Reflections From The Pond

Posts Tagged ‘video’

*singing* HealBotting across the Universe, on the Starship Enterprise, under Captain Kirk *stops singing*.

Hmm, well, not really, but I just love that song :D

Now, back to business! I use HealBot (or HealBot Continued which seems to be its current real name) when I heal in WoW. I’ve tried to use some other healy addon with even more custom options , like Grid, but since I was so used to the HealBot it felt like an unsurmountable hassle to figure out how Grid works and set it up to my liking.

I’ve heard rumours that it is a memory hog, but I’ve never noticed that, so I’ve stuck with HealBot, and in fact use it on all my chars, not only the healery ones, for a range of functions.

So how does it work?

Well, start by downloading it from Curse or some place of your liking, and install it. There is a manual of sorts on the download page and there is a whole forum dedicated to it, but this post is about how I have customised it to fit my way of playing. Anyone interested in it should not take my words as gospel but rather play around with it yourself to see what works for you :-)

If it doesn’t open automatically in-game type /hb to start it up.

You’ll see a frame looking something like this:

You use HealBot like any other raidframe, by clicking on the named healthbar to perform a variety of functions or spells. HealBot comes loaded with a default setting, but where’s the fun using that? Customising time!

Left-click on the small yellow H icon on the minimap

or write /hb o.

This opens up the first tab of the HealBot configuration, the General tab:

Disable HealBot turns the HealBot frame off. Turn it back on with /hb.

Show minimap button -- what it sounds like.

Lock position -- once you’ve found the ultimate place for the frame lock it in place so you don’t accidentally drag it around your screen. Not too fun to misclick on the anchor point instead of a bar and toss the entire thing out under your other action bars.

Anchor -- the HealBot frame grows from this point, and you left-click in the chosen corner to drag the frame around.

I usually chose Top Left as my anchor because then the groups will be sorted nicely with 1 on the top left and increasing to the right and down. It also means that you will have to move the HealBot frame around to fit it in depending on the size of the raid, since after a 40-man AV the tiny frame with your name only in it will be sitting almost in the middle of your screen and not neatly down in the corner.

Close automatically -- this closes the frame when no one needs a heal or a decurse of some kind and pops it open again when someone does. I have my heal frame enabled at all times because the popping up and down of it can be rather annoying. You can’t make it so only the bars of people needing heals will open up, it’s either all or nothing, so I prefer having it open all the time.

Play sound on open chimes so you won’t miss that HealBot is now ready to be used. Not very useful to me so I’ve turned it off.

Hide options button -- checking this saves some space in the frame since the “Options” at the bottom of it will be hidden. Better to instead use:

Right click opens options -- right click anywhere on the frame apart from a heal bar to open the configuration menu (options panel).

Hide party frames -- I check this since I don’t need the usual five party members’ frames visible when I have HealBot enabled, but I don’t check Include player and target since I find it reassuring to see my own frame all the time and I often have a mob or boss targetted to see who it is targetting in turn and which spells and abilities it is using.

Enable libQuickHealth is for the more advanced people using some sort of mob health thingie. I have not had the time or inclination yet to figure out if this would be useful for me, so I have not checked it, same with the Use CPU Profiler.

In the chat option, the only message I have enabled is the resurrection one -- Notify for ressurection only. It is slightly annoying when you ress people only to find out a second or two before your 10 second ressurection spell is finished that someone else was ressing your target too. HealBot shows dead people’s name in black letters which turn to green when someone is casting a ress spell on them, so you can check that before you try to ress someone as well to avoid double-ressing.

I don’t use messages for healing (as you can see I have checked No messages) but you can select any recipents of your choice if you want to broadcast whom you are healing and for how much (estimated).

The original ressurrection message has been good enough for me so far (Casting #s on #n), but you can make fanciful messages of your own if you please. #s is the spell you are casting, #n is the target for the spell and #h is the estimated amount this target will be healed for.

 

Now, the next tab is the Spells tab.

The top drop-down menu lets you choose if you want to use enabled bars at all times or if you want to disable them when out of combat. You can have different spell settings and key-bindings on the enabled and disabled bars.

I always use enabled bars because frankly I have enough spells to keep track of as it is, and adding another set of depending on whether I am in or out of combat would do my head in.

As you can see you can bind spells to five mouse buttons, and you have to check for yourself which button on your mouse corresponds to what.

For each mouse button, you can have up to four different keybindings, the simple click or a click when holding down a modifier key, shift, ctrl or alt. I use ctrl as my push-to-talk key for our Ventrilo, so I have cleared all ctrl-clicks from my HealBot.

You type in the spell or macro you want to use for each click-combo. (More on my macros later.)

Save unique spells for each spec is a nifty feature that will let you select different spells for the clicks if you are dual specced. I have not yet tried it with any of my girls since I don’t have anyone with two healery specs, so I cannot say for sure how good it works.

Use enabled settings when target is in combat is a small variety of the top drop-down menu, but since I don’t use disabled bars I have it unchecked, and the next one, Always use enabled settings, is checked to be doubly sure. (Well, enabled settings is not quite the same thing as enabled bars, but close enough :-)

Avoid accidental PvP flagging is checked so if I can’t heal anyone engaging in PvP unless I am flagged myself.

Having an addon choose which spells to use when in combat is a strict no-no and would be boring as hell, but out of combat it really doesn’t matter, does it? Checking SmartCast when out of combat and checking which kind of spells you want to use for this enables the addon to pick whichever spell is appropriate for your target. This is probably the only times nowadays my priest actually uses Lesser Heal or Heal when she’s SmartCasting out of combat to top her off.

The SmartCast spells are cast in the following order; ressurrection spell, decurses, buffs and finally heals.

I am a lazy one so I have enabled all types of spells :D

Be aware though that for the SmartCast of buffs to work you need to set which buffs to look out for, which you do on the Buffs tab, and likewise which spell(s) to use for decurses, which you do on the Curse tab.

 

Next tab up is the Healing.

Here you can choose from a number of different options in which heal bars to include.

I generally have Self, My Targets, Group, Raid, Pets and Target Bar checked. Raid includes yourself and the group you are in, if any. If you check Self and/or Group, those health bars will be pulled out and displayed as separate groups before all the other raid groups, like this:

See how the groups sort themselves nicely in the options order?

The Pets include all sorts of combat pets, hunters’, warlocks’, priests’ Shadowfiends and any MC’d minions of theirs. Very handy in the Inspector Razouvious fight, for example.

Main Tanks are picked up from ORA2 or whatever raid addon you are using.

My Targets is a list you make yourself by Ctrl-Alt-Right Click on the health bar of whomever you would like to add to this group, up to 10 members.  To remove someone from your My Targets-group, Ctrl-Alt-Right Click on them once again.

Target Bar is showing the player or NPC you have targetted at the moment, and they don’t need to be grouped with you. Handy for escort quests and such things. If you want your target to show up as a group of its own on HealBot, select which options you would like to include. I usually have them all unchecked.

Checking Restrict Target Bar to predefined settings is supposed to make you able to add people to your My Targets-group by right-clicking them, but it is not working for me atm, so I have it unchecked.

Alert Level is the threshold (percent of max health) below which the health bars will highlight to call for attention, like in this example where the level is set to 80%:

I have normally this level set to 100 %, so my health bars are always highlighted. This is because you cannot easily distinguish between the fading done for people above 80 % health and the fading done for people out of range in Healbot, so to not risk trying to heal people out of range, or failing to run towards them if needed, I prefer to clearly see who is in range for my heals:

The range check frequency is simply how often HealBot checks who’s in range, and as usual, the more often the spiffier computer you need.

Since I don’t use disabled bars I’ve not bothered about Disable bar when range > 100 yards, with my settings above it does not matter if it checked or not.

In the nextx pane, Show extra bars is for any raid members not already selected in the top pane, and it can be filtered accordingly. I rarely meddle with this since I most often raid 10-mans (except when bg’ing which is too chaotic anyway for me to bother trying to sort things neatly) which are pretty easy to keep track of and thus I keep it on All Classes sorted by Groups.

 

Next tab, the Cure tab!

At the top, I’ve checked the Monitor to remove debuffs and also in combat. I can remove debuffs and I use Healbot for this as well, so I only have one addon for the whole keeping people good and well and happy-business. So, debuffs needs to be removed, and especially in combat since some are rather nasty and might even interfere with my ability to heal.

It’s a screenshot from my shaman’s HealBot, thus I’ve chosen Cleanse Spirit for debuff removing and I am monitoring it on the raid, which also includes myself and my group. This is the spell that SmartCast will use when de-debuffing, but you have to set the decurse spells and key-bindings yourself in the Spells tab for when in combat.

I’ve chosen to ignore debuffs by class, ie magic effects won’t show up on my shaman’s healbot since she can’t dispell magic effects on friendly target, and debuffs which are not harmful or which has a short duration is also ignored. I hate being slowed so I’m keeping an eye out for such debuffs even though they are not directly harmful.

In the next section, the custom debuffs allows you to watch for debuffs that you can’t dispell but need to react fast to. HealBot comes witha few debuffs loaded, but you can always write in a new one and save it when you encounter it. Kel’Thuzad’s Frost Blasts and Ignius Slag Pots are examples of debuffs that requires fast reactions to heal.

I have colour-coded the different debuffs so I can easily see who’s affected directly on their health bars, when the bright leaf-green turns to any of the darkish colours indicated, violet for diseases, blur for magic effects, green for poisons, brownish-yellow for curses and reddish purple for the custom debuffs.

I’ve unchecked Display warning on debuff since I see it directly with my colour-coding, but I have checked Play sound on debuff, although it is usually too noisy to hear it through the raid din.

 

Next, the pimp options are found on Skin 1 and Skin 2.

On these two tabs, there are several options for textures, widhts, fonts and font sizes etc, and you have to fiddle around with them to find something that works for you. Remember that you can save different skins for different situations, you can use considerably larger bars and fonts on a 5-man dungeon run or a 10-man raid than a 25-man raid or even a 40-man AV raid.

You can’t change the colour of the health bars when unaffected by debuffs and not lacking any buffs, or the colours of the rage/mana/energy/runic power bar, but otherwise it is pretty customisable. 

There are a few different skins to choose from an you can make as many of your own as you want, just tweak the settings on Skin 1 and Skin 2 and save them under another name.

The Background is the color of the frame or (lack of frame) around the HealBot health bars.

If you check Show headers, all your target options from the Healing tab will be sorted into neat groups with headers, which in my opinion makes it much easier to see the whole picture. Just check out the difference between this AV raid with headers:

 

 and the same AV raid without headers:

Speaks for itself, eh?

I want to monitor for aggro and I use the Flash bar which blinks on above the health bar of the player in question to alert me if someone has pulled aggro and might need a quick heal. This monitoring covers both aggro towards the triggerhappy mage with a string of crits that actually passed the tank in threat and the random aggro-redirect of certain boss spells which are flung haphazardly out on the raid.

I don’t use fluid bars because the wildly fluctuating of the health is a bit nauseating at times.

I use Show HoT icons but not Debuff icons since I see the manner of the debuff by the colour-coding anyways, and the health bars are a bit crowded at times. For that very same reason I put the HoT icons on the bars and not off them, and to the left because that let’s me see the first part of the player’s name to easier identify them. Icon count is for charged buffs, like Earth Shield or Lifebloom, and duration is for normal HoTs, like Riptide or Renew.

On the next tab, Skin 2, there are more options for the appearance of the health bars

I have set the opacity for out of range and disabled to the same value, because like I said before it is very hard to differentiate between them even with largely different values.

I also make the Mana bar size rather large since I like to keep track of my fellow raiders mana and if they might benefit from an Innervate or Mana Tide totem.

The bottom pane has some more informative options. I try to keep the bars rather small, so I only use Show name on bar and not Show class on bar, but to make up for that I use Color text by class and use a rather fat font to be able to see the colour. If you have good enough eyesight, a good enough and large screen resolution, you can check the Double text lines to squeeze in two lines of text on each health bar. I don’t, so I settled for the above settings.

I don’t use Color bar by class since it screw up my debuff colour coding.

I also don’t show health on bars since that is a rather large number with lots of digits and needs a large health bar to be visible. I do like to be able to see something else besides greenih bars, you know, things like the boss and the splendid fireworks going on around him and even some of the lovely scenery of their hideouts.

 

The next to last tab, the Tips tab, deals with the tooltips.

All these options sets what is shown on the tooltip when you mouseover a health bar. I usually don’t pay too much attention to this, it is basically information about the target and which key-bindings you have available.

 

The last tab is the Buffs tab.

I always check Monitor for missing buffs and also in combat.

This is my shaman’s Buff tab, and she has it easy and needs only keep track of her own buffs, the Water Shield and Earthliving Weapon, but you can set this to check raid wide for missing buffs.

Out of combat, player’s who miss a buff will have a white health bar (or blue, in my case) and it won’t turn green until all buffs you monitor for are in place. You change the un-buffed color by right-clicking on the bar and drag the sliders around til it suits you.

 

Now, this is the basics on how HealBot works and how I have set it up. The trickiest part is to assign spells, macros and abilities to the various keybindings and to find a way to work with them fluently, especially if you, like me, use this addon for many different chars with different spells at their disposal.

This turned out to be a pretty long post in itself so I will cover my actual key bindings and when I use them on my various chars in another post. Til then, have fun fiddling around!

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No, seriously, why can’t a gnome be a druid?

There is one immediate and profound question -- what size bear would she be?

But apart from that, is there something inherent that prohibits a gnome from studying hard and learning the tricks and become a shapeshifting druid or is it plain old discrimination?

Tauren and Night Elves are the only races that can become druids, but although both are very old races as opposed to the younger race of the gnomes, there does not seem to be any physical or  spiritual criteria for becoming a druid, only the racial one. And if Night Elves can become druids, why can’t Blood Elves? After all, they share the same heritage.

Maybe it’s something taught?

The druids learned their ways from Cenarius, the son of Elune, the Moon Godess and Malorne, the White Stag. Cenarius was brought up by Ysera, the Green Dragon Aspect and Protector of the Emerald Dream and he taught the druids to be the keepers of the world, to heal and nurture it and to keep the delicate balance of nature. The druids’ powers come from nature itself and their affinity with nature is strong enough to let them change their shapes.

Now, the druids do not rely on Nature exclusively, because some of their offensive abilities like Moonfire and Starfire actually uses Arcane powers, but the absolute majority of the spells at their disposal are of the Nature school (or the Physical variety when they are in Cat or Bear form).

Is it maybe so that gnomes can’t use Nature spells at all, maybe it is impossible for them to learn how to tap into the forces of Nature and shift into a tiny teddy bear?

Well, actually none of the classes available to the gnomes (Warlocks, Mages, Warriors and Rogues) uses Nature damage spells of any kind (Rogues’ poisons are Nature damage I believe, but that is something applied from without), and if you are to believe Gearmaster Mechazod the gnomes were originally created by “The Grand Architect”, a Titan keeper from within the halls of fabled Ulduar.

According to the Gearmaster, life is “a condition that eventually befalls all of the creations of the Titans!” 

In other words, the gnomes supposedly started out as robots of some kind, and, over thousands of years, slowly turned into fleshy beings!

(The Gearmaster is busy reverting this condition in the quest The Mechagnomes in Borean Tundra atm, go there and help Fizzcrank stop him!)

So, given the gnomes’ possible un-natural creation, born from cogwheels and metal and tinkering and far from the lush green forests of the Emerald Dream, maybe they are barred from tapping into the energies of Nature and thus truly unable to become druids.

(Although it would not be too unreasonable to assume that during their long historical transformation from fleshless to fleshy they would have approached the natural ways somewhat, and that it would not be impossible for a determined gnome to go the whole way and totally embrace Nature, would it?)

But what about the other races? Hunters use Nature spells, Shamans use Nature spells, and you can find Hunters or Shamans of every race there is, except gnomes (edit: or humans or undeads). So it seems all most other races can tap into Nature powers, why can’t they become druids then? Is Blizzard oppressing us?

I say we should start up a rebellion! Let’s all join in the People’s Front of the Emerald Dream and fight Blizzard for our right to be druids!

Even if we can’t be druids we can have the right to be!

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This day Jools moved to the Aerie Peak realm.

She spent the last weekends’ mornings doing some heroics with some of her friends on Vashj, getting her Exalted with the Sha’tar, concluding with a quiet come-together around a bonfire in Elwynn Forest before she packed her bags and transferred.

Aerie Peak is a pve realm = no more being ganked while peacefully questing!

Jools has found a new cool guild there and although all her sisters are on Vashj I think she will like it a lot in her new home.

It’s not likely that she ever will forget the fun times she had on Vashj, and if she comes even remotely close she can always watch this video made for her by one of her dearest friends! (And yes, I cried a lot of happy tears when I watched it :-)

So, this is a goodbye from Jools to everyone she knew on Vashj. May you all live long and prosper, may your days be sunny and warm, and may you all be careful what you wish for, because you might get it!

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