the chat window that will keep you informed about what’s happening and what’s about to happen during a fight, and also who its happening to. In many cases, you’ll also receive a sound when you need to take action. It is very useful for fights like Kel’Thuzad, where you only have split seconds to prevent a death, but its helpful on every fight, even in 5-man instances. Here’s the download link for DBM.
Omen Threat Meter
Omen is an Add-on that is more important for tanks and dps to have but it is useful for you too. Omen is a threat meter that will show you a list of who has the top threat on the mob you are targeting. You can use it to quickly see who may need a Hand of Salvation or to tell when someone may pull aggro and will need a heal or a Hand of Protection. It can also give you a warning sound when you receive aggro from any mob, giving you a chance to hit your Divine Shield or Hammer of Justice. You can download Omen here.
Summary
These four Add-ons are the only combat Add-ons I use and they do the job for me. Besides these, I keep things simple with the default Blizzard UI. You can see a shot of my UI in action below.
If you are using Healbot, you don’t need Decursive. I’ve set Healbot to cast Cleanse with Alt/right-click. Needing to click on another part of an increasingly over-crowded screen became a pain.
An add-on you didn’t mention is PallyPower. It is a MUST for every pally.
Yeah, Healbot can handle decursing as well. I really like Decursive though and how easy it is to see who needs cleansing. My healbot bars are already crowded with buffs and my hotkeys for Healbot are already all used too, lol.
I have Pally Power installed, but I don’t use it. I find I just do Blessing of Wisdom almost every time anyway. There’s only 3 (sometimes 4) paladin blessings and most people only need 2 of them. Its not hard to click on a target and see which blessing he’s missing.
imo use bartender/prat and get more open space to see the encounter.
Pally Power is indeed a MUST have for every pala who participates in raids. Good guilds would not let you join raids without this addon. Its main feature is coordinating the blessings of several palas in the raid. It shows you who has skilled which blessing (and aura) and without any discussion assign your blessings, even small blessings for single raidmembers etc. which is often required in 10-raids with only two paladins and e.g. differently skilled shamans.
After the initial setup is done and the raid starts you only have to watch a small bar where pally power shows the remaining time of the blessings for each class. And - most important - it shows you who is in range at the time of you blessing and who is not. So you can’t waste any symbols but just one-click-buff the raid with appropriate blessings when everybody is in range. If somebodys dying the color of his class changes and you can renew your blessing instantly.
The silly messages “where is my blessing xy” in raids are obsolete then - except in random raids where usually one casual does not have the addon installed. Then you do have to invest time for discussion like it’s been 3 years ago. But it can be done easier.
Greetings from Proudmoore/EU (and yeah, we’ve got Yogg-Saron already down /before/ he’s been nerfed
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Hi.
First of all, I would like to thank you for that guides you write. I am planning to get back into WoW again playing a Holy Paladin, but this time not in PvE but in PvP only. If I imagine right I only used PallyPower talking of AddOns… However, what AddOns do you recommend me to use for nice 3v3 Arena? Is it really a good idea to loose screen space for Healbot just for two mates (and myself) to heal? Or is it a good idea to have Decursive if I just have to disspell two mates (and myself)?
So far, your guides where really helpful!
I know that does not really belong here, but can you write a guide about which talents/skills are useful in what situation in PvP/Arena? If I understand this site right it is some sort of big guide with a lot of single parts, but I still miss something that tells me skill x - useful when blabla, skill y - not useful at all in PvP, … That should help making a good UI quite a lot.
Thanks in advance, Marei.
I do have a pvp healing guide, but I’m sure I could go into more detail about more of the abilities:
http://www.holypaladin.net/index.php/arena-healing-tips-for-holy-paladins
Pallypower is probably not necessary for arenas. Healbot and Decursive don’t take up much screen space in a 3v3. They get really bad in a 25 or 40-man raid, but 3 people isn’t bad at all. I like larger health bars because it gives you a more accurate picture of someone’s health. The smaller the bar is the more health each pixel represents, which means its harder to tell exactly what someone’s health is. Decursive is really nice in arenas but there are other addons that do the same thing if you don’t like the 3 tiny green boxes for some reason.
Thank you for the answer.
Yes, that guide was indeed the thing that was in my mind. It’s great but it gives detailed information and nice tips rather than general information or some sort of overlook. It wouldn’t be a bad thing to explain more common things, too, since a guide is ment to gather knowledge from for both: newbies and advanced gamers. Just in case you find some spare time I would be glad to read something that simply tells me everything I can understand with only PvE experiences (talking of healing). The best thing would be a text which explains every spect of Holypala-PvP: every abilitly, skill (in the build), strategy… You got it. Of course that’ll be a bunch of work, so I do not really request it, but just let you know that it’ll be a great additiotion to your guides. If you can’t get bored enough you can even add videos to make clear what your talking of. Maybe someone else did that before and I simply couldn’t find the link? If someone knows where to find the information I am looking for, I would be grateful to get a link.
Ah, alright, thank you for the information about the AddOns. So Healbot and Decursive would do it for 3v3? Phew, I was afraid I need to learn tons of AddOns and whatnot, to make my job as the Healer as decent as I am possible to. Thinking of that, it’ll take enough time to get used to Hotkeys… Well, but I guess that Hotkeys are a must nowadadys.
However, that’s it for now. Have a nice day, I am looking foreward to an answer!
Hey there, first of all, thanks for your great guides. Did you ever try out healing with Grid and Clique? Loving it since the SSC and TK days - finally I can see my screen again, and I don’t need Decursive at all either.
I also run Pally Power, a great help if you run with two paladins, one doing kings and you’re doing spot buffs for druids and shamans, the bane of blessing.
I find grid and clique much superior to healbot based on grids size and ability to show detailed information in the smaller format alone.
Grid also shows which debuff which player has and if you can cleanse it by the color of the border on the debuff. (Damn you purple borders)
Not only this but you can see what type of player you are healing by the border around the players name (ie keep the pink borders up) this makes it easier to remember where the tanks are in a 25 and focus heals on the right person.
while healbot is a very good add on I still find grid much superior, If nothing else it gets rid of those ugly decursive boxes lol
O and I suggest taking a look at ZOMGbuffs in addition to or as opposed to pally power ZOMGbuffs shows buff assignments from pally power (but is unable to assign buffs to pally power.)
The true benefits of zomg buffs lies in it’s ability to manage not only blessings, but seals, auras, and (here it is) when you cast beacon of light, sacred shield, or any of the hands it pops up a seperate icon with a timer called a spell tracker which sticks around till after raid allowing single click casting of any of these spells.
When the next patch comes out and we need to keep sacred shield up i think these spell trackers will be invalueable.
The thing I don’t like about grid is the small boxes, actually. I think its too hard to see exactly how much health people have lost. I do lose a lot of screen space with healbot and decursive, but I can always still see the important stuff (my character).
My healbot also shows icons for Sacred Shield and Beacon of Light so I know when to refresh them.
“The thing I don’t like about grid is the small boxes, actually. I think its too hard to see exactly how much health people have lost.”
Ever tried to enlarge it? Or even set the HP in numbers in it? Think you need to take a look at the options in Grid, think there would be a whole new world opening for you
“I do lose a lot of screen space with healbot and decursive, but I can always still see the important stuff (my character).”
The important Stuff isn’t your char, it’s what’s happening around. If you see nothing but your char, you can’t anticipate in tactics like avoiding aoe, take better positions, …
guess it all is a matter of opinion nice to have options on the table. After all isn’t wow about us all having our own game play experience. Other wise we would all play rune scape and grind 19 mil xp in al of the exact same gear.
I find it hard to keep track of beacon, shield, judging seals, decursing, who to heal and move according to fight all at once.
Healbot, decursive and dbm take care of who to heal, decursing and when to move… Im still left tracking beacon, shield and judgements any addon for those?
I have icons turned on with Heabot, so it actually shows me a Beacon, Sacred Shield and Flash HoT icon with a timer on my Healbot bars. The judgement I don’t worry about too much. I’ve gotten so used to judging every 10 seconds now that it is second nature. Pretty much just judge whenever its off cooldown and don’t worry too much if you’re a little late. You could wait as much as a minute without worrying about your haste falling off.
as i said in a previous statement using Zomgbuffs has a box with beacon and shield timers and single click recasting on original target just one of several options
apparently i can set it so that dbm can make a sound when my cooldowns are up? how cna i do this anyone know?
You could try using the Doom_CooldownPulse Addon for that. I don’t think it plays a sound but I’ve heard good things about it. It flashes the ability’s icon in the middle of your screen. I don’t use a cooldown alert addon so I can’t tell you from personal experience.
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/doomcooldownpulse.aspx
Well, I have been using healbot for a long time and I m quite happy with it, I have icons on too and it can also show debuffs in different colors so u wont miss them. I also use the keyboard modifiers but i have noticed that sometimes the alt key gets stuck and i have no Flash of light available until i get it unstuck. I have never tried decursive but i will after reading this. There is also the beacontracker addon which is very straightforward, its only a small line used as timer and it is marked with the player name targeted by your beacon of light. Healbot also lets u select players using shift-click (i think) so u can change friendly targets in one place before casting a spell on them. I m also using the alt modifier for my cleansing through healbott so it helps there too. You can even do auto blessing with it but be carefull, its not very configurable.
Pally-power seems great but its actually a piece of crap. I was using it but in fact it is responsible for a lot of crashes and kickouts for a lot of players. Really badly coded i guess.
U can sort out blessings and auras among pallies easily at the start and stay with that. Its not hard and you can save some precious memory for the game.
I also use DBM (must for dungeons and raids), Omen, Recount, Xperl for User Frames, Bartender for extra bars, Titanpanel.
Other addons include Sexymap as a minimap replacement, Carbonite for maps and quests, and WIM to handle the chatting in/out of Dungeons and Raids. Onebag is optional to help with inventory.
I don’t use Pally power either for similiar reasons. A lot of people say every pally has to have it, but come on - there’s only 3 blessings, its not that hard to figure out what to give. Look at what blessings someone has and give them something else. I always just give out wisdom and might since I have those improved and let the other pally give out kings. Prot pally gives out sanctuary. If we have a 4th pally, I give out wisdom and they can give might to hunters and paladins. Its the exact same every time. There’s no reason to have pally power running.
Do you think Grid is better than healbot? why?
Grid is only a raid-frame replacement. It don’t do anything regarding healing by itself. If couppled with Clique it will however, and I use this over healbot.
Mainly cause it works on all my characters, not only the healer ones. I use it for decursing on my mage, taunting and hands when i play prot, healing on my shaman, and missdirections etc on my hunter.
IMO this is more of a personal preference than anything else
I made the switch a while back mainly cause I found healbot hard to set up for anything but healing.
Regarding Pallypower/zomgbufftehraid I use zomg for the same reasons - it works for all characters I use (self buffs, group buffs).
While you can easily look at what the others are buffing you either spend 20min going through all ur raiders’ blessings, or you just ignore what the other pallies buff and just do your wisdom, possibly overwriting someone elses (don’t be that paladin).
Again it’s a personal preference - both ways work
Been Holy Pally for a while now and I recommend Shadow ui it can be set up the same as Grid but without all the addons for it. Also as options like (see only Curable debuffs) for Cleansing works great. Also for easy casting try this macro for Example…
#showtooltip
#show Holy Light
/cast [target=mouseover] Holy Light
can also be used on cleanse. all u have to do is pass mouse over who needs healing and cast dont have to actually click on the target. Just change spell name for any spell u want. Shadow ui has everything I need as a healer with agro warnings, debuffs show incoming heals dungeon role icons raid icons and so on.
Oh also allows u to remove other peoples buffs so it’s very easy to see Beacon of light and buffs and debuff size can be altered make them as big as u like.
My question is has anyone got a working Judgement macro.?
the idea is u can target the tank and the judgement spell will be cast on the tanks target without u actually targetting him. Problem is the macro will cast judgement on the tanks target but I cant get the macro to retarget the tank.. my macro so far
#showtooltip Judgement of Light
#show Judgement of Light
/cast [harm] [target=targettarget] Judgement of Light
/stop attack
/targetlasttarget <— bit I cant get working
tried without /stop attack, tried /targetlastfriend but nothing seems to work let me know if anone knows thanks
Hey, that’s the exact question I ask in my macros post, Actium. There’s a number of suggestions there on how to do it in the comments. Check it out: http://www.holypaladin.net/index.php/holy-paladin-macros
Personally, I’ve found I actually like the fact that it doesn’t re-target the tank. It allows me to keep an eye on the mob’s health and on heroics I can quickly throw in some dps on the mob as well right afterwards. I don’t need the tank (or anyone) targeted in order to heal them. I just manually retarget the tank every once in awhile to reapply buffs.
Decursive … yes , DBM … yes , Omen .. eh, I have it for my tank and dps toons but usually turn it off on my pali when healing. As far as Pali power … its in no way a “MUST” for palis. The ONLY reason ppl say its a must for palis is because their add-on doesn’t wrk unless all pali’s are using it. Also if someone else in the raid is running that add-on but is not on their pali, it really messes with the other palis that are usuing it. For those 2 reasons i see that add-on as junk and would never use it, But, if you have that much trouble keeping up with the 1 or 2 buffs u need to hand out, by all means use it. I don’t look down on the ppl that use it … I see it as a tool, if it helps you by all means use it, but please stop complaining if others don’t.
I think the only time Pallypower is useful is Raids as the rest of the time ie 5man I prefer not to buff until they ask for it as its a waste of reagents when I give dps BoM and they ask for something else. I use Shadow ui(highly recommended), Bartender 4, Carbonite, DBM, recount, Omen, Titan Panel, Quartz, Xloot, Xloot group(makes roll box much smaller) and a few others.
THANKS for your screen shot! I realy like seeing WHERE on the toolbars you have your spells. (also makes me feel good that many are in similar places)
I do notice that you don’t have many Greater Blessings in the bars - I have both regular and greater loaded because I like the 30mins vs 10 mins. Still just doing heroics so, not going to be overbuffing but I wonder what your thoughts are…
Thx
Uta
I do actually have all my greater blessings on the right side. For some reason I didn’t have kings in this screen shot, but it is there now.