You may have noticed from my hideous screenshots that I don't use a lot of mods. It's not that I'm against mods; anything that makes my job easier gets a big thumbs up from me. Really, it's just that I'm lazy. I had a nice UI, but when the patch broke it, I didn't really bother to update and mess with all the fine details again. Still, there are a few things I can't live without: DBM and Grid always make the list, as does Pally Power. Recount is handy, sure, and I like keeping FlagRSP up-to-date. But this isn't about any of those mods. In fact, this is about a mod that I just reinstalled a couple weeks ago:
Hey. I didn't name it. If I named it, it would be called Pretty Pink Paladin Pony Ptracker. (The P is silent.) Alas, it is what it is, and I can never remember the actual letters for it, so I have to rely on browser history to fill in the blanks past the CL.
CLCBPT, more formally called Paladin Beacon of Light, Sacred Shield Tracker, is just that: It tracks your buffs. Specifically, it tracks Beacon of Light, Sacred Shield, Judgments of the Pure, and your Flash of Light HoT on a Sacred Shield target.
Now, I know you're probably not all that impressed. There are other mods that can do the same thing. Heck, you can even configure Grid to do most of that. But let's think about this for a moment. This mod is just for paladins. It is our own. Our precious. And it does a few things that you can't really get without mating two mods together to get some weird babymod. And I don't really recommend that. It's almost as bad as breeding Pokemon that aren't the same type. We just don't go there, folks.
The main reason I like CLCBPT is because it is very visual without being in your face. You can see from the screenshot above, it shows countdown bars for my buffs, including my FoL HoT. It will also flash a warning and play a sound when the buffs are about to drop off, which is very helpful if you're caught up in a busy fight. Best part about this? If you're using the Beacon of Light glyph, you can stop wasting your mana recasting Beacon too early. Before I glyphed, I got into the habit of just refreshing Beacon before every pull. With an extra minute on the timer, I was losing a ton of mana for no reason. Unfortunately, waiting could mean I wouldn't have Beacon up when I really needed it. But with CLCBPT running, I never miss a Beacon, nor do I recast it too early. Additionally, the uptime of my Sacred Shield and FoL HoT is much higher, and I am never without haste from Judgments of the Pure.
So what do you do with CLCBPT once you've installed it? Configure it, of course! You can go into Options > Interface > Addons to access the menu, since I know you won't remember /clcbpt. I sure don't. Once you open it up, you'll see a few options to mess around with. First, click the Anchors button and move the timers where you'd like them. I have mine arranged right beside Grid. After that, you have a few different categories. Fortunately there's nothing too in-depth, so it doesn't take long to configure to your liking. Let's run through the options:
Scans per second: This is the refresh rate at which CLCBPT will check your buffs. Default should be fine.
Player
Growth: This is how the stack of cooldown bars grows. Default is up, with JoTP on the bottom, then Beacon, Sacred Shield, and FoL HoT.
Width/Height: I'm trying to think of something witty, but I'm having trouble channeling the snarky.
Font/Font Family: Oh and you can change the font. Woo. Hoo.
FoL HoT (fol)
I'm not making separate points for this. It'd make me feel silly. You can enable tracking here, change the color of the bar and its texture.
Beacon of Light (bol)
Ditto, except now you can play a sound and fade out a graphic as a warning. We'll get into global values of warnings in a minute. For now just check Pulse Warning and Sound Warning.
Judgments of the Pure (jotp)
Second verse, same as the first!
Sacred Shield (ss)
You know the drill.
Group
It took me a bit to figure out what this is, since it has the same options as Player. In a nutshell, enabling this allows you to spy on other holy paladins. You can see their Sacred Shield and Beacon of Light in the same way that you can see your own. Nice for tracking multiple Beacon targets in a raid. Or for shits and giggles in a pug when you're complaining to your guildmates about the fact that the so-called holy paladin isn't keeping Beacon up. Note that this doesn't appear to track their JotP or FoL HoTs, so no snickering about that.
Warnings
This is actually the main meat of this mod in terms of configurable options, and probably where you'll spend the most time. These are the global settings for all of your warnings. Essentially what a warning will do is show the spell graphic and play a sound once your buff is about to run out. Simple, but handy.
Pulse Duration: How long it flashes the graphic in seconds. Keep it short; you don't want it distracting you.
Pulse Position Horizontal/Vertical: Where the graphic shows on your screen. The default 0/0 coordinates will place it right over your character, which is fine by me. I tried putting it under Grid, but I never saw it over there. Apparently I need something more obvious.
Pulse Size Max/Min: The graphic starts out at a certain size and pulses to a smaller one. These are percentages of the original graphic size. Default is 150% start and 100% finish which works well for me, but if you're trying to cram a lot into a UI, you may want to set it smaller.
Warn Time: When you want the warning to show. As a default, it will show 3 seconds before the buff is about to expire. Note that you can set these individually for each buff. For example, if you want JoTP to flash when your judgement spell is off cooldown, set it to 42.
And... that's it! Really. It's a lightweight, simple mod and though it isn't something I'd call a necessity, it's very handy. And it makes pretty bars and graphics, which is what really counts.
This entry was posted
on Thursday, March 18, 2010
at Thursday, March 18, 2010
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