Confused about what gear is for resto and which is for balance after the changes to spellpower, spell hit, and spell crit? Guest author Graylo of Gray Matter graces our glen with a guide to gauge the gear guaranteed to gain glory and greatness! 
One of the more frequently asked questions I get is about addons that I consider essential as a Restoration Druid. While I’ve featured a number of great addons in the past, I have been remiss in the discussion of what — aside from a stellar set of raid frames — is perhaps one of the most beneficial addons you can get: a HoT Timer. With the dynamics of Lifebloom, any tool that helps you monitor its remaining duration is a welcome addition to your healing arsenal. I had originally planned to try out several HoT Timers so that I could compare and contrast them and eventually make a recommendation based on my experience. So I tried out a couple of different ones that differed only in their cosmetics. Then I installed DoTimer and abandoned my original plan for a contrasting analysis. To put it in the simplest terms, DoTimer blew me (and the other addons I had tried) away.
DoTimer is written by Asheyla and was originally conceived as a tool for Warlocks needing to monitor the status of their damage over time spells. It has since grown into a fully-featured set of addons for monitoring several types of timed events such as DoTs, cooldowns, and — of course — heals over time.
Tracking Heals over Time
Type in “/dot” to bring up the DoTimer Main Menu. This is where you will configure the basic settings associated with your DoTs and HoTs. A few of the features of note:
- Show Only Focus/Sort Focus
The Show Only Focus option toggles only displaying timers for your current focus target. This is especially helpful in a 25-man raid when you are rolling one or more HoTs on a tank but also assisting with raid healing via Lifebloom and can help ensure you don’t lose track of what — or, in this case — who is most important. For encounters where you are rolling Lifebloom on multiple tanks, you might instead use the Sort Focus option which will preferentially display the HoTs currently running on your focus target in the first position of your timers. - On Yourself
By default, HoTs are not shown when cast on yourself. You will probably want to turn this on. - Colors
By default, all timers use the same color scheme. However, you can set the color states (beginning, half, and end) associated with individual spells to improve your ability to recognize, at a glance, the difference between your Lifebloom timer and Rejuvenation timer. - Hidden Types
This allows you to toggle the display of either HoTs or DoTs depending upon your current usage. - Hidden Timers
If you notice a timer appear in your HoT timer that you don’t want to see in the future, enter its name here and press Enter. You can allow it to display again by typing its name and pressing Esc. This option is useful for hiding timers for on-use effects of trinkets since you may already be accustomed to monitoring those timers through your buffs window and want as few distractions from your Lifebloom queues as possible.
Tracking Cooldowns
In addition to allowing you to track your DoTs and HoTs, DoTimer also includes a utility for monitoring the status of various cooldowns. This allows you to determine at a glance how long it will be before you can use Innervate, Nature’s Swiftness, or Rebirth again. Equally as useful, it allows you to announce cooldowns to your raid simply by clicking upon them. So if a raid leader asks for a “Battle Rez check” before a boss encounter, you can click your Rebirth cooldown timer to announce, “My cooldown for Rebirth will complete in 10:23.” To open the Cooldowns configuration, type “/cd”. A couple of features to note here are:
- Integrated
If you prefer, you can opt to have your cooldowns displayed alongside your HoT/DoT timers. If you do go with this option, you will probably want to exclude many of them from displaying via the Hidden Timers option. - Play Sounds
More useful than the corresponding setting for HoTs/DoTs, a sound when Innervate and/or Nature’s Swiftness could be helpful.
One final thing to keep in mind. UI addons that you will reference when healing should be positioned as close to your raid frames as possible. The less time your eyes have to spend speeding across your screen (and back), the quicker your reaction time will inevitably be.
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I’m eager to try this out
I’ve been using Visual Heal for a while, though that is sadly very simplistic and good only for the recovery healers, not our mitigation HoTs. My only concerns are:
a) placement of the timers
-I have a laptop with a small screen, so I do not have much room. I also have metaHUD and ag_Unitframes and am bordering on a lack of space. How much space do the timers take up? Are they movable?
b) how much memory is required
-once again, the laptop issue. Mine is very bare-bones and can’t handle too many addons (I still am in the stone age and use the basic WoW interface, just decked out with as many addons as I feel comfortable using). It doesn’t seem too taxing, I’m just curious if you had perhaps noticed any difference in speed of play or latency.
^^ But I’m certainly going to give it a shot! Just have to figure out where to put it all…
I tried DotTimer last week for the first time and while I really liked what it was trying to do I never could get it to work right. It seemed everytime I zoned it would reset its settings and position to the middle of the screen. I could not see where to make it save the settings. Any ideas what I was doing wrong?
I am a Warlock (Velen) and tried this addon out. While it’s nice, I enjoy the customization options of Quartz (Ace) much more. The biggest drawback (to healers anyway) is that it’s only one target at a time, but there are options for a target and a focus.
I’ve heard of (but never tried) DoTimer; it sounds remarkably similar to the Ace Addon called “HoTCandy”, which basically only monitors heal over times. It’s very basic, very simple, and sits rather innocuously near the middle of my UI.
Dotimer is life. It’s VERY customizable (though I have trouble configuring my colors for some reason) and very reliable. To me, it’s part of my ‘holy trinity’ of add ons, along with Grid and Clique. Though I actually disable HoTs on me, so my tank HoTs are always at the top.
I tried Do Timer a while back, and I just didn’t like the way it looked. I had been using NECB for my hots, and that was fine in 5-mans and Kara, but getting into 4 tank healing, it wasn’t going to cut it, so I had to go find something else. I had hoped that Do Timer was that, but it just didn’t do it for me. Finally I found Grid, and GridStatus Lifebloom. It shows up right in my grid frame, it’s color coded, red , yellow and green. it displays the timer… I love it. I’d suggest taking a look at it.
@Bellwether: The timers can be configured in terms of scale and how much spacing you want between them. If you’re really limited, you could just set up a focus target and limit it to only displaying timers for that person. However, I think a better option for limited screen real estate might be a set of raid frames that displays buffs that fade counterclockwise as they expire (Pitbull does this). I plan on covering that method of timers (I use both) at some point, but Pitbull is so amazing that it’s really deserving of its own article. I’m afraid that I can’t tell you about memory usage. Pitbull is a HOG, though, so maybe that wouldn’t be good for you after all. I run way more addons than I probably should (it takes a good 45-60 seconds to get into the game), but I guess I’m addicted. ^_^
@Bullar: That is odd. TBH it sounds a lot like the trouble I had when I got my new computer. It runs Vista and was CONSTANTLY resetting my UI settings every time I logged out or zoned. Turns out that I had to turn off User Account Control (most. annoying. feature. ever.) so that WoW could modify settings. I would check to make sure that none of your addon configuration files are set to read only. I think these files are stored in [Your Path to WoW]\WTF\Account\[Your Account Name]\[Your Server Name]\[Your Character Name]\SavedVariables\
@Kellenn: I didn’t realize that Quartz made a HoT/DoT timer. I used its spell cast bar for a long time and loved it. Being able to display timers on multiple people is pretty important for me, though.
@Runycat: I actually used HoTCandy first. It was basically a simpler version of DoTimer. It worked just fine, but what really sold me on DoTimer was the cooldown announcements. =) Yes, I know. It’s an addiction.
@Bigtoy: When you configure your colors are you clicking on the colors box, selecting the school of magic, then the spell, then clicking on the colored square beside the spell in question? I was able to use that method to change my Lifebloom to bright green and my Rejuvenation to bright pink. Then I made all my other spells light blue so Rejuv and LB would stand out.
@Maerdred: I installed Grid one day, didn’t understand it immediately, and uninstalled it. I’ve heard so many people rave about it, though. I should really give it another chance. I will retry it and pick up the GridStatus Lifebloom addon, too. Thank you for the recommendation!
@Maerdred: How did you get your LB timer showing on Grid? I use the Grid MyHoTs and it shows me my stacking Lifeblooms, but it doesn’t give me the warning on the timer. Did it work for you out of the box?
I’ve been using DoTimer since my lock was my main. It’s really awesome and highly customizable. If you couldn’t get it working as you wanted, give it another try.
I use Quartz as well but I disabled almost everything but the casting bar feature. I didn’t like its timers.
@Phae: You should try Grid again. It takes a while to configure and get used, but I can’t imagine a better unit frame for 25-mans. It saves a lot of UI space. And don’t forget the plugin I recommend below, makes it awesome for LB-stacking on several targets.
@BigToy: there’s a plugin for Grid called GridStatusLifebloom. It’ll show you two numbers for every box: the countdown and the number of stacks on the target. You can find it at the Ace Updater (that program with a list of all Ace addons and that can update them all at once; if you never heard about it, go get it!).
Sometimes it shows more than 3 stacks, I’m yet to find out what it means. But the countdown part works well.
I also recommend getting an extra plugin for a third row of text, just to show LB stacks. I use the first for the player name, second for LB stacks/FD-offline-death warning, and the third for incoming heals.
@Bigtoy: I’m using the mod called “Grid Status Lifebloom” What it does (the way i have it configured) is I see a dot in the upper right corner of the frame when I have Lifebloom on a target. a Single LB is red, Double is Yellow, Triple/rolling is green. Also it has the timer in the text section. there are two text frames for grid, so the top is the name the lower is the timer. I can easily see all my targets at once and the timer as well as how many applications of LB they have.
I have yet to find a mod which will show another Druid’s LB’s in a similar manner(I stopped looking)
@Phae: I also had this reaction the first time I installed Grid, almost a year ago. But back in Aufust I decided to try again, and I took the time to set it up one night after a raid… (still in the group with a few stragglers) I’ve been hooked ever since. It’s actually a required addon for all of our healers.
Not to burst any bubbles but DoTimer is no longer being maintained. I went to Curse today to look at the screens for this add-on in contemplation of switching from Lifebloomer, but reading the comments it turns out that no one is working on the project anymore… It’ll keep working for a while I’m sure but someone better at code than me might need to step up and take it over.
@Sioban: NooooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooo!! Oh, I hate it when that happens. =( Some of the best addons have gone by the wayside because their authors can no longer spare the time to keep them up to date. Which isn’t to say I fault the author since she wasn’t being paid for her efforts, but it still stinks. Looks like I might be switching to Grid sooner rather than later! Thanks for the heads up.
I curently use xperl with click2cast and I am really pleased with the result.
I get to see all the buffs/debuffs I can cast or despell near the unit frame, along with a stack number and a visual clock-like timer on it. This results in a very clean and real-estate friendly approach of monitoring spells, both in solo and 5man parties.
The only problem is that stacking and timing is not displayed in the raid unit frames. You get to see only the spell icon. This however is easily overcome by using target and focus unit frames which include everything. So usually I set focus to MT and target to the target I am assigned and problem solved.
As for raid healing, I really do not have to monitor stacking of lifebloom in everyone. It is usually allowed to expire.
Hey everyone, I just briefly reviewed this… and I’m very fond of my clique+grid+lifebloom status combo…
BUT. I think you guys have experience and could help me with this problem…
Recently I’ve had this inexplainable problem with the add-on.
Yesterday during a kara raid, my lifebloom status mod stopped working correctly. Whenever I applied more than one lifebloom, my center text bar went black. Because of this I couldn’t monitor people’s lifebloom stacks… and well… you know the rest of the story… it was bad.
I did -not- download any mods beforehand, I did not update anything at all, nor did I tinker with my config. My mods were acting perfectly normal before the raid, no problems whatsoever.
I tried reinstalling, updating and what not my Grid, Clique, and lifebloom status add-ons since the problem started. No luck. I thought it was a config problem, I’ve looked through and everything seems in order.
The main problem is – I need to somehow get my lifeblooms back to normal… I can see the duration of the first lifebloom that I apply, and as soon as I go to add a second, the text/health bar goes black.
PLEASE… someone give me suggestions other than what I have already tried >.>
It would help if someone told me how their lifebloom status mod is configured, so I can double check that.
if all else fails.. looks like I’ll be getting a new lifebloom duration mod, but I want something that doesnt take up space, and that shows durations for various targets, something clean and organized… I was planning on trying the one posted here, I’ll give it a go.
Oh =( I just read that the featured mod is no longer continued… I guess I don’t have many options under my personal tastes. -_-
@Pinecone: Sorry to hear of your trouble with the Grid Lifebloom config. I know how frustrating that can be. I’ve uploaded a screenshot of how I have mine configured here: http://www.resto4life.com/images/lifebloom_grid_config.jpg
Another thing to check is to make sure that nothing that appears in the same spot has higher priority. Also, if you DO reinstall the addon, make sure you look for any configuration files that exist for it in your WTF file. I didn’t find one named for GridStatusLifebloom specifically, but maybe it stores its configuration by appending information onto the Grid.lua file found in WTF/Account//Saved Variables.
Best of luck!
clique+grid+lifebloom status is god mode healing. i just cant believe it would be discontinued.. i’ve never found anything even remotely close to being that good.. plz hlp!
@Milkdudd: I don’t think Grid or Lifebloom Status have been discontinued (I’m not sure about Clique as I don’t use it). I think Sioban was referring to DoTimer having been discontinued. No worries. =)
I tried clique when it first came out and found it a bit of overkill. The same results can be had with action buttons bound to mouse buttons. My favorite is to bind scroll wheel up to “Action Button 1″ and down to “Action Button 2″ in the Key2 column. Since druids have different bars for each form this setup saves druids from huge if im a bear do this if im a cat do that logic. So put your spam buttons or macros there, my preferences are the following;
Bear; Swipe and mangle
Kitty; Rake and mangle
Moonkin; Moonfire and wrath
Healing; Rejuvenation(shift for swiftmend) and Lifebloom
These are the macros I put in buttons one and two of my healing forms. These macros give easy access to my favorite heals and use “mouseover” casting so that a single spin of the wheel on a valid unit or unit frame will begin casting on that person. ;
#showtooltip
/cast [modifier:shift,target=target][modifier:shift,target=targettarget,harm] Wrath
/cast [target=mouseover,exists][target=target,exists,help][target=targettarget,exists,help] lifebloom
and
#showtooltip
/cast [modifier:shift,target=mouseover,exists][modifier:shift,target=targettarget] swiftmend
/cast [target=mouseover,exists][target=target][target=targettarget,exists] rejuvenation
(you have to unbind the Next and Previous bar functions if you want to use the shift modifier with the scroll wheel in your macros, or the bar flipping around will make you hate me.)
Hope this works for you as well as it does for me,
Enjoy
@Arielore: I actually do something similar, though I’m not as diligent about including the best modifiers for each spell (harm, exists, etc.). You’ve inspired me to do a little cleanup, though!
I can’t move anything like the buffs it shows won’t let me move them why?