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.
I can heal without Grid. Really and truly. I remember pulling out raid frames back in the day, so I certainly don’t believe any addon will make or break a healer, but I wouldn’t trade the efficiency and sheer knowledge that comes from having Grid.
It can certainly seem daunting at first, but once you get into the meat of the interface, you can easily configure it for just about any purpose. This, however, isn’t a general guide to setting up Grid. There are plenty of those on the web. Instead I’d like to illuminate a few things you may not know exist in Grid, and what you can do with them as a holy paladin:
Tracking Buffs
You may have used this feature by tracking certain debuffs in new raids before the Grid library was updated to include them - Incinerate Flesh and Bonespike Graveyard, for example. Did you know you can add buff tracking the same way?
Open up Grid config and expand the Status subsection. Click on Auras, then where it says Add New Buff, type in the name of the buff you want to track. In this case, we’re going to add Beacon of Light. Hit enter, then expand the Auras subsection to see Buff: Beacon of Light.
Click on Buff: Beacon of Light and take a look at the options. You can change the color of the indicator here, as well as the priority. A higher priority will make sure the indicator shows above other indicators in the same location. Below the priority slider there are several options, but since I’ve decided I want my bacon to show an indicator when it’s on a target, I only check Show if Mine.
Just like a custom debuff, though, if you don’t set it to an indicator, it won’t do anything. Currently I have my Grid set to display an aggro indicator in the upper left corner and a cleansable debuff indicator in the top right. Let’s say you want Beacon to display in the bottom left. Go up to Frame and expand it, then click on Bottom Left Corner. Check Buff: Beacon of Light and make sure everything else is unchecked, and viola! I have a way to track Beacon of Light on Grid.
You can do this with blessings, as well. Add a new buff the same way you added Beacon, then go in and tweak the options. You can choose to Show if Missing, but I still keep it to Show if Mine. It tells me the same thing without giving me more information than I need. This isn’t a substitute for PallyPower by any means, but if for some reason your standard buffing addon isn’t working, you can still see who in the raid has buffs at a glance.
Tracking Aggro
Let’s say you’re in a raid and one of those silly warlocks starts Lifetapping mid-pull. You figure ‘Alright, he’s not getting hit by anything, so I’ll keep him on a lower priority.’ But suddenly, there’s a dead warlock on the ground and everyone’s looking to you for answers. Turns out the warlock got aggro from an AE pack, but Grid’s default aggro indicator (a flashing red line around the box) was at a lower priority than the low health (flashing white line) indicator, so you didn’t see it. Even if you had, by the time he actually got aggro, it likely would have been too late. He is a warlock, after all. Just look at them and they fall over dead. *
But did you know you can track threat via Grid? Expand the Status subsection and select Aggro warning alert. Check the Threat box and you will get three separate color indicators to configure. After that, you can go up to the Frame subsection and decide where you want it to show. I have my aggro warning indicator set to the top left corner at the highest priority.
Now when that warlock is inching up to the tank in threat, you can see it via a High Threat indicator, allowing you the chance to toss a Hand of Salvation on him to calm his Hellfiring butt down. Yep. You’re just that awesome. Everyone can line up to thank you later. Preferably with chocolates.
Tweaking Icecrown Debuffs
I like to call this one: Making sure I don’t cleanse the abomination like a dumbass.
If you’ve updated Grid in the past few weeks, you’ll notice it now auto-tracks things like Bonespike Graveyard and Mark of the Fallen Champion. This is great, but we can do a bit more tweaking to maximize the efficiency of these indicators.
Expand the Status subsection and then expand Raid Debuffs. Click Icecrown Citadel and Load. You should see all of the debuffs from the zone, separated neatly by boss. Let’s just say, for starters, we want to do a few things here. Mainly, we want to solve some problems:
Mark of the Fallen Champion is getting covered up by another icon! Halp!
Go down to Deathbringer Saurfang and click Mark of the Fallen Champion. Set the icon and color priority to 10 and your problems should be solved!
I need to know how long my target has on their Mutated Infection! Halp!
Go down to Rotface and click Mutated Infection. Check Remained time and you should get a little timer with your icony goodness.
I keep cleansing the abomination on Putricide and everybody hates me! Halp!
I’m sure I’ve…. Never done this. Ever. But if I had, I would go down to Putricide and uncheck Enable so this icon won’t show at all on Grid and I wouldn’t be tempted to cleanse it…
I imagine most of you awesome healers know about these advanced configurations, but I’m hoping it helps a few people get a bit more out of Grid. While you can certainly get the same thing out of other addons, I like having everything in one nice, pretty, boxy… box.
What about you? Do you use advanced customization for Grid, or are you happy with the standard setup?
* No warlocks were harmed in the making of this post.
Friends
