Nobody cares about trash, though; right? Who ever said to you “your boss healing’s great, but you’re just not pulling your weight on the trash”? Okay, so it happens, but they mean you’re going afk, not that you’re 20% behind the game. Seriously; don’t afk on the trash. It needs to be cleared, and it’s faster if all 25 people are doing it.

Patchwerk. The definitive healing test. Monstrous amounts of healing spread over three tanks. I sat there healing my little heart out. Every now and then I flicked my eyes towards recount, and saw myself down the bottom. Damn. Heal harder. Spam more Regrowth. Roll Lifebloom on all three tanks. Try to keep Rejuv up. Swiftmend on the CD. Pop trinkets. Still near the bottom. What’s Wrong? I know this spec is viable.

Okay, so the MT got ganked. Stack hots, take a moment to brez, moar hots, moar regrowth. Chaos. Still near the bottom of the meter.

Eventually, we missed the enrage timer (we didn’t even make it to 20 people in the raid, this wasn’t all that surprising). Tanks 1-shotted, dpsers 1-shotted, wipe, as expected. Out of time for tonight, let’s call the raid. Great, I think. I can find out what on earth is going on with my healing. Click the drop-down for fights to have a look at overall healing. Uh, Althura… You had recount showing a trash pull.

Yes, I didn’t notice the meters weren’t changing. I just flicked my eyes over every now and then, and saw my numbers sucking. I never twigged.

Okay, so how did I perform really on Patchwerk? Very well. Topped the meters nicely, pulled over 3k effective HPS (I didn’t have a chance to check out over-heal yet). Beat my other resto druid by about 200HPS. Beat the top shammy by a touch. Kicked Ass.

Oh, 5-mans. I went along on a heroic CoS run tonight too with my shiny new spec. It worked a treat, and I found myself able to pull upwards of 1k dps on some pulls while solo-healing as well. An extra 1k dps is quite handy in beating the timer, and if your tank has enough mitigation, and your dps are decent at avoiding damage, I could see numbers even higher coming up. I can even see myself pugging normal 70 instances and beating some of the lamer dpsers. The fact that the balance SP bonuses work out of tree form is nice.

I’ll keep you up to date on my impressions of this DS-Resto build. My current impression is that it out-performs Wild Growth balance/resto builds in just about all situations. As I get more experience, I’ll keep you up to date. I think this may be a long-term spec for me. In the meantime,

Happy Druiding,

Althura.

Enter Dreamstate Healing. The idea is to run down the balance tree a bit, taking Lunar Guidance and Dreamstate. Back in the bad ol’ days I mentioned before, this meant we couldn’t get Tree of Life; however, since we’ve added a few levels (and had the trees changed around a bit), it’s now possible to grab Dreamstate and ToL.

But what does this mean? It’s not the bad ol’ days anymore, and druids are loved for their HoTs, not in spite of them. There’s no need to spam HTs anymore, and we don’t need the regen.

Okay, the thing is, it is possible to go oom as a resto druid. It’s not a real problem, and with appropriate mana management, it shouldn’t happen. But that’s the point; we’re still managing our mana. Sometimes we take a few moments off to duck outside the 5SR. Sometimes we trinket for more mana, and sometimes we have to innervate ourselves, instead of saving it for that holy priest that we just had to brez. There’s always room for more regen. When a healer or two goes down, there’s no time for time outside the 5SR. Those HTs you were cancel-casting now and then started landing. Hope you’re not low on mana…

I suppose the point is, do you have enough regen to cope with whatever happens? Or are you going to wipe, and try again? Can you take the pressure?

Actually, that’s not the point. The real point is, what do we give up to grab Dreamstate? What do we gain? Is it worth the trade?

First of all, the spec. You’re looking at 28/0/43 or similar. You still get all of the core resto talents. What you miss out is anything past Improved ToL. Actually, you even miss out on the third point in that. So, a little less bonus to your ToL healing, no Wild Growth (oh stop crying, it’s been nerfed anyway). What do you gain? A whole lot of extra regen (probably somewhere around 100mp5), and a bunch of extra bonus healing as well, from Lunar Guidance.

Is it worth it? I’m afraid that for me, the jury is still out. I’ve only specced this way this morning, and I’m about to have a stab at a 10-man Sarth to see how it goes. I’ll let you guys know.

In the meantime,

Happy Druiding,

Althura.

Okay, back from Sarth. It worked great in an easy-10-man situation; much spamming of heals, great regen, and the only thing I had to keep in mind was that I don’t have WG anymore. But remember, us druids didn’t have a group heal up until recently anyway; we needed to make up for it with skill. Pre-emptive healing, careful planning of HoTs, and more recently, plenty of spell haste.

They’re my main comments after trying out DS-healing. Remember how you used to do it, and don’t skimp on spell haste. Sure, stacking haste over regen just puts us back to where we were before, but you’re probably already packing a fair bit of haste at level 80 anyway. I’m yet to see how it performs in a 25-man, but I should be having a look at some heroic Naxx tomorrow night. We have another resto druid who I was fighting for top of heals with last time in, so I have a good way to gauge the performance of this new spec.

Your first step, and a very important one, is to backup all of your current settings. This will let you go back to the way things were before, if you just can’t make it work for you (or you get called to raid mid-setup and need to make things usable fast!). Open up your WoW folder and rename the “Interface” and “WTF” folders to something meaningful; I usually add something to the end, so I have “Interface – Good” and “WTF – Good”. If you want to work off your current settings, instead of renaming it, copy it; your copy will be your backup, and you’ll keep all your current addons and settings. You may find it harder to follow my instructions on getting set up, though, if you have a bunch of settings already.

If you’re running Vista, your WoW folder will probably be something like “C:\Users\Public\Games\World of Warcraft”. On XP, it’s probably more like “C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft”. If you’re on a mac, my condolences.

Okay, having backed up your old settings, the first thing you need is an addon manager, if you don’t already use one. I find WowMatrix to be excellent; Curse Gaming also has an addon manager. Next, there is a core set of addons that I’d recommend you grab straight away. I know this seems like a long list, but it’s not that bad, really.

• ACP. Short for “Addon Control Panel”, this lets you turn on and off addons without having to sign out, and is a crucial tool to the keen UI tinkerer.
• Auctioneer. It isn’t all that crucial to your UI, but I just can’t live without it.
• BugGrabber. Running all of these addons means you’ll probably run into the occasional error; this addon keeps them out of your face.
• Baggins. This is a tricky-to-setup bag replacement addon, but it’s more than worth the effort.
• Bartender 4. This lets you do all sorts of crazy things with your action bars.
• Cartographer. Because the default map sucks.
• Chatter. This gem gives you all sorts of nice little enhancements to your chat interface.
• Clique. I don’t care if you’re not a healer. Click-casting rocks, give it a chance.
• DragQueen. This lets you move some of the blizzard frames around if they get in your way; and trust me, they will.
• Fubar. This gives you … fubars. Trust me, you want it. Searching for “fubar” will also show up heaps of plugins; don’t worry too much about them for now, but at least grab DurabilityFu, ExperienceFu, FactionsFu, HeyFu, ItemRackFu, LocationFu, LuckyCharms, PerformanceFu, ReagentFu, and RecountFu.
• Grid. This is the most concise set of raid frames out there, and I love them even for 5-mans.
• ItemRack. Even if you only have one set of gear, this works in nicely with Baggins to sort your bags.
• LibPeriodicTable-3.1 (or later). This, again, works wonders for sorting your bags for you. Trust me here.
• Omen. Everyone needs a threat meter. Just do it.
• Pitbull. We’re going to use this to replace some of your default frames.
• Quartz. This is a castbar replacement with all sorts of options.
• Recount. The hottest set of meters in the game, in my opinion. This addon can hurt your performance; lower-end PCs beware.
• SexyMap. The default minimap just isn’t cool enough, and this replacement is … Sexy.
• Skinner. Most of the features of this addon are (in my opinion) completely useless, but it does have a few neat things we can use it for.
• Talented. If you EVER re-spec, and don’t know about Talented, … my god. I just couldn’t imagine it.
• XLoot, XLootGroup, XLootMonitor, and XLootMaster. These are a nice set of replacements for the blizzard loot UI.

Having installed all of those, it’s time to sign in. Your UI will look like an absolute mess, but don’t worry too much; we’ll have it cleaned up in no time. The first thing to do is to fix up your video settings; these will have reset to default. Press escape, hit the Video button, and choose your resolution (and any other settings you prefer to change). These are too dependent on your system for me to tell you what to select; just keep in mind that higher resolutions will probably look better, but run slower. Your screen will now look something like this:

First Impressions

Start the cleanup by dragging Recount off to the side (that’s the shaded box with the red title-bar in the middle of the screen). Then, click the Recount icon in the very top-right corner of the screen, to hide the Recount window altogether. This is a fubar button, and those bars along the top and bottom of your screen are fubars. Any fubar plugin can live on any of these fubars, and you can create more than two if you like, although I wouldn’t recommend it.

Important Note: Your settings are only saved when you log out. You’re going to spend a fair bit of time setting things up just right; log out every now and then to save your settings. There’s nothing worse than spending an hour getting things just right, only to have WoW crash on you, and lose all of your hard work.

The next thing to do is get yourself a blank space at the bottom of the screen, for your chat windows and minimap, and turn off a few of the sillier skinning features of Skinner (take a loot at one by opening your spellbook). Open up the skinner settings by typing /skinner or clicking the appropriate mini-map icon. On the main Skinner settings page, I turn off Dropdowns. Click on the + sign to get a bunch of sub-menus; I’ve turned off everything in Gradient, NPCFrames, PlayerFrames, and UIFrames. The stuff we’re really interested in is under the cryptic heading VP/TMPFrames. Make sure you’re on the Viewport tab, and turn on “Viewport Show”. Set your left and right sizes to 0, your top size to about 20 (so the viewport starts just below the fubar), and your bottom to something like 200. This bottom gap is where the minimap and chat windows will go. If you have trouble with this bit, like you set left and right to 0 but your viewport doesn’t go right to the edges, just type /reloadui and it should fix things.

One of the coolest things I’ve done with my UI is splitting my chat pane into two different windows. Less important and/or spammy stuff goes in one window, and important stuff (like guild/officers chat, party, battleground, and raid chat, and whispers) goes into the other. Start by mousing over your chat window, then right-click on General, and choose “Unlock Window”. Then, right-click on General again, choose Create New Window, and give it a name (I used Chat). Now, if you hold down your mouse button on the Chat tab, you can drag it out, and it’ll become a separate window. I put the general/combat log pane on the right-hand side of the screen, down in the black frame, and the Chat tab on the left. Drag the windows using the window name (General or Chat), and use the right mouse button near an edge to resize the window.

Let’s do something about those action bars; they’re probably starting to annoy you. Bartender lets us have a whole bunch of action bars on the screen at any one time. There’s a Bartender icon on the minimap; when you left-click it, it unlocks all of the bars, so you can move them around. We’re going to do a bit more than that though, so right-click the icon instead (or type /bar). Bar 1 is your main action bar, and you can have up to 9 others (you may find bars 7-10 are used for things like your form bars, so it’s better to avoid them if you can). I like having 5 bars, so click on the bar 6 option and disable it. Oh, keep in mind that this is UI customisation; feel free to ignore any of the settings I’m giving you and go your own way. Now, let’s turn bars 2-5 into vertical bars; click on bar 2, change the number of rows to 12, and rinse and repeat for 3 through 5. Up the top of the settings window, there’s a “Lock” checkbox; untick it, and drag the bars around. I put bar 2 top-left, 3 bottom-left, 4 top-right, and 5 bottom-right of the playing field. Hang on, they don’t fit; you’ll need to go in and change the scale of each bar as well. I find a scale of about 0.65 works well; if this is too small for you, you may need to re-think where you want the bars, or run with only 3 visible instead of 5, or maybe even go with each bar having 6 rows instead of 12. The sky’s the limit here, and you can always play around with things later. While you’re moving things around, find good spots for your pet, vehicle, and stance bars, and your main bar (bar 1; I put it top-center of the playing field). Personally, I keep my bag bar and micro menu turned off (the bartender menu lets you do this), and my stance bar scaled down a bit.

Things should be starting to look much tidier now; perhaps something like this:

A Bit Tidier

There’s still a ways to go yet, though. Let’s deal with the minimap. Don’t go rushing into moving it down into its spot yet, though: you’ll run into trouble. A bunch of UI elements are usually bound to the bottom of the minimap, and we’ll run them right off the bottom of the screen. Right-click on the minimap, and on the main SexyMap option page you’ll see a tickbox called “Show Movers”. Click this, and you’ll be able to move all of these windows below the minimap around. Don’t leave anything just under the minimap at the moment; it might still be bound there, and you’ll lose it when you move the map down. A word of caution: I’ve found these movers to be buggy sometimes; if I drag them around for more than a second or so, they sometimes get stuck. Move them in quick little bursts, and if they get stuck, you can “save yourself” by typing /reloadui. Once you’re done with these, untick the show movers box, and then untick the “Clamp to Screen” and “Lock Minimap” buttons. Now you can play with the minimap to your heart’s content: Move it down to that gap between the chat windows, play with the pre-sets, scale it down a bit to fit better, move around (or disable) the minimap buttons, and so on. Although it’s a bit boring, I find “Simple Square” the nicest preset to use, really. One setting in particular I’d recommend; go to the “Buttons” sub-menu, and set your Show New mail indicator to show always, instead of only on hover.

We’re looking much neater now. Take your Loot Monitor and Loot Rolls bars and pop them in the top-right corner; I put Loot Monitor on the very right, and Loot Rolls to the left of it. Drag your player frame up to the top-left corner, and move grid somewhere out of the way (I use the lower-left part of the playing field). Now, roll up your sleeves, because Pitbull is a pain to set up.

Type /pit, and we’ll get started. You should start on the main Pitbull setup page, and the first item you’ll see is a dropdown called “Configuration Mode”. Select “Party”; this shows a dummy set of party frames, so you can set them up without having to actually be in a party. You’ll see a whole stack of frames come up, and we definitely want to turn some of them off. Close the pitbull config window for a minute, and drag things around so you can see them better. Then type /pit again, and we’ll change some things. Click on Player (in the list of bars on the left), and we’ll dig into some of the sub-menus. If you want to change the overall size, that’s under Other. Auras lets you change how and where buffs and debuffs are displayed; text lets you change how things like health and mana are displayed. Bars lets you change the size and settings of the different bars; I tend to change the height of health, cast, and power to 1, so they’re equally sized. Play with these until you’re happy, and fiddle with party frames and so on as well. Personally, I like to just have an icon for the PartyTargets frames; go into Party Targets, go to the Bars section, and disable all of the bars. Then jump down to other and drop the width down until it’s roughly a square. Go to auras, and turn of buffs and debuffs. Then drag the whole thing over so it’s lined up next to your party targets. Now, to get the icon, find the “Modules” option on the left, scroll down until you find the Portrait option, and turn it on.

Now, go down the list on the left again, pick any frame sets you don’t think you need (like Party Pets, Focus Target, and so on) and disable them. If you disable something you wanted to keep, you can turn it back on from the Extra Units menu option. Pitbull is, I think, the hardest of all the addons to get right, and I’m still fiddling with my setup. Take some time playing with the settings; there are so many of them, you’ll probably find all sorts of neat things.

Configuration Mode: Party

This is roughly what your screen should be looking like. Keep in mind, when you select Configuration Mode: Party, it puts up a lot of buffs and debuffs and stuff that wouldn’t be there in most cases. Don’t worry if it looks a bit noisy: it won’t be so bad in an acual party situation. Turn party mode off in pitbull, and let’s move on: there’s a bit more to tidy up.

Oh, I’ll take this moment to mention Addon Control Panel. Type /acp and you see the interface: basically, you can turn addons on or off, hit the reloadui button, and your new addon choices are loaded/unloaded without you having to log off. Neat.

Okay, let’s get Fubar set up, and then we’re pretty much done. You should find you can drag the fubar icons (on those little bars at the top and bottom of the screen) between bars. To change the position they display on the bar, you usually have to right-click and change a setting; you can choose between left, right, or middle, and you can drag the icons around to change the order. I like to put LocationFu (which displays which area you’re in, and your coordinates) on the bottom bar, in the center, so it’s right under the minimap. Drag it down from the top bar to the bottom (it may take a few tries to get the knack), and then right-click on it, and change the Left setting to Center. Fiddle with your other fubar icons to taste, and we’re just about done.

Time for ItemRack and Baggins. ItemRack, I’m hoping most people are somewhat familiar with; I’m going to skip it here, for the most part. Right-click the ItemRack fubar button and choose the first option to get to your setup page. Click on sets, and create sets of gear to switch between. My main has sets for Shadow Resist, Healing, Balance, Feral, PvP, Regen, Haste, and so on. A key part of this is to try to get every piece of gear you own into a set; if it’s not part of some set, why are you lugging it around? Getting this right makes setting Baggins up easier.

Okay: Baggins. If you thought Pitbull was tricky, be afraid. Luckily, Baggins is easy to ease into bit by bit. What I’d recommend is to go into your key bindings menu (from the main menu you get when you hit escape). Go down to your Interface Panel options, and set your keyring to control-B, and check that toggle all bags is shift-B. Now scroll down and find the Baggins section, and set its hotkey to B. This means Baggins opens when you hit B, but you can still get to the usual bags with shift-B.

Now, find the Baggins icon on your fubar. Right-click it and choose Config Window; these are your main settings. The main thing to change here is under Layout: Click on the Set Layout Bounds button, and drag the bottom slider up so it doesn’t cover the chat window. You don’t strictly need to do this, but I prefer it that way. You can also scale things down a bit here; remember this when you go to open your bank window and find your screen a bit over-full. Close this window, right-click on the baggins fubar button again, and choose the Bag/Category Config option. This is where all the cool stuff happens; you can fiddle as little or as much as you want here.

I’m going to explain things a bit here. You can set up different “Bags”, and each bag displays things from set “Categories”. Hit B to open Baggins, and you’ll see the default bags and some categories. I like to change the way Baggins handles my gear: I only want gear that’s in an ItemRack set to come up in my Equipment bag. Other gear comes up in the Other bag, because I’ve probably just picked it up, and not worked out whether I’m going to keep it or not yet. First of all, we need some new categories; in the Baggins Bag/Category Config, go down to the Category section. Type a name for a new category, and click create. You can just create an Itemrack category, but I prefer to make things for different types of gear. I’ll walk through creating a set called Town, which holds my town-set gear, and I’ll leave you to create categories like “Healing”, “DPS”, “Resist Gear”, and so on. Keep in mind, one category can hold several different Itemrack sets, if you want.

So type “Town” into the text box and click Create. It will add Town to the Categories list, and select it for you. Now click add, to add a new rule. Click Edit, and under type, choose ItemRack. Then, in the same dropdown, select the set(s) you want to go in this category: in this case, my “Town” set. We now have a category which holds every piece of gear in my itemrack town set; do the same for your other gear sets. I only have a couple; my “Caster” category has my haste, regen, healing, and balance gear. My Feral category has my bear and kitty set. Keep things to maybe 3 or 4 categories of gear.

Now, we need to do something with there categories. Go back to the Bags section, and choose the Equipment bag. Set the bag priority to 20, delete the armor and weapons sections, and add new sections, one for each category. For example, click “New”, and type in town. Then click on the Edit button, and finally, add a category. So click on edit next to the town section, click add category, and choose the town category you created before.

Now, click on the Other bag (in the list on the left), click on the edit button next to the Other section, and add the Weapons and Armor categories. Lots of things will fit into both Armor and the ItemRack categories we made, but because we set the priority on the Equipment bag to 20, and our Other bag priority is still at the default setting of 1, things in itemrack sets will go in the Equipment bag instead of the Other bag. This whole categories, bags, and sections thing can be done with your bank bags too; and you can fiddle with the default sets, make different types of things appear in different sections, and so on. I have all of my leatherworking gear in one section of my Trade Goods bag, any gems I have on my in a second section, and everything else in an “Other” section. You can group the reagents you use together, and put everything else over in trade goods, instead of consumables. This complicated addon probably deserves a whole post devoted to it; in the meantime, fiddle with it, and if you get frustrated, go back to shift-Bing for a while, and ignore it. After a while, you’ll get so used to it, you wondered how you ever lived without it; no manual sorting, stacks organise themselves, and all of your things “just show up in the right place”.

This whole Baggins thing sounds pretty complicated, and it is. There’s a lot you can do, and it’s a really wonderful addon once you have it all worked out, but it takes some learning. I’d encourage you to persevere; it’s a wonderful addon. In the meantime, don’t forget that your normal bags are only a shift-B away.

There you have it; we’re just about done. There are a couple of things left to do.

Just About Done

One thing we haven’t played with at all is chatter. Type /chatter to bring up the settings. I’ll leave this one as an exercise to the reader; there’s nothing that really needs changing, but you can mess with the chat window fonts, move the edit box around, and change all sorts of things.

Another thing you’ll really want to do is install some more fubar addons, and get them set up just right. There are addons for fubar to display so many different things, you’ll be blown away. Search for fubar in your addon manager, and you should get most of them. Install a few, play with them, try different things.

I haven’t gone over Clique at all. You can mess with it yourself; open your spellbook, click on the new option down the bottom to open up the Clique pane, and now when you click on a spell it binds it. Right-click on your favourite heal, and now whenever you right-click on someone, it’ll cast that heal. Careful here. You right-click on people to get options to do things like open trade. This is why I disable Clique for everything except my grid frames: there’s a button at the bottom of the Clique window called “Frames” where you can turn all the other frames off. Now your bindings will only work on the raid-frames, like you want, and other frames work normally. Oh, you can use modified clicks: shift-click, and-click, and so on. I have every heal my druid can cast bound to some kind of click or modified click.

The final thing to do takes the longest. Keep tweaking, fiddling, and messing with settings. When something annoys you, change it. This setup is so totally customisable that it’s almost certain that whatever’s bugging you can be changed. Fiddle with Baggins until you have it just right. Keep an eye out for new fubar plugins. Get things exactly the way you want it; having your UI set up just right makes WoW that much more enjoyable.

There’s a serious amount of content here; feel free to ask questions, make comments, and tell me about great addons I’ve left out. In the meantime,

Happy Druiding,

Althura.

First attempt at a complete UI

Actually, that’s not quite how it looks at the moment, but I completely forgot about taking a screen-shot before the shutdown tonight, and I can’t get one now. It’s close enough for the time being.

First of all: Before you go poking at things, backup your current UI somewhere safe. Find your WoW directory, and make copies of the WTF and Interface folders. If things go pear-shaped on you, you can always go back to the saved copy.

The first thing you’ll notice is the big black box at the bottom. An addon called Skinner lets me create blank sections at the top and bottom of the screen like this. It does a whole lot of other stuff too, but I turned most of it off. I’ve split off a second chat window; the one on the left has all of the important stuff (guild chat, party/raid, and so on), and the one on the right has loot info, emotes, say and yell, and all of the trash channels like trade and general. The chat windows themselves are enhanced using Chatter, which is a great (and easy to set up) addon which lets you tweak all sorts of things about your chat windows. SexyMap, a wonderful minimap replacement, sits in the middle there, and has a range of different skins you can put on it. A nice feature is the way it lets you fade-out most of the minimap buttons unless you mouse-over it.

My character frame, sitting there to the left of the minimap, has since been moved up above the party frames, to where it normally is, and the party frames moved down a bit. Speaking of the frames, I use Pitbull to setup these custom frames. It takes a bit of setting up, but I think it’s worth it to replace the default frames. Over to the right of the minimap, I had my target and target-of-target frames, one above the other; I’ve since moved these up to the right of my player/party frames, although I’m starting to think it’s making the top of my playing field a bit cluttered. I’m still not sure about the best place for these. Oh, and moving those frames up top let me widen the chat frames right to the edge of the minimap, which makes them much easier to read. Going back to the party frames, to the immediate right of each party member, I have a frame showing their target. I have it set up to just show an icon, but you can get lots more information.

I use Pitbull for my basic and party frames, but I just can’t get over how concise Grid is, so my raid frames still use Grid. I use this for healing even in 5-mans, and all of my healing spells are bound to mouse clicks (or modifier+mouse clicks) using Clique. One warning with Clique: disable it for most of your frames, or you’ll find yourself casting a spell on someone when you wanted to right-click to access the drop-down menu. I keep Grid unlocked so I can drag it around: sometimes I find it great having it right next to my character, so I can see what’s going on around me and my healing targets without looking around too much; other times it’s annoying, and I want it more out of the way.

Two little bars to the right of my main action bar are provided by addons to XLoot: XLootMonitor and XLootGroup. XLoot itself replaces the default loot frame, XLootMonitor shows a nice graphical running summary of loot received, rolls, and so on, and XLootGroup replaces those annoying loot-roll frames with something less in your face.

My action bars are customized using Bartender. My main action bar is along the top, and it switches depending on my form. It also switches whenever I hold down control or alt. There are a bunch of extra (and very small!) vertical bars along the side, for all sorts of things that I want visible but not in my face. The bars on the left are actually the ones I get to using alt and control; it means I can monitor cooldowns on those without having to hit the modifier key.

Over on the right side of the playing field, you’ll see the obvious Omen and Recount. *Yawn*

Looking at the top and bottom of the screen, however, you’ll see an addon I’ve fallen in love with: Fubar. It lets you set up bars, and has all sorts of plugins to put on those bars. I couldn’t even begin to list all the awesomeness you can do with this; fire up your addon manager (I use WowMatrix) and type Fubar into the search box; you should see heaps of plugins. Some of my favourites are:

• HeyFu keeps a history of whispers I’ve received. The info on the bar is how many whispers I’ve received since I last clicked on it; if I mouse-over, it shows me a summary of my current conversation, and right-clicking gives me access to my recent chat history in a cascading menu.
• ItemRackFu. This basically just lets me move my ItemRack button from the minimap to a fubar.
• LuckyCharms. This is a great one for tanks and raid leaders/assistants; it gives you all of the mob marker icons in a spot on the fubar, which you can just click to mark your current target. You can see this in the center of my top fubar.
• FactionsFu shows me my current rep with any particular faction I select; mousing over it brings up a list of my rep with all factions.
• DurabilityFu shows me my current gear durability level.
• GarbageFu shows me my remaining bag space, and even better, I can shift-click it to drop the lowest-priced trash item in my bags.

Seriously, it just goes on and on. If you’ve never tried Fubar, you’re missing out.

Moving on to the stuff you can’t see. I’m using a bag replacement called Baggins: this is really tough to get used to, and I hated it for a while, but I persevered, and now I’m in love with it. Instead of showing you actual bag slots, it lets you set up all sorts of categories to display stuff under. Gear, reagents, consumables, quest items, and so on. You can categorize things in so many ways, and it works for your bank as well. One suggestion, which I found made it much easier to get used to the thing: don’t let it replace your bags (there’s a setting for that). Instead, I rebound ‘B’ to bring up Baggins; shift-B toggles my default blizzard bags, and control-B toggles my keyring. This let me use Baggins most of the time, but if I was in a hurry and couldn’t be bothered, I could still get to the normal ones. If you decide to try Baggins out, be prepared to be patient with it; I think it’s worth the effort, but it would have been easy to give up early on. Also, download LibPeriodicTable: it vastly improves the category system, and gives you access to your ItemRack/Outfitter/ClosetGnome equipment sets as categories.

I’m using Quartz to replace the blizzard cast bar; I don’t care too much about the look, I just wanted something I could move around. ItemRack is my current favourite gear-set manager, and I just couldn’t live without it. Druids, pallys, pretty much anyone who hangs onto different gear for different sets should be using it (or something similar). DragQueen is a gem: it lets me move most of the blizzard UI frames (like the spellbook, character page, and so on) around. Cartographer replaces the default map, !BugGrabber and BugSack tidy any UI errors away where they won’t bother me, and ACP lets me switch addons on and off without signing out (this makes setting your UI up so much easier). Finally, BadgeWatch reminds everyone in my raid to loot their emblems in heroics and raids (and bugs everyone in level 70 heroics, because they don’t care about badges anymore anyway).

There’s probably heaps more I could write. There are all sorts of tips and tricks I picked up while I was setting all of this up. This is quite enough for one night, though: if you decide to play with your UI, and run into trouble, drop me a question here and I’ll see if I can help. In the meantime,

Happy Druiding,

Althura.

So back to resto I went. I think it was inevitable.

Anyway, the other reason I haven’t been posting is that all of my meta-WoW time lately has been spent fiddling with my interface. Playing with macros, addons, and other UI customisations. I’m sure I’ll end up with one helluva series on what I end up with, but for now, this is it.

Happy Druiding,

Althura.

Resigning as a core raider.

This isn’t a choice I wanted to make, but unfortunately, due to those nasty IRL things that pop up from time to time, Dissent’s HoTNelf is going part-time for a while. I’m going to miss out on a ton of progression content, which really sucks. Progression is why I play. Lack of it is why I ditched my last guild (In spite of them being a great bunch of people! Hi FFJ!). Fortunately, Dissent has social and backup-raider ranks, and so moving out of full-time raiding doesn’t mean they’re gonna ditch me. Probably, anyway.

I’m slowly creeping towards the point of this post, but if you read oneHoTNelf often you’re used to that. Don’t worry, I’ll get there.

Anyway, the start of the month saw my first night sitting out of raid in … A Very Long Time. I even sat in the raid vent channel for a while. I sat outside Naxx. I already miss raiding; but most of all, I miss being directly responsible for guild progression.

“Hang on Alth, you weren’t responsible for guild progression, just involved. Right? Not an officer, not a class leader… Not Responsible.”

Wrong.

In a guild, every raider is responsible for guild progression. Every backup raider who comes in once in a while. Even some of the socials. But particularly the core raiders. Responsible. Directly.

But what IS progression? How does it work? If I’m responsible for it, what do I have to do?

Read on.

Progression: What Is It?

Progression is the thing that moved you on from kara to ZA, or expanded you out into the 25-mans. Progression is that shiny purple you saved your badges for, or that new elixir recipe you picked up which will let guildies get cheaper access to consumables. Progression is farming mats or gold for a new craftable or enchantment. Recruiting a new raider; learning a new strategy; reading a fantastic blog on healing tips (or even just this one).

Some people think that progression is boring, or tedious. Some people think it means wiping over and over on a raid boss for weeks on end. Some people even think it’s something the guild master or officers do; everyone else is just along to hit stuff.

As far as boring tedium: You missed the point. Wiping is not progression. Wiping is just dying and copping a repair bill; it can even be regression (going backwards). If you wipe over and over, people get discouraged. Their gold reserves run lower, as they pay repairs and use up consumables. Wiping over and over simply is not progression. Progression can involve wiping over and over, though, but even this shouldn’t be boring or tedious. Raid bosses are meant to be tough; they’re meant to wipe groups. Some of them are famous for wiping groups; think Shade of Aran in karazhan. I’ve walked in there with 10 people who all sported plenty of T6 and equivalent gear, and wiped from flame wreath. Kael’thas in The Eye (TK). High Astromancer Solarian. Ugh.

I think my favourite progression boss of all time was Illidan. We wiped on phase one, while the mages failed on the shadow-thingys. We wiped on phase two, when the tanks failed on eyebeams. We wiped on phase two when the raid failed the stacking boss. We wiped on phase three, probably for no good reason at all. We went back to wiping on phase two. We saw phase four, and wiped. Phase 5? You guessed it. Wipe. Wipe after wipe after wipe. Shadowfiends in the raid. Healers failing Dark Barrage. Our MT failing the shield-wall boss. Pallies failing the “click on the FR aura button” boss. Flames of Azzinoth leashed. SR tank dead from Shadow Demons. Agonizing Flames. People standing in front of Illidan and healing him way back up. Healer aggro as the encounter started due to an early crit. Ranged pulling aggro from Flames of Azzinoth and running them through the raid. Demons on every single healer who was in range of the SR tank. OMG.

All of this is mechanic wiping; it’s quite aside from wiping because the healing assignments weren’t quite right. FR tanks wearing the wrong gear-set. The SR tank lagging out (goodbye raid!), or … I’ve temporarily run out. The point is, there was a lot of wiping, and it was a lot of fun. It was an intense fight. Run here, stack there, stay behind the boss. Heal that guy, spread out there. Twenty minutes or so of really tough boss-fighting. And then you wiped, and worked out why. Maybe an officer yelled at someone who did something dumb. It was absolutely nuts, and it was SO much fun.

Of course, what would not have been fun is if we wiped, over and over and over, from the mages letting shadowfiends get into the raid. Or if we struggled through phase one over and over, only to have a tank fail on eyebeams every time. That’s not fun, and it’s not progression. It’s just failing.

Progression is about getting somewhere. Sticking with the Illidan example, we were stoked when we made it to phase two. Not much of a challenge, really, but those stupid shadowfiends did get us a couple of times. Phase two was really tough back then, and our FR tanks weren’t exactly over-geared for it: we lost them just to pure damage plenty of times. We had a string of eyebeam failures here and there, which were frustrating, but then we hit phase three, and it was all worth it.

See, this is it. Wiping isn’t fun. Farming for consumables isn’t fun. Having to skip a night of raiding because key players are burned out and just didn’t show isn’t fun. But you know what? You kill that bastard, and it was all worth it. Even just seeing a new phase is great, but the kill is the real accomplishment. There’s that tense moment when Akama runs up to finish him off, and you’re thinking: We did it. Two weeks of wipes, for more reasons than you can count, and this arsehole is finally dead. And there’s no glaive; or the helm you were after didn’t drop. Or maybe it did. But suddenly, you don’t care: Illidan is down. I just saw, and beat, content that most people never will. Well, not before the nerf anyway, but we didn’t know it was coming.

Am I annoyed that just anyone can roll in and kill Illidan now? T6 tokens aren’t even worth DEing? The boss I worked on for so long, nerfed to the point we can skip phase four altogether? What about that I did all that work, and only ever got one bit of gear off him (my token), even though we ended up farming him for ages?

No. You know why? It’s not about the gear. It’s not about being one of the only people on the server to have downed him. It’s not even about being in a sunwell guild.

You know what? All those guilds that suddenly went from 2/5 MH to Illidan down with the nerf missed out on the single best part of the whole thing: The Progression.

The Illidan fight wasn’t about the phat epics. It wasn’t even about the kill. I’ve killed lots of bosses (and I DO mean LOTS), and I’ve picked up lots of epics. Epics are boring. If I want an epic, I’ll go do some solo farming for mats and make one. Or I’ll buy it off the AH. Loot isn’t the point. Killing bosses does nothing for me.

You know what all those guilds who didn’t even see Illidan pre-nerf missed out on? Not the kill, not the epics. Sure, they didn’t wipe over and over. They didn’t spend days on end farming consumables and enchanting mats. But you know what? I had a LOT more fun than they did. They missed out on the progression.

Making It Happen

So now you know what progression IS. You can (hopefully) see why it’s fun. Now you need to know the how.

There are two parts to progression. The leadership, and the participants. Without good leadership (and Dissent has some really excellent leadership), progression won’t happen; at least, not quickly. Further, without the active participation of a great bunch of raiders (again, something Dissent has in spades), you won’t get far either.

From the leadership view, you need organisation and planning. You need a tank leader; his job is not necessarily to do the MTing, but to organise the tanking. To assign jobs to tanks, to (probably) do most of the marking.  You also need a heal leader; somebody to know every healer, his gear level, his spec, and to assign each appropriately to the tanks. Somebody who takes two druids, for example, and assigns one to each tank, probably isn’t right for the job. Ditto to someone who puts the holy pallys on raid heals when there’s lots of splash damage going on.

And of course, you need the overall raid leader. The guy (or gal) who sets times, who picks the content, and unfortunately, the guy who shouts at people for doing dumb stuff in general. This person needs to have great raid awareness, and a good set of mods (to catch that damn mage who WON’T switch to the adds when it’s called). Perhaps the best asset for a raid leader, however, is a good sense of what’s going on in boss encounters. Dissent’s raid (and guild) leader is a self-confessed sub-par healer (although much less sub-par at healing than I am at dpsing), and yet I’ve seen him run up the back of a raid to work out what was going wrong in the healing. And then, not just run around, but find and fix the problem. I’ve seen him take a tough encounter (like Illidan), toss out the boss-killers script, and come up with Dissent’s strategy.

Aside from leadership, though, the other key part of the equation is the raid group itself. Whether you have a fixed group of raiders, a core with a bunch of socials subbing in, or something else, your raiders are the crucial second part of progression. This is why, whoever you are, if you’re in a raiding guild: progression is up to you.

Your job, as a core raider, as a reserve, even as a social, is to progress the guild, and everyone in it. Your contribution will depend on your commitment to the guild, and how much time you have, however here are a few things you can do:

• Grab recipes for your crafting profession, and make sure guildies have access to them. Enchanters, jewelcrafters, and alchemists have a particular role here, but leatherworkers and blacksmiths can both create gear that can be useful, particularly early in your progression.
• Farm mats and pop them in the guild bank. If you can create raid consumables, even better! If you have a recipe for something the guild goes through, but can’t farm mats for it, talk to the guild leader about having the guild bank provide mats or buy them from the AH.
• Run heroics! Until you’ve been farming higher-end content for a while, there will be raiders who can find upgrades in heroics, or from badges. If you’re fully geared, go along on heroics to help out raiders who haven’t been so lucky with gear. If you’re a social, help fill in spots that aren’t full. Hey, take the socials along anyway! The social you leave out of a heroic today because he’s undergeared might be the one you need to come help heal through Patchwerk tomorrow.
• Read (or write) a blog, or a guide on your guild forums. Help a less-experienced guildie pick the right gear, or enchants, or talents. Generally learn about your character, or help teach other people about theirs (only if you do really know though). Don’t be the guy who always has an opinion, even if it’s wrong: Wrong advice hurts progression. Telling a pally tank to to skip Judgements of the Just is bad.

There are all sorts of things you can do to help the guild in general. The other thing you need to focus on, though, is yourself. Your talent spec, your gear, your gems and enchants. Your glyphs. Your addons. YOUR playstyle. Directly responsible for raid progression, like I said.

Know your hit cap, defense cap, expertise cap, whatever’s relevant to your class and spec. Check out different addons, and learn to write macros. Look at every glyph for your class, work out what you want, and then get a second opinion. That Glyph of Healing Touch sounded cool for a minute, but have you wondered why they sell for next to nothing on the AH? Have you asked around, read different sites? Done your own analysis maybe?

I still think Replenish is a total waste of talent points. It would hardly be worth taking if it were free. Yet I still see druids with it, and missing some much more crucial talents.

Know what attributes benefit you. Boomkins stack crit and int, trees stack spirit and SP. Don’t just grab whatever gear; make sure it’s a real upgrade.

Remember: Guild Progression is up to YOU.

I never moved my BC pre-heroic gear guide onto this blog; it sat on the guild forums. I always thought about shifting it over, but never did. There’s not much point now, but what there is a point for is a guide to gearing an 80 druid for raids and heroics. I’m doing it in a few parts, because there are just so many options out there; it all started with my rep reward guide.

So here it is; what drops where, healer-style. I’ll pop the recommended level range in brackets, so you know when to hit it up.

Utgarde Keep (70-72)

First, pick up the quest Into Utgarde! (there’s a bit of a chain leading up to it). You’ll be rewarded with a Ring of Decimation. Also, grab Disarmament; Your reward is Amulet of the Tranquil Mind, which will be an upgrade for almost everyone.

Prince Keleseth has a couple of great healing drops: Reinforced Velvet Helm and Keleseth’s Blade of Evocation. Bully the dps into passing for you: that spirit is yours!

Skarvald the Constructor has a completely useless loot table for us, even on heroic, but push on, because…

Ingvar the Plunderer can drop Holistic Patchwork Breeches (and you don’t even have to compete with clothie casters!)

Overall, there are a few drops here that will definitely help the lower-level druid, although you’ll probably replace most of this stuff in later instances.

The Nexus (71-73)

Once again, there are a few quests to grab. The key ones are Prisoner of War (for Mantle of Keristrasza) and Quickening (for Sandals of Mystical Evolution).

Grand Magus Telestra gives us a shot at Belt of Draconic Runes.

… (I won’t mention bosses which don’t drop anything for us anymore).

Anomalus drops a nice off-hand, Tome of the Lore Keepers.

Keristrasza has Attuned Crystalline Boots and Band of Glittering Permafrost. Sadly, the ring has mp5 instead of spirit, but if it’s an upgrade…

Azjol-Nerub (72-74)

Quests, quests, quests. Always quests. Death to the Traitor King rewards you with some unusual boots (Kilix’s Silk Slippers): spirit, SP, and haste. Neat.

Krik’thir the Gatewatcher drops Exquisite Spider-Silk Footwraps.

Hadronox has a couple of nice items: Life-Staff of the Web Lair and Spinneret Epaulets.

Ahn’kahet: The Old Kingdom (73-75)

Prince Taldaram has Gloves of the Blood Prince and Talisman of Scourge Command.

Jedoga Shadowseeker drops the dubiously included Cloak of the Darkcaster; you should probably just let a dpser grab this.

Herald Volazj can drop a set of haste shoulders: Mantle of Echoing Bats. Haste gear can be very handy for a resto druid (and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise), but be careful not to gimp your regen.

Drak’Tharon Keep (74-76)

Trollgore drops a nice helm, Berserker’s Horns.

Novos the Summoner has no spirit for us, but we can pick up Crystal Pendant of Warding (beware mp5 over spirit) or Robes of Novos (haste gear).

King Dred has Stable Master’s Breeches, and the unusual Staff of the Great Reptile (that’s a lot of spirit. And haste).

Oh, don’t forget the quests. Search and Rescue for Kurzel’s Angst, and Cleansing Drak’Tharon for Shroud of Temptation.

Violet Hold (75-77)

This place randomly selects 2 bosses from 6 options before you face the final boss.

Moragg can drop Band of Eyes.

Zuramat the Obliterator has Pendant of Shadow Beams, for your haste set.

Basically, hope for those two, because the other options have nothing for us.

Gundrak (76-78)

Moorabi drops two items you might like: Frozen Scepter of Necromancy and Arcane Focal Signet.

Halls of Stone (77-79)

Maiden of Grief has a nice classic druid ring, Ringlet of Repose, and Chain of Fiery Orbs.

Krystallus drops Leggings of Burning Gleam.

Also, completing the quest the NPC Brann Bronzebeard gives you inside rewards you with the excellent Mantle of the Intrepid Explorer.

Halls of Lightning (80)

General Bjarngrim drops nice cloth shoulders, Mantle of Electrical Charges.

Volkhan drops a haste head: Volkhan’s Hood.

Ionar drops Thundercloud Grasps, which sadly have mp5 instead of spirit.

Loken has a great loot table. Chaotic Spiral Amulet and Raiments of the Titans are both excellent bits of gear.

The Oculus (80)

Drakos the Interrogator drops Verdisa’s Cuffs of Dreaming and Timeless Beads of Eternos.

Varos Cloudstrider gives a shot at a haste helm (Horned Helm of Varos) and the very nice Gloves of the Azure-Lord.

Mage-Lord Urom drops haste shoes, The Conjurer’s Slippers.

Cache of Eregos (unlocked after the final fight) can contain a very nice staff, Malygos’ Favor, and a trinket, Tome of Arcane Phenomena.

CoT: Culling of Stratholme (80)

Meathook drops the very nice ring, Enchanted Wire Stitching.

Chrono-Lord Epoch drops a staff with some great stats: Sempiternal Staff. Unusually, this is an item with good healing stats, and some crit.

Dark Runed Chest is all that’s left after Mal’Ganis runs off like a little girl: luckily, it’s full of nice loot. Hopefully, Gloves of Northern Lordaeron, Demonic Fabric Bands, or Soul Preserver.

Utgarde Pinnacle (80)

Gortok Palehoof drops a haste off-hand (Seal of Valgarde) and a cloak which, sadly, has mp5 instead of spirit (Shroud of Resurrection).

Skadi the Ruthless drops Silken Amice of Ymirjar.

King Ymiron only has a haste ring, Signet of Ranulf.

Wrap-up

That’s it. All the normal-mode instance boss drops I could find that looked healy-ish. I’d love to sit down now and build up some sample sets, do a “pick-of-the-slots” rundown, and tell you what to run; unfortunately, I’ve been at this for hours now, and I’m really not in the mood to combine this with the rep rewards for a final wrap-up. I will do one, but maybe in a day or two. In the meantime,

Happy Druiding,

Althura.

People who even mention running the old instances are laughed at: I’ve watched many a flame session directed at some poor sap trying to get a ZA group together. Seriously, that’s nearly as bad as running UBRS! Plus, we all know you’re just after the achievement now that out-leveling and outgearing the place is so easy. What else is there to gain, but an empty achievement accessible to anyone who can get a bunch of level 80s together?

Hang on, people. ZA was fun! I remember reading previews of Zul’Aman, and I remember it being praised for its atmosphere, its storyline, its… General FUNness. So why shouldn’t people go back and run it?

In fact, there’s a whole lot of Burning Crusade content that’s well worth going back to see, if you missed it. Lots of it is even fun enough that I’ll definitely want to do it “just for fun” in the future, even though I ran most of the content to death before Wrath came out. Now, I know exactly what I’ll want to go back to see; but what about people who missed content? What’s “worth it”, and what’s just a waste of time? What can be pugged and zerged? What will take careful coordination by an experienced raid leader, and what (if anything) will require a full guild effort with carefully planned strategies, even at level 80?

Bear with me now, there was a LOT of content in BC. I’m not even going to look at quest lines, just instances and raids. I’ll do them in a few major categories, so you can skip past the stuff you know. If you’re going to tl;dr me, there’s a quick wrap-up at the end.

Instances

Let’s start with the instances (and when I refer to ‘instances’, I’m just talking about 5-man instances). Most people who spent any time at level 70 during BC will have seen most of the instances, but people who didn’t spend much time at 70, particularly those who didn’t get to 70 before wrath came out, will probably have missed most of them. All of the 5-man BC instances have heroic modes.

Hellfire Citadel: This hub in Hellfire Peninsula sports three instances.

Ramparts holds no real fond memories for me: the first boss is thoroughly boring; the second, annoying but uninteresting. The third boss, a dragon-rider (who calls his dragon down to join the fight mid-way through) is kind of interesting, but not worth the clear. That said, even a reasonably inexperienced group should breeze through to the end, and if the second boss fight tricks you up, you can skip it altogether. It’s worth noting that although the dragon-rider boss is probably the ‘last boss’, the second boss drops the primal nether, and you can do them in either order. I call Vazruden and Nazan the ‘last boss’ for two reasons: it’s the objective of the daily heroic, and there’s a shortcut straight to the instance entrance right by him, for a quick exit.

Blood Furnace has a few interesting boss fights, but my primary memory from here is slogging through trash. Not a bad instance at the time, but again, I probably won’t be going back ‘just for fun’. The final fight has an interesting setting: you’re in a chamber with a see-through floor; the view below is of Magtheridon’s Lair.

Shattered Halls was, compared to many of the other instances, pretty tough. The trash hit hard, the pulls were huge, and some of the boss fights were tricky. Very few tanks could run this place smoothly, and even fewer non-tankadins. This would be my pick of the HC instances to go back to, and it should be fairly straight-forward with a level 80 group, without being too boring. You may even lose a clothie or two on the two last bosses!

Coilfang Reservoir: Like HC, CR is a hub with three 5-man instances. It can be found in central Zangarmarsh, and you have to swim down a tube in the middle of a lake to get in.

Underbog is an easy run with medium levels of trash, and bosses with a few tricks. Particularly as most level 80 groups will be able to take multiple pulls together, the trash will hardly slow you up at all, and the boss fights are probably worth a run. The second boss has a trick or two to trip up the unwary group which charges in; sadly, you’ll have to go easy on your dps on the last boss, or you’ll hardly even see the fight. I’ve seen better-geared groups drop the last boss in a matter of seconds, even on heroic, although I’ve seen this boss wipe groups over and over where dps was a bit light. Heroic UB is probably a decent option for a group of 80s looking for a quick fun instance.

That said, I much preferred Steamvaults. It’s kind of a shame it only has three bosses, because it meant fewer badge-farming groups bothered. The trash is challenging, particularly if not pulled well, and the boss fights are fun. Hydromancer Thespia asks the DPS to pay attention for a change and keeps the healer on her toes, but isn’t too frustrating. Mekgineer Steamrigger is a bit of light AoE fun, and the final boss has a few little mini-DPS races too. All in all, one of my favourite instances, and one not to be missed. If you do one instance in Coilfang, make it SV.

Slave Pens is a quick little run, and was always considered one of the easier heroics. The bosses aren’t really very interesting, although there are a few trash pulls that are a pain. My call is: don’t bother.

Auchindoun: This instance hub, just south of Shattrath, sports three thoroughly unmemorable instances, and a fourth rather more interesting one.

Sethekk Halls, while relatively uninteresting, does have two points of note: It’s the instance for the final stage of the druid Swift Flight Form quest chain, and the second-last boss (which requires a druid who’s completed the chain leading up to it to summon) drops a very rare epic land mount. Sadly, these are about the only two reasons you’d bother. The bosses are a little tricky, and not particularly fun, and I never ran this place much.

Personally, I found Mana Tombs even less interesting, and can hardly remember a thing about the place. I almost never ran into pugs bothering with this instance.

Less interesting even than MT (in my opinion) was Auchenai Crypts. It was a nice quick run, punctuated mostly by boring trash.

The one gem in Auchindoun is Shadow Labyrinth (I even wrote an Easy-mode Guide for this place). There is quite a bit of trash, but the bosses more than make the run worth it. If you want a slightly-creepy shadowy instance to run, with great atmosphere, try this place. There are some nasty trash pulls which made this place a chore even for better-geared groups, particularly on heroic, but if you follow my guide, you should get through it well enough. The second boss is quite unusual, the third boss holds some really nightmarish memories for a lot of us, and the final boss may even prove somewhat challenging (on heroic) for a group of level 80s. If you want to experience some of the best of Burning Crusade instancing, do this.

Tempest Keep: This is one of the more memorable instance hubs, sporting three 5-man instances. Of note is the fact that none of the instances are accessible without flying (or a warlock summon). TK is located in eastern Netherstorm.

The Mechanar is famous for being thought of as an ‘easy’ heroic, and yet wiping many groups over and over (mostly on the later bosses). The trash is reasonably quick and easy, and I’ve taken part in plenty of clears on heroic mode taking around 20 minutes. That said, it’s not always an easy run: there are a few spots that a mis-timed pull can easily wipe a group, and the major bosses all have their little tricky parts. In addition, there are two mini-bosses that drop parts of a key to the ‘Cache of the Legion’, which provides access to loot similar to a boss. The third boss (commonly known as ‘the fire bitch’) can be particularly difficult for those who haven’t got much experience kiting while tanking/healing/dpsing, and she’s probably been the source of more wipes than nearly any other 5-man boss I can remember. The final boss is fairly easy, but there is a tricky gauntlet to run to get there (although it doesn’t reset if you wipe). Again, this is an enjoyable instance, and will provide some fun, and moreover quick, impressions of BC instancing.

The Botanica is another great instance (again, with an Easy-mode Guide by yours truly), and probably my favourite 5-man. The trash isn’t particularly short, but there’s lots of variety, and the bosses are interesting. Be prepared for some wipes if your tank doesn’t know the third boss well. The fifth (and final) boss is fun, but reasonably easy. Again, I’d recommend this as a fun ‘old-school’ instance, but only if you have a bit more time on your hands. Compared to twenty-minute heroic runs of mech, bot was seldom over in much under an hour.

The third instance in TK is the Arcatraz. This place felt a bit like a long slog through trash to a single final boss. The first boss was rather annoying and optional. The next two bosses were both in the same room, and rather straight-forward (unless your gear wasn’t up to the instance). The final boss is a quite interesting event, with a number of mini-bosses and a couple of NPCs, and if it weren’t for the long slog to get there, I’d thoroughly recommend it.

Caverns of Time: This rather unusual ‘event-oriented’ hub contains two BC instances. It’s located in Tanaris, in southern Kalimdor; it’s painful to reach, although a direct teleport is available from the World’s End Tavern in Shattrath City if you’re at least revered with Keepers of Time.

Escape from Durnholde Keep lets the party participate in Thrall’s escape from captivity in the Old Hillsbrad Foothills. The story-line is interesting, and this is a must for the lore-junkies out there. The normal mode is an absolute walk in the park for a group of level 70s: you won’t even really need a tank. The heroic mode could be extremely difficult, depending on your group makeup, although it shouldn’t be a problem at 80. The final encounter consists of a number of waves of dragonkin, followed by a final dragon boss.

Opening of the Dark Portal (also known by its setting, Black Morass) allows the party to assist Medivh in the opening of the Dark Portal, another major event in Warcraft history. There’s a bit of easy non-elite trash to clear the area around the event, and the event itself is started by approaching Medivh. There are three ‘boss waves’, each preceded by five waves of trash. Each wave pours out of a portal which spawns in one of four locations, and consists of an elite mini-boss or boss, and various dragonkin trash. The only exception is the final boss (wave 18), which doesn’t have any trash. Trash will continue to spawn, and the portal remain, until the boss or mini-boss is killed. This is a reasonably easy instance once you get the hang of it, either on normal or heroic, and again, a definite must for lore-junkies.

Isle of Quel’danas: With only a single 5-man instance, this was a rather late addition to the Burning Crusade content. The isle is located at the very northern tip of the Eastern Kingdoms, and is most easily accessed by portal from Shattrath.

Magister’s Terrace on normal mode was on par with the easier heroics, and the heroic mode was probably the hardest 5-man experience in the game. The trash can be frustrating, particularly the larger pulls, and some of the bosses are tough. However: The last boss, Kael’thas, is without doubt the most fun 5-man boss fight of BC. And, unless you’re ready for one or two little tricks, it’s probably the most likely to wipe a group of 80s (well, on heroic mode, anyway). If you go back and do one BC instance once you hit 80 that you haven’t already seen, make it MgT.

Raids

The raid models have been different for each version of WoW. Vanilla WoW (before any expansions) had limited 10-man raiding, and really focused on 40-man raids. This proved a little over-stressful for the majority of players, and most raids were really seen, by most, as inaccessible to the average player.

Burning Crusade changed that, bringing more 10-man raiding experience, dropping the 40-man category, and introducing 25-man raids. While many guilds still struggle to sustain a 25-man raid team, it isn’t uncommon to see guilds taking a 10-man core with 10 or 15 social members and pugs into a 25-man raid, and downing bosses. BC saw a proliferation of ‘Casual Raiding’ guilds, and the new model in wrath will only serve to reinforce this trend.

WotLK has further improved 10-man raiding options, providing both 10- and 25-man versions of all raid instances. This means that guilds with 10-man teams can access all of the raid content, without having to struggle to pug another 15 players. The 25-man versions do provide better loot, however, rewarding those guilds that do manage the 25-man versions.

What all of this means, for people going back to do BC raids, is that some of the stuff is tuned for 25 level 70s. While you definitely won’t need 25 level 80s to manage it, I suspect some of the content will be very difficult, or even impossible, for a 10-man team. That said, if you can throw together 15 or 20 players, almost all of this stuff is definitely accessible to the casual player, although you will have to do some homework for some of it if you don’t have someone experienced along.

Karazhan

Karazhan was the first raid most players encountered in BC. It’s a 10-man raid tuned for players sporting mostly level 70 rare gear, and you could certainly walk in and down a boss or two without a single epic in your whole group. There are a few tricky boss fights, but nothing that a little homework won’t solve. Even so, you’ll be hard-pressed to put together 10 level 80s without having at least one or two along who know most of the fights. I imagine you could clear kara with a group of only 5 level 80s, or at least come close, although the chess event might be a challenge with only 5 players. This is a good fun raid, and if you want some light easy ‘old-school’ raiding, this is the way to go. An experienced and well-geared group of level 70s can clear this in two to three hours without difficulty.

Gruul’s Lair

This is generally considered the ‘next-easiest’ instance after Kara, however it is a 25-man raid. It was certainly the first 25-man raid most guilds worked on. There are only two bosses in here: High King Maulgar (a tricky multi-boss fight) and Gruul the Dragonkiller. Even the best-geared group of level 80s is going to have to either take along someone who knows the fights, or do some research: these fights cannot be ‘zerged’. If you do happen across a group going here though, I’d say it’s worthwhile: it’s a good fun instance, it doesn’t take long to complete (if the group doesn’t just chain-wipe), and Gruul himself is an impressive (and fun) boss fight. Unless you happen across a group, however, it’s probably not worth setting out to get a run together. It’s worth noting that the first boss fight is actually the trickier one: Gruul himself requires people to pay a bit of attention, but it doesn’t require the same careful planning as the HKM fight.

Gruul’s Lair is located in the Blade’s Edge Mountains in Outlands.

Magtheridon

This is similar to Gruul’s lair in a lot of ways. There’s only one boss, minimal trash, and it requires a similar gear level as well. Most guilds progressed from Gruul to Mag. The homework required for this place is a bit lighter, especially since they nerfed the ‘cube’ mechanic. You will need to read up on it a touch, and you need to dish out a couple of jobs to people (and failure to do these jobs on time can be a raid-wiper), but the whole fight is a little simpler than getting a Gruul run sorted out. I suspect that you’ll have more success running Mag without any experienced players than you would doing Gruul. If you don’t have much time but can get 15 or 20 players together, this is a great BC raid to have a stab at.

You can find the entrance to Magtheridon’s Lair at the foot of Hellfire Citadel, on its western side.

Zul’Aman

Now, ZA was actually introduced rather later in BC than most of the ‘later’ (harder) raids. It was actually introduced to combat the problem that there was nowhere for 10-man raiding guilds to go after kara, and also to be in a format more accessible to the ‘casual’ raider who can’t manage long sessions of raiding. While each of the bosses has something unique which has to be dealt with, the strategies are fairly simple, and the bosses are to some extent zergable (probably more so to a well-geared group of level 80s). It was placed to fill the gap between kara/mags/gruuls and the later raids, and to be accessible with gear from kara and heroics.

ZA is a fun instance with great atmosphere, and it is probably the number one raid I’d recommend. Kara is longer, trickier to navigate, and you’re more likely to have seen it anyway. If you want to go back and do one instance, and you want it to only require 6-8 players and be relatively easy, ZA is your raid. Oh, by the way, it’s located in the Ghostlands, in Eastern Kingdoms. It also sports the first well-known ‘non-boss’ boss: the gong boss. It’s mostly a problem if people are too impatient to get started.

Serpentshrine Cavern

Straight from the gong boss to the elevator boss: this one has claimed the lives of countless ‘noobs’. SSC, as its commonly shortened to, is a 25-man raid in Coilfang Reservoir, in central Zangarmarsh. Progression-wise, it comes after Mag/Gruul/ZA. Its layout is quite unusual, and if you’ve never been here, it’s worth grabbing a mate, creating a raid group, and going in for a look. If you can manage not to ‘noob-up’ on the elevator boss, you can have a bit of a look at the instance without pulling a single mob. Unfortunately, due to the unusual layout and tricky bosses, trying to raid here without an experienced leader is probably going to result in some serious wiping, even with a group of 80s. That’s if you can find your way to the bosses, anyway.

If you stumble across a group with a leader who knows what’s going on, this is a fun raid. I guess I’m saying that about all of the BC raids, but there’s a reason people go to so much effort to see all of this content. If you’re going to pick and choose bosses, do The Lurker Below (take someone who’s bothered to level their fishing skill!) for a bit of fun, and Lady Vashj (for something that’s more challenging).

The Eye (Tempest Keep)

Technically the 25-man raid in Netherstorm is called The Eye, but it’s more commonly referred to by the name of the instance hub, Tempest Keep. Difficulty-wise, it’s just a bit tougher than SSC. Unfortunately, there’s no tourist pass available: unless you have the group to down some rather nasty (and large!) trash pulls, you won’t see much. The boss fights in here that are worth seeing are fun because they’re complex: don’t try this without a few people who know what’s going on. A’lar and Kael’thas (the first and last bosses) are both enormously entertaining fights, and I’d say this is one of the more worthwhile raids to watch out for an opportunity to do. The second boss (Void Reaver, also known as ‘Loot Reaver’) isn’t very interesting and has some annoying trash to clear, and Solarian is just a bitch; don’t bother (your experienced raid leader won’t want to anyway).

Mount Hyjal

This instance, located in the Caverns of Time, is an absolute must-do for any lore buff. You get to fight alongside both Jaina Proudmoore and Thrall, and the instance culminates in you defeating Archimonde (hopefully). On top of that, MH is just plain fun, and has great scenery. It’s my favourite instance of the Burning Crusade. The whole instance is comprised of a number of waves of trash, followed by a boss; kind of like the Opening of the Dark Portal instance, but much more epic. Seriously: grab 15 or 20 mates and come zerg this. The trash, and perhaps the first boss or two, is zergable with virtually no knowledge of what’s going on (with a decent-sized raid group of 80s, anyway), but if you have access to someone who knows the strats, try to do the whole thing: the last boss is a whole stack of fun, if you don’t mind wiping a bit while you learn it.

Oh, and Mount Hyjal has a free tourist-pass as well; you can zone in and have a good look around without having to kill a single mob.

Black Temple

Prior to the release of the Isle of Quel’danas content patch, this was the toughest raid in the game. There are a whole bunch of different bosses, and you will need a raid leader who knows what’s going on. There are some very interesting boss fights, and if Mount Hyjal isn’t an option but you have a good group and an experienced leader, this place is worth a look. While you won’t get to experience Illidan as a progression fight at the intended difficulty, he’s probably still going to be a fun fight at level 80, and plenty capable of wiping a group that gets something wrong. After the 3.0.2 raid nerf, BT was clearable by an experienced group of 70s in 2-3 hours, but you should probably plan on taking longer if your group isn’t comprised mostly of people who’ve run the place dozens of times.

The Black Temple is located in eastern Shadowmoon Valley.

Sunwell

The pinnacle of BC raiding. This place was seriously hard, and I suspect it will challenge people even at level 80. I’d suggest taking at least 20 people along to here, and preferably a few people who know the instance. Mostly-inexperienced groups will wipe here, no matter how epic they are. There are some mechanics that can dish out some ridiculous amounts of raid damage, and to be honest, clearing this place will probably be hard even for a group of level 80 players. If you can field a 25-man team and have some spare raiding time each week, this place will give you some excellent experience in working as a team, and you’ll get a fairly prestigious achievement to go along with it if you can clear the place. Very few people have ever downed Kil’jaeden, and it will be a tough achievement even with the new expansion out.

Redux Redux

So, looking back at all of this, what should you see? What should you skip? I’m going to assume you saw nothing of instancing or raiding in BC; skip where appropriate.

Instance-wise, lore-junkies will want to catch both of the Caverns of Time instances. For nice quick runs, look at either Mechanar (in Tempest Keep) or Steamvault (in Coilfang); if you have more time on your hands, Botanica (again, in TK) and Shadow Labs (in Auchindoun) should be fun. Oh, yeah. Do Magister’s Terrace. There are very few experiences anywhere in WoW to match swimming around in an anti-gravity field dodging giant blobs while you try to dps a boss like Kael’thas. Oh, except possibly 2-manning him from about 40% to a kill on your first ever attempt. That was crazy fun.

Raid-wise, there’s a lot to see, and most of it is excellent. Zul’aman is a must-see; you’ll only need 6 or 8 mates at level 80 (or even fewer), and you can do it in a few short sessions if you like. With an experienced group, the whole place shouldn’t take much longer than some of the bigger instances; keep in mind that the timed event only allowed 45 minutes or so to down the first 4 bosses, and people were managing that at level 70, pre-nerf.

Even with only one other mate to form a raid group, you can have a bit of a look around both Mount Hyjal and Serpentshrine Cavern, and if you haven’t seen them, I’d highly recommend you take the time. In fact, grab 20 or so mates and go zerg some stuff in Mount Hyjal; it’s my pick of the BC raids, and you won’t need much strategy early on. If you can find someone who knows the fights to take the group through, you should be able to experience the Archi fight, which is great fun.

The Eye is worth a look for the fun boss fights, but you’ll almost definitely need a guide; the boss fights are very complicated. Jump in a group if you see one going, but don’t go out of your way. The same goes for Black Temple.

Sunwell is still probably going to be guild-only territory if you want to down a few bosses. The fights require learning, and you can’t simply out-gear and out-level it and hope to get by. If you do get the opportunity to participate in a Sunwell clear, however, go for it; only a very small fraction of the WoW population will ever see the later bosses in here.

There you go; Burning Crusade in a nutshell. It was a great expansion with some excellent content, and if you missed it, take a few hours here and there to see the sights. I think you’ll find it well worth the effort.

What do you think? Have I missed any real gems? Are you shuddering at the thought of setting foot inside Shadow Labs ever again? Is there a quest-line so compelling that it just has to be done? Do tell. In the meantime,

Happy Druiding,

Althura.

So what HAVE I been doing?

Going boomkin, for a start. I highly recommend throwing at least a few points into balance while you level. I’ve left myself only about 20 points into resto, and I’ve stacked most of the core balance talents. Especially with the change to spell power, you will put out some really good damage, as well as having better survivability in moonkin form.

On top of going balance (although I promise, that’s just while I level), I’ve moved servers. In fact, the whole guild did. We were sick to death of 2000+ queues (that’s right, TWO THOUSAND PLUS). That meant over three hours. Guildies had said they’d seen close to 2.5k, and a four hour wait. Bye bye, Aman’thul. It was a bit of a snap decision, very little discussion really. One night it was being tossed about in vent, with no real decisions being made. The next night, our GM Pawn announced that he was going, and he hoped we’d all come too. A couple of people held out for a while, but pretty much the entire guild (barring a few random socials) is over now. We’ll be raiding it up on the new Oceanic server Saurfang from now on.

It was nice to show up to a new server and already have a reputation. Quite a few people, when they noticed I was in Dissent, immediately whispered me comments ranging from “Ugh, you guys, you’re gonna fail” to “OMG Dissent! Are you recruiting?”. Fortunately a lot more of the latter than the former, but there were a few people here and there who seemed to dislike us. Oh well, I guess they’re most likely the jealous type.

The one place we didn’t have enough fame (or infamy) was with Aman’thul’s GMs. When we petitioned to have the whole guild moved over, bank tabs and all, we were told Dissent wasn’t ‘high-profile’ enough. Apparently being ranked 4th on the server by WowJutsu isn’t all that high-profile. Oh well.

Ok, I lied. I will sneak a few tips in here. Rep. Rep, rep, rep. My Kalu’ak rep is well into revered already, and if you just do all the quests at the three main quest hubs, in Howling Fjord, Borean Tundra, and Dragonblight, you’ll be pretty close to revered (hit that link back there to see the rewards for the different factions). A few dailies and you’re done: there’s one at each quest hub, although be aware that the Borean Tundra one is at the over-run Kalu’ak settlement a little to the west of the main hub.

Wyrmrest Accord is taking a little longer. Focusing on the quests at Wyrmrest Temple rewards you, not just with a stack of rep, but also a cool cut-scene and an achievement. The daily there is also fun.

Sadly, I’m yet to make much of an impression on the Knights of the Ebon Blade, Sons of Hodir, or the Frenzyheart/Oracles. I’m sure these will feature heavily as I get closer to 80, however. I’m sitting around mid-78 so far (which puts me WELL behind Dissent’s faster guys, who have already downed a number of bosses in 10-man Naxx).

80 is certainly in sight, and in the meantime,

Happy Druiding,

Althura.

So, how do you get these addons? The easiest way is to install an addon manager. Addon managers generally install addons for you, check for updates regularly, and so on. My current favourite is called WowMatrix: It’s quick, easy to install, and FAR more up-to-date than most addon managers I’ve used in the past. It has a neat “Get More AddOns” tab that’s easy to use and automatically handles installations for you.

So, once you’ve worked out how to get addons, which ones do you want? There are SO many out there.

Raid Frames

All good healers should be able to manage without addons. Blizzard provides us with raid frames, and let’s face it: Click on your target, hit your spell. Click on your target, hit your spell. You can even make [target=mouseover] macros (try “[target=mouseover,exists,help,nodead]” to minimise errors).

Unfortunately, Blizzard’s default frames really aren’t that great. Fortunately, there are Alternatives. There are three main raid-frame addons that I hear about often:

• XPerl
  This is a mature and commonly-used raid-frame replacement. It is known for being very fully-featured and customisable. I have never used it myself, and I normally hear of it being used by tanks, dpsers, and particularly raid leaders.
• Grid
  Grid is extremely popular, particularly in the healing community. In addition to having similar advantages to XPerl, it provides smaller, more concise frames, and has a wide range of addons available.
• HealBot
  Healbot is known for being easy to use, providing integrated click-casting, and several other neat features. It is popular among lower-end healers, however higher-progression healers tend to prefer one of the previous options. HealBot has a reputation for being a bit laggy at inconvenient times. Like XPerl, I have never used HealBot myself, and am relying on what I’ve heard from others.

My personal pick for healing is Grid. It integrates with a number of other popular addons, and is easily extended. It has a large community of sub-developers who write additional addons to provide extra features. When I’m setting up a new WoW install for healing, Grid is THE number one addon I want.

All of Grid’s addons are treated as separate WoW addons. There’s no manual downloading or installing to be done. As a druid healer, the ones I go for are:

• Grid_QuickHealth: I’ll go into QuickHealth later on; this addon allows Grid to access QuickHealth info. Also install LibQuickHealth-2.0.
• GridManaBars: Vanilla Grid has no mana bars: only health indicators. You probably want to know when your fellow healers are going OOM.
• GridStatusLifebloom: This gives you a REALLY neat way of keeping track of the time remaining on your lifebloom stacks. If you install NO OTHER GRID ADDON, GET THIS.
• GridStatusMissingBuffs: Gives you an indicator showing who’s missing various buffs.

There are a wide variety of other available addons, but these are the core ones I go for straight away. If you want to browse a list, and you have WowMatrix installed, just go to the install tab and search for “Grid”.

Installing and setting up grid can be a bit daunting, but once you get into it it isn’t too bad. Basically, you setup your frames to display “Auras” (buffs, debuffs, etc.) in one of the various positions. You get corner indicators, which are little coloured dots, and a whole lot of pre-set auras. You can also add new auras.

I set the “Aggro Warning” to the top-left corner. I always have a little red dot in the top-left of the frame of ANYONE with aggro. Apart from AoE damage, these are generally the people needing healing, and so this is handy information to have.

Top-right I use for my swift-mendable hots, regrowth and rejuv. If there’s a dot on the top-right of anyone’s frame, I know I can give them an instant burst-heal with swiftmend.

Bottom-right I use for curses and poisons. Curses come up as purple, and poisons as green, by default. You can set the priority of any aura between 1 and 99, and the higher priority auras over-ride lower priority ones.

Bottom-left I use for two things: Wild Growth and EMERGENCY. Emergency is any debuff that requires serious attention, from maiden’s holy-fire debuff to Illidan’s Dark Barrage. If I haven’t been told to focus on the tanks and ignore everything else, I need to spam-heal anyone who shows up an emergency debuff. There’s no actual way to set bottom-left for any emergency: I have to manually set up each debuff I want to show here. I set Wild Growth as a low priority and a light colour so I can easily tell the difference, and Wild Growth will never show up instead of a real emergency indicator.

The whole of the frame shows the person’s health, but there’s a nice little feature called “Incoming Heals”: if another healer in your party or raid is using a compatible addon, and they start casting a heal on somebody, you will see a little shaded area showing the estimated size of the heal that’s about to land. If a priest is about to land a massive Greater Heal on somebody who’s just taken some once-off damage, you know not to bother.

Normally, Grid only has a single line of text: the person’s name. You can turn on a second text-line, and this is where you want to put your Lifebloom indicator.

The Lifebloom indicator, provided by GridStatusLifebloom, is GOLD. It shows a countdown timer for the expiry of your current lifebloom stack on every frame. This is REALLY handy, but even better, it gives a colour-based indicator showing how high your lifebloom is stacked. I customise my colours: Red for 1 stack, Yellow for 2, Green for 3. If Grid had no other features at all, it would be worth it just for this.

Click-Casting

Raid frames are great, but unless you’re using HealBot (which I DON’T recommend), you still need to take 2 steps for each heal: Select your target, cast your spell. Select your target, cast your spell.

Annoying.

I’ve only ever really looked at one click-casting addon. It was too easy to bother trying anything else, and it’s never let me down. It’s called Clique.

Clique lets you bind various mouse-buttons to spells, and cast them on your current mouse-over target. Sure, you can accomplish this with macros, but Clique is just so easy and adjustable you’d be crazy to bother. When you install Clique, you get an extra tab on your spell-book. Once you select this tab, it brings up a new menu showing your current mouse-bindings. You can then select other spellbook tabs, and simply clicking on a spell (with an optional key-modifier like shift, control, or alt) binds that spell to that mouse-click.

Personally, I leave left-click unbound generally. I need this to select a target, which I sometimes want to do. If you’re rolling lifebloom on one tank in particular, sometimes you just want to select them and use your keyboard to do the casting. My only exception is on Archimonde: I select our MT as my current target, and then bind left-click to decurse.

Right-click is set to lifebloom. I find this nice and convenient: to roll lifebloom, I just hover around my tank’s frames and right-click them. Middle-click is Wild Growth.

Now we get to our modifiers. As I use control for my PTT button for Vent, I’ve avoided control. I use shift-left for rejuv, shift-right for swiftmend, alt-left for regrowth, and alt-right for Healing Touch. Shift-middle is Abolish Poison, and alt-middle is Remove Curse. This gives me all my primary heals easily cast by clicking on people’s Grid-frames. SUPER convenient. I’ve been meaning to play with assigning an NS+HT macro to a click, but I just haven’t gotten around to it. I’m sure it’s possible.

That’s about all there is to click-casting. It sounds like a bit of work to set it up, but it’s really quite easy. Once you’ve tried click-casting, you’ll NEVER go back.

QuickHealth

I mentioned Grid_QuickHealth before. There’s a neat little addon called LibQuickHealth-2.0, and its aim is to make the health bars on your raid frames adjust to damage and heals more quickly.

The way things happen by default is that a combat event, like some incoming damage, occurs, and you see that in your combat log. THEN, Blizzard’s server updates the health of the person who took the damage, and sends the updated health amount to your client. THIS IS LAGGY. You have to wait a moment between seeing the combat event, and seeing the resulting decrease in health. QuickHealth attempts to allow for this by adjusting health-bars based on the combat log, and only checking it’s already-calculated value when the updated health amount arrives. I’m not really sure how much benefit you get out of this, but I use it. The only real problem I get from it is that it doesn’t account for the rez-at-graveyard thingy in TK instances, and it’s a bit buggy just after you’ve rezzed there.

HealPoints

HealPoints is a handy little addon for assessing healing gear. It adds a number to the tooltip of any item you hover over, telling you whether it’s better or worse than the gear you’re currently using. I don’t really pay this a lot of attention anymore: I can generally compare the various stats and make my own decisions. This is a great tool if you’re still learning about healing gear, though, and I used it extensively for quite a long time.

ItemRack

This one is GOLD. I’ve also been recently told some good things about Outfitter, but I’ve been using ItemRack for so long, and I love it. I have a heal set, balance, feral tank, non-feral tank (uncritable without talents), resto pvp, feral pvp, shadow resist, fire resist… The list goes on. It can throw whole sets in and out of the bank too.

oRA2

I don’t use this one directly, but it’s very useful for raiding. It gives me a set of tank frames (with target and target-of-target), it lets raid leaders see what my current cooldowns are (mainly for brez), and does all sorts of other things. If you raid, you should probably have this.

Recount

Recount probably deserves a whole post all to itself, and this one’s gotten long enough already. It lets me see all sorts of statistics about what’s going on in combat: heal meters, damage meters, dispells… The one to really pay attention to is the Deaths option. If you show Deaths, you can click on someone’s name to have a look at the last few seconds before they died. Try not to use it to blame people for deaths, that can get unpleasant. It is a good tool for seeing, for example, why a tank died… Were the assigned healers not landing heals as fast as they should? Or maybe they were spamming the heals, and you know you need more or better geared healers on that tank.

Talented

Talented is simply wonderful for anyone who respecs even occasionally. You can set up different talent specs as templates, play around with them, post the whole spec list to chat channels… And most importantly, automatically apply a template. No more expensive mistakes while selecting talent points, and no more tedious clicking. Just choose a template, click apply, and come back in a few minutes.

There’s also an addon called Talented_Data that lets you play around with templates from the talent tree of any other class.

Messaging and Copy-Pasting

WIM and ChatCopy are the two addons I use for this stuff. ChatCopy lets me select text from just about any chat channel and copy it to the windows clipboard, to paste somewhere else (great for vent details). WIM is a window- or tab-based “msn-style” application to replace whispers. No chance, now, of missing a whisper in the middle of loot-spam, or when you make the mistake of hearthing to shatt just before a server shutdown. It can also store your chat history, and brings your recent history up when you open a new chat window with someone you’ve talked to before.

Wrap-up

I use a whole bunch of other addons too. To be honest, I’m a bit of an addon-whore. QuestHelper and WHDB. ProfessionsBook. LootLink. Cartographer, AND Atlas. Beql. In fact, WowMatrix tells me I currently have 82 addons installed. The above ones, however, are the ones I’ve found particularly useful, as a druid healer, or just handy in general. If you find any of them a bit too tricky to get into, drop me a comment and I’ll try to write a howto. In the meantime…

Happy Druiding,

Althura.