Tracking the New HoT
And let me be the, er, second to welcome you to Divine Aegis. I’m the other, more paladin-ish aspect of the bubble, Lyriel. To get things started, I thought I’d move my short add-on review from the old blog over here. Legitimately new content is on the way, though, including my thoughts on healing the new raid as a paladin; I’m just waiting for tonight to play with Jaraxxus on 25-man. He wasn’t bad on 10-man though.
As you may know, in 3.2 paladins were given the gift we didn’t know we wanted (and some of us still aren’t sure): a HoT attached to our Flash of Light spell. In the legalese fine-print style that has become common of so many of our spells (have you read Hand of Protection‘s tooltip recently? void where prohibited) it will only apply if we cast Flash of Light on someone who is currently affected by Sacred Shield—the buff itself, not the proc.
Personally, I’ve wanted a tank-healing HoT ever since Azgalor, but I’ll save discussion of the merits of the HoT for another post. This one is all about tracking the darned thing. Since 3.2 was released, I’ve tried a lot of different add-ons for this, and I thought I’d share the options I’ve found in a brief rundown.
The Contenders:
Power Auras: Classic
This is one of my favorite add-ons. Its versatility is unparalleled in terms of the way you can display cooldowns, used abilities, buff or debuff durations, procs, and more. I’ve had some trouble getting it to read my focus target’s buffs, but I’m told that it is capable of tracking the FoL HoT on your focus target, even if I fail at getting it to do so. I still use it for things like Judgements of the Pure, Light’s Grace, Divine Plea duration, trinket procs, and notably Art of War procs in my ret offspec.
Advantages: Multiple ways of displaying information, much more varied than your standard bars and timers.
Disadvantages: Some problems displaying Focus target information.
3.2 Compatible?: Mostly yes, even though the add-on itself hasn’t been updated in some time.
ClassTimer
This is a new find for me, but it’s one that I ultimately decided had earned a permanent spot on my UI. It’s a fairly standard timer mod, with options for every class and virtually every ability you can imagine. At the time of this writing, you have to add the spell “Flash of Light” manually, but after doing so it worked like a charm. You could very easily use this to track all of your buffs, debuffs, and cooldowns, but since I was already using Power Auras, I limited (by painstakingly unchecking about 4,000 things) my monitoring to Beacon of Light, Sacred Shield, and Flash of Light.
But here’s the big reason I like ClassTimer:
See how there are two Sacred Shield buffs? ClassTimer tracks and displays both the buff itself as well as the proc. They (annoyingly) share the same name, which causes problems for a lot of add-ons.
The reason this is great is because there’s a little skill minigame involved in maximizing your FoL HoT. Many forumites have declared the way Sacred Shield works and the way Flash of Light works to be contradictory: surely the 50% crit means you want to spam FoL on the target, but the HoT means you only want to apply it every 12 seconds. In practice, there’s synergy there, you just have to look at it without our pre-3.2-conceived notions of what SS+FoL is for. Even having dropped a boatload of crit for mp5 in 3.2, with raid buffs and the Sacred Shield proc up, my FoL crit chance is very nearly 90%. That’s an almost guaranteed crit, meaning a HoT worth 150% more. With an addon that lets you track your proc, which tank avoidance will help stay up for the one second you need, you can time your refreshes to ensure that your FoL will crit, meaning maximum HoT coverage.
I also love that it uses the Shared Media library, so I can plaster my frilly Glamour textures on it and make it match my Pitbull frames. >.>
Advantages: Simple, easy to configure, wide-range of uses, tracks SS buff AND proc, Shared Media library!
Disadvantages: As with most of these mods, you’ll need to make your SS target your focus target to track these buffs.
3.2 Compatible?: Yes.
DoTimer
This is another tracking mod very similar to ClassTimer. The configuration is more complicated and it doesn’t use the Shared Media library, but it’ll track Flash of Light and anything else you need tracked.
Advantages: Solid all-purposed tracking mod.
Disadvantages: No pretty glamour textures. QQ.
3.2 Compatible?: Yes.
HealMinder
Here’s one you probably haven’t heard of. It was made by a paladin specifically to track the new Flash of Light HoT, and I have to say: it’s absolutely perfect for what it does. It also displays the information in a way that none of the other mods do: it shows the health value remaining on the HoT, which ticks down in real time. This is useful because it lets you know the strength of the applied HoT. It does not show the duration. As such, I think it’s the perfect complement to one of the timer mods. Configuration is a snap, it’s very lightweight, and it can alert you with text and/or sound when your HoT expires. And best of all? It doesn’t require your Flash target to be your focus target. It’ll even work on random un-grouped bystanders in Dalaran.
Advantages: One of its kind in terms of display, easy config, easy legibility, lightweight.
Disadvantages: Only shows the duration in terms of health value, not time. It’s also a very limited mod, but hey that’s what we’re here for.
3.2 Compatible?: Duh!
GridStatusHoTs
This is a plug-in for the popular raidframe, Grid. It tracks HoTs and buffs like Sacred Shield and Beacon of Light. It can track the FoL HoT just fine. My only problem is that it cannot tell Sacred Shield (buff) from Sacred Shield (proc) and so if you set it to flash or change colors when Sacred Shield is about to expire, it will read the proc before the buff, which is always about to expire. It’s a bit maddening–so much so that I ended up going back to Healbot for a lightweight click-to-heal mod.
Advantages: Tracks the FoL HoT and similar trackable buffs.
Disadvantages: Confounded by Sacred Shield.
3.2 Compatible?: I know Grid has a 3.2 update, but GridStatusHoTs does not. I believe it still functions though.
Aaand, that’s my HoT-tracking roundup. This is by no means an exhaustive list of add-ons capable of tracking our new HoT, but it’s certainly a good place to start. Honorable mentions that did not make this particular list include CLCBPT and TellMeWhen; I haven’t personally used either of them, but I’m told they’re both very good. So do check them out if none of the above float your boat.
Tagged as Addons, Holy Paladin, HoT + Categorized as Paladin
Thanks Lyriel. I’d been using primarily TellMeWhen, but have started looking into some of the other myriad notification addons. I’m leaning towards PowerAuras because it doesn’t take up UI space–something I’ve been appreciating more and more.
Did you ever compare the memory usage of these addons with one another? I know a lot of people who have faster computers don’t even think about that sort of thing sometimes… =)
Oh, that’s a really good point! I may go back and add in memory usage.
In the short term, the ones I’m using clock in at 600-700kb each (ClassTimer and Power Auras) and a slim 130kb for Healminder. The boyfriend tells me DoTimer is ~500kb for him.
Thanks so much for this post! I really appreciate the reviews you did. I am going to install ClassTimers and try this out! I was previously using BeaconCountdown, but here is a bug when one is specced into Divine Guardian, so thank you for helping me find an alternative.
Keep up the good work. I can’t wait to read more by you. :D *Bookmarked*
Oh, I found this other addon: http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/clcbpt.aspx
It tracks Beacon of Light, Sacred Shield, JotP and the new FoL HoT and shows who it’s on. I really like it. :D
Aw, thanks for the encouragement, Alundria!
And yes, I do like CLCBPT, although I decided to stick with ClassTimer for the time being, partially because it’s really easy to multi-purpose for alts, and partially because omgsharedmedialibrary. Glamour textures 4 lyfe.
But yes, I did feel a bit bad about relegating CLCBPT and TellMeWhen to a short line at the end, but there are just so many good add-ons out there.
Oh, I didn’t see where you mentioned it at the end! L2Read, Alundria! >_< Haha, well, I installed ClassTimer anyway, and I do like it better, so thank you for pointing me in that direction!
Ah, some nice addons. I’m using Caith’s UI, which comes with Power Auras & Class Timer. While Power Auras I use more often, I don’t see Class Timers having a big deal with me (Holy Priest) unless I go Shadow Spec.
Good stuff! I tried Powerauras after seeing some settings posted on plusheal. Unfortunately I didn’t want to have to learn what each symbol, timer, etc stood for. Call me lazy. :) I tried a few others you mentioned (including yatba, which I used for quite some time), but all were thrown out when I ran across ForteXorcist. It can take a bit to set up, but then again I use Grid and Pitbull, so setting up difficult addons is my forte (pun intended). I have to say I really do love this addon. In addition to the spell tracker, it also has a CD bar which has been a wonder.
@Herrac You can configure PowerAuras however you like—it comes with no default settings. So you can select which aura represents which buffs/spells/procs etc. It’s like Grid in the fact that after you spend so much time fiddling with it and tailoring it to your needs, you’ll know exactly what each little thing stands for.
You can also use the in-game icons with Power Auras. For example, when Divine Plea comes off cooldown, a large version of the Divine Plea icon just flashes on my screen for 1-2 seconds and then disappears.
That said, Lilitharien uses ForteXorcist and really likes it. I’m going to have to give it another shot one of these days.
I’ve been using VuhDo after switching off Healbot. The HoT support in VuhDo displays the SS buff and FoL HoT and can show countdown timers. I don’t particularly care about the size of the HoT, just that I have SS on the target already. This works well as I am already looking at my raid frames for healing.
I’m still refining my configuration, but I believe there are notification options for expiring HoTs as well.
I also use VuhDo (exclusively) for raiding. The configuration options in this addon on great. HoTs for all classes can be shown by either text, colors, icons, or flashes depending on your play style. Timers, amount healed, ticks left, etc are also in the addon if you choose to use them.
I read this article a while back, but I must have missed the last paragraph that mentioned CLCBPT. I’ve tried almost all of the addons you mentioned and none of them left me happy. Someone else mentioned CLCBPT to me, and I am so very thankful. It is everything I want as a Holy Paladin! (Well, I did disable the FoL HoT tracker and replace it with HealMinder, but HoT Health vs. HoT duration seems to be a matter of preference.)
For anyone who is looking for Holy Paladin addons, please do yourself a favor and at least look at the screenshot for CLCBPT. Also, it does not require a focus target like ClassTimer does. If you try to use ClassTimer, you will understand how the simplicity of CLCBPT wins.
It’s like Grid in the fact that after you spend so much time fiddling with it and tailoring it to your needs, you’ll know exactly what each little thing stands for.
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